Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Cavesa]

Why are people being so rude without any reason?
I wish I were as "stupid" as you, Iversen, you are one of my sources of inspiration!

I don't think someone who knows 1 language 100% (even Japanese) is news-worthy though. That would mean every single professional translator would get celebrated, maybe 1000 people in every city rather than one person per country or so. Another exception is Khatsumoto - he is celebrated because he didn't just master Japanese, he supposedly did so in only 18 months."

He did it not only fast, but also in a way people usually consider impossible. Without studying Japanese at university and without paying for lots and lots of classes. That is why I value a lot of his advice so highly.

Some readers may find some of Sprachprofi's other comments more interesting:

"3x1 [hours per week] is imho the absolute minimum to make any progress at all.

Once you're B2, you should stop counting hours and just enjoy the language, read books, watch movies, talk a lot - no amount of study can force C1/C2. If you don't reach it automatically from the way you use the language in real life, you probably don't have need for that high level. Languages adapt to the level you need them to be (for what you're doing with them over a long period of time), for the better or the worse."

"The more languages you learn, the more likely that you won't need them all at C1/C2."

The world needs more Sprachprofis.

I would agree with the 3 hours per week. I struggle exactly because I don't reach this minimum these days, so I should follow sprachprofi's advice here as soon as I can. Or damn it, I can do it even now, instead of procrastinating, 3 hours per week are not gonna harm my studies.

However, I am not against counting hours after B2. If one understands it is not like "488 hours till C1" counting, but more like "I have studied 200 out of the 350 hours planned for this semester" kind of counting, there is nothing wrong about it. But of course any guesses of hours per level are very imprecise and even more at the high levels.

[reineke]

Why are people being so rude without any reason?
I wish I were as "stupid" as you, Iversen, you are one of my sources of inspiration!

I don't think someone who knows 1 language 100% (even Japanese) is news-worthy though. That would mean every single professional translator would get celebrated, maybe 1000 people in every city rather than one person per country or so. Another exception is Khatsumoto - he is celebrated because he didn't just master Japanese, he supposedly did so in only 18 months."

He did it not only fast, but also in a way people usually consider impossible. Without studying Japanese at university and without paying for lots and lots of classes. That is why I value a lot of his advice so highly.

Some of AJATT content was written by "momoko," who also worked as a Japanese-English translator. Caveat emptor.

I have a great respect for translators and I didn't particularly care for that comment.

[Iversen]

I find Khatzumoto's experiment interesting, but few of us would want to built our own little target language bubble as he did - even if it functioned for him. I don't know who wrote the content at the AJATT site - I have not used it.

As for translators I respect them highly (even if I personally think translating is easier than speaking ), and I don't think Sprachprofi respects them less. The point is however that there are fewer successful 'bubble builders' than accomplished translators who have learnt their métier by following courses etc. etc. For me the biggest problem with the formulation is that "knowing 1 language 100%" for me is a meaningless statement. I have 62 years of experience with Danish, and I still don't know all its nooks and crannies. And I bet that finding 1000 translators in any town with another native language than Danish who know Danish better than me will be difficult, and the best of them have almost certainly spent more than 18 months learning the language. If you set the standard somewhere in the stratosphere then omniscient translators may be as rare as successful Khatzumotos.

As for my alleged 'stupidity' it simply consists in considering which factors could contribute to make language learning pleasant and successful. And being able to guess how words are pronounced is definitely a relevant factor - especially if you don't often hear most of your target languages spoken.

As for time expenditure: I definitely spend more than 3 hours a week on language learning, but this has to cover a lot of projects. Sometimes I spend more 3 hours on just one language in a week - like for instance the last couple of days where I have tried to get my Polish beefed up by reading/copying texts and doing word lists. On the other hand I haven't spent any time at all on Bulgarian or Albanian this past week.

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[Iversen]

GER: Ich bin heute in einem Stadtbus etwa eine halbe Stunde gefahren und bin wegen einer ärztlichen Untersuchung dazu noch mindestens eine halbe Stunde in einem Warteraum gesessen, und ich war vernünftig genug, die Zeit mit Lesen zu verbringen. Ich habe fast die Hälfte von "Der Dativ is dem sein Tod" gelesen. Das Buch wurde 2004 veröffentlicht, und ich habe ihn in 2006 gekauft (und gelesen). Zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatten die Deutschen gerade eine traumatische Rechtschreibreform durchgelebt, und in einigen Artikeln wundert sich der Autor Bastian Sick über die Details. Aber er schreibt das mit Doppel-s, wo ich die Reform bewußt ignoriert habe und weiterhin "daß" mit Eszett schreibe. Und ist der Genitiv denn wirklich zur Tode geweiht? Neh, nur nach bestimmten Präpositionen wie den "wegen" - und vorwiegend in Süddeutschland.

