We, Paleface?

(Tonto's response to the Lone Ranger's Indians, Tonto. Hundreds of them. We're in trouble now.)

A while ago I wrote (here)

...whenever a dictionary says 'origin unknown' it's a fairly safe bet that a non-Roman writing system was involved. In fact, 'origin unknown' is a bit  like the geographer's terra incognita and 'Here be dragons'; it's a euphemism for 'outwith the scope of traditional scholarship'; and it's not a final sentence.

This is reminiscent of a trick question I remember from my schooldays:  

What was the biggest island in the world before Australia was discovered? 
Answer: Australia.

My point is that whenever someone does something, someone else may well have got there first. That Ecclesiastes bloke was right: There is nothing  new under the Sun. While we're on the subject of islands, I wrote here about how the Portuguese visited the island of Leiname in the early fifteenth century and named it Madeira.

Lignum is the root of the Spanish leño, and † ^{[not that simple...]} materia is the root of the Portuguese madeira (no prizes, by now, for recognizing metathesis here – the r and the i. This commonplace in language development is the subject of one of my more popular backnumbers.)

A Castilian monk (again not the first, but possibly – except for an alleged visit by the Vikings – the first in the post-Roman world) 'discovered' the island too:

...[A] Castilian monk also identified the location of the islands in their present location, with the names Leiname (modern Italian legname, cognate of Portuguese madeira, "wood"), Diserta and Puerto Santo.

So says Wikipedia, and I don't have time to trace it back to a sounder source. 

Then along came the Portuguese and spat in their beer (as it were)... 

† This is not to say that this is the only word. Among the options, Spanish has madera and Portuguese has lenho. By changing the name, Portugal was not saying 'A feeg for your feelthy leño. We are calling it Madeira, to remove all trace of your influence.' They were simply asserting their right to change the name, or perhaps covering their tracks – 'This isn't what others have known as Leiname, it's Madeira' changing the name so as to stake their claim – in the way of all colonizing powers.

In their defence though, one should remember that in those days there was no international maritime registry – they weren't to know.

I was reminded of this by Jim Al Kalili's Science and Islam earlier this week (that's when I saw it, although it first aired  in 2009). He thought (as did many [all?] educated Westerners, that Egyptology began in the 19th century with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. But remember my ...it's a fairly safe bet that a non-Roman writing system was involved. About 40 minutes in, the learned professor...

<digression>
I'm drawn to the idea of Jim Al-Kalili having an evil alter ego called Midge Acid-id. The gag (if that's the word, perhaps I should just say conceit) works better with IPA  symbols:

Jim/Midge => /ʤɪm mɪʤ/

</digression>

...starts a quite lengthy piece about how Arabic scholars deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics much earlier. (I would quantify that much but my sound card is busy with other things...).

Speaking of which, I could be watching the cricket.   Stay tuned for an update about the word algorithm.

b

PS
And here are a few more clues:

• Reportedly, be accompanied by a criminal intermediary and be affronted – (4, 7)
• An amount worthy of consideration amidst your alternate arrangement – (1,4,3)
• Like the sky, learn cue after improvisation  – (8)

Update: 2017.07.10.12:15 – Added PPS

PPS

I promised an update about algorithm, and here it is. In the ninth century, long before William the Bastard conquered Britain, there lived a mathematician in a town now called Khiva. His name, according to one of the Oxford Dictionaries – Dominus illuminatio mea might as well be Dominus obscuratio mea when it comes to trying to work out just who is telling you something (anyway, the source is here) – whose name made its way into the catalogues of libraries that used Roman script as "al-Ḵwārizmī ‘the man of Ḵwārizm’".

<digression>
Long-time readers of this blog may remember about al being the definite article, marking many borrowings from Arabic, especially ones that came to English via Spain (whose Moorish invaders spoke Arabic as a second language). This explains why the Italian for sugar  is zucchero (as the Arab invaders of Italy through Sicily had Arabic as a mother-tongue), whereas Spanish and Portuguese words for sugar are azúcar and açúcar, bearing the trace of an article: Do you take the sugar in your coffee?

(As Etymonline says

sugar (n.)

late 13c., sugre, from Old French sucre "sugar" (12c.), from Medieval Latin succarum, from Arabic sukkar, from Persian , from Sanskrit sharkara "ground or candied sugar,"...

The Arabic root of sugar has no vowel before the s.)

</digresssion>

This man introduced the idea of solving problems in principle – without reference to specific values. The system he used involved formulating an <insert-word-here> and applying it to the problem. The rest is left as an exercise for the reader. :-)

Update: 2018.03.20.13:30 –  Added PPPS

PPPS Not before time, the answers to those clues (in PS): TAKE OFFENCE,  A TIDY SUM, CERULEAN

And this PPPS gives me tho opportunity to say a bit more about metathesis in Portuguese (which, you may remember, I mentioned in the context of the Latin  MATERIA becoming Portuguese Madeira). Whenever ...

