Big in Australia

One of the charms of driving around in Australia is the Australian penchant for building big versions of everyday things and putting them by the side of the highway. While there, we photographed the Big Banana and the Big Prawn. We even stayed at the Big Trout Motor Inn (picture soon to be developed).

World Heritage: Australia

Last summer, I mentioned that I had been to 7 World Heritage Sites. Since then, I've been to the University of Virginia (which I've changed my mind and decided to count even without Monticello) and last fall I visited the Tower of London.

In Australia, we made it to three World Heritage sites. One of these, as mentioned Wednesday, was the Great Barrier Reef. But before that, on the drive up, we stopped at Bundjalung National Park. Bundjalung contsists of littoral (coastal) rainforest, which is coastal rainforest. Because it's built on sand, it's fairly rare, and fairly fragile. Bundjalung National Park is part of the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves. We also visited the Greater Blue Mountains Area (more on that later when the pictures come back).

So that's twelve World Heritage sites.

Hat Head

Sadly, my hair was not long enough to produce good hat head for this picture.

LEI

Here's a photo from the plane we flew into Lady Elliot Island on the Great Barrier Reef. You can see the island itself (composed of dead coral) surrounded by a reef. The strip going all the way across the island is the "landing strip". It's not paved or anything; just clear of trees and stuff.

It was fairly amazing landing on this dot in the Pacific, tens of miles from any other land (except other reef islands). I was really amazed to get out of the plane, look to my left and see the Pacific, then look to my right and also see the Pacific. I don't think I'll soon forget that feeling.

Blogger Woes Solved

OK, I fixed the most recent problem with my weblog, so I hope to resume posting soon. The archives may be messed up for a while, though.

Sydney Observatory and other things

We went to the Sydney Observatory Tuesday night. They had a nice little evening program. It wasn't nearly as nice as the one at Kitt Peak, but it did provide the opportunity to look at Alpha Centauri through a telescope, something you can't do up north.

By the way, if you're ever in Australia, it appears that you can't buy cold medicine from a convenience store; you have to buy it from a "chemist" (pharmacy). You can, however, buy "Panadol", a pain reliever. I thought I was doing well by looking at the generic name, "paracetamol," to figure out the US equivalent, but I've never heard of paracetamol. Turns out it's also known as acetaminophen -- Tylenol. So don't go asking for Tylenol, look for Panadol.

Last night, we took the ferry to Manly for dinner. We ended up there at around 9:30, but we found a place that was still serving food (Australia seems to roll up its sidewalks early) and had some reasonably good food and an absolutely great passionfruit tart.

There's much much more, but I'm a little bit overwhelmed at describing it all, and I have a cold (see above). Certainly more to follow from me and also from Christina.

Sydney Harbour Dining

Well, the publishing didn't work yesterday, but so far it's working today. Once again, I only have a little bit of time during the conference's lunch break. I'm chairing an afternoon session, so I probably shouldn't be late.

After the conference yesterday, we walked down to the Rocks, which is where the convicts originally landed in 1788. It's been turned into sort of a touristy restaurant and shopping district -- it reminded Christina of Georgetown.

We stopped in an Aboriginal restaurant, which had kangaroo and other sorts of interesting meat. The sign said that it had traditional dancing, but the place was empty. So we stopped in to ask when they would have traditional dancing. The woman explained that they only brought the dancers in when they had at least 25 bookings. We asked when that might happen, and she told us last Saturday they had 40 people, but none of them had booked in advance, so there was no dancing. Christina took a card, and the woman wanted to know if we were really going to call to make a booking.

She seemed bitter, and I guess if your people's land is stolen, you have a right to. But my ancestors didn't steal her ancestors' land -- they were busy stealing somebody else's. All we wanted to know was when they might have dancing. We'll probably go back later in the week, and we may even make a booking -- in case there happen to be 24 other bookings (as now seems rather unlikely).

We walked some more until we got to the water, and we eventually selected Italian Village, which offered us a nice meal, washed down with a nice Australian wine.

Down Under

I've only got a few moments here...this is the first time I've had Internet access I could publish from.

Random thoughts:

• The water really does go the wrong way 'round down here, but I've never really paid that much attention to it going the right way up there.
  
• Australia is cheap. You get about 2 Australian dollars for one American, and a lot of times the prices look reasonable even before you divide them in two.
  
• Driving on the wrong side of the road isn't as hard as I thought it would be. Driving in Syndey, on the other hand, is ridiculous. Lots of one-way streets, lots of no-right-turn signs. The GPS has been a lifesaver.
  
• The Southern Cross is really quite striking, and I can see why various countries use it on their flags. The Milky Way is amazing...I can't believe I had to come down here to get away from the light pollution.
  
• A lot of times when Christina was driving, I'd look for the wheel, the brakes, or other things I expected to be on the "correct" side of the car. Last night when I was driving by myself, I got into the car, sat down, and then had to get out and get in the driver's side.
  
