Post-It Architecture

While rummaging through our stationery cupboard at work, I noticed that there was a wider range of 'Post-It' note sizes than I had previously realised. So I took a few of each and noticed later that they were in proportion to each other. Stacking them, I found that they could be built into differently shaped architectures (if that is the right word). Here is an example:

Optical Confuion

We have all heard of optical illusions but what about 'optical confusions'? The first image below is physically impossible and can be described as an optical illusion. I do not know how the second image was created but it is not impossible as such. It can be classed as an illusion but I wonder if 'confusion' is not a more appropriate term.

Optical Illusion

Optical Confusion

Epictetus - 24

From: The Golden Sayings of Epictetus (translated by Hastings Crossley) - from Project Gutenberg.


CLXXI
In company avoid frequent and undue talk about your own actions and dangers. However pleasant it may be to you to enlarge upon the risks you have run, others may not find such pleasure in listening to your adventures. Avoid provoking laughter also: it is a habit from which one easily slides into the ways of the foolish, and apt to diminish the respect which your neighbors feel for you. To border on coarse talk is also dangerous. On such occasions, if a convenient opportunity offer, rebuke the speaker. If not, at least by relapsing into silence, colouring, and looking annoyed, show that you are displeased with the subject.

Stupidity

To put it bluntly, I have had to put up with other people's stupidity again recently. (I will not go into details but I have also had to do this in a university setting: the very setting were one would expect intelligence and open-mindedness to prevail.) This has brought to mind two pertinent quotations. One from the Bible, the other from an atheist. It seems that nobody can stand stupidity.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. (AV)
Proverbs 17: 28

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he understands.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Tartan

I found an app - which I still have on an old ipod somewhere - that allows the user to make their own tartan. So I had a go with some of my favourite colours - aware that I also like right angles and rectangles. This is a result from my experimentation:

I'm sure that there are other tartan creation tools available elsewhere online. (I must seek them out sometime.)