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People who’d argued that interstellar travel was financially impractical had reckoned without the immense commercial possibilities of having a story to tell to an audience of over eight billion consumers.
Terri liked this
“This innate structure, this latent structure, is not fully developed at birth, nor is it too obvious at the age of eighteen months. But then, suddenly, and in the most dramatic way, the developing child becomes open to language, becomes able to construct a grammar from the utterances of his parents. He shows a spectacular ability, a genius for language, between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six months”
― Seeing Voices
― Seeing Voices
“Questions for U2: ‘What record would you like to make – i.e. how would you like this to be read? How would you like to get there? Does it bother you if the result is ‘undemocratic’? How much cheating is allowed? How much me?’ Lincoln’s axe: ‘This is Lincoln’s original axe. The head has been replaced three times and the handle twice.”
― A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary
― A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary
“Nuclear weapons were a discontinuous change in human power. At Hiroshima, a single bomb did the damage of thousands. And six years later, a single thermonuclear bomb held more energy than every explosive used in the entire course of the Second World War.43”
― The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
― The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
“signed language is not merely proselike and narrative in structure, but essentially “cinematic” too: In a signed language … narrative is no longer linear and prosaic. Instead, the essence of sign language is to cut from a normal view to a close-up to a distant shot to a close-up again, and so on, even including flashback and flash-forward scenes, exactly as a movie editor works.… Not only is signing itself arranged more like edited film than like written narration, but also each signer is placed very much as a camera: the field of vision and angle of view are directed but variable. Not only the signer signing but also the signer watching is aware at all times of the signer’s visual orientation to what is being signed about.”
― Seeing Voices
― Seeing Voices
“I was struck by the graphic quality, the fullness of her descriptions. Her parents spoke too of this fullness: “All the characters or creatures or objects Charlotte talks about are placed,” her mother said; “spatial reference is essential to ASL. When Charlotte signs, the whole scene is set up; you can see where everyone or everything is; it is all visualized with a detail that would be rare for the hearing.” This placing of objects and people in specific locations, this use of elaborate, spatial reference had been striking in Charlotte, her parents said, since the age of four and a half—already at that age she had gone beyond them, shown a sort of “staging” power, an “architectural” power that they had seen in other deaf people—but rarely in the hearing.”
― Seeing Voices
― Seeing Voices
Stephen’s 2025 Year in Books
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