The grandma of climate science

Last week's Inside Science dealt with the digitization programme that after nearly ten years has yielded a website that makes available online all the journals and many other associated documents from the archives of the Royal Society, dating back to its earliest activities over 350 years ago

Established in 2014, 'Science in the making' is an ambitious digitisation programme that aims to make archival material related to the publication of the Society’s scientific journals available online to all. On this website you can discover the complex material that lies behind the published articles: peer reviews, correspondence, photographs, illustrations and early drafts.

Source

This clearly deserves a Tezzy nomination (regular readers will recognize this as a virtual [that is, non-existent, except in my fevered brain] award for a time-wasting website [numerosissimi...

<rantette> 

Incidentally, why can't people stress these Italianate superlatives as nature intended, that is (ahem) proparoxytonically (on the third from last syllable). There was, until the pandemic put them out of business, a short-lived beauty parlour in Spencers Wood with the (odious, incidentally) name "Blissimi".

<autobiographical-note> 

I remember when they were recruiting before the launch. They asked for full cv, references, AND A PHOTOGRAPH. They might just as well have said

Ugly people need not apply. 

</autobiographical-note>

They clearly didn't exclude the ugly in spirit, who said they worked at "Blissimi".
</rantette>

 ...]).But it was not until 1945 that the Royal Society admitted women as full members (there had previously been some sort of Associate Fellowship). I suppose it took the 2nd World War to convince the members that women were capable of more than housework and child-rearing

Nearly a month ago I missed an edition of the BBC's excellent The Climate Question. As it says in the blurb:

In 1856, an American woman called Eunice Newton Foote discovered that higher levels of carbon dioxide would warm the planet. But credit for discovering climate change was given to someone else who made the same discovery three years later.

We celebrate Foote's role in early climate science by recreating her little-known experiment and asking if there are some voices that continue to be overlooked in climate science today - and how we overcome these climate blind spots.

Three years later, John Tyndall (who had the advantage of a Y chromosome rather than a second X, as well as being a Fellow of the Royal Society) did a similar experiment, and was subsequently dubbed 'The father of climate science.'

The first contributor to this podcast, Alice Bell, describes Eunice's experiment in her book Our Biggest Experiment:

Her experiment was reasonably simple. She placed two glass cylinders by a window and planted a thermometer in each of them. Using a pump to remove some of the air from one of the cylinders, she found it didn't catch the heat as well as the other. From this, she figured out the density of the air had an impact on the power of the Sun's rays. This made sense - after all, everyone knew it was colder at the top of high mountains. After comparing a cylinder of moist air with one that had been dried, she found the Sun's rays were more powerful in damper conditions. This wasn't surprising either, as she commented in her notes:

'Who has not experienced the burning heat of the Sun that precedes a summer's shower?' Thirdly, and crucially for our story, she tried filling one cylinder with carbon dioxide. This had the biggest impact: the cylinder became noticeably much hotter and took a lot longer to cool down after the experiment had ended. She concluded, almost in passing: 'An atmosphere of that gas would give to our Earth a high temperature.'

'WOULD give.'  167 years ago. But the Monstrous Regiment of XY-ers careered on in their self-perpetuating death spiral. As Byron put it 'And if I laugh 'tis that I may not weep' (Don Juan quotes Best Before May 1970).

Perhaps Eunice should be dubbed 'the grandma of climate science'. 

That's all for now.

b

PS

I would have preferred to illustrate this post with a photo of Eunice Newton Foote. Tellingly, though, there isn't one. The only photographs of American women in the 19th century were of the "Get back in the wagon, woman" sort, with their husband's hand on their right shoulder and their left hand on the right shoulder of the oldest of a befuddling string of children. I'll have to content myself with not using a photo of Tyndall.

Update: 2023.06.09.14:15 – Added PPS

PPS Come to think of it, the snub is a bit more snubby if I use this picture:

Alice Bell

I Was Glad, take 3

When Hubert Parry set verses from Psalm 122 (Laetatus Sum) for  the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 the text of the middle section read

Vivat Rex Eduardus

...

Vivat! Vivat! Vivat!

It was revised for George VI, for Elizabeth II, and for Charles III (as listeners/spectators last Saturday will have heard).

In Latin, 'May he live" is Vivat, traditionally pronounced – in this context – in what Wikipedia calls 'a variant known as Anglicised Latin' though I'm not convinced about the 'Anglicised' bit. It's the traditional seventeenth to early twentieth century English pronunciation: /vaɪvæt/. This section is officially known as "The Acclamation", less formally known in choral circles as "The Vivats".

