Wittgenstein's notion of "language games" compares favorably with the emergent notion of "namespaces" in computer science: in order to disambiguate and avoid gratuitous "name collisions" we must specify the context, using a notation for doing so.
Thusly, what language community A means by 'ego' or 'syndicate' might be distinguished from meanings in community B, much as we distinguish fiction or philosophy titles. A lion in Narnia needn't be the spitting image of Nietzsche's lion in Zarathustra or Wittgenstein's in the PI or whatever, even if there's a family resemblance.
"A failure to recognize context" might be the epitaph carved in the cold stone over the grave of AI, which overpromised and never delivered. But humans netted a lot of useful spin-offs from that push nevertheless, including this "namespaces" business, which may be used to formalize and manage machine world, even if the machines aren't really aware of them on their own.
Wittgenstein's genius was to show that these namespaces aren't just vague fuzzy blobs, as if a context were like an atmosphere or gas (don't just accept such images, question them). Rather, we're talking about intricate machinery, finely tuned clockworks in many cases. So the insight was closer to Einstein's, about the relativity of coordinate systems, even if there's some elemental grammar connecting them all (so-called "constants of nature" and so on).
Per some earlier posts to this list, I think Wittgenstein's later philo is being quite properly appropriated by pragmatic engineer types looking for ways to untangle ostensibly at-odds rule-based cultural practices.
We're able to collaborate at a high level, on such technologies as TCP/IP, so let's take it to the next level. Religious discourse especially might be less violence-prone once informed by this science of namespaces (aka "forms of life"). Religion plus a stronger computer science equals a less rancorous and hostile memepool, or that's the fond hope at least.
As a Friendly delegate to the Parliament of World Religions in Cape Town in 1999, I've long taken an interest in what philosophy might do to diffuse religious tensions, so it's small wonder that I'm seeing ways to deploy Wittgenstein to the front lines in this context. He's quite effective in battle, and not unfriendly to more Asian patterns of thought.
Related reading: "Language Game" as a Philosophical Term (December, 2013)
Friday, April 21, 2006
Queue Ball
A play on words: they're lined up to go in, but it's a cue ball in pool. Stuff I've got lined up: house exterior paint needs replacing; giant waterbed in basement needs assembling and filling; lawn mower needs replacing plus grounds need professional help; and then there're Brian's condors, their proper care and feeding, in some advanced Pacific Rim's industry's Silicon Forest.
I blew through Trader Joe's this morning, aggregating grist. Tomorrow's a road show (aka gig). One more day in the big city.
Tara took the 140 page Aibo manual to the beach this afternoon -- a little light reading for the car.
I blew through Trader Joe's this morning, aggregating grist. Tomorrow's a road show (aka gig). One more day in the big city.
Tara took the 140 page Aibo manual to the beach this afternoon -- a little light reading for the car.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Tuesday Night Wanderings
David Tver presented on the number line last night, meaning the so-called real numbers and their breakdown into rationals and irrationals, with the latter forking into algebraic and transcendental numbers. He reviewed Cantor's notion of "countability" as well.
His foray into Ramanujan's "almost integers" such as e**(pi*sqrt(163)) gave me an idea for my upcoming Saturday Academy class.
I was glad to reconnect with Wanderers after my short absence. Jim had some souvenir desert rocks from the Libyan police. Glenn gave me a vintage Spirograph, in good condition, for Tara. Bob McGown recounted some African meteorite adventures. Barry talked about boat hull formation through vacuum-assisted resin injection.
I left a bit early, per plan, in order to get the projector and laptop set up. The rest of the family, including Sam, visiting from over the mountains, had gone out to Old Wives Tales for dinner. When they got back, we watched all the digital slides from our recent Tennessee trip, plus my London trip.
On today's agenda: get a new string of Tibetan prayer flags for the back yard (the old ones are in tatters).
His foray into Ramanujan's "almost integers" such as e**(pi*sqrt(163)) gave me an idea for my upcoming Saturday Academy class.
I was glad to reconnect with Wanderers after my short absence. Jim had some souvenir desert rocks from the Libyan police. Glenn gave me a vintage Spirograph, in good condition, for Tara. Bob McGown recounted some African meteorite adventures. Barry talked about boat hull formation through vacuum-assisted resin injection.
I left a bit early, per plan, in order to get the projector and laptop set up. The rest of the family, including Sam, visiting from over the mountains, had gone out to Old Wives Tales for dinner. When they got back, we watched all the digital slides from our recent Tennessee trip, plus my London trip.
On today's agenda: get a new string of Tibetan prayer flags for the back yard (the old ones are in tatters).
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Home to PDX
Derek retrieved me from Hollywood District per plan, waiting longer than expected because of track construction, meaning I had to go from the Red to the Blue line at the Gateway transfer stop. All this at the other end of a very long day, beginning with the 49 from Battersea to South Kensington, Picadilly tube to Heathrow, Canadian Airlines home, to PDX 4D.
Dawn and Tara were watching a Buffy (some episode about a Ted in Season Two), Mom puttering. Fish in therapy, Sarah psycho. No Nick.
The trip back was less grueling, as I'd regained my airline legs. Had a book, for one thing, and a good one (I've blogged about the author). Tara's also reading one from the same genre (reviewed by me elsewhere). And I had a better angle on the films, so watched most of two of them (Clint Eastwood protecting a president, and Walk the Line). Although the route back was technically more miles in its longest segment, the time went by faster, my head cold gone.
Dawn turns in early, after family chat, including some detailed discussion of Bodies. Tara is playing some ants simulation (but would it run on Ubuntu?). I'm writing in my blog, or keeping a journal, as we Quakers say.
Dawn and Tara were watching a Buffy (some episode about a Ted in Season Two), Mom puttering. Fish in therapy, Sarah psycho. No Nick.
The trip back was less grueling, as I'd regained my airline legs. Had a book, for one thing, and a good one (I've blogged about the author). Tara's also reading one from the same genre (reviewed by me elsewhere). And I had a better angle on the films, so watched most of two of them (Clint Eastwood protecting a president, and Walk the Line). Although the route back was technically more miles in its longest segment, the time went by faster, my head cold gone.
Dawn turns in early, after family chat, including some detailed discussion of Bodies. Tara is playing some ants simulation (but would it run on Ubuntu?). I'm writing in my blog, or keeping a journal, as we Quakers say.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
More from London
I went to the Bodies exhibit at Earl's Court this afternoon, which comes across more as a medical science exhibit than an art exhibit. Viewer couples would sometimes nuzzle, reminded of their love amidst all this awesome machinery.
Then I checked out the human development, and minerals and meteorite sections of the Natural History Museum (plus the gift shop). The latter venue was especially crowded with families from many places around our globe. London is cosmopolitan in that way, another world city.
On television, bodies of the living mix memes with a vengeance, stirring up old fears of new conflicts. A common inspections protocol with a ban on weaponizing fissile materials everywhere would seem a worthy policy goal. WMDs are a crime against humanity, duh.
Making this be about hot button issues just muddies the waters, but then positive futurism is not in vogue these days, at least not on CNN.
The plan is to rejoin my family in Portland by the end of Easter Sunday. Staying this extra day cut the airfare in half. I wanted to give the Shuttleworth Foundation the most bang for its buck, plus a day for sightseeing was fun -- and now I'm ready to be home.
I'm grateful to have access to Nancy's flat tonight, which is full of contemplative books. Just reading the titles is a help. Fears wash through my body too, mixing with jet lag and a cold.
Then I checked out the human development, and minerals and meteorite sections of the Natural History Museum (plus the gift shop). The latter venue was especially crowded with families from many places around our globe. London is cosmopolitan in that way, another world city.
On television, bodies of the living mix memes with a vengeance, stirring up old fears of new conflicts. A common inspections protocol with a ban on weaponizing fissile materials everywhere would seem a worthy policy goal. WMDs are a crime against humanity, duh.
Making this be about hot button issues just muddies the waters, but then positive futurism is not in vogue these days, at least not on CNN.
The plan is to rejoin my family in Portland by the end of Easter Sunday. Staying this extra day cut the airfare in half. I wanted to give the Shuttleworth Foundation the most bang for its buck, plus a day for sightseeing was fun -- and now I'm ready to be home.
I'm grateful to have access to Nancy's flat tonight, which is full of contemplative books. Just reading the titles is a help. Fears wash through my body too, mixing with jet lag and a cold.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
London Knowledge Lab
Logo turtle
LKL collection
These UKers seemed genuinely cheered by the generous helping of memes I heaped on their plates, about young pre-college students using Python to cast "math objects" in object oriented code, including all these colorful polyhedra, pre-calibrated per the Fuller School's preferred design.
I had a live Internet connection plus a repurposed version of my most recent OSCON presentation.
Here in the UK, there's a top-down approach to maths which makes the teacher's role pretty much cut and dried. Bold experiments like mine just don't get tried. A dreary inertia prevails. Phillip expressed some nostalgia for bygone decades when people were more into trying new things.
Why do we think programming has to be "hard" anyway?
After the talk, Phillip (Dr. Kent) escorted me to Friends House, where I met Nancy Irving, general secretary of Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), and family friend. We had dinner together (Italian). I'll be staying in her flat my last night in London, while she's on business in Scotland.
Nancy Irving next to Gandhi statue
(photo by K. Urner)
Monday, April 10, 2006
Launch Pad
edubuntu booting in Derek's kitchen(click for larger view)
So I'm living out of my OSCON carry-on, lugging a laptop, haven't yet packed the checked baggage. Catching up on my spam : -D. Listened to a little Randi Rhodes on KPOJ while I waited in Razz for Tara. Randi thinks the "nuke Iran" people are really creepy. Duh. I try not to look at the freak shows er talk shows too much.
Not all Americans are idols. Not by a long shot.
I've been doing my carnivore schtick a lot lately. Big Daddy's BBQ for lunch and tonight: Mongolian Grill, whole family (well, not Sarah (NDW = no dogs welcome)).
If I manage to zip by Derek's for some quick BS and a brewskie, I'll snap a digicam shot of Edubuntu, which I burned to CD and which he got running on a recently purchased castaway Pentium (a perfectly good one). I'll upload it to become part of this blog post.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Process Ecology
Dr. Robert Ulanowicz is unaccustomed to speaking to audiences in halls the size of the Schnitzer, with his name on the marquee, but he pulled it off, with a highly philosophical attack on a caricature of Newtonianism, deliberately exaggerated for rhetorical effect.
Reductionism, or bottom-up explanations of phenomena, have never worked very well in ecology or biology, except in niche areas. Now that biology is in ascendency, some scientists are getting more explicit (and less apologetic) about their need for some top-down heuristics. Wholes select the parts somehow. Auto-catalytic bootstrapping occurs in nature, not just in our computers.
Ulanowicz cited Karl Popper a lot, including in the form of a projected quote or two, which I snarfed up with the ISEPP video camera. If your thinking has no room for noncomputable leaps, it won't survive over the long haul, was the gist of Popper's advice here. I think Roger Penrose (our previous ISEPP lecturer) would've approved.
