I’m not a religious man in the conventional observant sense. But I am spiritual. For example, as I’ve written, whenever I visit Cradle Mountain I feel the presence of something I can’t explain, but seemingly a strong preternatural force. Two days ago, when darling Emily, Jono and I walked up to Marion’s lookout and then around Dove Lake, I felt it again, even though apart from brief glimpses The Mountain was shrouded in cloud and mist. I have a theory that each person has a hardwired affinity to mountain vistas or sea vistas, but not to both equally. If so then I’m unequivocally in the former group. But I digress. Because what I want to say is that there are some man-made creations that evoke awe in me, albeit not with any sense of spirituality. Here are two, and they’re related to one another: The Google search engine never fails to impress and excite me. Searching the entire World Wide Web in a fraction of a second is astounding, astonishing, dumbfounding. And patterns in Google search queries can be very informative. Last year a Google team began to explore if search queries could accurately model real-world phenomena. Last Tuesday Google launched Google Flu Trends which to date accurately mirrors true data (for the USA). Amazing. But nowhere near as amazing as Cradle Mountain.
3 comments:
FWIW, I definitely have always had a hard wired affinity to sea vistas.. and I've always wondered why!! That was one of my questions for you..
And I too am amazed, astounded and bewildered by the speed and info of Google.
But as you wrote yesterday, the wonder of grandparenthood leaves everything else far behind!!!
Anyway, I love you heaps xx
The view WAS amazing, as was the scroggin, the falafel (home made pita!), the jackets on-jackets off-jackets on, and breathing the freshest and purest air in the world ... but NOTHING compared to the euphoria of being able to share it all with my two favourite men.
Thank you Farmdoc, for every single step.
xox
On 4 June 2009 Google launched its flu trend web page for Australia. Here is the article and here is the direct link. Regrettably, as the article explains, Tasmania and the Northern Territory aren't included.
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