Thursday, August 28, 2025

Tunis

The Phoenicians, based in what is now Lebanon, were great sailors in ancient times. They founded settlements around the Mediterranean, some of which grew into the cities of today. One of those settlements, on the African side of the Mediterranean, was called Carthage.

Carthage grew into a great and influential city that later became a major opponent of the Romans. It fought three separate wars with Rome, with much of the combat taking place in Italy. The wars were called the Punic Wars. Rome finally got the upper hand and destroyed Carthage. Later it was rebuilt as a Roman city.

I once wasn't sure whether to believe the story of Hannibal attacking Rome with elephants across the Alps, but I suppose it is true.

The following images are of the ruins of Carthage. The first image, from Google Earth, shows Phoenicia as a red dot and Carthage as a yellow dot. The next two images are from Google Street View.



There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish. 

Carthage, now known as Tunis, has been an important city since it was founded, and today gets a lot of visitors. The following scenes are of the medina of Tunis, the old part of the city. Tunis was an important city of medieval Islam. The first four images, of the streets and markets of the medina, are from Google Street View.




https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7979183,10.1726181,3a,75y,152.44h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJFwbG7vli0gah-fEUT_16A!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DJFwbG7vli0gah-fEUT_16A%26yaw%3D152.43642903764615!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D 

Here is some more of the older part of Tunis.

The Zaytuna Mosque also had a great university. The first two images of the Mosque are from Google Street View.


Here is some scenes beginning at the university, which is near the mosque.

Downtown Tunis runs along Avenue Habib Bourguiba, named for the first president of modern Tunisia. The country was a colony of France and you can see the French influence. But this street is as attractive as the Champs-Elysees. The first four images are from Google Street View.




 https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7996142,10.1799937,3a,75y,160.15h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sIPM5p9_zLyEF9n-dh038pQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DIPM5p9_zLyEF9n-dh038pQ%26yaw%3D160.1476228119409!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D 

This is an area near downtown Tunis.

Tunis has a monument just like the one in Algiers, but not as high. The first image is from Google Street View. 


This is the monument, at Kasbah Square.

The following scenes begin at the Clock Tower.

These are the modern buildings of Tunis. The first four images are from Google Street View.




The following scenes begin along Avenue Mohamed V. This is a main business street of Tunis and was named for the former king of Morocco.


This is a neighborhood of Tunis away from the city center.

The important thing that has happened in Tunisia in recent years is that the Arab Spring began there, in 2009. This was a general spirit of uprising against the governments of Arab countries. The Arab Spring had a far-reaching effect that hasn't finished playing out yet, as the Syrian Civil War was part of it. There was resulting changes of government in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria and, Yemen. One of the most visible manifestations of the Arab Spring was the overthrow, capture and, killing of Moammar Gaddafi, in neighboring Libya.

That is the city of Tunis. The following seven images, from Google Street View, are further south in Tunisia. There are a lot of places that look like the American west.







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Lightning And Straight Lines

Have you ever wondered why a bolt of lightning doesn't go in a straight line, or maybe it does?

A bolt of lightning prompts thinking about the nature of straight lines, and what exactly a straight line is. A bolt of lightning will take the path of least resistance to it's destination. It is excess electrons proceeding either from the cloud to the ground, from the ground to the cloud, or between two clouds. 

But why is this path of least resistance not exactly the same thing as what we see as a straight line, when it would seem that the path of least distance should also be the path of least resistance? If we could see the lightning bolt from the perspective of one of it's electrons, it would certainly seem that it had traveled in a perfectly straight line, not what we see as the typically jagged path of a lightning bolt.

This brings us to the nature of straight lines, and since a straight line is defined as the shortest distance between two points, it brings us to the nature of distance. We see distance in terms of straight lines but an electron in the lightning bolt would see it in terms of energy, a "straight line" being the route of lowest energy between two points instead of the shortest distance.

But then what exactly is distance? Is it the amount of space between two points or the amount of energy in the space between two points, or does it even matter? We define distance as how much energy or time we would have to expend to get there or how much light is hindered and reduced in getting from there to us.

The trouble with our definition of a straight line is that we will always define the path of light as a straight line, because we get our information from light. We can see by a jagged lightning bolt that a straight line might be open to definition. The path of lowest energy of an electron in a lightning bolt may not be exactly the same as the path of light.

The definition of a straight line seems to be dependent on the dimensions of space. A straight line in a lower dimensional order might not be a straight line, meaning the most direct route between two points, in a higher dimensional order. A living being is only aware of the dimensions of it's own order and would be unaware of any higher dimensional order of which it was a part.

Our dimensional order is four dimensions, one of which we perceive as time. There is no reason to believe that there couldn't be more dimensions of space than this. It would actually be the lowest information state for there to be an infinite number of dimensions, since this would avoid having to make the choice of a number. If we could see in a higher dimensional order, we might see that what we thought was a straight line was not actually a straight line. Just as with the lightning bolt.

