The invention of the sail

The sail was invented by someone who had recently witnessed oak leaves
blowing across a snow covered landscape. Not FRESH
snow.....everything sort of gets mired or otherwise immobilized in
that.....but snow that had piled up for a while and then was subjected
to a bit of freezing rain, followed by a thaw and some more snow and
then another thaw.....etc. What was required was a relatively firm
surface in late winter, when the leaves of the white oak lineage, thus
far retained (as opposed to those of their cousins in the red branch
of the family), began dropping at odd and manifestly unpredicted
intervals.....beyond the obvious stipulation that it would occur
mostly on breezy days.

Or, something like that.

It happened today.....um, leaf movement, that is, not the invention of
the sail.....in the late afternoon or early evening, depending on how
one chooses to define these things.

Standing out on the deck, exhilarated by the shockingly
uncharacteristic temperatures in the high 40s to low 50s, I watched
many of these leafy vessels cruising across the lawn (well, I've been
here in all seasons; I KNOW there is a lawn under there.....somewhere)
in apparently windless conditions. The smoke, rising in a thin and
perfectly vertical column from the chimney betrayed no hint of lateral
air movement. Nor did anything else. Except the leaves. Powerful
antithesis!

WTF?

Even more confusing, both individual leaves and myriad clusters cruise
blithely by yet more individuals and by and THROUGH! other resolutely
stationary groups. Huh?

To put it more concretely, what we have here is a relatively large
mass of individuals of precisely the same character behaving in
different ways under precisely the same set of conditions and
circumstances.

Something is DEFINITELY wrong here!

But what can it be?

And then, for reasons one can only suppose are no less worthy of a
psychological PhD dissertation (or, at least a Master's thesis) than
any other, it suddenly clicks.

Indeed, the conditions and circumstances and characteristics ARE!
precisely the same......almost.

Oak leaves, like any other class of beings, things, stuff, or
whatever, are structured and behave in more or less predictable ways.
This is EXACTLY why they qualify as members of a class of beings,
ainna?

Duh!

So?

So, oak leaves hanging on the twigs through a "temperate" winter are
no different from their deciduous cousins in many other families in at
least one critically important respect; they are most assuredly dead.
And in death it transpires that they have other things in common with
all of their deciduous kin. One of these things.....a critically
important thing in the present investigation.....is that while they
retain their overall shape (until they rot.....like pretty much
anything else), their conformation changes.....sometimes radically. A
live oak leaf (well, in most species, anyway) is a more or less FLAT
leaf. When the leaves die, they dry. Drying changes the leaves. To
one extent or another, they curl. And they curl consistently (more or
less), which is to say that ignoring the bewildering complexities of
determining what constitutes top versus bottom, obverse versus
converse, proximal versus distal, dorsal versus ventral, etc., the
edges, stipules, ends or whatever tend to curl in the same direction
from the nominal flat plane of the living leaf.

The result? The point?

A tent, properly (which is to say adequately) staked.....or a boat
with billowed sail!

giles
somewhere in (or at least near.....if his gps is to be trusted)
honalee.

giles
somewhere in (or at least near.....if his gps is to be trusted)
honalee.


Smoking his Dope with Puff!!!

HH.

"Giles" wrote in message
...

The sail was invented by someone who had recently witnessed oak leaves
blowing across a snow covered landscape. Not FRESH
snow.....everything sort of gets mired or otherwise immobilized in
that.....but snow that had piled up for a while and then was subjected
to a bit of freezing rain, followed by a thaw and some more snow and
then another thaw.....etc. What was required was a relatively firm
surface in late winter, when the leaves of the white oak lineage, thus
far retained (as opposed to those of their cousins in the red branch
of the family), began dropping at odd and manifestly unpredicted
intervals.....beyond the obvious stipulation that it would occur
mostly on breezy days.

Or, something like that.

It happened today.....um, leaf movement, that is, not the invention of
the sail.....in the late afternoon or early evening, depending on how
one chooses to define these things.

Standing out on the deck, exhilarated by the shockingly
uncharacteristic temperatures in the high 40s to low 50s, I watched
many of these leafy vessels cruising across the lawn (well, I've been
here in all seasons; I KNOW there is a lawn under there.....somewhere)
in apparently windless conditions. The smoke, rising in a thin and
perfectly vertical column from the chimney betrayed no hint of lateral
air movement. Nor did anything else. Except the leaves. Powerful
antithesis!

WTF?

Even more confusing, both individual leaves and myriad clusters cruise
blithely by yet more individuals and by and THROUGH! other resolutely
stationary groups. Huh?

