Morning all. Just waking up here…Grand Canyon.Greenland.You don’t expect me to get my feet wet, do you?Northern lights in Iceland.Ladybirds for independence march.Seems like a good place for a rest.Morocco.Found this fellow on Twitter courtesy of Barry Farquharson.The first day at work is always daunting.These papers are so boring!!!Plockton and Kyle from Raasay, thanks to Dave.
What are they cooking for Munguin’s dinner?
I looked right and then left and then right again.
Where do you suppose that is?
Temple Bar, Dublin.
Come on, it’s time to get up.
Punakha, Bhutan.
Are you going to be my friend?
Hows this for a view?
Well, that’s it for another week, Munguinites. Hope you enjoyed it more than I’m enjoying whatever this is I’ve got to eat.
I thought those two donkeys might be Scottish donkeys, but my almost eldritch paranormal abilities and exceptional googling skills tell me that that’s actually County Donegal. Very beautiful, but there’s a lot of coastline there so I couldn’t pinpoint it any better than that.
Nice pictures. Sunset on the Grand Canyon is always pretty. Gives it great colors. I raced the sun across Arizona one afternoon after failing to tear myself away from the Las Vegas blackjack tables and slot machines before late morning. I might have lost the light at the canyon, but managed to get about 45 minutes or so of late afternoon and early evening summer sun for pictures from the South Rim overlooks.
Someday I’m going to go to the trouble of navigating to the OTHER side of the canyon….the NORTH rim that only about 10% of tourists ever see. It’s another 1,000 ft in altitude above the South Rim (about 8,000 ft) with poorer highway access that’s only open about five months in summer due to the winter snows on the high Colorado Plateau. The Grand Canyon is only about 18 miles wide from south rim to north rim, but that’s a FIVE HOUR (220 mile) drive around the canyon from one to the other if you want to do it in a single day.
The deer looks like it might be on the road to Devils Tower (Wyoming).
Tris…..Yes, the roads to the North Rim are apparently not great. Of course it’s five hours, but also 220 miles around the end of the canyon where you can cross the Colorado River on more level ground. There’s just no bridge over the part that’s 6,000 ft deep and 18 miles wide. 😉
I just can’t see the economic viability of a bridge that long, over something that deep… and it’s not really something I’d want to go on anyway. Imagine a break down half way across…
A bridge would also spoil the view for the tourists…..LOL.
However, farther down the Colorado River on the Nevada border at Hoover Dam, they did build a big high bridge that crosses the Colorado high above the dam and takes the traffic off the dam itself. Trucks were a problem, since the road down to the level of the dam is steep and winding, and dangerous cargoes like explosives crossing the dam were always a concern.
The big new bridge is certainly more efficient than the old two-lane road over the dam in carrying cross-country traffic across the Colorado at the Nevada-Arizona border. However, it totally obliterates what was once a beautiful panoramic view of the dam by air…..which you could sometimes see from a plane vectoring into McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
I don’t like the bridge, but they didn’t ask me. 😉
Your comment made me think of bridges, and I decided to post a photie of the Millau Viaduct in France – not because anything like it would be a practical solution to bridging the Grand Canyon, but because it’s beautiful, and I’ve been over it, and before that I’d driven of the somewhat nightmarish roads in the region. http://tinyurl.com/ybep5o3y
Hi Ed…….the Millau Viaduct is not only high and long, it’s beautiful. There really is something about modern cable-stayed bridges, such as the Queensferry Crossing Bridge, that makes them beautiful. They seem to float in the air. Much the same can be said for traditional suspension bridges. They can also span longer distances than the tried and true (since Roman times) arch bridges, which are not so beautiful.
I looked up the statistics of the beautiful Millau Viaduct and two recently constructed (and not so beautiful) very high American arch bridges…….the O’Callaghan-Tillman Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge, and the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.
Deck Height Longest Span Total Span
Millau Viaduct 909 ft 1122 ft 2460 ft
(France)
Hoover Dam Bypass 889 ft 1060 ft 1060 ft
(Nevada-Arizona)
New River Gorge 876 ft 1699 ft 1699 ft
(West Virginia)
The New River Gorge Bridge is an impressive sight and spans a long distance between the walls of the gorge of the New River. It also turned a HORRENDOUS 40 minute drive down the walls of the gorge on a narrow two-lane mountain road with 15-25 mph hairpin switchbacks, into a minute or two of straight line travel at highway speed wall-to-wall across the gorge. It’s a tad ugly I think…….mostly because they apparently decided to paint it the color of RUST.
The view of the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge is not so bad if you drive the two lane road down to the top of the dam, and look BACK at it….where it doesn’t spoil the view of the dam.
BTW……..the Millau Viaduct also has another height honor. Its tallest mast is 1,125.3 ft (343.0 meters.) Taller than the Eiffel Tower.
From an American perspective the French can be somewhat “unusual.” They have speech laws for example…….not for “freedom of”, as much as for”no one will be offended by”.
But now I find that you can’t legally take a picture of anything in France…….unless it’s really old and no longer protected by copyright. There is no “Freedom of Panorama” in France, and the lighting scheme of the Eiffel Tower is protected by copyright. So if you try to take a picture of the lighted tower at night, the gendarmes will come and arrest you and throw you in the Bastille or some such place……along with the other miscreant photographers……AND all those prisoners who SAID something illegal.
So how is it that people are allowed to take pictures of the Millau Viaduct and post them on the internet?
There’s of course the possibility that all those people who have taken pictures of the Millau Viaduct have already been arrested and convicted…..and are doing hard time in French prisons as we speak. 😉
Tris……I’m immensely gratified that Mr. Munguin and Munguin World Media are taking such a high profile stand about publishing nighttime Eiffel photography.
In the event that agents of Interpol serve a French arrest warrant and whisk him away to France, Munguin will enjoy my most fervent support as he serves his time in a French prison. 😉
I’m fairly sure that if teh worst comes to the worst, Munguin, who is fluent in French, will have a word with his friend M le Président, and will spend any prison time in a wing of the Elysee … I just hope I get an invite too!
