The other wind

[Barrett Dorko]

I say he can see the wind, but Bill knows I’m only joking. Every year at a festival near my home he races his sailboat and every year he wins. I get to start each race but that doesn’t really help him. He just knows his friend will be there with the bull horn.

In a thread elsewhere John Ware compared the expression of ideomotion to the wind and I’ve been thinking about it since. A wind’s origin varies but I can’t imagine that its manifestation is ever absent. Harnessing it takes a few forms and interest in doing that has certainly grown.

Bill uses it to sail, I use ideomotion to amplify correction. Naturally occurring and ubiquitous, Bill senses the presence of one and I the other. Once each year he and I meet and celebrate together its power.

The wind is already there. I just get to start the race.

[Milehigh]

With proper technique, a sailboat tacking into the wind can travel faster than the wind it is harnessing.

Which is an interesting addition to your metaphor.

Eric

[Barrett Dorko]

Eric, It is.

The title of this blog post actually came from a great, great book by LeGuin.

Read some of the comments and you'll find there's a "minor sorcerer" there that does an amazing thing.

[Milehigh]

I see that book is six in a series. You have laid out a steep challenge for me but it looks like a great series. Thanks.

Eric

[Barrett Dorko]

The first three were written in the 70s and the last far more recently.

I thought the third, titled The Farthest Shore had some of the best lines in it and crafted a couple of essays around it. They're in my office somewhere.

[John W]

I think I was scoffed at when I made that comparison. I'm pretty sure that was over in that mammoth trigger point thread on another blog.

Someone who can cite reams of research and recall most of the abstracts of each article thought that metaphor was silly and inaccurate.

Maybe if I had used a sciency phrase for "wind" like "thermodynamic oscillation", I would've gotten a better response.

[Barrett Dorko]

Yes, when that guy said that I I realized why we never agree on much.

Also, why you and I often do.

[Randy Dixon]

It isn't really relevant, but do you think that a wind powered vehicle can go faster than the speed of the wind going directly downwind?

The connection to your analogy I suppose is that you can get any number of aeronautical engineers, sailors, physicists and beer drinkers together and there will be wide disagreement whether this is indeed possible and why it is possible or not.

The fact that it has been done hasn't really stopped the arguing, which I thinks makes the analogy even more appropriate.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06...than-the-wind/