Toy companies offer today's children a roster of robots almost from birth. Kids aged five and up can command Botley the Coding Robot to go around objects and to master an obstacle course. The MindWare company (mindware.com) provides easy-to-follow instructions that enable eight-year-olds to assemble and program robots operated by batteries, solar, hydraulic, or chemical power. Some robots from MindWare use artificial intelligence and infrared sensors. One climbs smooth surfaces using a suction system.
Rapidly advancing technology makes learning to read more important than ever. The best books to give young children are the ones adults enjoy reading to them over and over again. When my granddaughter was young, my favorite was Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. Keith Bellows does more than provide motivation to read about the world. In 100 Places That Can Change Your Child's Live, he describes tantalizing destinations, lists places to eat and stay, and even suggests the most worthwhile souvenirs to bring home.
A globe is the perfect gift companion to help children locate where they live and to plot a trip around the world. Globes also give kids a sense of distance and a sense of the correct size of continents. From home, would it take longer to get to the Arctic or to Africa? At the equator, land masses on two-dimensional maps appear accurate in size, but distortion increases away from the North and South poles. Greenland begins to look as large as Africa even though it is thirteen times smaller.
In a "Peanuts" comic strip, Lucy once broke into a conversation the other kids were having about what gifts they wanted to say she wanted real estate. While a deed to several acres of real estate may be out of the question, giving children government bonds would give them a stake in their countries' futures. If an older child requests a smartphone, couple it with an index card listing three stocks and their trading prices on a day in December. Show him or her a smartphone can be used to keep track of stock prices not only to engage in social chatter.
Food commercials tempt kids to put down their smartphones and come to the table when there is something good to eat. Why not involve children in baking and cooking their own good eats? Gift them with recipes, pans, pots, and oven mitts to make their favorite cookies or pasta dishes. In the same vein, crafty adults might gift wrap lumber, a tool, and directions for making a picture frame or yarn, knitting needles, and directions for making a scarf.
Some organizations have found ways to involve children in their causes by matching contributions with rewards. For example, a portion of the price of every gift purchased from the UNICEF Market (unicefmarket.org/catalog) goes to deliver food, vaccines, mosquito nets, and other lifesaving supplies to children around the world. Presents of UNICEF games, puzzles and art materials not only are fun, but they also are a way for children to aid kids suffering in crisis areas. In the World Wildlife Foundation's catalog (wwfcatalog.org), potential donors find a wide variety of gift ideas for kids. One of the most popular World Wildlife programs, symbolic animal adoptions, couples a donation with a child's gift of a soft plush version of an adopted animal, ranging from a familiar elephant to an exotic blue-footed booby.
Finally, a $25 gift card from kiva.org introduces children to a form of venture capitalism. Using their card, they can choose the country, man or woman, and project they want to support. Computer updates inform them every time part of their loan is repaid. Holiday gifts can show modern kids it is both blessed to receive and to give.
Showing posts with label Greenland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greenland. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Friday, August 31, 2018
Santa Opens Arctic Ocean for Business
Reindeer have new competition. Between now and next March, ice thickens in the Arctic Ocean, but, because of climate change, gradual melting after March opens a shipping channel in August. Ships with stronger hulls and expensive icebreaker escorts even can use the route for up to three months.
Up until about five years ago, the dark cold South Pole was home to penguins, and the far north only housed Eskimos and Russian prisoners in Siberia. Oleg Sentson, the Ukrainian film director on a hunger strike, is still there in a penal colony serving a 20-year sentence for protesting Russia's annexation of Crimea. But Russia's President Putin also now hikes on vacations in Siberia, and Russian ships travel from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg on a Northern Sea Route Putin calls "a matter of national pride."
Why are countries scrambling for claims to sea routes through the Arctic Ocean and not around Antarctica? Examine the North and South Poles on a globe or map. How many degrees latitude does it take from both poles before you find at least five countries? What potential problems do you see when passing between Russia and Alaska?
Arctic shipping routes, according to a paper prepared by the engineering faculty at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, are most dangerous in the East Siberian Sea. In the shallowest area of the Arctic Ocean, ice builds up earlier and faster after summer, and uncharted waters are more likely to cause ships to run aground. Even during summer, half of the East Siberian Sea can remain ice covered.
