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Recently, the Economist, as part of their "Big Questions" series, asked which language do you think is most worth learning? I learned about it through a post in the Esperanto community encouraging people to vote. I was a bit surprised to see that Esperanto was actually one of the choices. So I voted for Esperanto and didn't think much more about it. Everyone knows that on-line surveys don't really mean much and aren't something to get excited about, although it is interesting how they are effective at drawing participation.

A few days later, I noticed someone on Twitter arguing with a guy about the outcome of the survey. He'd written a snarky blog post, which I don't really disagree with the substance of -- as I said, online polling doesn't mean anything. But his argument, that Esperanto isn't important because most people don't know what it is, seemed flawed to me. I engaged in a discussion with him to try to draw out this point and to emphasize that I thought the question was poorly constructed. As an example, I asked "Which programming language is 'most important' to learn? C? C++? C#? Python? Perl? PHP?" My point being that the task determines which language is most appropriate. There isn't any one language that's more "important" than another. I also argued that asking random people on the street seemed unlikely to tell you very much. If you accept his statement that most people don't know what Esperanto is, how can you claim that people are choosing not to learn it? He said the main thing that he learned was that the Esperanto community is a bunch of aggressive fanatics.

He followed up a few days later with a post explaining why he is unlikely to learn Esperanto with a bunch of statements of things you supposedly can't do in Esperanto (like read the newspaper, literature, and histories of a country). There's an element of truth to this, but in fact there is a rich literature in Esperanto that can draw from the traditions of many countries. I've learned way more about other countries by learning Esperanto than I did by learning a national language. I found being a second-language learner of Spanish -- even at a very advanced level -- left me totally unable to appreciate genuine literature. My experience with Esperanto has been way better. But that's a matter of taste.

Finally, he topped it off with this:

I could not travel and use the language unless I went to a dedicated meet up of Esperanto speakers, where I might find some of the people who have called me arrogant, nonsensical, illogical and prejudiced in commenting on my previous post here.

This too is not really accurate: one of the great pleasures of Esperanto travel is arranging to stay with families and people along the way. That's not really a "dedicated meetup" and provides a different perspective of other cultures than you'll get just "showing up" in a country and wandering around talking to people on the street. But the guy didn't bother to actually learn anything about Esperanto: he's just going on his preconceptions about the language.

Still, sigh... The Esperanto community has the word "talpismo" for over-enthusiastic proselytizing. Maybe part of the problem is that many of the people trying to comment are non-native speakers of English and have a hard time being measured in their comments. :-)

Download the poster (pdf) to print and share, visit the symposium site, or follow this link to Register now!

In Twtr: Which tongues work best for microblogs? the Economist asks how many characters are needed in different languages, as compared with English. They find Chinese is the most concise (as ideograms use a single character to express a whole word) and most romance language are longer. I wondered how Esperanto compares.

For data, I used the haiku that I post daily at Twitter in Esperanto with English translation. I selected the haiku I've posted in the past year (~350), eliminated the ones where I didn't include a translation, and counted the characters in each, and plotted them.

The total number of characters was 19227 in Esperanto and 20371 in English -- for a mean/median (both) of 3 characters more in English. In the same metric used in the original article (ie, as compared with 1000 characters of English text), Esperanto would use 56 characters less, placing it above Chinese, but below the next most concise language in their study (Arabic).

Haiku are actually an interesting data source, in that the goal is to have a particular count in syllables, but the data may also include some biases. I conform to the traditional 5-7-5 syllable counts in the Esperanto versions, but less consistently in the English translations (where art and custom suggest you should strive for fewer), which may account for some of the excess verbiage. At the same time, in order to post a haiku with the three hashtags I want to use (#hajko #haiku #esperanto which total 25 characters), I'm often looking for characters to shave from the English translation to get everything to fit (by replacing the word "and" with an ampersand, for example).

The whole idea of worrying about how concise the language itself is, however, is really kind of silly. As they point out in the article, people have always found all sorts of ways to shorten messages, even just to avoid typing, like the ubiquitous "LOL" (or "MDR" or "KKK" depending on which language you speak).

