A Last First Day in May

The maxi taxi was kept busy today, with three different drivers.  I poked around on-line, ended up with customer service, on a Sunday, to make sure I had current proof of insurance in the glove box of this 1997 Nissan, in an earlier chapter an escape pod from Georgia (the state not the country).

Denny is in, from Shanghai, our Isolated Friend and family, home to roost, like a jet coming in after Snyders, also Isolated, but just hours by car away.  Like us, the Snyders have also been active with Bridge City and, in fact, one of today's Nissan drivers was from that other Monthly Meeting in our NPYM branch in Portland.

I missed Meeting for Worship (m4w) however, as I was accompanying high school friends to our community organizing and service event at the Food Carts.  We took over a tented section off to the side, where the business had yet to open, and ordered mostly from a breakfast trailer across the court.

This Food Cart Pod has high self esteem, and justly so.  The Mac 'n Cheese guy is the Buzz Lightyear of his category, with a cool art deco kiosk on a palette, straight from the kiosk factory.

Tara had other social obligations at Slappy Cakes nearby, the always-crowded-on-a-Sunday cook your own pancakes at the table place.  You can't just safely retrofit a place, this took some forethought, and hence the market edge.

Our Food Cart meetup has to do with the Door Project, which involves campers downtown.

Me on Facebook today, adding to another Friend's thread:

The US sees prison as its way of sheltering its homeless. Criminalizing sleeping in public space (camping) helps shorten the circuit twixt a jobless existence and a forced labor existence where you get to make desks for the school kids (if lucky). Prison also keeps you from voting which is convenient for a lot of people. Warehousing homeless in jails is just how America deals with it -- and no, this doesn't make it the envy of the world. Seems more like Mordor. Sauron for president. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sauron-For-President/187727034637119

I'm plowing through a Kindle version of Popko's excellent primer on subdividing spheres by geodesic methods.  He's one of the pioneers in the field and had a front row seat on the geodesic dome's grand debut in architecture and logistics.

I'm enjoying his narrative, in addition to the mathematical explanations.  He's good about including the names of more players, such as T.C. Howard, Duncan Stuart, Don Richter and others. I recommend this resource to STEM students.

Speaking of STEM, we talked a lot at the carts about how Portland has been forced to cut back on Outdoor School, reducing it from a week to three days;  more evidence of the decrepitude of our Republic as it slides into its Bananahood phase.

Blundering On

Speaking of blunders, there's increasing agitation among Pacific Islanders regarding the likelihood that militants who depend on LAWCAP's welfare system are going to further despoil the Pacific environment as they put on a show of doing their "work" (a kind of theater).

Mostly males engage in this lifestyle.  They enjoy being told what to do and carrying out orders, don't actually prize thinking / acting for themselves that much.  They cost a lot to sustain and their "war games" help exhaust peak oil, putting more strain on everyone.

As Smedley Butler pointed out in no uncertain terms, war is a racket.  The USAers are being groomed to hate / fear the North Koreans by LAWCAP's investment bankers, as stockpiling antipathy is a necessary prerequisite to the massive waste, the orgy of destruction, called "war" in modern times (more it's just barely managed mayhem, and a way to win fat contracts).

George Orwell and President Eisenhower were both prescient.

In earlier times, we had this myth that civilians could control the militants in sophisticated democracies, whereas Banana Republics where characterized by "juntas" who "governed" by self-appointment and cronyism.

The Gitmo saga has made this myth a lot less believable.  Presidents have been shoved aside in the mad rush to create a post USA or pseudo USA of gigantic proportions.

It's hard to "just follow orders" and "defend democracy" at the same time.  With enough choosing the former over the latter, one loses that which originally supplied some legitimacy to one's cause.

Brilliant Blunders

This was the title of Mario Livio's new book, just out a couple days ago.  He'd spoken in WDC and Seattle about it already, ISEPP / Portland being his third stop.  Tomorrow:  Science Friday with Ira Flato, a talk at PSU (Kramer Hall) and another book signing at Powell's.

ISEPP has hosted Mario twice before in Portland.  I thought this time he seemed more rested, but then I think the noosphere's in a better place as well.

Mario puts real leg work into his books and tries to discover for himself what's so.  He's something of a myth buster, e.g. exploding canards about Phi (esoteric to know any).

