Chaos theory at breakfast time

Dave laid the table under the pine trees and we had youghut and muessli for breakfast, together with peaches and green hot pickled chilli peppers. We talked of ants and their sociobiological significance. The individual sacrificing themselves for the benifit of the community. Where do you get the energy or the power to do good to others.

Well Dave has discovered that the first prerequisite is to be sober. The pickled cucumbers and chillis for breakfast are a legacy from the past... something he needed to kick start the day and rid him of his hangover. This year he is accompanied by his son Paul who has a moderating influence on his excessive drinking habits. Everyone behaves better when they have children to look after. Every parent should be forced to take one with them when they travel.

Indeed I forsee a future where companies will hire out children at airports to adults who want to behave themselves while travelling abroad.

I remarked to Dave that Sandor was interested in General Carl von Clausewitz and that it was not a major battle that resulted in the defeat of Napoleon but a series of presistant small attacks over a long period of time. That is the ruin of all of us.



"Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand?"
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Instability and tension causes systems and people to collapse. There is a well known experiment where grains of sand are droped one at a time onto a flat surface. This results in a pyrimid/cone of sand particles being built up. The system is under considerable tension, and one grain of sand falls and causes an avalanche. In itself one grain of sand is a small and insignificant particle and the event of it falling is no more different from every other grain of sand that has fallen before it. Yet it causes a breakdown of the system.

The question has been asked many times. Does a butterfly flapping its wings in the Brazilian Jungle cause a hurricane in Japan. Dave says of course it does... have you seen the bloody size of those butterfly wings in Brazil?