Schoolish Business

I think the community is pretty OK with the Synergetics on Wikipedia page. Defining it as "empirical" (bold, not my sentence) is with reference to its essentially hands-on nature.

The discipline is immersive, the opposite of aloof. Synergetics is not a spectator sport. More like First Person Physics.

Fuller eschewed math notations for the most part in that work, and for a reason: he was wanting to contribute difficult prose, not difficult not-prose.

If the C.P. Snow chasm were to be bridged, it could just as well be from the humanities side. Lionel sent some great research on this, a distillation of Cosmic Fishing by E.J. Applewhite.

When average reading comprehension levels go up by just a couple ticks around the world, you end up with that many less scams, bogus beliefs. Outward wars, like other mob actions, are sometimes triggered by deliberate subterfuge.

Increasing the level of media and computer literacy keeps the fatalistic and apocalyptic from banding together too tightly. When communications run every which way, it's easier to put out fires, quell falsehoods. War profiteers should be encouraged to make an honest living for a change.

Our situation is dire enough without making it worse through self-fulfilling prophecies.

David Koski and I had a rather voluminous exchange recently, as I once again attempted to fathom his way of manufacturing zonohedra from hexahedra.

When he says a shape is 600-sided, he's seeing all these flattened hexahedra not visible to tourists, fair warning. They tile the surface of those not-rhombic polygons -- creating more rhombs for the initiated.

These flat hexahedra are as a result of construction, using various central angle sets corresponding to the great circle networks of such as the 6 + 10 + 15 = 31 and 6 + 7 + 12 = 25 of the icosahedron and cuboctahedron respectively. Yes, I'm describing cartoons, mathcasts.

In Bizmo Diaries, I give an example a Geometry Storyboard showcasing David's method with respect to the six vertex axes of the cuboctahedron. He did all the graphics in vZome, for explaining by email.

Q: What's a bizmo?

A: a business mobile...

...possibly going from the Bend area towards Forest Grove. Dave Ulmer had an interesting example parked at the Linus Pauling Campus some years back. In the full blown vision, we'd have dispatcher control rooms keeping the show on the road.

By "Linus Pauling Campus" I refer to a three-building complex plus parking lot, right off the Silicon Forest's original memory lane: our Hawthorne Boulevard. That's right. Both Tektronix and Electro-Scientific Instruments got started right here in 97214.

I phoned SNEC today and exulted about the Bucky play, the big difference it made in Portland in 2008. SNEC is helping to organize some events around the play when it opens in Washington DC later this year. Trevor and I both got to give talks, a real privilege in that venue (Portland Center Stage).

They're watching a lot of science TV on Youtubes over there or "back east" as some put it. Excellent production values out of India these days, lots of well-explained college level material, for free on the web. MIT isn't the only source of free / open course-ware.

Welcome to the Global U.

I stumbled upon this "bridge to nowhere article" from the Ellensburg Daily Record, December 7, 1987, when Alaskans were contemplating their global grid hookup.

That's but a distant memory most people don't have. What likely amazed some politicians in the 2008 election cycle is how dutifully contemporary journalists avoided sharing any of this history, even just for context.

Likewise regarding Iraq or Iran: Neo-Victorians chatter about oil pipes and not electrical grids, try to sound worldly-rich in some upper deck Titanic namespace. Google up some recent history to learn more about this electric world you're inheriting.

One might claim Synergetics has no engineering significance, but then just look at the track record.

True, both the geodesic dome and octet-truss were dawning lights in other geniuses (Bauresfeld and Bell respectively). That's what we'd expect. Great minds really do think alike, partially overlap on principle.

That any four events define a tetrahedron might be considered a foretaste of hyperlinks. Schools of thought "constellate" and "precess" one another in Cyberia. The invisible colleges all observe one another.

Likewise Synergetics is a hall of mirrors with respect to what people were studying in the 1900s.

Fuller was in sync with his times, and/or somewhat anticipatory.

Yes, the work may seem rather deliberately obfuscatory in never mentioning phi (nothing "golden" in the index), even while seeming to dis pi (it's more humans taking themselves too literally that he's fighting, as if literal pi were ever used in nature).

In working to stay true to himself, Fuller reinvented a lot of wheels. He didn't have time to find all the short cuts. Not saying we do either. Just some of them.

I've been trying to correct any misapprehensions regarding this math-through-programming campaign we've been waging. This is not about boosting honors or AP caliber classes necessarily.

This is about reaching out across the digital divide to anyone struggling, and providing some soothing focus time. Sometimes students relax by concentrating, if permitted the breathing room needed for study. If you've got time for a command line, then you must know where your next meal is coming from, if not the one after that.

Getting some kind of handle on the equipment just feels like a step up, especially if the stuff actually works.

I've been helping this guy in Indonesia via a shared canvas, PDF, attached Python scripts. This is stuff with colored balls in VPython.

In trying to help Bruce with his wrapper class for the Standard Library turtle, I gave some unhelpful advice. Vern stepped in.

* * *

My dear Uncle John passed away on January 20. He was an avid science fiction buff, lent me Isaac Asimov's two volume journal. He grew up in the wilds of Alaska. He radiated peace, warmth and good humor all the days that I knew him.

I look forward to seeing Uncle Bill again soon. John was his brother in law. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bill's sister Evelyn.

A Quick Recall

Software engineering has spawned a vast literature, a lot of it deriving from manufacturing.

Process control, meaning in many cases maximizing uniformity among outputs, is all about looking for statistical anomalies. What's about to break? What's already broken?

Most life cycle development models put a premium on getting as much right at design time as feasible. The so-called Waterfall approach tries to prevent any dabbling in implementation until all the requirements have been fully specified, in terms of use cases (scenarios) or whatever lists.

A more reasonable approach is to start down the implementation path with mock ups and prototypes, garnering feedback from end users. This means system architecture is not finalized before some construction has occurred.

Software development is not exactly like building a physical building -- there's still customer feedback and changes to blueprints rather late in the game.

Agile development methods include such refactoring as a part of its test driven approach.

CMMI, IEEE 1417, Six Sigma... a vast literature.

Update on Projects

:: by D. Koski using vZome ::

Open Source:

I again tackled making the Win 7 laptop (named Flextegrity) a dual boot machine. My diagnosis is the motherboard Core i3 video is not yet Ubuntu-compatible, as of version 9.10 (Karmic Koala). I could only find one post on the problem.

Over on edu-sig, I've continued having fruitful dialog with some talented teachers. That's quite a strong archive if I say so myself. The PSF list is heating up with more discussions of nominations, which I feel at liberty to share, as Pycon is coming right up, so tiz the season. I'm just a freshman, joined PSF in 2009, so I've just been lurking mostly. This is my first time to even see the process.

Flextegrity:

A new shipment of version 5 has arrived, in multiple colors. We dove into assembly mode, building a tower. The parts are Home Depot compatible, or should be.

Replacing a squares-based with a triangles-based knitting pattern in later versions, made Flextegrity more robust, less brick-like. The orientation of the icosahedra in their join matrix was key.

Synergetics:

I've "amberized" (frozen) the Wikipedia entry on Synergetics up to the latest SNEC fork, by moving it over to Wikieducator. I realize I have limited control over the Wikipedia version, should not expect it to stay on the track I originally envisioned for it.

On WikiEducator, I'm more like the school teacher or artist, with more creative control over the pages I instantiate. I've got a bunch. The Python Tutorials page was a collaborative effort.

Regarding the WikiEducator version: that first paragraph and block quote after "What is Synergetics?" was already the opening salvo when I inherited the page on Wikipedia. The page was languishing as a "stub" at the time.

