Dr. Who's Reading Room

eTown webisode #349 - Slaid Cleaves - “Whim of Iron”

Hearing on e-town the cleverly turned phrase “Whim of Iron” that is the title (and chorus) of this song made me think of creative and determined people I know. Too bad that the video is missing Cleaves’s introduction to the song, in which he attributes the phrase to his grandfather, and the inspiration to his aunt.

(Source: vimeo.com)

utnereader:

Now that Washington has at least six wars cooking (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and more generally, the global war on terror), Americans find themselves in a new world of war. If, however, you haven’t joined the all-volunteer military, any of our 17 intelligence outfits, the Pentagon, the weapons companies and hire-a-gun corporations associated with it, or some other part of the National Security Complex, America’s distant wars go on largely without you (at least until the bills come due).

War has a way of turning almost anything upside down, including language. But with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, crumbling infrastructure, and weird weather, who even notices? This undoubtedly means that you’re using a set of antediluvian war words or definitions from your father’s day. It’s time to catch up. Read more …

Madam President, the Pacific has a rich cultural and linguistic tradition. Hundreds of distinct languages are spoken in homes throughout our 14 countries. No more than 10,000 people speak my native language of Nauruan, and it, like so many others, may soon disappear. However, none of our words are quite so exotic as the ones spoken by the climate change negotiators. The people who inhabit these walls communicate in acronyms—QELROs, LULUCF, NAMAs—letters that carry the power to determine which of our nations may thrive and which may vanish beneath the waves. Yet, neither this nor any other language adequately captures the destructive impact that climate change is having and will continue to have on the people of our region. The gravity of the crisis has escaped us. It has become lost in a fog of scientific, economic and technical jargon. Without bold action, it will be left with to our children to come up with the words to convey the tragedy of losing our homelands when it did not have to be this way.

“

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Marcus Stephen, President of Nauru, the world’s smallest island nation (8 sq. mi.) and leader of the Pacific Small Island Developing States at COP16 in Cancún. “Countries Least Responsible for Climate Change are the Ones Most Threatened by It”: Island States Urge Binding Emissions Cuts at U.N. Climate Summit Democracy Now! 12/7/10

Listopada, "leaves are falling." »

I love the name of this month given by my Polish forebears (mother’s side), listopada, “leaves are falling.”