7. Local Symmetries

17 Thursday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, design rationale, leadership, nature, psychology, Uncategorized, user experience

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architecture, art, books, Design, HCI, photography, psychology, usability, UX

7. Local Symmetries.

Complex organizations typically have many levels of organizations. In life, there are cells which often have symmetry. The human body has large-scale bilateral symmetry (two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, two sides to the brain, etc.). If we look at our hands, we see a thumb and four fingers. Each finger, and the thumb, each have roughly bilateral symmetry. Symmetries such as these are visible.

There are also often functional symmetries in living systems as well. We breathe in. We breath out. Our nervous system has excitatory circuits and inhibitory circuits. Most complex organisms reproduce via two sexes. Many animals have cycles of sleep and wakefulness. Often birds, and other animals have migrations tied to the cycle of the seasons. Trees are able to draw water up and move water down.

The structural symmetries and the functional symmetries are often connected. When a person runs, for example, they use one leg and then the other. In fact, as your left leg goes forward, typically so does your right arm. As you move your right leg forward, you move you left arm forward. As you breathe in, your rib cage expands on both sides symmetrically. As you breathe out, your rib cage contracts on both sides symmetrically.

Human organizations often have functional symmetries as well as structural symmetries. For example, most organizations have an “onboarding process” as well as a “termination process.” Our physical artifacts often exhibit local symmetries and these are often related to our physical and behavioral symmetries. A long boat, for instance, allows for multiple rowers to row in unison. The boat and oars are symmetrical and so is the rowing of the boat.

Human artifacts of many scales may exhibit local symmetries for two reasons. First, since most natural living things exhibit local symmetries, copying that may strike us a more beautiful. In addition, if one learns the skills necessary to make the left half of a canoe, one already knows a lot about how to make the right half, provided the canoe has bilateral symmetry. The same is true of an oar, a cane, a bowl, etc. It also makes it easier for the user of the artifact.

As a user of an artifact such a chair, for example, you come to expect that the right arm rest and the left arm rest will be at the same height and be equally hard. If the arm rests are at different heights, you will, I believe, be more likely to bang your elbow when shifting position or reaching for something.

One could, no doubt, adapt fairly quickly to a chair which had two different kinds of arm rests, but imagine a keyboard for your computer in which every key was a different size and shape. Or, imagine a piano keyboard in which all the keys were at different spacings, and sizes.

Local symmetries also offer another advantage. Systems with local symmetries are easier to repair or maintain. Imagine how much more expensive it would be to maintain a piano, for example, if a repair shop had to keep 88 different sizes of keys! In a similar fashion, imagine a programmer decided it would be fun to program every pull-down menu with completely different algorithms. When the next release of the application required changes or additions, it would make understanding and modifying the code much more difficult.

Why does local symmetry, as opposed to merely, symmetry, make sense? Let’s go back to the chair example. It might make sense for a family to have three chairs for three different sized people; e.g., a papa bear chair, a mama bear chair, and a baby bear chair. Or, think of tee-shirts that come in Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large. It makes no sense to make every tee-shirt the same size. People differ a lot in their size. But for mass manufacturing, it does make sense that the left and right sleeves match for any particular size. Similarly, it doesn’t matter that the arms on papa bear’s chair are of a different size than the arms on baby bear’s chair. It doesn’t matter if the teeth on my comb are different from the teeth on your comb. It doesn’t matter if the tires on my Saab match the tires on your Range Rover. And, generally, this is true for most artifacts, organizational structures, architectural features, and anatomical features. Local symmetry almost always has four advantages: 1) it adds to beauty. 2) it’s easier to create 3) it’s easier for the user and 4) it’s easier to maintain or repair.

Design always carries messages. Design which solves our problem or beautifies our world or resonates and echoes the properties of natural beauty carries the messages: “I care. I am a bit like you. I am making this for you and others like us. It shows the beauty that I see is a lot like the beauty (and usefulness) that you see. You are not alone. We are in this together. You and I both belong to “Team Humanity.”

What could be more important?

On the other hand, (notice the oblique reference to symmetry) when I look at most of the screens of most of the interfaces I deal with on a daily basis, there is generally a decided lack of local symmetry. Would they look more natural and more beautiful if there were more local symmetry. I think so. What’s less clear is whether they would be more usable. Much of the screen is taken up with words and icons. In drop-down, pop-up, and flyover menus, there are lists which mainly consist of words. Words, by virtue of the nature of written language are of different lengths.

On the other hand, programming languages and functionalities often do exhibit local symmetry. This probably makes learning and using such languages more tractable.

———————————————-

Design – Interpretation Model of Communication

Design Interpretation Analysis of Natural English

Some recommended books:

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on the mental game for all sports using examples from tennis, golf, baseball, and other sports. It covers self-talk, imagery, mental practice, strategy, tactics, & sportsmanship. http://tinyurl.com/ng2heq3

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

Dream Planet. Where do you run when the whole world is crumbling under the weight of human folly? When the lethal Conformers invade 22nd century Pittsburgh, escape becomes the top priority for lovebird scavengers Alex and Eva.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

The Walkabout Diaries:

Travels with Sadie

6. Good Shape

16 Wednesday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, design rationale, HCI, leadership, management, nature, politics, psychology, Uncategorized, user experience

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art, beauty, creativity, Design, flowers, Good shape, HCI, painting, photography, UX, writing

6. Good Shape.

Good Shape. Positive Space. These seem to be highly related concepts. Most of the pictures I used as illustrations of Positive Space could equally well illustrate Good Shape. A Positive Space is often composed of multiple good shapes arranged in a “balanced way.”

In order to illustrate “Good Shape,” I decided to take some pictures to illustrate “Bad Shape.” Since I have surrounded myself mainly with nature or with artifacts that were intentionally designed to be aesthetically pleasing, it turned out to be more difficult than I imagined at first. The other issue is that when I take photographs, I (like most people) “frame” the picture so that “Good Shape” is clear. I began to intentionally brake that habitual way of framing with pictures of flowers that overlap. The natural beauty of flowers is so rich that, to me, even a quasi-random framing still results in a beautiful picture.

This turns out not to be the case with artifacts however.

Although some of the elements of this seem to have “Good Shape,” the overall composition lacks a coherent center. It seems to me to be an artificial “kludge” of colors, textures, and shapes and there is no overall “Good Shape.”

By re-arranging the elements into this form (above), to me, it seems to get closer to “Good Shape” but the purple “tennis ball” seems ill-proportioned and out of place. In “real tennis” there is a physical reason for the ball to be fuzzy but here, the fuzziness of the ball seems added on and arbitrary.

Here too (above), the overall composition lacks “Good Shape.” The large semi-random dark blob in the middle has no real “Center.” The elements around the edges do not cohere or reflect off of each other. None of the elements around the edges are complete enough to have “Good Shape” except possibly the links of the small chain.

Here is another example of quasi-random elements brought together into a single picture. Though to me, both the wood and the stone are in and of themselves beautiful, there is nothing about the composition that integrates into a whole. There is no center, no echoes, no alternating repetition, no levels of scale, and despite the nice texture of the stone and wood, the overall effect, to me, is lacking in “Natural Order” and in beauty.