To put it more concretely, what we have here is a relatively large
mass of individuals of precisely the same character behaving in
different ways under precisely the same set of conditions and
circumstances.

Something is DEFINITELY wrong here!

But what can it be?

And then, for reasons one can only suppose are no less worthy of a
psychological PhD dissertation (or, at least a Master's thesis) than
any other, it suddenly clicks.

Indeed, the conditions and circumstances and characteristics ARE!
precisely the same......almost.

Oak leaves, like any other class of beings, things, stuff, or
whatever, are structured and behave in more or less predictable ways.
This is EXACTLY why they qualify as members of a class of beings,
ainna?

Duh!

So?

So, oak leaves hanging on the twigs through a "temperate" winter are
no different from their deciduous cousins in many other families in at
least one critically important respect; they are most assuredly dead.
And in death it transpires that they have other things in common with
all of their deciduous kin. One of these things.....a critically
important thing in the present investigation.....is that while they
retain their overall shape (until they rot.....like pretty much
anything else), their conformation changes.....sometimes radically. A
live oak leaf (well, in most species, anyway) is a more or less FLAT
leaf. When the leaves die, they dry. Drying changes the leaves. To
one extent or another, they curl. And they curl consistently (more or
less), which is to say that ignoring the bewildering complexities of
determining what constitutes top versus bottom, obverse versus
converse, proximal versus distal, dorsal versus ventral, etc., the
edges, stipules, ends or whatever tend to curl in the same direction
from the nominal flat plane of the living leaf.

The result? The point?

A tent, properly (which is to say adequately) staked.....or a boat
with billowed sail!

giles
somewhere in (or at least near.....if his gps is to be trusted)
honalee.

Speaking of a sail, I took my first ride in a one person ice boat this
weekend on our lake. What a rush!
The GPS said 41.2 mph high speed when I returned and the wind wasn't blowing
that hard. I can only imagine what a 30 mph wind would be like.

Very fun,
JT

On Feb 13, 10:48*pm, ScovilleUnit wrote:
giles
somewhere in (or at least near.....if his gps is to be trusted)
honalee.

Smoking his Dope with Puff!!!

HH.

moron.

g.

On Feb 14, 1:21*pm, "JT" wrote:
"Giles" wrote in message

...







The sail was invented by someone who had recently witnessed oak leaves
blowing across a snow covered landscape. *Not FRESH
snow.....everything sort of gets mired or otherwise immobilized in
that.....but snow that had piled up for a while and then was subjected
to a bit of freezing rain, followed by a thaw and some more snow and
then another thaw.....etc. *What was required was a relatively firm
surface in late winter, when the leaves of the white oak lineage, thus
far retained (as opposed to those of their cousins in the red branch
of the family), began dropping at odd and manifestly unpredicted
intervals.....beyond the obvious stipulation that it would occur
mostly on breezy days.

Or, something like that.

It happened today.....um, leaf movement, that is, not the invention of
the sail.....in the late afternoon or early evening, depending on how
one chooses to define these things.

Standing out on the deck, exhilarated by the shockingly
uncharacteristic temperatures in the high 40s to low 50s, I watched
many of these leafy vessels cruising across the lawn (well, I've been
here in all seasons; I KNOW there is a lawn under there.....somewhere)
in apparently windless conditions. *The smoke, rising in a thin and
perfectly vertical column from the chimney betrayed no hint of lateral
air movement. *Nor did anything else. *Except the leaves. *Powerful
antithesis!

WTF?

Even more confusing, both individual leaves and myriad clusters cruise
blithely by yet more individuals and by and THROUGH! other resolutely
stationary groups. *Huh? * * *

To put it more concretely, what we have here is a relatively large
mass of individuals of precisely the same character behaving in
different ways under precisely the same set of conditions and
circumstances.

Something is DEFINITELY wrong here!

But what can it be?

And then, for reasons one can only suppose are no less worthy of a
psychological PhD dissertation (or, at least a Master's thesis) than
any other, it suddenly clicks.

Indeed, the conditions and circumstances and characteristics ARE!
precisely the same......almost.

Oak leaves, like any other class of beings, things, stuff, or
whatever, are structured and behave in more or less predictable ways.
This is EXACTLY why they qualify as members of a class of beings,
ainna?

Duh!

So?