Speaking of nighttime photography. An interesting low angle view of Hoover Dam more or less from river level, with the bypass bridge silhouetted against the sky. No photograph can do justice to the scale of Hoover Dam and its location down in a narrow, approx. 1,000 ft deep canyon. The 726 ft tall concrete face of the dam is beautifully illuminated at night. Even the scale of the powerhouse at the base of the damn can’t be appreciated unless you are down at river level and looking up at the huge building. (Part of the public tour.)
The location in Black Canyon where the dam was built, as it appeared in 1871.
It is indeed very high! As for painting bridges rust-coloured, we do that with the Forth Bridge – it started out as red lead paint, but that’s no longer allowed because of international efforts to get heavy metals out of the environment. Could it be that environmental law does not stop it being used for bridges in the US? Surely not.
For the Forth Bridge, they spent a great deal of time stripping the lead paint off along with any spots of corrosion, and removing all the bird and other shit and other such delightful substances avian, mammalian and technological origin, and then painted it back up again with some extremely expensive sooperdooper polymer-based stuff with Superior Properties that was made to have exactly the same colour.
Whether they dumped all the old paint and other crap in the river, or disposed of it properly, is unknown to me, but one would rather hope so.
They could probably have saved some cash by painting the bridge magnolia instead – or ivory cream, which I believe is the magnolia of 21st century – but that would have been a bit naff, I suppose, to have people look at such an iconic structure and say “When our [insert female name here] moved in, all her walls were like that”.
Ed……Amazing story……….especially since it so closely matches the story of how America’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge ended up being painted red…..or actually “orange vermilion” called “international orange”…….instead of gray, silver, or black, which was what was originally envisaged. Turns out that the consulting architect noticed the bright color of the reddish-orange primer base coat being applied, and liked it. The rest is history:
I see that the National Museums Scotland website says the Forth Bridge paint color is called “Forth Bridge Red”, and is mixed to match the original red oxide color used in 1890…….as you described.
I might mention an “accident” that occurred on another iconic American bridge……the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River in New York City.
From Wiki…….
The original design for the George Washington Bridge’s suspension towers called for them to be encased in concrete and granite………However, the facades were postponed as a cost-cutting measure after the start of the Great Depression in 1929, midway through the bridge’s construction. The entire weight of the bridge was supported by the steel structure, and the purely decorative masonry could be added at a later date. Even though the steel towers had been left that way for cost reasons, aesthetic critiques of the bare steel towers were favorable…….The masonry facades were ultimately never built; and the exposed steel towers, with their distinctive criss-crossed bracing, have become one of the George Washington Bridge’s most identifiable characteristics.
It was decided that the bare steel towers look modern and utilitarian.
Tris……Yes, but true of all steel bridges I guess. When I said “bare steel,” I didn’t mean that it wasn’t coated. In this case, with a final coating of gray paint. In fact, since they didn’t clad the towers in a masonry facade as originally planned, it probably makes it easier to inspect for corrosion, and makes it easier to repair and repaint.
I never knew that was the reason why it looks the way it does. They (whoever they are) claim that the GW is the busiest bridge in the world, but one does wonder how they know.
Ed…….Wiki says: . “As of 2016, the George Washington Bridge carried over 103 million vehicles per year, making it the world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge.” It has 14 lanes of traffic on two levels. It carries three numbered highways of the federal US highway system, and also I-95, one of the major cross-country routes of the Interstate Highway system.
The GW has toll collection data of course, but there’s lots of ways to count traffic it seems. 😉
Danny, I didn’t express myself as well as I usually do! I do know that the GW has tolls; I was thinking of other bridges around the world that might not necessarily have tolls. I thought the Dartford Crossing in London might have more, but the suspension bridge (southbound) and the two tunnels (northbound) have fewer than 60 million crossings a year between them. If I had doubts, it is because there is a well-known tendency in America (and Russia, actually) to claim that X, Y or Z is the biggest / highest / best in the world, whether it is or not, because there is an automatic assumption that if it’s the biggest / highest / best in America (or Russia), then obviously it must be the biggest / highest / best in the world.
Not so easy to get away with in today’s interconnected world, probably.
Ed…..very good point! However, an American view might be that if those other bridges want to be in the race, let them lodge their claim with supporting documentation and America will submit the matter to American arbitration. 😉
There is after all the AMERICAN way of doing things. You’re no doubt aware that the WORLD Championship of baseball is the WORLD SERIES, which is exclusively a contest between two LEAGUES of AMERICAN baseball. Well, strictly speaking, there is one Canadian team in the race (the Toronto Blue Jays of the AMERICAN League), now that the Montreal Expos have moved to the AMERICAN capital of Washington, D.C. Now I ask you what could be more of a WORLD Championship than THAT?
You are somewhat hampered in your analysis by what is clearly a respect for objective reality. Mere reality is in fact no longer relevant as an arbiter of truth in the politically polarized American republic. Truth is whatever you want it to be, and facts that do not conform to your opinion are damnable lies by the other political party which hates America and all the people in it.
You will have heard that all this led to the election to the presidency (by the American democratic process where the LOSER of the popular vote wins the election) of a real estate huckster and all-purpose con-man and demagogue. For our Mr. Trump, reality is whatever he says it is, and the reality-spouting nay-sayers of the media are “enemies of the people.” Trumpian disdain for reality is combined with a love of superlatives…….worst in history/best in history/biggest in the world, etc……..and so we have an America in which opinions about traffic volume on the GW for example take on elements of treasonous sedition on one hand verses patriotic love-of-country on the other. Nay-sayers will be prosecuted…….or at the very least litigated. 😉
BTW, back in the world of reality outside the District of Columbia there’s those damnable Chinese among others who seem to be working overtime to take the biggest and best records from the USA where they properly belong. People arriving back in the US after having seen of the new airports of the far East for example, often comment on the increasingly “third world” look of old American airports and crumbling infrastructure generally. The tallest building records for example have always been a big deal, and none of them are in the USA anymore as far as I know. Gone are the halcyon days when it was a contest of which new building in New York City AND the world would be the tallest……..the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building.
Things are a bit rubbish at Panda Palace so I really needed Soppy Sunday today and it didn’t disappoint. Someone should tell that bloke in the water though that jaguars are excellent swimmers and unlike many kitties like the water. The ladybird picture is brilliant – glad they are on our side 🙂 Greenland picture is stunning. Marvelous stuff.