By way of contrast, the flower here seems to have a good overall shape reinforced by a Strong Center, Alternating Repetition, and each of the petals themselves has Good Shape. Around the flower, to me, is a “Positive Space.” Note that one of the petals seems slightly out of place. To me, however, this does not spoil the “Good Shape.”

The same can be said of these flowers.

It isn’t necessary to have overall “simplicity” in order to have “Good Shape.” These flowers are not “simple” in shape, but they still have “Good Shape.”

The bird on a branch shown above seems to me to have “Good Shape” even though it is (in outline) lacking symmetry. Though lacking symmetry in profile, the shape strikes me as “balanced.” I don’t perceive the bird as having to exert a lot of energy to keep from “falling off the branch.” The bird’s shape, like the shapes of most animals and plants is the result of 4.5 billion years of evolutionary history.

Many people view some creatures as “enemies” and therefore “creepy” or “yucky” or perhaps even as dangerous. If you can set that aside and simply look though, I think you can see that “Good Shape” characterizes all sorts of animals (as well as plants).

At a more abstract level, it even seems that natural animal behavior often shows beauty. That also seems characteristic of skilled human behavior. The Olympics show plenty of examples. It is hard to imagine an “ugly” baseball swing resulting in a home run. The runners, jumpers, throwers, gymnasts, tennis players, and so on produce “Good Shape” in three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension.

I play tennis several times a week. I’m not averse to winning a point even if the ball hits my frame, skids off to the net cord and drops over for a winner. But — I never feel as pleased by such outsized luck as when I hit a good shot that results from proper choice, preparation, and execution (and a history of practice and reflection). I never think of a lucky mis-hit as “beautiful.”

The concept of “Good Shape” even applies to more complex human organizations and endeavors. Racism, for instance, to me is truly ugly. It is not based on truth, but on a kludge of lies masquerading as truth. White Supremacy for instance, basically says, “We’re white! That makes us superior! In fact, we’re so superior, that we insist every aspect of our society be tilted so we can be guaranteed a win!”

Huh?

Bad logic is never beautiful.

The “Good Shape” exhibited by most plants and animals reflects both a long evolutionary balance of forces (phylogeny) and the development of a particular organism (ontogeny). When biology goes awry, as in cancer, the result is not beauty. The “logic” of cancer is that billions of years of evolution that allows our bodies to work harmoniously is put aside for short-sighted egotism. A random cell says, in effect, “I’m no longer going to do my part for the body as a whole. Instead, I’m going to grab all I can for myself and grow in an unrestricted way!”

Such a cell, by making that decision, signs its own death warrant. Either the body destroys the cancer and therefore the cancer dies — or, the cancer prevails and in that case it destroys the life of the organism it was supposed to be a part of — and then it dies anyway! It’s an “ugly” decision both because it is disproportionate and because it is illogical. It aims to be self-serving, but it is not even self-serving. It guarantees its own death and kills more life along the way.

It’s the same, to me, with any dysfunctional human organization. If democracy is perverted by some people demanding that decisions be made so that they can have their way regardless of how it impacts the overall tree of life and the overall health of a city, state, or nation, it lacks “Good Shape” and instead becomes a distorted kludge lacking symmetry, lacking balance, lacking life. It is no accident that “Gerrymandered” districts do not have “Good Shape.”

In extreme cases, not surprisingly, dictatorships have resulted in a war on truth, beauty, and life itself. It’s no “accident” that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were each responsible for millions of human deaths. Their activities also show utter disregard for the beauty of the natural environment and the plants and animals of the planet.

When it comes to User Experience, the most obvious way to apply “Good Shape” is to the visual elements of the interface — icons, windows, menus, tool bars etc. However, I think it also applies to the design process. Are the needs of all stakeholders taken into consideration?

Do the various disciplines involved in design respect each other? Do people tell the truth and show trust? Does the company treat its users with respect and tell the truth in its various communications?

If a company provides “free games” or “free services” that are purportedly for entertainment or education but the real purpose is to gather data to sell to advertisers or foreign powers trying to use the data to destroy democracy, it would seem to me that business model itself — the raison d’êtrefor the entire project is an “ugly shape” regardless of how pretty the icons are.

What do you think? Do the concepts of natural beauty apply to the design of organizations and even governments?

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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 6: Good Shape

Cancer always loses in the end

Fascism Leads to Chaos

Who Speaks for Wolf?

Voter Suppression is Life Suppression

Imagine All the People

Roar, Ocean, Roar!

The Dance of Billions

5. Positive Space

15 Tuesday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, design rationale, love, nature, psychology, Uncategorized, user experience

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aesthetics, art, beauty, books, Christopher Alexander., Design, freedom, greed, growth, HCI, life, nature, pattern language, Patterns, politics, psychology, responsibility, usability, user_experience, UX

5. Positive Space

(This is the fifth in a series of 15 blogs that explore Christopher Alexander’s “Fifteen Properties” of good design, natural beauty, living spaces, etc.).

Life is a dance on the edge between chaos, on the one hand, and sameness & repetition on the other hand. Repetition without variation or change is not life. On the other hand, endless random variation without any pattern or principle is also not life. Planet Earth is sometimes said to be a “Goldilocks Planet” — not too hot and not too cold — to support life. Most of the life forms on planet earth themselves exhibit a “positive shape” — a shape that wants to expand and fill out — and yet, there are limits because of circulation, gravity, communication etc. so that growth is typically not unrestricted. The tension between trying to grow and having to stick close enough to form creates positive space.

Life may not always be “a bowl of cherries” but nonetheless, a bowl of cherries does illustrate the property of “positive space.” The bowl connotes living things trying to expand right up to the boundaries possible. A bowl that is filled with cherries and even slightly over-filled but without inducing a fear of spillage, to me, connotes life being vigorous and healthy. To me, a single cherry sitting all alone in a large bowl seems to exhibit positive space much less — at least at the scale of the bowl.

When I look at an individual cherry, I also see positive space. The cherry is not a perfect sphere, featureless and smooth. If it were, to me, it would be a much less positive space. The fact that there is a stem and a noticeable indentation where the stem goes provides a kind of center. So too does the slight asymmetry of the cherry. It appears as though it might have developed as two halves that tried to circle a space at the same time from two different directions – clockwise and counterclockwise. They met and merged to form the almost spherical cherry.

The lobes of this red pepper show positive shape.

The cherry is not the only natural food that has this kind of positive space. Think of corn on the cob. Each kernel seems to have tried to grow as large as it can. It pushes up against and into other kernels. Each kernel seems therefore to be “bursting with life.”

Consider a cucumber. It’s roughly cylindrical. But “roughly” is important here. To me, it would seem much less an example of “Positive Space” if it were literally a cylinder. It tapers at the ends and it bulges at the middle. That seems more “positive.”

To a person who doesn’t understand that life is primarily a cooperative endeavor among all the parts of the vast tree of life, but instead sees the world only as a zero-sum game, it must seem as though the positive living space of a cucumber makes the space around the cucumber less positive and less living. But this is not true! The space around the cucumber’s slightly rotund shape is much more positive and living than the space around a perfect cylinder.