<GENERALIZATION TYPE="questionable">
??? Maybe there are a few exceptions, but certainly nearly always.
</GENERALIZATION>

...you find an -eiro or -eira ending in Portuguese (that is, pretty often) you can trace it to an -ARIU(M) or -ARIA(M) ending, where the i and the r have swapped places.

And only man is vile

<apologia_pro_subject_line_sua>
(But the island in question is not Heber's "Ceylon" (isle...vile is the rhyme); it is on Henderson Island that

In vain with lavish kindness

The gifts of God are strown

Source

Besides, that lavish kindness doesn't really work, and I doubt if The Big Fellah would be in a hurry to claim discarded Tizer bottles as part of his bounty.)

But I'm getting off the subject. Ahem...
</apologia_pro_subject_line_sua>

I spotted this sub-head in a Guardian article on Monday.

Henderson Island, part of the Pitcairn group, is covered by 18 tonnes of plastic – the highest density of anthropogenic debris recorded anywhere in the world

Anthropogenic debris. Take a moment to consider that phrase. The article goes on:

The largest of the four islands of the Pitcairn Island group, Henderson Island is a Unesco World Heritage Listed site and one of the few atolls in the world whose ecology has been practically untouched by humans.

The island exhibits remarkable biological diversity given it covers only 3,700 hectares, with 10 endemic species of plant and four land bird species. Its isolation had, until recently, afforded it protection from most human activities...

...The threat to biodiversity posed by plastic debris has come under increased scrutiny as findings reveal the extent of the problem, with millions of tonnes ending up in the ocean every year.

The natural world has put up a brave response  to this assault.  Hermit crabs, for example, have started using bits of this debris to stand in for empty shells. On the face of it, this is a Good Thing – reuse rather than refuse. But a member of a research group working on the island, interviewed for the Guardian article, reported finding

...  hundreds of crabs living in rubbish such as bottle caps and cosmetics jars, and has been told of one living inside a doll’s head.

“From the looks on people’s faces, it was quite grotesque,” she said. “That was how I felt about all these crabs – we are not providing them a home, this is not a benefit to them.

“This plastic is old, it’s brittle, it’s sharp, it’s toxic. It was really quite tragic seeing these gorgeous crabs scuttling about, living in our waste.”

<digression>

Hermit-crab chain, about 6/7 minutes in

By the way, while  we're on the subject of hermit crabs, I recommend this Natural World programme, part of which deals with an  informal house-swapping chain formed by a sequence of different-sized hermit crabs, with the biggest finding a new shell and all the others swapping theirs for the next size up.
</digression>

But a solution could be provided by the natural world. At the end of April 2017 an article in Current Biology reported on Polyethylene bio-degradation by caterpillars of the wax moth Galleria mellonella a title that rather telegraphs the message (and promises a less than inviting overview of the research). I admit that I was more inclined to read about a Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting biodegradable solution to plastic pollution in a piece in the University of Cambridge's Research review.

This very hungry caterpillar produces "something that breaks the chemical bond, perhaps in its salivary glands or a symbiotic bacteria in its gut", says Paulo Bombelli, a Cambridge researcher and co-author of the article.

...the degradation rate is extremely fast compared to other recent discoveries, such as bacteria reported last year to biodegrade some plastics at a rate of just 0.13mg a day. Polyethylene takes between 100 and 400 years to degrade in landfill sites.  "If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, its reproduction on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be achievable," said Cambridge's Paolo Bombelli...

...As the molecular details of the process become known, the researchers say it could be used to devise a biotechnological solution on an industrial scale for managing polyethylene waste.

So it looks as if we might not need to go as far as Mars to do our terra-forming. Maybe we can do it on Earth. Hang on though, that doesn't make much sense: TERRA-forming on Earth?  Holy pleonasm, Batman.

b
And here's a clue:

• Buy on favourable terms – in other words, credit. (7)
  

Update: 2017.05.30.22:45 – Added PS.

PS I imagine Mr (Signor?) Bombelli is one of the overseas students who could do with a guarantee of continued residence. I wish the Brexit preparations would pay more attention to this sort of thing.

Oh yes, and the answer to that clue: BELIEVE.

Update: 2017.06.19.10:45 – Added PPS.

PPS The blog has gone quiet for a bit, but I’m still here. A recent article has added some background to this story:

More here.

We can only hope that Galleria mellonella can stand the cold.