I added the bullets, also verbatim Synergetics, then spent the balance of the entry seeking to shed light on those claims while providing more of a philosophical and/or literary context.

Think of Synergetics as akin to Finnegans Wake, with my contribution exegesis thereon -- a perfectly legitimate Wikipedia topic. Or maybe use the term "hermeneutics" if "exegesis" sounds too Biblical for ya?

Updating Wikipedia

I've been resisting tackling the Wikipedia page on Bucky Fuller's Synergetics. Why? Well for one thing because I'm somewhat close to the action and encyclopedias are supposed to be these dispassionate endeavors. Wikipedia calls for impartiality.

On the other hand, no one was stepping up to the plate, giving at least the simple basics. Obviously that page was just going to sit there, going nowhere. Being close to the action means I have some credibility on this subject.

I'd been doing some related writing over on Wikieducator, had some ready material. I do think the new version is a real improvement. I was also sensitive to previous authors and did not remove anything. I fixed some punctuation, added a couple hyphens. As Wiki-buffs know, there's a complete page history, so the details may be audited.

Was I impartial enough? What I avoided was trying to tell much of the subsequent history, after publication. Yes, people discovered (and named) buckminsterfullerene and E.J. Applewhite wrote this great article about it in Chemical Intelligencer. That's for some other entry. Or read The King of Infinite Space, a biography of Donald Coxeter by Siobhan Roberts, which also tells some of this story. Or poke around in my blogs.

What I focused on was the tetrahedral geometry, but then I wanted to be sure readers had the flavor of the writing, and understood its philosophical nature. This wasn't some dry manual for dome engineers. He tackled the big issues, the human condition.

Was I just being a baby in avoiding this work? Given the obscurity of this topic, and the fact few people care about it or even know it exists, you might think it should have been a trivial exercise for me, nothing all that painstaking. On the contrary, this has been some difficult business.

Burn Out City

I came across Arthur Dye today, out for a walk in the neighborhood. We chatted a bit. He's been a mentor on AFSC matters, or at least a great source of stories. I used to work for him at CUE, and later at Ecotrust.

Dr. Tag said I looked world-weary when yakking about AFSC at our recent meeting. She was off to an organizing meeting about assembling culture boxes (schools can order them for classroom use). I was taking a short break away from my office.

I don't deny feeling pressure. Just keeping up is a challenge. A little training in Wordpress got me nudging Grunch.net a few spaces into the future. Not that many readers reach Synergetics on the Web through that portal, but those that do may want to catch up on a little esoteric history, not usually covered in schools.

My technical writing regarding Flextegrity is still in the beginning stages.

I'm somewhat relieved the PCMTV orientation for tonight was canceled. I'd only just found about it from Glenn. That's for people wanting to make television.

Channel 29 is delivering a premier TV show on geometry these days, called Dimensions. You can watch the episodes on-line. Made in France.

Chuck and Mary took me to lunch. We chatted with mom by cell (they go back to before I was born). Mom is into the thick of it with WILPF these days, while the LA area deals with major downpours.

Our work/study cook/musician pulled an all nighter in her basement apartment. Her voice wafted up through the furnace vents even unto the second floor, where my daughter and I have our respective bedrooms (Melvin, the chameleon, has moved back with his owner, leaving Barry-the-Python to keep Tara company; I get the dog).

The assignment: to sing in C# against the keyboard's F-# major melody (did I get that right?). She reports needing over a hundred and seventy takes to get it done. That's a pretty grueling schedule given tonight marks the start of her marathon community organizing event at Laughing Horse (which is where I'm at now).

By all means lets ramp up to help Haitians, but then lets keep ramping up. Disaster relief should and could be one of the world's biggest businesses. Disaster prevention would be another. Here's a dramatic alternative to phony cop shows, phony doctor shows... should we call it the Reality Channel?

My concerns about AFSC are mostly website related. Which of those programs is actually a ghost program? United Voices is what I was involved with in Portland, but is that what we're doing today? The Portland site is out of date. As laision, I need to report that to Bridge City, along with some other stuff. As NPYM rep, I need to memo Seattle (which I did, although Philadelphia minds the website).

Without some exciting technology (helicopters, surface ships), control rooms (lots of global data, situations on screen), celebrities (not always from Hollywood) it probably couldn't compete in prime time against the Illusion Channel. Add those ingredients, and you're getting closer to getting an extended national guard commercial, complete with product placements.

Services looking to recruit, including some civilian ones, might have good reasons to like these shows.

I was re-listening to the tour guide at the Whitney on Youtube, explaining about Bucky's philosophy. She stresses the concept of a "closed system" a lot but is that really right? We need to talk more about "surfing the solar gradient" if we ever want to make some sense of our economic situation. Do they teach that in universities these days? You don't have to call it GST if you don't care to -- The Economist doesn't.

My thanks to Lionel for those podcasts, one of which was about the process whereby energy-using hydrocarbons create a food chain for we mammals. These were for kids though, with friendly piano music. I should share them with our student when she's not too busy...

MLK Day

I was glad to spend the $2 for a bottomless cup of coffee at Urban Grind. I listened intently to Martin Luther King's speech about the war in Indochina, though I was not able to hear every word.

I also studied The Oregonian, reading stories about Haiti, where the situation is grim.

Yesterday evening, four members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints showed up at my door, by prearrangement. I'd been studying their literature while chatting on the porch in the winter cold, comparing notes regarding our respective practices.

I'd invited them in to chat further, but as these were three young women, they needed a supervisor, unless I happened to have an older woman in my household, to serve as a chaperon.

Only my daughter was present, so they demurred, but resolved to return with an appropriate person.

As it happened, our live-in student was present this time, and so a chaperon was not strictly necessary (she studies the homeless situation in Portland and cooks meals -- a work/study arrangement).

Nevertheless, I was pleased to meet with this larger team. We sat around my dining room table for friendly conversation. Their supervisor had a Quaker background and, like the lead spokeswoman, was from Pennsylvania. We found other common ground as well.

We shared for approximately 10 minutes in each direction, followed by another 10 minutes of give and take. I had some AFSC literature on the table, and explained how Quakers, being a tiny sect, only manage to accomplish their business in this world by forming allegiances with non-Quakers who might experience similar leadings.

Our cook went off to get her Bible. Although more of a Buddhist, she went right to a quote in Revelations that she knew some Christians used to damn others, including Mormons. Our experienced visitors were not phased, having heard this quote many times.

I was impressed by this exchange, as I'm mostly ignorant where the The Book of Revelations is concerned. That particular book is not much emphasized in most the meetings I attend, even if they're Bible-focused.

My visitors and I did manage to agree on the doctrine of continuing revelation. We expect more prophets will be showing us a way forward, guided by whatever leadings, answering whatever callings. Indeed, we have many such leaders among us today.

I regard MLK as such a prophet, a latter day saint. That being said, I recognize MLK Day as a secular holiday more than a religious one. He championed civil rights and civil liberties, held dear by many religions, philosophies and ideologies.

MLK Weekend

volume 147 K-mods by DK using vZome browns

I saw Quakers doing a lot of smart, conscientious analysis, as they gave donations to the Haiti rescue mission (although it's already too late for so many).

AFSC is running a tribute to MLK and their historic relationship, is partnered with Handicap International (per Twitter). Queen of Earthala (Friend) gave to Doctors Without Borders. However you might make the most difference, that's your calling, your way.

