"J" is for Jackie

With the eagerly-awaited biopic “42” hitting theaters tonight, I can’t think of a better word for “J."

There is far too much to say about Jack Roosevelt Robinson for me to do him any justice in a blog post, and I feel like the less I say the better.  (Can my words either add to or subtract from greatness?)  If all you know about him is that he broke the major league baseball color barrier, or played for the Dodgers, you really ought to discover more about the man for yourself. Consider it your homework assignment.

There are any number of extraordinary things about him that, taken individually, are praiseworthy, but there's one that is front and center for me, that I've never seen anyone else mention.

When it comes to Jackie Robinson, what it all boils down to for me, is that he was such a man.   In every episode of his life, in every possible sense of the word, he was a true man, a mensch.  I'll leave it to the reader to ponder that.

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"I" is for Irritable

We continue this excursion away from the theme of "Stuff: Engineering, Materials and Things" with "irritable," a seemingly harmless little word which brought my very world crumbling down around me some thirty-two years ago.

In sixth grade, I was a wreck, at least in my own eyes. I was uncool, unathletic, awkward and self-conscious.  Basically, like me now, but shorter.  I was always the last one picked in any sporting contest.  I had a bit of a pot belly.  I once laughed while drinking milk and it came out my nose.  In front of a pretty girl.

I was not popular.

I could draw pretty well and I was a fiendishly good reader, and no, neither of those did a thing for my popularity, any more than did the fact that I played the clarinet in band.  Yeah, I was That Kid.

Man, I had forgotten just how bad it really was until just now.  Excuse me for a moment while I go collect myself.  Talk amongst yourselves.

Right.  Anyway, I was also good at spelling.  Again, not something that upped my cool factor in any way, but winning the 1981 Charles H. Castle Elementary School sixth grade spelling contest did mean one thing - I was finally the best at something.  And that, folks, most assuredly is better than not being the best at something.

I remained outwardly humble, of course; noblesse oblige, remembering the little people, not wanting to take undue advantage of my newfound notoriety.  I do admit though, I was proud.

Which, I have on good authority, is the very thing that goeth before the fall, and for me the fall came swiftly and terribly.  A few weeks later at the District contest I missed my very first word.  I spelled "irritable" with one "r."

Yeah, I know.

My humiliation knew no bounds.  A third grader should have nailed that one.  I couldn't even look at my principal, Mr. Chapman, who had accompanied me.  I had failed myself and I had failed Mr. Walker, the best teacher a kid could have.  I had failed Charles H. Castle Elementary School.  My ancestors looked down from heaven and shook their heads sadly. Like Icarus, I had soared too close to the sun, and my fall was no less dramatic.

Never again did I scale the dizzying heights of spelling greatness.  Never again did Genius fly so low to brush me with her gossamer wing.  The next year, at O.J. Actis Junior High school, I didn't even get into the contest.  Mrs. Kendrick made up a rule, on the fly, that you had to have gotten 100% on all your spelling tests, and she did it just to keep me out, which she was looking for any excuse to do.  It may have had something to do with me constantly talking in class and being lazy in my classwork, I don't know, whatever.  Everett went instead.  I think he won, and went on to win everything between that and the World Spelling Bee or something, I don't know, whatever.

But shed no tears for me, kind reader.  They may have have cruelly snuffed out a promising spelling career; they may have robbed me of the future greatness that was rightfully mine, but they could not take away the glory of those few shimmering weeks when, for a brief, glorious moment, I was the best.

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"H" is for Heat

Here's what I think, humbly.  Disclaimer: I am not a physicist nor a theologian.

Hot (adjective) and cold (adjective) are opposites. They describe relative amounts of heat energy.

Heat (noun) and cold (noun) aren't opposites.  Heat is a form of energy. Although we use it as a noun ("Come in from the cold"), cold isn't really a thing; it doesn't exist except as the absence of heat. You can generate heat, but you can't generate cold. You can build a heat ray, but you can't build a cold ray. Your freezer doesn't generate cold; its mechanism continually removes heat from its interior.

Light is electromagnetic radiation. Darkness isn't the opposite of light, it's the absence of it.  There are light rays.  There are not dark rays.  You can't turn on the dark with a switch.  Light dispels darkness; darkness cannot dispel light.

