Wednesday 10 December 2008
Steps by Carlo Scarpa
The Butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colours and symmetry, deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the pertubing mystery of metamorphosis; the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.
Primo Levi
Friday 5 December 2008
Thursday 4 December 2008
Threshold
From a physical standpoint, a black hole is a marvelously simple object, far simpler then the earth or a human being... When a black hole first forms, its horizon may have a grotesque shape and may be wildly vibrating. Within a fraction of a second, however, the horizon should settle down into a unique smooth shape. If the hole is not rotating, its shape will be absolutely spherical. Rotation, however, will flatten it at the poles just as rotation slightly flattens the earth.
Kip S. Thorne 'The Search for Black Holes'
Monday 21 April 2008
Nomadic Object
Monday 26 November 2007
Thursday 22 November 2007
Monday 19 November 2007
The Real Thing
HENRY: (holding his cricket bat). This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly...(he clucks his tongue to make the noise). What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might... travel...(he clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.) Now, what we've got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance around shouting 'ouch!' with your hands stuck into your armpits. (Indicating the cricket bat.) This isn't better because someone says it's better, or because there's a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lord's. It's better because it's better.
Tom Stoppard
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