Non Smooth

The Universe may exhibit a fractal nature , according to a couple of Roman physicists who have been poring over large-scale surveys of the universe recently.
If this is indeed so, the Universe had better have a bloody good reason for such behaviour, as the number of cosmologists upset at the mere suggestion of non-homogeneous large scale form demonstrate.

I can see them now, toyi-toying down the street, placards reading “Down with Fractals” and “Go Smooth or Go Home” waving in their work-tremulous hands; voices raised in agonised wails of incomprehension as to why the cosmos is turning on them all of a sudden.

We humans often demonstrate a lack of tolerance towards change – when it’s not in our very best interests, or when it simply upsets our stable way of doing, or understanding, things.

On the other hand, we are questing, curious monkeys at our best – as the development of the Large Hadron Collider, over the objections of folk who think it’s one big apocalypse machine, shows.

Personally, I’m in favour. If we get eaten by strange attractors we’ve only got ourselves to blame.

Really.

On the home front, my partner has come down with a godsawful form of ‘flu, which is keeping us both awake at nights.

He refuses to drink coltsfoot tea, so once again, has only himself to blame.

Looking around for someone else to blame is usually futile in any case. Especially when it’s a case of not protecting yourself as winter draws nigh. Or when Mercury goes retrograde. I’m still sitting without a computer at home, having blown it up during the last backwards motion of that upstart little planet.

As Mad Bob Mugabe’s sycophants accuse the opposition party of stealing their T shirts in order to shock the world with rampant violence, and remove women and children from the same opposition party’s headquarters under a pretext of looking for lice, I’m sometimes torn between wanting to cry and wanting to rock back on my heels and laugh aloud.

There’s that Lila again.

A colleague tells me of his aunt, who has a farm in Zimbabwe. Her workers had their hands cut off when they showed a tendency to support Morgan Tsvangerai.
I’m starting to wonder, now, if Mad Bob is no more than a puppet, with the big deals in the armed forces pulling his strings?

Pathological personalities are not just attracted to politics after all- the amount of power to be gained from high position in the army, especially in a red-level Africa, is considerable enough to be a lure to those of us who just can’t get enough of the hard tack.

With the sun having started its upward journey once more (although the lowest winter temperatures are yet to come –there was frost on the ground this morning),we tend to the optimistic outlook.

At least, I do.

Zimbabwe has very little oil, so we can’t expect the West to march in there and hang the criminals. It does, however, have platinum and other minerals, as well as great farming land.Maybe a small coup, funded by – oh, let’s say Anglo American?

You know, much as I despise the man, I sometimes have to agree with Mugabe.


Snowflake fractal from Visual Paradox.