Meteorology Quotes

Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except for his own, three times over, [Marvin] was severely stuck for something to do, and had taken up composing short dolorous ditties of no tone, or indeed tune. The latest one was a lullaby. Marvin droned, Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see in infrared, How I hate the night. He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse. Now I lay me down to sleep, Try to count electric sheep, Sweet dream wishes you can keep, How I hate the night.

Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course. Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.

Tell me again about the intelligence of humans. They cannot even manage to comprehend predictable meteorological events.

Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are of the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence.

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.

Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits.

House-training, I must tell you, is a formality that can elude young dachshunds for some time; this is particularly true in climates that affront their sensibilities with outrageous meteorological insults. Rain, for example, or a startling gust of wind.

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other.

Meteorologically, Hell didn’t seem much worse than an English spring.

Your face says so much in so little time, you let everything you're thinking bloom upon your face, and I can't think of anything else I'd rather watch than you pass through five moods in five minutes. What glorious weather.

Eventually, they give up, and the unexplained meteorological phenomenon is simply called a “dubstep storm,” because—in the words of one researcher—“It had one hell of a drop.

I’m interested in [meteorology], but I’m more interested in gross misappropriations of the authoritative language of science. It feels rife with clarity, and yet you don’t understand what it means. And I think that’s beautiful.

The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies. "Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth." "Right, like geologists." "Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle..." "So, it's like oceanography or hydrology." "And the atmosphere." "Meteorology, climatology..." "It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet." "How is that different from ecology or environmental science?" "Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--" "Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci." "Some geographers specialize in different world regions." "Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department." "They're not." (Long pause.) "So, uh, what is it that do study then?

I have a problem meeting people because if I know what to say, I don’t know when to say it, and if I know when to speak, I never know what to say. To me, networking events are just giant meteorological conferences where I approach everyone as if they are a weatherman as I say, “So, what do you think about this crazy weather we’re having?

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards. Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it. A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer.

Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.

The policy are to be commended.' Aschenbach replied, and after a brief exchange of meteorological observations the manager excused himself.

Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can’t tell me why our college professors shouldn’t be transferred to the meteorological department.

if there is one topic of conversation humans never exhaust, it is the status of their outdoor environment. And for as much as they discuss it, their incredulity is . . . well, incredible. That preposterous phrase: Can you believe this weather we’re having? How many times have I heard it? One thousand, nine hundred and ten, to be exact. One and a half times a day, on average. Tell me again about the intelligence of humans. They cannot even manage to comprehend predictable meteorological events.

It is one diagnostic trait of Homo sapiens that groups of individuals are periodically infected with a feverish nervousness which causes the individual to turn on and destroy, not only his own kind, but the works of his own kind. It is not known whether this be caused by a virus, some airborne spore, or whether it be a species reaction to some meteorological stimulus as yet undetermined.

Gloomy days, whether meteorological or psychological, lend themselves more to the creation of Gothic horror. On those insular days, the mind gravitates towards the unseen and the subconscious. Days of blinding sunshine banish the desire to ruminate and it is replaced with a longing to participate in the outside world.

The rules of scientific investigation always require us, when we enter the domains of conjecture, to adopt that hypothesis by which the greatest number of known facts and phenomena may be reconciled.

When cool-climate relatives and friends are astonished to hear such temperatures, Pico Mundians put a chamber-of-commerce spin on our meteorology, noting that the humidity is a mere fifteen or twenty percent. Our average summer day, they insist, isn’t like a sweltering steam bath but like a refreshing sauna.

Oh, please, Mr. B thinks, not a human. Not another human. He is filled with despair. God's passion for humans always leads to catastrophe, to meteorological upset on an epic scale. What is wrong with the boy that he can't get it up for some nice goddess? Why, oh why, can't he pursue a sensible relationship, one that will not end in disaster?

Yet like many other human traits that made sense in past ages but cause trouble in the modern age, the knowledge illusion has its downside. The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realise just how ignorant they are of what’s going on. Consequently some who know next to nothing about meteorology or biology nevertheless propose policies regarding climate change and genetically modified crops, while others hold extremely strong views about what should be done in Iraq or Ukraine without being able to locate these countries on a map. People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming newsfeeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged. Providing people with more and better information is unlikely to improve matters. Scientists hope to dispel wrong views by better science education, and pundits hope to sway public opinion on issues such as Obamacare or global warming by presenting the public with accurate facts and expert reports. Such hopes are grounded in a misunderstanding of how humans actually think. Most of our views are shaped by communal groupthink rather than individual rationality, and we hold on to these views out of group loyalty. Bombarding people with facts and exposing their individual ignorance is likely to backfire. Most people don’t like too many facts, and they certainly don’t like to feel stupid. Don’t be so sure that you can convince Tea Party supporters of the truth of global warming by presenting them with sheets of statistical data.

The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a single grand story. Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, it is unbudgeable, not because of some one or two huge chains of argument that might–hope against hope–have weak links in them, but because it is securely tied by hundreds of thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other field of knowledge. New discoveries may conceivably lead to dramatic, even 'revolutionary' shifts in the Darwinian theory, but the hope that it will be 'refuted' by some shattering breakthrough is about as reasonable as the hope that we will return to a geocentric vision and discard Copernicus.

It was on a meteorologically challenged November night that Frankenstein infused the spark of being into the creature and saw its dull yellow eye open. Breathless horror filled Frankenstein's heart as a vision of the next twenty years flashed through his mind. There would be responsibilities--schooling, education, clothing--and he was a lone parent!

The day succeeding this remarkable Midsummer night, proved no common day. I do not mean that it brought signs in heaven above, or portents on the earth beneath; nor do I allude to meteorological phenomena, to storm, flood, or whirlwind. On the contrary: the sun rose jocund, with a July face. Morning decked her beauty with rubies, and so filled her lap with roses, that they fell from her in showers, making her path blush: the Hours woke fresh as nymphs, and emptying on the early hills their dew-vials, they stepped out dismantled of vapour: shadowless, azure, and glorious, they led the sun’s steeds on a burning and unclouded course.

