So I was watching some TV tonight and realized I was a bit bored with reality tv, ridiculous "death panel" propoganda, and how in order to have a bi-partisan support the Grand Ol' Party says we need 80 senate votes. Ok, so reality tv is tolerable, but the Constitution says a bill is to be passed with at least 51 votes, aka a majority of 100. Then as soon as the righty tighties became the minority party, the filibuster upped the magic number to 60. Now 80? Ha. I guess pro-life only applies to fetii.
Anyway, after regaining some sanity via Bill Maher and John Stuart, I noticed that Nova happened to be showing a history of fractals, entitled "Fractals, Hunting the Hidden Dimension." Pretty good summary. What I came away with is the concept that fractals are basically a geometric interpretation of an iterative mathematical process. Start with a function with input x0 and obtain output y0. Then plug y0 in for x1 to obtain y1, etc, etc...The result when graphed is a geometric form that appears the same at tiny levels and macroscopic levels.
This sprung a number of different concepts. The one that stuck with me the most was the invention of a fractal-based antenna. This antenna, bent to be shaped in the Koch Snowflake, demonstrated the ability to transmit larger amounts of data with a smaller antenna. It also allowed one antenna to transmit and receive multiple frequencies (bluetooth, wifi, cell signal, etc).
This lead to two of my own ideas, which I will sum up in blog posts "2.1" and "2.2" to follow.
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