Everything difficult about a watch comes from being small, portable and attached to somebody. The timekeeping principles are the same as a clock; the conditions are entirely different. Here are…
The shaft is not holding the canopy up. A sliding collar pushes struts outward, those push the ribs out, and the fabric between them is stretched tight - which is…
There is a widespread mental model of a kite that treats the string as a leash, restraining something that would otherwise escape.
That model produces a specific prediction: cut the…
There is a distinction that changes how a whole category of coastal feature should be thought about, and it comes down to whether something is a population or a structure.…
There is a category of traditional building technique that looks primitive and turns out to be doing something subtle, and thatch is the clearest example available.
The appearance suggests a…
There is a category of discovery that arrives sideways, as the residue of an argument about something else entirely.
The argument concerned whether a space containing nothing could exist. The…