At this time of year, we begin to notice that the sun is quite low…
By this time the camera’s memory card was full.
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At this time of year, we begin to notice that the sun is quite low…
By this time the camera’s memory card was full.
A Bad Guide 
A.J.P. ‘Nosferatu’ Crown.
Fabulous!!
Instant thought: Daddy-Long-Legs.
The man’s got a shadow longer than a docker’s tea break.
Those can’t be the shadows of a doubt, they’re too substantial. I can see why one might want to steal such a thing. Did Peter Pan live in Norway ? In milder climes most people believe what they are told – they cast doubts no bigger than chihuahuas and often stamp them out inadvertently.
Correction: it is the gummint that finds it easier to stamp out small doubts in temperate regions. To leave your mark on the environment, you must keep a Rottweiler at your heels or cast a long shadow there, depending on whether you live south or north.
Clearly he’s on stilts. I think that’s how the Cirque du Soleil got its name.
I believe Proust wrote about this, in the work originally entitled Dans l’ombre des couronnes sur des échasses. But, as Gide was fond of saying, « L’homme ne deviendra point vraiment grand aussi longtemps qu’il se juchera sur des échasses ».
Ah, long shadows… it’s that time of year again (though happily not so for dear Julia, who gets the shorter shadows this time of year).
The approach of winter always causes the pedant in one to hark back to that most umbrous of scholastic paradoxes, The Shadow.
In his A Nocturnall Upon St. Lucie’s Day, Being the Shortest Day, Donne, who never met a paradox he didn’t like to fiddle about with, plays upon it thus:
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
For there to be a shadow, Donne is saying, some body must exist or have existed to have cast it.
But what is clear in the height of noonday may be obscured in the passage of time, which dictates the transitoriness of things, including all bodies.
With the lengthening autumnal shades of afternoon and evening, the day and the year give up the light, and life enters the Valley of the Shadow. Which is populated by hordes of Daddy Long Legs.
(Thank you, Julia).
The poor dog appears understandably apprehensive.
Grumbly, there is no such work. Is there?
Grumbly, there is no such work. If you can’t stand on the shoulders of giants, you have to use stilts to see where you’re going. Or is it glasses. Anyway, John Donne didn’t know about Photoshop.
Nosferatu — I forgot yesterday was hallowe’en — mummy & daddy longlegs, the more closely you time the docker’s teabreak the further you get from sailing the ship (Heisenberg).
Photoshop perhaps not, but I was sure he had fancied-up the reds and yellows in these views of Hove at dawn.
(I believe it’s a program they offer in the seven sleepers den.)
From Wikipedia:
I dwelt at 43 Lower Park Road, Brightlingsea, all through several epic winters, saw several wrecks washed up upon that coast, and experienced great delirium of hunger, though never quite of a Hamsun level.
Still the worst depths of emergency ration to which necessity drove me were lined with, as I recall, Brazil nuts.
Not guilty, your honour.
(But wait, Arthur, is that a Wiki-trick… or were Mignonette and Marionette the same vessel?)
Well, things certainly never got THIS bad:
“Drawing lots in order to nominate a sacrificial victim who would die to feed the others was possibly first discussed on 16 or 17 July, and debate seems to have intensified on 21 July but without resolution. On 23 or 24 July, with Parker probably in a coma, Dudley told the others that it was better that one of them die so that the others survive and that they should draw lots. Brooks refused. That night, Dudley again raised the matter with Stephens pointing out that Parker was probably dying and that he and Stephens had wives and families. They agreed to leave the matter until the morning. The following day, with no prospect of rescue in sight, Dudley and Stephens silently signalled to each other that Parker would be killed. Killing Parker before his natural death would better preserve his blood to drink. Brooks, who had not been party to the earlier discussion claimed to have signalled neither assent nor protest. Dudley always insisted that Brooks had assented. Dudley said a prayer and, with Stephens standing by to hold the youth’s legs if he struggled, pushed his penknife into Parker’s jugular vein, killing him.”
(That bit of self-exculpatory logic about the wives and families does rather lodge in the old craw. And too the issue of the freshness of the blood would seem perhaps a trifle cold to have been raised, even in this chop-logical context. )
Small wonder, then, the Mignonette was haunted.
Shadows: By an amazing coincidence, I just finished reading Peter Schlemihl (in German). A great story! As soon as I started it, I regretted that it had taken me so many years to get around to reading it. I did not understand every word (I did not use a dictionary), but quite enough to follow the thread of the story.
How interesting, m-l. I hadn’t heard of it, though I like the name, as well as that of its author. Is it just coincidence that Struwwelpeter is also Peter? I think it must be.
Tom, I recently flew over that part of Essex, and there were windmills in the sea (except they call them turbines), two great rectangles of (I think) 49 of them. I wondered why they hadn’t found a place where they could have just one 7 x 7 square.
Arthur,
At the time I was living in that then-remote outpost, the nearby offshore North Sea structures were two large floating rigs, the broadcasting venues of the “pirate” pop radio stations Radio London and Radio Caroline. The Top Forty came in loud and clear. The disc jockeys had to be out there for weeks at a time…
“(Thank you, Julia).”
You’re welcome, Tom, but it’s all tour merit!
The story of the Mignonette was like the Mary Celeste?
(you know, is always strange for me as a Spanish speaker that in many other languages ships are feminine and have feminine names)
I seem to remember some Genovese traveller leaving Cádiz with the three ships Santa María, la Niña and la Pinta.
Yes, what about that, Julia?
Tom, did you really survive on Brazil nuts? I didn’t know they grew in Essex. I used to listen to Radio Caroline, I think they just made a film out of it.
I just read the story of Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty. Apparently he was really a very nice man — not at all like Charles Laughton — beloved by children and animals, and ended up an admiral.
