chaoticutopia

Thanks to everyone who responded to the spirituality survey! After seeing the all the responses to the spirituality survey, this week, I've come to one definite conclusion: While folks are eager to define categories, they don't like being fit into them. I think this is because categories tend to be…

The other day, in response to a meme, I confessed to being a theist. I seem to have chosen a good time to do this, as many of my (non-theistic) fellow ScienceBloggers are discussing the matter. (Here and here are just a few examples.) I suppose I should explain. Since the holidays are approaching…

Be it winter or spring, I can find fractals growing all around me. Patterns which seem defiantly simple emerge with branching, crystalline beauty. This week's fractal is a Julia set, transformed with inverse circles, then painted with the colors of a winter's day: ...similar to a snowy scene in…

Ken over at Prospero's Books recently tagged me with this prying meme, asking me to list five things about myself that most people don't know. When I first considered the task, I realized there are many things about me that are relatively unknown... but I'm not quite willing to share them all in…

After the skies cleared this week, I headed out to nearby Standley Lake to get a few winter photographs: Standley Lake, with shores covered in snow and a snow-capped Longs Peak in the distance. A few trees by the shore. This is "south for the winter" for these Canadian Geese. There are a ton of…

My apologies for getting the fractal out a day late, and for keeping it simple. Just as soon as I started to get caught up with things, I caught a nasty little cold. So, here are the basics-I'll get back to more detailed posts as soon as my head clears. Thanks for your patience! For this fractal,…

Since I'm a little behind on, well... everything (housework, postings, academic deadlines, Christmas shopping, sleep, etc.,) I figured the least I could do was share another spiral delight. I ran across this mosaic of flickr images while browsing for my "Thanksgiving decorations": If you click…

Occasionally, I run across a fractal in nature that is so perfectly formed, that the repeating, scaling patterns are actually 3-D. In these cases, it is difficult to do the image justice by creating a similar fractal on a 2-D surface. I encountered this in today's fractal. The Julia set, colored…

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 display elegant fractal-like patterns: This Tom seems to know his…

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. So, what is a starch, exactly? A starch is a complex carbohydrate;…

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? I tried to include every answer, adding a few of my own "guesses" as well, to show more similar forms. Thanks to everyone who added their…

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 to the brain and thus "heard". Essentially, it is a spiral…

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. (Zimmer's article is, as usual, an…

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 and society, without the guidance of a leader. Spiral forms are an…

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 night's program on NPR on emergence, I was not disappointed. Listening to…

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. How? That's our question this hour. We…

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 a single pebble, And find the path Has changed its course. (…

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 merely looking for a pattern that was somewhat spotty. I ended up with this…

The day is upon us, the first Tuesday in November, good old election day. I could, as the "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question of the week requests, discuss the most important political races local to me, or explain why certain ballot initiatives are important, while others are not. But, chances are,…

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 overseas. (One bottle of Heineken, for instance, requires at least…

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 of the bailout values. Try to find the same spot later on, without the same exact values,…

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" nonetheless. Metropolitan Metamorphosis What it was    …

...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, new evidence suggests the Chicxulub meteor…

It was ghoulish! It was macabre! Ok, so it was just my son, "Count" Roland: He may be the only one brave enough to walk past the zombies and decapitated heads to ring the doorbell tonight. Or, everyone else is home, trick-or-treating in cyberspace. Now you can too! Or, courtesy of the same site,…

Ok, so, I may have made my porch a little too spooky this Halloween: So far, I haven't had a single trick-or-treater. That means... all the candy is mine!!! All mine!!! Oh... wait... there's a knock at the door... (Be right back)

I've kept this research paper in the archives for too long. Converging topics as diverse as bioethics and Gothic literature, it was one of the most enjoyable papers I've ever had to write. What better day could there be to bring it out of the shadows, than Halloween? Even though I wrote it over a…

In order to make up for my recent shortage of Friday Fractals, I've assembled a few at once, with a Halloween-ish theme. I browsed over the Mandelbrot set, seeking the spookiest angles. What seems freakiest is the unending depths of the set... I could have been wandering through forever. It is…

Witches, stew, and a battle... A well-timed meme floated into ScienceBlogs over the weekend, asking what advice we might have for our 12-year-old selves. This began as John Lynch at Stranger Fruit borrowed the survey question from Fark.com. Soon, others began to respond, including Janet at…

You awaken in a gloomy, unfamiliar hotel room, unsure of anything--even your own identity. You can search the room, or the dark alleys beyond, and discover the answers, but beware. Each clue may only serve to deepen the mystery, and you'll soon discover, there are only 8 Days. This week, talented…

(/lurk) As a fan of the dark and eerie, a student of the strange, and a writer of creepy tales, I'm delighted by the approach of Halloween. It sort of snuck up on me, as those dark little twists tend to do. Usually, when my various research projects lead me to those shadowy alleys of the…