Alma painted the Easter-egg heads that are sitting on the windowsill. It means your children are growing up when they’d rather paint Kant, Descartes and Nietzsche (l. – r.) than chicks and bunnies.
It’s May, and I’ve opened the windows. They are locked tight during the winter and though it’s much warmer that way, we lose any connection with the outside –
where the birch trees near the house are now becoming greener by the day.
The windflowers are still thriving,
so are the daffodils,
and so is Tops.
Vesla had a haircut on Sunday.
It’s always a surprise to see how small she really is, like the front half of a pantomime horse.
I’m not the only one who thinks so.
A Bad Guide 
Even your trees make me smile
Loved the eggs – I hope Alma was listening to Monty Python while painting them.
What other references could she possibly have?
Windflowers? I thought those were anemones. Live and learn.
It’s a delight to see your creatures out and about, Crown.
Windflowers are anemones.
I can never say ‘anemonie’ without it coming out ‘an enemy’. Sili, they’re hvitveis and blåveis in Norwegian. I call them windflowers, but you have to be careful with names like that; others probably use it for something quite different. It’s a good thing we’ve got Linnaeus‘s categories – though I see he even changed his own name to the more pretentious (to my ear, anyway) von Linné, so he probably just had a bit of a thing about being in charge of names.
Thank you dearie, Stuart & cat.
She loves Monty Python (I think she does, she certainly grew up with it), but nowadays they do have other references. She’s taking philosophy at school. It seems to be a pretty good foundation in western philosophy, taught by an ex-priest (Lutheran), who decided he didn’t believe in God.
Well, Artur, I will say this for Alma’s Triad of Eggheads — it just goes to show that two out of three philosophers ought to take the example of Kant. There is just something about philosophical whiskers that mixes in an unsettling way with the being pictured on an egg. Also, the flutings in the egg-glasses have created shadows which create an impression of the Egghead Philosophers being spring-loaded, like small jack-in-the-boxes perhaps about to go traveling the hills and valleys of the pleasant springtime landscape in small leaps and bounds, in much the same way Slinky toys descend a staircase.
I ought to take close ups of the whiskers. They’re more convincing in the flesh, so to speak, especially the hamster that Nietzsche kept under his nostrils.
A crazy idea.-
You could buy to her an egg of ostrich to paint Freud symbolizing the super ego with this super egg. In the meantime she could listen to music of Alma’s husband: G. Mahler, the famous patient of Freud.
I think Freud’s portrait should be painted inside the egg. Freud probably even pronounced his German with ovular r-s.
That Alma later married Walter Gropius, designer of the Dessau Bauhaus and the London Playboy Club (look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair), and they had a daughter also named Alma.
Ovular r-s can be caused by eating too much Sachertorte.
Well, THAT Alma certainly DID get around.
Gustav, Sigmund, Franz, Walter, my heavens, Alban Berg… was no one safe?
Had the great explorer of the Subconscious inkled that Alma was on the egg in question, he might have speedily escaped… ad ovo posteriori, would that be the term?
Probably the accusative. Ad ovum. The poor thing was always being blamed for everything. Raptors of every species — do they ever get a reprieve from history?
Anemone of course means daughter of the wind in Greek. (Windröschen to Germanic philosophers on eggs.)
I do like the comment by Jésus re the super-eggo. A kind of egg-product-“stretcher”, in effect (ab ovo)?
>Tom Clark
“Ad ovo” posteriori? I think “a priori” is better; remember the Latin idiom “ab ovo usque ad mala” (from egg to apple, as you know), an odd way to have a lunch. Because of that probably Obelix said: “these Romans are crazy”.
Artur,
Last month’s auto mayhem and near decapitation having left me with one partially severed ear, I am unable at present to don my spectacles, thus remain a bit challenged when it comes to Linnaean identifications — but can it be the flor de Alma is a Snowdrop Windflower (Anemone sylvestris)?
Jésus,
Please see my correction above to “ad ovum”.
I am advised on this delicate subject by one Coquito, who generously offers free linguistic instruction (not really to me personally, but more or less at large to las chicas de la red):
“Ovum, ut in multis reptilibus cellula ovum a masculo fecundata, quam scientiati zygotum (ex verbo Graeco ζυγωτόν) appellant. Ovum est ergo eodem tempore forma et momentum progressionis vitae novi animantis”.
Hola, chicas!
Ovum o “huevo” en español no es solo nombre del cuerpo extraño, sino también es la base de multiples expresiones en la lengua española. Por ejemplo, tenemos la expresión “llevar un “huevo” de cosas” (llevar muchas cosas), “Me duele un huevo” o bien popular “Estar hasta el huevo“ (estar cansado, borracho, harto…)
En México también tenemos muchas expresiones con huevos como “me caes de huevos” es que le caes o que te cae muy bien a alguien, “esta de huevos que indica que algo esta muy padre” (increíble), “que hueva” tengo que es cuando tienes mucha flojera, “ten los huevos” es cuando alguien no dice las cosas como las piensa de verdad porque no tiene el valor de hacerlo.
Existe también la expresión famosa “a huevo” que se puede traducir como “si”, “efectivamente”, “exactamente”, “de verdad”. A una persona se le ocurrió hacer la traducción al latín de esta preciosa expresión lo que nos dio “ ad ovum”. Esta expresión a parte de su connotación contemporánea mencionada arriba, tiene su significado más antiguo. En la época del Imperio Romano, esta locución fue usada con el significado de “llegar a los principios de las cosas, a lo importante”, como la variación de Ab ovo – una expresión tomada del poeta Horacio que equivale a “desde el origen más remoto”.
Existen mas expresiones en español que se puedan traducir exitosamente al latín sin perder su sentido? Ese es el reto de este mes. A ver quien lo puede lograr.
Ad ovum!
Coquito
The saxophonist Paul Desmond, seeing some large potted plants in a hotel lobby, said “With fronds like these, who needs anemones?”
Vi call them blåveis and hvitveis in Norwegian.
That’s a loan from German, I think, where Weiss makes sense as a name for a white flower. Or maybe that’s folk etymology. Another Norwegian name for windflower is symre: hvitsymre, blåsymre og gulsymre. I’ve never thought of it, but i I suppose it’s derived from sumar, the Old Norse (and undanified modern) word for summer — “sumrie”.
Or maybe that’s folk etymology
So it seems.
I suppose it’s derived from sumar
Yes.
Except it’s not even a folk etymology if it’s only me.
Well, it’s not only you, I’ve wondered too. But it doesn’t really make any sense that it would be called simply “white” in two languages. I didn’t know the name symre.
Tom, that’s really awful about your ear and neck injuries. You must stay out of trouble. I think the windflowers we’ve got here are aka wood anemonies, not A. sylvestris.
According to Wikipedia, Paul Desmond said,
Remember the Latin idiom “ab ovo usque ad mala” (from egg to apples, as you know), an odd way to have a lunch.
