Lift

i usually try not to really mention what i'm thinking here, as it is my general supposition that no one really cares, but today will be an exception. i'm not even going to pretend that any more than 3 people in america might find me insiteful, but i figured i'd just put it out here.

today, i thought about lift. i was on a flight to OKC and began thinking about the whole concept of lift. if you ever want to freak yourself out while on a plane you should really focus on the physical forces at work in lift - i mean just stare a the wing and think "air supports this. no really, it's just air".

for anyone who may be unawares, the central concept in flight isn't the speed of the plane (though it's obviously important), but lift. part of the concept is that the top edge of a wing is longer than the bottom edge and so the air travelling above the wing is faster, and therefore pressure is lower above the wing "lifting" the wing up. the other piece of lift is the whole "equal and opposite reaction" bit with the wing "turning" the air downward and pushing the wing upward. anyway, when you're on a plane and you look out at that flimsy wing supporting that turgid fuselage 5 miles off the ground it's sort of weird to think that it's airflow that is actually keeping everything in flight.

what i discovered, is that if you sit there and really focus on lift, it can be almost impossible to convince yourself that it should work. i mean, you're actually in flight, so you KNOW on some level that it works, but you can totally convince yourself that it'll stop working at any moment. isn't it bizarre that it can seem more natural to have a completely irrational fear about something you have obvious empircal evidence of than to trust a concept because it seems difficult to belive in? are people geared to mistrust things or does it come from experience? you know lift works, but it doesn't seem like it should. you can fly while convincing yourself that, not just your flight, but the entire concept of flight shouldn't work.

i think that's why faith is so important in life and in relationships.

if you think too hard about almost any concept, you can convince yourself it shouldn't work. soooo, we are offered two options. you can either spend your life watching the wing and making sure it keeps remembering to bend the wind, or you can just sit back and enjoy the flight. i think i'll just keep enjoying the flight.

My First Bass

nothing really to tell here. drew and i went fishing. i caught my first bass (more of a fly fisherman, i am)

you may remember my phat hat as being the same one i won for catching a barracuda on drew's bachelor party. it still looks every bit as good as it did the day i got it, which is not saying much

drew caught a fish as well. his was a monster, literally dwarfing my fish. ok, that's still not saying much.

it was a slow day, but we had a good time and so did the fish. : )

MLK Day

it's MLK day. i have nothing monumental to say, but i do remember the first time i ever saw video of him speaking. i was about 6 and my father was fixing a movie projecter for my mom's high school. the reel that was in there was of the "i have a dream" speech. i remember thinking i had never heard or seen anything like that before in my life. i don't remember even having any understanding whatsoever of what he was talking about. i just remember feeling the emotion with which he spoke. i wasn't necessarily a paragon of morality at the time (though in my defense, how many six year olds are), so i distinctly remember that i wanted to not return the reel.

anyway, if anyone has never listened to a couple of his most famous speeches, it's worth a listen. both are amazing. "I Have a Dream" is of course his most famous. certainly most chilling, however, is "I've Been to the Mountaintop" particularly when you realize that he delivered this speech on the night before he was killed. when i had my wreck, the last word i said before impact was a rather unseemly curse word. i remember thinking afterwards, i should probably see to it that if anything serious ever happens to me again, i have something better to say. i can't listen to that speech without feeling that he was somehow prescient of his impending demise. what an amazing benediction of his own life. seriously, i dare you to listen to that, with the full knowledge that 24 hours later he would be dead and not get the chills. at a minimum the last 8 minutes or so are worth hearing, starting with his story of "the good samaritan".