My cosmology theory has electrons as one-dimensional strings. Lightning does not appear to us to take a perfectly straight route because we are of a higher dimensional order than the electrons in a lightning bolt. What they "see" as a straight line is not exactly a straight line in our view.

Distance in a lower dimensional order is longer than in a higher dimensional order. This is because the "shortcuts" that would be visible in a higher dimensional order cannot be seen. Suppose that there was a one-dimensional being in a lower corner of a box, and it wanted to move to the diagonally opposite upper corner. It would be unable to see that it could go directly across the box, because that would require seeing in three dimensions. Neither would it be able to see that it could go diagonally across the box, to the opposite corner, because that would require seeing in two dimensions.

The one-dimensional being would have to take the journey one dimension at a time, in three legs along the vertices of the box. It would be unaware of, and unable to access, the diagonal "shortcut" directly across the box. We see the being's journey as three legs, one in each dimension of the box, but it would see itself as having moved only in a straight line. It couldn't be aware of the "turns" because that would require a two-dimensional order. In the same way, electrons in the bolt of lightning would see themselves as moving in a perfectly straight line. The path of least resistance and a straight line would be one and the same.

If a one-dimensional being was at Point 1, in the following image, and wanted to get to Point 2, it would see the distance as the three vertices in red, A, B and, C, but would see it as a straight line. It would be utterly unaware of the diagonal shortcut across the box.

Remember the Pythagorean Theorem. In a right triangle, which is a triangle with one right angle, the squares of the two legs, added together, is equal to the square of the diagonal. This is usually expressed as C squared = A squared + B squared. This theorem works in multiple dimensions.

The one-dimensional being would see, if the box is a cube with each side having a dimension of 1, the distance to the diagonally opposite upper corner as a straight line distance of 3. We, with our dimensional order being the same as the box, see it as a straight line distance of the square root of 3, which is 1.732.

Where does that bring us considering that it would be the lowest information state for there to be an infinite number of dimensions, because that would avoid having to make the choice of a number? We are of only four dimensions, one of which we perceive as time. That means our dimensional order is infinitesimal with regard to the universe. 

We see the distances in the universe as infinite. But this could just be the result of our dimensional perspective. The universe could be infinitesimal in space, on the order of an electron, but of an infinite number of dimensions. Since we are of an infinitesimal dimensional order, we would have to see the distances in the universe as infinite and be utterly unaware of the "shortcuts" across the universe, just as with the electrons in the bolt of lightning.

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Technology Reminders

There is still one feature that phones are missing. I wrote about this here years ago. What if you want to show something on your phone to a group of people? It is awkward to pass the phone around. If a phone has a flashlight then why can't it be used as a projector? Anywhere that it is a little bit dark, the phone screen could be projected onto a wall.

When is a phone going to offer a choice of keyboard? I am sure that many people would like an ABC keyboard, instead of this QWERTY order. This was made to facilitate faster typing in the days of secretaries but almost everyone does their own typing nowadays and it is useless to be able to type faster than one can think. Some people can type with their thumbs. Since most people are right-handed, how about a keyboard with the most-used letters to the right side? There could also be a left-handed thumb keyboard.

No matter how many words a language may have, only about ten thousand words are in common everyday use. Why not assign each word a four-digit numerical code, from 0000 to 9999? This would only include words, and not names. Every sign that might be read by people from another country would have the numeric code displayed under each word. It would only be necessary to enter the codes into an app to translate the words. This would  not work for detailed information because grammar differs between languages, but it would work fine for the information on signs.

As I have written here before, this ASCII system of encoding has long been obsolete. This is from 1968, the very early days of computer technology. This is what I call being "technically-forward but system-backward". There are two possibilities in a bit, either on or off which is expressed as 1 or 0 and this is known as "binary". Eight bits thus contains 256 possible permutations. There are 256 possible characters in use, including lower case, caps, numbers, punctuation and, unprinted control characters. Each character is assigned a particular permutation of eight bits. This is why an IP address has four sections between 0 and 255. But this is extremely wasteful of space. We really don't need to transmit caps because they can be filled in by spell check technology. Why don't we take the total number of necessary characters, and I don't think we need 256, and treat the entire document as a vast number of this base, and then transmit the entire number in binary? We use a base ten system but numbers can be of any base. This would save a vast amount of space. I am sure that the development of this ASCII system was influenced by Morse Code.

There is now so much on the internet that a form of AI doesn't require any new technology. Just turn computers loose to examine everything on the internet. They will see billions of documents and billions of images. They will learn to read by noticing that certain words tend to be associated with certain images. In this way they will learn all languages. They will read news and notice trends that no one has noticed. They will notice patterns in history that have never been noticed. They will produce a steady stream of inventions and scientific discoveries by putting information together. They will catch criminals by noticing crimes and fraud and patterns in crimes.

