Marking time in November 2006

Friday 17 November 2006

Headcounting at Camp Delta

I have just found Jonathan Corum’s Camp Delta web page, subtitled Nationalities of enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay, the “legal equivalent of outer space”. The page is dated February 2004. Old news. But still current.

Corum has drawn graphics to represent each of the men detained at Guantanamo Bay, standing in groups according to their nationality. One hundred and sixty men stand by the flag of Saudi Arabia. Eighty-five from Yemen. Eighty-two from Pakistan. One each from Sweden, Spain, Kenya. One from Iraq. And so on, to a total of six hundred and nineteen.

Two figures stand beside the Australian flag—I know they are Mamdouh Habib (who was released in January 2005) and David Hicks (who is still at Camp Delta). There is one figure holding an American flag, but he is not a detainee.

I admire the graphics, but deplore the facts they represent.

One of Jonathan Corum’s images. These toy figures make the numbers tangible.

filed under Design + The web

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Thursday 2 November 2006

Still at Kangaroo Island

filed under Environment

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Wednesday 1 November 2006

Kangaroo Island

I’m at Kangaroo Island, inspecting lighthouses. Today’s subject was the Cape St Alban Lighthouse, which deserves an award for cuteness.

That’s me standing on the balcony. The lighthouse is so small, and the balcony so narrow, that I had to breathe in to get past the stanchions. (Thanks to Daniel Bocking for taking the picture).

The Cape St Alban lighthouse was one of the first unattended lighthouses in South Australia—that is, it did not have lightkeepers living on the site. This cross-section is from one of the 1908 contract drawings. It shows the original optical apparatus with a kerosene burner, mounted in the open, without the protection of a lantern room. In 1914 the lighthouse was converted to acetylene operation and the present lantern room was added.

filed under Lighthouses + Me

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