March 30, 2004 :: Dammit

I wasn't done writing that entry, why'd you publish it?

posted by Rainmayun at 8:59 PM -

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Hmph...

So what's the problem with the overriding theme?

posted by Anonymous at 2:51 PM -

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March 08, 2004 :: The College Dropout

Kanye West has been anointed the new, hot, "conscious" rap artist by the record industry media. After suffering through the hype both from them and from enough of my friends who bought it the week it came out, I decided it was worth getting a bootleg copy and giving it a listen. The bottom line: It is more creative than most other recent offerings, but Kanye has problems, and some of them are significant.

The album title, "The College Dropout", is a reference to Kanye's own personal history of difficulty with higher education. He uses his own life narrative of his failure as a college student to structure the album, making many references to school, education, "smartness", and success. The overriding theme is that he has been able to overcome all of the obstacles that life has tossed his way, including dropping out from school and the new-famous auto accident and reconstructive surgery on his jaw.

posted by Rainmayun at 12:37 PM -

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March 03, 2004 :: Ribbon in the sky

I had an argument with my stepmother the other day. She's normally a fairly intelligent person, often paranoid and occasionally very country. I was driving her around in my car on a beautiful sunny day, with hardly a cloud in the sky. She was visiting the Washington metro area from her normal home in southern California. We were having a nice conversation about various family topics (with my sister dozing in the back seat), until she started talking to me about comets.

She was expressing mystic wonder to me at how she sees these comets every day, in the same positions in the sky, and how she is 3,000 miles from her home yet she still sees them. I was highly confused. Comets? I didn't see anything in the sky resembling a comet. She insisted they were there, and I was beginning to wonder if she would be needing psychotropic medication as she transitioned into senior citizenship. Besides, I told her, I needed to keep my eyes on the road.

After some effort, she was finally able to point one out that was in the forward direction from the car. I looked up in the sky, and saw.... a contrail. For those of you who aren't familiar, witness the picture:

A contrail from a jumbo jet

A bit of etymology and science: Contrail is a coined word for "condensation trail", in reference to the trail of condensed water that jet engines leave behind in the air. One of the byproducts of jet fuel combustion is water vapor. The air at high altitudes is generally a lot colder than the air on the surface, so that hot water vapor quickly cools into liquid (and sometimes frozen) micro-droplets, which are then visible as white clouds. They form lines because the planes move in lines.

So when I explained to her that what she was seeing were contrails, she told me I was flat-out wrong. They couldn't be caused by airplanes, because she couldn't see the planes, and they weren't moving, and anyway, why would they be in the same positions at the same times in the sky every day? It did not matter that it would make more sense for planes to fly the same routes at the same times every day than for "comets" to appear in the sky in the same position every day. She knew she was right, and she didn't understand why I wouldn't believe her.

I quickly gave in on that argument.

posted by Rainmayun at 10:52 AM -

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