Anyway 18th August is apparently World Orangutan Day. So there is a link to Peanut who doesn’t seem to realise he’s supposed to like climbing. Poor thing.
Reading the WGD’s article on it, have posted to a couple of places. So much for democracy, eh? “You’ll have had your free press” – except They’re doubling down on all Their tried-and-tested malpractices and malfeasances.
…WGD’s article. We have a serious expectation that indyref 2 will happen (as a movable feast) anytime between six weeks from now up until 28 March next year. There is also a strong possibility of a snap general election, or a Brexit 2.0 referendum, or both. So it begins – not that it ever stopped.
At the same time I notice that the guy who was leading the small band of Unionist supporters in Inverness, and who is apparently a Holocaust denier and hard right wing Britnat, has had his videos left alone.
Having just got back from
ayia Napa would like to
Ask your opinion.
Watched a group of young
Scots marching through
Ayia Napa each night
All Carrying the saltire 🏴
About ten of them
One ☝️ (good girl ) did
Carry the royal standard
But is this March of the nats
On holiday ????
Reminiscent of the 1930s
In another place.
Or just exuberant patriotic
Youth either way if this was
The orange 🍊 order what
Would the nats say
????
Must admit seemed a trifle
Unusual to me mayhap
Somone in the know will
Read this on your blog
And give an explanation.
Hedged his bets with duel nationality, did Andrew.
He’ll be able to keep his red passport that is so useful, while the rest of us get these crappy “iconic” ones which will confine us to a long “foreigner” queue.
My guess is someone at BBC Scotland with an agenda; Scotland is off London’s radar, the third largest party in Westminster very rarely gets a mention on “the news where we [not you] are”.
“On 21 October 2015, the Scotland Office re-branded their Facebook profile to ‘UK Government for Scotland. The Scotland Office Twitter handle changed to @UKGovScotland at the same time.”
No there is nothing sinister about that, not at all…
Just like there is nothing sinister about all the new staff it has recently recruited and its vastly increased spending…….
Is it true that ladybirds bite humans when they are thirsty? A few years ago I read that there was an outbreak of ladybird bites in the long, hot summer of 76. As the UK is having another long, hot summer I wondered if they were biting again. Of course, the ladybird bite story might just be a shaggy insect thing.
The pyramids are on planet 675 , I’m a Stargate fan what can I say .
On the BBC /Youtube take down , the beeb has had complaints of a rather large nature , wonder why .
It had to be her , I was looking forward to a coffee , cream cake and marmalade sandwich with Paddington , oh well Jackie in the tunnel it is , you do know my wife isn’t going to be happy .
Update on Wings youtube take down , it was Stu’s own interview with the BBC that was copyright struck , there may be more but as of 1 hour ago , that was it .
I don’t know how these things work but….. scraping the whole of Youtube for copyright is impractical due to the computational cost. Given that, sampling with a subset of chosen clips sounds more practical. If you’re going to sample then you’ll also need to modify the sample set from time to time. If you don’t do that you’ll eventually find all content matching the sample set and you’ll just be wasting computer cycles. If I was choosing a sample set of content I’d look for specific signatures of music, specific logos on the screen, maybe even specific faces. Something with a clear match that is the same every time so that the features of one sample can pull in multiple instances of copyright. These will be changed from time to time. A less conspiratorial explanation is that the BBC simply changed their sample set and the computers started to churn away one more time until they picked up a couple of matches.
Anything that is algorithmic is harder to game for a specific outcome than a process that involves human intervention. For that reason I’m sceptical of a conspiracy. I’m also sceptical because we only have a couple of simultaneous data points – not statistically meaningful.
It’s interesting why the BBC do this at all? It is far too expensive to do this just to annoy WoS so it must be part of a bigger effort of copyright enforcement. But why? I understand why they would protect comedy shows because they have resell and repeat value. But the news? The news is never repeated. I think I have a potential answer.
If your job is finding copyright infringements then you’ll be judged as better at it if you find more of them. News is something that repeats logos and signature tunes. If you search for the signatures of one news show then you might pull in that signature across multiple days of news – et voila great monthly stats, high fives all round and a promotion.
Whenever I see talk of conspiracy I tend to look for more rational explanations of human nature and cock-up.
To find out more, though, would require a FoI about BBC technical strategy on copyright inforcement. What process do they employ? Who chooses what content will be prioritised? etc etc. They could reasonably argue commercial security here because they almost certainly do sell access to their historic news library to international media agencies. If they do sell access to their news library then the buyers of that library will require the BBC to make their fees worthwhile ie stop all sundry sharing it for free.
We’ve ended up with a question of why the BBC try to monetize their news service. That doesn’t sound right to me.
More
New email from YouTube – it now appears the BBC only objected to ONE of these 60 most recent videos. (Still hundreds more to check.)
Wings Over Scotland
Verified account
@WingsScotland
3h3 hours ago
Oh my God I’ve just worked out which one it was. It was this one: https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-debut/ Which is to say, THE ONE WHERE THE BBC INTERVIEWED *ME*.
Wings Over Scotland
Verified account
@WingsScotland
3h3 hours ago
The BBC have made YouTube kill my entire channel because I posted a BBC interview with myself.
I wonder what it was about THAT interview that triggered their target button.
The comparison algorithm is necessarily statistical because the signal on youtube is not the same as the original broadcast signal – it’s been compressed and decompressed multiple times and each time that happens noise is added to the pixels. A lot of posters on youtube go even further. They try to make it harder for the matching algorithm by:
a) reflecting the image
b) blurring the image
c) stretching or shrinking the image along a vector
d)adding a colour gradient to the image
e)changing the pixel density
f)shrinking the image and moving it off centre
g)expanding the image so that the outer edge is lost
h)resampling
i)etc etc etc
This leads to a game of cat and mouse between content posters and content owners. I’d expect the BBC to constantly change their matching algorithm and the content samples they use to hunt for matches. That means that historic posts sometimes get picked up years after they were posted.
