February 16, 2010
Barack Obama’s difficulties balancing hard diplomacy and human rights
“Mr Obama’s foreign-policy approach of seeking engagement with opponents such as Iran, in an effort to establish dialogue and more effective diplomatic channels, has made it harder for him to beat the human-rights drum loudly. But by failing to speak up about repression, the American leader risks being perceived as weak. His muted reaction to the rigged presidential elections in Iran and the violent repression that followed (and continues) has seemed deferential…“
January 26, 2010
Bigger languages are also simpler ones
“WHY do some languages drip with verb endings, declensions that show how a noun is used, and other grammatical bits and pieces, while others rely on word order and context? The former category tends to include languages spoken by small groups in isolated settings like the Amazon or New Guinea. The latter include such languages as English and Mandarin.
This fact has made scholars wonder if languages simplify as they spread. Researchers have wondered if second-language learning of such conquering languages as English have led them to shed grammatical baggage…“
December 27, 2009
In search of the world’s hardest language
Perhaps the “hardest” language studied by many Anglophones is Latin. In it, all nouns are marked for case, an ending that tells what function the word has in a sentence (subject, direct object, possessive and so on). There are six cases, and five different patterns for declining verbs into them. This system, and its many exceptions, made for years of classroom torture for many children. But it also gives Latin a flexibility of word order. If the subject is marked as a subject with an ending, it need not come at the beginning of a sentence. This ability made many scholars of bygone days admire Latin’s majesty—and admire themselves for mastering it. Knowing Latin (and Greek, which presents similar problems) was long the sign of an educated person.
Yet are Latin and Greek truly hard? These two genetic cousins of English, in the Indo-European language family, are child’s play compared with some. Languages tend to get “harder” the farther one moves from English and its relatives. Assessing how languages are tricky for English-speakers gives a guide to how the world’s languages differ overall…
Twain’s joke about German gender shows that in most languages it often has little to do with physical sex. “Gender” is related to “genre”, and means merely a group of nouns lumped together for grammatical purposes. Linguists talk instead of “noun classes”, which may have to do with shape or size, or whether the noun is animate, but often rules are hard to see. George Lakoff, a linguist, memorably described a noun class of Dyirbal (spoken in north-eastern Australia) as including “women, fire and dangerous things”. To the extent that genders are idiosyncratic, they are hard to learn. Bora, spoken in Peru, has more than 350 of them…”
(Read the whole thing.)
December 10, 2009
Arguments over money dampened the euphoria at the start of the Copenhagen climate talks
“Everyone agrees that poorer countries, including India and China, need cash for climate ‘mitigation’—adopting green technology and new approaches to land use and forest conservation—and for ‘adaptation’: coping with the anticipated effects of climate change, some of which (like a degree of sea level rise) look unavoidable. America has joined the list of countries accepting such transfers, saying it will pay its ‘fair share’. Rich countries have talked of a ‘quick start’ fund. The leaked Danish text has it starting in 2010-12 at a value to be determined; the UN has suggested $10 billion. To poor countries, this sounds paltry: responses range from ‘bribery’ to ‘it will not even pay for the coffins’. Instead, the G77 has asked for 0.5% to 1% of the rich countries’ GDPs. That implies hundreds of billions of dollars on top of existing development aid. The idea that rich countries will hand over 1.2% to 1.7% of their wealth in perpetuity is not going to fly…“
November 28, 2009
Leaked e-mails do not show climate scientists at their best
“There is nothing in the e-mails so far to suggest that the authors do not believe in man-made global warming and are making the whole thing up, as some have been claiming. A more serious concern is that they believe in global warming too much, and that their commitment to the cause leads them to tolerate poor scientific practice, to close themselves off from criticism, and to deny reasonable requests for data…“
November 19, 2009
Barack Obama and others admit that Copenhagen will at most produce only an outline climate agreement. But that would be a lot better than nothing
“A number of climate-watchers in Washington breathed a sigh of relief when Barack Obama and Lars Lokke Rasmussen said what everyone involved had long known. Not only will Mr Obama now not sign a bill before Copenhagen; the Senate is not even expected to vote on one. But at least that means that the several committees that get a crack at the bill will be allowed to get on with their work…“
November 11, 2009
I moderated a lively panel on global perspectives ahead of December’s Copenhagen climate conference. The session, held in Washington, included Jose Goldemberg of the University of Sao Paolo, Sun Guoshun of the Chinese embassy, and Atul Arya of BP, three very different characters with very different points of view. Audio is here. See also the feisty talk by Ed Markey, co-author of the Waxman-Markey bill, who connected tomorrow’s green revolution with yesterday’s telecoms revolution; if we’d let entrenched interests have their way, he said, you’d still be using a rotary-dial phone, and forget about the Blackberry in your pocket. Finally, check out the excellent panel session with Michael Levi, Frank Loy and Daniel Price, moderated by the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin.
October 15, 2009
Signs of bipartisanship on the climate-change bill
“MANY commentators fear that Barack Obama’s plans for a cap-and-trade bill have got fatally stuck in the Senate. Their calculations were shaken up over the weekend when Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, joined John Kerry, a liberal Massachusetts Democrat, to write an article headlined ‘Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation)’ in the New York Times. Mr Kerry is the main author of the Senate’s cap-and-trade bill. Mr Graham is no squishy moderate, but he is an occasional dealmaker. When he crosses the aisle, it tends to matter…“
Gloom and pragmatism ahead of the Copenhagen climate-change summit
“THE planet is warming, but the mood among climate negotiators seems as chilly as ever. On October 9th the penultimate round of talks before December’s climate-change summit in Copenhagen ended in Bangkok. Only one session remains, in Barcelona in November. Leaders are now busy lowering expectations, saying that this summit will be a prelude to a ‘Copenhagen II’ in 2010…”
October 1, 2009
The G20 decides to end subsidies on fossil fuels
“HOPEFUL activists branded the annual UN get-together of world leaders in New York starting on September 20th ‘Climate Week’. In the event it was a cold shower, failing to reach a breakthrough in the run-up to the climate-treaty talks in Copenhagen in December. But a decision taken later in the week by the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh helped make up for that. To little fanfare, world leaders decided to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies in the ‘medium term’…”