Death, Destruction, Poverty and Addiction - or - Where to invest a wad of cash.

Death, Destruction, Poverty and Addiction - or - Where to invest  a wad of cash

In the (financial) Spring a middle-aged man's fancy lightly turns to investment returns.

What with Russia invading Ukraine, ISIL spreading like wildfire across at least 2 countries, continuing instability in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, conflicts with the Uighurs in China, Boko Haram in Nigeria ... and the increasing tenor of military crisis and forcefulness in combating these powers, I got to wondering what investment potential currently exists among the arms manufacturers. I started by looking up the 10 largest arms manufacturers.

As it happens, 7 of the top 10 are American companies, as are 5 of the top 6. Starting at the top here is what I found. In each case I compared it to the S&P500, which has risen by 42% since 4 January, 2013.

1. Lockheed Martin, up 96.7%
2. Boeing, up 54%
3. BAE Systems, up 41.5% ... British company
4. Raytheon, up 81%
5. General Dynamics, up 89%
6. Northrop Grumman. up 98.8%
7. Airbus Group, up 67% ... EU company
8. United Technologies Corporation, up 32.4%
9. Finmeccanica, up 71.9% ... Italian company
10. L-3 Communications, up 49.9%

The above returns do not include dividends, which are significant. All but one of the top 10 companies seriously outpaced the S&P500.

Conclusion? War still makes money.

In future research I will look into the profit potential of Casino companies, Alcohol makers, cigarette makers and payday loan companies.

scripturam hanc , et plorate

A Morphology of Arches

My architecture department needs to be shaken up and challenged. I'm going to launch a training program and also get everybody to demonstrate their creativity by posting examples of their favorite work (that they've done themselves) on the walls of our office (which desperately needs to stop being an office and start being a "studio").
To kick this off I've created "A Morphology of Arches", which I'll print out nice and large, and mount in a prominent spot. I'm going to ask a few of my top staff to develop similar morphologies for vaults, domes, minarets and whatever else I can think of that's relevant to the work we do.
Any of you have suggestions?
Here it is... "A Morphology of Arches".

First impressions second time around

Yes, friends, I am back in Saudi Arabia. The forces of the universe seem to have conspired to bring me back here for more...

I was just innocently sitting in the cozy living room of my cottage by the sea, in Brittany, one evening, when I had the thought, "I should probably go back to Saudi and work some more. My finances need the boost."

I didn't act on the thought but 2 weeks later I was contacted by a recruiter who wanted permission to present my CV for a post in Riyadh. I agreed.

And lo and behold, here I am!

I am now the manager of the Architecture group of Dar Al Riyadh, one of the largest Saudi owned Architecture/Engineering firms.

Be careful what you wish for!

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Things here in Riyadh seem a tad bit looser than when I left here 2 years ago. In the shopping malls I see more women, and more of them are not wearing the full face coverings. Women from the large expat community, ranging from Philippines to USA and Australia rarely cover their hair. In the past, there was strict separation between "Family" areas and "Single Men" areas in restaurants. The clear division seems to be fading. There are still areas reserved for families and groups of women. The single men don't go in these sections. But the families and groups of women are free to sit in the "single men" area without question. It seems to be the norm. So, Saudi women who may still be uncomfortable being in public in the presence of men they don't know still have the option of a "safe" place to go, while also having the option to go anywhere else too. It's a significant change, a small step, but in the right direction (in my humble opinion).

Traffic is still nuts ... but perhaps not quite so crazy as before. When I left 2 years ago the city was just beginning to install speed cameras. Now they are everywhere on the main roads and people seem to be calming down.

We're on the road to nowhere

A group of us at work did an overnight trip to our branch office in Al Khobar. This meant a 4.5 hour drive across the desert to the east coast. Here are a few images from the car window. At a truck stop along the way I saw these neat clay pots. Next time we do this trip I'll probably buy a few...

Things I didn't capture with my camera -

a tree, yes, a single tree growing out there, in the middle of nowhere with nothing around it, the only tree I saw except for a couple of small groves that were obviously planned and irrigated -

the burned out hulk of an SUV half submerged in the shifting sands, 100 feet off the side of the road, couldn't help wondering what the story was there. As far as I could see there was no skeleton inside -

speed demons by the handful driving at least 120 mph along the highway, using the shoulder to pass the people like us who were poking along at 90.

Cottage by the sea - painting the exterior

In the breaks between the rain I'm repainting the exterior.
First step, remove all the shutters and restore them. I can do that indoors on rainy days. I'll post that separately.

Here are photos of the original state.

View from the south-east, with 27 in the foreground and 27bis at the right, behind

The "courette" on the south side. The tanks are the gas supply.

The north wall of the bis

North and West walls of the bis.

Isn't it lovely? I just love the multi-colored streaks. The garden belongs to the neighbor and the bis abuts it on the property line.

Bis bedroom dormer. I've already begun restoring these windows. The shutters are beyond repair and I've removed the shutters on the left.

House windows, living room below, main bedroom above

Entry door below, small bedroom above

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In the first half of January, over the course of 3 days, using my trusty Karcher pressure washer I got all the dirt and loose paint off the exterior. In some places the paint came off down to the original cement plaster. I used a chlorine based solution first, let it rest for 10-20 minutes, then did the pressure washing. This kills the fungi, mosses and other micro-organisms that typically grow on the surfaces of the houses around here. I used a very dilute, weak solution because I didn't want to flood the surrounding environment with chlorine. But this treatment, along with proper maintenance in the future should keep it from looking as it did before.