This time he disabused us of the idea that Darwin had been aware of Mendel's work.  He didn't have the paper, and the one book he had that mentions Mendel still had the relevant page uncut (you had to cut open pages more back then).  Mario had a picture of that.  And besides, even if one had read that account, it was superficial and wouldn't have amounted to a hill of beans for Darwin.

Darwin's blunder was to assume with his times that heredity was a kind of blending.  Traits would shmoo together, not stay sharp.  Such a model actually works against the possibility of evolution by natural selection, as some critics subsequently pointed out.

Einstein's blunder was to take the cosmological constant out of his equations, once universal expansion was discovered.  He thought universal expansion made said constant unnecessary and regretted having introduced it.  On the contrary, the latest empirical results suggest an accelerating rate of expansion, making the constant useful.  He should have kept it.

Finally, Linus Pauling got DNA wrong, publishing an inside-out, triple helical version.  Mario thought his alpha helix discovery primed the pump in that he'd withheld the latter discovery for thirteen years while he sought verification, and then was proved right all along.

Given the pressure to find the structure of DNA, he decided to risk a theory that, in retrospect, went against basic chemical principles (all those mutually repulsive phosphorous atoms would need lots of hydrogen bonds to hold them together, but then how would DNA register as an acid without exploding?).

I asked during Q&A if we Portland, Oregonians, proud of our native son, should keep circulating the story that a third Nobel Prize might have been his had he been allowed to go to England to see Rosalind Franklin's pictures.  The numbskull State Department, terrified of McCarthyites, a kind of low-brow know-nothing, had denied him a visa.  That denial is on display at OSU, a badge of honor.

Mario dispelled this myth as well, saying Pauling did make it to England shortly thereafter and ignored the opportunity to collaborate with Rosalind.  "So it was his own damned fault" I concluded, to audience laughter.  Mario shares the view that the McCarthy period was a dark one in this country.

At the dinner, Mario talked more about telescopy and astrophysics.  He's the head of the Space Science Telescope Institute these days, a fitting position in an illustrious career.

He also talked about art, expressing high admiration for Vermeer (he collects art books, had just bought two that very day at Powell's for $150).

I asked if, budget permitting, a telescope similar to Hubble, in Earth's orbit, would still be useful to science, even in if the James Webb works as advertised.  He was more starry eyed about an L2-placed large array that would look sharply at distant Earth-like planets, something Webb might start to do (if all goes well).

I'd remembered from my three day stint at STScI how some of the folks wondered why Earth-pointing telescopes (aka "spy satellites") of somewhat similar design, could get replaced yet their Hubble couldn't be, for budget reasons.  Why those priorities?

Joe Arnold asked a series of questions about geniuses going off the deep end, making "blunders squared" so to speak.  Newton, for example.  Didn't has work in alchemy make him at least a third crazy?

Terry piped up about the poverty of any cosmological narrative back then and the need to resort to theological terms.  Science was not yet up to shouldering such burdens as the story of the cosmos, and yet humans have a need to explore that regardless of how little is known.

Another question during the Q&A was whether the rate of new discoveries was tapering off.  Mario thought the life sciences were poised for exponential expansion, whereas physics, particle physics in particular, had the boosted power of the LHC and maybe advanced LIGO to look forward to (a gravitational wave detector), but then what?   There might be fewer breakthroughs to look forward to there.  Science is not monolithic after all, is more amoeba-like.

Finally, at the dinner we talked about communications with extra-terrestrials and whether we should be concerned about revealing our presence, as Stephen Hawking seemed to counsel.  Mario thought the difficulties in communicating across a "generation gap", in terms of how long the relative time a life form had been around -- a difference of perhaps a billion years -- would be as great a barrier as the gap in distance.  How well do we "communicate" with bacteria?

The problem with our notion of "intelligent life" is we have so little to compare it with, other than its diversity on planet Earth.  What would dolphins say I wonder?  If a lion could talk we would not understand him.

Tara got a personalized copy of the book while chatting about her interest in physics.

WQM (Spring 2013)

:: coast trip / quarterly meeting ::

Camp Cleawox is a favorite of the Girl Scout subculture, and it was our privilege, as Quakers from around the Willamette Valley and beyond, to converge there.

I came late on Saturday, having enjoyed Terry's talk Friday night, a long-anticipated event in our little ISEPP world, partially overlapping with said Quakers, through Doug Strain et al.  Carl Thatcher knows some of the story.

