Tough

This week has been really tough. I don't mean hard or inflexible; I mean that it has been difficult to get things done, to work out what I am thinking from the snarl of information spinning and twirling its way through my head.

So I went for a long walk, had lunch with Constantine, and picked up Book 4 of Planetary. Suddenly, everything makes sense: the job of the survivor is to save things, no matter what it costs. It is tough because it often seems paradoxical.

When the going gets tough, the tough are often hopelessly lost. It's like many of the substances I've played with in the lab before: the harder or faster you work (on, with) them, the more viscous they become, until you cannot work (on, with) them anymore. This is funny behaviour, but pretty common. Agglutination, it's called.

Sometimes, however, you need to work with time and resources as if they were dilatant, like pizza cheese or quicksand. With such substances, the more slowly and gently you work with them, the more viscous they are. This is why mozzarella stretches most when you slowly and gently pull on it, and snaps if you pull sharply. The same with quicksand: move quickly and in you go, deeper and to your doom — but move slowly and gently and you will be safe.

The problem is that sometimes you don't know about the bulk properties of what you're handling. With information, that's even more complicated. This is why some people say PhD stands for 'permanent head damage'.