Using the language of topology to describe complex systems, leads to new insights about waves and weather patterns on earth. Some features of fluid flow on Earth can be explained by principles that traditionally apply to quantum systems.
Love? I will tell thee what it is to love! It is to build with human thoughts a shrine, where hope sits brooding like a beauteous dove; where time seems young, and life a thing divine. All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combine to consecrate this sanctuary of bliss. Above, the stars in cloudless beauty shine; around, the streams their flowery margins kiss; and if there’s heaven on earth, that heaven is surely this.
The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist.
Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm.
Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors’ wives and widows.
A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm.
Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable.
The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit.
Chapter 3 – The Chapel, Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times over many years and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers.
The introduction begins like this:
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space. Listen…”