Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts:

Tuesday was interesting here at Fractal Central.   FL and I were at breakfast with the TV playing softly in the background, when FL suddenly asked, "are we going to die?"   Without much thought, I answered, "Of course," and FL exclaimed something like 'oh my God!'   I was reading the paper, and did not realize that the quarter-hourly swine-flu scare was being hyped on the TV morning news show and she was referring to the flu scare.

When I realized what she was talking about, I assured her that the whole doomsday atmosphere was created to get people to worry so that they would spend more time watching the news channels and thereby enable the stations to charge more for their advertising.   But the whole thing really started my philosophical juices flowing.   I love mysteries, and next to the fourth dimension, death must be the biggest mystery of all, so expect some morbid musings in the not too distant future.

A more immediate concern is how to rate today's fractal.   After at least 2 minutes of contemplation, I realized that I would never be able to honestly rate the latest appearance of my old friend, the rectangle in the Z^(2.003) Julibrot, so I rated it as a question mark.

The name "Mystical Rectangle" refers to the mystery of trying to determine the true four-dimensional shape of the object that is rectangular in only two of its four dimensions.

Today's orientation is very close to the Julia direction, just far enough removed to make the scene interesting.   I'm not sure what slices the JulibrotZpwr formula cuts in Julibrot, but I have never found similar slices with any of the other four-dimensional formulas.

The calculation time of 1-1/4 minutes is very fast.   Equally fast is the trip to view the finished image on the FOTD web site at:
The April heat wave continued here at Fractal Central on Tuesday.   The fractal cats made the most of things by avoiding the hot sun and temperature of 90F 32C.   The humidity remained low however, so the cats were reasonably happy.   My day started slow, but turned busy when an unexpected job arrived around 10am.

Crises notwithstanding, the next FOTD fractal will be posted in 24 hours.   Until then, take care, and why worry about the flu, when the disease that will kill everyone is already out there.   It is not yet fully defined, but it is 100-percent fatal and everyone is certain to contract it and die of it.   Its name is 'something'.   (Don't blame me for mentioning the unpleasant and inescapable truth!   I didn't make things this way.   The Big Guy up in the sky did it, so blame Him.)


Jim Muth
jamth@mindspring.com
jimmuth@aol.com

START PARAMETER FILE=======================================

Mystical_Rectangle { ; time=0:01:14.64-SF5 on P4-2000
  reset=2004 type=formula formulafile=basic.frm
  formulaname=JulibrotZpwr passes=1 float=y logmap=56
  center-mag=-0.000545676/+0.07365904/101.6427/1/19/0
  params=2.003/0/-1.7435/0.0003/-0.0015/0.0005
  inside=255 maxiter=2800 periodicity=10
  colors=000A0NA0NA0NA0PA2PA4PA6P48R0AR0CR0ER0GP0HR0\
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  NuzLzzJvzLszLozLkzLezNJAJ }

frm:JulibrotZpwr     {; Jim Muth
  ; Draws oblique slices of order n Julibrot Figure
  ; P1 defines power of Z, P2 sets center of slice
  ; P3 sets angle of slice
  z=pixel, c=p2+(pixel*p3):
  z=z^p1+c,
  |z| <= 100 }

END PARAMETER FILE=========================================