Feigenbaum!

[sdelmonte]

The following is yet more proof of the weirdness that is Joss Whedon, and might contain what could be called spoilers for recent episodes of Angel...

So, I suppose that we all figured Fred Berkle's stuffed rabbit Feigenbaum got its name from something in her childhood, some rather silly thing that was meant to show that Fred had a silly side, or held onto her youth or something.

Nope.

I read a review of last week's Angel, "Shells," where the writer, Nan Dibble, starts by telling us she's been looking into the work of a physicist/mathematician named Mitchell Feigenbaum. Turns out he's a highly regarded expert in chaos theory. Here's the homepage for his lab at Rockefeller University:

http://www.rockefeller.edu/research/abstract.php?id=38

In other words, Joss Whedon - who wrote "Hole in the World," which introduced Feigenbaum the stuffed rabbit - has once again shown the level of esoteric yet telling information floating about his head. And of course, this is meant to tell us that not only was Fred a total math/science geek - which we knew - but that ideas like chaos theory are part of the subtext.

Over the years, we have found ourselves at the receiving end of something amazing. It's not enough that Joss is such a good writer. It's not even enough that he's a good thinker (most of the time). As MTGAT put it, he Knows Things. He knows ballet. He knows music. He knows American history - witness a character named Jubal Early on Firefly's final episode. And he knows enough about modern physics to not only remind us "all things tend to chaos" (to quote Giles from season 3) but to use something this ridiculously subtle. (Maybe too subtle.)

I like to thing I Know Things. But Joss, wherever you are in Hollywood plotting X-Men and planning Serenity, you surely take the cake.

I leave it to others, however, to ponder the deeper meanings of Feigenbaum the rabbit and Feigenbaum the scientist.

(Oh, and if are interested, you can see what Ms. Dibble did with Feigenbaum's theories in her review. I don't agree with a lot of of, but it's nice to see the effort and love she puts into it. Lord knows, when I tried to read about Feigenbaum's math, I began to get bleary-eyed.

http://www.soulfulspike.com/nanreviews/nanangel_5-16.html)

Comments

On naming stuffed animals for obscure scientists

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

mabfan and I have quite the collection of stuffed animals, many of whom have odd/pun names. The one that stumps people most often is our bison, whom we named Freeman.

One of these days, MAB and I keep saying, we're going to contact Freeman Dyson and tell him of our bison named in his honor.

Nice to see that Joss has the same sense of whimsy that MAB and I have. :-)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I still remember the episode where Fred and co. are attending a strings theory conference. Fred is in awe of the fact that she's preceeding Ed Witten in the list of speakers. None of the other characters know what she's talking about it, but I certainly did.

Kinda like when Gunn noted that if Illyria moves fast, she's like Barry Allen. "Jay Garrick? Wally West? Never mind."