Category: learning curve

Second Language London

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I know – another London post. But this is interesting and kind of fun: a tube map with the second most common languages (after English, innit) spoken at each stop.

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You’ll need to click it to make it bigger.

A few things struck me immediately: the huge number of Bengali speakers in East London (the size of the dots relates to the percentage of speakers of that language). Perhaps unsurprisingly,Bengali is the second most spkoen language in London overall.
Also, the way that the groups stick together: that brown diagnonal of Lithuanians in the South East, equally, the dark orange of Punjabi in the South West and the light pink of Gujarati in the North West.

Afrikaans makes an impact too – in dark green, right at the top of the Northern line: Colindale, Burnt Oak and Edgware.

UPDATE: A beagle-eyed reader on Facebook notes that I may have got my Romanian and Afrikaans mixed up. This is always hapeening to me and has led to many unfortunate incidents here in SA (although, they are nothing, NOTHING! compared to my struggles on that recent trip to Bucharest).
A more detailed look at the map reveals that she’s almost certainly correct.

Two points arise from this:

1. The linguistic diversity of London is such that the researchers ran out of different colours to use, and
2. Well, where’s the Afrikaans then?

It took me a while, but I got there in the end – the penultimate stop eastbound on the central line: Theydon Bois. No, I’d never heard of it before, either, but I’m not sure how I’d missed it, given that it’s THE major large residential village of choice at the junction of the M11 and M25. Claim to fame-tastic.

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When I knew Saffas in London, it was all Acton and Putney – now replaced by Arabic and French. There are a lot of French speakers in London, which, as the cartographers point out, might include French speakers from North and Central Africa as well, although:

Since London is now the sixth biggest French city and has a resident member of the National Assembly to represent expatriates, it is a fair bet that many are from France

Linguistic diversity is rampant too:

Around Turnpike Lane 16 languages are spoken by more than one per cent of the population, topped by Polish at 6.7 per cent.

More details here.

There are three German warships off the coast of Struisbaai

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I’m not saying that it’s necessarily anything to worry about.
(UPDATE: Or is there?)
I’m just saying that they’re there.

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The Hessen, The Berlin and The Karlsruhe are probably just hanging around out there about 20 nautical miles offshore and enjoying the late summer calamari season. My sources tell me that squid is a very popular dish in Germany. Right?

The Berlin is essentially a supply ship, a support vessel for other German Navy ships.

Built in 1984, the Karlsruhe is a Bremen-class frigate. It’s got guns.

The Hessen is a more modern (2006) Sachsen-class frigate.

HESSEN
It’s got LOTS of guns:

These ships are optimized for the anti-air warfare role. The primary anti-air weapons are the 32-cell Mk 41 Mod 10 vertical launching system, equipped with twenty-four SM-2 Block IIIA missiles and thirty-two Evolved Sea Sparrowmissiles. Point-defense against cruise missiles is provided by a pair of 21-round Rolling Airframe Missile launchers. The ships are also equipped with two four-cell RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile launchers.

For defense against submarines, the frigates carry two triple-launchers for the 324 mm (12.8 in) MU90 Impact torpedoes. The ships also carry a variety of guns, including one dual-purpose 62-caliber 76-millimeter (3.0 in) gun manufactured by OTO Melara.
They are also armed with two Rheinmetall 27 mm (1.1 in) MLG 27 remote-controlled autocannons in single mounts.

Oh yeah?
Well, I’ve got a catty that I picked up at the robots in Somerset West (although I’m not ever so accurate with it) and I also have a beagle, albeit that it’s a beagle that generally gets quite scared when confronted with anything bigger than a seagull. (c.f. the Hessen at a length of 143m and a displacement of 5,800 tonnes.)

Having compared the respective weaponry at our disposal (and despite having noted with some glee that they have no specific anti-beagle measures available to them), I think that the German warships can stay right where they are if they like, or they can can even come and take over Struisbaai if that’s what they want to do.

I, for one, welcome our new Teutonic overlords.

Confirmed positions this afternoon: here, here & here.

UPDATE: Obviously they’re here using the convenient old “bilateral exercise” story:

The aim of the bilateral exercise is to facilitate the sharing of maritime expertise and to strengthen the military cooperation between the two countries.

Sadly, given the distinct lack of any SA Navy vessels in the vicinity, I have a sinking feeling (pun intended) that the strengthening of military cooperation may have been a bit of a one way street.

Dyson

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An abandoned factory in Sheffield apparently makes for an interesting photo subject. I know this because I saw karl101’s photo album on flickr and then I looked around some more and found some more photos here and here.

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I’ve lived the  Urbex life both vicariously and fairly regularly on this blog through people like silentUK and longexposure.net, and that’s been fun, but there’s obviously additional local interest for me in this one.

The company was founded by John Dyson who began mining clay and making bricks in the early 1800s. From the very beginning the business was a success. The 1834 Sheffield trade directory lists “John Dyson – Brick Maker, Stannington” which indicates that he ran the business on his own. However, by 1838 the business was listed as “John Dyson and Son – Black clay miners and firebrick manufacturers, Griffs House, Stannington”.