I agree. I don’t like the sound of this if it’s really how they ate.
Here is Ab Ovo, 1917, by Paul Klee, which as far as I can see has nothing to do with the Horace saying.
Perhaps there was an apple when Klee started the painting, but then the egg ate it.
Or the chicken, whichever came first.
Eggs don’t eat outside the shell.
They also don’t breathe until they’re outside the shell. It just struck me that all non-aqueous animals, not only humans, must experience that heart valve switchover when they are born. Blood that used to circulate through the lungs must now be prevented from doing so, so air can pass.
Bird chicks often have difficulty pecking their way out of their shells. I wonder whether breathing starts only once they are completely outside it. If it starts when the shell is intact, the pecking might be a suffocation response, an attempt to escape. The hatching of a chick may not be such a cute phenomenon after all.
Based on some hasty internet research, I believe the chicks start using their lungs to breathe several days before they hatch. (Up to this time they have been receiving oxygen through the pores in their shells, but how it makes it way into their bloodstream is unclear to me.) Apparently they poke their way through a membrane and start breathing air even before they poke the first hole in the shell.
Today as a group of us walked past a bush a robin (thrush) exploded from it. I peered among the branches and saw a nest, stuck my head further in and saw a surprisingly big blue egg.
A cuckoo’s egg, perhaps.
Apparently they poke their way through a membrane and start breathing air even before they poke the first hole in the shell.
Depending on the thickness of the shell (ostrich eggs, for example, are very thick), I can’t imagine that much air is available on the inside. Suffocation must threaten at some point.
We once had a chicken hatch in our kitchen. It was very interesting and took quite a long time, like childbirth. It’s too bad that death isn’t as ingeniously packaged as birth is.
But death does have some extras. As it is occurring the mind goes – either because it already went, or when it can’t handle the situation any longer. Even in death, life has cunning ways of pulling the wool over your eyes. Since it rarely ever told you what you wanted to know anyway, it’s at least consistent.
In my experience, death is harder on the audience than on the artist. But the more performances you take in over the years, the more you learn about the theater. At one point I found myself thinking: “Why, what’s so special about this? I could play that role myself.”
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
AJP “Dusty” MacDeth.
What I find particularly neat about that text is that it is spoken by a player. Mirrors within mirrors ! Meanwhile, back at the ranch …
Yes. I was just thinking it’s very like the As You Like It Seven Ages of Man speech, in that. They had a different, more cozy relationship with the audience in them days. Having Queen Elizabeth I in the crowd was a more informal affair than it is when QE2 rattles her jewelry from the balcony.
Unless jewelry is some sort of euphemism. Here‘s something to digest.
I find it hard to believe that many people have ever wanted, needed or actually had a crap at the opera. This writer’s time would have been much better spent organising adequate public facilities at Oxford colleges. I vividly remember having had to crap in the rockery in the gardens of St. John’s College when I was seven or eight years old*. I was back there, fifty years later – last spring – and I found the spot. The situation hasn’t improved, there’s still no proper crapper nearby.
*(Some sort of tummy bug.)
>Tom Clark
Of course, I’d read your correction related to the accusative and the prepositions. My com was only a pun with “priori” and “posteriori” and about the origin of this idiom, according a book I have.
As for our expressions, there are others as “tocarse los huevos, costar un huevo, tener a alguien hasta los huevos”, etc. where “huevo” is a synonymous of testicle.
A cuckoo’s egg, perhaps.
Interesting suggestion. I only saw one egg. Now I want to go back and look again. Usually robins lay more than one, more than two I think. If one was much bigger than the others, it could be one of those horrible parasites. But I thought there was only one, and I was speculating that one that occurred as a single might be expected to be bigger than average.
Are cuckoos’ eggs somehow capable of mimicking the colors of the “host” birds’ eggs.
Be careful to be discreet. I’ve noticed that if they become too popular, birds can easily be discouraged from sitting on their nests, leave the eggs and fly away for good.
St John’s: wouldn’t you have found a bog if you’d nipped into any staircase? Nobody would have minded – you were eight, after all.
My cousin had a room, but it was too far away. Here, I think, is the spot. Also here. You can see the gardens are big.
Are cuckoos’ eggs somehow capable of mimicking the colors of the “host” birds’ eggs.
You betchum. If you watched animal documentaries more frequently on German TV, you would know about brood parasitism without even having to go outdoors. That’s how I learned about it:
In my opinion, this obliges anyone who believes in God to acknowledge that God is a trouble-maker. Not so much the source of evil etc etc, but rather just plain mean.
hosts exhibit high levels of egg rejection behavior.
That’s me. I like the yellow part soft, or else.
we had the same orchids (it was a gift) but now the flowers are gone and we don’t know how to make them grow again. Or is it an impossible task as the one all the king’s horses and all the king’s men had?
Again and again I say it: your place is beautiful and all your girls are fantastic.
>Julia
Speaking of “huevos”, it’s curious you tell us about orchids.
The word cuckoo is obviously onomatopoetic. The Scandinavian name for the bird, gauk, gjøk, gøk, gök, is an older imitation of the same sound. I’ve suggested that English geek is a cognate, but apparently not. But it looks about right — the expected spelling of an English cognate would be *geak or *yeak.
Last night I gave my scouts an egg, an orange and a piece of wood and told them to boil the egg.
Although you can’t get blood out of a turnip, perhaps you can get sparks out of an orange ? I don’t see how else they’re going to light a fire.
Julia, you are very kind. I love praise. I’m not an orchid expert at all, though I do like them a lot. I think we’ve got one in the garden too; is that possible? The ones I like best grow wild in England. I can’t remember how long we’ve had this one, but I know we’ve managed to kill them in the past. Can’t you just keep them and wait for them to flower again?
>Trond Engen
I’ve just read about that. It’s interesting and a bit similar to boil water inside a cone made by paper (sheet). I’ve done it. People in the country sometimes boil milk in a tetra brik easily.
Last night I gave my scouts an egg, an orange and a piece of wood and told them to boil the egg.
You gave them the egg? Kids today.
Oh, all right. I give up.. . . .
>Grumbly Stu
One of eggs could be a Kinder Surprise containing a lighter or, at least, a magnifying glass.
You gave them the egg? Kids today.
Little eggoists, all of them.
(No, I didn’t get this at all.)
a Kinder Surprise containing a lighter or, at least, a magnifying glass
I might add that they had some tools and a box of matches with them.
Egg à la Orange? I still give up.
I hope Trond is not trying to train his scouts as poachers.
>Grumbly Stu
Poachers? Be careful : -) Here you can see our king as distinguished scout:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Scouts_destacados
And here a caricature related to his last affair (in both senses) in Botswana:
http://www.fotoshumor.com/Humor_grafico/es1688/Portada-de-El-Jueves
>A. J. P. Crown
It’s worse “egg à l’orage”. People say storms are bad in incubation period.