Go North, Young Men
Despite the harsh environment and high insurance rates, activity is expected to increase in the far north due to a variety of factors. Arctic routes shorten navigation time, and they are free of pirates. Oil and gas reserves in the area already have attracted exploration. (See the earlier posts: "Troubled Northwest Passage Found" and "North Pole Flag.")
Accidents, seldom now, can be expected to increase as shipping traffic increases, however. Ship captains who ply the Arctic Ocean cannot help but feel a little like captains of potential Titanics. Ice can trap ships, and they still can hit icebergs, as well as icebreaker escorts and other ships. Captains need constant weather station updates about the changing wave heights, wind speeds, and temperatures that affect icing in each section along their routes, information they also need in order to know how long crew members should stay out on deck. They want protocols about plans for emergency assistance and oil spill clean ups from members of the Arctic Council (Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark-Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States).
Tourists Who Have Been Everywhere
Possible perils failed to deter 900 passengers from paying anywhere from $20,000 to one million dollars per person to book passage on the Crystal Serenity's first cruise through the Arctic Ocean in 2016. The ship sailed from Seward to Nome, Alaska, where it docked to unload solar panels ordered by the city's population of 3800. In groups, cruise passengers took turns sailing to shore in transport boats to photograph wild musk oxen; eat $5 slices of blueberry pie; watch Eskimo dancers; and purchase locally made seal gloves and wallets. From Nome, a month long voyage passed by Greenland and ended in New York.
The trip required a crew of 600, a special navigation satellite system, and chartering cargo planes to deliver perishable food for pickups at communities along northern Canada. The Crystal Serenity made another, and its final, passenger voyage in 2017.
Faster Cargo Shipments
After the Crystal Serenity tested the Arctic route for passenger cruises, the Danish-based Maersk line, the world's largest shipping company, launched the Russian Venta Maersk's container ship north from Vladivostok, west across the Arctic Ocean, and south around Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Carrying 3600 containers of Russian frozen fish and electronics from South Korea, the ship cut off about two weeks from the usual time it takes to use the southern route from Asia and enter Europe using the Suez Canal. While time was saved, profit was lost, because container ships are used to dropping off and picking up a thousand containers at a dozen or more ports along the way. No such transshipment points exist on the Arctic route. Following the test trip, Maersk announced no immediate plans to substitute the Northern Sea Route for its usual schedule.
Russian cargo ships already do service domestic ports on an irregular basis. Now Moscow is building roads, a railroad, and facilities to establish regular ports of call along its Northern Sea Route. China also has made overtures to Iceland and Greenland to establish outposts on what Beijing calls its "Polar Silk Road." (See the earlier posts, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder" and "China Stakes New Claim to Arctic.")
After China's President Xi Jinping determined to reduce pollution by switching from coal to natural gas, a serious shortage left Chinese homes without heat and shut down factories. To prevent future natural gas shortages, China's state-owned COSCO shipping company and Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines formed a 50-50 partnership to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) east on the Arctic Ocean and south to Asia from Russia's Novartek producer on the Yamal Peninsula. While a tanker can make this trip in 15 days in summer, compared to 35 days by going west and south through the Suez Canal, ice is too thick in the winter. Yet, there is pressure to increase China's shipments through the most dangerous East Siberian Sea.
Up until about five years ago, the dark cold South Pole was home to penguins, and the far north only housed Eskimos and Russian prisoners in Siberia. Oleg Sentson, the Ukrainian film director on a hunger strike, is still there in a penal colony serving a 20-year sentence for protesting Russia's annexation of Crimea. But Russia's President Putin also now hikes on vacations in Siberia, and Russian ships travel from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg on a Northern Sea Route Putin calls "a matter of national pride."
Why are countries scrambling for claims to sea routes through the Arctic Ocean and not around Antarctica? Examine the North and South Poles on a globe or map. How many degrees latitude does it take from both poles before you find at least five countries? What potential problems do you see when passing between Russia and Alaska?
Arctic shipping routes, according to a paper prepared by the engineering faculty at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, are most dangerous in the East Siberian Sea. In the shallowest area of the Arctic Ocean, ice builds up earlier and faster after summer, and uncharted waters are more likely to cause ships to run aground. Even during summer, half of the East Siberian Sea can remain ice covered.