Economics is a discipline for quiet times. The profession, it turns out, … has no grip on understanding how the abnormal grows out of the normal and what happens next, its practitioners like weather forecasters who don’t understand storms. —Will Hutton, journalist The Observer, London

some people who know next to nothing about meteorology or biology nevertheless propose policies regarding climate change and genetically modified crops, while others hold extremely strong views about what should be done in Iraq or Ukraine without being able to locate these countries on a map.

Orwell declares, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” which makes direct observations and firsthand encounters in the material and sensory world likewise acts of resistance or at least reinforcements of the self who can resist. To spend time frequently with these direct experiences is clarifying, a way of stepping out of the whirlpools of words and the confusion they can whip up. In an age of lies and illusions, the garden is one way to ground yourself in the realm of the processes of growth and the passage of time, the rules of physics, meteorology, hydrology, and biology, and the realms of the senses.

Up high, biology vanishes to reveal a world shaped by the starker forces of geology and meteorology, the bare bones of the earth wrapped in sky.

The policy are to be commended.' Aschenbach replied, and after a brief exchange of meteorological observations the manager excused himself.

While meteorology as an applied science has made tremendous strides in the past fifty years, we have not yet discovered a cure for bureaucracy.

The astronomer is, in some measure, independent of his fellow astronomer; he can wait in his observatory till the star he wishes to observe comes to his meridian; but the meteorologist has his observations bounded by a very limited horizon, and can do little without the aid of numerous observers furnishing him contemporaneous observations over a wide-extended area.

And if the best you can do is quote the Bible in defence of your prejudice, then have the humility to be consistent. The same book that exhorts against the abomination of one man lying with another also contains exhortations against the eating of pork and shell-fish and against menstruating women daring to come near holy places. It’s no good functionalistically claiming that kosher diet had its local, meteorological purposes now defunct, or that the prejudice against ovulation can be dispensed with as superstition, the Bible that you bash us with tells you that much of what you do is unclean: don’t pick and choose with a Revealed Text — or if you do, pick and choose the good bits, the bits that say things like ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, or ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’.

There are two groups of observational sciences. One is called exact—astronomy, physics, chemistry, and so on—and there is another: black and white magic, astrology, graphology, chiromancy, and so on. This second group includes meteorology.

Emerging, as we had, from the dark and gloomy bowels of the earth, the scene before us presented a view of wondrous beauty, and, while doubtless enhanced by contrast, it was nevertheless such an aspect as is seldom given to the eyes, of a Barsoomian of today to view. To me it seemed a little garden spot upon a dying world preserved from an ancient era when Barsoom was young and meteorological conditions were such as to favor the growth of vegetation that has since become extinct over practically the entire area of the planet. In this deep valley, surrounded by lofty cliffs, the atmosphere doubtless was considerably denser than upon the surface of the planet above. The sun's days were reflected by the lofty escarpment, which must also hold the heat during the colder periods of night, and, in addition to this, there was ample water for irrigation which nature might easily have achieved through percolation of the waters of the river through and beneath the top soil of the valley.

The ultimate goal of a meteorologist is to set up differential equations of the movements of the air and to obtain, as their integral, the general atmospheric circulation, and as particular integrals the cyclones, anticyclones, tornados, and thunderstorms.

There was a single ray of sun shining through the window. I got up, went to the cracked glass, and saw that it was both raining and shining outside-- a bit of meteorological weirdness whose name no one can seem to agree on. My mom, I kid you not, refers to it as "orphan's tears.

He senses that the light-fall, surfaces, slopes and sounds of a landscape are all somehow involved in accessing what he calls the 'keyless chamber[s] of the brain'; that the instinct and the body must know ways that the conscious mind cannot...he recognizes that weather is something we think in- 'the wind, the rain, the steaming road, and the vigorous limbs and glowing brain and that they created...We and the storm are one' - and that we would be better, perhaps, of not speaking of states of mind, but rather of atmospheres of mind or meteorologies of mind.

Cohen was on his knees taking a picture of a passing cloud, an unremarkable cirrus shaped as if it were sketched expressly for a meteorology textbook, its immortality assured only through the wild Polish luck of having passed the former concentration camp on the day of Cohen's visit.

We see, as in the universes of the material kosmos, after meteorological, vegetable, and animal cycles, man at last arises, born through them, to prove them, concentrate them, to turn upon them with wonder and love -- to command them, adorn them, and carry them upward into superior realms -- so, out of the series of the preceding social and political universes, now arise these States. We see that while many were supposing things established and completed, really the grandest things always remain; and discover that the work of the New World is not ended, but only fairly begun