I've cast Girl Scouts big time in my science fiction, which trends towards the "Tarzania" variety, or, in more urban settings, highlights nomadic chic, with gizmos.  Sometimes we ride in bizmos.  Couldn't resist.

The camp was good at re-grounding me in the realities, in this case of what forest life is like, when you're in close quarters yet clumped, with paths in between.  Are they meeting in the other hamlets?  Is there a party tonight?

The Lodge supposedly has a schedule, but a lot of stuff is ad hoc.  Some girls feel sadly left out.  They think the popular girls are maybe running things.  At camp, we test out theories, and begin a life long process of constructing a model of reality.  Camp David is no different.

I pitched my tent amidst those already adjacent the lodge.  I was uncertain about temperature, having forgotten to bring blankets.  A Friend lent me one, but I'd heard some warnings about how cold it was the night before (when I was still in Portland).

As it turned out, May 4, 5 were really warm at the Oregon coast, with locals exclaiming about the heat.  We didn't get to a temperature drop until Nye Beach in Newport, a steamer clams stop for me.  The mom and daughter (passengers) phoned ahead for Chinese food.  The mom was on a pilgrimage to revisit Sylvia Hotel, which in her day let beach front rooms for only $60 a month.

The girl scouts do Girl Scout Math, which doesn't fit the stereotype of just noodling with a pencil.  There's algebra involved, and some calculus, but also using forces, maintaining equipment, hauling supplies and inventory from point A to point B.  Scouting in other words.  Navigating, organizing, not leaving it all to the Boys.  Designing, building... I've used Food Not Bombs as a role model, when it comes to cooperating, urban planning, counting calories, making friends.

Larry and I dipped into Florence for coffee, from where Tara and I got in touch about her return.  The night before, another Friend and I were at an amazing restaurant in Old Town, the one with the bar and the cakes and the giant chalkboard menu, crab encrusted halibut etc.  We got the last table.  Lucky devils.

I did manage to join in a Meeting for Worship. The testimony against torture was strong, somewhat despairing that we were stuck here for so long, a problem child, error prone beyond wise.  Could Universe afford us?  Are we too needy to survive?  Perennial questions.

May First Festivities

:: May 1st / PDX ::

I don't take it as sacrilegious or even trivializing to take in May Day (May First) as a fashion event.  Yes, I'm talking about the red and black, the workers of the world, as well as the displaced and "undocumented" (plenty of disk space, and how is a Facebook account not a "document"?).

I've grown in my respect for the fashion industry over time.  Yes, lots of money and resources, but the usage of same is relatively benign.  Models push towards extremes, an athletic achievement, and the human imagination clothes them.  Picture a Survivaball [tm] on the runway in Milan!  Grin.

I was backup, in the batter's box, in case extra muscle was needed, but for the most part I was free to move about and shoot pictures from various angles.  I liked this woman's simple cut dress and somewhat elven boots.  This Peruvian look was interesting.  Peru is a focus these days, because of TPP (some WTO-like nonsense).  I'm already looking for the spoof web site.

Ironically, I had a full day of work to put in and wasn't billing AFSC for time on the clock.  I'm volunteer through NPYM to keep an eye on things Quaker-related where this Committee is concerned, one steered by many Meetings and even some Churches, though EFI has a history of feeling repelled by various species of Red, not to mention Brown (UPS has rescued Brown as an OK uniform color -- a handsome service, for both women and men).

AFSC is a creature of Haverford College and such places, a rather cerebral / academic institution that panders to the neurally endowed.  Some claim such pandering is inconsistent with Diversity but that's like saying a circus doesn't have enough variety of freak.  Spoiled brats are freaks.  Who is in no way a freak of nature, raise your hand?

I find it amusing that all these white people stormed into North America in order to accuse the people here of moving about illegally.  The King of England hath spoken and there shall be no Trespass and blah blah.  Dang but idiocy spreads quickly, can't contain that UK and its private property obsessions, with some groups qualified to lord it over others where forest lands were concerned.  Robin Hood and all that.  Monty Python sums it up.

Some of the guys, a few gals, were demonstrating their right to be anonymous, to where you couldn't even see their faces (though for some, that was more a costume and they kept monkeying with it, so we saw them).  I, on the other hand, was sporting my AFSC name tag.  True, it got twisted and lots of times you couldn't see it, but I was basically the only one wearing a lanyard with my name glaring out through the plastic.  A fashion statement there, even a bold one, though I'm more behind the camera where recording models is concerned.

