The Octoberizing Chamber

[rain_gryphon]

Striped icebergs.

*****

The Olympics approach. The torch-lighting is Monday. They're apparently planning to carry the Olympic torch over the summit of Mt. Everest. You gotta love a ceremony that involves setting something on fire, then running around waving it while everyone stares at you.

The Chinese have far and away some of the most wonderful Olympic structures I've ever seen. Whatever spirit impelled architecture here in the 1960s, the Chinese have it now. Our newer buildings look tame and inhibited next to stuff like the Bird's Nest, or the Water Cube.

I've noticed the same thing about their main grandstand at Shanghai - it's imposing past belief, with that huge bridge over the main stretch, but somehow toy-like at the same time. It makes the whole thing look like a slot car track.

*****

The Chinese Olympic mascots are a pretty shitty lot, but that seems to be the custom anymore. I'm reasonably sure that no-one will ever match the pure distilled essence of failure that was our Atlanta mascot.

Comments

[whitetail.livejournal.com]

I don't doubt the existence of striped icebergs, but I'm a bit skeptical of these pictures. It's a shame I have to take almost all images on the net with a grain of salt. I've seen too many perfect photoshop jobs to believe my own eyes most of the time anymore...

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

They are probably genuine photographs but with the contrast boosted.
Look in the "Norwegian sailor Oyvind Tangen was aboard a research vessel when he noticed the unusual black lines striped through the ice block" picture how the water is really dark while the top of the iceberg is completely overexposed. The widest of the "black" stripes (the one farthest to the right in the main band of stripes going down the middle of the iceberg) has a nice ice-blue colour on the top of the iceberg but the same stripe looks dark-green on the side of the iceberg.
So those are really stripes, but they might not be quite as black as that in real life.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I have to accept the existence of icebergs in general on faith, having never seen one myself, striped or otherwise.