Vi Hart’s Playful Mathematics: Flatland on a Möbius Strip

What Victorian novellas have to do with higher mathematics, optical illusions and illustration.

Vi Hart has a rare gift: making math cool. She distills mathematical concepts in clever, engaging, relentlessly creative ways using visual metaphors like balloons, doodling, beadwork and food to illustrate anything from Platonic solids to hyperbolic planes to binary trees.

In this fantastic 7-minute video, two months in the making, Hart takes the iconic 1884 satirical novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, which applies Victorian knowledge of higher mathematics to a witty story about a fictional two-dimensional world and a humble square who tries to wrap his mind around a third dimension, and adapts it to a Möbius strip, a non-orientable looped surface that only has one side and one boundary component, with lovely hand-drawn illustration.

(For the definitive resource on the fascinating Möbius strip, do check out The Möbius Strip: Dr. August Möbius’s Marvelous Band in Mathematics, Games, Literature, Art, Technology, and Cosmology.)

Hart’s work reminds me of Robin Moore’s string math portraits from the 1980s and Kevin Van Aelst’s edible science, a living testament to the power of playfulness as a gateway to learning.

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Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Remastered

It’s hard not to love Carl Sagan, who has done for science what John Szarkowski has for photography and Paola Antonelli for design. What pushed him into the forefront of cultural awareness was the now-iconic 1980s 13-part TV series he narrated and co-wrote, entitled Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was digitally remastered in 2002 and is now available in a glorious 7-disc DVD set. Nearly 3 decades ago, Sagan, eloquent and prfound as ever, touches on a number of today’s most critical issues — from international politics to our doomed dependence on fossil fuels — as he explores the universe and our place within it.

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

Cosmos is an absolute cultural gem that we think should be required viewing in any education curriculum that purports to foster intellectual well-roundedness. The DVD set is well worth the investment, but you can also scour YouTube for segments from the different episodes.

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Citizen King: The Last Five Years of MLK’s Life

Today marks the 25th annual Martin Luther King Day, commemorating the visionary whose work and legacy transcended borders of nationality, ethnicity and ideology to make one of the most important contributions to human rights in history. In 2004, PBS produced Citizen King — an extraordinary documentary that skirts the all-too-familiar stories of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and instead offers a rare glimpse of the last five years of MLK’s life through personal recollections and eyewitness accounts of friends, journalists, policemen, historians and cultural luminaries.

The series is now available on YouTube in 13 parts — or, for those keen on quality, on DVD.

My dear fellow Clergymen: I came across your recent statement calling our present activities ‘unwise and untimely.’ I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ~ Letter from the Birmingham Jail, MLK, 1963

Catch the remaining parts here: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

Finally, no celebration of MLK’s legacy is complete without his iconic I Have a Dream speech — catch it here in its full hair-raising glory:

For more on MLK’s legacy, we highly recommend A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. — published more than 20 years ago, still an absolutely critical capsule of thought leadership and moral history.

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Woodworking for Mere Mortals: 5 DIY Wooden Gadgets

What Zimbabwean pianos have to do with vintage maze games and tortillas.

In today’s multitasking, digitally driven creative landscape, there’s something to be said for the joy of unitasking and hands-on, tactile work the output of which is something charmingly analog and tangible. Enter Woodworking for Mere Mortals, our new favorite creative craftsmanship fix — a portal for woodworking projects, video tutorials, tips and resources for de-appifying your leisure and impressing friends with remarkably memorable gifts. Several dozen woodworking videos teach you how to make anything from salad tongs to musical instruments, complete with downloadable templates and narrated with delightful quirk by Northern California woodmaker Steve Ramsey. Here are 5 of our favorites.

RATCHET RATTLE

Who needs a vuvuzela when you can have a ratchet rattle? Show the other team who’s boss at the next sporting event you attend or institute an office-wide intercom alternative with this really, really, really loud DIY noisemaker.

THUMB PIANO

Sure, you could just download the latest music-making iPad app. Or, you could make yourself a Zimbambwean mbira dza vadzimu thumb piano. (And then actually learn to play it as wonderfully as this guy does.)

CLOWN TOOTHPICK HOLDER

The dear old toothpick may be on the verge of slipping into cultural obscurity, but we find it an ingenious incarnation of design minimalism — one you’d appreciate even more with a clown toothpick holder …especially if you happen to have contracted our recently developed cinnamon toothpick addiction.

TORTILLA PRESS

Down with stereotypes — now you can be a foodie and a lumberjack, thanks to this DIY tortilla press. This particular project is a wonderful manifestation of the fruitful convergence of new media and traditional craft — after Steve posted the original video, he got feedback from viewers pointing out a functionality problem that resulted in really, really fat tortillas. Consequently, he’s been toying with the idea of a prototype for removable inserts that allow for multi-thickness tortillas.

VINTAGE LABYRINTH GAME

For another wonderful anitdote to the appification of leisure, make yourself — or a device-dependent friend — a retro marble maze. Download the PDF template here. (For a slightly more modern DIY gaming diversion, the connect 4 project is also worth a look.)

For more on the art and craft of woodworking, we highly recommend Old Ways of Working Wood: The Techniques and Tools of a Time Honored Craft — the definitive blueprint to wood types, tools and techniques, adorned with more than 200 beautiful illustrations.

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