There’s a further complexity because almost any algorithm can be improved with increased computational cost. It can also be improved with more human intervention. Both are real costs but it remains the case that computers are cheaper than humans. A film company like Disney is protecting a relatively small amount of high value content. It is cost effective to use the highest quality settings in the matching software and attack the problem with a computational juggernaut. That’s why Back To The Future is not for free on youtube. The BBC, on the other hand, is protecting a huge volume of low value content. They can never hope to win because it is not cost-effective. A quick search of youtube suggests they are losing but they can’t just give up.
If the BBC can’t expect to protect all of their content, they are still able to protect some of it. They’ll hope that the mere threat of take-down notices will deter others. That means that posters of contested material will wonder why their content was taken down, while other similar posts remain available. The answer, though, is more likely to be statistical rater than conspiratorial. Conspiracies require organisation, intelligence and discretion rarely found in the wild and definitely not at the BBC.
It is actually a fascinating area of computer science. It involves graph theory and finite-state transducers. Hang on, that’s not right. It’s actually incredibly boring. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Your explanation makes perfect sense, Terry, but I don’t believe it’s the whole story.
It is not too fanciful or conspiratorial to say that rather than some junior jobsworth in the BBC Department of Copyright Infringement running a new algorithm and it all happening by chance and algorithm from there, if a Certain Person from a Certain Ministry had a word with a Certain Person at the BBC, and made some kind of threat or offered some kind of inducement for Certain BBC Person to go back to BeeB Central and instruct said junior jobsworth to test his new copyright infringement software on the particular YouTube channels on the list provided to him by the Certain Person at the Certain Ministry… the desired effect would be produced, and Plausible Deniability would be maintained.
Similarly, would it be GCHQ that is responsible for monitoring internet output from a “national security” standpoint? We Scottish independentistas are well-known subversives, of course. I remember too, back in the days of Greenham Common, how intrusive the security services could be in tapping people’s phones, infiltrating CND and other such groups with undercover polis and so on. GCHQ could be another source of information for the Certain Person from a Certain Ministry to tip the wink to the Certain Person from the BBC…
The BBC is immune to FOI requests, or so it seems; it’s not so long since new staff were vetted by MI5 as a matter of course (do they still do that?) – so, like the Home Office, there’s a lot going on in there that will most probably never see the light of day, even though it bloody well otter.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Lovely! Life reaffirmed.
I thought those two donkeys might be Scottish donkeys, but my almost eldritch paranormal abilities and exceptional googling skills tell me that that’s actually County Donegal. Very beautiful, but there’s a lot of coastline there so I couldn’t pinpoint it any better than that.
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Not THAT paranormal then, eh? Oh well, we’ll have to ask Harry Potter.
🙂
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Nice pictures. Sunset on the Grand Canyon is always pretty. Gives it great colors. I raced the sun across Arizona one afternoon after failing to tear myself away from the Las Vegas blackjack tables and slot machines before late morning. I might have lost the light at the canyon, but managed to get about 45 minutes or so of late afternoon and early evening summer sun for pictures from the South Rim overlooks.
Someday I’m going to go to the trouble of navigating to the OTHER side of the canyon….the NORTH rim that only about 10% of tourists ever see. It’s another 1,000 ft in altitude above the South Rim (about 8,000 ft) with poorer highway access that’s only open about five months in summer due to the winter snows on the high Colorado Plateau. The Grand Canyon is only about 18 miles wide from south rim to north rim, but that’s a FIVE HOUR (220 mile) drive around the canyon from one to the other if you want to do it in a single day.
The deer looks like it might be on the road to Devils Tower (Wyoming).
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Five hours, Danny?
Sounds like the roads down there are like the ones in Scotland!!!
Mind, if that deer picture is in Wyoming, their roads aren’t a lot better.
🙂
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Tris…..Yes, the roads to the North Rim are apparently not great. Of course it’s five hours, but also 220 miles around the end of the canyon where you can cross the Colorado River on more level ground. There’s just no bridge over the part that’s 6,000 ft deep and 18 miles wide. 😉
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Yeah, well, that’s fair enough, Danny.
I just can’t see the economic viability of a bridge that long, over something that deep… and it’s not really something I’d want to go on anyway. Imagine a break down half way across…
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A bridge would also spoil the view for the tourists…..LOL.
However, farther down the Colorado River on the Nevada border at Hoover Dam, they did build a big high bridge that crosses the Colorado high above the dam and takes the traffic off the dam itself. Trucks were a problem, since the road down to the level of the dam is steep and winding, and dangerous cargoes like explosives crossing the dam were always a concern.
The big new bridge is certainly more efficient than the old two-lane road over the dam in carrying cross-country traffic across the Colorado at the Nevada-Arizona border. However, it totally obliterates what was once a beautiful panoramic view of the dam by air…..which you could sometimes see from a plane vectoring into McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
I don’t like the bridge, but they didn’t ask me. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_O%27Callaghan%E2%80%93Pat_Tillman_Memorial_Bridge
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LOL… how remiss of them, Danny.
Tell them to do better next time.
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Your comment made me think of bridges, and I decided to post a photie of the Millau Viaduct in France – not because anything like it would be a practical solution to bridging the Grand Canyon, but because it’s beautiful, and I’ve been over it, and before that I’d driven of the somewhat nightmarish roads in the region. http://tinyurl.com/ybep5o3y
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Wow…. well done les Français. Spectacularly nice.
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Hi Ed…….the Millau Viaduct is not only high and long, it’s beautiful. There really is something about modern cable-stayed bridges, such as the Queensferry Crossing Bridge, that makes them beautiful. They seem to float in the air. Much the same can be said for traditional suspension bridges. They can also span longer distances than the tried and true (since Roman times) arch bridges, which are not so beautiful.
I looked up the statistics of the beautiful Millau Viaduct and two recently constructed (and not so beautiful) very high American arch bridges…….the O’Callaghan-Tillman Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge, and the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.
Deck Height Longest Span Total Span
Millau Viaduct 909 ft 1122 ft 2460 ft
(France)
Hoover Dam Bypass 889 ft 1060 ft 1060 ft
(Nevada-Arizona)
New River Gorge 876 ft 1699 ft 1699 ft
(West Virginia)
The New River Gorge Bridge is an impressive sight and spans a long distance between the walls of the gorge of the New River. It also turned a HORRENDOUS 40 minute drive down the walls of the gorge on a narrow two-lane mountain road with 15-25 mph hairpin switchbacks, into a minute or two of straight line travel at highway speed wall-to-wall across the gorge. It’s a tad ugly I think…….mostly because they apparently decided to paint it the color of RUST.
