Musings
Recently I encountered this article abstract, Virtual water: Virtuous impact? The unsteady state of virtual water (2007), by Dik Roth and Jeroen Warner, and the phrase “virtual water” sure caught my eye. What they mean is water needed for crop production, with the implication that if you get your food from elsewhere, the water needed to grow (and ship) that food comes from that environment, not locally to you. I first encountered this concept, absent the catchy name, when a guide we had in Tanzania observed that flowers grown in Africa and shipped to the voracious flower markets in Europe meant Africa was effectively exporting water since flowers take so much to grow to the blooming stage. Anyway, having yesterday driven through flooding in Ohio and water sluicing in ditches in Kentucky, while thinking about the drought here in Georgia, water’s been on my mind.
To reduce the amount of virtual water you consume (or cause to be used), consider following Michael Pollan’s prescription: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (Pollan’s link, and a NYTimes article….)
Today’s vocabulary: iteroparous
Applies to organisms that reproduce more than once during their lifetimes. Examples include mammals, perennial plants. Iteroparous plants are more common in the tropics. In contrast, semelparous organisms reproduce only once in a lifetime. In general, semelparous species will produce more offspring from their single breeding event than iteroparous species. Iteroparity appears to be an adaptation to environmental (and thus reproductive) uncertainty.
I thought this a fine word (well, pair of words) for springtime….
Posted at 6:14 PM |
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…the bees didn’t stay in one place long enough to have their picture taken….
Actually, this may be a pear and not an apple; still both are within Rosaceae…so, I guess I shoulda thought more ’afore I labeled this Malus….
Today’s vocabulary: bloom
Among its meanings, bloom as a noun has somewhat contradictory references both 1) to being in the state of flowering, and 2), to the light, powdery (natural) surface deposit on leaves or the skin of fruit, e.g., apples, plums, grapes. So, in the growth sequence of Malus (and other species), bloom can be used twice—at least.
Posted at 4:18 PM |
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To a great degree, our vocabularies reflect the kinds of things we feel a need to express. In other words (haha), the words we originate, use and keep current in our languages reflect the things we feel a need to say. Thus, unfamiliar words judged archaic by our dictionaries are words for things we no longer talk about—or for things for which we have other or newer terminology.
One category of words that are now uncommon in American English refer to landscape features. A quick glance at place names across the British Isles reveals myriad examples, which include holm, -stead, and heath. Suffixes -bridge and -ford remain current in our vocabularies and thus are self-explanatory.
Today’s vocabulary*: holm
a flat piece of ground adjacent to a river that floods when the water level is high
Today’s vocabulary: -stead
suffix referring to place or town, of Germanic origin and related to the Dutch stad
Today’s vocabulary: heath
an area of open, uncultivated land vegetated with low vegetation like gorse, heather, and grasses [differs from forests or cultivated lands, for example]
* Definitions adapted from Apple dictionary.
Posted at 6:40 PM |
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Ok. Here’s another popular culture version of prehistory, this one the movie 10K BC. With trepedation, I checked out the NYTimes review and immediately a word I’d never seen before jumped out at me. Was this an archaeology term I’d missed (and how?)? Or popular culture I’d missed—maybe a insurance commercial or two?
Ah, Google informed me—the latter. A.O. Scott’s word snuffleupagus is a lower-case corruption of the name of a character on Sesame Street, Aloysius Snuffleupagus—a superhuman sized puppet that looks something like a tuskless mammoth/mastodon.
And, yet, Scott uses the word as if it is a synonym for mammoth/mastodon, or as if it is a real species term:
…the Yagahl, a tribe of snuffleupagus hunters…
and:
…the big, climactic fight, complete with an epic snuffleupagus rampage…
FYI NYT and A.O. Scott: mammoth≠mastodon≠ snuffleupagus (or even Snuffleupagus).
Note: this etymological snafu bothered me so much I was distracted from the other prehistoric misinformation I’m sure the movie dispenses….
Posted at 11:39 AM |
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Hey, this was the closest I could come to the “name in lights” theme from our archive of personal photos….
Today’s theme: friends making splashes (aka excellent adventures!)….
First, last night. Rey was on Jeopardy. Came in second! From all I hear, when you’re up, the key wrinkle is more the button to ring in than anything else—the limiting factor certainly is not what you know.
