chaoticutopia | May 25, 2007I've been running late again this week, but at least this time, I had a decent excuse. While most of my free time lately has been spent cleaning out closets and other fun springtime tasks, last night, I had a wicked time. That is, I had a chance to see the musical, Wicked, at the Temple-Buell Theater in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. I adore theater, most especially, the lyrical forms (I was named after an opera, after all.) I thought the play was wonderful, although the musical score seemed a little a dry. (I think it might be based on the theme from M*A*S*H.) The sets and the…
chaoticutopia | May 21, 2007
Contrail descending from a cumulonimbus cloud.
I suppose the most obvious signs of life in this picture are human in origin. With the storm rolling in, most animals had already sought shelter. Not us... we keep flying over the country, or running outside to take pictures. We operate under the assumption that we have the upper hand when it comes to the weather. (Of course, looking at last week's news, that might be a faulty assumption.) I think this picture says otherwise... we may have conquered flight, but our biggest jets are still dwarfed by ordinary thunderheads.
All photos by the…
chaoticutopia | May 20, 2007If you're poking around, looking for some relaxing diversion before you have to go back to work tomorrow, you've come to the right place. Lately, I've been writing a few casual game reviews for Casual Gameplay, better known as JayIsGames.com. Jay has offered reviews of the best in online casual gaming for many years, and has earned quite a reputation. Being a loyal fan of the site, I love the chance to help Jay and his staff out with the occasional review. OK, well, truth be told, it's a good excuse to relax, something most of us need. Here are a few reviews I've done over the past few months…
chaoticutopia | May 18, 2007I think I'm going to take this Nova Julia set home, color it with fBm noise, and call it "Find Nemo":
Didn't find him? Try here:
A Percula Clownfish (Amphiprion percula) swimming around in an aquarium
Ok, so, this one is for the kids. (And the grownups, who, like me, couldn't resist watching Finding Nemo once or twice... or a dozen times.) As any child who has seen the movie knows, clown fish live with poisonous sea anemones, which protect them from predators. In the movie, Nemo's father says he "gets stung all the time" and so he's "used to it". However, real clownfish (often known as…
chaoticutopia | May 17, 2007Life is cyclical, perhaps necessarily. Just ask a biochemist about metabolic pathways, or an astronomer about the motion of the planets. I keep running into cycles as I try understand the ecological history of the Denver metropolitan area. From the never-ending passage of precious water to the arguments over it, history is constantly repeating. Even more inevitable than the issues concerning water management (or anything else, for that matter) is one of the harshest cycles of all: Life and death.
As I've mentioned a few times, I've been trying to start up a few new features. For the mid-week…
chaoticutopia | May 16, 2007I suspect PZ knew this already:
Click to see the (larger) original.
See, even web comic strip artists can get into octopus sex trivia. Er, come to think of it, it seems like most of them do...
Comic by Robert Balder of Partially Clips and Erfworld.
chaoticutopia | May 14, 2007
Lady beetle eggs (Coccinellidae, unknown genus/species) on a cedar fence.
(Two animal species in one shot: There was a squirrel lurking in the trees behind, if you can make out the fuzzy gray shape in the background of the full-sized image.)
CHAOS: Complex Habitats Around Our Suburbs isn't just a geeky acronym; it is a gallery of often-unnoticed life. Each week, I'll add a new photo of a complex habitat found near my home. We often think of nature as something that exists outside of our neighborhoods, away from the cities. It is easy to forget that cities and neighborhoods are, indeed,…
chaoticutopia | May 13, 2007
Mother's Day is drawing to a close. I've spent a better part of the day, appropriately, mothering. While being showered with cards and kisses from my six-year-old son, I've had a chance to reflect a bit on the subject of motherhood. (Being a mom is a busy job--I'm just now getting a chance to write this down!) In six years, I've learned an incredible amount about being a mother. But the greatest lessons, and the most powerful tools for raising a child, I learned from my own mother.
It was never anything she said, although she's always offered me advice when I've asked (or sometimes even…
chaoticutopia | May 11, 2007Cricket: chirp.
chirp.
Oh... wait... you're still here? I'm sorry... I forgot to mention that I was taking a short vacation from writing. Well, I didn't mention it, because I didn't really plan for it. In that case, I would have scheduled something ahead of time. Instead, I finished my finals, and started fiddling in the garden. Suddenly, a week later, I realized I hadn't written anything, from a blog or a poem to a new research project. Since words are usually flowing out of me like a garden hose, this came as a surprise... a pleasant one, as it turns out.
During this "vacation" I had…
chaoticutopia | May 4, 2007Words cannot quite describe this fractal piece, which is abstract, yet seemingly (and sensually) familiar. As any of my regular readers will know, it isn't too hard for me to find fractals which subtly imitate natural forms. Still, it was quite a surprise to find these anthropomorphic forms lurking in the set. The flesh-like curves appeared as I was feeling around a vortex Julia set, using 3D fractal Brownian motion as a coloring formula. Originally, I was trying to find something that looked like a feather or a leaf. (When I first saw the body, I had it colored green. Talk about abstract.)…
chaoticutopia | May 3, 2007
As my week of bioblitzing was wrapping up, so were my classes. Add to that an eager 6-year-old, who wanted to help with spring preparations by cleaning the pond-with windex-and you can see, I've been busy.
