(excerpted from “Class Notes: the busy child’s guide to future history”)
From one perspective mankind’s present journey, of which we are so proud and humble and glad to be a part, began in the deep past, almost one thousand years ago, as a despairing but nonetheless epic attempt to undo the consequences of what made it [...]
Archive for the ‘History of Science’ Category
A Brand New Day
Posted in History of Science on July 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
On board The Rorqual
Posted in History of Science on December 15, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Sunlight through a transparent ceiling—shafts of swaying, rippling green—and an absurdly childish memory of an awestruck little boy holding his breath. Excited, blissful, scared. Hauling himself up from the depths, rung by slow rung towards the surface, from a mile or more below—
And woke back terrified, alone.
The dream was still more real to him than [...]
What is PAT?
Posted in History of Science on December 11, 2006 | 1 Comment »
ARTEFACTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY (cont.)
PART XIV: PAT, or the idée fixe as a creative tool
From WIKIPEDIA:
Fixational eye movements (also known as fixational instability, retinal jitter) are small, involuntary eye movements that occur during visual fixation. There are three categories of fixational eye movements: microsaccades, ocular drifts, and ocular microtremor. Although their existence has been [...]
Ricky Yuan
Posted in History of Science on December 9, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
PROLOGUE
I’m travelling through an empty place. It’s dark. I can see the lights of distant stars all around me, and beyond them the beautiful, swirling, shell-like glow of even more distant galaxies and galactic clusters. It’s incredible but weird.
If I could stop I’d feel better.
Now I’ve stopped falling. I’m sitting upright in what seems to [...]
