A tangenital mix of blogliness, studying the effects of time, change, and chaos
A student in Colorado, looking for some sort of synthesis--the big picture, encompassing all the strangeness in the universe--but willing to settle for the philosophic or poetic lens.
Most of my favorite blogs can be found here somewhere on ScienceBlogs. Here are a few of the other gems out there:
August 29, 2006
Category: Lens of Fiction
Illusions in Lavender was the most difficult story I ever tried to write. I must have set it down a dozen times, driven by the same reluctance I feel writing this post, now. No matter how much research or editing...
Posted by Karmen at 1:26 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 28, 2006
Category: Fractals
Life, at times, seems rather abstract. So, with little comment, I present an abstract fractal. Unlike most of my fractals, which resemble some form in nature, this one represents a figment of a dream. Since I can't exactly take a...
Posted by Karmen at 3:00 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 24, 2006
Category: Riding the Waves
My husband's name is Alan Franklin, but we affectionately call him Al. So, ever since he began to dabble in progressive politics, I've been expecting this day: Al Franken meets Al Franklin. My Al's thoughts on the encounter can be...
Posted by Karmen at 5:41 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Riding the Waves
Take these back-to-school days and vacation recovery, and throw in a cold virus and little writer's block, and you have one very neglected blog.
Posted by Karmen at 3:00 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 22, 2006
Category: Poetry
I'm not sure why I write so many poems about the waves. They must be somewhat cathartic. I've been having trouble writing what I ought to be, and this one sort of spilled out. Please, pardon if the meter is...
Posted by Karmen at 1:49 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 21, 2006
Category: Complexity
If there were ever a post to elude a specific category here on ScienceBlogs, this would be it. If it were simply a "hey, I'm back from the mountains" post, I could stick it under "Chatter". But sometimes, visiting remote...
Posted by Karmen at 3:15 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 18, 2006
Category: Fractals
This was actually the first Friday Fractal, originally posted on ChaoticUtopia.com on April 28th of this year. I've found many images in fractals which are reminiscent of forms in nature. Both the precise mathematical displays and the delicate shapes of...
Posted by Karmen at 10:10 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 17, 2006
Category: For the Love of Wisdom
Sometimes, inspiration and insight can come from the strangest places. This post, gathered from a series on my old site, describes my experiences with the classic symbol for morality: The apple (as in, the fruit of knowledge of good and...
Posted by Karmen at 10:15 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 16, 2006
Category: Lens of Fiction
The following is a short story-a work of fiction-or is it an epistemological metaphor? You decide....
Posted by Karmen at 2:15 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 15, 2006
Category: Complexity
Grisha Perelman recently crawled out the woods with the solution to the Poincare conjecture, and snuck back. There was talk of his love for mushrooms. ...er... Well, it turns out he was correct, so we probably shouldn't question his inspiration....
Posted by Karmen at 4:23 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Poetry
Here are two poems, each embracing a different perception of time:...
Posted by Karmen at 2:13 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 14, 2006
Category: Colorado
"At last we got through, and I beheld, with some sadness, the goal of my journey, 'The Great Divide,' the Snowy Range, and between me and it South Park, a rolling prairie seventy-five miles long and over 10,000 feet high,...
Posted by Karmen at 3:10 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 11, 2006
Category: Fractals
Emergence: Complex patterns arise from the simplest rules. From lighter elements emerge heavier compounds; from clouds of gasses and particles arise galaxies, stars, and planets. From basic atmospheric reactions between basic chemical compounds, the building blocks of life, amino acids...
Posted by Karmen at 2:30 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 10, 2006
Category: Strange Life
When I wrote about the lady beetle colony in the maple tree outside, I managed to get some great pictures of newly hatched larvae, plenty of pupae, and the beetles themselves. That would be almost the whole life cycle--except my...
Posted by Karmen at 2:52 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Riding the Waves
Via Sluggy Freelance by Pete Abrams Sluggy Freelance, my favorite webcomic, is in the midst of a "Stick Figures in Spaaaaace" week. While the stick figures don't show off Pete's artistic ability, they offer a chance for stand-alone gags...
Posted by Karmen at 11:37 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 9, 2006
Category: For the Love of Wisdom
Why can't we picture a fifth dimension? One, two, and three seem so easy to grasp. We can even see how one leads to the next: a line, composed of points, is a component of a shape on a plane,...
Posted by Karmen at 12:05 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 8, 2006
Category: For the Love of Wisdom
I've spent plenty of time, sitting outside, thinking about time. (Some might argue that's a waste of time, but I say you need to take time to smell the roses.) Cliches aside, it seems appropriate to discuss the relationship between time and values by examining change in a place I value.
Posted by Karmen at 7:19 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: For the Love of Wisdom
The title makes this sound like a post about utopia. That wasn't my intention, but maybe, in some ways, it is. When Jose Garcia over at Meme Therapy asked me for a quote about achieving utopia, I discussed the same...
Posted by Karmen at 2:24 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 7, 2006
Category: For the Love of Wisdom
Sometimes, reading philosophy is a lot like medieval torture. For some reason, talking about things like objectivity in ethics or the meaning of existence requires numerous dry definitions and explanations. This process causes the reader to be overwhelmed and confused....
Posted by Karmen at 3:06 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 4, 2006
Category: Riding the Waves
Friday sort of snuck up on me. When it did, it brought along a multitude of small annoyances. My cable modem has been flaking out, intermittently. When the modem is working, my pond is flooding and blowing the fuse to...
Posted by Karmen at 5:42 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Fractals
Some people have been asking how I make the fractals for the Friday feature. A few just assumed that I took a photograph and plunked it into a computer program, which automatically spit out a fractal. I wish it were...
Posted by Karmen at 3:50 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 3, 2006
Category: Riding the Waves
It's a dimension of chaos! Shall we battle, or ride the waves? They say it's a catchy phrase, but I know what they're thinking. They hear words like, "dimension", "chaos", or "battle", and think laser guns and villains with curling...
Posted by Karmen at 3:08 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 1, 2006
Category: Complexity
Does a little grape relate to the changes of an entire planetary ecosystem? Of course. Slight changes in temperature will affect the producers, before it begins to hurt the consumers. This is true for growers in the Napa Valley, and wine drinkers around the world, but it is also true for any plants and the animals that eat them.
Posted by Karmen at 2:58 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