IC: Í norrænu var það eignarfall eftir orðið "til" og það er svo enn á íslensku. En ekki á dönsku, nema í reglulegum tjáningum eins og "til vands" og "til lands" ("að vatni" ,"að lenda").

FR: En ce moment je regarde un programme en français québecqois sur la nourriture et le non fonctionnement de nos intestines. J'ai appris un tas de faits, mais pas beaucoup de mots nouveaux (ou peut-être que j'ai oublié déjà les mots nouveaux que j'ai entendu parce-que je n'ai rien noté). Or je me souviens de l'indice "glycémique", qui selon les experts serait TRÈS important, et par conséquent est-il un peu suspect que je ne le connaisse déjà. Selon Wikipédia "L'indice glycémique est un critère de classement des aliments contenant des glucides, basé sur leurs effets sur la glycémie (taux de glucose dans le sang) durant les deux heures suivant leur ingestion. Il permet de comparer le pouvoir glycémiant de chaque aliment, mesuré directement lors de la digestion. "

Et en essayant de comprendre cette définition je appris encore un fait noveau (du moins pour moi): "Les glucides étaient historiquement appelés hydrates de carbone (ou carbohydrates) car on considérait que leur formule chimique était basée sur le modèle Cn(H2O)p. À l'heure actuelle, la définition a évolué et ce terme est complètement obsolète en français mais pas en anglais où l'on utilise très largement le terme « carbohydrates »." On pourrait ajouter que en danois nous parlons toujours des "kulhydrater" (ce qui correspond au terme 'carbohydrates'(ou 'carbs' aux EUA), et je doute vraiment que les français aient massivement adopté le terme 'glucides'. Mais peut-être ai-je tout simplement pas discuté assez le thème de la nutrition avec des personnes francophones depuis que ce changement se soit produit.

GER: Ich habe auch ein Programm über spektakulären (oder merkwürdigen) Eisenbahnen gesehen, und eines der Beispiele war die Hängebahn durch Wupper-Tal (und die Stadt Wuppertal), mit der ich mehrmals gefahren bin, da sie der einfachste Weg ist, den excellenten Zoo in Wuppertal zu erreichen. Ein anderes Beispiel: die Rodelbahn, die eine steile Straße in der Innenstadt von Lissabon hinaufführt. In der Tat bin ich mit ganz viele der genannten Bahnen gefahren, aber mir fehlen noch zum Beispiel die Bimmelbahn auf Mallorca und die Jungfraubahn die im inneren des Gebirges fährt und fast bis zur Aussichtsplattform oben führt. Außerdem habe ich ein Zooprogramm aus Stuttgart gesehen und ...

IT: .. stanotte un programma sull'esito delle elezioni parlamentari in Italia - ma ovviamente non posso commentare su questo qui (sfortunatamente, perché c'è veramente molto da dire lassù).

EN: Right now I watch a program in English which tells me that it is important to get enough sleep, because the gaps between the cells in the brain get washed through while you sleep, and if you don't sleep enough your brain will become dirty and you increase your risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. And sleep reinforces your learning efficiency. So goodnight...

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[Iversen]

OK, another fine day, and I have slept long enough since my last message.

In the meantime I have obviously done several things, but the one I would like to mention is that I have worked with my parallel guide folders to a couple of the museums in Dublin. I have got an Irish and a Dutch folder for the National Museum of Art in central Dublin, but right now I'm still at page one of the Irish and English folders from the National Museum of Decorative Arts and History - or "Ard-Mhúsaem Náosoúnta na nEalaíon Ornáideach agus na Staire" in the National language of the Poblacht na hÉireann. This museum is housed in something called the Collins' Barracks in English. In Irish this is rendered as "Dún Uí Choileáin", where the funny thing is that "Dún" means fortress rather than barracks. I have been there twice, and at one time there was a viking ship in the courtyard named "Havhingsten" ('The Sea Stallion') in Danish. This is a reconstructed viking ship based on Skuldelev II, which was found at the bottom of Roskilde Fiord in Denmark. But some mad enthousiasts sailed it across the North Sea to Ireland and back, and that's actually quite fair since it has been shown that the original ship was built in Ireland. At least the Irish museum people didn't keep it - we got it back to Roskilde.

