The fourth dimension of place.
Notes from a Motorcycle FilmWhich I watched on the bus.
A wire back through timeA narrator is called by himself, 40 years from now.
Darwin on his DeathbedThe words were lost; he speaks to an unknown secretary.
The PayoffA word on astronomy.
Until the Water Boils...something you do with cloth and paper.
The Mechanical EndCalling it a day in the information age.
Opportunities to LearnThere will be a test on this, later.
The Time-Filled RoomPaul went for a walk and thought of rooms empty of events.
Chronological ChauvinismPaul Ford and Scott Rahin discuss the earth as a container for time; Scott introduces the concept of chronological chauvinism.
Looking at the NumbersWith a needle and thread in my hand.
10 Decades of SeparationBetween any two people we now assume 6 degrees of separation. Across
race, class, and geography, the line from you to anyone else has a
maximum of 4 (or is it 5) people between.
I wish though there was some way to add time as an axis. For instance,
I'll draw a line between Queen Victoria and myself:
My father used to caddy in New Haven. And one of the men for whom he
caddied - this is in the 1940s - was a lawyer for Hartford Life,
around 55. He'd grown up on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and when
he was 13 and 14 had run errands for an old woman who lived in the
West Village. The old woman was now firmly middle class, but still had
pretensions of her former station.
He went for her groceries and helped her put in new light bulbs. One
day she sat him down and made him tea - he liked coffee more but
didn't complain, because normally she gave him a dollar a week. And
she told him proudly about dancing with the Prince of Wales in 1860.
It was the greatest ball ever in New York. I was 19, she said. All the
girls danced with him. It was 3 AM and I looked in his eyes. I had
been introduced.
Of course he was handsome; he was a prince.
My father was a caddy, but I know nothing of
I cannot draw a line between Queen Victoria and myself. Any such line
is lost to history, or for those with histories written more clearly. m
That's a lie.
I can draw a direct line between Sinclair Lewis, Thornton Wilder,
Martin Luther King, some doctors in Turkey.
I wonder how many degrees between Hitler and Beethoven and I. In the
history of music you often find it.
5 Days with No Human ContactA variation on the vertical theme.
Social PlaceStories of one's place in the wider world of human behavior.
City of TomorrowAll those buildings. A photo illustration done at work.