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. ...

Patrick Lockerby

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 »

Arctic Ice July 2010 - Update #1

Jul 08 2010 | comment(s)

Arctic Ice July 2010 - Update #1

Before I write another line about ice, I want to thank all of my readers. Whether or not you leave comments, whether or not you link in other blogs, just knowing that I have so many readers gives me the encouragement to keep going: to keep up the standards I have set myself.

One of the standards I set for myself is to always remember just how much I don't know. We have much still to learn about the Arctic. Just when we think we know all there is to know, you can be sure that nature will remind us most harshly of our blind ignorance.

Arctic ice July update #1

Another Poetic Interlude

Jul 05 2010 | comment(s)

Another Poetic Interlude

Language is my first love.

When I discovered the joy of the scientific method I applied it to language.

The study of linguistics can be incredibly boring or a source of great joy. The choice is there to be made. It's a matter of approach. You can, perhaps, switch off your emotions and study with cold logic, or switch off the logic and get so emotional that you end up talking rubbish.

There is a third way.

Let logic map out the landscape, but let emotion decide which bit of it you are going to ramble through today, just for the sheer joy of it.

MODIS Rapidfire For Citizen Scientists - #4

Jul 04 2010 | comment(s)

MODIS Rapidfire For Citizen Scientists - #4

This is part #4 of a brief explanation of the NASA/GSFC MODIS Rapid Response System - Rapidfire - together with a Howto for citizen scientists. The first part was
MODIS Rapidfire For Citizen Scientists - #1

In this part, I describe some of the things to be seen in the MODIS images.

A Brit Celebrates July 4th

Jul 03 2010 | comment(s)

A Brit Celebrates July 4th

I've only been writing here for just over a year. From day one I have been made to feel very welcome, and I want to thank everyone here and all of my readers for that. Of course, Hank gets the biggest and bestest thank you.

But I want to go further. Science 2.0 gives me an intellectual freedom which can only exist where freedom of speech is cherished.

I was born just after WW2 had ended. I grew up knowing what a great debt I owed to the brave men and women of all nations who fought a tyranny under which I might never have learned the meaning of freedom.

Search For Franklin - A Free Resource

Jul 03 2010 | comment(s)

Search For Franklin - A Free Resource

Much of what was known about the Arctic before the 20th century came from the sheer guts and determination of men who didn't know how to quit.

The quest for a North West Passage was promoted by commercial and military considerations. After the loss of the Franklin Expedition with two entire ships' crews, a 'no expense spared' approach was taken to finding the lost expedition.

Many of the ships engaged in the search had to be abandoned due to the terrible conditions. Eventually, all hope of finding any member of the Franklin crews alive was abandoned.

Understanding Ice

Jul 02 2010 | comment(s)

Understanding Ice

Ice is just frozen water, right?

Wrong!

Now you will perhaps inquire with astonishment how it is possible that ice, which is the most brittle and fragile of substances, can flow in the glacier like a viscous mass; and you may perhaps be disposed to regard this as one of the wildest and most improbable statements that have ever been made by philosophers.
Hermann von Helmholtz, 1865

It's very difficult to make absolutely pure ice, even in the lab. Most especially in natural conditions, when ice forms it includes all sorts of chemicals and particles - and they affect its properties significantly, as does the water itself and the bottom topography.