Juan Carlos I, actual Rey
Sofía de Grecia, actual Reina
How come every language except English uses actual to mean ‘current’?
I think it is due to different takes on certain philosophical notions. “Actuality” in “actual/potential” refers to what is now, as opposed to what could be in future. So “actual” can be understood as “real” (the English “actual”). But since what exists always exists now (the past exists only in imaginative memory), “actuality” can be understood as “current”.
The German is aktuell.
Here you can see our king as distinguished scout:
Your scandal is nothing compared to the Swedish, and their culprit is on the same list. We do get around.
Jesús: you many have missed my pun if you do not know that one meaning of “poach” is escalfar, the other one being cazar furtivamente.or robar.
A. J. P. Crown
Well question. Probably for that “actually” is a false friend to us and sometimes we translated it as “nowadays”. Also, your “actual” is “real” but this last word means in Spanish “real” and “royal”.
Stu, I found your pun very funny, actually ;-)
As I enjoy every conversation and link proposed here (¡Pobre Sofía! ¡Pobre elefante!).
Although I don’t always have time to comment, you are always my favourite “chat room”
>Grumbly Stu
Yes, I’ve read both meaning but I only thought in “cazar furtivamente” giving free rein to my imagination: children looking for eggs inside nests, hunting lizards and frogs…
We all liked your pun, Stu.
And I like actual > real > royal.
¡Pobre elefante!
And before that, he was shooting bears. I read about it at Rio Wang. Someone should get him a bunch of video games.
>Julia
About puns, have you got this that related “huevos” and “orchids”?
Oh, no, es verdad, Jesús… I didn’t. I’m a lady! (?)
Sadly, it is possible to cheat and do a search for boil egg orange peel.
Oh, and if you ever find yourself in the wilderness with an egg and and neither a cooking pot nor an orange peel, then as long as you have internet access you can try searching for information on other ways of boiling an egg.
Stu, I liked your pun, too.
Would a video game satisfy the actual king? A virtual hunt might be insufficiently real.
But it’s appropriate. He is a bit of a virtual, to use rhyming slang.
(I’m sad to see that ‘Jeremy’ is quickly becoming similarly-derived rhyming slang based on Jeremy Hunt, the British minister who is alleged by Murdoch to have supplied him with secret gov’t info.)
Hola chicas y conejos, tengo muchos huevos. ¿Te gustaría chatear?
Tengo muchos juegos de palabras buenas también. Voy a explicar ahora?
Hello girls and rabbits, I have many eggs. Would you like to chat?
I have many good puns too. Let me explain now?
Yes, I very much would like that.
We have internet connection here. Do you have that too?
Now you’ve lost me…
¡Oh, no, no perdemos la conexión con los cucos espero!
Blood that used to circulate through the lungs must now be prevented from doing so, so air can pass.
This is bass-ackwards, Stu. Blood that used to not circulate through the vessels of the lungs must now go there to receive oxygen.
if they become too popular, birds can easily be discouraged
We always have robins nesting near the entrance to our house at this time of year. The first time they tried it, they began building much too close to the door and when they figured that out they quickly changed their plans. But their new location, which they have stuck with several years running, is still such that they have to put up with noisy doors and cars and people passing by. (This is not the nest that I peered into; I would need to get on a stepladder to see into this one, and anyway I don’t want to bother the poor things. The nest in the bush was on the grounds of the nursing home where my mother is living.)
Tenemos un dicho: “un pájaro en el monte vale dos hámsteres”.
¿Tiene éste?
What would I do without Google Translate? I saw monte and vale and thought of mountains and valleys.
Yes, it’s remarkable, such untoward glorification of a mere bush!
Though of course by vale they obviously mean to signal matters of relative worth (from valeo).
Ad valorem Google Translate?!
John Keats loved the word “vale” in Milton, he thought it the most beautiful of words, so much more poetic than “valley”.
On the passage from PL at I. 314-321 (“to slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven!”), he enthused as follows:
“There is a cool pleasure in the very sound of vale — The English word is of the happiest chance. Milton has put vales in heaven and hell with the very utter affection and yearning of a great Poet — It is a sort of delphic abstraction, a beautiful thing made more beautiful by being reflected and put in a mist…”
(One wonders what GT might make of “very utter” — ??)
My second thought after hills and dales was that “vale” was in the valedictory sense. Fair vale, cruel world.
Did Keats say anything about the shadow of the valley of death? I suppose the vale of death sounds too attractive.
The so-called Bible in Basic English: Yes, though I go through the valley of deep shade, I will have no fear of evil; for you are with me, your rod and your support… I question their use of ‘rod’. That doesn’t sound very basic to me. And ‘deep shade’ as a euphemism for death is new to me, how can I push up the daisies in deep shade?
your rod and your staff — I suppose I always pictured the rod and the staff as being one and the same stick, but that can’t be right
then there’s the veil of tears
And I learn that “utter” is historically the same word as “outer”.
I believe that the shadow of the valley of death — or is it the valley of the shadow of death? we used to have to say this in the morning in school way back when — is different from the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing in teeth.
I took another look at that nest today. I am happy to report that upon closer inspection it has four eggs, not just one, and that they are not at all too big to be plausibly robin’s eggs. So I am no longer concerned about cuckoos. Nobody was sitting on it, but somebody scolded me from a tree. I think I can rest easy.
On the home front, our driveway birds have hatched.
GS: Blood that used to circulate through the lungs must now be prevented from doing so, so air can pass
empty: This is bass-ackwards, Stu. Blood that used to not circulate through the vessels of the lungs must now go there to receive oxygen.
I had a wrong idea about the embryonal bronchi. I thought that blood flowed through them, but in fact they are filled with amniotic fluid. According to the link, before birth “most of the blood does not go through the developing baby’s lungs. Instead, it travels through the heart and flows throughout the baby’s body.”. It seems clear that some blood must circulate through the lungs in the embryo, but not through the bronchi.
So I am no longer concerned about cuckoos.
Surely you weren’t concerned in the sense of harboring compassion and being apt to litigate ? “Brood parasitism” is merely a scientific term describing what we might unscientifically call adoption. It is indeed involuntary, but Mother Nature does not ask first and act later.
Compassion, yes. Apt to do anything, no.
Adoption doesn’t usually involve seeing your genetic offspring killed.
By the way, do cuckoos always do this? In that case, there should be no such thing as a cuckoo’s nest.
Adoption doesn’t usually involve seeing your genetic offspring killed.
I doubt that birds know anything about genetics. Nor do male lions who kill the cubs of other males. We should be careful not to impute our explanations to their motives – although I doubt that “motives” is an appropriate word to describe the springs of animal behavior. .
Even if birds were in the know about genetics, they just do the best they can with the chicks they have, and don’t complain to the police. Nothing wrong with that, I hope ?