But more often than not, in concerts, the Vivats are not included, and some listeners (though not singers) are surprised by Parry's abrupt change of mood

In I Was Glad, take 2, I mentioned

 ...an ad for a concert I had missed, at Truro Cathedral, the venue

Church at Lostwithiel

for the final performance in my choir's tour of the West Country in the summer of 2013. From a base at Plymouth, we sang at various places, one being here at the pretty church at Lostwithiel. If more about the tour interests you, I covered it in this post nearer the time (a  bit parochial, but with some linguistic  interest on the subject of expressions of home and opinion [bei and chez]).

As I said, our last recital was at Truro Cathedral. By chance, only hours before we sang, the birth of Prince George was announced. In our  repertoire for the tour we had various largely devotional  pieces, and two party pieces from which our MD chose one, varying from concert to concert.

I thought that a  natural piece to sing to welcome the young prince was "I Was Glad".  But – rather tactlessly, I felt 😏 – for the Truro recital our MD chose "Zadok the priest" recalling the prince's grandfather's ill-starred wedding (where it had been played). (Perhaps, though, I was the only one to notice this rather lugubrious echo; besides, my view was probably coloured by the marvellous bass-line of the Parry (especially the last few bars).

But when we sang it at Truro we omitted the Vivats (as many choirs do, depending on the context). 

On 30 April Westminster Abbey announced the New Vivats:

    

One of many

On 4 May at about 08.50 Radio 3 played a rendition performed at Ely Cathedral, with what Petroc Trelawney said were 'the new vivats'; but the words weren't the ones announced by Westmister Abbey 4 days earlier:

The words which will be sung at this Coronation are:   

Vivat Regina Camilla! Vivat Regina Camilla! 

Vivat! Vivat! Vivat! 

 

Vivat Rex Carolus! Vivat Rex Carolus! 

Vivat! Vivat! Vivat! 

(Or ‘Long live Queen Camilla! Long live King Charles!')

These were indeed the words used during the service  I couldn't make out the words of the Ely version, but the queen was not Camilla and the king was not Carolus; not Eduardus or Georgius either – it sounded like ... 

<speculation>
Latin had a little-used case ...

<doubt type="not in the exam?">
(or perhaps we just didn't learn about it)
</doubt>

....case ending for use when addressing someone. As it was often the same as the nominative I never gave it much thought.

<autobiographical_note>
On the subject of vocatives, I'm reminded of a charming feature of Portuguese (if not current now it was still current in 1972) whereby the name of a person whose attention was sought was preceded by "O". I enjoyed people addressing me as "O Bob". That's /ɔ bɔb/, not /u bɔb/ . This is not the definite article – which would indeed be used before a name when referring to another person. That's /u/. This 'vocative'  is a full-blown open /ɔ/; 

<beware-a-little-learning> 

My big brother – not that big, actually; but senior – had a 78 called 'The bandit of Brazil", mostly in English but with the odd 'o cangaceiro' thrown in for local colour, That 'o' is just a definite article, pronounced /u/; but the singers gave it an  /ɔ/, Perhaps this is Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation, and the US singers got it right.  I doubt it though. 

</beware-a-little-learning>

</autobiographical_note>

I wonder if the  word for 'name' (nomen) has the vocative nomini, so that Vivat nomini means '"may <insert name here> live ("long", if you must, but get real)" Perhaps using the right words before the Big Day would have been Bad Luck.

</speculation>

Personally I wasn't that fussed, but whatever floats your royal barge. Good luck to him.

b

PS Save the date:

b

Timber

The opening paragraph of The Power of Trees by Peter Wohlleben sums the book up rather wel

And the subtitle adds quite a sad reproach: 

How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them

<speculation subject="reproachfulness quotient?">
I wonder how carefully Wohlleben's translator Jane Billinghurst (a long-time collaborator) reflected this reproach: does it really mean How Ancient forest can save us if only we'd let them? The last paragraph of Wohlleben's introductory note suggests this sort of doubt:

</speculation>

The author was one of the guests on this week's Start the Week. The other guests are introduced by the BBC Sounds blurb thus:

Jill Butler is an ancient tree specialist and a trustee of the Tree Register of the British Isle which records the nation’s ‘champion trees’ – the tallest and biggest trees of their species. But she’s also keen on getting the public involved in helping to find and care for some of the country’s oldest trees with the citizen science project, Ancient Tree Inventory, run by the Woodland Trust. 

