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enthusiastick) wrote2007-07-11 12:21 am
enthusiastick) wrote2007-07-11 12:21 am
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they say you don't have a problem until you start sleeping alone
Clouds are kind of miraculous.
Not the most profound thought, I know, but there you have it. As I was sitting on the plane flying to Chicago on my recent trip I found myself staring out the window at the whispy, illusory shapes formed by the water vapor. They seemed so solid and tangible, and so close, like I could reach out and touch them.
As early as junior high I had science teachers who waxed eloquent about how lucky we are that the dihydrogen oxide is curved. Just a quirk of quantum physics, really -- it could easily be straight, like carbon dioxide. And then everything would be different. If it weren't bent, it wouldn't be polar. It wouldn't be liquid at room temperature, for one thing. And it wouldn't be less dense when frozen, so ice wouldn't float. And not nearly so many things would dissolve in it.
The universe as we know it would look very, very different. And we ourselves wouldn't be in that universe, at least not in anything like the form we're in now.
And one of those miracles of bent, polar water molecules is the formation of clouds. The idea that vaporized water should happen to accumulate with dust in the air into beautiful, visible gray and white shapes? Amazing.
I've had a lot of time to contemplate this notion recently. At my recently-concluded temp gig I've been working in the John Hancock tower, about fifty stories up. In the past few weeks I've watched some truly magnificent storms roll in along the river Charles, dumping rain and sometimes lightning onto the earth below. The building creaks when the wind blows fast enough, twisting in the wind.
A month or two ago I had a late night conversation in my kitchen with my friend Eric P about divinity. He and I have very, very different views of the world, especially religiously. He's something like a Buddhist, and a number of the things I take as implicit in my faith and spirituality seem to bother him deeply. Nevertheless I enjoy the dialogue a lot -- Eric's a great guy with whom to have a debate.
He'd probably laugh at me, though, if he knew how much wonder I took in staring at the clouds. I grasp the basic science behind them and have a sense of the deeper mathematics at work in their existence and their shape.
I'm twenty-five years old, and I still think clouds are magical.
Not the most profound thought, I know, but there you have it. As I was sitting on the plane flying to Chicago on my recent trip I found myself staring out the window at the whispy, illusory shapes formed by the water vapor. They seemed so solid and tangible, and so close, like I could reach out and touch them.
As early as junior high I had science teachers who waxed eloquent about how lucky we are that the dihydrogen oxide is curved. Just a quirk of quantum physics, really -- it could easily be straight, like carbon dioxide. And then everything would be different. If it weren't bent, it wouldn't be polar. It wouldn't be liquid at room temperature, for one thing. And it wouldn't be less dense when frozen, so ice wouldn't float. And not nearly so many things would dissolve in it.
The universe as we know it would look very, very different. And we ourselves wouldn't be in that universe, at least not in anything like the form we're in now.
And one of those miracles of bent, polar water molecules is the formation of clouds. The idea that vaporized water should happen to accumulate with dust in the air into beautiful, visible gray and white shapes? Amazing.
I've had a lot of time to contemplate this notion recently. At my recently-concluded temp gig I've been working in the John Hancock tower, about fifty stories up. In the past few weeks I've watched some truly magnificent storms roll in along the river Charles, dumping rain and sometimes lightning onto the earth below. The building creaks when the wind blows fast enough, twisting in the wind.
A month or two ago I had a late night conversation in my kitchen with my friend Eric P about divinity. He and I have very, very different views of the world, especially religiously. He's something like a Buddhist, and a number of the things I take as implicit in my faith and spirituality seem to bother him deeply. Nevertheless I enjoy the dialogue a lot -- Eric's a great guy with whom to have a debate.
He'd probably laugh at me, though, if he knew how much wonder I took in staring at the clouds. I grasp the basic science behind them and have a sense of the deeper mathematics at work in their existence and their shape.
I'm twenty-five years old, and I still think clouds are magical.
no subject
I know whenever I am 'forced' to talk about a belief in a higher power I say that I don't think it is our place to even begin to pretend to understand what a being so great as to create the world as we know it could be thinking, no less interpret and execute what we believe to be it's will.
/blather
no subject
However, it is good to be hearing from you again, dude. Even distantly.
no subject