MetaFilter posts tagged with chaos

New Worlds and Old

Artw — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:16:08 -0800

The Readers of Boing Boing interview Michael Moorcock

Dark Knight meets Matrix meets Awesome

blahblahblah — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:59:38 -0800

Carousel is one incredible, continuous two-minute tracking shot of the deadly and eternal fight between cops and clowns [high definition versions here with additional interactive features]. Directed by Adam Berg, apparently 90% of the amazing stunts were captured in-camera.

"Saruman's velocity is 69.5 m/s (155.5 mph) as he hits the spike."

not_on_display — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:16:11 -0800

Phriday Physics Phun! What is the force Superman exerts to stop a plane from crashing into the ground, or the speed and mass of Vince Vaughn's winning Dodgeball shot? What's the force exerted by a Dominique Wilkins windmill slam dunk, or the speed of a retired Charles Barkley? What's the frequency of a cat's purr? ...the mass of a snowflake? ...the pressure inside a can of soda? ..the reaction time of the human fingertip? The Physics Factbook, via hypertextbook.com, is "an encyclopedia of scientific essays written by high school students that can be used by anybody," containing over 800 entries and special topics. Also from hypertextbook.com: E-world (which hosts a cool reloadable mosaic of a ton of NYC traffic videocameras), the Physics Hypertextbook and the Chaos Hypertextbook.

Would you like to buy an fuzzy multi-instanton knot?

escabeche — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:56:25 -0800

"...the best place to hide bulls**t is in a refereed journal that’s not open-access!" The math-physics blog n-category cafe digs into the curious case of M.S. El Naschie. El Naschie is editor-in-chief of the journal Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals, published by the well-respected scientific publisher Elsevier and sold to academic libraries for US$4,520 a year. The problem? El Naschie has published 322 of his own papers in the journal -- papers that John Baez (of "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics" and "The Crackpot Index") describes as "vague, dreamlike imagery," "undisciplined numerology larded with impressive buzzwords," and "total baloney." Is El Naschie a reverse Sokal? Or a Markov process for producing random publishable papers? One thing's for sure -- he knows how to cure cancer.

Dominoes Made of Dominoes

axltea — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:53:43 -0800

Dominoes Made of Dominoes Awesome and very chromatically beautiful. Watch for the hold-outs that refuse to collapse.

Global Warming, Strange Attractors...

sporb — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 22:15:01 -0800

Remember all that talk about the Gulf stream turning south and England entering an new Ice Age?
Well, better take a look at this one: (at the bottom)... Ok, this is the Jet stream, not the Gulf stream, but turbulence is turbulence and chaotic systems have a way of quickly migrating to new attractors, often first displaying a kind of turbulence during the transition phase. Here's a link to a .pdf that may be helpful (or not...)
I tell you - Winnipeg (Canada's Global Warming Success Story) just keeps lookin' better and better! But, hopefully, never this good...

Somehow Captain Clark is behind this.

deusdiabolus — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:44:25 -0800

The Number 23 has a movie. It's been associated with everything from conspiracy theory to historical and scientific fact, and now the obsession of thousands of Discordians and worshippers of Eris (not to mention KLF fans) is the specific subject of a movie directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Jim Carrey. It comes out in February. I don't think I need to tell you which day.

They have infiltrated every branch of public service and every political office they can get their hands on.

amberglow — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 06:25:36 -0800

Operation enduring chaos: ... the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". ... From killing everyone named Omar (a Sunni name) who passes thru the wrong checkpoint, to simply marking businesses (and their owners) they want gone with red crosses, how various squads and militias and "armies" and "brigades" are running Iraq.

spooky fluids!

sergeant sandwich — Wed, 10 May 2006 15:14:04 -0800

Order from chaos! Fill a cylindrical bucket with water and make it so the bottom can spin. At certain speeds, stable regular polygonal shapes will spontaneously form at the turbulent surface of the water. See the video. [2.6MB avi] [via last week's PRL]

Uh, what?

snsranch — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:29:11 -0800

Somebody made a funny. (the funny is a series of fake christmas cards with stories)

Synchronized Chaos

ozomatli — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 14:50:03 -0800

The synchronization of two pendulum clocks was discovered in 1665 by Huygens. Two pendulum clocks mounted on the same wall always fell exactly out of phase with each other no matter what the starting conditions. Regardless of the initial conditions the system always ended up the same. In stark contrast, a chaotic system is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. How can these two seemingly seperate things be tied together? The synchronization of chaos. When two chaotic systems are synchronized together, information can be shared between them. It immediatly brings to mind applications for encryption, but it is still far away from everyday use.

Mideast chaos is part of the plan

homunculus — Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:42:24 -0800

"Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan." This is a fascinating and disturbing article by Josh Marshall for next month's Washington Monthly, released early due to recent events. Of course, whether or not the war will destabalize the Mideast is open to debate.

costas — Thu, 07 Mar 2002 03:38:12 -0800

Can some people intuitively find order in chaos? Scientists discover that certain people are likely to predict chaotic time series, such as the weather or the stock market.

Allen Varney — Wed, 19 Sep 2001 09:25:18 -0800

Northeast could face energy chaos, MIT expert warns "The existing transmission grids were designed to serve regional needs. Power transfers from one grid to another were meant for emergencies only. Computer simulations performed at MIT show that heavy use of grid interconnections to tap cheaper power sources can have unintended effects. Trades between two regional grids can adversely affect operations in a third regional grid, potentially leading to frequency and voltage disturbances." But don't panic, MIT's Competitive Power Systems Group (funded "from a variety of industrial sources") has a solution. FUD or useful idea?

peterme — Fri, 30 Mar 2001 11:44:58 -0800

I-jacking!
Sippey encourages you 'to inject chaos and anarchy into the post button by hijacking the identities and namesakes of your favorite web "icons."'
Who do you want to be today?