Dust Storm Sunset and Sunrise
This is what it looks like in a dust storm. Imagine fog, but fog that cakes on your face and makes it grainy, that gets in your eyes and up your nostrils. Dust that gets in your ears, dust you can taste. Your skin dries out like an alligator and there is a coating of slick grit on the road.
It’s a driving challenge. Visibility is low. But people are driving more slowly, at least along the roads I drive, so I am actually enjoying the experience. It’s kind of an adventure.
This is how it looked late yesterday afternoon:
And this is the Dust Storm Sunrise this morning:
Phase Me
AdventureMan and I were having one of those conversations we love so much – why we say what we do. This time, it was on the word phrase “phase”. We have a collection of words you use one way but not the other, and we are adding to it all the time.
Like with “phase” – we never say “Oh, man, I was so totally phased.” We never say “that phased me.”
We MIGHT say “I sort of phased out when he started talking about molecular electronics and phased back in as he summed it up,” but that is a phrase – phased-out / phased-in. I’m not sure they are related.
No.
We say:
That didn’t phase me.
I wasn’t the least bit phased.
We got throught he entire procedure unfazed. (It’s the same word.)
I’ve been searching the internet for any kind of explanation as to why we use this almost exclusively in the negative, and I can’t find much.
I did find a website, Urban Dictionary which asks for audience participation to define what words and phrases mean. Very interesting:
1. phase
(Votes) 132 up, 17 down
(Verb) To disturb, perturb, deter or intimidate. Usually used in the negative.
“They swore at me, but hey, I’m not phased.”
“You can’t phase me by talking while playing chess.”
This entry brought to you by Mrm who used the phrase in a recent comment and it was just too much of a co-incidence, so I had to write about it.
Update:
I just couldn’t let it go. Finally I discovered the problem. Me and Mark Twain have the same problem, thinking phase and faze are related. They are not. From Wiktionary:
English
Pronunciation
fāz, /feɪz/, /feIz/
Homophones: phase
Rhymes: -eɪz
Verb: to faze
third-person singular simple present: fazes,
present participle: fazing,
simple past: fazed,
past participle: fazed
To frighten or cause hesitation; to daunt, put off (usually used in the negative)
Jumping out of an airplane does not faze him, yet he is afraid to ride a roller coaster.
Related terms
unfazed
Translations
to frighten or cause hesitation; to daunt
Usage notes
Citations for faze in the OED start in 1830; usage was established by 1890.
The word phase is sometimes used incorrectly for faze; such notables as the New York Times and Mark Twain have made this error. This sometimes leads to the supposition that faze is an uneducated spelling of phase; they are distinct terms.
Kuwait View
This is for people who lived in Kuwait a long time ago – like pre-invasion – and still think of Kuwait as a sleepy, spacious little city. It is taken from near the Marina Mall, a mall that has an overpass across Gulf road to take shoppers to the Marina Crescent, a collection of many restaurants with indoor and outdoor seating.
This is a view looking north, toward Kuwait City:
This is a view looking south:
Sunrise 19 Feb 2008
“Not with a bang, but a whimper. . . ”
That tiny tiny bright speck you see is the sun fighting to shine through the clouds. It was only there for one brief moment – then gone! Maybe we will have rain today?
The gasp of brightness brought to mind T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men (by clicking on the blue hypertext, you can go to a great website where it explains all the references in the poem.) Although it was written in 1925 – almost a century ago – it has a very modern feel to it. Your challenge for today – read the poem. Those with more time or interest – go to the website and read the references.:
The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Dubai Rape Case Update (Two)
In another tiny little article, but high up on page 3 of the Kuwait Times is:
UAE Court Upholds Verdict in Rape Case
Dubai: An appeals court in the United Arab Emirates yesterday upheld 15 year jail terms handed down against two Emiratis convicted of raping a French-Swiss teenager, and AFP journalist said. The judge in Dubai took just a few seconds to announce his ruling after proceedings opened. The defense wanted the sentences pronounced on December 12 to be quashed, and a lawyer for the two men told AFP after Sunday’s ruling that a further appeal would be lodged with the supreme court. Prosecutors had demanded the maximum punishment, which could have meant the death penalty. A third defendant is being tried in a juvenile court. One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease. The boy’s mother, Veronique Robert, launched a media campaign to publicize the case and gather support for her demand that the UAE recognize homosexual rape in its legal system and set up institutions to treat AIDs sufferers. She protested against the original verdict, saying that “15 years is nothing for someone who knew he had AIDs.”
Comment: Did you read this sentence?:
One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease.
Can you tell me who has been found to be clear of the disease? One of the men? The teenager?
Comment 2: Bravo, UAE judges!