Think of a tree trunk compared with a telephone pole. They are both made of wood and they are both approximately cylindrical. But a tree trunk feels much more alive to us than a telephone pole. I don’t think this is simply because we “know” a tree is alive. It looks more alive and if you allow yourself to “tune in” to it, it feels more alive. And, importantly, not only does the space that the tree inhabits seem more living. So too does the space around it! A long line of telephone poles may exhibit “Levels of Scale” and “Alternating Repetition” and such a picture may make us feel some life to it.

But a single telephone pole does nothing to stir life in me. In that sense, it’s nothing like a tree. It’s flat and it kills the space on either side as well. The columns in the Parthenon are roughly cylindrical and obviously not literally alive. But they, unlike a telephone pole, have positive space and create positive space around them. Life is not fundamentally a zero-sum game. The bee does not “steal” the flowers pollen and thus damage the flower. The bee helps the flower. The flower helps the bee. Positive space in an object does not steal from or detract from the space around the object. It enhances it!

Similarly, the “competition” for space among the kernels of corn on a cob of corn shows that competition can be a beautiful thing. I like to see the kernels pushing against each other. All of them seem living and positive. Imagine instead a cob of corn in which one kernel had grown like a giant spider of orange cancer and took up 98% of the cob. Aside from this one ultra-greedy cell, there were only a few widely spaced and shriveled up kernels. Would you pick that from the pile of corn? Would you want to slather it with butter and bite into it? I sure wouldn’t! And to me, that is exactly what cruelty, unfairness, and greed look like. It might seem positive — after all, the dictator is trying to “grow.” That is true but he’s rigged the game. Competition is no longer beautiful when the game is rigged. Competition is no longer beautiful when your tennis opponent slices off your leg before the match starts or pays off the chair umpire to call everything you hit out.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about cucumbers or cherries or corn. I just happened to have been washing vegetables before writing this. These radishes also exhibit positive space. And, although their shape is not the same as a cherry or a cucumber, the radishes also enhance the space around them. And, so does the avocado. An avocado that is just past ideal ripeness begins to flatten irregularly and the “pebbles” of the skin also flatten making a less positive space. The pebbles of a perfectly ripe avocado are themselves tiny positive spaces that add to the overall impression of vigor.

Flowers provide numerous examples of positive space. And, so far as I can tell, the positive space of flowers invariably also enhances the positivity of the space around them.

Animals also generally exhibit positive space. Their shapes, after all, come about through a struggle among different tradeoffs that have been “learned” by each species over four and a half billion years. But whether you look at the leg of a turtle, the leg of a turkey, or the leg of a polar bear, you will see positive space. The shapes are quite different because their histories are quite different. But in every case, the shape is determined by the history and each of those histories is the same length — 4.5 billion years. The fact that each of these shapes comes about through the dance of trying to survive and thrive in all their various habitats makes every one of them beautiful in its own right — even those whom most of us don’t particularly like to interact with such as rattlesnakes or lions. Even if we don’t wish to come face to face with a lion or grizzly bear, we do recognize their beauty. And, I would claim that as those animals walk through any landscape, they will not only exhibit their own positive shape; they will also enhance the positivity of the shape around where they are walking. Think how many times photographers and painters have put an animal in the foreground of a landscape. Of course, doing so makes the scene immediately more living, more interesting, and more beautiful.

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels.com

What does this have to do with the user’s experience on a computing device? I would have to say that most interfaces on most devices do not do much to bring the interface “alive” including having positive space. The tool bar icons on this version of my Mac are very slightly “bulging” like a living cell (or kernel of corn). Even more subtly, the windows have slightly rounded corners.

It’s an entirely different story with many games though. It seems to me that some of the game artists are among the best artists in the world. They have created many very beautiful games. Could they be more beautiful still if game designers consciously thought about using Christopher Alexander’s “Properties” in general, and “Positive Space” in particular? I think so, but for many games, such as Horizon Zero Dawn, many of the elements are copied so closely from nature that aspects such as “Positive Space” are mostly already taken care of by evolutionary bias toward the beautiful. (Yes, I do think there is such a bias, but it will have to be the subject of a different post.)

What about other applications and systems? Do you think you’ve seen good examples of “Positive Space” in such systems? How could you see incorporating “Positive Space” in UX?

At a more societal level, it seems to me that freedom is closely related to “positive space.” Each individual should be free to expand, grow, experiment, so long as it doesn’t impinge much on those around them. Imposing overly strict boundaries makes life less interesting and less lively. Growth without any sense of balance or notion of how a particular piece of life relates to the whole is called cancer. A society which allows or even encourages theft, rape, fraud and other felonies under the banner of “freedom” is doomed to ultimate failure with lots of pain along the way.

————————————

Winning by Cheating is Losing

Life Will Find a Way

Math Class: Who are you?

Life is a dance

Myths of the Veritas: The Forgotten Field

Cancer Always Loses in the End

When GREED is the only creed

The After Times

After All

Somewhere a Bird Cries

The Dance of Billions

Some recommended books —

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on the mental game for all sports using examples from tennis, golf, baseball, and other sports. It covers self-talk, imagery, mental practice, strategy, tactics, & sportsmanship. http://tinyurl.com/ng2heq3

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

4. Alternating Repetition

14 Monday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, design rationale, HCI, leadership, management, nature, psychology, Uncategorized, user experience

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aesthetics, architecture, art, beauty, Design, diversity, HCI, human factors, leadership, order, repetition, UX, writing

(This is the fourth post in a series of 15 which aim to examine the fifteen properties of natural order postulated by Christopher Alexander. I wonder whether the property of “Alternating Repetition” could be more frequently incorporated into User Experience and what the pros and cons might be).

4. Alternating Repetition

In nature, whether we look at clouds, waves, mountain ranges, forests, plants, the leaves of plants, or almost any animal, we see alternating repetition. Such natural repetition is almost never a precise and complete replication. Just as every reproductive act of life introduces an element of recombination as well as the possibility of mutation, so too the repetitions we see in life are not mathematical. We indeed see patterns repeated in a line or in a circle, but the instances in living things show variation. Similarly, human artifacts made with the hands; e.g., weaving or poetry or rock walls or tennis strokes show repetition but with slight and subtle variations.

If you look at modern industrial society, you see many examples of exact repetition. It’s true that if you looked at 10,000 examples of the same brand and model pen, or notebook, or scissors, or streak knives under a microscope, you could likely find small differences. To the naked eye, however, they would appear identical. Seeing 10,000 pebbles, leaves, or waves you would always see slight to moderate differences. To me, it makes a difference in terms of beauty. Handmade items and human actions naturally show more variation than things produced by machines.