Well, they do complain to somebody when they see a threat to their eggs or their chicks.
Let’s try it again without the red-herring word “genetic”. Adopting a child doesn’t usually involve seeing your other children killed.
I agree that it’s easy to go wrong by imputing human feelings to animals, but I do see animals as having feelings. And how can I not use knowledge of human feelings as some kind of basis for trying to imagine how animals feel?
What do Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche and the other eggheads have to say about this?
Cue Crown to fulminate at Descartes for his claim that animals are “merely machines”.
I do see animals as having feelings. And how can I not use knowledge of human feelings as some kind of basis for trying to imagine how animals feel?
Here’s one way: discard the red-herring word “feelings” in connection with animals, or at least rethink it. Animals are not “merely machines”, and I’m sure that they have feelings in some sense, but probably not as the result of thinking or moralizing about what happens.
In any case, speculation about animal “feelings” is a let’s-consult-an-authority card played in disagreements between two groups of people: those who don’t care how animals are treated, and those who do. Here people are pretending to consult “reality” in order to adjudicate their differences in opinion.
This is the same kind of thing as “what God intends us to do”, God being an authority that Christians who disagree with each other pretend to consult.
I see disagreements about how animals should be treated as disagreements between people that can’t be adjudicated by appeals to “the reality of animal feelings”, about which we know nothing. It would be less contentious to consult our own feelings, and act in accordance with them, instead of appealing to Daddy.
In civilized societies, should and shouldn’t are settled for the nonce by positive law preventing certain kinds of treatments, and allowing others. That’s the way things always end up, with or without speculation.
Well, I wasn’t legislating or litigating. I was just concerned about cuckoos, and not because I thought that the robin was thinking or moralizing.
Setting aside cuckoos and robins for a moment – what do you think about my last comment, which does not address cuckoos and robins in particular ?
Debemos tener cuidado de no imputar nuestras explicaciones, ni para el caso de imponerlas. La imposición de las explicaciones implica una sobreabundancia de huevos, ¿no es cierto?
Así es todo listo para una exégesis de mi último comentario?
Here people are pretending to consult “reality” in order to adjudicate their differences in opinion.
Differences of opinion about what to do. Sometimes also differences of opinion about “reality”.
Stu, I don’t get it. When people argue for courses of action based on beliefs about morality, would you prefer that they not mention those beliefs? Or is there a way to do that without “moralizing” (whatever that dirty-to-you word means to you)? Or are you maintaining that there is no such thing as a belief about morality, that those who believe they hold such beliefs are under an illusion?
Do you really equate “because I think it’s right” with “because God told me so”?
Por supuesto que Dios se lo dije!
¿Quién más podría posiblemente haber sido? Mickey Mouse?
Do you really equate “because I think it’s right” with “because God told me so”?
As often as I can manage, I am quite careful about my choice of words. What I wrote is: “… speculation about animal ‘feelings’ is a let’s-consult-an-authority card … This is the same kind of thing as ‘what God intends us to do’.”
As you see, I did not equate these gambits. Rather, I said they are the same kind of thing. “Same kind” means here that both involve an imaginary consultation of authority. In the one case, “reality” is being conjured as an adjudicator of disagreements – but then how can we understand the fact that people disagree about what is “real” ?
Best leave “reality” tied to a tree outside the restaurant.
When people argue for courses of action based on beliefs about morality, would you prefer that they not mention those beliefs?
What I wrote is intended to suggest that there are other ways of reaching provisional agreement than by appealing to imaginary authorities – alternative ways, in the inclusive-or sense of alternative. I propose the view that arguing on the basis of beliefs as to whether animals “have feelings” is a kind of detour around a matter that is always present, even though hardly any one pays attention to it. That issue is our feelings about how animals should be treated. It is not “animal feelings” that are at issue, but our feelings about how animals should be treated.
The idea of “animal feelings” comes in primarily as an attempt to objectivize human feelings about how animals should be treated. It is an artefact of intellectualized discussion about animals in the absence of animals. I believe it is a waste of time to scrabble around for “reality/authority” arguments when the problem is that your interlocutor (supposing he claims to be indifferent to animal treatment) cannot be confronted straight off with an animal suffering in a lab experiment, or a dog being beaten. Of course that will not necessarily change his mind, so … what do we do now ? Proffer more thought experiments ?
It may just be that you have more faith than I do that arguments about concrete things have the power to change minds. My position is that arguments about abstract things are more likely to change minds, and the rest is better dealt with by legislatures and the police.
Or are you maintaining that there is no such thing as a belief about morality, that those who believe they hold such beliefs are under an illusion?
I said nothing about illusions, and have never claimed that what another person believes is an illusion. You, Hat and several other people seem to believe the contrary – despite the fact that I have never even claimed that this belief is an illusion.
On such occasions I do often repeat, though, that you have no good reason to think I believe such a thing – given that I have never put forward such a belief, and have always explicitly denied holding such a belief. After all I have written on such matters over the past 2 years, I feel that I have to repeat this more often than should be necessary by now.
What I do see is that you sometimes have difficulty understanding the sense of what I write. To hammer it into understandable shape, you pull out of your toolbox the same old explanations, things along the line of “wild-eyed modernists” (as Hat wrote recently, although not about me this time), “he’s saying everything is an illusion” and so on. Of course there’s nothing wrong with trying to reshape things in one’s own terms, in order to understand them better – I do so, and everybody does so. It’s just that my toolbox contains more than than just a hammer.
1. Tom, I’d give you some answers, but I don’t speak Spanish.
2. I don’t understand Stu’s problem with morality either, but anyway, morality regarding animals only comes into play once you’ve decided that other animals are comparable to humans in some way. Most people haven’t done that, and they aren’t going to consider it seriously in my lifetime (partly because few people have much experience of living with other animals, except for a pet or two). Should they ever do so, human-rights precedents (slavery, voting rights etc.) tell us that morality alone is a good enough argument for many middle-class people (i.e. the majority) to agree to acknowledge animal rights. They’re willing to be inconvenienced, just so long as the costs won’t cripple them.
empty, I’m just wondering: which of the following, if any, accurately describe your reactions to things I write that you don’t understand ?
1. It doesn’t make any sense, but I suppose he thinks it does
2. It doesn’t make any sense, but I suppose it’s just me
3. It doesn’t make any sense, but is well-expressed
4. It seems to make sense, but is badly expressed
5. It seems to make sense, and is cunningly well-expressed, but I still don’t understand it
6. It might make sense, provided I knew the assumptions on which it is based
I’m guessing you’ll go for all of them except 4.
Crown, I have no problem with morality. I have a problem with moralizing, which is not the same thing.
Hei gode mennesker, er det trist at du har et problem.
