Thursday, January 30, 2025

The Mecca Hypothesis

One of the truly amazing things about the human geography of the world is that a single language is spoken over the vast distance from Morocco to Yemen. Most traditional language domains, with the exceptions of the relatively recently settled continents such as North America, South America and Australia, tend to be more or less compact in geographical shape.

This is at least true of the densely populated portions thereof. Chinese and Russian are spoken over wide areas, but the populations of both are heavily concentrated so that much of the language domain is sparse in population. China's population is concentrated in the eastern part of the country, while Russia's is in the western, European section, and away from Siberia.

The Arabic language, however, is spoken over a vast and elongated area with the majority of it being sparsely populated. Except for Berbers, in certain areas of north Africa, the population is ethnically Arab. But is traditionally tribal, and is separated by mountains, wide areas of forbidding desert, and the Red Sea.

Just on the other side of the Mediterranean, the language pattern of Europe is completely different. There are basically three major European language groups; the Romance Languages with a historical foundation in Latin, the northern European or Germanic languages, and the Slavic languages of eastern Europe. These three groups have fragmented into the multitude of languages that are spoken today.

It is easy to see the common origin of the northern European languages by the translation of the word "drink".
German -Trinken
Dutch -Drinken
English -Drink
Norwegian -Drikke
Swedish -Dricka

The Dutch language originated as a branch of Low German. English is largely based on the language brought to England long ago by Anglo Saxon settlers from central Europe. Even today, there are a number of common names that are pronounced the same way, but can have either an English or a German spelling such as "Snyder" and "Sneider". Yiddish, the traditional language of central European Jews, also originated as a branch of German.

Germany originated as a multitude of small states across central Europe that spoke roughly the same language, but the German language was well on the way to fragmenting further before it was standardized in the past few decades.

The languages of the Scandinavian countries; Norwegian, Swedish and, Danish, are similar enough that speakers of any of the three can often understand the other two. But this does not include Finnish, which is completely different. Spanish and Italian are also similar enough that some mutual comprehension is possible.

French differs from the other Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and, Romanian) in that it also has a strong Celtic influence. Celtic was a language that also fragmented into several related languages. Breton, spoken in Brittany in far western France, is similar enough to Welsh, spoken in Wales on the other side of the English Channel, that speakers of the two can often understand one another.

The country that is now known as Romania is far to the east, and was once a retirement area in the days of the Roman Empire, when it was called Dacia. Romanian is thus considered as a Romance language, but has a significant Slavic influence on it due to it's location in eastern Europe. In the same way the Slavic languages, such as Russian, Polish and, Czech have the similarity that indicates common origin.

There are, of course, the unique European languages that are unlike any of the others. These are Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, and the Basque language of northwestern Spain. Catalan is the native language of northeastern Spain, around Barcelona, but is a Romance language. Hungarian and Finnish seem to have originated further east before being planted by settlers, the Magyars in the case of Hungarian. I read one theory that the two languages are distantly related.

So now, back on the other side of the Mediterranean, how on earth did we manage to have a single language spoken over an area about the size of Europe, when the original languages of Europe fragmented into the linguistic jigsaw puzzle that we see today? This has really amazed me.

Yet, the answer is very clear. It is the Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca that has kept this vast area speaking a single language over time. It is also a factor that the Qu'ran is supposed to be read in Arabic, but even with this the spoken language could have fragmented so that the written language could have ended up spoken in a number of different ways, as is Chinese today.

In the centuries before air travel, Moslems would undertake the great effort to make the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj. Their interaction with fellow Moslems along the way, as well as at their destination, is what has resulted in Arabic remaining the language of this vast geographical area.

Invasions to spread the religion in the early days of Islam brought the language to many of the areas where it is now spoken, but without the pilgrimage there would never have been a single language spoken over such a wide area. Different groups, such as the Fatimids and Zirids of North Africa, would have developed separate languages and the linguistic landscape would be much like that of Europe today.