Lots of people had their cameras.  You demonstrate some distance with those, if you want to.  You might be a journalist from a skeptical far right political group, just exercising your right as a member of the public, to mingle with traitorous curs.  But then you have the option of self branding in various ways.  Me with my name tag, others with colors, such as red and black.  Carry a sign, hold a balloon, just show your solidarity.

The police were on the clock too and not especially unfriendly.  This is good practice and low key, a time to get out the bicycles, motorcycles, horses, even like a SWAT team or two to guard the bridges, in case the anarchists made a break for it and tried to unite with the forklift people in those East Side warehouses, where Willamette Valley produce is handled.  What if the Reds took control of the tomato supply?  The police were ready.

I thought the Asian girl (Cambodian?) behind me was one of the most fashionable, with bright layers, designed to change as the day progressed.  Bright orange (the NGO's theme color), blue, black... Awesome.  I also enjoyed meeting up with Crystal, back from Arizona.  Given partially overlapping scenario Universe it may be months before I see her again, one never knows.  We worked on Verboten Math together for Portland Free School.

On the way from my car, other side of Burnside, I went by the Door Project and snapped a few doors (means I took their picture).  Then I interviewed a guy about zoning for camping, what we call "shanty towns" in the rest of the world, but don't want for our too-good-for-poverty "developed" world.

If we upgraded the services and technology, the way Occupy Portland was attempting to do for itself (with not much cooperation from the Pentagon, known for its occupation equipment and aspirations), then camps more like Dignity Village, not right in the heart of downtown, would be feasible  (expand the Clackamas County TRP program?).  Something for Metro to think about?  Not in a vacuum.  Many great cities wrestle with these same planning / zoning problems.

Not that you can't have skyscraper villages, perhaps a section of floors.  This guy was tired of the inside of a tent and would probably not be first in line for a Cubby [tm] either, no matter how much WiFi was provided.

Lindsey was trying out a new look as well.  Compare Occupy (then) with May Day (now).  She and Melody (a couple of two years) were headed to a film showing.  Some of the youth Melody works with have been busy on film projects and these are starting to come into the public eye more.

Division Growth

The title is reminiscent of the "multiplication by division" meme, yet in this case also means a street close to my current position, parallel to my street.  Division Street.  Some are using the division sign, as a marketing device.  Each street develops an identity.  Hawthorne is flanked to the north by Belmont and to the south by Division, a tri-some.  In 97214, that's a coordinate system that makes sense.  My activities have density here, if we draw the zig-zaggy world line.  Also Rome.  New Jersey / Manhattan area.  WDC.

Glenn and I sampled a coffee shop that's been there awhile I think, but who knows how long.  We were amidst a lot of leveling and rebuilding.  I don't know about every city but Portland is in a boom town phase in some dimensions (not all, no, not all).  The patch of town at the bottom end of the cable car (the overhead tram) was one of the fastest growing zip code areas in North America there for a bit, in terms of the size and rate of its building, or so I heard, not able to cross-check.

Speaking of cross-check, Glenn was a source of information on the Knights Templar today.  His reading forays take him to this and that topic.  His claim was the Jolly Roger was officially a Knights maritime brand.  I find the Internet echoes that story all over.  I've always made an esoteric link from that symbol to the XO, which the XO site playfully deals with.

Portland gets perceived through the lens of Grimm, not just Portlandia, the former a lot less grim than the Miami-centered Dexter, the latter, skit based, being more directly spoofy.  Last night Blue House viewers went through a Season One episode featuring a pig like pork eater who lived in a geodesic dome that blew up.  Our Airstream hero guy (trailer HQS near the Fremont Bridge) can sniff out these fairy tale creatures, thanks to his own freakish paranormal abilities. I was curious whether Portland would be overtly outed as the backdrop for this fiction (vs. "anonymous Gotham"), as Miami serves Dexter and as Phoenix serves Breaking Bad.  Yes, that's the approach taken.

Speaking of Division, I enjoyed lunch with friends at New Thai Blues on Tuesday.  That was my last recorded use of the new Alaska Airlines Visa card.  As of last night, I had to cancel that sucker, for some reason not in my wallet.  A new one is on the way.  Monday was Food Not Bombs, a classic.

