At night all cats are gray. The silvery color of the moon, reflected from their fur, gave exactly this neutral, nondescript color. And no matter how beautiful the cat was, it didn’t matter at night. But on the other hand: no matter how ugly she was, at night she was no different from her white and fluffy relatives. This is probably why you love the night so much. At night your ugliness is not visible - this is how you perceive your appearance. You never pay attention to your skin, teeth, or hair. You simply don’t have the time or desire for “this nonsense.” After all, at night all cats are gray, but you don’t care what you look like during the day. You even find a certain perverse pleasure in the reactions of others caused by your appearance. You don't need love and respect. I think, deep down, you still consider yourself unworthy of these sincere feelings. You still hate and despise yourself for one fatal mistake you made in your distant youth and you will never forgive yourself. And at night all cats are gray. They have no past to be ashamed of. They have no present, which has no meaning. They have no future, the possible existence of which is generally in question. At night they are all the same. At night all the cats are gray, but I can’t be seen at all. In an unlit room, when I have no clothes, it’s hard to make out even my silhouette. And the light in my bedroom is never on - you turn it off when we cross the threshold. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I can see the outline of your body. Your skin is so pale that it is simply impossible not to see it. But I merge with the darkness, and you cannot see me. You feel my touch, but you don't see my hands. You kiss and caress me, but you don’t see what emotions, replacing each other, run across my face. You don’t see me and you can imagine anyone in my place. That's probably what you do. That's probably why you're fucking me. I studiously avoid such an epithet as “making love”, because you will be the first to make me laugh if any phrase with the word “love” escapes my lips. That's why I fuck you silently, biting your lips until they bleed, avoiding even moaning. After all, even my moan can tell you about my love. I love you, Severus Snape. I look forward to our meetings, like a traveler pursued by vampires waits for the dawn, despite the fact that after these meetings I am completely devastated. You're probably a vampire too, Snape. You feed on my unrequited feelings and unspoken words. And every time I think that this is the end, that now you will get up, wipe the sperm from your belly with a towel, throw on a robe, close the door behind you and never come again. I'm so confused that I don't even know whether to wait for this with joy or fear. But then the next meeting at Grimmaud comes, and out of habit, I block my consciousness, erecting unimaginable barriers to cover access to my own brain. But do you really care how magically impenetrable these barriers are? You simply ignore their inaccessibility, piercing them with a dry, tired voice: “I’ll come to you in the evening.” You just let me know without even asking if I had any other plans for that night. You can’t even imagine how angry this makes me, because I stopped making plans for my evenings a long time ago. Ever since you came into my life, no one else has crossed the threshold of my bedroom. "I'll come see you in the evening." The most important words I hear. It doesn't matter that the war is about to start, don't care about the dramatically increased population of Dementors, nothing matters. I am a soldier, am I afraid of the upcoming battles? All that matters is that you come tonight too. And everything repeats itself again: night, an unlit bedroom and two lovers who, in three years of unrestrained fucking, have never seen each other naked. In pitch darkness, only sensations matter, and I will do my best to make them as bright as possible. I want you to look at the marks on your body later in the daylight and know that they were left by my hands and lips... As soon as you had time to say: “nox,” I fly up to you and push you onto the bed. You hiss, your hip hitting her back, but you don’t say anything. I can even bet a thousand galleons that at this moment your lips stretch into a caustic smile. Everything goes according to the pre-written script, and you obediently stretch out on the bed. I run my hand along your body, and your entire modest wardrobe ends up clenched in my fist, and then impatiently thrown onto the floor. I turn you over onto your back, and, squeezing your bruised thigh, I jerk you into a knee-elbow position. You hiss again and (another thousand on the line) grin. You never liked foreplay, you didn't need any foreplay. And my behavior was familiar to you - you yourself taught me to love you this way. But today I do not intend to follow your lead. Do you think that you are not worthy of tenderness, that you don’t need it? I intend to prove the opposite. Despite the strong boner, I overcame the initial desire to take you roughly and quickly. Not today. I gently placed my hand on your shoulder and helped you to your knees. Tickling your throat, running my fingers along it, I made your head fall back on my shoulder. Your unwashed hair unpleasantly touches my naked, hot skin, but, as always, I don’t pay attention to it. I pass your hair through my fingers, and then with my pads I lightly touch your scalp and begin to massage. My mouth stretches into a smile: you have never hissed so sweetly. I place my thumb and index finger on your chin and turn your head to meet you with a deep, tender kiss. You fidgeted with displeasure, noticing the change in my behavior, but I held you too tightly to let you escape. When you stopped twitching, realizing the futility of your resistance - without your wand, which was thrown to the floor along with your clothes, you had no chance to cope with me - I kissed you again, spreading my offended pursed lips with my tongue. In retaliation, you slightly bit my tongue, but I just laughed quietly in response: no, that’s not it. Taking my lips off yours, I slid them over your rough, unshaven cheeks, outlined the chiseled line of your cheekbones with my tongue, and then pressed my mouth to the thin and incredibly sensitive skin behind your ear. Your breathing hitched, and I considered this my first small victory. Without giving you time to come to your senses, I ran my hands along your body, stroking your tense hips, your sunken stomach, the protruding lines of your ribs. Playfully pinched your nipples, not forgetting to kiss and bite your favorite secret place behind your ear, gradually sliding your lips lower, kissing your equally sensitive collarbones. And then I hear you moan. Albeit a very quiet, albeit barely perceptible, moan. Unable to contain myself, I tear myself away from you and, burying my nose in your hair, laugh quietly. And you just snort in response, but somehow not at all angry. I would say you snort very nicely...

