Nathan Sawaya, LEGO Artistry

I have been getting into the work of Nathan Sawaya, who makes sculptures out of LEGO bricks


Nathan Sawaya at work

Check out pictures of his work here.

In praise of repetition?

Just read James Dyson's Wired blog post called "In Praise of Failure", characterizing the trail-and-error nature of innovation.

Overall, I found his characterization of invention dead-on. However, I've noticed that Dyson Labs tends to use the same basic mechanism (centrifugal force) and applies it to all his new creations (e.g. the cyclone and air multiplier technologies). If each of his creations consisted of a novel mechanism, would the failure rate be much higher? Or is it an inventor's process that is key to successful innovation (with a healthy dose of failure, of course)?

It appears that each inventor has their own style: Edison would exhaustively prototype an idea, Dyson uses the "template" approaches, and others use whatever they are most comfortable with. And that might be the most important take-home message of this article: invention is a creative activity, and so it must be done in a way that allows the inventor maximum inspiration.

What's at syntheticdaisies.blogpot.com?

One letter missed, and I get this:



Wonder if I can buy rapture cookies from them (nougat-filled, with a swirl in the center the shape of the Virgin Mary)? Definitely optimized for Netscape 2.0 (circa mid-90s).

Surrealism of the Month III

The definition of surrealism is....machine gun jubblies.



This, as far as I can tell, is the living definition of a "literary trope". As in "happiness is a warm trope".

Postmodernism courtesy of: Katy Perry ("Firework", "California Gurls" videos), Austin Powers ("The Spy Who Shagged Me" movie)

KLI Theory Lab: a good resource

Here is one of my favorite resources for evolution and cognitive theory -- the KLI theory lab, hosted by the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Austria.

KLI theory lab web portal

My favorite feature of this database is the rather obscure list of keywords and extensive author list. Another favorite feature is the topical scope of the resource, which ranges from molecular biology to philosophy and cultural evolution to animal behavior. The design has been redone in the last few years, which has made for a more powerful and scalable tool.