Jul. 26th, 2008 05:31 am
It's not the heat, it's the inanity
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muckefuckIt goes without saying that I would never wish a humid, sweltering summer upon anyone, least of all my best friends, but part of me is relieved to see the Heat Index edging up just as I prepare to depart for California. After all, even if accommodations are taken care of, the tickets weren't cheap and I would've felt awfully silly paying that money to fly someplace where the weather isn't any better than here.
And can I just say what a asinine thing the "Heat Index" is anyway? At least the Windchill Factor has some footing in scientific fact--the physical effects of moving air on exposed flesh. I've always assumed the basis for the Heat Index (or "HumiTemp" as it was called in my youth) was flimsy, and Wikipedia only confirms it:
In any case, don't expect to hear much from me out there. It may be different when I'm in SF, but I'm assuming the cost of Internet cafés in Tahoe will be prohibitive enough to make me think better of spending any of my time in them on LiveJournal. Besides, part of the point of the trip is to be a vacation from online life as well. Gods know I need to do something to break my unhealthy dependence on this medium before I move into a household where I'll have 24/7 access to it.
[*] Most of my life, I've blamed the humid summers on having no natural barriers between me and the Gulf. Now I find that transpiration from the cornfields is also a significant factor. We mock Tom Skilling for being a hyperactive little chipmunk, but Nietzsche knows I do learn things from him. In light of the how we pretended in my childhood that the alley or the neighbours' overgrown garden was "the Burmese jungle", I'm particularly fond of the line: "Dew points, the preferred measure of moisture among
meteorologists, are expected to reach the 70s later Friday in Chicago and could surge
to near 80 degrees in sections of Missouri and Iowa -- a level most often associated
with tropical rain forests."
[**] Moreover, as someone who grew up where the winters were always dry as dust, I want a Dank-o-meter to describe how miserable it makes me feel on those rare days of cold, damp air which always creeps down into my bones and makes me feel like I'll never be warm again, like I'm some poor blighter in a Dickensian tenement with nought but rags of blankets for warmth.
And can I just say what a asinine thing the "Heat Index" is anyway? At least the Windchill Factor has some footing in scientific fact--the physical effects of moving air on exposed flesh. I've always assumed the basis for the Heat Index (or "HumiTemp" as it was called in my youth) was flimsy, and Wikipedia only confirms it:
Measurements have been taken based on subjective descriptions of how hot subjects feel for a given temperature and humidity, allowing an index to be made which corresponds a temperature and humidity combination to a higher temperature in dry air.Let's look at my own background to see the basic flaw here: I grew up in Missouri, where high temperatures without high humidity simply don't happen[*]. I distinctly remember my first experience with greater than 90℉ (30ºC) heat and less than 50% humidity, which came at a summer camp in West Texas when I was just shy of 17: I didn't believe what people told me the temperature was. To me, it felt fifteen degrees cooler than it actually was. So shouldn't my Heat Index work the opposite way? If it's 88℉ and humidity is 21%, shouldn't the weather report tell me that it "feels like 75" or whatever?[**] At least I learned from that experience not to trust my perceptions when hiking in the West and to drink as much water as I could stand.
In any case, don't expect to hear much from me out there. It may be different when I'm in SF, but I'm assuming the cost of Internet cafés in Tahoe will be prohibitive enough to make me think better of spending any of my time in them on LiveJournal. Besides, part of the point of the trip is to be a vacation from online life as well. Gods know I need to do something to break my unhealthy dependence on this medium before I move into a household where I'll have 24/7 access to it.
[*] Most of my life, I've blamed the humid summers on having no natural barriers between me and the Gulf. Now I find that transpiration from the cornfields is also a significant factor. We mock Tom Skilling for being a hyperactive little chipmunk, but Nietzsche knows I do learn things from him. In light of the how we pretended in my childhood that the alley or the neighbours' overgrown garden was "the Burmese jungle", I'm particularly fond of the line: "Dew points, the preferred measure of moisture among
meteorologists, are expected to reach the 70s later Friday in Chicago and could surge
to near 80 degrees in sections of Missouri and Iowa -- a level most often associated
with tropical rain forests."
[**] Moreover, as someone who grew up where the winters were always dry as dust, I want a Dank-o-meter to describe how miserable it makes me feel on those rare days of cold, damp air which always creeps down into my bones and makes me feel like I'll never be warm again, like I'm some poor blighter in a Dickensian tenement with nought but rags of blankets for warmth.
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It's weird to be in a place where evaporative cooling actually works.
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