The various “elements” of a User Interface generally have the feel of something made by machine. The size of all the application icons on the tool bar, for instance, are the same. They are all almost the same exact shape and size. On my tool bar the icons for Finder, Launchpad, Mail, Safari, Chrome, FaceTime, Messenger, Maps, Photos, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, System Preferences, Keynote, Pages, Preview, and News are the same. However, the Kindle icon is slightly larger and more square. The Zoom icon is very slightly rounder. [NOTE: This is no longer true in 2026]. The icon for Facebook is still circular, however. In other words, there is some slight variation, but mainly the icons are the same in outline, but different inside. But the set of icons on the tool bar has no sense of “harmony” whatsoever–at least, not to me.

Note that the tool bar is both abnormally homogeneous in terms of positioning and size but completely disconnected in terms of the images which differ in a random disharmony seldom exhibited in nature.

Instead, each icon seems to scream out its individuality without regard to its neighbors. (Which reminds me of things like not masking, getting vaccinations, or telling the truth, for instance, because you don’t feel like it so who cares what the consequences to others are). Anyway, the layout of the toolbar, to me, it’s reminiscent of driving down the highway and seeing a sequence of billboards, each advertising some random product or service in no particular order. Often, each billboard is the same size but they are independent of each other. The one exception I can think of were the “Burma Shave” signs along the highway. Each sign was a small rectangle with several words on it. About a quarter mile down the road, another sign would appear. They were meant to be seen in a specific order and together, they made a kind of “story” which usually rhymed. Typically, the signs touted the joys of the product — “Burma Shave” — or, provided public service announcements about safe driving.

In the early days of computing, putting in “variation” might have been insanely wasteful of space and processing time. This is no longer true. Yet, the “look and feel” of User Interfaces remains, for the most part, quite “mechanical” or “mechanistic” rather than “natural.” Sometimes modern computer games include naturalistic looking variations in how repeated plants, rocks, clouds, etc. are represented. Look at the palm trees and you will see variations among the trees that are reminiscent of the real palm trees I see every day in the San Diego area. In addition, each tree contains a number of fronds that repeat a generic theme; yet, each front is somewhat different. The fronds themselves each contain alternating repetition, just as do real palm tree fronds.

We might consider whether it would make sense to put more natural looking alternating repetition into the more utilitarian aspects of user experience. For example, could it be both more beautiful and more useful to allow more variation in the way files are represented visually? Will Hill, James Hollan, Dave Wrobleski, & Tim McCandless suggested (in a CHI ’92 paper) that physical documents such as manuals naturally show wear in places where they are most used. They suggested that the visual representation of computer documents might be altered slightly to show which documents have been used or edited more and also that such cues within a document might also be useful.

Hill, William; Hollan, James; Wrobleski, Dave; McCandless, Tim; “Edit Wear and Read Wear,” Human factors in computing systems: Striking a balance. Proceedings of the 9th annual conference. SIGCHI ’92 Proceedings (Monterey, CA), Addison-Wesley, 1992, pp. 3-9.

One of the few cookbooks I use with some regularity is entitled, Fat Free and Flavor Full. The recipe I’ve used many times is the black bean salad. If I open the physical book, it naturally falls open to that particular recipe. “Open Recent” I find a very useful features of the Pages application, but I don’t see a way to look at files based on overall frequency of use. It could be the case that there are some applications for which you would want specific files to be easily found depending on the season or the date. The authors of “Edit Wear and Read Wear” were mainly talking about the utility of encoding information about a file into its visual representation. There might well be aesthetic reasons to do so as well.

The wooden blinds shown below exhibit alternating repetition in several ways. First, there is the matter of perspective. Some variation almost always presents itself simply by virtue of the fact that I typically view the blinds at an angle and some are closer to me than others. This means that the size, and the retinal shape are slightly different. Second, there is variation caused by slight changes in the angle of the slats relative to vertical. Third, each slat is made of wood. The wood itself shows rings (or more commonly a planar projection of the concentric cylinders.

The wooden blinds, because they are illuminated from the outside by tree-filtered sunlight also show further variation; however I don’t think that is typically “alternating repetition.” Perhaps not coincidentally, although I find it a little interesting, I can’t say I find that source of variation to be beautiful to me. The other three all add to the aesthetics, at least to me.

Is it feasible to introduce alternating repetition with slight variation into User Interfaces? Would it be desirable? What negative side-effects might arise? Do you even agree with Christopher Alexander that Alternating Repetition is an aspect of natural beauty and beautiful design? One thing that occurs to me is that if some element of the UI is more variable in outline etc., it may mean that the actions upon that object must deal with that variability. If designed greenfield, that might not be too difficult. But if, for example, the code for dragging and dropping was written under a presumption of zero variability, that might be problematic. What do you think?

——————-

Discussion of Alternating Repetition with additional visual examples can be found here:

The Fifteen Fundamental Properties of Living Structure. 4. Alternating Repetition

Because Christopher Alexander wrote a book, about the 15 properties, his examples are mainly visual. But alternating repetition as an element of beauty is also clearly present in music and in dance. There is a little of it, it seems to me, in culinary arts as well. I am also reminded of the smelling actions of my dog, Sadie. As she watches an animal without charging it, she waves her nose back and forth quite deliberately in a kind of “sampling” of the surrounding air. A bear will sometimes move sideways with alternating repetition to provide better depth perception of a far away target (like me!). But that’s a story for another time.

Use Diversity as a Resource

The Tree of Life

Life is a Dance

Take a Glance; Join the Dance

Piano

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

Strong Centers

12 Saturday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, design rationale, HCI, nature, psychology, Uncategorized, user experience

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

aesthetics, architecture, art, beauty, Christopher Alexander., Design, HCI, human factors, usability, UX

This is the second posting in a series of fifteen which examine Christopher Alexander’s “Fifteen Properties” of natural beauty and suggests how these properties might apply to user experience design.

Photo by Dominika Greguu0161ovu00e1 on Pexels.com

2. “Strong centers” is probably one of the most overlooked properties of design in UX/HCI. Often, what exists for the user, from their perspective, is a “sprawl” of functions, tool bars, and icons with no obvious overall or subsidiary organization. A better design would allow the user to quickly find a “home base” from which, it would be obvious where to find subsidiary home bases. There is some sense in which hyperbolic trees, fisheye lenses, and home pages partly begin to address this issue.

Instead of “strong centers”, the impression I often get in looking at applications for word processing, organizing photos, searching, or dealing with settings is that the designers are given or generate a long list of functions to be supported. Which ones are related to which though? Which ones are central? In many cases, UX practitioners give users (or, more often, potential users), a set of cards with one function each and ask the users to sort these into piles. I am not against such studies, but they are unlikely to lead to a coherent design with a strong center. The users are not, in most cases, professional designers. In many cases, an application is supposed to support many different specific actions. For example, I use word processors to write essays, poems, and fiction. I also use a word processor to proofread something, to re-organize ideas, to “jot down” a bunch of ideas, or to write an outline. These are very different tasks, at least to me. If asked to sort cards, I would do it differently depending on which type of task and which type of material I’m thinking about.

As I type this, I glance at the “Pages” tool bar which includes: Pages, File, Edit, Insert, Format, Arrange, View, Share, Window, and Help. None of these seems like “home” to the task of writing an essay. I know from experience that if I want to write any kind of material, I must go to the “File” menu even though, as best I can recall, my initial impression of this label was that it would be something to do after I was “done” with the tasks of composing and proofreading. The toolbar gives no impression of their being any “center” at all, let alone a “strong center.”

