R.I.P. Nicholas Winton ~ Rescuer of WWII Kids++

Sad to hear Sir Nicholas Winton has passed in his sleep at 106 years. He's one of the few who acted -- both at-scale and by-all-means-necessary -- to save children, mostly Jewish, caught up in Nazi craziness in the early phases of WWII.  And he did so quietly -- and quasi-legally -- but totally morally.  Unsung, he, with the help of his own mother, and colleagues Beatrice Wellington, Doreen Warriner, Trevor Chadwick and others in Prague, managed to organize the rescue of several trainloads totaling 669 children destined for Nazi concentration camps. A last train was stopped by the next escalation in fighting -- most (if not all) those ~200+ children died.  No one knew any of this until pretty recently.  Beyond his WWII efforts, he also cared about the elderly and infirm, setting up homes to support those in need.  And most recently, his story has been shared widely.  All together, Winton was a truly extraordinary and epic hero!

CSCL Globe ~ Biggest (For Now) Containership!

Thanks to gCaptain for covering maiden UK visit of world's largest (for the next couple months) containership, the 400 meter long, 19,100 TEU-carrying MV CSCL Globe! First, Mike Schuler introduced the ship in November...

"Move over Triple-E’s, there’s a new big dog in town. Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. in Ulsan, South Korea has just named the new title-holder for the world’s largest containership."

Second, covering UK arrival with video by Shipping TV as the vessel approaches the Port of Felixstowe... And most recently, container handling and bridge-tour with Shipping TV’s Chris Gosling... Plus, here's BBC's Richard Westcott sailing near and getting onboard! Here's first visit to Hamburg plus engine-room view!

Made in Britain ~ Chad's Lovely Timelapse!

Kuriositas spots Chad Gordon Higgins' Made in Britain timelapse...

Farm for the Future ~ Sustainable Growth...

UD spots Rebecca Hosking's docu A Farm for the Future exploring...

"How to transform her family’s farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key. With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family’s wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year’s high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is. Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future."

Europe 24 ~ Day of Air Traffic Data Visualization!

Wired's Kyle VanHemert says Watch an Entire Day of Air Traffic in One Astonishing Visualization...

"The folks at NATS, responsible for handling much of the air traffic control in Great Britain and elsewhere, know the delicate dance better than just about anyone. To give us a sense of what keeps them busy day to day, they put together this stunning video. Running at 1,440 times regular speed, the viz is striking as pure laser light spectacle. But the closer you watch, the more fascinating details you’ll find. The clip combines UK radar data from June 21 of last year and flight plan data from the rest of the continent from July 28."

English ~ Birthing of our Global Common Lingo!

Beautiful historical reflection on emergence of English language!

1. Birth of a Language
2. English Goes Underground
3. The Battle for the Language of the Bible
4. This Earth, This Realm, This England
5. English in America
6. Speaking Proper
7. The Language of Empire
8. Many Tongues Called English, One World Language

I'm particularly amused by the influence of America on English... And here's one final bonus nugget -- a compare and contrast of Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation versus contemporary English!

Waldkindergarten ~ Back to Nature Campfire Kids

Der Spiegel's Rupert Neate writes about Campfire Kids: Going Back to Nature with Forest Kindergartens...

"These children are sitting on logs in a forest around a campfire. This no ordinary day care center, this a Waldkindergarten. [...] the risks are outweighed by the "massive" mental and physical benefits of playing outside. "Children who have attended a Waldkindergarten have a much deeper understanding of the world around them, and evidence shows they are often much more confident and outgoing when they reach school." [...] the US and the UK's obsession with health and safety and regulations may have slowed adoption of the idea, but [...] forest kindergartens have proved very popular in Japan, which is also known for its red tape bureaucracy."

And here's what it looks like in short docu by Hubert Ulrich...

Aberdeen ~ UK Center for Subsea Engineering...

Fascinating to read NYTimes piece by Stanley Reed on Aberdeen, With a Foot on the Seafloor about a Scottish city that's blossomed into offshore industry boom town...

