waiting for breakfast
So here I am stirring the coffee again. It's not necessary. The sugar would disslove anyway, given enough time. But I'd like to drink it now, or at least in this lifetime. And even if it were not hot, the sugar would eventually dissolve anyway also. As long as it does not make a saturated solution and crystalize out. What is is, but a chemist would say what is is because of Brownian movement (no, that's not what happens after you eat a brownie). At room temperature Thermodynamics favors a uniform sugar solution in the water in the coffee. And by attempting to understand why what is is, the chemist might be able to make what isn't is.
And if I had a really sensitive thermometer, perhaps that old mercury one that I used when I hand developed 4x5 Ektachrome, I could see the coffee get hotter as I stir, because the stirring really is the heat, just like the heat is the stirring.
I have this 1965 Harmony Classical guitar. It was Dad's guitar. Dad didn't have a lot of time to play it, let alone time to waste posting on a DB internet forum. He read pulp fiction while his coffee got cold. Well, as was common with those inexpensive student guitars of that era, the solid spruce top was much better than the craftmanship that glued it to the mahogany sides, back, and neck. In short the intonation was horrible, and over time the instrument just mostly sat in the case in a closet. No one could bring themselves to sell Dad's old guitar, so as executor of his will, I wound up being the caretaker of it with the understanding it would be a family heirloom. So one day in the mid nineties I got it out of the closet and strummed it. It wasn't in tune, but something had changed over the years. The tone was incredible. So I did some research and fixed the bridge bone using the factory specifications for the string clearances at the 12th and 17th fret that at the time were published on the internet by the Korean company that bought the old Harmony brand name. And now the guitar sounds fabulous. But no one stirred it for 25 years or more. It simply aged in the case. In this case, I think it is evidence that the perceived improvement that I heard in tone would have happened anyway due to aging. Playing it over the years might have speeded it up, but that didn't happen in this case, although I do play it some now. Also the top color was very different even though it had been in a dark closet. What had been a very light colored spruce top had become a honey golden color. And the top had a hairline crack right down the middle where it was joined (no problem, there was a brace right under the join.)
I guess what I am saying is this, and it is really the only part of my idea that is theoretical, the rest is well accepted, and that is this: That the changes we perceive as a result of aging or playing, or by Reumont's procedure, are all really the same thing, just happening at different rates depending on various factors that speed up the inevitable changes in the wood as it progresses toward the state most favored by Thermodynamics. I think that is as simply as I can state the concept. I would never pretend that it is fact. It's just an idea. What is, is, and by thermodynamics, what will be, will be.
And I will graciously thank Mr. Ken Smith for indulging me and allowing me to post my idea here and remind him that I have no better way to waste my time than in the present company here. Oops. The coffee is cold!
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