What will come next after phones? How about hats? The brain produces electromagnetic waves, known as neural oscillations. You won't need to push any buttons, the hat will read what you want from your brain waves. You won't have to look at a screen, that will seem like something from the Stone Age, because the hat will put what you are looking for directly into your brain. You won't have to actually talk to someone that you are calling because it can all be done with brain waves.

There was a lot of coordinating that could have been done. Take, for example, America's phone Area Codes and mailing address Zip Codes. The Area Codes have three digits and the Zip Codes five. This might have been coordinated so that the Area Code, of a given location, is also the first three digits of the Zip Code. In Zip Code 14304, for example, we would know that the Area Code is 143.

The earth rotates eastward. This is why rocket launch sites, such as in Florida and India, are located on the east coast. The rocket picks up the momentum of the eastward rotation so, if something goes wrong, it will crash into the sea instead of into a populated area. Why can't we use this principle to save fuel on flights? Eastbound flights should be as low as practical, to maximize the support of the earth's rotation. Westbound flights should be as high as practical, to minimize the opposition of the earth's rotation.

Why does every flavor that we use in foods have to be the imitation of a natural flavor? When are we going to develop completely synthetic flavors?

Modern printing technology has opened up completely new possibilities for flags. The old two or three color flags are from the distant past. A photograph can now easily be made into a flag. A nation's flag can now be a pic of a bunch of people hanging out on the beach.

Has anyone ever wondered if we are putting too much confidence in DNA testing? A DNA test is considered as like the Word of God. I remember when polygraph tests were where DNA is now. A polygraph was the Gold Standard. Polygraphs are still used but now it is known that they are of less than perfect accuracy. I wonder if we will ever find that DNA testing isn't quite as accurate as we thought. Remember that, a century ago, it was believed that an image of the last thing a deceased person saw was imprinted on the lenses of their eyes. If a murder victim has their eyes open, a close-up photo would be taken of their eye lenses, in the hope that it would reveal an image of the murderer.

I followed the Apollo Space Program as a child. But the development of AI means that there is less reason than ever to send humans far into space. AI can explore space. It would be ideal if the AI system on a spacecraft could be updated by programming from earth.

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The New Orleans Solution

This week is the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans.

New Orleans is a very unique city, with it's own styles of music, cuisine and architecture. It has an extensive mix of both French and Spanish influence, and was America's port to the Caribbean and South America long before Miami became a major city.

New Orleans is located between Lake Pontchartrain to the north, and the Mississippi River to the south. The classic image of New Orleans is that of a steamboat on the Mississippi River. Image from the Wikipedia article "New Orleans".


This is a satellite image of New Orleans, between Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the winding Mississippi River going through the city. Image from Google Earth.


Here are the photos, from the "Travel Photos of North America", from the famed Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans:



Have you ever noticed that cobblestones, or buildings made out of stones, are not seen in New Orleans? That is because it is built on the alluvial soil of the Mississippi Delta, which was carried there by water and so would not include stones.

New Orleans began on the higher ground where the French Quarter is located, this is the oldest area of the city. But human activity changed the hydrology of the area, causing the water table to drop and thus the land to settle. In some places, ground level gradually lowered by up to eight feet (more than two meters). This left most of the city below the level of Lake Pontchartrain and even further below the level of the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi River flows past New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Pontchartrain is actually connected to the Gulf of Mexico. This means that it is not technically a lake because it's waters are salty. The side of New Orleans facing the Mississippi is traditionally considered as the "front of the town", while the side facing Lake Pontchartrain is the "back of the town".

The dilemma of New Orleans is that the system of levees which keep the waters of the lake and the river out, also hold rainwater in. With the city being below the level of the surrounding waters, there is no natural outlet for the water from rainfall. New Orleans has constructed an extensive network of pumping stations and drainage canals to empty water within the city into Lake Pontchartrain. 

There are several canals, with levees on either side, crossing the city with water levels above the level of the surrounding land. The major canals are the London Avenue Canal, the Orleans Avenue Canal and, the 17th Street Canal. Aside from these open canals, there are also closed channels and sewers to evacuate rainwater. There is also the Industrial Canal, but that is a navigable waterway with locks that connects Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River. The following image, from Google Earth, shows the Industrial Canal connecting the Mississippi River, to the south, with Lake Pontchartrain, to the north.


This photo shows how the level of the water in the canals, the same as that in Lake Pontchartrain to which they connect, is higher than the level of the land which they protect. A levee is a bank of earth that holds back water, while a flood wall is an actual wall. Two images from the Wikipedia article "17th Street Canal".


Here is excess water being pumped, by a pumping station, into a drainage canal:


The pumping stations pump water into the canals, which then empty it into Lake Pontchartrain. But if the level of the lake were to suddenly rise, it would cause water to rush into the canals, putting added pressure on the levees.

