Odd and Different Architecture #1 - Photos

Snail house - Sofia, Bulgaria

Conch house - Isla Mujeres, Mexico

Tokyo, Japan

Bangkok, Thailand

Ideal Palace, France

Indira Ghandi Planetarium, India

Sheep house - Tirau, New Zealand

45's Border Wall

I am still hysterically disgusted by the current Presidential Administration's pan to "Build a Wall" dividing the United States from Mexico.  In the last treaty boundary negotiation between the United States of America and the Estados Unidos de Mexico in 1970, it was agreed exactly where the border was.  However, two parts of the boundary line are established by the treaty as being "the deepest part of the middle channel of the Rio Grande" and "the deepest part of the middle channel of the Colorado River."  Whenever there is a torrential rain and flooding, or a hurricane, these two boundaries can move.
   Let's look at some numbers and some topographical areas.  In the boundary treaty of 1970, the national borders extend 18 miles into the Pacific Ocean and 12 miles into the Gulf of Mexico.  According to the US Border Patrol, the "border regions" extend 37 miles from the shores in both directions.  The border between Mexico and the US is about 1,989 miles, depending on the the river courses.  The boundaries run from below sea level on both ends, along the deepest part of the middle channel of two rivers, up over the Continental Divide, near Columbus, New Mexico (altitude 3,900 feet), and across the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts.
  Currently, there are 670 miles of many different types of fencing stretched out between the American states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, and the Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas.  There have been large reductions of illegal aliens crossing the border for quite a few years.  Since the regime of Twitler began, the numbers have fallen even more.
    Let's face some ugly facts.  Americans do not want to do what they consider menial labor.  Each of us grew up being told we can be whatever we choose to be. Parents today are still telling their children that.  The truth is that there are huge needs for so-called blue collar workers.  People today believe that each and every one of them deserve to work inside and office, behind their own desk, and spending, maybe half their time working, and the other half schmoozing, while receiving a salary of at least $200,000 per year.  I've had high school kids and college students tell me that those were their work expectations.  Americans do not want to do any type of job that will make them break a sweat, get them dirty, or appear to be subservient in any manner.
    Face it, America needs immigrants who will work hard for a minimum wage.  Throughout our farmlands, there is a severe shortage of people who are willing to work in the fields.  Crops are rotting in fields because there is no one who will go out and bring the crops in.  A Georgia farmer offered to pay anyone willing to help him bring in his crops $15 per hour.  He was told that the work was too hard and too hot, and people would not even agree to be hired by him.  That speaks volumes about the current American mindset.  Americans are just "too good" to actually work for a living.  Personally, I find that sad.
    It also seems that the tangerine tyrant is trying to get into a fight with our northern neighbor, Canada.  Is he going to want another wall, blocking the US and Canadian border?  That boundary, including the Great Lakes, is more than 5,525 miles (1,538 is Alaska's border alone).
   The border wall is complete and total nonsense...  America is what it is because of its diversity - we need to continue to open our arms to all people who wish to start their lives anew, in freedom.  The 45th Administration are all plunder-monkeys seeking their own glorification.  They need to be ousted.

Wildlife and Scenes

A 2-year-old male black bear visited the town of Broonfield, Colorado yesterday

Chincoteague mare and foal on a tump in Black Duck Drain, Assateague Island, Virginia (taken Memorial Day 2014)

Red warbler in Mexico

Can you see the sandpiper on Assateague Beach?

Cathedral Cove, near Hahei, New Zealand

Views Around the World

Lightning off Italy

La Pintada, Mexico

Sunset in the South Seas

Beddgelert, Wales

Moving hay in Romania

Miscellaneous Photos

Gamla Uppsala, Sweden - photo taken in the 1880s

Captain George Ashby and his horse, Cornet, of the Royal Cavalry at Motcomb Street

Assateague Lighthouse

A humpback whale playing off Ocean City, Maryland between 15th and 30th Streets

Popocatlpetl erupting on 4 July 2013 in Mexico

2013 "Super Moon" Around the World

Moon rise over the Tien Shan Mountains, near Almaty, Kazakhstan

African moon rise

Lady Liberty, New York

Mexico

Mendocino, California

Strange Natural Wonders - I

Blood Falls, Antarctica:  A shockingly macabre shade of what looks like blood cascades down the pale face of Taylor Glacier. When scientists first discovered these falls in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in 1911, they thought algae colored the dark red water that spewed from a crack in the glacier. It turns out the hue comes from high iron levels in the falls’ source, a pool buried 1,300 feet below the ice. In a sinister twist, the landscape is so arid that when seals and penguins wander inland and get lost, they never decompose; their remains are left strewn about.

 

Asbyrgi Canyon, Iceland:  Legend has it that the Asbyrgi Canyon in northern Iceland was created when the hoof of a Norse god’s horse touched the earth, slicing through 300-foot-tall cliffs and flattening an area just over two miles long and more than a half mile wide. The likelier scientific explanation is that two periods of glacial flooding carved the canyon between 3,000 and 10,000 years ago. But standing atop the cliffs, with the green carpet of the horseshoe-shaped canyon spread before you, it’s fun to imagine otherwise.

 

Cano Cristales River, Columbia:  Folks make the journey into central Colombia’s Serranéa de la Macarena national park to see why Caño Cristales has inspired nicknames like the River of Five Colors, the Liquid Rainbow, and even the Most Beautiful River in the World. It’s important to get the timing right: when the water reaches the perfect levels (usually between July and December), it becomes a kaleidoscope of pink, green, blue, and yellow as a plant called the Macarenia clavigera, which lives on the river floor, gets the sun it needs to bloom into an explosion of colors.

 

The Cave of the Crystals, Naica, Mexico:  It looks like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude come to life. A thousand feet underground in a working lead and silver mine in Chihuahua, Mexico, opaque crystals of gypsum—some as large as four feet wide and 50 feet long—sprout at all angles from the volcanically heated water below. Temperatures in the cave, which was discovered only in 2000, can reach 150 degrees with nearly 100 percent humidity, conditions that only a superhuman could survive in for long. Any more than 10 minutes in a cave without proper gear can lead to heatstroke.

 

The Giant's Causeway, Ireland:  One of Northern Ireland’s most popular tourist attractions, Giant’s Causeway earned its name from the 40,000 basalt columns that interlock to form what looks like a walkway fit for a colossus. The stones, mostly hexagonal in shape, formed 60 million years ago when underground lava flows cooled into formations as tall as 39 feet high and 18 inches in diameter. It was comparatively recently—about 15,000 years ago—that the soil around the seaside stones eroded and they became visible above ground.

 

Lake Retba, Senegal:  It looks as if someone poured a giant bottle of Pepto-Bismol into Lake Retba—that’s how deeply pink these waters are. The color is actually caused by a particular kind of algae called Dunaliella salina that produces a pigment. The salt content is extremely high, reaching 40 percent in some spots and allowing the algae to thrive (and swimmers to float effortlessly on the surface of the 10-foot-deep lake). Blinding white piles of salt line the shores, and locals work several hours a day harvesting salt from the bright pink water.

 

Views

Carricknarede Rope Bridge, Ireland

Manatees under the Crystal River Bridge, Florida

Popocatlpetl erupting in Mexico

Starry night in the Sequoia National Forest, California

Around the World

Hallstatt, Austria

 

Pacific coast of Mexico

 

Osezaki Lighthouse, Japan

 

An old water mill

My Favorite Volcanoes

Chimborazo in Ecuador

Popocatepetl in Mexico

Cotopaxi, overlooking Quito, Ecuador