Inner Life of the Cell
“So there you are sitting watching this on TV, and you’re thinking, ‘Well I’m pretty much doing nothing’, but your 72 trillion cells are a riot of magical, elegant, exquisitely organised activity…In you…Right now.” -Robert Krulwich, ABC News
Cosmos within
“Let a mite be given him, with its minute body and parts imcomparably more minute, limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops. Dividing these last things again, let him exhaust his powers of conception, and let the last object at which he can arrive be now that or our discourse. Perhaps he will think that here is the smallest point in nature. I will let him see therein a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the visible universe, but all that he can conceive of nature’s immensity in the womb of this abridged atom. Let him see therein an infinity of universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the visible world;…
Let him lose himself in wonders amazing in their littleness as the others in their vasness.”
-Blaise Pascal
Obfuscation
“Adrien, you’re stinky. Did you do a poo-poo?”
“no”
“Do you have a poo-poo in your diaper?”
“…”
“Do you have a poo-poo in your diaper?”
“yes”
“Ok, so did you do a poo-poo?”
“no”
“Then how did the poo-poo get in your diaper?”
“…”
“Hmmm? how?”
“very fast”
“So you did a poo-poo in your diaper then? You can tell me.”
“nooo”
“Adrien, where does the poo-poo come from then. You’re stinky”
“It comes by itself”
“Adrien you did a poo-poo didn’t you”
“no”
(Continues on this way for some time till I get tired and send him downstairs to mommy hoping she’ll change him)
Reading Tintin
Last night my six year old and I sat on the couch and read Tintin together. He read, I helped with some of the tougher words and concepts like ‘communism’ (One of Herge’s earlier books where Tintin is in Moscow). It was such a treat both because he was enjoying reading and enjoying Tintin’s adventure.
When I was a kid we didn’t have TV in our house and I grew up on Tintin and Asterix among other things, and I hoped they would have the same appeal to my sons as they did to me. But they have to compete with TV and Internet now so thats all we hear about.
But reading the comic has it’s own magic that it seems he appreciated and he said it was better than watching the Tintin cartoon. He’s looking forward to reading more of the books, and so am I!