A renaissance man for the twenty-first century!
This is one of my all time favorite snaps, showing the magnificent Dome of the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, but framed in the context of quite a mundane and architecturally uninspiring neighboorhood street:
Unbelievably, the Basilica of St. Peter is known as the largest church in the world. I find that a bit hard to believe – but that is what is says in Wikipedia.
Everyone knows that Bangalore is often referred to as India’s Silicon Valley – but not everybody agrees why. Some say it was because Wipro got its start here – I had the pleasure of meeting Wipro’s Azim Premji, but I don’t believe this is the reason.
After living many years in southern India, I’ve come to the realization that no other place I’ve visited has such a deep, long, and intense culture of technical innovation.
Probably the best known example: Back in the eighteenth century Southern Indians invented military rockets, the British stole these and exported them back to the New World – and in fact it is these Indian “rockets’ red glare” mentioned in the Star Spangled Banner.
But here’s an even better example: ancient outdoor air conditioning. This snap shows a temple in the Southern Indian UNESCO village of Hampi:
The stone columns are hollow and, when filled with water, provide a strong evaporative cooling effect.
I’ll share other examples of Southern Indian “culture of innovation” as time permits.
I don’t know when it started.
I don’t know how it started.
But I do know that today London is covered with pubs that have very fancy exteriors.
I took this snap on my second visit to London:
But then I quickly realized that just about every pub had a pretty exterior, such as this one:
And this one:
At this point I stopped taking snaps of pubs. If they are all like this, I am sure there are coffee table books that can do a better job at capturing them than me!
The great thing about having a photo blog is that you get the chance to learn little interesting facts. While driving around Southern California I took this snap overlooking the city of Long Beach:
And I couldn’t resist driving up and seeing one of these oil pumps up close:
But naturally I got curious about why there are so many oil pumps in this area, so a quick check on Wikipedia pulled up this article about the Long Beach Oil Field, at one time a hugely important natural resource for the U.S.
Capable of carrying over 800 passengers, the Airbus A380 is currently the world’s largest passenger aircraft. And the amazing perk about my job is that I get to get up-close-and-personal with these jumbo jets.
Here’s a snap from driving on the tarmac in Los Angeles International Airport (LAX):
At the Tom Bradley International Gates (also known to us in the trade as TIBITS, Terminal 5), the A380’s are all parked side-by-side. And here’s a snap of us driving in an automobile underneath the wing:
Looking out their window the flying public sees the busy crew on the “ramp” but has little idea of the overwhelming logistical complexity and challenges that a company like Swissport has to overcome to deliver a top service.
I know its a touristy thing to do, but I’ve always wanted to see the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard, which I recently got the chance to do.
On both sides of the street, extending for quite some length, are the famous “stars” – 2600 of them, to be precise:
They are arranged in repeating patterns of two: two stars facing left, then two stars facing right. I’m not sure how they decide to mix up the celebrities, but movie stars, musicians, movie directors, and other famous people are honored here. In the snap above you can see some empty stars; the names are added after the celebrities are selected, but the stars are already built into the ground.
One one side of Hollywood Boulevard is Graumann’s Chinese Theatre,
And in the very tiny area in front, you can see the hand and footprints of the mega-stars:
I have quite a few blog entries about the wonderful historic buildings in Metz, France, which are in spectacular condition despite a number of world wars.
This building didn’t fare as well as the others:
This is the Temple du Garnison (or Garrison Temple, in English) – and apparently the main part of this church collapsed due to a fire in 1946. All that remains is this steeple.
I have no idea what kind of tree this is, but I thought the root structure made an interesting snap. I parked next to this tree while visiting Beverly Hills:
Well, I don’t know if he did or he didn’t.
But this is a scene from the film Beverly Hills Cop, that shows him cruising down the expensive and glamorous Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California:
And this is a snap I took of the real Rodeo Drive today, risking life and limb by standing in the middle of the street to get the perfect shot:
OK, it wasn’t all that dangerous. It was a Sunday morning, and all the stores were closed, and there was no traffic at all.
The first time something happens, you don’t even think about it.
The second time something happens, you call it deja vu.
But the third time something happens, and when it is religious in nature, it isn’t just scary – it’s terrifying!
The first time it happened I had a rental car in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I got lost. So I pulled over to the nearest parking lot to check the navigation system, and this happened to be a famous Mormon temple. I never gave it a second thought.
The second time it happened I had a rental car in the Chevy Chase neighborhood near Washington DC area, and I got lost. So I pulled over to the nearest parking lot to check the navigation system, and this happened to be a famous Mormon temple. I immediately thought, deja vu!
The third time it happened I had a rental car in the Burbank area of Southern California, and I got lost. So I pulled over to the nearest parking lot to check the navigation sysstem, and this happened to be a famous Mormon temple. I immediately thought: this isn’t just scary, this is now terrifying!
Now, I am not Mormon. But is something trying to tell me, I should become one?
I don’t know when it first started to happen.
I don’t know how it started to happen.
