The Never Ending Published Authors Thread (NEPAT)

And men tend to flirt.

I'm certainly not going to choose between two beautiful young ladies, but Shelagh is right about including a hamster. Hamsters win every time. They always have that puzzled, "Is everything OK?" look and need to be assured that it is. Then the expression stays the same but the meaning changes to, "Do you have a treat for me?"
It never is fair to pit humans against a hamster, but if you were going to attempt it, Carol and Betty would be the ones to choose. And Marie, of course.

Heh heh! I won!

Of course. Anyone who spends much time around hamsters learns to speak their language. Basically it consists of food, water, treats, sleep and is everything OK? On a higher lever it includes I want to roll around in my ball and will somebody open the damn door on my cage.

Shelagh,

I like the article you posted on chaos theory on the True or False thread. It explains a concept that is over my head in such a way that I can almost understand it. When I clicked on the "Mandelbrot Set" link, though, it didn't work. I found this video, which shows why the set is so fascinating. Talk about there being order within chaos!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6460130356432628677&ei=hP4FSrPKA6C0rQK74K25Dw&q=mandelbrot+sets&hl=en&client=firefox-a

Ann

Carol gave me the idea to rename this thread.

Let's see now. Refresh my memory--what was it originally?

Definitely not off topic.

Oh, okay! Thanks for clearing my befuddled mind!

This is the right thread for befuddled minds!

I'm also in the befuddled mind category, so I'm in good company here.

Carol

Out of befuddled minds comes chaos and out of chaos comes order. Remove the chaos and this thread is definitely out of order.

We are all in the right place, I see!

alj wrote:

Shelagh,

I like the article you posted on chaos theory on the True or False thread. It explains a concept that is over my head in such a way that I can almost understand it. When I clicked on the "Mandelbrot Set" link, though, it didn't work. I found this video, which shows why the set is so fascinating. Talk about there being order within chaos!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6460130356432628677&ei=hP4FSrPKA6C0rQK74K25Dw&q=mandelbrot+sets&hl=en&client=firefox-a

Ann

Really amazing, Ann.
I've always been mesmerised by sacred geometry and things like this Mandlebrot Set.

To my mind, the Mandelbrot Set is exemplifying that our universe is infinite going in toward the scale of the "very small" (i.e. magnifying the atoms and molecules under a microscope)...just as much as it is going out into the scale of the "very large" (i.e. peering out into space toward the distant galaxies using a telescope).

Great video. Thank you for sharing it here...

My daughter works at the university with a program that studies small things. My grandson, a student, works there as well. This program is an NIH program and also gets help from the stimulus package and is making discoveries, small discoveries.

My daughter is in admin and did the following website. The structures are fascinating.

http://www.uwstructuralgenomics.org/

Carol

One of the first books I came across when I first felt the compulsion to look into the "new" sciences was a book by Louise B. Young called The Unfinished Universe. In her opening paragraphs she states:

Quote :

In every field and woods, in every season of the year we see intricately designed artistic creations--a rosebud opening, a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, a snowflake drifting on the winter wind. Countless examples speak of an underlying force responsible for designing a world of order and beauty...

The Mandelbrot Set strikes me in much the same way. There is a pattern to the development of life we can observe in everything from the rose unfolding to the structure of proteins explained in Carol's daughter's website.

Young does not end her introduction with her observation concerning order and beauty, but goes on to say that ugliness and disorder are prevalent as well. She uses the analogy of creating a poem to explain how the creator of a work begins with an unfinished idea, and how the poem develops as the poet writes it. Her answer to the dichotomy is that the universe is, as she says, unfinished. She says that many new insights are coming in from many different sources have, "revealed intimations of an orderly design" which give us "suggestions of a work-in-progress, [our] still unfinished universe."

Ann

Like Marie, I enjoy chaos. I prefer it uncontrolled, though.

Marie,

Add another son, three daughters, three dogs, a guinea pig and associates and you have chaos on a grand scale!

My mother used to say she didn't have to watch TV, she only had to come by our house and see what was going on.

I live such a quiet life now.

Carol

Two girls, one boy, as a single parent from the time they were 6, 8, and 10. We were a perfect example of disorderly order.



Ann

I just wrote a whole diatribe of wonderful remembering about raising young ones and when I got to the teenage years, my whole post evaporated.

God works in mysterious ways.

Love,
Betty

It can be fun to watch in other people's lives, but I prefer a little control over my own chaos.

That is all we can control, Zada. We can't do anything about anyone else.

But sometimes we keep trying. Darn.

Carol

I keep telling my daughter I never raised a teenager before and I am making up things as I go along.

cturkel wrote:

I keep telling my daughter I never raised a teenager before and I am making up things as I go along.

That is about all you can do. Even going on our own experiences, each child is going to be different and what might have worked for our parents may not work for any given child of our own.

I look back on the teen-age years wth wonder.

Wonder that we made it through.

Becky had gone through her "crisis" and was a great help with Dan when he started up his.

One evenng he was yamnering about something he wanted to do.

Dave and a were trying to be reasonable--we were getting nowhere.

Finally I said, " Enough! You are not doing it!'

He said," I will not put up with this another second."

It was downright funny to watch that huge, overgrown kid open the closet, grab his long leather coat, don it and stomp out the door.

Even more shocking was to see Becky grab her coat and head after him.

"Where are you going? " I asked.

" I have to get Dan." she answered. "Someone might kill him."

Talk about chaos!