Graupel

Someone on the internet has reported on the making up of a new word.

Snain.  Indeed.  Snain.

OK, this is a made up word and a pretty stupid one at that.

On the other hand I hereby endorse graupel.  Graupel totally works for me, graupel is obscure certainly, but does have the odor and patina of "completely made up."

On the other hand we have "snain".

The Urban Dictionary gives the following definition for "snain":

"A slushy mix of snow flakes and rain droplets. The outter (sic) layer of a snain flake is soft and slushy while the inner core is icy. This wintry mix makes walking and driving rather fun"

OK, stop right there.  The problem seems to me to be that "snain" attempts to conflate several different precipitation types into a single type for the purpose of, technical term here, sounding hip.

What about this "snain".  Well, if it is a slushy mix of snow flakes and rain droplets it is either freezing rain or rain turning to snow.  These are both highly useful descriptions.  Each gives you all of the information you need to know what sort of precipitation is falling from the sky.  And both give you that information without you having to go out and expose yourself to the elements to determine which variation of "snain" is currently occurring.  By this point in our lives we all know what each of those types of precipitaion is.

Secondly, if the outer layer is soft and slushy while the inner core is icy the precipitation event is sleet.  And further more there is NO WINTRY MIX that makes walking and driving RATHER FUN.  ON WHAT PLANET?  Wintry mixes are miserable, miserable for walking but absolutely treacherous for driving.

I think this whole thing arises out of some sort of misguided effort to make our language more like the "eskimo" languages which are believed by lots of us in the snow belt to have an unusually large number of words for "snow".

There's a Wikipedia article, in fact a couple of Wikipedia articles seem relevant.

From the first of the two cited articles:

"In fact, the Eskimo–Aleut languages have about the same number of distinct word roots referring to snow as English does, but the structure of these languages tends to allow more variety as to how those roots can be modified in forming a single word. A good deal of the ongoing debate thus depends on how one defines "word", and perhaps even "word root"."

The article continues by citing an evaluation of the issue by at least one commenter referring to it all as the "Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax".

What are we to make of the fact that the large number of languages spoken by the large number of different northern indigenous peoples generally all have about the same number of words for snow as English?

We are to make that making up a new one, particularly a stupid new one which does a less adequate job of describing winter precipitation than words that we already have and use, is a fool's errand.

On the other hand, as always, I don't really have to decide so I guess I won't.  Everyone is allowed to go ahead and refer to any given precipitation event as "snain" if doing so makes them happy.

April 18, 2013 for scale.

Enjoy.

Stealing an idea from my brother

It is getting a little late here on another ugly winter day.  I haven't posted yet but did take a minute to look around at what others have posted.  TT has posted a photo from July 2011.  I recognize the vantage point, I was there that day too, in fact my blog post that day was entitled "I'm glad I did this while I am still young."

We got there early and waited an hour and half for the church to open so that we could be in the first group to climb the 422 steps to the top of Notre Dame.  I still have several photos that only I have probably ever seen so with a stolen idea here are a couple more from July 2011, the top of the big stone church.  Here's one, the crowd has not yet gathered in front of the church.

I think I used the others last time but I still like them and think they stand up to a repeat.

Here's that same bridge with some foreground interference.

Looking the other way, Tour Saint Jacques in the background and Basilique du Sacré Coeur in the far away top of Montmarte background.

This one is of one of the folks running the concession, Francois. He was bustling about just before the 10am opening, giving instructions mostly in French but also in English. I tried, "I like your hat".

He replied, in English, "Thank you very much, I bought it in Istanbul just a few days ago."

Just in case anyone missed the above semi-offhand reference, 422 steps.  With a gift shop located about two thirds of the way up, not so much because you are going to buy anything, although you certainly might.  I think the gift shop is mostly there so you can take a little break if that seems like a good idea.

Armistice Day

Winter.  Yikes!

Here is a photo of the tomb of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Commander in Chief of the Allied Armies in 1918.  The tomb is located at Les Invalides, also the location of the Tomb of Napoleon.  Foch's tomb is of ordinary French soldiers bearing on their shoulders the body of a comrade in arms.

Foch was the person who on November 11, 1918 accepted the enemy request for an armistice.  Eventually the final peace terms as embodied in the Treat of Versailles were not as Foch wished, he declared, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years".   World War II began twenty years and 65 days later.

Here's a repeat from Armistice Day 2011:

The photo is of the Minnesota Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the State Capitol approach. The inscription is a quotation from the poem, "The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak", by Archibald MacLeish. The inscription reads, "We were young. We have died. Remember us."
Here is the complete poem:

The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could
but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.

First

The snow part isn't completely over yet but it is going to be considerably less severe than as predicted by the European model et al.

Here's my first look at it at about 7:30am.

It's still snowing at that point but the accumulated amount is not terribly daunting.  Using our handy back yard measuring surface I am going to estimate at most a couple of inches on the table top.

The deal apparently is that temperatures stayed slightly higher than the model and we ended up getting a fair amount of the precipitation as rain.  This is just after the first appearance on our street for this season of the big plow.

Then the small plow comes around and does the rest of the clean up of the traffic circle.