Django Unchained (movie review)

If you come to Django directly from reading Bucky Fuller's Speculative Prehistory in Critical Path, then you can bet one meme comes through strongly and clearly:  the caste of people who get to mount horses and lord it over others, taking advantage of their human + nonhuman size, is a real factor in storytelling.

Tarantino really runs with it.

In Fuller's telling, the other caste of landlubber was the on-foot migratory type, the shepherd, the infantry guy trudging through the mud.  Whole peoples wandered, sometimes pastors with their flocks.

Then you had your sea-goers, more or less hard core.  These were archetypes (stereotypes), as what he wove for us was cosmo-graphical and somewhat unbelievable unless played backwards as encoded glimpses of the far future, when we have ways of tele-projecting our mer-people.

Tarantino has a lot of fun with this film.  His ideal audience has already gone through a strong comic book / manga phase, understands about fiction and science fiction.  The uber-violence is cartoon violence, developed from over-exaggerated caricatures engaged in tense contests of will.  The Wild West has long provided such a back drop for our morality plays.  Science fiction like Serenity takes this Old West as a template.

The movie is set just before the Civil War and the protagonists are almost time travelers from our day in their level of alienation from the slave-riddled South.  The German might be typecast forward as a post Civil War carpetbagger.

The parody of the KKK, making fun of those little eye holes (figuratively speaking) is part of the film's wry comedy.  Westerns tend to be uber-comical for their exaggerated lines, and their uber-violence.

One thinks one is getting deep inside the South's psyche with DiCaprio, but Candyland is deliberately hard to decipher.  The slave head of household is a behind the scenes father to the estate, as he takes a brandy in the back room and elders the gentleman farmer.  The slave sees through the ruse, is not blind like his master.

The German guy is not used to not getting his way and feels somewhat bullied.  His North-South altercation DiCaprio what leaves Django on his own, and the movie posing as a prequel, which is another Western cliche:  a hero is born, more movies to come, Unchained but the first about our bounty hunter's rampage through the West, the next batman.

If you want to enjoy this film but cannot stomach the violence, e.g. if you're Quaker, then I suggest watching Seven Psychopaths first as a warm-up exercise.  Get used to these excesses of the imagination, qua imagination.  No one is suggesting that real life is really like this.

Wanderers 2013.4.9

Two of us around the table were Princeton alumni, and so knew of Blair Arch, Blair Hall, and maybe Blairstown, New Jersey.  John Insley Blair was to railroads in the industrializing east, near New York, what Sam Hill was to roadways in our area:  an entrepreneurial make-it-happen kind of guy.  He pretty much personified the railroad tycoon of the 1800s, friendly to Lincoln, likewise in the railroad biz.

Yet he's not a well known character based on the histories we read today.  Check any grand sweeping view of US history on the shelves today, and see if he's in the index.  Elliot Trommald, our historian story teller, pointed out that the New York Times had tried to objectively rank financial giants, in terms of their holdings adjusted for inflation, and by their measures Blair was certainly up there with JP Morgan, other heavyweights.

Given Elliot is an historian, he understands there's a lot of forensic science involved, police work, and piecing together puzzles.  What may account for Blair's relative obscurity, strangely enough, was his handwriting.  So much of it seems impenetrable.  He was self educated, self made, to a great degree, and kept all his own books.  He played it close to the vest.  This makes it difficult for those who come later to decipher all that went on.

Elliot has done a lot of work looking into this man and his family.  The Scribner family and company intersects with the Blairs through John's daughter.  Even with so much unreadable handwriting, there's much substantive history to be woven from this cloth.

Elliot has also studied Lincoln quite a bit and presented to Wanderers about him before.  As an illustration of the forensic challenges, he circled a certain quote about the dangers of corporations, oft repeated, including recently in a book by Al Gore, that really cannot be attributed to Lincoln. The paragraph has the lilt and cadence of a pseudo-Lincoln (Lincolnesque), and that fools people, some of them always (the gullible make so much history possible).

Many of our guests that evening wanted to discuss the concept of "corporate personhood", what that means and how it came to be that the money games were so obviously slanted to serve those puppeting corporate persons.  This seemed a murky area in that few of us present had much legal training in corporate law.  What's an "artificial person" versus a real one, and could "artificial people" tell lies to protect themselves?  What would Asimov say?