<digression>

A photograph by Dr Waller caught my attention for two reasons, one of which has nothing to do with with pollution – though the use of a pound coin for scale is an intesting multi-layered metaphor (about the link between environmental damage and getting and spending)

The second, and totally irrelevant reason was that it reminded me of a recent conversation I had with an old (not to say coæval) friend about the similarity between the new coin  and the old threepenny bit – though, when I compare the two, Browning‘s Far brighter than that gaudy melon flower comes to mind. 

I can think of no more polyphonic word (to abuse the term in my own Humpty-Dumpty-esque way – I mean pronounced in many different ways). The first syllable could have any of four vowel sounds:

• /ɪ/ as in thrips
• /ʊ/ as in whoops
• /ʌ/ as in trundle
• /e/ as in rep

But not, of course /i:/ as in three. 

</digression>

Update: 2017.08.16.14:55 – Added PPPS.

PPPS – Three months after this original post, Scientific American has caught up, with quotes from Spain's Institute of Biomedicine & Biotechnology of Cantabria (a happy echo of Universitas Cantabrigiensis) and the University of Tennessee. I can only imagine that a combination of Trump and Brexit will further slow down the dissemination of news about scientific research – particularly if it has environmental impact.

Whalemeat again

At the weekend a story that has been around for many years... poked its head  above the parap... no, wrong metaphor in the circumstances... surfaced again: the Earth has a [proposed – not everyone agrees. although the arguments strike me as pretty sound] eighth continent.

The Independent seemed utterly convinced, going for the indicative (There is"):

Zealandia: There is a previously unknown, submerged continent around New Zealand, say scientists

The Guardian, not atypically, went for the mangled idiomatic phrase (here):

Zealandia – pieces finally falling together for continent we didn't know we had

Surely,  things "come together" or "fall into place". I wonder what falling together involves. The British National Corpus notes 13 instances (run the search here), but they are all just juxtapositions of a verb and a preposition – not a brand-new phrasal verb.

<digression>
Which reminds me – that song I was going to write about sentences changing horses in mid-stream

...I must go and give some thought to a song inspired by David Crystal's IATEFL keynote on 'blends' (or as he said, to give it the $10 word, anacoluthon). It is based on the song sung, but not written, by the Beatles – Anna; the lead-singer sings 'Ana-' and the backing singers join in, to move the tune to the relative minor, '-coluthon'.

It's still on the back-burner (a pretty crowded one).
</digression>

The good ol' Beeb (... and how DARE that clown [the incumbent, if that's the mot juste, of the Presidency; perhaps encumbrance ...] accuse them of inaccuracy?) took a more measured view, going for the question

Zealandia: Is there an eighth continent under New Zealand?

... although under is not quite right, unless Europe could be said to be under Switzerland.

Just a week earlier, a horribly sad drama had played out on New Zealand's Farewell Spit (which takes the unintended irony prize for nominal determinism). As that report says:

The reasons for beachings remain a mystery. Explanations range from marine noise pollution to suicides, and NASA is even investigating whether solar storms could mess with whales’ navigation. But geography could certainly be a factor, considering several known stranding blackspots share characteristics.

This site considers the possible interference of magnetism:

Animals are known to figure out direction over long distances from the Earth's magnetic field or the direction of the sun. For instance, researchers of tiger sharks and thresher sharks recently said cues from Earth's magnetic fields may [sic. "be", probably] what enables those sharks to orient themselves and travel spot-on toward a far target.

See more here

<digression type="amateur_forensic_typography"> 
Perhaps the author wrote the one word  "maybe", as I'm afraid many people do. The desk-editor marked it with a "/" to signify the word-break,  rather than use the standard symbol:

Then whoever edited the final text (in the old days it would have been a compositor, but now it's more probably an unpaid intern) misinterpreted the – perhaps slightly misplaced – "/" mark as a deletion.

(Reading it back for sense was above their pay-grade.)
</digression>

But this blog avers – with unconvincing certainty – that the problem is something to do with air pressure.

But whales [sic]  scientists will not [sic – oh now I get it, it's them durn "experts" again]  tell you that barotrauma in the air sinuses of mass stranded whales and dolphins causes echo-navigation system failure. They know for a fact [ !!! my emphasis  – this is the unmistakable sign of a bar-room know-all ] that the air contained in odontoceti cranial air spaces serves underwater to bounce, channel, reflect, isolate, send, and otherwise direct the returning echoes these animals use to navigate and find their food.

Oh dear. With "writing" of this lamentable calibre, no wonder people are confused.  The "writer" must want people not to understand.