"Since the early 1970s, when oil was discovered in the British North Sea, Aberdeen has evolved from a fishing town, to an oil boom town, to the world’s center of innovation and execution for the technology that makes the modern offshore energy industry possible. “Scotland has been the home of subsea engineering,” Mr. Blake, a Scot, said in a conference room in Chevron’s European headquarters on a hilltop overlooking this city and its many dark granite buildings. “The expertise generated by the North Sea continually influences undersea work across the globe.” That expertise, with a resurgence of investment in natural gas and oil fields in and near the North Sea, means that Aberdeen, with 468,000 people in the city and surrounding area, has been able to nearly escape the economic doldrums that have plagued most of Britain and Europe. Aside from central London, Aberdeen is the wealthiest place in Britain..."

See also sister-city Stavanger in Norway!

Explaining UK ~ CGPGrey Disentangles Empire...

One of CGPGrey's great explanatory videos disentangles The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England! Punchline picture... P.S. See also History of the Union Jack!
P.P.S. See also The (Secret) City of London!

Snollygosters ~ Forsyth @ TED on Political Speak

Thanks to John Mills for spotting Mark Forsyth answering What’s a snollygoster? A short lesson in political speak @ TEDxHousesofParliament...

Operation Palliser ~ Enlightened Intervention...

I'm very interested in the current boom times in Sierra Leone, with dramatic growth rates and the problems of prosperity and entanglements over ownership and sharing the wealth. How different from just over a decade ago when SL was in the throes of civil war. Until, that is, Operation Palliser, which began as an evacuation by UK troops but escalated into the protection of the capital, Freetown, and fight against the RUF rebellion. The story deserves further review because it is a successful example of Enlightened Intervention by outside powers in ending strife and restoring a people to a more peaceful pathway forward. The BBC tells of The brigadier who saved Sierra Leone, the story of the British deployment and their leader...

"The force commander, a little-known brigadier called David Richards, had other ideas. He saw a chance, took a risk, and changed the fate of the country. [...] "I could see," he told me, "that with a little robustness, we could make a difference." [...] Richards promised the president that Britain would supply arms and ammunition to the government forces. [...] Richards was committing Britain to taking sides in Sierra Leone's civil war. However, there was one important difficulty. The general's political bosses in London had sent him to carry out a quick evacuation and then leave. "So," I asked him 10 years on, "you were promising the president all this before you had the political authority from London to do so?" "Er, yes," he said, "I'm afraid I was, yes."

Wow! See more from the BBC about this remarkable story... And here's a Master's thesis by Patrick Evoe on Operation Palliser: The British Military Intervention into Sierra Leone, A Case of a Successful Use of Western Military Interdiction in a Sub-Sahara African Civil War.

Bicycle Infrastructure ~ Comparing NL & UK...

Mark Wagenbuur at BicycleDutch compares UK bicycling infrastructure to that in the Netherlands. Very eye-opening. He's too polite to say it directly, but the bottom-line is that the British urban planners and traffic engineers are grotesquely incompetent -- roughly as horrible as their American equivalents. Witness Mark's videos...

Making Tracks ~ Railway Maintenance & Repair...

Companies like the Belgian Infrabel maintain & repair railroad trackage using ginormous pieces of equipment! Here's Discovery show on UK's London-Glasgow upgrade by Network Rail, Railtrack, etc (be sure to click thru all 6 segments)... Or here new track laying in KSA... Here UP builds in Nebraska, USA...

Heroic Guardian ~ Interview with EIC Rusbridger

Al Jazeera's Listening Post interviews Guardian newspaper editor Alan Rusbridger about their epic investigative journalism...

"The Guardian is not Britain's largest newspaper -- there are 10 in the UK with a bigger circulation -- nor is the paper turning a profit. The company that runs it reportedly lost $50m last year. But the Guardian has been at the centre of two of the biggest news stories of the past 18 months [News Corp phone hacking and WikiLeaks]."