Oops!
yes… I seem to remember such a story… ;-)
The point is that these were “caravelas” (a feminine noun), so their names are feminine too. Happens the same with “fragata” now that I think about it. But what I meant is that, al least for me, is strange when in English is you always say “she” for a ship (¿also for a car, like in Italian “la macchina”?)
Ah ha, now I understand. Yes, old-fashioned cars are definitely “she” in English, but I’d say contemporary cars are neuter. You’d have to be a bit of a romantic to refer to a Volvo stationwagon as “she”.
I don’t believe “romantic” would adequately describe the disposition of someone who called his Lamborghini “she”. Such a person would surely have to have a weakness for dominas.
I’m sorry is “caraBelas” not “caraVelas” (you see, I’m also stupid in Spanish! b & v should not be so close on the keyboard!!)
Grumbly, I agree with you!
Oh, it’s Lamborghini’s who are “she”? I’ve never even met anyone who owned a Lamborghini.
I’m pretty sure cruise ships are “it”.
Of course, Lamborghini started by making tractors. A tractor or a combine-harvester might be “she”.
When I was a kid we had a then-popular sort of American Motors car called a Rambler. A letter fell off the radiator grill(e), leaving AMBLER. My father and my uncle discovered that the letters were easy to move around — they were held by screws or bolts — so after some thought they took off the other R and made MABEL, which became the car’s name for the rest of her life.
I think they’re called caravelles in English (from French).
Yes, she looks like a Mabel.
At this time of year, we begin to notice that the sun is quite low…
Here too, twice per day, around 5.30 a.m. and around 6 p.m.
Yes, but here it’s like that all day long. You lot never get that, I think.
Like the Indian Ocean bathed in a never-ending sunrise and sunset. Yes, that’s exactly it.
That must be nice. (Great for taking pictures I presume.) It somehow reminds me of Saint-Exupéry’s little prince on his asteroid, who only had to pull his chair a bit to see a sunset whenever he wished to.
So, 6:13 pm, has the sun set already or not?
There wasn’t any sun today, but if there had been it would have set at four-something, I think. Since we put the clocks back last Sunday the early dusk has become much more noticeable, but of course it’s better in the early mornings.
The low sun is very dangerous when you’re driving; the sun illuminates every speck of dust and spray on your windscreen, so you can’t see through it, as well as dazzling you directly. Yesterday it caused a nasty accident near here.
Brazil nuts growing in Essex. Reminds me of today, the kids at the school where I am working made a Thanksgiving display and among the gifts are bananas…
Sucking a pebble helps.
If I ever get to spend Thanksgiving in Taiwan I think I’ll have the Irish potatoes.
I’m very glad to hear you’ve been giving a teaching job.
The modest little Nash[R]ambler was the least Lamborghini-ish of fifties caravelles. With the optional “continental” spare tire mount, however, perhaps it gains a posterior elegance that qualifies it for a gender pronoun.
The Brazil nuts in Brightlingsea (Brittlesey, to say it right) were obviously brought in from somewhere. Possibly Norway. They were sold in a shop on the front street.
Yes, which continent is it that mounts its tyres like that?
It would seem that the continental tire began in Europe. Early European sports cars had their spare tire attached on the back as their trunk or storage space was so very small.
It’s interesting to note the term “continental tire” also came to describe a non-functional bulge stamped into the trunk lid, or a cosmetic accessory to the rear of the car that gave the impression of a spare tire mount.
I like the concept of a non-functional bulge. A helpful term in many contexts.
Not of course that the history of the continental tire is an entirely unworried one.
“There is a legend that Henry Ford II complained that the trunk of his personal Ford Thunderbird did not have room for a set of golf clubs without removing the spare tire. The 1956 Thunderbird had its spare tire mounted outside. However, adding weight behind the rear wheels was said to adversely affect steering and handling. For 1957 the Thunderbird’s trunk was stretched 5 inches (127 mm) to allow the spare tire to migrate back inside.”
A migrating back-loaded tire would seem to represent a small emblem of continental drift. Therefore perhaps the correct answer might be Gondwana.
“Spare tire” can also refer to this kind of non-functional bulge.
What kind of a sadistic designer wants to “give the impression” that there’s a spare tyre? Then when your tyre blows — haha, it’s just a non-functional bulge.
(from above)
the name Peter: Peter Schlemihl, StruwwelPeter, Peter Rabbit, Piotr/Petroshka (as in “Peter and the Wolf”, among others), (mon ami) Pierrot, …
I guess the name of the First Disciple and Heavenly Doorman (or perhaps Gatekeeper) is or was one of the most common names in Europe, practically the generic male name, and therefore given to characters in popular culture. In English the generic name is most likely to be Johnny or Jack (in the box, and the Beanstalk, Appleseed, jump-up, etc ).
I don’t know about the Spanish equivalent.
the gender of ships
In French the basic words for boats or ships are masculine, but some of the more specialized words (by no means all) are feminine, as in barque, caravelle, frégate, périssoire, brigantine, galère, etc. I think that it is more likely for these to have a female name, but not necessarily: when I was young there was the famous “paquebot [m.] Normandie [f.], “le [m.] Normandie” for short (it was a large passenger boat). Similarly we would refer to the “Queen Mary” as “le [m.] Queen Mary”. This usage is not limited to the naming of boats: in Montréal there is a big hotel called “le [m.] Reine Elizabeth” (“le” referring to the hotel, not to the queen).
>Marie-lucie
The name of the foster-father and head of the Holy Family was one of the most common names in Spain. I need it to complete that family with my name.
