The faces of this polyhedron are 12 regular pentagons, 20 equilateral triangles, 30 rhombi, and 60 almost-square trapezoids. I created it with Stella 4d, which is available at this website.
Tag Archives: internet
Warning: Escaped Genetic Experiment on the Loose!
At 47, My Age Is a Prime Number Again =D
For some reason, I like having my age be a prime number of years. Today, I turn 47, so I get to have a prime-number-age for a whole year now. This hasn’t happened since I was 43, so I made this 47-pointed star to celebrate:
I also make birthday-stars for composite-number ages as well, just because it’s fun, and you can find at least two others on this blog, on January 12, in past years. Also, I wouldn’t want to have to wait until I’m 53 (my next prime age) to make another one of these.
At the moment, I certainly don’t feel 47. There are times when I feel twenty-two . . .
There are also times when I feel six.
At the moment, however, I feel about thirty. For that reason, I put the 47-pointed stars on the thirty faces of a rotating rhombic triacontahedron, because (a) it’s my birthday, (b) I want to, and (c) I can.
Image/music credits:
- I created this using Geometer’s Sketchpad and MS-Paint.
- “When Yer Twenty-Two,” by The Flaming Lips, via a YouTube posting.
- Two panels from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, by Bill Watterson. (Calvin is perpetually six years old.)
- Created using the image at the top of this post, and the program Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, which is available here.
The Misadventures of Jynx the Kitten, Chapter Two: Jynx vs. My Computer
Jynx: 1, Computer: 0.
Tonight’s feline insanity started while we were watching Star Trek — the episode where Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock go up against a planet full of nuclear-armed Space Nazis.
Apparently, cats — or, at least, this cat — find Nazis disturbing, which, of course, they were — and will be again, if they appear in the 23rd Century . . . because some half-crazed future historian went and violated the Prime Directive, becoming, a few years later, a fully-crazed future historian. Jynx was so incredibly disturbed by the Space Nazis, in fact, that he bounced over pillows and blankets, in a series of nicely Newtonian . . .
‘
&^ (Stop that, Jynx!)
. . . parabolic arcs, to land on my computer. He then proceeded to pause the episode — then close my browser (the picture-moment, with my wife laughing hysterically as she took it), and finally tried to bite the heads off several Space Nazis as the screen slowly darkened. After due consideration, Jynx decided this was not enough, and so, next, he reached out a paw, and quickly turned my computer completely off. A smug look followed. You haven’t seen a look this smug, unless, maybe, you’ve also seen one on the face of a kitten.
Getting it (my computer, not Jynx) turned back on was not easy. For a little while, in fact, I thought Jynx had destroyed the Internet. In reality, the Internet had been fine all along, for this picture, taken a little earlier, with a tablet, got to my e-mail account almost instantly. It took much longer, however, for me to actually get to my e-mail account.
My computer now has tiny bite marks all over it, and plays Radiohead’s song “2 + 2 = 5” so slowly that it’s turned the song into “1.5 + 1.5 = π” – and that song sounds terrible.
I hope my computer lives long enough for this post to make it to my blog. In the meantime, Jynx reigns — OW! — triumphant.
[2016 update: that computer is now officially dead. Jynx the Cat lives on.]
Hello, Out There!
Image
This map shows where the hits on this blog have come from, since its inception.
A notable exception: Iran shows zero hits. However, I know that people in Iran have seen https://robertlovespi.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/love-letters-from-iran/ — but access to the Internet from inside Iran is difficult. Hits from inside Iran show up on this map, no doubt, but they show up as hits from other, less repressive countries.
I also don’t believe for one moment that no one from China has seen my blog. The suspiciously high number of hits from Taiwan make me suspect Internet traffic is simply being routed from The People’s Republic, through Taiwan, to get to the rest of the world.
Information wants to be free. People do, too — and are finding ways around those forces which seek to control us.