Long ago the vikings ruled the area around Dublin, which they founded - although some distance from the center of the modern city. The name "Dublin" comes from "Dubhlinn" (menaning 'BlackPool'), but its present day name in Irish is weirdly enough "Baile Átha Cliath", which means something like "town (at) rough ford"). And what about the museum? Well, as the name implies it shows both decorative arts and historical collections, but there is a a separate branch for archeology (including the viking period) in the town center, and the section in the barracks was established to solve the space problems of the old building. Btw, the word 'barracks' is as misleading as the word 'dún'. The building in question is a drap square mason colossus with a central courtyard, and the museum still only occupied a fraction of all that space when I last visited it in 2012.

And Irish? Well, I had started to study it several years ago, but then I put it on the shelf because I found it more urgent to add some Slavic languages to my collection - and also because I never really got the sound of it into my head. I used an excellent synthesizer named Abair to control my expectations concerning the pronunciation of the language, and somehow it always told me I was wrong. However Abair still exists and I have got a useful pocket Collins dictionary and some grammars plus one of the Harry Potter novels in both Irish and English, so in principle I could take the Irish language up again. But for the moment I would be content just to get back to the point where I could understand a written text with the help of my dictionary or a translation. That's also why I don't try to write this message in Irish - it would take forever and be full of errors.

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[Iversen]

Since I mostly learn from texts and NOT from textbooks or courseware part of my daily routine is to seach for such texts. Those that I want to study will be printed out, often with a machine translation (even in cases where I could have read them with an occasional peek in a dictionary). Those that don't get printed out and studied are not often mentioned here, but of course I read lots of stuff that just don't get printed. One reason is that I then can't give a link, anothr reason is that I like to be certain about my comments, and then it is nice to have a printed text near me. A third reason is that I usually have enough material to comment on in the things I watch on TV and in my printouts.

And books? Well, since I restarted my language studies about ten years ago (upon the discovery of HTLAL) I ironically now read less books than before, and I don't nearly as often have library books lying around. The reason is of course that I would like to focus on non-fictional books in my target languages, and apart from books in English that's not what I find on the shelves of a Danish public library. So..

Today I'll explain the choice of my latest printouts. It all started with butterflies in Sweden...

SW: "Fjäriln vingad syns på Haga" sjöng Bellman, och de gör de också idag. Haga är en stor park i norra Stockholm, och sedan Bellmans tid har det dessutom kommit ett fjärilshus där, så nu har det blivit ännu lättare att se fjärilar på Haga. Men det finns också annat enn fjärilar i huset, och det var en affisch på väggen som fangade min uppmärksamhet. Det visade de olika broskfiskfamiljer, och de är mestadels konstiga - I alla fall om du som de flesta tänker på hajar som de har visats i undermåliga skräckfilmer. Några som havsmusar är mycket konstiga, men inte okända. Jag har även smakat en sådan, men det var inte en framgång: den smakade av petroleum. Rockor är också mycket kända bland akvariebesökare - de är de med afstand de mest nyfikna invånare i sådana institutioner! Ock alla känner utan tvekan till hammerhajen, som är extremt konstig. Men på nedre vänster hörnet av affischen är en familj av mycket gammaldags hajar, som är betydligt mindre kända - och som jag aldrig någonsin har hinnat äta: de sex och sju-gällade hajarna, på latin känd som Hexanchiformes (faktiskt ett namn som är mer grekiskt än latinskt!).

RU: Конечно, я хотел узнать больше об этих старых животныежизнях, и я нашел длинную статью в английской версии Википедии. Но нет чувствоват никак вызов в чтении всего на английском языке, и поэтому я искал несколько других языковых версий. Оказалось, что вторая статья по длине и информации была найдена по-русски, поэтому теперь я напечатал несколько страниц о шестиногих акулах для дальнейшего изучения. Но это для меня нет недостаточно. Ученые мало знают об этой акуле, поэтому я искал акул в целом на других языках.

