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lines and colors :: a blog about drawing, painting, illustration, comics, concept art and other visual arts » Flame Fractals
Art and mathematics have a long but somewhat strained history. Well, that’s not quite true. It isn’t the intersection of art and mathematics that’s problematic, but our limited ability to understand and appreciate that relationship. So images that are the result of mathematical calculations are immediately suspect as “not art”, and I’ll be the first to admit that Photoshop filters and Painter brushes that promise to make “paintings” out of photographs make this a very grey area (colorful, but grey). But the proof, as they say, is in the putting, and the deciding factor is your response to the images. Fractals are part of a branch of mathematics that embraces infinity, dealing with infinite recursions, infinite depth and capable of generating images represent edges of infinite length, wrapped within themselves in exquisite crinolations.
The polymath blog
This post marks the official opening of the mini-polymath3 project to solve a problem from the 2011 IMO . I have decided to use Q2, in part to see how the polymath format would cope with a more geometrically themed problem. Problem 2.
7 Deadly Sins of Creativity
Creativity is not just for artists and poets. Everybody has the potential to exercise their creative mind – to innovate new ways of accomplishing things that will ultimately make life easier and more gratifying. Creativity magnifies the effectiveness of our natural talents, generating elevated levels of success and happiness by helping us discover more efficient ways to do what we love to do. Acts of creativity can be found in every facet of life. We are surrounded by the byproducts of creative ideas both big and small.Göbekli Tepe (“Potbelly Hill”) is a Neolithic (stone-age) hilltop sanctuary erected at the top of a mountain ridge in southeastern Anatolia, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa. It is the oldest known human-made religious structure, most likely erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BCE (around 12,000 years ago) and has been under excavation since 1994 by German and Turkish archæologists. It has revolutionised understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic. The site contains 20 round (buried) structures, 4 of which have now been excavated. Each round structure has a diameter of between 10 and 30 metres (30 and 100 feet), all decorated with massive, mostly T-shaped, limestone pillars that are the most striking feature of the site.
Tempus Edax Rerum
FlowingData explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better – mainly through data visualization.
The 99 Greatest blogs you aren't reading :: 10,000 Words
4chan
4chan is a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images. There are boards dedicated to a variety of topics, from Japanese animation and culture to videogames, music, and photography. Users do not need to register an account before participating in the community. Feel free to click on a board that interests you and jump right in!
Mysterious Universe
I was eleven years old when I was introduced to the menacing and macabre world of the enigmatic Men in Black. It was a typically bleak and windswept English evening in the late autumn of 1976 when they first darkened my door. On the night in question – wide of eye and full of youthful excitement and anticipation – I eagerly began reading the disturbing pages of John Keel’s classic title, The Mothman Prophecies , which told of distinctly strange goings-on at Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the mid-to-late 1960s. Strange goings-on? Hell, outright supernatural foulness and malignancy would be far more apt terminology! A glowing-eyed, winged-monster, surreal reports of contact with enigmatic alien intelligences on lonely, moonlit, tree-shrouded roads, occult phenomena plaguing the town, and lives manipulated and transformed in ways near-unimaginable were the order of the day – as was the brooding, predatory, and repeated manifestation of the dreaded MIB.
Mosquito Cloud
12/08/2011 By mc.murphy 3 Comments THURSDAY, DEC 8, 2011 3:56 AM PST U.S. arming Egyptian military crackdown BY GLENN GREENWALD (excerpt) When the Center for American Progress’ Think Progress blog recently compiled all of the inspiring foreign policy successes of our nation’s strong and resolute Commander-in-Chief, they listed — alongside the assassination of a U.S. citizen without due process and increased deference to Israel — what they hailed as the President’s having “supported democratic transition in Egypt.” President Obama apparently deserves credit for this notwithstanding the fact that his administration supported President Mubarak up to the very last minute; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in 2009, proclaimed: “I … [Read More...] 12/08/2011 By mc.murphy 2 Comments
Front Porch Republic
Several weeks ago, at the web journal Humane Pursuits, James Banks published an article entitled “Community as We Know It, Not as We Wish It,” which was largely a response to an article I had published earlier here at FPR. Mr.… It doesn’t take an acquaintance with Tocqueville to spot the flaws in many American claims about equality. Just go to school.Why is cosmology so popular? Books by writers such as Paul Davies and Stephen Hawking on fine-tuning or the multiverse routinely become bestsellers. They’re good writers, of course. And there’s the aesthetic appeal of cosmology too, offering a ceaseless stream of heavenly images at which to wonder and gaze. But I suspect there’s more to it than that.
The Mirror of the Cosmos | Big Questions Online
Summer Science Sailors, Gaze below and tell me you are not tempted to captain this ship Drink in the video and say you are not intoxicated, I dare you “ The 18 ft skiff is currently one of the fastest monohulls on Earth … The high speed makes it hard to handle and requires extremely fast reflexes …” Love it!
Skeptical Swedish Scientists | Skeptical, Critical and Optimistic Thinking about Science from Sweden
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. – R. Emerson 1.