Anticipatory design science means having large inventories of relief supplies, ready to go. But then we're running low on staples to begin with. Eating less meat is an ethical option. More attention to "fooding and lodging" is what the math teachers are hoping we'll see (on TV).

I find so many experts promising the whole world will want to live like pigs and consume to the level of the sky's the limit, because that's simply human nature. This begs too many questions to address in one blog post.

What's unaesthetic is bad design, and no amount of money compensates for that ugliness, is my short answer.

Back to the real world: I'm cramming on GIT for Windows 7 using msysgit, a cygwin-like utility in that it runs a bash instance, complete with vim, enough to do development work, say with Django. It's not that you'd need to code in this window, just check in and out. Return to the native file system for your everyday business needs. Python runs fine outside of cygwin.


I agree with GL that it'd take like a million dollars to get enough math teachers interested in using agiles, industry standard though they be (no one runs a website off a calculator). They'd want to get paid, and get credit, as well they should, in exchange for some concerted study. Self selecting? Volunteers? I've been inviting suggestions, in the spirit of encouraging intelligent debate. I've had enough meetings to know this isn't a completely unfamiliar conversation. Do we call it digital math or discrete math? Do we care?

A bulked up teacher training program is worth the investment provided Oregon's students (or any cyber state's) might enjoy the benefits of whatever outcomes. We would get some surprising results I'm pretty sure. Not knowing everything in advance is somewhat par for the course. People seem to think political science offers some possibility of deterministic theater, yet even the Newtonians had no way to suggest the Laws of Nature were that strict.

I'd suggest PCC as a venue, a facility with enough computer labs (feedback gleaned from Dr. Livio's talk). Or, as a known-quantity radical in these woods, I'm always suggesting the private sector jump in, and Intel has (in terms of money), but what does that mean on the ground?

Dave has me gawking at his 132-sider, a construct of vZome browns, which enter the hubs at the following angles.

He's got an analysis of this shape in terms of constituent hexahedra of rational volume, giving him an answer in K-mods.

The K-mod, for those interested, is 1.5 times the volume of the T-mod, and has phi/sqrt(2) radius.

Relative to the rhombic dodecahedron of volume 6 and rhombic triacontahedron of volume 7.5 (12o Ks), Dave has his 132-sider weighing in at 9 3/16.

Patrick has me thinking buzz bots again. They don't have to be sexy. Run in the cloud, command line switches. Talk through a switchboard (maybe PostgreSQL). Web crawling is a languid activity. It's the Wild West out there, and a lot of snakes (Python processes) die. Fortunately, these new languages tend to fail gracefully, with the proper raising of exceptions.

Glenn has me entranced with the macroscopic powers of Flextegrity. Instead of animated cartoons, we have the real deal, Made in China. Here's my look at a prototype Great Wall:

flextegrity.com

Wanderers 2010.1.13

Ron Sato joined us this morning to whip through a rather cerebral yet informative talk about the FDA drug approval process, giving numerous historical examples of how scandals, abuses, mistakes, led to the passage of more stringent laws, bringing us to where we are today.

Ron did post-doctoral work at Rochester & Brown before joining American/DuPont-Merck. He participated in programs which generated Losartan, the first ARB (angiotensinogen receptor blocker) to reach the market, and Esmolol (a niche beta blocker).

The ensuing conversation focused on the bioethics around clinical trials, and ways desperate individuals sometimes attempt to work around the FDA, such as by getting their medicines less expensively from Canada.

The AIDS/HIV epidemic generated enough political pressure to expedite (fast track) the approval of some drugs. Many past scandals have involved drugs getting to the public without sufficient testing. Ron had several examples, including the 1937 Sulfanilamide Disaster, well documented by Carol Ballentine at the FDA website.

The ongoing illegality of marijuana and the consequent drug war in Mexico was also a topic of conversation. We did not talk about cocaine or the opiates, and the drug wars around those, in Columbia and Afghanistan respectively.

Several of those present bemoaned what they perceived as a loss of productive public debate in this country, given how shrill polemics and punditry have seemingly taken over on television. Where is our ability to collectively process information? How will our civilization advance? Through Youtube?

My position was that affordable health care, education etc., all need to go on the back burner so long as the priority is military spending. We just can't have it both ways. We're facing some either/or choices. This was not a new or original idea, just plain common sense. As a planet, our living standards are on hold, or are slated to go down, to the extent human beings focus on destroying their own infrastructure. That's really just a truism, disguised as an empirical fact.

Patrick and I had a similar conversation recently, wherein I regurgitated some of my National Geographic reading. If we ate less meat, had a healthier diet, and focused more on global electrification as an ongoing top priority, we might yet improve living standards. Kilowatts per capita consumption is inversely proportional to population growth, is thinking here. We're looking for those "gentle checks" Malthus was hoping we'd find.

However, I'm getting somewhat off topic here. More to the point were the zebra fish, which Ron knew quite a bit about. They're used by ONAMI companies, as I recalled. You want genetically simple creatures for early clinical trials. Testing on blow fish was another option, but zebra fish, being transparent, proved to have more potential.

Ron will be giving a similar talk at Reed College in a few days. We were fortunate to learn from his experience.

Activism in Portland

We caught up with the protest march having swung by Muddy's just to check on the haps, and finding the pancake breakfast chugging along. Lots of great business opportunities materialized this weekend, with Flipside chief among them.

Running late, we strode onward towards downtown, over the Morrison Bridge.

I recommended to Lindsey she might want to contact the Legion of Tech, as Ignite-like events (with longer musical numbers interspersed) could be an ongoing worth-something-to-be-there Flipside experience. Minimum $5 maybe?

The idea would be to keep funneling events into that queue (by whatever "air traffic control" process), to keep the wheels turning, the revenue streaming. Muddy's is likely having this same idea. The puzzle is not unlike the one faced by Multnomah Community Access, the cable TV station. One hopes to keep filling the pipeline with fresh programming.

Riot Cop just phoned about tomorrow... (now later today...).

Sometimes an event might need to be antiseptic, cordoned off, like when museum quality art makes its debut. We've got advertising dollars in this picture, sponsors for said events, if and when the time seems appropriate.

* * *

The protest march was tightly organized, staging around Pioneer Place and then stopping in front of cell phone company store fronts, starting with Verizon, then T-Mobile, then Sprint, then Cricket. The message at each was the same: divest of your Motorola brand cell phones -- also a message to consumers who happened to be watching.

I remarked to fellow marchers on the rarefied, somewhat esoteric nature of this message, "almost Kabbalistic" I said. "Now that's maybe going too far" tsk-tsked one of our clique.

The sidewalk protestors then promptly converged to a PSU lecture hall for some lightning talks, other conferencing. I'd hung back at the Heathman awaiting my Jordanian friend. We decided to move her car to the faculty garage, get a day pass.

Then our little party had to eject early owing to time constraints: Lindsey had a meeting with Multnomah Friend Elizabeth Fischer at Laughing Horse while I needed to catch up with Ambassadora Tag re matters Pythonic (yes, I need a haircut, am too much the long hair these days, some weird professor).

Although I took part in the procession, I was not shy about whipping out my cell phone and pointing out the Verizon logo. Does its being a Samsung get me off the hook? Lindsey mentioned a website called Credo that advises on cell brands based on various ethical criteria.

The protest march, ostensibly having something to do with nation states and the deathly serious plight we're in, reminded me of like actions at Princeton back in the 1970s, wherein shareholders got scrutiny for having invested in inequity.