The view of the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge is not so bad if you drive the two lane road down to the top of the dam, and look BACK at it….where it doesn’t spoil the view of the dam.
BTW……..the Millau Viaduct also has another height honor. Its tallest mast is 1,125.3 ft (343.0 meters.) Taller than the Eiffel Tower.
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PS: WordPress reformatted a very nice table I constructed showing 1) Deck Height, 2)Longest Span, and 3) Total span of the bridges.
Now those statistics are just the three numbers in order following the names of the bridges.
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LOL Bless it, WordPress could mess more of less anything up
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Amazing view of Millau Viaduct:
From an American perspective the French can be somewhat “unusual.” They have speech laws for example…….not for “freedom of”, as much as for”no one will be offended by”.
But now I find that you can’t legally take a picture of anything in France…….unless it’s really old and no longer protected by copyright. There is no “Freedom of Panorama” in France, and the lighting scheme of the Eiffel Tower is protected by copyright. So if you try to take a picture of the lighted tower at night, the gendarmes will come and arrest you and throw you in the Bastille or some such place……along with the other miscreant photographers……AND all those prisoners who SAID something illegal.
So how is it that people are allowed to take pictures of the Millau Viaduct and post them on the internet?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama
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There’s of course the possibility that all those people who have taken pictures of the Millau Viaduct have already been arrested and convicted…..and are doing hard time in French prisons as we speak. 😉
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Ils sont bizarre, les Français.
Of course absolutely no one takes any notice of this, and as the video says, no one has ever been convicted.
Munguin just doesn’t give a damn, does he?
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Tris……I’m immensely gratified that Mr. Munguin and Munguin World Media are taking such a high profile stand about publishing nighttime Eiffel photography.
In the event that agents of Interpol serve a French arrest warrant and whisk him away to France, Munguin will enjoy my most fervent support as he serves his time in a French prison. 😉
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I’m fairly sure that if teh worst comes to the worst, Munguin, who is fluent in French, will have a word with his friend M le Président, and will spend any prison time in a wing of the Elysee … I just hope I get an invite too!
He says to tell you thank you for your concern.
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Tris……..Nice to have friends in high places….such as the Elysee Palace!…….LOL.
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Some have it… some don’t, Danny. It’s the way of the world.
Les connections!
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Speaking of nighttime photography. An interesting low angle view of Hoover Dam more or less from river level, with the bypass bridge silhouetted against the sky. No photograph can do justice to the scale of Hoover Dam and its location down in a narrow, approx. 1,000 ft deep canyon. The 726 ft tall concrete face of the dam is beautifully illuminated at night. Even the scale of the powerhouse at the base of the damn can’t be appreciated unless you are down at river level and looking up at the huge building. (Part of the public tour.)
The location in Black Canyon where the dam was built, as it appeared in 1871.
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Awesome< Danny. Both the bridge and the dam.
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A less well known fact about the Elysée Palace is that includes a working farm; they grow a great deal of cash there, in the Champs Elýsées…
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It is indeed very high! As for painting bridges rust-coloured, we do that with the Forth Bridge – it started out as red lead paint, but that’s no longer allowed because of international efforts to get heavy metals out of the environment. Could it be that environmental law does not stop it being used for bridges in the US? Surely not.
For the Forth Bridge, they spent a great deal of time stripping the lead paint off along with any spots of corrosion, and removing all the bird and other shit and other such delightful substances avian, mammalian and technological origin, and then painted it back up again with some extremely expensive sooperdooper polymer-based stuff with Superior Properties that was made to have exactly the same colour.
Whether they dumped all the old paint and other crap in the river, or disposed of it properly, is unknown to me, but one would rather hope so.
They could probably have saved some cash by painting the bridge magnolia instead – or ivory cream, which I believe is the magnolia of 21st century – but that would have been a bit naff, I suppose, to have people look at such an iconic structure and say “When our [insert female name here] moved in, all her walls were like that”.
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Ed……Amazing story……….especially since it so closely matches the story of how America’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge ended up being painted red…..or actually “orange vermilion” called “international orange”…….instead of gray, silver, or black, which was what was originally envisaged. Turns out that the consulting architect noticed the bright color of the reddish-orange primer base coat being applied, and liked it. The rest is history:
https://www.npr.org/2011/04/26/135150942/the-golden-gate-bridges-accidental-color
I see that the National Museums Scotland website says the Forth Bridge paint color is called “Forth Bridge Red”, and is mixed to match the original red oxide color used in 1890…….as you described.
https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/science-and-technology/forth-bridge-paint-mixer/
I might mention an “accident” that occurred on another iconic American bridge……the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River in New York City.
From Wiki…….
The original design for the George Washington Bridge’s suspension towers called for them to be encased in concrete and granite………However, the facades were postponed as a cost-cutting measure after the start of the Great Depression in 1929, midway through the bridge’s construction. The entire weight of the bridge was supported by the steel structure, and the purely decorative masonry could be added at a later date. Even though the steel towers had been left that way for cost reasons, aesthetic critiques of the bare steel towers were favorable…….The masonry facades were ultimately never built; and the exposed steel towers, with their distinctive criss-crossed bracing, have become one of the George Washington Bridge’s most identifiable characteristics.
It was decided that the bare steel towers look modern and utilitarian.
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Actually, it is impressive, but keeping it rust free must be a nightmare…?
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Tris……Yes, but true of all steel bridges I guess. When I said “bare steel,” I didn’t mean that it wasn’t coated. In this case, with a final coating of gray paint. In fact, since they didn’t clad the towers in a masonry facade as originally planned, it probably makes it easier to inspect for corrosion, and makes it easier to repair and repaint.
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True, Danny.
It’s very impressive anyway. Nicer than concrete.
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I never knew that was the reason why it looks the way it does. They (whoever they are) claim that the GW is the busiest bridge in the world, but one does wonder how they know.
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Ed…….Wiki says: . “As of 2016, the George Washington Bridge carried over 103 million vehicles per year, making it the world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge.” It has 14 lanes of traffic on two levels. It carries three numbered highways of the federal US highway system, and also I-95, one of the major cross-country routes of the Interstate Highway system.