In my native language (English), I read from top to bottom, left to right. In that sense, the Apple Icon is first and the “Pages” item is next and it is in bold print. That could be considered a subtle clue that it’s the “most important.” In a way, the items on the “Pages” menu are “meta-items.” In that sense, I suppose you could argue that they are “important” — though as a writer, none of the items seem that important. In fact, if we get right down to it, nothing in Pages really seems designed to support the actual writing process. And, I’m not trying to single out Pages because it’s the only one or the worst one. Lack of a “strong center” seems true of nearly all applications.

Different people use different processes for writing — and I myself use different processes for different types of writing, so perhaps trying to organize the features and functions so that there is a “strong center”reflective of the “strong center” of the task of writing is just not feasible. I am certainly not advocating for resurrecting “Clippy.”

Ideally, it should be possible for users to “know where the action is” upon entering an application or a web page.

In another interpretation, “strong centers” refers more to underlying architecture and points to the need for a core of functionality that transcends a specific release or even a specific application. A good underlying architecture will communicate this essential center (related to central purpose or style) to the user.

All too often, the processes involved in developing an application or system themselves have no “strong center.” If the development process is itself a hodgepodge political process of accommodating to a portfolio of features and functions that are advocated for by diverse and uncoordinated stakeholders, then, what one has are a long, unorganized list artificially shoved into menus and sub-menus and toolbars. It should not be surprising then, that the user finds it difficult to know where to begin when first encountering an application — even if the user knows exactly what they want to accomplish.

Compare and contrast most menu structures and user interfaces with the “strong centers” that are extremely common in life forms. Here are some examples of butterflies.

The central axis includes the head, the thorax and the abdomen. These are in a line in the strong center. Typically, they are colored differently from the wings. The bilateral symmetry of the wings as well as the overall shape reinforces the strong center. Wing patterns, and even the antennae and legs lead the eye back to the strong center.

Most people think of butterflies as beautiful — and I agree. When asked, however, most people will say they are “brightly colored.” Some are; some are not. But “bright colors” don’t necessarily give rise to beauty!

Strong Centers doesn’t just apply to butterflies. Look at most birds, fish, mammals, insects and you will see how the symmetries and smaller centers reflect and strengthen the major center. Indeed, Strong Centers are not limited to the animal kingdom. The trunk of a tree provides a strong center. Each branch is itself a center and the connection of the branches to the trunk reinforces the strength of the central trunk.

Even single cells often exhibit strong centers (and many of the other 15 properties, by the way).

It would love to be able to provide you with a process or checklist or formula so you could design user experiences with “strong centers.” I cannot really do that. Nor can anyone else. If you keep it in mind, even at the back of your mind, you may see opportunities to help make that happen with regard to whatever you’re working on. I’m curious to hear your thoughts about “Strong Centers.”

One technique that may be of some use was shared at a workshop by someone who worked at a car company. In the design of a specific car, the team decided the car would reflect “a professional soccer player out for a night on the town.” This is obviously not a “formula” or “checklist” but it offers a metaphor that designers of car interiors, exteriors, and the drive train could all relate to. A similar method is sometimes used in film — some specific person is responsible for the artistic integrity of the whole.

There is no one way to produce strong centers. Here are some examples from flowers.

———————

Here we see that each flower has a strong center and the central stem provides a strong center for the entire plant.

Some useful links to more information, discussion, and examples relevant to “strong centers” or to the fifteen properties.

Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 2: Strong Centers

https://www.archdaily.com/626429/unified-architectural-theory-chapter-11

Roar, Ocean, Roar!

Imagine All the People

The Dance of Billions

Somewhere a Bird Cries

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Piano!

Unite!

Fifteen Properties of Natural Beauty & UX/HCI

09 Wednesday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, design rationale, HCI, nature, psychology, Uncategorized, user experience

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

architecture, art, books, Design, gratitude, HCI, human factors, mindfulness, photography, Travel, UX

This is an introduction to a series of blog posts on the “Nature of Beauty.”

Christopher Alexander was an architect and city planner. In his MIT dissertation, Alexander took a very mathematical approach to design. In our studies at IBM Research on the “Psychology of Design” I first ran across that work (Notes on the Synthesis of Form). Later in his career, however, he took a quite different approach to design. With an international team, he visited many different parts of the world to see what “worked” in terms of architecture and city planning. The results were documented in the form of a “Pattern Language.” In this sense, a “Pattern” is the named solution to a recurring problem. A “Pattern Language” is a connected lattice of Patterns that together, “cover” a field.

Others (including me) have emulated his approach for other fields such as pedagogy, organizational change, object-oriented programming, software development processes, and human-computer interaction. A few years ago, I suggested such Patterns for collaboration and teamwork. Here’s a link to the introduction of that effort. Here’s a link to the index of those Patterns.

Still later in life, Christopher Alexander embarked on a project called The Nature of Order. This work is documented in a series of four books. In the first book, he proposes fifteen properties of good form in nature — and in beautiful artifacts. Explication and example will be needed to appreciate what these properties mean. In this post, I list the fifteen and will attempt to explain the first one with respect to UX and Human Computer Interaction.

First, you might be wondering what relevance these fifteen properties of nature might have to interface design. After all, can’t the designer just test out their ideas empirically until a UX design is shown to be usable, learnable, and perhaps enjoyable as well? Well, sure. Ideally, every possibility could be explored and tested empirically.

But how many possibilities are there? Without any guiding principles, there are not only more possibilities than can be tested by you. There are more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe. Imagine a very simple interface on a small mobile device. Let’s say there are only ten screens in your whole application. The iPhone 12, for instance, has nearly 3 million pixels. 24-bit color allows over 16 million colors per pixel. If you literally tested out every possible arrangement, this would mean 16 million to the 3 millionth power for each of the ten screens!! The number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be between 10**78 and 10**82. Obviously, this is far less than 16,000,000**3,000,000 !!

Of course, I’m not suggesting that anyone would attempt a pixel by pixel test of an interface, but the general point remains: you need some way to limit testing to reasonable alternatives. The notion of using these fifteen properties is not that they dictate a particular design nor that you don’t need to do any empirical testing. Rather, the fifteen properties could be used to help guide design. The properties could be thought of as reducing the search space.

Here are the fifteen properties:

Levels of Scale
Strong Centers
Boundaries
Alternating Repetition
Positive Space
Good Shape
Local Symmetries
Deep Interlock and Ambiguity
Contrast
Gradients
Roughness
Echoes
The Void
Simplicity and Inner Calm
Not-separateness

Perhaps the names themselves might resonate with your own sense of aesthetics for design and composition, but let’s review them one by one.

The first is “Levels of Scale.”

When it comes to natural beauty, a few moments reflection may provide you with many examples. Christopher Alexander claims this property is also present in traditional art and architecture across many cultures. As you see something such as, e.g., the Taj Mahal or the Parthenon in the distance, you see a beautiful shape. As you approach it, you will see more and more levels of scale. By contrast, many modern buildings are largely featureless between the overall shape and the texture of the building material.

