There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Bali topographic map

You don’t get a much more interesting Point of View than from a Space Shuttle, and that’s why this image of Mount Agung and Mount Batur is so impressive.

But that sort of got me wondering. What else - apart from any cheeky surveillance of course! - have NASA been up to in Indonesian skies?

And have they produced any other of those wonderful topographic maps with their Space Shuttle data?

Well, there aren’t, alas, any topographic maps of Java or Indonesia, but NASA have done one of Bali. And it’s truly impressive: the whole island of Bali beneath the Space Shuttle as it whizzes around the Earth some 300 km above…

Click on pic for full size image

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