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Note to self...
There is a reason why the Scandinavians drink akvavit in small quantities during meals to aid digestion. Small quantities. Because the stuff tastes like hell. It also goes straight to your head.
Anyway. Clearly I have returned from my unexpected brief vacation. Apologies to my Russian students for missing the first class of the new term; I hope you found the library assignment at least moderately entertaining. I mean, it was all about the atomic bomb. Everyone likes reading about the atomic bomb, no?
As for why as I was away... a friend of mine died a year ago today. I haven't had much of a chance over the last year to really do much with that, if that makes any sense. There were issues with my family and tsunamis and the like. But I think I finally managed to say goodbye properly yesterday, and that means a lot.
Aldous Huxley once said something about walking in the mountains being the equivalent of churchgoing. I'm not a religious person, but I have to say I kind of agree.
Anyway. Clearly I have returned from my unexpected brief vacation. Apologies to my Russian students for missing the first class of the new term; I hope you found the library assignment at least moderately entertaining. I mean, it was all about the atomic bomb. Everyone likes reading about the atomic bomb, no?
As for why as I was away... a friend of mine died a year ago today. I haven't had much of a chance over the last year to really do much with that, if that makes any sense. There were issues with my family and tsunamis and the like. But I think I finally managed to say goodbye properly yesterday, and that means a lot.
Aldous Huxley once said something about walking in the mountains being the equivalent of churchgoing. I'm not a religious person, but I have to say I kind of agree.
no subject
2007-01-10 08:47 pm (UTC)
I'm sorry for your loss. The assignment was indeed interesting. Although, I'm not much on the things that go 'Boom!' and then leave mess about that causes cancer but that's a personal thing.
What's akvavit?
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x_cable
2007-01-10 08:57 pm (UTC)
Alcohol that's distilled from potatoes or grain. Flavored with various herbs, depending on the type... my friend liked it. We were going to drink to his memory on top of the mountain but wound up saving the bottle for the bottom. Probably not a bad thing, in retrospect.
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x_wallflower_
2007-01-10 09:19 pm (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure whether the whole 'drunk' experience is worth the pain afterwards. I'm still in two minds about the whole thing and probably will be till my 21st birthday when I actually get to put theory into practice.
Although, Mom says I should try it at least once so I then 'know' rather then just 'think'. She said that about broccoli as well though, and that was not an experience I wish to repeat any time soon.
They are truly the evil of the vegetable world.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 09:24 pm (UTC)
I have the greatest of respect for your mother's advice. But if you do try it out, once you're 21, I'd recommend selecting your poison of choice carefully.
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x_pressive
2007-01-10 09:30 pm (UTC)
Choose your drinks carefully, drink plenty of water, and do it with friends. (Drinking alone = not cool.)
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x_wallflower_
2007-01-10 09:49 pm (UTC)
Well, I could always get you and Amanda to take me somewhere in New York. I'd trust you two to get me home okay.
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x_pressive
2007-01-10 09:51 pm (UTC)
I think I should be terrified that you trust us of all people on a night of drinking. Not that I'm not flattered, of course. After all, Amanda and I are professionals ;)
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x_wytchbrat
2007-01-10 09:54 pm (UTC)
You're terrified? I'm in a state of shock over here. When did I get to be disrepiutably respectable? *grins*
But I do seem to be the one called on to be the designated drinker for the less experienced. Although, I'm never using Doug's take-out method to pick drinks again. Sambucca is evil, evil stuff, especially with sake on top of it.
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x_wallflower_
2007-01-10 09:58 pm (UTC)
Wait...isn't sambucca supposed to be the licorice flavoured stuff. And Saki is rice wine...how does that work?
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x_wytchbrat
2007-01-10 10:02 pm (UTC)
It doesn't, believe me.
Doug has this little brass globe of the world that we use to order take out. Spin the globe, whereever it stops, that's the food you order. I ended up doing something similar for a pub crawl, which is why the scary drink combinations. Word of advice? Never mix drinks, especially when you're just starting out.
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x_cypher
2007-01-11 02:09 am (UTC)
We are never ever ever using the globe again.
Ever.
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x_wytchbrat
2007-01-11 02:13 am (UTC)
Amen to that.
Tho' it wasn't all bad.
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x_cypher
2007-01-11 02:21 am (UTC)
Which part, the drinking, the karaoke, or the rest of it? ;-)
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x_wytchbrat
2007-01-11 02:27 am (UTC)
If you have to ask, you definitely had too much to drink. *grins* The karaoke, of course. Who else would get to hear me butcher the Beatles like that?
