Word: retina
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...look as if it belonged in Heaven. That could only be accomplished by the sheer hallucinatory pressure of religious vision, skewed at an angle to match the orthodoxy of the times. The isolated exemplar was William Blake: in 1810, in Vision of the Last Judgment, angels danced on his retina: " 'What,' it will be Question'd, 'When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?' O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying 'Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almight...
Micro-Art by Lewis R. Wolberg, 291 pages. Abrams. $25. A first-class attempt to prove visually that less is more. Photographer Wolberg offers a short history of microscopes, then dazzles the reader's retina with 220 amazing photographic enlargements of everything from the female sex organs of moss (blown up 300 times), to a virus (160,000 times its actual size) that greatly resembles an archipelago. The colors and textures are gorgeous, but at the price, they are a costly pleasure...
...backlash among serious critics: Were her paintings any more than a game with the retina? Indeed, they were; and the proof is a full-scale retrospective, opening this week at the Kunstverein in Hannover, Germany...
...sure, Last Things is technically about death. Snow's alter ego, Sir Lewis Eliot, reaches his 60s. A number of old friends die, as old friends will. And on Nov. 28, 1965, Eliot's heart stops for 3½ minutes during an operation for floating retina. Many medical details and a hint of geriatrics, though, do not add up to a philosophical treatment of death. In the end, Last Things is less an ode to mortality than a lip reading through the obituary column...
...have proposed a more plausible explanation: cosmic rays. Though only some of these high-speed particles-mostly protons-manage to break through the shield of the earth's magnetic field, they can easily penetrate the eyelids of a space traveler, pass through the eye fluid and strike the retina. At times, they may even hit the brain's optic nerve. Such bombardment causes no serious damage during a short lunar mission. But since the effect of cosmic rays on the body is cumulative-like that of X rays-they could present a greater peril on prolonged space voyages...