Director's Cut

Sunny Day

I just had a productive meeting about AFSC stuff at the Bagdad on Hawthorne, followed by a quick pit stop at Pauling House.

Quakers are celebrating California's court ruling today, gay marriage is legal. Often a good sign, when mainstream culture starts catching up to Friends.

We'd been promised this sunny weather a few days ago and thanks to better data and modeling, the forecast was spot on. Drove mom to PDX this morning, after being snarly with the math teachers again (they're used to it by now).

I cashed the Saturday Academy check last night, thank you.

And thanks to Glenn Stockton for a copy of Leon Lederman's comments, May 10, Science News, about how a better science education will be critical to the future of humankind -- not really news, but the truth bears repeating. Quakers love science, take after Muslims in that way.

Speaking of Muslims, I really enjoyed Glenn Baker's Stand Up, broadcast on national TV this last First Day. Here's what I said in an email:

I liked the camera work, glint on the sunglasses (Ahmed Ahmed), angle shots in Hollywood, where I’ve been recently, felt familiar (sunny), with comedy scene more night shots, sudden pull backs, great close ups of the talent.

Love the cerebral palsy Jersey girl, bet you do too, in part given how the Jersey City chapter plays a role in my psyche to this day, leaves a soft spot for Jersey girls.

At Willamette Quarterly Meeting planning meeting last night, we came up with The Future of Friends as a topic. Our relationship with AFSC will be a focus, along with the new NPYM Faith and Practice, still in the works.

Wanderers 2008.5.13

Last night's guest, Alex Ansary, has a cable TV show in Portland. He was invited by Aldona to talk about 911 and other stuff.

He predicts a lot of chaos and craziness up ahead (food riots? -- already happening in some places). We should maybe stockpile food? Guns? Definitely community networking and permaculture (cue Sunanda).

I appreciated this quick peak into the collective psyche. Alex is articulate and intelligent. As long as he keeps omnitriangulating, he'll do fine I think.

He doesn't trust official explanations of things (skepticism is good) and works hard to piece together a coherent alternative narrative. CFR, Bilderburgs, Trilateral Commission... a lot of the usual stuff (so far). He didn't claim to believe everything he was telling us, just wanted to make sure we had access to his literature.

Some of his fans joined us for the evening and echoed many of his concerns. I appreciated their commitment to investigative journalism. Patricia had a calming influence, as voices got louder, which I appreciated.

Wanderers doesn't rate as the core of any conspiracy yet, which is just as well. We're not trying to compete with the Zbigniew Brzezinskis of this world.

Good seeing Nirel again, however briefly (I'm a loyal fan).

I joked with Bill about having upgraded my Ubuntu Dell laptop to Horny Hen the other day. Of course I meant Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04).

The funniest part of the meeting (I thought) is when discussion turned to space aliens and Dick Pugh the meteor man said now we were on his turf. Dick can count me as a fan as well.

Adult Education

Today at Business Meeting, I was placed on the slate for a position on the Adult Education Committee, as well as for the AFSC Liaison position, which I've been angling for since late last year.

Although I don't become effective in these new capacities until July, I'm already thinking ahead to some suitable fare. As adults in a high tech medically oriented economy, we should update our ideas about biology with some of the newer materials, such as these computer animations of genetic processes:



Regarding the proposal to increase individual assessments on members, on behalf of the Yearly Meeting, I again articulated my view that someday we'll get back to having those successful Quaker businesses, such that we relieve some of the burden on our struggling families, with little if any slack in their budgets as it is.

After the meeting, Timothy and I discussed what Quaker reality television might look like.

Dumb Houses

I do enjoy my 1905 dumb house, wood frame, a classic, don't get me wrong.

But you'd think by 2008, the American consumer would have a cute little LCD showing the home's electricity expenditure in real time, totals accruing, denominated in both dollars and joules (like those calorie / lap counters at the gym). You might even phone home and enter a password, to get the latest report on your cell. Break it out by room and appliance, presuming your house has the smarts (most don't yet, I realize -- dumb houses the norm).

Just a short time ago, the Montag oil guy read my oil tank with a stick. I undertand why old oil tanks don't have electronic output, like a car's, but why do new oil tanks still suck just as much?

All this lip-service to energy consciousness; where's the beef?

Utility companies might have to provide a USB port inside the home (gasp). So maybe we display the house energy stats on an unused TV channel?

And while on that topic, why can't we interleave a local home school channel on the neighborhood network? I guess that's what the Internet's for, but TV seems to have all this extra bandwidth, redundant programming, in households with no Internet.

That old community service idea, when did it die?

Meanwhile, millions of kids spend millions of hours watching TV, but their public schools mostly don't show them how to make it ("go learn that on your own, we adults are too busy"). Schools with no time to pass on the basic communication skills of the culture? How did that happen?

If it's about money, then let's get those instrument panels on TV. Maybe show us the data, instead of stacking the deck? "Too busy ripping you off to serve you" works in the short term, but customers will vote with their feet, if true competition is permitted (the true promise of capitalism, if we actually walk the talk).

It's so easy to imagine that "smart America" that "other tomorrow," more Jetsons, less Rambo or whatever this is (Idiocracy some think -- Bucky called it oblivion, but always with some seeds of utopia and vice versa (a yin-yang kind of thing)).

Propagating Gnu Math

[ republished from a StudyPack forum ]

In my recent talk in Chicago at the Python conference (Pycon 2008), I took the line that Python might be useful in place of a calculator in what today we call "high school math class" (and we might keep calling it that).

In other words, I bill my Saturday Academy class as Pythonic Math (a kind of subtitle), not as an introduction to Computer Science (although it is also that in some ways).

Per A Mathematician's Lament, the K-12 math pipeline is widely regarded as broken anyway, even by insiders, so that makes it fair game for overhaul and replacement, by such as our Silicon Forest people, as we don't like to waste students' valuable bandwidth.

Of course realistically we don't try to take over the schools, simply offer content through the Internet, elite academies willing to experiment and so on. Compliance is voluntary, we are not Borg-like (though some call us viral -- a common complaint about open source strategies that leverage network effects).

Primary math objects we care about are such as:

• primitive number types and strings
• collections like sets
• integers modulo N
• rational numbers (Q) -- we talk N < Z < Q < R < C a lot
  
• linear functions
• polynomials
• 2D & 3D plots
• fractals and cellular automata
• trig functions and relations
• vectors (and edges)
• polyhedra (tetrahedron most primitive).

Lots of stats, calculus, chemistry, biology applications for computer language treatment so the idea is once you've got a language, it will follow you around perhaps on your laptop.

However I'm not saying every course exploring this curriculum plods through all of these topics in sequence. Nor do I insist all teachers use Python, as I'm in no position to insist, am just another "gnu math" teacher (I am quite inventive though, so a lot of my collaborators and co-conspirators copy my ideas, as I copy theirs). I also don't only use Python (I've been known to use J for example). Spreadsheets are not forbidden (smile).

Regarding I/O and piping in remarks by Atanas, I am in agreement and especially extol the latter (piping) as relevant in my Chicago talk, using for my example the wonderfully pipe-worthy utilities at the Antiprism site, the work of Adrian Rossiter. For our segments on polyhedra (using POV-Ray, VPython and so on), his stash of open source C++ tools, runnable on multiple platforms, are stellar. When it comes to I/O, I think it's realistic to have objects be heavy equipment sometimes.

Parenting Comment

As a geek with a life on the Internet, I often get asked about my policies as a parent, regarding chat rooms, email or whatever. But of course a lot depends on the child, and although I've been a school teacher for teenagers a lot, I'm not expert on all the permutations.

As parents I think we shoot for the same goal: not a lot of fearfulness, yet plenty of smarts for keeping out of trouble, playing it safe.

Communicating by computer doesn't mean you can't be personable in person. I get tired of old stereotypes.

What fewer parents ask me about are my thoughts on tarot decks and such, despite the mail to Mr. Wicca I sometimes get (my late wife's last name) i.e. do I have any thoughts on the occult, esoterica, religious education, to share with other parents?

A lot of the same caveats pertain, but in general I favor "know thyself" type philosophies and see psychology coming under that same broader humanities umbrella.

You needn't have Jungian beliefs about synchronicity or whatever, to get value from reading about life's changes, transitions. Young adult fiction, including some movies (like Disney's, Miyazaki's), come under this same heading.

In later life, as adults, frustration accrues with loss of fluidity, a hardening of habits, what we call "getting stuck" in some of the old timer shoptalks.

Unfreezing may lead to somewhat unpredictable consequences, true, but at least you're not so stuck. Remembering there are recognized pattern languages out there, may help you get closer to where you wanted to go, if not there exactly.

Hollywood movie actors learn many of these techniques in order to avoid being typecast, to morph into new characters on the big screen.

So get started on this literature when you're still young, and keep limber, is my advice, whether or not you have aspirations around theater.

To sum it all up, would I have a problem with the idea of some teenager surfing web sites on Tarot, reading up in the literature? Not at all, as a general rule.

But wouldn't it be nice if our schools had stronger science, so psychology could be looked into in more depth in the classroom, with presumably experienced, well-trained teachers. Again, this was more my training, less as a parent, more as a classroom storyteller.

Nonetheless, as a single dad with a lot of community support (Portland is a good family town), I feel fortunate. Dawn taught me a great deal, having already had some parenting experience when we met plus she was wise (what wicca meant to her -- for a faith and practice, she joined Quakers).