I never did get around to counting the flora in my two bioblitz locations, but I have no regrets. This has been a wonderfully enlightening experience for me. While my counts don't show it, I managed to stumble onto one of the richest ecological niches in my area. I've visited site A at Standley Lake regularly since moving to this part of town. Now, I'll be visiting site B (B is for…
chaoticutopia | April 30, 2007
Geese at Standley Lake (soft pastel and charchol on canvas) by Karmen Lee Franklin, 2007
It seems that in life, nothing ever turns out as expected. Over the past week, which was, of course, National Wildlife Week, I participated in the Blogger Bioblitz. The experience was loads of fun, quite educational, and full of surprises. By the last day, I'd sort of given up on counting (overwhelmed by the diversity I'd discovered) and switched into artistic mode... but the surprises kept coming.
I dropped by both sites A and B over the weekend. I completed a small count at the beaver ponds at site B…
chaoticutopia | April 27, 2007
Tracking wildlife in my neighborhood wetlands this week made me reflect on the complex network of organisms in a habitat. Everything in an ecosystem is so intimately tied together, that a single species can have drastic effects on the entire habitat. The ecosystem, like all systems containing that elusive chaotic aspect, has sensitive dependence on the initial conditions... like a fractal. In the fractal or in nature, one small change can ripple through the entire set. For an example, I took two copies of the classic Mandelbrot set, and laid one atop the other. Then, I used slightly…
chaoticutopia | April 25, 2007
The rain finally stopped this afternoon, so I decided to head over to Site A for a 15 minute bioblitz. The lake seemed deserted when I arrived. No other people were interested in climbing around in the mud, and all of the fauna was hiding. Far away, I heard a meadowlark and what sounded like a frog, but otherwise, all was quiet. I walked around a little, and decided I had better mark off a square, and start counting the many clumps of prairie grass along the trail. Unfortunately, in early spring, when it is just sprouting from the ground, prairie grass is notoriously difficult to identify. I…
chaoticutopia | April 24, 2007
In theory, conducting a bioblitz was going to be a simple enterprise. I would go to one of my chosen spots, count the organisms as I went along, noting them in my book and, if possible take a photograph. I figured the two places I'd chosen would be relatively barren. In the tall grass prairie (especially one that has been mowed) you expect lots of grass, the occasional shrub or succulent, and the standard plains fauna, mostly passing birds and a profusion of prairie dog mounds. Site A is one of my regular haunts, and I knew I'd spot, at best, some waterfowl or wildflowers there.
I chose…
chaoticutopia | April 22, 2007
Today is Earth Day, the perfect holiday to kick off a little Blogger Bioblitzing for National Wildlife Week. All around our bumpy sphere, people are going out and getting intimate with nature. Like many other bloggers, I've been scouting out the perfect places to bioblitz.
In Colorado (as everywhere else) ecology depends on the water... and there just isn't much to go around. The earliest humans who lived along the Front Range kept constantly moving, letting the limited natural resources replenish as they went along. Later, fur trappers and miners settled in the region, and eventually…
chaoticutopia | April 20, 2007The Perfection of Wisdom: A Fractal:
A layered fractal, incorporating a Lissajous curve
(For Melinda)
The Perfection of Wisdom: An 11th Century Illuminated Manuscript:
A page from the illuminated manuscript, Astasähasrikä Prajñäpäramitä (The Perfection of Wisdom)Created on pattra pages in a Tibetan monestary during the late 11th century (Pala age)
And thus Sariputra says:
The perfection of wisdom gives light.
I pay homage to the perfection of wisdom!
She is worthy of homage.
She is a source of light,
She removes darkness, and leads
Away from the blinding darkness
Caused by a…
chaoticutopia | April 19, 2007"Hate something. Change something. Make something better." When Garrison Keillor sings it, you can't help but smile.
I played this adorable little game, called Grr several years ago when it was featured on Jay Is Games, and instantly fell in love. The game floated up from my memories this week, as I was trying to develop a better attitude about my housework and writing. While it has always been a cheery distraction from the gloomy doldrums, it also turned out to be well timed.
Yesterday, Nissan announced that they were coming out with a new "green" diesel engine. They are just catching up…
chaoticutopia | April 17, 2007I'd like to offer my sympathies to the students at Virginia Tech, and the friends and family of the victims of yesterday's horrible tragedy. I usually write long blog posts, or at least include interesting images in my posts, but today, neither words nor images really seem adequate or appropriate. Even worse, I had planned to post a series of "random distractions" this week, since the semester is pulling to a close, and those in academia need a little break. No distraction, however, can ease the mind at a time like this.
Eight years ago, I lived near Columbine High School. My husband worked…
chaoticutopia | April 13, 2007What happens when you cross two immensely complex patterns, and then picture them at the perfect unique angle? Consider first, the merging of a skewed Mandelbrot set with a cloud-like plasma fractal. Zoom in on one, out on the other, and blend:
Now compare this with a photograph of a distant galaxy:
NGC1356
Like my fractal, the photo was taken at a particular and unique angle, capturing an eclipse of enormous scale. In this case, the Chandra X-Ray observatory captured the eclipse of a black hole with a galactic cloud. This gave astronomers the perfect opportunity to measure the halo of…