At the Heathman dinner afterward, Terry generously invited me to the speaker's table to share ideas about synergy in connection with Bucky Fuller. I couldn't resist bringing up Wittgenstein though, because of the Popper connection, and because I think such table talk is more of the ecology of mind Bateson was talking about (Gregory Bateson was among the first sources Bob cited in his talk). Here we were: sipping wine, eating salmon, and processing.
Here's one of my favorite quotes from LW's PI:
And on the topic of Bucky, I tried to give the flavor of his Synergetics: not only did he accept free agency but thought he had 12 ways to go at each juncture (537.50). Saying such a thing'd typically be a career-blowing move for most academic scientists. The peers just wouldn't allow it, at least not in any flagship journal of repute.
Fuller was referring to the 12 vertices of the cuboctahedron of course, thinking of himself as a piece on the board in some isomatrix-based multi-dimensional chess game. The image is more a metaphorical verity than a fact perhaps. I was sharing some of the coin of my realm, banking on Terry's kind introduction, and no one seemed to mind that much, or find my process too offensive.
Indeed, I was in a pretty happy and bubbly mood last night. Our oncologist gave me some hope to feed on, using terms and concepts I'm able to believe in. I love my wife and want her to enjoy a good quality of life for as long as possible. Thinking she might have at least another couple good years with the new hormone treatment was a big boost for me.
I realize that it's a non-deterministic ecology we're talking about, and the humans aren't entirely in control. We serve a steering function but we don't have the final word. Our job is to prove our resourcefulness, to manifest our ability to adapt, less so to dictate or boss.
Along these lines, I mentioned the Tower of Babel story again (one of my favorites), suggesting Dr. Ulanowicz might work it in when addressing more Biblically-schooled audiences. He agreed that his style of science, although still completely naturalistic and devoid of transcendentalism, is nevertheless kindler and gentler with respect to God talk.
I also suggested the process ecology ideas had a Buddhist flavor (I mentioned Nagarjuna's treatise on causality, reminiscent of Hume's). Given Portland sits here on the Pacific Rim, we feel the intellectual currents from Japan. Bob found this observation interesting, having just picked up a book by the Dalai Lama for airplane reading.
Don said Bob reminded him of Gene Lehman. I could see what he meant.
Reductionism, or bottom-up explanations of phenomena, have never worked very well in ecology or biology, except in niche areas. Now that biology is in ascendency, some scientists are getting more explicit (and less apologetic) about their need for some top-down heuristics. Wholes select the parts somehow. Auto-catalytic bootstrapping occurs in nature, not just in our computers.
Ulanowicz cited Karl Popper a lot, including in the form of a projected quote or two, which I snarfed up with the ISEPP video camera. If your thinking has no room for noncomputable leaps, it won't survive over the long haul, was the gist of Popper's advice here. I think Roger Penrose (our previous ISEPP lecturer) would've approved.
At the Heathman dinner afterward, Terry generously invited me to the speaker's table to share ideas about synergy in connection with Bucky Fuller. I couldn't resist bringing up Wittgenstein though, because of the Popper connection, and because I think such table talk is more of the ecology of mind Bateson was talking about (Gregory Bateson was among the first sources Bob cited in his talk). Here we were: sipping wine, eating salmon, and processing.
Here's one of my favorite quotes from LW's PI:
We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound, essential, in our investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable essence of language. That is, the order existing between the concepts of proposition, word, proof, truth, experience and so on. This order is a super-order between -- so to speak -- super-concepts. Whereas, of course, if the words "language", "experience", "world", have a use, it must be as humble a one as that of the words "table", "lamp", "door". (PI 97)We use these heavy duty words, but still, they're words, memes, a kind of currency but with biological properties. Some ideas fit better with others. Like, Rick Grote, also at our table, was saying "synergy" and "process" go well together. Like cookies and cream?
And on the topic of Bucky, I tried to give the flavor of his Synergetics: not only did he accept free agency but thought he had 12 ways to go at each juncture (537.50). Saying such a thing'd typically be a career-blowing move for most academic scientists. The peers just wouldn't allow it, at least not in any flagship journal of repute.
Fuller was referring to the 12 vertices of the cuboctahedron of course, thinking of himself as a piece on the board in some isomatrix-based multi-dimensional chess game. The image is more a metaphorical verity than a fact perhaps. I was sharing some of the coin of my realm, banking on Terry's kind introduction, and no one seemed to mind that much, or find my process too offensive.
Indeed, I was in a pretty happy and bubbly mood last night. Our oncologist gave me some hope to feed on, using terms and concepts I'm able to believe in. I love my wife and want her to enjoy a good quality of life for as long as possible. Thinking she might have at least another couple good years with the new hormone treatment was a big boost for me.
I realize that it's a non-deterministic ecology we're talking about, and the humans aren't entirely in control. We serve a steering function but we don't have the final word. Our job is to prove our resourcefulness, to manifest our ability to adapt, less so to dictate or boss.
Along these lines, I mentioned the Tower of Babel story again (one of my favorites), suggesting Dr. Ulanowicz might work it in when addressing more Biblically-schooled audiences. He agreed that his style of science, although still completely naturalistic and devoid of transcendentalism, is nevertheless kindler and gentler with respect to God talk.
I also suggested the process ecology ideas had a Buddhist flavor (I mentioned Nagarjuna's treatise on causality, reminiscent of Hume's). Given Portland sits here on the Pacific Rim, we feel the intellectual currents from Japan. Bob found this observation interesting, having just picked up a book by the Dalai Lama for airplane reading.
Don said Bob reminded him of Gene Lehman. I could see what he meant.
Monday, April 03, 2006
ER
Dawn's rib cage is more painful than ever, so her pulmonologist suggested we head over to the ER for diagnosis, pleurisy suspected.
I've been doing deliveries of bookkeeping data, plus over the weekend washed all the sheets and blankets, while learning about the slave trade in Rhode Island, pre Civil War (using Pauling House wifi).
I was @ Pauling House again last night, labeling an edubuntu CD while chatting with David Koski by cell (four- vs. five-fold symmetry regimes, one of our fave topics of discussion).
I've got seven or eight students signed up for my Saturday Academy class (Pythonic Mathematics), which has been pushed back a week, owing to the upcoming Shuttleworth Summit in London.
I've been watching Noam Chomsky on Amy Goodman's show while we wait for testing outcomes (chest X-ray in progress). Sheesh that guy is articulate; one eloquently loquacious sentence after another without hardly a halt. That's what it means to be an MIT linguist I suppose: good at language.
Tara and I have started sampling Angel, a Buffy spin-off with a partially overlapping storyline. Dawn may catch up when she feels better.
OK, duty calls @ The Neighbors': computer issues. We saw Cirque du Soleil with them yesterday (Varekai), then went to a dim sum place in Chinatown.
Later:
Not what we wanted to hear. The CT scan shows the cancer has reappeared in Dawn's rib and likely elsewhere. Our family is swimming in unhappiness and disappointment again. I love Dawn and this family with all my heart and soul. I am eternally grateful to have these people in my life.
I've been doing deliveries of bookkeeping data, plus over the weekend washed all the sheets and blankets, while learning about the slave trade in Rhode Island, pre Civil War (using Pauling House wifi).
I was @ Pauling House again last night, labeling an edubuntu CD while chatting with David Koski by cell (four- vs. five-fold symmetry regimes, one of our fave topics of discussion).
I've got seven or eight students signed up for my Saturday Academy class (Pythonic Mathematics), which has been pushed back a week, owing to the upcoming Shuttleworth Summit in London.
I've been watching Noam Chomsky on Amy Goodman's show while we wait for testing outcomes (chest X-ray in progress). Sheesh that guy is articulate; one eloquently loquacious sentence after another without hardly a halt. That's what it means to be an MIT linguist I suppose: good at language.
Tara and I have started sampling Angel, a Buffy spin-off with a partially overlapping storyline. Dawn may catch up when she feels better.
OK, duty calls @ The Neighbors': computer issues. We saw Cirque du Soleil with them yesterday (Varekai), then went to a dim sum place in Chinatown.
Later:
Not what we wanted to hear. The CT scan shows the cancer has reappeared in Dawn's rib and likely elsewhere. Our family is swimming in unhappiness and disappointment again. I love Dawn and this family with all my heart and soul. I am eternally grateful to have these people in my life.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Returning to PDX
The family is busy reintegrating into the Portland scene, which means touching base with many favorite networks, eating establishments, haunts. Plus resting. We've been up since 1 AM, Portland time, and on the go ever since.
We literally walked off the plane from Nashville (Frontier operates a fine Airbus service) , across the hallway, and onto the connecting flight into PDX. We were somewhat surprised our bags also made it (I pictured Byzantine basement conveyor systems running under the Denver airport, bags routed hither and yon, like something from a Wallace and Gromit movie -- but probably they just drove 'em over a few planes on that bags truck).
Another site we much appreciated: the Jack Daniels distillery. My family displayed a surprising interest in this side trip, about 20 miles south of I-24, exit 111 (follow signs to Lynchburg). Of course I was just as eager to go along, and indeed the tour was an eye-opener. This is a very tightly run operation, pure and simple. Even though my Quaker denominator would suggest I'd be anti-liquor, the fact is Quakers took the same approach with chocolate, just as addictive, and just as likely to make you fat (a leading cause of death in today's America). So I'm no "holier than thou guy" on this issue. I take my hat off to the master brewers and tasters of Tennessee (with no disrespect to other distilleries we didn't get to visit -- I know there's more than one in those parts).
Great to be back in Portland. Wanderers right away. I gave Glenn some guff on the hexapent issue.
We literally walked off the plane from Nashville (Frontier operates a fine Airbus service) , across the hallway, and onto the connecting flight into PDX. We were somewhat surprised our bags also made it (I pictured Byzantine basement conveyor systems running under the Denver airport, bags routed hither and yon, like something from a Wallace and Gromit movie -- but probably they just drove 'em over a few planes on that bags truck).
Another site we much appreciated: the Jack Daniels distillery. My family displayed a surprising interest in this side trip, about 20 miles south of I-24, exit 111 (follow signs to Lynchburg). Of course I was just as eager to go along, and indeed the tour was an eye-opener. This is a very tightly run operation, pure and simple. Even though my Quaker denominator would suggest I'd be anti-liquor, the fact is Quakers took the same approach with chocolate, just as addictive, and just as likely to make you fat (a leading cause of death in today's America). So I'm no "holier than thou guy" on this issue. I take my hat off to the master brewers and tasters of Tennessee (with no disrespect to other distilleries we didn't get to visit -- I know there's more than one in those parts).
Great to be back in Portland. Wanderers right away. I gave Glenn some guff on the hexapent issue.
Chattanooga, TN
The people of Chattanooga have done fine job of organizing a network of attractions for their visitors. Electric buses ply the main thoroughfare, connecting the pedestrian-friendly riverfront, with its world class aquarium and art museum, to hotels and theaters.
Lookout Mountain, for which the city is named (a mispronun- ciation of the Cherokee) sports no less than three major attractions: an inclined railway (aka funicular), an underground waterfall, and a rock garden overlook (which we skipped -- one can't see everything, and besides, it's in Georgia).
We stayed in the historical Sheraton Read House enjoying all the amenities: pool, gym and wifi in the rooms. I was able to keep up with my curriculum writing, Dawn with her bookkeeping. Alexia and Tara kept up with their emails.