The message was one of more socially responsible investors, looking after the Princeton brand, wanting to keep it untarnished and divested of dead albatross companies. We call that school spirit. Students planning to wear the Princeton name on their sleeves, or otherwise identify with their alma mater, wanted to be on the right side of history in the eyes of posterity. Who could blame them? This was in relation to South Africa's impending transformation.

At our 25th reunion, our class gave itself some pats on the back for Princeton's historic performance. Student pressure to divest had made a difference. Sally Frank also got special mention during the ceremonies, for her diversity work: just because Princeton had started admitting women, doesn't mean there wasn't still work to be done, and Sally had taken it on.

These were my "2D friends" I might as well brag about it.

My own deeper ties to South Africa would develop later, with my family's move to that area.

On a related front, the imprisonment of a hip hop artist Marc Hall for singing out against stop loss has hit a nerve with some musicians. Speaking out against slavery is what a lot of music has been about and that's not likely to change all of a sudden. Hip hop and folk music have a lot of historical continuity.

Commercialized music may not have a message (other than "numb me out"), but artists have been known to sing for free in favor of a cause. That's how it worked at Liberty Hall. At those kinds of occasions, you'll get more substantive content. Like at those fundraisers at the Laughing Horse venue: musicians spoke their minds, both in lyrics and between songs. All the funds went to buy sleeping bags for the homeless.

Tag and I had some Roots Red and split a slice at American Dream Pizza, then she had to flit back downtown. She keeps track of who practices what religion, noting when a student is Jewish, a cousin is Christian, another is Muslim and so on. She's respectful of world religions, reserving her sharpest criticism for her own orthodoxy (the mark of a true scholar: be most critical of what you know the most about).

I'm not so good at keeping track of what religion everyone claims to profess, get their signs mixed up too. I like to get into dialog with someone and make my own determinations. Maybe she claims to be this or that but I'm seeing something else? I discover some new Quakers in this way. Plus I like psychological and philosophical taxonomies, with their more secular (religion-neutral) flavor.

Portlanders push themselves to be socially conscious, even though that's not always easy. We have a lot of good book stores and Internet cafes. Case in point: this Goldstone Report I'd not heard about, though condemned by a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives (HR 867), was defended by both Kucinich and Blumenauer, with Wu and DeFazio voting present. That's what a lot of our zip codes are like around here: at least two standard deviations from the center of the bell curve.

When it comes to orthodoxies, I think it's pretty obvious the entire planet Earth may be viewed as our promised land, in the sense that here is what God has provided to humanity for a home. There's this sense of a sacred covenant and a need to protect her and save her, to pass her on to coming generations. Or is this a heresy instead of an orthodoxy? Either way, I think we're existentially called to greater global awareness, and both religion and science have a role to play in answering this call.

Back to the Future

I did some lesson planning for my futuristic math class today, filing some fragments here and there, as I'm not trying to hoard. This is free and open source culture after all, much the same as the ambient academe, in terms of not copy-protecting what needs to be shared.

The stack goes in layers, from chip to cloud, with some floors public, others private -- not that hard to visualize. Where it's stuff we all share, like the operating system, you like to check into it, see that it's not doing anything against your best interests. That's why we have SELinux and such distros, or just Linux in general (anyone may double check the source code -- not that that's easy, but some people can, find they learn from doing it).

Of special interest is the mini-language that are Python's format specifiers, newly back ported to 2.6, and the way to get your string outputs the way you like 'em. The cool thing here is your specifiers know how to dig into the guts of the objects sent, using dot notation, dictionary syntax or whatever, just unquoted.

In using Python as a calculator, we're not forbidding ourselves short class definitions, such as something to instantiate a dome, for use on Mars (Earth... Moon) in various ecosystems. One example showed inputting frequency and edge length, say from any pentagon center to a neighboring hub. By the provided algorithm (imported in one line), that's sufficient information provided you're also given the frequency. The result is deterministic at that point. And what you get back are various attributes, such as volume (both in tetra-units and cubes), temperature, cabin pressure, stuff like that. The student isn't expected to write some long script. These aren't necessarily typists we're talking about.

I think I told the story pretty well, of how we made the leap from 2.x to 3.x. I'm also consistent in my view that mono-lingual is worse than bilingual. In the age of unicode, we encourage ogling the full character set. However, here I'm talking about multiple computer languages, and I circle J, inheriting from APL, as a good example of something completely different. Compare it with Python and you'll have a better appreciation for how various are these languages. Don't stop there if you're interested.

Hey, wanted to listen to Good Bye Party music after work but upon stowing the gear I realized I was famished and needed to cook something (rice, potato, broccoli etc.). My daughter is off with a peer group of elders, women from her mother's circle.

From the Family Album

From 1995 Fuller Centennial, organized by GENI

Biz Notes

by D. Koski (Flickr)

by D. Koski (Flickr)

Yes, says Sir Koski, Zometool'll give us an octet-truss if we use the twisted greens. I've been checking out the patent on those zome hubs (4701131, Paul Hildebrandt), cool. The process for their manufacture is likewise a miracle. Respect the factory, not just the inventor: a lesson I learned from Stu Quimby & Co.

From my on-line resume:

Design Science Toys, Tivoli, New York (2005): Consulted on-site and remotely with the owner of an educational toy factory regarding the design and packaging of Strange Attractors, a geometric construction kit. Exchanged spreadsheets with the lead designer regarding the dimensions and color coding of the plastic rods with detachable magnetic cone inserts. Tested successive factory prototypes for quality and usability. Developed a custom Python library of spatial geometry programs for outputting Scene Description Language to POV-Ray, a free and open source ray tracer. Collaborated with the instruction booklet author and lead marketer to supply high definition color renderings of the product in various stages of assembly, for use in the instruction booklet and on the commercial packaging.

by K. Urner (Flickr)

The twisted green addresses the Zome hubs pentagon facets, but not straight on, at a slant. This gives five possible positions per strut and reconciles the exploded pentagonal dodecahedron (the 12 facets of said hub) with more FCC-like capabilities, taking advantage of the "five cubes" phenomenon.

I'm hoping Laughing Horse Books has or will get this new movie The Garden, about an oasis community in LA, deliberately undermined by the city to keep a success story from continuing. Of course the saga is ongoing, as the news spreads.

LW is trully concerned about Muddy's, isn't clear to what extent they might have a real business plan. She strode off to their recently called meeting, a reconnaissance mission.

I'm always thinking tourism could save the day, like people would venture through Portland precisely to seek out and savor subcultures like SE Belmont's. But that's probably out of date thinking.

People come to Portland on business, for meetings, not for uncompensated fun in the sun. That turns some coffee shops into media centers, more like CubeSpace, or into co-working zones.

Live musical performances, including karaoke, have an integral role in keeping wheels turning, especially when working cross-culturally, as often happens given our Pacific Rim situation. We saw James Jameson doing karaoke awhile back, and I acknowledge he's good at it, as good as he'd claimed.

So, if you're already in Portland on business, are from out of town, check out Muddy Water's on SE Belmont. Check out Red Cap, Three Friends.... No reason to be afraid of SE Portland, including the Hawthorne District (Bagdad Theater etc.)

Also check out (and consider giving a donation to) St. Francis Dining Hall. Quakers volunteer there sometimes, including myself and my daughter. Check out Laughing Horse Books. Then visit Dignity Village on your way back to the airport? It's close to Ikea.

Pacific Rim Economics

I followed up on my meeting with Buzz by meeting with the company president he'd been telling me about. I learned a lot about polyethalene (PE) as applied to billboards.

Even as a shelter skin, PE sheets might be colorized. I was thinking of "Big Map" applications such as were used in World Games, but optionally foldable into giant globes, geoscopes. Wouldn't schools like to have these?