If your design has multiple levels of scale, it will be easier for your user to orient themselves; to know “where they are” in the application and therefore easier to take appropriate action. Not only are you making their “task” more doable, you are providing a kind of entertainment. If it works well, they will be thinking of the building and perhaps its significance the entire time they approach the building. By contrast, if I approach a modern no-scales building, I bore quickly and, like most people, there are a whole host of things waiting to be thought about. So, I’ll mainly be thinking of one or my problems and largely ignoring your building and what it stands for. Reflect on your own experiences and see whether you agree. Lincoln Memorial, Winchester Cathedral, Temple in Kyoto: they are completely different from each other and yet in this way, they are all the same: they keep your attention focused on the moment. In other words, they help you be fully alive and awake. In the best circumstance, they also elicit some awe and gratitude not only for the geniuses who designed but also for the many laborers who found and mined the materials, constructed something from it, and even those whose taxes paid those workers.

Levels of Scale is something to keep in mind with respect to your design — whether hardware, software, documentation, story, or a building.

How could you use or see “Levels of Scale” as a desirable property of what you are doing right now?

———————————-

Some references to Pattern Languages in HCI.

Pan, Y., Roedl, D., Blevis, E. and Thomas, J. (2012), Re-conceptualizing Fashion in Sustainable HCI. Designing Interactive Systems conference. New Castle, UK, June 2012.

Thomas, J. C. (2012). Patterns for emergent global intelligence. In Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience By Design J. Carroll (Ed.), New York: Springer.

Thomas, J. (2012). Edging Toward Sustainability. CHI Workshop Position Paper for Simple Sustainable Living. CHI 2012, Austin, Texas.

Thomas, J. (2012), Enhancing Collective Intelligence by Enhancing Social Roles and Diversity. CSCW Workshop Position Paper for Collective Intelligence and Community Discourse and Action. CSCW 2012, Bellvue, WA.

Thomas, J. (2011), Toward a pattern language for socializing technology for seniors. Workshop position paper accepted for CSCW 2011 workshop: Socializing technology among seniors in China, Hangzhou, China, March 19-23.

Thomas, J. (2011). Toward a Socio-Technical Pattern Language for Social Systems in China and the World. Workshop position paper accepted for CSCW 2011 workshop: Designing social and collaborative systems for China. Hangzhou, China, March 19-23.

Thomas, J. (2011). Toward a Socio-Technical Pattern Language for Social Media and International Development. Workshop position paper accepted for CSCW 2011 workshop: Social media for development, Hangzhou, China, March 19-23.

Bonanni, L., Busse, D. Thomas, J., Bevis, E., Turpeinen, M. & Jardin, N. (2011). Visible, actionalble, sustainable: Sustainable interactin design in professional domains. Workshop accepted for CHI 2011. Vancouver, B.C., May 7-12.

Thomas, J. (2011). Focus on Ego as Universe and Everyday Sustainability. Workshop position paper accepted for CHI 2011 workshop: Everyday practice and sustainable HCI: Understanding and learning from cultures of (un)sustainability. Vancouver, B.C., May 7-12.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2242380_A_Pattern_Approach_to_Interaction_Design

Click to access dearden-patterns-hci09.pdf

https://www.mit.edu/~jtidwell/common_ground.html

Thomas, J. C. (2018), Building common ground in a wildly webbed world: a pattern language approach. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 16 (3), 338-350.

——————————-

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

The Walkabout Diaries are photo-essays inspired by walks in nearby neighborhoods, gardens, and parks.

The Walkabout Diaries

Dog Years

28 Friday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in America, nature, pets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

charlie-brown, dogs, family, fiction, goldens, kids, life, parenting, pets, politics, story, truth, USA, writing

NOTE: I originally wrote this after a long rainy spell in San Diego. In fact, it hasn’t rained here for quite a while, but I believe we will have another long string of rainy days before long. We’ll see. Meanwhile….

Sunshine was one of my reasons for moving to San Diego. It wasn’t the most important, but it was important and I appreciate the Sunshine. For the past week, however, Sunshine took a long-awaited vacation. Apparently, Sunshine was running some sort of scam on the weather forecasters, calling up and saying, “Hi! It’s Sunshine! I’m feeling so much better today! I’ll be at work as usual tomorrow. You can count on it.

And then, when daybreak arrives the next day, it doesn’t. That is to say, when it should arrive, it doesn’t because Sunshine has overslept. Again. I suspect it might be because of all-night partying last night on the other side of the world.

You would think that the weather forecasters would catch on. You might even think that they would have seen the famous “Charlie Brown” cartoon meme in which Charlie Brown’s frienemy Lucy, promises him, year after year, that she will dutifully hold the football and not pull it away—not this time. And, dutifully, year after year, Charlie Brown decides that this will, or at least might be, the year that Lucy finally does the right thing.

But of course, she doesn’t do the right thing. And, Charlie falls flat on his back every time. Lucy smiles.

So apparently, this week, did the Sunshine. Taking vacation elsewhere and not showing more than a stray ray or two in San Diego allowed for the deluge. Other places farther north had it much worse, in terms of rainfall and damage. Worldwide, what we now call extreme weather may, in many places, become more “normal” and extreme weather will become deadlier.

In any case, I am have been just as foolish as the weather forecasters and Charlie Brown. Every day, my phone app has said the rain would be over in a day or two. And, then, two days later…same forecast is dutifully presented. But not the promised reality.

Sadie, meanwhile has been very patient about the fact that our walks have been typically much shorter all week. She has also been patient about not being allowed to dig in the dirt. More accurately, she wasn’t allowed to dig in the mud. There was no “dirt” around. It’s not idle digging. She hears and smells gophers and goes after them. Unsuccessfully. Every time. She’s dug for gophers more than the San Diego weather forecasters trusted Sunshine’s repeated false assurances that tomorrow the rain would end; indeed, even more often than Charlie Brown has over-trusted Lucy.

Sadie persists. She enjoys the process. Maybe the weather forecasters enjoy knowing that they made everyone feel hopeful that could play tennis in a few days (or have a picnic or mow the lawn or harvest their fruit in sunshine). Maybe Charlie Brown enjoys being the kind of person who would give another one more chance to be good, even if they never take that chance than to be more cynical and realistic.

I can’t say what the motivations are for Charlie Brown and the weather forecasters, but I am sure Sadie enjoys the digging. She certainly has little care for how dirty her paws get or whether she spews mud on my shoes. My philosophy may be a mixture of Charlie Brown and the San Diego Cabal of Sun Predictors. I believe Sadie should spend some time “just being a dog.” In other words, she should be in at least partial charge of what she does and be allowed to follow her “instincts” unless it poses a true danger and not just because, say, she tracks mud into the house.

As I was watching Sadie dig, and I was sliding sideways to prevent becoming muck-inundated, it occurred to me that I too, had some years of “just being a dog.” My parents, I think, thought of it as time for my “just being a kid.” In some cases, I heard adults say, “Oh, it’s just boys being boys” when we played in the dirt, fought with sticks, or had “rock wars” wherein we literally threw rocks at each other.

