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Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4 If not Latin, then what? Please see the links at...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3 Plants and the moon. For thousands of years, people...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2 An i for an i ? Not nymphs: women! There are...

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #1

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #1 Tom, Dick and Harry explain a statistical method. ...

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Patrick LockerbyRSS Feed of this column.

Retired engineer, 73 years young. Computer builder and programmer. Linguist specialising in language acquisition and computational linguistics. Interested in every human endeavour except the scrooge... Read More »

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Arctic Ice July 2011 - Update

Arctic Ice July 2011 - Update

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

Arctic Ice July 2011 - Update

Are we headed for another 2007 style crash ?

In my Arctic Ice March 2011 - Update #1,  I gave these figures for September minimum -
an extent below 4 million km2 is highly probable.
an extent below 3 million km2 is entirely possible if Arctic weather continues to follow the overall trends of the last decade.
In April I revised that, based on some projections from IARC - IJIS figures to -
I project an end of season extent range between 3.9 million km2 and 4.5 million km2.
The Scientific Method

The Scientific Method

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

The Scientific Method


    While I was working hard on my translation of the memoire of the illustrious Ignaz Venetz, I found that the need to indulge in some hermeneutic and other studies had me nicely side-tracked on more than one occasion.   In order to know what an author meant by his words of 1821, one must see how those words were used by his or her contemporaries.
Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer - #2

Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer - #2

Jul 20 2011 | comment(s)

Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer - #2


Ignaz Venetz was, in 1821, awarded a prize of 300 francs for his memoire by the Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft - the Swiss Natural Science Society.  It is my firm opinion that, accordingly, the date of publication should be cited as 1821: the date of the award of the prize, and not 1833 which was the date of its re-publication in a bound archive of science papers.
Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer

Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer

Jul 19 2011 | comment(s)

Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer

Climate has always changed - but we have not always known it.

Events following 1816 - the year without a summer - led to a major controversy in which the scientific consensus on the one hand was countered by dogma on the other.  On reading the history of that great controversy, one gets a strong sense of Déjà vu.
History Mystery #3 - Land, Law And Science

History Mystery #3 - Land, Law And Science

Jul 14 2011 | comment(s)

History Mystery #3 - Land, Law and Science

"Words are to the Anthropologist what rolled pebbles are to the Geologist — battered relics of past ages often containing within them indelible records capable of intelligent interpretation..."
John Herschel
Arctic Ice July 2011

Arctic Ice July 2011

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

Arctic Ice July 2011

For much of the written history of the Arctic, exceptional extents of open water were reported in terms of what the explorer, fisherman, whaler or sealer had previously experienced.  That would make such events likely every 20 to 30 years.  However, for each report of open ice in a specific area there is likely to be found in the archives a report from 180 degrees opposite across the pole of a greater than usual ice extent.