The acknowledgments in the front of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, which I’m currently reading, include a reference to Fernand Braudel. I’d never heard of him before, so I looked him up.

Beneath the rapid succession of events on a human scale, which the historian likens to ripples on the ocean’s surface, Fernand Braudel attempts to charter a course through deeper waters to find the slower currents typical of the history of human groups relating to their environment, the structures that shape societies, be it essential trading and sailing routes or mentalities.

This led me to think: what era do we live in? There are many ways to think about it. We could say that we live in:

– the post-9/11 world

– the Internet era

– the world made by the countercultural movement

– the post-World War II era

– the age of electricity

– the age of democracy (begun in the 1770’s)

– the modern era (begun in the Renaissance)

– the era of human civilization (begun 5,000 years ago?)

– the era of homo sapiens

And even further back.

We’re all really just specks in the grand scale of things. Sometimes it’s good to step back from the day-to-day events in the news and get some perspective on those slower, deeper currents that we rarely notice.

Bush Backs Condom Use to Prevent Spread of AIDS

Well, I wasn’t expecting that.

Mr. Bush has mentioned condom use at least once before, last July, in Entebbe, Uganda. But mentioning it in a domestic context is quite different.

“I can’t believe the president actually used the C-word,” said Amy Coen, the president of Population Action International, which has long backed birth control and AIDS prevention in underdeveloped countries. “That’s not one that comes easily to him. But it’s one thing to use the word and another thing to actually fund it.”

One can hope.