 The healing powers of ancient trees is celebrated in stories throughout history, including the great Icelandic sagas. In The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think Carolyne Larrington, Professor of medieval European Literature explores the renewal that comes from the roots of Yggdrasill, the World Tree.

While listening I thought back to three podcasts. The first was this (about the "nuclear milestone" reached on 5 December 2022...

<parenthesis>

(though the work was done at the US National Ignition Facility, so perhaps we can date this milestone to the Feast of St Nicholas – providing a possible explanation for the energy source used by Santa's sleigh; (well, I did say 'perhaps'))

</parenthesis>

...) by getting more energy out of a fusion reaction than they'd put in (a tiny amount, but its a start.

What they do is in effect use lasers to contain a tiny star (the American speaker says 'the size of a BB', but the English woman says 'the size of a peppercorn' – draw from that whatever cultural conclusioins you like).

When they waxed lyrical...

<cliché-watch>

What else can one wax (apart from cars, obv.)?

</cliché-watch>

... about "a practically limitless supply of fusion energy", I thought 'Hang on a minute. Haven't we already got that – the Sun?

Aha, comes the objection; but only in the daytime, and when it's sunny enough. Well I've thought of that: those other two podcasts:

• A huge solar farm in the Sahara: The Inquiry
• An even bigger one in space, assembled by robots: The Climate Question

But the highest tech solution, apart from depending on as-yet uninvented kit, would involve the burning of huge amounts of rocket fuel. And anyway it all seems a lot of bother, when the the Sun and the trees are doing the job anyway.

Time for my walk.

b

For whom?

Classic FM helpfully explains:

Beethoven’s Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor is rarely referred to in such grandiose terms; instead, all who know and love it refer to it simply by its nickname, ‘Für Elise’ (German for ‘for Elise’).

Phew – silly me: there I was thinking it meant furry leaves.

The issue of this (alleged) 'dedication' ...

<parenthesis> 
(I'm not so sure: maybe it's just an indication of the pupil who might benefit from it; for more on this, read on)
</parenthesis>

...arose recently when, as recounted in  an article in Current Biology published on 22 March), Begg et al.

<parenthesis> 
(alii is a bit of an understatement; multissimi, more like; a dozen or more contributors of various kinds are credited)
</parenthesis>

...examined more-or-less well-attributed locks of Beethoven's hair. The original article is pretty dense (and long) so this rather arch précis ...

<parenthesis>
(I say 'rather arch' because it uses the not unclunky device of keeping Beethoven's identity secret for the first few paragraphs; at first he is just 'the patient')
</parenthesis>

...more readable. 

There have been several interpretations of the person referred to by the words "Für Elise", notably three:

1. Thérèse Malfatti
   Classic fm's page on the subject holds that
   

   It is widely acknowledged that Therese, perhaps the true dedicatee of ‘Für Elise’, was Therese Malfatti, a woman to whom Beethoven proposed in 1810 – the same year he composed ‘Für Elise’. She was also the owner of the manuscript.

   Previously (I suspect a rather hasty edit, as Malfatti hasn't been introduced yet) the page has this:
   

   Poor Therese must have been slightly miffed when, thanks to a rather slapdash copywriter called Ludwig Nohl, the dedication on the published version of the work was changed to someone quite different.

   Not just 'rather slapdash', I'd say; totally incompetent (tripping on laudanum, perhaps). I don't buy this. Again, the author seems to be hung up on the term 'dedication': see option 3. 

2. Elisabeth Röckel. That page goes on:
   

   However, other researchers have suggested Elise could have been a German soprano named Elisabeth Röckel. Röckel played Florestan in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, and many sources show that Elisabeth often met with Beethoven, who fell in love with the young woman and wanted to marry her.

   Has anyone called 'Elisabeth' ever answered to 'Elise'? Has Ms Röckel? I don't know, but I'd  be surprised.

3. A pupil of Malfatti, called Elise.
   
   Classic fm again:
   

There is also a third candidate: another German soprano and friend of Beethoven called Elise Barensfeld. In 2012, musicologist Rita Steblin claimed Beethoven dedicated ‘Für Elise’ to Barensfeld.

Steblin thinks Therese Malfatti could have been Barensfeld’s piano teacher when she was 13, which is why Beethoven dedicated Elise the easy Bagatelle, “to do his beloved Therese a favour”.

