Pycon 2013 Begins

Loop Like a Native by Ned Batchelder was a talk on "fundamentals" or "primitives" -- I like that he pitched it that way, not as "for beginners".  Experts need refreshers in basics too.  "The ability to loop tall buildings in a single bound -- that joke is the whole reason I'm giving this talk." (applause).  The talk was in Python 2.x instead of 3.x.  Iterators come into their own in 3.x.  "Abstract the iterations more"; good advice.

I also attended Anna Ravencroft's talk on what to do if your talk was not accepted -- not the boat I was in (my lightning talk sailed through on Saturday Morning -- see "bumbling professor" at 9 minutes in) but I like to see how PSF members role model welcoming behavior.  She did a pretty good job I thought.

At the PSF lunch, we all applauded the positive outcome of the trademark dispute in the UK, which had cost us.  I sat at the Texas table (unofficially that), and put a good word in for Austin in 2016 (we're booked for Montreal the next two years, no US Pycons planned or expected as of this writing, other than the smaller state ones like PyOhio).

I don't have any quarrel with people marketing computer services using Python in their name, a practice PSF should encourage.  However, if the trademarking rules in some country are such that there's some winner-take-all model regarding who uses the token "Python" for their services, well then of course PSF should fight to keep its channels free and clear.

We can't afford to have some fly-by-night operation call the dogs on us just because some crazy rule book says one and only one computer company is allowed to hold that token (most rule books aren't that crazy).  We fight to keep the tent big, not the monopoly of any one group.  Even nonprofits can get pretty dictatorial.  Our table at least seemed to agree the OCLC was not a role model in how they took a bat to that New York Library Hotel that spoof-emulated / celebrated library filing, with books pegged to room number.

The New Relic guy did a great job profiling profilers, a world class expert in the subject.

Quaker Men's Group 2013

:: wqm mens group 2013 ::

I've been attending this group off and on for over a decade by now.  I've missed the last two years, so had not been to Bear Camp before, a homestead with yurts, a comfy lodge, off of Rt. 126 about half way between Eugene and Florence, Oregon.

Our theme this year was privilege, with hints of whiteness and maleness weaving through. A bouquet of inter-connected concepts.  As at the AFSC meeting, I expressed some embarrassment over the "race" concept and how quaint it might sound in the ears of the less antiquated.  I'd say most of us translated the theme into expressions of gratitude for lives that had been full, adventuresome, not worth complaining or whining about.

Last time I attended the theme for me personally was dire straits and the difficulty of making some transitions.  That was at another site we've frequented over the years, the Church of the Brethren camp near Myrtle Point, Oregon.

The camp is run by a couple.  We're enthusiastic about their enterprise, as we are supportive of the Brethren and their facility.  We decided to return to Bear Camp next year, but with some discussion of meeting more often than once a year, and maybe in other places in that case.  An interest group or at least a table during one of the meals at North Pacific's Annual Session was proposed.

Even in a room of all white guys, there's likely lots of diversity, just along other axes.  We had quite a few retired military, especially Air Force.  One of our number is ethnically a Brooklyn Jew (a "tribe" he easily identifies with) though a practicing Quaker as well.  We discussed this word "tribe" quite a bit.  One's legal right to identify as a tribal member is a core concern of many NavAms in this part of the world and the result may be "name collisions" (what happens when namespaces step on each other).

I spoke at some length about the AFSC meeting I'd just attended (below), wherein the forced schooling of natives by Euros hell bent on the destruction of their cultures had been a top agenda item.  Oppressing cultures have the luxury of remaining oblivious a lot of the time.  Their thugs (soldiers, but also teachers and social workers) do their dirty work, but they themselves simply enjoy blissful ignorance.  The oppressed, on the other hand, can less afford to ignore their relative loss of freedoms and opportunities.  These statements verge on being tautologies.

Speaking of "tribes", I've been reading Debt:  The First 5000 Years, on my Kindle.  I'm enjoying how the author somewhat mockingly visits the faux anthropology the economists concocted, starting with Adam Smith in particular, to give their discipline more of a basis.  "Money" per the economists' mythology, is all about rescuing a bound-to-fail, barter-based approach, as if some tribes had tried this but the deals were just too complicated after awhile.

David Graeber, himself an anthropologist, finds other memeplexes more compelling, when it comes to explaining the origin of money.  Barter still has a role, even with money in the picture.  The either/or thinking which portrays money as a swap-in and savior for bartering conveniently overlooks debt and its role as a prime motivator in human affairs.  Graeber looks elsewhere to explain the origin of money games.

I joined this group late, having had responsibilities the night before as usher and ISEPP board member.   Gibor Basri, an internationally recognized professor of astronomy and expert on brown dwarfs, was here in Portland to lecture on the findings of the Kepler Project.

NASA's Kepler (a specialized satellite telescope in the sun's orbit, following Earth) has been staring a a small patch of stars, not blinking, looking for the characteristic repeated wavering that would indicate a planet transiting between a star in our viewpoint.  What appears to have been proved is stars with planets are as common as rain and a lot of those are likely Earth-like in size, the even more are likely "super Earths" i.e. the average planet is somewhat bigger than ours.

During closing worship we remembered some of our dear departed, Olin Byerly having most recently left the living.  I brought up Lewis Hoskins and Ed Janoe.  We also spoke of those still alive and not present.  These kinds of remembrances are typically "tribal", to further elaborate on this anthropological term.  I think of the Hash House Harriers, a kind of running club, and their espirit du corps.

I re-explored the coast a little coming back, taking Rt. 126 to 101 to Lincoln City, Rt. 18 back to Portland.  Just north of Florence, I stopped at Sea Lion Caves where I'd not been since a small child, to the best of my recollection.  The sound of being in that cave inspires singing behavior, one might say.  I gather the high tide is what deposits them on such high perches, there'd be no way to climb there built like that.  In the ocean, they're graceful.  Seals are sleek.

From AFSC Corporation Meeting

:: afsc meetup 2013 ::

Friends (Quakers) have gathered from around North America to participate in the annual meeting of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which is closing on a hundred years old.

Henry Cadbury helped get the ball rolling in the early 1900s, with help from Rufus Jones.  Henry was about 31 at the time, Rufus more my age at 54.  Henry went on to teach at the Harvard Divinity School, having quit Haverford College when he found out he was going to be fired, for speaking out against post-WW1 anti-German sentiments that were going around.

I've been representing North Pacific Yearly Meeting for some time, making an annual trip to Friends Center, also known informally as the Quaker Vatican and/or Quaker Kremlin.  Quakers, for those who don't know, got started in the 1600s thanks to activists Fox, Mott, Nayler and so forth, in England.

I'm one of three reps from our region, even though I laid down my membership in the Religious Society through my Monthly Meeting for various reasons.  Claiming membership through a Monthly Meeting is but one expression of one's Quakerism.  The original Friends of Christ (John 13:13) were not "members" of anything, just as Jesus was never a Christian (Praise Allah).

There's some chance my presence here over the years is in violation of the bylaws, but then we're in violation anyway, since participation of corp reps by YMs is below the bylaw numbers this year anyway.  The bylaws are subject to revision.  That's what the Board takes up on Sunday, when I'll be on my way (I'm not a board member).

In my view, NPYM is entitled to appoint non-members as reps to the AFSC corporation, and has done so in my case.  Sometimes our non-members have strong Quaker values and are higher on my totem pole, as weighty Friends, than those following the practices around membership.  I do serve on the Oversight Committee and have been involved in clearness committees for members, so it's not like I don't appreciate that process.

Cadbury's experience at Haverford reminds me of Linus Pauling's at Cal Tech, when anti-Japanese sentiments were being fanned by its administration.  Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to prison camps in that chapter.  He tried to protect a friend of his, but the FBI had its way.

After a long day of sessions, we gathered in the meeting room for a presentation about AFSC work in Burundi.  Burundi is a source of many lessons in sociology and anthropology.  The recently warring factions, Hutu and Tutsi, were ostensibly indistinguishable when not acting out their roles (think of Democrats and Republicans).  The differences are more historical and socioeconomic, not genetic so much.

We then had a fantastic presentation by a Wabanaki native on the program of cultural genocide waged against her people in Maine over the years.  The Anglo-Euros were a nasty-cruel bunch.  I'm not unhappy much of their culture is morphing into something else.  Their indefensible ideologies are   self-annihilating, given their shaky basis in non-science and stupidity -- lots of crappy, toxic religion, among other things.

