Word: fractals
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...headset and standing on a milk crate, how to manipulate a large, 3-chip Sony studio camera. In the computer-graphics room, instructor Deena Segot will be critiquing an advanced camper's animation created in Macromedia Director. Later the same day, Segot will have beginner students draw butterflies in Fractal Design Painter. Like butterflies, children need freedom. So each day, campers can socialize outdoors until it's time to go home...
...other end of the spectrum, some segments of the show are intentionally laden with metaphorical meaning. The fractal segment, in which these exotic patterns become visible on a screen as the Blue Men spread shaving cream with trowels, is significant to Blue Man cosmology. According to Stanton, the unpredictability of fractals, their structure which is both methodical and chaotic, reflects the randomness of modern life and proves that "We [mankind] are not that crazy after all." Goldman is intrigued that "patterns do a thing which nobody expected them to do, which is look more similar the more complicated they become...
...applied to Crichton. "I think of Michael as the high priest of high concept," says Spielberg. All right, concept: Island. Theme park. Dinosaurs. Adults swallowed whole. Kids in peril. Easy. But who said the author had to give us the history of computers along with it? And chaos theory? Fractal vs. Euclidean geometry? And the workings of a Stegosaurus gizzard? And dna? So much dna it's a wonder Crichton hasn't been called as an expert witness in the O.J. trial...
...cool water gardens, the arcaded patios, the fractal-like proliferation of detail in the stucco domes, the mind-defeating intricacy of the mosaics with their cordons de la eternidad (literally, "ribbons of eternity") interlacing in continuous patterns: such things cannot be crated, shipped across the Atlantic and put in a museum. One fragment of a 14th century mosaic dado from the Alhambra, however beautiful, is only a detail and cannot convey the overwhelming effect of the patterning on the palace's actual walls. Thus, although this exhibition looks fine inside the pyramid of the Met's Lehman Pavilion...
Nonetheless, Penrose's reasoning is powerful, and he delves extensively into such heavy topics as fractal geometry, number theory, quantum physics, entropy and cosmology to give readers the necessary background to understand his ideas. "I have to admit," he says, "that I had been looking for an excuse to write about many aspects of physics and mathematics anyway, and this gave...