At absolute zero nothing is stirring, not even a mouse. Is this a cat or a bat or a dog?
It is a photograph my wife took this morning, of sunlight coming through the ice-covered window pane (the black background is merely contrast caused by the mullions of the wooden window frame).
And now for something completely different. I recommend everyone read the last two posts at Poemas del rio Wang, which I really enjoyed.
A Bad Guide 
What an odd hat the Virgin Mary is wearing.
Haven’t seen iceblossoms since I was a kid. One of the few downsides to central heating (that works).
Apparently Norwegian television has managed to produce quite a viewer magnet: a seven hour trip on Bergensbanen from Oslo.
Quite a bit on Politiken today. I wonder if I should bug Hat about the Danish translation of À la recherche. I recall reading about volume one a long time ago – must be getting near to a decade now. I think. Or perhaps it was M Bovary now that I think about it …
There’s also some brouhaha about Danish poets being foulmouthed.
What are those cam-shaped things that appear to be raised, pointed ears? You’re not going to claim that Mother Nature made them ?
I didn’t know the word “iceblossom”.
Ihr lacht wohl über den Träumer, der Blumen im Winter sah.
You’re not going to claim that Mother Nature made them ?
Doch, doch. She did. That picture’s completely unphotoshopped.
They’re not appliqués representing neatly-trimmed bushes in the gardens of Versailles ?
How I love Schubert, and how I dislike the sound of the classical tenor voice !
Thanks for sending me to río Wang; I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time as I did when I saw the lubok with the bear saying Прѣвед! (I’d visit there more often if it didn’t take so long to load; I once asked him to shorten the front page and he did, but apparently not enough.)
Were there appliqués formerly at those locations ? Perhaps when they were removed the outlines left an almost invisible deposit, or ridge, on the glass that did not come off when the windows were cleaned.
Failing that, I hope you will show us the affidavit from Mrs. N. affirming authorial rights.
Es gibt überhaupt keine bushes in the gardens of Versailles in this house.
If you speed up the Schubert a little, you can listen to it sung by a contralto.
Spike Milligan:-
“His voice was raised in that high nasal Irish tenor, known and hated the world over.”
I once asked him to shorten the front page and he did, but apparently not enough.
I have the same problem. I think it may be caused by the little pictures of past posts, on the right-hand side. Very pretty as they are they take ages to load.
Thanks a lot for the recommendation again, Megkoronázott. Estoy completamente emocionado. And check back soon (hopefully this evening) to see what was the dinner of the king during the Illustrious Royal Bear Hunting.
Language, now I have halved the number of the posts on the front page again, in the spirit of Zenon’s Achilles. Let’s see if this will be enough to reach the turtle of your computer.
I don’t think that what we have here is a tenor voice. In fact, when hastily picking that YouTube bit, I thought it sounded too low and only took it when the next one to come along was equally low. Upon investigation, this performance seems to be in F. I happen to have a book of Schubert’s Lieder in the house, “Ausgabe für mittlere Stimme”, which has this song in G and says that Schubert wrote it in A.
Baritone, then. I couldn’t think of the word at the time. Don’t like ’em either. I don’t like any kind of hair-sprayed, corsetted, contrived voice, male or female. Jes’ sayin’.
Unless it be that of Lady Bracknell.
I haven’t seen ice on window like that in ages. I forgot how pretty it can be. Sometimes the ice can form trees and even whole fairy-tale forests.
Usually it means you’re losing a lot of heat through the window. Double paned windows are pretty standard here now.
We have double-paned windows.
contrived voice
Maybe it’s a matter of what you’re used to. I’m not used to classical singing, either, and it can affect me in just the negative way that I think you mean. Or not. It’s unpredictable.
My wife and I attended a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” last month. We both had that kind of “this kind of singing sounds silly to me” difficulty with the solo bits — she more than I. We both liked the tenor, whose garb and stage manner somehow conveyed a straightforward human presence rather than something irritatingly affected. The bass’s singing struck us both as, I don’t know, melodramatic? I liked the soprano better than my wife did. Well, she was wearing a cream-colored gown that (to borrow a phrase from Bertie Wooster) “accentuated rather than hid the graceful outlines of her figure, if you know what I mean”. She sang like an angel, more or less, and had some strange dark straps on her shoulder which, to me, suggested that the gown could be fitted for wings if the need arose. And as for the alto soloist, they didn’t have one at all. They had a countertenor instead, and I’m sure Stu would have disliked his (skilled but inevitably in some sense artificial) falsetto just as much as my wife did.
Oh, another thing that gets me is when a singer refers to his/her voice as “my instrument”. I connect this with the way that vocalists (justifiably) resent it when the word “musician” is used to mean instrumentalists alone. But, for heaven’s sake, an instrument is an instrument!
The YouTube bit is sung by the Dutch bass-baritone Robert Holl, it says so under “more info”. If you want to hear a tenor, “Related Videos” on the right-hand side offers a version by Jonas Kaufmann.
Language, now I have halved the number of the posts on the front page again, in the spirit of Zenon’s Achilles. Let’s see if this will be enough to reach the turtle of your computer.
It’s a definite improvement — thanks!
We have double-paned windows.
I can’t imagine why it’s icing up then, unless it isn’t vented to the outside. A lot of our windows have a small channel at the bottom the width of a matchstick for condensation to escape to the outside. Or maybe the space between the panes is more than an inch, in which case air currents become possible between the two panes of glass and the window loses 1 R-value that was supposed to be created by the inch of dead air space.
