|
|
|
ends of the empathy spectrum
Monday, August 22 2005
The big deck-related achievement today was the screwing down of the deck boards. I spaced them a full half inch apart because I'm a little worried about whether the roof rafters can support the concentrated weight of winter snow and I'm hoping the wide gaps will prevent thick snow accumulation. I've been unable to find any calculator or reference that can provide me even a ballpark-figure load-bearing estimate for an arrangement that, in cross section, looks like this:
For a sense of scale, the 2X10 rafters present a wall/ceiling in the laboratory of 174 inches in length, 61 inches of which are above the top of the 2X6 collar tie. The bottom of the triangle, that is, the width of the laboratory floor, is about 246 inches. The deck poles are 103 inches apart, with the east side being 16 inches further down the roof deck (that's 11.5 vertical inches) than the west side.
I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to calculating loads on such a structure. Given this situation, it should be obvious why I'm posting such precise details on the Wonderfully Worrisome World Wide Web.
Tonight Gretchen and I watched the final episode of Six Feet Under, though for some reason we thought it might be the penultimate episode. Gradually, though, it became clear that loose ends were being wrapped up for a grand slow-motion-but-actually-accelerated happily ever after. It wasn't an especially spectacular episode until near the end when Clare climbed in her hybrid and started flying westward across the desert toward New York City, a journey that resonates with me as a symbol a massive change because Gretchen and I made that trek in July of 2001 in a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, and I've been on the happily ever after track ever since. The flashes of the future, with people caught in the unescapable prison of time, inevitably to die in each their own unique way, it was incredible. I've never seen anything like it except the final one or two of the Seven Up series, but those involved real people whose ultimate future we'll have to stick around through real time to know. After five years of Six Feet Under, I knew the characters better than nearly everyone I know in the Hudson Valley. Watching them rapidly grow old and die was simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking.
Our minds were so blown that Gretchen and I ended up having one of our long existential conversation afterwards, a conversation that inevitably focused on a fundamental disturbing difference between us: her psychological set point leaves her highly empathetic but also liable to depression, whereas I'm sort of pathologically non-empathetic (unless I try) though I'm also not especially liable to depression (unless I'm trying to be empathetic). Gretchen's empathy is responsible for most of the depth of her friendships, which are some of her most important assets. As for me, friendships are nice, but I'm perfectly happy starving them for months or years at a time. All personality traits have their pluses and minuses and we both benefit and suffer from our mutual ends of the empathy spectrum.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?050822 feedback
previous | next |
