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« Norvin Richards Colloquium | Main | Online Lectures by Famous Linguists»

Partee: News from New Zealand

Barbara wrote in with a few observations about the strangeness of life in the Southern Hemisphere. In addition to some comments about how everything is upside-down down there, but she has some noteworthy astronomical observations:

Orion down under, or "Knowing vs. realizing"

New Zealand keeps making me feel interestingly dumb -- I keep being surprised by things about which immediately after the surprise reaction I have to say "oh, of course". It's a constant lesson in the difference between "having the information that" and "realizing that".

Latest: I just saw the constellation Orion! But that's a northern constellation! Oh, of course: we only have it in the fall, and the rest of the time it must be somewhere else, mustn't it? Where else but in the southern hemisphere? ("Duh.", in some dialects.) So of course I "knew" it -- but not until after I had recovered from the initial shock and thought a second.

So it turns out that since we'll have two fall seasons this year, I'll have Orion most of the year. That's nice, I like Orion. (I remember when George Horn -- UMass PhD 1973 or so -- went to teach in Australia and sent back to the department a postcard with a diagram showing why the man in the moon is upside down from down here. That one was harder.)

Greetings to all,
Barbara

Correction

John Kingston writes:

Chris and Barbara,
A correction may be called for. Orion has been visible in the early evening all through both January and February. I always look for it when I get home in the evening after dark at this time of year and then do the walk around the sky to see other familiar friends. It's fully up, too, so much that Sirius is easily visible. Of course, both are in the southern sky.
John

And Barbara follows up:

Aha! Thanks! Indeed Orion is in the northern sky here. We're going to go out some clear night soon to look for the Southern Cross, now that we've figured out that it's pretty much straight opposite Orion.

Thanks again -- as I said in my note to WHISC, this is fun -- it's an interesting kind of dumb.

March 9, 2006 12:05 AM | 04:07 (2006-03-09) , faculty news