Jesús,
I was not just referring to those names being very common for real persons, but specifically to their use for imaginary persons in folk songs, stories or traditions, such as “Jack (and the Beanstalk), jack(o’lantern), etc” in English (why “Jack” [a nickname for “John”] rather than some other name?), or in French “Pierre” or “Pierrot” – “Pierre” is very common in folksongs about lovers, and “Pierrot” for instance in the song Au clair de la lune. Are there similar traditional uses for a few names in Spanish?
Yes, m-l, and are the same ones: Juan y Pedro are the most common names in folk tales. Like “Juan Sin Miedo” or “Pedro de Urdemalas”.
In traditional sayings (“refranes”) Juan and Pedro are also omnipresent.
I think the name “Juan” is more often used for the folk character of the silly-wise and “Pedro”, for the mischievous trickster.
m-l, the English use “Jack” because they don’t use “Jock”. Simples.
>Marie-lucie
In the canon, after “Maria”, the first names are :“Joseph”, “Petri”, “Pauli” and “Joanne” so probably these names were very chosen for real and imaginary persons.
The boy in some jokes is always “Jaimito”.
Here, even the men of the Flintstones are « Pedro » and « Pablo ».
Pedro Flintstone and Pablo Rubble?
No, Pedro Picapiedra (“flinstone) y Pablo Mármol (“marble).
Jesús, entiendo que lo que pregunta marie-lucie apunta a cuestiones folklóricas que trascienden los nombres más comunes o usuales. De hecho los nombres Pedro y Juan son aparecen en el folklore de muchas naciones en las versiones de cada idioma.
I had a Yamaha Fino, and not only did I call her she, I called her Fino (no article), which given that that’s a masculine ending is completely absurd.
>Julia
“Sí creo haber entendido bien en esta ocasión. He puesto también “imaginary” en el comentario; me parece que los nombres más comunes son también los primeros que se nos ocurren cuando nos inventamos algo.”
Well, don’t worry. I suppose she was Japanese, anyway, not Spanish.
In the days when there were people who worked at petrol stations you used to say “Fill her up!”, but that was a while ago. At petrol stations in Italy, I remember you’re supposed to say either “Tutto” or “Tutti”, but I always got it wrong. One means everything and the other everyone; in the end I used to say both to make sure, I must have sounded very stupid.
In English Wikipedia:
What different connotations?
>A. J. P. Crown
The etymology of Pepe is still not sure. Even Wiki.es discussed that.
Pepe is also a bad melon. Besides that, in vulgar slang it’s vulva.
Thanks, AJ.
Teaching kids is good. A job that promotes my humanity rather than crushing it makes a refreshing change.
Irish potatoes update : I walked past there on Saturday night, on my way to the world’s tallest building. There was an army of young people devouring Samhain specials and some very cute girls done up as sex zombies.
I didn’t see much sign of the upper end of the 5-60 demographic in attendance.
How did you know they were sex zombies?
Did you climb to the top of the world’s tallest building?
I just threw in ‘sex zombies’ because I can’t think of anything better to convey a flavour of them. Does it work? See anything?
I’ve walked around outside on the observation deck (87th floor of 101), was a happy time with Yang, our amusingly blunt guide. Actually, I will put up a pic of me and Yang in action. Bear with me.
I’m not good-looking etc, but this is us doing something like “You are my sunshine”
Pinhut, I didn’t like to say but I took an immediate dislike to the customers at the Famine Outlet, especially the emo boy with the rucksack and outsize ‘skinny’ jeans. Have you considered terrorism?
Non-Functional Bulge still holding the lead on the rail, with Amusingly Blunt coming up fast on the outside…
Yes, I see sex zombies. I was thinking of Hallowe’en. VERY nice picture of you and Yang. You’ll have to go on the road as Yin and Yang.
… and talking of the road, Tom once hitchhiked around England with Alan Ginsberg. Poetry in motion.
And who is Petra?
Nefertiti the Sex Zombie making a valiant late challenge…
And it’s a Photo Finnish!
(Would the spaying provide an unfair advantage perhaps?)
Petra, or she-Peter, the rock upon which I shall build my church, also the Rose City, hewn from rock, also your average-average German bird with no distinguishing features whatsoever (‘Peehtra, du komm doch ma, Petra!’). Petra oleum, the oil that ariseth from the rock and fuelleth our civilisation and without which we’d still be knitting books from hemp rope.
That’s a very good hallowe’en costume (I’ve seen a lot of them).
Pin and Yang.
or. Pin and Pang.
That photo may be required as evidence in my ongoing quest to be brought in from the cold. “See, it smiles.”
Spayed and spay paint. That’s a cute new coinage.
Allen could be a rather trying hitchhiking companion at times… but just as one was losing heart, during a chilling sudden downpour somewhere in the wild outlands of the West, his serendipitous deployment of Buddhist prayer signals (hand gestures, accompanied by a rackety off-key mantra) succeeded in causing a pleasant young lorry driver to stop, and chauffeur us all the way into… Reading, if memory serves.
AG was triumphant, especially as the young driver was (to apply an epithet my wife recently found in Life magazine, applied to a volcano, yet — !) quite “pulchritudinous”.
The only Petra I know was the dog on BBC children’s television.
Principal, have you tried the food at the Potato Famine shop in Bangkok?
What was that about birds?
No sign of it yet, but can spring be far behind? I judged them by their looks alone from P’s pic.
I thought it was Jesùs who walked on water. Or did they all do it?
Blow me down with a feather, Ø.
(And may I say what an excellent moniker that is, Nordic and fresh yet abhorrent to Nature.)
Are you a mathematician, P.?
Nah, that’s the only factoid I remember, and only for the stern Biblical sound of it. ‘Nature abhors a vacuum cleaner.’ (Spinoza)
A vacuum cleaner than what?
Oh, a vacuum cleaner. But there’s no dirt in a vacuum, so what’s it for?
He’s right. Either it’s a vacuum or it’s not. Kant would never have made a mistake like that. Nor would Sir James Dyson.
Or did they all do it?
I just looked it up. It seems that Peter tried stepping out of the boat and walking on the lake, but wasn’t sure he could pull it off, and this is when the master uttered the famous words “O ye of little faith.”
In a modern colloquial translation, the master might instead say “Chicken !”.
On consideration, it’s no wonder Peter hesitated. Questions abound before such an undertaking: Will my shoes get wet ? What if a shark bites me ? I can’t tack, so should I two-step ? How long do I have to stay out there ?
Well found, Ø. Who am I to correct Jesus’s English, but shouldn’t it be “Oh thou of little faith”? He must have meant several of them.
English was not Jesus’s first language. Give the guy a break.
No, Jesus was doing really well and actually, I’m not even sure I’m right. I was hoping someone would zoom in and correct me.
A second googling suggests that he did in fact say “thou” to Peter as the latter stood there worrying about insufficient surface tension, and that it was a bit later that he uttered the “ye” line — this time to the whole group — when they were standing around saying things like “You said you were going to bring the loaves and fishes.”
LOL
You two would do a great comedy pair “AJP & Ø “
Ø & AJP, more like.
You’re right, that sounds better.
I think so. It’s not easy to give up your career as a university professor and go on the road. The last one I remember was in that Marlene Dietrich movie The Blue Angel. I think he was a biologist.
Either it’s a vacuum or it’s not.
Gotta be all or nothing, does it? Or rather, either entirely nothing or nothing like nothing. There’s no such thing as half-empty? A fine pessimist you’d make, I don’t think.
0.5 Ø is not Ø. Do the math.
Oh boy, I just told a math prof to “do the math”!
>A. J. P. Crown
(I don’t know if you are teasing)
The Oxford dictionary said: “Ye /ji:/, archaic or dialect, vosotros, as [you]; o ye of little faith.”
Besides that I found: You …, o thou …, o you …, o man … of little faith and others English versions.
Anyway, there are a patent:
http://patentados.com/invento/aparato-flotador-para-caminar-sobre-el-agua.html
As regards the sharks, it was a lake!
Sorry.
“there is…”
Thank you! No, I wasn’t teasing. Perhaps someone can explain the difference between “ye” and “thou”. Is “ye” both sing. and pl., like “you”?
Yes, I agree that the Sea of Galilee is a lake, though it’s obviously also a sea. It is a freshwater lake, which might be a reason not to call it a sea — but then what about the Great Salt Lake?
Anyway, sharks can’t live in fresh water. Oh wait, they can.
German has der See and die See. Are the masculine ones landlocked or fresh or what?
>A. J. P. Crown
The Oxford D. also said: “Ye, definite article (mock archaic) (singular) el , la (plural) los, las; ye olde [sic] Tudor tavern.”
However, like I before wrote, “ye” has a translation to plural “vosotros”. Curiously, Jesus only told Peter in this case. Is it in advance to “the royal we” so employed for the popes? (LOL)
And for Jesus two candles but for me (Jesús) two beers, please.
From Wiki I gather that:
1. In Middle English thou/thou was singular and ye/you was plural
2. In Early Middle English thou/thee was familiar singular and ye/you was familiar plural, while ye/you was both singular and plural for addressing your betters
And of course since then we’ve dropped the thee/thou, retained the you for all second-person purposes (here and there supplementing it with a dialectical y’all or youse), and kept the ye around as a toy word for you, or the.
>Empty
Well, we finish in a scoreless tie, if you accept. Talking about Simon [Peter] I felt from the bridge over troubled water.
Curiously, as you know, the same river is the source to sea of Galilee and Dead sea; however in this sea there aren’t anything although it is rich in ClNa.
I forgot the Ness lake, where there is a …
Oh, I never thought to look at Wikipedia. Thank you for finding that.
Loch Ness, yes. The lochs of Scotland are lakes, except the ones that are sea lochs. I believe that the Jordan River flows into the Sea of Galilee, and also from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. Nothing flows out of the Dead Sea. All of this is below sea level.
AJP: The reason why I mention that it’s from WiPe is that we should probably therefore take it with a grain of, uh, NaCl.
>Empty
Damn! My formula isn’t at all orthodox. I confess that I have a “vice” because of I learnt an old method. The IUPAC will kill me.
Oh, I didn’t even notice that your formula was different. In the Scottish lochs I believe they have ClaN.
>Empty
It’s a good opportunity to wear the tartan of the clan Baxter which has like “motto”: “Invicta veritas” or, since we have told about the seas, “Tutus in undis” (clan Wood).
German has der See and die See. Are the masculine ones landlocked or fresh or what?
Der See is a bounded subset of water, but it is not closed since there are accumulation points near mountains. Its discharge points are accumulation points of die See, which is half-open and unbounded in imagination space.
I see.
I take it that was the mathematical explanation, Grumb.
The fetamathematical explanation, i.e. cheesy.
By the way, empty, die See is not simply-connected, as the existence of Australia shows. Assuming the axiom of choice, we can see that in fact die See is non-orientable. In the past, sailors who made the wrong choices lost their orientation along a path from their port of origin.
On the meaning of “cheesy”, see the convincingly normative explanation 1. in the Urban Dictionary.
Cheesiness is subjective, Grumbly. What seems cheesy to me, may be a legitimate and attractive hairstyle to you. What seems cheesy to me, may cause you to weep and hug your girlfriend tight.
All this mathematics seems like a legitimate and attractive hairdo to me. I weep and hug my girlfriend tight.
What I meant by “convincingly normative” is this: I found the main explanation (not the closing examples you have cited here) so nuanced and well-formulated that I now want to use the word in the same carefully nuanced way.
