THE THEORY CORNER STORE (PART II)

Greetings Theory Cornerites, and welcome to the Theory Corner Store! It's very rough, but I was getting impatient with my own procrastination, and I figured the sting of seeing it up and imperfect would spur me on to do it right.

So what have we got here? Well, it's a place to sell my own pamphlets, comics and posters, but it's more than that. It's also a place to find oddball items made by other people that blew my mind when I found out about them. I like to imagine that the young Sherlock Holmes, Indiana Jones, Pasteur, Captain Blood, Rod Scribner, Hugh Hefner, and Alfred Hitchcock would have enjoyed perusing these pages. If I do my job right, then just reading the ads should expand your mind, even if you don't buy anything.

I'll post a couple of ad pages just get the store started, then I'll move it all to a site (not up yet) that's just for that. I'm not abandoning Theory Corner to do this, it's just an interesting sideline.

I'll start with a couple of items that I won't see a cent of profit from. If you want to buy them, which I hope you do, you'll have to deal directly with the supplier, who doesn't even know that I exist. Both of these would make a great present for a significant other. Wait til you see the microscope!

Here's the first thing I'm hawking (above)... a poster showing St. Basil's cathedral in Moscow, arguably the most beautiful building on Earth. It was built in the 16th Century by Ivan the Terrible to commemorate Russia's conquest of Mongolia.

If there was ever a time when conquest was justified, this was it. Mongolia was a voracious barbarian empire which attempted to put an end to civilization wherever it found it. Mongolia, it has to be remembered, nearly conquered Europe and brought an end to the muslim golden age of science and scholarship. They had to be stopped, and crazy Ivan was the man to do it. Legend says that he was so moved by the beauty of the cathedral that he had the architect put to death, so he would never build another building to compete with it.

The black-rimmed version is the best poster of the subject I could find. It's a little steep at 42 bucks, but they've got us over a barrel. Sure, you can download a small picture off the net for free, but this is a case where size matters. St. Basil's is all about volume, and you can't get a sense of that from a post card.

It's also about color. There's a theory that buildings should always emphasize shape, but Basil's is inconceivable without the flamboyant color. It's magical, inspiring, storybook color that makes me want to paint every time I look at it.

Come to think of it, it makes me want to think as well. This is not a traditional building. Traditional Russian architecture put it's onion towers on top of blank, high-walled Romanesque-type walls. The architect here had the insight that the high walls just got in the way...so he jettisoned them, or made it look like he did.

And the triangular silhouette...maybe he was inspired by Norwegian stave churches (above). It's funny to think that the thought-provoking and beautiful St. Basil's shares the same square with the Kremlin, whose blank, brutal walls are the very definition of ugly.

Amazingly the Canon company put up a free color download of a paper model of the cathedral. I'm not really into paper models, but I wouldn't mind doing a quick and dirty Scotch tape version of a couple of the towers. It would give me a tactile feel for the shapes, and maybe a deeper understanding of how color and pattern influences how we experience volume. Anyway, here's the address:

http://www.imagekind.com/St-Basils-cathedral-at-Red-Square-Moscow_art?IMID=e5881cde-029b-41a2-90ae-95aa1888d638


A BINOCULAR MICROSCOPE FOR $60!!!!!

Now comes the microscope! I've blogged about stereo microscopes before, but I don't think I ever convinced anyone to buy one. Maybe that's because the price was so daunting...I bought mine 15 years ago for about about $200. No doubt that a lot of readers thought that was too much to spend for a hobby item that would only end up collecting dust in the closet. That's where mine was til this morning. I haven't used it in years.

You would think that admitting that would end the discussion, but it doesn't. The truth is that I got my money's worth in the first month of use. What I saw through the lenses changed forever the way I think about the natural world. No nature show on TV can substitute for seeing the real thing, say a live insect, seemingly as big and vivid as a chihuahua on your lap. The first time I looked I nearly jumped out of my seat. The insect on the stage looked like a raging monster out of a horror movie. Let me tell you, the world of the small is unbelievably brutal and violent, and the creatures who inhabit it are rigged for deadly combat.

The reason I bring this up again is that I discovered that Edmund Scientific (that's where I bought my scope) is selling a model for $60. Let that sink in! Sixty bucks!!!!! I haven't seen this model, so I don't know what they had to skimp on to sell it so cheap, but the company is well reputed for its optics, and I can't believe they would risk their reputation on something completely useless. At this price the scope strikes me as an unbelievable bargain, even if it does end up in the closet. You simply can't allow yourself to pass through life without getting a glimpse of the hostile and horrific world that's under your feet.

By the way, don't be put off by the 20X magnification, which seems paltry compared to what monocular microscopes offer. Actually 20X is ideal for most tasks, and the 3D effect only works at magnifications like this.

Here's Edmund's address:

http://scientificsonline.com/category.asp?start=16&c=421190

SEXY COSTUME POSTERS

Sad to say, I wasn't able to find anyone who was willing to sell these sexy Halloween costume posters. If anyone reading this knows where these can be had, will you let me know?