I'm glad the AFSC has been involved in the global process of bringing attention to and of course repudiating the immoral / unethical Christian Doctrine of Discovery, an initiative first brought to my attention by Arthur Dye (a former AFSC regional director).

Maine has started a Truth and Reconciliation process in collaboration with the Wabanakis to help address the truths of cultural genocide and the sins (errors) of the ancestors.  This is called "changing the narrative" (long overdue).

We also heard a first person horror story about some young children (six girls) taken from their tribal setting by some "child welfare" bureau and raised in a pathological household by some monster.  One of these children grew up to tell her story from the podium.

This intensely stressful karma has been multi-generational.  She had a hard time parenting, having been beaten, raped and tortured her whole life (she's closing on 50).  She helps with the healing by telling her story.  It's not about reparations for her, as there's no monetary sum that could restore her equilibrium.  She has to do the work herself, in community, and is doing so.  And so it is for many in their suffering.

From ApacheCon

:: apachecon 2013 ::

Back in hotel space, with choppy Internet.  Not that base has been trouble free.  I'm free to speculate that DSL is over subscribed and random dropping is like a rolling brown out they don't tell us about.  How are customers to know?

You would need whistleblowers, and last I checked Congress was more interested in whistleblowers sitting on whatever.  At the UN, warehouses pile up to the rafters with earnest reports of unfairness.

At least the heat's on.  Base is not arctic.  Portland is 45th parallel or thereabouts and we're creeping around the annalemma.

I'm in no way a full timer at this conference though.  I have a busy day, and choppy Internet only puts me further behind.

Good meeting at AFSC tonight.  Tony Noble joined us.  Afterwards I got more caught up on what's rollicking in this town.  Somewhat embarrassing how much I don't know.

Shirley Q. Liquor was offending people all over the country and The Eagle had booked him.  Local activists went berzerk (paraphrase), but when the Q-Center sought to use that opportunity to broker a Racism discussion, that set off inter-tribal jealousies in other dimensions.  Events were being canceled faster than they could be defined.

The car is on Apachecon and AFSC duty both.  That makes it sound like I pile up receipts for the IRS, and I should probably.  But I'm not advertising to the public as a licensed chauffeur (which I'm not) and don't really see the point.  Anyway, I've got my taxes filed for this year already, and expect a refund (from Feds, not the state).

I've got a fresh Buddha tankha hanging in the Buddha Room (also Bob's).

We talked about QVS some (at the AFSC post-meeting), reminding me of conversations with Robert Cooper recently.  He knew of this house in North Carolina.

Eddy reminded me my next flight was on a different day than I'd thought.  Scary to be that wrong.  I did that in DC and got lucky.

Carol waded deep into the logistics of making it happen for her, and I was encouraging.  Using an oxygenator on plane trips is still somewhat state of the art.  These machines are somewhat new.  I praised her for helping break new ground, with Delta, with other airlines.

Not in the cards in this shuffle though.  She can relax and recover more instead.  Whether that trip insurance she purchased pans out is another question.  More unfairness.

:: new AFSC poster ::

Wanderers 2013.2.20

Not uncharacteristically, I was late this morning.  My thanks to Don for the reminder phone call.  I really didn't know what I was missing.

Alan Weider has recently finished a book looking at the role played by an activist couple, Ruth First and Joe Slovo, in the anti-apartheid campaign that analysts are still grappling with, and will for some time, as the benefits of hindsight keep flooding in.

Alan is not new to this general topic, the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, and what I caught of his talk was deeply informed.  That's coming from my own limited perspective as a member of a Quaker family that relocated to Lesotho in the 1990s and stayed there for about seven years.

I then moved to The Bagdad to hear a presentation from Momentis out of Dallas, an energy company seeking to offer Oregonians more choice as deregulation looms.  By 2016, companies like Just Energy expect to have access to market share.  Some of our Quakers have gotten involved in this venture.

A grass roots marketing campaign is being developed, one that recruits from the consumer base itself to expand its sales force.  Not a new idea in North America, though perhaps not in energy (Amway and Tupperware don't sell you Internet services or household gas).  Wanderer Patrick Barton was my guest, as I value his perspective on matters energetic.

Back to Alan's story:

Ruth was blown up by a mail bomb, placed by unprincipled South Africans who believed they had a mandate to murder (not a new misapprehension).  The monster behind this  atrocity came forward during the Truth Process.  Joe later died of cancer, having served in the Housing Ministry.

The USSR did funnel a lot of money to the anti-apartheid resistance back then.  Remember Cuba's involvement in Angola.  Joe was a Gorbachev fan.

I mentioned our family history during the Q&A.  Urners came to Lesotho after apartheid was officially over and many a diplomatic family was leaving Maseru, which had served as a base.  As Quakers, we learned about recent history through that particular lens, which was enlightening.  But for the accident in 2000, Jack and Carol would likely still be in Maseru, enjoying good times.  They loved that whole area of the world (though not exclusively).

I also mentioned my time at 2 Dickinson Street when the student body was asking Nassau Hall to divest of any stock holdings in companies benefiting from an apartheid regime.  Such holdings would seem antithetical to, and/or hypocritical of, a liberal arts institution, according to these 1970s student analyst-activists.

Madeline Albright, formerly US Secretary of State, is speaking at The Bagdad tonight.  Like last time, I'll miss it, but will hope to read reports.  Portland (PDX) has diplomatic relations with Washington, DC (WDC), as well as non-diplomatic relations.

Reconstruction (Phase 2)

Link to Phase One

Live from DorkBot

We're at Someday Lounge again tonight, though Backspace (two doors down) in the more usual occasion?

What am I up to?  I've been telling the hospital bosses their patient-facing equipment is crap if it doesn't do Kanji, the Japanese word for Chinese ideographs, a core element in several languages.  I've discovered James Heisig's work thanks to this Youtube by a Nipponophile.  One may have many goals in tackling Kanji, one being to cultivate an associational network that cross-hatches one's own.  Plus you know you're tuning in something of the consciousness of billions.  What's the keyword for "tongue" again?  As in "mother tongue"?  I'll get back with the number. 41: 舌.

James isn't teaching Japanese specifically, in this volume, just the Kanji with their imaginative meanings, which he builds using English.  Their pronunciation in any language, their combinations, are left to future work.  This is particle physics, subatomics.  Or is it bacterial phenomenology?  Yes, that's it.  The characters swallow each other, as well as common elements.  There's an assemblage, a kind of molecular bonding.  Study Kanji to learn chemistry, why not?

I using my cell phone as a Hotspot, talking to my cell provider, getting on the Internet that way.

Holden is with me; we took the bus together.  He's in the thick of getting NA Apachecon booted.  The last one was in 2011 in Vancouver, BC (another state of North America, two to our north, Washington in between).  Homeland Security (US) does a lot of its intake in Vancouver, with domestic flights southward.

I was telling Brenda about Alan and Kati getting married in our living room in Thimphu, how he, the good Jew, had to sit on a swastika, though one innocent of Nazi spin.

Brenda is a Wanderer and role model GSM teacher (Girl Scout Math).  GSM is actually an urban nomad wilderness survival skills program that uses STEM math, not traditional / conventional math.  STEM math tends to be quite geographic, lots of geocaching (treasure maps / hunts), GIS, GPS, and geometric.  If your teacher doesn't say what an Icosahedron is at any point, that's likely not STEM.   GSM inherits from Pentagon Math quite a bit, but isn't as violence-prone.  Brenda, Elise, Deb, Lindsey, Trish... Xtine, you could call them "tom boys" I suppose, as they're not afraid of tools or science.  That's an ancient namespace though ("tom boys", お侠), more characteristic of septuagenarians.

I went outside and took some long shots of the very low resolution (but very bright) being shown.  Other dorks had their various bots.  Mine were commercial devices, not homemade.  I'm more the journalist-blogger than the bona fide dork, more the dork wannabe.   Another mixin superclass for GSM I'd say.

Steve is selling a Raspberry Pi.  Last week he showed up with about fifty.

You can place these units, with solar power, deep in the forest, with loggers (meaning log files, chronofiles -- though some loggers with permits to cut might willingly place them).  They don't need to transmit (can't be traced that way).  The GPS locations get saved and the monitors check them later.  Someone is cutting trees?  Does BLM know?  Record something for the subscribers (a snapshot, a reading), data for the listeners.  Sierra Club maybe.

