Researching the Anthropocene

[Arneb]

I have my difficulties with this designation, but here is a fascinating project: 6 young scientists from across the board of faculties: Medicine, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Informatics, and, yes, Musicology, meet on an expedition to Ecuador, planning to climb Chimborazo and other famous locations there. They are trying to find and differentiate human influence in this orgy of natural splendour, which is also a prime example of human endeavour and ingenuity: They follow in the footsteps of Alexander von Humboldt, who, climbing Chimborazo in a suit in 1802, was the first human to try to get as far away from the centre of the Earth as you possibly can without using a flying machine (he and two companions reached about 5600 m of altitude, 5900 by their own estimate).

The scientists involved write a blog, also available in English. I commend this project to the friendly attention of the house. Have fun!

[Enzo]

Alexander von Humboldt - he of the famous current?

[Arneb]

Yes, the one and only.

[g-one]

I have my difficulties with this designation, but here is a fascinating project: 6 young scientists from across the board of faculties: Medicine, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Informatics, and, yes, Musicology,

I share your taking issue with the designations. The sound recordist is a 'musicologist' while the camera man is presented as being from the scientific field of 'informatics'.

[Enzo]

Who would be the chief obfuscator?

[Arneb]

I have my difficulties with this designation, but here is a fascinating project: 6 young scientists from across the board of faculties: Medicine, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Informatics, and, yes, Musicology,

I share your taking issue with the designations. The sound recordist is a 'musicologist' while the camera man is presented as being from the scientific field of 'informatics'.

Not so fast. The musicologist is indeed a musicologist, holding a junior professorship in empirical musicology at Technische Universität Dresden. That's not something being on the Faculty of Trump University. Neither is the University of Stuttgart, where Dirk Pflüger is a professor specializing in Scientific Computing. They all have pretty impressive CVs and publication lists, if you care to look.

My problem with designation is with the term "anthropocene", not with calling a musicologist a musicologist even if her main occupation during the expedition will be sound recording. That's a bit like rolling your eyes at a professor of insectology and calling him a butterfly collector just because she goes on a field trip.

[g-one]

My eye-roll was at the use of the term 'informatics' in regard to the well known field of computer science, which I don't find all that related to photography.
But point taken. Sorry for the misunderstanding and agreement.

It may be because Informatik is in Germany what would be Computer Science most elsewhere.

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

Informatics is the applied science behind Information and Communications Technology.
Computing is just a subset of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics

[g-one]

Thank you, I stand corrected.
Not sure who added those words inside my post though?

[Arneb]

Not sure who added those words inside my post though?

Oh dear, that was me!
I wanted to post this as a reply, and, what with my moderator powers, I seem to have hit Edit instead of Quote. I was away from the board right away and didn't check my post. My sincere apology.

If you want, I can edit out the mistake and put it into a post under my name, but my suggestion is we let it stand the way it is.

[g-one]

That's ok, no problem leaving it how it is.
Just thought I should check to make sure there is still only one voice in my head.

Sounds like the team will lose their connection now for a few days.

[Arneb]

Good luck to them all.