He Named Me Malala (movie review)

Carol and I watched this in the Regal Cinema at Fox Tower.  Today is Indigenous Peoples Day.  Portland has said good bye to Columbus, officially.  He's had enough days by now.

I woke up forgetting it was a holiday and started bugging people at work, my bad.  Then on leaving for the film, I left the front door to the house wide open.  Thankfully, Melody came by at random and took care of it and then hung out with Sarah-the-dog (she gets lonely).  Lucky me, to have such friends.  Melody just has to take some last exams to get her license as a massage therapist.  Her knowledge of the body's musculature and specific pathologies is quite extensive, plus will be deepened with more experience.

Just before the film we saw the Suffragettes preview, coming in a few days.  That provided some good shading (as in nuance) regarding the dark ages patriarchy we've been enduring for some time.  Men have needed to run things, at least in their own minds.  And we're not out from under said patriarchy yet.  Those with an XY chromosome still seem to suffer from some sense of extreme entitlement.  Something about brain chemistry?  Are we talking nature or nurture?

Whatever the explanation, I'm thinking the imbalance in power and opportunity is indicative of a defect in the species.  The combination of monotheism coupled with thinking that God has male gender, would seem an unfortunate memetic mutation.  As with any archetype, that one needs to be counter-balanced lest it become a runaway train.  Monotheists are notorious for not being team players.

What is "education" anyway?  Does it always look like classrooms?  Is it a carbon copy (a dated term) of the institution you attended in your youth?  I had a good experience with schooling on the whole, so lets not paint me as bitter and complaining in raising questions about conventional notions.

Definitely the process of educating oneself includes learning to read, that much is clear, but when do we learn about intuition and listening to inner promptings that are not mere temptations or cravings others have cleverly implanted?  When do we learn to become less gullible, less someone else's puppet or stooge?  Becoming informed and building character happens in many ways, through many life experiences.  Let's not become the prisoner of our own stereotypes.

A most important aspect of elementary school is it makes the acquisition of specific skills, such as numeric computation, a peer group activity such that one's likelihood of future success becomes a public topic.  One is graded relative to others.

There's a zero sum aspect to any curve based assessment.  Even though we think the collective IQ of humanity has been increasing, whatever that means, renormalizing means we don't see that fact, and that in itself is a way of deceiving ourselves.  One learns to measure oneself relative to a cohort of cronies with little sense of cohorts past.  Malala is subjected to these same regimes, in the name of "schooling".

In that artificially created zero sum sense, school may be a crushing and cruel institution for many an impressionable human (with the unimpressionable past hope), so I'm hesitant to romanticize said institution as "the better fate" for all girls, in any sweeping sense.  That'd be too cavalier.  There's too much that's pathological about "schooling" to wish it on everyone in its present form.  So even as we bring more girls into education, lets transform what we mean by education.  It's not like all the future shock is for the Taliban alone.

Suppose one sees through the social media that other kids one's own age have learned a lot of skills.  They read and write, surf the web...  that sense of "peer pressure" is still there, but perhaps with less potential for public shaming?  Humans nudge each other to perform at higher levels, but with more privacy restored?

Lets focus on creating safe personal workspaces for every student, places to be left alone in for awhile (out of choice, not punishment) places to study quietly, to read, to write, to reflect.  Being crowded together with others:  is that somehow intrinsic to what "education" means?  Who taught you that?

It's not either / or of course, but so often these days it seems "school" means exclusively either "under the watchful supervision of authorities" and/or "in crowded spaces, a space of endless random interruptions".   Neither environment may be conducive to learning.  One might suggest such circumstances are specifically designed to prevent too much learning.  Was a lot of what we called "schooling" really more about "warehousing" when we look back?

In point of fact, there is no one institution entitled to call itself "the" school to the exclusion of all others, just as no one human is "the" teacher of all the others, not the father, not the mother, not the uncles, not the aunts, not the sibs.  All are teachers, no "one" is.

Put another way:  bringing a child into the world is a social act and the world gets to be a collective teacher, not just one adult (another preview was for The Room).  Learning to read opens more windows, and the possibility of more relationships.

Lets remember that the invading Euro-Anglos used their "boarding schools" quite deliberately to tear into indigenous societies, to abduct their children, to ensure the native ways died out in favor of what was "Christian" (or whatever nonsense) -- still a pattern to this day.

"Education" is often code for "learning to think more like the victors and less like the vanquished" i.e. we need to be clear that "education" may be a vector for genocide, a tool of missionaries, perhaps well meaning, but nevertheless on a mission to crush and defeat whatever customs or ways they demonize as inimical to their own.

Obviously genocide is what the Taliban fear, as the prospect of educated women in the sense we're talking about suggests lifestyles entirely different from those they had imagined for themselves, as future patriarchs.  But then we all live in a time of future shock, and a lot of expectations don't get met all around, including those of men in other cultures besides the Taliban.

Prayers for cleverly planted desires may go unanswered or worse, lead to unintended side effects.  The easy availability of weapons makes "blaming others" and "making them pay" a no-brainer for the many shocked by their emerging futures.  People "go postal" in their disappointment, wanting to share their pain with a world turned enemy.  Sometimes the military is a great outlet for collective freaking out, and taking it out on others.  Ain't that NATO in a nutshell?  Not so different from ISIS in being run by aggressive males anxious to preserve their way of life.

Lets agree that sometimes taking the children away from home and placing them under the authority of other adults is not the only or best way to transmit a culture.  Educate the whole family at the same time why not?  Don't give up on the adults or tune them out.  That's mistake number one.  Malala's family does a lot of learning together.  That's healthy.  Good show.

We see that girls are born into the midst of wars, meme wars, PR wars, same as boys.  A tug-o-war ensues, pulling them in all directions.  Exercising one's ability to think for oneself and to follow one's own intuition, while retaining some power to exercise freedom, the power of choice, would be the goal of a liberal education.  But many an education is far from liberal in its goals.  So be vigilant!

The Martian (movie review)

I've been clamoring for "positive near future science fiction" in my writing for like decades, and/or noticing its absence.  The near future has been dark and oppressive, with civilization off the rails, such that "future noir" has just about taken over the genre -- so different from happier times when the culture was upbeat about where we might be going.

In this film, the world is free to unite behind a brave effort, and not because we're fighting off aliens this time.  We're rescuing one of our own, struggling valiantly to stay alive on the Red Planet.

We know it's the near future,  versus the far future, given we're told the date and some on the crew still have a bond with the same music we recognize in 2015.  The technology looks quite similar to our own.  Aside from NASA's logo everywhere, and JPL's, there's very little product placement.  CNN gets to play the TV news anchor.  Times Square is recognizable.  We don't get to look at their cars.

Yes, the film is about recruiting talent, helping youngsters project future selves onto a canvas.  The puzzles that need solving all require STEM and/or media skills, in addition to bravery, stamina and good looks.  Geodesics need to be calculated, communications established, medical treatments self administered... astronauts have to be DIY jacks of all trades.  Everyone knows about ASCII (a hexadecimal code for numbers and letters) and Lord of the Rings (associated with geekdom).

We also get a taste of compartmentalization, bureaucracy, sharing information based on "need to know" and making tough calls, giving orders.  We're in a semi-military culture the civilians have opted into, a culture that has absorbed the military's cavalier sense of hubris regarding plutonium in treating it as one more toxic substance that needs to be buried a few feet in the sand under some dorky flag.

When our hero gets cold, his solution is to dig it up and drag the container all over Mars, possibly jeopardizing the future habitability of the entire planet should he flip the truck and commend all those radio-toxins to the Martian dust clouds.  Should Americans be allowed to take radiotoxins to Mars, given this is their attitude?  An astronaut from another culture might have done the more honorable thing and self euthanized.

Only the US seems keen to have its people on Mars in this future, though we're not completely clear on their motivations.  The level of public excitement seems to be a the main variable to track and the public doesn't like people dying in tragic circumstances (outside of war that is, currently still a bestseller).  The primary motivation is to put on a good show, to give the public its money's worth in terms of infotainment.

