Audri Swisher's Blog

“Hunting the Hidden Dimension” presents fractal geometry: the means of describing mathematically those patterns that appear jagged and random upon first glance. This is done by breaking a typical geometric shape into endlessly smaller and smaller pieces – “iteration” – with often surprising results. The key idea is self-similarity: that is, no matter what the scale is, a fractal will look very much the same.

Essentially, Benoit Mandelbrot flew in the face of classical mathematics with his discovery of fractal geometry. The long-held assumption was that math was limited to smooth lines and regularity. In the 1970s, Mandelbrot pointed to the seeming chaos of nature and claimed that fractals could describe its patterns, as classical geometry described man-made patterns.

In fact, fractals seem to be all around us – tree branch patterns, special effects of films, art, noise on telephone lines, textiles, antennas, cell phone parts, our eye movements, cancer screening, etc. While their full potential likely hasn’t been realized, it’s clear that fractals have already been beneficial to us. As for what lies ahead…who knows? (There’s probably a fractal pattern out there somewhere to predict it, though.)

Response:

So this is what the math teacher was talking about when he said that what we were learning was applicable.

While some of the people in this video are quick to point out that the technicalities aren’t the most important things about fractals, I was still intrigued by their explanation of being “in between dimensions.” According to mighty Wikipedia, a dimension is “informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify each point within it.” All right, so locating a point in a two-dimensional square needs (x,y), locating a point in a three-dimensional cube needs (x,y,z). Therefore, a 2.6-dimensional fractal needs…2.6 points? Hmm. Oh well.

Trivialities aside, fractals are pretty cool. And definitely useful. But beautiful? Biologist Brian Enquist (University of Arizona) had to say: “What’s absolutely amazing is that you can translate what you see in the natural world in the language of mathematics. And I can’t think of anything more beautiful than that.”  I might not go that far, but it is fascinating to think that seemingly unrelated objects, such as a mathematical formula and our eye movements, could be linked somehow. I’m curious about what precisely he means, though. Is he amazed that nature fits these patterns? Or, conversely, that the patterns fit nature? Is he simply amazed at our ability to translate them? That simplicity results from seeming complexity?

Richard Taylor (University of Oregon) also said that mathematicians and artists are closer than a person might think: they just use different languages. At another point, Mandelbrot stated: “The eye had been banished out of science…been excommunicated.” He, on the other hand, was fascinated by the visual side of mathematics. From a pure visual standpoint, fractals are eye-catching and beautiful. But, as some of you have probably already figured out, I’m much more concerned with the practical side of things. If useful fractals are also beautiful, more power to them. If they ensure that my cell phone doesn’t look like a porcupine, even better.

Here’s a fun little site for playing with fractals: http://www.fractalposter.com/fractal_generator.php

“Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.” ~ Paul Erdős

How do sports change our views of what it means to be a man?

In his article “What’s ‘manly,’ what’s not for athletes,” LZ Granderson examines this question. Professional athletes are held to different standards from other celebrities in terms of their “manliness.” Athletes who take advantage of their good looks, who put family ahead of their career, who appear in a men’s fashion magazine – many are criticized for, essentially, doing “women’s” work. Granderson wonders if sports could eventually take a step ahead of the rest of society to redefine what it means to be manly.

“The Televised Sports Manhood Formula,” published in 2000, analyzes and defines manhood according to a range of different sports on television. Its conclusions result in a formula of a “real man”: aggressive, gutsy, a fighter; someone who’s willing to compromise his own health to win.

The YouTube video is a SportsCenter countdown of the top ten most extraordinarily creative hockey goals. Impressive!

Response:

Confession: I’ve never been an avid watcher of televised sports. On the rare occasions I do, it’s usually golf or tennis – the quiet, individual sports – or the very end of the Super Bowl. But even with my limited background, I can see where the authors of both articles are coming from. The Formula seemed right on the money in its definition of a Real Man according to the world of televised sports. I would be curious to see the statistics for today, as opposed to 1999. I’m betting that both the gender and race numbers would be less glaringly male and white than twelve years ago.

I really liked the point about Tiger Woods that Granderson made in his article. First of all, I don’t think that professional athletes should be propelled to role model status in areas beyond their sport, but that’s kind of beside the point. If Tiger Woods was condemned for cheating on his wife, why is Sergio Romo similarly condemned for taking time off for the birth of his child? I feel as if we have some skewed priorities here, people.

Taking a different tack…

My friend and I have had this ongoing argument for a while. She hates sports – watching, playing, sweating, etc. I, on the other hand, love them. She wrote an article a while back for our high school paper entitled “Art vs. Sports: The Debate Lives On” and asked me to proofread it. The opening read: “Which is more important? Self-expression and creativity or physical fitness and athleticism?” I wrote, “Are you suggesting that athletics are not a form of self-expression or are not creative? Because I heartily disagree.”

True, sports are not and never will be the same as art. But take a look at that YouTube video of the top ten creative hockey goals (note: creative). They took work, they took heart, they were unique, and they certainly stirred emotion. Isn’t that creative? Isn’t that beauty?

I’ll leave you with a few choice quotations, each paired with an appropriate theme of the Televised Sports Manhood Formula:

Sports is a Man’s World: If the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn’t, it’s that girls should stick to girls’ sports, such as hot oil wrestling, foxy boxing, and such and such. ~ Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

Boys Will Be (Violent) Boys: I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

Give Up Your Body for the Team: Pain heals.  Chicks dig scars.  Glory lasts forever. ~ Vince McKewin, from the movie The Replacements

Show Some Guts!: Losers quit when they’re tired.  Winners quit when they’ve won. ~ Unknown

Hard to believe that the words of a man who lived before the time of Christ would still ring true today, isn’t it? It seems the basics of eloquence haven’t changed much in two thousand years; or, perhaps, Cicero was a man ahead of his time. Maybe it’s both.

Cicero begins by wondering whether eloquence has brought more harm or good to man. While he writes that the actions of eloquent men have led to “distresses,” he ultimately concludes that eloquence leads to tremendous things: “enduring alliances,” “holy friendships,” etc. However, wisdom without eloquence is ineffectual, and eloquence without wisdom is useless and leads to mischief.

The men of an earlier time, Cicero writes, determined not by reasoning but by brute strength. Only when a man arose and sought to draw out the capabilities of the minds around him through his impassioned wisdom and eloquence did civilization develop. Could any of it have happened without eloquence?

No, writes Cicero; but he acknowledges the capacity for evil as well. (Hitler, anyone?) Men that had acquired eloquence with no regard for knowledge or understanding fooled multitudes and brought about disasters. Therefore, many abandoned eloquence for quieter, more tranquil pursuits.

However, the misuse of eloquence should only strengthen the resolve of those who would use it well, Cicero writes. Eloquence has the largest effect on all affairs and, if paired with wisdom, will bring more advantages to the public than from any other source.

Cicero devotes some time to discussing the duty and end of oration and its subjects. Its duty, which is what ought to be done, is to “speak in a manner suitable to persuading men.” Its end, which is the goal of the duty, is to persuade by language. The subjects of oration, at least according to Aristotle, should be the demonstrative (praise or blame of an individual), deliberative (statement of opinion), and judicial (topics of accusation and defense or demand and refusal).

Finally, what we’ve all (or at least I’ve) been waiting for: the parts of effective eloquence. Cicero lists five: Invention, Arrangement, Elocution, Memory, and Delivery. I’ll discuss them slightly more in depth in my response. Speaking of which…

Response:

In keeping with this year’s theme – that is, beauty – we come upon beauty in a different form: eloquence. Cicero writes of something, like outward attractiveness, that can be misused for harm but is ultimately beneficial to humanity.  It was intriguing to watch the origins of eloquence unfold, especially through the eyes of a Roman philosopher, B.C.

