Category: Geography

Where There’s a Wool, There’s a Way*

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It appears that the people fo the Faroe Islands want to have Google cameras taking pictures of them when they are unaware so that the island is covered by Google Street View™.

I find this odd, but who am I to judge them?

What is odd is that they have a shortage of motor vehicles, so they mounted the Street View™ equipment on sheep:

Living across 18 tiny sub-polar islands in the north Atlantic, Faroe islanders are used to working in difficult conditions. So tired of waiting for Google Street View to come and map the roads, causeways and bridges of the archipelago, a team has set up its own mapping project – Sheep View 360.

With the help of a local shepherd and a specially built harness built by a fellow islander, Durita Dahl Andreassen of Visit Faroe Islands has fitted five of the island’s sheep with a 360-degree camera.

As the sheep walk and graze around the island, the pictures are sent back to Andreassen with GPS co-ordinates, which she then uploads to Google Street View.

“Here in the Faroe Islands we have to do things our way,” says Andreassen. “Knowing that we are so small and Google is so big, we felt this was the thing to do.”

My mind is officially blown.

Clearly

*H/t Emptywheel for the joke, which she described as a, “Baaad joke.”  Ouch.

The Stupid, It Burns Us!!!!

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Too True

Tehran Tom took his case directly to the Iranian government
— Jared Polis (@jaredpolis) March 10, 2015

Thank you Congressman Polis. You have described Tom Cotton perfectly.


Geography 101: Tehran is the capital of Iran

The Iranian response

In an interview with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation,. “Tehran” Tom Cotton said that the Iranian regime cannot be trusted because, they already control Tehran: (Vid at link)

SCHIEFFER: What do you want to happen here? What is your alternative here? Let’s say that the deal falls through. Then what?

 COTTON: Well, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said, the alternative to a bad deal is a better deal.

 The Iranians frequently bluff to walk away from the table. If they bluff this week, call their bluff. But Congress stands ready to impose much more severe sanctions. Moreover, we have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance. They already control Tehran. Increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad, and now Sanaa as well.
They do all that without a nuclear weapon. Imagine what they would do with a nuclear weapon.

Seriously?!?!?!?

The distinguished gentleman from Arkansas is suggested that theIranians have seized control of Tehran?

Next, he will say that the British have seized control of London, or that Mexico controls Mexico City, or that Arkansas has cornered the market on blithering idiots.

OK, that last one is true: In electing Tom Cotton to the Senate, the voters of Arkansas have clearly cornered the market on blithering idiots, as evidenced by their election of “Tehran” Tom Cotton to the Senate.

Must Read

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It’s a PDF, and it’s 22 pages, but John Quiggen of the University of Queensland makes the fascinating point that the great financial centers of the world, primarily New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo, exist because the concentration of the financial industry facilitates corruption and cronyism of the managing class:

Recent developments in the global system of cities present a curious paradox. With the cost of communications declining almost to zero and substantial, though less dramatic reductions in transport costs, there is now little technical requirement for most kinds of production to be undertaken in any particular location, or for elements of production chains to be located close to each other. This fact has had dramatic consequences for the organisation of manufacturing industry. Simple production chains involving the import of raw materials, usually from developing countries, for processing in a specialised centre, have been replaced by far more complex structures.

Yet, in important respects, the dominance of a small number of ‘global cities’has never been greater. In this paper, it is argued that the dominance of global cities reflects a desire for clustering on the part of finance sector professionals and corporate executives. It seems likely that such clustering provides private benefits by enhancing the value of personal contacts, but reduces the efficiency and profitability of the corporate sector

 ………

 These concerns are even more pronounced in relation to personal networks connecting financial enterprises with their clients. It is reasonable to assume that such personal networks facilitate the development of business relationships between the firms in question, leading to flows of payments on services based on relationships of personal trust and shared interests, rather than on formal and transparent contractual relationships.

Such a system is commonly referred to as ‘relationship capitalism’ or, more pejoratively as ‘crony capitalism’. In general, it is viewed favourably during booms, when the disregard of process tends to facilitate rapid generation of wealth, and less favourably during recessions when the exchange of personal favours and the evasion of formal controls tends to be reclassified (often retrospectively) as corrupt.

Basically, if you are in an environment where you can run into a potential co-conspirator at a restaurant, or at a party, where small talk can allow you to tease out a deal that will benefit you, and your friend, but not your clients without the sort of transaction trail that you would see with phone calls, and emails, etc.

Essentially, it turns out that centralized financial district are a particularly criminogenic environment in terms of control fraud.

A few casual conversations at a party with, for example, a stock analyst, and that IPO you are pumping up, or the stock price of the company in which your stock options have just vested, and Ka-Ching, there you are with a vacation home in the Hamptons, a yacht, and a Ferrari.