when you think of japanese poetry, i suspect the first thing that comes to mind is the haiku — a surprisingly-modern invention in a country with more than a thousand years of formal poetic history. that being said, the haiku and its extended version, the renga, are probably the most… Read More »tickling the shogun’s tongue

the difference between art and craft is not form but purpose. art has a single reason to exist, to convey emotion, typically through a search for beauty and meaning. craft has a different one, to be functionally useful in the moment. while much art effectively tells a story and craft… Read More »deeper within language

we’re in the middle of october and it’s fall. it’s miserable and dark and the nights are closing in on us. it’s time to huddle under a blanket and turn up the heat, grab a cup of hot tea and snuggle with your favorite book. or you could just say… Read More »thirty-two days of creativity

there is a problem with modern education. it is neither modern nor does it educate. this, indeed, is an issue for our society. we are creating a future where we can’t possibly do anything but regress to the darkness of our medieval, brutal past because we aren’t just forgetting the… Read More »fuck school

let’s build a smoothing-plane. this smoothing-plane, in fact… there are many, many, many ways to do this but i believe this is the simplest. a few things before we begin. this is a plane design based on a traditional smoothing-plane but it’s longer than is typical of a western plane… Read More »a simple plane

i’ve been away from my usual life for a couple of days to get some medical treatment i’ve been waiting for and all the time traveling to and from the hospital and lying there unable to do anything – really anything (it was vision-related and my eyes simply didn’t work… Read More »a simple bench