Only about one in six Moslems today is Arab. Turkey, Iran and Pakistan are Moslem nations, but these nations had their own languages before Islam was brought to the area, and so do not speak Arabic.

The original language from which Arabic has descended also fragmented. For example, the word for day, "yom", is the same in both Arabic and Hebrew because the two are both Semitic languages, as were many of the languages spoken in the ancient Middle East.

Thus, we can conclude that if Christians had instituted a pilgrimage to St. Peter's Square, similar to the Haj, Europeans today would speak only three major languages; the descendants of Latin, the northern European languages, and Slavic.
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Traditional Direction

Here is something that should have a name. It is about our perception of direction on a global scale. When we express the compass direction to a place what we mean is the direction that we would go to get there, and this sounds like it makes perfect sense.

There is something that has changed in recent decades, and our thinking about direction has not caught up. The change is in transportation. It used to be that we would travel by land and sea but now there is air transport. The way air transport has changed the direction is because of the polar regions. When it came to traveling the polar regions used to be inaccessible but now planes fly over the poles, but our directional thinking is still about land and sea transport.

Suppose that a mosque is being built in Los Angeles and the direction to Mecca must be determined. The traditional direction to Mecca, if based on land and sea transport, would look like this. Both images from Google Earth.

But if we were looking for the shortest distance to Mecca, regardless of whether it included the polar region, the direction would look like this.

Even if the destination isn't far enough away that the polar regions are a factor, the curvature of the earth changes the direction from what is indicated by a flat map. The earth is a globe and a map, while easier to use than a globe, is an imperfect representation of it. Again, what we mean by direction is the shortest distance between two points. Due to the curvature of the earth the shortest distance is shifted northward in the northern hemisphere and southward in the southern hemisphere. 

The following two images, from Google Earth, show the most direct line between New York and London. The line is shifted considerably northward from what it would be according to the compass directions on a flat map. It doesn't involve the polar region because the two places are not far enough apart, relative to the circumference of the earth. This is because the latitudinal circumference of the earth decreases as we get further from the equator.


Why don't we refer to the direction of travel to a distant place, before air travel, as the "Traditional Direction".

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Thursday, January 23, 2025

Jordan And The Hashemites

The Hashemites are the oldest royal house in the world, outside of Japan. They claim that their founder was a great-grandfather of Muhammad. The Hashemites were rivals of, but also related to, the Umayyads who founded the second caliphate of Islam. The Hashemites were the custodians of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina for about a thousand years, until the area was conquered by the House of Saud and became part of modern Saudi Arabia. The Hashemites, through the government of Jordan, are still the custodians of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Abdullah I was the king of the modern nation of Jordan, and the son of the founder of the modern Hashemite Dynasty, who had been made Emir of Mecca by the Ottomans. The Hashemite Dynasty has ruled Jordan, formerly known as Transjordan because it was across the Jordan River from Palestine. Abdullah I was assassinated while attending a funeral at the Al Aqsa Mosque, in 1951. With him was his grandson, Prince Hussein, who was also shot but was saved when a medal that he was wearing deflected the bullet.

Prince Hussein went on to become the well-known and popular King Hussein, of Jordan, who died in 1999. The Hashemites also ruled Iraq as a royal family, and even briefly ruled Syria.

Has anyone ever heard of someone who has been king of two separate countries, at separate times, without one country ruling the other?

That feat was achieved by Faisal I, the brother of Abdullah I. He was Hashemite king first of Syria, and then of Iraq. His son, Ghazi, and then his grandson Faisal II followed as kings of Iraq. When Egypt and Syria proclaimed their unity, as the United Arab Republic, Jordan and Iraq proclaimed their own union as the Arab Federation, ruled by the Hashemites.

