Word: chaotic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hard to know how to respond to Falling Down: deplore its crudeness or admire its shrewdness. But it is occasionally the movies' job to plunge into the national psyche, root around in its chaotic darkness and return to the surface with some arresting fantasy that helps bring our uglier imaginings into focus. In that sense, this often vulgar and exploitative movie has some value...
With the CIA's help, Mobutu stepped into the power vacuum that followed the Belgian Congo's chaotic independence in 1960. Staging a bloodless coup, he took power, only to hand it back to a civilian President. The next year, ousted Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who had turned increasingly to the Soviet Union for support, was assassinated in an operation that benefited both Mobutu and the CIA. "I received instructions to see that Lumumba was removed from the world," recalls Devlin. "I received poison toothpaste, among other devices, but never used them." Mobutu seized control for good in a second...
...over the eons, a chaotic universe organized itself into stars and galaxies and planets. And at least one planet, our own, is now bursting with life in bewildering varieties, filled with organisms that have arrayed themselves into ecosystems, communities and complex societies. How did this happen? That is the question posed by a brand-new field of science known as complexity...
Complexity theory examines the systems that lie in the middle ground between the predictable and the chaotic -- in fact, right on the border between the two states. Says Edward Knapp, president of the Santa Fe Institute: "We think of a complex system as one that is probably never in equilibrium, a system with many interlocking parts that are not easily described by simple arithmetic...
This phenomenon is known as self-organized criticality -- the grains have organized themselves to slope at a certain angle, yet the arrangement is precarious because a tiny extra bit of sand can knock the whole thing down. The sandpile is not quite stable, not quite chaotic...