• This is a really empty country. It's the size of the continental US with 1/15 the population. And parts of the US are really empty. We've been travelling in the more populated part (east coast), and it's been at times like driving through rural Colorado.
  
• Australia is a relatively wealthy country per capita, but not per mile. So the roads don't seem to be as wide as we're used to. Except near major cities, you don't see anything bigger than two-lane roads.
  
• Australians don't seem to speed very much. I guess when you can get caught behind somebody doing 30 kph under the speed limit until you get to an overtaking lane, you have to have a relaxed attitude towards travel time.
  
• More later
  

Contraction Tour, Part Two

OK, so the Twins aren't really going to be contracted any time soon. Still, the second leg of my contraction tour continued with a visit to the Metrodome, which was much livelier than last time I visited. Attendance was around 29,000, rather than 9,000 like a couple of years ago. They seemed to have spruced up the place, too.

One feature they had added was Twins Bingo. The goal is similar to regular bingo, except each square has a particular baseball play (e.g., double, strikeout, 3-6-3 double play). The first so-many fans to get bingo get something like Twins tickets. It seemed to be a good way to get people into the game, moreover it was a good way to get people to learn the scoring system. Seemed like a neat trick to convert casual fans into fans who knew something about the game (like the scoring terminology). I saw two downsides. One, you start rooting for the bingo rather than the team. ("C'mon, HBP!") Two, once the maximum number of prizes was awarded, they stopped telling you what the score was. That frustrated both people who were playing Twins Bingo for fun, as well as those who wanted to keep learning the system. (Also, the already-keen baseball aficianados among us were disappointed not to find out how plays were being scored.)



Oh, and the Twins won, 6-5.

Mammoth Family

In yesterday's entry, I talked about our visit to the La Brea tar pits and showed some pictures. In one of them, a woolly mammoth is shown sinking into the tar. I should take pains to point out that the mammoth is not, in fact, real, but rather a replica.

In a supreme display of pathos, the city of Los Angeles (or whoever runs the park) has chosen to display a mommy mammoth (if I recall correctly) sinking into the tar while her mate and children watch helplessly. Really quite sad.

At the time, I thought that the fake mammoths were fairly cheesy -- after all, this wasn't Universal Studios...this was science. But I think it actually looks pretty good in the picture.

Tar Pits

During our recent visit to LA, Christina, Janie (Christina's sister) and I went to the La Brea Tar Pits. They're located in a park right in the middle of LA, which seems a little odd. Anyway, there they are, bubbling pits of tar.

Here's a closeup of some bubbles from a picture Christina took:



It's a nice enough 15 to 30 minutes walking around the pits -- you can see where they're still excavating. Unfortunately, you can't see the excavation itself, but maybe we were there during the wrong time of year. We were warned off the museum, but we ignored that advice. I'm glad we did. It's pretty neat. You learn a lot about what North American mammals were like before man came over and wiped out most of the bigger ones (they even had horses). You get to see some the phenomenal number of skeletons they pulled out of the tar. We got to see a chunk of tar they hadn't processed, and it looked absolutely full of bones and petrified wood.



OK, so they're celebrating their 25th anniversary, and there was a note that they were updating their displays. So this is more of a 1977 museum than a 2002 one. But given that, it was a pretty cool visit.

Monsieur Smoked Meat

Here's a picture of my fellow number theorists and me in Montreal last month at the Expos game.

Pay attention, ESPN

Of the 32 teams that began play, Spain was the only one to finish the first round with a perfect 3-0 record.

--Greg Garber, "Some players keep eye on World Cup", ESPN.com

That must be news to Brazil.

Back in the early 1950s, when Eddie Martin left his segregated high school in Roswell, Ga., a half-hour north of Atlanta, I-75 was a 700-mile pipeline out of purgatory.

--Chad Millman, Fab Friend, ESPN the Magazine

Interesting, since the Interstate highway system was created in 1956.

Not So Fast, Howie...

"Get ready for reeallly long profiles of the former Jose Padilla, a la John Walker Lindh. At least there won't be any neighbors saying he seemed like such a nice young man, since he started getting arrested at 13."

--Howard Kurtz, A Quick and Dirty Story, washingtonpost.com, June 11.

"Jose was a nice kid," said Nelly Ojeda, a neighbor in Chicago.

--Michael Grunwald and Amy Goldstein, An Unusual Odyssey, The Washington Post, June 11, Page A1.

In the Getty

Christina and I went to LA last weekend with her sister. This trip was as a result of a contest Christina won last fall. I went out Saturday-Tuesday, and the two of them returned yesterday.



Sunday morning, we headed out to the Getty, Los Angeles' newest and most impressive art museum. The collection is funded with the fortune of the late J. Paul Getty, builds on his collection, and reflects his tastes. His tastes aren't exactly mine, which is just as well, since there's a lot to see there. We never would have managed to see everything even if we had wanted to.

