What? So the other morning at about 6:00 AM, in a sleep-deprived, over-worked haze fueled by both stimulants and depressants, I got to thinking about design. Design, and fighter jets. (It was a rough night)

Why fighter jets? Despite the nasty business that causes them to be, fighter jets are still literally awesome expressions of design. They are the purest visible examples of embodied performance, their forms honed solely by the forces of aerodynamic necessity. This is engineering without constraints, especially none of the incredibly arbitrary restrictions that limit, say, Formula 1, often pointed to as the pinnacle of design engineering. And on a purely aesthetic level, it always amazes me how beautiful and “right” their lines look, despite - or because of - their functional role.

Now I’m sure if we’d invested the $62 billion spent on the new F-22 Raptor’s budget solving all the world’s problems there would be countless examples of awe-inspiringly beautiful design produced as a result. But that’s never going to happen, so I figure I might as well try to derive some aesthetic satisfaction from the result while I go on consciously hating it with my left brain.