Monday, July 14, 2008

• hottness

  
  

   

  So there's this stuff in the ground, called oil. and we've been burning it, see. because stuff like oil what burns in a way that can be harnessed seems to be pretty good stuff cause it can make steam and turn wheels and generally make things go. like civilization for example, and although his big thinking days are behind him and some of his fire is died away, sometimes greeley still thinks about that heat, you know, and burnin' and what it means and how it works cause metabolism is fire too and so even his thoughts are fire and fire is at the center of all life and creation not to mention the sun which ain't nuthin' but a big ball of fire, floatin' all graceful-like through the firmament.

  

  and so here we are: people. livin' off that big hot ball in the sky...and writin' with fire and readin' 'bout fire and studyin' fire and well pretty much everything we mess with is either fire or fire-related cause fire is what we do and that's good cause it kinda makes us engines of the cosmos the divine cosmos which repeats itself on all scales like when you look through a telescope and see them planets up there and the moons of jupiter, maybe, and draw them on a scrap of paper just like galileo did you done repeated that same pattern that's up there in the sky and also when biology people sequence DNA which is so tiny ya can't even see it with even the strongest magnifyin' glass and then they get the sequence and write it REAL BIG on the wall all proud like and put it in their powerpoint presentations.

  see that ain't nuthin' but the universe repeatin' itself on different size scales which it likes to do and which you will know if you ever study the branches of a tree, and nature does it with people or without people, but it seems people is real good at it - which sometimes makes greeley wonder if it's maybe an important thing that we do whether we know it or not.

  and by the way havin' lots of fire to do it with don't hurt neither because i tell you what you ain't gonna do much science if you ain't got a good fire burnin' that's the honest truth. now have a tree.

  

  lately, like pretty much for the past couple hundred years people been burnin' fossily fuels cause it turns out nothin' burns quite like a dead thing you can suck outta the ground, which is pretty cool cause them dead things, well we wouldn't call em dead if'n they hadn't once been alive and contributin' to bein' alive and all, but then they died cause sooner or later, well, everybody's gotta go...but see, now they kinda comed back to life when you think about it cause when we burn 'em they get to contribute again to turnin' the wheels of creation and drawin' pictures of jupiter and sequencin' DNA and basically doin' what life does...

  which as i said largely consists of burnin' stuff.

  now i know this writtin' is gettin' a tad long and all and devoid of punctuation but i kinda want to finish myself here so i hope you will indulge me as i describe the thoughts of greeley for just a little more and as you probably guessed they're about burnin'

  what happens when stuff burns is pretty simple: the stuff gets hot, that's what happens. now a physicist will tell you that hottness is molecular motion; namely there's little itty bitty microscoppity atoms and molecules that make up a pot of water and when you boil that water them atoms start movin' around and bangin' into one another faster and more vigorous-like than before. and even sometimes they get movin' so fast they actually jump out of the water altogether and take to the air, which is what makes steam 

  

  but here's the thing, see, when all them teeny microscoppity atom things in that pot get heated up and make steam, maybe that steam is makin' an engine' go. and maybe that engine is in a car. and maybe your best friend (who is not at all microscoppity) is drivin' that car. which means he's goin' somewhere a lot faster than if he weren't burnin' somethin' to get there. just like them molecules he's burnin' to begin with.

  so see, all these fires people been usin', makin' all them tiny little atoms move real fast, when you think about it like greeley sometimes does, you might just think they have the effect of heatin' up people too. and then you might think a rocket ship is really just hot people - boilin' off the earth, straight up into space.

  

  and you might be a little bit right.

  have a buttercup
  
  :)

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