There is that 'dedicated' again. Why does it have to be dedicated to anyone? Mightn't it just have been designed for her to play as that week's homework?

Anyway, 'dedication' apart, what  about poor Ludwig? Begg et al. concluded that he had Hepatitis B (among other conditions) – explaining his deafness. And they did this by DNA analysis of his hair (of which there are several examples, more than half of which are reliably authenticated...

<parenthesis>
(though one, reverentially displayed in its own 'reliquary', turns out [hilariously] to have come from, in Medscape's words, a woman likely of North African, Middle Eastern, or Jewish ancestry)

 

</parenthesis>

But some of the others are reliable:

And Begg et al. give a fascinating analysis.

<nagging-doubt>
One question arises though: I can't claim to be an expert on DNA profiling, but I have watched several episodes of CSI. And even I know that when someone finds a hair that should lead to the cracking of the whole case, the lab always says (improbably promptly) 'There was no root. we can't get anything from it.'

From what appears in that photo there are no roots; you can almost see the scissor marks (all right, not really, but the locks were obviously detached with some care. 

No doubt the science has progressed; smaller and smaller samples are gaining evidential credibility. But the Medscape article refers repeatedly to follicles:

But it wasn't just Beethoven's DNA in these hair follicles. Analysis of a follicle from later in his life revealed the unmistakable presence of hepatitis B virus. Endemic in Europe at the time, this was a common cause of liver failure and is likely to have contributed to, if not directly caused, Beethoven's demise.

</nagging-doubt> 

Ho hum. Enough; but have a read.

b 

 

Wings of thought, etc.

 Nearly 8 years ago I wrote here

In a summer concert (probably called Music for a summer's evening  – they usually are [see here]) given by a choir I used to sing with we were singing, inter alia [or should that be aRia? {bou-boum-tsh  – Ithangyou}],  Verdi's Va Pensiero and Borodin's Polovtsian dances [victim of many a metathesis, but I digress]. They seemed quite dissimilar, until you look at the lyrics – particularly the metaphors in them:

Verdi's setting is:

(the melody known to the listeners of Classic FM as The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves)

The words are translated ('after a fashion' as my brother once said in response to a sales assistant's 'Are you being served?'...

<autobiographical-note type="2023 addition">

It was in Squire Pianos, once at an address in the Uxbridge Road, Ealing, known to me at the time, thanks to a youthful misreading of their sign, as "Square Pianos".

</autobiographical-note>

...) in this Wikipedia article:

Fly, thought, on wings of gold;

go settle upon the slopes and the hills,

where, soft and mild, the sweet airs

of our native land smell fragrant!

Borodin's setting is:

(the melody known to the listeners of Classic FM as Stranger in Paradise)

– translated as

Fly away on wings of wind

To native lands, our native song,

To there, where we sang you freely,

Where we were so carefree with you

There, under the hot sky,

'Fly', 'wings', 'native land'  – it's all there in both of them....

<inline_PS date="March 2025">
Ten years after I originally wrote  this, I was listening to Sara Mohr-Pietsch's Music Map, and she made this very point. But she went a step further:

"...Va Pensiero, from Nabucco, which comes from nearly fifty years before Borodin wrote the libretto of his opers Prince Igor, adapting it from an early Russian epic but no doubt with Verdi's hit in mind (HD 2025: my emphasis)."

</inline_PS> 

... because the people singing, in both pieces, are expatriated slaves. Moreover, the Wikipedia translation does the correspondence no favours: Borodin's sky is 'hot', but Verdi's 'sweet airs' are 'mild' – a flamboyantly inappropriate translation of tepidi (which you'll see towards the end of the second line).

During one of the Covid lockdowns, when Wokingham Choral Society was wrestling with the unfathomable whims of the DCMS, I was singing the Verdi again:

My choir's latest virtual rehearsal was based on what is known in England as "The chorus of the Hebrew slaves" (so much better as the Coro di Schiavi Ebrei, as our copy had it...

<TYPO status="dubious" reason="old language?">
I think, though my knowledge of Italian is based on a course I did in 1992. the modern Italian would have degli in place of di. This would be yet another example of archaism in the 19th century text, like those I noted here

In his text for Va pensiero, Verdi (or his librettist if he had one ...? 

<stop-press date="June 2020">
Yes he did – the splendidly named Temistocle Solera
</stop-press >

...) does not use dove, in

Ove olezzano tepide e molli 

L'aure dolci del suolo natal

...

The ove shows that at one stage some Italic dialects followed the French path, without an initial d. 