Corrupt Officials Beware
I don’t usually type out the whole article from the Kuwait Times, but because this one is so small, and buried way down on the page, I am making an exception and typing in the whole thing:
Responding to recent stories published by Al-Rai concerning alleged violations and corruption cases committed by ministers and MPs, HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Nassar Al-Mohammed noted that HH the Amir had instructed them to enforce the law to everybody. “And you can start with enforcing it on me,” the prime minister added.
Sheikh Nassar pointed out that the law would be enforced on everybody, be them (sic) (they) senior or minor officials. He added that he had instructed all concerned law-enforcement authorities to treat everyone equally with no exceptions at all.
Comment: WOOOO HOOOOOOOOO, HH Prime Minister Sheikh Nassar Al-Mohammed and BIG WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO to HH the Emir! If I knew how to make red letters, this would be a big RED letter day! WOOOOO HOOOOO law enforcement!
The Purg’s Not-Tag
The Purg has non-tagged us to link to The Purgatorian Blog with things that fascinate us.
It fascinates me that thirty year olds are sounding like really really OLD people, criticizing the young people just the way the adults used to criticize them, their choice in music, their ideas of fashion and I wonder how we change from young people who explore new ideas into old people who criticize new ideas?
It fascinates me that although we became “human” so long ago, we find the most amazing reasons to beat up on each other, kill each other, torture each other, and if you just step back a step or two, you begin to see that all the reasons to fight one another are flimsy compared to the great miracle of our creation. I wonder if we are really civilized? I wonder just how thin the veneer of civilization really is? How little it takes to turn us back into beasts?
It fascinates me how the things we own really own us. I have a horror of being forced, in the afterlife, to carry all the THINGS I consider important in this life on my back, like a turtle with it’s shell.
It fascinates me the trivia I give my attention to, the time I WASTE when I have things I really need to do.
I am fascinated by the darkness we all carry within us, and the heroic people I know who strive on a daily basis to overcome that darkness, to give their best in every situation, with earthly good humor and humility.
The Purg sent out this not-challenge to anyone interested to write a post on the sorts of thoughts that fascinate you.
Not So Fast!
The other day, I was taking breakfast to a friend. For me, I love Gulf breakfasts, I love fried Haloumi, I love felafel, I love hummous and even beans. I love hot fragrant flat bread, fresh out of the oven.
But I knew my friend needed some protein, so I went to a nearby MickyD’s.
It was not fast food. It was very very very very slow food. And even worse – when I got to my friends house, and gave her the BIG value breakfast, she opened the box and – it was pancakes. They were not just slow, they also gave me the WRONG order!
I have to tell you, I was astonished to see so many people there. People like me, women, families, sitting and visiting and eating at McDonalds as they would at a much nicer place, Pain Quotidien or Paul’s or some coffee place. And the McDonalds actually looked nicer than the run-of-the-mill McDonalds, it was clean and even had some relatively nice furniture. But it was NOT fast food!
Struggling Sunrise 17 Feb 08
This morning, the sun had a real fight going just to break through the thick haze on the horizon. WeatherUnderground: Kuwait calls it a “light haze.” The temperature, at 0700 is one degree Fahrenheit LESS than Seattle at 8:00 at night. It feels COLD again!
43 °F / 6 °C
Light Haze
Date Night Sparks
This is the #1 most e-mailed article from the New York Times, and you can read the entire article by clicking HERE:
Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: February 12, 2008
Long-married couples often schedule a weekly “date night” — a regular evening out with friends or at a favorite restaurant to strengthen their marital bond.
But brain and behavior researchers say many couples are going about date night all wrong. Simply spending quality time together is probably not enough to prevent a relationship from getting stale.
Using laboratory studies, real-world experiments and even brain-scan data, scientists can now offer long-married couples a simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place. The solution? Reinventing date night.
Rather than visiting the same familiar haunts and dining with the same old friends, couples need to tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy, says Arthur Aron, a professor of social psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The goal is to find ways to keep injecting novelty into the relationship. The activity can be as simple as trying a new restaurant or something a little more unusual or thrilling — like taking an art class or going to an amusement park.
The theory is based on brain science. New experiences activate the brain’s reward system, flooding it with dopamine and norepinephrine. These are the same brain circuits that are ignited in early romantic love, a time of exhilaration and obsessive thoughts about a new partner. (They are also the brain chemicals involved in drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder.)
Most studies of love and marriage show that the decline of romantic love over time is inevitable. The butterflies of early romance quickly flutter away and are replaced by familiar, predictable feelings of long-term attachment.
But several experiments show that novelty — simply doing new things together as a couple — may help bring the butterflies back, recreating the chemical surges of early courtship.
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 