Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
scriptingNews outline for 7/7/2000
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 7/7/2000; 6:29:04 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 7/7/2000 Msg #: 18361 Prev/Next: 18360 / 18362
Mandelbrot
I saw a PBS show on Mandelbrot sets and fractals, hosted by Arthur C. Clarke. I had no idea they were so beautiful and so potentially important, or even what they were. They may be even bigger than the universe. It's possible that everything's a fractal, even our brains; they may be the key to understanding DNA, and like floor wax, they can even be used to compress images on computer networks like this one (the Internet).
Benoit Mandelbrot, a researcher at IBM in upstate NY, is alive and speaks English. He was on the show! Of course soon after the show was over I wondered if IBM took out patents on this stuff. Would that dampen Clarke's enthusiasm for fractals if they had? Questions questions.
Google search for Mandelbrot.
Jeru and Great Hair
Now that I've put some of Jeru's writing on the Web, perhaps we can go some other places together.
I spent the weekend with friends that I know through Jeru. Some old ones and some new ones. I got a lot of exercise this weekend, emotional exercise too, and saw my little boy, the one that's four years old, very clearly for much of the weekend. This was lovely.
Suntanned and emotionally expressed, yesterday was a Great Hair Day at SFO for me. That made it more entertaining. Everywhere I went heads turned. I caught people staring at me. I smiled, somewhat embarassed. This is not the normal thing for me.
With Jeru's teachings fresh on my mind, I realized something, most of these people who are looking at me probably think I'm a relative of theirs, someone from their deep past, perhaps their father or older brother, or (it is this bizarre) their mother. The little child in all of us doesn't know about time, and doesn't really understand gender.
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