Above it (and below it) all…
Readers who enjoyed Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten (and who wouldn’t?) will likely be amused by the homage in a pair of recent xkcd strips… looking up…
and looking down…
As we consider our place in the scheme of things, we might recall that it was on this date in 1764 that Edward Gibbon commenced his epic history, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. As he recalled, “It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter [presently the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli], that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind … But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the City, rather than of the Empire.”