BA IN: Dan sebuah kerajaan pulau seperti Indonesia harus memiliki sesuatu untuk dikatakan tentang tema hiu. Tentu saja ada artikel di Wikipedia, tapi saya juga menemukan sebuah blog di desnaikhsandra.blogspot.com dengan banyak artikel tentang hewan, termasuk satu tentang hiu, dengan komentar singkat dan banyak gambar hiu yang berbeda. Itu juga dikirim untuk dicetak. Namun, saya juga menemukan sebuah artikel tentang jejak kaki, di mana beberapa contoh jejak kaki yang dicurigai dari era dinosaurus diperlihatkan. Dinosaurus yang disebut Acrocanthosaurus bahkan akan letakkan jejak kaki di atas jejak manusia seperti itu. Yang lain menemukan sesuatu yang tampak seperti jejak kaki di deposit trilobita. Trilobita meninggal 240 juta tahun yang lalu. Dan itulah skeptisisme saya datang ke dalam operasi. Hal ini lebih mungkin bahwa beberapa amatir salah menafsirkan tayangan di tebing daripada bahkan orang-orang berkeliaran di dunia ratusan juta tahun yang lalu.

GER: Und jetzt habe ich gerade auf NDR gehört, daß man in Tallinn Nordeuropas größtes Kunstmuseum eröffnet hat. Dies wurde in einer Sendung über Dutzende von Städten, die an die Ostsee oder die Kattegat liegen, mitgeteilt. Einschließlich Oslo, "weil sie so niedlich aussieht".

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[Iversen]

PLA: Ik höör jüst een Podcast op Platt vun NDR sien Radiostation. 't würr wat över Iesenbahn un grote Loks snackt hier, aver nu snackt 'ne akademische Dame uut Fehmarn, die inst in Hamburg as Plattdüütsche Redaktörin aan die NDR hett werkt. Daarno hett sie an een Projekt 'Platolio.de' werkt, dat Plattdüütsche Lehrprogrammen hett anbeet, aver ik kann vundag düsse Pagina nich künnen apen maken. Is dat Projekt Platolio dood?

Ik moet Zé do Rock danken wegen die link to die Nederdüütsche Radioprogrammen vun NDR. Ik seh veel TV vun NDR, aver höör generell överhööft nich Radio. Vör fief Minuten heff ik een Podcast vün Ines Bärbel hört (ik heff ook een Böök vun düsse Dame), o sie hett mi verteld, dat Fruunsstimmen generell veel leger vundag süund as in de ölle Dagen (uter Marlene Dietrich). Un nu höör ik wat över schepfohrt mit de Blandina die aldaglich vün Dörpen in Emsland to Emmen in NoordFriesland fohrt.

GER: Übrigens habe ich bei herrn Sick gelernt ("Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod" Band 2), daß Mecklenburg traditionell mit langem /e/ ausgesprochen wurde, und daß das "c" hier als ein Vokalverlänger gemeint sei - weil es so auf Plattdeutsch war. Aber jetzt haben sogar die meisten Mecklenburger dieses Faktum vergessen und sagen frohen Herzes Mecklenburg mit einem kurzes /e/, so wie es auch seit langem mit Lübeck geschehen ist. Und mit den Namen des Autors - man sollte eigentlich /Siiiiiiiik/ sagen, nicht kurzerhand /Sik/ - aber er hat sich sicher daran gewöhnt!

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By the way: while listening to the Low German podcasts I also found some written articles, and one of these was interesting enough to mention here, namely one about the oldest version of Low German, which is called Old Saxonian ("ooltsassisch" op Platt) - although, as the article rightly mention, this name was not know to the Old Saxonians themselves. They had some serious trouble with Charlemagne who decided that they willy-nilly had to become christians, but when it had happened they began writing chronicles an things like that in their language. But then the sources dried out, and from 1100 to 1200 there is really no Saxonian literature. The article ventures the guess that their potential writers chose some version of High German as their means of expression, but then it is hard to explain why the language then appears again as Middle Low German, which became the language of the mighty Hanseatic league. I think I'll have to find out what really happened - but not tonight.

[Iversen]

I actually wrote the long rant below as an answer to the thread about maintaing 10+ languages, but then it just grew and grew and came to deal more with problems in acquiring active skills than in maintaining them... so I moved the lot to this log.

