He's not ugly, but nothing special in the looks department. Obviously, to me he is the most beautiful being who ever lived, but I'm biased. When Fiona falls in love with Richard, we are surprised because no one could be more ordinary looking than Richard. But to Fiona he looks lovely. It's all in the eye of the beholder. Are there any examples of books being improved in translation?
I was never asked. Had I been asked, though, I would have declined, as, unlike Perec's e-less La Disparition, which I did translate, it's a silly, pointless and virtually unreadable book. How can I stop my neighbours' cats from relieving themselves in my vegetable patch? Why is it said that the darkest hour is the one before dawn? It seems to me there is a gradual lightening in the sky before it is properly light.
Questions and answers to nq theguardian. Please include name, address and phone number. What would happen if they unlocked the Panama canal? Love at first sight — for beauties only? Terence Hollingworth, Blagnac, France An international congress in Paris in considered a long route across Nicaragua and a shorter Panama route.
Gath said. Grand in scale and beautifully imagined, the original Panama Canal is an engineering marvel. Ships glide through on a mile water bridge. The lock gates, some weighing more than tons, are watertight and buoyant, so finely balanced that should the power fail, a single person can manually open and close them.
Built by the United States after a failed attempt by the French left thousands dead, the canal operated with hardly a false note for years using this procedure: As a ship approaches the locks, cables are attached to electric locomotives that run on rails alongside each of the lock walls. They draw the ship into the chamber, bring it to a stop, then draw it into the next chamber. Their constant tension winches keep the ship centered, ensuring safe and timely passage.
Three locks raise the ships 85 feet to Gatun Lake, which supplies water for the canal and drinking water for much of the country. Three more locks lower them back to sea level. All of the locks are filled and emptied by gravity, without pumps. Over the decades, the canal made Panama, with few natural resources, a key square on the economic chessboard: a major banking, trading and airline hub, not to mention a transit zone for drug dealing and money laundering.
Ships became bigger. The more cargo they carried, the lower the cost. By , ships were being built that could not pass through the canal. Fearing that its waterway might end up like the long-outdated Erie Canal, the canal authority set out to build a bigger one.
Contractors faced some of the same challenges that the Americans did a century before: tides up to 19 feet on the Pacific but only two on the Atlantic, unstable soil, and torrential downpours. They also had to excavate and dredge without disturbing the original canal operating alongside. On top of that, just as it was about to solicit bids, the canal authority received some frightening news in November By his assessment, the area is vulnerable to earthquakes of up to 8.
So serious is the risk, Mr. The next month, the American Embassy heard similar warnings from Mr. Even so, three consortiums — including one led by Bechtel, an American company with an international reputation for taking on big, difficult projects — pursued the contract. The company, Constructora Urbana, in which Mr.
The other two members were Impregilo, a large Italian contractor, and Jan De Nul, a Belgian company that specializes in dredging and excavation. In March , after 15 months of contentious negotiations, the three consortiums submitted their sealed bids before a packed auditorium, with the president and diplomatic corps as witnesses.
To heighten the drama, a motorcade delivered the envelopes to a vault at the National Bank for safekeeping. The one with the best price and design would win. That July, with the nation watching on television, the bids were opened, and the result was a shocker: The underdog Sacyr group had won. Bechtel and American diplomats were incredulous.
A few days after Christmas in , at lunch with Barbara J. Martinelli is now best known for something else: presiding over an administration that is the subject of roughly 25 corruption investigations. In a confidential cable , Ms. Stephenson noted Mr. Karen Smits arrived in Panama the day the Sacyr group won the contract. She was 27 and had grown up on a farm in the Netherlands. While her gender, blond hair and blue eyes made her stand out among the male construction workers, few people knew who she was or why she was hanging around their lunchrooms, hallways and in the field.
That would soon change. Smits, an organizational anthropologist, had come to the canal for her Ph. But after 85 interviews over a year, she came away with much more: a contemporaneous account of the tension and conflict emanating not just from cultural clashes, but also from the stress of completing a huge project on a rock-bottom budget.
Smits, adding that when told the size of the winning bid, they were incredulous. Different cultures. Different ways to approach a project. Some officials said the collaboration was like being trapped in a war or an arranged marriage.
One Belgian manager told Ms. Concern over costs quickly escalated into heated exchanges over who was going to do what and for how much. Smits said. Time was another issue. The canal authority would be a stern master. They made one fact abundantly clear: The new canal would operate very differently from the old one.
This change weighed on Mr. His opinion carries weight. Tugboats will now push and pull vessels that are more than three football fields long and stacked with up to 13, containers, nearly three times as much as the old, smaller ships. The authority excluded canal workers from much of the planning, according to union representatives. Rankin, the head of the union of canal pilots, who board transiting ships and direct them, along with the tugboats. Berendrecht also uses only freshwater, whereas Panama tugboats must contend with currents that result when saltwater and freshwater meet.
The saltwater dives under. The new locks are 1, feet long and feet wide. Big container ships are 1, feet long and feet wide. Tugboats fore and aft measure nearly feet each. Do the math, they say. By that standard, the new locks should have been 1, feet long and feet wide. The current size, the captains noted, leaves little or no bailout room for the tugboats at either end should a problem arise.
Ceballos said in December. We have been asking them. In late May, Mr. Rankin and two fellow pilots traveled to Europe at union expense to research how ships might move more safely through the locks. Rankin said his union members were especially worried about the black plastic buffers, or fenders, attached to the canal walls to protect ships and the canal itself. The pilots studied cushioning methods used in Europe and concluded that large, floating fenders would be more effective.
Rankin said, referring to the old canal. Several years ago, the canal authority quietly tested its new method in the original canal, using smaller vessels. Rankin, who did not participate in those tests but monitored them. The pilots now train on a small artificial lake, using miniature ships and tugboats scaled to one twenty-fifth of their actual size.
They also use simulators. But, as Mr. Rankin said late last month. Quijano said the captains had received proper training, including classes and simulations, and called their complaints a contract-negotiating ploy. He added that the locks could be made longer by using a backup gate; that would not, however, increase their width.
The study, released this year, concluded that the ships could pass through the locks under perfect, windless conditions, but would have trouble on windier days. The canal authority said the study was seriously flawed.
Rankin said his union had recommended using more tugboats to position ships before they entered the locks. A large color monitor showed ships moving through the nearby locks. He was in good spirits. Viluce announced. Easier to handle that way. The Santiago is no outlier. Each Spanish tugboat can do a degree spin. Each can move sideways, as Mr. Viluce demonstrated by positioning his boat perpendicular to the moving cruise ship and keeping it there.
Workers waiting in line for their pay at the Culebra Cut, formerly called Gaillard Cut,an artificial valley that cut through the continental divide in Panama. With the yellow fever threat abating, accidents replaced disease as the largest cause of death in the canal zone in The most dangerous work took place as laborers carved a ditch 45 feet deep and at least feet wide through an eight-mile mountainous stretch known as the Culebra Cut.
Workers blasted away at the mountains with upwards of 6 0 million pounds of dynamite, which could ignite prematurely in the tropical Panamanian climate. Excavating machines also detonated unexploded charges as was the case in a December accident that killed 23 men. Flooding regularly submerged equipment, and the unstable ground could give way at any instance.
Particularly for workers partially deafened as a side effect of drinking quinine to ward off malaria, the inability to hear made deadly railroad accidents a regular occurrence. So many Panama Canal workers were maimed during the construction that artificial limb makers competed for highly coveted contracts with the canal builders. One such manufacturer, A. Between and the end of construction in , the United States recorded the deaths of 5, canal workers.
When combined with the deaths from the French venture, Parker estimates it amounted to lives lost for each mile of the canal. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.
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