You're not trying to catch the discrete campers or hikers.  It's broad trends in the ecosystems that you sense, and record.  You might be in a plexiglass box in a riverbed, measuring turbidity.  If they do a clear cut in Bull Run, they'll know, and you'll know.

Next time:  Brain Silo.  Stay tuned.

La Casa

Promised Land (movie review)

A delightful fractal of a movie.

I'm biased to think that way, having just attended a John Driscoll lecture at Harder House, PSU's epicenter of Systems Science.  Plus there's a pun.

Everyone does a fine job of acting in this one, going through the motions.  Just what are they voting on exactly?  It's not clear.  The whole idea is surreal, and as we back away from this narrative we realize that none of this really happened.

And yet the companies are real and the leases are real, and people are counting their pennies, reckoning on having some gas in the bank.  Accounting systems make a difference.

Me, I'd pay people a stipend to just act out the small town life, so people could visit and learn how to take it slower.  Make it a theme park kind of thing.  But then that's how I see it anyway, Sun as our sponsor (by which I mean the nearby star, not Sun Microsystems per se, though I respect Sun's engineers and their contributions).

What play is this?  What theater are we in?  It's a really existential film in that way.  Everyone is so sophisticated, not just the city slickers.  I was taken back to another surreal film with Matt.  Funny, to see them together.

Everything is Under Control

I'd been bragging to some Bible studies teacher of food ethics about my FNB connections, so it was fortuitous to have an opportunity to reinforce those ties.  Jay's bike had been ripped from a private stairwell by some bold theft artist, and so he phoned me as he arrived at OTY on foot, hoping to meet up with TA who had vegan chili.

Well, the long and the short of it is I hauled the day's vegetables from point A to point B, got to be the hero at some level in the Global Matrix.  I got some good body core sweat goin' meaning a definite calorie burn, especially when coming back, fully loaded, and up some fairly steep inclines.  It'd be interesting to know how many joules that was.  My Razr showed my I'd turned the wrong way at Williams and Tillamook (I was rusty, I admit).

Trevor was by today with some excess assets. Yes, RAW's anthology of conspiracies, entitled Everything is Under Control.  Indeed that entry under GRUNCH was to my page, as archive.org will disclose.  Some say one of the more successful conspiracies but I'm not really in a position to judge, being in the thick of it and all.

Given a canine is moving in, and an ET, we set it up to have Sarah-the-dog encounter her housemate-to-be on a walk.  No turf to defend, a public space (in front of Laurie's).  Then she came home with us, with both humans clearly OK with it. This was supposed to set the right tone.  Dog psychology ya know.

Given Pirate Party links, quite unofficial given my US citizenship, it's maybe not surprising I've been waving the Swedish flag a lot.  I was telling poor Paul Tanner on math-teach that no matter how right Paul Krugman might be on the macro economics, USAers were just not smart enough to surge in their own interests, prove me wrong why don'tcha.  They confuse democracy with just voting (if even that), as if that were the limit  of their responsibilities. Then today I was like viva Sweden and Finland, compared to the sorrowful goliath.

To a physics list:

Civilizations making it past various thresholds enter an era where the planetary biosphere becomes of concern.  It's not just warming we have to think about, but radiotoxins and out of the cloud mad scientist experiments such as the ones conducted recently by so-called "cold warring" goliaths and their idiot advisers.  They messed with the Van Allen belts. 

As humans, we are aware of no precedent (legal or otherwise) for the current chapter i.e. as we awaken to our biospheric responsibilities, and eye Mars as a possible habitat, at least in science fiction, and as we think about colonizing the under-ocean ecosystem somewhat more, we have no ancestral role models other than we have many examples of ecosystems becoming untenable.  

We know we might mess up.  

I hope to be available to out-of-towners during Apachecon, then have to high tail it to Philadelphia for the annual meeting.

Fooding at Meeting

"Fooding" is not usually a verb, but it is in the Himalayas, so I'm absconding with it for local use.  Today the Junior Friends had a fundraiser, though perhaps not sufficiently announced.

The theme was "Middle Eastern" and extended to include a lamb stew (even if many Friends are individually vegetarian).  I brought the ingredients for Teresina Lentils and cooked the dish en situ, in our "Food Not Bombs" kitchen (as I tend to think of it, private namespace).

Speaking of which, Walker has re-purposed a portion of her wardrobe to practice as "FNB CEO" (one of many in an anarchy).  Not that different from me being in the Education Ministry, sometimes as the actual Minister (rotating position).  Steve Holden and I are watching In the Thick of It (BBC), which is fun.

Keith McHenry is another FNB CEO who has come through.  He's been in Mexico and Chiapas and places.  I've read some communiques.  Walker is meeting with Unitarians today, after their service.  She's droped her urban survivalist look for something more churchy today.

Today is Business Meeting at Multnomah Meeting.  I should ascend the stairs and continue journaling from there.

Was what happened in Connecticut all that different from what happened in Fallujah?  Crazed mad-cow-like humans hell bent on taking lives, and equipped with the tools for so doing.

I'm curious about whom nominating has added to the slate for Oversight Committee (OC).  We lost four Overseers in a short time recently, including the previous clerk (Debbie has been acting clerk).

Walker thinks a Major Payne type character, perhaps more than one, vets, friendly big guy types whom the kids adore, would be a stereotypical, OK way to add security.  They have responsibilities as faculty as well. We had our armed guards in Manila but they didn't get to teach anything.

I'm used to the idea of armed security around me, on base, in the hood.  Should kids be practicing with swipe cards then?  It depends on the school I think.  School is a lot about preparing for the work place, and a lot of work places are locked down to some degree.  Learning the habits of working in secure environments is worth starting early.

Mari, Barbara and I talked about language learning, Arabic in particular.  Mari has been in Egypt recently.  She's finding Arabic hard.  She and Barbara both speak Spanish pretty well.  Mari has noticed Arabic roots in Bantu.  I bought some coffee roasted by Josh, one of our former armed services guys.  I don't speak any Arabic, to speak of, though I've studied it and admire it.

Leslie Hickcox gave the annual report of the FCNL liaison: she'd traveled to DC for the November meeting.  The Friends Committee on National Legislation is a Quaker lobby based in the Imperial City (QUNO represents Quakers to the United Nations).

There's a somewhat slow version of the Countdown to Zero campaign going on around Congress, run mostly by eventualists (not immediatists, i.e. not radical abolitionists).

"Immediatist" is a term from Civil War days, when some people wanted to end the institution of slavery in North America right away. Others, including many Friends, were for ending slavery all in good time, maybe in a few hundred years.  Big wheels turn slowly and so on.

Urban Fashions

"Urban nomad" is not a new concept, yet keeps morphing.

Given Portland's bicycle-centric core youth culture, clothing that won't catch in the chain is a must, but that may mean leg hugging stretched fiber of some variety.  There's no preference for the women's bicycle with the lower bar, as the tunic or skirt doesn't care.   These aren't hooped gowns we're talking about.

Much of the focus in this genre is on accessories, as the ninja nomad needs autonomy within cities.  If you're attending a Food Not Bombs serving, or just wanting to not waste, then you won't need those plastic utensils or paper cups and plates people keep shoving at you, adding to the waste stream.

Your mess kit signals you're a soldier for the environment, on the side of trees and all that is green and good.  In this way, the hippie earth mother tradition is continued, but in a somewhat more superhero vein.  Maybe just chop sticks.  My mom carries those around.

Which brings us to utility belts.  These have been typically worn low on the waste, but there's much to be said for kidney high pouches, or holsters worn high.

The bicycle tools are typically under the seat (of the bicycle) but if you're paranoid or in a paranoid part of town, you need room on your person for small gadgets normally fixed to your steed.

I sometimes wear a money belt around the wrist or lower arm, Cuffka brand by Nirel.

The winterized outfit is the more challenging.  The look derives from EMT work, where the crews need to stay flexible, able to operate equipment, fold and unfold gurneys and so forth.  Para-medical meets para-military:  the place to aim.

The goal is to remain compact, light, efficient, and semi-autonomous.  You may be packing electronics.  You may carry extra glasses, a brief case.

Ideally, this outfit is compatible with the workplace, perhaps a record store or hair salon, some public facing job.  But that's Portland more than some workplaces, in that we're already over tattoos and nose rings.  The fixed image of how the CEO has to look gave way some time ago.

