Comments View as Flat

1. 

   Tod Posted 11:55 am
   02 Oct 2006

   Great Interview

   Interesting and engaging enough to make me want to learn more about Patzert. Thanks!

   "Because the world doesn't matter if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch

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2. 

   Robert Delfs Posted 12:14 pm
   02 Oct 2006

   Thanks

   That was a wonderful interview with Patzert.  

   Robert Delfs

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3. 

   Biodiversivist Posted 1:07 pm
   02 Oct 2006

   Ditto

   He also hit the nail on the head with that Aspergers remark.

   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: www.saveourbiodiversity.com

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4. 

   dobermanmacleod Posted 5:32 pm
   02 Oct 2006

   Abrupt climate change imminent

   "WP: But, I'm not convinced that the climate system acts in a linear, intuitive way."

   Although GCMs (global climate models) are bias toward linear gradual change, ice cores taken from the Greenland ice caps suggest abrupt change.

   The earth's climate does not respond to forcing in a smooth and gradual way.  Complex systems like the atmosphere and ocean currents are known to move from one steady state to another with only very brief transitions in between.

   It is predictable that within a decade or two the climate will change abruptly from the mild Holocene of the last 10,000 years, to a more hot and dry climate that has been the cause of mass extinctions repeatedly in the past.

   "KS: Last week James Hansen, who has been called "America's top climatologist" by ABC News, and who in a major speech last December warned that "action must be prompt" on reducing greenhouse gas emissions if we hope to avoid a precipitous rise in global temperatures..."

   Abrupt climate changes are especially common in history when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly.  Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events.

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5. 

   bookerly Posted 7:16 pm
   02 Oct 2006

   Background music

   
      Great interview!  But, sigh, is anyone but the already committed really listening?

      Maybe we should require that everytime global warming is mentioned on tv, they play scary background music, the kind that everyone knows means something really bad is going to happen unless.....

   patrick

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6. 

   caniscandida Posted 8:42 pm
   02 Oct 2006

   new Anglophone and theological paradigms

   Whether or not it matters to anyone in the scientific, secular, agnostic, whatever, communities:

   1. "El Nin~o" is a Spanish noun.  So is "La Nin~a."  The second N is correctly written with a tilde, and is pronounced as the "ni" of English "onion."  (The tilde is regularly written above the N.  Unfortunately, because of the deficiencies of the operator of this keyboard, we can expect no better, currently, than that the tilde be placed immediately following the affected letter.  Any advice would be appreciated.)

   2. "El Nin~o" is a Spanish noun.  So is "La Nin~a."  According to a grave rule of linguistics governing many European languages, including the Romance languages, there must be grammatical agreement of case, number and gender between adjectives and the nouns they modify.  (Given the way the Romance languages evolved, we can forget about case.)  "El" and "la" both are the definite article, a kind of adjective, usually translated as "the" in English.  The former is masculine singular, the latter is feminine singular.  In Spanish, as in all Romance languages, the adjective modifying a noun must be made plural, along with the noun.  Hence, the plural of "El Nin~o" is not "El Nin~os," but rather "Los Nin~os."  The plural of "La Nin~a" is not "La Nin~as," but rather "Las Nin~as."

   3a. A theological curiosity: It is generally unknown who decided to name this vaguely periodic meteorological/climatological event "El Nin~o."  The Spanish words mean "The (male) Child," and there is reportedly some connexion to the first appearances of this globally diffuse phenomenon off the coast of the predominantly Catholic, Spanish-speaking country of Peru, around Christmas, when the Catholic Church in its liturgy celebrates the birth of the male Jewish child, Jesus.

   3b. More curious, theologically: If "El Nin~o" refers to both the Christ Child, and to the meteorological/climatological event, there is a grammatical schism: In the former sense, there can be only one "El Nin~o."  There is one and only one Christ Child.  In the latter sense, there can be multiple events so-called.  Properly, the plural of "El Nin~o" is "Los Nin~os" (and NOT the barbarous "El Ninos").  But "los Nin~os" is theologically bizarre, and perhaps offensive; there is only ONE Christ Child.  So, to refer to the plural subjects of meteorologists and climatologists, I would recommend "El Nin~o events," or "El Nin~o climate patterns," or something along those lines.

   3c. Even more curious, theologically: There is apparently some opposite global climatological/meteorological pattern which works in a way quite different from the El Nin~o pattern.  Some person, whether or not inspired by God, decided to call this opposite pattern "La Nin~a."  Fine, call it whatever you like, call it "Fred," or "Ethel," or "species 8472," you have a large menu of options.  But why in the world would scientists bother to create a pseudo-divine being?  A "female child," whom no one believes in?  That strikes me as horribly intellectually irresponsible.

   Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

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7. 

   mihan Posted 4:10 am
   03 Oct 2006

   stolen words, wicked felines

   Canis,

   I share your horror at the degradation of the language (I'm a teacher, so that horror is an everyday affair). However, in this case, one might argue (indeed, I shall) that "El Nin~os" is similar to "bureaus": we've taken the word into English, so we pluralize it as an English word.

   Also, as a scientist, I am just happpy any time a scientist writes a complete sentence. At least we tend to refer to "data" in the plural (my other pet peeve).

