A nostalgia inducing piece - Before the Internet by
Emma Rathbone
“Before the Internet,
you would just sit in an armchair with a book open on your lap, staring into
space or staring at a decorative broom on the wall—kind of shifting back and
forth between those two modes of being.”
On This Summer Solstice, Be Glad You Live on Earth by Alan
Burdick
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/on-this-summer-solstice-be-glad-you-live-on-earth
“Summer is a separate matter. A planet’s seasons are shaped by two factors: the eccentricity of its orbit—whether it’s closer to the sun at some times of the year than at others—and the tilt of its axis. Earth’s orbit is essentially circular, so the effect on our climate is negligible. But the planet itself leans twenty-three degrees to the side; as we orbit, there comes a day when the North Pole is maximally tilted toward the sun and the Northern Hemisphere sees more daylight than it will all year. That’s today, the summer solstice. (Below the equator, it’s the winter solstice, of course, and in six months our situations will reverse.) If we weren’t off-kilter, we’d have no summer nor any seasons at all.”
“Summer is a separate matter. A planet’s seasons are shaped by two factors: the eccentricity of its orbit—whether it’s closer to the sun at some times of the year than at others—and the tilt of its axis. Earth’s orbit is essentially circular, so the effect on our climate is negligible. But the planet itself leans twenty-three degrees to the side; as we orbit, there comes a day when the North Pole is maximally tilted toward the sun and the Northern Hemisphere sees more daylight than it will all year. That’s today, the summer solstice. (Below the equator, it’s the winter solstice, of course, and in six months our situations will reverse.) If we weren’t off-kilter, we’d have no summer nor any seasons at all.”