First I'd like to thank Diane and Dan P and Mrs. Oksana H for making today possible, and thank you for those of you who have come to join us to celebrate this day with Kevin and Renata. So they tell me that I’ve been invited here to lecture you on how the Kevin you know became the person he is. If you have any questions, we’ll have a formal Q and A following the lecture1.
The first topic I’d like to introduce is motion.
Perpetual motion is defined by "Motion that continues indefinitely without any external source of energy".
Similarly Kevin's childhood is defined by "Motion that continues indefinitely with or without an opposing force".
Example 1: put Kevin at the bottom of a snowy hill with a sled. Example 2: put Kevin at the bottom of a grassy hill with a large box.
Example 3: put Kevin near a staircase with a sleeping bag.
You get the idea. Hours of entertainment. The more physical it was, the longer Kevin would persist. Today his challenges are a bit less physical, but he is no less enduring2.
Our next topic shifts from kinematics to optics.
A reflection is the production of an image by or as if by a mirror.
Well, I didn’t need a mirror to see my reflection. This may surprise you, Kevin used to follow me around when we were little.
Everywhere.
And to add to the shock value, in about 60% of the old photos I have, Kevin and I are wearing matching clothing, and not on just on formal occasions!
But as quickly as the matching clothes faded, Kevin was no longer following me but instead leading his own crowd - one which I was always welcome to join, and I often did.
It has been Kevin's ability to be a good leader that has driven him far through life. But more impressive is his ability listen, follow, and do what needs to be done for the sake of others.
Let’s shift focus from optics to chemistry.
A solvent is a substance that dissolves another to form a solution.
We’ll get back to that in a minute.
For now, I have to say that I am especially glad to be here on this occasion. Living in California, I don't see Kevin that much anymore.
We do talk, but we don't have the same opportunities to say, go out for late night Mexican food. Ever since Kevin moved to the city, he's been more than welcoming to have anyone visit or stay for the night. He's also been more than welcoming to have friends and family come over to help him paint, install things, etc.
Watching Kevin paint is actually a spectacle. You never know what you're going to get. Let his painting history speak for itself:
Example 1: Painting his condo - no one knows what he did, but what he didn't do was get an even coat on the wall – or ceiling for that matter.
Example 2: Staining the fence at my mom’s house - ...along with the side of my mom’s house.
Example 3: The one that takes the crown would have to be the white bathroom to which he added blue-sponged polka dots. Large semi-uniform sponge prints of bright blue, bright blue, from floor to ceiling.
But Kevin was always ready to get things done…
Moving on to thermodynamics:
If you look up entropy, you will find two definitions.
The first is a measure of disorder or randomness in a closed system. The second shows a picture of the nest of disorder and randomness under Kevin’s bed.
Have you ever played a board game with Kevin?
I didn't think so. Few of us have had this pleasure.
The longer-lasting the game, the better. Everything starts out as it's supposed to. Taking turns, following rules. Taking more turns, adding more rules. Taking away pieces to compensate...
We rarely finished any game that we started. That is, unless Kevin was winning.
One thing we were always civil about playing was Micro Machines. We had a serious process:
First: divide up the cars, carefully selecting one by one. Which Lamborghini was better, the black one with the flip doors or the red on with black detail? Kevin automatically gets the Ferrari. But who gets the aircraft carrier?
Next: After about 30 minutes of deliberation, we would... hmmm. I don't recall anything ever happening once we picked cars.
But I can tell you what we didn't do, and that was put them away. Just our way of passively introducing entropy into the system, and believe me, the entropy was always increasing in the toy room.
Now let’s return to dynamics.
Friction is the force that resists motion in the direction of movement.
One thing that Kevin and I have always had in common is our love for travel and the outdoors. Ten years ago3 we traveled up the coast of Australia and then traveled through southern New Zealand for a week. We learned how to surf on some of the ocean's smallest waves in Byron Bay, the surfing capital of Australia, and then two weeks later were hiking the Fox Glacier and skiing Mt. Hutt in New Zealand.
The general idea behind skis is having optimized surface area and minimal friction. Skiing Mt. Hutt was interesting. Shortly after Kevin upgraded our skis to Performance (aka lower friction) skis, a dense fog and ice rain settled in and persisted through the rest of the day. Being the cautious one, I followed Kevin as he darted down, both of us blinded by ice and fogging sunglasses.
We decided to return several days later only to find out we had been skiing a well-chiseled rocky slope with cliffs and drop-offs we couldn't even see. But now that we could was an excuse to go even faster. That's the Kevin I ski with.
We’re going to skip Bernoulli’s Principle for this next concept.
Flying, according to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
The problem is of course gravity, which is elegantly defined as the attraction of two physical bodies.
A few years ago, my wife, Caroline, and I found a rustic little log cabin to live in, right off the Fox River. We were serious gluttons for punishment; as if the river weren't enough, there were swamps galore spreading flocks of mosquitoes across the area.
But with our cabin we had a pier, and Kevin had a boat. I've only been out on the boat a handful of times. Like Kevin says, "you can feel every wave on it!" as if that's a good thing.
I'll admit, it's fun to ride in unless you're stuck in the front. The front of his boat is the river equivalent of a mechanical bull.
So I kind of chuckled when I first met Renata, the two of them on their way for a boat ride. Whatever gravity brought them together, I was skeptical of whether that force was strong enough to counter the effects of his boat.
I'm just going to go ahead and assume that he didn't make her ride in front.
Which leads me to my last concept of the evening: Cohesion.
Cohesion is defined as the action or fact of forming a united whole - it is the attractive force that holds two things together.
To be honest, we weren’t sure that both Kevin and Renata would make it back after that first boat ride. Or if they did, whether we’d ever see her again. It didn’t take us long to recognize that these two were experiencing a very strong cohesive force, as they were effectively, and have been ever since, inseparable.
Let’s open up the floor to any Questions.
If there are no questions, could everyone please raise your glass for Kevin and Renata: for a lifetime of happiness, cohesion, and paint thinner!
This was a best-man speech I gave for my brother and sister-in-law over 10 years ago. I recognized at the time that my method of communication what I was passionate about didn’t resonate with, well, anyone outside of a highly technical field. This speech was given in front of about 400 people who only knew me as a ‘smarty-pants’ type who talked above everyone’s head. My goal when writing this was to both be myself - because I like to talk about technical things - and be relatable to a few hundred people I have never met or have never really connected with.
At the time of writing this speech, Kevin had not yet procreated. At this time, his challenges are just as, if not more, physical than they were, now that he and Renata have two boys closing in on 8 and 10 that are very much like their dad in terms of energy dissipation.
Now over 20 years ago!