FNB PR Again

The way I see it is as Urban Sport, a lot like GeoCaching, which my friends Chris and Larry play almost every day, at least when in town.  Trevor took me on a geocaching outing a couple times, once to track down the cache, another time to set up a fresh one, or so I recall.

Food Not Bombs as practiced by our chapter is athletic.  Like the Hash House Harriers my dad so loved, mom also a runner, me too when in town.  Not the same meaning of "hash" but you're forgiven if you're confused.  In that one, a small groups lays a trail, with several false branches, all signified in esoteric chalk symbols.  The gang gets unleashed later, and follows the trail like bloodhounds.  The routes may be spectacular as the sport lends itself to all manner of topography.

So here you've got a bike trailer, possibly homemade from a ladder, or bamboo.  You've got artisans in this sector already, with more ideas in the pipeline. Art trailers.  Busking hutches.  Would we allow them?  Curbside trailers are akin to cars, allowed to park overnight, and why not with sleepers?  As usual, the public street and curb are the focus of so many laws, with each "class" fighting for rules perceived to work in its favor.  Yet elegant, high powered shows move around in curbside vehicles.  Why be too biased against small, fuel efficient, cycle-drawn carriages?

In any case, my trailer isn't looking for a place to park.  I got it from the lot.  There's a fleet.  I'm on duty I signed up for, a workout.  This is my time in the "gym of life".  I'm on a mission to rescue perfectly fine organic produce of high quality, just inches from the compost machine, in order to feed an ecosystem of community building food awareness activists who enjoy the challenge of taking what they get.

The values are enough congruent with Quaker values (no outward weapons needed, simple rules, plain speech, egalitarian treatment) to lead me to encourage FNBers to just come by any time, pick up some roles in the meeting.  There's no requirement to profess lifetime allegiance to some religious denomination in order to walk the talk and speak truthfully of one having committee responsibilities, including clearing others for membership (without being one oneself).

Deciding to "wear the tattoo", to advertise publicly one's allegiance, in reciprocal fashion with a Monthly Meeting, is another service or program we offer, called "membership in the Society" (i.e. Religious Society of Friends).  For this role, we don't always self select our most esoteric or nuanced Friends, as their talk may require of them manifold allegiances and obligations, or express itself in principled objections to some status quo among members (slave ownership was at one time divisive).  Be that as it may, participation is encouraged, from members and non-members alike.

FNB is similar in offering dramatic roles.  It's urban theater.  We appreciate our guerrilla chefs, able to turn a combination of dry stores and fresh produce into something delectable.  Would that a noob cook could learn in an apprentice capacity.  This happens.  Many torches to passed.  Had I not lost Ninja David's knife set, I might not be allowing a Cutco salesperson into my home tomorrow.  By now, I truly appreciate the value of a good knife set.  Even if I don't make a purchase, I'll before to remind my fellow urbanites not to "make do" with less than professional cookware, to the extent your budget might afford.  Way more important than beer and cigarettes.

Thirsters Gather

Tonight was a who's who for me in that a lot of my favorite characters were present:  Mark Frischmuth of DemocracyLab, Marianne Buchwalter, Allen Taylor, Bob Bjerre and more.

Thirsters had gathered to celebrate and commemorate the life and times of their anchorman Bob Textor.  These were his salon mates, his chat room, of live, here and now people. Both his adult offspring were there and joined in the speech making, spontaneously emceed by Art Kohn (both he and Allen have cruise ship experience as well as classroom and know how to speak in a group setting).

Wanderers has benefited over the years from our overlap with this group.  Our horizons have been expanded.  Don is our principal go-between, as anchorman for Wanderers.

Thirsters is liberal, academic, and strongly steeped in Southeast Asia.  Roger Paget is another founder and will be anchoring the next planning meeting as this 15-16 year old group seeks its way in the wake of Bob's passing. 

This McMenamins was a tavern and pool hall back when Vaughn Street Park, a baseball park, hosted Pacific Coast League games, with Beavers the home team.  Spectators swarmed through around game time, though the 30s and 40s. The park was demolished in 1956, two years before I was born.

Thirsters took root in a later chapter, in an alcove at the east end, and when McMenamins remodeled the place, their new floor plan encouraged the same growth pattern.  The McMenamin brothers have enjoyed and supported this use of the space and their company footed the tab for the evening, with Thirsters leaving thank you tips to the staff.

A more formal memorial service will be held in March.

I won't try to give a bio of Bob here.  He worked on the original architecture of the Peace Corps, as one speaker reminded us tonight.  He made sure recruits got training in the language and culture of the place they were being sent -- you'd think an obvious need, but Washington DC was still pretty green at outreach via this new form of citizen diplomacy.  He had extensive experience in Asia.

The chatter that developed around Bob and his friends is both erudite and worldly and helps define cosmopolitan Portland, an interesting cross between a world capital (of open source for example) and a frontier town.  Lew Frederick showed up, a regular (and member of the Oregon legislature these days) and Sue Hagmeier, sister of my friend Michael.

A great many other important people were present, but I'm mostly confining my account to characters previously mentioned in my blogs.  Portland is small, but not that small.  Elizabeth Furse had appeared here a couple weeks ago, having spoken at Wanderers earlier.

I talked a lot with Allen, who is as busy as ever writing books and helping a South Africa based company expand its market for substance screening and identity verification equipment.

Bob Bjerre talked about his adventures in Kosovo, Macedonia and like that, in the aftermath of the last Balkan War (the breakup of Yugoslavia).  He helped with home building for World Vision and United Methodists.

Marianne expressed her generic hope in young people and their ability to create a brighter world for themselves (her granddaughter is going to work for Intel). "As long as they don't do something stupid" I said sagely.

@ Thirsters, from 2007 (click for larger view)

Science Pub

I got there early, skipped the beer line, and did some day jobbing using wifi.  The theater filled quickly, yet I still wasn't clear on the topic....

Suzanne tapped me awake.  I'd dozed off, having not slept much.  My finger was doing the "d" key in someone's program ("dddddddd...." over a thousand according to PyCharm).  No real damage, as I could easily refresh with a copy... She was there with a friend.

Chris sat to my left and introduced herself.  We compared notes on culture and music.  She proved quite knowledgeable.   She and Suzanne exchanged greetings.

Then came the quiz, which I was miserable at.

The lecture was all about this neuroscientist's family.  He was doing a lot of the teaching things I advocate, sharing autobiography, telling stories, connecting the dots, but not neglecting to share concepts and findings in STEM.

His slides had plenty of animations.  Larry Sherman, Ph.D. -- hadn't he done a talk here before as one of Oregon's most innovative? Ah yes, It comes back to me now, slowly.  Is it still Deja Vu if you've really seen it (or something like it) before?

The Bagdad's brightest projection bulb had died (exploded?) over the weekend and we were invited to not comment on screen dimness in our OMSI Pub evaluations, as this was a known issue.

Lots of talk about epigenetics.  The animations were of DNA coiling within coils of coils, but still translating, making proteins.  He went over the ultra basics.

Epigenetic factors might include a tightening of some coils, making them less likely to translate, thanks to supporting proteins (animations for this).  This isn't about sequences jumping, but about multiple systems impacting one another, being a part of one bigger process: the passing along of karma.

Yeah, it sounds weird to say "karma" there, so lets say "momentum" which is conserved.  I've been reciting this mantra, "momentum for a distance in a time".  The somewhat blurred picture registers a change in position for the time the film was exposed to the information.

Lights, camera, action.  The units of action are momentum for a distance, whereas energy is action in a time (at a frequency).  I think of cartoons with repeating backgrounds.  Ripple effects, consequences.  "Karma" might sound too judgmental, whereas if you're more psychoanalytic about it then you see most karma as unconscious and not really the ego's affair (unless the ego needs to get heroic and effect some changes -- a new level of "go gettum" in the animal kingdom).

Before the speaker part started, a father and son played miniature ukelele and banjo type instruments.  No singing.  I've already lost the memory of the band's name, which was projected and repeated. The audience was a appreciative, Larry had a good segue into his talk.

Our speaker recounted finding out he'd been adopted and ultimately wanting to know more about his biological parents and siblings.  He was astounded to find his academic career had taken him to his ancestral lands, before he had a clue they were ancestral.

