GR translation: shearing alongside for miles
rich
richard.romeo at gmail.com
Tue Jul 25 08:47:41 CDT 2017
'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'
is that partly what the 'pornography of flight' is possibly alluding to,
Monte?
rich
On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 4:27 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170725/5198648f/attachment.html>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list