> > Sometimes, especially while on the bus, thoughts simply pop into my head, and then I extrapolate long threads of thought and association out of them, and when I get home, I forget all about them, no matter how interesting they were. Here's one I got while on the way from the bus station to home: a system for classifying rain. This should be two-dimensional at least, because there are two main criteria for judging rain as I experience it: the size of the drops and their frequency. Other criteria are of less or no significance to the way people feel when being rained on: the amount of sulphuric acid, say, or the water's hardness.
> >
> > Another thought about rain is that actually it has to fall quite a long way (except with very low clouds; I have at times seen small clouds lower than thirty meters above the ground, and that not only on top of mountains) before it reaches the ground; and that clouds can be very fast, so that when it starts to rain where you are, the rain reaches the ground at least a few hundred meters away, and when you get wet, the rain started falling not only far above, but also to the left. And even when the clouds are almost stationary, there will be a delay between when it starts/stops to rain and when you notice.
>
> Rain is weird, isn't it? How is it that water, (by the way, I'm borrowing heavily from "The Last Continent", Terry Pratchett) that can scour out huge valleys and caverns in rock, and is very heavy in relation to its volume, can just float up into the sky, change colour to white, hang around for days on end, produce electricity, and then fall back to earth and be used for such mundane things as drinking and washing? As for the rain classification, take a look at The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or one of its constituent volumes (I forget which one).
>
> To use the hackneyed old cliche, truth is certainly stranger than fiction.
>
> > Fuzz"first boring post on the new board!"pilz
>
> Phil-"At least you got your name on Page 1...I think I must get the award for 'longest sentence on page 1 of a message board"-bee

And did you ever see it rain up? I did. I was at the Napali Lookout which is 4000 feet above the cliffs on Kauai. Wind off the ocean was rising up the cliffs and clouds were forming. Rain falling out of the clouds was being blown up over the edge of the lookout. Yes, they were small droplets, but too big to called mist. The best time to go up there is early morning, when the wind is light. You get less fog (clouds) and the view of the ocean below is spectacular. In the afternoon, you may not see the ocean at all.
Don't ever go to Kauai without going up to the lookout. You change climates several times on the way up, and you are driving along the edge of a spectacular canyon on the way up. OK, I'm rambling again.
Howard