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:
November 28, 2006
Category: Riding the Waves
If you click this incredible spiral collage, you'll be taken to the full, interactive version at coverpop.com. If you roll your mouse over the images there, the titles will appear along with a linked preview of the original. The image was Jim Bumgardner, who is known for such oddities as creating the Palace chat system.
Posted by Karmen at 5:04 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 24, 2006
Category: Fractals
Ok, I know you're probably tired of food, after a huge Thanksgiving dinner, but at least this makes that leftover broccoli salad in the fridge look more interesting. Broccoli has become almost as famous for displaying fractal patterns as it has for grossing out children at the dinner table.
Posted by Karmen at 4:57 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 23, 2006
Category: Complexity
Here are a handful of photographs which not only fit the Thanksgiving theme, but also show fractal or spiral patterns, emerging in art and nature. What better pattern to begin with than the turkey? The feathers of a turkey can...
Posted by Karmen at 12:29 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 22, 2006
Category: Riding the Waves
What makes the perfect Thanksgiving turkey gravy? Depending on your preference, it might be the smooth texture, the rich flavor, or the glossy sheen. No matter what the end result, the magic of gravy lies in the science of starch....
Posted by Karmen at 8:54 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Complexity
I had so many creative guesses for the complexity puzzle posted the other day, that I decided to pull them altogether into one mosaic: So... who was right?...
Posted by Karmen at 4:57 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 21, 2006
Category: Complexity
Another spiral; this time, one that can be found inside the human body: An isolated and dissected cochlea. The cochlea is the organ inside your inner ear that ultimately transforms the vibrations of sound into nerve signals, which are sent...
Posted by Karmen at 3:16 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Complexity
Casey Luskin, please come out of your box, or stop trying to stick your opinions through the keyhole without taking a look. Luskin, a mouthpiece for the Discovery Institute, recently tried to attack Carl Zimmer's National Geographic article on complexity....
Posted by Karmen at 1:27 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 17, 2006
Category: Fractals
What's so special about a spiral? Why does it catch our eye, inspiring our art and architecture? Why is it even there? This week, I reviewed a program about the emergence of order, showing how organized patterns appear in nature...
Posted by Karmen at 4:43 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Complexity
With my love for fractals, added to my experiences with a gigantic wasp/ladybug colony springing to order in front of my home, the subject of emergent behavior should feel quite natural to me. Indeed, as I listened to Monday...
Posted by Karmen at 12:54 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 13, 2006
Category: Complexity
Tonight, Colorado Public Radio is hosting a program about emergence: What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies, all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony....
Posted by Karmen at 7:30 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Poetry
Here's a very short poem about battle or riding the waves... that doesn't actually mention waves or chaos for once: Casting Pebbles Each pebble, Under your foot, Is meant to be there, Holding together The path of your life. Kick...
Posted by Karmen at 5:43 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 10, 2006
Category: Fractals
Hidden deep within the layers of the Mandelbrot set, subtle, yet familiar forms can almost leap out at you. This happened to me as I applied the coloring formula (based on Gaussian integers) to this week's fractal. I was...
Posted by Karmen at 3:27 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 7, 2006
Category: Riding the Waves
Since you've already gone to vote...(You have, haven't you?) ...here are a few web-based delights to celebrate election day. Have you ever wanted to throw tomatoes at that one sleazy congressman? How about unleashing a massive flood on Global Warming skeptics?
Posted by Karmen at 11:46 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 3, 2006
Category: Their Odd Creations
The other day, I jokingly suggested that a surplus of red tape might lead to human extinction. Leave it to a brewery to take such a threat seriously. Apparently, beer can generate large amounts of red tape, especially when shipped...
Posted by Karmen at 8:40 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Fractals
Fractals, like so many sights in nature, can seem both static and dynamic at the same time. A cloud can change its shape right before your eyes, and so can a slice of the Mandelbrot set, with a slight nudge...
Posted by Karmen at 5:42 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Poetry
While rediscovering an old coffee haunt the other night, I scratched the following words onto a few pages in my notebook. It is probably more of a rather lengthy run-on sentence than a poem, but I'm filing it under "poetry"...
Posted by Karmen at 12:03 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 2, 2006
Category: Complexity
...or at least, the end of any simple theory regarding the extinction of our saurian predecessors. A few announcements from the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America last week concerned the simplicity of mass extinctions. For instance,...
Posted by Karmen at 12:23 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
