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Conversation with Chat GPT Can you interpret this real life scenario in the form of Calculus. We are on the pavement of a street in Cambridge, England, the year is 1666, there is a lady in a white dress thinking about crossing the road. The road is cobbled but there is a thick layer of effluent covering it. It is raining. On the road there is one horse drawn carriage travelling from east to west at approx 3 miles per hour. There is another carriage travelling from west to east at approx 4 miles per hour. The first carriage is … Read More

So in today’s edition of WTF I’ve just seen that there is a Russian ship with 20,000 tonnes of explosives (ammonium nitrate) at anchor off the Kent coast. Remembering that there is a World War 2 US munitions ship, SS Montgomery, sunk just off Sheerness and Southend I thought I’d investigate blast radii. Turns out that the Maritime Safety board have advised against any disturbance of the site in case that results in a detonation of the 1400 tonnes of explosives on board which would then have a blast radius of 30 miles. As we are talking about 20,000 tonnes of explosives … Read More

Whilst fiddling about trying to work out why a small group of men are being allowed to bring us to the brink of World War 3, I thought I’d look into the origins of the atom bomb and came upon this fascinating vignette. I was surprised that an acutely aware scientist such as Einstein would be standing so close to someone with 20 years of direct radiation exposure, who was basically a walking bomb. So fast forward to Einsteins death in 1955 and reading his doctors reports it appears that Einstein suffered for the last 39 years of his life … Read More

I have set the image revealed by the Mona Lisa mirror illusion next to a contemporary Leonardo sketch of Salai and if this isn’t enough to at least interest the Leonardo scholars I can do no more!

On reading this blog from the bottom up we arrive at these four images. (Fig.1) The two on the right, the actual renaissance images versus the two images on the left being the image upside down a la Camera Obscura with a mirror placed at 90 degrees and a candle light coming in from the right to simulate Leonardo and when he would have viewed his illicit picture. (Fig.2) As you can see the other portrait shows the same woman whereas the Leonardo Mona Lisa shows a completely different person. If you could bear with me I will present my workings … Read More

On a conveniently dark and stormy morning I want to tell you a story in two timelines with hopefully the same conclusion. It begins for me on January 28 th of this year and supporters of Just Stop Oil throwing soup over the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris. As an artist who loves to play with images I realised that despite my lifelong fascination with Leonardo I had neither used nor referenced any of his work previously. However, the perfect opportunity had come this Sunday afternoon so I downloaded the Mona Lisa. Fig 2 What was immediately apparent … Read More