Whereas Jay Baldwin used Tefzel (DuPont) to make a skin of transparent argon-gas-filled pillows, PE fabrics are more readily translucent. I don't know if PE pillows would even work.

This company has experience selling through Walmart.com, has maybe 3000 employees in China alone, a headquarters in Dallas.

Although PE has a reputation for being slow to biodegrade, more recent products make it more eco-friendly. It's better than PVC at any rate, also used in dome shelter solutions.

I reminded Buzz that most domical domiciles to date had missed including the garden. The actual dwelling, where the furniture is placed, might be more like a movie set, given the containing free span shell already provides a controlled environment, shelter from the elements.

Autonomous living unit, 1949
Buckminster Fuller
© Buckminster Fuller Institute

Internally, the division of living space into floors and rooms has nothing to do with holding up a roof.

These were not immediate concerns of our metal rods and PE company however, which was casting about for agricultural applications, such as equipment warehouses, gazebos, auxiliary structures.

I went back to my old list of dome manufacturers on the Way Back Machine, looking for still-going concerns.

Various solutions have been tried at this scale.

More Geopolitics

I left the venue, Liberty Hall, to join Michael and Matt for birthday celebrations. Michael has turned 52.

Our conversation turned to Iran. I brought up Freeman Dyson's suggestion that now would be a good time to focus on new agreements with the Russians, about reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles. North Korea and Iran are small potatoes when it comes to reducing the nuclear threat. Lets build on the progress of earlier presidents.

That's not what's in the news today though (maybe tomorrow?).

Instead we're getting all these anonymous national advisers citing unnamed defectors and classified reports to the effect that the NIE report is no longer to be believed. Per today's New York Times:

Iran’s insistence that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only is roundly rejected by Western officials and, in internal reports, by international nuclear inspectors. Yet Washington’s assessments of how much progress Iran has made toward a weapon have varied greatly over the past two years, partly a reflection of how little is known about the inner workings of the country’s nuclear programs.

Mr. Obama’s top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, published a year before President George W. Bush left office, which said that Iranian scientists ended all work on designing a nuclear warhead in late 2003.

Public memory may be short, but weren't "disbelieving top advisers" a primary source of misinformation leading to the invasion of Iraq?

The president ended up on TV making a fool of himself, searching high and low for those non-existent WMDs. Never before in world history has a USA president been forced to humiliate himself in this way.

Do we want a repeat of that bitter defeat, so soon? Is the plan to force the new president's hand? We're told he's giving sanctions one more chance, but that they've never worked in the past. So here's that stench of inevitability again, concocted behind the scenes, a deliberately self-fulfilling prophecy, a phony fait accompli.

Colin Powell at least had the guts to put his name and reputation on the line, and to express regrets later. Let's at least cut the crap and stop with the slimy "anonymous" BS, whaddya say? Let's not let the warmongers hide in the woodwork again, building consensus through leaks. Watch those pundits carefully now, and you'll see their sleights of hand.

The NYT has soiled itself before, become the shallow tool of jingoists. Journalism with backbone doesn't spark wars through innuendo, doesn't kowtow.

If that NIE has been superseded, then lets be super clear by whom, when and why. Because of Qum? The White House web site will make this crystal clear, and no fair simply cutting and pasting from British government sources.

Global engineers have built more nuclear power plants in need of fissile materials, as they've done many times around the world. Here's a significant civilian investment and we could definitely benefit from the power.

Iran's grid connects to Iraq's in at least nine places according to the Army Corps of Engineers, and Iraq desperately needs that power in order to rebuild. So if there's any way to safely provide the missing ingredient (a non-weapons-grade fuel), then that would be the rational / worthy goal in this case.

So has the USA already offered to supply said missing ingredient, should the Iranian centrifuges prove not up to the job? That would seem the humane gesture, as Iraq has been unnecessarily devastated by disbelieving officials, needs to repair itself pronto as the troops pack their gear, mission accomplished, purpose served.

If the USA is at all serious about helping Iraq, then it should at the very least not obstruct Russian plans to provide processing capability, long on the table. Russia is geographically closer to these plants and has the wherewithal, already performs the same service for plants in India. Getting those civilian power plants up and running is a top priority.

The UK's Jack Straw is already on record saying Iran has a right, in principle, to develop civilian nuclear power. To argue otherwise is to come off like some uber-coward hypocrite.

Also, speaking of hypocrits, why is the UN so silent on the continued occupation of Iraq by a foreign power? Its own UNSCOM was overridden, the IAEA disbelieved. If Iran is defying the will of the UN, by continuing to enrich uranium, then isn't the USA doing the same, by continuing to occupy a sovereign nation?

The UN can't afford to be a perceived as a hapless puppet if it wants any credibility in this world. A little more even handedness would go a long ways at this juncture.

I learned from Bill Lightfoot about my uncle John Talmadge. He's choosing to forgo further treatment. Our family is pulling together in support.

Entering Y2K + 10

:: mom in whittier ::

Part of my work today was digging through old invoices remembering what I did for Urban League, Vision Northwest, Clackamas and Multnomah counties, Ecotrust, Northwest Regional China Council... all those varied and interesting nonprofit agencies.

I'm fortunate to have a Visual FoxPro database with that historical material.

I got a kick outta being "Foxpro guy" all those years, coding up a storm, writing applications. Working with heart people was pretty exciting.

My daughter has been learning her local geography better. When I was her age, Rome was my challenge, and I thank that city for its kindness to children in those days, including to visiting foreigners like me.

Sometimes (rarely) I mentally ride pieces of bus routes 26 and 55, two of those near our family abode, close to Piazza Ungheria on Viale Parioli.

So yes, it's a day of looking back, over more than just the one year.

Looking forward, I found myself defending what should need no defending: the relevance of hexadecimal numbers in our digital age.

I'd like to think we were getting more done, making some headway, but really how could that be? Here we are in 2010 (in most time zones) and math teachers are still debating whether base-16 is relevant? What about ASCII and Unicode? Anything?

Koski, Sam and I were surfing through chemistry by email, though on different wavelengths.

I was also thinking about Ron Resch, who slipped away from us this year. His daughter's name was Tara too. I was fortunate to get to know him and collaborate a little, towards the end of his life.

My late wife's step dad Arthur Dix, a beloved father to her, also died just a few days ago. I've been thinking of him and Gail.

Congratulations to Chris and Larry on their new grandchild.

Thanks to the Linus Pauling connection, Sam and I are immersed in discussions of icotwinning and Mackey shells, per this web site (I've since returned those borrowed tomes).

A material commonly able to assume the cuboctahedral fcc in a restful state (like a yoga position) will sometimes go into a rotationally five-fold symmetric icosahedral shape under stress, like if it's really tiny and surface tension becomes more a controlling factor (as happens at the nano scale).

I get into some related science in my 1991 Synergetics: the Invention Behind the Inventions:

Chemists have been able to generate icosahedral clusters of atoms by forcing xenon gas through a nozzle at high pressure. The xenon clusters, which spontaneously form as the gas cools, consist of concentric icosahedral shells - named Mackay shells after crystallographer Alan Mackay. The total number of atoms in such clusters is expressed using the familiar synergetics formula:

N = 1 +SIGMA(10F²+ 2)

Or, alternatively, one may derive:[2]

N = (10/3)F³+ 5F²+(11/3)F + 1

This icosahedral cluster growth pattern cannot be maintained indefinitely out to any frequency however. At some point, it jitterbugs to release pent-up stress and relaxes into alignment with the isomatrix to become a stable crystal. As Dr. Bjornholm of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen puts it: "The point is that hard spheres cannot really be packed into the icosahedron... The spheres have to be soft... As a result a strain builds up in the cluster and at some stage it becomes favourable to release the strain through a rearrangement of the atoms leading to the familiar cuboctahedral structure of the macroscopic crystal."[3] The jitterbug transformation has been discovered in nature.