There is good and there is evil. God is good, therefore, whatever is good has its source in Him and is an imperfect reflection of His person and character.

Evil is the opposite of good, and evil is a thing, it has "substance," it can be palpable.  But God did not create evil. God created man in His image; that is, in a finite way, he imparted his attibutes to man. One of these attributes is moral agency. God made man a free moral agent. Man, in exercising his free moral agency, rebelled against God. Evil comes not from God but from man. All evil has its source in the corruption caused by man's rebellion. Evil is man falling short, sometimes tragically so, of the good created by God.

By my reckoning, if you are asking how a good God could allow evil, you're asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is why God created man with free moral agency.

"G" is for the Good Old Days

Circa 1982, I was a preteen boy more interested in airplanes than just about anything else (with certain of the girls at O.J. Actis Junior High a close second). I knew with absolute certainty I was going to grow up to be a pilot, no question. I read about aviation, built model airplanes (I know, not exactly guaranteed to get said girls' reciprocal interest) and loved going to airshows. It was at one such show on a spring weekend that I crawled around and under the immaculately restored B-17 Flying Fortress Sentimental Journey and happily forked over three of my dad's dollars to walk through it. Afterward, standing in the shade of her broad wing, surrounded by the sounds of radial engines and Glenn Miller pumped out of the tinny PA system, I remarked to a trim, gray-haired gentleman in a leather flight jacket who had flown in B-17s during the war, “Sometimes I think I was born forty years too late.”

I’ll never forget the man's reply.  “Ah, don’t ever say that.  Everyone is born when they're supposed to be.”

Even at the know-it-all age of twelve, I immediately recognized the wisdom of his words. I knew he was telling me that every age has its share of good times and bad, challenges and opportunities, and that it's up to everyone to seek out the adventures of the era in which they find themselves.

I'm still insufferably nostalgic, though. I've always loved old technology, old films, old music, old style, and I still think there's a lot those things can teach us. There are so many things about people's lives in earlier times that I find fascinating and think ought to be preserved and not forgotten.  I think old people are a treasure.

But as the noted American sociologist Billy Joel observed, the good old days weren’t always good.  It’s one thing to want to hold on to the good stuff from the old days; it’s another to forget there was bad stuff, too.

So I’m glad to have missed out on a time when lots of Americans still thought that Hitler fellow over there had some pretty good ideas.

I’d hate to have seen American citizens be robbed of their property and herded into barbed wire enclosures in various badlands because they had a surname from the wrong country.

It would have been scary to see so many children my age in leg braces and iron lungs.

  

I don’t want to return to an era when “separate but equal” was perpetuated in law instead of recognized as a baneful fiction, when sitting down at a lunch counter could be a radical act.

I'll pass on thinking it was ever okay for a man to manhandle or otherwise disrespect a woman.

I’m glad I wasn’t around to see America's veterans come back home to be spit on and slandered.

So I see nostalgia for what it is and keep it in its proper place on the shelf. I keep loving old cars and motorcycles, and listening to Sinatra and shaving with a mug and brush and wishing I wasn’t so paranoid about letting my children play outside.  And I gratefully live in the present, ever looking for God’s purpose in having put me in this place and this time, right here, right now.

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The World Must Never Forget

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  We will never forget the enormous crime perpetrated by evil men against the Jewish people and we reaffirm our vow that it will never be allowed to happen again. 


Update:  This is a post of mine from 2009 on Holocaust denial.

"F" is for Form Following Function

There was a saying among early airplane designers: If it looks right, it'll fly right. The flowing, organic shapes of a well-flying airplane are naturally pleasing to the human eye. In the slide rule era, the saying pretty much held true. But the high-speed computers and more powerful jet engines of the 1970s allowed engineers to use previously unsuitable shapes to unlock new aircraft capabilities, such as stealth.

 The hard lines and facets that were optimal for scattering radar signals in the first generation of stealth aircraft like the F-117 would have been anathema to designers looking for low drag and stability. 

But the latest engines could overcome drag with their enormous power, and computers performing thousands of calculations per second could not only translate pilot input into control surface movements, but instantly correct for instability. The Grumman X-29 with its forward-swept wings, was designed for extreme maneuverability and was reportedly so inherently unstable that if its triple-redundant computer system suffered a complete failure in flight (a highly unlikely scenario), the aircraft would instantly disintegrate in midair.  Form still followed function, but new technology enabled new forms which allowed for new functions.