Jeg er sikker på at hvis jeg hadde vært i stand til å lese hver og en av dine “Position Paper” som sendes inn til dette interessant område de siste to årene har jeg kanskje har en bedre sjanse til å tilby noe hjelp i denne vanskelige situasjonen.
Ha en fin dag!
Thanks for clearing that up. I was wondering how you could know so much about Kant & co. and yet not have any time for morals.
>Tom Clark
I don’t understand either what you mean with these sentences. Are they translations of English texts, except the last one?
>A. J. P. Crown
One com I wrote last night has been erased. Do you know why? Was it stupid?
Det er sikkert mye lettere for meg å svare, hvis du skriver på norsk eller et annet språk at jeg forstår, fransk eller tysk f.eks. Diskusjonen mellom Ø (= Tom på norsk, som du husker kanske) og Stu foregår også hos Language Hat. Takk for hilsen.
Jesús, I think he’s using Google Translate. I suspect the English – Norwegian is a lot better than the English – Spanish.
I didn’t erase anything. I’ll take a look later to see if it’s in the spam pile. I’m in a bit of a rush now.
Artur,
At Voidplay our friend Empty speaks of his preference for empty sets (mathematically speaking, I believe).
Speaking in a language one does not know is a curious empty-set experience, perhaps a bit like standing at the edge of a great canyon, or fjord, or Abyss, if you will.
Kant was a terrible one for moralizing, but you Kant have everything. My intro to philosophy etc. was through Ryle and Hare in the ’60s, The British School of Moral Philosophy and all that.
You may have guessed by now that I too am a terrible moralizer. The countermeasures I have found for myself are the ones I grimly propagate here and elsewhere, prominent among them: “keep’em guessin'”.
It is only uncertainty about what to do that keeps me from preaching fire and brimstone. By looking carefully, I have found uncertainty everywhere. Isn’t that neat ?
>A. J. P. Crown
I’m sorry. I found it. I was wrong so I had looked for in other post.
In Scotland “gowk” is used for the cuckoo, and also to refer to foolish fellows. I know the robin only as the robin
I suspected Tom of using GT! One thing I love about the empty set is that there is only one of them. If you equate two empty sets, nobody can tell you that they are only alike in being empty. Tom, did you know that your name (which is the same as mine) means Empty in Norwegian? dearieme, I know the robin by two names: “robin” and “thrush”, and I know two birds by the name “robin”. I think I had heard of “gowk”, but not in the bird sense. Stu, my favorites are 5 and 6, but I don’t have time to think about it much more right now. I will just note that there is much certainty amid your uncertainty (I think): For example you seem certain that when I parade my feelings of concern for a bird I am erring if I base those feelings on any idea about what it feels like to be a bird (as if I could alter what I base my feelings on).
Am I correct in thinking that you recommend breaking ourselves of such habits as speculating or imaging or intuiting, or trying to intuit, anything about what it feels like to be a bird (or more generally about anything that you regard as unknowable), on the practical grounds that the result of such efforts or habits will not serve us well if we find ourselves in political debates on the subject of the treatment of animals (or any other subject)?
That’s pretty damn close, empty – asymptotically.
I never recommend anything, the expression “I recommend” has never passed my browser into the internet. This is where item 6 comes in:
Because I often express myself quite forcefully, you perhaps assume that I am trying to tell people what to do, or to straighten them out. However, you surely remember that I am always cracking jokes, and drop my topic to jump on any passing train of thought coming from another commenter. This would not be consistent behavior by a bully.
Maybe that’s confusing you: how can Stu put so much effort into these finely artificed cookies, and then just let them crumble ? Perhaps you are not accustomed to someone holding strong views that he doesn’t try to force down your throat. I meant what I said: “there are other ways of reaching provisional agreement than by appealing to imaginary authorities – alternative ways, in the inclusive-or sense of alternative.” My views are always “in addition” views, not “my way or the highway” views. It is irrelevant that I stage them with so much spectacle.
recommend breaking ourselves of such habits as speculating or imaging or intuiting, or trying to intuit, anything about what it feels like to be a bird (or more generally about anything that you regard as unknowable)
It all depends on what you want to accomplish. Perhaps you are content to believe/intuit/know what you believe/intuit/know, and to merely elaborate on it until your dying day – well, I have nothing against that. Perhaps you are never tempted to run thought experiments with yourself on those beliefs, not even once a month just for fun – another thing I have nothing against. As long as you believe/know only people who are like that too, life will be … well, familiar.
on the practical grounds that the result of such efforts or habits will not serve us well if we find ourselves in political debates on the subject of the treatment of animals (or any other subject)?
Ditto, with “believe/intuit/know” replaced by “argue (with)”.
Let me bring in a rather shopworn analogy, to illustrate what I mean by “inclusive-or alternatives”. Consider the sun, winging its way across the sky each day. Whether or not you believe the earth is flat, you can imagine that the sun is revolving around it and you. You “almost see” it doing so.
But what about what we “know” about the solar system ? There, it is said, the earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. But do we even “almost see” this happening ? We do not – instead, we imagine it happening. From an imaginary vantage point outside the solar system we can “see” the earth revolving around the sun. From a real vantage point on the earth we can’t see shit – but we can “almost see” = imagine that the sun is revolving around the earth.
Is one of these viewpoints “valid”, and the other “invalid”. No. Each is useful and “valid” in different circumstances.
You remember the difficulties people had, for over 150 years, in wrapping their heads around Copernican notions of what’s what. Most people fell into the trap of thinking they had to give up geocentrism for heliocentrism. Today we can see that there is no need to trip over yourself like that. Any child can still see the sun moving across the sky and around the earth.
There is another familiar example of someone being able to handle two different kinds of activity – scientific and sexual – that most people cannot even imagine as compatible in the same person. They see a Gynecologist’s Dilemma where the doctor merely goes about his business and home life. This could easily encourage a rethink of what the notion of “person” might be good for, and for what not – but most people prefer to stick with their cringing. Another opportunity missed.
Stu, every day the sun is rolled from horizon to horizon by a giant dung beetle. I feel sure that this is true. I know that I read it somewhere or other, and it has always resonated for me.
That’s scarabaeus sacer. The ancient Egyptians worshipped many kind of animal, including the dung beetle. They even took the trouble to embalm them for their trip to heaven. A German TV documentary reported that tens of thousands of embalmed cats, monkeys, dogs and birds of various kinds have been found.
Maybe “embalmed” is the wrong word here – “mummified in some way I have forgotten” would be more accurate.
Animals are not “merely machines”, and I’m sure that they have feelings in some sense,
Me, too.
but probably not as the result of thinking or moralizing about what happens.
Here you have lost me. At first I thought you were denying that the animals’ feelings arise from the animals’ thoughts or from the animals’ moralizing, but that can’t be it. Are you denying that your opinions about animals’ feelings arise from any thought on your part? Well, fine, but on the other hand you seem to be advocating (recommending? offering as an alternative?) thought about such matters, as opposed to merely being sure that one knows.