Neither union would last long, but there was rivalry between them while they did. To understand why, we have to go back to the French Revolution, which began the modern political era. Jordan and Iraq, the Arab Federation, were ruled by kings. While Egypt and Syria, the United Arab Republic, were ruled by military officers who had overthrown their kings.

The brief life of the Arab Federation, as well as Royal Hashemite rule in Iraq, came to an end in 1958 when Faisal II was overthrown and executed in a military coup. Again, we see the influence of the French Revolution as the revolution in Iraq happened on July 14, which is Bastille Day. The Iraqi officer who led the coup would ultimately be overthrown himself, by the Iraqi branch of the Baath Party, the best-known member of which turned out to be Saddam Hussein.

Have you ever wondered why Iraq and Syria have to be separate countries, even though there have been those who would like the unite them? We have to go back into history to see the answer. Remember that the Umayyad Caliphate was based in Damascus, in Syria. The Abbasid Caliphate, which overthrew the Umayyads, built an entirely new city as their capital. This city is Baghdad, in Iraq. That history is enough to keep the two modern countries separate.

Back to the most popular of the Hashemites, King Hussein of Jordan, which is still ruled by the Hashemites. King Hussein, the one who survived the bullet on the Temple Mount in 1951 because he was wearing a medal that deflected it, is remembered as a great peacemaker as well as having made the modern country of Jordan.

King Hussein of Jordan was so accomplished at holding a delicate balancing act that, if he had been in Niagara Falls, would surely have been the greatest of tightrope walkers. He must have been doing something right to hold onto his crown while kings were being overthrown all around him, in Egypt, Libya, Iran and, Iraq. Likewise his son, the present king of Jordan Abdullah II, avoided a fall in the Arab Spring, which brought down many of those leaders in lands where kings had earlier been overthrown.

One facet of King Hussein's successful balancing act was between Israel, to the immediate west, and it's Arab enemies all around. The king managed this with so many Palestinian refugees in his country that they outnumbered the Jordanians themselves. The Palestinians in Jordan had their own agenda, independent of the government, which culminated in what is known as the Dawson Field Hijackings, where four airliners were hijacked and destroyed, on the ground, although the passengers were released first.

Another facet of the delicate balancing act achieved by Jordan's King Hussein is between the west and the Communist bloc during the Cold War. Still another facet is between Islam and the west following Iran's 1979 revolution.

Another popular figure from Jordan is the widow of King Hussein, Queen Noor. She was born in the U.S., of Syrian immigrant parents, and continues to do a lot to make the world a better place. The present king of Jordan, Abdullah II, is the son not of Queen Noor but of an earlier wife, Princess Muna who was a native of England.

The capital city of Jordan today is Amman. Readers of the Bible will be familiar with an old rival of the Israelites to the east, known as the Ammonites. The capital of the Ammonites was the city of Rabbah, today it is known as Amman, named clearly for the Ammonites. After the Ammonites, in Hellenistic times, it became known as Philadelphia, so that the city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania is actually named for Amman.

Amman, which did not regain importance until modern times, had been through all of the usual parade of empires and conquerors in the region, Alexander, the Romans, the Umayyad and then Abbasid Caliphates, the Crusaders, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, and then the modern nation of Jordan that has been governed by the Hashemites.

Like Aleppo and Cairo, Amman was built around a citadel. The following scenes begin in the Citadel of Amman. The first six images of the Citadel are from Google Street View. In some of the images you can see the city in the background.







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/@31.9554802,35.9341456,3a,75y,15.12h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMbaX8v4Y_6dzPEaVvCpJTf8WpT40-lFAtZpNrn!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMbaX8v4Y_6dzPEaVvCpJTf8WpT40-lFAtZpNrn%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya12.909076-ro-0-fo100!7i2508!8i1254

Here is some more of Amman, in the area of the Jordan Museum. The first five images are from Google Street View.












https://www.google.com/maps/@31.9734763,35.8442319,3a,75y,271h,76t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNK-XsScHa_faA4CRxjPv6fgF-rpwHk5GY3FHfv!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNK-XsScHa_faA4CRxjPv6fgF-rpwHk5GY3FHfv%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-14.999992-ya114.49999-ro-0-fo100!7i8192!8i4096

This is a residential area in the northern part of Amman.