I did actually spend a lot of time getting a solid grip on the Germanic and the Romance languages, but most of that job was done from I was around 9 or 10 until I left the university in 1981. I had officially studied French, but in those days it was possible to follow courses and lectures in other languages (provided there wasn't wasn't a space problem, which there was in Spanish due to the number of ultrared students who admired Che Guevara and wanted to learn his language, haha). So in those days I could easily get to hear at least half a dozen languages several times a week - and even participate in conversation classes. When I had got my exam I left the university and dropped language learning for around 25 years. Most of my languages deteriorated during that period, except those which were most useful for my travels. My Spanish would definitely have gone completely if I hadn't been on a number of weeklong voyages to Spain and Latin America, where I had the opportunity to use it. I didn't visit Italy nearly as often, so my Italian became rusty, and since I didn't go to Romania during that period my Romanian disappeared totally - apart from the word "scrumiere", which means 'ashtray'. Heaven knows why I remembered that one, since I don't smoke, but that was the situation until the late noughties, where I without too much could revive the whole gamut of languages I had known in 1981. And why? Because I had learnt them fairly well both as written and spoken languages, and in most cases I had also spoken them during travels.

The situation is different with my 'new' language families. I have not heard or spoken them much, so even though I do know a lot of words and at least the main points of grammar of several of them they are generally primarily written languages for me. And that means that I can sit down and write a short message in for instance Russian, but if I miss a word or want to check an ending then I'll stop in the middle of a sentence and find the solution. But you can't do that when you speak, and if I tried to use those languages for instance during a Polyglot conference or gathering then I would get distracted by hearing stronger languages all around me. So my problem with these languages isn't as much a lack of knowledge as a lack of training in using them actively for conversation. And for me the solution is to stay in monoglot surroundings where my head is constantly bombarded with speech and written messages until it responding by itself with snippets of thoughts in the local language. I may not say much myself during this phase, but that's unimportant - the crux of the matter is that I have to be able to keep an inner monologue running in the target languages, and once I can do that it is not a big problem to start saying some of the sentences in my head aloud (except of course that my pronunciation may be somewhat dubious, but that alone won't make me stop speaking). If I can't think continually in a language I don't want to have conversations in it, it's that simple.

The problem with the Slavic languages, Greek, Bahasa and even Latin is that I don't get the necessary training in conversation before rather late during during a trip abroad. And a skill that hasn't been trained enough can never get robust enough to be left alone for months or years - it WILL deteriorate.

Afrikaans, Low German and Scots can illustrate another point in a fairly illustrative way. I can read all three with no problems at all, and I can understand their spoken versions as well. But apart from maybe a minut or so in Afrikaans and two or three sentences in Low German I have never had the opportunity to speak them - and therefore I couldn't speak them 'at the drop of a hat' even if I had a native speaker in front of me, and because I can't do that I don't get the extra hour of concentrated speech that might transform my passive skills into something like an active skill. With languages that are spoken by every local citizen in a travel destination the situation is different, because there I can train myself by responding silently to the speech I hear, and then I get the buzz I mentioned where the language just starts flowing. And that's why my Greek is becoming active, even though I understand spoken Greek far less well than the three other languages I mentioned.

There's no free meal in language learning.

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[Iversen]

IT: Ogi ho fatto un percorso di una durata di circa un'ora e mezzo, e ho utilizzato aquesto tempo per studiare un opuscolo di Erice, una piccola città all'oveste di Sicilia. Una linea aerea ha offerto voli direttamente da Billund in Jutlandia a Trapani, la città più che sta vicino a Erice, direttamente al mare, ed io ho pensato: "non durerà mai", ed ho acquistato un biglietto a Trapani mentre fosse posibile. E come pevisto, la ruta è stata chiusa dopo solo due anni, presubilmente perché tutti coloro che volevano visitare questa parte del mundo allora la già avevano visitato, ed il resto dei danesi non avevano l'intenzione di farlo. Dunque ho prenotato una camera d'albergo in Trapani, chi ha degli messi di trasporto migliori di questi di Erice -per esempio a Palermo. Questo non fu la mia prima visita a Sicilia, ma le altre volte ho visitato la isola con il treno per Messina, da dove ci sono linee a Palermo e a Siracuso. Ho anche una volta fatto una soggiorno nella città Taormina all'este di Sicilia, presso di Etna, e senza dubbio la destinazione turistica più apprezzata dei miei compatrioti viaggianti. Ma Trapanai? Ed Erice? Questi erano luoghi fuori del solito per noi.