The Cracker Barrel store and restaurant chain does a fine breakfast menu, with much of the revenue going to support the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville through advertising. Southern cooking supporting country music: a positive synergy if there ever was one. Dawn pitches for Bob Evans, a sister chain.
Off the beaten path: Dragon Dreams, a museum and gift shop devoted to all things dragonesque. Tara and Alexia (sisters, ages 11 and 27) really loved this store. We all did. Recommended.
Lookout Mountain, for which the city is named (a mispronun- ciation of the Cherokee) sports no less than three major attractions: an inclined railway (aka funicular), an underground waterfall, and a rock garden overlook (which we skipped -- one can't see everything, and besides, it's in Georgia).
We stayed in the historical Sheraton Read House enjoying all the amenities: pool, gym and wifi in the rooms. I was able to keep up with my curriculum writing, Dawn with her bookkeeping. Alexia and Tara kept up with their emails.
The Cracker Barrel store and restaurant chain does a fine breakfast menu, with much of the revenue going to support the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville through advertising. Southern cooking supporting country music: a positive synergy if there ever was one. Dawn pitches for Bob Evans, a sister chain.
Off the beaten path: Dragon Dreams, a museum and gift shop devoted to all things dragonesque. Tara and Alexia (sisters, ages 11 and 27) really loved this store. We all did. Recommended.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Clarksville, TN
Clarksville Courthouse(photo by K. Urner)
At the basement level I found recreations of a one room school house, an early printer shop, an unmarked linotype (my grandfather Reilley was a union linotype operator), plus science exhibits about radar, tornadoes, and designing for people with disabilities.
The Black Horse, a micro-brewery, and Front Page Deli are two of the main downtown eating establishments.
I purchased a local paper (The Leaf-Chronicle) from the corner vending machine next to the Black Horse. One of the front page stories (Chicks 'not ready to make nice,' but return to country, by John Gerome, AP, March 25, 2006) was about the Dixie Chicks making a come back. I agree with their analysis: country music has pretty much lost its moral compass. You can see this in and around Nashville: the genre has forgotten its roots and become a vehicle for glamorizing the excessive lifestyles of its rich and famous.
But is rock and roll any better these days?
Alexia and I joined a small worship group on Sunday, in a beautiful old house on the outskirts of town, built before the Civil War.
I purchased a matted photograph of the Montreal Expo '67 dome from the local art co-op near the deli.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Temple to Athena
John, Alexia and Dawn in Nashville
(photo by K. Urner)
(photo by K. Urner)
Whereas neocons have misleadingly indulged in the mythology that Europeans are from Venus, Americans from Mars, in truth American culture is more informed by Athena, the goddess of wisdom and defense.
For example, here in Music City, we have the Parthenon, much loved and well maintained by the natives, with many ties at the museum level to the original Parthenon in Athens, Greece.
Athena in the Parthenon, Nashville, Tennessee
(photo by K. Urner)
(photo by K. Urner)
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Wanderers 2006.3.21
Last night we were treated to some cosmic-scale modeling by Bob McGown, recently returned from Namibia, where he was overseeing a small observatory. He mentioned his encounters with giant spiders and hyenas only briefly, as he's giving his Africa talk later, to a different group.
He had our universe divided into five epochs, of which we were in the second or third. The age of black holes was still to come. The conditions for biological life might not be so favorable then. Perhaps machine life would take our place?
Bob's focus was emergence (synergy) and its centrality in evolutionary scenarios (analogies to fractals). Allen wondered if "emergence" was just another pinhead jargon, while Rick pointed out that at least reductionists still try to anticipate our future (something we need to keep working at), whereas players suckering for "emergence" might give up trying to see into any kind of crystal ball at all -- a kind of defeatism. Bob, to his credit, clearly had his crystal ball out, and was trying to look farther ahead than most of us ever dare.
For my part, I expressed some doubt that the early 21st century would be remembered for its cosmology, given its poor benchmark scores on such simple matters as feeding people and providing them with shelter, instead of blowing them to bits. Why take a dysfunctional civilization's science so seriously? Our thinking is obviously quite warped ("we are devo"). Well, we know a lot about killing I suppose. Some reputation.
Still, if I'm going to enjoy some long haul cosmology, I'm happy to get it from Bob. His dedication to this subject is obvious and admirable. He lives and breathes dark energy. More power to him. Wanderers purchased both of his well-executed cosmology posters for $5 apiece, out of the coffee fund. We hope to display them in the Pauling House somewhere.
And besides, as Laughlin pointed out in his ISEPP lecture, cosmology is good for fund raising, and we do need satellites for lots of stuff. Keeping people interested in their extraterrestrial environment remains a priority, just like we want them to care about undersea life and other wilderness areas.
What humans care about, they're less likely to destroy.
He had our universe divided into five epochs, of which we were in the second or third. The age of black holes was still to come. The conditions for biological life might not be so favorable then. Perhaps machine life would take our place?
Bob's focus was emergence (synergy) and its centrality in evolutionary scenarios (analogies to fractals). Allen wondered if "emergence" was just another pinhead jargon, while Rick pointed out that at least reductionists still try to anticipate our future (something we need to keep working at), whereas players suckering for "emergence" might give up trying to see into any kind of crystal ball at all -- a kind of defeatism. Bob, to his credit, clearly had his crystal ball out, and was trying to look farther ahead than most of us ever dare.
For my part, I expressed some doubt that the early 21st century would be remembered for its cosmology, given its poor benchmark scores on such simple matters as feeding people and providing them with shelter, instead of blowing them to bits. Why take a dysfunctional civilization's science so seriously? Our thinking is obviously quite warped ("we are devo"). Well, we know a lot about killing I suppose. Some reputation.
Still, if I'm going to enjoy some long haul cosmology, I'm happy to get it from Bob. His dedication to this subject is obvious and admirable. He lives and breathes dark energy. More power to him. Wanderers purchased both of his well-executed cosmology posters for $5 apiece, out of the coffee fund. We hope to display them in the Pauling House somewhere.
And besides, as Laughlin pointed out in his ISEPP lecture, cosmology is good for fund raising, and we do need satellites for lots of stuff. Keeping people interested in their extraterrestrial environment remains a priority, just like we want them to care about undersea life and other wilderness areas.
What humans care about, they're less likely to destroy.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
More Office Chatter
So the remanufactured Brother MFC-8840D arrived on time, via UPS. I swapped it out for the previous one, which is slated for duty in another TBC office, and now I need to run some tests, starting with color scanning (or maybe a fax'll come in, and print double-sided).
Mom phoned this morning and requested some albums by mail. I don't know when I'll be seeing some of these pictures again, so this is an ideal time to be testing some new equipment.
Of interest: will Windows be smart enough to recycle the old software drivers, or will I need to reinstall from the CD? Answer: Windows was almost smart enough; maybe I was the problem.
Blogger is having problems accepting photographs this afternoon.
So here're the first scans: Mom doing her Mother Teresa thing in Bangladesh, except her students weren't half dead (just divorced, which can amount to the same thing in that culture); Dad with Thimphu in the background, in front of the family digs with the dog.
Chronologically, the lower picture comes later, as the stint in Dhaka came earlier. The parental trajectory went something this: Seattle, DC, Chicago, Portland, Rome, DC, Manila, Cairo, Dhaka, DC, Thimphu, Lesotho. I peeled off in Manila, and did Princeton, Cairo (twice), Jersey City, DC, New York, Dhaka, Portland, Thimphu (3x), Lesotho (3x). That's a greatly simplified picture (like, my sister has another trajectory yet).
I scanned these to DLW, thence to Tara's laptop by mistake (she must have left it on), thence to TMU2, from whence I grabbed it using KTU2 (the troll-damaged, dual-monitor jobber, where I do a lot of my picture editing). I cropped and rotated using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0.
Mom phoned this morning and requested some albums by mail. I don't know when I'll be seeing some of these pictures again, so this is an ideal time to be testing some new equipment.
Of interest: will Windows be smart enough to recycle the old software drivers, or will I need to reinstall from the CD? Answer: Windows was almost smart enough; maybe I was the problem.
Blogger is having problems accepting photographs this afternoon.
So here're the first scans: Mom doing her Mother Teresa thing in Bangladesh, except her students weren't half dead (just divorced, which can amount to the same thing in that culture); Dad with Thimphu in the background, in front of the family digs with the dog.
Chronologically, the lower picture comes later, as the stint in Dhaka came earlier. The parental trajectory went something this: Seattle, DC, Chicago, Portland, Rome, DC, Manila, Cairo, Dhaka, DC, Thimphu, Lesotho. I peeled off in Manila, and did Princeton, Cairo (twice), Jersey City, DC, New York, Dhaka, Portland, Thimphu (3x), Lesotho (3x). That's a greatly simplified picture (like, my sister has another trajectory yet).
I scanned these to DLW, thence to Tara's laptop by mistake (she must have left it on), thence to TMU2, from whence I grabbed it using KTU2 (the troll-damaged, dual-monitor jobber, where I do a lot of my picture editing). I cropped and rotated using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
More Fun Collaborations
"a Waterman Polyhedron"(by K. Urner using Jython)
A lot of you have heard me lecture about Watermans (my coin, named for Steve): convex hulls with all IVM vertices = CCP centers, and of maximal sphericity per each maximal radial distance.
The above rendering uses Jython (and POV-Ray), an implementation of Python in Java, meaning I was able to import, and use from within Jython, a convex hull finding Java class.
Fun Collaborations
"study for Sam Lanahan"(by K. Urner using Python + POV-Ray)
Sam owns the high resolution version of this rendering. Since our collaboration, Sam has enhanced and refined his FlexBlox invention.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Global Matrix (Wanderers Meeting)
Glenn Stockton is doing his Global Matrix gig. He uses analogical computation to encrypt/decrypt the generic landscape of information (a metamap). Glenn, see, is a retired cryptography guy (classically trained, pre RSA), at one time in Nam with the NSA (he has a background in linguistics, was pretty good with Vietnamese). Since then, he's been an engineer and craftsman, with a passion for science and philosophy (historical dimensions especially).
Glenn discovered design science recently. He's plugging The Parsimonious Universe. Obviously, I'm doing this in real time, which is why the present tense. I Ching now. Terry is running camera. Jim Buxton hasn't left for Libya yet, is sitting close to the front of the table, where Glenn is showing an I Ching matrix (octally based). Leibniz, when at the top of his game, got credit for early cryptography using binary methods. This was actually blowback from earlier Jesuit forays into China, which netted them copies of the I Ching, and revelations about arithmetic in other bases (Carl Jung is another channel for Chinese thinking around the I Ching ala his studies in synchronicity and such).
Polarity, less so duality, is characteristic of Leibniz and Heraclitus. A magnet is a perfect representation of polarity. Duality is illusory by comparison [the subtle unity of the two tendencies escapes the notice of Manicheans, as Walter Kaufmann used to call them -- KU].
Glenn was introduced to the pre-MOSAIC Internet by his uber-geek son. Glenn, underwhelmed, committed to defining what the search space and navigation engine might be for this emergent topology. In Bucky language: he committed to studying the geometry of thinking, making full use of his capacities and abilities, as cryptographer, linguist, and electronics engineer (he talks "gate logic" a lot, more below).
In a bifurcative logic, you have a dualistic decision process, an either/or switch. You also have the AND switch. Glenn's emerging computer design also uses inversion (yin into yang, yang into yin) -- in quantum computers, most of the gates are simply inverters.
After years of theorizing, he emerged from small town Arizona to rub shoulders with some big names in the Santa Fe Institute. He phoned Stuart Kaufmann and they had a 2.5 hour meeting. Based on such positive feedback, Glenn continued with his book project. He needed a computer engineer. Phil Walker, a senior software quality engineer (Credence etc.) encouraged Glenn to move to Portland, given the IT culture (Glenn's son lives here too).
Glenn currently has contacts at PSU, where he gets high marks for his system. He was pointed to OGI, where he met with the director, which is how he got pointed to CS @ PSU. This plugged him in to the hexagonal automata studies now happening around magnetologic (reconfigurable hardware; the computer is in the software). He also joined the PSU-based Cascade Systems Society (Wanderer Pat Barton is also a member, as is Milt, sitting here at the table). Milt pointed Glenn to Terry's ISEPP and Wanderers (which explains how Glenn met me, your blogger this morning).
Now we're back to the Civil War, talking about the jailhouse code or playfair square, known to POWs on both sides. Glenn's matrix starts with the 256-character 8-bit byte. Extended ASCII maps to this. 2 ASCII characters index an XY matrix of 256 x 256 addressable cells (= 65356). The XYZ matrix has 65356 x 256 = 16777216 cells addressed with 3 ASCII characters [see addendum].
Glenn maps this XYZ cell space to his Global Matrix: concentric, hexagonally tiled spheres, but with 12 pentagons per shell. The Z axis becomes the radius outward from the origin, each Z address corresponding to an XY ball. The same addressing scheme applies in that the remaining 2 ASCII characters cover each ball (floor, or sphere). I need to plug in to AC now, with my DC battery at only 4%. OK, nice save.
We've gotten to the point of Wanderers asking pointed questions. "How is the XYZ \ Global Matrix transformation an inversion?" Terry wants to know. "Good question" I echo. Glenn goes back to his duality versus polarity distinction. The two mappings are complementary, not in opposition (not inimical to one another). One set of file addresses; two modeling domains.
Glenn is supplying a useful bridge for introducing a more spherically adept, omnidirectional, radial modeling style to XYZ-trained thinkers. As a Fuller Schooler, I'm trained to see the IVM bricking within XYZ as rhombic dodecahedra, using Couplers to address the XYZ cube, then generating a concentric hierarchy around some arbitrary origin and spinning the icosa and cubocta, netting 120 LCD triangles from their respective 31 and 25 great circle networks (see below), then applying a frequency parameter to instantiate this template for some literal application (e.g. mapping weather, sun spots or whatever).
Glenn's hexapental approach maps to the variable-frequency icosasphere, the source of the classic geodesic dome.
Glenn was inspired by early Bucky, but hasn't ploughed through Synergetics yet (I noticed this about his library, from when I visited his apartments). That's actually very encouraging. Having someone come up with all this independently is another breakthrough. Putting on my recruiter hat, I'm rubbing my hands ("yum, fresh meat" thinks the smiley dog).
I think Portland is smart enough to support a "think tank" economy, don't you? We've done a lot of homework around how to build and sustain a vibrant KBE. Why should DC's beltway bandits have all the fun? The Pacific Northwest is just as tech-savvy as the Northeast Corridor, if you ask me (not forgetting about bioengineering ala OHSU).
Hexagonal architecture has many advantages, at the level of gate logic, modeling biological growth (including differential equations) and so on. Glenn gets into color coding, cellular automata, other branches of study. Quantum dots.
Terry, on camera, is serving as chief interrogator (devil's advocate) for now, while I keep blogging (need more coffee...). Jon used the word "trifurcation" (heh). Anyway, if you get the tape, you'll see all this. Terry just said "scale invariance." Milt is excusing himself, gave me his biz card earlier, invited me to call. Wanderers in action.
OK, now I'll go back and slightly polish what's turned out to be a quite lengthy post. Mostly, I'll just leave it rough, in keeping with the real time aesthetics.
Later: Per plan, Dawn pulled into the head shop parking lot across the street and whisked me away in the Subaru (Razz). We went to a wireless coffee shop for a late breakfast, to browse web pages about Chattanooga and Nashville, Tennessee.
Now that I've had some more time to digest Glenn's presentation, I'm not seeing how to address all the cells in a hexapent with exactly 2 ASCII characters. 65536 falls between 63482 and 66272, the number of cells in hexapents of frequency 138 and 141 respectively (and there are no frequencies in between). We could go with the 138-frequency and have some addresses left over -- but that breaks any 1-to-1 mapping to the third power of 256 (the borg-like cube).
I still think Glenn is on the right track, in hot pursuit of something useful.
Followup (March 20):
I think this "lesson plan" to the Math Forum captures the essence of much of Glenn's thinking, while shrinking it down to a friendly game-like apparatus pre-college kids might explore.
Glenn Stockton, 1962Page, Arizona
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Green Signal?
"angle versus frequency"4D Studios mock-up
So my focus these days is whether the war colleges would have any objection to getting behind an initiative to improve the algebra and geometry curriculum for K12ers on USA military bases, as well as in the elite preparative academies, many of them gateways to West Point and so forth.
If not, then we should push ahead with a revitalization plan that nets us more sophisticated fare on the Pentagon Channel. This was the subject of my last two Internet posts, including one to the Math Forum.
Regarding the above graphic: the student slides a shape onto the pedestal, using a mouse. Holding angles (shape) constant, the student grows or shrinks the shape using the scroll bar. The graphs below plot the resulting changes in the linear, surface and volumetric dimensions (powers of 1, 2 and 3).
Monday, March 13, 2006
Office Chatter
Office chatter, sometimes known as cube-speak (or qube-speak), involves banter about office products, breaks and glitches, fixes and workarounds. Like just today, we seriously jammed the paper feeder of our Brother MFC-8820D. Clearly, that feature will never work again. Not having much time on break, I simply ordered up a factory remade one, all parts working.
The convenience of just needing a few mouse clicks far outweighed any savings I'd gain doing serious driving, say out to Fry's, or even to Office Depot on MLK. In a few days, it'll be delivered. In the meantime, we'll put up with no paper feeder.
This thing prints double-sided, one of its most endearing features, given the paper pulp this saves.
I'm in limbo on video equipment, as it could be my talent is more in storyboarding. I've got good ideas for commercials. I'm not about to remake myself into an expensive studio overnight. Much easier is the hired gun role -- learn the ropes, while sharing relevant outdoor skills.
Like, at this Men's Group I was just in, we went walking up a trail to a vista point. I volunteered that if we got lost and needed food, I could shoot us a monkey. You had to be there (rural Oregon) to get the joke I guess.
I did phone my wife, out with my daughter in a coffee shop, to have a quick business meeting about the purchase. She was against it, so I volunteered funding from a small budget off to the side, which I control. This amused her, but she also wants to see the retiring printer put to worthy use, as it has some years left in it, even minus a working paper feeder. I agree with her thinking.
The convenience of just needing a few mouse clicks far outweighed any savings I'd gain doing serious driving, say out to Fry's, or even to Office Depot on MLK. In a few days, it'll be delivered. In the meantime, we'll put up with no paper feeder.
This thing prints double-sided, one of its most endearing features, given the paper pulp this saves.
I'm in limbo on video equipment, as it could be my talent is more in storyboarding. I've got good ideas for commercials. I'm not about to remake myself into an expensive studio overnight. Much easier is the hired gun role -- learn the ropes, while sharing relevant outdoor skills.
Like, at this Men's Group I was just in, we went walking up a trail to a vista point. I volunteered that if we got lost and needed food, I could shoot us a monkey. You had to be there (rural Oregon) to get the joke I guess.
I did phone my wife, out with my daughter in a coffee shop, to have a quick business meeting about the purchase. She was against it, so I volunteered funding from a small budget off to the side, which I control. This amused her, but she also wants to see the retiring printer put to worthy use, as it has some years left in it, even minus a working paper feeder. I agree with her thinking.
Friday, March 10, 2006
ISEPP presents...
I ran Terry's camera for the ISEPP presentation again, from high on the speaker's right, dress circle level.
Sir Roger Penrose was our in-front-of-the-camera talent, running two partially overlapping overhead projectors, quickly flipping back and forth from diagram to diagram, building a model of an eternally regenerative Universe, of cosmic constant lambda > 0.
In Penrose's latest proposal, the ultra low entropy constraints of the Big Bang are perhaps associated with zero Weyl Curvature (an hypothesis), Ricci Curvature being the other curvature of interest in this namespace.
But this same zero curvature might obtain when all future singularities (black holes) had rattled away their Hawking radiation, like so many kernels of popcorn, turning their last residual bits of mass into pure light energy.
At this point, with everything photons, all sense of time and space is rendered meaningless, and a kind of recalibration or rescaling might take place, such that our now prefrequency, isotropic, limiting special case might once again show up as a low entropy singularity with zero Weyl curvature -- and another Big Bang gives birth to another gravitational economy, ready to take it from the top.
Downhill = our direction of increasing entropy, per the 2nd Law, although on Planet Earth we're locally permitted an uphill ride on the solar gradient, with "clever plants" impounding high energy photons for the local food chain. We rebroadcast away the energy we didn't use.
Back to zero curvature, there might even be some gravitational rippling connecting one universe to a next. Penrose proposes yet another particle, charged, yet massless, to add some weight to his ideas.
Like any good scientist, Sir Roger builds falsifiable conditions into his pet theories. It's better to bow out with integrity, knowingly wrong, than it is to indefinitely linger as a hungry ghost, with some irrefutably baseless theory (i.e. all tautologies or truisms) -- and no fans.
During Q&A afterward, some of the most earnest questions came from children. He'd held them spellbound for like two hours. The two-overheads approach, with mostly hand-crafted content, is quite simple yet effective in a retro kind of way -- all those little light cones become almost iconic (9 parameters describe their shape, their angles, with only the 10th providing a sense of scale, or frequency).
Our dinner was on the 4th floor of the Performing Arts Center, overlooking a wet Broadway, with lots of flashing, reflecting light for atmosphere (big windows). The salmon with potatoes dish was excellent.
I asked no questions of Sir Roger -- although I did get his autograph in my copy of his latest book, at which time I mentioned I'd be his cameraman for the evening.
I wore my Class of 1980 Princeton reunion shirt -- little Nassau Halls in a pattern. If I'd had a Penrose tiles dress shirt, I could've worn that instead. I enjoy clowning around a little, when afforded an opportunity.
Sir Roger Penrose was our in-front-of-the-camera talent, running two partially overlapping overhead projectors, quickly flipping back and forth from diagram to diagram, building a model of an eternally regenerative Universe, of cosmic constant lambda > 0.
In Penrose's latest proposal, the ultra low entropy constraints of the Big Bang are perhaps associated with zero Weyl Curvature (an hypothesis), Ricci Curvature being the other curvature of interest in this namespace.
But this same zero curvature might obtain when all future singularities (black holes) had rattled away their Hawking radiation, like so many kernels of popcorn, turning their last residual bits of mass into pure light energy.
At this point, with everything photons, all sense of time and space is rendered meaningless, and a kind of recalibration or rescaling might take place, such that our now prefrequency, isotropic, limiting special case might once again show up as a low entropy singularity with zero Weyl curvature -- and another Big Bang gives birth to another gravitational economy, ready to take it from the top.
Downhill = our direction of increasing entropy, per the 2nd Law, although on Planet Earth we're locally permitted an uphill ride on the solar gradient, with "clever plants" impounding high energy photons for the local food chain. We rebroadcast away the energy we didn't use.
Back to zero curvature, there might even be some gravitational rippling connecting one universe to a next. Penrose proposes yet another particle, charged, yet massless, to add some weight to his ideas.
Like any good scientist, Sir Roger builds falsifiable conditions into his pet theories. It's better to bow out with integrity, knowingly wrong, than it is to indefinitely linger as a hungry ghost, with some irrefutably baseless theory (i.e. all tautologies or truisms) -- and no fans.
During Q&A afterward, some of the most earnest questions came from children. He'd held them spellbound for like two hours. The two-overheads approach, with mostly hand-crafted content, is quite simple yet effective in a retro kind of way -- all those little light cones become almost iconic (9 parameters describe their shape, their angles, with only the 10th providing a sense of scale, or frequency).
Our dinner was on the 4th floor of the Performing Arts Center, overlooking a wet Broadway, with lots of flashing, reflecting light for atmosphere (big windows). The salmon with potatoes dish was excellent.
I asked no questions of Sir Roger -- although I did get his autograph in my copy of his latest book, at which time I mentioned I'd be his cameraman for the evening.
I wore my Class of 1980 Princeton reunion shirt -- little Nassau Halls in a pattern. If I'd had a Penrose tiles dress shirt, I could've worn that instead. I enjoy clowning around a little, when afforded an opportunity.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Like Narnia in PDX
Big snow flakes took children from their seats this morning. I tried to work them in: "each snowflake is an object from my one class template," I explained (except my Toshiba wouldn't really be fast enough -- nature out-computes us all, cyber ice queen that she is (friendly lick)).
We'd been hacking on our Monkey, Dog and Human classes (each student has a Windows 2000 box), each template inheriting from the Mammal class, and Mammal from object (the new-style way to start new Python classes). I wrote it all up on edu-sig. Here's the source code of my zoo module.
Portlanders get skittish in even light snow, as their driving / walking reflexes haven't been conditioned and reprogramming takes time. Winter-hardened mid-westerners'd laugh at how we spin out on our little Hwy 26 for no good reason, just because of a few snow flakes or ice.
I prefer that route along the Columbia Gorge by the way, in front of the old Bolton homestead (happy times there), and turning right and south at Hood River. We did this recently, and I dropped my Samsung in the parking lot. The beginning of the end. Weeks later, it (my cell phone) died on Meliptus but no, I didn't "bury her at sea" (that'd be unecological).
Hood Meadows and Cooper Spur are two of our main ski areas. Hood Meadows is quite big and efficient whereas Cooper Spur is maybe less intimidating, but because lower, more likely to get rain (even when Hood Meadows is still getting snow). Does Condi ski?
So yeah, this being Thursday, I did my usual Python gig at Winterhaven. Before launching into it, the Winterhaven faculty guy I work with showed me where to get a Squeakland plugin for my FireFox browser. This is relevant as I'm still intending to make that Shuttleworth Summit in London in April, where Alan Kay might be struttin' his stuff.
That's not a for sure or anything (we're busy people, so even if I go, maybe nobody else will), but hey, I like checking in on Squeak from time to time. Same with Logo, where I'm a big fan of the "swimming turtles" idea i.e. not just a flat-on-the-floor metaphors, but in a tank or an ocean, swimming freely (not a new idea, not original with me, no way -- like, I saw it in Finding Nemo).
Thinking of news stories that I've seen...
So how about a special olympics or league where you're supposed to take steroids. The players sign a waiver, like they know this stuff can't be good. But there's no game of "discovery and scandal," no attempt to deceive any fans -- just a change in the rules.
Regular non-monster players get to keep their respective gigs, and play squeaky clean, steroid-free baseball or whatever.
The point is to not stack the deck and break records with "advantages" not available to your predecessors. That wouldn't be fair.
However, if people are out in the open about their "advantages" (maybe not steroids though? -- I hear they're pretty dangerous), then maybe it's not really unsportsmanlike to just open a new chapter in the record books for these people?
Like, we won't even try to compare: to a league of their own, those "performance enhancer" athelete-users. Sounds like something Old Sparta would try. Most Athenians would be more Clinton-like, and not inhale.
Hey, it's fun writing about sports. I hardly ever do it.
We'd been hacking on our Monkey, Dog and Human classes (each student has a Windows 2000 box), each template inheriting from the Mammal class, and Mammal from object (the new-style way to start new Python classes). I wrote it all up on edu-sig. Here's the source code of my zoo module.
Portlanders get skittish in even light snow, as their driving / walking reflexes haven't been conditioned and reprogramming takes time. Winter-hardened mid-westerners'd laugh at how we spin out on our little Hwy 26 for no good reason, just because of a few snow flakes or ice.
I prefer that route along the Columbia Gorge by the way, in front of the old Bolton homestead (happy times there), and turning right and south at Hood River. We did this recently, and I dropped my Samsung in the parking lot. The beginning of the end. Weeks later, it (my cell phone) died on Meliptus but no, I didn't "bury her at sea" (that'd be unecological).
Hood Meadows and Cooper Spur are two of our main ski areas. Hood Meadows is quite big and efficient whereas Cooper Spur is maybe less intimidating, but because lower, more likely to get rain (even when Hood Meadows is still getting snow). Does Condi ski?
So yeah, this being Thursday, I did my usual Python gig at Winterhaven. Before launching into it, the Winterhaven faculty guy I work with showed me where to get a Squeakland plugin for my FireFox browser. This is relevant as I'm still intending to make that Shuttleworth Summit in London in April, where Alan Kay might be struttin' his stuff.
That's not a for sure or anything (we're busy people, so even if I go, maybe nobody else will), but hey, I like checking in on Squeak from time to time. Same with Logo, where I'm a big fan of the "swimming turtles" idea i.e. not just a flat-on-the-floor metaphors, but in a tank or an ocean, swimming freely (not a new idea, not original with me, no way -- like, I saw it in Finding Nemo).
Thinking of news stories that I've seen...
So how about a special olympics or league where you're supposed to take steroids. The players sign a waiver, like they know this stuff can't be good. But there's no game of "discovery and scandal," no attempt to deceive any fans -- just a change in the rules.
Regular non-monster players get to keep their respective gigs, and play squeaky clean, steroid-free baseball or whatever.
The point is to not stack the deck and break records with "advantages" not available to your predecessors. That wouldn't be fair.
However, if people are out in the open about their "advantages" (maybe not steroids though? -- I hear they're pretty dangerous), then maybe it's not really unsportsmanlike to just open a new chapter in the record books for these people?
Like, we won't even try to compare: to a league of their own, those "performance enhancer" athelete-users. Sounds like something Old Sparta would try. Most Athenians would be more Clinton-like, and not inhale.
Hey, it's fun writing about sports. I hardly ever do it.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Followup on Funding
So far, it's looking fairly likely that I'll be doing the gigs in London (Shuttleworth Foundation) and CERN (EuroPython).
The first is a brainstorming and summit, aimed at defining a curriculum pipeline for South Africans (one of several no doubt), featuring Logo | Squeak | Python. Or at least that's the present picture.
As I stated on edu-sig, that's a Turtle, a Mouse, and a Snake. Some say Python refers to a comedy troupe, but I say "it ate Monty" (funny).
The second is to be staged at the home of W3, i.e. at the birthplace of the web. Hypertext is one of those developments I used to rave about, long before it happened, thanks to Ted Nelson's Computer Lib / Dream Machines (now a collectible), plus some brain- storming of my own. Then Tim Berners-Lee came along and simply made it happen.
The fact that I've been on target before about something positive, as a futurist, keeps me thinking I might still be on to something with my brand of positive futurism, even these many years later, even today.
I was even in The Oregonian a couple of times, anticipating hypertext kiosks and more use of the Fuller Projection.
Anyway, productive day. I got some hospital work done, coordinated with employers.
Saturday Academy gave a green light to the London trip, even if that means changes to our schedule. I'll be a more interesting and effective teacher, to the extent I'm able to bring back insights about how things are going in technology and education world.
Quakers seem OK with my missing FGC in Tacoma this year. Although it's a big deal for Friends General Conference to come this far west, I'll plan to rejoin it back east at some point. A memory from 1983: the day I learned Bucky died, I was enroute to this very gathering -- read about it in the car, in The Washington Post, and cried.
And by the way, I sorta lied about being "not [used to] getting much [assistance]." I get and have gotten a lot of assistance, by very expert individuals who're good at what they do. I don't easily forget that. Yet sometimes I need to whine.
The first is a brainstorming and summit, aimed at defining a curriculum pipeline for South Africans (one of several no doubt), featuring Logo | Squeak | Python. Or at least that's the present picture.
As I stated on edu-sig, that's a Turtle, a Mouse, and a Snake. Some say Python refers to a comedy troupe, but I say "it ate Monty" (funny).
The second is to be staged at the home of W3, i.e. at the birthplace of the web. Hypertext is one of those developments I used to rave about, long before it happened, thanks to Ted Nelson's Computer Lib / Dream Machines (now a collectible), plus some brain- storming of my own. Then Tim Berners-Lee came along and simply made it happen.
The fact that I've been on target before about something positive, as a futurist, keeps me thinking I might still be on to something with my brand of positive futurism, even these many years later, even today.
I was even in The Oregonian a couple of times, anticipating hypertext kiosks and more use of the Fuller Projection.
Anyway, productive day. I got some hospital work done, coordinated with employers.
Saturday Academy gave a green light to the London trip, even if that means changes to our schedule. I'll be a more interesting and effective teacher, to the extent I'm able to bring back insights about how things are going in technology and education world.
Quakers seem OK with my missing FGC in Tacoma this year. Although it's a big deal for Friends General Conference to come this far west, I'll plan to rejoin it back east at some point. A memory from 1983: the day I learned Bucky died, I was enroute to this very gathering -- read about it in the car, in The Washington Post, and cried.
And by the way, I sorta lied about being "not [used to] getting much [assistance]." I get and have gotten a lot of assistance, by very expert individuals who're good at what they do. I don't easily forget that. Yet sometimes I need to whine.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
SAO Spring Conference 2006
I spent much of the day in Salem, at Willamette University, stopping at Starchie Archie's (aka Mickey D's) in Woodburn for breakfast and fuel. The ConocoPhillips station had Exxon decals on the pumps. This seemed quite the oil giant, so I snapped a picture for my blog.
I was attending the SAO Foundation's annual spring conference, held in conjunction with the Oregon CSTA. Congratulations to Sara Zuckerman on becoming the president elect this year.
As I was thanking WU's Fritz Ruehr for sharing his excellent computer contest challenges with me awhile back (the conference is held in conjunction with a high school programming contest), my shoulder-slung Toshiba swung into a clock made from an old disk drive, knocking out its AA battery, which was hard to put back in. This clock was for timing the contest. Fortunately, Fritz had a backup clock.
Aside from this faux pas, which people were friendly about, I think I did an effective job as a diplomat, both for Python and for the Open Source Community more generally. This year I had the added credential of being a Python teacher in a Portland public school -- plus I use Moodle, which turned out to be another big topic.
Several teachers, without prompting from me, expressed the view that math students are under-served when it comes to technology. Why not mix math with programming? Kids often thrive when this gets tried. Yet the two subjects are strictly segregated, with math made a requirement and computer science an elective.
When the civilian education budget tightens, the technology teachers are among the first to be axed, or switched into math teaching. In the meantime, demand for students well-versed in technology is on the rise, with business and industry begging the schools to be more responsive to their needs.
Universities find incoming freshmen already turned off to technical careers (especially women). Enrollment in CS departments is way down. We learned more about these frustrations during the panel discussion, with representatives from OIT, WOU, PSU, and WU.
The answer seems obvious: require computer use when learning mathematics. And yet when the NCTM talks about "technology in the classroom" it usually means calculators, with a mere nod to a few popular computer applications such as Geometers Sketchpad. Computer programming is rarely if ever mentioned in the NCTM literature. Go to my Oregon Curriculum Network website if you want the real deal.
I made a lot of good contacts. SAO meetings are a valuable networking opportunity.
Addenda:
A conference highlight for me was watching student presenter Steven Bocci (9th grade) whip through GameMaker, building a playable version of Breakout in just five minutes. I now have a better appreciation of why kids flock to Edwin Pillobello's classes at Saturday Academy. GameMaker is cleverly designed and probably does teach some transferrable programming skills, usable in other World Game contexts.
Also, around this same time, Brad Miller was at SIGCSE 2006 in Houston, Texas, giving a formal presentation on the advantages of Python at the college level, which he says was well received.
I was attending the SAO Foundation's annual spring conference, held in conjunction with the Oregon CSTA. Congratulations to Sara Zuckerman on becoming the president elect this year.
As I was thanking WU's Fritz Ruehr for sharing his excellent computer contest challenges with me awhile back (the conference is held in conjunction with a high school programming contest), my shoulder-slung Toshiba swung into a clock made from an old disk drive, knocking out its AA battery, which was hard to put back in. This clock was for timing the contest. Fortunately, Fritz had a backup clock.
Aside from this faux pas, which people were friendly about, I think I did an effective job as a diplomat, both for Python and for the Open Source Community more generally. This year I had the added credential of being a Python teacher in a Portland public school -- plus I use Moodle, which turned out to be another big topic.
Several teachers, without prompting from me, expressed the view that math students are under-served when it comes to technology. Why not mix math with programming? Kids often thrive when this gets tried. Yet the two subjects are strictly segregated, with math made a requirement and computer science an elective.
When the civilian education budget tightens, the technology teachers are among the first to be axed, or switched into math teaching. In the meantime, demand for students well-versed in technology is on the rise, with business and industry begging the schools to be more responsive to their needs.
Universities find incoming freshmen already turned off to technical careers (especially women). Enrollment in CS departments is way down. We learned more about these frustrations during the panel discussion, with representatives from OIT, WOU, PSU, and WU.
The answer seems obvious: require computer use when learning mathematics. And yet when the NCTM talks about "technology in the classroom" it usually means calculators, with a mere nod to a few popular computer applications such as Geometers Sketchpad. Computer programming is rarely if ever mentioned in the NCTM literature. Go to my Oregon Curriculum Network website if you want the real deal.
I made a lot of good contacts. SAO meetings are a valuable networking opportunity.
Addenda:
A conference highlight for me was watching student presenter Steven Bocci (9th grade) whip through GameMaker, building a playable version of Breakout in just five minutes. I now have a better appreciation of why kids flock to Edwin Pillobello's classes at Saturday Academy. GameMaker is cleverly designed and probably does teach some transferrable programming skills, usable in other World Game contexts.
Also, around this same time, Brad Miller was at SIGCSE 2006 in Houston, Texas, giving a formal presentation on the advantages of Python at the college level, which he says was well received.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Cocktail Party
Saturday Academy hosted a "celebrate the instructors" event at Bluehour on Everett, twixt 12th and 13th NW this Thursday night. I finally met Kent Anderson, the veteran C language instructor, and James Zaleski, the Flash instructor.
Plus Noah Kleiman was there from Old Library Studio. Musician Jimmy Lott and I had just been in a training session with him the night before, on open source multi-track (Audicity & plug-ins mostly, although the studio itself uses higher end stuff). Small town.
James, the Flash guy, has been working with the Beaverton police on youth outreach (teaching Flash) and showed some student work. Impressive. Also, Joyce Creswell, SA Executive Director (and Wanderer) screened a little pro-SA piece, which I suggested we get uploaded as a Google Video (if that ever happens, I'll add a link from this post).
This morning, I got an invite to join Shuttleworth Foundation in London in mid-April. Checking airlines, I'm not seeing a way to get back in time for my April 15 SA class. On the other hand, I'd dearly love to meet these people. On the other hand, I have no travel budget for events like this (Catalina and Nashville were family; had to pass on G4G7 in Atlanta, a disappointment). On the other hand, I could ask for assistance. On the other hand, I'm used to not getting much (I made my career helping not-for-profits, mostly, so I'm not rolling in dough). E.J. Applewhite tried to get me a Guggenheim at one point, but was turned away (he was pissed about that).
Note: we're paying like $1100 to have some of Tara's teeth extracted today, plus I'm buying her an iPod for enduring the experience (she's wanted one for a long time). So it's not like we're really impoverished or anything, just typical middle income (per USA standard). Looks like we owe about $8K in taxes this year (mostly for social security). Plus I identify as a capitalist, meaning (in my case anyway) that I've internalized vast assets and manage them, both personally and precessionally.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
More Poopka from Zogby
Making the rounds on liberal elists:
Retaliation for Saddam's role? That's not what "the trial" is about (big guys in zoo cages more like -- and where's Tariq Aziz in all this? I hope OK). Cheney says shooting this one guy with his personal gun was a "worst day" for him. Tour some more hospitals guy, they're there because of you. Have some more "bad days" on my personal tab (some black budget line item only you and a few others know about -- sorry, my leak, my bad).
Anyway, I'm glad the mission is clear, for the most part. Any soldier who doesn't get why we fight really shouldn't be in the game. Uncle Sam has every responsibility to make it absolutely clear what the mission is. Any waffling = immediate and severe demotion among the rank and file. Otherwise you get what we got in Vietnam: K-Mart clerks leading the charge, getting shot in the back by "one of the guys" (and good riddance).
Sorry, I have this mean streak.
- Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay "as long as they are needed"
- While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
- Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
- Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam's role in 9/11, most don't blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
- Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
- Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment
Retaliation for Saddam's role? That's not what "the trial" is about (big guys in zoo cages more like -- and where's Tariq Aziz in all this? I hope OK). Cheney says shooting this one guy with his personal gun was a "worst day" for him. Tour some more hospitals guy, they're there because of you. Have some more "bad days" on my personal tab (some black budget line item only you and a few others know about -- sorry, my leak, my bad).
Anyway, I'm glad the mission is clear, for the most part. Any soldier who doesn't get why we fight really shouldn't be in the game. Uncle Sam has every responsibility to make it absolutely clear what the mission is. Any waffling = immediate and severe demotion among the rank and file. Otherwise you get what we got in Vietnam: K-Mart clerks leading the charge, getting shot in the back by "one of the guys" (and good riddance).
Sorry, I have this mean streak.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
More Polemics
I'm sounding pretty ugly in this thread on the Math Forum. I'm like this whimpering, snarling, monster dog, fangs dripping, just inches away from something I'd like to eat (damn this leash). So I make a cartoon out of it. Flip flip flip.
On an up note, the Gardner people sent me another beautiful invite. I really don't have the budget right now. I blame Congress (snarl, whine, whimper, drool)...
Friday, February 24, 2006
Econ 101
Today, I'm chatting with Russ, a fellow Python programmer and open source expert (I've seen him at OSCON), but also The Angry Economist. He's really frustrated with Quakers who don't know the difference between "debt" and "deficit" and otherwise oversimplify complicated issues.
In my view, Earth is this giant spherical motherboard, powered by starlight (the Sun mostly). We insert our waterwheels and what not to get work done (what we consider work, i.e. bread making).
We don't repay the sun (a fusion furnace). We're like a giant not-for-profit depending on grant income i.e. cosmic energy (measured in calories or joules or what have you).
And what's the business of this Earthian economy of ours? I think of it as a giant university system. We're trying to get smarter (and succeeding to some degree), so we get more work done with less of a downside.
Right now, we're still pretty dumb though. How do I know? Humans suffer way more than feels right to me. Higher living standards = less preventable suffering.
Pretty simple huh. Too simple?
Addendum: Hazel Henderson is using a computer metaphor too I see: "Economics is now widely seen as the faulty sourcecode deep in societies’ hard drives." (The Politics of Money) Economics = faulty sourcecode. Heh. Works for me.
In my view, Earth is this giant spherical motherboard, powered by starlight (the Sun mostly). We insert our waterwheels and what not to get work done (what we consider work, i.e. bread making).
We don't repay the sun (a fusion furnace). We're like a giant not-for-profit depending on grant income i.e. cosmic energy (measured in calories or joules or what have you).
And what's the business of this Earthian economy of ours? I think of it as a giant university system. We're trying to get smarter (and succeeding to some degree), so we get more work done with less of a downside.
Right now, we're still pretty dumb though. How do I know? Humans suffer way more than feels right to me. Higher living standards = less preventable suffering.
Pretty simple huh. Too simple?
Addendum: Hazel Henderson is using a computer metaphor too I see: "Economics is now widely seen as the faulty sourcecode deep in societies’ hard drives." (The Politics of Money) Economics = faulty sourcecode. Heh. Works for me.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Revisiting Malthusianism
So I'm back to debating with Brian, a fellow Wanderer, about what's really in short supply: physical resources or intelligence?
What's lacking I'm thinking is more contextual / alchemical. We need some new myths (means good stories, not untruths).
I'm taking the standard Fuller School line here. The Hunger Project took a similar tack (i.e. tried to "shift the context") but people got cynical hearing talk like that.
My views are more popular in the developing world, which sees lowering birth rates through raising living standards as the only ethical way forward. Global energy grid etc. etc.
What's lacking I'm thinking is more contextual / alchemical. We need some new myths (means good stories, not untruths).
I'm taking the standard Fuller School line here. The Hunger Project took a similar tack (i.e. tried to "shift the context") but people got cynical hearing talk like that.
My views are more popular in the developing world, which sees lowering birth rates through raising living standards as the only ethical way forward. Global energy grid etc. etc.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Dome @ Long Beach
Here's a semi-obligatory picture for a Bucky-related blog like this one. As any middle school student in LAUSD and environs oughta know, this n-frequency (?) dome (see the pentagons?) was a home for the Spruce Goose -- and we all know what that is, yes?
