Blast from the Past: Those Las Vegas Showgirls "Do" Tessellations!

(Image: Tiled ceiling showing use of tessellated patterns, Shiraz, Iran). Goddess' truth! As I was looking up the definition of onomatopoeia for the previous post about domestication of cats, I grabbed my trusty 30+ year old edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary off the bookshelf in the den and flipped it open as I settled it above my computer keyboard; it opened to pages 1204 and 1205. On the upper right hand side, page 1205, are the key words "tessellation (to) tethering." When I saw "tessellation" I immediately thought of a Las Vegas Showgirls article that Isis and I put together many moons ago! Check it out: Chess - Tesselations - Knight's Tour - Escher - "Harry Potter May 20, 2003 (Note to self: Please take Mr. Don to task for forgetting his editing task to such an extent that he omitted to close the quote at the end of "Harry Potter. Of course, I suppose that could have been taken as a sign of things to come back then...) For further information on the blow-your-mind subject of tessellations: Lots of cool tessellation graphics at Tessellations.org Refresher on what a tessellation is from Math Forum: What Is a Tessellation? The word tessellation is derived from the Latin word for tile - "tesserae" - as in mosaic tiles. Although the art of creating amazing mosaics out of small bits of colored clay or stone tiles was known from before the Roman period, my recollection is that it was the Persians under Islamic rule who took the art to its highest form, creating intricate geometrical colored patterns out of myriad tesserae and larger glazed bricks. See, for instance, Iran: Visual Arts: History of Iranian Tile.