A while back I finished Gleick's groundbreaking
Chaos. It wasn't
as cool as I had hoped, maybe because the basics of it have been so integrated into geek culture that it no longer seems so revolutionary. But since finishing it, I've been on the lookout for chaotic systems in my own life. So far the best one I've come up with is the HEPA airfilters we have at home, the way they shift into different modes of audible vibration doesn't seem to follow any definite pattern, but it's not purely random either.
Link of the Moment
Cat's Eye Technologies has a lot of demented mini-languages. Befunge is particularly mind-brutalizing. FORTRAN meets the old game Lemmings-- your code pointer travels through a 2D grid, kind of like an old Atari videogame.
Exchange of the Moment
"She could suck the chrome right off a trailer hitch."
"Uh- I don't think the quality of that kind of activity should be rated in PSI."