Dyson’s were manufacturers of refractory material, ceramics for the steel industry – basically making the tiles which lined the inside of the furnaces and ladles used in steelmaking – they also produced fire backs and other household ceramic bricks for the likes of Agas, fires etc.

As with all industry these days, however, China does it more cheaply. But rather than going under like so many other British businesses have, Dyson reacted to this by building a plant in Tianjin in China. They still supply “technical ceramics and thermal technologies” to those people and industries who need technical ceramics and thermal technologies.
I guess 2015 China is a far cry from even the 1970s in Sheffield, though:

I worked at Dyson in 1970. When I was there we mostly made teeming refractories for steel making. They lined the blast furnaces, ladles and moulds. The pipes for “uphill” teeming were stamped out in wet clay (mined from the local Ughill quarries) in drop stamp moulds. Every so often, someone would be a bit slow taking his hands out of the way of the stamp and would lose the end of his fingers. Almost everyone in the factory was missing bits of fingers, crushed by the stamper.

Eina.

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Given the number of photo albums and sites devoted to it, I guess that the Dyson Ceramics factory in Sheffield must be the most accessible derelict factory in the world. What’s interesting to me is the respect with which it appears to be treated by the explorers and photographers. Easily mobile items (like the bottles and stamping kit above) appear in photos from both 2010 and 2014 – people are going in there to take photographs, not souvenirs.

Space Station eclipse photo isn’t real

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After the asphyxiated Capetonian dog, I’ve discovered that there’s even more fakery and hoaxism on the internet.
Hoodathunkit?

Lookie here: https://gizmodo.com/this-mind-blowing-image-of-the-eclipse-cant-possibly-be-5912184

Says Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz:

It’s a 3D rendering made in Terragen 2 by DevianArt user ~A4size-ska. It took 38 hours to render. The image of the Milky Way was added later in Photoshop. You can get the high resolution original here. It’s beautiful anyway.

Think first, share second, people…

I knew it the moment I saw it. It was just too similar to this astronomically impossible “Summer Solstice at the North Pole” image, which is obviously also not what it claims to be, but was also a digitally constructed picture, built in Terragen

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Thankfully, Jesus does share an REAL image of the moon’s shadow on the earth, taken from the International Space Station. Sadly, given the unlimited imagination and lack of astronomical restrictions of the images above, dare I suggest that it’s a little underwhelming:

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Did I really just say that about a photo from the ISS? I think I did.

It’s all good though, because space ‘tog Don Pettit has previously given us this amazing stuff.

just Panama things

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I say Panama, you say…?
Well, it’s going to be one of two things: “hats” or “canal”. OK, or possibly “Jack’s”  if you’re Capetonian and into dockside seafood.

The Canal famously goes right through Panama twixt Panama City and… er… Colon, so that’s a valid Panamanian thing (also, it’s ‘currently being extended’, but… but how?).
The hats, however, infamously actually originate from Ecuador, which is but one Colombia away from Panama, but isn’t Panama. They are definitely hats though.

There is another Panama thing. A biggie, too. The Disease. If you’ve ever had Panama Disease, then frankly I’m amazed that you’re reading this. Not just because it’s invariably fatal, but moreover because it only affects bananas.

Fusarium oxysporum – that’s your problem, right there. It’s untreatable. And it’s been an issue for a while, prompting lines like:

The banana industry was in a serious crisis, so a new banana thought to be immune to Panama disease was found and adopted, the Cavendish.

But now even the trusty, sturdy Cavendish is becoming threatened by a new variant of Panama Disease: “Tropical Race 4”.
And it’s serious. Because Banana Business is Big Business: R5.7 BILLION Business each year in North Queensland alone. NQ is panicking a bit, because the catastrophic Northern Territory banana crash of 1997 – yes, caused by that fungal bastard – is still very fresh in the memory. The NT banana industry has never really recovered either, because the Fusarium spores can hang around in the soil for 30 years or more, just waiting for their next bananary host to be planted and then killing it, and with it, the local industry.
The concern is that NQ may well go the same way.

We’re not immune here in South Africa, either.

Fusarium wilt (Panama disease) is responsible for severe Iosses of Cavendish bananas in two of the six production areas of South Africa: Kiepersol and southern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The disease first occurred in KZN in 1940, and from there spread to Kiepersol with infected plant material, where it resulted in 30% Ioss of banana fields between 1991 and 2000.

The biggest problem with bananas, aside from their irritating habit of being green when I want to buy them in Woolies, is that they reproduce asexually. Poor things. Asexual reproduction doesn’t allow for much genetic variation though, and so if Daddy banana is wilting (careful now), Baby banana is going to get it too. Bad news for bananas generally.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. But that’s kind of the point here. No-one has the answer: it’s another case of us so-called brilliant humans being outwitted by a microbe. Now, not only it it the case that we are all going to die horrible deaths soon, we’re not going to have any bananas to eat while we’re doing it.