February's ending, and Spring is not far off. I've done some new sign designs at my local Starbucks. Snowdrops, sunshine, and luminous cupcakes here:

and here's a lavish art nouveau display for the Chocolate Marble Macchiato. Both are done in acrylic markers on heavy coated boards.

Wonderful Cosmology

I just finished reading a classic book by British cosmologist Martin Rees, titled BEFORE THE BEGINNING. Much of the rambling about black holes in my previous few entries has been inspired by this book, which takes you on a tour of the incredible cosmological discoveries of the last century. He illuminates not only black holes, but grand galactic structures, quasars, supernovae, active galaxies emitting intense radiation, neutron stars, and dark matter. His writing is clear and unpretentious, though at times it got a bit too technical for me to follow. The only thing wrong with this book is that it was written in 1997, before the astonishing discovery, in 1999, that the universe is expanding faster, rather than slowing down. Rees speculates about this, but it had not been confirmed when this book was written. That discovery puts a few chapters of his out of date. But it's still great reading, and in later books he probably deals with it. I'm just grateful that the universe has brought about beings conscious enough to think about and discover the reasons behind all these grand phenomena.

Posted at 2:45 am | link