Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Dirty Chaos

I took a look at the list of the summer movies, a season which really runs from May to August, and it seems we're in for a rash of those 'dirty chaos' flicks that pit order vs. disorder and guess who gets to play the heavy? :(

Here's a list of the key offenders...
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/
Star Wars - Episode iii - http://www.starwars.com/episode-iii/
The message remains the same - when things go wrong - 'dirty chaos' ensues? What can be done to clear chaos' name, if anything? Do we just have to settle for using nonlinear dynamics as our alias? In fact, chaos theory has spawned so many nicknames and shorthand jargon, I'm not surprised the public just sticks with the first two dictionary defintions...

cha*os
1) A condition or place of great disorder or confusion 2) A disorderly mass; a jumble 3) The disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space supposed in some cosmogonic views to have existed before the ordered universe - I kind of dig this one :) 3a) Greek mythology ....the most ancient of gods .... the personification of the infinity of space preceding creation of the universe 4) A dynamical system that has a sensitive dependence on its initial conditions
Feedback Question: How would you shape the public perception of Chaos Theory?
With Turbulence, MRF 04.26

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Groundrules for this Airspace

Project Denver is underway...over the next 100 days or so I'd like to invite your well-thought contribution to this blog as we prepare for the 15th Annual Conference for the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences, August 4th - 6th at Denver University.

Once a week, I'll post a topic/issue/current event and some typical news links that followed it. What I'd like to get back from you is how you perceive, process and interpret it using NDS as your primary filter. IOW, if we were talking about the latest bombing in Iraq, what does that event look like in your "chaos map" . Is it just another pertubation? Is it an order parameter of the insurgence? Or is it just another iteration of the limit cycle of war? You get the idea...USE the language of nonlinear dynamics and expand your horizons so others can pick up the concepts from pop culture, current events and everyday life. Hopefully, we'll have carryover threads and some topics offered up and it'll FRACTAL from there. I just want to use this free medium to archive these exchanges and see where it goes, if it goes anywhere at all. Let it self-organize. :)

To post comments just contact me directly at addchiro@mindspring.com and
I'll send you an invitation to be a member of this blog. BTW, this little blog is already RSS'd, so feel free to post your contact information and any area of expertise you want our subscribers to know of.

Strangely Yours, MRF