Technology for the Birds
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Israeliness, Technology, Travel
It almost sounds like a joke – something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, maybe. But “bird strikes” are apparently a serious problem for pilots and planes. That’s, apparently, what happened to a U.S. Airways jet that was forced to land in the Hudson River after taking off New York’s LaGuardia Airport minutes before. Nobody was hurt – amazingly – but in the battle between birds and pilots, humans haven’t always fared so well against avians. Luckily, Israel is on the case, working on ways to keep birds and planes away from each other!
According to experts, bird strikes – where a bird gets sucked into a jet’s engine, discombobulating the avionics (check out the photo of what an engine hit by birds looks like) – is not all that rare, and has plagued planes and even rockets. While not common in civilian aviation, bird strikes appear to be a near-plague for military flyers, according to this website which lists dozens of crashes, ejections, and even deaths of pilots due to bird strikes (at least two Israeli pilot deaths are listed). 
Because Israel is on the main north-south migratory route for birds, the IDF has been very concerned with bird strikes. According to the “Bird Strike Committee Proceedings” for 2002,
the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has focused attention in bird strike prevention on collisions between aircraft and migrating birds during low-level flight operations. Only in the last 2 years has the IAF begun to tackle the problem of reducing bird-aircraft collisions at or near airfields. A dramatic shift in thinking has led the IAF to initiate complete wildlife control programs at its airbases, featuring the employment of border collies and wildlife control officers to help eliminate the risk of wildlife collisions within the control zone (CTR) of each airfield.
As a crucial component of this program, the IAF has initiated major changes in habitat management at airfields, eliminating agricultural initiatives and undergoing large-scale modifications in airfield maintenance practices. Additionally, the IAF has altered flight and ground operations where possible to attenuate the risk imposed by birds and has coordinated efforts within various departments at each airbase to address bird strike control issues. Awareness and the resolve to eliminate wildlife hazards at its airfields are key features to the IAF’s new directive on bird strike prevention. Though still in its infancy, the IAF’s new wildlife control program has already shown dramatic improvements in the reduction of bird strike hazards at airbases.
My friends at the Fisher Institute in Herzliya have been on this problem as well, and have developed some new technology to ensure that both planes and birds can share the skies, that I hope to be able to report more about soon.
Foto Friday – Tel Aviv Port
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Travel
Conde Nast’s Concierge.com just named Tel Aviv tops on its “It List 2009” and about time too. Each year, Concierge “comb[s] the globe looking for the emerging places that will be on everybody’s lips two years from now”. So how great is it to already be in a place “that will make you feel all right about the world again”. Great indeed.
Photographer Hanoch Grizitzky has captured the Tel Aviv’s enchantment and energy in a series of images of the old port and its new boardwalk in the rain. The image above is of the walkway and, looming in the background, the Reading Power Plant — a historic Modernist building whose tower was once accurately described by an old boyfriend as “the phallus of Tel Aviv”. Reading is now garishly draped in colored lights because we are the party city.
Winter isn’t the most fashionable time to travel, but it has its advantages: the city air feels fresh, there aren’t a lot of tourists, and people are calmer, (relatively speaking – this is Israel, of course), in the absence of the summer swelter. The disadvantages are that it sometimes rains and gets dark very early, but these elements have their charms as well.
Grizitzky freelances for leading Israeli news publications such as Yediot Aharonot, Globes, women’s mag La-Isha, entertainment rag Pnai Plus and others, photographing objects of beauty – be they desert flowers or spokesmodels. “My starting point is love of photography and beautiful things come from there,” he says. “Like the hummus commercial says, ‘Do it out of love or don’t do it at all.’”
These small format images don’t begin to do justice to Grizitzky’s works, particularly this panoramic view. For a better look, visit his website and picture gallery.
Foto Friday – Chabad in India
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Life, Religion
There isn’t that much to say. Chabad Houses are known stops for Israeli backpackers on their post-army service trips. Whether in Katmandu, Bangkok or Mumbai, these are places where travelers can drop in, get a hot meal, perhaps even celebrate Passover or Sukkot with friends from home. Whatever animosity secular Israelis may hold towards the local haredi community all but vanishes when it comes to parents wanting a safe haven for their kids as they wander the big wide world. Now that sense of security has been irrevocably shattered. Here are a few images of Chabad in India from quieter times, taken from Chabad.org.
