volume 147 K-mods by DK using vZome brownsI saw Quakers doing a lot of smart, conscientious analysis, as they gave donations to the Haiti rescue mission (although it's already too late for so many).
AFSC is running a tribute to MLK and their historic relationship, is partnered with Handicap International (per Twitter). Queen of Earthala (Friend) gave to Doctors Without Borders. However you might make the most difference, that's your calling, your way.
Anticipatory design science means having large inventories of relief supplies, ready to go. But then we're running low on staples to begin with. Eating less meat is an ethical option. More attention to "fooding and lodging" is what the math teachers are hoping we'll see (on TV).
I find so many experts promising the whole world will want to live like pigs and consume to the level of the sky's the limit, because that's simply human nature. This begs too many questions to address in one blog post.
What's unaesthetic is bad design, and no amount of money compensates for that ugliness, is my short answer.
Back to the real world: I'm cramming on GIT for Windows 7 using msysgit, a cygwin-like utility in that it runs a bash instance, complete with vim, enough to do development work, say with Django. It's not that you'd need to code in this window, just check in and out. Return to the native file system for your everyday business needs. Python runs fine outside of cygwin.
I agree with GL that it'd take like a million dollars to get enough math teachers interested in using agiles, industry standard though they be (no one runs a website off a calculator). They'd want to get paid, and get credit, as well they should, in exchange for some concerted study. Self selecting? Volunteers? I've been inviting suggestions, in the spirit of encouraging intelligent debate. I've had enough meetings to know this isn't a completely unfamiliar conversation. Do we call it digital math or discrete math? Do we care?
A bulked up teacher training program is worth the investment provided Oregon's students (or any cyber state's) might enjoy the benefits of whatever outcomes. We would get some surprising results I'm pretty sure. Not knowing everything in advance is somewhat par for the course. People seem to think political science offers some possibility of deterministic theater, yet even the Newtonians had no way to suggest the Laws of Nature were that strict.
I'd suggest PCC as a venue, a facility with enough computer labs (feedback gleaned from Dr. Livio's talk). Or, as a known-quantity radical in these woods, I'm always suggesting the private sector jump in, and Intel has (in terms of money), but what does that mean on the ground?
Dave has me gawking at his 132-sider, a construct of vZome browns, which enter the hubs at the following angles.
He's got an analysis of this shape in terms of constituent hexahedra of rational volume, giving him an answer in K-mods.
The K-mod, for those interested, is 1.5 times the volume of the T-mod, and has phi/sqrt(2) radius.
Relative to the rhombic dodecahedron of volume 6 and rhombic triacontahedron of volume 7.5 (12o Ks), Dave has his 132-sider weighing in at 9 3/16.
Patrick has me thinking buzz bots again. They don't have to be sexy. Run in the cloud, command line switches. Talk through a switchboard (maybe PostgreSQL). Web crawling is a languid activity. It's the Wild West out there, and a lot of snakes (Python processes) die. Fortunately, these new languages tend to fail gracefully, with the proper raising of exceptions.
Glenn has me entranced with the macroscopic powers of Flextegrity. Instead of animated cartoons, we have the real deal, Made in China. Here's my look at a prototype Great Wall:
