chaoticutopia
Posts by this author
February 14, 2007
Last Valentine's Day, I posted a few fictional pieces describing different aspects of romantic relationships-a tender sonnet for the hopelessly romantic and a wicked horror story for the bitter and jaded.
This year, I seem to be running behind. So, rather than highlight the extremes of love, I…
February 14, 2007
I missed my regular blogging time yesterday, as I was scratching my head, trying to solve Kevin Beck's latest logic problem. In the end, I figured it out, but it was a tough one. I've always been a fan of these types of puzzles, and this one was particularly delightful, and not just for the…
February 12, 2007
Happy Birthday 198th Birthday
Thank you, Mr. Darwin, for showing us the bewitchingly simple way life can change and become more complex over time.
The Alliance for Science is holding a Darwin Day essay contest for high school students, with an intriguing question and cash prizes. If you're…
February 9, 2007
Fractal Cognition:
An abstract layered fractal, incorporating two types of Julia sets and an L-System fractal (pictured at right, below)
This fractal was inspired by some of the ideas I've posted lately. Here are a few tidbits for context:
We only see a fraction of an ever-changing cosmos.…
February 8, 2007
Here is another philosophy paper of mine, which I find to be increasingly relevant, all the time. It describes how a computer might soon have a consciousness equivalent or surpassing the human consciousness: philosophy with a bit of AI theory mingled with a touch of neuroscience.
When I got the…
February 7, 2007
Yesterday, I posted a paper discussing a potential flaw in our perception of reality. Here, I review an article from Scientific American Mind, suggesting how such "flaws" occur from a neurological standpoint.
A Delay from Reality
By Karmen Lee Franklin
Imagine being witness to a spectacular car…
February 6, 2007
Many science bloggers are dedicating this week to a week of pure science, in which they are posting a single non-controversial science piece each day. Since I barely manage to get out a quality post every other day, and also since I'm writing a paper on a controversial subject (global warming), I…
February 2, 2007
Well, technically, it's still Friday somewhere...
It is bitterly cold in Colorado right now, somewhere around 10 degrees below 0, Fahrenheit. It was a bit warmer than that at sunset, when I spent some time admiring the fractal patterns in tree branches. (I'll confess, it's a favorite hobby of mine…
January 31, 2007
I've been in a creative mood this week, and I decided to take it out on my notebook pc:
Many people like to personalize their laptops with a unique bumper sticker or something similar. I couldn't find the right sticker, so I ended up doing my own thing. I took a bit of inspiration from the week of…
January 26, 2007
Trying to merge a flame fractal with a Julia set and a 3D sphere was almost enough to make my computer have a thermonuclear meltdown.... or at the very least, run out of memory. With a little coaxing, however, I was able to make it work. I'd say the results were pretty hot:
...but not quite as hot…
January 26, 2007
This guy is simply amazing. While my fractal art uses a computer to explore the fuzzy boundaries between a 2nd and 3rd dimension, Peter Callesen's art uses nothing more than standard paper--the very same sort you probably have sitting in your printer tray--and a little glue. From these humble…
January 23, 2007
...let's come up with some advice for the next president.
It seems like everyone is passing the buck on climate change, these days. In his speech, President Bush spoke of future technologies, and called climate change a "serious problem". He isn't going to be in office too much longer, of course,…
January 20, 2007
I must apologize for being a bit slow with blogging lately, and now a day late with the Friday Fractal. A series of events and observations left me in an existential mood, pondering the fuzziness of the line between reality and fiction. Since my story on the subject, Illusions in Lavender was…
January 16, 2007
If you are love reading great science blogs, and wish you could read them while you are away from the internet, check this out: The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006:
A collection of 50 selected blog posts showcasing the quality and diversity of writing on science blogs till…
January 13, 2007
Everybody else is doing it.... who am I to argue with peer pressure?
Now, you can be cool too, make your own library catalogue card, here.
January 12, 2007
Many things in nature seem to catch our eye, simply by hovering between a turbulent, chaotic mess, and a vacant, serene sense of order. Art tends to reflect these dichotomies in nature, even when it is fairly abstract in nature. Some say it stems from a fascination from good and evil, or light and…
January 10, 2007
Here's a collection of odd things I've run across in the last week or so. A fireball from space here, maps of the future there, general chaos everywhere, and someone riding the waves... just go with the flow.
First, last week, the skies over our head were glowing in the darkest hour, just before…
January 9, 2007
I spent long enough thinking about my last entry, that I forgot to announce my news. I've been admitted to the University of Colorado at Boulder, in the Environmental Studies program. I still need to make a few contacts to establish a double major, and study philosophy as well. (Perhaps I can…
January 9, 2007
As a writer, I love to use metaphors to explain what I see. Sometimes, it is much easier to describe how something is like another thing than it is to describe the thing itself. The metaphor adds a subjective layer of context to a thing, making the unfamiliar familiar. Language is, in some part,…
January 6, 2007
It's hard to believe I've been blogging for a year now. In some ways, I still feel like a newb, struggling to put up my three or so posts a week. Yet, when I look back at all the work I've done in the last year, I'm amazed at all that I did. Choosing the "best of Chaotic Utopia" was no easier than…
January 5, 2007
I'd be hard pressed to choose a favorite from all of the fractals I've done as a Friday Feature. I started the feature in April of last year, after playing around with a fractal toy that a friend of mine built. Since then, I've created a piece of nature-inspired fractal art nearly every week. I've…
January 2, 2007
I'll admit, I've never been a big fan of New Year's resolutions. It isn't that I don't like setting goals... but vowing to make a major lifestyle change with a time limit does seem to be asking for trouble. After all, there will always be a touch of chaos. With that in mind, I actually made a…
December 29, 2006
Even in a snowy winter landscape, I feel as if I'm surrounded by fractals. In order to capture this feeling, I turned to the complex topography of the Mandelbrot set. I added an fBm coloring algorithm, to mimic the soft hues of a winter storm. When the fractal was complete, I decided to superimpose…
December 23, 2006
In order to create a festive holiday fractal, you don't even need a computer. All you need are a few standard Christmas decorations: glass balls and lights. (Actually, you don't even need Christmas lights, any light source will do.) It's quite simple: put the balls in a small pile under the light,…
December 20, 2006
What do you do when stuck at home in a blizzard? Why, build a snow fort, of course:
And, inside, to wish you a Merry Winter Solstice, is the king of the fort, Roland:
December 20, 2006
The mother of all logarithmic spirals is focused right over my head. Check it out:
Basically, moisture is being drawn from the Gulf of Mexico and blown to the northwest. There, it climbs the slopes of the Rockies, where it is colliding with a large mass of cold air from the arctic. For Denver,…
December 19, 2006
I get strange searches from google or yahoo all the time, from queries about facial hair to blowing things up. It isn't too unusual for a search engine to come up with sites unrelated to the original query, so I usually give these searches little more than a cursory glance. One search from yahoo…
December 17, 2006
Finally! Well, sort of... my caricature, along with all the other ScienceBloggers, appears in the middle of the next issue of Seed Magazine, and also here. You'll find me lurking off to the sides, looking sort of evil. ;-)
December 17, 2006
I'm a bit late on the Friday Fractal this week, mostly because I've been busy with my son's 6th birthday party. Since Roland adores these fractals almost as much as I do, I told him he could make this week's fractal. (That's another reason we're late... he has school on Fridays, and had the party…