Solnit
I borrowed some kids to go gawk with me at the one thing that we can always count on in an ever-more unstable world: age-of-dinosaur dioramas in science museums. This one had the usual dramatic clash between a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops; pterodactyls soaring through the air, one with a small reptile in its toothy maw; and some oblivious grazing by what, when I was young in another millennium, we would have called a brontosaurus. Easy to overlook in all that drama was the shrew-like mammal perched on a reed or thick blade of grass, too small to serve even as an enticing pterodactyl snack. The next thing coming down the line always looks like that mammal at the beginning – that’s what I told the kids – inconsequential, beside the point; the official point usually being the clash of the titans.
That’s exactly why mainstream journalists spent the first decade of this century debating the meaning of the obvious binaries […]
Rebecca Solnit, The Age of Mammals
[x]#2354 fan donderdag 21 december 2006 @ 00:08:36