<background>
Earlier in the same post I had written:

The word for 'where' has a chequered history in the Romance Languages. Simply put (which is all I'm up to) it is derived from UBI [='where'] or UNDE [='where from'], with or without an initial DE. So French où comes from UBI, Italian dove comes from DE + UBI and Spanish is 'etymologically pleonastic' when it asks 'Where are you from?'; '¿De dónde eres?' starts with DE DE UNDE, meaning 'from[from[from where]]]'.

And what in modern Italian would be aire is aure (reminiscent, to me, of the two possible forms in Portuguese of the word derived from CAUSA(M): Fr.chose, Italian and Spanish cosa, but Portuguese [modern Continental Portuguese, that is] either coisa or cousa – to be filed under Interesting but irrelevant I suspect). ...[2023 note: the original had an interesting note on Catalan on, but the indentation was a bit much. And my use of the term 'interesting' is admittedly relative.]

</background>

As Metternich...

<parenthesis>
"needs citation", to use Wikipedia's passive-aggressive  gibe, but my history teacher used to say it, and what's good enough for Mr Crosby is good enough for me.
</parenthesis>

...said at the time 'Italy is a geographical expression'. The name VERDI was a coded feature of political graffiti, standing for Vittorio Emanuele Rei D'Italia. (And, now I think of it, the Hebrew Slaves have an allegorical relevance: the people of that geographical expression had been "enslaved" for centuries by various imperial powers.)
</TYPO>

Those quotes around "enslaved" would be frowned on in much post-colonial analysis, but I used them at the time of writing. 

That's all for now. Lots of words to be learnt for our June concert.

b

Update: 2025.03.24.11:15 – Added <inline_PS />

The Trumpet Involuntary

Paul Klee talked about drawing as  'Taking a line for a walk'. In my case it's taking a thought for a walk. And as a distraction from Rishi and Jezzer's Alan Quartermain stunt (using the halving of inflation the way our hero used a lunar eclipse ...

<parenthesis>
[well. Rider Haggard did eventually correct the earlier editions, which made the eclipse solar]
</parenthesis>

...), here is today's rambling, taking as its point de départ this tweet:

It's no good clicking on this, which is  as dumb as a screengrab can be, but...

<help-is-at-hand>
That BBC News  report is here:

Public emergency alerts to be sent to all UK smartphones

and the supporting Ministry of Love video is here. 
</help-is-at-hand>

Well, we'll all sleep sounder in our beds now, except those shiftworkers who rely on Airline Mode – rather than switching the Infernal Machine off.

And the author of that tweet is not alone.

To quote the opening salvos of that report:

A siren-like alert will be sent to smartphone users across the UK next month to test a new government public warning system.

It allows the government and emergency services to send urgent messages warning the public of life-threatening situations like flooding or wildfires.

The test is expected to take place in the early evening of 23 April.

Phone users will have to acknowledge the alert before they can use other features on their devices.

A message will appear on the home screens of people's devices during the test, with vibration and a loud warning sound that will ring for about 10 seconds, even if the phone is set to silent.

Take special note of that last clause: noise-pollution is guaranteed. There is a lifeline (sanity clause?) though:

People can opt out by searching their device settings for emergency alerts and then turning off severe and extreme ones. Officials say the alerts could be life-saving, though, advising against switching them off.

So there  is  a temporary solution to the Evensong problem...

<inline-pps type="stop-press">
But not on my phone (4G, Android) Perhaps it's for iPhones only, or 5G. Or maybe it's just a sop, to make people more likely to ... Surely they wouldn't be that devious?
</inline-pps>

... short of confiscating the congregation's phones and switching them off (that is, not just 'silent').

The article goes on:

Messages would only ever come from the government or emergency services and will initially focus on the most serious weather-related events, with the ability to get a message to 90% of mobile users within the relevant area.

Terror alerts could be added to the list of potential events that would trigger a notification.

The messages will include details of the area impacted and instructions about how to respond.

Messages 'would only ever come from the government or emergency services.' Oh yeah? My money's on scammers finding a way to take advantage of those 'instructions about how to respond.'

Well, I must return to das Land ohne Musik, or at least ohne Die BBC Singers.

b

PS What is it with ex Prime Ministers and dodgy dossiers?

Update 2023.03.22.15:30 – Added <inline-pps />

Update 2023.03.24.14:35 – Added PPPS

My last line (before the PS) was premature. White knights are in the offing, the axing has been suspended, ...

