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| date | 2001-02-03:21:14 |
| Physics |
Snow has a lot of interesting physics. Today we learned about instability. Some physical systems are stable: small deviations from equilibrium result in forces that restore the equilibrium. But most are to one degree or another unstable, so a large enough change will result in the system eventually reaching a new and different equilibrium. River meanders are a result of a simple form of instability. Start with an almost perfectly straight river. Where the bank does curve a little, the current on the outside of the curve flows a little faster than the current on the inside. For rivers with sandy banks, the rate of errosion increases with the speed of the current. So on the inside of the curve the river tends to deposit silt, and on the outside it tends to wear the bank away. Thus, what started out as a small curve gets bigger. In time, it can result in a meander that travels through a full 360 degrees, forming a ring lake. It turns out that under the right conditions, tobboggan runs are subject to the same kind of instability. We've had a lot of snow in the past week, and then had a few warm days that melted a friable crust onto it. Last week's tobboggan run was still in evidence, however, although covered by new snow. The first run Tim and I made went just about perfectly, as we whooshed down the groove of last week's run. But there were a few places were the tobboggan was pushed to one side or the other by the old groove. When that happened, it tended to dig a bit into the opposite wall a little further along, and then get corrected back into the middle. As we went down more often, the groove started to widen out into a series of meanders, as the tobboggan was pushed this way and that, carving more deeply into the walls each time. Near the last run, we were just about flung out, which was kind of fun. The run after that, though, the sides had been cut so wide that the effect almost vanished--we were able to go down the center of the meanders and hardly touch the walls at all. |
| Writing |
The most important thing about writing is the artist's voice as an individual. The most difficult challenge for an artist is to speak with that individual voice, to say what matters to the artist as a person, as a human being. Not as a mouthpeice for socially approved rhetoric, nor in protest against socially approved rhetoric, but as a single human being. This is the hard part, the lonely part, the part that can't be shared. It's the part that non-artists don't understand, the cost of saying those words, of writing those lines. The only Hemmingway I've read is The Garden of Eden, and the thing I love about it is that it is about the cost to the artist of the creation of art, and it describes it in a way that I can understand and see in myself. I'm not sure why I was thinking about this today, but I was. It's important. |
| Creatures |
I was reminded today of why I loves dogs. I was walking home from town, just for fun--it was a beautiful crisp day, sunny, calm and about -5 C. The walk is about three miles and the highway passes through the army base, CFB Kingston. There was someone on the base out walking a dog. The dog was a young shepard, probably about ten months old, bouncy happily through the crusty snow. The owner was walking along the base road, a looking morose and bundled up against the cold, which was weird because it was warm enough that I'd taken my jacket off. The dog wanted to cheer its owner up, and to have some fun, to play. The obvious way to do this is to find a stick to throw. The only stick in evidence was a dead branch fallen off a tree, that was six or eight feet long. That didn't stop the dog for a moment--it picked the thing up neatly in the middle, and bounded through the snow, happy as a clam, after its person, who continued to walk morosely on. The dog didn't get the fun of having the stick (or a least, some more manageble part of the stick, thrown. But it did have the fun of bouncing through the snow, full of energy and joy, regardless of its stupid person. Later in the day the kids and I went out to play in the snow. We took our dog with us, as always, and he happily played the role of a siege elelphant as the kids assualted my snow-fort, leaping over and battering down walls under Timothy's commands, who realized that if he just got on the opposite side of the fort from the dog and call "Here Tux!" the dog would do the rest. A good time was had by all. |
| Reading |
I've finished Tom Jones, which is one reason I've not written much this week, and have to say that I'm glad I did. I'll write more about it later, probably, but here are a few notes about its goodness. Feilding was a deeply human man, with a genuine feeling of generosity toward his fellow creatures. He married one of his maids some years after his first wife died, and I have to wonder how much of the comment on the class system is meant ironically. The whole notion that some people are not just better at some things than others but are simply better than others in an unqualified, absolute way, due to their birth or whatever, is so bizzare that it's easy to forget that it was once widely believed and is probably still widely believed. Feilding certainly portrays characters who believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with pressing a member of the lower classes into naval service, although the same character would be horrified were anything similar to be done to a "gentleman." The way of the voices of the characters speak in the novel is wonderful, almost making up for how turgid most of the prose is. Feilding handles a complex plot deftly and well, and interestingly includes almost no concrete description in this very, very long book. The people are the focus of attention, as we know them by what they say and do, not, for the most part, by how they look. And descriptions of their surroundings are likewise almost completely absent. The book is a novel about social reality. Physical reality is a mere backdrop. |