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growyourwingsI've been so busy and involved lately that I decided to take a time-out today. My brain is full and my roller coaster self-review, self-determination, self-WHATEVER needs to percolate a little.
What this means folks is that, yes, I may be posting a lot today as thoughts percolate. Or, no, I won't as my brain shuts down. Whatever happens happens. (Isn't that a song? Que Sera, Sera? I have that somewhere....*mind wanders*)
Oh, yeah, I'm posting....sorry.
So kiddies, anyone know what this is???? (And yes, I know I'm being flippant)
For those of us Boomers, no it's not tie-die (although it did end up being used as fabric art during the late 70s and early 80s.)
Fractals, baby.
When I decided late yesterday afternoon that my brain was officially dead I decided to watch the latest Nova episode. One of my new friends from my workshop commented on Facebook the day before that she was watching Nova and it was about Fractals.
Man I love Fractals. It's like the perfect crack from someone who loves logic, images, patterns, complexity, and mystery. And I'd forgotten all about them.
Luckily my TIVO is set up to record NOVA--although I never take the time to watch them.
So my downtime yesterday was watching Hunting the Hidden Dimension on Nova.
I grew up watching Nova. My Dad watched it everytime it was on. Pre-cable, Internet, torrents, Netflix, and iTunes, PBS was like the permanent Homebase at our house. Pre-FoodNetwork too--it was about the only place you could find cooking shows. *stares off into space and goes into nostalgic musings..*
I'm back! (miss me?)
Anyway, I loved this show.
Anyone ever read Contact by Carl Sagan? (Or seen the movie with Jodie Foster?) When I was a late teen, early adult, I devoured all of Sagan's books (and of course watched all of Cosmos, again PBS baby!)
One of the things I loved about Contact was about the hidden message buried in one or more irrational number. The thought that something designed the universe in such a way as to build messages into the fabric of the universe---well it just grabs me deep inside.
Fractals, to me, are like that. Again the thought that there is mathematical logic buried in organic matter, living things, rocks, mountains, everything. Again--just *shivers* in glee.
And I loved the story of the man who discovered Fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. A self-described odd-ball. A Jew who survived German-occupied France. A man who discovered he could look at mathematical formulas and see, quickly, in his mind, pictures generated by those formulas. Who withstood the scorn of his colleagues and continued to insist Fractals were important. A man who was recruited by IBM in the early days of the computer to work with a group of non-conformist, rebel-like thinkers. *sigh I want that job*
I loved how Mandelbrot's work with Fractals was slowly noticed by non-mathematicians. How it sparked something in those outsiders. How those people took Mandelbrot's ideas and revolutionized the special effects we all enjoy in movies todays. Mandelbrot's work can be directly credited for the break-through in computer-generated images (CGI) in movies.
A textile designer was influenced by what she read in Mandelbrot's book The Fractal Geometry of Nature, and teamed up with a physicist and a mathematician to create software that designed weaving patterns for clothing based on fractals.
Scientists and doctors are using fractals to explore the human heart, researching ways of diagnosing cancers, and researching how the human eye works.
So math, logic, art, and the nature of the universe---all wrapped up in a pretty picture, a fractal.
*loves*
/end geek-out
ETA: Hee! I love how I went from my last post about boys kissing to this post about fractals and the complexity of the universe. What can I say, I'm a renaissance woman (whoa I even knew how to spell that! That surprises me.)
What this means folks is that, yes, I may be posting a lot today as thoughts percolate. Or, no, I won't as my brain shuts down. Whatever happens happens. (Isn't that a song? Que Sera, Sera? I have that somewhere....*mind wanders*)
Oh, yeah, I'm posting....sorry.
So kiddies, anyone know what this is???? (And yes, I know I'm being flippant)
For those of us Boomers, no it's not tie-die (although it did end up being used as fabric art during the late 70s and early 80s.)
Fractals, baby.
When I decided late yesterday afternoon that my brain was officially dead I decided to watch the latest Nova episode. One of my new friends from my workshop commented on Facebook the day before that she was watching Nova and it was about Fractals.
Man I love Fractals. It's like the perfect crack from someone who loves logic, images, patterns, complexity, and mystery. And I'd forgotten all about them.
Luckily my TIVO is set up to record NOVA--although I never take the time to watch them.
So my downtime yesterday was watching Hunting the Hidden Dimension on Nova.
I grew up watching Nova. My Dad watched it everytime it was on. Pre-cable, Internet, torrents, Netflix, and iTunes, PBS was like the permanent Homebase at our house. Pre-FoodNetwork too--it was about the only place you could find cooking shows. *stares off into space and goes into nostalgic musings..*
I'm back! (miss me?)
Anyway, I loved this show.
Anyone ever read Contact by Carl Sagan? (Or seen the movie with Jodie Foster?) When I was a late teen, early adult, I devoured all of Sagan's books (and of course watched all of Cosmos, again PBS baby!)
One of the things I loved about Contact was about the hidden message buried in one or more irrational number. The thought that something designed the universe in such a way as to build messages into the fabric of the universe---well it just grabs me deep inside.
Fractals, to me, are like that. Again the thought that there is mathematical logic buried in organic matter, living things, rocks, mountains, everything. Again--just *shivers* in glee.
And I loved the story of the man who discovered Fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. A self-described odd-ball. A Jew who survived German-occupied France. A man who discovered he could look at mathematical formulas and see, quickly, in his mind, pictures generated by those formulas. Who withstood the scorn of his colleagues and continued to insist Fractals were important. A man who was recruited by IBM in the early days of the computer to work with a group of non-conformist, rebel-like thinkers. *sigh I want that job*
I loved how Mandelbrot's work with Fractals was slowly noticed by non-mathematicians. How it sparked something in those outsiders. How those people took Mandelbrot's ideas and revolutionized the special effects we all enjoy in movies todays. Mandelbrot's work can be directly credited for the break-through in computer-generated images (CGI) in movies.
A textile designer was influenced by what she read in Mandelbrot's book The Fractal Geometry of Nature, and teamed up with a physicist and a mathematician to create software that designed weaving patterns for clothing based on fractals.
Scientists and doctors are using fractals to explore the human heart, researching ways of diagnosing cancers, and researching how the human eye works.
So math, logic, art, and the nature of the universe---all wrapped up in a pretty picture, a fractal.
*loves*
/end geek-out
ETA: Hee! I love how I went from my last post about boys kissing to this post about fractals and the complexity of the universe. What can I say, I'm a renaissance woman (whoa I even knew how to spell that! That surprises me.)
