At 6:07 PM +0000 2002/03/22, Keith Hudson wrote: >At 08:52 22/03/02 -0500, Brian wrote: > >Hi Keith, >>And the cause of this 'natural warming' of 1000 years ago could have >>been massive droughts causing massive forest fires (a lot more >>forests back then) greatly increasing the greenhouse gases.
Keith: >Could be. But it's unlikely. When climatologists talk of warm periods they >are talking of decades at least, usually centuries. It's unlikely, >statistically, that there'd have been continuous forest fires all through >the Medieval Warm Period. There'd have been no forests left! > >My house stands on what used to be a Roman vineyard during a previous warm >period when the climate of southern England was more like the Mediterranean >being several degrees Centigrade warmer. I think this was a mini-warm >period and only lasted a couple of centuries (until 300AD). Are you deliberately avoiding my point Keith by questioning my example. How about this: an earthquake or asteroid caused a significant steady leakage of methane or natural gas that ignited and burned for a long time and caused increased levels of green house gases? Do you believe that large levels of greenhouse gases may have caused global warming then? And what about now? At 6:07 PM +0000 2002/03/22, Keith Hudson wrote: >My apologies for not commenting on those postings. I much enjoyed 'Mud, >Brawn and Brain' and the obvious skill of the bricklayer's labourer when a >bricklayer is in full spate. I can attest to the skills involved, having >mixed mortar (called "muck" over here) for the laying of 10,500 bricks >during a period when I was a young man building a small house for my >family. Though whether I was as skilled as the labourer mentioned in your >article is doubtful, 'cos the bricklayer concerned was also me and was none >too quick -- in fact, pathetically slow. (One trick your writer missed was >the addition of a dash of washing-up liquid to the mix -- it produces >beautiful muck which spreads like warm butter from the trowel. If you >haven't laid bricks in this way you haven't lived!) You don't seem to want to stay in the 'concrete' with me Keith;but rather jump back to the abstract concept of IQ which takes us nowhere. I would suggest you read Jane Wagner's "Searching for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe" or see the play if it happens to be playing in a theatre near you. Lily Tomlin played the narrator Trudy, the 'mad' bag lady, in the Broadway production. At 6:07 PM +0000 2002/03/22, Brian wrote: > >I also found your recent rant about the 'whole language'approach to >>reading highly paradoxical. It came shortly after you and Harry raved >>about some very treasured pulp fiction you both read as youths. >Keith replied >Is there not a teeny-weeny bit of prejudice in the above? The ScFi writer, >Brian Aldiss, whose name I forgot in my recent posting to Harry, wrote lots >of "pulp fiction" in his early days for those gory magazines. But he's >acknowledged to be one of the finest writers of our day. Have you read his >autobiography? Much to be recommended. > >(BMcA) >>Whole >>language advocates would have made use of your enthusiastic response >>to these materials to take you more deeply into reading. For example >>they may have asked you to critically examine who the heroes were and >>who the villains were. Was there any propaganda lurking in those >>texts? There certainly was in the Superman and Batman comics I >>devoured in the 1950s. Keith: >Good gracious! You read Superman and Batman comics and yet turned your nose >up at "pulp fiction"? Remarkable! I never read 'em m'self. For me, was >text-only stuff like the Wizard, Rover, and Adventure that Harry and I >mentioned some while back. You completely missed my point here Keith. I used 'pulp fiction' partly because of the powerful film by that name and also because I loved it as a kid. Stephen King has been described as a pulp fiction writer by some high brows. He a has a wonderful little nonfiction book out called 'On Writing'. He writes about all the pulp fiction he read as a kid that inspired him to write. My point is that whole language teachers use the stuff that kids love to read; Harry Potter is a perfect example. Have you read any? Beats the hell out of the phonics structured "See Dick kick Spot" stuff. I remember trying to get a Grade 5 student's mother to see the value in her son reading 4 books from C. S. Lewis' Narnia series rather than the first 80 pages of a basal reader. Amazing, eh? I much prefer the swampy world of 30 years of practice rather than the high hard ground of abstraction that you read about in the Telegraph or FT regarding education. -- ************************************************** * Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator * * Faculty of Education, Queen's University * * Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 * * FAX:(613) 533-6596 Phone (613) 533-6000x74937* * e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * "Education is not the filling of a pail, * * but the lighting of a fire. * * W.B.Yeats * * * **************************************************