Right, an airplane, brainchild of Howard Hughes, now in McMinnville, Oregon.
The dome is still used, although for exactly what I don't know. I saw cruise ship passengers walking through it. The Queen Mary is permanently parked nearby, another tourist attraction.
Followup: another diamatic dome in the LA area: the Faith Dome.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Coasters!
me on Silver Bullet(robot camera)
Knott's Berry Farm has acquired quite a collection of roller coasters over its lengthy tenure as America's first theme park.
I sampled Silver Bullet (front row!), Ghostrider, Boomerang and Xcelerator. The Farm won the Lisebergsapplåd award (name for Liseberg in Sweden) in 1988.
PS: yes I know this "inflated chipmunk" look isn't my most popular -- maybe too much like Elvis (the dead one). But hey, family members found it endearing. So just call me "a master of many disguises" (that's like a note to old girl friends or something).
Friday, February 17, 2006
Morning in LA
I'm using wireless from a private residence close to my hotel. Bright blue sky, pool and jacuzzi a stone's throw away -- ah, this is the life (Portland was supposed to be in the 20s today).
The LA Times was fun this morning: there's a long page one article dissecting the Niger yellowcake rumors, saying the FBI investigation into who forged the documents has been "reopened" (why ever closed?); and Bill Maher's editorial is clever, about what I call the Eleanor Rigby Syndrome (we want "them" to listen).
The Budget rental car lady really tried hard to get me to upgrade to the yellow Mustang (hard top).
Richard Metzger's disinfo.com has a new blurb (Feb 15) on Bucky's Montreal dome with links to a couple Google videos. That makes a total of three Google vids (to date) that come up in response to "Buckminster Fuller". I just re-edited the description of my little talk to make it the fourth.
The LA Times was fun this morning: there's a long page one article dissecting the Niger yellowcake rumors, saying the FBI investigation into who forged the documents has been "reopened" (why ever closed?); and Bill Maher's editorial is clever, about what I call the Eleanor Rigby Syndrome (we want "them" to listen).
The Budget rental car lady really tried hard to get me to upgrade to the yellow Mustang (hard top).
Richard Metzger's disinfo.com has a new blurb (Feb 15) on Bucky's Montreal dome with links to a couple Google videos. That makes a total of three Google vids (to date) that come up in response to "Buckminster Fuller". I just re-edited the description of my little talk to make it the fourth.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Octet Truss
Portland World Trade Center(photo by K. Urner, Olympus Stylus 500)
I took a series of photos yesterday focusing on an architectural feature of one of our downtown buildings: a spaceframe known as the octet truss. The above photo shows 12 spokes emanating from a common hub, corresponding to 12 balls around a nuclear ball in the face centered cubic packing (FCC).
I incorporated these shots into my slide show for sixth graders at Winterhaven today, along with a slide borrowed from my OSCON 2005 talk featuring Alexander Graham Bell standing next to one of his "kites" -- likewise an octet truss.
The photo below shows the 12-spoke hub in Bell's construction kit.
Fuller called this lattice the isotropic vector matrix (all vectors are the same length) and related it to Avogadro's ideal gas model.Of course gas molecules aren't static, but their average uniformity in a volume might be associated with the isotropic distribution of "spherics" i.e. the rhombic dodecahedral voronoi cells around each ball in the packing.
Related reading:
More Oregon Curriculum stuff, posted from concourse B, PDX airport.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Illahee
Illahee is a Native American word meaning this place, our country. Peter Schoonmaker shared with Wanderers this morning about his work with the Illahee Foundation on ecosystem planning, focusing on urban centers, and Portland in particular.
Peter's group produces a lecture series, similar to ISEPP's in some ways, but focusing on these different themes. Last year's theme was How Cities Learn (taking off from Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn -- Stewart being one of the lecturers). This year it's Water & Oil (watch for the ads on Tri-Met buses).
Fortunately, Wanderers Dick Pugh and Jim Buxton were present, both "long now" types with an understanding of our place on the geological time scale. We joked about the thin stratum of asphalt and other petroleum based products we'd eventually become, as the world goes on turning.
Peter is on Mayor Tom Potter's visioning committee, aimed at coming up with some credible, actionable futurism for Portland. He finds the process rather plodding compared to Jaime Lerner's fast-paced style, but not every city is as lucky as Curtiba (in Brazil), where Jaime served a few terms as mayor.
Wanderers agreed that roping in more creative types, including Portland's illustrious science fiction community, might be a good idea. Jon Bunce cited Ursula LeGuinn's 1971 novel Lathe of Heaven for anticipating Portland's future (the 1980 made-for-TV version was filmed in Dallas, while the 2002 remake features Ursala's home town of Portland, including light rail).
Indeed, according to Peter, Jaime Lerner likes his planning committees to consist of three main types of people: architects for their design sensibilities, journalists because they know how to meet deadlines, and poet-philosopher types, for their powers of precognition.
After Peter's presentation, I hooked up my wireless laptop to my projector, and screened my OMSI Dome and Dignity Village blog entries, about getting FEDs (Fly's Eye Domes) showcased around Portland.
Although designed for service in more rural areas, FED-style infrastructure draws support from urban control rooms, studios, and classrooms, i.e. is the brainchild of our KBE.
I shared my view that corporate media need only shift gears a little and we'd have some dynamite reality TV complete with exciting product placement opportunities. Politicians needn't be in the loop on this one, which is fortunate, as when it comes to brainstorming potentially positive futures, they're apparently otherwise engaged.
Indeed, I'm flying down to LA tomorrow (after my Winterhaven gig), where I hope to stir things up a bit. Why should this science fiction capital, in a state with a movie star governor, lag so far behind Portland when it comes to intelligently brainstorming about our American Dream? Let's get Hollywood up to speed, shall we? We could use its media know-how.
Peter's group produces a lecture series, similar to ISEPP's in some ways, but focusing on these different themes. Last year's theme was How Cities Learn (taking off from Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn -- Stewart being one of the lecturers). This year it's Water & Oil (watch for the ads on Tri-Met buses).
Fortunately, Wanderers Dick Pugh and Jim Buxton were present, both "long now" types with an understanding of our place on the geological time scale. We joked about the thin stratum of asphalt and other petroleum based products we'd eventually become, as the world goes on turning.
Peter is on Mayor Tom Potter's visioning committee, aimed at coming up with some credible, actionable futurism for Portland. He finds the process rather plodding compared to Jaime Lerner's fast-paced style, but not every city is as lucky as Curtiba (in Brazil), where Jaime served a few terms as mayor.
Wanderers agreed that roping in more creative types, including Portland's illustrious science fiction community, might be a good idea. Jon Bunce cited Ursula LeGuinn's 1971 novel Lathe of Heaven for anticipating Portland's future (the 1980 made-for-TV version was filmed in Dallas, while the 2002 remake features Ursala's home town of Portland, including light rail).
Indeed, according to Peter, Jaime Lerner likes his planning committees to consist of three main types of people: architects for their design sensibilities, journalists because they know how to meet deadlines, and poet-philosopher types, for their powers of precognition.
After Peter's presentation, I hooked up my wireless laptop to my projector, and screened my OMSI Dome and Dignity Village blog entries, about getting FEDs (Fly's Eye Domes) showcased around Portland.
Although designed for service in more rural areas, FED-style infrastructure draws support from urban control rooms, studios, and classrooms, i.e. is the brainchild of our KBE.
I shared my view that corporate media need only shift gears a little and we'd have some dynamite reality TV complete with exciting product placement opportunities. Politicians needn't be in the loop on this one, which is fortunate, as when it comes to brainstorming potentially positive futures, they're apparently otherwise engaged.
Indeed, I'm flying down to LA tomorrow (after my Winterhaven gig), where I hope to stir things up a bit. Why should this science fiction capital, in a state with a movie star governor, lag so far behind Portland when it comes to intelligently brainstorming about our American Dream? Let's get Hollywood up to speed, shall we? We could use its media know-how.
Monday, February 13, 2006
What the Bleep (movie review)
What the Bleep: Down the Rabbit Hole is a remix and second draft of the original What the #$*! Do We Know!? with some added material, most notably the Dr. Quantum cartoons (and did Ramtha smoke a pipe last time?).
The film lays a neurobiology layer atop a quantum mechanics layer in an attempt to boost the observer's quality of life. Thoughts and attitudes matter; reality is maybe more plastic than you'd presumed. In that sense, it's a religious film addressing aspects of the human condition, while piggy-backing on science's credibility to drive its message home. Like, really use those frontal lobes and make your world a better place.
I found the cosmetics too thickly applied, what with the hallmarky backgrounds, music and lighting abetting the already expressive foreground talking heads. Also, I'm philosophically biased against Abbott's Flatland meme, although I found it well-rendered, in the form of a concluding Dr. Quantum cartoon screened within the Bagdad Theater (the observer's very venue in this case).
The film doesn't have anything intelligent to say to parents in the developing world, watching their children die of medically preventable causes such as starvation. It's more aimed at relatively well cared for mid-life urbanites with little excuse to not be over themselves already.
The film lays a neurobiology layer atop a quantum mechanics layer in an attempt to boost the observer's quality of life. Thoughts and attitudes matter; reality is maybe more plastic than you'd presumed. In that sense, it's a religious film addressing aspects of the human condition, while piggy-backing on science's credibility to drive its message home. Like, really use those frontal lobes and make your world a better place.
I found the cosmetics too thickly applied, what with the hallmarky backgrounds, music and lighting abetting the already expressive foreground talking heads. Also, I'm philosophically biased against Abbott's Flatland meme, although I found it well-rendered, in the form of a concluding Dr. Quantum cartoon screened within the Bagdad Theater (the observer's very venue in this case).
The film doesn't have anything intelligent to say to parents in the developing world, watching their children die of medically preventable causes such as starvation. It's more aimed at relatively well cared for mid-life urbanites with little excuse to not be over themselves already.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Turnover
I resigned from all my Yahoo groups today, except the two where I have official responsibilities. Plus I think I've about exhausted what I have to say in the Math Forum, at least for awhile.
My goal is to shake up my reality a bit and look for some new venues, plus my web sites could use some more upkeep and maintenance. Like, I just got an email from Alastair Farrugia about a small group theory error I need to fix on one of my crypto pages (plus he shared some links to fun software).
Dad always warned against getting "stuck in a rut" and had several self-disciplines to keep that from happening (e.g. he liked to keep changing where people sat at the dinner table).
I had breakfast with Dave Fabik this morning, at Cadillac Café on Broadway (very crowded, we sat at the bar).
Dave and I were also lunch mates on Thursday, with Henry Sessions and young Christopher, and Don Wardwell. Henry is in the final stages of becoming a physician's assistant (PA), having come from a career in public radio and public relations (PR), including for the American Red Cross.
My goal is to shake up my reality a bit and look for some new venues, plus my web sites could use some more upkeep and maintenance. Like, I just got an email from Alastair Farrugia about a small group theory error I need to fix on one of my crypto pages (plus he shared some links to fun software).
Dad always warned against getting "stuck in a rut" and had several self-disciplines to keep that from happening (e.g. he liked to keep changing where people sat at the dinner table).
