Loan strategy

Strangely true, want to get loans on a book - just place it on the Returns trolley and someone will choose it.

Lifting the roof

At long last, contractors have begun the stabilising works on the Stick Shed.
Some of the posts, rafters and purlins will be replaced/repaired, vermin removed, and roof sheets replaced and secured over the coming months. Most of the conservation works will be high up near the roof, so the workmen will be using cherry pickers and scissor lifts. They are hoping to have the work completed early in 2010.

Ghost fleet of the Recession

From London's Daily Mail is "the ghost fleet of the recession" the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lying at anchor off Singapore. Never before photographed, it has no crew, no cargo and no destination.

Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined, but their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers, they are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis.

These ships are parked in this Sargasso off the beaten track,where nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer people not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

The ships have been quietly retired to this backwater, to be maintained only by skeleton crews left to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed.

The Singapore site is only one of these graveyards, there are similar sites in the Bosporus Strait and Qinhungdao off the Chinese coast. A couple of years ago these ships would be steaming back and forth across the oceans, now 12 per cent are doing nothing.

The only positive I can see - they could end up the world's best wreck dive site, provided it isn't too deep.

Lost symbol

Will have to put "Into the storm" aside, now that the new Dan Brown has arrived. 509 pages of close-set type, and while we are on top of the Holds at this stage, when word gets around are sure to be inundated with heaps of requests.

It is apparently "A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories, arcane icons and enigmatic codes. An intelligent, lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn".

So will have to see if it lives up to the blurb and keeps me up reading all night.

Most remote abandoned

Aahh, Weburbanist has abandoned places in truly far-flung locations, the mystery is less about why they were abandoned – it is how there were people there in the first place. Examples of human stubbornness in the face of extreme environmental conditions, from one temperature extreme to another.

This one is also interesting for the names of the places, the first is St Kilda, no not the Melbourne suburb, but St Kilda, Scotland in the Outer Hebrides

It has been inhabited continuously for 2,000 years – ending in 1930 (even has a lighthouse)

St Kilda ruins

Then there's Ballarat,the second Ballarat near Death Valley in California, named after the Victorian goldrush one, but not faring as well. It used to have about 500 people, now only 2.

To the other extreme - South Georgia in the South Atlantic, was the home to a number of sealing and whaling stations. It was famous for Shackleton's traverse of the island after the Endurance was crushed, he was buried there in 1922.


And finally the Australian entrant - the town of Cook in South Australia. One of numerous towns (named after famous figures in Australian history) established on the Indian-Pacific rail-line. Now with less reliance on local railway gangers maintaining the line, Cook boasts only 4 residents and is the only scheduled stop across the Nullarbor Plain section of the line. All supplies, including fresh water, arrive by train.

At World's End

At World’s End: 13 More Post-Apocalyptic Visions, another post from WebUrbanist.
Our small blue planet – and everything on it – is destined to be fried to a crisp by an expanding sun some 5 billion years hence. Will anyone be around to observe the final sunset, or will society and civilization be snuffed out long before? Here are 13 more visions of what a post-apocalyptic world might be like.
I've chosen just a few of the 13, which have some significance to me.

Mad To The Max

From Australia it came, and things would never be the same. Mad Max, released in 1979, was the inspiration of many post-apocalyptic films to come. I was at one of the Mad Max locations at the Mundi Mundi Plains just a few weeks ago.

Apocalypso music
An early sci-fi blockbuster is The War Of The Worlds in which invaders from Mars nearly triumph over humanity, only to be defeated by humble bacteria. One of the best treatments of Wells’ masterpiece is Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, issued as a double LP record in 1978 accompanied by bleak artwork by Peter Goodfellow, Geoff Taylor and Michael Trim. I've the LP version and just organised to have it digitised the day before yesterday - will still keep the LP and artwork though.

Silent Spring In Siberia
Some say the world will end not with a bang, but with a whimper… a slow slump into decay and decomposition. Witness the process in action by visiting the abandoned Russian city of Kadykchan. A Siberian tin-mining town that boasted a population of 5,794 as recently as 1989, Kadykchan has less than 300 inhabitants today.
This view of Kadykchan in its prime, taken from – seriously – the city’s official website.

 Panic in Detroit

It’s not only in Russia that parts of our modern world are slipping away into chaos and catastrophe – it’s happening in the city I've covered a number of times Detroit, Michigan building the American dream.