Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chop them down and you have a cabin!
Burn it down and you have fertile ground!
Plant a tree in that fertile ground, and ... oh.
Here is today
91–100 of 116 posts
Re: Here is today
#92Amazed how old Earth actually is compared to the estimated age of the universe. Also, about how old is primitive cellular life.
Re: Here is today
#93Re: Here is today
#94Yeah, I like this, but it becomes less effective as the scale increases. At "Here is the Earth", the line for Today should be invisible (certainly not the same width as in "Here is this century"). It demonstrates the limits of this kind of explicitly visual approach.
By contrast, language, which leverages the imagination, can be even more effective at revealing how insignificant we are:
"...stretch your arms to their fullest extent and imagine that width as the entire [4.5 Billion year] history of the Earth. On this scale...the distance from the fingertips of one hand to the wrist of the other is Precambrian. All of complex life is in one hand, 'and in a single stroke with a medium-grained nail file you could eradicate human history.' " (from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything)
Another example of language illustrating an abstract concept better than visual/graphic design: If you filmed or animated the following thought-experiment, would it render it any more effective?
"Imagine people's height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending order of income.
The first passers-by, the owners of loss-making businesses, are invisible: their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor, who are midgets. After half an hour the strollers are still only waist-high, since America's median income is only half the mean. It takes nearly 45 minutes before normal-sized people appear. But then, in the final minutes, giants thunder by. With six minutes to go they are 12 feet tall. When the 400 highest earners walk by, right at the end, each is more than two miles tall."
Re: Here is today
#95What I find most interesting is that the dawn of anatomically modern humans is actually visible on the 4.54 billion year timeline of the Earth. 200,000 years out of 4.54 billion might only be about 1/23000 of our planet's history, but that's also a whole 1/23000!
Re: Here is today
#96Is it odd that I don't see the point of this? Don't get me wrong, this is skillfully crafted, and kudos to the developer, but I'm missing the 'why?'.
Re: Here is today
#97I've always wanted to do something like that! It's brilliant. You should add "here is your grand-grand mother, what's her name?" and "here will be your potential grand grand son, do you think they'll remember your name?"
Out of interest, what country are you from? I'm curious at the fact you called it 'grand-grand'. Here in Australia we use 'great grand(mother etc.)'. Must be a cultural thing.
I just guessed, I'm french :)
Re: Here is today
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious how it could prove accurate for that time frame? How could something like that be verified or proven?
It's all theoretical, in the same way that our understanding of gravity or radiation itself is theoretical.
It's more like a , you might get killed by a car if you step into the street kind of theoretical. Or the drip of a water clock will fill the container in 8 hours kind of theoretical. Or a don't plant too early or your people will starve kind of theoretical.
A theory in science is a model backed by the huge majority of observational evidence and the collective experience of the model's community. There are no other equivalent human institutions for reliability. None.
So saying "it's just a theory" in the case of uranium-dating is a fairly unreasoned attitude.
Re: Here is today
#99This is the first time I've seen something online that really made me go "Wow! I want to make something like this too!" And since I felt so strongly about this reaction, I messaged the guy behind the site (Luke Twyman) saying "Thanks for the inspiration!" It's quite a feeling being (a) inspired by something that you just bump into one day, and (b) being able to shoot the guy/gal behind it telling him/her how much you…
THE Haruki? If so, I read your book on running yesterday! What a wonderful coincidence. I was also very inspired (inspirational ripple going on here..) and decided to run every day instead of just every other day. Great read!
Edit: went to your website and found out, no, you're not Haruki Murakami. Sorry for confusing you with him!
Re: Here is today
#100What I find most interesting is that the dawn of anatomically modern humans is actually visible on the 4.54 billion year timeline of the Earth. 200,000 years out of 4.54 billion might only be about 1/23000 of our planet's history, but that's also a whole 1/23000!
If the period of time that humans have been around was drawn to scale, it wouldn't really be visible.
If we assume that the width of the bar for the life of the earth is 1500 pixels (the width changes depending on the window size), then the period we have been around will be around 0.06 pixels wide (1500/23000 = 0.065). Much closer to zero pixels than one pixel.