Of course, those were military attack and fighter aircraft with unique mission requirements. For just about all other airplanes, low drag and good flying characteristics are still paramount, so airplanes will continue to look right and fly right.

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When American architect Louis Sullivan famously proclaimed that “form ever follows function,” he meant that designers should eschew ornamentation, design for function and let the form (shape) ensue.

I'd bet that Sullivan approved of the motorcycles of his day. Sand-cast engine cases, rows of closely-spaced cooling fins,  pushrod and bevel drive tubes standing proud, stainless steel spokes and fasteners and fenders; all have a function, all are essential, none are there solely for decoration.  Yet, individually and in the capability and competence of the whole they comprise, they have a certain stark beauty.  They are a riot of shapes and textures, a moveable feast for the eyes. 

The plastic bodywork that encases modern sporting motorcycles isn't strictly ornamental.  It does improve aerodynamics and directs air to the radiator.  Riders like it, but I suspect manufacturers like it because it covers up unsightly industrial-looking mechanicals that are designed with manufacturing cost reduction rather than beauty in mind.  Me?  I agree with Jay Leno; I don't trust any motorcycle I can't see through.  Fortunately, we're in the midst of a "see through" motorcycle renaissance.

Sure, parts on vintage motorcycles are polished and chromed, painted and striped, but polishing aids cleaning and plating and paint protect from rust, and there's nothing wrong with making functional parts look good without compromising function.  But nowadays, there's an entire industry devoted to add-on ornamental chrome covers and assorted gingerbread for a certain popular genre of motorcycles.  One can only imagine what Mr. Sullivan would think

Note:  Monday we'll be taking a break from long-winded techno-geek posts.  You're welcome.

 http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

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"E" is for Efficiency

Want to know a secret? Ever hear of the famous 200 mile-per-gallon carburetor, the one invented decades ago but suppressed by a cabal of greedy oil company executives? Yeah, it never happened. The mother of all urban legends. How do I know? Simple. It's physically impossible.  Trust me on this.

It’s really not too complicated. There is a certain amount of energy contained in a gallon of gasoline, and it takes a certain amount of energy, and thus gasoline, to safely push an automobile, carrying people and their stuff, over the ground and through the air a given distance at a given speed, and to do so in a structure that won't crumple like an origami boulder upon contact with other vehicles or fixed objects (Smart cars seem a little less so when folded under a semi-trailer).

"I know, but I'm getting wicked fuel economy."

Understand that only part of the energy in a gallon of gasoline is actually utilized in moving the car. Much of the energy is lost - through heat loss, mechanical friction, wind resistance, and tire friction and flex. Even noise and vibration is lost energy. And much of what isn't lost must charge the battery, provide spark to the engine, and power the air conditioning and all those accessories (like Junior and Sissy's DVD players and those front seat bun warmers you paid extra for. Not that there's anything wrong with that).  Even the energy that actually drives the car is eventually dissipated as heat through the brakes. Seriously, the carburetor (or fuel injection today) is not the issue.

Engineers maximize efficiency (minimize energy losses) as much as possible, but no mechanical system is 100% efficient, meaning there are always energy losses. Which is exactly why true perpetual motion machines are an impossibility, the crest of each rise on a roller coaster is lower than the previous one and if you spin the most perfectly balanced and adjusted bicycle wheel it will eventually come to a stop. And because there are always energy losses, there is an upper limit to fuel efficiency and that limit is a lot closer to the highway fuel mileage of a Honda Civic than to a mythical 200 mpg.

All of that awful waste may sound positively medieval, but the truth is, the internal combustion engine is still an engineering marvel that has been refined to fuel efficiency and emissions levels only dreamed of just a few years ago.  We're in the midst of a second Golden Age of high performance, only this time clean and economical performance. (More on that another time.) Electric cars and other alternatives are a real improvement in efficiency, but don't kid yourself; there is still noise and emissions and heat involved, it's just been moved upstream to the coal-fired power plant, conveniently out of sight and out of mind. Internal combustion and alternate energy will exist side-by-side for years to come, like mechanical and electronic wristwatches.  At least until someone figures out how to make a solar-powered airliner.

 http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

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