An interesting discovery

meglimir relayed this interesting Register article about a large-scale model in Huangyangtan, China, of an extensive area of mountainous terrain.  The model is 900 by 700 meters and is extremely detailed, complete with snow.

Now to me, with my nasty, suspicious mind, there are three very pressing questions about this model:

• Does it match any existing terrain elsewhere on the Earth?
• If not ... then what's it for?
• More importantly, if it does ... then where is that terrain?

The answers to these questions could be important with regard to insight into China's possible future plans for further, ah, "liberations" of "former Chinese territories".

Of course, since surely the Chinese would be aware of how short a time a construction of this size could possibly go unnoticed by satellite observation, it could also be intentional misdirection.  China has already declared that it considers Taiwan (aka the Republic of China) to still be part of the People's Republic of China¹, and strongly hinted that it is willing to employ any necessary military force to regain control of Taiwan, up to and including using nuclear weapons against US forces supporting Taiwan.

Update:

The word seems to be that the modelled terrain is an area along China's border with India, and that it is modelled in awesomely exacting detail.  One wonders what China may have in mind....

[1]  The Taiwanese people, for the most part, disagree strenuously on this point.  They have an independent, largely free-market society with multi-party democratic politics, not subject to the totalitarian dictates of the PRC, and they like it that way.  In fact, up until 1991, the official position of the ROC government on Taiwan was that it was the legitimate government of all of China.

Danegeld

Thanks are due to beckyzoole for posting, and thereby reminding me of, the following words of wisdom from the inestimable Rudyard Kipling:

Danegeld

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night — we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

-- Sir Rudyard Kipling

In the literature again

I appear to have entered the literature again.  I'm apparently quoted on page 282 of Barbara Carlson's new coffee-table book, The Pocket Lint Chronicles (see promo photo at left).  I no longer have the least recollection of what the quote was, though the author told me at the time what she was requesting permission to quote.

My prior claims to fractional Warhols include credit in O'Reilly Associates' System Performance Tuning, Second Edition, publication in the Spokane Open Poetry Review, and playing about five or six cloned soldiers and the Master of Space and Time in a short sci-fi/horror movie made by TV Production students at Spokane Falls Community College (which was probably never shown outside of the TV Production course).

Now if only I could finish my own novel-in-progress and get it published....

Does anyone know of an open-source or freeware tool ...

...that can rotate an AVI file by 90 degrees?  I have a number of video sequences I've shot with my Canon digital camera in portrait mode, but of course the player doesn't know that, and while I have an abundance of tools for losslessly rotating JPEG photos, none of the utilities supplied by Canon, and no other utilities I have, will rotate an AVI movie and save the rotated version.  (I can rotate the movies at playback time with mplayer, but cannot -- to my knowledge -- save them.)