:: click for larger view ::

Birthday Party (Spring 2013)

Sarah and Bob are dear friends from Wanderers circles, although Glenn and I first met them at Esozone.  Don met them at Terwilliger Plaza, where he was part of an inner circle caring for Doug Strain.

Glenn, Don and I, as an older posse of Wild West types (it seemed) joined Bob & Sarah, her sister Katie and partner Scott, Michelle and Jessie (the later of The Modern Golem, a Portland band) in a reserved room at one of Portland's best Japanese restaurants.  We enjoyed a fantastic time together.  Bob, like myself, is a Bucky Fuller fan and our memories drifted back to the D.W. Jacobs play in 2006, when I got to have breakfast with Allegra.  Bob had come to Esozone in 2008 to catch Trevor's talk on Bucky.

Yikes, first I started entering the special room in giant clod hopper shoes, such that I felt awkwardly like the monster in Young Frankenstein trying to play his role.  Then, upon removing my shoes (exposing big fuzzy white socks) I fumbled the camera, sending her crashing to the floor.

This was my third, count 'em 1, 2, 3, Nikon Coolpix S8200, the best camera ever for me.  Fortunately, a corner of the plastic housing took the brunt, cushioning the delicate internals as she hit the concrete. With an over-abundance of super-glue applied the next day, she is probably sufficiently repaired to last well into 2014 if not longer, InshAllah.

The quality of the pictures appears undiminished.

I posted to dev@democracylab this morning, after breakfast with Steve Holden, emeritus PSF chairman, writing:

"""
I have worked in the voting industry by the way, for Project Vote! aka
Americans for Civic Participation, based in DC at the time (I was support
staff for field people).  That was the Reagan-Mondale contest.  I learned a
lot about electioneering then.  Here in Portland I've been active with
DemocracyLab, which pioneers new forms of social media which might be
considered democracy-advancing.
"""

Kirby, member of Python Software Foundation, to David Mertz, Elections
Administrator, Python Dictatorship

Context:  PSF members recently voted by secret ballot, David Mertz
administrating.  We had record participation via an eVoting mechanism.
However the ballot itself was changing up to the last minute and that
confused some voters as to what they were voting on, such that the members
private list is filled with debate about whether to re-run the election.  I
say "Python Dictatorship" because we use the title "Benevolent Dictator for
Life" (BDFL) with respect to Guido, the guy who got the ball rolling and
continues to guide Python-the-language as a work in progress.

The members list archives itself is private and that's OK. Most of the content would bore those not vested to some nitty gritty level in the future of this group.

Likewise some AFSC lists and meetings are by invitation or come with a role. In government, they use the word "classified" which is short for "restricted access".

Software provides micro-management over readability and writability, such as via the POSIX ownership infrastructure (chmod etc.). At higher levels, within CMS frameworks such as Plone, administrators have all sorts of ways to curtain off and refine views.

The whole idea of "need to know" is the basis for any great piracy (enterprise) as we learn in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (one of Bucky's).

Speaking of AFSC, the scoop there is I've been circulating some Linus Pauling House research into the roles Quakers played with regard to "Indians" (in the sense of native Americans). I'll share more of that in these blogs at a later time.

Argo (movie review)

I usually like to write my movie reviews without peeking at what others have said.  That's just a game I play with myself.  Put my cards on the table and then maybe read others' stuff after.  In this case though, I did a fair amount of homework reading more background, but not a lot more.

Like many viewers of the film, I knew parts of the movie would be fake as this was not purporting to be a documentary.  This was a Hollywood film poking somewhat ironic fun at itself, with the director being told to his face, as an actor, that old cliche about how any monkey can be taught to direct a film in a day or two.  That's just another way of saying there's an immense gulf between a well and poorly directed film and/or agency and/or whatever needs directing.

I went with a film maker and photographer who plies her trade to some degree.  Her trajectory as a filmmaker had swerved a bit.  She did community access TV after inheriting family property that needed managing.  She was present when the Latino gay bar, which means family friendly in ways you may not get if Anglophone, got bashed by out of zoners and effectively closed by violence and threats, but the news shows didn't want to touch the story.  This was over 10 years ago.  We were having beer in a successor to the space when she told me of these events, partially caught on film.