In other words, nobody knows. And I haven't found even speculative finger-pointing at, say, micro-waves or underwater cables or any other man-made techno-pollutant. Plastic waste is the the closest candidate, but there's nothing high-tech about simple suffocation Note, this is not an Official Rumour. I don't want to start well-meaning environmentalist fanatics demonstrating against the coastal siting of cell-towers or anything of the kind..

But certainly, to judge by the noise my computer makes when I get a text (SMS), it seems to me that it's at least worth considering the possibility that something man-made (not land forms or solar wind or any of those other inanimate scapegoats – Not me guv) might have something to do with it.

Meanwhile the horrific and pathetic regular beachings go on, with  well-intentioned volunteers working around the clock to keep stranded whales alive until they can be refloated, just to see the disoriented beasts turn round and beach themselves again.

So perhaps the new continent should continue to keep its head down, as it were.  Being out of the way of man-made interference seems to me like a reliable survival strategy.

Time for bed.

b


PS And here are a couple of clues, with a certain thematic coherence.

• Herd, by the sound of it, of erzast wildebeest? Stuff and nonsense! (4, 4)
  
• I'm Trump, starting to peter out, confusingly – totally unrehearsed. (9)

Update: 2018.01.07.15:15 – Cossword answers: FAKE NEWS and IMPROMPTU.

Islands again

Some years ago I posted here about islands; it must have been quite a while ago, as it was occasioned by a visit to an Open Day at Silchester, and they have been a thing of the past for a year or two (maybe three – time gets quicker at a certain age, in an ironic reversal of an arrow [which gets slower and slower, having no doubt heard about Xeno). But I've been thinking about islands again  – in the context of elephants and Cyclops.

Somewhere on Radio 4 last week a woman spoke about dwarf elephants (and iPlayer's indexing algorithm isn't good enough to remind me of who she was).

Dwarf elephants are prehistoric members of the order Proboscidea which, through the process of allopatric speciation on islands, evolved much smaller body sizes (around 1.5-2.3 metres) in comparison with their immediate ancestors. Dwarf elephants are an example of insular dwarfism,...

Also sprach Wikipedia.

But the woman on the radio didn't mention Cyclops – a strange omission, given that the "fact" (some doubt there, I suspect?) is so succulent. Perhaps she didn't mention it because she has an academic haughtiness about the story. But Wikipedia had no such fastidiousness:

...it has been suggested by the palaeontologist Othenio Abel in 1914,^[3] that the finding of skeletons of such elephants sparked the idea that they belonged to giant cyclopses, because the center nasal opening was thought to be a cyclopic eye socket.

A studio guest asked why dwarfism happened on islands. I'm sorry to have to be so reliant on Wikipedia, but iPlayer has let me down::

...large terrestrial vertebrates (usually mammals) that colonize islands evolve dwarf forms, a phenomenon attributed to adaptation to resource-poor environments and selection for early maturation and reproduction.

... Not that "large". In 2003 a fossil was found on the island Flores. Homo Floresiensis, was known by some more fevered journalists as 'the hobbit'.

<autobiographical_note> 

In the late '80s or early '90s, with Reading Haydn Choir, I sang Stanford's The Revenge, a Ballad of the Fleet. The libretto,  was written by Alfred Lord Tennyson  (the hosts of that wiki – IMSLP  – are presumably politically hostile to all that lickspittle bowing and scraping, as they call him plain "Alfred Tennyson"; I've referred to this strenuous egalitarianism before, in connection with the word titled [see the rant in red here].)

But the opening words of that piece are "In Flores, in the Açores" (which leads me to suspect that Tennyson didn't know much about pronouncing Portuguese, FWIW), and I remember, when Homo Floresiensis was discovered in 2003, wondering if it was the same Flores. (It's not. BTW  – unless HMS Revenge was fighting off the coast of Indonesia. :-) )

In a later Reading Haydn Choir concert I sang Handel's Acis and Galatea, with the Cyclops Polyphemus represented by a very agile bass. [Keep up. keep up; I mentioned Cyclops a while back.]

</autobiographical_note>  

Homo Floresiensis is thought by some experts (I haven't kept abreast of all the arguments, though I think there are several theories [with one having Homo Floresiensis descended from an as yet undiscovered small ape]) to have been a descendant of Homo Erectus subjected to insular dwarfism.

Ho hum time for bed.

b
 PS And here's a clue:

Thus might Spooner keep the con-artist apart from the aviatrix, we hear. (8,3,5,4,3,5)

Update 2016.09.25.15:05 – Added PPS

PPS And another:

Bad-mouth trendy food shop first, with malice aforethought. (10)

Update 2016.10.25.16:25 – Added PPPS

PPS: The answers: SEPARATE THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF ;  DELIBERATE