Or maybe the fine point that I’m missing is in the “about what happens”.
By the way, Stu, I didn’t call you a bully, so there’s no point in arguing that some of your behavior is inconsistent with being a bully. You are a bully at times, but I was not feeling bullied. Certainly you are not a consistent bully. When your gynecologist alternates between clinical examination and conjugal conjunction, he is not trying to keep anybody guessing, as you are when you alternate between bullying and clowning.
In Scotland “gowk” is used for the cuckoo, and also to refer to foolish fellows.
And so it does here. Which is why I liked the geek thing.
But I can’t say if gowk is a loan from Scandinavian or a cognate. What does Scottish do with the ald aw diphtong? Is ‘leak’ (or ‘onion’) lowk as well? Is ‘stream’ strowm? Or any other words like that?
>Grumbly Stu
I read this news yesterday in “El País” related to a survey (1500 Europeans interviewed): “10,3% of Spaniards said that it’s true the sun revolves around the earth (European average: 14,8 %).”
Oh my Ra!
Female parasitic cuckoos sometimes specialize and lay eggs that closely resemble the eggs of their chosen host. This has been produced by natural selection, as some birds are able to distinguish cuckoo eggs from their own, leading to those eggs least like the host’s being thrown out of the nest. Parasitic cuckoos that show the highest levels of egg mimicry are those whose hosts exhibit high levels of egg rejection behavior. Some hosts do not exhibit egg rejection behavior and the cuckoo eggs look very dissimilar from the host eggs.
Man, I need to spend more time here. Where else would I learn stuff like this? Amazing.
But I can’t say if gowk is a loan from Scandinavian or a cognate.
It’s a loan. Those other words are just like English, mutatis mutandis (i.e., same vowel, different phonetic realization).
“When your gynecologist alternates between clinical examination and conjugal conjunction, he is not trying to keep anybody guessing, as you are when you alternate between bullying and clowning.”
Perhaps his gynecologist has been thrown off by the “gowk” tangent.
One might have thought the applicable term to be “twit”.
“…n.) Someone with the rare ability to suck their own c..k. E.g. :
‘The other day I walked in on my son sucking his own umm…let’s just say he’s a twit.'”
It’s a loan. Those other words are just like English, mutatis mutandis (i.e., same vowel, different phonetic realization).
But not that different, I gather. Thanks.
Perhaps his gynecologist has been thrown off by the “gowk” tangent.
Warning women against the dangers of brood paracitism?
It makes more sense to call it the Guynecologist’s Dilemma, because it’s only men (though not all of them) who see a problem there.
“El País” related to a survey (1500 Europeans interviewed): “10,3% of Spaniards said that it’s true the sun revolves around the earth (European average: 14,8 %).”
Although this may say more about surveys with only 1,500 participants than it does about Spaniards & Europeans, it’s quite reassuring that some people would rather believe what they see than what they’re told to believe.
We have a funny attitude towards cuckoos. On the one hand, calling them parasites, making them sound like a skin disease, and on the other imitating their call to portray an idealised version of country life (Beethoven, Delius).
And on more hands calling them foolish fellows, or crazy
ability to suck their own c..k.
Just so everyone knows, I don’t object to so-called obscenity. I personally prefer to spell words out in full rather than giving them unnecessary emphasis (having to stop thinking and fill in the dots). Even though I’m not a believer, the idea of equating G.d with c..k seems bizarre and not thought through. – And if children are reading (which I doubt, they have better things to do), the odd bit of swearing and scatology should make them feel much more at home.
>A. J. P. Crown
You are right. Anyway, you mustn’t forget that lots of people lie in surveys, especially in political ones.
Besides I add that I made a mistake; there were 1500 interviewed/country and 10 European countries and USA so 16500 interviewed. It’s a reliable study.
It’s a reliable study.
It seems so, but it always bothers me with simple transnational studies that (1 – linguistically) nuances of translation may give questions with slightly different implicit suppositions and (2 – culturally) there may be national differences in the tendency of the responders to express agreement with implicit suppositions.
>Trond Engen
Yes, although I must suppose that they have chosen good translators. Besides, there are some questions without any interpretation like: “could you say the name of a scientific?” 46% of Spaniards don’t know one.
Well, Artur, just quoting the old reliable unreliable Urban dictionary, there.
The idea of sucking one’s own G.d is indeed a curious one and might seem outlandish to some who have not had the benefit of receiving the sacrament of H.ly C.mmunion.
(This of course would probably not include 46% of Spaniards.)
But then I suppose these days the oral benisons come in all flavours & sizes.
There are, it seems, people whose mental operations appear to them in much the same radiant light G.d once appeared.
Or am I getting my members (of the H.ly Trinity, that is!) mixed up?
Was that primordial radiant-light-bringer not G.d himself but the H.ly Gh.st? Ear-entry shaft-of-light-bearing cuckoo of Fra Angelico et al.?
(As the poet Auden once wrote, Those Old Masters, They always had their orifices a bit off… or wait, head injury rearing its ugly visage again? Mixed-up members of the literary pantheon? Can it have been Walter Savage Landor?)
>Tom Clark
Probably more than 46% of elderly Spaniards understand that when they listened to “asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor, lavabis me et super nivem dealbabor”, that is related to holy water.
Tom, you may have been a victim of brood paracletism.
“10,3% of Spaniards said that it’s true the sun revolves around the earth (European average: 14,8 %).”
This reminds me of something I read a few days ago. Someone (I forget who) was called to give a speech to a political audience in one of the Southern states, in which he mentioned that the moon reflects the sun’s light but does not itself produce any light. A woman stormed out of the meeting, shouting “I believe in the Bible!”, where it says that God created two light bodies, for day and for night respectively.
Questions: 1. if the first thing to be created was light (“Let there be light!”), why did God then need to create the sun and the moon? 2. If the purpose of the moon was to light the night, why does it wax and wane and disappear from view once a month, while the sun reliably shines every day?
@marie-lucie: 1. if the first thing to be created was light (“Let there be light!”), why did God then need to create the sun and the moon?
He created light so that he could see what he was doing. Genesis says nothing about “needing” to create the sun and the moon. The standard view is that God does what he pleases.
@marie-lucie: 2. If the purpose of the moon was to light the night, why does it wax and wane and disappear from view once a month, while the sun reliably shines every day?
When you check Genesis 1:13-18, you see that both the “lights” (the sun and the moon) are intended to “give light upon the earth”, but also to “divide the day from the night”:
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Day and night would not be different from each other if the amounts of light provided by sun and moon were equal. But sun and moon are also intended to rule and govern (another word used in some translations), not just to provide light. Why do you expect that the moon should “shine reliably” like the sun ? The quoted passage offers no guarantees as to “reliability”, not even for the sun. After all, even the sun does not shine reliably, because cloud cover prevents it from doing so. And even rulers go on vacation.