No other institution seems to have caught the Mars bug to the degree NASA has.  Apparently the US Congress was able to boost borrowing authority through a number of election cycles.  What's the national debt level I wonder? 

No one says "days" anymore, as in "24 hour period".  The word "sols" has taken over.  Hey, maybe it's already that way at Mission Control.

As in Oblivion, futuristic aesthetics involve LCDs that make that high pitched "screen making letters" noise.  That's an old convention in science fiction, since X-Files at least.

2001 Space Odyssey deserves mention simply for how we've had to reset the clock.  The technology projected in the late 1960s is still mostly ahead of what we've come to.  No Hal.  No moon base (apparently -- or maybe the Russians have one?).  No cryogenic sleep to make the time go by with less aging and fewer intake needs.

On the other hand, the aerospace aesthetics are familiar, with hints of geodesic structures, airlocks, docking, and of course retro-rockets, which, unlike in the movie Gravity are allowed to make noise, even in the total silence of space.

The bandwidth seems awfully narrow though.  Even with communications re-established, Earth is unable to send better music?  We're maybe supposed to conclude that our hero secretly likes disco.  As shown in other scenes, these geeks routinely say the opposite of what they mean in a joking way.  Engineers still get a little dodgy when it comes to expressing their true feelings I guess.

The acrobatics in zero gravity are persuasive, especially inside the Hermes.  No real effort is made to simulate the lower gravity of Mars, much greater than our moon's, but still quite a bit less than Earth's.

I'd say geeks have moved from the carnival to high end circus, with the space program center ring.  This was Apollo 13 on steroids, a real world almost-disaster about which a major movie was made.

There are no "bad people" in this film.  Catharsis is not achieved through watching the bad people get what's coming to them.  I can't recall a single handgun in the entire two hours.  A circus without violence is not very Roman is it?  No love triangles (that we get to know about).  No sex (OK, a tiny bit).

The fact that nature is equally unforgiving to all and therefore fair, in terms of applying the same physics across the board, while humans are fallible and fragile, yet ingenious, is enough to drive the plot. In many ways, this is a hopeful film of the kind I've been wishing for, so far be it from me to be a wet blanket.

Let's not overlook the atavistic / supranational posture assumed by the hero himself:  it's not the US colonizing or claiming Mars for itself in this picture, but a lone pirate and his newfound treasure (an entire planet), a more "outlaw" experience.  He celebrates the existential scenario over a more fictive institutionalized self, and yet still remains loyal to his tribe. He's a conquistador with a plutonium teddy bear (his Wilson -- though he doesn't talk to it).

The astrogeek's tribe, in remaining loyal to him, also verges on becoming a tribe of outlaws themselves, pirates.  Overriding commands from on high is sometimes the stuff of heroism.  We saw that for real in Fukushima, when the head engineer insisted on dousing the plant in saltwater, overruling his bosses, thereby quite possibly saving Greater Tokyo from evacuation.  Perhaps Japanese engineers take plutonium more seriously?

The movie has been sold out at The Bagdad on at least one occasion, me being one of those turned away from the Friday showing at 7 PM.  I went to the 10:45 PM showing last night, Saturday, having met with a former co-worker and his nephew at Rogue Hall (I say "former" co-worker because as the website clearly states, we're dropping the "school" moniker; the original team from Useractive -- formerly NetMath -- has already mostly dispersed).

So You Wanna Be a Martian Math Teacher...

dedicated to Sarah 

(old dog on the audio track)

Links:

Digital Mathematics:  Heuristics for Teachers
Martian Mathematics @ Reed College (Saturday Academy)
Storyboards:  Concepts for Synergetics Animations (Flickr Album)

Reciprocal Bases

Citizen diplomats are planning to counter any permanent base presence by the US military in Germany or Korea with reciprocal bases in the US, with an humanitarian purpose, and allowing personnel to rotate through on missions.

We co-organize with the more free-wheeling intelligence community, much of it west of the Mississippi i.e. in West Region.  The Pentagon need not have essential input into this plan.  Existing bases would include the embassies already on the ground.

A next generation of such bases (or call them campuses) is already under construction.  Most US military personnel have no clearance to participate in this work.  Different skill sets (partially overlapping) required.

The US military's concern is properly the US military's bases, co-owned with NATO and the Eurozone in some cases.  They had that one near Bishkek for example i.e. they have plenty to manage without trying to mind our business as well.  We're not in their chain of command.

Today:  General John Campbell reneges on a promise to end his dirty wars in Afghanistan.  We will have an Afghani presence above and beyond a normal embassy presence in the US as well.   Weapons inspection is one of the goals, operation Countdown to Zero and all that.

The logistics system is currently under development.  Learning to become a weapons inspector takes some fancy education, like you might get at Reed College.

Some training bases, other facilities, in the US may be given over to our program.  I welcome the leadership Princeton University is providing.

Funding / investment should be more balanced.  We also need more helicopters.

"We have the situation completely under control in Iraq" says McCain on the radio.  Who is this "we" he claims to speak for?  The people of Arizona I guess.  He said the attack on the hospital was justified by the presence of an enemy in the same city... or was that Alzheimer talking?  Stay tuned.

Masked and Anonymous (movie review)

Jack Fate (Bob Dylan) is on a most amazing magical mystery tour.  We don't see most of it, as he emerges from some underground cave, and leaves in some van, but the part we do witness gives us a ringside seat on life's circus.

Each event is cram packed with thematic content, and all Jack does is mostly listen.  Mostly, he's a witness too, a listener, somewhat self-effacing, an Oriental, or a Stoic.

We hear him think, watch him listen.  When it's his turn in the limelight, it's to make music, with those wanting to play politics piggy-backing on his rhymes (or simply writing them).

The World we get with Jack is one of poverty and dictatorship, i.e. is mostly Blue Meanies.  In a way, he's the proverbial emperor in his own Kingdom, while an impostor owns the throne (shades of Hamlet).  The world is akilter, setting him adrift.

He's not unlike the Buddha, arising from some presumed idyllic matrix, of father, mother, son (remembered from fading footage) only to see that never-never nirvana-world morphed, transformation by transformation, by infidelity, betrayal, and disownment, into the samsara-world of this star-studded movie.

He's a persona non grata, or perhaps a legend in his own time, take your pick.  He's a has been.  However in the musical numbers he's not a "has been" but as good as ever, channeling the voice of the volk i.e. the folk, passing on what he's learned.

[ Bob Dylan was the great folk musician who then went with the electric guitar, a fork in the culture.  He endured the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as this movie recreates by analogy. ]

In getting these big name actors together, including Luke Wilson (Idiocracy) and John Goodman (Big Lebowski), the director Larry Charles and screen-writers (Bob one of them) wisely give them great rants.

One of my favorite rants I call the "misanthropy rant" (actually Beautiful Animals is the scene name) and is delivered by Val Kilmer.  I was able to find it on Youtube.  Notice the deliberately rough editing, reminiscent of Dr. Brule's show on early morning TV.  Note also that this soliloquy contains the title of the film.

Some Quaker History

a letter to the editor linking Hicksites to Hume (source)

I drank my morning coffee, a combo of Seattles Best and Dunkin Donuts i.e. leftovers (both good quality, just I wanted my allotted twelve cups -- some saved to the fridge), while reading The Atlantic.

David Koski had found that recent article by a Professor of Babyhood, Alison Gropnik, recounting how she transformed a midlife crisis into something useful to scholarship:  more evidence of David Hume having some direct knowledge of Buddhism through Jesuit sources.

That got me Googling, finding Hume's poking fun at Quakers, only to find, on fast forwarding, that by the 1830s, the Hicksite branch of Friends were being demonized by Orthodox as Hume-inspired (that infernal Priestley was another baddie).

Connecting these dots gives insights into the conversations of today, as the more Orthodox church-minded continue to find fault with their more Buddhist-like off-spring.

Lyndon LaRouche and Jane Addams then entered the mix as typifying this split.  Jane, founder of WILPF, had a Hicksite dad and formed liberal ideas.