That’s just a small taste of what it’s like to grow up in a house of engineers, always thinking about vapor barriers and such.
On other fronts, tomorrow I’m going to take some Dayquil and teach a math class. Ø will be so proud. That Dayquil is an amazing product.
I would need more than that to teach a maths class.
We have all sorts of different windows, some with insulated glass — we even had the possibilty of having insulated triple-glass in a skylight — and some, where we really liked the old slightly uneven glass, are just double glzed, with 2 layers of windows. The insulated glass in the goat house’s windows is completely covered with ice that has lovely patterns on it. I’ve been thinking of scraping it off in Vesla’s “office”, though, so that she can see out.
[…] and boots nincompoop!" Nice to know i'm not the only one making adjustments. Please Stand By. Heh. Absolute Zero. Sing Along To Songs You Don't Know. Do read, please, the photographer's notation. Extraordinarily […]
Poor Vesla, she’ll be so bored. Years ago you used to be able to get a product that would keep your eye glasses from fogging up when you go outside. There were two products, actually; one was a tissue with some sort of chemical that didn’t last very long and another was a crayon that you scribbled on the lens and wiped off. That one was good for ice skating.
The math class was great fun; I did a review of whole numbers. If I took a double dosage I could probably teach string theory. The Nyquil is freaky though, very vivid dreams–I dreamed I was marrying my undergraduate mentor who is thirty years my senior and has no hair or teeth–he didn’t show up in the dream, but the chapel had lovely cobblestones, I had a pale blue dress, and there were some great hors d’oeuvres.
Can you get this stuff without a prescription?
Of course, but the package tells you not to drive. I didn’t know you were interested in math.
Dextromethorphan is, I think, the ingredient causing those freaky dreams. Robitussin definitely has it; kids take about five times the recommended dosage and “robotrip.” Coricidin Cough and Cold, too. (NyQuil would just put you to sleep.)
Interesting about dextromethorphan, but I don’t mind the dreams. Better than waking up congested and exhausted after only partial sleep.The color and detail is unusual though, and trying to decode the content is a challenge. I suppose it means I need to look to my pension. Or get a better job before I end up renting a room from my old mentor again–I’ve gotten the official union notification of reduction of hours. How do you live on 6 hours a week?
I have read about (really, in real life – not under the influence of cold remedies), and tried, rubbing half a potato vigourously over a bathroom mirror. This keeps the mirror from fogging up when you bathe or shower (or just run a lot of hot water). Whether it would prevent frost fairies forming, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try it on the car. The house windows are keeping clear at the moment. Presumably you can use the OTHER half of the potato, also.
I’m not interested in doing maths, but I’m (was) interested in the history of maths, which I believe should be taught to schoolchildren parallel with the subject itself. There’s a very good 4-volume set, published in the Eighties, called The World Of Mathematics, edited by James R. Newman, that Language also read, he said.
I’ll try the potato on my car windows.
You can also lightly wipe a small blob of shaving cream on the bathroom mirror to stop it steaming up – it’s an old barbers’ trick.
I did the Oslo Bergen train around 1960, wonderful ride, even in summer. Would love to do it in winter.
published in the Eighties
Fifties. There was a set of that original hardbound edition at the Brattle Bookshop for USD 1/vol, as of the other day.
Is that right. I knew parts of it were earlier, but not the whole thing. $1/vol., you lucky lot, I wish I lived near some used-book shops.
Yes, it came out in 1956. I still have my original copy, in its handsome slipcase. Thanks, Mom & Dad!
Did you get it in 1956? If so, you started early. What were you, about eight?
Mine’s from the mid-Eighties and it’s discolored.
And incidentally, I cannot find a link to the most precise of several different images, but the “batlike” creature Jack Frost has painted for you looks very very much like one or more of the little dogs (French Bulldogs?) after which “El Bulli” – Ferran Adrià’s Roses restaurant is named. It was the first thing I thought of. Those ears are so distinctive. What could the Frost Fairies be trying to tell us?
My current interest in mathematics is a due to fever. The cough medicine has nothing to do with it, since I fall asleep as soon as I take it. As the fever abates, my fascination with the subject will normalize. BTW, it’s not “cough syrup” any more and you don’t have to fool around with those sticky little measuring cups. It’s all in capsules. The guaifenesin too, it’s called Mucinex, but Walgreen’s locks up the time release tablets and you have to find a clerk with the key.
French Bulldogs?
Quite right. That’s exactly what it is. As Dearie said, it’s the shroud of Turin, only it’s a French bulldog. You win the prize of your choice from Language Hat.
Gee, I didn’t know there was a prize. Actually I was thinking of OFFERING a prize… Mmm. Probably I would submit some future as-yet-unimagined [very short] text for copyediting and hope that might be the prize. I assume the goats would consult on it – would that be a reasonable assumption? I’ll save this up. Gosh. I’m speechless.
And as soon as I can render it suitably anonymous, I will relate an anecdote about being invited to El Bulli by its chef, which I have not yet abandonned hope of accepting. Ahhh…anecdotes. Most are very dull.
“Bulli” is a French bulldog.
http://www.bluesharkfrenchbulldog.com/index.php?modul=home
You see the logo briefly when you click on the El Bulli website.
http://www.elbulli.com/
What a strange idea, naming your restaurant after a dog.