Music Monday

Inspired by much Twittering, and because on Monday mornings I need a musical kick in the arse:

Helsinki summer

About ten kilometres from downtown Helsinki. If you want to hire a canoe or kayak try here. It's worth pre-booking if the weather is as nice as it has been today.

Good Helsinki cycle paths #2

I cycled to and from work on four days this last week - lovely weather balancing out tired legs. That's about 200 kms and 8 hours in the saddle. Anyway, the more I ride, the more sadly obsessed I become with cycle path design (or lack there of). The weather being so good I've ridden the longer route through the central park quite a few times this week. This is very relaxing as you are on gravel tracks, miles from any cars, with the only worry being coming round a corner and meeting a dog walker with one of those idiot extendible leads. Why do people with those extendible leads somehow think that walking on one side of a cycle path whilst Fido walks on the other side - stretching two metres of tight nylon out between them - could ever be a smart thing to do? Run in to that doing 35 kmph and me, the dog or the dog's owner are going to get hurt - and I'm the only one wearing a helmet.

Anyway, eventually you get down town and have to leave the quiet woodland paths and get back into urban cycling mode. This is why I want to point out the best bit of cycle path I know in downtown Helsinki:

The video is riding south down Pohjoisranta, about here:


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It's a good because, first, there is a metre of space clearly defined with trees and stuff between us bikers and the cars in the street. Secondly there is a bloody great wall between us bikers and the pedestrians. Now don't get me wrong; I love pedestrians, indeed some of my best friends have been known to walk, I just don't like them wandering aimlessly onto cycle paths. It's great to see pedestrians strolling down here, looking at the boats, enjoying the sea air, having fun - knowing that is where they'll stay thanks to the aforementioned bloody great wall. Also, where cars or pedestrians can cross the cycle path, it is really clearly marked with zebra crossing markings on the road. If all of the city could be like this, cycling life would be really sweet.

Top radio

Strictly speaking - I don't actually listen to the radio much any more, so this should really be titled 'top podcasts'; but you get the point. You can probably find all of these through iTunes, but I'll try and link directly to the relevant webpages.

Firstly, the ever excellent Rear Vision from ABC Radio National Australia. A couple of shows back they did the programme on Chavez and Venezuela. They explain clearly and precisely how he came to be elected with so much popular support, and then all his weakness both personal and political. Excellent journalism - find the right experts and just let them talk.

Then two episodes of Fresh Air from NPR in the States. Firstly, their interview with Dr. Atul Gawande - which helps explain a lot about the structural difficulties of the US healthcare system - when doctors are turned into businessmen and women. And secondly their interview with Chip Berlet, a remarkable sounding researcher into the role of conspiracy theories in extremist ideologies and world views.

And finally, and really only of interest to cyclists, the Guardian has made a pretty good effort with their first ever bike podcast. Bike reviews, cycling safety issues, possible trip destinations, interviews - really a bike mag to listen to.

Midsummer midnight

I've spent two hours on my bike today. I left work at 11 pm and got home around midnight. Yesterday was the longest day of the year, but tonight was close enough to celebrate the solstice for me - by being out on the bike in almost daylight as midnight approached. Not a cloud in the sky, and bright orange lighting up the northern horizon. Kinda magic, although I just have to ignore the fact that now the winter is getting closer again and the days shorter. Riding at that time you always see hares - I'm not sure why but it is virtually guaranteed. I'm not sure why hares seems to dig cycle paths, but they do. Sometimes they let you chase them a bit, lollopping along on track before dashing off into the undergrowth at the side of the path. I took a certain route through one bit of forest as well tonight wondering if I might meet a moose. I've seen a moose near there before, and also saw one on Sunday afternoon, just west of Helsinki, as I was coming home from climbing. He was just standing by the motorway watching the world go by. But no moose tonight, just rabbits and hares. It's kinda cool though that my cycle commute even includes the possibility of meeting a moose.

Here's a short and jumpy (annoying road surfacing!) clip from downtown Helsinki at about 11.10 pm as I was beginning my ride home - just to give those at lower latitudes an idea of Helsinki summer 'nights'.

Billy few mates goes to Brussels

The Times reports on the newly elected BNP MEPs visiting Brussels to get things started. They haven't found enough support yet to form a grouping within the European Parliament; the Italian Northern League MEPs seem to be wisely steering well clear of them, along with Wilders and co from Holland and the Danish Peoples Party. But according to Nick Griffin, they have agreed to cooperate with the Hungarian Jobbik (and who wouldn't want to cooperate with a party so cool that it has its own militia with armbands, boots and everything?), the Bulgarian Attack Party and Belgium's Vlaams Belang. Are we seeing a pattern forming here?

Grigris, chunky quickdraws, and aching shoulders

Some pictures of Lammi, a sports climbing cliff on the road between Lahti and Tampere from Saturday. An impressive cliff but not that great for untalented low- to mid-grade punters such as myself! Just about everything overhangs slightly, and I hate overhangs. But still it is well bolted so if you are sensible you shouldn't get into too much trouble. :-)

Käpylehmä 6a - the supposed warm up route. Well too hard for me to warm up on besides by continually falling off it. Here Tony puts in a much better effort to get the redpoint.

Käpylehmä again, Simon's turn.

Tony on Otepää, a rather classy 6b that goes up the middle of the cliff.

Oddly I actually found the moves on this easier than on the 6a, but it only overhangs a tiny bit so suits me more. Tony came pretty close to onsighting it and got it on his first redpoint attempt.

Otepää again.

The upper reaches of Otepää.

We also went and did our duty of patronising the Cafe la Rosa in Lammi town centre. Even if I was pretty hopeless at the climbing, I fully support the idea of a cliff where in the interest of maintaining a good access situation you have to eat homemade donuts and drink coffee in a café.

Counting al Qaeda

Something that I meant to blog last week and totally forgot about: one of my weekly podcast is the 'Political Scene' from the New Yorker. It's just a few journalists chatting, but they are pros and know their stuff. Last week, in the wake of Obama's Cairo speech, they were discussing US policy and the 'Muslim world'. One of the speakers was New Yorker correspondent Lawrence Wright who I still think has written one of the better books on al Qaeda: The Looming Tower. Wright spent years interviewing spooks, Islamist activists, retired Jihadis, family members of still active Jihadis, local journalists and the like around the world. He clearly has good contacts, and notes in this podcast that he was recently told by Egyptian intelligence that they believe the core of al Qaeda, now mainly based in Pakistan number now below 200 people. Even the CIA number them only between 300 and 500. These numbers don't presumably include any of the affiliates who have adopted the al-Qaeda monniker in more recent years, such as the GSPC in Algeria, but does suggest that for all the weaknesses in US policy towards the Taliban in Afghanistan, the coalition (and Pakistanis) are having some success at keeping al Qaeda's central organisers suppressed.

Wright does make the very interesting point though, that the "Af-Pak" insurgency is become "proletarianized" and the Taliban is taking on a class distinction that wasn't clear before. Landless peasants are joining the Taliban and fighting against the landed class. If the conflict becomes progressively influenced by socio-economic factors, this is a major policy failure as it provides the insurgency with a moral legitimacy that it didn't previously possess.

You can listen directly to the podcast here. Wright's interesting comments begin at about 7.40.