The GW has toll collection data of course, but there’s lots of ways to count traffic it seems. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_count
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Danny, I didn’t express myself as well as I usually do! I do know that the GW has tolls; I was thinking of other bridges around the world that might not necessarily have tolls. I thought the Dartford Crossing in London might have more, but the suspension bridge (southbound) and the two tunnels (northbound) have fewer than 60 million crossings a year between them. If I had doubts, it is because there is a well-known tendency in America (and Russia, actually) to claim that X, Y or Z is the biggest / highest / best in the world, whether it is or not, because there is an automatic assumption that if it’s the biggest / highest / best in America (or Russia), then obviously it must be the biggest / highest / best in the world.
Not so easy to get away with in today’s interconnected world, probably.
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Ed…..very good point! However, an American view might be that if those other bridges want to be in the race, let them lodge their claim with supporting documentation and America will submit the matter to American arbitration. 😉
There is after all the AMERICAN way of doing things. You’re no doubt aware that the WORLD Championship of baseball is the WORLD SERIES, which is exclusively a contest between two LEAGUES of AMERICAN baseball. Well, strictly speaking, there is one Canadian team in the race (the Toronto Blue Jays of the AMERICAN League), now that the Montreal Expos have moved to the AMERICAN capital of Washington, D.C. Now I ask you what could be more of a WORLD Championship than THAT?
You are somewhat hampered in your analysis by what is clearly a respect for objective reality. Mere reality is in fact no longer relevant as an arbiter of truth in the politically polarized American republic. Truth is whatever you want it to be, and facts that do not conform to your opinion are damnable lies by the other political party which hates America and all the people in it.
You will have heard that all this led to the election to the presidency (by the American democratic process where the LOSER of the popular vote wins the election) of a real estate huckster and all-purpose con-man and demagogue. For our Mr. Trump, reality is whatever he says it is, and the reality-spouting nay-sayers of the media are “enemies of the people.” Trumpian disdain for reality is combined with a love of superlatives…….worst in history/best in history/biggest in the world, etc……..and so we have an America in which opinions about traffic volume on the GW for example take on elements of treasonous sedition on one hand verses patriotic love-of-country on the other. Nay-sayers will be prosecuted…….or at the very least litigated. 😉
BTW, back in the world of reality outside the District of Columbia there’s those damnable Chinese among others who seem to be working overtime to take the biggest and best records from the USA where they properly belong. People arriving back in the US after having seen of the new airports of the far East for example, often comment on the increasingly “third world” look of old American airports and crumbling infrastructure generally. The tallest building records for example have always been a big deal, and none of them are in the USA anymore as far as I know. Gone are the halcyon days when it was a contest of which new building in New York City AND the world would be the tallest……..the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/oct/06/architecture2
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LOL. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of Magnolia, I always say!
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Things are a bit rubbish at Panda Palace so I really needed Soppy Sunday today and it didn’t disappoint. Someone should tell that bloke in the water though that jaguars are excellent swimmers and unlike many kitties like the water. The ladybird picture is brilliant – glad they are on our side 🙂 Greenland picture is stunning. Marvelous stuff.
Anyway 18th August is apparently World Orangutan Day. So there is a link to Peanut who doesn’t seem to realise he’s supposed to like climbing. Poor thing.
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So what happens to baby Peanut? Does he recover from the flu and learn to climb?
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good news on baby Peanut – though no longer a baby. He’s off to the wild.
https://www.orangutan-appeal.org.uk/about-us/news/article/a-big-step-for-peanut
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FANTASTIC :):):):)
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Poor wee Peanut.
I hope he got over his flu.
And I hope things are better in Panda Palace soon.
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That cat seems to have found a fitting use for British newspapers that doesn’t involve getting ink on your bottom.
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LOL.
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oh come on people we can’t let Saturday’s pictures of old cars get more comments than Soppy Sunday again. Where are folk?
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Probably reading up on the BBC’s latest “unbiased” approach to pro-indy sites/people?
For once its cool here, 19C and light rain. Thank gods for that 😀
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Reading the WGD’s article on it, have posted to a couple of places. So much for democracy, eh? “You’ll have had your free press” – except They’re doubling down on all Their tried-and-tested malpractices and malfeasances.
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…WGD’s article. We have a serious expectation that indyref 2 will happen (as a movable feast) anytime between six weeks from now up until 28 March next year. There is also a strong possibility of a snap general election, or a Brexit 2.0 referendum, or both. So it begins – not that it ever stopped.
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Well, they will have to do something.
It would help if the Tories and their dinosaur denying partners could actually come to some agreement about what they want.
And it would be even better if it fitted with the rules of the EU, you know indivisibility of the 4 competences and stuff.
They really seem o believe their own crap about cakes and eating them.
Terry has a good article across at his place… and on Commonspace. Worth a read and comment.
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Martin Keatings at Forward as One seems to have had the same problem:
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And Moridura (Peter Curren) too.
At the same time I notice that the guy who was leading the small band of Unionist supporters in Inverness, and who is apparently a Holocaust denier and hard right wing Britnat, has had his videos left alone.
Odd that.
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It worked before.
Why wouldn’t it work again?
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Dreadful what is happening. I can see being a supporter of independence being declared illegal at this rate. The Empire strikes back right enough!
That said, its been a few weekends in a row that Saturday has tons of comments with much fewer on Sunday. Observing the Sabbath?
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PP – not the Sabbath, necessarily: probably just admiring God’s handiwork with sunscreen on, possibly with a view of the sea.
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LOL Our readers are very devout. I’m sure they are all, erm… Nah, I lie.
I expect to be labeled an “enemy of the people” soon…
Well, I’m not. But I’m happy to be an enemy of their ghastly incompetent government and their odious SOS for the UK in Scotland.
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I had to put on trousers (as opposed to shorts) for the first time in weeks.
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Didn’t I say that life had been reaffirmed? Well, it wouldn’t hurt to say it again, so – the orangutans have reaffirmed life for me. I love them.
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oh me too. Adorable aren’t they. Beyond horrible that they face extinction due to human cousins’ behaviour. We can be a bad species!
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Can be?
Are.
That said, we can be quite nice too…
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Well, that’s what we try to do….