She also spied in the women's stalls for me at the movie theater and reported they were gushing about Ben Affleck, whose name I can't think of without imagining a duck selling insurance (speaking of which, a friend of my friend Jimmy Lott voices the pig in Geico commercials).  He's both the ham and the director, Ben is, in this friendly look back to the 1980s, with those intensely loud IBM Selectrics.  Good job with the haircuts too, giant glasses, people still smoking on jumbo jets.  You say John Chambers was a make-up artist?  

Arkin and Goodman make a great Hollywood.

The state of the Hollywood sign (in great disrepair) was more than interesting in that they put up a black and white version right next to it, and as the eyes go back and forth, the sense of suspended disbelief is suspended even further.  "Wow it's so realistic!" says the neural nerd, so easily fooled by screen magic, so slippery when wet, "they spared no effort in recreating the past just as it was".  Critics leave the movie feeling hoodwinked at some level, and want to study more, which is good.  I'm getting to that.  Seven Psychopaths features that Hollywood sign, as do many in The Story of Film.

I wanted to know what Iranians thought of the film and whether the Iranian blogs were getting into it.

There's a dialog to be had about which "America" we prefer, the Thirty Dark Zero one [sic], where a CIA director shows his face (Tony Soprano plays Panetta), or this more Get Smart like operation (Kyle Chandler in both), where Stansfield Turner lurks behind the scenes and you see less gun play (Mendez gets through the whole movie without one).

Like in Hollywood:  which movie lots / production companies do you want controlling / orchestrating your projections?  That's a basic question.  Which screenplays to you really want produced?  That's a question governments answer, not just movie makers.  Their job is theater.

The two CIAs collide towards the end, as Delta Force is being scrambled for something more traditionally military, whereas those playing with mirrors and shadows are told to stand down, right in the middle of their setup.  Like when Alan Arkin tries to get back into his office:  the whole fragile plan is about to crash because of some slugheads (ex Delta Force?) making a two star film.   Quality operations go on hold while the brute force crowd crushes in, ruining everything.

Because remember how that Delta Force thing went:  not well.  That's not how the hostages got out.  Rather, something transpired that left Carter out and Reagan in, and then the 444 days were over.  This film helps at least associate a higher level of intelligence with Canadians, not unlike Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine in that respect.  Why are "Americans" being hunted in the first place, and not Swiss?

Iran is strongly into film making and needs to work through karma like any people with in-common destinies.  I'm all for getting Iranian DVDs taking us through a different window.  The same tension will likely prevail:  to what level is it mind over brain and brain over brawn?  Buckminster Fuller lurks in the background of this story, as a backer of Science Fiction Land, a kind of Toon Town, or Wilderness of Mirrors.

Wanderers 2013.3.26

:: joe arnold with friend ::

Joe Arnold delivered a technical talk tonight, posing hypotheses about how humans of our type might have become so prevalent.  Could the lid have come off of something?  They appeared to break out of the box right after a period of 75K years of cold.  Had their number dwindled to where new cognitive abilities might emerge?  Emergence by emergency?

As an example of possible genetic transformations, he was looking at fragile X chromosome sequences, CGG, CGG, CGG... a metaphor for both defects (or lacunae) and self healing.  In one of the videos he shared, it appeared like the methylated CGG sequence got edited out by pinching off, though the literature to back him up was weak in this area.  He admitted his hypothesis was highly speculative.

We were a packed house.  Steve Holden with Julie from London, David Feinstein, Keith Lofstrom, Blueberry and Lynne... Buzz.  A mixed bag.  Terry Bristol was warming up for his talk, we hope not too sneering, as people sense tone over content when it's over their heads.  Lots of good banter I thought.  Terry questioned the dogma that some built in desire to reproduce and have huge families was really a driver, either now or really ever.  Heresy is his middle name.  He questions Darwin the same way some question the Gospels.

I started my day early in Woodstock as a follow-up to encountering the Peace Corps table, lots of vets last night at Lucky Lab, and wanting to chat more with the Sierra Leone guy (later the Balkans, also Peace Corps).  We'd met here before.  After I raised the topic of Quakers and slavery, the US Civil War, he talked about a route some former slaves took, to safer Canada and then back to Africa via Halifax.

Suzanne joined us and helped steer the conversation, which I was happy to have her do (something she's good at).  Then shopping at Trader Joe's, which I'd boycotted for awhile, over some fish issue, but now am happy enough to trade with again (fish issue resolved).

Joe is our psychiatrist Wanderer who lives well outside Portland.  He comes to the lectures and Heathman dinners and we respect him a lot.  We've done retreats at his place.  We come out of the woodwork when he shares his latest thinking.