Lyndon, also of Quaker heritage, but of the more Orthodox / Evangelical persuasion, decried David Hume as anti-Platonic, and Hicksites + AFSC as Communists.

One might hypothesize / speculate, empirically, not as a matter of pure deduction, that Alison Gropnik probably admires Jane Addams more than she admires Lyndon LaRouche.

Developments

Lots happening.  The city is proposing to move R2DToo (Right to Survive Too) closer to OMSI.

The South Campus refugee camp, closer to MercyCorps, and Dignity Village near the airport, could be involved in prototyping dymaxion lifestyles (my storyboard).

An individual may not live this way through many chapters, but in any chapter, many may be living this way.  Ibrahim was understandably skeptical on KOIN.

I've been location scouting the area for years.

Regarding telecommunications, Blue House Studios, a source of Synergetics videos, has no need of the 1000 Mbps speed bandwidth, tested for a month.  I've scaled back to 40 Mbps down, 12 up, plus Prism TV on the side.

If we need rack space with fatter pipes, that will not have to be to / from the local campus, at least not in the near term.

CenturyLink sent an engineer over this morning, changing the POP connection to DHCP (technical) and adding a TV box.  My Samsung is on order -- or was.  The model I'm seeking is hard to find.

At the same time R2DToo is coming under pressure to move, the property owners around Hinson Baptist Church are once again agitating to shutter the rain shelter, inhibiting social services.

Food Not Bombs is not the problem.  We're well behaved and beloved by churches, temples etc.  We're the darling of charitable causes.

But FNB only uses said pavilion one or twice a week for a few hours. What else goes on?  The neighbors have their stories.  They're worried about property resale values.

So I suggested via the FNB listserv that we think about thinking short term and long.  The church itself might be open to our petition to help refugees on cold dark days.  They have a beautiful facility that stands idle much of the time.  Or Parks and Recreation could give us a key to the rain shelter.

As for the OMSI serving, with R2DToo's houseless as "astronauts of the future" (testing products and workflows for dymaxion living), that's an idea that'd need more buy in to fly.   

Dignity Village (EPCOT West), closer to the airport, should be part of the planning process.

Glenn wrote a good letter to Southeast Examiner, published this May 14, asking if earthquake preparedness might include maintaining one of the world's best gravity-powered city water systems, already paid for an operational.

If we loose power in an earthquake, like at Fukushima, having the Mt. Tabor reservoirs at the ready makes plenty of sense.

Occupy Revisted

To review, buried in obscure web pages, as is my wont, I analyzed the Occupy movement in terms of recruitment potential, not for terrorists mind you, but of think-ahead problem-solver types not afraid to try new things.

The parks were a showcase of concentrated talent, if one could only discover them and keep track of them, to match with future opportunities.

Although I agitated to park on the periphery and scout it out, my role was more in the realm of food supply and retreat logistics, after the initial takeover.

Now we're again faced with "sudden communities" in need of services, forced encampments, as a result of war.  Civilians are fleeing the theater, where those in charge of ordnance have chosen to use it.  I'm sure we'll be seeing more statistics.  We already know the size of the populations on the move is more than a few rubber boats can handle.  We've seen boat people before.  This is not a new pattern.

During Occupy, we had the luxury of staying put long enough to experiment with self government.  We did not have a complete ecosystem, plop in the middle of a city like that.  Rajneesh Puram didn't get it right either.  There's maybe no such thing as an insta-village, plopping people down willy-nilly and expecting a civilization overnight.  OPDX did not achieve that either.

However, suppose one rescued and transplanted an entire set of families who already knew each other and had established businesses?  Do we not have the bandwidth?  Is Survivor really more urgent?

Some Family History

:: Tom, Maureen, Chuck ::

Today I had an opportunity to join a small group at the Boltons, for a focus group on Great Britain.  Tom and Celine had been touring there in June, from London to Edinburgh, back to London by train, then West Sussex, Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral, by rental car.

We hooked Tom's laptop to the Vizio 40" by VGA (=RGB) cable and went through the slides, Tom narrating, with comments from Celine.

Tom Gihring has been in my blogs before, as a fan of Henry George the economist.  While in London, they met up with another Georgist who gave them good advice on where to tour, including Canary Wharf and surroundings.

The slides covered a lot of the hot spots:  Kew Park, Victoria and Albert Museum, Globe Theater (reconstructed), Greenwich, the British Museum, Westminster Cathedral, Trafalgar Square... and that's just for starters.  They had a month to kick around.

Charles Bolton, professor emeritus of sociology at PSU, is in his 90s, but still lives in his family home, taken care of by extended family.  The Boltons had three girls, all married and all with children, some of whom have had children who've had children.

When I returned to Portland after kicking around on the East Coast for some years, post Princeton, I moved into the Bolton's basement and started looking for work.  I was in my late twenties.

At first I got by with some temp agency work, however David Lansky discovered at an EMO event that I was looking for something more lasting, and he knew Carol Slaughter was in need of assistance with a government contract to teach computer skills to older workers, 55 and older -- a category I myself fit in today.

David was with Center for Urban Education (CUE), which also helped manage government contracts aimed at refugee resettlement post Vietnam War.  That funding came to an end soon after I joined the organization, and that proved fatal to CUE in the end.

My wife to be, who had joined as a bookkeeper, went on to take on multiple nonprofit bookkeeping clients, and I became a free lance programmer, also mostly for nonprofits.  Dawn Wicca and Associates was launched, in 1990.

Dawn and I moved in together when forming our partnership, on Rhine Street in Portland's Brooklyn neighborhood.  We married in 1993 and our daughter Tara was born in 1994, by which time we had moved to the Hawthorne District.  Dawn's daughter Alexia by a previous marriage was likewise a part of our household.

Harold and Maureen Long, and their two boys, Patrick and Erin, now fully grown men, got to know me through the Boltons, as did Tom and Celine and their two boys, Patrick and Daniel, also grown.  We've been getting together now and then ever since.  Mary Bolton died in 2012.  Celine was born in Hong Kong and first moved to the US in her twenties to pursue her studies in St. Louis, MO.

My mom Carol and Mary Bolton were both active in WILPF (Womens International League for Peace and Freedom) which Maureen has also since joined.  Maureen's ex, Harold Long, studied with Frank Lloyd Wright and was an architect.  We're still in touch as well.  Harold got to meet my friend Ed Applewhite, likewise very interested in architecture, when he visited Portland with his wife June in 1998.

Speaking of WILPF, mom and I are now off to a WILPF dinner at Hoda's (Lebanese cuisine) on Belmont.  Saturday is another WILPF celebration.  We're thinking of Mary quite a bit.

Encoding and Projecting

In psychological literature, "to unconsciously project" is almost a redundancy, as "to project" is to unconsciously engage in something, namely casting a troubling inner demon into the persona of someone else and tuning it in as this "other" (perhaps beyond one's control) rather than as a manifestation of one's own psyche (perhaps also beyond one's control, which is scarier).

At the other end of the spectrum is what many writers do, of science fiction or other genres:  they project with the intent to encode, meaning they're actually consciously working on some "inner demon" challenge (e.g. rejuvenation or reconciliation) but they're using an alien (foreign, otherworldly) backdrop as a premise.

Ed Said talks about this process somewhat in his famous Orientalism, which I've been reading off and on since my visit to Earlham College in Indiana.  Some readers might be surprised how imbued middle America is with matters Oriental, NIU's Center for Burma Studies a case in point.

Westerners have a habit of projecting (back to unconsciously again) on Native Americans (Indians, as in Indiana) and Asians (Orientals) in much the same way, or used to (times have changed).  The melodrama of virtues versus vices would play out in these romantic idealizations, ala Avatar.

That's a two way street of course, projecting fantasies on the other, in that "the other" may project right back, which tends to further the spiral and make shared theater happen.  The protagonist and antagonist egg each other on, it's built right in to the language.

Ayn Rand, living in Russia, had a dream of the West, somewhat Made in Hollywood, and in her case her American Dream came true.

The lesson here is projections are not always of inner demons, but of inner angels.  In seeing someone's deep intelligence, we're actually in touch with our own (or how would we see it?).