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Ha ha…
History, it seems, is more popular that Nature…
Odd, though!
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tris
And this is how Trump supporters see the earth
After the end of times.
https://goo.gl/images/w5PR3S
Given they actually believe
This as a fact is there any
Point in the Democrats trying
To gain votes from such disturbed people .
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Nice to see you again Niko. It’s been a while. Hope you’re ok?
Everything about Trump and his supporters is disturbing. The Israel situation is particularly disturbing, given the potential consequences.
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Those fundamentalist Christians in the USA 🇺🇸
Are just as dangerous as
Any Muslim terrorists
Thought the Hand maids
Tale was a work of fiction
Not a documentary .
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Anyone who is fanatical about religion is dangerous.
If they believe that god is telling them to do stuff…
George W Bush… Tony Blair…
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Having just got back from
ayia Napa would like to
Ask your opinion.
Watched a group of young
Scots marching through
Ayia Napa each night
All Carrying the saltire 🏴
About ten of them
One ☝️ (good girl ) did
Carry the royal standard
But is this March of the nats
On holiday ????
Reminiscent of the 1930s
In another place.
Or just exuberant patriotic
Youth either way if this was
The orange 🍊 order what
Would the nats say
????
Must admit seemed a trifle
Unusual to me mayhap
Somone in the know will
Read this on your blog
And give an explanation.
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As opposed to the drunken thugs ALL over the med in summer wearing union jackery & actively trying to provoke the locals?
Get a life FFS.
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He conveniently forgets the marches that take place which are reminiscent of the 1690’s.
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On holiday in another country don’t think so
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Umm that was a reply
But not as I know it .
Now if you can give an
Example of Union Flag waving youths marching around on holiday
Please do .
Flag waving nats good
Flag waving yoons bad
Sad 😢
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Flag waving Yoons tend to get violent, that’s bad.
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No. All flag waving on holidys is wrong.
People don;t go on holiday to have the UK or Scotland rammed down their necks.
They go for culture, sun, cheap booze, sights, food… whatever.
They don’t want politics.
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Did Brits on holiday in Benidorm riot when England won a match in Russia recently. Flag waving and screaming ENGERLAND?
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“Umm that was a reply
But not as I know it .”
Now, which bit of :
“On holiday in another country don’t think so”
You think that doesn’t apply to?
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Oh yeah, they are at it too.
Flags are not for that. So it doesn’t matter to me which flag they wave. Holiday in someone else’s country isn’t the place for it.
Save it for marches at home, by all means, but don’t disturb other people’s holidays in Spain or Greece. Just my opnion
The USA and the UK seem to make their flags into all sorts.
Always makes me laugh at the gym when you see someone with Union Jack boxers. Dude, that’s not respectful.
I’ve never seen French people do that sort of thing… except at an international football match.
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This was meant to be a reply to PP. WordPress, eh?
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No. I don’t think it’s appropriate to be marching with flags in someone else’s country.
NO matter whether they are Scottish, English or royal flags. That’s not what they are for.
Anyone else know anything about this?
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Don’t get me wrong they
Weren’t aggressive in any way .
But just seemed unusual
Didn’t get an opportunity to
Talk to them .
They went down towards the harbour no Scots bars down there The Queen Vic bar perhaps
But doubt they went there 🤓
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LOL
By and large, you have to admit, Scottish independence supporters aren’t violent.
But I still say that it isn’t anything to do with the Greeks. Folk kicking back on their holidays don;t want to see that.
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It occurs to me that St Andrew is the patron saint not just of Scotland, but of Greece as well.
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Hedged his bets with duel nationality, did Andrew.
He’ll be able to keep his red passport that is so useful, while the rest of us get these crappy “iconic” ones which will confine us to a long “foreigner” queue.
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The saltires the flag of Tenerife as well although it’s a darker blue.
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So, Niko, if you see a crowd of people in Tenerife marching with saltires… That’s OK. They are allowed to.
Well, unless the Spanish king takes it into his head that this is sedition!
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My guess is someone at BBC Scotland with an agenda; Scotland is off London’s radar, the third largest party in Westminster very rarely gets a mention on “the news where we [not you] are”.
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You don’t think the orders came from Britain, Conan?
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More likely the Scottish Office.
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I think you mean The UK Government for Scotland!
“On 21 October 2015, the Scotland Office re-branded their Facebook profile to ‘UK Government for Scotland. The Scotland Office Twitter handle changed to @UKGovScotland at the same time.”
No there is nothing sinister about that, not at all…
Just like there is nothing sinister about all the new staff it has recently recruited and its vastly increased spending…….
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No PP, nothing sinister at all.
Much.
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Isn’t that now called UK government (in Scotland)?
You think it’s Muddle or his newly transfused Blue Blood failed MP?
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Is it true that ladybirds bite humans when they are thirsty? A few years ago I read that there was an outbreak of ladybird bites in the long, hot summer of 76. As the UK is having another long, hot summer I wondered if they were biting again. Of course, the ladybird bite story might just be a shaggy insect thing.
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Nope, actually it seems to be true.
so maybe its a good idea to have a very shallow dish of water out for them…
https://www.pushdoctor.co.uk/what-we-treat/insect-bites-stings/ladybird-bites
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Distract them with a decoy. Like it. But what if they are cunning?
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Well, if they are cunning, I’ve had it.
Me against all of them? What chance have I got?
I’ll simply be bitten to death…
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The pyramids are on planet 675 , I’m a Stargate fan what can I say .
On the BBC /Youtube take down , the beeb has had complaints of a rather large nature , wonder why .
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You win about the pyramids. First prize is a week in the Clyde Tunnel with Jackie Baillie. 🙂
Good. I wonder if they will do anything, or just ignore a pile of whinging jocks.
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It had to be her , I was looking forward to a coffee , cream cake and marmalade sandwich with Paddington , oh well Jackie in the tunnel it is , you do know my wife isn’t going to be happy .
Update on Wings youtube take down , it was Stu’s own interview with the BBC that was copyright struck , there may be more but as of 1 hour ago , that was it .
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So, they took the whole thing down becasue of one interview that HE was on. How can they do that?
