Sunday, June 04, 2017

Haifa Bay International Airport


Aviation progress was, in many cases, much faster than expected. Countries and cities that invested in this direction are booming. In twenty years, the number of passenger airplanes worldwide will double. This development is integrated into the transition to a knowledge economy, and the importance of human capital over material capital.
The maritime port cities have declined considerably as traditional employment centers. Modern shipping requires limited manpower, and except for tourism, it no longer deals with transporting passengers.
The State of Israel, which enjoys the aura of one of the world's most advanced air force and aviation industry, is at the end of the list in the number of airports per capita. The aviation industry is concentrated in the center of the country, around the congested Ben Gurion Airport. The Haifa-Acre metropolis remains behind, especially brcause of the petrochemical plants, which prevent the development of modern services and dense housing.
There are several alternatives throughout the State of Israel to a second for Ben Gurion Airport. In view of the opposition to Ramat David, each of them, with the exception of that in Haifa Bay, will cause the north of the country to decline. Haifa Bay airport may, through minimal investment, become a medium-sized international airport, and through a long-term investment in several stages to the complementary for Ben Gurion Airport in terms of size and services. This is because Haifa's runway has the potential for synergy with the sea port by integrating it as a long wavebreaker, which will greatly increase the area of ​​the sea port.
The spectacular amphitheater of Haifa Bay evokes a sense of heights, creating a constant stimulus for the viewers. The title most commonly associated with 'air' is 'free', and natural air is free air. One thing is clear: Haifa metropolis needs an international airport as breathing air.
Theodor Herzel predicted that Haifa would be the most developed city in the country, and the invention of the airplane. He stated that the Jewish state, like the airplane, would be based on the principle of movement. Without movement it would collapse quickly. Anyone who tries to deprive Haifa-Acre metropolis of the constant movement that the aerial city creates negates Herzel's vision. Every magical place has its uniqueness. The airplanes flying over Haifa Bay are the top of it's magic, like peace doves.




Haifa Bay International Airport - illustration





Saturday, June 03, 2017

Daedalus and Icarus

Here are some traditions, customs and modern cultural aspects regarding Daedalus and Icarus:

  • In Pliny's Natural History he is credited with inventing carpentry "and with it the saw, axe, plumb-line, drill, glue, and isinglass". 
  • Pausanias, in travelling around Greece, attributed to Daedalus numerous archaic wooden cult figures that impressed him: "All the works of this artist, though somewhat uncouth to look at, nevertheless have a touch of the divine in them."
  • It is said he first conceived masts and sails for ships for the navy of Minos. He is said to have carved statues so well they looked as if alive; even possessing self-motion. They would have escaped if not for the chain that bound them to the wall.
  • Daedalus gave his name to any Greek artificer and to many Greek contraptions that represented dextrous skill. At Plataea there was a festival, the Daedala, in which a temporary wooden altar was fashioned, and an effigy was made from an oak-tree and dressed in bridal attire. It was carried in a cart with a woman who acted as bridesmaid. The image was called Daedale and the archaic ritual given an explanation through a myth to the purpose.
  • In the period of Romanticism, Daedalus came to denote the classic artist, a skilled mature craftsman

  • In the period of Romanticism, Icarus symbolized the romantic artist, whose impetuous, passionate and rebellious nature, as well as his defiance of formal aesthetic and social conventions, may ultimately prove to be self-destructive. 
  • Stephen Dedalus, in Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" envisages his future artist-self "a winged form flying above the waves ... a hawk-like man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve”.
  • Ovid's treatment of the Icarus myth and its connection with that of Phaëthon influenced the mythological tradition in English literature as received and interpreted by major writers such as Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, and Joyce.
  • Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (ca. 1558), famous for relegating the fall to a scarcely noticed event in the background
  • In Renaissance iconography, the significance of Icarus depends on context: in the Orion Fountain at Messina, he is one of many figures associated with water; but he is also shown on the Bankruptcy Court of the Amsterdam Town Hall - where he symbolizes high-flying ambition. The 16th-century painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, traditionally but perhaps erroneously attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, was the inspiration for two of the 20th century's most notable English-language poems.
  • Literary interpretation has found in the myth the structure and consequence of personal over-ambition. An Icarus-related study of the Daedalus myth was published by the French hellenist Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux.
  • In psychology there have been synthetic studies of the Icarus complex with respect to the alleged relationship between fascination for fire, enuresis, high ambition, and ascensionism.
  • In the psychiatric mind features of disease were perceived in the shape of the pendulous emotional ecstatic-high and depressive-low of bipolar disorder. Henry Murray having proposed the term Icarus complex, apparently found symptoms particularly in mania where a person is fond of heights, fascinated by both fire and water, narcissistic and observed with fantastical or far-fetched imaginary cognition.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what can be collected and created regarding this myth. It can be related to modern political events:
  • The 2001 twin towers disaster.
  • Deadalus is an inspiration for Jesus Christ, who is depicted also with wings. The airplane shape is that of a cross in the sky, so it can explain modern Antisemitism.
  • Theodore Herzel envisioned the airplane as something which will be depended of movement in order to stay in the sky. He wrote a novel about the inventor of the flying machine who destroy it after it create wars. 
  • The decision to build or not to build an airport or an airplane.