   Speaking of pets, this Friday I will have my cats (both the adorable-but-wicked and the well-behaved-but-surly) blessed by Lutherans. I will note any changes in disposition or behavior.

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8. 

   kmp Posted 4:41 am
   03 Oct 2006

   I'm with you, mihan.

   Data are people, data are. (Fill in the blank....  inconclusive... suggestive... indicative...depressing).

   The only time "data is" is appropriate is when you capitalize Data and place "lieutenant" before it.

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9. 

   bookerly Posted 10:53 am
   03 Oct 2006

   Grammar

   
      One of the interesting problems I have run into as an English teacher is the divergence of British and American English.

      The usages are quite different in many ways, and it makes what was already a convoluted grammar almost unintelligible.

      Interestingly, the two have been smushed together into one "English".

      So, I always start by telling my students that English grammar is terrible.  They feel better then, and we can proceed.

   patrick

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10. 

    mihan Posted 5:14 am
    04 Oct 2006

    grammar is a bitch

    Tell me about it! I went to British schools for the 7 years right before college, and I still can't spell "realise" correctly.

    Still: Data are. Media are.

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11. 

    Kit Stolz Posted 6:24 am
    05 Oct 2006

    species 8472

    You make a good point, Caniscandida--a whole bunch of them, actually. I especially appreciate you offering a solution to the el Nino/la Nina plural naming issue. (A accredited scientist at this point might observe that if you call this phenomenon ENSO, you wouldn't have this problem--but then I would say you'd have a different problem, one that might require a Ph.D to solve.) And with you I suspect someone who speaks Spanish and has worked in word processing programming may have solved have solved the tilde placing issue as well...for example, the LATimes uses the tilde properly.

    I am reluctant, however, to put the tilde within the word el nin~o, because that seems to me the grammatical of two wrongs not making a right.

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12. 

    caniscandida Posted 7:31 am
    05 Oct 2006

    the ethics of typography

    Dear Kit,

    I am not sure I fully appreciate everything you are saying, but I am anyway very happy that you wrote.

    I can read Spanish, and make myself understood in it, and sort of understand it, when it is spoken, if the Spanish-speaker is gentle with me, but make no claims beyond that.  (Announcements at, e.g., bus stations in Mexico City, go way over my head; fortunately lives are not at stake.)  "Word processing," yeah, I have heard of that.  "Programming," I have heard of that too.  "Word processing programming" is therefore not too conceptually difficult for me.  I mean, in terms of "that it exists"; in terms of "how it works," you might as well be asking me to drive Opportunity up on Mars from Pasadena.

    Presumably, Kit, you wanted to write, regarding placing the separate tilde just after an N (or a couple of vowels in Portuguese) which it ought to sit on top of, that this is "the grammatical [equivalent] of two wrongs not making a right"?  Well, OK, but if so, I only partly agree.  We do what we can with the tools at hand.  But you are right, in the sense that the people who would be most likely to see the tilde would not know what it means, and would not care about how to pronounce the N.

    The big issue for me, which few scientists have shown any interest in, is whether traditional human languages and linguistic practices matter in scientific vocabulary.  And that is OK.  As David Roberts might put it, they have "bigger fish to fry."  I would just point out that, seeing how globalized the scientific community really is, for a long time now, the American scientific community would presumably want to learn from the mistakes of the American government, foreign-policy-wise, and be helpful towards those who use languages other than English, and those who use scripts other than Roman, and be less assertive that English be the only language of international discourse.

    Actually, my understanding is that developing word-processing software for Chinese, and for the related but even more complicated Japanese, made much quicker progress than the languages written in the Arabic script.

    Well, there is that old lesson: follow the money.

    We classicists, once the most powerful people in every university, have devolved into Cinderellas, or match-seller-girls, passed by, overlooked, by one and all.  Printing classical Greek texts is similar basically, space-wise and direction-wise, to printing anything in Roman.  But, there is a formidable array of diacritical marks.  Almost every word has an accent -- and there are three different accents -- ; and every word that begins with a vowel, or a rho, has a breathing, rough or smooth.  So there are all sorts of combinations.  So that is seven times three times two, plus one.  Forty-three?  And the next job is making sure they print legibly, which is easier said than done.

    Curiously, Latin has no diacritical marks at all.  Could that be a clue to the Romans' imperial success?

    Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

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13. 

    caniscandida Posted 7:32 am
    05 Oct 2006

    iota subscripts!

    Oh, I forgot about them!  Gevalt!

    Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

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14. 

    Kit Stolz Posted 2:50 pm
    11 Oct 2006

    We have a winner!

    A newspaper editor kindly instructed me on how to place these marks within words used on the web.  

    Go to a program such as MS WORD. Go to "Keyboard Shortcuts for International Characters."

    Follow the instructions. For example, to put a tilde over a letter, go CTRL + SHFT + TILDE, then type the letter. Then copy + paste it from WORD to HTML.

    It works!

    I'm embarrassed I didn't know this.

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15. 

    caniscandida Posted 4:00 pm
    11 Oct 2006

    (testing ...)

    España

    México

    tête-à-tête

    That's brilliant!  Now I know something I did not know before!  Thanks ever so much, Kit!

    Of course, it involves a few steps and so takes a few seconds, and one will therefore need to decide if the clarity and accuracy are worth it.

    Knowing me, I probably would usually decide, Yes they are.

    Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

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