Last night you slept in my bed for the first time. He didn’t quickly get up and hastily get dressed, as he had done before, but calmed down sweetly in my arms, regaining his breath. And then he fell asleep without lifting his head from my shoulder. I lay there almost not breathing, reading the measured beats of your heart and smiling like a boy who found himself in Zonko’s shop for the first time. I don’t know how long I lay there, reveling in my happiness, imagining how you would wake up in my arms in the rays of the morning sun, how you would squint funny, and then we would finally see each other... My dreams were not destined to come true. You suddenly woke up, abruptly tore your head away from my shoulder and remained in this position for some time, apparently gathering your thoughts and remembering where you were, who you were with, and how you managed to fall asleep in the first place. Then you quickly stood up, hastily threw on your robe and, without saying a word, slipped out of the bedroom. The next day you didn't come. As, indeed, in a week, a month, a year... I will never know whether it was caused by fear from the feelings that suddenly fell upon you: that night a boy named Draco Malfoy let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, and you killed Albus Dumbledore ...You have become the most despised enemy after Voldemort for all members of the Order of the Phoenix. I would have killed you in a heartbeat if I had met you then, in the first days after Albus was killed, but you were a lucky son of a bitch and knew how to hide. And then I had to hide: the Eaters seized power.

At night all cats are gray. I took myself a lover, as black as me, as fragile as you. If you don’t turn on the light, you can’t see him and you can imagine anyone in his place. I tried to represent you. I don’t know how you did this trick, but it didn’t work out for me. I missed you, if you can miss you by hating. I know you never liked Harry Potter. It was deeply personal, I never tried to understand the nature of your hatred. But no matter what you think about his mental abilities, you cannot deny him his powers of observation and the ability to draw the right conclusions. I was the first person Harry showed your memories to. Whatever you think about what a bad student Harry was, he mastered your first lesson very well. A bezoar is a universal antidote and it is what saved your life before the medics arrived. You survived only by a miracle, and also because you were stubborn as hell. Today is June 2nd. It's been exactly a month since the world got rid of Voldemort. And it's been a month since you've been lying in St. Mungo's. I have become the new Minister of Magic, but despite the catastrophic lack of free time, I visit you in the hospital every day. You know, death did you good. You have never looked so good: refreshed, younger and less stern. Some semblance of a truce with Harry played an important role here. There is one less demon that was eating you up from the inside. I, of course, get on your nerves: your cheekbones are already aching from my repentance and constant boring apologies, so at a certain point you just shut me up with a kiss. And then you ask me to take off my clothes. During the day. In a room into which a medic or an uninvited visitor could enter at any moment. But you want to see me naked... And I don’t care if anyone comes in here. Let them look - it’s not a pity. The main thing is that you will see me too. And I began to undress. And your remark that striptease performed by the Minister of Magic is your long-standing sexual fantasy, and that Fudge and Scrimgeour were real beeches, refusing you this whim, I turned a deaf ear. After all, for every thing I dropped, you dropped yours...