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I don’t know how these things work but….. scraping the whole of Youtube for copyright is impractical due to the computational cost. Given that, sampling with a subset of chosen clips sounds more practical. If you’re going to sample then you’ll also need to modify the sample set from time to time. If you don’t do that you’ll eventually find all content matching the sample set and you’ll just be wasting computer cycles. If I was choosing a sample set of content I’d look for specific signatures of music, specific logos on the screen, maybe even specific faces. Something with a clear match that is the same every time so that the features of one sample can pull in multiple instances of copyright. These will be changed from time to time. A less conspiratorial explanation is that the BBC simply changed their sample set and the computers started to churn away one more time until they picked up a couple of matches.
Anything that is algorithmic is harder to game for a specific outcome than a process that involves human intervention. For that reason I’m sceptical of a conspiracy. I’m also sceptical because we only have a couple of simultaneous data points – not statistically meaningful.
It’s interesting why the BBC do this at all? It is far too expensive to do this just to annoy WoS so it must be part of a bigger effort of copyright enforcement. But why? I understand why they would protect comedy shows because they have resell and repeat value. But the news? The news is never repeated. I think I have a potential answer.
If your job is finding copyright infringements then you’ll be judged as better at it if you find more of them. News is something that repeats logos and signature tunes. If you search for the signatures of one news show then you might pull in that signature across multiple days of news – et voila great monthly stats, high fives all round and a promotion.
Whenever I see talk of conspiracy I tend to look for more rational explanations of human nature and cock-up.
To find out more, though, would require a FoI about BBC technical strategy on copyright inforcement. What process do they employ? Who chooses what content will be prioritised? etc etc. They could reasonably argue commercial security here because they almost certainly do sell access to their historic news library to international media agencies. If they do sell access to their news library then the buyers of that library will require the BBC to make their fees worthwhile ie stop all sundry sharing it for free.
We’ve ended up with a question of why the BBC try to monetize their news service. That doesn’t sound right to me.
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LOL Simply the great bugbear of all our lives today…
Targets.
Someone in the copy writing dept management has upped the targets, and to achieve the bonus they have to strike down more stuff.
No matter how useless is.
Sounds just like the UK.
Danke, Terry.
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More
New email from YouTube – it now appears the BBC only objected to ONE of these 60 most recent videos. (Still hundreds more to check.)
Wings Over Scotland
Verified account
@WingsScotland
3h3 hours ago
Oh my God I’ve just worked out which one it was. It was this one: https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-debut/ Which is to say, THE ONE WHERE THE BBC INTERVIEWED *ME*.
Wings Over Scotland
Verified account
@WingsScotland
3h3 hours ago
The BBC have made YouTube kill my entire channel because I posted a BBC interview with myself.
I wonder what it was about THAT interview that triggered their target button.
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I think it is just chance, to be honest.
The comparison algorithm is necessarily statistical because the signal on youtube is not the same as the original broadcast signal – it’s been compressed and decompressed multiple times and each time that happens noise is added to the pixels. A lot of posters on youtube go even further. They try to make it harder for the matching algorithm by:
a) reflecting the image
b) blurring the image
c) stretching or shrinking the image along a vector
d)adding a colour gradient to the image
e)changing the pixel density
f)shrinking the image and moving it off centre
g)expanding the image so that the outer edge is lost
h)resampling
i)etc etc etc
This leads to a game of cat and mouse between content posters and content owners. I’d expect the BBC to constantly change their matching algorithm and the content samples they use to hunt for matches. That means that historic posts sometimes get picked up years after they were posted.
There’s a further complexity because almost any algorithm can be improved with increased computational cost. It can also be improved with more human intervention. Both are real costs but it remains the case that computers are cheaper than humans. A film company like Disney is protecting a relatively small amount of high value content. It is cost effective to use the highest quality settings in the matching software and attack the problem with a computational juggernaut. That’s why Back To The Future is not for free on youtube. The BBC, on the other hand, is protecting a huge volume of low value content. They can never hope to win because it is not cost-effective. A quick search of youtube suggests they are losing but they can’t just give up.
If the BBC can’t expect to protect all of their content, they are still able to protect some of it. They’ll hope that the mere threat of take-down notices will deter others. That means that posters of contested material will wonder why their content was taken down, while other similar posts remain available. The answer, though, is more likely to be statistical rater than conspiratorial. Conspiracies require organisation, intelligence and discretion rarely found in the wild and definitely not at the BBC.
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LOL. Thank you for the scientific explanation (only some of which I understood).
I certainly get the last bit though. LOL. True!
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It is actually a fascinating area of computer science. It involves graph theory and finite-state transducers. Hang on, that’s not right. It’s actually incredibly boring. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
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🙂 🙂
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Your explanation makes perfect sense, Terry, but I don’t believe it’s the whole story.
It is not too fanciful or conspiratorial to say that rather than some junior jobsworth in the BBC Department of Copyright Infringement running a new algorithm and it all happening by chance and algorithm from there, if a Certain Person from a Certain Ministry had a word with a Certain Person at the BBC, and made some kind of threat or offered some kind of inducement for Certain BBC Person to go back to BeeB Central and instruct said junior jobsworth to test his new copyright infringement software on the particular YouTube channels on the list provided to him by the Certain Person at the Certain Ministry… the desired effect would be produced, and Plausible Deniability would be maintained.
Similarly, would it be GCHQ that is responsible for monitoring internet output from a “national security” standpoint? We Scottish independentistas are well-known subversives, of course. I remember too, back in the days of Greenham Common, how intrusive the security services could be in tapping people’s phones, infiltrating CND and other such groups with undercover polis and so on. GCHQ could be another source of information for the Certain Person from a Certain Ministry to tip the wink to the Certain Person from the BBC…
The BBC is immune to FOI requests, or so it seems; it’s not so long since new staff were vetted by MI5 as a matter of course (do they still do that?) – so, like the Home Office, there’s a lot going on in there that will most probably never see the light of day, even though it bloody well otter.
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I’ve just talked to Peter in the local.
He’s annoyed of course, but somewhat resigned.
I asked him specifically if I could quote him; thankfully he was drinking tonic water…
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Yes, he gave that impression.
He said he wasn’t going to fight it.
Pass on my best wishes. I’m so sorry. That was 9 years of hard work disappeared overnight.
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