Deadpoet’s Cave

I received an email from Anand, a fellow Toddycat, about the relative size of Earth compared to various heavenly bodies (not the Scarlett Johansson kind. Although the word globes comes to mind). I’m not sure where Anand picked up the graphics, but I googled and found them at The Size of Our World.

Those illustrations brought to mind the Powers of 10, which looks at Universe from very far away and zooms in on to the Earth, eventually to the level of quarks, at distance intervals of powers of 10. They also brought to mind the ending of Men in Black:

In the final scene of the film the camera pans back into the sky and continues to pan through space past our solar system past millions of stars ultimately revealing that our galaxy is contained within a circular container resembling a marble.

This sounds vaguely like the video above from Sesame Street. It is one of my favourite Sesame Street clips. For some reason, it caught my attention way back when. The tune has since been etched in my mind.

Thanks to YouTube, I managed to watch it once again. I’m not sure whether it sparked my interest in science, but I’m sure it helped. The animation fascinates me even now, filling me with wonder and awe, as it did back then.

Watching it now is comforting somehow. I am also reminded of the scene in Amelie where one of the characters finds his childhood keepsakes and wells up with emotion. Cheesy as it may sound, I think I know how he felt.

I dug a little further, and I came across this list of songs from Sesame Street. The man responsible for the segment is Bud Luckey. Interestingly, if you’ve watched Pixar’s The Incredibles, you’ve watched one of his creations: Boundin’. This short animated film is his work, and it shares a distinctive style with That’s about the size of it.

Thanks, Mr Luckey!

Infinity (That’s about the size of it)
Composed, animated and sung by Bud Luckey with lyrics by Don Hadley

Oh, everything comes in its own special size
I guess it can be measured
By where you put your eyes
It looks big when you’re close
It looks smaller back a bit
That’s about the size of it

That’s about the size
It’s where you put your eyes
That’s about the size of it

Oh, the big becomes the little
When you see it back a bit
The huge becomes the dinky
Which is just the opposite
Of the larger that gets smaller
It never seems to quit (most online sources say ‘fit’)
That’s about the size of it

That’s about the size
It’s where you put your eyes
That’s about the size of it

That the big becomes the little
That’s the way it seems to go
They make up a larger thing
It’s something good to know
It’s nice to know that though we’re small
There’s always room to grow
And that’s about the size of it

That’s about the size
It’s where you put your eyes
That’s about the size of it

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