OK, Erice. Si può arrivare per funicolare, ma io ho preso un autobus normale, e gli autobussi devono restare fori della vecchia città perché non c'è spazio per coloro. Tra le mura vivono secono Wikivoyage soltanto 500 personi - il resto della popolazione viva sotto la cuticola in Casa Santa, che io credevi fosse una parte di Trapani - ma no, sono Ericini. La vecchia città e come un museo, e questo anche implica che si deve pagare per visitare le chiese Si fa questo nell'ufficio turistico in Torre di Federico III accanto del duomo. E possibilmente è come parte di quest'acquisto che ho ricevuto la guida detta "della città-museo". In questa guida si può vedere detagli sopra tutte le chiese e le mura ciclopiche ed il Quartiere Spagnuolo (sebbene soltante quelche linee), ma non sapevo dopo aver letto quest'opuscolo che si avrei potuto visitare il Castello di Venere (benché sia marcato sul plano), néanche che c'è un museo civico in Erica. Ma nel mio caso non era importante, perché ho speso tutto un giorno passiggiato per le strade angusti, visitanto le chiese quando ci sono passato. Non avrei avuto tempo per vedere più.

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[Iversen]

I have now received the email with the accept of my speech proposal for the gathering in Brataslava. I'm going to speak about the historical geography of the European languages, and in a sense this is a continuation of the speech I did last year - except that this time I'll do it in French. The title will be "La geógraphie et histoire des langues européennes". And I'm happy in this way to meet the challenge put forward by the gathering team to have more lectures in anything but English.

Last year I combined the information about DNA 'layers' found in old Danish bones (which showed that we have had two major immigration wawes, and that the latest prehistoric one consisted of people from the Kurgan steppes), the archological information (which showed that our local stoneage culture changed abruptly around 2800 BC) and linguistic information insofar it can be obtained, and the conclusion was that the Germanic languages in all likelihood developed in Northern Germany and (maybe) Southern Scandinavia sometime during the ironage, and that the earlier Indoeuropean languages which preceded them must have come long before with the Yamnaya people, who left the Kurgan steppes and went through Eastern Europe to Northern Europe.

This year the questions undern scrutiny will be what role the non-Indoeuropean languages in Europe had (and how little we actually know about them), and when/how the non-Germanic language families in Europe became established in their current territories.

I have spent some days with my family, and as usual this has more or less prevented me from studying. I always wonder how people who actually live in the same location as their family members manage to study anything at all, and I have to admit that I haven't cracked the code yet - or rather, I must have known how to do my homework while I was a school kid, but since then I must have forgotten how to do it. Anyway, in the train back home I read an ...

DU: ... artikel over de opkomst van sterren, een ander over navigatie voor GPS en tot slot een artikel over exoplaneten. Vooral het laatste onderwerp ontwikkelt zich zeer snel in deze jaren, en nu hebben de astronomen verschillende kleine rotsachtige planeten in de zogenaamde 'goldilock' zone gevonden, dat is: de zone waar er redelijke temperaturen zijn die het leven in andere zonnestelsels nog waarschijnlijker voorkomt. Maar voordat je veel te enthousiast wordt, wil ik erop wijzen dat het verschillende onwaarschijnlijk gelukjes waren die onze eigen aardklif zijn relatief stabiel en redelijk comfortabel klimaat gaven.

Ten eerste zeggen onze leerden dat het grootste deel van ons water door kometen werd gebracht nadat het oorspronkelijke water was weggekookt. En waarom kwamen de kometen? Ja, ze waren verstoord in hun rijstroken van Jupiter en Saturnus, die toevallig in banen kwamen die een resonantie-effect veroorzaakten. En het was ook heel gelukkig dat een klauw prezis zo in de Aarde instortte, dat een grote maan uit de stukken ontstond. Zonder onze liever Maan zou onze aard-as rondgevliegen en we zouen een zeer korte dag en een ondraaglijke snelheid en sterkte van klimaatveranderingen hebben.

We weten nu dat planeten zeer frequent zijn, en ofschoon de meeste zonnestelsels heel anders zijn dan de onze, moeten er veel planeten zijn met potentieel voor leven. Maar als onze gunstige situatie het gevolg is van het samenvallen van zeer zeldzame gebeurtenissen, kan dit betekenen dat de dichtstbijzijnde schepsel ver weg van ons woont. En het is zeer waarschijnlijk dat de meeste planeten van het leven niet langer bereiken dan tot primitieve eencellige organismen, en dat intelligente wormen zichzelf doden in een extreem korte tijd.

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