Nota Bene

So what’s the habitation situation like for visitors in Greenland? Actually not bad at all. Decent basic hotels, cozy rooms, most of the creature comforts as you normally find in good hotels, and nice food. The only drawback I came across: Internet connection speed, and also low traffic limits.

Here’s the hotel in Nuuk we stayed at – from both outside and in…

Read on: how the Inuit live…

As promised yesterday, here come a LOT of photos…

So get the popcorn in plus your beverage of choice, and we’re off…

Read on: 500 thousand tons of ice per hour …

You don’t have to go out to sea far from Ilulissat before you come across mini-bergs – quite a few reside even inside the port’s walls. From time to time they crack, break up, and/or roll over. Just as we were heading out one ‘berg did just that: it made a crackling sound, sank down under the sea, briefly paused to come to its senses, and then slowly re-emerged upside-down to give its belly a go in the sun :).

But those were mere babies. A little further out to sea were the parents – and grandparents…

Read on: Here they are, the beauts!…

Next up on our tour of Greenland – the town of Ilulissat, 550km north of Nuuk, and 200km inside the Arctic Circle. Yes, that means that in July the sun never sets, which we tested – positively – for ourselves.

There are no roads between Nuuk and Ilulissat (!), so it was back onto one of those small red planes to get up to the town. This is only a good thing as the views out the windows are spectacular – that is, if you manage to get a window seat: air tickets don’t come with an assigned seat as usual, so you have to be up front in the line. But that can be tricky, since they announce the gate number only in Danish, then English Greenlandic (again an example of Greenlandic laidbackness – but this time I wasn’t too happy about it).

We flew with a quick connection in Kangerlussuaq. And that’s where I got lucky: I was allowed to sit in the cockpit all the way to Ilulissat – sat in the third seat behind the other two :).

Read on: the rare cockpit views…

Get ready for lots of photos. Vast quantities of photos. For Greenland has vast quantities of natural, albeit harsh beauty: glaciers, the mountains they blanket and the icebergs that break off them.

I’ll get to glaciers and icebergs a little later, but for now, we’re off to study just ice. Not quite ‘icebergs’ but kinda mini-icebergs, micro-icebergs and nano-icebergs, which we’d already gotten a peek of in the port of Nuuk.

Read on: Fjords, iceberg climbing and… banya!

Oh my Greenland! An huuge island. It can nearly compete with whole continents on size! It’s just 3.5 times smaller than Australia. However, if the glaciers of Greenland continue to melt at their current rate, the island is going to rise up considerably once the weight of all that glacial ice is lessened. And since it’s rising faster than the level of the sea is rising, soon enough Greenland could join up with North America. They’ll have to install a land-based border with Canada before we know it!

Incidentally, the local guides here told us how dozens of years ago the height of Greenland would rise half a centimeter per year; however, last year, it rose 4.5 centimeters. Oh my Greenland, indeed!

But I’m here to tell you about something else today…

So. Here we are in the capital of Greenland – one of the smallest capital ‘cities’ in the world. Incidentally, you know what Greenland’s flag looks like? Here it is:

Read on: streets, houses, landscapes…

Kangerlussuaq. Probably the strangest international airport in the world. First off, try pronouncing it properly. Hardly slips off the tongue now does it? I had trouble with it too.

Next there’s its geographic and demographic strangeness…

Have you ever seen an international hub airport with a local population of just 500 folks? Not 500,000 – 500! Well, now I have :).

And have you ever seen an airport where for domestic flights there are no security checks whatsoever?! In you stroll, you check in, hand over your luggage, and then you can go walkabout – wherever, including back outside the airport! When your plane’s due you walk to it from wherever you are with no security hassle. A dream!

Ok. Here’s the answer to question No. 2:

Greenland is a very rocky country, and a very glacial one. So building an airport – where you need a good stretch of flat land for the runway itself plus no rockiness in the near vicinity to get in the way of airplanes’ coming in to land and taking off – is no easy task. They did find one spot however that was deemed suitable – Kangerlussuaq: a freak bit of flat bedrock sufficiently far away from the nearest cliffs. The only problem: the runway is a mere 2.8km long!

Read on: Nuuk and Ilulissat

By some quirk of fate I often fly across the North Atlantic. Europe-America-Europe; sometimes Asia-America-Europe; sometimes other, more exotic combinations. Example: sometimes I get to fly over Greenland. Sometimes this is at night – so nothing to report there. Other times it’s by day, but the weather’s typically polar and the visibility’s poor. But just sometimes, very occasionally, I get lucky: jetting over Greenland when it’s sunny and panoramic…

One such time for example was in July 2012: Crazy trip, crazy plane, crazy nice weather.

Fast forward to July 2016, and it’s crazy nice weather again up over the big green white land. But this time I wasn’t just flying over, I was to land and then stay a few days. Hurray!

Read on: inside, deeper, more and more …

As always for this ‘column‘, I’ll be giving you a round-up of some of the most eek recent items of cybersecurity news, which might not have made the headlines but which are no less eek for that. And as usual, it’s all mostly bad news. There are still a few reasons to be optimistic though – but only a few. Eek!

Uh-oh Cyber-News Item No. 1: The Future’s Arrived.

A screenshot from Blade Runner

Many authors like to fantasize about how things will be in the future. Often, science fiction writers come up with deep philosophical reflections upon man and his place in the Universe. There’s Russia’s Strugatsky brothers, there’s Philip K. Dick, and there’s Arthur C. Clarke (plus his ‘translator’ to the silver screen Stanley Kubrick), for example. And very often such deep philosophical reflection is rather bleak and scary.

Other times, the reflection is a little less deep and philosophical, but no less likely to one day lead to reality – in fact, oftentimes more so. This is where I make appearances!…

So. Back in the first decade of this century, during my presentations your humble servant liked to tell fun ‘scare’ stories about what could happen in the future. Example: a coffeemaker launches a DDoS attack on the fridge, while the microwave works out the factory PINs of the juicer so it can then show text-adverts on its digital display.

Fast forward less than a decade and such ‘sci-fi’ is coming true…

Read on: Computer worms rising from the dead…

The Starmus-ship Enterprise journeyed further – for a third, fourth and fifth day! Yes, five full days for one single conference – and me present for (almost) every presentation (of the first three days): a first for me.

I’ve grouped the last three days into one post as five posts on one conference would be a little OTT… and anyway, the last three days were slightly less jaw-droppingly intergalactic than the first two. They were still really something however, including several Starmus ‘star’ moments, including this one:

Stephen Hawking.

This clever chap hardly needs an introduction. He started out by telling us a Brief History of Time His Life. Of course, you can read all about that on Wikipedia, but it’s a lot better from the horse’s mouth. Actually, not from the horses’ mouth, and not from his own, but from software that scans his eyes and selects the required words to make sentences. This, plus the synthesized words over the sound system really made an impression. What a guy! An amazing character. Huge respect.

Read on: Check out these views!…