The Interesting Stuff Is in the Middle

(Usually a title like this would immediately make me think of an Oreo or a jelly donut, but not this time.)

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"'Beauty,' i.e., that which makes something interesting, is related to a mixture of regularity and irregularity. When things are too regular, we usually find them to be uninteresting because they yield no surprises for us. Complementary to this, highly irregular things are often uninteresting because they make no sense. In the middle, between regularity and irregularity, lies a place where things can be understood, but not completely." ~ Title and excerpt from The Computational Beauty of Nature by Gary William Flake.

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I can't say that I'll even begin to understand half of what this guy talks about in his book, but I liked the quote above and found it interesting and true in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way, when you sit down and give it a bit of a think.

I love it when a concept, however fleeting in my little noggin, sparks a flash of insight and then I say, Oh yeah! I get it.

Even if the concept swiftly disappears again. At least for a moment, I understand. It's like a pop quiz to see if my brain can rise to the occasion.

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I was looking for some text to accompany a few photos I took the other day on one of my lunchtime walks, photos that turned out all fractal-ly cool and unintentionally cosmic. I was trying to apply the author's concept to these photos to see if it could help me determine which one was the most beautiful. Which one do you like best?

I love having the ability to see an altered universe sometimes, without anything else except for my trusty camera.

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Illusion is the first of all pleasures. ~ Voltaire

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. ~ Albert Einstein

Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him? ~ Calvin and Hobbes

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. ~ Bertrand Russell

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One of my favorite and visually entertaining ways of getting a mind-bending view of the universe is here.

The Elegant Universe is a fascinating fall through the Rabbit Hole, and you can see the entire program here. For free. No strings attached. (Ha ha, my little string theory joke for today.)

Not that I'm trying to be a physics pusher or anything.