The Usual Shop

Posted by Steve on September 18th, 2008 in Uncategorized

I was going to take a picture of my naked shoulder for this post, but decided instead to just describe what’s inked there.  It’s a spiral and some rectangles.  The rectangles all have the property that the ratio of the length of any longer side to the corresponding shorter side is the same as the ratio of the longer side plus the shorter side to the longer side.  That ratio is 1.6180339887…  The spiral is inscribed in the rectangles and has a lot of mathematically and naturally interesting properties.  It’s called the logarithmic spiral.

I paid someone to carve this into my arm

I chose that tattoo because i adore math and like the ideas represented by the rectangles and the spiral.  17th century mathematician Jakob Bernoulli also had a minor obsession with the spiral.  In fact, he requested that after he die, that spiral be engraved on his grave marker.  Unfortunately for him, the actual spiral that ended up there was the Archimedean spiral.  I’m just glad my tattoo artist followed instructions better than Bernoulli’s engraver.  Permanent spiral representations of self can be a tricky thing.

Not the intended spiral

Last weekend Annalise and i saw another permanent spiral representing the vision of artist Robert Smithson.  He made a rock jetty that spirals into the Great Salt Lake.  He chose (i assume intentionally) the Archimedean spiral for his art.

The second most artistically interesting spiral in this post

Another artist that used the idea of something circling around and around, getting closer and closer to some destination (in this case insanity and suicide) is Trent Reznor.  Nine Inch Nails significantly put themselves on the map with their concept album The Downward Spiral.  As far as i know, Trent never said which spiral he had in mind to describe his character’s descent into madness.  I’m going to predict that it’s the logarithmic spiral since that would imply a more dramatic slide.  The Archimedean spiral would still indicate closing in on madness, but not getting exponentially closer.

See the cat?  See the cradle?  See the spiral?

So there are some spirals to be aware of as you’re flying out of control or being flushed down the toilet in life.  Did you know that in the southern hemisphere, water actually flies out of the toilet when you flush it?  They have no respect for spirals there.