But we're more often better off when there's a conscious element, i.e. when we're projecting on purpose, and know that's what we're doing.  That's why we came to the opera, or whatever.

Take The Beatles and their era of live and recorded experiences with Ravi Shankar.  The blending of world music is of course a metaphor for the blending of cultures more generally.  This blending was undertaken consciously, with intent, much as Paul Simon later reached out towards Southern Africa.

In The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner, there's a chapter on the "invention" of China.  Echoes of Said.

However again we have a sense of conscious intent, of inventing China on purpose in order to work through various issues and contradictions in peoples who had never set foot in China and spoke not a word of Chinese.

We might as well use Oz, but it's more work to invent a whole world.  Why not make do with an existing culture, or an historical one?  Or brew a blend, as did Orwell in 1984 or Gilliam & Rushin in The Zero Theorem.

When one consciously and willfully takes part in literary / filmic invention: that's more what I call "encoding".

One may see the process with the so-called Islamic State, variously abbreviated.  Demonization (projection) is working in every direction, creating a veritable Halloween of horrific characters.  By the same token, the encoders use this Gothic vista to engage in some internal dialog.

Investigating How Things Work

I was yakking with my physical therapist today about how in Roman times, before the Empire, a so-called Fable of the Belly persuaded Plebes and Patricians to hold it together a little while longer.

Body-based metaphors sometimes go a long way in making sense.  We each have one after all, and know health is a function of each part doing its job.

That got my therapist thinking about the analogy between human bodies and governing bodies.  We both agreed that both are complicated and knowing something about how they work really helps with developing effective treatments or even cures.

My next observation was about this English word "corruption", which comes up so easily when a set of rules is not followed.

People dream up a bunch of rules, a game, and seek to have this game played as envisioned, but then in practice these rules often get bent or broken.  The response, rather than to accept the rules might be inappropriate or the game poorly designed (insufficient checks and balances), is to claim "corruption" is destroying whatever, and that there's no point looking for "fixes" until we might first end said corruption -- a prescription for paralysis.

More apropos than moralizing or pointing out all the criminal behaviors, would be the Anthropology of it all.  Anthropologists are trained to wade into a culture without exuding moral judgements.

For one thing, it messes up the data when the observers are putting out strong signals, being judgmental and commanding about their expectations, what they hope to find.  That's not anthropology, that's missionary work.

I grabbed a bus home, not wanting to overdo it with the ankle and having some work to attend to, but the train of thought continues...

We have a way of probing animal bodies and discussing their various pathologies, without moralizing a lot.  We also have ways of describing biological systems (ecosystems) without necessarily deciding which of the natural process is "out of line" and/or "corrupting".

If we have a definite goal, say a maximal yield of some cash crop, then of course we'll have some cues as to what needs curing.  We get out the insecticides and go after the bugs.  We enter the scene with the intention to fix known wrongs, to effect repairs.  But have we done enough homework?

In other cases, where we're not so vested, the analysis isn't so biased.

What's needed, in world development circles, is more of an ability to describe without applying a lot of premature judgements, our minds already made up about what "the rules" should really be.

One often finds the police, criminal investigators, detectives, becoming "corrupt" and/or "jaded" as they come to understand how the game imposed in the first place, from on high, was in some ways unplayable from the get go.

They lose some of their initial ethnocentrism, these police.  The criminal underworld has its own codes, its own rules.  Such cops become more like go-betweens, explaining and interpreting the underworld to more ideological audiences.  Some will say they've become corrupted, and become servants of the devil.

Prohibition was a lot of crock to begin with.  Of course bootlegging was going on.  Many police on the beat could see that.  One could even buy their cooperation.  Police like to drink, off duty.  It's somewhat unworkable to be busting your friends, the ones who watch your back on the day job.

This pattern applies to diplomats as well. Of course policies X and Y beget side-effect Z.  It's our language that calls them "side effects" usually meaning "effects other than intended".

Another way of saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is that "hell is all the side effects to which those good intentions gave rise" (so much corruption, right?).

Nietzsche was onto something with his "beyond good and evil" approach.

He wanted to dissect and investigate the way language actually works, without the overhead of "should" and "ought".  He wanted moralizing to get out of the way and stop hogging so much bandwidth.  He subsumed the Will to Truth to the Will to Power.

One might agree to define Power as that which actually does occur, as opposed to what we Wish and/or Command to occur.

When people say "absolute power corrupts absolutely" what do they mean?  How about "the way it is is not at all how we think it should be".

Lets start with how it is, suspending judgement.

R. Buckminster Fuller introduces his poetic science fiction, Critical Path, saying he has "no good or bad people" in his account.  He's not looking for saints to worship.

J. P. Morgan gets his attention, but not because he's some saint or villain.  He's simply powerful, good at making a difference.  Powerful people come off more as rule makers than rule followers sometimes.  Rather than playing by the rules, they come up with new games.

Anthropology need not begin with moral judgements, whereas religion seems to always want to go there.

If we want to understand how things work, best to investigate without too much prejudice.  Unless we can do that, we'll just see "corruption" and not how things are actually getting done in some circles.

Compare and Contrast

I would agree that the language of mathematics is about making generalizations, but also making them precisely enough so that they hold universally thanks to some clear stipulations.  Minus the clear stipulations, one just gets dogmas (poopy belief piles).

In some of the Google Groups, such as mathfuture, I suggest abetting ordinary XYZ vector mathematics, an arithmetic of sorts, with what I put forward as a sidebar "IVM vector mathematics", with an apparatus some might claim is a parody of XYZ but which I'm happy to take quite seriously.

In comparing and contrasting the two approaches, we come to see what commonalities apply.  The two arithmetical games have the same operations.

"We use a Caltrop in place of a Jack" is one of the ground rules, differentiating respective language games.

The XYZ "jack" divvies space into eight octants whereas in Quadrays, the "caltrop" divides it into four.

XYZ (jack): (+ + +)(+ + -)(+ - +)(- + +)(- - +)(- + -)(+ - -)(- - -)

IVM (caltrop): (+ + + 0)(+  + 0 +)(+ 0 + +)(0 + + +)

Per any point, one direction stays passive in Caltrop arithmetic, with positivity (or zero) in the other three, sufficient to reach all points in a quadrant, with four quadrants spanning space.

Cartesian coordinates (also invented by Fermat) employ a "jack shape" of six spokes whereby space is subdivided into eight regions, designated by permutations in sign, positive or negative.

Tip-to-tail addition, 180 flip for negation, scalar multiplication (if allowed) works the same way as with "Jack vectors" such that all points have 4-tuples instead of 3-tuples, and negatives are not needed.  We have an isomorphism between them.

The Americans have apparently said "no" to any such curriculum for now, if we're to judge by Common Core, but then who says that's what to judge by?  Common Core actually forbids nothing, being an affirmative document in a "what to include" format, so lets not assume "verboten" where "not mentioned" is more the expected norm.

Common Core is like a cake with no frosting, or staircase with no carpet.  The frills are missing, leaving bare bones.  In adding spice with the IVM, in addition to XYZ, we're going beyond what's required.

In other words, if you're the teacher and you find introducing Quadrays to your classrooms catalyzes more productive thinking about "vectors" in general, then you have the right, as a freedom-loving American (or whatever) to say "yes" to the sharing of these ideas, if only for experimental purposes.

However, you may feel you need permission from your "church" or from whatever various designated religious authority sub-geniuses, however intriguing you find these ideas personally. It's not necessarily your call, where the education of innocents is concerned, whether to venture outside the lines or not.  Not every teacher is a wannabe rebel.  I encourage you then:  follow your conscience.

Besides, I've had a free hand to teach this stuff for some decades now, so I'm not about to complain about censorship.  I maybe don't always reach the most receptive age group, as vectors are usually saved until college and my Saturday Academy classes were more middle school on average.  That's a different issue.  The past does not dictate the future in any case.

No, I think the reason IVM mathematics makes so few inroads in America has more to do with complacency than with censorship, with the XYZ people thinking "why should I share the road with some johnny-come-lately, and what's a 'caltrop' anyway?"  The NIH ('not invented here') syndrome is prevalent.

