Chaotic Utopia

Turkey Shoot!

Dave Munger — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:44:17 -0500

Happy Turkey Day!

Shoot your own dinner! via Southbank

Thanks to my pal, Sara, who recommended this manic turkey shooter for Thanksgiving Day. I know it doesn't make sense, but then again, most holidays don't anymore.

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The Prickly Finger

Dave Munger — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:08:43 -0500

Ok, this is just bizzarre. If you’re easily freaked out, don’t read this. It might start off nice and pretty...

This story begins sometime in the mid-1990s, when I was still young enough to do stupid things with friends who had too much to drink. It involves a sort of tradition for those of us who grew up in the Front Range of Colorado, a world famous natural amphitheater, and a close encounter with the local flora.

It was late on a warm summer night. A group of us had decided, just on the spur of the moment, to go over to Red Rocks Amphitheater, and see who was playing. Now, this didn’t mean going to the ticket booth. It meant parking the car off the side of the road, and climbing over a hill to a place where you could overlook the concert below, and hear the music reverberating off of the monolithic rocks. Every teenager in the area has supposedly tried to do this at some point, although over the years it has become increasingly difficult--or so I hear. I might just be getting old.

Now, those of you who have never visited Colorado might have something of an idyllic view of our foothills. You see photos of aspen groves, forests thick with ponderosa and lodgepole pines... but that’s not really what we have in the foothills, close to the cities. Instead, it is more like a high desert scrub... lots of barren rocks, bristly grasses, stands of yucca, and most importantly (for this story at least) lots and lots of prickly pear:

(Note: I’ve used that picture before. It isn’t actually from Red Rocks, but from Table Mesa in Boulder.)

Ok... so, now, you might see where this is going. They don’t exactly provide nice cleared trails to sneak up into Red Rocks. So, we parked near some small, fenced fossil bed along Dinosaur Ridge, which runs up the right side of this map:

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Re-imagining this Chaotic Utopia

Dave Munger — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:45:36 -0500

So, I’ll be the first to admit it. This blog is dead. I’ve noticed it happening to a number of sites I used to read on a regular basis, as the authors found themselves overwhelmed and occupied with many other things--school, work, life--chaos. Yet, what I’m facing is a little different. This blog was always about chaos. And now, my trouble isn’t being overwhelmed with many things, but the exact opposite. I’ve been struck with focus. It was inevitable that my blog would follow.

It has been a strange road. When I first started writing in earnest, developing my ideas and going back to school to refine them, I didn’t have much focus. Sure, everything revolved around chaos theory and fractals, but that was the rub--my focus was everything. Plus, they don’t generally offer undergraduate degrees in chaos theory at the local university. That didn’t stop me, of course. I just looked for the most all-inclusive, interdisciplinary degree I could find. If anyone asked me why, I’d sort of make something up on the spot. I might as well have majored in magic.

Partially Clips by Rob Balder

Ok, so, I didn’t go for a major in humanities or English (like the author of that comic, or a good number of my friends) but I did choose a fairly ambiguous program, and one that seems to be the current popular choice for the undecided: environmental studies. That isn’t to say environmental scientists lack focus--on the other hand, those who work in the field generally have a very specific and important focus, like cleaning up abandoned mines or monitoring the effects of climate change on a certain species of tree. Those undecided kids in the environmental studies program end up choosing one of those specific careers, sooner or later. But that wasn’t me, either. I had a lot of trouble choosing a single aspect.

It snuck up on me.

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What if you didn't vote?

Dave Munger — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:39:03 -0500

Surely, you don’t need me to remind you to vote today. Everywhere we turn, there are little reminders. But what would happen if you or I didn’t vote today? Here’s an example:

If you know someone who says they don’t need to vote, you can customize this video and send it to them.

Finally, if you are, like me, going to drop off your ballot today (there is something pleasant about doing it the old fashioned way, on election day, at the polls, with the old-style non-computerized ballot!) bring a good book for those long lines, and enjoy! See you after we’ve elected someone!

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Don't doubt my scienceness!

