Strategy Session

@voteyeson97 strategy meetings... https://t.co/WPFJOPoNrc

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) September 29, 2016

We've been putting our heads together, "we" being a clique of Measure 97 supporters, wondering if we might rescue mathematics teachers from their double bind.  On the one hand, the high school track is brimming with disappointed students, unable to hack it, but all attempts at reform hit a brick wall.  The name of that brick wall is "computer science".

The quality of public debate remains low, as people without the terminology or concepts just cannot participate in the conversation.  They stay with what they know, such as "will using a calculator make Johnny too dumb to multiply single digit numbers?"  I'm not saying that's an out of bounds question.  However for someone living in the Silicon Forest, calculators are not the issue.  Lets talk about computers, and about the bash shell.  Crickets chirping.

Having been party to these conversations for some decades by now, with thousands of posts to my name in the infamous Forum 206 @ MathForum, I don't see any sudden clearing ahead at the national level.  I do see regional and even more local breakthroughs happening.  A lot depends on individual teachers, such as Peter Farrell in California, and A. Jorge Garcia in New York.  Both of these math teachers understand that "learning to code" and "learning mathematics" are not antithetical (big word, means "not in opposition to one another").

Most of the action is in Twitter-verse from my point of view.  That doesn't mean decisions get made there, only that here's an application that lets us study memes, up close and personal.  Watch how "AI" and "data science" mix with "big data" and "machine learning" to give us new blends of science fiction, influential simply in their being widespread.  I'm not saying these concepts are empty.  On the contrary, substantive shifts are afoot.  Drilling down through Twitter gives analysts access to some of the most important memes in a highly distilled (refined) form.

We meet on-line, in coffee shops, at brew pubs.  I'm not saying we all see eye-to-eye.  My talk at Wanderers about matters Raspbian included plenty of Measure 97 talk, 98 as well.  Tiz the season.  We may not win at the polls, but the opportunities to organize have opened up anyway, and that is for the better.

I'll have more time to devote to these issues, as I conclude my two year term as Clerk of the Information Technology Committee for North Pacific Yearly Meeting.  That wasn't a paid gig, given Quakerism is volunteer role playing, for the most part.  However I did learn some new project management skills which I'll take with me as we enter this new chapter. That was originally a three year role however the position has a reputation for morphing and I'd rather kick the ball to another team player at this point, now that the job description has changed yet again.

Star Party

"Star Party" is a bit tongue in cheek (a wry joke) as the night sky was overcast and not even the moons (of Jupiter) were to be seen.  Never mind, we knew in advance that'd be the case.  This was our Wanderers retreat, coupled with an open house for Brenda, who runs a farm out towards Mt. Hood.

Carol (mom) has been glued to the TV (Internet) watching a conference she didn't make it to in WDC (Washington, DC).  Given quite a number of registered ended up in overflow rooms watching on TV as well, her remaining in the comfort of her home office seems a good decision.

Since her program started up again early this morning, and for other reasons, we didn't say at the farm very long, were among the very first to leave (when latecomers were just arriving).  I tried some really interesting and tasty dishes, including some "LDS beer" (home crafted dark ale by a Mormon craftsman).

Given I was the designated driver (with two passengers), I was light on the alcohol, imbibing only three thimble sized cups in the last hour, with my usual couple bottles in the first hour.  If we'd stayed any later, I would have switched to coffee.  As it was, I was awake and alert both ways, not a problem.  We shot out on Hwy 26, returning by I-84 much of the way.  The art car works great, still plenty muscular for my needs.

Glenn recently found the third of three volumes (with an index), in translation, by that German philosopher guy, bucking to be the next Heidegger maybe?  The title of this one is Foam.  Glenn says it's about insiders and outsiders, as defined by container metaphors (i.e. spheres, bubbles, systems of any kind -- like a tetrahedron).

Talk Like a Pirate

Given today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, I'm reposting this little Youtube, wherein I suggest where Pyret, the computer language, might fit in to the high school curriculum: along the Lambda Calc track.

