tom-igoe recommended this book, to further my enquiry about electricity. nikolai was pleasantly surprised when i told him that i was reading this. he’s read it before, and recommended it to jasmine last year.
quotes from the book:
I hate acknowledgement pages. They’re always just too darn sweet for me.
No one really understands electricity. But no one wants to admit it. Once I realized that truth, it became easy to learn about electricity.
It’s Little Greenies.
That’s right. Little Greenies. It’s not electrons at all. Electrons are a
myth, a superstition. They don’t make sense, they’re boring, and they’ve
never been proved. Shoot, I’ve never seen an electron, have you? Of course
not. No one has. Sure, the electron theory seems to work a lot of the time,
but so did the Flat Earth Theory. The theories of Aristotle, Newton and
Euclid appeared to work pretty well, too, for a few hundred years. Now
they seem childish. All because bold and adventurous thinkers like you and
me were willing to consider alter natives.
Elegant and innovative alternatives, like The Greenie Theory.
I developed The Greenie Theory while fishing at a lake in Utah. It was
one of those rare and special times when you have a whole city’s water
supply all to yourself. One of those days when the fish won’t bite, but the
sun is hot, the water is cool and clear, and you don’t care. Cynics will try to
convince you that the beer I was drinking provided most of my inspiration.
I’m sure they said that about Einstein, too.
on voltage:
“Greenies like to party,” Mike said. “It’s what we live for. And a party
means girls, beer, and rock ‘n roll. If there’s a bunch of Greenies cruising
down a wire, you can bet we’re headed for a party.”
‘Am I supposed to be writing this down?” I asked. This was a new role
for me. Mike and I were sitting by the lake fishing. He had somehow come
up with the neatest fishing pole I’d ever seen. It was long, glossy black, and
made a low whirring sound whenever he cast.
“Nah,” said Mike. “You can’t write and fish at the same time. Let’s just
mellow out and get on the same wavelength. Let the heavy stuff slide for a
while.”
“Right,” I said, suppressing an urge to either say, “Like right,” or “Right
on.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “When Greenies party, it works like this: the
chicks buy kegs of beer and turn up their radios. The brothers hear that rock
‘n roll, get in their little green cars and motovate toward the music. Works
every time.”
“Don’t the girls ever drive toward the guys?”
“No, man, that’s not the way it works. The chicks buy the beer and we
chase ‘em. We hear that music and the urge comes over us. We call it the
“need-to-party.” Suddenly he put down his pole, went over to the boulder
he had appeared behind, and came back with a book. “It’s a Greenie-
English dictionary,” he said. “You know, for translating. Let’s see, need-to-
party … Oh, yeah, here it is: ‘voltage.’ We call it the need-to-party, you call
it voltage. Does that make sense to you?”
Say you got a flashlight
battery. On the positive side of that battery you got a bunch of Greenie
chicks. And, I mean, some of those chicks are very positive. On the
negative side, you got some Greenie dudes. Those chicks, they buy a couple
kegs and turn up their little boom boxes. Us guys, we hear the music, and
right away we feel that need-to-party. The more chicks there are, the more
little boom boxes they got, which makes that music loud. That means more
dudes hear it and feel that need-to-party. If there’s a way for us to get there,
we’re gonna cruise. If all the bridges are down and the roads are closed,
maybe we can’t get there. But we’re still gonna feel that urge. That’s what
voltage is: It’s boy Greenies feeling that need-to-party and girl Greenies
playing rock ‘n roll. Voltage is that hunger to be movin’ on down the road.”