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x_pete
2007-01-11 01:40 pm (UTC)
Akvavit is, like Nate says, made by Scandinavians, and therefore not to trusted. It will make you see things, then go blind. Not necessarily in that order. The nights are long and cold there, and they've invented a lot of ways to pass them more quickly. I'm told that some of them don't involve passing out in a pool of your own vomit, but I've never met anyone who could verify that.
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x_sanfuaiyaa
2007-01-10 08:57 pm (UTC)
That's because the divine resides in the mountains, not in the church.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 09:00 pm (UTC)
You certainly won't hear me disagree that something out of the ordinary resides in the mountains. I've stood on... let's see, eight of the world's highest, and each time the experience has been hard to put into words. And I've certainly tried.
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x_sanfuaiyaa
2007-01-10 09:04 pm (UTC)
Whether it's Divine with a big D or just something that inspires awe, it's there.
Animism. It's the way to go.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 09:17 pm (UTC)
I suppose one of the things that attracted me to the mountains - I was twenty at the time - was the permanence. Everest, for example, is just there. You can't argue with that, can't change it, can't forget that it exists.
... and why that's an attractive thing to me probably don't make much sense on the surface of it.
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x_wallflower_
2007-01-10 09:21 pm (UTC)
Mountains aren't really permanent though. Nothing in the universe is. It'll all either be ground down or destroyed one day.
It's just our limited lifespans that make things seem permanent.
(And boy, I'm in an introspective mind today.)
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x_cable
2007-01-10 09:26 pm (UTC)
Still, relative to the human lifespan, a mountain is about as close to eternal as you get.
And really, I was more taken by the fact that you couldn't wipe a mountain out of existence with the stroke of a pen. That had a great deal of attraction in my younger days.
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x_sanfuaiyaa
2007-01-10 09:26 pm (UTC)
Existence is cyclical, not linear.
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x_forge
2007-01-10 09:41 pm (UTC)
Well, there's an interesting mode of thought. For centuries, physicists have held that the amount of matter in the universe is finite, in accordance with the maxim that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. But yet we've seen that rule seriously bent with folks like Marie-Ange and Jamie who create mass out of seemingly nothing. We've seen that some people here can add protons and neutrons to an atom to turn it into something else entirely, without a concrete explanation of where those subatomic particles come from.
If the amount of matter in the universe is NOT a fixed constant, it totally throws doubts on the concept of a Big Bang/Big Crunch, the (incorrect) assumption that space is curved, and our understandings of things like cosmic gravity and string theory.
Which goes back to Laurie's assertion that everything will eventually break down, being a simplification of the "heat death" theory, which uses the laws of entropy to postulate that eventually all kinetic momentum in the universe will reach a state of static equilibrium. Which of course requires a constant and finite amount of matter, which may not be the case.
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x_sanfuaiyaa
2007-01-10 09:45 pm (UTC)
Aren't there hypotheses that state that another universe may have existed before this one but eventually collapsed in the Big Crunch, and then expanded again into our universe with the Big Bang? And that this just happens again and again, with each universe existing according to different physical laws.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 09:46 pm (UTC)
I triggered a discussion about the nature of the universe? Go me. Do I get 'good teacher points' for that?
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x_wallflower_
2007-01-10 09:48 pm (UTC)
*snickers* Only if you grade us on our responses.
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x_sanfuaiyaa
2007-01-10 09:49 pm (UTC)
Assuming that our questioning doesn't cause the universe to collapse on itself, or wake up the giant turtle that's actually dreaming up existence.
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x_forge
2007-01-10 09:48 pm (UTC)
Precisely, but the Big Crunch theories all center around heat death or a Single Gravity Point concept, both of which would be invalidated by nonconstant matter.
It's basic physics. F=ma is proven, and we have a finite amount of gravity in the universe because M is supposed to be constant. But if M is not constant, then the Big Crunch theories are in doubt because there's no constant gravity to reach equilibrium.
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x_sanfuaiyaa
2007-01-10 10:02 pm (UTC)
I thought that the matter they pull in is extradimensional and not permanent on this plane of existence, so does it really violate thermodynamics?
And you're also assuming that your paradigm is valid. If I recall Dr. McCoy's physics classes correctly, Newton's theories about gravity were accepted for centuries until research went to the atomic level and his theories could no longer account for observations. Then along comes Einstein. So maybe the laws of motion only work on a certain scale, too, but are invalid as your point of view changes.
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x_forge
2007-01-10 10:12 pm (UTC)
I know. Trust me, this makes my work on Unified Field Theory so much more complicated. I swear, I *almost* had it until I came here and found people having no respect for classical physics.