So, oak leaves hanging on the twigs through a "temperate" winter are
no different from their deciduous cousins in many other families in at
least one critically important respect; they are most assuredly dead.
And in death it transpires that they have other things in common with
all of their deciduous kin. *One of these things.....a critically
important thing in the present investigation.....is that while they
retain their overall shape (until they rot.....like pretty much
anything else), their conformation changes.....sometimes radically. *A
live oak leaf (well, in most species, anyway) is a more or less FLAT
leaf. *When the leaves die, they dry. *Drying changes the leaves. *To
one extent or another, they curl. *And they curl consistently (more or
less), which is to say that ignoring the bewildering complexities of
determining what constitutes top versus bottom, obverse versus
converse, proximal versus distal, dorsal versus ventral, etc., the
edges, stipules, ends or whatever tend to curl in the same direction
from the nominal flat plane of the living leaf.

The result? *The point?

A tent, properly (which is to say adequately) staked.....or a boat
with billowed sail! * * *

giles
somewhere in (or at least near.....if his gps is to be trusted)
honalee.

Speaking of a sail, I took my first ride in a one person ice boat this
weekend on our lake. What a rush!
The GPS said 41.2 mph high speed when I returned and the wind wasn't blowing
that hard. I can only imagine what a 30 mph wind would be like.

Very fun,
JT

I live in what is touted as one of the world's great hotspots* for ice
boating. One of my earliest memories is "I wanna do that!".

Ain't done it yet.

I am DEEPLY envious.

giles
*"hotspots"....."ICE boating".....get it?.....nyuck, nyuck.

Giles wrote in
:

On Feb 14, 1:21*pm, "JT" wrote:
"Giles" wrote in message

.
..







The sail was invented by someone who had recently witnessed oak
leaves blowing across a snow covered landscape. *Not FRESH
snow.....everything sort of gets mired or otherwise immobilized in
that.....but snow that had piled up for a while and then was
subjected to a bit of freezing rain, followed by a thaw and some
more snow and then another thaw.....etc. *What was required was a
relatively firm surface in late winter, when the leaves of the
white oak lineage, thus far retained (as opposed to those of their
cousins in the red branch of the family), began dropping at odd and
manifestly unpredicted intervals.....beyond the obvious stipulation
that it would occur mostly on breezy days.

Or, something like that.

It happened today.....um, leaf movement, that is, not the invention
of the sail.....in the late afternoon or early evening, depending
on how one chooses to define these things.

Standing out on the deck, exhilarated by the shockingly
uncharacteristic temperatures in the high 40s to low 50s, I watched
many of these leafy vessels cruising across the lawn (well, I've
been here in all seasons; I KNOW there is a lawn under
there.....somewhere) in apparently windless conditions. *The smoke,
rising in a thin and perfectly vertical column from the chimney
betrayed no hint of lateral air movement. *Nor did anything else.
*Except the leaves. *Powerf
ul
antithesis!

WTF?

Even more confusing, both individual leaves and myriad clusters
cruise blithely by yet more individuals and by and THROUGH! other
resolutely stationary groups. *Huh? * * *

To put it more concretely, what we have here is a relatively large
mass of individuals of precisely the same character behaving in
different ways under precisely the same set of conditions and
circumstances.

Something is DEFINITELY wrong here!

But what can it be?

And then, for reasons one can only suppose are no less worthy of a
psychological PhD dissertation (or, at least a Master's thesis)
than any other, it suddenly clicks.

Indeed, the conditions and circumstances and characteristics ARE!
precisely the same......almost.

Oak leaves, like any other class of beings, things, stuff, or
whatever, are structured and behave in more or less predictable
ways. This is EXACTLY why they qualify as members of a class of
beings, ainna?

Duh!

So?

So, oak leaves hanging on the twigs through a "temperate" winter
are no different from their deciduous cousins in many other
families in at least one critically important respect; they are
most assuredly dead. And in death it transpires that they have
other things in common with all of their deciduous kin. *One of
these things.....a critically important thing in the present
investigation.....is that while they retain their overall shape
(until they rot.....like pretty much anything else), their
conformation changes.....sometimes radically. *
A
live oak leaf (well, in most species, anyway) is a more or less
FLAT leaf. *When the leaves die, they dry. *Drying changes the
leaves.
*To
one extent or another, they curl. *And they curl consistently (more
o
r
less), which is to say that ignoring the bewildering complexities
of determining what constitutes top versus bottom, obverse versus
converse, proximal versus distal, dorsal versus ventral, etc., the
edges, stipules, ends or whatever tend to curl in the same
direction from the nominal flat plane of the living leaf.

The result? *The point?

A tent, properly (which is to say adequately) staked.....or a boat
with billowed sail! * * *

giles
somewhere in (or at least near.....if his gps is to be trusted)
honalee.