“Subjective” is a clapped-out word. Note that this is not a claim that the word never had any sense when it was used. That would be a subjective interpretation of what I’m saying. (You see ?)
It’s a question of verbal style, Crown. You may think I’m too old to be wearing feathers in my hair, but at least I can keep my fingernails clean.
please correct: “never had any sense when it was used”
I agree it was an interesting explanation. I had thought of cheesy as meaning “trying to impress and failing”, but I don’t understand the cheese metaphor. Sometimes I’m impressed by cheese, sometimes not.
Until now, I thought cheesy meant something like “lacking in (good) taste or sense of propriety”, or “embarassingly corny”. Despite the fact that cheese that has gone off is anything but tasteless. I agree that the metaphor is not clear, in contrast to the phenomena to which it is applied.
Crucial & completely unimportant information: in Buenos Aires’ Spanish “cheese” (lack of taste or bad taste or lack of elegance and class) is “grasa”. One of my favourites words & accusations (though as I’m a good girl ;-), I never say it much outloud)
Yes, I think it means those things sometimes too.
Does grasa have any other meaning, like cheesy does?
We need B.A. Spanish for when we hold our convention there.
“Grasa” is lard, I think. So the meaning Julia gave us is already the other meaning. Cheese is “queso”.
Oh, like French.
Yes, exactly “grasa” is fat (in general, all kinds of fat). And so it invokes a similar image as “cheesy”, something greasy & not refined .
And of course, you need to learn your “porteño Spanish” (Spanish from Buenos Aires) for when you come here… but you would never ever be “grasa” :-)
I can keep my fingernails clean.
Stu, if I may say so, you seem a little obsessed by this subject. Your own blog has dealt with nothing but dirty fingernails for months now.
Lard is any kind of rendered fat, right ? What’s still on the animal is only called fat, not lard – apart from the disobliging expression “lard-belly”.
Is that the same in Spanish, Julia ? Are there different words for different kinds of fat ? To “render fat” (or butter) means to apply low heat to it in a pan, in order to break down the structure and get a spreadable result. In the case of butter, the goal is to get the protein to separate out. It floats to the surface and can be skimmed off, leaving butterfat (ghee).
I thought it was “lard-ass”, which means lazy.
Your own blog has dealt with nothing but dirty fingernails for months now.
Look who’s talkin’ ! I keep checking at yours for more tales of highjinks in the world of mathematics, and go away (,) empty.
I am the one but not the other.
Cut and paste, people, cut and paste. Like so: Ø
Cutting and pasting is bad programming style. If you were familiar with L’histoire d’Ø, you would know why some of us call him empty.
please correct: L’histoire d’Ø
Don’t worry, no one’s accusing you of being the Other, Stu. And we like your fingernails the way they are.
How do we know that was cut and pasted?
the one but not the other.
You’ve lost me here, Stu. Which one of which two are you? I myself am the zero.
I thought that manteca was lard. But then, I also thought that para bailar la bamba you need un poco de grasa.
more tales
If anything I would probably post more tales of family life, with emphasis on vermin and holidays. Maybe I should attempt pictures. I almost wrote something about Halloween, but the moment passed and now the pumpkins are slowly returning to the primordial slime from which we all try so hard to ascend.
For what it’s worth, I always find it works best to put up some pictures and then do the writing. Then, what I have to say is what’s not already visible — and it’s not directly contradicted by the photographs (that’s happened once or twice).
No, I see that, but there’s some of what looks to me like attempts to ‘program’ [sdjbgfsknc;9756453w#@!] without actually producing a nice rounded Ø, and I won’t have it.
L’histoire d’Ø, I wouldn’t know: as Helmut Newton said, Junie and I are todally square.
I myself have not carefully distinguished (though I know I should) between the mathematician’s symbol for the empty set, the Nordic letter, and the slashed zero that some people use to differentiate zero from the letter O.
See, I try to alter it and I mess it up.
You’ll just have to take my word for it, AJP. Principals don’t lie.
Re manchego: if you can bear to sit through it, listen to Christopher Ricks praising Dirty Dancing. At about 478:45:32.
> Stu, I don’t really know the technical names for different fat. “Grasa” can be the fat in any kind of meat (pork, veal, chicken) and also the solid (?) lubricant you use for a machine.
We, in Argentina, call the butter “manteca” but in other countries (Spain, for instance) they call it “mantequilla” and when they say “manteca” they mean something we call “grasa de cerdo”. Is that pork lard in English? I don’t know.
>ø (copy- paste) “Para bailar la bamba” you need “gracIa” (¿grace in English? something like glamour or some spark), NOT “grasa”. Although is a bit “grasa” that song and dancing :-)
At about 478:45:32
Principal, what’s 478? I like Christopher Ricks but I can’t find the Dirty dancing bit.
No, it’s in the last third of the 864,325 minutes, somewhere… He describes the scene where P. Swayze MA teaches her the tickle move (I think) as ‘terribly moving’.
Meanwhile, it’s Loy Krathong. Rasa!
Grasa, sorry.
Oh, yes, Principal! That can be the emblem of “grasa”. A perfect definition.
Patrick Swayse could be another good example…
The empty set is a tabula rasa.
foie gras, mardi gras, grease
It seems to me that mantequilla=butter is literally lardette.
>Julia
Galicians also say “manteca” = butter. “Mantequilla” derives from “manteca” which has an uncertain origin.
The name of fat the most universal is “margarina” or margarine; it’s French but actually its origin is “pearl” in Greek because of its color.
Sometimes margarine is artificially colored to look more like butter. There seems to be quite a bit of legal history about this.
In English it’s pronounced with a “soft g”. Can anyone think of another word where we get soft “g” before “a”?