Speaking of high school, thanks to Nepris for arranging for me to pop up as a talking head for thirty minutes, in an Austin classroom.  That's in Texas.

Austin and Portland have a lot in common (Keep Austin Weird).

Here's my post to the Pyret discussion list, promising to do my part. :-D

Feeling the Bern

Glenn and I returned for the open house today, and met some new people, hatched some new plans.

Many pundits do not make the connection between Feeling the Bern, meaning Bernie Sanders, and Burning Man, a Maker Faire writ large on the playa.

I've not been to Burning Man and won't advertise any inner circle savvy, save to say I've done some homework.

Given Flickr has fixed the embedded slideshow feature, I'll replicate the Hedron slideshow here as well.

I watched Sam fix a Kindle today, using his cell to show the video on how to disassemble and reassemble.  He was replacing the battery with an after market one.  This is a new Sam, heretofore unmentioned.  We also talked about World Game / Game World.

A lovely community.  Carry on.

#3dprinting polyhedrons @HedronTech : https://t.co/ILUs91d9TI

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) September 18, 2016

Feeling the Bern @HedronTech ... pic.twitter.com/WiTvdxXaUR

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) September 17, 2016

Maintenance

All the embedded slideshows in these blogs stopped working today.  I've found enough other Flickr users noticing the change to be sure it's not me.  It's the "show" feature itself that's broken, embedded or not.  Lets see if Flickr is responsive or knows how to fix its code.

Carol had her INR check today, a topic in the election, as Hillary (69) gets her INR checks as well.  Presidents typically have their health issues aired as that reminds people to pay attention to their own health.  We learned quite a bit about president Reagan's colon. Trump's stats at 70 remind me (58) I need to lose more weight.  Carol (87) needs to up her intake of kale a tad.

I recently put out another essay on Medium entitled Thinking Globally in 2016.  My purpose there was to update a small cabal of readers on some esoteric literature that deserves more peer review going forward, given how we may elect to shift more weight towards some of the technologies therein reviewed.

My diet relies a lot on pinto bean burritos I make myself, with raw onion and spinach, grated cheddar, and picante sauce.  I also gulp Soylent, a non-dairy "just add water" powdered food designed for geeks with limited time and/or cooking skills.  I like to think I do have at least some cooking skills, however the "limited time" label sometimes applies.

For exercise, I continue walking up Mt. Tabor many mornings.  Thanks to the bicycle, I'm also well positioned to circle around in Laurelhurst Park a few times, a pleasant up and down affair, something like the kiddy-coaster at Oak's Park. The beer is what makes me a bit of a fatso, though I've lost some since Lithuania.

Those following on Twitter know I'm eager to check out Hedron, a maker space, among other places, in follow-up to Maker Faire, part of PDX Maker Week.

Lindsey Walker (40+) whipped through on a tight schedule, heading from Kathmandu to OSU.  Joel was her greeter this time. My chauffeur duties have sometimes included meeting her plane or seeing her off.  Not this time.  Melody also stopped by briefly to say hello.

I picked up on the Susan Lindauer thread today and forwarded one of her early book tour videos to WILPF for evaluation.  Per her book, she was detained under the Patriot Act.  I've been reviewing a bunch of dot-connecting Youtubes many of my readers will likely already know about.

We get different inbox materials at different times in partially overlapping scenarios (to use some Buckyspeak).  CIA director Brennan was on CBS News tonight suggesting new leaks might be forthcoming soon.  Have people had time to digest what's already been leaked?  When did they find the time?

Lets hope the Flickr slide share API comes back to life.  That's been a really cool feature.

Learning About Language

Revisiting 911

I think I'll do a 9-11 post a couple days early.  That's my wedding anniversary, true for many.  We booked the Rhododendron Garden, and although we had a backup plan, in case it rained, it didn't. That was 1993.

My parents suffered their car crash, fatal to my dad, in October, 2000.  I'd been to Lesotho to help with the aftermath, Julie taking over.  On September 11, 2001, I was in Portland.  Dawn came to me in tears with the unfolding news on TV.

