I know how to write well, and how to edit. But I cant do this:
.

Avalanche prediction is such a black art that meteorology seems a hard science by comparison. Snow pack, as you may know, has the broadest range of physical properties of any known physical substance. It can range from neve, an almost crystalline ice-like mass, to the flour-fine dust of a powder avalanche. Snow pack is plastic, elastic, rigid, brittle, solid, or liquid, depending on the interacting physical factors.

An avalanche of snow pack is often caused by such a complex net of factors that the phenomenon seems almost to possess life. One doesnt have to be a fanatical animist to sense, in some complex systems, businesses that resemble the commerce of life. One ready analogy is that an avalanche with its almost all-or-nothing response resembles the triggering of a nerve cell. A small irritant input, usually the mountaineer himself, unleashes an enormous orgasmic response.

Aggregation of loosely coupled elements can produce the slop needed for innovation. Counterfactuality in the mind is permitted by an elastic looseness. Likewise, systems such as avalanches defy easy prediction because they dont have to be one way.

Primitive peoples often credit such complex systems with a mentality or spirit. indeed, one does not have to be particularly superstitious to at times feel the presence of a sort of mind in a corniced snow pack. There is a character, a sort of irritable grouchiness at times, a playful perversity at others, but almost always a sense of being that comes from billions of flakes of snow that feel each others presence.

Crowd and flock behaviors resemble avalanches. Changes of public opinion can be swift; a mobs mood can snap into violent action as abruptly as a collapsing wall of snow. Nations may even have some of a snow packs perversity, for that matter.

Much of the effort to understand systems like avalanches, the weather, gas flow in internal combustion systems, and other swirly things has rested on an attempt to analyze microscopic elements. Perhaps some day, well have the mathematics and measuring devices to pull off this sort of analysis, but such reductionism often misses how the artists do it. The most savvy mountaineers, the most skilled engine tuners rely on an intuitive sense of the personalities of the medium they work with. Measurements have their place, to be sure, but a sense of the phenomenons personality often guides attempts to find solutions.

I think in time computer sciences will lead the way in developing classifications of big system personalities. Computer hardware readily lends itself to precise replication and in time, Im sure well develop the sensitivity to recognize big system minds as readily as we do a friends face. Even today, this is beginning to be true, as quirks in wiring and software can yield distinctive personalities in our existing computer systems. Randy Read, in correspondence with Douglas Hofstadter

.

Of course Im drawn to it because I agree with what he is saying; the gist of his letter jives with my intuition. But his eloquence is remarkable.

Every word moves the sentence. Im particularly drawn to the following phrases, which I chose carefully (especially the last one):

Have you any idea how hard it is to come up with shit like that?

Sure, he over-alliterates and sometimes repeats words. But he knows how to close sentences, how to leave you feeling firmly planted by a pause. And he does it without any trace of pretension, without over-writing. Rare, indeed.

.

.