First of all, I’d like to plug the paintings of a friend, Geoff Farnsworth http://www.geoff-farnsworth.com/, a dedicated professional artist. I am a dedicated amateur, and probably without his encouragement I would be painting next to nothing.

From several friends, independently of one another, I have started reading Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain” — the story of a man who visits his cousin at a sanatorium, only to discover that he has tuberculosis. I am less than halfway through because I read rather slowly. Sometimes my attention flags when I read fiction, and then I retrieve it by forcing myself to parse and translate sentences in my head, or I stop reading. My days of speed reading ended long ago. In university we had to read many classical works of literature, sometimes three books a week, and I resolved to revisit those books to read them at a leisurely pace when I got old. Well, I got old.

The “Magic Mountain” seems mainly to be about the subjective passage of time. It also lingers on details of tuberculosis, and the author can write with plasticity on the sound of a cough.

Following some advice from Gerry Seinfeld, I am keeping a little calendar, and for particular things that I want to practice I mark the calendar with certain letters, M for Music, P for Painting, H for the study of Hebrew, W for writing, C for cleaning. (I earn a “W” today for writing on this blog — “nulla dies sine linea” — the reward comes when you can look back at the calendar and see a long chain without interruption of a particular activity. I suppose this is good, because of all the things I do, only translation has brought me any money, whereas the other activities will bear fruit only if I persevere.

At present my painting is mostly practice. I make small oil-paintings that are copies of photographs or old painters. The copies are on primed paper (hardware store oil-based primer), which seems to work -- the oil does not soak all the way through and eat at the paper. I have a number of good panels, but out of stage fright I have been sticking with small pictures on paper. When I think I have a good original idea, then I will take it to the large panels.

Musically, I have been putting new things on reverbnation.com and soundcloud.com (search for “hyoomik”). I have stepped up my game as it were. I have a kit of samples called Philharmonik based on recordings of the Prague philharmonik, using a wide variety of notes from orchestral instruments. I am also using Melodyne, which allows me to take sound samples and create new melodies out of them (and it can do much more). In the past, I used to record a song from beginning to end in one fell swoop. Now (in part thanks to the calendar system) I take my time. If I make up music for only four beats, that can be a “day’s work” for me.

The Hebrew language is a matter of curiosity. When I read the Old Testament in English many years ago, I realized from the footnotes that I would understand more if I learned Hebrew. As Led Zeppelin taught us, “sometimes words have two meanings.” At present (in order of knowledge), my foreign languages are Polish, French, Latin, German, Greek, other Romance languages, other Slavic languages. Sometimes it is just enough knowledge to know how to look things up in a dictionary. However, Hebrew is a much greater challenge, because it is a Semitic language, not an Indo-European language. So, the only way for me to approach it is to inch my way along.

Spring finally seems to have arrived. Although the temperature may still fall below freezing at night, the snow seems to be almost melted away.

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So far, today, April 4, 2014 HPW and later M. I made abundant pancakes around 3 pm, as the result of which I slumbered like Adam when he had his rib removed, or Jonah in the hold, or Ulysses in Lotus-land, or perhaps a scene from the Wizard of Oz. I didn’t do any of my regular work, but I am far ahead anyways, so no matter. I read about 100 pages of The Magic Mountain and have reached the conversations of Settembrini and Naphta, and now I am getting quite interested. Earlier, Castorp declared his love to Madamoiselle Chauchat, but it was left mostly in French. I could deal with this until Castorp started speaking of anatomy, where I mostly had to guess. I have 250 pages left to go.

Contrarianism

I have been following with interest the contest between Michael Mann and Mark Steyn, concerning whether there is a solid consensus on the issue, fraud, etc. I follow Mark Steyn mostly for his writing on old songs, but he is a very entertaining controversialist, and is especially sensitive to issues of free speech, and his site is here: www.steynonline.com. One of his critics is David Ableton, who publishes his thought here:davidappell.blogspot.ca.

I would so much like to ask questions and dialogue, but I suspect that I would be ignored. My credentials are in philosophy, not natural science. So, perhaps by putting the above links in this post, I will somehow draw the attention of an expert.

I have yet to be convinced about anthropogenic warming either way. However, I think that many of the things that could prevent it (if greenhouse gasses are a problem) should be done in any case. First of all, get rid of cars. I have met many people (none of them scientists) who get very righteous and wound up about global warming, but no one is willing to give up his car for his beliefs. Second, put a stop to free wheeling global trade. We are transporting our food immense distances (and soon will have hourly pizza delivery to the International Space Station). The idea is that if everyone could trade with everyone, market forces would cause evil regimes to topple. It has not happened. Fossil energy is extremely cheap, otherwise we would have a very limited diet.

Now, for my scientific guesses. When ice melts, it becomes fresh water. If that fresh water hits salt water that is below the freezing point of fresh water, the fresh water can quickly freeze. So, under the right conditions, fresh water from melting icebergs or glaciers can actually end up increasing the area of ocean covered by ice. This would be affected by the amount of fresh water hitting the salt water in a certain time, the temperature of the salt water etc. Once enough dark blue sea is covered by bright reflective ice, you might end up with a feedback loop, with heat reflected back to the sky, and cooler temperatures overall. Some Canadian scholar came up with a theory that the Ice Age took over North America in a mere five years because of warming (waters rose over Panama, a circular current around North America turned into a refrigerator coil, and the snow didn't go away).

My second wild guess. There is very sparse information about how long the deserts have been such as they are. However, in the Middle Ages it was hotter than now. There were farms in Greenland. Some say that temperatures and rain caused grass to grow in Mongolia, and in the new conditions the Mongols thrived to the point where they could threaten Europe. Does this mean that under hotter global conditions, places that are now deserts were lush?

This could be. When air is warm it can absorb a lot more water vapor. I would guess that given higher temperatures the oceans would not rise very much, but there would be more rainfall everywhere. Some of the water-laden air would be pushed over deserts, where the cold desert nights would squeeze out rain. Then the Sahara and the Gobi would bloom.

To fortify the puzzle, there is petrified wood, or unrotted wood on the highest island in the Canadian arctic. That would suggest that in some recent epoch, there was a moderate climate up there. So, perhaps a warm planet is not so bad?

Another big puzzle. There has been some questions about where the carbon has gone. If all the carbon dioxide we produce remained in the atmosphere, there should be more. Is it absorbed by the oceans? I have read that the amounts in the oceans are insufficient to explain where the CO2 has gone. Here's a wild theory. Thermal depolymerization is the process whereby complex hydrocarbons are broken down into simple ones, and is used to get rid of garbage and produce crude oil at the same time. Well, CO2 has carbon and oxygen, and H20 has hydrogen and oxygen. What happens when the two are put together under extreme pressure deep in the ocean by volcanic vents? Would the result be hydrocarbons, i.e. oils? Would not that be a strange twist, if the planet were using CO2 to produce more crude oil deep beneath the sea?

I will share this on twitter, in hopes that someone can fill in some gaps in the comment box.