Preventing El Ninyo: a metaphor for Marxists

["Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lists,

This has little and a lot to do with our centers of interest.

All my struggle against Eurocentric Marxism amounts to the morale
that comes out from the posting I am forwarding, which is interesting
in itself by the way. If our task is to help our masses to raise from
spontaneous knowledge to revolutionary consciousness, then this
little bit of metaphoric information may well be of use.


------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:              Sat, 12 Feb 2000 08:24:42 -0600 (CST)
Subject:                Fwd: Study says South American farmers may have been 
able to
predict              El Nino




--- "by way of John Newcomb <jnewcomb@xxxxxxxxxxx>"
U.S. Water News Online
> February 2000

 LIMA, Peru -- Farmers in the high Andes Mountains may have
been able to predict El Nino for centuries by observing whether
nearly invisible   clouds dimmed the light from a cluster of stars
called the Pleiades.  A tradition for potato farming handed down
from one generation to the   next teaches that the brightness of
stars in the constellation during   June roughly predicted the
rainfall during the growing season from   October to May. The
brighter the stars, the more abundant the rain for a potato crop
highly vulnerable to drought. If poor rains are predicted, villagers
in   the mountains of Peru and Bolivia delay planting for several
weeks.

Benjamin Orlove at the University of California at Davis and
co-workers   reported in the journal Nature that modern meteorology
supports the   farming tradition.  His study of satellite and
weather data suggests that wispy cirrus   clouds high in the
atmosphere are more prevalent during El Nino, a   warming of the
Pacific Ocean that occurs roughly every two to seven   years.
``What is remarkable is how detailed this cloud data is,'' Orlove
said.   Orlove, who spent more than 31/2 years in the Peruvian
Andes, said the   clouds obscure the dimmest five of the 11 main
stars that form the   Pleiades. The dimmer stars are on the outer
edges of the constellation,   so it appears to shrink when viewed
with the naked eye, he said.  The changes apparently only can be seen
in the clear, dry air of the   high Andes, which have a unique
weather pattern, Orlove said.

The farming tradition may extend back to the 15th century and the
Inca   empire, said Alan Kolata, a University of Chicago
anthropologist who   specializes in the Andes. He said the
Incas, who unified the central   Andes tribes, had extensive
astronomical knowledge even though they   lacked a written language.

> http://www.uswaternews.com/archives/arcglobal/tstusay2.html

------- End of forwarded message -------



Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx