Building a Unit XYZ Cube within the IVM (School of Tomorrow)

Telecommuting

Today is a Saturday.  I've been immersed in data analysis and visualization classes pretty recently (leading them). 

More recently, I've had one or two planning meetings to attend, with FSI and/or TrimTab. I call them planning meetings given the anticipatory designing that goes on, much of it imaginary, like in Critical Path.  

The geoscope near the UN was never built.  Ephermeralization.

Newtonian Units

I used to do movie reviews rather frequently. I still see movies, but my energies have been directed elsewhere. I will explore ways to move the movies back into my blogs, without necessarily adopting a "movie review" format. 

For example, Quantum of Solace, a Bond film, one I'd so far missed (I've caught the majority I'd hazard, back through several chapters), got me thinking of the concept of Power once again. We started talking power during a TrimTab meeting and I stuck up for the Newtonian meaning: energy per time. 

What's the connection? 

When Bond and the Bolivian hellion need a hotel for the evening, she has this cover story worked out for two teachers, clearly of limited means. The hotel is far less than four star. Bond is having none of it, and insists they have the best most palatial digs anywhere on the circuit. He tells the desk the same story: two teachers... whom've just won the lottery. 

The Bolivian is impressed with Bond's power to spend money like water, and a swiftly flowing river of water at that. 

When nature is being powerful, she's showing off some combination of inertia and pattern-making. She goes for high wattage, but doesn't lose the structure, or if she does, an explosion takes its place, representing what until a moment ago had been more cohesive. 

The stately, one could say placid, flow of the lower Columbia, gets forced through what pass for water wheels on their sides, although we call them turbines today. The torque the river pushes against is that of magnets resisting the steady twirl. The current goes out across the lines at very high voltage, to stepping stations able to reduce the power to match conventional loads. 

Newtonian units also get into Work, not just Power, another politically loaded term. An anti-employee accomplishes negative work, but perhaps by burning the same calories as would a hard worker. Work is measured against a stipulated end state, so that syntropy and entropy compete in the business of making stuff happen. 

Was the design conducive to getting work done in the first place? 

Did anyone even know what the end goal was? 

Entropy might've been high from the beginning. 

Bond is not only burning through funds, he's making an effective difference from the standpoint of the crown. Lower life sycophants may have sold out, but 007's boss, a queen bee, has a lot of faith in his ability to evade her own henchmen. Now there's an interesting pattern for ya.

Positive Developments

The Youtubers of the moment share a lot of negativity.  Of course I'm able to sample from many time frames, so the current inflationary conflagrations in the eastern hemisphere, with repercussions around the globe, is only optionally a focus. I do believe in staying current, although I know that's relative. My grasp of UK politics has improved but I'm still not getting the India-China-Pakistan matrix that clearly, whereas obviously it's very important.

I should add that my bizmo (meaning "body" in this case) has toured in all of those nation-states. We walked across the border from India to Pakistan somewhere near Kashmir, ending up in Islamabad, then Peshawar, then Kabul... my mom is an Abdul Gaffar Khan fan, though they never met in person.  My good friend Glenn Baker had come from Islamabad to join us in the Philippines, in my senior year of high school.

Anyway, the good news is I was gifted with a hand-me-down Mac Pro, a lot like the one I already have and got used from Fubonn Shopping Center on SE 82nd.  However this next one volunteered to upgrade itself to Monterey, a big jump from Yosemite (these are names of Apple Mac computer operating systems, from the Intel chip days).  I've been having a good time beefing it up with my favorite software, including a POV-Ray, not through homebrew this time.

Navigating Bureaucracy

Getting one of my bank cards replaced, at the teller window, reminded me my driver's license had expired. DMV now has online renewal, and with proof of payment in the glove compartment, I'm good to go.

I've got mom's Medicare call in my queue.  We'll see if they let me do an in-home administration of the blood check.  I'd need to get trained.  Providence is fine with it.

Matthew took me to lunch at Barley Mill today.  Then we walked due south through Ladd's Addition to Palio on Ladd's Circle.  I've talked around these places before.  The Ladd sisters had a houseboat on the Columbia, where the original scenic photography hobbyists would gather.