Even people have discovered that waxing and waning is generally useful in order to keep someone in line, or “govern” them. Let’s take the case of a girl who suspects that her boyfriend is taking her for granted. She decides that for a while she should turn down his requests for a date, pleading that she has to take care of her aging grandmother (who has already died, but the boyfriend doesn’t know that). Or she tells him that she “needs time to think” and doesn’t even answer the phone.
What the girl doesn’t initially know is that this on-again-off-again behavior suggests to the boyfriend that he can do exactly the same. Films have been made on this subject.
Wesley’s notes elaborate on this:
1:14-19 This is the history of the fourth day’s work, the creating the sun, moon and stars. Of this we have an account, In general, verse 14, 15. where we have, The command given concerning them. Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven – God had said, Ge 1:3 Let there be light, and there was light; but that was, as it were, a chaos of light, scattered and confused; now it was collected and made into several luminaries, and so rendered both more glorious and more serviceable. The use they were intended to be of to this earth. They must be for the distinction of times, of day and night, summer and winter. They must be for the direction of actions: they are for signs of the change of weather, that the husbandman may order his affairs with discretion. They do also give light upon the earth – That we may walk John 11:9 and work John 9:4 according as the duty of every day requires. The lights of heaven do not shine for themselves, nor for the world of spirits above, they need them not; but they shine for us, and for our pleasure and advantage.
While composing the above profound commentary, I found this nice bit of weirdness in Clarke’s commentary:
On the nature of the sun there have been various conjectures. It was long thought that he was a vast globe of fire 1,384,462 times larger than the earth, and that he was continually emitting from his body innumerable millions of fiery particles, which, being extremely divided, answered for the purpose of light and heat without occasioning any ignition or burning, except when collected in the focus of a convex lens or burning glass.
Against this opinion, however, many serious and weighty objections have been made; and it has been so pressed with difficulties that philosophers have been obliged to look for a theory less repugnant to nature and probability. Dr. Herschel’s discoveries by means of his immensely magnifying telescopes, have, by the general consent of philosophers, added a new habitable world to our system, which is the Sun. Without stopping to enter into detail, which would be improper here, it is sufficient to say that these discoveries tend to prove that what we call the sun is only the atmosphere of that luminary; “that this atmosphere consists of various elastic fluids that are more or less lucid and transparent; that as the clouds belonging to our earth are probably decompositions of some of the elastic fluids belonging to the atmosphere itself, so we may suppose that in the vast atmosphere of the sun, similar decompositions may take place, but with this difference, that the decompositions of the elastic fluids of the sun are of a phosphoric nature, and are attended by lucid appearances, by giving out light.” The body of the sun he considers as hidden generally from us by means of this luminous atmosphere, but what are called the maculae or spots on the sun are real openings in this atmosphere, through which the opaque body of the sun becomes visible; that this atmosphere itself is not fiery nor hot, but is the instrument which God designed to act on the caloric or latent heat; and that heat is only produced by the solar light acting upon and combining with the caloric or matter of fire contained in the air, and other substances which are heated by it. This ingenious theory is supported by many plausible reasons and illustrations, which may be seen in the paper he read before the Royal Society. On this subject see the note on Genesis 1:3.
Adam Clarke “(1760 or 1762–1832) was a British Methodist theologian and Biblical scholar. He was born in the townland of Moybeg Kirley near Tobermore in Ireland. He is chiefly remembered for writing a commentary on the Bible which took him 40 years to complete and which was a primary Methodist theological resource for two centuries.”
Very interesting, Mr. Clarke’s theory!!
When I wrote “why did God need to create the sun and the moon”, it was rhetorical. Obviously God does not “need” to do anything, I could have written “choose” instead. What I meant is that if light already existed, why create light-emitting bodies? you would think that what was needed was night! of course Wesley gives a clever answer to that.
The sun does shine reliably: clouds can be seen passing in front of it, then beyond it, and the diminution of light is minimal compared to the absence of light after the sun sets. Clouds also pass in front of the moon and do not create as much darkness as the absence of the moon itself.
if light already existed, why create light-emitting bodies?
I think that in Genesis the creation of light is conceived of as a pure invention without a distribution system. For example, when the principle of the light-bulb was discovered, light-bulbs were not yet being manufactured and sold.
Similarly, once light had been invented, it just sat on God’s lab table for a few days while he considered his options. He then created the sun and the moon as specific light-emitting products, in addition to the stars, and spread his wares across the sky to attract customers.
I expect that just about the time when we all switch over to solar energy God will announce that he has a new, better, maybe more efficient product to replace it.
That’s surely what keeps Mr Romney from removing his magic underpants.
I had not a clue what that referred to. Internet investigation turned up a lot of words about essentially nothing. As far as I can tell,
1. Romney made a long political speech about the various religious communities in America
2. Some twit then twittered to the world a remark to the effect that Romney should “stick that in his magic underpants” (or “underwear” ?).
Now there is a great hue, cry and taïaut of “magic underpants”, but I can’t see any fox or other content. What a fucking waste of time are political ephemera.
Sorry, Stu. I didn’t know this until recently either, but Mormon men (including Romney) always wear some kind of special underwear. I think it’s one of the more interesting facts to have come out of the US election. I just meant that some people on the religious right probably think that God is going to save them from global warming (if it in fact exists), so let’s not bother doing anything about it.
When Mitt Romney came on the scene I read about this for the first time. From what I can gather, Mormons are enjoined to wear a special kind of undergarments that signify their membership in their community. I think that “magic” is an overinterpretation caused by the mystery attached to these garments. The mystery is relative: specialized businesses catering to the needs of the community openly advertise approved styles of male and female undergarments. I saw some samples on the internet and remember that the female ones, covering most of the body, are not something the average woman would choose to wear under her regular clothes during a summer in the Utah desert. I can’t remember what the men’s garments look like but I suspect they also provide a lot of coverage.
It’s like a starched, linen tablecloth. It has drawstrings and covers the knees. It looks as if it had been designed by the freemasons. It must be late 19C.
I didn’t know that Mormons wear special undergarments. Where do people learn such things ?
Sounds weird, admittedly – like a voluminous nether-yarmulke. But why do people go on and on about it ?
Crown, did you find a photo of one ? What is it called ??
Here’s something.
I also meant to say, in keeping with Stu’s suggestion, that when He created light he may only have created the laws of electromagnetism (which in our mental world manifest themselves as Maxwell’s equations, and which, as Maxwell himself was delighted to recognize, predict the existence of electromagnetic radiation) without having having yet given any thought at all to how to make any creatures capable of using this radiation to find their way around–which frequencies can they sense, and so on.