And I think that at some point in history, when consumers had grown accustomed to margarine colored bright yellow to make it look more like butter, the butter-makers began adjusting the color of their sometimes relatively pale product to make it look more like margarine (or rather more like the way butter was by then supposed to look).
Very interesting, Jesùs. Thanks for that.
I can’t think of any words, Ø. Aren’t there any? French unsalted butter, my favourite, is very pale in colour. Since I cut down on my animal-fat intake I’ve been consuming more margarine (some people in England say it with a hard G). It’s not as good as the above-mentioned butter. The oddest thing I know about it is that it’s not allowed in Swiss road tunnels because it’s inflammable. I think a margarine truck caught fire there earlier. Yes, here it is:
A letter bomb is a letter to which a bomb has been added. The existence of such letters does not justify the interpretation that all letters are dangerous.
The last part of the sentence you quote does not have to be understood as telling us that margarine is highly inflammable. The truck may merely have been carrying a particular kind of margarine, namely one to which certain substances had been added to make it inflammable.
That interpretation suggests something rather unlikely, though: that the truckload was part of a Jonestown-like suicide plot by the leader of a group of oleolingus devotees – or whatever you call those people who like to cover themselves in something greasy and then do stuff with each other.
For clarity, the sentence should have ended with “carrying margarine, which is highly inflammable”. But I find it hard to believe that that is true either. It it were, people would long ago have stopped buttering their toast because it was too dangerous.
Don’t think so: almighty God isn’t a god to whom a substance has been added that makes her almighty, it’s just the epithet, as in highly inflammable margarine, delicious chocolate, or Grumbly Stu.
I believe in highly inflammable margarine. I wouldn’t dream of using margarine to butter a hot piece of toast; it sounds grasa and you’re playing with fire, Stu. And, yes, “almighty God” isn’t one half of a double act, “The God Brothers” (or Sisters), whereas Grumbly Stu is only one side of endlessly-optimistic-Stu-with-the-sunny-nature. You sometimes have to guess the meaning in ambiguous sentences*.
*Now he’s going to look for double meanings in that sentence. Well, to save you time, I assure you there aren’t any.
Principal, I’m enjoying your links.
Should we move over to Autumn Trim? I’m worried the page might sag under our weight.
It’s up to you where we go.
I didn’t understand correctly your link about the accident but I read that in French and I think the problem was above all the flour. Sometimes there are accidents, even explosions, when substances very powdery and combustible are well mixed with the air, like in silos, coal mines (not firedamp), etc. I have had once a little explosion with a tin sprinkling a bit of flour over a candle; the explosion blew the top of the tin into the air.
On the other hand and about the words with “ga”, it’s curious, but easily understood, that the cocktail margarita has a sound, more or less, like in Spanish being also a word with the same Greek origin that pearl. Here, someone say “margaritas” (marguerites) instead of “perlas” (pearls) when they say the biblical citation: “to cast pearls before swine”.
And now a question about “Almighty”, was it the password to communicate Captain Willard in “Apocalypse Now”? In Spanish he said “Todopoderoso”.
On the English-lang. Wikipedia it says:
I first read about it in a long article in the New Yorker; there was a lot about the danger of transporting margarine in that article. I never drive it home any more, I eat it in the supermarket parking lot.
I believe in highly inflammable margarine.
Now I ask you, what’s unambiguous about that religiously coded sentence: “I believe in HIM” ?
In my comments on “carrying highly inflammable margarine”, I was thinking of the kind of irrelevant filler that bad journalists add to their prose: “The first speaker at the G5 summit was former spelling-bee champion Medvedev”. The irrelevance here is obvious from the incongruity, but there can still be irrelevance, and ambiguity, even when no incongruity is apparent, as in “carrying highly inflammable margarine”. Even in the apparently unambiguous expression “Almighty God”, the adjective is not exempt from irrelevance: in Gnostic thought, “Almighty God” is just a tyrant lording it over the visible and known universe, there being a greater power elsewhere that is not playing cacique.
Suppose the report had been about a truck “carrying highly toxic mushrooms”. Most people would not conclude from that that mushrooms per se are toxic, because they already know that some kinds of mushroom are toxic.
Whether a statement about a subject seems to be a likely or informative statement, depends on what you already know about the subject. Information has to be surprising, because otherwise it would not inform. Because the media love to play up danger and catastrophe in harmless situations, I assume I would already have seen more than enough headlines like “Family dies at breakfast in toast-and-margarine inferno” if that kind of thing actually happened.
I think Jesús has it right: flour (and possibly margarine, or an intermediate chemical form of it) carried in large metal tanks can be highly explosive if you open the tanks in the vicinity of a small flame (or stick your head in and cough), although small quantities of these substances in a kitchen container are not dangerous.
Information has to be surprising, because otherwise it would not inform.
It can confirm what you already suspected, and
(Nietzsche, Basel University lecture, 1869.)
>A. J. P. Crown
OK, I just read a translation of the link. Obviously the margarine is inflammable but I don’t think it burn easier than others vegetables oils, for example. Also the CO generated was an important cause of death, compounded by pumping air into the tunnel.
Speaking of air and like curiosity, in 1755 a fire started in the mine* of Almadén during more than 2 years; people didn’t know the air is necessary to combustion yet! Finding the date I found a delicious and funny phrase where the word “Todopoderoso” (Almighty) is by “novena” and “rogativa” (rogation), the only attempt for solving the problem.
*Really the joists, planks, etc. employed to shore up.
P.S.
In my previous text I meant: “I did once a little explosion as an experiment…”
It [information] can confirm what you already suspected
Not quite so, there is an important distinction that needs to be recognized here. An information is news. Information can be communicated only once. An information repeated still has sense, but this is the sense of its being repeated. It is not the same sense it had initially.