WHY ARE ALL CATS GRAY IN THE DARK?

A physicist would say: “in the dark all cats are black,” because in the absence of lighting no objects are visible at all. But the saying does not mean complete darkness, but darkness in the everyday sense of the word, that is, very poor lighting. The saying goes exactly like this: all cats are gray at night. The original, non-transferable meaning of the saying is that when there is insufficient lighting, our eyes cease to distinguish color - every surface appears gray.

Is this true? In the twilight, do both the red flag and the green foliage appear equally gray? It is easy to verify the correctness of this statement. Anyone who looked closely at the color of objects at dusk noticed, of course, that color differences were erased and all things seemed more or less dark gray: a red blanket, blue wallpaper, purple flowers, and green leaves.

“Through the lowered curtains,” we read in Chekhov’s “Letter,” “the sun’s rays did not penetrate here, it was twilight, so all the roses in the large bouquet seemed to be the same color.”

Accurate physical experiments fully confirm this observation. If a painted surface is illuminated with weak white light (or a white surface with weak colored light), gradually increasing the illumination, then the eye first sees simply a gray color, without any color tint. And only when the lighting intensifies to a certain extent does the eye begin to notice that the surface is painted. This degree of illumination is called the “lowest threshold of color sensation.”

So, the literal and completely correct meaning of the saying (which exists in many languages) is that below the threshold of color sensation, all objects appear gray.

Maria Moshkovich, newspaper "EZH-Lawyer".

Our motor grader broke down and was parked on the roadway; the driver did not put up emergency signs. At night, a foreign car collided with a motor grader. The insurance company compensated the victim for the damage (120 thousand rubles) and has now filed a claim against the driver for recourse compensation, since he has an expired license (the policyholder under MTPL is an organization). Is the insurance company right? After all, the accident occurred while the vehicle was parked, and the driver was brought to administrative responsibility for violating traffic rules.

A. Vershinina, Chita

The insurer has the right to make a recourse claim against the person who caused the harm in the amount of the insurance payment made by the insurer, if the said person did not have the right to drive the vehicle during the use of which the harm was caused to him. The insurer may also demand from the specified person compensation for expenses incurred during the consideration of the insured event (Article 14 of the Federal Law of April 25, 2002 N 40-FZ “On compulsory insurance of civil liability of vehicle owners”).

As follows from the above formulation, the recourse claim in this case will be legal if three facts are confirmed:

the driver does not have a license to drive the vehicle;
vehicle use;
cause-and-effect relationship between the use of the vehicle and harm to the victim.

The expiration of the established validity period of a driver's license is one of the grounds for termination of the right to drive a vehicle (Article 28 of the Federal Law of December 10, 1995 N 196-FZ “On Road Traffic Safety”). The opinion that the right to drive a vehicle is granted by a driver’s license, and not a registration certificate (power of attorney, rental agreement), is confirmed by the Ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated January 12, 2010 N 41-B09-34.

As for the use of vehicles, the definition of this concept is given in Art. 1 of Law No. 40-FZ. Use is recognized as “the operation of a vehicle associated with its movement within the boundaries of roads (road traffic), as well as in the territories adjacent to them and intended for the movement of vehicles.” Road traffic, in turn, is “a set of social relations that arise in the process of moving people and goods with the help of vehicles or without them within the boundaries of roads” (clause 1.2 of the Road Traffic Rules of the Russian Federation, approved by Resolution of the Council of Ministers - Government of the Russian Federation dated October 23 .93 N 1090).

From these definitions, judicial practice concludes that the use of a vehicle includes both the actual movement of the vehicle and its stopping, disembarkation and embarkation of people, parking, the movement of pedestrians, the rights and obligations of drivers, passengers and pedestrians (see Definitions of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation dated June 28, 2010 N BAS-6519/10 and dated November 15, 2007 N 14169/07).