But I do know if you visit Manhattan today, the original ethnic Jewish and Italian seem to be slowly obscured – if not downright pushed out – by Chinese, Korean, and Sushi restaurants, as this snap (one of my favorites) shows:
If you spend enough time walking around medieval German and Swiss villages, you’ll eventually notice that most of the houses are so-called half-timbered houses (with planks of wood separating the stuccoed exterior) but that a number of houses are painted in a very ornate and detailed style.
Here is one such house that I discovered in Olten, which shows both styles: the half-timbering at the top, and a large painted area below:
What I don’t know is the history of these houses. Were they always like that right from the beginning? Were perhaps ALL the houses like this, right from the beginning, and was it only recently that some of the houses stopped receiving this painted attention? One of the many, many mysteries if you live in Europe!
In a recent post I showed a tram in Strasbourg stopped at the Place de l’homme du fer – which you can roughly translate as Iron Man Square. If you are curious about how it got its name, just have a short look around and you’ll quickly see this man in armor hanging on the wall:
And he looks even more impressive close up:
This used to be the location of an armory, and the original coat of arms was hung up in the year 1740. What you see here, however, is just a replica – fortunately, the original has been moved to a museum to be preserved.
I wonder if you can call a Chinese millipede a Chinapede? At any rate, sometime after I took this snap of a millipede in Hainan, China, I realized that without some reference it’s hard to anyone to appreciate just how large this fellow was:
The problem with the Disneyland-like look of so many buildings in Las Vegas it that it obscures that there are some true architectural gems, as this snap (one of my favorites) of the Wynn Las Vegas shows:
About the only way you can take decent photographs of the massive European cathedrals is from a distance, as this snap overlooking the Rhein River near the German city of Köln shows:
Everyone will instantly recognize this snap of the Empire State Building in Manhattan:
But if you’ve got sharp eyes, you could in theory notice something else – but it seems nobody ever does. If you look closely, you’ll see that every building has a little tiny box on its roof.
There is a law in Manhattan that every building must contain a cistern of water on the roof that can be released and gravity fed in case of a building fire.
The truly amazing part is that nobody ever notices these little boxes until they’re told about them – but as soon as you know they’re there, you can’t help but see them!
Continuing the series, here is another animal bridge across a highway in northern Switzerland:
Everyone’s heard the word barbeque, even if not everyone has tasted it. And everyone’s heard about Texas, even if not everyone has visited it.
But a Texas Barbeque is really something special. The snap below is of the hugely famous Bill Miller Barbeque, and I’m told it wouldn’t be unusual to see Willy Nelson here – although I never have.
But the amazing part is what you don’t see. These Texas barbecues generate so much heat and smoke, that as soon as you drive into the parking lot it gets a bit difficult to breathe.
For this reason, most people order their food in advance, and even if it takes just a few minutes to pick it up, you leave with your clothes deeply soiled with the wonderful barbecue odors.
These are not Harry Potter Dementors.
But you could be forgiven for thinking they are. In fact, this is an artistic display just outside of the French town of Verdun. Interestingly, it does not commemorate the soldiers of World War I, but rather it commemorates the French soldiers who fought in the Yugoslavian war.
I’ve written about trees in the heath and the Gorse of York.
But since my last blog just over 2000 readers have left comments that I made an egregious error!
I showed this picture and referred to it as gorse:
My dear readers, mea culpa. I did make a mistake ad attached the wrong picture! You were right, that wasn’t gorse, it was heath.
This is the gorse:
Interestingly, there is some speculation that certain types of thorny bushes that grow in nutrient poor areas are in fact carnivorous: the thorns are not designed to retard animals but rather to capture them, so the remains of their dying carcasses can fertilize the ground. Gorse seems not to be in that category, as the thorns tend to repel rather than hold trapped animals. But an interesting theory nonetheless.
If you’ve spent any time walking around Manhattan, you’re sure to have come across a sight like this:
Even though I lived for a while in New York, I never understood why this happens or what it’s about.
But thanks to this blog, now I finally know just a little bit more about this practice!
Today the city it’s officially known as Mysuru, after a movement that has seen the “Re-Indification” of many names in India (Bombay / Mumbai, Calcutta / Kolkata . . . you get the idea). Anyway, this picture I took just outside of the Devaraja Market is still one of my favorites:
In most every South Indian market I’ve visited, the stalls selling colored powder seem always to be right in the front:
It’s been a while since I’ve visited – and to be honest, I am not sure if the market is still there today. I remember reading a few years ago that part of it collapsed.
As an American I was eager to visit Cannes, since we hear so much about this famous French coastal town. On the one hand, if the weather is nice there are a few pretty views here:
But by and large, the impression I got was that it was for the ultra-affluent who had a need to show other people who ultra-affluent they were. For example, the beaches are about as totally unspectacular as you can get:
But, I did find one thing that appealed to me: a church dating back to the Middle Ages, now almost inaccessible by foot, having been almost completely buried in what are now back alleys and fully enclosed by hotels:
