Complex Systems

Sep 1166 min read

An Exercise in Middle Woodland Geometry IV

For thousands of years before European contact, the peoples of eastern North America have lived along the banks of the region's many rivers.

Sep 8, 202314 min read

What is Choice?

The fact that humans do not make purely rational decisions has been established in psychology and is taken as a set of constraints or bounds

Jun 10, 202319 min read

Mound Builders of Ohio: Part 1

The Hopewell culture culminates in a history that goes back thousands of years.

Apr 30, 20237 min read

Mastodon Posts

Last 5 months' posts on Mastodon

Apr 2, 202312 min read

What is the Dawn Chorus?

For diurnal animals, dawn and dusk are special times.

Jan 13, 202316 min read

What is a Chair?

… and what does it have to do with a crow using a tool or the origin of life?

Nov 24, 202222 min read

Complexity, Cooperation, and the Individual

As humans, we live inside our little heads and we have this illusion that we are separate from the world and our bodies.

Aug 26, 202210 min read

Coherent Structures: Part 2 – Gels

The inside of a biological cell is considered a gel.

Jun 18, 202214 min read

Coherent Structures: Part 1, Clouds and Ocean Vortexes

Humans are excellent at seeing patterns and categorizing what they see. Some are only imagination, others form the basis of our science.

Apr 24, 202217 min read

Human Consciousness, Theory of Mind, and Smart Animals

Whether consciousness or language in humans came first is an open question.

Jan 24, 202212 min read

Bitcoin is Shitcoin Part II

How does a technology supposedly based on the expansion of human freedom need an autocrat to force people to use it?

Nov 6, 20218 min read

Is Oumuamua a seed?

Oumuamua is the first confirmed interstellar object.

Jul 31, 20215 min read

Bitcoin is Shitcoin

This is the techno libertarian ideal. Which will hold true? What could possibly go wrong?

Apr 9, 20211 min read

Simple Economy

A NetLogo model of a simple economy has a surprising result of inequality.

Nov 16, 20207 min read

Dynamic Systems and Modeling

A dynamic system is a set of mathematical equations in which one or more variables change according to time.

Aug 21, 20209 min read

Introduction to Turing Patterns

During the 1930s and 1940s a group of scientists tried to reconcile the newly rediscovered Mendelian genetics with Darwin's theory of...