Appropriately enough for LA, getting to see the museum revolves around parking. During the week, you have to make a reservation to park. For whatever reason, that isn't the case on the weekends. After parking, you ride the monorail to the museum. They seem rather proud of the monorail -- Christina was looking for a magnet in the gift shop, and the only ones she found featured the monorail. That seems a little odd for an art museum.



The only 20th century or American art they feature is in the photography collection. They have so many photographs, the only ones that are on display are a part of whatever exhibition they have going on. When we visited, it was "Railroad Vision". The exhibit was an interesting collection of photographs done for early railroads. The exhibition was perhaps more interesting as a history exhibit than an art exhibit, though the pictures were attractive. The railroads hired photographers, and the photographs they took encouraged people to ride the rails to scenic destinations. There was one interesting picture of Lincoln and a couple of generals or aides. Lincoln was clearly the only one who had difficulty standing still for the whole exposure, as he turned out a little blurry.



We looked at one part of the permanent collection -- the late 19th century paintings on display. They had some nice selections, such as the above Van Gogh, as well as works by Monet and Cezanne.



We also saw "A Treasury of 15th-Century Manuscript Illumination". The illuminated manuscripts were beautiful, although there was not a lot of descriptive text in the exhibit. There were a few entries keyed to the audio guide, and that was a little helpful with understanding the context.

Winnipeg

I wasn't writing this weblog in 1999 when I went to Winnipeg for a conference. But I was going through some old files and came across some notes I made on the city. I thought I'd share them here.

Winnipeg is a fairly dull city compared to, say, Toronto, but on the other hand it's exciting when compared to...Minneapolis. Their primary attraction seems to be "The Forks" which is an Inner Harbor-style tourist trap. It can probably be skipped unless you like overpriced, mediocre food.

For something better, get in your car and drive to Alycia's for some really good Ukranian food. Winnipeg is apparently a hotbed of Ukranian food, and this was an excellent place to sample some.

As far as tourist attractions go, the Canadian Mint was pretty interesting. The most interesting thing I learned is that they make coins for other countries under contract. I suppose it makes sense...and if the US ever offered to do that, the countries would probably worry that every time someone in Congress got upset, we'd cut off their coins.

The biggest complaint I have about Winnpeg is how much everybody smoked. As a Marylander, I almost fainted when I saw people smoking in the hotel lobby. Also, the non-smoking section in restaurants is about 4 tables shoved at the end.

Contraction Tour, Part One

Last week in Montreal several of us number theorists went to Olympic Stadium to watch the Expos play the Braves. The Expos won in extra innings. I don't know if I've ever been to an extra-inning game before. I went to an overtime Canadian Football League game once...

The stadium was nice enough, but they spent over $1 billion on it. (Even Canadian, that's big money.) They should have gotten more for that. The announcements were all in French, which was sort of a waste, since I think most of the people there were the few remaining Anglophones in Montreal. Actually, that and people who had come up to root for the Braves. I saw plenty of signs from people wanting to get on TBS, but of course none from people wanting on Montreal TV -- the Expos don't have a TV contract. I considered a sign that said "DC Loves the Expos" -- but then realized I might run afoul of the language laws. So I considered "DC L'Expos". But then I didn't want to get thrown out of the stadium -- well, to tell you the truth, I was just too lazy.

Anyway, it was fun. The Metro went right to the stadium -- we didn't even have to go outside. We gathered our meal at "Monsieur Smoked Meat" and headed to our seats -- around $26 Canadian, which weren't bad for lower deck seats between home and third. The game, as often happens with MLB these days, went on too long -- by the end even some of the Braves partisans were hoping the Expos would score and get the game over with. And the attendance was, of course, pitifully low -- in the 5,000 range. Here's hoping I see the Expos again soon -- in DC.

A Concise History of Australia

During my trip to Montreal, I finished reading Stuart MacIntyre's A Concise History of Australia. I had earlier read The Fatal Shore, and Christina is currently reading Syndey: The Story of a City, in preparation for our upcoming trip.

A Concise History of Australia is exactly what the title advertises, and exactly what I was looking for. It seems to be a very modern telling of the country's history. It acknowledges that the continent's human history goes back tens of thousands of years, not hundreds. But at the same time it recognizes that non-Aboriginal history is all we've got records of and concentrates on that. In general, where there's an attempt to dip into revisionist history, it mentions the new interpretations while recognizing the traditional view. One thing that I found interesting was the idea that as Australia becomes more diverse through immigration, its people are turning to Aboriginal history as a unifying factor to replace the Imperial history that is meaningful mostly just to the shrinking Anglo-Australian portion of the population. I recommend the book for anybody wanting a historical background before traveling to Australia (or for those who are just curious about the land Down Under).

It even finds time to mention the "dingo ate my baby" story.

Back to Canada?

Having just returned from Canada, would I go back? Of course! In fact, I'm scheduled to give a talk at a conference in Banff next May.

Guess I'll have to figure out something to talk about.

Christina

Christina has a new post on freelancing, identity theft and other topics.