Likt båda sina föräldrar född i goa Glennborg. Astor föddes idag kl 1715, var 3 832 g tung och 51 cm lång. Här bredvid bild på storebror Eskil – likheter finns. Göteborg, Östra sjukhuset, 2013.

+ Astor J.M. förstås.

- Det faktum att jag knappt hann lämna samma sjukhus då jag nödgades avlägsna min blindtarm. Mer om det någon annan gång.

Old vs. new, Boston-built: The USS Constitution, launched in 1797, and the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, opened in 2003.

Strapping!

The foreigness of the Nova Scotian supermarket was not too alarming, save these sacks of milk…!

Egad, plastic sacks of milk!

I didn’t puzzle long over these milk pouches and moved on but there I was, again faced by another strange thing- what on earth are these?

The Fiddleheads Cometh

Fiddlehead-no sir, you are a Fiddlehead.

A Crock of Maritime Gold.

I reckon you are paying attention but I’ll elaborate: You will be hard pressed to find better prices anywhere in the world. (Unless you talk to a fisherman or dive for em’ of the bay yourself!)
Here is the menu I created for my breakfast sup: Bacon Lobster Loaf with cheddar, garlic butter sauce and a side of boiled and lightly salted Fiddleheads. Lets take a look at the prep and the cooking on part 2(soon to come.)

Mary is away for a few days and so I delivered her to the airport. On the way there (and back) I took the long way, around the Miramar peninsula to enable us to enjoy the beauty of the day. I may have taken a photo or two on the way.

From Balaena Bay, the view across the harbour, up the valley to the mountains was breathtakingly beautiful. Enlarge the image to see the hills. The Interisland ferry Aratere was stooging about. I am never sure whether they are carrying out drills when they do this, or just vacating a berth to allow a scheduled service in.

The Aratere is on the left

Just around the corner of Pt Halswell, I looked back again and saw a small trawler chugging out to sea. We had plenty of time before check-in so yet another pause.

Passing Matiu/Somes Island

After a leisurely lunch at the airport, I came back the same way and paused in Breaker Bay where those cruel rocks looked innocent.

Steeple rock in the background

Back near Pt Halswell there is a stunted pine on a rocky outcrop that appealed to me.

A natural “bonsai”

My last image of the day was back out at Pauatahanui. I didn’t get any good bird shots, but I did like this image of the sun shining through the smoke of a wood fire on a nearby farm. The white things in the foreground are plastic bags giving shelter to some tree seedlings.

The smoke was just drifting

A big expedition to distant parts begins today with a fellow photographer. I am hoping for more weather like yesterday.

Let’s see where we get to.

In 1972,  a group of marines were taken to Rockall on board RFA Engerdine, and tasked with repairing/rebuilding the damaged beacon which had been placed on the islet.

One of those involved would now like to find any information relating to this operation, to pass on to his grandchildren.

As ever, any information would be greatly appreciated, and passed on to the originator.

Rockall is not the best environment for any sort of beacon to be expected to survive in, and it seems the beacon referred to was one of four which have been established there over the years.

The last attempt seems to have been in 1998, but that too had failed by 2005, and current information is that no further attempts to mark the rock with a beacon have followed.

Via Michael’s List of Scottish Lighthouses: Section T

The picture of Rockall, dating from 2008, actually shows the latter beacon, just visible on the summit of the islet.

Rockall © Andy Strangeway via geograph

This week Chill and I discussed public toilet disaster scenarios, the traumatic birth of my first child and Chill’s latest d*ck hunt. Love from Hali to Miami.

 TLFC-18: Slapping me in the face with your computer d**k Download

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25 May 13 – Sydney – Vivid Sydney

I was in Breaker Bay at the entrance to Wellington Harbour, watching no fewer than four vessels positioning themselves for entering or leaving port. The big lens has a significant sail area, and it was very hard to hold it still on the single balance point of the monopod.  I had to sacrifice depth of field for a fast shutter speed.

I think this vessel is carrying fruit to Asian markets

My first subject is a pretty little general purpose dry cargo vessel called the Asian Adonis. Despite being just 14 years old, this ship harks back to the designs in vogue in the 1970s. I can’t recall the last time I saw a ship with guyed derricks as opposed to hydraulic cranes. At a mere 7,355 Tonnes this is a minnow amongst freighters.  I enjoyed the reminder of days gone by.

How many members of the Maersk family have yet to have a ship named after them?

As the Asian Adonis was passing the Pencarrow light, the next in line was the Oluf Maersk , inbound from Lyttelton. As I watched, this 34,000 Tonne vessel swung to port, to afford the pilot vessel some shelter from that howling wind as the pilot scrambled to the accommodation ladder.  As soon as he was aboard, she swung back on course to avoid any unpleasantness with the Interisland ferry Arahura outbound for Picton.  Dwarfing the smaller ship, the Oluf Maersk is listed as a 3,267 TEU vessel. That is, it could carry up to that many twenty-foot containers. There is a new class of container ship with six times this capacity (18,000 TEU). What a monster that will be when it enters service on the 28th of this month.  See here for a video  of its launch.

Still far out in the strait, the little Bluebridge vessel Straitsman  appeared to have slowed down to avoid this  flurry of traffic. Meanwhile, Oluf Maersk is back on track and the Arahura  can safely leave the harbour.

As I may have said before, I love ships.

The political situation facing the modern USAF and USN is obviously different, and different enough that the implied connection between the two doctrines may obscure more than it illuminates. The objective of smoothing inter-service cooperation is obviously worthy, and AirLand Battle is worth remembering for the peace it represented between the Army and Air Force. Given the differences between the two concepts (one is a doctrine, one is not; one had an enemy in mind, one does not; one involved a lead and support service, one involves equal cooperation between two services, etc.), the confusion generated by the comparison may outweigh the rhetorical value of the (admittedly nifty) naming strategy.

