Books

We probably all know someone who absorbs information readily, whether from textbooks or travel guides, and spews it out ad infinitum when a key word or phrase triggers their inner…Read more

Having done no portraits in eleven days says something about my current mental state.  Not a lot admittedly, but… At breakfast – which is our primary conversation setting.  I…Read more

In a dream, you envision yourself a very clever and fortunate worm in the core of a ‘Granny Smith’ apple. You are endowed with X-ray vision so you can…Read more

Gravitational lensing smears images of more distant galaxies into crescent shapes within a few seconds of arc from the center of the lensing cluster and its own orbiting galaxies. …Read more

What was the prehistoric artist celebrating when he sculpted the Venus of Willendorf?  Did he or she perceive her as a deity, an ideal, as representative of female members…Read more

I ran across this the other day; I cannot warrant its authenticity but it rings true for what Richard Dawkins might have said. It’s a theme I have reiterated…Read more

The Poisson equation was at issue in the centuries long debate about whether an infinite stationary state universe would collapse under its own weight.  It describes the behavior of…Read more

Around the year 1637 Pierre de Fermat boasted: “To divide a cube into two cubes, a fourth power, or in general any power whatever into two powers of the…Read more

After having posted the previous post on facebook, one of my facebook friends responded as follows: “Why do you post such material here rather than send it to a…Read more

We tend to think of lenses as transparent localized regions in space where optical refraction or gravitational deflection occurs. Light transmitted through these regions will pass a point at…Read more