I won't recount the whole story here, as it sounded like, after a couple more presentations, the theater might pick this up.  The neuroscientist is also into theater, music, sports.

His biological mom had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at way too young an age, and given electro-shock treatments.  Her own mother had been traumatized... it's tempting to relate more of the story.

So how much of who we are depends on "free will" and how much on "machinery"?  That seems to be the polarity.  People wonder about automaticity and to what extent they have any choice in the matter.  One has choice in one's level of acceptance.

Chris considerately shared half a Luna bar and cough drop candies.  She even brought me water.   Suzanne was saying I looked really sleepy (she'd awakened me after all).  After listening to the Q&A I stumbled home.

Black Like Me (movie review)

I grabbed this on impulse from Movie Madness.

This film was made in the mid 1960s.  The running joke, if you can call it that, is he continues to look just like himself.  Like Buzz Lightyear out of his bubble.  He's too grumpy for the job of undercover spy.  Waaaay too grumpy. But we can understand, as the audience, that one feels offended.

He's mostly exposed to other men's sexual fantasies, which you'd think, as a journalist, he'd not be unfamiliar with.

The flashbacks are classically inserted.  The jazz soundtrack is emotive.  They smoke all the time, Buzz Lightyear in bed.  The actors are into it.  The Strange-colored Man would be a fun title.  He's having identity problems much deeper than which side of the Civil War he'd fight on.  A deeper nut case.  Fits into America just great.

I used to hitchhike around the east coast, up and down (as they say, we say)...

Scary man.  If that's what white guys are like, line me up for a vacation.  He's properly grateful to that country guy for not being a dick (short ride, hero not on best behavior).

I tell ya, if you're gonna send spies, at least train 'em first.  He was lucky to recruit that shoe polish guy early, but the training in the field seemed to make zero difference.  See this movie in sequence with The Spy Who Sat Next to the Photocopier.

I don't usually write my reviews right as I watch 'em.  This is the hundred and some minute enhanced edition, the 2nd of 2 DVDs.  I'm 99% sure I read the book in Rome, Italy, part of my parents' collection.  But not until now do I see the movie, in 2013.

There's a guy dancing all machine-like, proto robot.  That set of moves went a long way (Michael Jackson a pioneer / popularizer), kept morphing.  007 would have stuck out too, what with those ears 'n all...  just train 'em first, OK?

Speaking of which, I've been brainstorming on Math Future about my rural Oregon school for diplomats, a pastiche / montage of the best from my cullings.  I've got the "math is an outdoor sport" meme going.

A lot of the trauma is more class than race related.  "You're too serious about everything, ruins a fella from having fun" -- yes, girl, your diagnosis is on target.  It's number 3, 2, 1 experiences all the way (invoking est jargon -- appropriate given toilet access is a theme), a bumpy ride.

The business school project where I yak about Yankee types help with the truck fleet twixt Istanbul and Kabul and those:  not a spy ring, just strong STEM, high level training, and risky to some degree, though we hope not from stupid / random acts of violence.  Roads are dangerous enough...

He's being stalked at the moment, prey.  Prays to St. Jude.  Good Catholic, we learned that earlier.  The KKK didn't like Catholics either right?  Uh oh, PTSD melt down.  The Breaking Bad dad, the meth cook, was a little tougher.  "I'd a known you anywhere".  These whites are geeks (meeting up with his friends).

Somalis are having a "black like me" episode in their history these days.  Shelbyville, TN instead of Shelby, TX.  Talking about the documentary, Hawo's Dinner Party.  It's one thing to be black in Somalia, something else to be Somali in the North American south, maybe forced to relinquish at least one of your husbands.  No wait, I got it backwards, at least one of your wives.  You get the idea.

"You might be interviewed on TV".  How do you not offend people?  That's not the liberal's question.  A healthy conscience is worth a high price in Vienna, makes for better music appreciation.  Offend them if you must, with your revelations, be a Freud, a Woody Allen.  Be one of those bleeding hearts.  Be a muckraker if necessary.

Waaay too grumpy (he's strangling his interviewee -- torture is not professional guy).  Yeah, go see a priest, good idea.  You've got problems.  Uh oh, girl on the beach, another bump.  That ticket booth lady at the bus station isn't very professional.  The sets are theatric.  Movie's were still more "on stage" back then, not surprising.  Some are still made that way, classic.  Gas station, Memphis. Uh oh, cover blown, he's in the newspaper.  Reminds me of the Hillsboro, Ohio story.

Nice character review at the end here, a quick look.  The white line on the road again.  Stands for "color line" right?  Yep, the trailer says so.  Thanks to the film restoration people.  I'll check the special features next.

Concluding 2012

We got a card from the Baker family today.  "Looks like the Mayans were wrong..." though of course those "Mayans" as seen in hindsight have little in common with how they viewed themselves.  The geopolitical affairs of 2012 were not their concern, any more than these weighed on the minds of those channeling their one god (aka God) for the Book of Revelations.  Anyway, The Rapture was last year (May 21, 2011).

I tuned in the Mayans in their more New Age chapter back when I met Andrew Frank.  He was steeped in the writings of José Argüelles.  Andrew married, had a son, and moved out of town, much later turning up as a field worker in solar energy.  This had long been a dream of his, stretching back to when he and I drove to Olympia to visit Doug Wood, a reigning prince of solar steam.  Andrew's other focus has been early childhood education.  He's developed some interesting hands-on activities around pipe cleaners (multi-color) and polyhedrons.

Glenn and I saw each other, after some years in between, around Djangocon this year.  That was an Open Source highlight, Open Bastion presiding.  We toured in Georgetown some, visiting the "Exorcist steps".  Glenn gifted me with a copy of Easy Like Water, his newest documentary, also a first person travelogue, about the floating schools in Bangladesh.  The film has a global warming spin.

Food Not Bombs has continued to morph.  I'd hoped to take another step with what I've dubbed our Ministry of Education building (an abandoned high school) by repurposing its kitchen for food rescue logistics.  Then the reality principle set in:   JenQ had already explored the possibility a year ago, and found out there's no kitchen.  Portland Public Schools is likely to sell the property soon anyway, having shut it down in the 1980s (it was down to either Washington or Cleveland that had to close, the latter with disjoint but greater total hectares).  We continue to explore other possibilities.

Carol's bout with pneumonia ironically prolonged her stay into winter, as she gained strength to make the switch to sunnier digs.  The house was again stocked with oxygen tanks and a concentrator, a sign of high living standards and a sharable privilege we should afford ourselves globally, along with eye glasses for all who need them.

An oxygen industry (like Apria's) is benign enough, as are other harmless pursuits, such as fashion, movie-making / theater, arts, crafts, cooking.  Yet these enterprises tend to go begging while the truly toxic endeavors get fully funded by the slavers.  Slavers are those who enslave us to past reflexes that are also suicidal and inconsistent with humans' best interests.  Slavers need to be countered, for their own good as well as our own.

We'd stocked up on tanks before when my wife Dawn was healing -- and dying (like we're all doing) -- and Apria was our supplier then too.  We were able to rent a vehicle and collect tanks in New Mexico, visit Santa Fe in winter.  Again, this was a high living standard experience, a real privilege by global standards in our time.  Most of our collective wealth was being squandered back then, and humans reaped a more miserable harvest for their collective inability to reprogram.

How does one enjoy high living standards without spoiling?  Over-sheltering, cocooning excessively, leads to getting stuck in larval states.  Nerds fail to mature into worldly and socially responsible geeks.  Psyches stay trapped.

Philosophical counseling was not well established and many religions had run out of gas, as we made the transition to 2013.  With 2012 in the rear view mirror, would we continue with global maturation?

Skyfall (movie review)

I'd been meaning to see this one for a long time, plus there's one between I'm still behind on.  I'm talking about the James Bond franchise, now in its 50th year.

Skyfall is more comic book in the Batman sense, a little darker and exploring roots.  My Friendly movie mate (Quakers are going to movies more as a part of their practice) thought it lower budget, or at least slimmed down, but with computers added.  There's an "eternal return" aspect as the formula gets followed, with old parts swapped out for new upgrades.  Moneypenny gets a facelift.  Bond is still getting old.  He and M are somewhat over the hill and their powers are at least half from beyond the grave at this point.  The opening credits play up the dead theme more than most, but then he's into "resurrection" (direct quote).

The archetype of M is celebrated.  She has her posse of freaks, not unlike Picard in a wheelchair, husbanding X-Men.  Octavia Butler novels came to mind, as I contemplated freakishness, a theme with me these days.  Bond has several sixth senses.  The part where he says "stop, go back" when they're looking at the computer, is another bead in the necklace of cliches, but also shows his John Nash like ability to pattern recognize.  We could call it that.  He's seen all the Bond films, by definition, through many lifetimes, and knows the pattern language.

The computer display (what the new Q is using), looks awfully Struck-like, talking Gereld de Jong and elastic interval geometry, Tim Tyler and others (I was an early adopter, had a first Synergetics pow wow about that, with Kenneth Snelson also a chief inspiration (yes, they get lumped together a lot, with good reason)).  This was before I explored Sam's Flextegrity concept and prototypes.

Back to the posse, things can go wrong and agents can swallow their poison and not actually die.  Or rather, who they were somewhat dies.  Bond has some bardo states in the freezing cold water, and the first time is not the last.  He stays in the game though as he senses his talents are needed.  MI6 is soon ablaze in his absence, as the alchemy goes awry and M's posse starts to implode.  Bond was a needed compression member.  Without him, that chapter comes to an end.

Shanghai is as Denny describes it, electrified and bright.  The height of the many skyscrapers plays a role.  Another cliche for the necklace: an elevator on steroids.  We don't get much of a window into why we're here.  Shanghai is not implicated.  Just a backdrop this time.  Chinese are not bad guys, or North Koreans.  The evil is a rogue agent and it's when unleashed and undisciplined by English ethics that we see the freakish abilities more.  Bond is a different mix, has other talents.

My movie mate had a good idea for an English style bar in the neighborhood, that night a victim of a pub crawl so we lucked out getting a last table in the back.  Our analysis continued, turning to other topics.  The movie itself encouraged exploring Freudian themes, or at least probing beneath the surface about this archetype, and its association with freaks on the fringe, in the shadows, and in this world rather uniformly armed and dangerous, though moving towards more computerized.

In the backstory, M had indeed abandoned one of her agents in hopes of smoothing relations with China.  There was some "greater good" reasoning.  One might remember Gary Powers, the U2 pilot, and the anger some felt at his coming back from the dead.  Bond goes straight to M's apartment, knowing that in coming back from the shadows, you need some real friends.  The future M questioned his judgement in not wanting to fade away in what could have been a kind of bliss.  Commitment, and a duty to the franchise, keep him on, past what bureau testing might advise.

DorkBot PDX

Steve Holden and I crashed this subculture on invitation from Ward Cunningham, inventor of the Wiki and now working on his Federated Wiki concept (mostly in JavaScript).  The venue was Someday Lounge, where I'd been long ago for Esozone, and just a few doors down from Backspace (connected management and kitchen as I understand it) where Tim DuRoche was playing jazz that evening -- I found out by happenstance.  SW 5th and Davis.

This event had me thinking of Trevor and his performance as Gadgetto by William Black.  Having mechanical and/or electronic music emerge mysteriously from black (opaque) boxes was one of the themes of the evening.  They called it open mike, meaning OK to fail.  Some seemed to take this literally, making the talk about failure and having the demo not work.  Such discomfort may be therapeutic when properly channeled.  This seemed a good venue for that.  Dork out at DorkBot.

Some of the presentations were quite successful, especially the purely musical numbers (though perhaps with visualizers -- the Wall Street audio collage was amazing, child-sounding voices reading headlines about a moody character).

A full-sized doll house served as the target of a specifically customized projection.  Characters danced in each window and light schemes took over the surface.  The display was seasonally apropos as control of lighting by electronic means is a lot of what winter is about, decoration-wise.

Much of the talk was about MIDI and pure data.  Meanwhile, at our table, the discussion was somewhat deeply into electronics, instrumentation, welding techniques and so on.  I was clearly in the presence of some very gifted and talented individuals.  Many thank yous to all concerned, and to Ward for alerting us about this bi-weekly gathering.  I look forward to being there again sometime.

We drove home past Dukes Landing, now abandoned.  A lot of musicians took advantage of that facility, to share with an audience.  Belmont street kids.  Muddy's.  A mostly vanished subculture by now.  They come and go.

The conversation at our table was educational, not run of the mill.  Much of it went over my head or got filed for future reference.  I like to connect the dots, but sometimes it's more dots than connections.

Winter Coders' Social

I'd not made it to one of these before, to the best of my recollection.  Diana was able to astound me quite easily, with tales of The Bodyguard, a suffragette posse that knew the jujitsu of Victorian England, all about canes and parasols, called bartitsu.  You've got to be kidding.  No for real.  She and I both whipped out suffragette photos on our cells (she had more, I just had the Dora Marsden shot).

I reconnected with quite a few of the good folks of Portland's open source community.  I've always felt Portlandia steered clear of such as Adam the Robot and other touch stone hallmarks of the world community known as geekdom.  That doesn't immediately resonate I realize.  To some, a geek is a tawdry side show act, another trafficker in snake oil.  I understand.  There's a dark underbelly to everything, why not be proud of a dark side?

We had a raffle, free to enter, so I guess not a fundraiser really.  More like potlatch economics in that the chiefs got to thump their brands, their drums.  Open Bastion gave out the top prize, a Nexus 7.  That's Steve's entity, the producer behind some of these conferences I write about.

Urban Airship seemed to have its act together, as did our open source denizens, who dutifully shared potluck.  I filled up on bean burritos (home cooked pintos in my crock pot) before the event, so as not to crave the smorgasbord too gluttonously.  The strategy worked, plus I'd burned 1000 calories earlier, at least.  Even with the beers, it was probably a net loss day, and that's a good thing when you're in my ballpark, stats-wise.

This was not a night for presentations, no Ignite format.  Ward Cunningham was there, as was Amber Case, people with high link counts, as in "weighty Friends" (rough translation into subculture-speak).  Steve and Ward hung out.  I've had some good times around Ward, at that Barcamp especially, but other times too.

Weird donuts were a feature, with the FireFox logo.

Steve heard a rumor that Tiger Bar on Broadway specialized in Blues on Tuesdays, so we made our way there by way of Deschutes Brewery.  No, they'd discontinued Blues some months ago and Tuesdays were movie nights, and tonight was The Watchmen.

We'd sort of barged in, in the middle.  Clearly some characters were having fun.  I don't pretend to be an expert all of a sudden.  I only just got started on The Avenguers, gimme a break.

Parking is no piece of cake in the Pearl on a Tuesday night.  I ended up quite far from the venue, but didn't mind.  The walks in semi-rain were refreshing.

Waling at night in a city is a pleasure I enjoy.

Steve had been planning to include some Raspberry Pi's in the raffle, but Michelle's read was we had enough to give away and she hadn't had enough chance to promote these exotic specimens.  I'd brought a number of them in my brief case.

She ended up with two, and during the raffle ad libbed that this five year old girl and her family might want one, as raffle winners, which they did.  I appeared mysteriously from the crowd and handed them one from my briefcase.  Steve let me carry them (he's their owner).

Judgement Day

I dove back into the world of state high school debate and elocution yesterday.  I paused in route to Ridgefield High, Washington State, to take a picture of my odometer going from 1999999 to 2000000.

I judged a public form about raising taxes versus cutting spending, and an interpretive reading contest.  Then I judged several spar sessions, where the topics are purposefully superficial -- it's the form and delivery that matter more.  "Wiley Coyote > Roadrunner" "Royalty > Celebrities", "mechanical pencil > ordinary #2 pencil", "email > snailmail", "football > soccer", "Star Wars > Star Trek", "broccoli > carrots".  These would be the affirmative "is better than" resolutions.  The Neg side takes the opposite view.

Spar:  AFF chooses from two resolutions:

One minute prep
AFF speaks (2 minutes)
Cross examination (1 minute)
One minute prep
NEG speaks (2 minutes)
Cross examination (1 minute)
AFF gives summary speech (1 minute)
NEG does the same (1 minute)

Maureen had given me the October 2012 issue of Harper's with High School Debate and the Demise of Public Speech by Ben Lerner, a former high school debater (a national champion even).  Ben talked a lot about the spread of "spreading" which is talking really fast like those voices speaking legalese during television commercials, and small print that goes by quickly everywhere.  In making reasoning somewhat unintelligible and intimidating, one creates more space for the slow plodding of unreason, for political sound bites.