I had breakfast with Dave Fabik this morning, at Cadillac Café on Broadway (very crowded, we sat at the bar).
Dave and I were also lunch mates on Thursday, with Henry Sessions and young Christopher, and Don Wardwell. Henry is in the final stages of becoming a physician's assistant (PA), having come from a career in public radio and public relations (PR), including for the American Red Cross.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
The Kepler Project
Dr. Gibor Basri focused his well-attended lecture on the Kepler Project, designed to answer the question: how many earth-like planets might we reasonably expect to find in our galaxy?
The instrument will be fired into space on a Delta rocket c/o NASA, presumably in 2008 although the schedule has already slipped for bureaucratic reasons.
The space platform, nowhere near as expensive or sophisticated as The Hubble (will Hubble get that last upgrade before it dies?), consists of CCD panels focused on a star field near the Northern Cross and Vega.
The idea is to stare, unblinkingly, at all these stars, for about 4 years. Periodic dips in brightness, caused by planets partially eclipsing their parents, will show up upon filtering the continuously downloaded data. The word "planet" is built in to the etymology of "wanderer" by the way.
The mathematics will tell us how many of these planets are earth-like i.e. in some habitable zone that would in principle allow for liquid water on the surface. Whether there actually is any liquid water, let alone life, on these particular planets is not something Kepler will reveal.
During the Heathman Dinner (I sat next to Glenn Stockton, retired cryptographer, and Jon Bunce, musician, plus David Feinstein, mathematician, Don Wardwell, boat captain, Nirel, web wrangler and Larry, retired chemist, were at our table), I asked whether solar systems ever form directly in the wake of exploding stars.
Dr. Basri said yes, that two of the first earth-sized planets ever discovered beyond our solar system were both in orbit around a pulsar, the remains of a gas giant's exploding and collapsing.
Thanks to the Mentor Graphics Foundation, a lot of high and middle schoolers get to attend these lectures, which would be too expensively inconvenient for them otherwise.
Our regular attenders have built up a lot of appreciation for contemporary science and engineering over the years.
Before the lecture, Glenn and I joined Patrick and Diane Barton for dinner at a McMenamin's brew pub (the one nearest the Art Museum downtown). The Bartons, a Wanderer couple, used to work at Sandia (a national lab) in connection with supercomputer modeling. Glenn used to work for the NSA. And I'm a Fuller Schooler.
Yes, I realize that's two dinners in one night. That's why I just got a hummus plate the first time (plus Hammerhead -- the beer, not the shark). And Glenn had ahi twice (a taste of heaven).
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Restoring Integrity?
Now that we've turned the corner on implementing more design science within K-16, we need to get to work on repairing the damaged integrity of various key players in this picture. The war is over, rehabilitation and rebuilding is now the name of the game.
Sometimes this means working with former enemies, such as the NCTM. Even the MAA is not unscathed, having failed to do anything very sensible with the A & B modules when it could have made a real difference at a critical time. Oh well, that's all water under the bridge by now.
In general, the Ivory Tower has not performed well during this interlude. We've seen too much blaming of others (politicians especially), given how overspecialization leaves its victims feeling powerless and blue.
There've been many stellar exceptions of course, but this doesn't change the fact that reforms are sorely needed. I'm sure "the experts" will be rushing forward with their lists of much-needed changes.
Sometimes this means working with former enemies, such as the NCTM. Even the MAA is not unscathed, having failed to do anything very sensible with the A & B modules when it could have made a real difference at a critical time. Oh well, that's all water under the bridge by now.
In general, the Ivory Tower has not performed well during this interlude. We've seen too much blaming of others (politicians especially), given how overspecialization leaves its victims feeling powerless and blue.
There've been many stellar exceptions of course, but this doesn't change the fact that reforms are sorely needed. I'm sure "the experts" will be rushing forward with their lists of much-needed changes.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Philosophers Gather
Linus Pauling House, Feb 7, 2006(photo by K. Urner)
Terry Bristol, president of ISEPP, lectured on American Pragmatism to a packed house of curious Wanderers last night. Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, John Dewey, and Joseph Priestley are among those whom Terry cites as influencing his thinking.
Tara (age 11) kicked off the program by demonstrating her two robot dogs, Robopet and I-Cybie (she didn't stay for the lecture though).
That's a picture of a young Linus and Ava over the mantle behind Terry.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Broken Flowers (movie review)
I suppose some might read a tone of moral condemnation into this portrayal of an older man's pilgrimmage to past temples, each containing a goddess of some kind: no high moral principles, no glory, no battles for God; secular-materialist (aka "western") civilian life is empty and decadent and yadda yadda.
But that wouldn't be me behind that reading (except I liked the goddess part). I savor that twilight zone of airports and rental cars, soft ring tones, faceless announcements, a little turbulance, dreams. The allusion to Buddhism is apt, amidst ripples of Lost in Translation. Murry's character is overflowing with love in the Void. He's a bodhisattva. America is beautiful.
But that wouldn't be me behind that reading (except I liked the goddess part). I savor that twilight zone of airports and rental cars, soft ring tones, faceless announcements, a little turbulance, dreams. The allusion to Buddhism is apt, amidst ripples of Lost in Translation. Murry's character is overflowing with love in the Void. He's a bodhisattva. America is beautiful.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Moral Relativism?
I've been chatting with a certain SWM on a Wittgenstein list (a Yahoo! group) -- both of us appear in the acknowledgements in Duncan Richter's new book by the way (Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein's Philosophy). We've been yakking about moral bedrockism (absolutism) versus relativism, whether Wittgenstein was either, and tangentially, where do we come down?
I know for myself I'm coming to the following elucidation: moral relativism is a first line of defense against the morally inferior; let 'em all duke it out, and the bedrockers among 'em 'll likely percolate to the surface, ready for round 2 etc.
I mean, we're of harder and softer metal, along many different axes or principles. Alchemical mixings of archetypes. I'll budge where you'd never and vice versa. We wonder at one another's weaknesses. I'll grant you all that.
All the more reason to not step in as some Grand Mediator with a handy fix for every problem. I'm not doing that either, believe me. I'm just another guy in the ring, sometimes more than ready for that next bell.
But when they're all still just kids, needing tools of self expression, I'm saying: I won't deny you some dynamite training with these multi-track audio and video sequencer devices. You may grow up an enemy, but you'll know how to express yourself effectively, which means you're less likely to resort to brute force, the strategy of those at the end of some rope already.
You shouldn't run out of editing tricks that fast. Like, I'm not impressed when you go for the guns. OK, so you failed, what more shall we say? But if you know how to edit TV, do a good job in journalism, know how to research, think critically and analytically, then hey, let's watch your programming. Let's see what you think it's all about. I'll help give you those skills, or learn them from others, and make them your own.
It's not like I know in advance if you'll be with me or agin' me. At least you'll be free.
I know for myself I'm coming to the following elucidation: moral relativism is a first line of defense against the morally inferior; let 'em all duke it out, and the bedrockers among 'em 'll likely percolate to the surface, ready for round 2 etc.
I mean, we're of harder and softer metal, along many different axes or principles. Alchemical mixings of archetypes. I'll budge where you'd never and vice versa. We wonder at one another's weaknesses. I'll grant you all that.
All the more reason to not step in as some Grand Mediator with a handy fix for every problem. I'm not doing that either, believe me. I'm just another guy in the ring, sometimes more than ready for that next bell.
But when they're all still just kids, needing tools of self expression, I'm saying: I won't deny you some dynamite training with these multi-track audio and video sequencer devices. You may grow up an enemy, but you'll know how to express yourself effectively, which means you're less likely to resort to brute force, the strategy of those at the end of some rope already.
You shouldn't run out of editing tricks that fast. Like, I'm not impressed when you go for the guns. OK, so you failed, what more shall we say? But if you know how to edit TV, do a good job in journalism, know how to research, think critically and analytically, then hey, let's watch your programming. Let's see what you think it's all about. I'll help give you those skills, or learn them from others, and make them your own.
It's not like I know in advance if you'll be with me or agin' me. At least you'll be free.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Conundrum
Our local mayor is working to inject new dollars into a flagging school system. See today's Oregonian, Metro section, page B6 (One step closer to a winnable school plan).
My approach is to talk turkey directly i.e. let's join the school board in looking at curriculum. This Old Library Studio has some right stuff: lots of music-making booths ala EMP, with software for working in multi-track (mostly Apple, though Noah is likewise a Linux devotee).
The multi-track metaphor is likewise what we use in television, however both stem from the older orchestra conductor view: lots of instruments (now called devices) scripted into a whole, with this overview person tasked with waving a wand, making facial grimmaces and so forth (I've watched them work, but have nowhere near the musical knowledge to do much better than mime the performance).
So our curriculum aims to equip kids with mastery of multi-track editing in various contexts. A toy company I used as a base for these ideas has gone out of business (slow link), while my Alien Curriculum (giving academic rigor to these ideas) languishes at my Oregon Curriculum Network website (except not really: I do have a fan base).
Speaking of that article on B6, another conundrum appears right next to it: Calling Inspector Clouseau. This one is about some middle aged guy tripping on his own shoelaces and smashing some Chinese vases at the bottom of a staircase. Playing the clip in reverse: a man back-swims towards heaven's gate, as these Humpty Dumpty type objects reassemble in his wake.
My approach is to talk turkey directly i.e. let's join the school board in looking at curriculum. This Old Library Studio has some right stuff: lots of music-making booths ala EMP, with software for working in multi-track (mostly Apple, though Noah is likewise a Linux devotee).
The multi-track metaphor is likewise what we use in television, however both stem from the older orchestra conductor view: lots of instruments (now called devices) scripted into a whole, with this overview person tasked with waving a wand, making facial grimmaces and so forth (I've watched them work, but have nowhere near the musical knowledge to do much better than mime the performance).
So our curriculum aims to equip kids with mastery of multi-track editing in various contexts. A toy company I used as a base for these ideas has gone out of business (slow link), while my Alien Curriculum (giving academic rigor to these ideas) languishes at my Oregon Curriculum Network website (except not really: I do have a fan base).
Speaking of that article on B6, another conundrum appears right next to it: Calling Inspector Clouseau. This one is about some middle aged guy tripping on his own shoelaces and smashing some Chinese vases at the bottom of a staircase. Playing the clip in reverse: a man back-swims towards heaven's gate, as these Humpty Dumpty type objects reassemble in his wake.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Bruce Adams Presents...
robotic wafer processor from Bruce's slidesThe ion-injected dopants disrupt the local lattice. Thermal treatment restores it, but if cooked too long, the dopants diffuse, ruining the junction.
As Moore's Law has continued to push the number of transistors on a wafer, the layering dimension (Z axis) has become critical. Multi-hour lamp-driven baking techniques don't work at these smaller scales, nor is multi-second rapid thermal processing (RTP) fast enough at these smaller scales either.
R&D groups are exploring various solutions, Bruce's being one of them.
Jim Buxton is looking forward to the Libya trip (eclipse viewing). I found it encouraging that Myanmar and Zimbabwe are picking up the slack on the official enemies list these days (referring to last night's State of the Union Address). Libya is a new friend.
Gordon Hoffman joined us today, offering his unique perspective as a long haul Silicon Forester.
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