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x_sanfuaiyaa
2007-01-10 10:14 pm (UTC)
You say that like triggering a nuclear reaction with just a thought is a bad thing.
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x_forge
2007-01-10 10:20 pm (UTC)
Oh, your power's definitely flashy - but folks like Tommy and Paige are manipulating subatomic particles directly and that makes even LESS sense. I mean, I haven't figured out HOW Tommy isn't just colliding protons randomly and blowing us all to kingdom come.
And don't even get me STARTED on trying to figure Mondo out...
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x_wytchbrat
2007-01-11 02:14 am (UTC)
Should I be offended you worked mine out pretty quickly? *grins*
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x_juggernaut
2007-01-10 09:36 pm (UTC)
Hey hey hey. Your limited lifespans, you mean. Some of us ain't sure we've GOT a limited lifespan.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 10:04 pm (UTC)
I say we declare you an honorary mountain. I mean, if the shoe fits...
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x_sanfuaiyaa
2007-01-10 09:24 pm (UTC)
I think it's the blatance. The idea that there's this big White bearded man sitting up on a cloud and looking down at us is foolish. That's a matter of believing just what other people who lived hundreds of years before you said.
But then there are things that are there, whose existence you cannot deny. Whether there's some force or intelligence behind that is a personal matter and irrelevant to appreciating the majesty of what you see.
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x_wallflower_
2007-01-10 09:47 pm (UTC)
See, I find the big bearded guy in the sky theory amusing. If only because people seem to think a God, or Goddess or whathaveyou would be in any way interested in what we get up to.
Although, I suppose we could be an ant farm. And people have been known to watch those for hours.
I've yet to decide my theological leanings. It all seems horribly confusing.
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x_ccelerate
2007-01-10 09:26 pm (UTC)
Just as long as you don't subscribe to Huxley's other attempts at enlightenment. The last thing we need around here is a telepath flying on hallucinogens.
Closure is often steadying. Finding it is often anything but. I'm glad you were able to get there, with regard to your friend.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 09:45 pm (UTC)
No hallucinogens. My wife would kill me.
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x_skin
2007-01-10 09:54 pm (UTC)
Not if she was on Muir and I got there first.
Does chocolate still count as a hallucinogen for you?
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x_cable
2007-01-10 10:09 pm (UTC)
Moira actually made me experiment, believe it or not. It gives me a headache still, but the precog must be good and gone, because it's sure not making me see the future anymore.
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x_ccelerate
2007-01-10 09:58 pm (UTC)
Wise woman. My father has some very disturbing stories about what happens to psychics who play around with mind-expanding pharmaceuticals. And when he's disturbed, that's saying something.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 10:10 pm (UTC)
Yes, I've had enough psychotic breaks for one lifetime. They sort of pale after the twelfth time.
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x_ccelerate
2007-01-10 10:12 pm (UTC)
They keep you around so all the little telepaths know what not to do, don't they?
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x_cable
2007-01-10 10:13 pm (UTC)
I revel in my negative-model-ness. It gives me a perverse sort of joy.
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x_wytchbrat
2007-01-10 09:59 pm (UTC)
Funny how those anniversaries have the effect of making you deal with things. I ended up getting the magic back for Charlie's. Kind of fitting, really. I just wish he'd been around to see it, but then again, if he hadn't died I wouldn't have lost it in the first place.
Any way.
I think GW would have approved of the way you and Dom and Ange did things. Frostbite and all. :) Think I'll be raising a glass in his honour tonight myself.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 10:12 pm (UTC)
He deserved a bigger mountain, but it's the thought that counts. Besides - it fits, in a way. He was always the one who told us we were crazy for climbing what we did, but came along anyway.
(And just don't make it akvavit. GW also liked Guiness very much, I will note.)
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x_wytchbrat
2007-01-11 12:31 am (UTC)
Guiness it is - I don't think Finnegan's carries akvavit.
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x_penance
2007-01-10 10:10 pm (UTC)
I am being sorry to be hearing about your friend. But it is seeming you are finding the good way to be remembering him.
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x_cable
2007-01-10 10:16 pm (UTC)
I think so too, Yvette.
And it reminds me I need to start making arrangements for the climbing trip. I think he would have thought that was a wonderful idea, too.
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x_wolverine
2007-01-12 03:05 am (UTC)
Aquavit's good stuff.
Got a taste for it from somewhere. Don't remember where.
Just that it's good stuff. Black coffee from grounds with eggshell in it to settle it out (like the Swedes do), aquavit, and ... something else. Can't remember.