<inline-p⁴s>
So their position is just ahem sub-Damoclean (didn't think I'd ever be able to reuse that one).
</inline-p⁴s>

... and the BBC Singers will be singing at the Proms. So it's possible that they'll make it beyond their hundredth birthday – though their future is not yet assured.

Update 2023.04.05.16:50 – Added <inline-p⁴s />

The Edge of Reason

Reviving an old practice, I'm going to look at how this blog has been performing in the past year, using statistics provided by Google Blogger based on Page Views. Interest in Harmless Drudgery is, to use a technical term that I haven't had to grapple with since my Nets&Comms days, bursty.

<autobiographical-note date-range="1984-2003">
In the very nearly 20 years I spent at DEC/Compaq/HP ... 

<bloody-capitalists>
(those skinflints were careful to get rid of me just before I clocked up my 20th year – when they would have had to fork out for a gold watch)
</bloody-capitalists> 

... I often met the term. A signal is bursty when it keeps changing from very busy to almost quiescent, from polygonum baldschuanicum ('mile-a-minute plant') to tumble-weed.
</autobiographical-note>

Some days it barely claws its way into double figures, but on other days it can run to several hundred. This 'burstiness' is ironed out to some extent to an average of 30-odd a day, but the monthly average can be pretty variable too:

Du côté de chez Knowles

I've been watching The Edge of Darkness (made in 1985, but repeated recently  on BBC 4) for the nth time (n = 3, I think – > 2 anyway). It's still very good (though not without flaws   –  notably the very clunky sketching of the eco-political background, by means of an extremely silly guest speaker (who appeared in the first ten minutes but never again). I imagine he may have had leather patches on his elbows, in common with most speakers in the Rent-an-Idealist-Boffin stables. And the inevitable and entirely gratuitous bit of hanky-panky with Zoe Wanamaker was buttock-clenchingly  pointless.

But for the most part it's good, and stands the test of time...

<recursive-tangent>
(which is more than can be said for the idiom 'it stands the test of time'. Why did I use it? Beats me.
</recursive-tangent>

. It deals with a detective (Bob Peck) investigating the death of his daughter and learning about her in the process (and finally coming to sympathize with her). Made in 1985, it is strangely reminiscent of – though obviously different, both in political background and sex of the main characters ...

<etymological-fallacy>
(the word protagonists sprang  guiltily to mind [and to my lasting shame and regret] , but I suppressed the urge. I try not to entertain the etymological fallacy – which decrees that words can only ever mean what their roots [etyma?] originally meant [eg decimation can only ever refer to a 10% cull] – but I find it hard, knowing an admittedly tiny amount about classical Greek tragedy [Greek O-level Best Before June 1968, but I have read at least one Euripide {sic}] to imagine a play with more than one protagonist. So I try to avoid kicking the hornets' nest. But an inventor whose prototype is a failure, and who designs and builds another should surely not feel constrained to call the second one a deuterotype.)
</etymological-fallacy>

... – the 1982 feature film Missing, which has Jack Lemon reprising (preprising?) the Bob Peck role of a politically naïve...

<etymological-fallacy take="2">
(and that's another thing, I don't insist on naïf for a man, although I'd probably use it if I ever had need of the phrase faux naïf, which I've managed without for the last seventy yea...(whoops))
</etymological-fallacy>

... bereaved father. I suppose there was something in the water in the '80s that encouraged the revisiting of this trope.

But, as good old Willy Wordsworth so eloquently put it, 'Up! Up! my friend and quit your books'.

I shall return.

b

Update 2023.06.02.10:50 – Added PS

PS And here he is. Bursty or what?  For the last week of May (except on 31st, when there were nearly 500) daily visits came to an average of about a dozen. In the first 1 and a bit days of June, they're just shy of 1200 (1198 at last count, but by the time I hit Publish who knows?). This is more than all but four of last year's totals for a full month.

But I'm missing the cricket...

Update 2023.06.10.20:10 – Added PPS

Curiouser and curiouser. The burst has continued: in the first ⅓ of June, visits to the blog have amounted to more than the total from January to May 2023:

HD Page Views in first half of 2023

Update 2023.06.15.14:30 – Added PPPS

Last time, honest. Now that the first half of June is nearly over, HD  Page View have outweighed the previous 6 months (Dec 2022-May 2023), and by close of business 'today' (I'm not sure when the day ends on the Internet; possibly 23'59" PST) it'll probably have included November 2023 as well: