Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!nosc!spectra!bseeg
From: bseeg@spectra.COM (Bob Seegmiller)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: fractals as bad science
Summary: response to Fred Mitchell's association of fractals with DNA
Keywords: Fractals, DNA
Message-ID: <298@spectra.COM>
Date: 4 Jan 90 02:12:14 GMT
References: <119.256E54C5@uscacm.UUCP> <1247@becker.UUCP> <9144@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Reply-To: bseeg@spectra (Bob Seegmiller)
Followup-To: Fractals as bad science
Distribution: na
Organization: Spectragraphics, Corp., San Diego, CA
Lines: 29

In article <9144@cbmvax.commodore.com> mitchell@cbmvax.commodore.com (Fred Mitchell - PA) writes:
>  [misc deleted]
>
>........- we can begin to understand how a HUGE amount of information
>can be encoded by such a small dataset (DNA).

Small dataset?  Human DNA?  Not hardly.  I don't believe fractals have
much to do with information storage in DNA, either.  I'm curious where
he gets this idea, as I haven't seen it in any of periodicals
(SciAm,Science News) I read.  I agree with a previous response in re
fractals as being "small", and applied in recursively defined
representations.  I'm not familiar with any structures or systems (both
physical -- a.k.a. tissues/organs) in living organisms that can be
fractally described.  (Please note emphasis on physical -- I'm not
addressing neural organization, or behaviors of any of such systems --
that belongs in another news group -- simply what can be genetically
constructed from DNA.)

(Of course, I expect some will take this inch and stretch it a mile --
sigh.)

>  [misc deleted]
>
>	-Mitchell
>         mitchell@cbmvax.UUCP
>	 To Life, Immortal.

Sorry to post this to comp.graphics, but I felt it had to be answered,
and had waited for someone else to before I stepped in.