Nobody recognizes "Quadrays" as a brand of anything (correction:  there's a flashlight by Nitecore), let alone as a geometric something, which means the whole language game might as well be from Mars.

In an age that rewards people for being "mainstream", anything out of the ordinary (i.e. "extraordinary") is left to "circus freaks" or whatever "out cast" of underdogs.

We're more likely to learn of Quadrays from wandering egoists "sirfessing" in Hobo Colleges [tm], than from Pearson or Springer-Verlag.

Speaking of Mars, that's a segue to Wittgenstein, the movie, wherein the young LW's alter ego and / or imaginary friend, is likewise a Martian -- played by Nabil Shaban, a Facebook friend (introduced to me by Trevor).

Another Study Period

I've been studying history as well as working in IT waters.  IT has a timeline (a history) too.

Studying what you ask?  You want to know?

I won't be able to cover all of it in one blog post, but let me review.  Even if no one were to read this, Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics says "doing a recall" is a good idea.

To review circumstances:  I'm care-taking for a family pet who needs a fit assistant.  Instead of hiring someone, I'm doing the job myself, as sitting kicked back in an easy chair with a relaxed mutt is in many stereotypical scenarios one of the best places to be.  People want this, especially with the gigabit fiber optics and BBQ out back.

Why should I act aloof (haughtily above it all) when I enjoy such privilege in Scenario Universe (non-simultaneous and eternally aconceptual)?  In addition to these physical comforts, I have the benefit of friends and family, pets.

So what am I complaining about?  Nothing, not for me, lets go take care of those refugees.  "First world problems" means "well taken care of" by world standards.  Now lets raise those standards for everyone, which means a global safety net, like the UN has been working on providing (FAO, WHO... UNICEF).

When people feel safe enough to change jobs, then those miserable in their current service might find where they better fit, and a happier population makes for a better experience for all of us aboard our shared Spaceship Earth.  A safety net means having time to learn, to study, to catch up.  People need that.  We're reprogrammable, but not in an instant.  Retraining takes work.

Then of course there's that eternal insecurity of not knowing tomorrow (as big as today, which is huge), as if omniscience were ever an option (or would help).  We all have our existential issues with mortality, even when a next meal looks like a pretty sure thing.  Alan Watts wrote about this stuff, as did Paul Tillich and many others.

Lets admit that in boosting physical well being, we're not pretending to resolve all metaphysical conundrums.  That's not to ignore metaphysical issues, just to stay humble and admit a smartphone or even smartcar may not supply the meaning of life, although these phones get pestered with that stuff daily.  Even bankers and financial advisers are smart enough to know they don't have all the answers, most of 'em.

I understand about data hog smartcars being attractive, even if not in auto-drive.  I should have posted this in BizMo Diaries.  Lots of e-stuff, on the road.

However smart places to stay put in, shelter, need not have wheels, let alone wings.  Having swipe screens in the kitchen with apps and videos, however mounted or built in, makes as much sense as on the dashboard of a smartcar.  But what does the village look like?  Hillary said it takes one.

I think of the Blue House as a big wooden tent, complete with furnace and furnishings.  City blocks are like RV hookups, where you connect to services, including data, sewer, electricity and whatever.  RV camping and living parked in a non-mobile home, is more a matter of degree.

I'm camping, just with a heavier rig that's not designed for the open road, let alone the rolling waves.

I speculate that we're still waiting for something more to come out of Camping / Scouting that preserves a lot of the DIY ethic, but takes more advantage of bandwidth and other space program developments.

Science / research teams that show up (they have before in these blogs), live in and sample an environment (might need to have airlocks if mosquitoes are a serious threat), then leave with a plan to remove their equipment, including dwelling units, once the studies are complete.  What did these units look like?  Biosphere 2?  Lost in Space?

Since the units are designed to be moved, cleanup is not perceived as an onerous duty but as a logical completion of a project.  We get into weight (as in tonnage) as an issue, and the "more with less" phenomenon, which is what camping is all about, even if other types of architecture are more about being super heavy (bunkers, banks... fortresses).  Helicopters play a role.  An oil rig is a village.

Of course some of these pioneering villages will "stick" and grow over time, perhaps reaching a constant size rather quickly, then extending through time for quite awhile.  The map of how villages may shrink or grow is already a long one and that's not what I studied.

I was looking at the US stock market and all the scary news, and no it wouldn't surprise me if risk markets were skittish in the face of an uncertain future.   Where there's a dip in August you often see another one in September, I get that.  Nothing I can do about it either, like the weather.  Flap my butterfly wings?

Many Americans live in fear of exotic attacks, the like of which TV and Hollywood have already graphically depicted.  In a world in which humans were just not so crazy, didn't deliberately drive the bus off the cliff, we could relax more.  It'd be more like DisneyLand, where yes, accidents happen. But then Americans have made lots of enemies, they're told that too.  The world doesn't love them any more.  What happened?  No time to reflect given fantasy rules the roost.

Sketching more than just a smartcar but something like a lifestyle behind it, would please many investors, unsure what they're buying when robot cars are unveiled.

What's the future gonna be like?  Some giant crazy war?  Should we be saving to retire to a resort casino lifestyle or what?  Will the golf cart drive itself?  Or are we talking "virtual golf"?

People don't wanna be fooled (blindsided) by a future they didn't see coming.  I get that.

Like, sure, sure, we'll drink Pepsi and Coke, but then what?  Like in WALL-E maybe, the movie? That didn't look so bad, on that space ship, right?  A lot of us would be happy with that, no?  Those were self driving cars / chairs were they not, complete with Big Gulps.  Why did they go back to Earth again?  Something about not enough vegetables?

I think that's the easy chair talking.  The lullaby of the recliner.  This is how many Americans sit, watching TV.  I need to hike Mt. Tabor after this (just a small hill, but I've cut back since the heel problems).  Update:  maybe tomorrow.  I'll have a beer.

So much screen programming is just the engine running idle, turning over in fantasies, faux versions of professions invented for the big screen.   The not-real doctors treat not-real patients.  Not-real mathematicians help not-real police.  The answer:  "reality TV".  A bunch of games.

And they all have such superpowers compared to us, those fictional characters, or a lot of 'em do.  We can't hold a candle to fiction.

The "reality component" in people's fantasy lives is tough to gauge but even so, is an important variable through time.  Are they scared?  What do they see as inevitable?  Prophesies can be self-fulfilling you know.  Thomas Paine was at pains to remind us of that fact, reminding us that to prophecy was to songify, to auto-tune the news.

Televangelists of all stripes create some amazing illusions don't they, with that smoke and those mirrors.  Illusions jump start realities, just like The Turk (chess playing automaton, supposedly, in Napoleon's day) "proved" the possibility of chess-playing automatons, and now we have them.

I've also been studying demented cartoons, on advice from a lawyer I know (still practicing).  Thanks to my immersion in another season of Squidbillies (easy to find on-line) I found myself late to a lunch I'd been looking forward to.  I popped out of the Matrix just long enough to remember I have a life.

That being stupidly late pushed me to run which proved I still could, and brought me back to my days as a jogger, exiting my dorm window, golf course level, and running through the woods around Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies.  Cue fall colors.  Make me look handsome.

Hyuk.  Squidbillies is pretty funny.  They're squid hillbillies see, and they have hatred for "Chalkies" (white people), at least in some episodes.

I saw where Putin of Russia was extending more of a hand to Greece, Orthodox Christianity being a bond between them.  This was old news by now i.e. I was going back to a different debt crisis.  Now we're looking at the US's again, another thing I studied.

People who don't read a lot of history probably don't appreciate what a house of cards it's always been.  Humans, like chimps on a chimp island, have a glimmer of what intelligent institutions might be like, but follow-through is somewhat difficult for this species and besides, the puzzles are really tough to work out.  We only came up with arithmetic fairly recently, in geological terms.