Not all adults were on this plan 100%. My own parents would let me play in the dirt often times, but they did not want me to participate in rock fights or stick duels. Evading those restrictions was trivial. We weren’t trying to be bad. But we knew our friends would not to try to blind us with sticks or stones. We believed implicitly that since we weren’t intentionally trying to blind each other, it wouldn’t happen.

Though there were local variations in the strictness of restrictions, we were always able to do some version of “just being a kid” which truthfully, was not all that different from “just being a dog.”

I had just as little care about muddying my shoes or fingernails as Sadie does about muddying her paws. I’d say my “dog years” were mainly between six and thirteen. Before six, my parents or other caregivers wouldn’t leave me alone long enough to get in real trouble. I mean, I managed all the usual little things like peeing into electrical outlets, throwing stuff down the “registers” (heating vents) to see what would happen, and writing in books and on walls, but there was no opportunity to have rock fights or get muddy from head to foot.

From ages six to thirteen, however, I spent a lot of time outdoors unsupervised. Plenty of time to be a dog. A few years later, however, it dawned on me that girls might find me more attractive if I were less muddy. My mother might have planted that suggestion.

There’s no doubt that many of the “instincts” I had were not very effective guides. They weren’t as effective as the knowledge that science and society had developed over centuries. On balance, I still believe having some dog years is a risk worth taking.

For a dog.

Or for a kid.

————————————

Author page on Amazon

Author Page on Amazon

My Cousin Bobby

Sadie is a thief!

Sadie

Sunday Sonnet for Sadie

Sadie

Play Ball: The Squeaky Ball

Skirting the Turtle

Life Will Find a Way

Math Class

The Most Important Work

Dog Trainers

Recommended Books:

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

The Walkabout Diaries: Symphony

22 Saturday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in family, nature

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

collaboration, community, cooperation, Cymru, diaries, empathy, flower, flowers, garden, gardening, karma, love, nature, peace, photos, plants, teamwork, ubuntu, unity, walkabout

Below is a picture of a plant popularly known as a black rose. It’s a succulent and not closely related to a regular rose (as are apples, by the way). Shown here, by itself, more or less, it shows beauty in its radial symmetry and shiny leaves.

And then, there’s this:

Fireworks. Rainbows. A light show of beauty. What gives?

What gives? Its neighbors — that’s what gives

And it gives back. The beauty, the variety, the subtlety — they only come to life as part of a community of plants. Each one allows, blocks, filters, reflects, or even possibly refracts and diffracts the light of the setting sun. On evenings like this, with not a cloud in the sky, the light here (very dry) is sharply directional and allows these effects to be enhanced. But the main thing is the interaction with the other plants and trees of the garden.

And, isn’t this true for people as well? Someone can look beautiful but true beauty shines when someone is loving, teaching, learning, dancing with, or playing as part of a team or orchestra. That’s when people reveal their most amazing and unique gifts and charms.

In fact, the only special gift humans have is the ability to communicate with each other in complex ways that allow us to cooperate even across time and space.

After originally writing the blog post above in 2022, I discovered that this observation aligns nicely with the concept of “Ubuntu”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy

By way of contrast, there is the absurd idea of “the self-made man” — really just a rationalization for psychotic levels of greed.

Dance of Billions

Fencing

What Line?

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Listen you can hear the echoes

Series on Leadership and Empathy

The Walkabout Diaries: Bee Wise

The Walkabout Diaries: How Beautiful and Green

The Walkabout Diaries: The Party

The Walkabout Diaries: Life Will Find a Way

The Walkabout Diaries: Life of the Party

The Walkabout Diaries: Friends

The Walkabout Diaries: Sunset

The Walkabout Diaries: Lest We Forget

Some book recommendations:

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on the mental game for all sports using examples from tennis, golf, baseball, and other sports. It covers self-talk, imagery, mental practice, strategy, tactics, & sportsmanship. http://tinyurl.com/ng2heq3

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

Thirsty Thursday

21 Friday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in nature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

beauty, clouds, hiking, ice, life, nature, photography, rain, science, Travel, truth, water

Water is life.

At least, most forms of life need water. Indeed, most forms of life are largely made of water.

Water is some amazing stuff. It’s one of the few things that ordinary people in ordinary circumstances see in solid, liquid, and gaseous phases. One thing that’s unusual about water is that when it freezes, it expands. It also has a high “heat capacity.” This means that water takes a lot of heat energy, relative to most materials, to increase its temperature. It also means that, once heated, it takes a long time for the water to cool to the ambient temperature. It’s why land areas that are near the oceans tend to be more moderate in temperature than similar places inland.

A hundred miles inland from where I live is a place called “Palm Desert.” The average night temp in the coldest month is 41 degrees Fahrenheit while the average daytime temperature in the warmest month is 107 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a difference of 66 degrees! I live near San Diego, a few miles from the ocean. For San Diego, the average coldest temperature is 51 degrees and the average for the high is 77. That’s a difference of 26 degrees. Quite a difference. That difference is due to the high heat capacity of water.

Water is beautiful in many forms: rivers, springs, waterfalls, clouds, rainbows, dew, rainstorms, ocean waves are just a few of the many ways that water strikes us as beautiful.

A well-fed adult human can last weeks without food but only a few days without water. I wonder whether we also need the beauty of water. It shows that the region we’re in may be survivable. It also indicates that other life dwell nearby. Perhaps as a corollary to these, water may also remind us that what is “out there” and beautiful to look at is also “in here” — inside us.

Water also plays with and transforms light. When water shows itself as droplets, as shown in the pictures here, it demonstrates two aspects of its nature: it adheres to other surfaces and it coheres to itself. A drop of water on a flower or leaf demonstrates its dual nature.

This is also our own dual nature. We must play our part for a time as a separate droplet, but such a droplet does not keep that form forever. Each one of these water droplets has been part of a cloud, part of a river, part of an ocean. We too change. We too need to be coherent. But we also need to interact with and adhere, at least for a time, to aspects of our environment.

A drop of water does not obscure the form of the leaf or petal it finds itself on. Rather, the droplet enhances the form of the leaf or petal upon which it rests.

What about you?

The Walkabout Diaries: The life of the party

The Walkabout Diaries Mind Walk

The Walkabout Diaries Sunsets

The Walkabout Diaries Bee Wise

The Walkabout Diaries Friends

The Walkabout Diaries Life Will Find a Way

The Walkabout Diaries: Walk in the Park

The Walkabout Diaries A New Rose is a New Rose

The Walkabout Diaries: Racism is Absurd

The Walkabout Diaries Lest we Forget

Travels with Sadie Precipitation

Ice

Dance of Billions

Roar, Ocean, Roar

Recommended Books:

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

Happy Darwin Day!

05 Wednesday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in essay, love, nature, psychology, science, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

beauty, Darwin, Darwin's Day, evolution, life, nature, philosophy, science

Charles Darwin:

Born: February 12, 1809

November 24, 1859, The Origin of Species was published.

So, which date do we use to mark the beginning of evolution?

