Weekend Hill Climb, an end to Edinburgh's busy tourist season

Week 1 in Edinburgh

The subtle differences between the US and Scotland are fun to take note of.  The fact that Starbucks here doesn't require a key to use the restroom, the distinct Scottish way of speaking, the ancient faucets and fixtures, the clothes washer in the kitchen, the different grocery store layout.  Dairy products are plentiful and of great quality.  Fresh produce is not.  That said, today I went to a farmer's market with a friend and found some good vegetables (such as a zucchini, potatoes and onions), fresh grown and not too expensive.

The real decency and sincerity of everyone I meet has impressed me.  The reality of the work ahead has not fully set in though.  The first day of orientation week was marked by rainbows which followed me to school.  The weekend before, I had seen a similar rainbow from Arthur's Seat.  The weather here is spectacular, and I don't mind it not being constantly sunny.  The wind early in the week was intense, and kept some of the UEBS orientation tours from taking place.  The wind also cleaned the city of the smoky filled streets and the rain periodically washed the cobblestones clean.

Pilrig St. at Leith Walk (close to a potential living option)

Student Union:  Teviot Hall at Bristo Square

Business School at St. George Square, near the business school on Nicholson street

George and Dika in Library Bar (Teviot)

Donald MacRae's talk on Scottish Economy

Link to Online Resources, UEBS

Here is a link to a page where I list all of the online resources for the 2011-2012 MBA class.

http://uebs-links.blogspot.com/2011/09/links-collection-uebs.html

Here is a link to the first lecture day:

http://uebs-cases.blogspot.com/2011/09/summary-of-bartlett-mcleans-ges-jeff.html

And some pictures from today's walking tour of Edinburgh, and before on my flight over on an Airbus A380:

Business School, St George Entrance

Airflow over the A380 wing

San Francisco from the air

Cowgate Street, Edinburgh

Overlooking Edinburgh

Analyzing the BOR 90 Trimaran used in America's Cup 33

Center hull rarely touches the water, but adds an additional counterbalance to the enormous rigid rig.

Sloop rigged with a fabric jib, the high aspect ratio Main Sail is similar to my Hobie 20, except for the fact that it is 6.7 times larger and solid instead of fabric.  The proportions however, are similar.  One difference is that their Jib is fuller closer to the water and is a true Genoa in the sense that it's sail area looks to approach that of the main.

Note the wrinkles on the leading edge of the Genoa.  Could the jib halyard tension be insufficient?

Roughly 15 degree desired angle of heel with the mid hull 8 feet off the water.

Some manner of main sail trimming louvers controlled by the mid-hull crew.

Curved Dagger boards to accommodate effective angle of attack due to heel.  I don't quite understand why they are curved towards the heeling direction instead of away.  Do they act as a hydrofoil?

The blog below has a bunch of amazing photos of the construction of this beast.  Apparently the mainsail construction took place in San Diego.  With the large solid wing mainsail approaching 200 feet off the water, everything about this boat seems to have been all-out, spare no expense engineering.

http://www.adriaan.com/tag/bmw-oracle-trimaran/

Hog Island Race

 

 

Start of Hog Island Race, over-sheeted on the main:  Courtesy Jim Laws, Inverness Yacht Club

This is how we started and ended the Hog island race:  Oversheeted!  Phil Delarosa was great crew handling Jib and Trap like an acrobat and absorbing every gust that hit us.  It was a challenge to keep the boat flat, but as I learned during this 4+ hour race, it's better to de-power using the traveler and try to keep the main as a last resort.  I didn't feel confident enough to try this, but next time will for sure.

The winds started deceptively calm and built up to white caps off some of the beaches on the Western shore of Tomales.  45 degree windshifts, the hallmark of this bay that I call "gully puffs" kept us very busy during the main portion of the race.  Interestingly, we were able to convert a beam reach back to the finish into another upward leg due to our tremendous speed.  We were truly powered up and probably hit high teens and low 20 knot speeds.

There were a lot of boats.  Ryan Scofield visited with his girlfriend Emma and blew past the rest of the field.  A number of flying Scotts and Malcolm Fife in the 110 finished within the top five due to tremendous wind reading and low wind performance.  For our part, we probably finished somewhere in the middle after corrections are made.

A record number of four Johnson 18's were apparently on the water including Jim Pedigrew's boat which has recently found a new owner.  Sean Kelly and Mark Darley braved the puffs and singlehanded this year.  I think they both found excitement lay in store.  The day was largely warm and fogless with gentle breeze from the North shifting South Westerly in the afternoon.  The wind didn't play to our strong suit, but I think just as much came down to technique seeing that Ryan S. was able to cross first, probably about 30 mins+ in front of us.

Benjamin Franklin as a diplomat and covert operator

http://vulgarmorality.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/books-to-read-franklin-or-the-public-minded-man/

•   https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/benjamin-franklin.html

The article above discusses some of Franklin's contributions to aligning French interests with our own during the revolutionary war.  When trying to answer the question:  "Why did France come so much to our aid?" part of the answer seems to lie with the diplomacy and cunning of Franklin.  Franklin knew how to play the French against the English.  Henry Kissinger would later become famous for a similar skill in playing China and Russia against each other for our strategic benefit.

One particularly interesting episode that is mentioned is an account of how Franklin forged a letter from the Prince of Prussia to a military commander stating that the British would compensate the crown more for a dead soldier than a wounded one.  The letter stated therefore that the commander should let his soldiers die without attention!  This letter was apparently widely circulated among the Prussian troops and led to desertions.  It seems that the pragmatic Franklin learned propaganda from his roots in early US journalism.

Lethal Violence in the US is facilitated by firearms

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/09/mexico-security-1.html

We are a nation that prizes our freedoms, but I think its time to re-evaluate the need to have millions of guns floating around.  I'm not saying that you can't go to the gun-club and shoot, but do you need to have an AK-47 to feel safe?  Automatic or not, these are wartime weapons and should be tightly regulated.

Guns make impulsive killing easy, and lead to crazy rampages when the mentally ill cross paths with a guns-trader.  Every country has violence, but you only need to look at the statistics to see that per capita gun deaths in the US are higher than any of our industrialized peers, and right alongside many developing nations.

The article below discusses this issue in greater length:  The bottom line is that lethal deaths in the US can be avoided by more strictly controlling the tools that people use to kill, that is to say guns.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2004/09/death-by-the-barrel.html