Grumbly, the internet has answers to just about everything. As I said, I had never heard of those nether garments until Mitt Romney became a serious presidential candidate, but they were mentioned often enough in the American press. People were wondering whether or not Mitt actually wore those garments.
marie-lucie, I had already searched the internet to determine the background of this “magical underpants” business, but without success. It seems that most people making the jokes can’t handle the information at the same time – the old walk-and-chew-gum dilemma.
In contrast, the citations from the bible and commentaries in my comments above are the result of actually investigating sources – superficially, of course, but I did acquire a little knowledge of Genesis and Adam Clarke. I make jokes as mnemonics, and my citations are merely pointers, not appeals to authority.
Last night on the phone I told my sister about my “nether-yarmulke” joke. To my surprise, she said that Hasidim do have special underwear, and that I would find more in the internet under “Hasidic fashion”.
He wears that underwear only in secret, by dark of night. When not using it he secretes it in the glove box of one of the two Cadillacs in his wife’s garage. They’d never think to look there, those diabolical opponents of hydraulic fracturing, wholesale drilling, and other forms of Godly behaviour.
I was looking up streimel, the cylindrical fur hat worn by Jewish men in Williamsburg & on Park Avenue on the Sabbath (it looks wonderful, of course I don’t approve of killing minks). Anyway, I found this intriguing site. Unfortunately I don’t have time to look at it, but I thought I’d pass it on.
The spodik is similar, except it’s taller, usually fake-fur and originated in Poland. There’s also a Hungarian version, the Kucsma, that Languagehat discussed.
A temple garment (also referred to as garments, or Mormon underwear) is a type of underwear worn by members of some denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement, after they have taken part in the Endowment ceremony. Garments are worn both day and night […]
Holy shit!
Sorry, but somebody had to cra… make that joke.
I like the Jewish outfits much more than the Mormon underwear. Some of them are very imaginative.
The Jewish hats can double as winter tyres.
I came to remember that women’s underwear like that are called mamelukker in Norwegian. This guy combines the best of two worlds.
I looked up the “intriguing site” AJP linked to, indeed an interesting site devoted to religious headgear in a variety of religions. I was intrigued by the “miznefet with scarf” worn by a rabbi (who seems to own several models in different colours). The combination of hat and scarf looked very much like pictures I have seen of modern replicas or reconstitutions of head coverings worn by high-ranking women in parts of the ancient world: the high, plain hat called a “polos”, worn with a thin veil falling from it which is sometimes embellished by small metal decorations presumably stitched to it. Some “polos” hats or crowns are seen on Greek statues of female characters (eg goddesses or personifications), but are usually more elaborate than those known from archeological finds or ancient paintings.
I still haven’t looked at that site yet, perhaps tomorrow. I think for a clothes designer some of those pictures of Jewish outfits would be a goldmine of fashion ideas. Some of the hats were beautifully made too, I thought. There was some very intricate detailing combining layers of different fabrics.
I wonder why they called them mamelukker. Where was the connection between Norway & Egypt?
My late friend Allan used to entertain both himself and me by explicating the dress and headgear of the various Orthodox and Hasidic groups to be seen around NYC: “See that guy dressed like a sixteenth-century Polish tax collector? That’s a Satmar! Check out that streimel!” I miss him.
There’s a nice discussion here. “Gerrer Hasidim wear hoyznzokn — long black socks that the trousers are tucked into. Some Hasidim from Eastern Galicia wear black socks with their breeches on the Sabbath, as opposed to white ones, particularly Belzer Hasidim.” I love that stuff.
Trond: Mamelukker is quite an interesting name! The English name is pantalette (see Wiki), and the French name is just pantalons.
These were indeed worn at a time when the fashion was for skirts to be extremely wide, held in position by the crinoline, a really impractical undergarment which was so rigid that it could flip up and therefore expose the wearer’s legs, even if she also wore petticoats under the skirt. The pantalette worn underneath was made of thin linen cloth (like most other lingerie), closed by a string at the waist, and open in the back. I once saw a book on costume history which showed a woman putting it on with the opening in front: this was a gross misunderstanding on how it was worn, since a front opening would have made the pantalette impossible to manage while wearing the skirt. Children (of both sexes until around 5 years old) might not have worn real crinolines, but their shorter skirts were also very wide and they wore the pantalette underneath. As the pantalette was made to be seen, even if only occasionally, the bottom edges were usually decorated with embroidery or lace. In later times the pantalette became shorter, worn only by women, under a more manageable type of skirt.
When I was a little girl, I “inherited” a porcelain-faced doll which had been my mother’s. I think it must have been my grandmother who made several outfits for this doll, old-fashioned ones including pantalettes with lace edging.
I wonder why they called them mamelukker. Where was the connection between Norway & Egypt?
The picture linked to shows why: the man is wearing a longish coat, below which very wide pants are seen.
This is a test.
Asa has helped me sort this out. Let’s see if we’re done.
OK, maybe we are. It was something about the law of Gravatar.
= “Globally Recognized Avatar“. An “avatar” is a little graphic thingy “representing” an internet user. The pictures/graphics to the right of comments by empty and Julia, for instance, are avatars. In contrast, the WiPe article on the Hindu concept of avatar seems interesting, but I don’t have time right now to check it out.
You’d think that Crown of all people would have an avatar showing his crown or pate, but no. Empty’s gives us a glimpse of his.
Thanks for the suggestion, Stu. I’ll work something up.
Language: I love that stuff.
Me too. It must come from having lived in New York. Thanks for the link to that fascinating discussion.
m-l, those petticoats and embroidered pantalettes must have required masses of ironing. I wonder if there was a tendency for very labour-intensive styles to come into fashion because they showed the wearer was rich enough to afford to have the work done.
Rich and idle enough to do the work herself while somebody else did her cooking and cleaning and child-rearing. Mary of Scotland left a lot of elaborate embroidery…
I thought Mr Crown chose “Crown” to follow A. J. P. [most of the time] because it was a kind of money. I wonder why I thought that?
I started off as plain Arthur Crown (half-a-crown = pre-1970 English coin).
AJP: I wonder if there was a tendency for very labour-intensive styles to come into fashion because they showed the wearer was rich enough to afford to have the work done.
Styles requiring both a lot of material and a lot of time-consuming labour (to make as well as to maintain the garments) typically arise in times of extreme inequality where the rich (and especially the newly-rich) are showing off, as in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.
I remember seeing a mail-order catalogue that my grandmother had saved, apparently from before the First world war: plain fashions and “rich” fashions (identified as such!) were displayed side by side, the rich ones with wider skirts, more shiny cloth, and covered with extra lace, ribbon, etc. Of course garment industry workers (almost all women) were paid peanuts.
One contemporary equivalent may be all the unnecessary zippers and velcro that are all over my jackets and trousers. I think these clothes are made in China or somewhere else where labour is cheap. The trousers I wear most of the time have zippers down the outside of the thighs, so that I can air them if I get too hot. I wouldn’t dream of using them.