Goodbye Benoir

I don't know why, but when I heard this news today I thought about watching Scanners again.

And it gets weirder.. After a quick search on YouTube another name pops up; Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a student of Mandelbrot's fractal theories who uses mathematics to predict market trends in western economies (predicting the stock exchange.. sound familiar?). There are numerous interviews of both men predicting a massive economic collapse back in 2007. One interviewer asks them if it will be as bad as the great depression. 'More like the American Civil War' they agree. Taleb also wrote a book entitled 'Black Swan' the same year which uses chaos and fractal mathematics to explain what he calls his theory of 'Black Swan Events', the way seemingly out of nowhere shock and awe events can effect and mould society and markets. I don't know if you know this but Aronofsky's new movie is called 'Black Swan'. And I'm not even joking right now I decided to google 'The Eraser' and the same time 'Paranoid Android' starts playing randomly on my iPod. I'm going to bed!!

Pi in Your Face?

Watch Pi again.

I've had a few 'Close Encounters' moments this week.. Without the mashed potato. All signs point to my DVD collection.

I recently watched a TED talk by Ron Eglash titled African Fractals which was pretty impressive. It's admirable that there are people like him out there doing research into left field subjects which all too often turn out to be of incredible significance once we begin to understand their meanings. Who'd have guessed that as far as history records, African villages have been constructed as fractal forms?

Next, the Red Ice Radio podcast from way back in 2007 with Jake Kotze. I'm currently (slowly) working my way through a 300 hour download of RIR. This week I listened to Kotze mention Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain" and "Pi" while discussing (you guessed it) syncromysticism. In particular the idea of the fractal as the 'life code' which is the repeating theme in "Pi". The Tree of Life which is featured in "The Fountain" also appears in evolutionary science as a fractal diagram showing branches of the evolutionary process.


Last night I was listening to the Guardian's excellent science podcast with David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins discussing various points including Attenborough's current, soon to be published research on the Pre-Cambrian, the period before multi-cellular life on Earth spanning seven eighths of the planet's history. Rare fossils from this period were recently re-appraised by Attenborough and others who have now proved them to be evidence of the first complex life forms.

The connection?? Oh yes.. The newly discovered Pre-Cambrian life forms are fractal.