And this morning: Nancy figured out that a White House PR person (“senior White House aide”) had plagiarized, and not at all subtly, and broke the story on her blog. 235 comments as of this post. And more plagiarism uncovered. So far, the White House response is disappointment. Elsewhere, comments are already up on the Washington Post page and I understand the issue has been mentioned in the Situation Room. And, of course, JCB has commented extensively, wisely, and with erudition….
KUDOS to Rey and Nancy!
Posted at 6:27 PM |
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Except for the pixellation, perhaps this could have been in the exhibition we saw yesterday…but it’s grabbed from Google Earth, and is of the Iranian coast just west of the Strait of Hormuz, tipped for a low-angle view….
In June the U.P. is a semitropical bug farm.
That’s Jim Harrison in Returning to Earth (2007; pg. 78), and he’s so right! Although not always—he also says the Seney stretch is 50 miles, but I think it’s quite a bit less. Like high 20s. I guess if you’re on a bicycle, though, it may well feel like fifty miles!
You may know Harrison as the author of Legends of the Fall or Wolf (both made into movies), or possibly from his non-fiction writing about food and cooking. I cleave more to his fiction pieces set in Michigan or Oklahoma.
Today’s vocabulary: cleave
Interesting word meaning either to split/sever or to adhere (both verbs, notice). Opposite meanings…I meant the latter…. I guess the clue is the “cleave to” phrasing; with “to” cleave almost always means to adhere/be attached.
Posted at 1:19 PM |
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…from the mountains last weekend…
This morning I noticed it’s getting light earlier—for the first time in this winter-ending portion of the annual seasonal cycle.
Today’s vocabulary: part/fragment/segment…
The whole is equal to the sum of its parts—part being a general term for any of the components of a whole. But how did the whole come apart? Fragment suggests that breakage has occurred (fragments of pottery) and often refers to a brittle substance such as glass or pottery. Segment suggests that the whole has been separated along natural or pre-existing lines of division (a segment of an orange), and section suggests a substantial and clearly separate part that fits closely with other parts to form the whole (a section of a bookcase). Fraction usually suggests a less substantial but still clearly delineated part (a fraction of her income), and a portion is a part that has been allotted or assigned to someone (her portion of the program). Finally, the very frequently used piece is any part that is separate from the whole.
…definition from the Apple Dictionary, of course….
Posted at 6:17 PM |
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We saw at least five semis pulled over by cops on our way north on I-75 (spanning Tennessee to Ohio—not clustered), and I wondered if there were reports of contraband.
Today’s vocabulary: contraband
Mac’s dictionary says origin late 16th century: from Spanish contrabanda, from Italian contrabando, from contra- ‘against’ + bando ‘proclamation, ban.’
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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This year’s tree’s last night all gussied up….
Commit. That’s an interesting word. It can be that feeling dedication angle (adjective), or range across perpetuate, pledge and entrust/consign (as a verb).
Tonight I stayed up late to see what came down in New Hampshire, and got to thinking about committed and its cousins overcommitted and uncommitted.
But it’s too late for me to compose more than this….
Posted at 11:38 PM |
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From the Chihuly exhibit at the ATL Bot Garden several years ago…glass, fragile, get it?
I have to agree with George McGovern (here, in the Washington Post) that Bush and Cheney (say Chee-nee not Chay-nee) have repeatedly lied to the American people. Whom they claim to protect. Whose best interests they say they have at heart.
From what I’ve read, it sure sounds like Bush and his staff “have transgressed national and international law” (is going beyond the bounds of the same as broken? seems like it; but maybe not to lawyers…).
Sure sounds impeachable. And more….
So why is most of the national media ignoring all this in a furor about elections in several states (not Wyoming, did you notice that?) that won’t turn out enough delegates to make any diffence at the conventions? Yes, momentum is a real thing, but the media portrays such a biased picture of these votes….
Have we, the American people, so lost track of what we expect of our elected officials (stewardship of the public good while maintaining the public trust) that we permit Bush to stay in the White House without a formal finger raised against him, and evaluate the next set of candidates for the office of President based not on their policies (mostly) and quality of their advisors and the people they make their immediate subordinates?
Today’s vocabulary: pluvious
(adjective) characterized by heavy rainfall; rainy
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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