Esperanto is a great language for twitter, not because it's concise, but because it's easy to learn and has global reach. One weakness of Esperanto is that there aren't a lot of Esperanto speakers in any one place -- if a language is "a dialect with an army", Esperanto won't ever get there. But there are some Esperanto speakers almost everywhere and the Internet has made it easy for them to use their language with each other every day. Twitter is a natural fit.

Twitter has, until recently, not expressed much direct support for Esperanto: Esperanto isn't one of the languages currently available for the interface. But that may be changing: on their new "Twitter International" blog, their first message began with an Esperanto greeting. The Esperanto community would welcome more support for Esperanto from Twitter.

Recently, I finished reading Elizabeth Little's Trip of the Tongue, a sort-of travelogue about languages in the United States. It's an engaging read, if a bit superficial, with most chapters having one or more laugh-out-loud moments captured in a kind of dead-pan prose.

It begins as a travelogue: she goes here, she goes there, she hires guides, visits museums, etc. She has various epiphanies and misfortunes and shares what she learns along the way.

A major theme of the book is how language policy has served, usually to reduce the vitality of minority languages, but in some cases to protect languages. She also describes conditions in some places that have preserved languages -- and how some languages are surviving in spite of the overall trend toward global English.

Toward the end, she reveals more of what her agenda originally was and shares some experiences that were foundational for her wanting to do this project. Some of these experiences really resonated with me, as someone who has always had a life-long passion for languages. She speaks of her excitement with traveling to other countries, only to feel a sense of detachment and depersonalization after discovering that she was always categorized as "other" as soon as she opened her mouth (or even beforehand, just based on how she looked). She describes being in Montreal playing a game she calls "How Long Will It Take Them To Figure Out I'm a Native English-Speaker. My record so far is five French words." She describes her growing unease and horror at being a freak and her palpable relief to get back into the US. I've had similar experiences.

I studied Spanish in High School and then majored in Spanish as an undergraduate, dreaming that I would be able to be genuinely fluent in Spanish. Ha. My ten years of grueling study, memorizing irregular verbs and obscure minutiae of grammar left me barely competent to understand native speakers -- and to make myself understood. But not without leaving myself open for the ridicule of native speakers. And then I learned Esperanto.

I wrote about my experience learning Esperanto several years ago, which is still entirely valid. Esperanto provided the experience I was yearning for: an opportunity to become truly fluent in another language. But also, access to an international community of people distributed all over the world who were interested in meeting and interacting with people from other cultures. I don't have a huge number of close friends in Esperantujo, but a more than half of my ~500 friends in Facebook are Esperanto speakers. And the fact that we share a common language makes me automatically closer to them than most of my other face-to-face friends. I know that many of them would put me up in their house without a moment's hesitation -- based on the language that we share. And I wonder if she ever even heard of Esperanto...

Every year, I watch the cherry tree with great anticipation of the several blessed days of sakura cherry blossoms.

sakurburĝonojn… senvole la okuloj ŝtelrigardadas / sakura buds… keep drawing the eye to steal a glance.

Every year, it teases and torments me as the buds swell and open in fits and starts.

burĝonoj svelas, eĉ krevas iomete… kaj eble morgaŭ / buds swell, even splitting a little… and maybe tomorrow.

This year, we had a long run of near-summer weather and the cherry tree came right to the very edge of opening, and then cooler weather blew in. Terrifyingly, in a couple of days, frosty weather in the teens is forecast -- we've all got our fingers crossed hoping that the buds will hang on until the cold weather passes through.

Since we moved here, I've always wanted to drink sake in the spring while watching the cherry blossoms. But I've not had appropriate glasses or little pitcher for warming sake. I've seen them in the stores, but haven't quite been willing to spend the money on them for something I'd use so rarely -- especially given that I don't really like sake all that much. But this year, I decided to get them, so I picked them up at Mom's Chinese last night. This has probably doomed the cherries for sure, but at least I can drown my sorrows in warm sake.

