I still don’t see anything wrong with the name.
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I dislike the name somewhat, mostly because i associate anything with “blitz” used in other languages than German with wwii Blitzkrieg, and in English its from blitzkrieg “Blitz” is borrowed from. Maybe it sounds different to many native english speakers as the loanword is pretty established by now, but i cant help to think immediately of Nazi-German offensives with Blitz as a loanword. If it where in German i would not necessarily make that association as there it is often used in compounds to compare anything fast with lightning, while in English it is explicitly a comparison to Blitzkrieg (or, in the case of The Blitz, the german bombing of the UK).
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Pretty sure that association is intentional. NPS created bioblitzs with the idea to quickly drop a bunch of experts in an area for an inventory.
I like the term. And it’s nice to have a non-violent use of the term taking over the most common meaning.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=bioblitz&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cbioblitz%3B%2Cc0
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It may help to know that “blitz” is simply the German word for lightning. Santa’s reindeer, Donner and Blitzen, are in fact named Thunder and Lightning.
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i don’t think this really “helps” because that’s not the usual way it’s used in English, and bioblitz is originally an English term, not a German one. either way, my main point earlier was that i don’t think speed is necessarily the right / appropriate characteristic to highlight for a lot of events that are called bioblitzes. so even if “blitz” wasn’t associated with attack, i still don’t think it’s the best word for this kind of use case.
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It is a right way to call all of bioblitzes, they never take years, so they’re definitely much faster than regular scientific methods that accoplish similar aims. Even in it is associated with attack why we should not use a word that existed long before it was used for war? It’s like saying pagans shouldn’t use swastika because nazi decided to use it, bad events shouldn’t shade the light of what existed for thousands of years before they happened. and our goal as a society to not give them more power through words.
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Speed is a factor in a bioblitz, even if it doesn’t always look like it. You’re mobilizing as large a group of observers as possible to inventory a defined area over a short period of time (such as a weekend). The ones I’ve participated in remind me somewhat of a birding Big Day, which really is a “blitz” to document as many bird species as possible in 24 hours.
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i guess the way i look at it, the key characteristics of these kinds of events (in order of priority) are:
- focus on nature
- inventory
- crowd / group participation
- defined period
- (sometimes) defined location
i take no issue with the “bio” part of bioblitz because “bio” matches that first characteristic. “blitz” captures the defined period part, and you could make a case that it hints at the group participation aspect, but it doesn’t really address the inventory aspect (and if you didn’t know any better, it might even suggest an attack on nature).
i think a better alternative word would directly highlight the inventory aspect and the crowd aspect. whether to highlight the defined period aspect or not is sort of secondary, in my opinion. (it can be assumed, since these are events anyway.)
even though back in the day, this term was used by some folks to describe folks who were not Christian/Jewish, i don’t think it’s a great word to use to nowadays in most contexts.
i’m not saying that Buddhists or Hindus or Jains, etc. should stop using or be ashamed of using swastikas and similar symbols just because it was appropriated by folks who did bad things. but in the modern day, i wouldn’t just ignore that the swastika has both religious and political meanings now.
I have a relative and friends who are pagans and belong to self-described pagan groups and don’t shy away from the term. It’s all about context.
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Polytheists of Proto-Indo-European group to be specific, there’s just no other term for them in Russian with or without negative connotations, so I have no idea what to use in English as a single word, would appreciate an advice.
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i would just use this instead of that other word, even if it takes more words.
i take no issue with calling folks by names that they use for themselves, but i don’t think it’s great to label others with terms that they would not use for themselves. as you said, it’s all about the context.
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