Do you remember that pretty picture I came up with a few months ago? Well, the experiment I ran resulted in nothing like it. At all. Oh well.
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| What in God's name do these colors mean? I have absolutely no idea. SCIENCE! |
I went to Paris to see some friends that have visited from Los Angeles. Despite what you hear about L.A. pieces of it are quite nice! Only pieces of it though. The rest of is is god awful. Why would anyone willfully decide to live there? Anyway, we decided to go to the traditional tourist places. It's hard to go wrong with visiting arguably the greatest museum in the entire world.
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| Asian girl doing I don't know what. |
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| If I were a holy man, I would have a pet lion also. |
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| What does it take to become a saint? Have a machete lodged in your head? I would totally do that, |
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| A child choking a goose. Because it's art, that's why. |
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| Guy is serious business. |
Having these friends of mine visit was really fun! But it also felt a little strange. It felt like they didn't belong here. Except I am just like them, so I don't belong here either. We are strangers. They made me see how strange it is that I am here. Some American guy who speaks very little French: what am I doing here? Learning about turbulence? Yeah, I guess so. But why France? Why these strange people who say "alors" and "putain" all the time? Why these people who carry baguettes everywhere they go? Why this strange land that blames the Romanians for giving them horse meat instead of beef? It's because some of the greatest minds are French. Laplace, Lagrange, d'Almbert, Fourier, Carnot, Boussinesq, Galois (my hero), Navier; they're all French. That's why I am here. To learn from the best.
It's been decided that I will stay in France until at least September. I will be studying the aeroacoustic instabilities on a plasma torch that is used for the coating of materials. Maybe turbine blades need some ceramic coating for thermal protection? Maybe an airfoil needs an anti-friction coating to reduce drag? I dunno!
I really like living in France. One of my favorite things is waking up on a Saturday morning, and tuning into KEXP. You see, France is +9 hours ahead of Seattle. So when I wake up, Seattle is heading home from a hard night out. If I were in Seattle, I wouldn't have a chance to listen to the radio, because I would be just one of the many people trying to get home. But I am not in Seattle! I am lucky enough to catch KEXP in the twilight hours. The hours where magic happens. The hours where no one else is paying attention. Only you and the moonlight and the 41 bus heading to home. It's like the entire city belongs to you and only you. The feeling you get is strange. But other people have felt it too. I'm not really sure what to call it, but some people refer to it as "the night bus" or "dream pop" and they have dedicated a type of music to the feeling you get during this time. If you've ever taken the bus from downtown at ~3am on a cold, rainy, and quiet night, then you're already familiar with the feeling this kind of music gives you. Here is a small example:
Also, I got to talking to someone about intelligent design the other day. One of their arguments was that the universe had to have a designer. There is no way that the world could be so perfect and orderly without a creator. How could order come from chaos? This seems like a nice thought, and I wish it were true.
Well, let me tell you. The world is not orderly. At all. The world is constantly trying to kill us. (See today's huge fucking meteor strike.) The world is almost always in chaos and instability. Even something as simple as cooking spaghetti in your kitchen is a case for a chaotic and unstable system. Will it rain tomorrow? I have no idea! The weather might be modeled as a chaotic system and can only be described by probability. If a butterfly flaps its wings in the Atlantic ocean, will it cause a hurricane in California? It's possible, I don't know. There is chaos. Everywhere! All the time! Forever! So whenever someone tells you that the world is so perfect and orderly and how could that come from chaos, you call them out on their B.S. Even with something as simple as cooking spaghetti, the world is chaotic.
In my humble opinion, this is what makes the world beautiful. The world would be terribly boring if you already knew what was going to happen. There would be no need for philosophers or scientists or ethicists or engineers. Everything would already be known. A very horrible existence, no? If you already know all the answers, it means you're asking boring questions. (courtesy of a softer world)
