Equipo Williams

We’re out of Brazil and in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  We’re catching up on updates and blogs and stuff, but we beached pretty hard in Florianopolis.  The highlight of the change in countries has been dealing with the Argentinian economy and inflation.  Our first night here, the kids asked what the exchange rate was and we responded that we weren’t quite sure.  They asked us to Google it, to which Jessie replied, “well, it depends on how we pay, and when”.  It’s all true; we’ll cover it soon.

The car is on the water.  We’ve got a few weeks left before our reunion: the MSC Tavvishi took her sweet time sailing down the east coast and is now on her way to Brazil.  There are a few port calls before Montevideo and we’re hoping to see our car just after Thanksgiving.

And finally: Santos-Dumont, the Man, the Legend.  While we were in Sao Paulo waiting for a connection, we spotted this 737 painted as tribute to the 150th birthday of Santos-Dumont.  Pictures of airplanes painted on other airplanes. Looks pretty good.

And finally, the Intersection of Astronomy and Vexillology.  We all know that Brazil has a pretty great flag: iconic, great colors, we can ignore the use of words (which have no place on flags), et cetera.  One of the design elements on the flag is a star for each state and district in Brazil.  Instead of putting the stars in a boring geometric pattern, they’re laid out in constellations that would be visible from the southern hemisphere.  But that’s not all!  They’re laid out with respect to a specific time and place: 

“The constellations appearing on the National Flag correspond to the appearance of the sky, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, at 8:30 am on November 15, 1889 (twelve sidereal hours) and must be considered as seen by an observer located outside the celestial sphere.” 

https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Leis/L5700.htm

Now of course it’s not perfect and it’s not like they have an accurate star chart on the flag, but still! Pretty neat that they’d try to tie in the national history to the arrangement of the universe. I’m still trying to figure out why they chose a vantage outside the celestial sphere, maybe from the standpoint of God looking down on Rio?

And finally, the Intersection of Notaphily and Geopolitics. The aforementioned Argentinian Peso notes feature a map of Argentina on them.  The map not only includes the Malvinas (which is to be expected: even some of the city buses here have “Los Malvinas son argentinas” stickers on them), but also the Argentine Antarctic.  Apparently seven countries have made territorial claims in Antarctica, Argentina being one of them.  Their claim partially overlaps with the claims of Chile and the UK.  Back to the money: on their bills, Argentina shows a map of their territory which includes three separate, contested regions.  Bold move, Argentina.  I like it.