Welcome

If you arrived here by chance, you deserve a word or two of explanations. This is the blog of a real-world person. Like all real world people I am sometimes Serious and sometimes Not so serious, and sometimes too I just let my mind wander and speculate on various subjects.

Serious

Serious side covers mainly climatology, global agriculture and food security

Vaguely philosophical

Issues that puzzle me for various reasons, basically dealt with Seriously

not serious articles

Not so serious

Not so serious side is mostly made of subjectivity and a fair dose of derision

eifel articles

Eifel

A geographic study of weddings in the Eifel: who married whom in the Eifel, and where.

Latest posts

Environmental variables (3/23/2023) Posted in: Eifel
4 – A time of moving boundaries and variable weather! (3/18/2023) Posted in: Eifel This chapter attempts to put the locations the spouses originated from in the broader historical context of “Germany” and of “Europe” between 1800 and 1935, as it is clear that most people who married between Hallschlag, Virneburg and Mehring were “Germans” who came from areas that were part of the “Germany” of the time. The […]
Un jumeau numérique pour le Système alimentaire mondial? (3/8/2023) Posted in: Serious Le système alimentaire mondial est tellement complexe qu' il est virtuellement impossible à modéliser. Et sa modélisation en temps réelle coûterait des dizaines de milliards de dollars par an.
9 – Data (3/3/2023) Posted in: Eifel A caveat: all the downloadable files given below correspond to their version on the date of the first publication of this post on 2023-03-03. They are still subject to modification; their final version will be put online at the end of this project. All the data used in this study are available from this post. […]
3 – Locating places and sampling the database (3/2/2023) Posted in: Eifel About 2500 localities were eventually selected (sampled) and assigned coordinates. The post describes the problems, sources of the coordinates and some other issues encountered in the preparation of the final “clean” list of places used in the statistical analyses. 2.1 Finding coordinates Place names were located using a number of webtools, each with their specificities, […]
2 – The project database (2/28/2023) Posted in: Eifel This project aims at describing some features and trends affecting weddings in the Eifel, including their geography i.e. finding out, for instance, how far away from home brides would marry. This assumes that the home places can be identified and assigned geographic coordinates. It turned out this is far from a simple or immediate task, […]
1 – Introduction to Project “Eifel Weddings” (2/21/2023) Posted in: Eifel The group of posts which come under the generic heading of “Eifel” is about weddings in the Eifel between 1800 and 1935. The purpose is to contribute to the statistics and geography of weddings in the region in a broader sense, and hopefully identify some generic patterns and trends. It is specifically not about genealogy, […]
Be my guest: save the Planet! (1/25/2023) Posted in: Vaguely philosophical Almost 13 years ago I published a post with the title Projects that will (perhaps) save the planet. This was a random collection of ideas1 that could contribute to countering climatic change. The post was then updated at irregular intervals with new planet-saving projects as I became aware of them. The fact is we have […]
L’ extraordinaire durabilité du béton romain (1/7/2023) Posted in: Vaguely philosophical Le béton romain (Opus caementicium) et l’ opus reticulatum m’ ont toujours frappé par leur omniprésence à Rome, Ostia antica, Pompei… On cite le Panthéon1 comme exemple de résistance au temps2, mais il y a bien d’ autre structures: les égoûts de Rome, les aqueducs et les insulae d’ Ostia antica, immeubles de plusieurs étages. […]
Source of picture: https://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/birds/grue-cendree-212130.jpg How many cranes flew over Budapest airport on 4 November 2022 ? (11/15/2022) Posted in: Vaguely philosophical By Marton Bussay (MB) and Wergosum Cranes and their migrations have been around forever. They are associated in our memories with cold and short fall days, but they also bring up thoughts about freedom and the comforting side of cyclic natural phenomena: the Cranes are free birds living their free lives but they are dependable, […]