Winning Cosmos
This is the story of a competition I recently won. In an episode of the Skeptic Zone podcast published while I was in Sydney, Richard Saunders announced a competition: to take a photograph on the theme...
View ArticleFractal poetry, and other links
This post contains what purports to be a fractal poem. It’s not a bad poem in its own right, but the link to fractal geometry was too subjective for my taste. However, it got me thinking about what...
View ArticleVampire Women, a short story
I avoid sexual topics on this blog, for reasons best encapsulated in the phrase “more trouble than it’s worth“. I’d love to live in a world where a conversation about the diversity of human experience...
View ArticleLinks: 2015 — 4
There are several notable things to report on this month, though unusually, that doesn’t translate to a lot of links to share. You’ve probably heard the news that Terry Pratchett died recently. I’ve...
View ArticleLinks: 2015 — 8 (with a request or two)
I have, regrettably, been too busy to blog lately. But I’m here now. There are two personal items I’d like to discuss, so I’ll begin with the first, follow it with selected links from around the Web,...
View ArticleA monochrome pattern that’s simpler than it looks
The following pattern is, I think, quite pretty. I hope you agree. Here’s how it was made. First I made a simple pattern in Windows Paintbrush. Then I made a copy of the pattern in step one, and...
View ArticleThe Rabbit Who Lived Up An Elephant’s Trunk
This is a sequel to a blog post I wrote in 2008 on Illustrating Children’s Picture Books. Back then I described how I had attended a four-week adult education class of that description at the WEA...
View ArticleRoundup of things posted elsewhere
I have been very negligent about updating this blog, for all the usual reasons, mostly to do with time and its habit of insufficiency. That probably won’t change for a while, but here are a few things...
View ArticleGanjifa revisited
For a long time I’ve been fascinated by the Indian playing cards known as Ganjifa, which represent a different branch of the history of playing cards from the more familiar 52-card deck. In 2011 I...
View ArticleBeware mermaids
I originally posted the following on Google+ in 2016. Since G+ is due to be retired in the near future I’ve been making case-by-case decisions about what to do with my posts. Some are ephemeral and I’m...
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