Go North, Young Men
Despite the harsh environment and high insurance rates, activity is expected to increase in the far north due to a variety of factors. Arctic routes shorten navigation time, and they are free of pirates. Oil and gas reserves in the area already have attracted exploration. (See the earlier posts: "Troubled Northwest Passage Found" and "North Pole Flag.")
Accidents, seldom now, can be expected to increase as shipping traffic increases, however. Ship captains who ply the Arctic Ocean cannot help but feel a little like captains of potential Titanics. Ice can trap ships, and they still can hit icebergs, as well as icebreaker escorts and other ships. Captains need constant weather station updates about the changing wave heights, wind speeds, and temperatures that affect icing in each section along their routes, information they also need in order to know how long crew members should stay out on deck. They want protocols about plans for emergency assistance and oil spill clean ups from members of the Arctic Council (Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark-Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States).
Tourists Who Have Been Everywhere
Possible perils failed to deter 900 passengers from paying anywhere from $20,000 to one million dollars per person to book passage on the Crystal Serenity's first cruise through the Arctic Ocean in 2016. The ship sailed from Seward to Nome, Alaska, where it docked to unload solar panels ordered by the city's population of 3800. In groups, cruise passengers took turns sailing to shore in transport boats to photograph wild musk oxen; eat $5 slices of blueberry pie; watch Eskimo dancers; and purchase locally made seal gloves and wallets. From Nome, a month long voyage passed by Greenland and ended in New York.
The trip required a crew of 600, a special navigation satellite system, and chartering cargo planes to deliver perishable food for pickups at communities along northern Canada. The Crystal Serenity made another, and its final, passenger voyage in 2017.
Faster Cargo Shipments
After the Crystal Serenity tested the Arctic route for passenger cruises, the Danish-based Maersk line, the world's largest shipping company, launched the Russian Venta Maersk's container ship north from Vladivostok, west across the Arctic Ocean, and south around Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Carrying 3600 containers of Russian frozen fish and electronics from South Korea, the ship cut off about two weeks from the usual time it takes to use the southern route from Asia and enter Europe using the Suez Canal. While time was saved, profit was lost, because container ships are used to dropping off and picking up a thousand containers at a dozen or more ports along the way. No such transshipment points exist on the Arctic route. Following the test trip, Maersk announced no immediate plans to substitute the Northern Sea Route for its usual schedule.
Russian cargo ships already do service domestic ports on an irregular basis. Now Moscow is building roads, a railroad, and facilities to establish regular ports of call along its Northern Sea Route. China also has made overtures to Iceland and Greenland to establish outposts on what Beijing calls its "Polar Silk Road." (See the earlier posts, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder" and "China Stakes New Claim to Arctic.")
After China's President Xi Jinping determined to reduce pollution by switching from coal to natural gas, a serious shortage left Chinese homes without heat and shut down factories. To prevent future natural gas shortages, China's state-owned COSCO shipping company and Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines formed a 50-50 partnership to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) east on the Arctic Ocean and south to Asia from Russia's Novartek producer on the Yamal Peninsula. While a tanker can make this trip in 15 days in summer, compared to 35 days by going west and south through the Suez Canal, ice is too thick in the winter. Yet, there is pressure to increase China's shipments through the most dangerous East Siberian Sea.
Monday, June 4, 2018
China Stakes New Claim to Arctic
When warming from climate change uncovered portions of the ice sheet on Greenland, Chinese tourists arrived as did Chinese mining companies interested in the country's newly accessible deposits of rare earth minerals, said to be the world's tenth largest known deposit. In September, 2019, London's Rainbow mining company announced it was ready to expand rare earth production in Burundi to twenty times its current output in order to compete with China, already the world's major extractor of the hazardous-to-mine rare earth elements. Rare earth elements have a wide variety of uses in hybrid cars, catalytic converters, wind turbines, aircraft engines, cell phones, film making, oil refining, x-rays, powerful magnets for MRI machines, control rods in nuclear reactors, and for TV and computer screens.
To date, Greenland's 56,000 citizens rely on fishing exports and an annual grant from Denmark. An independence movement lobbies to free Greenland from Denmark, and Greenland's Prime Minister Kim Kielsen sees potential ties with China as a way to eliminate the need for Denmark's help. (The earlier post, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder," describes China's earlier attempt to stake a claim in the Arctic.)