Next step, patch a few small holes in the surface and start priming.
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Cottage by the Sea - Restoring the Exterior - Windows

Hi to everybody. This note comes to you from Rancho Escargot. Rancher Tony waving a howdy to y'all.

I thought I'd keep track of the various house restoration projects here on my 1001 Arabian Nights blog. So here goes it.

The main thing on the agenda at the moment is to get the outside cleaned up and restored, so that it looks good for the neighbors. In December I had a fellow come around and he washed the roof with some kind of anti-fungal treatment, to get rid of the various mosses and fungi that are growing on the slate shingles. Over the course of the winter they'll die off and the rain will wash them away, leaving a clean and fresh looking roof.

In the last few weeks I've been working on the windows of the cottage, stripping off all the old paint and removing the old putty, then repainting and puttying. I'm part way through that. The windows are made of some very hard, solid, straight grained wood. I think perhaps it's larch. Anyhow, they're in excellent shape. There isn't a sign of rot anywhere in the wood. I'll be repainting the outside white but may strip the inside to bare wood and varnish them if the grain looks good.

Here are some before photos of the cottage bedroom, BEFORE.

IN PROGRESS, old putty removed and new putty going in.

Sunset Murder Case - 1938 - an Art Deco mystery burlesque fest

Here's another little treat from Archive.org
https://archive.org/details/SunsetMurderCase

It's no masterpiece but it's a cultural relic that we're very lucky to have. It stars the ephemeral Sally Rand. She was a precocious girl from Missouri with big ideas. At 13 she was dancing in the chorus of a local show and a few years later made her way to Hollywood where she was quickly noticed. Dancing was her natural talent and not being of a shy nature, she gave full expression to her creativity through the sensuality of her body.

You may not have heard of Sally Rand. But you have most likely heard of her most famous creation, the "Bubble Dance".

The Sunset Murder Case treats us to a beautifully filmed record of her famous bubble dance early in the story. She's a "good girl", daughter of a murdered policeman, who infiltrates into the nightclub owned by the man she believes is responsible for her father's death.

The club's interior is a classic bit of Art Deco design and another treat in this filmic box of chocolates.

This was back in the days when men wore tuxedos, women wore beautiful gowns and everyone knew how to dance.

More stills from the bubble dance...

Isadora Duncan's influence is highly visible throughout, in both the asymmetrical movements and tunic of draped fabric, elements of Ancient Greek art that inspired Duncan. The Duncan connection is no surprise. Aside from the fact that she was already world famous, Duncan was a native of San Francisco and Sally Rand spent many critical years in her career working in San Francisco. For much of the 1930s she owned The Music Box, a burlesque theater that later became The Great American Music Hall. She was also a hugely popular and notorious performer at the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939 (subject of a Charlie Chan film I'll write about soon).

We're treated to her bubble dance and also her "fan dance", something she may not have invented but she certainly perfected. The fan, in fact, was an array of which peacock feathers, or more accurately, lyre bird feathers. The lyre bird is a naturally white peacock. Her stately dance, imitating the strut of the peacock, starts with a group of woman wearing Erte inspired gowns drifting around the stage, setting the mood.

 Finally they wander off and the peacock is left alone. She does her thing, making the most of the stairs, wandering in circles as peacocks are inclined to do, spreading her feathers out in a beautiful display, or letting them trail behind like the train of a gown. 

 The dance reaches its climax as the peacock twirls in excitement, its feathers spiraling around itself. Then gradually she comes to rest in the calm attitude of supremely confident beauty.

 I wish we could have had a closeup of the final pose. But it's a miracle this movie made it past the censors at all. The Hays Code was at its peak when this movie was made. In fact the censors insisted the original title "The Sunset Strip Murder Case" be changed and the "Strip" dropped. Clearly these dances were far more sensual than the Code would allow. In fact, based on Sally Rand's reputation alone, there were many movie theaters that refused to show the movie, and the city of Boston banned its appearance.

In addition to this priceless record of Sally Rand's work the movie provides a lot of delightful Art Deco design and atmosphere. It also provides, for comic relief, 2 charming characters, male and female sidekicks to the leads. Here they are the first time they meet. You might have guessed the girl's first impression isn't entirely favorable, although we learn that in fact she's quite smitten but hiding it well. They have some very punny dialogue. The girl, I'm guessing, was one of Sally Rand's compatriots in Burlesque, someone who appeared in only a very few movies, sometimes as uncredited extras and who is credited in this movie as Sugar Kane. Turns out she has a "real" name though, Kathryn ... Kathryn Kane. I think I prefer "Sugar". Aside from the few movies listed on IMDB and a few studio portraits listed for sale on eBay I can find no other record of her existence on the internet. Her romantic interest and comic foil is Dennis Moore, a fellow with a long career ahead of him in westerns but who makes a passable newspaper reporter in this movie.

 Here's Sugar Kane singing her number in the nightclub. I wonder what ever happened to her. The movie was made in 1938 and if she was in her early 20s at the time and were alive today she would be in her 90s. Not likely but possible. Did she make hay while the sun shone and then marry some nice young banker that came to her burlesque shows? Were there children and grandchildren? I wonder if someone points to her in this movie today and says, "She's my Grandma."

If I didn't write much about the men in this movie its because they didn't have a chance. These two beautiful ladies, Sally Rand, one of the great burlesque stars and a creative artist, and Sugar Kane, someone who seems to have been forgotten to history, both stole the show.

If you're looking to pass an hour watching this movie is certainly one of the most pleasant ways to do it.