Taking work home

Okay, I'm going to try uploading comics here in addition to the website. Ctrl+C! Ctrl+V!

I hated Algorithms class. Those homework problems would not leave me alone. No I'm not a genius like John Nash.

People are pattern seekers. We fill our evolutionary niche by finding patterns in the world and using them to predict the future, both consciously and subconsciously. We see patterns even when they are not there, in hot hands, human demographics, actions taken by deities, and virgin mary cheese sandwiches.

Many many beautiful things tease one's mind by hinting at patterns, seeming to be many familiar things or none, to the point that I now think the sense of beauty is one of the things that attune us to novel patterns. The clearest examples are the most artificial, like the mandelbrot set. Some alphabets and syllabries, to one like me who can't read them, hint at intricate patterns without containing any familiar shapes in a way that random scrawl decidedly doesn't. This presence of patterns is there in nature, too, in the stripes on a zebra and the way bamboo leans and drapes its leaves.

The computer science building, which you see in the background, doesn't make it. I'm sure it looked good on paper and in the 3d CAD tools, but somehow the finished product didn't come out quite right. All those right-angle square bars just look haphazard and the colors don't match. The only time it looks pretty is in late afternoon when the glass takes on the color of the sky. If the building looked pretty here, then it's because of my shortcomings as an artist.