Woo hoo, I'm the life of the party, cutting and pasting dry chemistry on a day of kissing and celebration. Hey, it takes all time zones.

Happy New Year everyone.

:: dad and sister, 1977, China ::

Math Teaching in Portland

:: a mini-course for teens ::

Sam and I served as co-teachers for our own kids last night, walking our talk as geometry teachers. Where does Flextegrity fit in, what's its context?

We pulled up the website on an XO (One Laptop per Child) to set the theme: design science, livingry (the opposite of killingry), making the world a better place.

One of the teens brought his high school geometry book to class. Was R. Buckminster Fuller anywhere mentioned? He checked the index. Yes, Fuller is given sidebar treatment on a page with a tetrahedron in one of the exercises (coincidence?).

We learn that Fuller is the "poet and philosopher" behind the geodesic dome, and yet there's zero information about his synergetic geometry, what he'd consider most relevant to teenage geometry students.

I covered some basics of space-filling, "tessellations in 3D", focusing on the rhombic dodecahedron of volume 6 (relative to our unit tetrahedron). Yes, the cube (volume 3 in our hierarchy), is likewise a space-filler. Regular tetrahedra (volume 1) fill space in complement with octahedra (volume 4) to form the octet-truss (a space frame or lattice). Our minimal tetrahedral space-filler, the Mite (volume 1/8) may be used to assemble all of the above (except the unit tetrahedron is just A modules, volume 1/24).

These whole and simple fractional volumes help kids tune in and stay connected, help them track. Mnemonics matter, provide a mental glue for cohering concepts. The concentric hierarchy is a pedagogical breakthrough, a life line, yet has almost no footprint in today's mass produced paper textbooks (why?). This explains our compulsion to supplement. We're an ethnic minority, a subculture, hoping to keep our flame alive and pass the torch to future generations.

The aforementioned octet-truss, variously named in the literature (CCP, FCC or IVM per Fuller) is a focus in many sciences. Flextegrity uses it as a backdrop, extending a purely geometric concept with real world materials (the difference between pre-frequency and frequency in Fuller's philosophy). There's a background / foreground relationship. Alexander Graham Bell was another original pioneer in this domain.

Sam covered tension and compression as co-occurring in any structure. He wanted to communicate the load-bearing responsibilities of real materials at different scales. He had assembled a tensegrity for this purpose, given how it isolates tensile and compressive elements. Kenneth Snelson of Oregon, Black Mountain College... he wove the historical tapestry, adding threads from his own life where appropriate (he'd studied under Joe Clinton while a poor student in New Jersey -- I'd forgotten that, even though by coincidence I had one of Joe's CDs in my bag).

Our kids were not expected to sit passively through all this. They ran the camera, interjected observations. Sam and I plied them with questions, solicited feedback. Our time was limited though, so no hands-on modeling, computer programming, video editing -- maybe some other time. This wasn't part of some grand scheme or plan, was more a spontaneous get-together. It's not like we have a private school on the side.

How might we encourage more teachers to join us in adding a more user-friendly spatial geometry to their toolkit? Here's a golden opportunity to augment and surpass stagnant standards, to innovate and pioneer. Oregon aspires to grow its high tech economy. Effective pedagogy is critical to realizing this dream. How might we signal a green light then? What wheels need to turn?

My other props included a Fuller Projection, CubeIt and Ball of Whacks. The latter two are useful for discussing further modular dissections of space-filling polyhedra. The concepts aren't difficult with the right mix of graphical and lexical. Going back and forth, between "left and right brain" is another aspect of load-balancing. Mathematics is imaginative.

Speaking of imaginative, the teens had all seen Avatar, more than once in some cases. We agreed that our tetrahedral geometry might be considered Na'Vi, the ethnicity under siege in that movie. That would go with our "geometry of nature" theme. Or just call us Earthlings, hoping to save our ship.

My thanks to crew member LaJean for a healthy vegan meal and insights regarding the power of hidden persuaders. She has a doctorate in nutrition and health, is also an authority on textiles and fabric, is able to sew together anything from a tent to a tuxedo. As I perused 4D Timelock after class (Fuller's early barrage of shelter-related writings), Sam and LaJean discussed Fuller's possible over-reliance on rationality, on reason, as a chief motivator.

Marshall McLuhan, Vance Packard... TV provides a window into the collective unconscious, sews the seeds of self-fulfilling prophecies. You'll find lots of readable tea leaves on TV, with even more on the Internet. Stay tuned.

Eternal Recurrence

design science tableau
(click for Photostream view)

I'm back at Duke's hanging out with assorted characters. What impresses me most is it's 52 degrees Fahrenheit or thereabouts, feels colder, even though I'm wearing layers.

Lindsey, with fewer layers and a cold, is toughing her way through a partial set.

I'm the old guy in this picture, reading works by younger men: an articulate 15 year old on the Math Forum (my daughters age); a poorly formatted yet thoughtful essay by Aaron Tabor, on the similarities between Nietzsche and Blake.

I brought some props, took some pictures, polished recent blog posts, adding links.

Chris and I talk about high desert Oregon, where he's traveled some, including by hopping a freight. Shades of Wendy and Lucy. He likes Applegate, Oregon.

Back at the ranch or whatever, cell call from Koski. He's steeped in molecular biology these days, wanted to yak about the Williams versus Fuller meanings for A and B particles. The Williams B contains an A, if you wanna look at it that way. The B, A and T of equal volume (1/24) is pretty clean. That being said, the Williams way makes plenty of sense (Koski's point), has its grounding in history.

I went on to tell about Gregor's contribution, in connection with my so far only one sample lesson plan for Martian Math (marketing's idea). Students use Python or other language (Logo?) to have a turtle draw the plane nets. Gregor's for the T was elegant and to the point.

MPG wrote awhile back asking about using this stuff in Detroit. I pointed to that sentence about metal stamping. Cars are like metal origami. We're using plane nets for A, B and T modules as stand ins, excuses to focus on, this kind of machine work:

Materials: No matter what your local construction material, perhaps paper, perhaps imaginary and/or computer generated, consider metal stamping and folding a possible topic. How are car bodies made? Watch some YouTubes or listen to machinists describe their metal work.

Does your school have its own metal working shop or perhaps sources of clay? Paper is not the only option. You may wish to recycle already manufactured parts in some lessons, not construct from raw materials.

Although it's late, I'm on kitchen duty where the beans are concerned. I already had a plan for some talking head tapes (sorrows of empire type stuff). However, POV-Ray is calling. I need to render what Koski sent me, get into the VRMLs. vZome (virtual Zome) outputs in both formats and I've been touting it as a school-friendly. Some of the outputs are still on the pathological side though.

Some kindly Mormons came by today, lent me their book with a specific passage to read. I okayed the mission, will follow up next week.

A Christmas Homily

This could well be my imagination, however my impression is the seasonal "peace on earth, good will to all mankind" rhetoric has been subdued and scaled back this year.

Most people aren't thinking like Freeman Dyson, that 2010 would be a great year to cut way back on those nukes, as another step towards their eventual elimination.

Speaking of rhetoric, as a practicing geek I've sampled a kind of "world domination" talk in these blogs and elsewhere (e.g. at Grunch dot Net -- which I'm in the process of moving today).