At the end of August, 2005, I had just started this blog writing a month before. The massive Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans from the direction of the Gulf of Mexico. A hurricane is actually an extreme low pressure center, with the tremendous winds rushing in from higher pressure areas, the circular motion is the result of momentum of the earth's rotation.

As the hurricane passes over water, it means less atmospheric pressure. This causes the water level to rise under a hurricane, and this is referred to as a "storm surge". As the hurricane passed over the coast, the water from it's storm surge rushed into Lake Pontchartrain, which is connected to the Gulf of Mexico. This caused the water level in the lake to rise suddenly, and water to rush into the outfall canals of New Orleans.

The barriers protecting New Orleans along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain held the water back, as planned. But along the canals in the city, with water levels higher then the surrounding ground and under greater pressure because of the water rushing in from the lake, the walls of the canals breached in dozens of places. The levees of the Orleans Avenue Canal did not breach but the 17th Street Canal wall gave way on the New Orleans side, and the levees of the London Avenue Canal were breached on both sides. In some areas, water came up through the storm drains.

Most of the city was flooded, but the high ground of the oldest part of the city was safe. Two images from the Wikipedia article "New Orleans". In the second image you can see the water line on the house from the flood.



It seems that when the levees along the canals were constructed, the underlying alluvial soil of the Mississippi Delta was presumed to be more sturdy than it really was. Many of the breaches in the canal levees occurred where the water level had not even reached the tops of the levees.

Nearly 1,500 people were killed. The response the the disaster was the turning point in the presidency of George W. Bush. Vast numbers of people went off into exile in other cities, particularly Houston, where they were not always welcomed

Conspiracy theories, mostly based on economic class, ran wild. Thousands of refugees were taken into the New Orleans Superdome stadium. Tabloids were filled with stories of rampant rape, robbery and, assault taking place, which mostly turned out not to be true.

Then there was the story that the government had spared no expense to reinforce the levees along neighborhoods where rich people lived, but hadn't bothered to take the same precautions in poorer neighborhoods.

The next story was that, when the flooding began, the government had actually dynamited the levees in poorer neighborhoods in order to divert the water away from the neighborhoods where rich people lived.

After the flood, there was actually plenty of food and supplies for everybody but, as we might expect, the government was making sure that wealthy people were taken care of first.

Finally, the  story emerged that the government had purposely built the levees so that they would not withstand the storm surge of the hurricane which would inevitably come because the poorer neighborhoods of New Orleans were too much of a drain on the economy and the government just wanted to be rid of them.

There was another story, which may have some truth to it, that there was the city's fleet of school buses, which could have ferried thousands of people to safety, but by the time permission could be obtained to use the buses, it was too late because they were underwater.

In still another story a large group of refugees, led by some New Orleans Police officers, managed to walk to a neighboring town that had not been flooded. But, as they were going to cross into that town, police from the town pointed their guns at the group, including their fellow officers, and insisted that they not enter the town. The town feared being inundated by "criminal elements" from the city.

But this isn't just any city here, this is New Orleans.

I remember one year when the local pro football team, the New Orleans Saints, was doing so poorly that fans of the team wore paper bags over their heads, because they were so ashamed of their team, which they nicknamed the "Aints", instead of the Saints.

They could not imagine that the team would one day come back to win the Super Bowl (the U.S. national championship), in the 2009 season.

Sure enough, this very special city has today come back from the mega-disaster, and is now better than ever. The spirit of New Orleans has proven to be stronger than Hurricane Katrina.

Looking at the map of New Orleans, I notice a solution which would prevent this from happening again using the idea of doors like those in Niagara Falls.

The north-south green lines, leading to Lake Pontchartrain in the north in the following image, are the canals which drain rainwater that is pumped into them from the city's numerous pumping stations. The drainage canals do not connect to the Mississippi River, to the south. Only the navigable Industrial Canal, to the right, links to both the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. The Industrial Canal has the lock system to accommodate the up to 6 meter (20 ft) difference in water levels between the river and the lake. The storm surge from Hurricane Katrina caused water to rush from the lake into the canals, breaching the levees of the canals:

Here is a map of the three main drainage canals of New Orleans. Image from the Wikipedia article "New Orleans Outfall Canals".


What if we extended the drainage canals to the Mississippi River, just as the Industrial Canal does? If a door was put at the ends of each canal, as was done where the canals meet Lake Pontchartrain following Hurricane Katrina, we could choose whether the water that is pumped into the canals would empty into the river or into the lake. The level of the water in the Mississippi River is higher than that in Lake Pontchartrain, because the Mississippi must flow downward into the Gulf of Mexico and the water in Lake Pontchartrain is ordinarily at the same level as that of the Gulf, and this would mean that the height of the levees and flood walls would have to be increased to that of the usual level of the Mississippi River, but not to the higher level of the Mississippi when it floods because the doors to the river would not be open at that time.