When you hear something more than once (or something that seems to be equivalent), you have already made sense out of a sequence of non-informations (apart from the first one) – namely by classifying them as repetitions. Implicit in the very notion of “repetition” is “nothing new”. You are now in a position to ask yourself: “why is this being repeated ?”. You are no longer considering news, but instead the fact of its being repeated. That is news, because you were expecting information. So the new information is not the old information.
The listener decides whether to take the repetition of something to amount to a confirmation. He is not forced by circumstances to interpret it that way. If he is gullible, he may not even regard himself as being forced – he may believe it to be the most natural thing in the world to believe what other people say, particularly when they say it over and over.
Obviously the margarine is inflammable but I don’t think it burns easier than others vegetables oils, for example.
“Easier” in this context means at what temperature it burns, and if you are a cook you know that is very variable with vegetable oils: rapeseed oil (rapsolie), for example, burns at a much higher temperature than olive oil.
This post is beginning to cast a long shadow.
So, too, are the two chaps in the lower right of the top photo here.
(Unless they are standing on stilts, that is.)
I wonder whether my front door is locked. There are two possibilities, I turn the handle to find out. It is locked. This information isn’t a surprise.
Tom, they’re either on stilts or have abnormally long legs — many people in those days had very short legs (the first picture I can find).
I found this values very little precise: flash point of olive oil >250 ºC; rapeseed oil >300 ºC.
I don’t mean “surprise” in the sense of “unexpected”, so I had better avoid the word “surprise”. As you say yourself, you are expecting one of two outcomes. When you find the door is locked, you now know something that you didn’t know before. That is news, even when it “matches expectations” by falling into a range of news.
If finding out that the door is locked does not tell you what you did not know before (information/news), what was the point of trying to find out whether it is locked ?
Anyway I was originally talking about speaking and hearing, about novelty and repetition in communication – not about residential security. Do you have communicating rooms ?
You could be checking the door it in order to be able to assure your spouse that you have checked the door.
Or you could be describing in detail what you did to check the door, in order to convince your spouse that you actually did do it, even though you did not leave your chair in front of the football game on TV. Over time, she may notice that there is a correlation between her discovering that the door was unlocked after all on many occasions, and her remembering your detailed asseverations as to having checked. Thereafter, when you repeat your story, she will regard that not as confirmation of your story, but of her conviction that you are fibbing.
The point is that the world doesn’t speak to you, nor does it answer questions – despite the fact that Bacon considered that knowledge is best acquired by interrogating nature, and forcing it to reveal its secrets.
The predominant Urszene in family life does not involve Oedipus, but Pinocchio.
Do you have communicating rooms ?
I’ve no idea what they get up to when we’re not around, but I wouldn’t be… surprised.
You could be checking the door it in order to be able to assure your spouse that you have checked the door.
I see we’re leading parallel lives, just that I’m no good at maths.
Thereafter, when you repeat your story, she will regard that not as confirmation of your story, but of her conviction that you are fibbing.
See, I’m not that dumb. I often freely admit that I haven’t yet locked the door, so my wife does it while I back the car out.
Still, it’s clear you two are leading parallel lives in a mild-mannered universe. In mine, the forces of security, live touchdowns and veracity are locked in eternal combat, so that you have to move fast to avoid getting crushed.
The margarine isn’t that mild-mannered.
>A. J. P. Crown
Oh yes. To make something mild-mannered, Marlon Brando used butter during his last tango in Paris.
What is a live touchdown?
A live touchdown is a touchdown which you experience during live transmission of a football game. It is more exciting than seeing one in a recorded summary of game highlights that is broadcast two hours after the game is over.
If the husband had been merely watching a recorded game when the spousal summons to check the front door was issued, there would have been no serious conflict of interests (apart from laziness). He could push the pause button, go check the door, then settle back down in front of the TV.
You guys are married, you must know about the eternal conflict between security (what the wife thinks is important), veracity and live touchdowns (what you think is important but the wife doesn’t). Perhaps you actually do know, but have just forgotten about it as such.
Pinocchio didn’t know what was expected of him, so he lied to others, to cover his confusion. Oedipus knew what was coming to him, but he hoped it wouldn’t, so he lied to himself.
The average husband tells either lies or the truth, according to criteria of short to medium-term expediency. The average wife is too clever to hobble her style with such distinctions.
So what do you call a touchdown where television isn’t involved at all?
Neither television nor the radio ? It would still be a live touchdown if you were in the stadium watching the game. If you exclude that too, then we must go back to Berkeley and Johnson. Berkeley said that football points can be made only when spectators are present, or at least God is watching the game. Johnson replied by kicking a field goal, adding: “I refute it thus”.
I wouldn’t expect U.C. Berkeley to be much good at football. Chess, maybe. I wouldn’t expect to see God at a football game. Chess, maybe, but then I wouldn’t be there.
Do you think Bishop Berkeley would have accepted the money if someone had given him a ticket and he’d won the lottery?
If he played chess, it would be easy to beat him. Suppose during a game he left the room to take a pee, and his opponent removed one of Berkeley’s pieces. When he returned, he would find that one of his pieces no longer existed, and could only conclude that during his absence God’s attention had been distracted. In any case, God is a witness who cannot be sworn, so Berkeley would have to grin and bear it.
Or would he have just said God does not play dice.
I don’t know much about Berkeley’s general views, except to wonder how he acquired this so-called knowledge about what God’s job assignments are. He might well have felt that dice-playing by God would be infra dig.
