[spne]

Your description of research as "pebbles" reminds me of this representation of PhD research (posted on HN a couple years ago). I like how it captures the idea of pushing out the boundaries of what we know just a tiny bit at a time.

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

[pests]

Thanks for posting this. His comment immediately reminded me of this and I was about to try to find this exact page.