These structures along the river in Niagara Falls house the doors that can shut off the flow of water from the river to the underground channels that deliver water to the hydropower plant. Image from Google Earth.


Under this system, if there was the danger of a storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain again, the doors between the drainage canals and the lake could be closed to block the storm surge waters from flowing into the canals, and the doors of the canals to the Mississippi River could be opened, so that the excess water that is pumped into the canals would empty into the Mississippi River.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the main concern with flooding in New Orleans was from the Mississippi River side, not the Lake Pontchartrain side. The Mississippi River is indeed notorious for flooding. I remember following the news of the disastrous floods of 1993.

But floods on the Mississippi tend to happen in spring, brought about by sudden snow melt, while hurricane season is late summer. The chance that the level of water in the river will be high at the same time that there is a storm surge in Lake Pontchartrain is, while not impossible, extremely remote. The storm surge of a hurricane does not affect the level of water in the Mississippi River, where New Orleans is located, because the river is flowing in the opposite direction, toward the Gulf of Mexico.

The doors at the end of each canal could be opened or closed so that drainage water would flow into whichever was at the lowest water level. During storm surges, the doors to Lake Pontchartrain would be closed and the doors to the Mississippi River would be opened. The storm surge would raise the water level in the lake, but not in the river. The flow of the Mississippi would shield New Orleans from the storm surge. When the hurricane was over, and the water level dropped back below that of the Mississippi as it is normally, then the doors to the river could be closed and the doors to the lake reopened.

The same extension and doors would also, of course, have to be included in the storm drain system through which water entered some areas of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. This also applies to any covered drainage channels that we do not see on the map.

With the powerful pumps available nowadays, it is not really even necessary for the drainage canals to empty directly into either the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain. If available land could be found, excess water could flow through the drainage canals to a large collection basin, and from there into either the lake or the river. Safety channels could be included so that, if the basin overflowed, water would flow through this channel into either the lake or the river, rather than flooding the land in the city.

In the first of the following scenes, we see the flood wall in the background along the 17th Street Canal where a major breach took place in 2005. A pumping station has since been built on the site, and the cars are in the parking lot of the pumping station.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, ^, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.0177549,-90.1203656,3a,90y,257.07h,87.7t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s6KuOL7zyO_tOVQw5LzZg2g!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D6KuOL7zyO_tOVQw5LzZg2g%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D15.753598%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656

The first of the following images, taken on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, is from the same perspective as the following image on the "Travel Photos of North America".


The French Quarter is the oldest part of New Orleans, is on the highest ground, and did not flood during Hurricane Katrina. The rest of the images includes St. Louis Cathedral and Jackson Square. Most of the buildings are actually of Spanish construction, after the earlier French buildings had been destroyed in a fire, and before New Orleans came under control of the United States in 1803:

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9591281,-90.0651961,3a,75y,201.45h,82.03t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sy_GwFX_eeayBSwotP-ygXg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Dy_GwFX_eeayBSwotP-ygXg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D145.93224%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656

Here are some images of downtown New Orleans, starting outside the Superdome:

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9514916,-90.0794899,3a,75y,88.68t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-wiLb3nlvFmo%2FVCTeDNi8I9I%2FAAAAAAAAUdM%2FapJkvouDwM48lNXCuTckgcF3grKFvhilg!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh6.googleusercontent.com%2F-wiLb3nlvFmo%2FVCTeDNi8I9I%2FAAAAAAAAUdM%2FapJkvouDwM48lNXCuTckgcF3grKFvhilg%2Fw203-h101-n-k-no%2F!7i7272!8i3636
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The Gear Model Of Hurricanes

What I call  "The Weather Cycle" is my concept of how weather must follow a cycle which eventually starts back at the beginning and repeats itself. Everything to do with the weather is actually a cycle. This includes the seasons, the heating and cooling of day and night, the water cycle of evaporation to falling as precipitation, the rising of air over warm areas and the descending of air over cool areas and, the driving of the wind by the rotation of the earth.

This means that the weather can be compared with a complex system of mechanical gears. When gears are coupled together, smaller ones will turn faster and larger ones slower. If we were to assemble a system of gears of all different sizes, and put a piece of tape across all couplings of gears at the starting point, and then began to turn the gears, eventually all of the pieces of tape would line up as at the beginning.

If every factor in the weather is cyclical, and all of those cycles are finite, then the weather absolutely must repeat itself. We do not notice this because the cycle may be longer than a human lifetime, but graphing this cycle and taking global warming and human activities such as city building and deforestation would be the ultimate breakthrough in weather forecasting.

THE GEAR MODEL OF HURRICANES

I would like to explain my concept of how weather relates to mechanical gears in another way. A hurricane and the rotating earth operate exactly like a set of gears. If the green gear, in the following image representing the earth, is turning then the blue gear, representing a hurricane, will turn at an equal rate in the opposite direction. Since the blue gear is much smaller it will have to turn much faster to turn at an equal rate.