In Gnostic and some Christian lore, the Angels are downright mocking of Man for being such a ditz-brain, can't get it together, always flat on his face, saying to God (in some Gnostic gospels a She - I'd advise we let It pick It's own pronoun) that God ought not waste too much time with these backwater hick squidbillie humans of Planet Earth.

In today's terms, these "Angels" are some ET race that's just jealous for some reason.  At however many billion we should take a moment to pat ourselves on the back.  Malthus never imagined we'd make it to such numbers, which show signs of leveling off.

Labor Day 2015

The day got off to a bumpy start in that Carol, my mom, world class activist, was supposed to join a national call.  Instead she was confronted with a disaster of sorts:  our arthritic dog, unable to exit the house without assistance, had done her best to give warning.

Carol can't lift a forty pound dog down the front steps.  If the dog tries it herself, she tumbles, though she will come in on her own steam OK.

I put the picture together in the rear view mirror.  I'd been there the whole time, but upstairs snoozing.  I finished the cleanup but Carol was unable to join her call, a system notorious for not being friendly to cell phones.  Frustrating.

The second occurrence, less intense, reminded me I should work from the Chair of Computer Science (where I am now), not from the red office upstairs (it had been aquamarine).  When I'm a floor away, I'm not alert to the dog's cues.  She's not happy alone anyway.

The better solution was to have the dog join me outside on the patio.

"The patio" is a primary Place in the Pattern Language of middle class lifestyles.  One engages in ritual BBQ, especially on Labor Day, and that's exactly what I did, buying some choice meats from the supermarket, open on this flag flying Monday.

Glenn came by, bringing potato salad.  Life seemed less grim by late afternoon.

The radio and TV are full of stories of refugees and their battle with the prison-state system.  Nations have the right to bomb, or assume they do, or civil wars break out and nations bomb themselves.

People leave their nations, their homelands, and become part of a diaspora.

How friendly is the rest of the world, to wanderers?

This continual re-shifting of populations is not about to "settle down".

People on the move is the norm.  We're not livestock in feed lots.  I'm not saying humans bombing themselves is normal (I see it as pathological), however fleeing from disasters not Made By Man [tm] will remain a priority and human right.  If your place to live floods or burns, gets hit by a hurricane, you get to move somewhere else, perhaps to an "Old Man River" city (ala OMR).

There's some chatter on the Thirsters list.  I'm looking into New York City's recent history from the point of view of a Village Voice journalist, digging into it.  This was some time ago, before the 2015 electoral vista in the US.

The meeting room was quite packed at our Thirsters last meeting, with the facilitator kindly making more room at the table for me.  I'd arrived rather late, coming from a Python User Group organizers' meeting at Rentrak on Alder.

NPR is previewing a large number of upcoming films.  Some perked my interest.  All of this before Thanksgiving.  Then another Star Wars.

Orgazmo (movie review)

Thanks to my film instructor, I was immediately clued to the historical links twixt this film and South Park Studios.  Writer-directors Trey Parker and Matt Stone (uncredited as a writer -- both play characters as well) sketch a comical clash, twixt Utah Mormon and LA Filmmaker subcultures (porn filmmaking more particularly), that in many dimensions mirrors the culture wars covered in the movie reviewed below, Best of Enemies, about the Vidal-Buckley TV debates of 1968.

Those of us with fancy educations are more likely than most to associate the sometimes demonized "Liberals" of US political vista fame, with the so-called Vienna Circle that grew up simultaneously with Nazism.  Given I have a fancy Princeton education, that's not surprisingly my spiel as well.

The folklore or "volk-lore" of Wagner's melodramas rode the wave of anti-Semitic German nationalism, based in faux mythologies, including Social Darwinism popular in the US, to somewhat eclipse the whistleblowers who prophesied what was coming (not pretty).

Nietzsche in particular was driven to insanity by what was to become Nazi culture, his descent into madness roughly coinciding with the date of Hitler's birth.  His legacy was then twisted to fit the Nazi mold, which must have occasioned some intense grave spinning.

Liberals, such as Freud and Jung, thought repression of bawdy topics, banning open investigation of human sexuality and so on, only came back to bite one in the butt big time in the form of guilt and other pathologies, mostly dealt with by norms-enforcing religious orders and their secular / sponsored states.

The price of censorship, at both the individual and societal level, would be sick and twisted mob psychologies, an abhorrence of diversity (xenophobia), and increasingly fragile / defensive egos, feeling besieged by temptations (guilty pleasures, pornography) on all sides, plus a propensity to project fears on scapegoats, supposed puppets of dark and sinister forces.  Good against Evil in other words, Saints against Vices.

Those power-nesters seeking to cultivate a morally wholesome G-to-PG spectrum for their children feel threatened by uncensored R, NC-17 and MA materials available through adjacent magazines, TV channels, URLs.  Even TV-14 scares the G crowd sometimes.

Freud was saying unless humans gave vent their fantasies, their unconscious anti-egos would pretty much take over, which leads to outward wars and mob psychologies.  Better to let people explore the inner vista, as consenting adults, than pen them in and pay the piper.  Allowing Dante to tour Hell, in the Italian vernacular no less, made him, and his readers, more adept in the skills of enjoying life without getting trapped in its anti-patterns.

With the invention of broadcast television, the Liberals were especially feared in light of there only being three major networks in the USA at that time.  What if they put orgies on right after the news? With so few channels to choose from, the stakes were high.

How about gun violence fantasies right after the news?  Those are less of a problem for most cowboys, though to a tractor-driving Quaker like me, equally pornographic (pulling out a gun in public is considered immodestly forward in Quaker circles, not really for polite company, whereas actually using one as a weapon is beyond the pale crude).

The still nascent EU was far behind in terms of channels back in 1968.  UHF and cable were still in the future.  The real explosion in LA porn filmmaking would await the invention of VHS and asynchronous (non-broadcast, not real time) television, and later the Internet.

I was a fan of Freud's as early as 8th grade, plus was at the time living in Rome, Italy where sexuality is less inhibited (La Dolce Vita and all that).  Rome is frankly cosmopolitan and young ears and eyes hear and see plenty, even if I wasn't engaged in much risky behavior myself.

Cultivating judgement is a part of growing up, and one loses one's sense of what to watch out for if penned in by only PG.  Not a new insight, I realize.  Eat dirt if you want antibodies (but not in huge amounts).

Rocky Horror Picture Show covers a lot of the same territory.  I'm also going through some episodes of Bob's Burgers having delved into Archer (lead male actor the same in both).

These latter qualify as "naughty cartoons" but are not considered "pornographic" by Media Mogul standards.  They're typically guarded as Free Speech protected under the US Constitution, just like Vidal's books.

Animation (anime) as a technology covers the full spectrum from G to MA (what used to be called X-rated).

When it comes to teaching important lessons, the literary device of analogy, akin to the mathematical concept of iso- and homomorphism (mappings), allows fairy tales and dream sequences, other fantasy genres, to allude more than rub in.

Given teachings are about generalized principles sometimes, there's no real satisfaction in the special cases anyway.  The sense of completion (getting the teaching) is in connecting the dots, not in the dots themselves.

Some of the most effective andragogy involves "leaving things to the imagination" sometimes with the added layer of needing to crack the code in the first place.  Freud was saying something similar in that how the unconscious works is to encode or layer (cite Interpretation of Dreams, an 8th grade favorite).

Norman O. Brown had more to say on all this in Love's Body.

Best of Enemies (movie review)

I was but ten years old at the time.  Now, at fifty seven, don't picture me as having the puzzle all put together, everything figured out.  On the contrary, they keep dumping more puzzle pieces into my vista, this documentary a case in point.

ABC is behind in the ratings, the low budget wannabe, so with less to lose, risks a new scorpions in a jar format, arch conservative, William F. Buckley, versus a likely nemesis, Gore Vidal.  They hate each other and that makes for interesting television.  The format paid off, boosting ABC's ratings and the other networks followed suit.  Punditry pitting opposing viewpoints, along with the hosted talk shows, the host sometimes highly opinionated, would carry us forward as standard fare.