Then I get out there with our fairly reliable snow blower and reestablish contact between our garage and civilization as represented by the plowed street.

And I'm calling that good enough.  The second part of the big event is forecast as very, very cold, very much below average temperatures.  With a little more snow expected overnight as the deep freeze settles in I choose to leave a little texture out there.  If I get down to pavement I could end up with a skating rink in lieu of a driveway.  I prefer a snow field with some crusty ridges and edges.

The Weather Channel has begun to name winter storms.

Any more bicycling seems unlikely.

Mmmmm, bacon

Apparently I had it all wrong about the precipitation event.  No sign of it today and now it appears that the real forecast was for Sunday night, hence tonight, not last night.

One thing I did not have wrong was the enthusiasm of the local masses for bringing home the bacon.

We receive two newspapers daily, here are the front pages of the sport sections of the papers that arrived on our front step this morning.

There are a couple of nice photos of the trophy there.

Pause and enjoy, a bronze pig makes an excellent traveling trophy.

I also wish to note that apparently the National Football League has decided that TODAY is Veteran's Day.  I mean can't they even wait for the slightly more traditional Monday celebration of not the real day but the most convenient for taking a day off from work?

11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Gophers capture Floyd

Earlier this season the University of Minnesota football team defeated the team from the University of Michigan to capture something called "The Little Brown Jug".  I guess it was kind of a big deal for some older folks being as over the last half century or so (hey, anyone can have a bad half century) this has become an increasingly rare occurrence.  Minnesota won in '65 and '67 then this is the fourth time since then.

Personally I prefer the pig.  The local squad and the team representing the University of Iowa have an actual pretty competitive rivalry for "Floyd of Rosedale".  The Gophers captured the pig today (by a record setting 51-14).  What makes this noteworthy is that this is the first time the Gophers have held both of these two ancient trophies at the same time since 1967.

So, pardon all of us while we all give a hearty Ski-U-Mah and sing the Rouser a couple of times.

But wait, there is more.

In DePere, Wisconsin, Macalester has defeated St. Norbert College (TOPWLH inquires there's a saint named Norbert?) to capture the Northern Division championship of something called the Midwest Conference.  Stop and savor, a conference championship for the pumpkin heads, truly unimaginable just a few years ago, certainly unimaginable towards the end of the still NCAA Division III record 50 games losing streak from '74 to '80.  Those were the days.  Side note:  we were at the game at Macalester Stadium on September 22, 1980 when a late field goal pushed Macalester past Mount Senario (I know, I know, even more obscure that St. Norbert) by a score of 17-14.

In other football news SM Caen 1:2 FC Nantes.  Nantes secures another away three pointer to continue their fine early season form.  Les Canaries sit an impressive and quite unexpected 5th in the table with one third of the schedule now having been played.

Winter precipitation is forecast for tonight and tomorrow.  The heads think that enough may accumulate and that the conditions for next week may remain cool enough that the white stuff will stick around.  With this in mind it seems apparent that I won't be getting over to our favorite of the trees we have ever planted.  Further more, it is an ash, an ash is not at its most attractive stage right now.

Here is the most recent picture I have of Emily's tree, taken summer of '13.

Excuse me for now, I have to go off and lead a ceremonial singing of Minnesota March.

Not much

It was a cold and rainy day in November.

And that isn't even the first line in my novel, it's a description of today.

I didn't do much.  I witnessed the pick up of the recycling.  This is also a good municipal service.  Although I here get to insert my opinion that the whole separate pick up of "recyclables" is made possible by quirks in the tax code which render the whole system profitable in a way that probably would not exist in a true free market.  You know, "incentives", and "credits" and stuff like that.  Either way, not as good a deal for me as yesterday's pick-up, a good municipal service but not a great one.

I have two pictures that I took this evening, each relating vaguely to the recycling pick-up.

We have for the entire time we have lived here used these bulbs to light the living room area.  I used up our last old school incandescent recently when we returned home to find one of the ones that I can reach burned out.  I saved the sleeve because I plan to take it with me when I head out to Home Depot to get the compact florescent replacement.  I am hopeful that having the old sleeve will give me enough information to possibly enable me to get something appropriate without having to be assisted by one of those new Home Depot robotic shopping assistants.

I learned about these robots by watching John Oliver's show, Last Week Tonight.  It is a funny bit, available on YouTube.

Possibly the old bulb was recycled, possibly not, I frankly do not specifically recall.  The new bulbs will positively require recycling.

The other bits there are the locking system for my home generator.  I had the generator guys out this week for annual maintenance and had to remove the locks to allow them entry into the cabinet to do the oil change and miscellaneous maintenance checks.  Having a home generator is not exactly recycling but I do think it is pretty green.

Then there's this.  After only being prodded a dozen or so times (ask TOPWLH, I bet she thinks it was more) I whipped out my box cutter and reduced the excess cardboard that we had accumulated around the house over the last prolonged period since I last cut boxes down to a nice bundle suitable to be picked up by the recycling truck.

I came out of it with only two paper cuts, a pretty good result especially considering that only one of them bled copiously.  But by the way, the one that didn't bleed hurts more, a lot more.

Yes indeed, that is a REALLY big TV.

Not much today.