But the question of cause and effect requires proof. The fact that the driver was brought to administrative responsibility does not provide unambiguous evidence that the accident occurred precisely as a result of parking the grader in the wrong place and the driver’s failure to use the emergency stop sign. Perhaps the foreign car was speeding (overtaking illegally), the driver lost control (was drunk), etc. - all these points must be considered by the court when deciding what caused the accident.

Let us note that all three aspects we have considered are not controversial for the insurance company - otherwise it would simply refuse to pay the injured person (the owner of the foreign car) and he would file a claim directly with the organization (the owner of the grader). This speaks for itself (insurers will not pay without checking all the circumstances of the case in detail), however, you have a small chance to prove the absence of a cause-and-effect relationship between the actions of the grader driver and the accident or at least reduce the size of the recourse claim.

According to the general rule of Art. 1079 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the liability of the owner of the car (a source of increased danger) is innocent. However, the fact that a specific vehicle caused harm must be proven. In addition, the owner of a source of increased danger is released from the obligation to compensate for damage if he proves that it arose as a result of force majeure or the intent of the victim. The owner of the vehicle can also be released by the court from liability in whole or in part on the grounds provided for in clause 2 (gross negligence of the victim) and clause 3 (property status of the tortfeasor) of Art. 1083 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

So, the literal and completely correct meaning of the saying (which exists in many languages) is that below the threshold of color sensation, all objects appear gray.

It was discovered that there is a higher threshold of color sensation. Under extremely bright lighting, the eye again ceases to distinguish color shades: all painted surfaces appear equally white.

Chapter Ten

Sound. Wave-like movement.

Sound and radio waves

Sound travels about a million times slower than light; and since the speed of radio waves coincides with the speed of propagation of light vibrations, sound is a million times slower than a radio signal. From this follows an interesting consequence, the essence of which is clarified by the problem: who will hear the pianist’s first chord first, a visitor to a concert hall sitting 10 meters from the piano, or a radio listener at the machine receiving the pianist’s performance in his apartment, 100 kilometers from the hall?

Oddly enough, a radio listener will hear a chord earlier than a concert hall visitor, although the former is sitting 10,000 times further from the musical instrument. Indeed: radio waves travel a 100-kilometer distance in

100 / 300,000 = 1 / 3,000 seconds

Sound travels a 10-meter distance in

10 / 340 = 1 / 34 seconds.

From this it can be seen that transmitting sound by radio will require almost a hundred times less time than transmitting sound through the air.

Sound and bullet

When the passengers of the Jules Verne projectile flew to the moon, they were puzzled by the fact that they did not hear the sound of the colossal cannon firing from its mouth. It couldn't be any other way. No matter how deafening the roar was, the speed of its propagation (like any sound in the air in general) was only 340 m/sec, while the projectile moved at a speed of 11,000 m/sec. It is clear that the sound of the shot could not reach the ears of the passengers: the projectile overtook the sound.

But what about real shells and bullets: do they move faster than sound or, on the contrary, does sound outpace them and warn the victim of the approaching deadly projectile?

Modern rifles impart to bullets, when fired, a speed almost three times greater than the speed of sound in air - exactly about 900 m per second (the speed of sound at 0° is 332 m/sec). True, the sound spreads evenly, but the bullet flies, slowing down the speed of its flight. However, for most of its journey the bullet still travels faster than sound. It directly follows from this that if during a shootout you hear the sound of a shot or the whistle of a bullet, then you don’t have to worry: this bullet has already passed you. The bullet outstrips the sound of the shot, and if the bullet hits its victim, the latter will be killed before the sound of the shot that sent the bullet reaches her ear.

Imaginary explosion

The competition in speed between a flying body and the sound it produces sometimes forces us to unwittingly make erroneous conclusions, sometimes completely inconsistent with the true picture of the phenomenon.

A curious example is a fireball (or cannon shell) flying high above our heads. Fireballs penetrating into the atmosphere of our planet from outer space have enormous speed, which, even if reduced by the resistance of the atmosphere, is still tens of times greater than the speed of sound.