Interestingly, he traces the Lincoln-Douglas style debate, Tara's specialty, and which slows it down and relates issues to values, to Phillips Petroleum, these days Conoco-Phillips.  This corporate person, and adviser to the National Forensics League, was having a hard time with "spreading" as well, and designed this newer event format (LD) to slow things down somewhat.

Ben considers that more evidence of the fragmentation of US discourse.  There's dumb slow political talk playing on sentiments, mixed with fast unintelligible legalese, and precious little in between.  He wonders if Occupy with its "open mic" experiments (people repeating others' words) marked the beginning of a revived folk discourse, more oriented towards democratic practices.

Gonzo said he'd read the article and photocopied it for his team captains.

I notice Burgerville is serving beer and wine in Washington.  Do we have that in Oregon yet?  That state is just so much ahead of ours in some ways.

Good seeing Gonzo, Ben and Izzy again.  Hello to Hannah.  Hello from Tara.

I was able to download from a fair selection of stop watch apps to my Razr / M (Android).  This helped with my timings.  Time is taken quite seriously in these events.  There might be a 30 second grace period here and there, but no more than that.

All Nighter

All nighters are frequent at our house, but mostly because the basement musician goes to a nocturnal schedule sometimes.  I'm up all night trying to get IPython Notebooks to work, while yakking with Jean, a Friend, by email, regarding Lincoln, the movie.

This is part of that Quaker Conversations practice I've been outlining on FaceBook ("movie night" is a subcategory).

Awhile back, I checked out what Quakers were saying and doing on Youtube and developed a short compilation.  Having a committee behind this work, at the Yearly level, seemed important at the time and I was getting some positive feedback.

This is a Mac OS that I'm attempting to trick out in ways Holden deems worthwhile.  He's all hyped about IPython Notebooks these days.  He's just back from Vegas, not short on sleep, and we decided on an all night work party.  He's Skyping with his girlfriend at the moment (she's back in the UK).

My installation process broke apparently because I don't have some Mac OS 10.4 SDK that gcc might compile against.  I'm in over my head on that one.  This whole Mac thing is pretty new to me.

The Mac Air I'm using actually belongs to my employer, which is why I felt I should notify a co-worker of a tiny almost imperceptible screen blemish that some sticklers would want fixed under warranty (replacing the screen as all one can do).  They may not care about it.  Just trying to be dutiful in protecting their investment.

Steve is just back from Las Vegas.  He was with the CloudStack people (do they CamelCase it?). That's an Apache project, somewhat competing with OpenStack I gather, and Steve is moving in Apache circles more and more.  He'd never been to Vegas before.

I was inspired to sketch some of the Quantum Field Theory in Python, just parsing out the particles, not computing at all.  I've also been agitating (just a little) to get our edu-sig page upgraded at Python.org.  Lots has been happening what with Python Tutor, Skulpt and who knows what all.

My read on Lincoln was he didn't see any long term solution that didn't build on the Constitution, hence his need for amendments.  Living in a perpetually divided condition based on some "negotiated peace" would be as prone to breakdown as any social order.

ISEPP Physics Lecture

Sean Carroll's talk was somewhat a continuation of Lisa Randall's.  Just as Lisa would shortly appear on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show (after her ISEPP talk), so had Sean just been on the Colbert Report.

Both Sean and Lisa are students of high energy particle physics with high aptitude for explaining their studies to a lay public.  Sean's topic was the Higgs boson, which he's recently written a book about.  The LHR is the world's largest machine ever if you define machine a certain way, really impressive in scale, a 17 mile underground ring that penetrates an underground river.  The process is relatively innocuous:  it collides protons at high speeds (closer to the speed of light than bullets by a long shot) and, just as importantly, collects the results with layers of detectors.

I dropped Carol (mom) and an oxygen tank at AFSC for the seasonal open house and headed downtown, where I was cast in a supporting role as one of the ushers.  A lot of us Wanderers were there for that purpose:  Patrick, Mark, Barry, Jeff, Christine, Dave, Glenn, Don, Lynn, myself.  This was a new venue.  Oregon's chancellor's office no longer has the funding it once did and these civic science lectures needed to squeeze into a smaller less expensive venue.  First Congregational Church is but a few blocks from the Schnitzer.  We still had our dinner in the Heathman, per usual.

The Higgs boson is what the $9 billion supercollider at CERN was supposed to discover, and apparently it has.  The Standard Model now seems uber-confirmed.  Quantum field theory is poised to enter a new era, with the sense that conventional reality has the particles it needs, and now it's time to turn to dark energy and dark matter to find out what makes those tick.

It's less the discovery of a particle that's at issue than the incorporation of a new field, the Higgs field, which is at relatively high energy compared to other fields which average around zero.  Will confirmation of some super-symmetry theory be a next outcome after this?  There's some hope of that.  The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is due to shut down for two years and when it reopens, will be upgraded to ram protons together even more violently.  Detecting and sifting then takes place, with an eye towards isolating what's interesting versus what's mundane.  The vast majority of collisions are uninteresting whereas aggregate statistics may tell a story.

As a phenomenon, the Higgs boson is conceived to last less than a zepto second.  Finding it was hard because the signature resultants could just as easily be the signature of non-Higgs decay.  Only aggregate statistics suggest that there's a Higgs field at work.  Once this field is accepted, it helps explain why fermions have mass.  The Higgs is what delays them and prevents any light speed electrons.  The Higgs field may be treated as their source of mass.

The lay audience asked many intelligent questions.  One lady gave a sermon.  It turned out later at the dinner that Sean is not especially friendly towards religionists.  He's not one of those who thinks science and religion need to "get along" although he's quick to admit religionists may do the same science, and just as admirably.  A young woman wanted to know about spin, and whether some particles might have spin greater then two.  Higgs bosons have zero spin, and a consensus seems to have developed that bosons have at most a spin value of two.

Sean's lecture contained an interesting subtext:  it's also about the people.  He dwelt on Nobel Prize winners not just because they're celebs but because one may learn from them, and he had.  Organizational skills matter.  Why CERN and not Texas?  Thereby hangs a tale (several in fact).  But in sharing credit where due, how fair is the limitation of Nobels to like three at the most.  And was it the Higgs field because he had the most interesting name of the group?

He dwelt on the fact we were looking at a guy-heavy roster and addressed that with his scientific assessment that women have in fact been subjugated by their "lesser half" (as some fondly refer to XYs, though I'd say this is more about archetypes than relatively "simple" genetics).  Trends were moving rapidly to overcome and/or heal this rift in access however.  Public libraries have made a difference (they did in his case for sure).  He showed some graphs to make his point.  The audience was cheered and expressed relief and encouragement of these trends with sincere applause.

Even if QFT (quantum field theory) is getting work done, in the way of glass beads, simply re-presenting existing content with remapped terminology could be done for exercise.  Calling them quarks was quirky and quirky sticks, like I'm not saying "muons" and "gluons" aren't cool, as phonemes (phonemic memes), just that we could remap the constellations the same way, wrap them with alternative namespaces.  And sometimes do.  Or we look at it as other civilizations did or do, or will or might or might have already (same diff in some ways, civs are flip sides of cosmic casts of characters).

A whole subculture has grown up around high energy physics, with its own ethos and characters.  Although the economy has gone through a lot of resources, it's mostly value added.  They're not trying to kill anyone, just figure out what makes things tick.  The demands / stresses placed on tooling, data processing, constructing, planning, collaborating, yield benefits outside of CERN, certainly.  Take the World Wide Web for example, to which the CERN ecosystem gave rise, in complement with Tim Berners-Lee and the hypertext true believers (count me a young convert, reading Ted Nelson's book in Jersey City, hoping the Web might really happen (and it really did)).

Wanderers 2012.11.28

Elizabeth Furse spoke knowledgably and from much personal experience at the Linus Pauling House this morning.

I came late, as pre-arranged, given Sarah Angel (a nonhuman) needed to be left at the vets for a procedure.

The subject was treaties and do they matter.  Article 6 of the Constitution is quite important here.  Elizabeth, an immigrant from South Africa, served three terms in the US Congress as one of Oregon's representatives.

We learned a lot about the "termination movement", which got rolling in Congress in the 1950s when people grew tired of honoring treaty obligations.

Oregon had much valuable timber along the coast.  Simply ending a tribes existence, a kind of "de-listing" was the easiest way to get at those resources.  Governor McCain help free up a lot of land for deforestation by commercial interests.

