So I’ve been thinking.
…..geomimicry is the study of geographic processes* and the application of such systems to that of human (social?) problems. this is nothing new. this exact approach is currently in use with biologic processes (biomimicry). And we already know that there are parallels between fluvial properties/movements and that of people walking and traffic flow patterns, etc (see Dirk Helbing for more info).

but what if this were reversed? what if the geographic landscape reflected the seemingly random and impromptu patterns of humans through these spaces? what would the landscape look like if it reflected the patterns of hundreds of thousands of individuals?

my high school physics instructor made me wonder if this were, indeed, possible with his explanation of Newton’s Laws….
–> if every action has an equal and opposite reaction (Newton’s 3rd Law)
–> then a runner places equal and opposite force on the ground.
–> and if enough runners ran in the same direction (roughly 37,000 runners in the NYC marathon)…
–> shouldn’t they place enough force on the earth to reverse its spin?

Of course this is not possible, but it got me thinking about humans’ inadvertent effect on the earth and its geographic landscape. Sure we dig holes miles deep for natural resources and alter the face of the land with bulldozers to make room for new buildings. We even create lakes by damming rivers and flooding valleys as well as create new islands by filling in parts of the ocean with trash and soil (U.A.E. “The Palm” and “The World Islands”).

But what if we looked at our everyday movements and actions. My daily routine is an alternating series of patterns that vary only slightly……enough to add variety to my path or merely out of convenience. What if crowds could on a shorter timeline have similar effects to rivers cutting out canyons. And if we could, what would the terrain look like? How would that be represented visually? By 3d projection? Not sure.

Does any of this make sense? Seems I might be having a “deep thought” that after 8 hours of sleep might qualify as “just a thought”, at best.

:)

*physical geography and(?) human geography

How many different possible configurations are there?? Would you believe there are roughly 43 billion billion (ya, I said billion twice….not a typo!)? That’s 43 x 10^18!

Ok….that’s a lot. But so what?

Mathematicians are interested in finding “how many moves are needed to solve a MAXimally jumbled up cube”. In other words, what’s the smallest number of moves that will solve EVERY combination? It seems that this is a very difficult problem to solve considering the amount of possible combinations and the computation time needed to solve it. From the article I read in the August issue of New Scientist, the number looms near 20 (proven to be 22, but suspected to be 20).

So, you mean to tell me that I can solve any and every combination of the Rubik’s cube in no more than 20 moves? How depressing…..I’ve never solved one of those damn things!

how hilarious is comedy central’s game team!? they created a new game where it’s your job to help christian bale escape the cops (in reference to his recent run in with the law). pure comedy. pure entertainment. enjoy!