I just clipped and saved the image to the left, and then when I went to download it to this post could not find it. Finally I traced it to a file in my photographs called “Family Photos”, and I was going to move it to another file and then realized, wait, that’s probably the right place for it!

The man in the photo is Alfred E. Newman, a creation of William Gaines, also the man who gave us Mad Magazine. It still exists, part of DC Comics, but, you know, like the Beach Boys, still on tour, it’s not the same as it was. I have just a couple of stories about Mad Magazine, the first of which involves urban legends.

I was led to believe that William Gaines was a talented artist and humorist who could not find employment anywhere in entertainment or publishing because he was Jewish. In fact, his father, Max Gaines, was the publisher of All-American Comics division of DC Comics. In 1947 his father was killed in a motorboat accident on Lake Placid, and so Gaines quit school to take over the family business, EC Comics. He did OK, and otherwise was on his way to a career as a teacher. Instead, he worked in comic books. I find that a nobler profession.

Continue reading “The Newman Chronicles” →

The above image illustrates what is called “Mercator Projection,” created in 1569 and named after Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594). On the right is the standard view we get from flat maps. But true map coordinates are based on a circular globe, so that longitudinal lines approach one another in distance until they meet a the poles. By making them equidistant on a flat map, we distort the size of landmasses closer to the equators. See how, on the map above, Greenland appears larger than Africa.  In reality (unless you are a flat earther, in which case, vamoose!), Africa is fourteen times the size of Greenland. This explains why when we flew to Nairobi last year it took nine hours from Paris. The two places appeared much closer on the map.

The explanation for this is that Mercator projection is more practical for navigation on the high seas, giving better angles … I’m repeating what I read and don’t really get that, but accept it, as Mercator maps are all about and in use.

Continue reading “Mercator maps, some Beatles fun” →

“Behold!  human beings living in a sort of underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all across the den; they have been here from their childhood, and have their legs and neck chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them; for the chains are arranged in such a manner as to prevent them from turning round their heads. At a distance above and behind them the light of a fire is blazing, and between the fire in the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have before them, over which they show the puppets.

I see, he said.

And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying vessels, which appear over the wall; also figures of men and animals, made of wood and stone and various materials; as of the prisoners, as you would expect, are talking, and some of them are silent?

This is a strange image, he said, and they are strange prisoners.

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the buyer throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said: how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would see only the shadows?

Yes he said.

And if they were able to talk with one another, with enough suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?”

The Republic of Plato, Book Seven

Continue reading “The Cave Allegory” →