LOL. Neither!

Life has been evolving on earth for 4.5 billion years! You and I and everyone else on earth and every Redwood, Monarch Butterfly, Rose Bush, Siberian tiger, and Honeybee; every Porpoise, Sailfish, Snail, Hummingbird and Eagle evolved in an unbroken line from our common ancestors.

Every single one of your direct ancestors stayed alive long enough to procreate.

The study of life has always fascinated me. I found it astounding as a kid. I find it astounding today after 4/5 of a century. In honor of Charles Darwin Day — February 12th — I thought I’d point to some earlier essays and poems that have touched on life, evolution, or genetics. BTW, it’s August 5th, but we’re the product of evolution 24 hours/day, 365 1/4 days a year so it’s okay to celebrate now.

The parts of humanity we call “Western Civilization” has spent a very long time viewing other life forms as “stuff” to be used. We focus a lot of technology and eradicating other life forms, manipulating them, repositioning them, planting them, training them to do our bidding–not to mention eating them.

And, long ago, our ancestors decided it was more fun to move around than to simply eat light from the sun. The problem is, you can’t really generate enough energy to play all the fun games that humans can (along with our kin). We must eat. So, yes, I would eat another life form so mine could continue. But I would not utterly destroy a forest to put in a shopping mall to make billionaires richer.

But imagine for a moment that we put some resources into creating a very different relationship among the various species on the planet. What if, instead of seeing how best to monetize these beings, we instead viewed them as teachers, students, mentors, mentees, distant cousins? (All which, BTW, are true relations we have) What if we multiplied our efforts to communicate with them rather than exploit them? Humans can learn a tremendous amount by being exposed to even a single culture other than their own. Imagine how much we could learn from a million different species.

Here’s the thing about the life forms we share the planet with. The more you learn about any one of them; the more you look into their history, their ecology, their strategies, the more stunned you will become. We have one way to unlock some of that wisdom which is by careful observation. We can unlock some aspects with traditional analytic science. But imagine we could really learn to share experiences with other species.

Photo by u041eu043bu0435u0433 u042fu043au043eu0432u043bu0435u0432 on Pexels.com

Math Class: Who are you?

Many people act in their “self-interest.” Others act altruistically. What might a balance between self-interest and altruism look like?

It seems to me at least worth considering that the genes that make you be the being that you are are not only within the boundaries of your own skin. Those genes are all over the place! Some are in trees. Some are in bees. Many are in a porcupine. And the vast majority are in all humankind. There’s way more of “you” out there than just what is in your own skin.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/math-class-who-are-you/

The Great Race to the Finish

Ever notice how much many people rush about? I am too. Or, at least, I used to be. As I write this, none of our six cats is rushing about. Not even close. Charles Wallace is curled up in a cat bed on the window sill. Luna is curled up on the bed next to my wife. The other four are all in the living room lying in the sun. If I approached any one of them, they would know it instantly. They are not in deep sleep. They are just taking a … well … a cat nap

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/the-great-race-to-the-finish/

And speaking of cats, no doubt part of the reason I love them is that they are constant reminders of how to enjoy life and not only by napping!

A Suddenly Springing Something

A Cat’s a Cat & That’s That

Hai-Cat-Ku for You

Cats are also quite willing to be demonstrative when it comes to reminding you that they have their own agency; that their life is every bit as precious to it as yours is to you.

Ripples

Actions have consequences.

We generally think of evolution in terms of a species, over time, adapting to whatever circumstances it finds itself in. But consider this: the choices we make determine what kind of environment we will live in and ultimately, how an organism (including humanity) will evolve.

Ripples

Life is a dance between endless repetition on the one hand and chaos on the other hand. Life is not a printing press. Each copy is a little different. Because of that, it can change, and bend, and learn, and change.

Life is a Dance

All Life is a Dance

The natural world is overflowing with beauty.

It’s diverse; it’s abundant; it’s everywhere. When humans come in and change the landscape? Sometimes, we make it marginally better or add something that is as beautiful as nature but very different. But that’s rare. If we’re honest about it, most of the things humans make are not nearly so beautiful as the natural things they replace. The manufactured items are often more convenient. For instance, it’s easier and more affordable and more convenient for most people to own a car rather than a horse. But beauty? Despite hiring really good designers and putting in lots of time & energy into making a good design and then selling that design, I’ve never seen a car that approaches a horse in terms of beauty. And, aside from the “nice tries” but you didn’t get there category and the “well at least it works and is blah” category, let’s not forget the many occasions when humans replace natural beauty with unabashed and stunning ugliness. These poems, I suppose, were partly written in the hopes that humanity would see natural beauty and work together to leave the world more beautiful than we found it — and not just more “efficient.”

You Must Remember This

Ah Wilderness!

The Tree of Life

Take a Glance; Join the Dance

The Forest

It was his nature

It isn’t only a matter of how things look, of course. I wish that our actions and interactions could be more beautiful as well.

Let the Rainbows In

Happy Diwali

Oh, Tannenbaum!

P is for Politics

https://petersironwood.com/2021/08/31/let-the-rainbows-in/

When I was trained as an experimental psychologists, thinking about the experience of other species was not encouraged. It was actively discouraged. I have a very different view of the world now. I think it is much more parsimonious to presume that other organisms do have some sort of experience and in many cases, similar.

Occam’s Chain Saw Massacre

In addition to poems, I also like to celebrate the nature of nature by sharing thoughts and pictures, many in a series I call “The Walkabout Diaries.” Why? Because I literally walk about, generally the garden, and observe things there.

The Walkabout Diaries

The Walkabout Diaries: Life Will Find a Way

The Walkabout Diaries: Lest We Forget…

The Walkabout Diaries: Racism is Absurd.

Life Will Find a Way

Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors

The Walkabout Diaries: Sunsets

Ghosts of Flowers Past

Dictatorship is fundamentally anti-life

Dictatorship is the opposite of life. It hates freedom, truth, cooperation, and love. It isn’s satisfied with “motivating” people to do things with cogent rationale. It wants to force people to do things under threat of death or pain. It wants what is good for one person to substitute for the messy processes of negotiating what’s good enough for everyone. It wants to replace the thinking of millions of people to decide what to do with the thinking of one person and when mistakes are made hide those mistakes so well that no-one will learn from them. It’s the opposite of life. Or, at least, it is the opposite of healthy life. It’s cancer run amok. Like all cancers, it’s doomed. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be a lot of pain before it runs its course.

Cancer Always Loses in the End

Drumbeat: Spoiled Feet Fill the Street

Myths of the Veritas: The Tale of Three Blind Mice

The Cancelled Flight to Crazytown

Fish Have No Word for “Water”

The “All for me!” Bee

Siren Song

Life is a precious gift. Don’t throw it away.

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petersironwood

~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

Category Archives: nature

7. Local Symmetries

6. Good Shape

5. Positive Space

4. Alternating Repetition

Strong Centers

Fifteen Properties of Natural Beauty & UX/HCI

Dog Years

The Walkabout Diaries: Symphony

Thirsty Thursday

Happy Darwin Day!