We got home late on Friday night and spent the weekend recovering from the adversity of traveling. Now the bags have been (mostly) unpacked and put away, and we're getting back into the swing of things. This week is spring break at the university, which means a quiet week for me to get caught up. Daniel is also on spring break from Northstar, and, although Charlie has to go to school, its a new trimester, so at least there's a bit of honeymoon there as he gets to know the new teachers.

The weather has been amazing for March. I generally tell myself to not expect spring-like weather until April at the earliest: we've had blizzards on St. Patrick's day before, after all. But the weather has been like early summer. Yesterday, the crabapples all leafed out and the maples (which hadn't been flowering in the morning) were all in full flower by late afternoon. I'm watching the cherry buds with great anticipation.

I'm still recovering from shingles. I still can't quite make it through a full day of work and find I'm needing around 12 hours of sleep each night. I've been leaving work a bit early, fixing an early dinner, and going to bed around 6:30pm. I feel fine in the morning, but run down by the afternoon -- the beautiful weather isn't helping. And I still need to take the painkillers: I'd be in bad shape without them.

I got out for my first "real" bicycle ride on Saturday: I just rode to the stadium, around the loop road, and back. It's about 5 miles: a good first outing, until my rump toughens up. I've been riding my bike to work for a couple of weeks now. If the nice weather holds, I'll try to get to the Connecticut River next -- or maybe all the way to Northampton. It's nice to get a jump on the good bicycling weather for the season.

I got down Alisa's bike and helped Emily try riding it yesterday. She made a good first effort -- and didn't fall down or get any broken bones or anything. It would be nice if she could use the bike to give herself a little more independence.

Our whole trip was a bit inauspicious this year with various misfortunes along the way. Our bad luck continued when our flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems and we couldn't get another flight until the next day. Buzz graciously gave us a lift to Cottages where we had a drink and then went to Sand Castles for dinner, using vouchers from the airline. And then he gave us a lift to the Hotel Fredricksted. Ugh. What a dump. The fellow in the office tried to be helpful, but the whole place was rather dark and icky. There was a smoke alarm with a weak battery bleeping mournfully (which he fixed when we pointed it out). There was a huge dead cockroach in the shower. The phones didn't work. The ancient TV did work, but only 2 or 3 channels seemed to be turned on: almost all of the channels were blocked. Worst of all, we couldn't get in touch with the taxi company to get a ride to the airport. Eventually, we turned to Buzz again, who came to pick us up at 5am. I only got a couple of hours of sleep.

In the morning, we arrived at the airport and got signed in for a flight on Cape Air. The plane turned out to be a little Cessna 402 with 10 seats (including the pilot). Alisa sat in the co-pilot's seat. The flight was smooth and uneventful and low enough to give a good view of the scenery.

When we arrived in Puerto Rico, we debated a bit about what to do. Buzz had suggested that we probably had enough time to travel to Old San Juan, but given how poor our luck had been, we were all reluctant to head off into a strange city via unknown and untested public transportation. So we went to the American Airlines Admiral's Lounge and persuaded them to give all five of us a day pass for the price of one. The kids were happy to have network connectivity. There were free snacks and soda and even complimentary cocktails. A bit boring but, after the stress of the previous days, we were happy to just relax.

One more flight and we should be home.

It's already our last full day on the island. Every minute has been packed with activity, even if it was just sitting on the beach enjoying the breeze.

Coming in March is quite different than July. The weather is only subtly different: really just slightly cooler. But the sea is 7 or 8 degrees cooler and the waves quite a bit larger. A number of the trees (like the Hogplum and the Woman's Tongue) have lost most of their leaves. And some of the fruits (like star fruit, sugar apples and genips) aren't available. The lack of genips alone has Daniel convinced that we should never, ever come back except during the summer.

The biggest difference, though, is one of attitude. Coming in the middle of the semester turned out to be really difficult for me to shift mental gears. I found myself constantly worrying about things I wasn't doing and feeling like I ought to be working. In the summer, I've never felt that.

And, of course, we also had a whole series of minor disasters before the trip. Charlie got mono and was sick for weeks. I got shingles. Buzz had a break-in at his house just before the trip. A constant litany of woes.