As they cut through the air, fireballs often produce a noise reminiscent of thunder. Imagine that we are at point C (Fig. 152), and a fireball is flying above us along line AB. The sound produced by the fireball at point A will reach us (at C) only when the fireball itself has already moved to point B; since the car flies much faster than sound, it can manage to reach some point D and from here send us a sound before the sound from point A reaches us. Therefore, we will first hear the sound from point D and only then the sound from point A. And since the sound from point B will also come to us later than from point D, then somewhere above our head there should be a point K, at which the car gives its sound signal first. Mathematicians can calculate the position of this point if they are given a certain ratio of the speed of the car and the sound,

Figure 152. Imaginary fireball explosion.

Here's the result: what we hear will be completely different from what we see. To the eye, the fireball will appear first of all at point A and from here will fly along line AB. But for the ear, the fireball will first appear somewhere above our head at point K, then we will hear at the same time two sounds fading in opposite directions - from K to A and from K to B. In other words, we will hear the fireball as if it had split into two parts, which were carried away in opposite directions. Meanwhile, in reality no explosion occurred. That's how deceiving auditory impressions can be! It is possible that many fireball explosions witnessed by “eyewitnesses” are precisely this kind of auditory deception.

If the speed of sound decreased...

If sound propagated in the air not at a speed of 340 m per second, but much more slowly, then deceptive auditory impressions would be observed much more often.

Imagine, for example, that sound travels not 340 m per second, but, say, 340 mm, that is, it moves slower than a pedestrian. Sitting in an armchair, you listen to the story of your friend, who has the habit of talking while walking back and forth around the room. Under ordinary circumstances, this pacing does not in the least interfere with your listening; but with a reduced speed of sound, you will understand absolutely nothing from the speech of your guest: the previously spoken sounds will catch up with new ones and mix with them - you will get a confusion of sounds, devoid of any meaning.

By the way, in those moments when a guest approaches you, the sounds of his words will reach you in the reverse order: first the sounds just spoken will reach you, then the sounds spoken earlier, then even earlier, etc. because the utterer overtakes his sounds and is always ahead of them, continuing to make new ones. Of all the phrases uttered under such conditions, you could only understand the one with which an over-aged student once amazed young Karas from Pomyalovsky’s Bursa:

"I come with the sword, Judge."

If you dream, you won’t wake up

All cats are gray at night - subjectivity. In the dark, all shapes and colors become similar. The night erases all distinctive features. At a certain moment, in certain circumstances, this or that (thought, idea, action, judgment) seems like this (“cats are gray”) or, conversely, like this. However, in other situations everything turns 180 degrees. Then (“at night”) everything was obvious to man (“all the cats were gray”), now both the state of things and the views on them have changed.

Synonyms of the expression “all cats are gray at night”

smeared with the same world
From one angle
With the same pattern
Same suit
Birds of a feather
From one test

Analogues of the proverb “all cats are gray at night”

At night all the horses are black
At night all roads are smooth
When the lamp is removed, all women are the same
At night all the ladies are equally beautiful

Using a saying

- “And people say that the Nazis came to see you, officers... - This is for those who have bad eyes, all cats are grey. Not every German is a Hitler."(B. Polevoy “Deep Rear”).
- “Do you want me to remember last night? - There is no need to quarrel with me. I’m the person you need, but as for yesterday… All cats are gray at night. It was your imagination"(Yu. Bondarev “Shore”)
- “In the evening, when all the cats turned gray, the prince went to breathe clean air.”(Leskov. “The Dead Estate”)
- “Life is much better when you're rested, isn't it, Agnes? It's at night that all cats are gray"(M. Eldeneberg “Dangerous illusions”)

“However, the hour of the count’s visit was approaching, and my lady actually forced Katie to turn off the light in the bedroom, ordering de Wardes to be brought to her as soon as he arrived. Katie didn't have to wait long. As soon as d'Artagnan saw through the keyhole of the closet that the whole house was plunged into darkness, he ran out of his hiding place;
-What's that noise? - asked my lady.
“It’s me,” answered d’Artagnan in an undertone. “I am the Comte de Wardes.”
- What? - Milady asked in a trembling voice. “Why doesn’t he come in?” Count, count,” she added, “you know that I’m waiting for you!” —
Hearing this call, D'Artagnan ... rushed into the bedroom. There is no more painful rage and pain than the rage and pain that torment the soul of a lover who, pretending to be someone else, accepts assurances of love addressed to his happy rival.” (A. Dumas “The Three Musketeers”, part two, chapter five “All cats are grey”)