A Year of Chaotic Utopia

It's hard to believe I've been blogging for a year now. In some ways, I still feel like a newb, struggling to put up my three or so posts a week. Yet, when I look back at all the work I've done in the last year, I'm amazed at all that I did. Choosing the "best of Chaotic Utopia" was no easier than choosing a favorite among my fractals. The subjects and formats I've covered have been incredibly diverse, yet, as I've seen while writing the outline for my latest book, they all seem to be driving at the same idea.

That is, we live in a world rich in complex patterns... where most everything we see is hovering in a harmonic balance, torn between a dull, static order, and a chaotic end. Adaptation to the constant changes requires a certain amount of diversity, uniqueness... risk-taking. Now seems like a good time to learn what it means to adapt. While we humans are facing changes of global size, we're also building information-processing systems of global size. It isn't a coincidence, it is survival. Our survival. Our future. I've spent the past year, looking at the little pieces of this grand puzzle, with this blog. Each post, whether a serious scientific paper, complete with references, or a poem on the fly, is, in some way, an example of what of it means to "Adapt". Here are some of what I consider to be the best:

• My first post: a poem, appropriately titled, Reminder, and a few other poems which seemed to stand out, Embryonic Cognition, The Machine, the duality of time pair, Fragility and Vigor, and finally, Visions of Bubbles and Delphi.
• My introduction to ScienceBlogs last June, A Chaotic Utopia (Little did I know that I would later be voted the 2nd hottest and 4th nerdiest ScienceBlogger.)
• The series explaining my philosophical theories, and the "form" of a Chaotic Utopia.
• My favorite summertime discovery: Life and Death in a Lady Beetle Colony
• The Art of Time: A look at astronomical observatories in Paleolithic art
• A long but intensive look at radiation-resistant Deinococcus radiodurans, Conan the Bacterium, a favorite piece that I'm looking to get published.
• Finding Hope in Las Vegas: a summary of my experiences at YearlyKos
• Stone Steam and Sand; A Geologic Tour of the Southwest, looking at the San Juan Mountains, Pagosa Springs, and the Great Sand Dunes.
• A fun piece on Frankenstein and Bioethics
• A series on historic Church Ranch and urban development along the Front Range, which is still waiting to be finished. (I left off in 1940... but a heck of a lot happened after that.) You can find a few more examples, with some before/after photos, in these posts as well.
• ...and a question inspired by the series: Does history repeat, or do cycles of change simply overlap?
• A paper exploring the philosophical possibilities of AI, The Computer and the Consciousness
• Some thoughts on spirituality, The Battle of the Skeptic and the Empath, Surveying Your Spirituality, (and the following response,) The Story of Schrodinger's Apple, and More weirdness: Strangeness, change and the soul
• Some pure fun, from reviews of the games Return to the Archipelago and Sancho's Island, to a Kafkaesque moment, or a collection of distracting links
• Some pretty pictures without long posts attached, of butterflies, pelicans, Snowy Mountains and, of course, the striking historic images from the Lillybridge Collection. Plus, the image shown above, is definitely one of my favorites, fromTime and the Cosmic Mobius Strip.
• Finally, I consider my short stories to be the creme de la creme... my personal favorite will always be A Hint of Rosemary, but the one that has gained the most attention is definitely Illusions in Lavender, a story about bipolar illness. Other shorter pieces, such as a bit inspired by the Geysers of Enceladus, Paper Dolls, or The Wasteful Dragon are also worth the look.

I can easily spend another year sharing these odd perspectives, and probably will. Yet, now I'm taking on a new goal: to tie these ideas together in a single, easy-to-read book, titled "Adapt." I'll be looking for examples of internet forums, wikis, and blogging being applied to complex problems, and also examples of personal solutions... the ways each of us find to digest this overwhelming mass of information, to face large changes, and not get frustrated. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned, for another year in this Chaotic Utopia.