Putting Descartes Before the Horse · 11:44pm Jul 20th, 2015
It's been a crazy week of travelling for me. Last weekend I was camping in a field in Wales at a wedding party, which was great fun, even though it rained all night and my tent leaked. I then went out to Seattle for a week of particle physics stuff, also fun, getting home late last night after an exhausting overnight flight via Chicago. Problem with flying long-haul at this time of year—the only affordable options involve long and awkward stopovers.
Somehow, along the way, I found time to finish another short story: Discourse on the Haycartes Method. Thanks for everyone who left comments—it was nice to read them on my phone while stuck in airport terminals. I should probably now write an intelligent blog post about the impact Descartes had on mathematics, physics, computer science and philosophy. But I'm too tired now, and have too much work to catch up on, so it will have to wait.
Tagging this to Art of Rainbow Engineering, because, of course, Haycartes was the pony who showed how a primary and secondary rainbow can be formed from internal reflections in raindrops. For more details, read the story.
I just read your fic and I love the Twilight and Moondancer pics. Who did the art for them? Anyway, I really like your stories of ponies and science. Personal favorite #1: Domestic Rock Science; Pinkie the candy technician helping to teach about rocks. Personal Favorite #2: Rainbooms and Rationality; Diamond the brat gets schooled in the scientific method. Personal Favorite #3: The Art of Rainbow Engineering; near-natural rainbows in a weather-controlled world. I also love the blog entries. I mean, your bit on Lego Quark models, the bit with Pinkie talking about Exploratory Geophysics and how it helps rock farmers, Applejack talking about apple genetic diversity, and the ponies excited for CERN's LHC are cute and excellent.
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Thanks, always nice to get feedback like that
Concerning the artwork, I traced the ponies from this (Twilight) and this (Moondancer) and stuck them onto a slightly edited version of Descartes rainbow and an old title page of Discourse on Method (I can't find the link now).