Art & Photography

EightSquare Essays

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You have reached EighthSquare.com, a place on the vast chessboard of the Internet where writers, poets, various literary types, artists, photographers, travelers and such can share their words, images and thoughts with others.

Now playing:

Essays

The Legacy of the Mansarts
by Richard Brafford
Everything you always wanted to know and more about
Mansart, his descendants and the Mansard roof.

Travelogue, Part 4, India
by Andrew Nickson
In which the author makes his way through India.

Of Snowflakes, Ice, Figure Skating anda Very Brief Bit About Hexaflexagons
by Ela Schwartz
Inspired by Kenneth Libbrecht's snowflake books,
the author goes snowflake-gazing and off on a
few tangents.

Bodies: The Exhibition
by Lin Black
One living body's impressions of this controversial exhibit.

The Life and Work of Elizabeth Siddal
by Ela Schwartz
She was best known as the face that peered
from numerous paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, particularly those by her husband
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. But Siddal was more than
just a mindless muse; she was an artist and poet in
her own right. A look at her life, and death, and
a selection of her artwork and poetry.

An Evening with Neil Gaiman,
A Night in Chelsea

An Anonymous Pawn goes to hear Neil Gaiman
read from his new book, gets an autograph or two and spends
the night in a small room amidst some Manhattan greenery.

Battle of the Planets
This August, the International Astronomical Union
will determine what constitutes a planet and what
to name our latest solar system discoveries.
So where does this leave Pluto, Xena and Sedna?

Fireworks in Manhattan
by Norman Borden
Photos of the display over the East River on July Fourth.

The Tetra-Octa-Flexagon
Straight from the pages of Build Your Own
Polyhedra
, here comes this little-known square
flexagon composed of eight isosceles triangles
per face. Viva la 8-gon!

New Discoveries of the Hexa-Dodeca-Flexagon
by Ann Schwartz and Jeff Rutzky
The 12-gon is back: this time with more
secrets to unveil, such as wormhole mode
and a new array of hybrid faces

Flexagon Discovery:
The Shape Shifting 12-Gon

by Ann Schwartz
As if ordinary flexagons weren't fascinating
enough, here comes a hexadodecaflexagon
(12-gon for short) with propellers and rogue
triangles. Flexagons aren't created; supposedly
there are an infinite number just waiting for
someone to discover them. A copywriter does
just that and gives us the details




Flexagon Fever
by Ela Schwartz
Who would have thought a writer who didn't get past high
school trig and can't draw a straight line would become
obsessed with a "mathematical oddity," discovering its
properties, and coming up with intriguing designs?

Who Let the Cats Out
Our take on a pressing issue

Taking companies out of the stone age and into an environment full of automation
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