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0021984,35.956731,3a,75y,172.71h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sHiS0E4WlA8cdWIgtgdvvtQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DHiS0E4WlA8cdWIgtgdvvtQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D172.71109%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

This is what the northeastern part of the city looks like.

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0014504,35.9420792,3a,75y,169h,88t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPa_h7-QFmYuLsBQ2D9BNLpXd7NQmQ4BNndVACK!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPa_h7-QFmYuLsBQ2D9BNLpXd7NQmQ4BNndVACK%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-3.516522-ya169.52475-ro0.40126684-fo100!7i7776!8i3888

Finally, this is what Jordan is really known for. The ancient city of Petra has buildings carved right into the rock. The name "Petra" actually means "rock". Petra is believed to have been built before the time of Jesus. The first four images are from Google Street View.




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The Property Order

With the recent fire destruction in Los Angeles let's review my economic concept of the Property Order.

Has anyone ever pondered the apparent mystery of why, in the U.S., there has been such movement of population over the past half century from the northeast to the southwest? At first observation, it would seem that the opposite should be the case. The northeastern U.S. has abundant water and rainfall, fertile soil and, no earthquakes or large-scale fires while the southwest is the opposite. The northeast is also positioned closer to international destinations in terms of historic travel and trade. Yet, the population has shifted dramatically to the southwest.

Today, I would like to present my conclusion on this question and it has nothing to do with the sun. When people settle in a new area, one of the most important things that they seek out is a water supply and the first houses and buildings in the new settlement are inevitably built near the water. The easiest and least expensive homes to construct are those of wood frame. It is usually only when the settlement grows into a city and lumber becomes scarce and more expensive that developers begin building homes primarily out of brick.

In cities across the U.S. except in the southwest, it is easy to see this pattern today. Houses in the center of the city will be built primarily of wood. Outside that, there will be a ring of houses constructed mostly of brick. Finally, there will be the ring of postwar suburbs outside. This pattern does not always apply to the older and more densely populated areas in which wooden structures from two hundred years ago have not survived and building was more likely to be done with stone, rather than scarce wood, from the beginning.

A basic fact of real estate is that waterfront property is worth more than property that is not near or on water. The problem that we run into with a growing city is that the waterfront property would be greatly increasing in value as the city grows except that it is occupied by the older homes that were among the first built in the settlement when it was new. These homes near the water are, by this point, much less valuable than the homes that are being built further out, near the edge of the growing city.

This, then is the great mismatch of what I will call the Property Order. The best homes are built on land that is less than the best, in terms of location, while what would be the best land is occupied by some of the least expensive homes. This mismatch in the Property Order lowers the overall value of all the property in the city, which would be at it's peak when the value of homes matches the value of their land without the home. What we basically have is the economic order of the Twenty-First Century stuck with much of the Property Order of the Nineteenth Century.

One way around this is to knock vast numbers of older homes down. The original wood frame homes were probably not built with the idea of lasting more than a century and there is only so much that refurbishing can do. Knocking down and building anew is the only way to maximize the Property Order efficiency.

Another way is to just start over, some distance away. This happened often during postwar development. Nearby examples are Toronto's development of North York and Buffalo's development of Cheektowaga.

The best example of this is the massive renovation of Paris in the Nineteenth Century. It encountered much resistance. But without it, Paris certainly would not be the city that it is today. We saw this in our visit to "Paris".

Now back to the mass movement of population to America's southwest over the past sixty years or so. Even with the mass production of air conditioners, the area is dry and dusty and hot. The American Southwest may have sunshine and it certainly has a beauty all it's own. But neither of these is the reason that it has boomed.