Dave Munger — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:32:34 -0500

I promised one more comic before getting back to more serious research, and here it is. Sluggy Freelance is usually a serialized comic, but one instance last week stood out on it’s own:

"Don’t doubt my scienceness!"
From Sluggy Freelance by Pete Abrams

If you are curious about the story leading up to this scene (ie, why the storyline is titled "Little Bacon Bots" or why they are in an underground lab or who the dude in the helmet is or why they are debating the ultimate food) you could always go back to the beginning of the story. However, that might raise even more questions, like: why is Torg drawing a nose on his friend in the first place? In that case, you might end up trying to take in the entire archive, which stretches back over 10 years. I did it when there were about 7 years worth of archives... that’s one week of my life I can’t get back, but it was worth it. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you!

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Ghoulish Treats for Halloween

Dave Munger — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:07:05 -0500

You might have noticed, this blog has been as still as tomb over the past few weeks. It isn’t as if I was waiting for Halloween to write again--on the contrary, midterms were keeping me frighteningly busy! But, while I did manage to completely bomb one test, this semester has been quite insightful so far. (I finally see how this interdisciplinary approach I’ve been on will lead to a career. Yey! I’m not just wasting all my money on tuition!) So, all of this insight should, eventually, translate over to my blogging. It’ll be wicked, I promise!

For now, I’m still trying to de-stress after a tough week, while simultaneously getting ready for the Halloween fun tonight. Tomorrow, I can start catching up on more serious work. Today is a day for mischief and merriment. So, here are a few Halloween goodies to get you in the spirit of things!

Let’s start with costumes... what’s the scariest?

Habitat Loss
from Kevin and Kell by Bill Holbrook

Then, we have pumpkins to carve! This pumpkin is easy to carve... no seeds, no pulp, no mess, no knives needed... unlike the half a dozen real pumpkins sitting on my porch, waiting to be hacked open:

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Colorado Science Blogs Party Video

Dave Munger — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:49:34 -0500

Better late than never, I guess. We shot this video a few weeks ago at our local ScienceBlogs bash. We had martinis and hors d'oeuvres, played with balloons, and had some interesting conversations on science. Some of them were deep and insightful. None of those were filmed. We leave you with the rest:

Thanks to everyone who came, and to my husband Alan for his fascination with video editing.

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Destiny; a Manifestation

Dave Munger — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:44:41 -0500

American Progress by John Gast

Take note of the bison in the painting above, fleeing from America’s angel of death, a now-fallen angel named Manifest Destiny.
Take note of the bison, fleeing alongside horseback-riding natives and dwindling wildlife.
Take note of the bison, pressed ever-more westward towards a finite boundary, towards the Pacific Ocean.
Now, notice the complete lack of fences.

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Fractal Fences: LXXXI

Dave Munger — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:08:44 -0500

Barbed wire stretched across the prairie, the slaughter of animals (and people)... the founding of the old wild west wasn’t so beautiful. Despite that, of the classes I’m taking this fall, titled "Don’t Fence Me In", has gotten me to take a closer look at the Western genre in literature and film, and the commentaries they have made on our history. So, I’ve been turning back to the history of Church Ranch (my own pet wild west story,) watching Clint Eastwood films, and reading books by Cormac McCarthy. The latter really caught my interest... about halfway through Blood Meridian, (which is based on the infamous Glanton Gang) I started wondering if it was really a book about chaos theory and complexity, more than about violence and sunsets. When I went looking on the author’s website, I was somewhat startled, but not all too surprised, to find out that he hangs out at the Santa Fe Institute. (Who knew they had a resident fiction writer? I think I might like his job when he retires...) At some point, I’ll have to sit and write a deeper review of Blood Meridian, but for now, I’m paying tribute in fractal form. You might recognize it as a section of a Julia set, with some fBm noise and a fence-like coloring algorithm. Or, you might just look at it and see what I did... a bizzarre landscape, crossed with fences, and punctured by bullet holes. Maybe it’s just my imagination... or maybe it’s my legacy, handed down from the old west.

Fractal Fences
(click the image for a larger view)

Side note: Sorry that this one is a little late. I’ve been a bit behind with e-mails, comment replies, and posting (including editing that video footage from the party 2 weeks ago!) I’m slowly getting caught up, so my thanks and apologies to all of you who suffer along with my sporadic schedule. I hope to have more on the subject of boundaries and history soon.

Fractal made by the author using Chaos Pro.

