I’ve been spending 10+ hours / a day at work and unpacking from my move, so the posts have been few and far between this week. I hope to pick it up next week.

Check out this great article: Infrastructurist, one of the best blogs on the net IMO, did a story on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, one of the most fascinating subjects around.

Last year, two Austrian tourists managed to enter North Korea by train at a border crossing that has been closed to foreigners since 1994. Lucky for us, they took lots of pictures. Below are a few samples from their extensive documentation of their trip (see the full visual and narrative account here, here and here). They also hit Pyongyang–a city 3 million people that does see a bit of tourist traffic–and took some special photographic interest to the city’s infrastructure, especially trams.

Pyongyang boasts a subway system buried deeper underground than any other on earth; this is done so that the system might better survive a blast from atomic weaponry. It might also serve as a makeshift bomb shelter. There are rumours that the public transit system also connects to a much larger non-public underground rail system extending well beyond the city’s surface infrastructure.

It reminds me of the PRC’s subterranean submarine base on Hainan Island. Don’t miss photos of that base on the FAS website. And let’s not forget the tunnels dug by the Viet Cong. Apparently, Mao liked to dig.

via Gallery: North Korea’s Secret Infrastructure » INFRASTRUCTURIST.

The Real Estalker: Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud Flips Out In Turin.

MORE THAN A WITNESS.

This is a great site dedicated to chronicling the early days of LA’s punk scene.

I’m not certain why, but I was earlier reminded of a recent statement illustrating the rate at which Financial Services, as a component of US GDP, had grown dramatically in the post-Cold War period. I was startled by the figures I’d heard, but only this evening took it upon myself to actually research the claim.

The figures I discovered which best suited my inquiry are sourced to the Bank of International Settlements in Basil. Some of you may know this institute as the clearinghouse that allowed German and American financiers and industrialists to have financial interactions during World War II (AGFA, BASF, Bayer, I.G. Farbenindustrie, ITT, Deutsche Telekom, GM, IBM, GE, DuPont, Standard Oil, Coca Cola, Dow Chemical, it’s really silly how long the list gets). The bank was appropriately enough co-founded by Germany’s finance minister, and two-time appointee to head the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, who had, oddly enough, a rather American sounding full name: Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht.

He had this name because, although born in Germany, Schacht had grown up in New York.

I sort of remember reading somewhere that Schacht had once had some sort of minor social interaction once with FDR at the Harvard Club in New York. This all happened before FDR had fully entered politics.

The BIS was so publicly scandalous that in 1944, an organization no less august the the United Nations recommended its dissolution. See United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, Final Act (London et al., 1944), Article IV. Obviously this action was never undertaken.

Nevertheless, I digress. You can see the charts and figures at the BIS website. It’s all very interesting if you like that sort of thing.

It’s crazy when you read up on it and you realize, on a strategic level, what significance there was in the role of economics in World War II, particularly in the European theater. I suppose you can have a global total war between industrialized nations without a large amount of capital interactions between the opposing sides. This is particularly obvious in consideration of the entanglements resulting from Versailles.

Venice was once a swamp.

That’s just its history. It, and the adjoining Marina del Rey area, were collectively a swampy marsh area that was converted into waterways. When oil was discovered, and cars became more important than gondolas, much of the canal network as filled back in to make roadways.

Early Canal Rendering

Now we have climate simulations that show us what the coastline would look like based on an increase in the mean sea-level elevation.

It doesn’t look good for Venice and the Marina. If you raise the sea level over 17 meters, you can see what the future coastline will look like.

If I were Lex Luthor, I’d buy land in Mar Vista.

Here are the area’s Flood Maps.

Awesomeness.

An emblem on my shower door reads "American Shower Door Co. Inc."

As far as I can tell, there’s nothing special about it. It’s just funky seeing the address and everything. I’m going to drive by in a bit and see what’s what at 1028 N. La Brea.