Denmark is not opposed to granting Greenland's independence. But it now does use Greenland as a way to claim Arctic land and the U.S. military base on Greenland to claim an exemption from paying its share of NATO funding. (In 2019, Norway's leader termed President Trump's attempt to purchase Greenland "ridiculous.")
To date, Greenland's 56,000 citizens rely on fishing exports and an annual grant from Denmark. An independence movement lobbies to free Greenland from Denmark, and Greenland's Prime Minister Kim Kielsen sees potential ties with China as a way to eliminate the need for Denmark's help. (The earlier post, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder," describes China's earlier attempt to stake a claim in the Arctic.)
Denmark is not opposed to granting Greenland's independence. But it now does use Greenland as a way to claim Arctic land and the U.S. military base on Greenland to claim an exemption from paying its share of NATO funding. (In 2019, Norway's leader termed President Trump's attempt to purchase Greenland "ridiculous.")
Monday, April 4, 2016
New Art Forms and Functions
Joining innovative artists like Christo, who wrapped a bridge in Paris with cloth, and those who create sculptures out of sand and ice are contemporaries using solar power in their art and creating digital art that exists as a piece of software. Other artists are activists expressing environmental concerns and promoting participatory art that can flourish outside galleries and museums.
Visitors need to go deep inside a limestone cave in Puerto Rico to see a work by minimalist artist, Dan Flavin. Solar panels at the mouth of the cave power the pink, yellow, and red fluorescent lightbulbs that cast a reddish glow on the surrounding rock formations. To protect the lights from humidity and bats, the bulbs are hermetically sealed in a glass case.
The Phillips Gallery in New York reports that a digital image of a grain silo in Kansas that was created using algorithms appealed to a geneticist and a high-frequency trader, because it related to the mathematical processes they used in their jobs.
During a UN conference on climate change in Paris in December, 2015, visitors saw ice from Greenland slowly melting at the Place du Pantheon. Danish-Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson, created his work of art, "Ice Watch," by breaking an 80-ton block of ice into 12 chunks arranged in a circle.
Artists, activists, researchers, farmers, scientists, and architects have come together to dramatize the importance of preserving the seeds of ancient grains no longer in wide use. A sailing ship will return the seeds from Oslo to their native soil in Istanbul and the Middle East. Some students are designing and making the ship's sail and sailing outfits out of plants grown from seeds used for ages.
Not only can students be on the look out for new forms and functions of art around the world, they can try creating some themselves. Try attracting bees by planting a variety of flowers and vegetables in an artistic design this summer.
Visitors need to go deep inside a limestone cave in Puerto Rico to see a work by minimalist artist, Dan Flavin. Solar panels at the mouth of the cave power the pink, yellow, and red fluorescent lightbulbs that cast a reddish glow on the surrounding rock formations. To protect the lights from humidity and bats, the bulbs are hermetically sealed in a glass case.
The Phillips Gallery in New York reports that a digital image of a grain silo in Kansas that was created using algorithms appealed to a geneticist and a high-frequency trader, because it related to the mathematical processes they used in their jobs.
During a UN conference on climate change in Paris in December, 2015, visitors saw ice from Greenland slowly melting at the Place du Pantheon. Danish-Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson, created his work of art, "Ice Watch," by breaking an 80-ton block of ice into 12 chunks arranged in a circle.
Artists, activists, researchers, farmers, scientists, and architects have come together to dramatize the importance of preserving the seeds of ancient grains no longer in wide use. A sailing ship will return the seeds from Oslo to their native soil in Istanbul and the Middle East. Some students are designing and making the ship's sail and sailing outfits out of plants grown from seeds used for ages.
Not only can students be on the look out for new forms and functions of art around the world, they can try creating some themselves. Try attracting bees by planting a variety of flowers and vegetables in an artistic design this summer.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
North Pole Flag
Santa Claus has a flag now. Thanks to the "Flag for the Future" competition jointly sponsored by the Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and Greenpeace's "Save the Arctic," the North Pole, which is surrounded by high seas that no country owns, has a new flag.