For my second reading, I chose President Reagan’s response to the space shuttle Challenger disaster. He gave this speech on January 28, 1986, only hours after the shuttle broke apart less than two minutes into its flight. The speech is short, the words simple – but the emotion and impact huge. Quiet and somber, he expresses his grief, encourages the nation, and looks to the future with hope. He ends with a then-unknown quote from a poem by John Gillespie Magee, a teenaged pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, who died at the age of nineteen: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”

Cicero wrote: “No wisdom which was silent and destitute of skill in speaking could have had such power…” I think President Reagan understood this. The speech itself was written by Peggy Noonan, but America was looking to its leader for hope at such a tragic time. The invention, the arrangement, the elocution were not his; the memory of the event as a whole was burned into everyone’s mind already; but the delivery – the dignity, the solemnity – mattered.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) wrote: “True eloquence does not consist…in saying great things in a sublime style, but in a simple style; for there is…no such thing as a sublime style, the sublimity lies only in the things; and when they are not so, the language may be turgid, affected, metaphorical, but not affecting.” The president’s words that night in 1986 were said in a simple style, perhaps; but, for a nation mourning the crew of the Challenger, true eloquence had brought sublimity.

In Ted Chiang’s fictional Liking What You See: A Documentary, calliagnosia is a hotly debated issue. Shortened to calli in informal speech, calliagnosia is an alternative to the “deeper societal problem” of lookism, prejudice against unattractive people. Through selective anesthetics in the brain, calliagnosia effectively blocks a person’s ability to distinguish between beautiful and ugly people, as well as everyone in between.

The proponents of calliagnosia call it an “assisted maturity”: a means to look beyond the surface. Calliagnosics experience no aesthetic reactions to differing physical attributes, not even to the across-the-board definition of beauty – clear skin, symmetry, and average facial proportions. According to its advocates, calli is the cure for discrimination in the workplace, advertising distractions, image-consciousness, and devaluation of women.

Some warn against calliagnosia. The opponents ask whether it is worth losing the good with the bad. One man compares world-class beauty with the athleticism of an Olympian and wonders why a person must apologize for feeling wonder and admiration at both. He also believes that depriving ourselves of the chance to enjoy the talents of gifted individuals is a crime. Another claims that calli supporters want to condemn women for taking pleasure in their appearance.

Many of the varied “interviews” in Liking What You See pertain to an upcoming election at Pembleton University. A certain initiative, if passed, would make calli a requirement for students. The president of the National Calliagnosia Association speaks at the university, calling beauty a “visual drug” which interferes with our personal relationships and naming calliagnosia the only protection. Soon after, polls show that most students support the initiative. However, after an opponent speaker warns that calli will only create naïve individuals incapable of identifying “lookism,” the initiative fails to pass.

Response:

This is difficult for me to consider. I’ve always wanted to be judged solely on my character and not my outward appearance – leave the spiteful, empty-headed girls with perfect hair and flawless skin behind. But if I were faced with it head-on, in this way? It seems like cheating. Instead of people looking beyond blemishes or beauty to the person within, calliagnosia would make both invisible – make blinkers for us. True, calli would mean that people would be judged “by the content of their character,” in the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr. But at what cost?

Our decried autonomic responses are there for a reason, but let’s put reproductive success aside for now. Why deny ourselves the enjoyment of beautiful people or divest them of their pleasure? Instead of blinding ourselves to outward beauty so we can see the inner, we should teach people to love their neighbors. One proponent of calli in Liking What You See said, “True beauty is what you see with the eyes of love.” True. But I would add that instead of rewiring our brains, we could change our hearts. If we saw anyone who crossed our paths through the eyes of love, calli would become redundant and meaningless.

If this came to reality, many would flock to its use. But not this girl. Take me as I am. Take me and my bushy eyebrows. My future husband and I will still be able to tell our little girl how beautiful she is.