I'm seeing where this self spoofing nod to some inner drive or motivation might be misconstrued as an endorsement of unsustainable lifestyles based on militarism and/or brute force, especially to the casual reader.

Let me just say again for the record that "world domination" and "self mastery" are the two sides of this coin, and true "jihad" (as a spiritual discipline) means working together for a world less cruel, nurturing an internal psychology well suited to this purpose.

Neither nationalism nor racism are in the driver's seat here.

Peaceful co-existence is the name of the game, which to my way of thinking involves many flourishing civilizations, with people free to explore their shared planet, heritage, global university, promised land.

Protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are some of the themes here.

If you find a subculture that reflects your values and heart's desires, see about joining and becoming an insider. A "subculture" might be a religious group, a company, a cult, a tribe, an art colony... an extended family. Of course we've already joined in the world game playing right from the get go, by virtue of being born.

Diversity, not uniformity or mono-culture, is what to nurture and respect even as we work within one set of non-humanly contrived universal principles or "laws" (such as we investigate in science).

I apologize to my readers if I've not been clear enough before, about where I stand. My interconnected world-readable writings, video clips etc. are what I call my curriculum. I'm some kind of teacher engaged in work/study, and people will want to know what kind, especially if they think I might be influential in some way. What flames am I fanning? Whose politics do I espouse? Even if nobody is asking these questions, it's up to me to have some answers.

I'm also acutely aware that we feel trapped within institutions not of our own design or choosing. We fill prisons to overflowing, struggle in poverty, suffer under oppressors. Hopelessness and despair stalk the planet.

Religion and science are not eternally opposed. Intelligence and ingenuity are chief assets of our species. We have the ability to design new institutions, invent new roles for ourselves, stage different dramas. Our technologies work together in ways not anticipated by these components in isolation. "Compassionate engineering" is not an oxymoron.

Feeling called by our deeper nature or higher selves is what many identify as a religious sense of God's will. Others think in terms of evolutionary pressure or the fury of being. We needn't all use the same language. It's a sign of strength that we don't.

Real and Rational Numbers

:: vZome: octa + 1/4 tets by D. Koski ::

Today's triangle, one of them, was the Wittgenstein list and Math Forum. True, the reforms aren't that radical in the sense of sudden. This was a slow phase-in and got going long before I started tracking. Like when Arthur Loeb was writing Remarks on Some Elementary Volume Relationships... in 1965, I was still in Portland, just starting on New Math in 1st or 2nd grade.

We've got plenty of stuff on-line by now. Google Books has a lot of the Peter Pearce book, which I'm borrowing from Flextegrity Inc. What a gold mine.

The pace has been glacial, which is maybe reassuring. Geological time is cosmic time, so maybe it's more likely to stick?

My suggestion to Bill Marsh, who was following cues from Dr. Wu, was to handle real irrationals and rationals as a part of the same Uru-like vista and (this part is new) to use our wholesome whole number volumes tables to motivate the rational part, the discussion of fractions.

:: vZome: 1/24th of 1 ::

Historically, we've not had much option to toss around non-rectilinear blocks with volumes like 1/8, 1/24, 1, 4, 6. Our "wrong angle" family has been more out of sync, out of sight out of mind, with relatively intimidating irrational volumes. I'm among the first generation of math teacher able to avail of this new pedagogical tool, complete with world-readable literature, toys, kits, computer animations, even a world map.

The real numbers discussion, including incommensurability, would be with reference to the edges or vectors, with lots of surds, phi, sqrt(2). Associating number and length is primal, many authors agree.

Discovering the diagonal of a square is not a ratio of two integers was a big Greek achievement. In our own age: the discovery of chaos, even in the Newtonian realm, might be of parallel magnitude. So using a cube's edges to anchor this history of the irrationals is already the way it's done. We're not rocking any boats by staying with sqrt(2) and phi distances. Jay Kappraff's Connections: The Geometric Bridge Between Art and Science , as does Glenn Stockton's stuff.

The suggestion from Dr. Wu, with which Bill Marsh agreed, was to get the number line going earlier, even before fractions, as "measuring numbers". There's an interval based approach, pinning a number down by zig-zagging in, using binary biting.

The other scene graph was about local institutions. I tossed my hat in the ring (again) as this curriculum writer with a website named Oregon Curriculum Network. Lots of Python stuff, also some J. Free and open source software, with a math teacher's bias (I used to be one, St. Dominic Academy in NJ). There's also some precedent for the Martian Math stuff.

I also mentioned ISEPP in my Math Forum column, as a source of opportunities. Example: my academic discount on that first international conference on buckminsterfullerene, thanks to some official letterhead. That wasn't such an easy trip, driving to Santa Barbara and back, however it was a great adventure. I still remember that German chemist I hung out with.

Another opportunity: the recent field trip to ONAMI, thinking back to the field trip and the Zome kit I saw there, for making a Buckyball -- like going full circle. Pearce had his own most excellent connector kit, which I seem to recall using or at least seeing a few times.

This got me talking about Scott Vorthmann's vZome and Dave Koski's latest art. The quarter tets on the octa faces, giving the rhombic dodecahedron, is one of my favorites (up top).

Dave is quite attuned to the fact that a left A-module might get different edge colors in vZome when turned inside out. From a Synergetics perspective, this is less than ideal, given the left A and the right A both have the same edge lengths. Something to do with the hubs? The software allows

Brian posted an impassioned contribution to our Wanderers archive. He's an ecologist with a conscience, sometimes disappointed by the politics buffeting our commons. I've been in there with my math teacher hat, seemingly preoccupied with remote esoterica. Polyhedra? WTF.

In the physical therapy waiting room, I read most of that New Yorker article about Georgia, the one in the former Soviet Union. Pretty amazing stories. I also met Peter Ford that day, me thinking like a Pacific Rimmer, yakking about politics.

PPRC just called, 1 AM. Punishment Park, by Peter Watkins, is cued up, an ultra-dark product of the tumultuous Vietnam years. I might review it later. Watched the director's intro. Few venues show this film.

Philosophy of Mathematics

I've done some followup on the Wittgenstein list I frequent, hoping to get some wheels turning. Our current crew doesn't seem predisposed to discuss philosophy of mathematics all that much. No wait, JPDeMouy is keeping it going. That's wonderful!

I introduced the above figure as akin to something we might find in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. It relates to how Fuller's philosophy uses triangles and tetrahedra to model area and volume.

Here's an excerpt of something I wrote for Lionel, another long treatise on the meaning of dimension in Fuller's writings, a topic in which I've specialized:

In Fuller's namespace, we go with 4D for the tetrahedron because of its pronounced fourness. When you draw the XYZ three, as the corner of a room, you think of another facet between you and the apex (the room corner) making four walls. That could be a symbol of the wall behind you, if your viewpoint is inside. Either way, the 3-ness of XYZ is considered incomplete, an inadequate expression of two complementary sets of three, the two zig zigs of a tetrahedron. Which is where he gets his six.

I think we maybe get worried and anxious with these alternative uses because we feel this might call into question some authority to use all our favorite math tools, such as XYZ coordinates, trigonometry, who knows what else. I think this is an unfounded stress reflex, as there is no challenge at that level. Useful tools are useful tools. You wouldn't have had free Linux without free C.

That worry may be projected such that we see someone like Kirby trying to single-handedly replace centuries of math and physics in one fell swoop (fat chance of that happening). I'm not trying to do that. I'm looking for a modest place in the sun for precious heritage we need to protect and nurture. Do US Marines know how to build domes any more? Does anyone? Have we lost the ability to build domes? Know of any big new ones, of the geodesic variety?