A sign in English and Hebrew points the way to Goa, India’s Chabad House. (Photo: Meir Alfasi)
School children run outside the Chabad House in the Colaba Market area of Bombay, India. (Photo: Menachem Gansbourg)
One of Goa’s many Jewish visitors prays while wearing tefillin. (Photo: Meir Alfasi)
A Jewish man puts on tefillin in the last minutes before sunset. (Photo: Meir Alfasi)
Israelis will doubtless continue their love affair with all things Indian, and Israel’s strategic relationship with India will undoubtedly be strengthened. Chabad-Lubavitch will continue to grow. But the greater ramifications of this traumatic event — an attack on Israel and Jews, Americans, Britons, and, by extension, Western civilization — are as yet unknown.
For those wishing to give immediate help, a fund has been established in memory of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg.
Disgruntled at Duty-Free
Filed under: Business, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness
My husband had just gotten off the plane from a two-week work trip in the States, and before I could bundle him into the car at the airport and whisk him back home — I was waiting outside while he was gathering his baggage and duty-free treats — he suddenly stopped answering his cellphone — horrors! — and all I could think of was, ‘Has he been stopped by Customs?’
Of course, he had. After some 20 years of living in Israel, and making the Israel-U.S. trip many a time, with more than a few electronic treats in his bags, Daniel made the cardinal error of buying a new microwave in duty-free and bringing back a few birthday presents — all electronic — in his bags. But it was the big DeLonghi box sitting on his cart that alerted the bored customs crew, who immediately set their sights on him and demanded that he open all bags. There, to their delight, were three unopened boxes, including two cameras and an iHome, all birthday presents for family members back here.
After paying 850 shekels in fines and VAT, Daniel was set free, albeit disgruntled, and made his way over to our car. Now, of course, we also had to pay NIS 20 for parking, since we’d overstayed our 20-minute free parking. On the way home, we engaged in a step-by-step dismantling of the scenario, from the decision to buy a microwave in duty-free (where you don’t have to pay the 15.5% VAT that is paid on most consumer items in Israel), to not doing a better job of hiding the cameras in the suitcase.
It’s a funny thing, though; it’s not that duty-free shopping is such a bargain. It’s simply very easy to spend the time before boarding buying some things that you’ve needed to get, and then leaving it at the airport to bring home at the end of a trip. An Israeli innovation, you could say. But there are the downsides; whether it’s when the appliance arrives broken and you have to deal with the company’s less than satisfying customer service, or when you buy several bottles of whisky duty-free, only to find out that you’re only allowed to bring in one liter of liquor or two liters of wine. (That happened to friends of ours who were stocking up on whisky before their daughter’s wedding.)
So, did it pay to buy the electronics in the States, smuggle them home and then pay a fine? Well, yes. It’s still cheaper over there, and the range of choices are much wider. It would have been much more frustrating if they’d succeeded in making Daniel pay a fine on his two-year-old laptop that was also in his bag, and which, they pointed out, doesn’t have a Hebrew keyboard, which could mean that it was also bought in the States. But they let him slide on that one, and in fact, after a whispered consultation, decided to lower his total bill from NIS 1150 to NIS 850. And so, in the end, another bargain at the airport.
Foto Friday – White Nights with Tiranit Barzilay Cohen
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture
Last night was the first in Tel Aviv’s summer series of “White Night” events – all night happenings featuring outdoor concerts on Rothschild Boulevard and on the beach, discounts at restaurants and cafes, performances, and more.
There was also an opening, at the Sommer Contemporary Art gallery of photographer Tiranit Barzilay Cohen’s latest work – her first show in a decade. Barzilay photographs her subjects using minimal direction and set against a white studio background, to explore existential themes: life, death and the human condition.
The full exhibit may be viewed online at the gallery website.
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