New worlds of fractal weirdness
PONDERING the possible meanings of Clairol’s claim that its hair care product is “40 per cent more dimensional”, implying 4.2 dimensions in all, Feedback wondered whether the temporal extent of the dye might be fractal (3 October 2009). Now Charles Pell tells us that we are not the first to make our head hurt with this, and introduces us to a whole new world of weirdness.
He points us to the late Terence McKenna – best-known as a keen proponent of psychedelic drugs – who proposed the fractal evolution of history, an idea he called “novelty theory”.
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Somewhat depressingly – and, some would say, tastelessly – taking the moment of greatest novelty to date to have been 8:15 am local time on 6 August 1945 over the city of Hiroshima, Japan, McKenna went on to conclude that history would end in November 2012. Then, discovering the numerological prediction that the calendar of the Maya people ends on 21 December 2012, he to make his prediction match that. More effective than either this or the drugs in dispelling any possible impression of intellectual rigour, however, is the centrality to his “theory” of a series of numbers said to be derived from study of the ancient Chinese divination tool the I Ching.
Meanwhile, a famous web search engine finds to “fractal time” in the academic literature, not all of them in the Journal of Mushroom-Induced Musings. Reassuringly, those we looked at suggest they are talking about a fractal distribution of events – whether electron jumps or fruit-fly leaps – in normal time.
Refining our search , however, we find a small collection of authors proposing that space-time does indeed have a fractal dimension count.
Even before we start looking into this, we can feel our life disappearing irretrievably into a vortex – or more than one, but not quite two, vortices…
STAFF in the South African music licensing business where Ian Napier works were advised in a recent email: “Reception will be detecting all visitors who enter the building with a metal detector.”
Perhaps this branch of the South African music industry prefers to deal with androids.
UP TO dozens of readers have written with increasingly puzzling examples of the use of “up to” as a get-out clause in adverts. We first noted this phenomenon in adverts for broadband internet connections (6 February), then energy and price savings on TVs (24 April).
The ruse is – or your reports of it are – spreading like wildfire. John May reports British store Halfords offering . Sadly, none was, as strictly implied, less than half price. Others already seem uneasy about their claim. Roland Davis saw a sign in Dudley, UK, advertising a kitchen sale which offered “up to genuine 35% off”.
It has spread into “health” ads, though new European rules may hinder it (7 August). Marjorie Jones reports the claim that “Research shows that the Special K 2-Week Plan helped up to 3 out of 4 people get slimmer in just two weeks”. The only precise interpretation of this, she notes, is that the two-week plan definitely made no difference at all to at least one in four participants.
“Robert Jones’s local paper in New South Wales, Australia, advertises cosmetic surgery, proudly offering “vein free legs”. As it says: “A new lifestyle awaits you!” – a legless one, presumably”
CLAIM mutation is to be expected in such a fiercely competitive environment. Christopher Blanford tells us of a banner for the discount store HomeSense, spotted at Forbury Retail Park in Reading, UK, promising “unique homeware always up to 60% less”. He suggests this represents a record of three meaningless claims in so few words. First, we can be sure that no price is two-thirds reduced; but it might be twice as high, since “up to 60%” does not rule out a minus 100 per cent reduction. Second, what is “unique” about mass-produced goods – unless everything is a bit damaged and has unique flaws? Third, Christopher asks, “60% less” than what? (The answer to that is buried somewhere in consumer law, and can stay buried as far as Feedback is concerned.)
MEANWHILE, Drew Rankine informs us of yet another twist on the “up to” gambit, this time from Mastercard: “If your credit card is lost, stolen or misused by someone without your permission, you may have to pay up to £0 of any loss to us.”
This offer to demand less than £0 every time he loses his card “sounds like incitement” to Drew.
CAR maker Maserati, gushes The New Zealand Herald in , “says 62.5 per cent of the world’s population will sit comfortably in the rear” of a new convertible. That sounds like a bit of a tight fit, says John Ormond.
FINALLY, how do you make “supergoo”? Matthew Ashmore has decided not to encourage his children to follow the home experiment recommended by the Mad Science e-newsletter he receives. “All you need,” it says, “is cornflour, water, a small cup and a bowel.”