Category Archives: Uncategorized

It never ceases to amaze me. Academics. Just when you think something is dead and gone, an Academic will resurrect the matter and publish a paper. I think we should commence all graduate-level “Selecting a Research Topic” courses with “And on the third day…” 🙂

There was (is) an ongoing debate about the use of fractal analysis to determine the authenticity of Pollock’s paintings. I’ve been sort of following the exchange over the past two decades. Then in 2007, this article came out confirming that “Physicists recently ‘put the nail in the coffin’ in the debate about using fractal analysis in authenticating art.” Okay, so fractal analysis is a poor method for authenticity purposes but can you use it for something else?! Yes! To study Pollock’s evolution! Check out this recent article:

Fractal analysis of Jackson Pollock’s painting evolution (2016). “The aim of this work is to study the evolution of some fractality indices of Pollock’s paintings for the period from 1930 to 1955 and, in this form, detect changes in this painting technique and relate them to major cultural influences. To this end, about 30 paintings are analyzed by applying a two-dimensional detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). Results indicate two large shifts in the fractality indices. One transition involves a change in the correlations dimension by 1937, while a second transition implicates a shift in the short-scale Hurst exponent by 1945-1946. Based on descriptions from Pollock’s biographers, it is postulated that the first change may be strongly influenced by Mexican muralist Siqueiros and the second one by the moving of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner for living in the natural landscapes at Springs, Long Island.”

Fascinating to consider how we may be able to detect and measure the influences in our lives and how they alter our perception and interpretation of the world around us.

#JacksonPollock #BenoitMandelbrot #FractalAnalysis

Where are you investing your time, energy, and attention? Are you fully focused on what is important to you or constantly interrupted by the ping and ding?

I encourage you this year TO BE PRESENT. I’m defining this as dedicating yourself completely to what you are engaged in. Commit to the activity. When you cook, cook! When you drive, focus on the road! When you are having coffee with friends, give them your undivided attention.

Put a leash on that cell and create the boundaries necessary to better connect with yourself and those around you. Please.

The Attention Economy – How They Addict Us.
Visit Tristan Harris’ project Time Well Spent: http://www.timewellspent.io/

I’m not gonna dance for you
I know that you want me to
Better to dance alone
Than to dance with a ghost
I’m not gonna dance for you
Not like I used to.

Phase entanglement: “The entanglement of two interacting physical systems means that once the entangling interaction has occurred, the systems, even after eventual separation, can no longer be described as before, that is, as strictly separately independent states.” ~ Salvator Cannavo from Quantum Theory: A Philosopher’s Overview (2009)

Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That’s how the light gets in…

Definitely a must see! The funniest story I’ve read is from David’s book Holidays on Ice. If you have ever been unemployed and desperately looking for work, you have to read the first chapter Santaland Diaries. It will tickle your despair and frustration. Trust me. Here’s an excerpt.

“To the Bauhaus, design was an applied form of art, an approach that I believe to be fundamentally wrong. It is what creates a misleading impression that designers make beautiful objects. Design is a way of thinking, about addressing the fundamental needs of people and society. It can be applied to all aspects of human and societal life. Some things that we design do not have a physical structure: art, materials, form have little or no relevance. When the things that we design are tangible or visible, then yes, form matters. However, even here, I would place form second to utility: designers make things for people to use. They must be understandable, usable, emotionally delightful. For me, appearance Is extremely important, but secondary to utility. The great designers know how to make delightful, beautiful objects that are also functional, understandable, usable. That is what 21st century design should be. That is what it must be in this age of ever-more complex technology that, without the aid of designers, would be unintelligible, frustrating and a danger to society.”
~ Don Norman

“It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose which it truly has.”
– Maria Montessori

More on Why Understanding These Four Types of Mistakes Can Help Us Learn.

Nature’s little gems. #BluebonnetLeaves #DrJoeHanson

“The inverted spectrum thought experiment, originally developed by John Locke,^[8] invites us to imagine that we wake up one morning and find that for some unknown reason all the colors in the world have been inverted. Furthermore, we discover that no physical changes have occurred in our brains or bodies that would explain this phenomenon. Supporters of the existence of qualia argue that since we can imagine this happening without contradiction, it follows that we are imagining a change in a property that determines the way things look to us, but that has no physical basis.” (wiki)
More on the inverted spectrum argument here.

It began with the The New Yorker’s article on Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit (which in my head I keep pronouncing as “parfait” and I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve been denying myself ice cream or because of the piece I recently read on an Italian cardiologist’s patented performance-enhancing gelato). In any case, somehow I ended up down another fascinating road…baha!…the non-identity problem!

This is so interesting and sort of comical in how the language used to articulate the problem loops around. Honestly, I giggle as I type.

The non-identity problem, defined by Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “focuses on the obligations we think we have in respect of people who, by our own acts, are caused both to exist and to have existences that are, though worth having, unavoidably flawed – existences, that is, that are flawed if those people are ever to have them at all.”

Bahaha!!!!

Wiki’s definition of our obligations to “nobody” is a little easier to grasp:

“Study of weather patterns and other physical phenomena in the 20th century has shown that very minor changes in conditions at time T have drastic effects at all times after T. Compare this to the romantic involvement of future childbearing partners. Any actions taken today, at time T, will affect who exists after only a few generations. For instance, a significant change in global environmental policy would shift the conditions of the conception process so much that after 300 years none of the same people that would have been born are in fact born. Different couples meet each other and conceive at different times, and so different people come into existence. This is known as the ‘non-identity problem’.

We could thus craft disastrous policies that would be worse for nobody, because none of the same people would exist under the different policies. If we consider the moral ramifications of potential policies in person-affecting terms, we will have no reason to prefer a sound policy over an unsound one provided that its effects are not felt for a few generations. This is the non-identity problem in its purest form: the identity of future generations is causally dependent, in a very sensitive way, on the actions of the present generations.”

And boom! That’s the kicker right there. We need to consider our thoughts and actions as potential contributions to future generations. Everything is temporary and yet parts are permanent because it’s reinterpreted and carried forth by someone, like myself, who catches it in midair. And because I have grasped it, am changed forever. Be careful what you think…”as thinking makes it so” (Shakespeare) .

And I’m thinking about making one of these! Cookie Rookie’s Skinny Mint Parfait… 😛