[living] the wrong kind of snow

British Rail used to be a fact of British life. Smelly blue carriages with threadbare upholstery that chaffed like the paper in the toilets; fat black ticket-selling women; small cockney ticket-punching men; begrudging station buffets selling fairy liquid tea and blue Formica sandwiches. Full text here.

[environment] the petron disaster

I've just been e-mailed by one of the readers with the question, 'Who is Petron Corp?'

A fair question because this disaster is most definitely a sleeper - front page in all the oil rags but virtually zilch in the mainstream media. And this says everything about the western media.

There are two posts about them and their motto is 'We fuel success.' Unfortunately I lost the first post which was posted on this site on Friday, August 18th but you'll find it here.

Here was the gist:

So far, only one of the Solar 1’s 10 containers has ruptured in the sinking in the Panay Gulf, off Guimaris but this alone has spilt more than 50,000 gallons of oil into the sea.The slick now stretches across 13 nautical miles of water polluting 1,100 hectares of mangrove and 26 hectares in the Taclong Island Marine Reserve, as well as seaweed plantations and coral reefs containing popular dive sites. The damaged areas are not merely where townsfolk get their source of livelihood; these are protected areas which took years to develop and will again take many years to revive.

[environment] solar 1 tanks ready to rupture

The sinking of the Solar 1 last week is soon to become a major environmental disaster [see earlier article].

The tanker with 10 tanks, each of 50 000 litres, of which the first has already ruptured and the others are just biding their time.

A disaster official admitted Saturday that Philippine authorities have no capability to refloat the sunken ship off Guimaras province fearing that the country's worst-ever oil spill will affect the province for years.

Full article here.

[society] high class maids

Would you take a low-paid job and turn yourself into a second-class citizen just to make a few dollars and see the world?

Swedish au pairs and French maids are legendary for it but it's more difficult to see why two German girls from good families would come over to London, specifically to find such work.

Hannah and Elsa were two ladies at a loose end some summers ago, having negotiated work at a pizza place on Shad Thames and with the weekend to put in before they began their first shift on the Monday morning. I met them in Blackheath, trying to negotiate accommodation for the night. What else was a man to do on a Sunday afternoon other than take them through Greenwich Park and give them a boat trip to the city?

How would two proud Germans react to the drudgery of the work and how would they be treated by the management?

Full article here.

[far-east] the nuclear power game in the east

Will North Korea fight fairly? Will Japan?

North Korea’s armed forces comprise:

- Active forces: 1.14 million
- Special forces: 100,000 estimated
- Manpower fit for military service: 3,694,855

It has the world's fifth largest military and is the most militarized nation in proportion to population (estimated at 22 million. Military spending is 22.9% percent of GDP while around 70 percent of the army is deployed within 65 km of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

Overall, the effectiveness of the North Korean military is ... read more and comment here.

[classic film] manchurian candidate still relevant today

The Manchurian Candidate had the effect on me that Silence of the Lambs might have had on cannibals around the globe.

Leaving aside today's ubiquitous directors' cuts, this would have to be one of the few films where the revised version stands up almost as well as the acclaimed original. Almost.

John Frankenheimer’s dark, brooding 1962 tale of American psycho-history is, if you can believe Rotten Tomatoes’ 100% rating, a genuine classic. It certainly took the box office by storm before being suddenly withdrawn from circulation and then re-released a quarter of a century later.

It is as much oracle as movie - steeped in what Norman Mailer called ... read more and comment here.