Re: “All Wet? It’s Your Fault,” Opinion, Feb. 24-March 2
I was pointed to your website by a resident of Victoria who believed the topic covered in your recent editorial would awaken a great deal of sentiment.
In the nation where I was born and reside, a great deal of druids once lived. The British druids predate even animal husbandry, arriving at the tail end of Celtic hunting when farming was seen as radical. The restrictive planes of human dietary habit had yet to arise, with the peoples meat eaters by default.
Lacking supermarkets or even a humble grocer on their hunts, the Celts soon realized that the weather in Britain was poor.
Soon there emerged a polytheistic multi-God belief system centred around nature. For the Celts it was sufficient to lay blame on the supernatural. But their descendents refrained from theorizing even after inventing the weather report. For a man who trusts a weather bulletin beyond 24 hours is foolish indeed.
So I do not blame the scientists, for in the age of microwavable curries, the mp3, a still extant Zsa Zsa Gabor — they cannot craft a reliable prediction without cocking the whole thing up.
As for the Celts? They survive as a New Age thing, populated by pagans, ramblers, trance music listeners, communers with higher powers and so forth. Britain itself no doubt spread its bad weather to a land it made sure was named after it, and gradually competing theories about weather occurred.
But at least there are theories, for after 3000 years of sopping disgruntlement most everyone in Britain has become consigned to mere grumbling.
Peter Demain, U.K.