British designer, Dame Vivienne Westwood, on March 17, 2013, declared the winner of the "Flag for the Future" competition a pennant-shaped flag designed by 13-year-old Sarah Bartrisyia from Malaysia. On a white background, Ms. Bartrisyia used a circle of seven multicolored doves around Arctic starflowers to symbolize peace, hope, and global community.
The winning design will be reproduced on a titanium flag and stuck in the Arctic ice alongside a time capsule containing a Greenpeace petition signed by those who want to preserve the Arctic from overfishing and oil drilling. Drilling noise and vibrations also could have an impact on fish behavior, while an oil spill would be difficult to contain in ice-clogged waters. When a pipeline ruptured off Santa Barbara's California coast on May 19, 2015, the 105,000 gallon oil spill showed what can happen when drilling occurs anywhere. To dramatize the under-reported perils of drilling for oil in the Arctic, six Greenpeace volunteers climbed aboard Shell's gigantic oil rig, Polar Pioneer, in April, 2015 as it was en route through the Pacific Ocean to Alaska. June, 2015 saw Greenpeace volunteers in their kayaks blocking the Shell rig from leaving port in Seattle. Later, they hung from a bridge to dramatize the need to block the rig's progress to the Arctic. For more about the need to protect the Arctic and to sign a petition asking world leaders to ban oil drilling and industrial fishing in Arctic waters, go to savethearctic.org.
In London, you can purchase a "Save the Arctic" T-shirt designed by Vivienne Westwood at her World's End Shop at 430 Kings Road. The cost is 35 British pounds.
BP already operates in Alaska's offshore Arctic. Operating with Rosneft, the state-owned Russian energy company with the world's highest oil output, BP has a controlling interest in British-Russian TNK-BP and is set to launch a series of big projects in Russia's Arctic. As a result of Russia's actions in Ukraine in March and April, 2014, however, BP stockholders and Rosneft were concerned about the company's Russian investments until BP signed a major shale deal with Rosneft in May, 2014. In mid-2018, BP also would purchase the US shale assets of BHP for $10.5 billion.
Concern about Rosneft's profits was justified in 2014, when the drop in oil prices and the value of the ruble caused fourth quarter losses. By August, 2018, however, a barrel of crude was selling in the mid $60s and Rosnett''s quarterly net profit reached $3.7 billion. When a BP oil spill sent 170 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the company withdrew its bid for an exploration license to drill around Danish-owned Greenland. In 2014, BP renewed its application and, along with Statoil and other firms, won an exploration license there. A Chinese group is bidding for a license to drill for oil off of neighboring Iceland. Although the remote Chukchi Sea area of the Arctic experiences extreme weather conditions and lacks preparation to deal with an oil spill that would endanger wild life and indigenous communities, in 2008, the U.S. Department of the Interior sold oil and gas leases there.
The 8-nation intergovernmental Arctic Council, that includes Russia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States, has failed to agree on regulations that would govern oil and gas exploration in the Arctic region. Relying on a 1953 law that allows U.S. presidents to take executive action to prevent leasing of unleased lands in the federally administered Outer Continental Shelf, President Obama, in December, 2016, placed an indefinite ban on oil and gas leases in the Alaskan Beaufort and Chukchi areas of U.S. Arctic waters. Canada took similar actions. Both counties plan to identify shipping lanes through their protected areas, where harsh conditions would hamper cleaning up oil spills.
The Arctic region is believed to hold 30% of undiscovered gas deposits and 13% of undiscovered oil reserves. Ice melt in the area is opening a larger region for gas and oil exploration and, consequently, a larger area for border disputes and conflicting claims of sovereignty. By submarine, Russia planted a flag 2.5 miles beneath the North Pole in 2007, and according to TIME magazine (Aug. 17, 2015), the country submitted a formal claim to the United Nations for 463,000 square miles around the pole on Aug. 4, 2015. On April 30, 2017, NBC's Evening News showed Russian military men and armor training in the Arctic. Canada and Denmark (based on its Greenland island territory) have staked claims to sovereignty on territory including the North Pole by arguing that the Lomonosov Ridge of the continental shelf extends under the pole from their countries. A U.N. panel is expected to decide the disputes.
For information about other world flags, see my earlier blog post, "A Salute to Flags."
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