[11:26:29] Toms: more about the almanac, because to me it always meant “book of reference” - but we’re both right -
[11:26:40] Toms: From Wikipedia: “An almanac (also spelled almanack) is an annual pub­li­ca­tion con­tain­ing tab­u­lar infor­ma­tion in a par­tic­u­lar field or fields often arranged accord­ing to the cal­en­dar. Astro­nom­i­cal data and var­i­ous sta­tis­tics are also found in almanacs, such as the times of the rising and set­ting of the sun and moon, eclipses, hours of full tide, stated fes­ti­vals of churches, terms of courts, lists of all types, time­lines, and more. The word almanac comes from the Arabic المناخ al-​manaakh, mean­ing “the climate”.” and “Currently pub­lished almanacs such as Whitaker’s Almanack have expanded their scope and con­tents beyond that of their his­tor­i­cal coun­ter­parts. Modern almanacs include a com­pre­hen­sive pre­sen­ta­tion of sta­tis­tis­ti­cal and descrip­tive data cov­er­ing the entire world. Con­tents also include dis­cus­sions of top­i­cal devel­op­ments and a sum­mary of recent his­tor­i­cal events. Other cur­rently pub­lished almanacs (ca. 2006) include Infor­ma­tion Please Almanac, World Almanac and Book of Facts, and The Old Farmer’s Almanac.”
[11:27:44] Darrel: yes, but I don’t know if we can directly trans­late it… I also thought about that… but how can we verify the trans­la­tion?
[11:29:13] Toms: but didn’t you directly trans­late to cli­mate? I think that’s valid.
[11:29:38] Darrel: no… it’s in the book
[11:29:46] Toms: but should have both mean­ings - the ref­er­ence to cli­mate (as in ‘world climate’) and the other mean­ing as ‘book of data’
[11:31:01] Darrel: yes, I totally agree… but I didn’t want to get caught up in the linguistics… but either we can add this to the post, or as a comment… either/or…
[11:31:35] Toms: I make a com­ment
[11:31:52] Darrel: good idea…
[11:32:06] Toms: past­ing in this chat con­ver­sa­tion maybe..
[11:32:26] Darrel: hehehee… i don’t know… hmm… I’ll look back…
[11:33:43] Darrel: the other thing about Almanacs is that they are pre­scrip­tive / predictive… we use them in Canada to know which week­ends will be sunny… for exam­ple if you’re plan­ning your wedding…
[11:33:54] Toms: ah - there is some­thing in ger­many we call the 100year-calendar, telling how the wether was on a cer­tain day over the last 100years
[11:35:09] Darrel: exactly… and for crying out loud, they’re usu­ally right…
[11:35:56] Darrel: The book is really a “primer” for the region… it seems to intro­duce West­ern con­cepts to the Arabic World… things miss­ing that allow for their type of Archi­tec­ture and Urban­ism to exist…

And the orig­i­nal arti­cle by Mike Davis in the New Left Review against Dubai:
http://​newleft​re​view.​org/​?​p​a​g​e​=​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​&​#​0​3​8​;​v​i​e​w​=2635

Fur­ther Read­ing from Dys­turb:

There is the pre­vi­ous post of Dys­turb by Thomas:
http://​www.​dys​turb.​net/​2​0​0​7​/​i​n​s​t​a​n​t​-​c​i​t​y​-​t​h​e​-​r​i​s​e​-​o​f​-​dubai/
And another post by Clau­dia:
http://​www.​dys​turb.​net/​2​0​0​7​/​w​h​a​t​-​i​-​h​a​v​e​-​a​c​h​i​e​v​e​d​-​f​o​r​-​d​u​b​a​i​-​i​s​-​o​n​l​y​-​1​0​-​o​f​-​m​y​-​v​i​s​i​o​n​-​f​or-it/