It is because the southwest was unencumbered by the Property Order prevalent in the rest of the country and so it gave us the opportunity to start the Property Order over again. The same is true to some extent of Florida because before the advent of air conditioning, it was too hot and humid to be as populated as it is now.

This brings us to the possibility of "creative destruction". In the short term, mass destruction taking place in a city is a disaster. But, over the long term, it provides the opportunity to start the Property Order over. The Renovation of Paris, mentioned above, is creative destruction done purposely. But it can be beneficial in the long term, even if not done purposely.

Why are Toronto and Chicago by far the largest cities on the Great Lakes? It was recently in the news that the Toronto Metropolitan Area has reached a population of 7 million people. What Toronto and Chicago have in common is that their central city areas were both wiped out by massive fires, Chicago in 1871 and Toronto in 1904. This presented the opportunity to start the Property Order over again and, when the two cities came back, they came back stronger than ever. 

Certainly the fires in Los Angeles are a disaster. If there is a bright side to it, it's that Toronto and Chicago came back stronger than ever after their fires.
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America's Mount McKinley

Donald Trump is changing the name of America's highest mountain, in Alaska, back to Mount McKinley. This is in honor of the U.S. President, William McKinley, who was assassinated at Buffalo's Pan American Exhibition in 1901.

Not too far from where this is being written is a plaque marking the site of the assassination, which was redeveloped into a residential neighborhood after the exhibition. The name of "McKinley" is all over Buffalo. Image from Google Street View.


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America's Own Calendar

With Donald Trump planning on so many changes, see if Americans can believe the following four facts.

1) The earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical. This means that there is a point during the year when it is closest to the sun, as well as a point when it is furthest away. Just by chance the Fourth of July, America's much-celebrated Independence Day, is the day when the earth is furthest from the sun.

2) There are 50 U.S. states, represented by the 50 stars on the flag. If we add the District of Columbia, America's capital district, and Puerto Rico, that gives us 52. There are also 52 weeks in a year.

3) There are 13 red and white stripes on the U.S. flag, which represent the 13 original states. There are also 13 lunar cycles in a year, although they don't fit perfectly with the length of the year. The 12 months are based on the lunar cycle but there are actually 13 in a year. The moon orbits the earth in about 27 days and 8 hours, known as a sidereal month. But because the earth is revolving around the sun at the same time the moon appears to go through it's phase cycle in about 29 days and 12 hours, known as a synodic month. But a year divides into 13 four-week periods.

4) There was once a great supernova, an exploding star, that lasted about two years and was so brilliant that it was visible during the day. The brilliant supernova began on July 4, yes the Fourth of July, in the year 1054. The remnants of that supernova are today known as the Crab Nebula. The Crab Nebula turned out to appear red, white and, blue, the same colors as America's flag. Image from the Wikipedia article "Crab Nebula".

So why doesn't America have it's own calendar? I have long thought that we should name the weeks rather than the months. Ever since the Industrial Revolution the week has been more important to most people than the month. The Gregorian Calendar that we use now is a medieval calendar that preceded the Industrial Revolution, from when most people were working in agriculture.

In the American Calendar the year would begin on what is now the Fourth of July. This is the day on which the earth, in it's elliptical orbit, just happens to be at it's furthest point from the sun. The calendar would thus show where the earth is in it's orbit, in which it moves more slowly the further it is from the sun. This would be ideal for the Space Age.

The 52 weeks in a year would be named for the U.S. states, which are represented by the 50 stars on the flag, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. To avoid confusion with Washington State, Washington D.C. would simply be listed as "D.C.", or the "District of Columbia".

The present months were originally based on the lunar cycle but got stretched so that there are 12 months in the year. The American Calendar would have 13 four-week periods, based on what the lunar cycle actually is and named for the 13 original states, in alphabetical order, that are represented by the 13 stripes on the U.S. flag. Image from Wikipedia article "Flag of the United States".

