Posts by Hexblog

I feel something must be said about this astrological "sign shift" business that has set the 'tubes abuzz in recent days. There being twelve astrological signs ("Ophiuchus" notwithstanding) arranged around a central point, the issue is clearly one of both dozenal and hexagonal import. Despite the fact that I'm not all that into astrology (though I've learned enough over the years to inform my general fluency in Western occult symbolism), I feel the hexagonal principles at stake must be defended.

First of all, this is of course old news. I don't really understand why it keeps popping up in the media every few years, but this is simply the latest incarnation of a story that we've all been well aware of since classical antiquity, and that certainly should not come as news to anyone, anywhere. "Ophiuchus" has always been there, the twelve signs have never been symmetrically arranged in exact 30-degree sections, axial precession has always been going on, we always knew about it, nobody has ever cared, and nobody cares now. MOAR »

This intriguing article passed through the HEXAGONAL NEWS the other day:

Quantum Hexodynamics
". . . Our universe is two dimensional. A planar sheet that stretches endlessly. However, when thinking about Flatland, you should not imagine an infinite structureless sheet, but rather an infinite grid of microscopically small cells. These cells have a sixfold symmetry and nicely fit together in a hexagonal pattern. . . ."

It makes me want to actually finish reading the book one of these days. In fact, I first became aware of Flatland many years ago during my first hexagonal phase, and it always sort of bothered me that there weren't more hexagons in it. Leave it to the fucking Victorians to somehow create a two-dimensional plane of existence without any hexagons. Nonetheless, I'm glad to see the hexagons of Flatland finally getting the recognition they deserve after all these years. MOAR »

I have recently been made aware of a contest being held on Kotaku Australia regarding "hexagons that should not be." Apparently inspired by the hex tiling in Civilization V, they are giving away a free copy of the same to whoever most impressively photoshops a hexagonal shape onto an object that is not normally hexagonal. Unfortunately, the contest ends Monday night, so there's very little time to spread word of this to the larger hexagonal community. I wish I'd heard about it sooner. Anyway, samples of submitted work can be found on the following pages, and are most interesting:

• Some Of Your Civilization V Competition Entries
• More Civ V Competition Entries
• Your Six-Sided Take On The World

[Edit: The winners and runners up can be found here and here, respectively.]

I find it fascinating, obviously, both as a Civ fan (still trying to get 5 running under Wine!) and as a hexagonalist. Creative exercises of this sort, inducing people to think artistically about the roles and potential roles of hexagons in everyday life, are potentially very valuable tools in expanding hexagonal consciousness. It reminds me in some ways of last month's Interdependence Day Hexagon Project—in both cases, the hexagon is explicitly employed not for some incidental aesthetic reasons, but for its very hexagonality itself. This can only be, I think, a positive trend in our society, as we as a species come to terms with the implications of our glorious hexagonal future. I am hoping to see more and more of this sort of thing in the coming years, as hexagons rise to ever greater prominence in the collective human experience, perhaps leading at some point to the formation of an explicitly "hexagonalist" movement in art and design. MOAR »

Word on the street is that today's Google Doodle features an interactive truncated icosahedron in recognition of the 25th(.) anniversary of the discovery of the buckminsterfullerene (and, by extension, of fullerenes, nanotubes, &c. in general).

I normally don't actually pay attention to doodles—I find them rather played out at this point, and with the rise of integrated browser search fields, I rarely even go to Google's front page anymore. But it is worth noting that—according to sources who follow these things more closely than I do—this is ostensibly only Google's second "interactive" doodle, after this past spring's Pac-Man episode. THIS IS NOT AS INTERESTING AS PAC-MAN, but it's presumably indicative of the moral and intellectual gravity they assign to the discovery of fullerenes that they would consider the event worthy of such a rarified and exotic treatment. The spinning of the fullerene here is not merely meant to amuse us for half a second, but rather to instill in us an understanding that the event being commemorated is, on balance, probably more important than, you know, the Australian federal election, or Chinese Valentine's Day, or what have you. (Yes, almost as important as Pac-Man.) MOAR »

"Where is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to model the cosmos?" – Terence McKenna

I remember reading a short but eloquent endorsement of hexagons by Alan Watts once, probably seven or eight years ago. Since I wasn't particularly interested in hexagons at the time, I quickly forgot about it, and where exactly I had read it. However, times have changed and my hexagonal thinking has evolved, and with the advent of Google Books and all, I recently decided to look into the matter further. After an exhaustive search, I found two mentions of hexagons in Watts' books, which I shall now share with you, and duly expound upon.

I am not entirely sure either of these is in fact the passage I remember reading, but if it were either of them it would be this first one, which can be found in the essay What on Earth Are We Doing?, from the collection Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown:

"The whole secret of life and of creative energy consists in flowing with gravity. Even when he leaps and bounces our cat is going with it. This is the way the whole earth and everything in the universe beehives.*" MOAR »