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Buffalo Bill's Defunct

Dave Munger — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:15:22 -0500

This poem seemed really fitting with the last post, yet I couldn’t fit it in anywhere. So here it is, all by itself, with some strange guy reciting it next to an egg cart:

Buffalo Bill’s

defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

-- E. E. Cummings

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Where the Buffalo Roamed: A Historical Photo Essay

Dave Munger — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:53:47 -0500

Some folks say that bison belong here, not the ’burbs. The great herds once covered the plains, shaping the prairie in their nomadic graze. They were a keystone species, holding the ecology of the plains in a state of equilibrium. Native Americans who lived on the plains depended on the bison for survival, using the animals as a primary source of materials and food. Hides were used as clothing and shelter, bones were used as weapons, tools, and farming impliments. It may have been the most healthy lifestyle on earth at the time, at least nutritionally, if height is a judge of health. These provided for nomadic tribes and agricultural settlements, alike. (For instance, a bison scapula, attached to a long stick, made a handy hoe for tilling tough, clay-thick prairie soils.) But the bison herds were not eternal.

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Inevitable Complexity

Dave Munger — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:01:21 -0500

Time passes and the universe expands... but not so much locally. Here, something else happens altogether. Time passes, the amount of space stays the same, but the amount of information contained within grows increasingly dense. We may be products of this, or we may produce it. As we are driven to explore the world around us, we carve it up with boundaries and divisions, categorizing any information we can get our hands on. Our categories get smaller and smaller, each more specific and detailed than the last. In a sense, our drive to divide and label at increasingly smaller scales seems fitting for our fractal-laden world.... we could keep separating on into infinity. There’s a few drawbacks to this method, however. As we increase the density of our space with boundaries, we decrease our freedom of movement. As more lines are drawn around us, we find less room to reach--the impacts of our actions have a more immediate effect. Yet, not all of our designated boundaries are wholly accurate. They are convenient, so we stick with them, even when they don’t exactly fit the complexity of the world around us. Those convenient, yet marginally inaccurate boundaries don’t exist independent of reality. It isn’t as if these two worlds--the perceived and labeled world versus the real world--are mutually exclusive. Rather, they have direct impacts on one another. We adjust our boundaries as we gain understanding of the real world, hoping to increase their accuracy. Meanwhile, those choices and drawn boundaries affect the actual world around us. Ultimately, our world is constantly increasing in complexity, our adapting selves along with it, as both causes and effects. To understand what we are becoming, we must first understand where what we have been.

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Where to begin?

Dave Munger — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:37:29 -0500

The ScienceBlogs party here this past Sunday was a blast. We had about half a dozen people stop by, altogether. We ate and drank, talked science and politics, and did silly things for the camera. On the latter note, I now have about a half hour of footage that we shot at the party that is waiting to be edited. I estimate two minutes of it may actually be usable!*

*Note...at future parties, don’t put the helium-filled balloons next to the martinis. The combination is apparently too tempting.

So, I’ll have more party news later this weekend, when I’ll have time to sit down and look at that. In the meantime, there are many different things that I’d like to get up here: bits of history, science, philosophy, and art, woven together in strange yet thought-provoking ways, in quotes, fractals, poems, true stories, and more. Somewhere in this mess of information, I have to find a place to start. I’ll probably just dive in at some random spot, like life usually seems to do.

While I’m organizing my notes, I’ll leave you with a few questions to consider:

What do boundaries do?
Are boundaries real or artificial?
Are boundaries convenient? Necessary?
Do you have to draw new boundaries to answer these questions?

Most of my research has been hovering around these questions lately, so they’ll certainly be brought up again.... after the party post? I’m not sure; stay tuned!

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The Infinite Cat

Dave Munger — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:56:34 -0500

Ok, one more. You can’t leave the party without meeting Otto. He’s an infinite cat. That’s it! Thanks for coming, be it in person or virtually, and most especially, thank you for reading, commenting, and helping ScienceBlogs reach 1,000,000 comments!

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A Surreal Playground

Dave Munger — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:50:58 -0500

Suppose you’re not really the social type at all, and would rather play around in some serene playground. Well, we have something for you, too! Take a break and chill out in Vector Park. They have all sorts of weird things to click on, like three-legged headless acrobats, an odd assortment of objects to be balanced on hangers, and a dog-or-bird-like creature that chases your spider. See the giant head, pick at its nose until bubbles come out, and more. However you choose to do it, enjoy playing around in Vector Park.

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