Tom Veatch

Flames of inspiration often leave smoke signals behind.
From mine, these.


Publications

Veatch 1991, English Vowels

A U Penn dissertation in Linguistics comprising acoustic physics, articulatory phonetics, surface phonology, dialectology, and historical linguistics, all regarding that most understood niche in knowledge of that most interesting species, us

N+V Humor Theory

Veatch's 1998 "A Theory of Humor"

Self-focusing lasers

Soileau, Franck, and Veatch, 1981, On Self-Focusing and Spot-Size Dependence of Laser-Induced Breakdown. pp385-393 of Laser Induced Damage in Optical Materials: 1980, proceedings of a Symposium Sponsored by the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder Colorado. Not laser-like focus on self as in the later Veatch, but as in actual lasers doing self-focusing, in which the concentrated laser energy is so great that the material it focusses onto heats itself up and changes its optical properties so light beams don't just cross there but bend back again and again past the focal point: it doesn't just focus to its focus but keeps on staying focussed at a tiny focal point, sometimes producing a tiny explosion as a line or as spots or pops or explosions all in a line inside the material. Nice. Both actually and metaphorically. In which I pressed the Fire button many many times, watching for a bright light, and recording the outcome. In which, further, we discovered that lasers don't actually explode things as much as we hoped.


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Modified: 12/20/2021