Isn't it about time that America had a calendar of it's own? I am sure that Ben Franklin would have introduced this calendar if more had been known about space at the time.

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Thursday, January 16, 2025

Los Angeles And San Diego

I would like to express sympathy and support for Los Angeles because of the fires.

Los Angeles is the largest metropolitan area in the U.S., after New York. It is on the coast of southern California and was the natural destination of migrants moving west. It is the city that both introduced the world to the postwar car culture and where the internet began. You are probably already familiar with what the area looks like because it is also home to the best-known movie industry in the world and so much of what is seen on television was filmed there.

Los Angeles is also the port where so many goods from Asia arrive. The following image of endless rows of shipping containers, awaiting transfer to truck or train, is from Google Earth.


For Los Angeles to grow into the major city that it is today, an aqueduct had to be built to carry water from further inland. Today, the Colorado River that flows across America's west is virtually drained before it reaches the sea because of the voracious demand for water.

The cities of California tend to have Catholic names. But what it is really all about is the land of Protestant-style individualism. As we saw in the posting on this blog, "The Would-Have-Been Nation Of Westland", July 2017, the kind of people who headed west were people who didn't want to be told what to do by the establishment "back east".

This is El Pueblo de Los Angeles historical monument, the Spanish mission that was the beginning of Los Angeles. First image from Google Earth. The name of the city means "The Angels". When Mexico became independent of Spain, Los Angeles passed to Mexican control, and then to the U.S. after the war of 1848.


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/@34.0565689,-118.2385435,2a,60y,30.48h,90.71t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZagipxetmJwtAbCQtkeVKw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Here is the Historic Core of the city that was the city center for the first half of the Twentieth Century. There are more views of the downtown area. The first two images are from Google Earth.



One of the best-known sights around Los Angeles is the Hollywood Sign. The first image is from Google Earth.


https://www.google.com/maps/@34.127285,-118.3265068,3a,75y,72.65h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMPOZeOzI6OdCi9vwB6GVgm2nWujqqhoFWUD4-C!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMPOZeOzI6OdCi9vwB6GVgm2nWujqqhoFWUD4-C%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya295.32455-ro0-fo100!7i7168!8i3584

This is the neighborhood of Hollywood, the sign is above it. Hollywood is all about the movie industry. Few streets in the world are famous in themselves. Los Angeles has several such famous streets. One is Sunset Boulevard, along which the following scenes begin. As the city that introduced the world to the modern car culture, we shouldn't be surprised that Los Angeles has famous streets, three others are Wilshire Boulevard, Sepulveda Boulevard and, Santa Monica Boulevard.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0904301,-118.3289199,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1svqzhVBRKgWWOBHXCLsfyLQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

The following image of Sunset Blvd is from Google Earth.


Here is the "Walk of Fame" on Hollywood Boulevard.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1016381,-118.3337029,3a,60y,1.43h,77.1t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sbNYUoj4A25Lr9ryjUhOJhQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Another well-known Los Angeles neighborhood that is associated with the movie industry is Beverly Hills. The following views there also begin along Sunset Boulevard.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0736053,-118.4004235,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBt2kTVqEvm9hDDyOIq964A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

A lot of movie stars and other celebrities have lived in this housing development in Beverly Hills, the Trousdale Estates.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1045525,-118.3967976,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1siD_UrMPSmELECqFermqxnw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Not far from Beverly Hills is the vast and well-known university, UCLA, the University of California at Los Angeles. This is actually the birthplace of the internet.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0694343,-118.4449165,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZu1JlQw-VCegDwHddNCLfw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

The Greater Los Angeles area extends eastward to San Bernardino. Here is a residential neighborhood.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1258193,-117.2851434,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sGzXr19rZ3ulbM4vFeoMGyQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

South of Los Angeles, along the border with Mexico, is the city of San Diego. Like Los Angeles, it began with a Spanish mission during the Eighteenth Century. The focal point of the city later moved to what is now known as the Gaslamp Quarter. The first image, from Google Earth, is of downtown San Diego.