Moral for psychologists. -- Not to go in for backstairs psychology. Never to observe in order to observe! That gives a false perspective, leads to squinting and something forced and exaggerated. Experience as the wish to experience does not succeed. One must not eye oneself while having an experience; else the eye becomes "an evil eye." A born psychologist guards instinctively against seeing in order to see; the same is true of the born painter. He never works "from nature"; he leaves it to his instinct, to his camera obscura, to sift through and express the "case," "nature," that which is "experienced." He is conscious only of what is general, of the conclusion, the result: he does not know arbitrary abstractions from an individual case. What happens when one proceeds differently? For example, if, in the manner of the Parisian novelists, one goes in for backstairs psychology and deals in gossip, wholesale and retail? Then one lies in wait for reality, as it were, and every evening one brings home a handful of curiosities. But note what finally comes of all this: a heap of splotches, a mosaic at best, but in any case something added together, something restless, a mess of screaming colors. The worst in this respect is accomplished by the Goncourts; they do not put three sentences together without really hurting the eye, the psychologist's eye. Nature, estimated artistically, is no model. It exaggerates, it distorts, it leaves gaps. Nature is chance. To study "from nature" seems to me to be a bad sign: it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism; this lying in the dust before petit faits [little facts] is unworthy of a whole artist. To see what is--that is the mark of another kind of spirit, the anti-artistic, the factual. One must know who one is. Toward a psychology of the artist. -- If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy. Frenzy must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine; else there is no art. All kinds of frenzy, however diversely conditioned, have the strength to accomplish this: above all, the frenzy of sexual excitement, this most ancient and original form of frenzy. Also the frenzy that follows all great cravings, all strong affects; the frenzy of feasts, contests, feats of daring, victory, all extreme movement; the frenzy of cruelty; the frenzy in destruction, the frenzy under certain meteorological influences, as for example the frenzy of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; and finally the frenzy of will, the frenzy of an overcharged and swollen will. What is essential in such frenzy is the feeling of increased strength and fullness. Out of this feeling one lends to things, one forces them to accept from us, one violates them--this process is called idealizing. Let us get rid of a prejudice here: idealizing does not consist, as is commonly held, in subtracting or discounting the petty and inconsequential. What is decisive is rather a tremendous drive to bring out the main features so that the others disappear in the process. In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever one wills, is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power--until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is--art. Even everything that he is not yet, becomes for him an occasion of joy in himself; in art man enjoys himself as perfection.

Here’s all I’m trying to say: The planet on which our civilization evolved no longer exists. The stability that produced that civilization has vanished; epic changes have begun. (My favorite bleak headline, from USA Today in May 2009, describes a new study from the American Meteorological Society: “Global Warming May Be Twice as Bad as Previously Expected.”)69 We may, with commitment and luck, yet be able to maintain a planet that will sustain some kind of civilization, but it won’t be the same planet, and hence it can’t be the same civilization. The earth that we knew—the only earth that we ever knew—is gone.

Pathfinder LOG: SOL 0 BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED TIME 00:00:00 LOSS OF POWER DETECTED, TIME/DATE UNRELIABLE LOADING OS… VXWARE OPERATING SYSTEM (C) WIND RIVER SYSTEMS PERFORMING HARDWARE CHECK: INT. TEMPERATURE: −34°C EXT. TEMPERATURE: NONFUNCTIONAL BATTERY: FULL HIGAIN: OK LOGAIN: OK WIND SENSOR: NONFUNCTIONAL METEOROLOGY: NONFUNCTIONAL ASI: NONFUNCTIONAL IMAGER: OK ROVER RAMP: NONFUNCTIONAL SOLAR A: NONFUNCTIONAL SOLAR B: NONFUNCTIONAL SOLAR C: NONFUNCTIONAL HARDWARE CHECK COMPLETE BROADCASTING STATUS LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL… LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL… LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL SIGNAL ACQUIRED…

But where should he begin? - Well, then, the trouble with the English was their: Their: In a word, Gibreel solemnly pronounced, their weather. Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. 'When the day is not warmer than the night,' he reasoned, 'when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything - from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs - as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-or-take. What folly! For truth is extreme, it is so and not thus, it is him and not her; a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, heated. City,' he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, 'I am going to tropicalize you.' Gibreel enumerated the benefits of the proposed metamorphosis of London into a tropical city: increased moral definition, institution of a national siesta, development of vivid and expansive patterns of behaviour among the populace, higher-quality popular music, new birds in the trees (macaws, peacocks, cockatoos), new trees under the birds (coco-palms, tamarind, banyans with hanging beards). Improved street-life, outrageously coloured flowers (magenta, vermilion, neon-green), spider-monkeys in the oaks. A new mass market for domestic air-conditioning units, ceiling fans, anti-mosquito coils and sprays. A coir and copra industry. Increased appeal of London as a centre for conferences, etc.: better cricketeers; higher emphasis on ball-control among professional footballers, the traditional and soulless English commitment to 'high workrate' having been rendered obsolete by the heat. Religious fervour, political ferment, renewal of interest in the intellegentsia. No more British reserve; hot-water bottles to be banished forever, replaced in the foetid nights by the making of slow and odorous love. Emergence of new social values: friends to commence dropping in on one another without making appointments, closure of old-folks' homes, emphasis on the extended family. Spicier foods; the use of water as well as paper in English toilets; the joy of running fully dressed through the first rains of the monsoon. Disadvantages: cholera, typhoid, legionnaires' disease, cockroaches, dust, noise, a culture of excess. Standing upon the horizon, spreading his arms to fill the sky, Gibreel cried: 'Let it be.

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they’re standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don’t look quite like real science.† But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity.

Stabilizing an Unstable Economy,16 Minsky described

[...] sketches of Saussure's cyanometer, which distinguished the various blues in the sky.

Let’s have an attitude check!” Edwards said as he walked over to his meteorological instruments. “I hate this fucking place!” the tower crew answered at once. “Let’s have a positive attitude check.” “I positively hate this fucking place!” “Let’s have a negative attitude check.” “I don’t like this fucking place!” “Let’s have a short attitude check.” “Fuckit!” Everyone had a good laugh.

After the death of all living creatures, all our unfulfilled wishes and unspoken words will go on drifting in the stratosphere, they will combine with one another and linger upon the earth like fog. What will this fog look like in the eyes of the living? Will they fail to remember the dead and instead indulge in banal meteorological conversations like: "It's foggy today, don't you think?

Rain. I haven’t explained rain. The meteorologically inclined among you might be wondering about the planet’s weather patterns and water cycle. If you’re one of those to whom these things are extremely important, you have my sympathies. It’s never too late to develop a personality. Maybe go to a party. But try to avoid topics like weather patterns and water cycles. Unless of course you can do it like me.

But for the Count, his philosophical leanings had always been essentially meteorological. Specifically, he believed in the inevitable influence of clement and inclement weathers. He believed in the influence of early frosts and lingering summers, of ominous clouds and delicate rains, of fog and sunshine and snowfall. And he believed, most especially, in the reshaping of destinies by the slightest change in the thermometer.

Great American Desert appeared to have retreated westward across the Rockies to the threshold of the Great Basin. Such a spectacular climatic transformation was not about to be dismissed as a fluke, not by a people who thought themselves handpicked by God to occupy a wild continent. A new school of meteorology was founded to explain it. Its unspoken principle was divine intervention, and its motto was “Rain Follows the Plow.

I hope you slept well," he said. "Yes, isn't it lovely?" Jenny replied, giving two rapid little nods. "But we had such awful thunderstorms last week." Parallel straight lines, Denis reflected, meet only at infinity. He might talk for ever of care-charmer sleep and she of meteorology till the end of time. Did one ever establish contact with anyone? We are all parallel straight lines. Jenny was only a little more parallel than most. "They

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘English Traits’ I came across a meteorological explanation of the Englishman’s character. ‘Born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him indoors whenever he is at rest,’ he writes, ‘domesticity is the taproot which enables the nation to branch wide and high. The motive and end of their trade is to guard the independence and privacy of their homes.’9 I wondered whether the English weather might really be the key.

Holland took the question very seriously; he'd thought alot about it. Look at meteorology, he told them. The weather never settles down. It never repeats itself exactly. It's essentially unpredictable more than a week or so in advance. And yet we can comprehend and explain almost everything that we see up there. We can identify important features such as weather fronts, jet streams, and high-pressure systems. We can understand their dynamics. We can understand how they interact to produce weather on a local and regional scale. In short, we have a real science of weather-without full prediction. And we can do it because prediction isn't the essence of science. The essence is comprehension and explanation. And that's precisely what Santa Fe could hope to do with economics and other social sciences, he said: they could look for the analog of weather fronts-dynamical social phenomena they could understand and explain.

A sound Physics of the Earth should include all the primary considerations of the earth's atmosphere, of the characteristics and continual changes of the earth's external crust, and finally of the origin and development of living organisms. These considerations naturally divide the physics of the earth into three essential parts, the first being a theory of the atmosphere, or Meteorology, the second, a theory of the earth's external crust, or Hydrogeology, and the third, a theory of living organisms, or Biology.

He has time for gossip, for prophecies, for marvelous dramatic interplays, for treatises on history, for analyzing the French monarchy, the corruption of the Church, the decay of Italian politics. He has time for all sorts of metaphysical treatises on such matters as the nature of the generative principle, literary criticism, meteorology—in short, for his whole unfinished encyclopedia. And he still has time to invent a death for Ulysses, to engage in a metamorphic contest with Ovid, to make side remarks to his friends.

It wasn’t the fluidity that stymied the crew—that was common enough—but they had trouble getting used to the meteorological aspect of Jerico’s personal system. Having been raised in a place where such things were the norm rather than the exception, it never even occurred to Jerico that it could be an issue, until leaving home. Some things simply made a person feel feminine; other things made a person feel masculine. Wasn’t that true of everyone regardless of gender? Or did binaries deny themselves the things that didn’t fit the mold?

News trickles out into the world about the inexplicable disaster. There is widespread shock and puzzlement, and for a while, every new cloud in the sky causes mass panic. Fear reigns supreme as the world fears rain supreme, but years pass without any signs of the disaster repeating. Atmospheric scientists try for years to piece together what happened, but no explanation is forthcoming. Eventually, they give up, and the unexplained meteorological phenomenon is simply called a “dubstep storm,” because—in the words of one researcher—“It had one hell of a drop.

Certain opponents of Marxism dismiss it as an outworn economic dogma based upon 19th century prejudices. Marxism never was a dogma. There is no reason why its formulation in the 19th century should make it obsolete and wrong, any more than the discoveries of Gauss, Faraday and Darwin, which have passed into the body of science... The defense generally given is that the Gita and the Upanishads are Indian; that foreign ideas like Marxism are objectionable. This is generally argued in English the foreign language common to educated Indians; and by persons who live under a mode of production (the bourgeois system forcibly introduced by the foreigner into India.) The objection, therefore seems less to the foreign origin than to the ideas themselves which might endanger class privilege. Marxism is said to be based upon violence, upon the class-war in which the very best people do not believe nowadays. They might as well proclaim that meteorology encourages storms by predicting them. No Marxist work contains incitement to war and specious arguments for senseless killing remotely comparable to those in the divine Gita.

And one other thing: don't ask me about the weather. I don't much remember what the weather has been like during my life. True, I can remember how hot sun gave greater impetus to sex; how sudden snow delighted, and how cold, damp days set off those early symptoms that eventually led to a double hip replacement. But nothing significant in my life ever happened during, let alone because of, weather. So if you don't mind, meteorology will play no part in my story. Though you are free to deduce, when I am found playing grass-court tennis, that it was neither raining nor snowing at the time.

The Eiffel Tower wasn’t just the largest thing that anyone had ever proposed to build, it was the largest completely useless thing. It wasn’t a palace or burial chamber or place of worship. It didn’t even commemorate a fallen hero. Eiffel gamely insisted that his tower would have many practical applications—that it would make a terrific military lookout and that one could do useful aeronautical and meteorological experiments from its upper reaches—but eventually even he admitted that mostly he wished to build it simply for the slightly strange pleasure of making something really quite enormous. Many

It wasn’t the fluidity that stymied the crew—that was common enough—but they had trouble getting used to the meteorological aspect of Jerico’s personal system. Having been raised in a place where such things were the norm rather than the exception, it never even occurred to Jerico that it could be an issue, until leaving home. Some things simply made a person feel feminine; other things made a person feel masculine. Wasn’t that true of everyone regardless of gender? Or did binaries deny themselves the things that didn’t fit the mold? Well, regardless, Jerico found the faux pas and overcompensations more humorous than anything else.

remember how we used to play" in the upper atmosphere in the vertical climb in the sky above the clouds remember how we used to play in the nautical dusk along the radians of midheaven… out there amid the scattered wavelengths within the aerosols of a meteorological meadow we tread upon the aether side by side the ampere and the joule the whisper and the gleam borne along effervescent freeways remember how we came to rest inside the amethyst auditorium of a storm there - suspended in an echo-plex of thunder you drew me close and I tasted the voltage of your skin the radiometry of your eyes the amphetamine of your lips the flushed cushion of your tongue

The celestial god is not identified with the sky, for he is the same god who, creating the entire cosmos, created the sky too. This is why he is called Creator, All-powerful, Lord, Chief, Father, and the like. The celestial god is a person, not a uranian epiphany. But he lives in the sky and is manifested in meteorological phenomena—thunder, lightning, storm, meteors, and so on. This means that certain privileged structures of the cosmos—the sky, the atmosphere—constitute favorite epiphanies of the supreme being; he reveals his presence by what is specifically and peculiarly his—the majesty (majestas) of the celestial immensity, the terror (tremendum) of the storm.

climate is not the weather—a distinction often missing in popular discussion. The weather anywhere varies constantly in ways both predictable and unexpected—through the day (it’s usually warmer at 4 pm than it is at 4 am), across days (as when a front passes through), with the seasons, and from year to year. On the other hand, a location’s climate is the average of its weather over decades. In fact, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization defines climate as a thirty-year average, although climate researchers will sometimes discuss averages over a period as short as ten years. So changes in the weather from one year to another do not constitute changes in climate.

It is under the influence of an ancient animal sense of belonging that people have so many conversations about meteorology and the climate, influenced by a primitive memory, inscribed in the sense organs, and linked to the conditions of survival in the prehistoric era. These circumscribed, clichéd conversations are, however, the symptom of a real issue: even when we live in apartments, in conditions of thermal stability guaranteed by reliable and well-honed technology, it remains impossible for us to rid ourselves of this animal atavism; it is thus that a full awareness of our ignominy and misfortune, and of their complete and definitive nature, can only manifest itself in sufficiently favorable climatic conditions.

When Dr Sarabhai gave shape to a vision to develop rockets in India, he was questioned, along with the political leadership, on the relevance of such a programme when a vast majority in the country was battling the demons of hunger and poverty. Yet, he was in agreement with Jawaharlal Nehru that India could only play a meaningful role in the affairs of the world if the country was self-reliant in every manner, and should be able to apply advanced technologies to alleviate real-life problems. Thus our space programme was never simply a desire to be one among an elite group of nations, neither was it a matter of playing catch-up with other countries. Rather, it was an expression of the need for developing indigenous capabilities in telecommunications, meteorology and education.

There had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Religion offered no basis for a response at all. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of God, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, as will come as no surprise to you, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80 percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

Like the bear who went over the mountain, I went out to see what I could see. And, I might as well warn you, like the bear, all I could see was the other side of the mountain: more of same. I propose to keep here what Thoreau called ‘a meteorological journal of the mind,’ telling some tales and describing some of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and exploring, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those tales and sights dizzyingly lead. I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been set down, if we can’t learn why. So I think about the valley. It is my leisure as well as my work, a game. It is a fierce game I have joined because it is being played anyway, a game of both skill and chance, played against an unseen adversary- the conditions of time-in which the payoffs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment, might as well come to me as anyone else. I risk getting stuck on the board, so to speak, unable to move in any direction, which happens enough; and I risk the searing, exhausting nightmares that plunder rest and force me face down all night long in some muddy ditch seething with hatching insects and crustaceans. But if I can bear the nights, the days are a pleasure. I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing and I resound like a beaten bell.

Einstein said, “This huge world stands before us like a great eternal riddle.” Why couldn’t any of my teachers have told me that? “Listen,” they could have said, “no one has any idea what the hell is going on. We wake up in this world and we don’t know why we’re here or how anything works. I mean, look around. Look how bizarre it all is! What the hell is all this stuff? Reality is a huge mystery, and you have a choice to make. You can run from it, you can placate yourself with fairy tales, you can just pretend everything’s normal, or you can stare that mystery in the eye and try to solve it. If you are one of the brave ones to choose the latter, welcome to science. Science is the quest to solve the eternal riddle. We haven’t done it yet, but we’ve uncovered some pretty cool clues. The purpose of this class is for you to learn what clues we’ve already got, so that you can take those and head out into the world to find more. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be the one who finally solves the riddle.” If just one of my teachers had said that, I wouldn’t have taken meteorology.

The investigation described in the subsequent pages bears close relation to three sciences. It was approached by the author from the standpoint of astronomy and a desire to understand the variations of the sun. It was hoped that these variations could be more accurately studied by correlation with climatic phenomena. But the science of meteorology is still comparatively new and supplies us only with a few decades of records on which to base our conclusions. So botanical aid was sought in order to extend our knowledge of weather changes over hundreds and even thousands of years by making use of the dependence of the annual rings of trees in dry climates on the annual rainfall. If the relationship sought proves to be real, the rings in the trunks of trees give us not only a means of studying climatic changes through long periods of years, but perhaps also of tracing changes in solar activity during the same time. Thus astronomy, meteorology, and botany join in a study to which each contributes essential parts and from which, it is hoped, each may gain a small measure of benefit.

All children in Madagascar were raised genderless and forbidden to choose a gender until reaching adulthood. Even then, many didn’t choose a single state of being. Some, like Jerico, found fluidity to be their nature. “I feel like a woman beneath the sun and the stars. I feel like a man under the cover of clouds,” Jerico had explained to the crew when assuming command. “A simple glance at the skies will let you know how to address me at any given time.” It wasn’t the fluidity that stymied the crew – that was common enough – but they had trouble getting used to the meteorological aspect of Jerico’s personal system. Having been raised in a place where such things were the norm rather than the exception, it never even occurred to Jerico that it could be an issue, until leaving home. Some things simply made a person feel feminine; other things made a person feel masculine. Wasn’t that true of everyone regardless of gender? Or did binaries deny themselves the things that didn’t fit the mold? Well, regardless, Jerico found the faux pas and overcompensations more humorous than anything else.

The twenty-fourth baron of Aisling,” answered Sydney. “But we just call him Big Bill.” “It was thought that the twenty-third baron had no surviving relatives,” said Mother. “But, right before he passed away, a successful industrialist and distant cousin named William Maxwell was discovered living in Los Angeles. As the only heir, he inherited all of this.” “If he inherited it, why are we here?” asked Sara. “He didn’t want to leave sunny California for gloomy Scotland,” said Sydney. “And since he was already rich, he decided to use his inheritance to create the Foundation for Atmospheric Research and Monitoring. That’s how an old Scottish manor house become a state-of-the-art weather station and research center.” “You’ll have to memorize all this for the tours,” said Mother. “Tours?” “Weather Weirdos,” Sydney said, shaking her head. “They knock on the door at all hours and ask to look around.” “I prefer the term ‘meteorology enthusiasts,’ ” said Mother. “And we’re happy to welcome them. It’s all part of our mission as defined by the baron. He thought the study of ocean and weather patterns was vitally important. The fact that this house overlooks the North Sea made it an ideal location to do both.

I’m afraid I can’t comment on the name Rain God at this present time, and we are calling him an example of a Spontaneous Para-Causal Meteorological Phenomenon.’ ‘Can you tell us what that means?’ ‘I’m not altogether sure. Let’s be straight here. If we find something we can’t understand, we like to call it something you can’t understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don’t, and I’m afraid we couldn’t have that. ‘No, first we have to call it something which says it’s ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it’s not what you said it is, but something we say it is. ‘And if it turns out that you’re right, you’ll still be wrong, because we will simply call him a . . . er, “Supernormal . . .” – not paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what those mean now, no, a “Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer”. We’ll probably want to shove a “Quasi” in there somewhere to protect ourselves. Rain God! Huh, never heard such nonsense in my life. Admittedly, you wouldn’t catch me going on holiday with him. Thanks, that’ll be all for now, other than to say “Hi!” to Wonko if he’s watching.

Sadhana Sit in any comfortable posture, with your spine erect, and if necessary, supported. Remain still. Allow your attention to slowly grow still as well. Do this for five to seven minutes a day. You will notice that your breath will slow down. What is the significance of slowing down the human breath? Is it just some respiratory yogic acrobatics? No, it is not. A human being breathes twelve to fifteen times per minute, normally. If your breath settles down to twelve, you will know the ways of the earth’s atmosphere (i.e., you will become meteorologically sensitive). If it reduces to nine, you will know the language of the other creatures on this planet. If it reduces to six, you will know the very language of the earth. If it reduces to three, you will know the language of the source of creation. This is not about increasing your aerobic capacity. Nor is it about forcefully depriving yourself of breath. A combination of hatha yoga and an advanced yogic practice called the kriya, will gradually increase your lung capacity, but above all, will help you achieve a certain alignment, a certain ease, so that your system evolves to a state of stability where there is no static, no crackle; it just perceives everything.

The world remained ignorant of the accident at Chernobyl until the morning of Monday April 28th (it’s April 28th 2014 as I’m writing this, strangely enough), when a sensor detected elevated radiation levels on engineer Cliff Robinson as he arrived for work at Sweden’s Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, over 1,000 kilometers away. “My first thought was that a war had broken out and that somebody had blown up a nuclear bomb,” says Robinson. “It was a frightening experience, and of course we could not rule out that something had happened at Forsmark.”186 After a partial evacuation of the plant’s 600 staff, those that remained urgently tried to locate the source of what they assumed was a leak somewhere on site. It became apparent from isotopes present in the air that the source was not a nuclear bomb, as was feared, but a reactor. The Swedish Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology analysed the trajectory of the radioactive particles in the atmosphere, which indicated that they were emanating from the southeast: The Soviet Union. Sweden’s Ambassador in Moscow telephoned the Soviet State Committee for the Use of Atomic Energy to ask what was happening, but was told they had no information for him. Further inquiries were made to other Ministries, but again the Soviet government claimed they had heard nothing about any accident. By the evening, monitoring stations in Finland and Norway had also detected the high radiation contents in the air.187

the Cook expedition had another, far less benign result. Cook was not only an experienced seaman and geographer, but also a naval officer. The Royal Society financed a large part of the expedition’s expenses, but the ship itself was provided by the Royal Navy. The navy also seconded eighty-five well-armed sailors and marines, and equipped the ship with artillery, muskets, gunpowder and other weaponry. Much of the information collected by the expedition – particularly the astronomical, geographical, meteorological and anthropological data – was of obvious political and military value. The discovery of an effective treatment for scurvy greatly contributed to British control of the world’s oceans and its ability to send armies to the other side of the world. Cook claimed for Britain many of the islands and lands he ‘discovered’, most notably Australia. The Cook expedition laid the foundation for the British occupation of the south-western Pacific Ocean; for the conquest of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand; for the settlement of millions of Europeans in the new colonies; and for the extermination of their native cultures and most of their native populations.2 In the century following the Cook expedition, the most fertile lands of Australia and New Zealand were taken from their previous inhabitants by European settlers. The native population dropped by up to 90 per cent and the survivors were subjected to a harsh regime of racial oppression. For the Aborigines of Australia and the Maoris of New Zealand, the Cook expedition was the beginning of a catastrophe from which they have never recovered. An even worse fate befell the natives of Tasmania. Having survived for 10,000 years in splendid isolation, they were completely wiped out, to the last man, woman and child, within a century of Cook’s arrival. European settlers first drove them off the richest parts of the island, and then, coveting even the remaining wilderness, hunted them down and killed them systematically. The few survivors were hounded into an evangelical concentration camp, where well-meaning but not particularly open-minded missionaries tried to indoctrinate them in the ways of the modern world. The Tasmanians were instructed in reading and writing, Christianity and various ‘productive skills’ such as sewing clothes and farming. But they refused to learn. They became ever more melancholic, stopped having children, lost all interest in life, and finally chose the only escape route from the modern world of science and progress – death. Alas,

I awake with a start, shaking the cobwebs of sleep from my mind. It’s pitch-dark out, the wind howling. It takes a couple seconds to get my bearings, to realize I’m in my parents’ bed, Ryder beside me, on his side, facing me. Our hands are still joined, though our fingers are slack now. “Hey, you,” he says sleepily. “That one was loud, huh?” “What was?” “Thunder. Rattled the windows pretty bad.” “What time is it?” “Middle of the night, I’d say.” I could check my phone, but that would require sitting up and letting go of his hand. Right now, I don’t want to do that. I’m too comfortable. “Have you gotten any sleep at all?” I ask him, my mouth dry and cottony. “I think I drifted off for a little bit. Till…you know…the thunder started up again.” “Oh. Sorry.” “It should calm down some when the eye moves through.” “If there’s still an eye by the time it gets here. The center of circulation usually starts breaking up once it goes inland.” Yeah, all those hours watching the Weather Channel occasionally come in handy. He gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “Wow, maybe you should consider studying meteorology. You know, if the whole film-school thing doesn’t work out for you.” “I could double major,” I shoot back. “I bet you could.” “What are you going to study?” I ask, curious now. “I mean, besides football. You’ve got to major in something, don’t you?” He doesn’t answer right away. I wonder what’s going through his head--why he’s hesitating. “Astrophysics,” he says at last. “Yeah, right.” I roll my eyes. “Fine, if you don’t want to tell me…” “I’m serious. Astrophysics for undergrad. And then maybe…astronomy.” “What, you mean in graduate school?” He just nods. “You’re serious? You’re going to major in something that tough? I mean, most football players major in something like phys ed or underwater basket weaving, don’t they?” “Greg McElroy majored in business marketing,” he says with a shrug, ignoring my jab. “Yeah, but…astrophysics? What’s the point, if you’re just going to play pro football after you graduate anyway?” “Who says I want to play pro football?” he asks, releasing my hand. “Are you kidding me?” I sit up, staring at him in disbelief. He’s the best quarterback in the state of Mississippi. I mean, football is what he does…It’s his life. Why wouldn’t he play pro ball? He rolls over onto his back, staring at the ceiling, his arms folded behind his head. “Right, I’m just some dumb jock.” “Oh, please. Everyone knows you’re the smartest kid in our class. You always have been. I’d give anything for it to come as easily to me as it does to you.” He sits up abruptly, facing me. “You think it’s easy for me? I work my ass off. You have no idea what I’m working toward. Or what I’m up against,” he adds, shaking his head. “Probably not,” I concede. “Anyway, if anyone can major in astrophysics and play SEC ball at the same time, you can. But you might want to lose the attitude.” He drops his head into his hands. “I’m sorry, Jem. It’s just…everyone has all these expectations. My parents, the football coach--” “You think I don’t get that? Trust me. I get it better than just about anyone.” He lets out a sigh. “I guess our families have pretty much planned out our lives for us, haven’t they?” “They think they have, that’s for sure,” I say.

Stormy Sunday by Stewart Stafford Coffee offsets the stormy Sunday, Thundery fingers scratch the drum, The coal-black sky stares unamused, A dim rainbow stripe upon its back. The understudy sun punches through, Slamming into a house's white gable, Blinding against the dark backdrop, The shushing showers rage angrier. Liquid beading on the window pane, Translucent insects marching slipshod, Weather duellists go back and forth, A primal rolling flux rumbling on. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

A rough sense of Baker’s real time frame can also be teased out from internal evidence. The inferential details that help us to anchor the work in some genuine calendar is the extreme weather he described in his single winter of observations. It is without doubt the extraordinary winter of 1962–1963, that Arctic season when snow – more than at any time for 150 years – lay thick on the ground for months. It was the coldest period recorded in southern England since 1740, and long stretches of the coast froze into solid sheets with incipient ice floes. Baker’s description of an Essex landscape snowbound from 27 December right through until the first week of March fits closely with the meteorological pattern of that period. While these details may suggest a rough template for the book’s time and place, Baker felt in no way bound by it.

On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a businessman from Boise, Idaho, was flying a small plane near Mount Rainier when, according to Associated Press reports, he spotted a chain of nine “saucer-like” objects above and east of the mountain. Brilliant in the sun, these objects darted toward Mount Adams at “an incredible speed” that he estimated to be at least 1,200 miles per hour. Arnold’s story of saucer-shaped objects initiated a UFO craze that has not abated. Analyses by meteorologists and other scientists suggest that Mr. Arnold did not spot a visitor from another world, but rather a mountain wave cloud, a frequent visitor to the mountainous Pacific Northwest.

The three “Geekers” met almost every other day to figure out science riddles, just to keep their thinking sharp during the hot summer months. Today they had landed at Min’s, a white-and-gray modern home with lots of large, shiny windows and square furniture that looked like boxes. Since it was a hundred degrees with 87 percent humidity outside (Min knew it precisely, because at the moment she was studying meteorology), the Geekers were sprawled out in the family room, which was air-conditioned to a crisp seventy-two degrees.

In addition to starting the ball rolling on an international convention, the Villach and Toronto conferences had another major upshot, this one quite unintended. Many governments, including that of the United States, did not like the scientific community taking the reins on policy entrepreneurship. Thus, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international body established in 1988 under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization, was created (with US backing) for governments to assess anthropogenic climate change based on the latest science. Note the word Intergovernmental.

Tonight, according to her astronomy notebook (#4 of her notebooks, which were even rarer and harder to come by than actual books, according to Gothel), the moon would be new, meaning not there at all; the sky would be black but for the stars. And in a few days the floating lights would appear. They came at the same time every year. Even when it was cloudy, Rapunzel could see the telltale pinprick glows of their presence, gold and pink against the clouds. Which meant they were of the earth; below the moon and stars. How far up the lights floated she could never tell; they drifted into indifference when her eyes could no longer make them out against their sparkling stellar counterparts. Whether they were a natural phenomenon like rain (that went the wrong way) or some sort of magma or volcanic spew (Book #8: Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder, Complete with Letters and Notes by Pliny the Younger-- including, of course, the Elder's death by volcano), or something else entirely (pixies? Titans?), Rapunzel had no idea. She only knew that they came every year on what she had decided was her birthday. This year she would go see what they were. Herself.

With them heredity, diatheses, the vicissitudes of weather and other meteorological conditions, elements of decomposition, impure atmosphere, gluttony, insufficient and unwholesome food, inebriety and other environments, potent factors in the formation of disease, are entirely overlooked. Having their gaze fixed upon the one ignis fatuus, they become oblivious to all things else in heaven, earth or sea.79

Why I write . . . science fiction or fantasy . . . is a question which I am in a better position to answer. First, this is an area of fiction where the writer has considerably more freedom than in other types of fiction. I enjoy descriptive writing, and it pleases me to be able to describe landscapes and meteorological phenomena which could not exist on Earth, but which might be possible elsewhere; similarly, with characters and their motivations. For an example, I indulged my fancy in all of these things in my novelette ‘The Keys To December,’ which contained unmanlike humans engaged in an unusual project on a strange world. This provided an aesthetic pleasure of a sort that would not have obtained had I written a more down-to-Earth story.

That’s the joy of meteorology,” he said. “There’s vast areas of doubt and uncertainty.” “For example?” “Lightning,” he said. “We don’t know what causes it.” “Yes we do.” “No we don’t.” “Really?” “Really.

There was a look of desperation in the’ President’s aging, haunted face as he gazed up at the shining white face of the lonely satellite. “There’s only one thing left to do,” he said purposefully. “I’m going to call Captain Future.” The secretary stiffened. “Captain Future? But the whole world will know this is a perilous emergency, if you call him!” “This is a perilous emergency!” exclaimed his superior. “We’ve got to call him. Televise the meteorological rocket-patrol base at Spitzbergen. Order them to flash the magnesium flare signal from the North Pole.” “Very well, sir,” acceded the secretary, and went to the televisor.

So glad I could be there to rescue you when the rift beneath your town tore open and unleashed meteorological death upon you. Does this kind of thing happen often around here? Because weirdly, they didn't mention it on TripAdvisor

Tempest Stele sounds more like the archetypal battle between the sun/storm god and the sea, resembling also the mythical control of a meteorological phenomenon.

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they’re standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don’t look quite like real science.2 But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity.

To Cyrus, then, the storm and all other meteorological phenomena happened directly to him. Against him.

This is how LeMay described flying the Hump. And LeMay never complained about anything. It was a grueling hell…The mountains were a veritable smorgasbord of meteorological treachery—violent downdrafts, high winds and sudden snowstorms—all served up in temperatures 20 degrees below zero. As if they needed any reminding, the crews could frequently glimpse the 29,028-foot peak of Mount Everest thrusting up through the clouds just 150 miles from their flight path.

At exactly 8:45 P.M., George Alagna tuned the receiver in the radio shack to the six-hundred-meter frequency, the distress wave band for ships at sea. The mandatory three-minute period of silent “listening out” is an international watch kept by all ships at sea. For three minutes at precisely fifteen minutes past and fifteen minutes before each hour, every marine radio operator on duty stops transmitting and tunes to the emergency channel, listening for even the weakest distress signal. Junior Operator George Maki watched carefully as Alagna fine-tuned the instruments. Maki himself sometimes found it difficult to locate the frequency; on several occasions Chief Radio Officer Rogers had noticed Maki’s hesitation, and he used each occasion to give Maki a tongue-lashing. Ever since Rogers had assumed command of the wireless room, his hostility toward Maki had increased. The chief radio officer made special note of each of Maki’s faults: he was slow on direction finding, decoding meteorological bulletins, and switching smoothly across the transmitting and receiving wave bands. Maki knew his career as a radioman would be terminated abruptly if Rogers made a report to the Radiomarine Corporation. Rogers chose not to file any official complaint; instead, he kept Maki on as a personal whipping boy, somebody he could verbally castigate whenever he wanted to.

Who would not pass on as they did, dead for their country's life, and lighted to burial by the meteors splendor of their native sky

It wasn’t much of a room. It was mainly brown. Brown oilcloth flooring, brown walls, a picture over the brown bed of a brown stag being attacked by brown dogs on a brown moorland against a sky which, contrary to established meteorological knowledge, was brown. There was a brown wardrobe. Possibly, if you fought your way through the mysterious old coats* hanging in it, you’d break through into a magical fairyland full of talking animals and goblins, but it’d probably not be worth it.