Nature

From metawiki
Nature is freakin' sweet! Let's keep it!

Trees and mountains and rivers and stuff. All of it fractals.

"The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics." -Galileo Galilei

Nature topics include:

Fractals in Nature

Fractals are everywhere in nature, and just looking at them can improve your well-being. Here are a few of them:

Not just a river in Egypt, it's a fractal!
Trees. Classic fractals.
This cactus is a fractal.
So is this cabbage.
Crystallized coper veins. Fractals.
You can hear the ocean in this fractal.
Look! Up in the sky! Fractals!
Look! Down in this hole! Fractals!
What's under this lily pad? Fractals!
Ferns start out as little fractals.
And grow into big fractals!
Fractal flowers here and there.
Fractal flowers everywhere.
Fractals formed by ice on glass.
Fractal neurons move your ass.


Fractals in Nature

A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment

Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.


But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

  The shadow of the dome of pleasure

  Floated midway on the waves;

  Where was heard the mingled measure

  From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!


  A damsel with a dulcimer

  In a vision once I saw:

  It was an Abyssinian maid

  And on her dulcimer she played,

  Singing of Mount Abora.

  Could I revive within me

  Her symphony and song,

  To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Nature Videos

Remember when PBS nature videos narrated by David Attenborough and sponsored by Mutual of Omaha were some of the best entertainment you could get on TV? You do? Damn you're old!

Nature docs still are some of the best things a young brain can watch on TV, but there's a lot more other stuff to distract you from that fact now.

Our Planet (full Netflix series)


Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi


John Prine - Paradise


The Beatles - Mother Nature's Son


This one is such a hard left turn compared to the previous songs, it should probably come with a warning.

Historian Himself - In Mountains (Earth Beasts Awaken Part 1)