Call me conservative, but I'd like to keep these advances alive, don't take for granted that we will, given all the backsliding.

Given Synergetics is difficult and not typically assigned as reading-for-credit in any department, my little tempest in a teapot is ipso facto esoteric, something I often reflect on. Widening this circle would help a lot, ergo my going among academic philosophers, seeking converts to the cause (more world game players).

Tara opted out of the annual Solstice Party, hosted by good Bridge City Friends. We've been off the radar a lot; no other kids going.

What amazed me about the weather reports last night (CBS News) is the inflexibility of our car culture. The storms might be terrible, the risks rather high, yet the option of rescheduling, rewriting the script on the fly, seems even more dangerous somehow. Those dreams must come true. The airlines are smarter, with safety a chief concern. They simply cancel. Yes holiday plans are changed, that's what it means to have weather, an environment.

The word "hell bent" comes to mind, and I'm not thinking this with an aloof or superior attitude, as I'm also known to be stubborn to the point of foolhardy sometimes. Plus I realize that weather is sometimes surprising. One would have gladly stayed home, armed with advance notice, but even our best weather models have a strictly limited time horizon.

Those stories were east coast, like from I-77 in Virginia. People needed their National Guard.

Our weather in the Pacific Northwest is relatively balmy, although it's good those sleeping bags for the homeless were military grade and rated to go below freezing.

We're transporting appliances relating to food preparation to a start up community kitchen this evening. I have a small refrigerator no one is using, other household items. Uses of the company car tend to be utilitarian these days, counting doctor and physical therapy trips. I am fortunate to have stores within walking distance. Many people have lifestyles dependent on owning a car. I'm one of those people, am a part of the car culture.

Recruiting Philosophers

I upgraded my Ubuntu at Lyric, staying with Jackalope but getting all the latest patches. That knocked out my wifi again, eliminating the proprietary device driver. Getting that back required jacking in with a cable.

I'm making appeals to Wittgensteinians for some help with the Martian Math curriculum. People are giving me a hard time for showing off some innovative mathematics that's basic enough to impact classroom teaching. Readers of this blog know what I'm talking about.

There's no hostile takeover planned. What I sometimes call Gnu Math is not about attacking our core beliefs. On the contrary, as William Bennett once explained, it's already like an enemy has invaded, dumbed us all down. Casino Math and related modules aim to preserve our core heritage.

But it's the Martian Math that they're more worried about. Supermarket Math looks very Chamber of Commerce. Fine, we add some SQL, long overdue, fine we talk about web frameworks some, makes sense.

Martian Math takes us into nanotechnology, biotechnology, crystallography, has that high tech look and feel. It's more hexagonal and 60-degree based than rectilinear.

The question on many a teacher's mind is whether it's safe to introduce Martian Math to Earthlings. Will the effects be disruptive, deleterious? Those who've exposed themselves to this material seem to turn out OK. Indeed, many have developed impressive portfolios, gone on to make names for themselves.

So the question in my mind, in contrast, is whether it's safe to leave Earthlings as much in the dark as we do. The question is rhetorical, as I share Bucky's existential commitment to keeping options open where utopia vs. oblivion is concerned.

A strong philosophy department, able to steer teachers clear of their confusions, might lead to peaceful co-existence and more technology jobs for Oregonians.

That's where the Wittgensteinians come in, some of the stronger philosophers out there. They could teach us about language games, about the foundations of mathematics, about giving different "forms of life" their place in the sun.

More World Game

Long time readers know that I regard "Casino" to mean "large meeting hall" like a movie theater in Avalon (Catalina). No gambling may occur, yet there's always a risk in going out, sitting next to someone, so life is a gamble. This is not such a quirky spin, is actually closer to the dictionary meaning.

I bring this up because I imagine transitioning an experimental casino from one form of game playing to another, while keeping quite a bit of the same infrastructure. The arcade or video game palace is another influence (Avalon on Belmont).

Imagine playing a game of skill and being able to donate your winnings to invisible children somewhere in need of your help. There'd be some real circuitry here, thanks to data banks like Facebook and Paypal. You might pick your recipient, your game, and then play. Do you want your track record made public? You have that option.

What kind of games you ask? They might make you smarter. They might be recruiting commercials of some flavor, or even counter-recruiting commercials. People have choices about how they spend their time, whether to play any games at all. Video arcades seem oppressive to some. Not all games require video.

Because this model offers players a way to track their donations, there's an atmosphere of shopping for worthy outfits, getting more bang for the buck. Some dynamite nonprofit that really gets the job done (e.g. ONAMI) will bathe donors in reflected glory. Who knows how to pick winners? That's part of the game. Many gems in this ocean.

Pep Talk to a Math Teacher

A math teacher was concerned that polyhedra might not be relevant, as a mathematical topic, for elementary, middle and/or high school students. Here's an excerpt from my reply, promoting the Bucky stuff in particular (a focus of the Synergeo e-list this comes from):

Maybe don't start with the Greek idea of polyhedra.

Recognize that we're talking about space in general, i.e. the right brain, i.e. the visual imagination, as well as one's spatial abilities with tools, such as airplanes. Any four non-coplanar points define a tetrahedron or more generally, any four events. In this sense, they're inescapable.

Thinking coherently about volume, space, the relationships therein, involves thinking about the planet, stars, great circles. It also includes thinking about micro structures unseen by the naked eye. Not just crystal lattices but molecules of all kinds, viruses etc.

In building up spatial fluency, we have this backbone construct called the concentric hierarchy that's like a Swiss army knife of geometric relationships. You can anchor discussions about duals, relative volume, power law, space-filling, left and right handed, honeycombs, angle vs. frequency, and so forth. In other words, if a science teacher can simply take for granted that all these students have already internalized the concentric hierarchy, jitterbug included, then said teacher knows she or he doesn't have to start from scratch when explaining some architecture or chemistry.

This blog post might help as well:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/05/show-me-polyhedra.html

Remember, it's not just any approach to polyhedra that you're promoting, but one that's supremely memorable, dense with information, and centered around the volume tables here:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/12/another-rant.html

In today's environment, I think a selling feature would be that these students would join a tiny elite receiving information in this form. The link to Bucky could be explicit. They'd know about the map too, and about how they're privileged in knowing one of our great minds wanted us to focus on the electrical grids, how they're joining together and spanning the globe. A really cogent curriculum would be generous with such global data, but of course such data isn't that easy to come by, even on the Web. We're not in the habit of doing serious place-based education to begin with. You'd think Google would be into it. I should apply as their electric grid specialist and chief curriculum writer eh? They do hire curriculum writers I've noticed.

:: global studies class, Portland ::

High Stress

My daughter was hit in the crosswalk, is OK though sore, bruised, went over the hood apparently. I have the name of the driver. She called me from her babysitting assignment, not from the scene of the crime. I'm shaken.

Thank you to the cast at Duke's Landing for just hanging out tonight. I showed Troy my Digital Math pages and talked to Mike D. about Ed Cherlin's knowing about some APL for the XO. Mike is interested.

Wave to Evelyn.

Patrick walked Tara home and we had a long talk in my driveway, Lindsey there too. I thank my friends for their support.

I'm glum about my career as a "Bucky stuff" teacher.

Let's get it on big screens in coffee shops and places, use it to sell stuff if we have to, call it advertising, pays for itself. Rah, rah.

Nah, that's too hard, we're too busy being Capitalists or whatever.

Good stuff though.