Near the end of our last trip, I bought a book of the trees of Florida and the Virgin Islands, but didn't have much time to use it. This trip, I've been studying the book carefully and trying to identify all of the trees. There are a lot of trees right on the Cottages property, but also at the refuge and every other place we've stopped. The book is a bit incomplete: I've seen a number of trees that aren't in the book. But I've learned how to distinguish among the different kinds of palm trees and acacias. One helpful thing is that many -- even most -- of the trees have leaves, flowers, and fruits, which makes much easier to tell them all apart.

The trapping has been good. The mongoose population seems high. We've caught a lot of young males that were unmarked with an average trap success rate of 25% to 30%.

Yesterday afternoon, we hiked along the North Shore towards Annaly Bay. It turned out to be a bit too strenuous for Emily and I. I found that I was overheating and worried about getting back, so we turned back and didn't make it. Alisa, Charlie, and Daniel reached Annaly bay and swam in the pools, but they and Buzz's students were a bit angry that they'd been misled regarding how strenuous the hike would be. We decided we needed to make up some t-shirts that say

I survived an "easy walk" with Buzz Hoagland.

On our last full day, Charlie wants to take Alisa to snorkel by the pier. Daniel and I (and I suspect Emily too) will probably hang out and have a drink. Tonight, Alisa is taking everyone on a kayak adventure in the Salt River Bay to see the bioluminescent algae. And tomorrow we head home.

As a biology faculty member, catalogs and ads show up in my mailbox for all kinds of weird laboratory stuff. Today, I got an ad for an FTIR. On the envelop it says, "Open now to discover the world's smallest benchtop FTIR!". It's a four-page folded glossy flyer. It uses the acronym "FTIR" twice on the first page, four times on the second page, 7 times on the third page, and once on the back. But it never defines what an FTIR is. I guess if you don't know, you must not need to know.

Philip informs me that teh google says its a "Fourier transform infrared spectrometer". Just what I've always needed. Not.

It started with my shoulder hurting as though I had strained it. I had been moving some boxes around and, at first, thought it was nothing more than that. Then, I started feeling poorly -- under-the-weather -- achy and tired like I was coming down with a virus. In the early morning on Saturday, I discovered I had a livid rash on my chest, like I had gotten into poison ivy. It was Daniel who pronounced the diagnosis: shingles.

Wikipedia has a great page about shingles. The virus that causes chicken pox is a retro-virus that stitches its DNA into nerve cells in the ganglia along the spinal cord. At some point, the virus gets turned back on and starts a new infection that travels along the axon of the nerve and infects the region enervated by the spinal nerve, producing the rash in a small zone-like belt on just one side of the body. The rash is quite painful:

The pain may be mild to extreme in the affected dermatome, with sensations that are often described as stinging, tingling, aching, numbing or throbbing, and can be interspersed with quick stabs of agonizing pain.

I got into see the doctor on Sunday and got prescriptions for acyclovir and tramadol. Acyclovir is a neat antiviral medication -- one of the first treatments developed in the study of HIV. Retroviruses use their own DNA polymerase to replicate and this gets taken up as a base to be incorporated into the viral DNA, but lacks the 3' end where the next base would attach and causes the DNA molecule under construction to be terminated. Tramadol is a synthetic analog of codeine that is particularly effective at blocking nerve pain.

Prior to seeing the doctor, I'd been taking ibuprofen for the pain, which was actually pretty effective. And, at first, the rash was not terribly painful. Over the next couple of days, however, the rain became much more painful and I was grateful for the tramadol. It's effect is interesting: when I move the skin with the rash, or it brushes against fabric, I can feel that it hurts but, instead of hurting, it feels more like when you hit your funnybone: an odd uncomfortable feeling, but not pain. When the tramadol starts to wear off, however, I'm under no illusion regarding what I'm feeling.

It appears that the antivirals are having a positive effect: the rash has become much less livid and, although I still have ups and down, I'm starting to feel like I'm getting through to the other side.