What is impressive about the USN’s rollout, though, is how far they go to convey an impression, that ASB is just a minor tweak on ALB. That humility obscures, according to Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., just doesn’t dispel confusion.

That kind of intimate cooperation can’t be imposed by the joint theater commanders on their own, and it needs more than just better communications networks. It requires, instead, new “procedures [and] authorities” to let those operational commanders reach across traditional lines of jurisdiction and bring in capabilities they need. (The document doesn’t say, but such changes would require new Pentagon policies and perhaps new laws, developments we’ll be watching for and writing about).

This new jointness also must reach all the way back into the core of the armed services’ jurisdictions, into how troops are trained, units organized, and equipment developed and procured. The services need “mutually developed capability gaps” – i.e. a shared official analysis of the problem – and “integrated solution sets” – i.e. a shared official program to solve it. That kind of coordination would require require changes in how the services train to fight and could affect every defense contract for items more complex than combat boots.

As awe-inspiring as the ensuing turf wars will be, however, they’re not nearly as scary as the real wars. Tit-for-tat, unimaginative “symmetrical” combat – my planes dogfight your planes, my subs hunt your subs – is not a particularly effective way of winning conflicts. But it is at least modestly effective at controlling escalation. Both sides know, more or less, what to expect: If we do X, the other guy will probably do Y or Z, and Z is pretty bad, so maybe we don’t want to do X, after all.

Predictable, symmetrical responses are a big part of why the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, did not lead to war. The Soviets put missiles in Cuba, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised bombing the missile sites, but Kennedy realized Russians would strike back. So instead we used our ships to stop their ships that were trying to bring more missiles in. It was a near-run thing, but it worked, and no one got blown up. Conversely, using new weapons and tactics can provoke people to retaliate in ways you don’t expect. The Germans thought a proportionate response to the Royal Navy’s blockade of German ports would be for U-boats to sink every ship bound for Britain, including neutral ones, but Woodrow Wilson disagreed, which is why the US ended up entering World War I.

In the future AirSea Battle, that “cross-domain attack in depth using both kinetic and non-kinetic means” makes the old rulebook irrelevant. If, during some crisis over Taiwan or the Japanese-held Senkaku Islands, for example, missile launchers on the Chinese coast threaten our ships in the Western Pacific, the Chinese would certainly expect us to try to shoot down any missiles when and if they’re actually launched. But if a missile launcher is about to fire on our ships and we preemptively bomb it, is that proportional use of force or irresponsible escalation? If we strike a missile site on the Chinese mainland to protect our ships, should we expect the Chinese to retaliate against our Pacific Fleet or against Los Angeles?

Or what if, instead, we neutralize the missile threat before it ever launches, let’s say by hacking the Chinese satellite in orbit that spots our ships or the Chinese computers in Beijing that coordinate the attack? Does such a cyber-offensive count as an escalatory, inflammatory threat against the core of their national command-and-control system? Or, since nobody got hurt and nothing blew up, is it not even an act of war? If you want a chance of keeping a conflict from escalating, each side had better understand what the other considers escalation – and the fight for cyberspace has, by some measures, already begun.

It is unnervingly unclear how thoroughly the people working on AirSea Battle have thought this out. Admittedly, they’re only four years into it, and it took us much longer to work out nuclear deterrence in the Cold War.

Let’s hope the four services have the opportunity to fight their turf war before a real conflict gets planned.

Today there is no feather in sight, though I confess to suffering from withdrawal symptoms. While I am still thinking Autumn, technically it is already winter, and on a bleak day with oppressive grey sky and a spiteful drizzle, the weather was starting to act it out.

The problem with Wellington’s South Coast is that it demands a toll for its most spectacular presentations. Yesterday was not yet up there with wild waves and howling gales, but what it had to offer came at a price.

Safe haven

Island bay is often photographed, usually including the island, Tapu Te Ranga, which gives the bay its name.  The island is the natural breakwater that makes the bay a sheltered haven for the sturdy little boats of the Italian community that supply most of Wellington’s domestic fish demand. Another characteristic of the South Coast is the vivid red rock, apparently formed of iron-rich lava millions of years ago.  I can tell you that its sharp edges are vicious on the feet and usually uncomfortable to sit on.

A builder’s whimsy

From a slightly different angle, I took in some of the houses along the South Coast. The one that looks like a lighthouse is not a lighthouse at all, but rather a whimsy on the part of a local builder. It is a cottage for two available for short-term rentals as a “romantic getaway”.

The South Coast is not a place for anyone who is paranoid about tsunami risk. Indeed it is not a place for anyone who wants to be fussy about house and garden. I watched one lady using a small broom attempting to clear her tiny yard of wind-blown sand. This  would be a never-ending task worthy of Sisyphus.

Salt and sand combine with the wind to assault the paintwork of many of the old wooden houses along this coast and they often seem in a state of disrepair. Some of the newer infill housing attempt to use maintenance-free materials, but I suspect that just delays the inevitable.

A yacht below Baring Head

Applying the “look behind you” rule, I was lucky to see this yacht  making for harbour. Somehow there was just sufficient sunlight to share between the yacht itself and the lighthouse on Baring Head.  I note that the yacht has an auto-furling jib, but the mainsail does not look well-trimmed to me. On the other hand, despite its size, only one person was visible and trimming may take a little longer.

Soon they will be gone

My last shot of the day is of that same Japanese maple I pictured on May 29^{th -} just five days ago. Then it was still in full Autumn dress. Now it is shedding the last of its finery. No, it is not out of focus, as witness the branches. The blur is the bitter wind of winter tearing at the leaves to dislodge them from their perch. Soon the wood will be bare.

And that’s the day.

*”Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley