Down the pub

Posted by William M. Connolley on September 4, 2008
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The Castle in fact. With ASA. Misc:

Ran is Japanese King Lear, except the children are male, because it wouldn’t be plausible for Japanese females to be in that position. But its not especially plausible for English females either. Why aren’t the children in Lear male? Only possible answer we could find (other, perhaps, than a convenient excuse to have a few womem (who would have been men anyway…) in the play) was that if they were male, oldest-inheriting would have been too obvious. Answers invited.

Democracies never fight each other, but Russia and Georgia just have. Not really such a difficult puzzle, since the easy answer is to deny that Russia is a democracy, its an oligarchy. And in looking up a source for the d-dont-fight, I came across a beautiful piece by Specer Weart, indeed an intro to his book on the subject. However, the Russia-Georgia dust-up does blow the theory that countries with McDonalds never fight each other. As wiki noticed.

There was some other stuff, but my memory is hazy.

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  1. #1 FhnuZoag
    2008/09/04

    I suspect the best reason is that it was Elizabethan times, so queens were in vogue.

  2. #2 FhnuZoag
    2008/09/04

    Also, democracies have often fought each other, and Georgia has also non-democratic tendencies.

    Long and pedantic:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_exceptions_to_the_democratic_peace_theory

  3. #3 Steve Bloom
    2008/09/05

    Well, it’s not implausible for English females, even in Plantagenet times (recalling Matilda).

  4. #4 Magnus Westerstrand
    2008/09/05

    So a new proposal, :)

    How much could a “rapid” methane release from the Siberian tundra and coast impact temperature?

    … what could this mean for the models?

    [Well, that would rather depend on how much degaussed [sic :-)]. I really don’t know how much is plausible. As for the models… as you know, GHGs are mostly an input. It would be easy enough to specify extra GHGs to see what happens, but we already know the results. I doubt the permafrost is well modelled at present, so puting it in as a feedback would be tricky. More work required I presume… -W]

  5. #5 Gareth
    2008/09/05

    The best-known carbon cycle model’s at the Hadley Centre, isn’t it?

    [Yes, but I doubt it includes permafrost -W]

    With the hydrates, I think it would be a matter of specifying an increase in methane concentration over a given period and looking at what that does, rather than trying to work out a feedback process. Permafrost can be done later… ;-)

    [Just specifying an increase in CH4 wouldn't be very interesting, because we know what happens then. T goes up until the methane gets removed, and we know how that happens. You need the feedbacks for it to be interesting, and we know we don't know how to put that in -W]

  6. #6 Eli Rabett
    2008/09/05

    It’s tricky. The methane gets removed by hydroxyl radicals, but a large enough concentration of CH4 could saturate the sink.

    [Thats an interesting observation. I'd always gone on the methane-lifetime-is-10-y. How much would it take to saturate? -W]

  7. #7 Brian Schmidt
    2008/09/06

    Re Lear: I think the themes of betrayal and parent-child love are stronger by using a father-daughter relationship.

    Okay, I normally don’t do this but I just committed research and actually looked it up on wiki (if you call that research). Looks Will S. was sticking to the mythical history he drew from in writing the play:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leir_of_Britain

    Ran is excellent by the way, as is most everything by Kurosawa.