Speaking of a sail, I took my first ride in a one person ice boat
this weekend on our lake. What a rush!
The GPS said 41.2 mph high speed when I returned and the wind wasn't
blow
ing
that hard. I can only imagine what a 30 mph wind would be like.

Very fun,
JT

I live in what is touted as one of the world's great hotspots* for ice
boating. One of my earliest memories is "I wanna do that!".

Ain't done it yet.

I am DEEPLY envious.

giles
*"hotspots"....."ICE boating".....get it?.....nyuck, nyuck.

*"dumbass"....."Giles".....get it?.....nyuck, nyuck.

On Feb 14, 9:46*pm, ScovilleUnit wrote:
Giles wrote :





On Feb 14, 1:21*pm, "JT" wrote:
"Giles" wrote in message

.
..

The sail was invented by someone who had recently witnessed oak
leaves blowing across a snow covered landscape. *Not FRESH
snow.....everything sort of gets mired or otherwise immobilized in
that.....but snow that had piled up for a while and then was
subjected to a bit of freezing rain, followed by a thaw and some
more snow and then another thaw.....etc. *What was required was a
relatively firm surface in late winter, when the leaves of the
white oak lineage, thus far retained (as opposed to those of their
cousins in the red branch of the family), began dropping at odd and
manifestly unpredicted intervals.....beyond the obvious stipulation
that it would occur mostly on breezy days.

Or, something like that.

It happened today.....um, leaf movement, that is, not the invention
of the sail.....in the late afternoon or early evening, depending
on how one chooses to define these things.

Standing out on the deck, exhilarated by the shockingly
uncharacteristic temperatures in the high 40s to low 50s, I watched
many of these leafy vessels cruising across the lawn (well, I've
been here in all seasons; I KNOW there is a lawn under
there.....somewhere) in apparently windless conditions. *The smoke,
rising in a thin and perfectly vertical column from the chimney
betrayed no hint of lateral air movement. *Nor did anything else.
*Except the leaves. *Powerf
ul
antithesis!

WTF?

Even more confusing, both individual leaves and myriad clusters
cruise blithely by yet more individuals and by and THROUGH! other
resolutely stationary groups. *Huh? * * *

To put it more concretely, what we have here is a relatively large
mass of individuals of precisely the same character behaving in
different ways under precisely the same set of conditions and
circumstances.

Something is DEFINITELY wrong here!

But what can it be?

And then, for reasons one can only suppose are no less worthy of a
psychological PhD dissertation (or, at least a Master's thesis)
than any other, it suddenly clicks.

Indeed, the conditions and circumstances and characteristics ARE!
precisely the same......almost.

Oak leaves, like any other class of beings, things, stuff, or
whatever, are structured and behave in more or less predictable
ways. This is EXACTLY why they qualify as members of a class of
beings, ainna?

Duh!

So?

So, oak leaves hanging on the twigs through a "temperate" winter
are no different from their deciduous cousins in many other
families in at least one critically important respect; they are
most assuredly dead. And in death it transpires that they have
other things in common with all of their deciduous kin. *One of
these things.....a critically important thing in the present
investigation.....is that while they retain their overall shape
(until they rot.....like pretty much anything else), their
conformation changes.....sometimes radically. *
A
live oak leaf (well, in most species, anyway) is a more or less
FLAT leaf. *When the leaves die, they dry. *Drying changes the
leaves.
*To
one extent or another, they curl. *And they curl consistently (more
o
r
less), which is to say that ignoring the bewildering complexities
of determining what constitutes top versus bottom, obverse versus
converse, proximal versus distal, dorsal versus ventral, etc., the
edges, stipules, ends or whatever tend to curl in the same
direction from the nominal flat plane of the living leaf.

The result? *The point?

A tent, properly (which is to say adequately) staked.....or a boat
with billowed sail! * * *

giles
somewhere in (or at least near.....if his gps is to be trusted)
honalee.

Speaking of a sail, I took my first ride in a one person ice boat
this weekend on our lake. What a rush!
The GPS said 41.2 mph high speed when I returned and the wind wasn't
blow
ing
that hard. I can only imagine what a 30 mph wind would be like.

Very fun,
JT

I live in what is touted as one of the world's great hotspots* for ice
boating. *One of my earliest memories is "I wanna do that!".

Ain't done it yet.

I am DEEPLY envious. * * * *

giles
*"hotspots"....."ICE boating".....get it?.....nyuck, nyuck. * * *

*"dumbass"....."Giles".....get it?.....nyuck, nyuck. * * *

moron.

g.