Have you ever wondered about why the winds are as powerful as they are? Why aren't they more powerful, or less powerful? Notice that ordinary linear winds cannot move a solid equi-dimensional object on the earth's surface. By linear wind, I mean ordinary non-circular winds such as hurricanes or tornadoes. By equi-dimensional, I mean all dimensions equal such as a cubic block of wood. The wind can move leaves or paper, but leaves or paper are far from equi-dimensional in that they have much less thickness than width.

The reason for this is gravity. The block of wood is held to the earth by the same gravity that holds the air to the earth. The wood must have more density than the air or else it would not be on the surface. This means that it would not make sense for the wind to be able to move the wood, at least for ordinary winds formed by uneven heating of the earth as air rises over warm areas and sinks over cool areas. Such linear winds are, of course, not exactly linear because the effect of the earth's rotation causes the wind to spiral around a high pressure center to and then around a low pressure center.

But there are storms which can move such a block of wood. These are the circular storms referred to as hurricanes, cyclones or, typhoons. These are different in nature and much more powerful than ordinary linear winds.

A hurricane forms as dust is swept out over the sea by winds, typically from north Africa or Australia. This airborne dust allows the air to hold much more condensed water vapor than usual by acting as condensation nuclei.

The updraft of air over the warm sea is affected by the rotation of the earth, which adds a circular motion to the zone of exceptional water condensation. The spin makes the budding hurricane semi-independent of the earth's gravity so that it moves west, although it is not actually the hurricane moving west but the earth rotating eastward beneath it. Due to it's semi-independence from the earth's gravity, the hurricane moves eastward slower than the earth's rotation so that it seems to be moving westward.

In the following diagram, the green circle represents the earth and the red line the equator. The earth rotates eastward, as shown by the arrow below the equator. A hurricane, shown by the blue circle, interacts with the earth in the same way as two gears, and rotates in the opposite direction.


Another fact about such circular storms is that they cannot form at the equator, and always move away from the equator. This is what brings us to how a hurricane operates in the same way as a gear system.

The earth exerts centrifugal (outward) force as it spins. This force, however, is much weaker than the gravity which it opposes. If this were not the case, the earth itself would fly apart because gravity is what is holding the earth together. The textbook explanation of why hurricanes cannot form at the equator is that this is where there is no "spin". My explanation here is that there is centrifugal force of the earth's rotation at all latitudes, but that this centrifugal force is at it's maximum at the equator. This is simply due to the nature of a sphere, if the earth were a cylinder instead then centrifugal force would be equal at all latitudes.

In the following diagram the earth's axis, between the north and south poles, is represented by the black line. The centrifugal force of rotation is at it's maximum at the equator, represented by the red line.


The centrifugal force is actually a function of the cosine of the latitude. Cosine is the trigonometric function which starts at 1 at 0 degrees, and drops to 0 at 90 degrees. On the earth, 0 degrees latitude represents the equator and 90 degrees represents either pole.

I found it significant that, on a sphere, the cosine does not decrease at an even rate from equator to pole, that would be represented as an equilateral cone, but decreases progressively faster. The midway point between the equator and pole, 45 degrees latitude for example, has a cosine not of 0.5 but of 0.707. This means that the cosine of the latitude will drop much more from 45 to 90 degrees than it did from 0 to 45 degrees. Thus, the difference in centrifugal force from one latitude to another is greater the further we go from the equator.

This is actually the basis for hurricanes. It is not the centrifugal force of the spin of the earth which drives the circular motion of a hurricane. Rather, it is the difference in the centrifugal force of the spin of the earth which drives the circular motion of a hurricane. The hurricane has a certain width and there is a difference in the centrifugal force from one side to the other. Just as a gear will turn if there is a difference in force from one side to the other, so does a hurricane.

The earth spins fastest at the equator so, in the following diagram, it is spinning fastest on the side of the hurricane closest to the equator, as indicated by the arrow below the equator. Like a pairing of gears, this causes the hurricane to spin as indicated by the three arrows.


The reason that hurricanes do not form right at the equator now becomes clear. The equator is the lowest of latitudes and this means that there is the least difference in centrifugal force from one latitude to another there, as described above. The reason that hurricanes move away from the equator is to seek more difference in centrifugal force from one side of the hurricane to the other.

(Note-If this sounds familiar, it is similar to the principle behind tides. The moon is close enough for there to be a significant difference in it's gravitational pull between the surface of the ocean and the bottom. The water near the surface is pulled upward more strongly than the water at the bottom, and the result is the tidal bulge. The sun has far more mass than the moon, but it is also much further away so that it's tidal force on the oceans is only about 40% that of the moon).

So, a hurricane is essentially a smaller gear coupled to a larger one, which is the earth. 


