Texas: U.S. state or suicide cult?

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  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited April 17
    I think you’d say “x amount of the land in Arizona comprises part [or parts] of the Navajo Nation,” or “x area is part of the Navajo Nation.”

    Meanwhile, the one “reservation” in my state—which, despite sometimes being to referred to as such, is not, properly speaking, a reservation—is properly named “the Qualla Boundary,” often called simply “the Qualla.”

  • Lamb ChoppedLamb Chopped Shipmate
    edited April 18
    Ugh. Not to be difficult, but my point is that there are tracts of land belonging respectively to the Navajo, the Hopi, the Paiute, the Apache, and a dozen more. What is the correct term for such tracts of land when referred to as a class, not individually? One would hardly wish to recite all eighteen or so nations in Arizona alone, particularly in a discussion where the yet-unspecified term is apt to be needed many times. Suggestions? Or shall I revert to my declasse term?
  • I've heard "tribal land" but I've no idea whether that is a favoured term.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    I've heard "tribal land" but I've no idea whether that is a favoured term.

    That was the name commonly applied to the original lands of the first people here - they would have been far more extensive than the lands we have now "given" them.
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    Ugh. Not to be difficult, but my point is that there are tracts of land belonging respectively to the Navajo, the Hopi, the Paiute, the Apache, and a dozen more. What is the correct term for such tracts of land when referred to as a class, not individually?
    Ah. My apologies for perhaps being dense.

    The alternate terms I know of are tribal lands and Indian country.

    The latter term, of course, can raise other questions.

  • surely the point is that there is no acceptable name to all parties, because the spaces are a fruit of differential power. They would not exist but for the hegemony of settlers.
  • Yes, but speaking as both a part Cherokee and a writer/teacher of English, we need SOME damn word to call them...
  • Amanda B ReckondwythAmanda B Reckondwyth Mystery Worship Editor
    Since living languages are the product of the native speakers thereof, go for it.
  • floppamagub.
  • Hey, I'd prefer to try to redeem "reservation," on the grounds that we contaminate every new freaking word we use within six second or less, but failing that, I don't mind coining this one.
  • Dave W wrote: »
    But if that is the case, why the current raging outbreak in India, where the temperature is surely as high, if not a great deal higher, than in Texas.

    'cause India also has a very large, very densely-packed population?
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    India isn’t any denser today than it was two months ago, but now it has 20x more new cases per day. I don’t think there’s much evidence that outside temperatures have a direct effect on the virus.

    And I doubt that anyone can reliably explain variations in the case rate over location or time. Making assertions about why things are better in one place than another is kind of pointless; we don’t really know the relative importance of different environmental factors or the relative effectiveness of different measures, we don’t have good estimates of compliance, and there may well be just a lot sheer luck involved.
  • PendragonPendragon Shipmate
    The BBC's take on it was that a month or two back the Indian numbers were very low, and the powers that be were being triumphal about having seen off the worst of the virus, so promoted opening everything up again, and holding big religious and social gatherings (e.g. having fans at the cricket test matches). People stopped taking precautions, and the virus has taken advantage. Even with cases rising so fast they still allowed the super spreader event of bathing in the Ganges on a particularly auspicious date, despite the scientists publicly tearing their hair out over this.
  • The temperature thing is because Covid-19 (along with the cold and flu virus) is what's known as an "enveloped" virus - as it is popped out of the cell it's grown in, it takes a little piece of the cell membrane with it, so it's encased in a little greasy sphere (membranes being mostly made of lipid) holding the proteins and nucleic acid in a watery environment. If you can dry that out, the proteins lose their structure, the RNA degrades, and it "dies" (a loose term for something that is only arguably alive). That's also why handwashing can help prevent infection, as soap will disrupt that layer.

    So if you can keep surfaces that the virus might linger on dry and warm, it will survive on them for a much shorter time, and thus less likely to infect someone via that surface. Trouble is, surfaces aren't the best vector, people are, so even if it's perfect weather for drying out virus on surfaces, if people are breathing it on each other, you will get continued infections. Certainly it can dry out in the air as well, but it's also dispersed in the air as well, so you need to be quite close to someone to pick up a dose sufficient to cause infection - at which point unless you are in Death Valley it's not going to dry and die in the time it takes to go between two people less than 2m apart.
  • HelenEvaHelenEva Shipmate
    Worth remembering that new variants of the virus can crop up at any time and different variants can spread much more easily than others. As for example the "Kent variant" which spread very quickly in the UK in December 2020 onwards. So if an area is having a seemingly inexplicable rise in virus cases, it may be that they've got a new and more transmissible variant.
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