I'm not quite on board with the thesis that having just the three networks was a Golden Age.  More bandwidth, not less, keeps diverse memeplexes alive, some we may not appreciate, but need as surely as elemental protein.  That we're all more on our own and alone in our stitching it together (piecing it together) from a variety of sources, is more like detective work, less off the cuff, more reflective, less mob-like.  I'm not nostalgic for the older economy, however I do appreciate the vitality of the debate format and appreciate what ABC attempted, as an experiment.

Lets be fair, the ABC anchor was the first to say "Nazi" in comparing flying an emblem associated with Ho Chi Minh's army, against which soon-to-be Nixon's forces were arrayed.  Wasn't that deliberately provocative, like flying a Nazi swastika, the newsman asked?  He'd let that meme out of the bag, and Vidal made it land in Buckley's lap with the spin of "crypto".

What never happened was any rational discussion of how like or unlike the WW2 example, was the flying of said banner in a Chicago park, amidst acts of police brutality.  Nixon-Kissinger would be carpet bombing Laos soon.  Even Twain had mocked the Republic for becoming an Empire.  Been there done that.  We'd all studied Roman History, so the US was to be another cliche then?  Vidal mocked the Manifest Destiny crowd.  Seeing the former US ally against Japan, a Jeffersonian democrat, as a Hitler, did indeed seem far-fetched.  Carpet bombers with B-52s seem more Fourth Reich to me (shades of Spain), with the benefit of hindsight.  What a bizarre analogy, I'd suggest to ABC.

However instead of delving into history, educating his audience per usual, Buckley lost his cool.  Gore got his goat, in front of millions.  This documentary rubs it in.  That Buckley was so bothered by this episode helps define his character as usually taking some high road, at least in his own mind.  He'd gone below his own moral standards, in a blow to his own ego.  The threatened physical violence maybe seemed idiomatic, but calling Vidal a queer just reeked of feeling out-gunned.

I think his taking it hard that he lost his temper helps establish the guy's having a moral compass, which Vidal would have us doubt.  In any case, conservatism would become fashionable in the wake of Buckley's pioneering example, so whereas Vidal may have scored, the culture at large was ready to surge to the right.

Vidal predicted this during the 1968 convention, saying he smelled jingoism in the air.  Having become an atomic superpower, the need to show the world who its new boss was, was becoming an overwhelming need for some, especially in light of a perceived best time to act being short lived, and already over by the end of the Kennedy administration.  By 1968, the Cuban missile crisis has proved there's no winner-take-all strategy, and the Cold War is well under way.

Speaking of ABC and TV ratings, I coincidentally have a meetup at Rentrak tonight.  That's a company that performs a lot of the same services Nielson used to, but with newer technology.  Just a Python organizers meeting, followed by Thirsters.

After the movie I stopped by Yard House, getting soup, salad and ESB from the gracious Shannon behind the counter.   Then I walked across the Hawthorne Bridge, stopping here and there as I made may way back up the hill to my neighborhood, a good test of the healing ankle.

:: national geographic ::

Opting Out

:: behind an Iron Curtain ::

KOIN TV (CBS affiliate) has been reporting that Oregon State is getting nervous about how few students are electing to take the new Common Core Standards test, administered by the Feds.

If not enough students in a district take the test, loss of federal funds could be a result.

I'm one of those who goes around telling parents that, even if we do need a Common Core, the one they've come up with is probably not the one we want to go with, if at all interested in maintaining the quality of our Silicon Forest economy, largely nano-tech based.

The mathematics purveyed by Pearson, a British company, discriminates against Americans, an inventive people who came up with some twists on EU-style geometry, which the latter suppresses as "verboten" math.

We feel behind some Iron Curtain in that respect, with our designer memes nixed by powers that be, powers out of touch with We the People.

For example, we have a way of valuing volume that anchors to a shape other than the cube (a tetrahedron) and its all 90 degree angles.

No, our memes do not shove the cube off stage or commend it to the ash heap of history, but you'd never know that given the hostility and defensiveness with which Cubists meet what they perceive as defiance.  We merely wish to share the road.

Any questioning of the authority of these awkwardly insecure partisans, and the barriers go up, like a wall across New Mexico.  The "not invented here" syndrome is very strong among the road hogs.  We get forced off the road every time, unless we refuse in some way.

The State of Oregon is not directly a member of NATO, is only dragged along, unwittingly, by an incurious and incompetent Washington DC, which commits us to one disastrous policy after another.

That our core is neglected, theirs always hyped, is a disparity and double standard we (a lot of us) will no longer accept in Cascadia.  Taxation without representation has never been our cup of tea.

The loss of federal funding is a relief actually, given all the strings attached.  Detaching from the brain dead is a good investment if our purpose is to serve the welfare of Oregonians.

A Refresher Course

I'm reviewing a shop talk here, one used in IT.  You'll remember .NET (pronounced "dot net") which pioneers the idea of a common low level language to which higher level ones compile.  C# ("C-sharp") and Visual Basic would both compile to the same CLR (Common Language Runtime), which is like assembler language but not right on the chip.

The "chip" here is virtual i.e. there is no actual hardware that talks this language -- but could there be?  To run .NET on different physical chips means getting under the hardware abstraction layer.  .NET is well-established and does business every day.  The Open Source version is known as Mono (or "monkey") with support from Novell.

Anyway, picture .NET as a Great Pyramid (Mono in its shadow) and then add another one nearby:  the JVM or Java Virtual Machine.

Same idea:  multiple languages target the same pile of code, thereby availing of the million hours of labor going into them, we can debate whether to call it "slave" given wages were in the picture.  The JVM was pioneered by another giant of the Silicon Age:  Sun Microsystems.  The Sun ecosystem, including Java and Jython, was not so long ago acquired by Oracle.

So you might compare Microsoft and Oracle as chief sponsors of the two Great Pyramids out there on today's cyber-desert.

Lets look at the JVM more closely and talk about what it means to share a common lower level language.  Java, the main driver of the JVM project, is the computer language most native to this platform, but then consider Clojure, or Scala, or Jython.

These general purpose languages target the same JVM which brings with it the possibility of interoperability, a buzzword that tends to get all manner of coder geek excited, PyLadies included.  Something running in Jython might have applicability in some Clojure namespace.  I've been tracking developments along those lines.

Lets back up and talk about Jython again.  That's a version of the Python language that targets the JVM.

In contrast, Iron Python is a project targeting the .NET pyramid.

Two more VMs define Python:

• it's home base in a C-language version, and 
• PyPy, a Python written in a slimmed down version of itself.  

That's a lot going on and not every language enjoys such a complicated evolution.

Python's story is worth weaving in here though, as it helps us refine our understanding of the relationship between a high level language, such as Python, and the engines on which it might run, which are numerous, each pregnant with different if overlapping possibilities.

Where does Clojure fit in, mentioned earlier?

• One, it targets the JVM (think of Oracle) and 
• Two, it's in the LISP family ...

... a proud (and rightly so) branch in the family tree, which likewise includes Scheme, and Racket, and even the more obscure Hy, a recasting of Python into a LISPish syntax.

Think of caravans converging from faraway places, on some Oasis near some Pyramids.  That will give you a placid vista in which to think about how all these lineages and traditions come together and trade memes.

Even without turning into a Clojure programmer, a Pythonista may learn from the LISPers.

The stories told in the shadows of these Great Pyramids are informing today's IT.  Lets hope you feel somewhat refreshed about these concepts, relevant to computing today.

Trendy Talks

Two versions of an excellent talk by Joi Ito:

TED Talk

@ solidcon

Meat Therapy

I'm calling it that because the butcher behind the counter at the local market called out to me, helpfully, asking if I'd found everything all right.  Personnel at this market are encouraged to ask that, and if the customer strikes up a conversation, they're allowed to follow it, at least a little ways.

My response was to say I knew the market like the back of my hand (which I've barely explored in any detail, but idiomatically it means "know quite well") but thanks to a gift from my moved-away neighbors, I was now developing more BBQ savvy.  "You'd think an old guy like me would know everything there is to know about BBQ" I intoned, using my louder Bartonius voice, "not true, I'm just a beginner."  The butcher perceptively remarked that we forget and grow rusty as well.