It is a little bit more complex than this in that there is force applied to both sides of a hurricane but the force on one side, the low latitude side closest to the equator, is greater. This is what drives the spin of the hurricane. As the hurricane moves away from the equator, there is less centrifugal force to drive it but there is more difference in centrifugal force from one side of the hurricane to the other, as explained by the cosine of the latitude above.

The hurricane acts as a gear which brings centrifugal force of rotation from lower to higher latitudes, moving away from the equator, in a similar way that air and water currents tend to carry heat from lower to higher latitudes. The momentum imparted to the hurricane by the difference in the centrifugal force of rotation from one side to the other accumulates so that the winds within the hurricane become faster and faster. The velocity being imparted to the system at any one time must be the eastward velocity of the earth's rotation on the low latitude side of the storm minus the velocity of the earth's rotation on the high latitude side which would depend on the width of the storm.


Hurricanes spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere because of the rotation of the earth. The earth rotates eastward and it is this rotation which drives the hurricane so that the side closest to the equator must be moving eastward. Where I live, the prevailing wind is from the west and east winds are rare. When there is an east wind it is usually the remnants of a hurricane and is very powerful. During Hurricane Sandy, in the autumn of 2012, I periodically looked out to see how my trees were holding up and the wind was definitely from the east.

There is another way in which the operation of a hurricane is like that of a gear system. The centrifugal force of the earth's rotation is exerted perpendicular to the planet's axis of rotation. Due to the nature of a sphere, this means that this force is exactly perpendicular to the ground only at the equator. In fact, the angle between a flat surface of the earth and the thrust line of the centrifugal force of rotation is the same as the latitude.


Imagine that one gear cannot turn another if the two are perpendicular in alignment because it will be exerting an equal force on both sides of the other gear. But if there is some angle between the two gears, the exerted force will be unequal and the passive gear will begin to turn. The greater the angle between the two from the perpendicular, the faster the passive gear will turn.

The centrifugal force of earth's rotation is perpendicular to the surface only at the equator, due to the nature of a sphere. But the earth's atmosphere is parallel to the surface at all latitudes. This means that the higher the latitude, the more spin the centrifugal of rotation can exert on a system in the atmosphere such as a hurricane, and this is why hurricanes tend to move away from the equator until it crosses land so that there is no more evaporation of water to feed it or it becomes too cold to drive enough evaporation to sustain it.

The so-called "Great Red Spot" on Jupiter, which is larger than the entire earth, is actually such a storm system that has been underway for centuries. It was probably initiated by the impact of a comet.

The reason that South America does not get hurricanes, like North America does, is that hurricanes require a lot of dust to be swept up into the air by the wind. This dust acts as condensation nuclei for water vapor. When water vapor in the air condenses on particles of so much dust, it lowers the relative humidity of the air so that more water can evaporate, which then condenses on the particles of dust, and so on.

The dust that makes Atlantic hurricanes in the northern hemisphere comes from north Africa. But Africa south of the equator, which could supply the dust to bring comparable hurricanes to South America, is mostly green. There is not enough dust to send hurricanes toward South America, like there is in the northern hemisphere.

Due to the nature of a rotating sphere, like the earth, the nearer a point is to the equator, the faster it is moving with the rotation. This means that the earth underneath the mass of rising water vapor that is closer to the equator is moving eastward, with the earth's rotation, faster than the side that is further away from the equator.


This difference in relative speed, from one side to the other, it what gives the hurricane it's spin. In the northern hemisphere, a hurricane spins counter-clockwise because the side furthest south, and thus closer to the equator, is moving faster than the side that is further from the equator, northward. If you look down on the north or south pole, the direction that the earth appears to be spinning, clockwise or counter-clockwise, is the direction that a hurricane will also spin in that hemisphere.

The N represents looking down at the north pole. The eastward direction of spin, indicated by the arrow, causes the earth to rotate counterclockwise, as seen from this position.


The hurricane does not actually move westward, as it appears. The earth is rotating eastward and the increasing spin of the hurricane gives it some independence from the earth's gravity, so that it does not move eastward as fast as the earth is rotating eastward. This makes the hurricane seem to move westward.

A hurricane in the northern hemisphere, in addition to moving westward, will also move northward because the earth beneath it is moving eastward faster on the southern side, closer to the equator, and this directs the hurricane to the northwest, instead of due west.

But when a hurricane in the northern hemisphere gets far enough north, it starts to move eastward with the earth's rotation. This can be explained simply. When the hurricane was further south, in the tropics, it actually was moving eastward but it's spin gave it some independence from the earth's gravity. This caused it to still move eastward, but not as fast as the earth was rotating eastward. This caused it's apparent movement to be westward. The black line, beginning with the arrow, shows the possible movement of a hurricane away from the equator.


But due to the nature of a rotating sphere, the spin is less as we move further from the equator. As the hurricane moves to the northwest, it still has the eastward momentum that it had when it was in the tropics, where the spin of the earth was much faster. Going northward, a point is reached where that eastward momentum of the hurricane is greater than the eastward rotational velocity of the earth beneath it. At that point, the hurricane's apparent movement is eastward.

