Who knows about fractals?
I am curious why fractal sets are described with vaguely religious undertones. What is the signifigance of the Mandlebrodt Set?
What can I do with fractals?
Anybody know of any cool “zooming” fractal websites?
I’ve never heard of fractals being described “religiously.” They’re cool because many natural phenomena obey mathematical patterns that you see in fractals.
But that’s true of a lot of other things in math, too.
The golden spiral, the fibonacci series, and Lorenz attractors can be said to mirror Nature…or maybe Nature mirrors them.
Here is a good page about the work of Benoit Mandelbrot, who, AFAIK, still works for IBM.
[sub]*as recorded at RM Mentock’s web site[/sub]
“Dance your cares away,
Worries for another day,
Let the music play,
Down at Fractal Rock.”
“Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”
Who knows about fractals?
I know a bit about them. In a previous life I was pretty involved with a program that generates them.
**I am curious why fractal sets are described with vaguely religious undertones. **
Probably because virtually everything that involves life is fractally distributed. Your veins are fractaly distributed, as are the veins of every living thing. The galaxies are fractally distributed. For that matter, if you worship money, stock market returns are fractally distributed.
That bing said, I find most of the folks who get religious about fractals tend to be the same kind of folks who can get religious about tapeworms. 
**What is the signifigance of the Mandlebrodt Set? **
The Mandelbrot set is a mapping of Julia sets. If you select a point that’s inside the Mandelbrot set (referred to traditionally as “in the lake”), the corresponding Julia set will be closed (IE, have one and only one “lake”). If you select any other point, the corresponding Julia set will be open.
What can I do with fractals?
You can make some incredibly startling images with them. Monetarily, I’m not sure there’s much opportunity, though (knowing that stock market returns are fracally distributed does not mean knowing which way the market is headed, unfortunately).
Anybody know of any cool “zooming” fractal websites?
Here’s an excellent place to start looking. It has a page in it called the “Fractint User’s Gallery” that points you towards lots of other web sites.