Vexed Thinker

7 Tricks of Nature to Create Dazzling Color: A Zine

My interest in designing novel life forms has led me to study how animals make their color. I have also been taking note of the current popular zine making trend in creative social media circles. Therefore, today I decided to make a zine about ways nature makes dazzling, often iridescent, colors through light-scattering structures rather than light-absorbing pigments. This is my zine: If…

Now I’m a Notebook Thief: What I’m stealing from Joan Didion

I have been reflecting a lot on the process of a keeping a notebook. I wrote about my unusually extensive system and the type of notebooks I use, and I reflected on how my notebook system fits into my daily routine. Notebooks are my primary artistic output. I have few creative products. Most of what I do is thinking, and the best I have to show of my thinking is the notes I take on my on my…

Scheduling for Writers, Artists, and Creatives: Paper and Digital Notebooks Calendars, Trackers, and More

Now that I am in my retired years, my entire focus is on my creative projects. I worked as a researcher and professor in the biomedical sciences for twenty years. When I was working I was always hard on myself about sticking to a schedule, and I was rarely successful. Now that I am retired, I am more lenient with myself in terms of schedule, and I think that maybe it is better. The Saints and…

An Easy Way to Draw When You Can’t Draw: My Tracing Projector System for Cataloging and Studying Earth’s Life Forms

I like to think of myself as an a amateur artist, but the truth is that I can’t even draw to save my life. I have no skill for realistically representing things on paper or canvas. The iPhone sits above the semi-transparent, reflective lens and the viewer traces the reflected lines by looking through the lens from the top. Still, it is one of my goals to make a thorough study of the external…

The Vexed Thinker Project Begins to Leave Crumbs on the Internet

Now that the creative effort of the Vexed Thinker Project has been underway for several months, I have begun to expand and clarify my public face on the internet. I am leaving tracks! Hansel and Gretel, Illustration by Carl Offterdinger, Wikimedia Commons To the website, I added a new Newsetters/Project Scope tab that details the public writing efforts of the Vexed Thinker Project and links to…

#handmademandalas

Mandalas are Representations of the Light of the Soul: My Daily Mandala Habit

I try to draw a mandala each morning as part of my daily routine. Mandala drawing is part of my daily routine. Somewhere throughout the course of my delusional disorder I conceived of the idea that the soul is made up of light. I imagine that some people can see this light come and go into bodies, but I am blind to this light. Indeed, it is interesting to note that one highly refuted scientist…

Claiming the Bliss Station

Last week I wrote about Joseph Campbell’s thoughts on the essential role of the bliss station in a happy, productive life. The bliss station is a special place where the artist (or any individual) can go to dream and work uninterrupted for a special time each day. When I first wrote about the idea of a bliss station, I was working on the couch and dining room table of my apartment. After I…

Conceptualizing ‘Academic Blueprints’: An Adaptation of Austin Kleon’s ‘Newspaper Blackout’ Designed for World-Building

One of the goals of my artistic project is to design new worlds. Specifically, I aim to design the conceptual foundations for three new simulated worlds. The concept of an ‘academic blueprint’ for world-building One way to go about designing new worlds is just let the imagination run wild. The natural imagination will probably take ideas and experiences in mind, juxtapose them, and recombine…

I’ve been interested in the topic of light scattering in the atmosphere for a few weeks now. I’ve had one of those moments of synchronicity where the subject keeps coming up, but so far I haven’t been careful enough to sort it out. So, today I had to take a few minutes to surf the internet and sort it out. This post is a summary of what I’ve learned so far. I first heard of the topic of light…

How do birds get their color? Fantastical implications for designing new life forms.

One of the fantasies I like to entertain is that it may someday be possible for humans to create a whole new biota of life. I know, I know. I’m a scientist. Life evolves. It is not created. But just imagine how exciting it would be for humans to create their own living offspring. I don’t know how, when, and where, but isn’t it exhilarating to think that maybe we could create offspring of our own…