Does anyone remember, from 1982, a man nicknamed "Lawnchair Larry" got the idea of flying by tying helium balloons to a lawn chair. He attached containers of water to the chair so that he could drop some weight if he wanted to gain altitude. He brought a pellet gun so that he could burst some of the balloons if he wanted to lose altitude. He brought a two-way radio for communication.

The following image, from Google Earth, shows the route of the flight, from southwest to northeast. The flight was of over 16 km, about 11 miles, and reached an altitude of about 5 km, or 3 miles.



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The Western U.S. Flag

The southern U.S. sometimes uses the Confederate flag as it's unofficial regional flag, although there is a movement against it. Why doesn't the western U.S. have it's own unofficial regional flag?

The U.S. flag consists of a field of fifty stars, one for each of the fifty states, and thirteen alternating red and white stripes, one for each of the original thirteen states. But all of these original states are in the eastern U.S. The capital, Washington DC, is also in the east. This means that the flag very much favors the eastern part of the country, although it is true that the history of the country began in the east.

The field of fifty stars, in contrast, represents every state equally. The West is generally drier than the east, meaning less cloudy, so that the stars are more visible. Why doesn't the western U.S. adopt just the field of stars on the flag as it's unofficial regional flag? Image from the Wikipedia article "Flag of the United States".

The posting about the western U.S. is "The Would-Have-Been Nation Of Westland", July 2017.

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Greenland

Since Greenland is so often in the news, why don't we have a look at it?

ALL IMAGES ARE FROM GOOGLE STREET VIEW 

Greenland is considered as the world's largest island, with Australia being considered as the smallest continent. It is high in the Arctic and the vast majority of it is covered with a sheet of ice.

Politically, Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark. Nuuk is the capital city of Greenland, and it is what we will be seeing today. As we might expect, this vast island is very sparsely populated. Nuuk is a city of about 20,000 people, which is about a third of the population of the island. The Danish name for Nuuk is Godthab. 

In the following image you can see the Greenlandic flag to the right and the Danish flag to the left.

Notice how long the shadows are, of the light poles. Since Greenland is at such high latitude it means that the sun is low in the sky. Nuuk is less than 3 degrees from the Arctic Circle. But since it is below the Arctic Circle the sun always rises and sets once every 24 hours. The Arctic Circle, as well as the Antarctic Circle, is 23.5 degrees from the pole because that's how much the earth is tilted on it's axis, relative to the plane of it's orbit around the sun.


The lack of trees means that telephone poles have to be made of metal.

But God is up here just as much as He is anywhere.

This is the mall in Nuuk.

Here is a general look around Nuuk, which was formerly known by the Danish name of Godthab.












The rest of Greenland, which is the vast majority of the island, looks like this.



The first question that most people probably have about Greenland is how on earth it got it's name. It is sometimes said that Iceland and Greenland should exchange names. Iceland is where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge pokes above the surface of the water. So it has geothermal heating as a source of warmth, but Greenland has no such warmth.

Actually it was named by Erik the Red in the hope that it would attract people to his settlement. We tend to think of the Arctic as a relatively new frontier but there were European settlements on Greenland in medieval times.

Erik the Red had a son named Leif Erikson. He is believed to have founded a settlement at the northern tip of Newfoundland, called Vinland. The Vikings ultimately abandoned the settlement because of conflict with the native Indians. It would be nearly five hundred years before Europeans, led by Christopher Columbus, would settle the western hemisphere again.

The settlement at Vinland has been recreated. With the scarcity of wood notice how the structures, in the following images, have been built of sod, or blocks of earth, and the surface soil with grass has gone to make the roof. We can presume that the original settlement of Greenland was built in the same way.





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