Chasing hurricanes: a book tracks the destructive and beneficent power of the winds.

Chasing hurricanes: a book tracks the destructive and beneficent power of the winds. Windswept wind��swept?adj.Exposed to or swept by winds: windswept moors.windsweptAdjective1. : The Story of Wind and Weather Marq de Villiers de Villiers may refer to: De Villiers (surname) Abraham de Villiers, a current South African international cricketer (also known as AB de Villiers) Fanie de Villiers, a former South African cricketer McClelland and Stewart 338 pages, hardcover ISBN ISBNabbr.International Standard Book NumberISBNInternational Standard Book NumberISBNn abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m0771026447 It is a popular prejudice in every era to believe that contemporaryculture is degenerate. Grumpy and fuzzy-eared Romans bemoaned thedecline in the quality of their own writing, as did the Victorians andas do we. The dumbing down of the MTV MTVin full Music TelevisionU.S. cable television network, established in 1980 to present videos of musicians and singers performing new rock music. MTV won a wide following among rock-music fans worldwide and greatly affected the popular-music business. generation, the shrinkingattention span of our sped-up and less literate minds are worries thatgnaw alongside peak oil and climate change and the improbable pace ofthe housing market: climb into the hand basket and get ready for theheat. But embracing that idea is only the most efficient way ofcommunicating to the world the fact of one's own senescence senescence/se��nes��cence/ (se-nes��ens) the process of growing old, especially the condition resulting from the transitions and accumulations of the deleterious aging processes. se��nes��cencen. . Theevolutions of thought grow more lively, not less. Average IQ scores ofAmericans have grown 13.8 points in the last 46 years--the Flynneffect--and need to be recalibrated to reflect the steady rise inaverage ability at whatever it is they test. The origins of thephenomenon are debated: video games, refreshingly, might contribute toit, and the steadily more complex popular dramas are probably both causeand consequence. There is, as well, the Newtonian habit of perching onshoulders. Abandoning the grumpiness and refuting the inner curmudgeon cur��mudg��eon?n.An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions.[Origin unknown.]cur��mudg is liberating as well as accurate. It opens one's eyes to the newsophistication so��phis��ti��cate?v. so��phis��ti��cat��ed, so��phis��ti��cat��ing, so��phis��ti��catesv.tr.1. To cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly.2. in writing about subjects such as natural history. The rise of Books About Things has been called a fad but it isreally evidence of a growing suppleness of mind on the part of writersand, especially, readers. Mark Kurlansky in 1997 was one of the first,viewing North Atlantic history through the walleyed wall��eyedadj.1. Having a walleye.2. Affected with walleye.3. Having large bulging or staring eyes.4. Having eyes with distended pupils. lenses of Cod: ABiography of the Fish That Changed the World, and we have had historiesof beards, pigments, nutmeg, salt, the colour mauve, curry, gems,chocolate, solar eclipses, screws, zero and corn. This is by no means acomplete list. At bottom, these books use the old anatomy professors' trickof illustrating complex structures by following the paths of arrows shotat different angles. And, after such a long tradition of studyingpolitical and military histories as the entrance points to humanity,these alternative trajectories bedazzle be��daz��zle?tr.v. be��daz��zled, be��daz��zling, be��daz��zles1. To dazzle so completely as to make blind.2. To please irresistibly; enchant. the imagination: there wasactually nothing like curry in India prior to the arrival of thePortuguese and their new world import of spicy chilli peppers. Of coursenot. And how surprising. Marq de Villiers was one of the early adopters of this new way ofseeing. With Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Natural Resource, hewon the Governor General's award Since their creation in 1937, the Governor General's Literary Awards have become one of Canada's most prestigious prizes, awarded in both French and English in seven categories: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Drama, Children's Literature (Text), Children's Literature (Illustration), for nonfiction in 1999, and withhis new, very fine Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather he followsthis line further. His topic is timely. Hurricane Katrina destroyed oneof the great American cities last autumn, injuring that country morethan the direct effect of every terrorist attack that nation hasendured. The hurricane season in the Caribbean, nominally over November1, extended into late December last year and meteorologists Atmospheric scientistsCleveland Abbe Ernest Agee ...smells Aristotle Gary M. Barnes David Bates Francis Beaufort Tor Bergeron Jacob Bjerknes Vilhelm Bjerknes Howard B. needed todig deep into the Greek alphabet to name all the tropical storms thatformed. In 2004, for the first time in recorded history, a hurricaneformed in the South Atlantic and struck Brazil. Already, incredibly, thenew season is upon us and New Orleans has hardly begun to rebuild.Global warming means more of the city-levelling category five monsterswill form than we have seen before. The implications for settlementpatterns along the Gulf Coast are just beginning to be acknowledged. Windswept begins--as most of the new subject histories do--byemphasizing the familiarity of its topic, even its banality to uncuriousminds. We know all about wind after all, and watch the weather modelschatter cheerfully about high pressure ridges and Colorado lows on theevening news as we feign feign?v. feigned, feign��ing, feignsv.tr.1. a. To give a false appearance of: feign sleep.b. comprehension well enough that we even imaginewe understand a little. But digging a little deeper into thesetopics--and this is de Villiers's best trick--reveals theastonishing a��ston��ish?tr.v. as��ton��ished, as��ton��ish��ing, as��ton��ish��esTo fill with sudden wonder or amazement. See Synonyms at surprise. intricacy in��tri��ca��cy?n. pl. in��tri��ca��cies1. The condition or quality of being intricate; complexity.2. Something intricate: the intricacies of a census form.Noun 1. of what had been thought to be known. The purposeof literature, it is claimed, is to make the world seem as strange as itreally is. It is an effect that can be achieved in non-fiction as wellas fiction. The book opens and returns, throughout its length, to an account ofHurricane Ivan, which formed in the late summer of 2004 in the easternSahara and eventually swept out across the tropical Atlantic through theCaribbean and up the American coast ultimately to Nova Scotia, where deVilliers resides. As a narrative device, this manages to illustrate thetangible effect of rotating masses of moist air and at the same time topersonalize the phenomenon. Ivan whipped up waves of 40 metres out atsea before coming ashore on the Gulf Coast, where it split into twooffspring, each of which described eccentric and damaging tracks of itsown before dissipating--one in the cool settling waters of the NorthAtlantic and the other inland over the dry Texan plains. De Villiers interviews hurricane chasers, pilots who studied thenature of these great storms by flying into their centres. He provides afascinating gloss of the thermodynamics thermodynamics,branch of science concerned with the nature of heat and its conversion to mechanical, electric, and chemical energy. Historically, it grew out of efforts to construct more efficient heat engines—devices for extracting useful work from expanding that release such quantities ofenergy--as much as 400 20-megaton hydrogen bombs over 24 hours from evena moderate-sized storm. The work would be worthwhile if only for its exploration oftropical revolving storms. But of course wind affects human destiny evenwhen it does not move at 350 kilometres an hour, and the author'sinterest in his topic is encyclopedic en��cy��clo��pe��dic?adj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of an encyclopedia.2. Embracing many subjects; comprehensive: "an ignorance almost as encyclopedic as his erudition". De Villiers's clear-eyedexamination of wind generation as a renewable energy source is nearlyunprecedented in its even-handedness. Similarly, his explanation of theupper atmospheric physics, and of the enduring pressure cells thatdominate temperate zone weather, brings the reader deep into the arcana ar��ca��na?n.A plural of arcanum. of meteorology meteorology,branch of science that deals with the atmosphere of a planet, particularly that of the earth, the most important application of which is the analysis and prediction of weather. and short- and long-term climate change. But hisparticular strength is in his depiction of the personalities thatrotate--in the northern hemisphere that is clockwise--around hissubject. The hurricane chasers, Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis, AdmiralBeaufort: these men, with their preoccupations for moving air comingalive on the page, make the reader a weather freak as well for a fewhours, demonstrating the success of the book. There are a number of distracting errors. De Villiers'scontention that the frigidity of the upper atmosphere surpasses 1,000degrees below zero would surprise physicists who had believed absolutezero (-273[degrees]C) to be just that. There is also a contention thatall orchids depend on wind-powered distribution of their pollen, when infact one of the features of these plants is its highly specificrelationships with insect pollinators. Saturn's moon Titan is heldin this book to be the only body in the solar system, apart from theearth, to possess an atmosphere. But this is probably cavilling. The appeal of Windswept resideslargely in the idea that a non-scientist non-expert can meaningfullyengage with a subject as phenomenally complex as the origins and natureof planetary wind patterns. De Villiers demonstrates that one can, andmost enjoyably. Kevin Patterson's novel Consumption will appear in September,published by Random House Canada.