By the way, I can give you a hot investment tip on a promising new high-paper-to-price candidate, apart from the bible. I got it from a reliable source, the Wipe article on Berkeley:
I was reading somewhere yesterday about the advantage of studying for a B.Litt. instead of a Ph.D. in English. It might have been Elif Batuman, but whoever-it-was was railing against the absurdity of twenty-somethings trying to find minuscule subjects to do original research in (whereas for a B.Litt. you just have to study coursework). I was convinced. You won’t catch me studying for a Ph.D. in English, I know everyone has a miserable time.
I don’t care about touchdowns. I do care about certain moments in baseball. I generally get them “live” on TV, but I have discovered that things are not always as they appear: on occasion I have learned the outcome of an at-bat on the radio a few moments before it happened on TV. I will also sometimes put up with more delay than that. I have been known to doze off in the late innings and then “rewind” to see what I missed, sometimes fast-forwarding not only through the commercial breaks (when the game is between innings or a new pitcher is being brought in), but through the brief pauses between at-bats — or maybe even through the very brief pauses between pitches if I am in a certain mood. This behavior of mine is a serious violation of baseball yoga, I think. I don’t feel entirely right about it.
I do feel OK about the thing we did, either seven or eight years ago (plus one month), when we found that our son’s birthday party was in unavoidable conflict with a Red Sox playoffs game: we posted a sign at our door asking party guests not to give us any news of the game, as we were recording it to watch after the party.
The average husband […] The average wife
Stu, I’m surprised at you. (Or are we avoiding the word “surprise”? I’m getting all mixed up.) You can’t mean “average”. Maybe you mean “normal” or “typical”.
What I’m really confused about is this: If the world doesn’t speak to us, or answer questions, is there something else that does?
By the way, my wife never really believes me when I say that I closed all the first-floor doors and windows before gong to bed, but it’s not that she thinks I would lie — she just knows by experience that I often miss a window or even a door. Not always the same one, either.
If the world doesn’t speak to us, or answer questions, is there something else that does?
Other people, when they’re in the mood and there’s nothing on TV.
You can’t mean “average”. Maybe you mean “normal” or “typical”.
I didn’t invent vernacular English ! “Average” and “typical” are interchangeable in that register. I could even have written “your average husband” without fear of censure.
Grumbly, assez bougonner !
If the world doesn’t speak to us …is there something else that does?
If you have crucial information that I have omitted from my account, please let me know so I can correct my views. Have you ever been given the cold shoulder by a leg of lamb ? Or been cut dead by a lamppost ? Snubbed by a snipe, ignored by a molehill, rebuffed by a rambling rose ?
Why “assez bougonner” ? This is silliness, not bougonnerie I am indulging in ! Faut savoir rire.
This is silliness, not bougonnerie I am indulging in !
As long as it’s not bougrerie… :doublelol:
Y a bien de liaison. Faute de l’une, on fait l’autre.
Somebody’s in a nasty mood here, and it ain’t me.
I mean that certain comments are rather enijmatic.
“Your comment is awaiting moderation”: where did that come from ?
Now it’s gone.
I saw it when I turned on my machine. I think they objected to your spelling of enijmatic, but you can never be sure that it wasn’t simply arbitrary. I have to help tidy the house now, we’re expecting a new friend of my daughter’s at ten.
My wife is trying to persuade me there’s a dead body lying in the meadow. My daughter says it’s been there for days. It does look like a dead body from this distance (150 metres).
Arthur, it has just come to me that all of the above is part of a wonderfully cunning strategy on your part to throw us off the track of what now must seem the inevitable (false) conclusion to this entire very complicated whodunnit, that is, the fact that the dead body is to be found here.
Still, that leaves the culprit in doubt. Though of course there are the usual suspects.
(By the way, we’re currently tilting toward stilts.)
I forgot to point out that the “sea” in “Battersea”, and I suspect in “Brightlingsea”, and possibly in “Swansea”, means land surrounded by water; not water. Usually spelled “sey”.
Thank you for that, Ø. How interesting. Did you find that out when you were looking up the German die & das See?
Well, Empty, I haven’t been there in the past 45 years, but I’m presuming the place is still almost entirely surrounded by water. And as we are told by the local historian, Edward Percival Dickin (1914), as late as the 13th c. it was an island indeed.
“The name Brightlingsea and its informal conversational form
Bricklesey have many variants. It would be wearisome to print
the 193 forms I have found. Many of them, however, will he found
in the text. When the eccentricities of spelling are eliminated,
there are only three forms left Brightlingsea, Bricklesey, and
Brictriceseia (Domesday). If the Norman scribes did not make a
mistake over Brictriceseia, as they often did over Anglo-Saxon
names, it means Brictric’s island. As this form only appears once,
probably it was a mistake.
“The parish consists of a peninsula, two small islands, and parts
of two creeks and the estuary of the river Colne. It was anciently
an island, and was described as such in I295. A map of the
second half of the sixteenth century shows it as an island.”
The Aldus shipbuilding enterprise (brought up here earlier by AJP re. emergency luncheon at sea) was the great firm of the town.
In the 1930s more sprats were landed at Brickle or Brittle Sea than anywhere else in the country.
From what I can tell by photographs, seeing the familiar promenade with the familiar shivering bathers and the familiar forlorn rows of Bide-A-Wee cottages, the place has not changed too much.
It was interesting to learn the old Lido is still going strong (as it were), now with two levels.
I did not know that Brightlingsea was an island — never heard of the place till someone mentioned it the other day. I knew that -sey in place-names means island, but did not know that it occasionally ends up spelled -sea until I went and googled “Battersea” a few weeks ago (when Crown showed us the power station). Of course, Battersea is neither a sea nor an island.
That someone was me, Empty. (This is indeed an awfully long thread). Once dwelt there.
It might have been an island in the meandering past.
The Norse would have known about that.
I was thinking of Ba’ersea, that in former times there may have been a big bend in the river there.
Ah, another clue.