cupcakewizard
ID: RM7MN4LV
Member 93
19 entries
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Aimee Smith (F)
Los Angeles, US
Immortal since Apr 16, 2007
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    Now playing SpaceCollective
    Where forward thinking terrestrials share ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction. Introduction
    Featuring Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, based on an idea by Kees Boeke.
    From cupcakewizard's personal cargo

    Welcome to Who-Ville
    A lovely little book is about to make it to the big screen.

    Dr. Seuss's 'Horton Hears A Who' is about an elephant named Horton who is shocked to find that a speck of dust, which he has happened upon, is trying to communicate with him. What Horton discovers is that this speck of dust is actually a microscopic society called 'Who-Ville'. The inhabitants are of such minuscule proportions that our protagonist cannot even see them, however he can hear them. The Whos enlist Horton as their protector and he gladly obliges, standing guard for his vulnerable new friends. His vigilance does not go unnoticed by the other animals in Horton's jungle and as a result, he is ridiculed and even put in grave danger because no one else can hear the Whos that he so strongly believes in.

    Horton urges the Whos to make their presence be known by taking a stance and rallying all the members of Who-Ville so that their collective voice will be heard, which in the end they are greatly successful at.

    I love the simple metaphors in this story; You're never too small or insignificant. Be open to the possibility of a whole other world existing just around the corner.


    Sat, Nov 24, 2007  Permanent link
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    folkert     Wed, Dec 5, 2007  Permanent link
    I like the speck of dust metaphor. Along similar lines, here is one of my favorite excerpts from the Hitchhiker's Guide – imagining far beyond everyday conceptions of scale:

    "Careless talk"

    It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.

    For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.

    The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.

    A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.

    The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table.

    Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.

    Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.

    For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

    Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.

    "It's just life," they say.
     
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