In many ways, the Federal government is defined by its interface with other sovereignties, including these internal ones.  Tribal populations, of necessity, have steeped themselves in both the lore and the technical arcana, the better to further prevent erosion of their rights.

We had a lengthy Q&A period (in which I didn't participate), touching on many issues, including casinos and the Indian Gaming laws.  Elizabeth is masterful with this material and a font of relevant information.  I'm so glad I managed to stop in.

Plain Speech: A Meditation

A myth (or story with teachings) within the Quaker world, is success in business followed the early period of persecution (special prosecution).  Enough members of the nobility, celebs, had publicly joined to make the sect respectable even in Court (somewhat like Scientology in that way).  At that point, a reputation for plain truthful speech would get you far, as this quality was sorely missing in business and gave the practitioner, the Friend, an edge.

However, what is "plain speech"?  Quakers prided themselves on pretty much purging their grammar of notions of class.  The familiar "you" (back then "thou") was used towards everyone.  We should pause to remember how many languages, outside of English, inflect the "you" according to rank in society.  The grammar tells you your place, which helps keep it unconscious.

English becomes peculiarly frustrating in that it fails to obey the rules, is not inflected to read "inferior speaking to a superior", not by default.  You have the Quakers to thank for that to some degree.  They pioneered a kind of egalitarianism that was highly compatible with the spread of democracies and their rhetorical bastions.

But speech may be classist in other ways.  An accent packed with dodgy euphemisms that seems to not "cut through it" has the aspect of "not plain". What will it take for Quakers to stay plain in both dress and speech?  I don't think it means unappreciative of highly fanciful.  There's a unity of opposites here.

The plainness is to allow the bigger moves to become apparent.  People willingly suspending their individuality to help some "will" be expressed:  that's where things may go awesomely wrong or awesomely right depending.  In making a movie, the stars work together to create a story as conducted through a director, screenwriters and so on.  The whole is not just some sum of the parts.  Or: "summation" is not just the simple operation we think.

Musical events have this channeling ouija-like ability, other shared works of art, even TV series (coming out in "serial" is how Charles Dickens made a living -- back when people relied on their own imaginations instead of telecasts).

If you come across a Quaker cussing, talking like a pirate, swearing a blue streak, is that "plain speech"?  Should this man or woman be eldered?  She or he may be an elder.  Perhaps a psychopath?  Perhaps, but since when are we called to serve as judge before Judgement Day?

My definition of "plain speech" would encompass the standard est vocabulary for example (a late 1900s philosophy talk and workout), easily, wherein metonymy (synecdoche more specifically) was sometimes used to equate people with their anal orifices.

No, this was a real philosophy, and not necessarily lobotomized (unintelligent) just because crass or crude.  More just TV-14 for language, sex and violence (people told their true to life stories, though the emphasis was on Logic more than History, in the Hegelian sense).

I saw Tommy Chong and his wife in a live performance last night at Helium, one of Portland's many comedy clubs.  I learned from them too.  I found them plain spoken enough.  More than many, lets put it that way.  I was happy to bask in their non-hypocrisy, far from the euphemisms and perpetual pussy footing of many a meetinghouse Friend, more straitjacketed by their matrix.

Tonight it was The Walking Dead at The Bagdad.  I saw at least one other member of the meeting there.  I won't officially propose this AMC tele-drama for the syllabus though (the Adult Education program), at least not for the "meetup" format, as it's a serial, still ongoing, so a bigger commitment in terms of time.

Our practice is starting with the "all in one go" event, though Lord of the Rings is a trilogy, and I hear they're extending Star Wars as well.  I say lets start with bite size and work up to it.  If a group wants to peel off and do a series, fine, but I'm not volunteering to convene such a thing.

Bopping About

I missed Wanderers last night, lost in work, though I'd meant to go.  Sometimes Don reminds me but he knew I had Tara visiting for just a week.  She was elsewhere though.

Oh well, I ran into Glenn at the supermarket and he updated me.  Yes, I'd heard this guy before, at an Ignite, right?  Interesting.  He helps advise on the voting infrastructure aspects of democratic governmental forms.

Voting isn't the whole picture, but a true secret balloting system is great infrastructure.  I've suggested every high school needs one, with open source voting software the students are free to, encouraged to, dissect and discuss.  Which is not to mandate electronic voting to all experiments, no way.  So many ways to go on that score.

This is ricochet week in terms of bouncing around, or bopping about as we might say in the UK.

Sam Lanahan hosted Urners at Bread and Ink for a fine get together.  I haven't seen him for a long while.  He was looking forward to having two of his three kids visit (a little younger than Tara) -- with his third on a sojourn in Brazil.  He was looking forward to seeing Lincoln.

Good seeing Alexia, Sam, Reed, wish I'd popped in to say hi to Lea, the Valsquiers... we won't make it as far north as Stillaguamish country this year I don't think.  That's been part of our ritual in the past.

We still celebrate NavAm heritage though, regardless of itinerary, and toast to a bright future for original peoples of the Pacific Northwest (and by extension, peoples elsewhere who've live through really hard transformations, killing fields).

Great Kachina dolls at the Hyde residence.

I've welcomed the opportunity to see the inside of more Quaker homes.  Josh and I overlapped on committee work.  We're already Facebook friends, why not meet in person.  We had coffee together at Fresh Pot, after which I stayed on to keep working (have wifi will work).

Food Not Bombs is back to using the Quaker meetinghouse under Lindsey's direction.  I played a key role yesterday, per my report to the listserv.

Lincoln (movie review)

I'd been delving into pre US Civil War history already, fleshing out my sketchy knowledge of the Quakers' saga, which forms a fine trunk through which to branch out into much of US history, as Human Smoke is disclosing (I'm reading it on my Kindle).

As David Prideaux explained it at meeting (Stark Street), this is not an epic battle movie, like Waterloo, nor a biography of Lincoln, so much as a dramatization of the machinations surrounding the the passing of the 13th amendment to the US Constitution.

How did that come about?

Lincoln is well spoken, and played as an intuitive by Danny Day-Lewis.  He's loved by the people but, as important, he is respected by his inner circle, even as they feel free to open up to him with divergent views.

He lives with a democratic demeanor, not as a lord or superior.  He tells stories.  He seizes the moment, and takes control.  There's a chief executive aspect, which comes out in his lengthy soliloquies about the law and his doubts about the lawfulness of what he has already done to set the slaves free, as property of a rebellious enemy.  He's confiscating enemy assets by using his war powers, but now he wants a longer lasting civilian version that will long outlast these more freakish circumstances.

African Americans have already been fighting and dying in Grant's army.  How could any peace be developed which involved returning former slaves to their original estate?   Unless some law could decree an end to and/or outlaw slavery, a ratcheting back might solidify a state of disunion, rather than unify a state under a shared standard.

The House of Representatives is another main theater or continued scene / setting for this film.  Here we listen in on the patriarchs who seem so like these anthropomorphic animals, cartoon characters.

I'm thinking of Blacksad, the comic strip and graphic novel.  The scene here was comic in that same way, in the sense of exaggeration or caricature -- not because of unfaithfulness to the true past.  Lets remember Dante's "divine comedy" is a book about Hell.

The audience laughed when everyone in that chamber (except the Tommy Lee Jones character and some others) loudly booed the idea of a vote for women -- what might happen after black men got the vote, heaven forbid (if ever, centuries from then).

Sally Fields was strong, and again the audience laughed, with empathy, when she said "all history will remember of me is I was crazy".

Indeed, when history gets tightly focused and everyone knows they're in the eye of the storm so to speak, there's a tendency to play to the unseen audience, the future if you will.  To vote for the 13th amendment was to make a statement in the eyes of some anonymous future America, another tomorrow, a projected United States.

To enshrine anti-slavery edicts within a standard bearer for democratic forms of democracy, was to answer the call of logic and self consistency.  How could a democracy with an "all men created equal" premise forever deny itself the consequences of such a philosophy?  The war would end when cognitive dissonance was lowered -- that seemed the gist of Lincoln's therapy.

I was seeing this as a 2nd exercise of an emerging Quaker practice involving seeing movies together (maybe plays, standup comics) and discussing them, blogging about them.  Robert joined us in that capacity.  I hope to get him together with Steve for some followup conversation.  Cloud Atlas was our earlier trial run and has resulted in some emailed group discussions.