"Yes, and the technology is always changing" I agreed, "like I've got this chimney thing..., anyway, expect to see more of me."  I thanked him for his early morning "meat therapy".

As I wandered away from the meats section, I was thinking about my concerns about meat eating, a behavior I indulge in, which quickly led to thoughts on the role of morality.  To make a long story short, some of the best and most interesting work involves a delicate hand and a lot of empathy, and those habituated to bull in a china shop behavior e.g. lacking empathy, just won't have a prayer of landing such assignments.

However I do feel empathy for all of us who are meat, me one of them.  Being meat has amazing properties and many novel ways to suffer.  I'm watching my dog suffer loss of mobility day by day as I blog about it, as this form of degeneration has no cure but to start again with new meat, if one believes in "reincarnation" where "carne" is literally "meat" in Latin i.e. "to incarnate" is "to become meat".

There's a pun in English a lot of geeks use, rhyming "meet space" (the space of meetups) with "meat space".  Per the meaning @ Meetup.com, a meetup is indeed a meat space event, and I would argue even cyber events involve lots of meat, not just silicon and plastic, as the meeters still need to incarnate in order to pilot their avatars.  As long as one has a meat avatar, all events involving one have a meaty flavor.

That's just a fancy way of calling attention to some of the substantive consequences of enjoying ones presence as a mammal, in turn a member of the Meat Kingdom (many of the meats for sale and good for BBQ are not mammal meats, the set of animals being a superset of the mammal set).

BBQ on a T-Day

Right after witnessing Sky Writing and duly buying the advertised brand, to show my support for such stellar acrobatics (and to have ice cream), there appeared in my vista, in New Seasons, a slab of salmon on sale.  Ever since the neighbors sold their house and left, gifting me with two items, BBQ and lawn mower, I've wanted to try them both.

I've tried the mower, it works great, and today is T-day (try-day) for the BBQ, me having purchased a part of that slab at $8.99 a pound.  Carol and I sampled it last night using ordinary cookware, indoors.  Now I'm ready to fire up this Webber and find out what I'm able to do.

I've invited a guest for the occasion.  As I am not an accomplished BBQer in this chapter, or at least rusty from times gone by (our family used to live in Braai Country, Southern Africa), I'm leaving a wider margin of error and not subjecting too many guinea pigs to my culinary experiment.

The atmosphere has been much a topic these last few days, Metro Portland just getting a whiff of what truly is driving many crazy as these fires are so vast.  No relief in sight for the Bend area right now, where a lot of people have put a lot of nest eggs, in the form of expansive homes.

The Metolius Fire was another tragedy the locals still speak of.  That part of Oregon is a tinder box, relative to say Willamette Valley, a lowland under intensive cultivation.

So Portland is not getting huge sympathy and indeed its citizens are resigned to just toughing it out, as driving to clean air would mean going all the way to Nevada, and that's just not that practical.

Adding a plume from mesquite chips will not significantly impact PPM (parts per million).  We're doing our best to make efficient use of fresh fish, with skills-building exercise.  Like in scouting.  The dad is supposed to know how to grill in this culture.  I'm ready to give it a try, today is T-day.  I'll be the dad in this scene.

Of course I made some mistakes:  not enough charcoal and the fish slabs should have been in foil, though this way I at least got those stripes, like in the pictures, with the foil to follow.  Deke showed up and we did the chimney part again, using that special cylindrical device to get things going.

This time I turned the cylinder over on top of the lower grill instead of letting everything just sit on the bottom of the grill.  Live and learn.

The salmon turned out great.  Mom got some too, along with coleslaw and potato salad from Freddies.

We did a taste test comparing Dr. Pepper made with sugar, versus diet.

Summer fun.

Wanderers 2015.8.19

:: jeff goddard, 2009 ::

Jeff Goddard found time to join us, and it turns out his career and mine have brought us closer together:  we're both into Clojure.  He's using the Reagent based approach to working with React, the Facebook-supported JavaScript library.  My needs are more primitive so far as I'm doing curriculum writing in early STEM, looking at the concept of Vectors.

The discussion wandered all over, as is our wont.  I wrote on the white board with a colored marker clearly labeled as "not suitable for white boards" and had to put some work into getting everything back to pristine, which I did.  Lesson learned I hope.

Those other pens are for butcher paper presentations, not white board presentations.  I had a new domain to share, sounding vaguely shadowy in a DC Comics kind of way (4Dsyndicate.net -- just a placeholder right now, complements Grunch.net and 4Dsolutions.net, used for curriculum writing and DHL shipments (just shipped an art book to Nepal)).

Having access to Safari Books On-line as a perk of my employment means I might find a lot more on React and Reagent if I go poking around.  I'll plan on doing that soon, also wearing my IT Committee hat with NPYM (NGO community service role).

My schedule opened up during Wanderers owing to a rescheduling by the party interested in visiting Costco with me, a sometime Wanderer herself.  We can do that another time.

We talked about Uber, with me reminiscing about our Clackamas County experiment, funded by cigarette tax money through TriMet, who's mandate was to get people from here to there regardless of by what means.

Transportation Reaching People (TRP) showed how a non-profit -- a GO in this case, not an NGO -- could participate in the same space as Uber, tapping mostly retired folks with their own cars and dispatching them to help various parties keep doctor appointments, go shopping etc.

I also mentioned Ron Braithwaite's presentation years ago, about "urberizing" eldercare with a system of passive sensors and human monitors, some of them clients of health care in other ways, perhaps wheelchair bound.

Doing this work in public-private space was Ron's vision for Canada at first, but whether that idea ever went anywhere I know not.  My impression is we're still in the dark ages, Canada too.

My rant this morning was humans were very much an unfinished work, and were aliens to visit they'd likely say:  "not fully matured yet, we'll check back in a couple millennia, good luck."

That attitude derives from my latent case of misanthropy I'm sure.  Likely there's a pill for that in some catalog or other.  Mostly I've got it under control and have a lot of empathy for people.

In fact later today I for some reason (no reason?) took time off from teaching Python to plunge into some Youtubes looking back on the Tsunami in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka.

I also studied the sinking and refloating of the Costa Concordia, before meeting Carol's flight from Boston (JetBlue).

HSF 2015

(def HSF-2015 "Hawthorne Street Fair") in Clojure.  Symbols may have that hyphen, whereas in many computer languages the parser would see that as a subtraction operator.

Anyway, you'll see I focus on merchants and merchandize a lot, which is what a Fair is all about in some respects.  And showing off interesting canines.  I really enjoyed the dogs this year, missed the art cars, not saying they weren't there.

I did two passes through the festival.

The first time, with camera, starting at Fred Meyer's and working west all the way to the Cuban restaurant and the pink Voodoo Donuts food cart in the middle of the street.  Then I cut over to a quiet back street and ambled home, to upload my catch.  Great fun.

The second time I left the camera at home and joined Deke the Geek at StarBucks, already in good company.  I then headed west as before, but zigzagging almost to Belmont, winding up at said Cuban place, by way of the Growler Store, permitted to have beer in its parking lot.

I listened to folk music over a pint of IPA (just one), then ate Cuban food (rejoined by Deke at that point) then headed to the gym for my workout.  Pork mojo, tostones (fried plantaines) on the side, with brown rice and black beans.  Excellent.  My first time there.  Used to be a Taco Del Mar, which I also liked.  Deke took some pictures too (to be included in the above album when I get them).

At the gym I switched from Elliptical A (the model I'm used to) to Elliptical B (why not?), forgetting I'd already dumped my Android in a cylinder attached to A.  I was almost home again before realizing my mistake and hopped in the Nissan to get back as quickly as I could.  Still there.  Lucky me.

I saw several of my friends, including a Quaker or more, milling about, from my various vantage points.  I texted two of them, but did not interrupt their sojourns.  I also met up with a Hanukkah party regular and we talked about an upcoming photography exhibit at Newspace.

I'd planned yet a third circuit, with camera again, before closing time at 7 PM, and a re-opening to motor vehicles.  That was not to be, as I got involved in cyber-projects and let the time fly by.