Remember that the motion of a hurricane is easy to understand if we consider it and the earth as a system of gears.
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Thursday, August 21, 2025

Algiers

The attractive Mediterranean city of Algiers, the capital city of Algeria, was founded in 944, around the same time as Cairo.

The city was known as a haven for Barbary pirates, who may have taken a total of a million people as slaves. The United States, as a new nation, fought a number of battles with Barbary pirates, which is why the hymn of the U.S. Marines refers to "the shores of Tripoli", which was another Mediterranean coast haven of the pirates, and later the power base of Libya's Moammar Gaddafi.

Algiers, after breaking free of Spanish rule, was under marginal Ottoman control. The rulers, until the French conquest of 1830, lived in a palace and were known as Deys. It was a walled city until the Nineteenth Century.

The histories of Algeria and France have been inextricably linked since 1830. This is seen in how the Monument des Martyrs in Algiers looks like it might be the Algerian version of the Eiffel Tower, and the Notre Dame D'Afrique being the Algerian equivalent of Notre Dame in Paris. It also shows in how the French Mediterranean city of Marseilles appears as just as much an Algerian colony today as Algiers was a French colony, and with France having the largest population of Moslems in Europe.

It has become practically a legend of how the pretext for the French invasion and occupation of Algeria was the last Ottoman Dey striking the French consul with a flyswatter during a dispute about French debts to Algerian merchants. The French took it as an act of war, and invaded Algeria.

If Americans think the Vietnam War was a contentious issue in the 1960s, Algeria was a greater crisis for France in the 1950s. Vietnam had also been a French colony, and it seems that France let Vietnam go in order to concentrate on Algeria.

An uprising for Algerian independence began, and caused the collapse of the French Fourth Republic in 1958. This brought Charles De Gaulle back as president of the new Fifth Republic, with a stronger presidency. De Gaulle allowed a referendum on independence, and the country became independent in 1962. But the legacy of the relationship continues with millions of immigrants in France, and periodic crises such as the uprising in the Paris banlieus of 2005 and 2023.

Immediately after Algerian independence nearly a million French settlers, or their descendants, relocated to France. These returnees have been referred to since as Pied Noirs, literally "Black Feet". Most had been born in Algeria, and knew no other home. Many had never before been to their ancestral homeland of France. Their struggles to fit back into French society is another story in itself. Most Pied Noirs seemed to really miss life in Algeria.

In France, the change from one republic to the next means the adoption of a new constitution.
The First Republic was from the time of the French Revolution to the rise of Napoleon.
The Bourbon Dynasty made a comeback after the time of Napoleon, until their cadet branch were overthrown for good in the 1848 Revolution. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew also known as Napoleon III, became president of the Second Republic, but when his four-year term was over he simply, in true Napoleonic fashion, declared himself as emperor as the Second French Empire.
The Third Republic was from when presidential rule was reestablished in 1870, to Nazi occupation in 1940.
The Fourth republic was mostly a continuation of the Third Republic after the war, until the collapse over the Algerian Crisis in 1958.
The Fifth Republic, starting with Charles De Gaulle as president, eventually acknowledged Algerian independence and the Fifth Republic is still with us today.

Here are three photos of Algiers during the time that it was under French rule, from the Wikipedia article "French Algeria". It was not considered as a colony, but as actually a part of France.




Here are scenes around the old Casbah area of Algiers. The first seven images are from Google Street View.








There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7820125,3.0622976,3a,75y,107.17h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMQ6JJ1-3OKyNiHS0i0F-0grUvTUmQdiaNoiGzw!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMQ6JJ1-3OKyNiHS0i0F-0grUvTUmQdiaNoiGzw%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya132.0981-ro0-fo100!7i10752!8i3328

One of the best-known buildings in Algiers is the post office. here are some scenes from around there, which is also in the old part of town. It is the building with the three arched entrance ways. The first four images are from Google Street View.







https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7228354,3.0950392,3a,75y,120h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPv9j3jziZWBnY4ytrb3xtLeXEIp4GpLrVRzgvC!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPv9j3jziZWBnY4ytrb3xtLeXEIp4GpLrVRzgvC%3Dw900-h600-k-no-pi0-ya179-ro0-fo100!7i9216!8i4128?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTEyNC4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

The most visible landmark in Algiers is the Martyrs' Memorial. It looks like an Algerian version of the Eiffel Tower, but is actually three concrete palm leaves honoring those killed in Algeria's struggle for independence against French rule. This is thus an ideal symbol of Algeria's complex relationship with France, just across the Mediterranean. Two images from Google Street View.



Finally, here is another symbol of the relationship between France and Algeria. This is the Basilica Notre Dame D'Afrique, built by European settlers, and named for Notre Dame in Paris, but built in a very Moorish or north African style. The first three images are from Google Street View.



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