The canvas he painted included this ultra-shy girl whose grandfather later turned out to have Fragile X syndrome.  Recent breakthroughs in genetic science had allowed identification of this phenomenon, a long piece of methylated X chromosome, of up to 2000 CGG tri-nucleotides.

Joe's talk was about the history of the human species and related models, since Lucy.  He did a cave painting like sketch of forks and branches, hominid types.  How did they spread out of Africa, after a certain bottleneck?  How low did the numbers go when the planet froze that time? He was referencing the mitochondrial record, something David had spoken about earlier, at the Wanderer's retreat (the rate of mitochondrial mutation blurs what seemed a clear picture of "Eve" at one point).

Earlier:  a one frame cartoon that came to me.  Eve handing Adam an Apple iPhone: "it's for you" she says.  Feeding Adam's delirium he's channeling (talking to) God?  Lots of interpretations.  Actually it was the "snake" talking, or some brand of dragon maybe, depending on your mythos (frequency).

I thought Wanderers were on their best behavior.  Joe's talk got us rialed in various ways, like screeching apes but more fluent in English.  His calm quiet manner makes the world safe for us crazies to sound off, and people butted in big time towards the end.  But that's per our model, we expect that in Wanderers.  Terry was not out of place, as I explained to Helen, you just had to know enough history.  She thanked me for the thumbnail.  Good to have such a fun event and venue.

We all seem retarded to one another one might say.  What Fuller called aberrational, aberrations, afterimages of eternity (instant).  Or we seem preternaturally fast on occasion, like circus freaks.  Relativity.  Doppler Effect.  That's how Synergetics deals with it (our relative slowness -- we all have these "sequence defects" somewhere or another).  But these are also our gifts.

Joe's message seemed ultimately hopeful, that small self-repairings could make a big positive difference.  We like it when that happens.

John Dies in the End (movie review)

This is a cheesy self-spoofy movie, just what I needed, and as it happens a spin-off of Naked Lunch in some ways (squishy ugly creatures).

I'd been saying earlier in this butler and maid scene, with a steam cleaner cameo by this other Asian, that I could use some fluff, after more queue and chauffeur duty (PDX for MVPs).

As it happened, I was off by an hour and did have time to join Thirsters after all.  What a fun meeting.  There's a new framed portrait of Bob, a surplus of cash (to be gotten rid of, McMenamins to blame, in a good way, for hosting a couple big occasions).

I hope to make it next week as well, maybe catch up on what Zari's been up to (another Wanderers guest speaker).  Peter Miller was there and we compared notes more.  Turns out we're both Princeton alums who had Walter Kaufmann as a teacher, about a decade apart.

We went around the table introducing ourselves, given 2-3 minutes, including questions we'd hope the group would take up.  People gave polished thumbnail biographies as all were personable and intelligent and used to doing so when called upon.

The story I made up (true, but not much rehearsed) was customized for a Portland audience and focused on my dad the planner, his many stints overseas, my expat upbringing.  I was thinking how, for a different group, my bio could be almost entirely about my mom the peacemaker.  Both parents were strong performers, with sis and I getting a whirlwind ride in some respects.

As I informed my passengers in the ride home from PDX (warmer than London anyway), I was greedy for entertainment that evening and might try both Thirsters and the movie, and thanks to the modern automobile that worked out.

When do I yak about the movie?  If you've ever seen Drunk and On Drugs Happy Funtime Hour, you'll have some sense of it.  I have some episodes of that in my Air, which backs up to the cloud at work.  I'm curating popular culture and keep the terabyte separate.

I should move those to the brick I suppose.  This movie is further into squishy creatures and aliens though, more like eXisTenZ.  The plot is so crazy and "stream of consciousness" in presentation that you know it's just another midsummer night's dream, so to speak.

The underlying moral, if there is one, is admirable enough.  Some physical disfigurement like a missing hand or limb should be no barrier to our deep appreciation of some adorable person, against the backdrop that is life.  It's all a big squishy meat show, no point in being too prissy about it.

Paul Giamatta is good in this, and also reminds me, in this role at least, of Wallace Shawn in My Dinner with Andre.  Another title for this movie might be:  My Dinner with Wong.  One could see the Chinese restaurant as open tribute to eXistenZ in an emerging semiotics of surrealist existentialism.

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)