GR translation: shearing alongside for miles
Monte Davis
montedavis49 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 25 03:27:21 CDT 2017
Closest to "wind shear" in meteorology or aviation: notional layers of a
fluid (gas or liquid) moving adjacent to each other at different
velocities, with momentum transferred more or less smoothly between them at
the interface -- turbulence arises (i.e. the layers mix and tangle into
vortices) if the velocity difference is too great. (For me, this also harks
back to Achtfaden & co. and the "boundary layer" at the skin of an A4 as it
moves through the air.) The same applies to convection currents in a heated
cauldron: look at a patch of oil or fat sliding across the surface.
I may be stretching here, but I wouldn't put it past P. to have in mind
that the whole picture of successive sliding layers -- foundation of
aerodynamics for decades before 1945 -- is a *fiction* for mathematical
tractability, the reality being uncountable gas molecules moving with all
speeds and velocities in all directions, the layers emerging only as
statistics. Maybe there's a hint that the tribal/ethnic labels are also
fictions? That after their near-death experience as victims of abstraction
and systematization, the "Czechs" and "Slovaks" streaming along side by
side might be better off as individual I and Thou?
Anyway... look back to your Peenemunde passages, and if possible translate
"shearing" with a technical flavor, maybe whatever a Chinese weather
forecaster uses for "wind shear"
On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 7:44 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:
> V549.28-36, P559.5-13 . . . Sudetens and East Prussians shuttling
> between Berlin and the DP camps in Mecklenburg, Czechs and Slovaks, Croats
> and Serbs, Tosks and Ghegs, Macedonians, Magyars, Vlachs, Circassians,
> Spaniols, Bulgars stirred and streaming over the surface of the Imperial
> cauldron, colliding, shearing alongside for miles, sliding away, numb,
> indifferent to all momenta but the deepest, the instability too far below
> their itchy feet to give a shape to, white wrists and ankles incredibly
> wasted poking from their striped prison-camp pajamas, footsteps light as
> waterfowl’s in this inland dust . . .
>
> What does "shearing" mean here?
>
>
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