fractal mafia and the roman doctor

09May07

It’s a little uncanny, about an hour ago I did a Google Images search for romanescu, and then just a few minutes later, the Knackered Hackette opens a marketing email from the folks at Innocent — manufacturers of the smoothie drinks — with exactly the same idea. Talk about self-similar .

With all the discussion of Mandelbrot in Taleb’s book, I had the idea that we might post a fractal for your delight once a week. Perhaps we’d call it “Fractal Friday” — something to look forward to as we wind down for the weekend. Taleb suggests that fractal shapes are good to contemplate — they are restful in their variation, and may stimulate creativity (more on that soon). Our favourite in daily life has to be the vegetable romanescu, delivered from Riverford Farm in Devon, when in season.

Well, Innocent provides this link to a great site by John Walker with some wonderful images of a romanescu cauliflower/cabbage/broccoli (including the one above), and a more technical discussion of fractals than we are capable of.

In the Knackered House all brassicas go by the nickname “Roman Doctor”: somewhere I half-remember reading (this usually means I made it up) that the Romans did not need physicians because their diet was full of life-preserving cabbage. It does not matter whether it is true or not. In our self-experimenting home, unlike the Knackered Hack’s own childhood behaviour, the kids know not to argue when told to eat their greens.

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