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March 8, 2000
Ted Mooney <mooney@finishing.com>
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics rules nature
and can be expressed in many ways, one of which is "no process is
possible whose sole result is transfer of heat from a cooler body to
a hotter one".
Engineers express the 2nd Law in two words:
"Entropy increases" (speaking inexactly, entropy is disorder or
randomness).
I'm an engineer myself, but I was first
exposed to the 2nd Law at about age 5, on which occasion I expressed
it as: "Not fair! and I'm TELLin'!" See, my big sister had the
playing cards, and when I demanded to be allowed to play, she said
okay but we'd play a new game called 52-Pickup and she would be the
dealer.
It's much easier to scatter cards than to
pick them up again . . . to break things than to fix them . . . to
wreck a structure than to build one. The 2nd Law in action.
And as the U.S. "primary season" wound down
to its ugly close, the 2nd Law warned us that it would be very easy
for a candidate to quote a half dozen of his opponent's votes &
statements out of context in 30-second attack ads -- and impossible
to restore the context within the attention span of the average
moron. Unfortunately, politicians really are smarter than the rest of
us, they understand this 2nd Law of MoronDynamics. They know that
despite our claims to hate sicko attack ads they will continue to
work extremely well because we morons fail to see the 52-Pickup style
dynamic of it.
- - -
To relate the 2nd Law to the world of
finishing, we've all seen inquiries on the finishing.com Hotline page
as well as at other sites and on the science newsgroups to this
effect: "Pleeze email all detals of all aspects of metal finishig:
types, use, costs, advatages/disadvantages." Or the popular student
question: "What juice cleans pennies best? I need it tonite!".
I'm happy to help inquirers when I can, and
our other readers demonstrate that they are too. But it's a fool's
game of 52-Pickup to spend serious time trying to assemble an answer
for a question dealt by an inquirer who had no intention of spending
more than a few seconds on his problem himself. So if anybody
occasionally decides to just answer a query with "2nd Law" or
"52-Pickup", we'll understand. And if you see that reply from me on a
bad hair day, you know what it's about.
By now you've guessed: Super Tuesday was not
a good hair day 'round these parts 
.
Philip J. Verzal
- Cicero, Il USA
TED
AS OF LATE I HAVE BEEN READING THE NEWS AND OPINION PAGE OF FINISHING.COM EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE OLD. I FIRST WANT TO SAY THAT YOU DO A BANG UP JOB KEEPING FINISHING.COM GOING AND I CAN TELL YOUR HEART IS NOT ONLY INTO THE WEB SITE BUT METAL FINISHING AS WELL. KUDOS TO YOU FOR YOUR DEVOTION TO BOTH.
I HAVE TO AGREE WITH YOU ON THIS TOPIC. I NOTICE MANY FOLKS ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THEIR FINISHING ISSUES, BUT THEN WE NEVER SEE A REPLY FROM THE ASKER TO A RESPONSE ONCE IT HAS BEEN GIVEN. IT IS AS THOUGH SAID PERSON IS SCRAMBLING TO ASK QUESTIONS OF ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN....KINDA LIKE A SHIP ON THE OCEAN....ANY PORT IN A STORM. THIS IS DISAPPOINTING. I FOR ONE APPRECIATE NOT ONLY THIS WEB SITE (WHICH I MIGHT ADD IS A GREAT TOOL FOR LEARNING) BUT MORE SPECIFICALLY YOUR EFFORTS AND PASSION IN KEEPING IT GOING. THE COUNTLESS HOURS I AM SURE YOU EMPLOY IN DOING SO AND THEN ONLY TO BE MADE A MOCKERY OF. I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE YOUR LOVE FOR WHAT YOU DO AND YOUR DESIRE TO HELP OTHERS KEEP YOU FROM TAKING OFFENSE. SO TED, BE ENCOURAGED AND PLEASE KEEP UP THE FANTASTIC WORK.
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