By chance I fell over this quite amusing image of how London would be if it were like Venice. I believe it is a piece of very early science fiction writing, in the British scientific romance genre. It was published in 1899, and later republished on the Forgotten Futures web site.
Click on the link below for the full article and many more images of how London would have been, had it been like Venice.
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Its not all that unusual, they’re getting quite common around here, even in the centre of town. Most often we see them wading in the low water under the brink or sitting in the top of small trees, and they usually take flight if you get closer than about ten meters or so.
This one had settled on the fence of a viewing platform near the main path along the ramparts, which was a bit unusual, so I sat down to watch it for a while. Not only had it picked an unusual place to rest, it also seemed very reluctant to leave it. A man feeding the ducks went all the way down to it, and all it did was to take a few steps along the fence to keep more distance, and two children ran down to it, shouting, and it hardly moved.
After watching it for some time I too walked down to take a few photos with my mobile phone, and it allowed me as close as one metre without showing signs of distress. I took a few pictures as close as I could and walked on. From the next bastion I could see it was still sitting there.
I have never been that close to a grey heron before.
The WWF has just released a report – the Living Planet Report 2008 – about the ecological footprint for various countries around the world. The population of Denmark has the fourth largest ecological footprint per capita, mostly due to our very high CO2 emissions and an excessive consumption of meat, which requires much land to produce.
The only counties with a higher pro capita ecological footprint are the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America and Kuwait.
Each Dane requires 8 hectares of farmland to sustain our life style, while an Italian only requires 5 hectares, which is still well over twice the world average.
Jacob Sterling, a spokesperson for the Danish section of the WWF, says:
– We’re a nation of meat eaters, and it makes us the country in Europe with the highest consumption of beef and next highest of pork, measured pro capita. The production of food for cattle and swine takes up large areas of arable land all over the world. It is completely unacceptable that our consumption puts such a level of stress on the planet.Here’s the description of “ecological footprint” from the report:
The Ecological Footprint measures humanity’s demand on the biosphere in terms of the area of biologically productive land and sea required to provide the resources we use and to absorb our waste. … A country’s footprint is the sum of all the cropland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds required to produce the food, fibre and timber it consumes, to absorb the wastes emitted when it uses energy, and to provide space for its infrastructure. Since people consume resources and ecological services from all over the world, their footprint sums these areas, regardless of where they are located on the planet.
Sterling Airlines, the company I have normally used for low fare flights to and from Venice, has just filed for bankruptcy today. It’ll be a few months before I’m heading back to Venice, but I wonder what this will do to prices.
It never was a great company to fly with, but they were cheap and had three weekly flights between Copenhagen and Venice.
Silly update: I don’t know why, but I just checked on Facebook to see if there was something about the Sterling Airlines bankruptcy there, and I got this result:
What appears to have happened is this. The van was driving in the inner lane with the empty, but very low trailer. The car, probably trying to overtake him, hit the trailer at high speed having only seen the van. At impact, the car must have done a somersault and rolled over, ending crashed into the guard rail turned 180° relative to the driving direction. This was what I saw and fortunately didn’t hit. The van must have received a violent forward push, directly into the chassis through the trailer hook, which turned it over. The trailer was detached as the van fell, and ended besides it.
From what I could see, the driver of the car had injuries around his eyes, but not to his eyes, probably caused by the expanding air bag, which had blood stains on it. His seat belt and the air bag probably saved his life. The driver of the van was completely unscathed, but shocked. Getting the impact from behind he had no forewarning, but the seat belt and having the larger vehicle protected him.
The remains of the whales were discovered by a boatful of tourists on August 17th.
The discovery has raised much fear of Greenland’s image as a place of sustainable hunting, where the whole animal is used.
There are more pictures and coverage in Danish at Sermitsiaq.gl.
I’m back in Venice now, in the camping getting the last things ready before a group of Danes arrives on Sunday for a week of magic Venetian paddling.
I was lucky enough to find myself a vacant window seat on the right side of the plane. The airport of Venice is built on the edge of the the lagoon, and the approach is almost always from the south, so the right side of the plane has a fantastic view of the lagoon and Venice itself, while the left side has a less spectacular view of the Po valley.
Photos taken with a mobile phone through an airplane window aren’t the greatest, but I had no other camera on me and the hostess wouldn’t let me open the window 🙂
The “gronde” of the southern lagoon, an area I still haven’t explored in kayak.
Venice with the Giudecca island and the minor islands south of the city.
Venice with its modern (1930s) additions of the Tronchetto island and the Barrier, officially named “Ponte della Libertà”.
The Barrier and the uninhabited San Secondo island.
Murano and San Michele, with a bit of Venice on the right and the abandoned Campalto island in front.
The northern lagoon near the airport. The “Tessera Canal” in front with Isola di Tessera and Murano to the far right, and Carbonera island in the centre-left. Carbonera used to house a gun battery, but it is now abandoned like so many other “marginal” lagoon islands.
The barene at the airport runways, with the violet flowers in bloom. The airport is built on a part of the lagoon, which used to be like this.
The original painting, kept safe from Berlusconi’s groping hands in a museum, is here, with the relevant part enlarged (again borrowed from La Repubblica):
The modification of a treasured Italian work of art, even if only on a copy, has caused an uproar in Italy, but then, it is only a very minor gaffe by Berlusconi standard. Now, if he would only claim that Truth is really the communist daughter of a nazi concentration camp guard, that would be more his style.
The story is all around, in La Repubblica, on the BBC and many others.
We took our beagle Jamil paddling one day in Venice, just to try it. He sat in the rear hatch of my Rockpool Menai 18, with his own little canine PFD on. There are a few photos below.
Beagles aren’t usually fond of water, but he was calm enough for a short paddle. After about half an hour he got more restless, and after an hour we called it a day. I don’t think it was the water that bothered him, but rather the cramped space in the hatch, which didn’t allow him to change sitting position easily. The next time I’ll take one of the doubles to give him more room.
The ship is a replica of a 30m longship, build in Dublin around 1040 by Nordic or Nordic taught shipbuilders, and some time later sunk near Roskilde in Denmark, to block a narrow passage in the fjord for enemy ships. The wreck was, along four other viking ships, raised in the 1960s and is now on permanent exhibit at the Roskilde Viking Ship museum.
At about three thirty we got ready to return. As soon as we rounded the corner, we discovered that the wind was still a nice force 4, with swells of 1-2m but modest waves of less than 1m. It still took an effort to round Capo Monte Santu, and as we moved well away from the coast to avoid the choppy rebounding waves, we got separated and lost visual contact for extended periods.
Francesco knows his waters and was both much more confident and a lot faster than me, so he was well ahead of me most of the time and probably closer to the rock wall than I wanted to be. In any case I lost him for quite some time, and at the same time didn’t feel I had the resources to actively look for him, as the wind and waves gave me plenty to work with.
I wouldn’t say I was in trouble there, but it wasn’t easy going. The first hour took all my effort and concentration, but I did handle it in a controlled and steady way. My own feeling is that I was quite close to the limits of my abilities in a kayak, but not outside.
In the end all went well, and as soon as we were around the cape we found each other again, and we paddled together for the next couple of hours back to Santa Maria Navarrese. I was quite tired in the end, more mental tiredness than physical.
We had a coffee at Santa Maria Navarres and drove home to yet another dinner thet couldn’t be beat, and then off to bed. I slept well.
