RE: Northern guilt?

Aha.

Northern gilt. The minute particles of gold that condense in the air over
the Arctic regions, that generate the Northern Lights. Cast your mind back
to chemistry lessons at school, consult your Periodic Table and then ask
yourself: from whence comes the "Au" in Aurora Borealis? (a similar but
infintely more vulgar process in the Southern hemisphere resulted in
Australia).

In a nutshell: seawater contains gold. Water travelling downhill from left
to right in the Atlantic stream evaporates in a North-easterly direction,
rapidly cools, and condenses into tiny droplets of water and other elemental
particles, including gold. In much the same way that a rainbow occurs when
water droplets diffract light, when light shines through a mixture of water
and particles of gold, secondary diffraction takes place due to light
reflecting off the gold particles. Effectively, there are billions of tiny
light sources, the effect being a great fat enormous rainbow, with added
sparkly bits, that fills the entire sky.

The gold falls to earth, much of it landing on Greenland which of course
does nothing for that country's weight problem. The earth tips more, the
stream speeds up, more sea evaporates, more gold condenses out, Greenland
gets even heavier. It's an inherently unstable process, and eventually we'll
probably tip right over.

Dunc.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf
> Of B Merrill
> Sent: 10 February 2005 14:35
> To: siblings
> Subject: Northern guilt?
>
>
> One very potent theme that Jane sings about is guilt. (Well, anyway, she
> did before she taking her turn towards more happiness.) Guilt for
> abandoning someone who needs us, who loves us. We find this in "The Lobby"
> and also "Goodbye Pumpkinhead."
>
> And elsewhere? I think there's at least one other song that presents us
> with this kind of guilt... Or two songs?
>
> And is this guilt Northern guilt?
> Something to brood over during the long winters?
>
> Any other northerner who'd care to contemplate that matter?
>
> Meanwhile, there's a major snowstorm taking place outside my window right
> now.
> Very groovy!
>
> ta,
>
> Bruce
>
> PS Duncan, yes I already know that guilt rhymes with tuilt.
>
> PPS Third try to get this thru the list!
> Is this a forbidden topic?