I'm respectful of all the work the science community has done, some members of which I've met (Chandler... Margulis), regarding their independent investigation of what went on that day, so tragic and still mysterious.  I'm not one of those jumping up and down saying I know the answers. "A convergence of special interests?"  That doesn't tell us anything.

However, I do think the Truthers may underestimate their readers and viewers.  They suggest we need psychological help because we're still in denial about what they reveal.  I'd say we're not in denial, by and large, just what's the next move? The Truthers are calling for a new, independent investigation, taking us to a next square beyond the NIST report. So who's really in denial?

On a board game called, Lets Do the Rational Next Thing, that might indeed be the next square.  I haven't noticed we're playing such a board game though. Our shared reality defies mere rationality.

If powers that be so effectively control the storytelling, then what would move them to suddenly unroll the red carpet for those not into playing along with their preferred narratives?  Just asking.

Please don't suppose I'm booing from the peanut gallery or throwing rotten tomatoes.  On the contrary, I see a lot of good science.  I'm just wondering why the scientists think "the rules of science" need be followed, in the sense I raise above.  As Margulis suggests, PR rules, at least in the short term.

Lets hope the scientists and engineers will continue with their independent investigation, the one they've been doing.  It's not like the "official" power structures have been eager to pay for it, I realize. Many would prefer to focus on other matters and find the myths more comforting, are quite content to live in fantasy-fiction, a kind of Matrix.  What's the benefit of waking up?  I admit that type of denial does exist.

Put another way, the fog of war is called that for a reason. I've only known a world at war, starting with the Kennedy assassinations when I was in second grade living on Capital Hwy near Multnomah Village.  I've been in fog ever since.  It never lifts, right?  We live and breath it.

In the course of living in fog, I've lived outside the US, moved back, taught in schools, programmed computers, raised a family.

We're like so many ships passing in the night, right?  Lets avoid crashing into each other at least?

I do think the general public puts a lot of trust in science and generally respects the work of those seeking more truth.  That's an uphill battle, I agree.

Some brands of political discourse have gone down the figurative toilet, turned more potty-mouth, more like urine, thanks to their not being willing to communicate much science.  That changes their alchemical composition. Lots of people have noticed the change in tone.

On another topic, I've recently learned that the QuakerQuaker website, where I've committed some writings, much of it discussion-oriented, might be going away soon.  I'll be copying some of the content to other web sites.

Wanderers 2016.9.6

I enjoyed a great turnout for this Raspbian presentation, an induction into the subculture of Raspberry Pi for some of us.  My focus was the ARM chip itself, billions served, and I kicked it off recounting my first stumbling upon the Acorn system, in Paro, Bhutan (Druk-yul).  Some Brits had set up shop there, and were not running DOS or Windows.

The ARM chip was inspired by UC Berkeley + Stanford writings on a RISC architecture, which remained pie-in-the-sky insofar as Intel x86 was concerned, the Pentium and so on offering rich vocabulary chips.

The ARM, in contrast, stayed more comprehensible in some scenarios, and lower power, so made its way, post Acorn, into Samsung and other devices, running applications (A), as well as more real time (R) and embedded (M) devices.  The ARM network of partners rivals (and partially overlaps) Intel's.

So from Advanced RISC Machine to these three "architecture profiles", ARM has preserved mnemonic value, good branding.  Raspberry Pi is its own brand and Barbara Stross, bless her good sense, brought raspberries and yogurt, the better to celebrate with.  The Pi is likewise a "Py machine", playing well with Python.

I brought the museum-worthy Python Software Foundation's retired mascot to the event.  Mascots are not so much in fashion these days and this stuffed toy had no role in the latest Pycon, here in Portland.  Maybe I'll lug her (Naga), to the next one, and bequeath her back to some booth.  I ended up with her thanks to Steve Holden, former PSF chairman, and quick to ride the wave of mascots being cool, when they were.

Below, you'll see said Python snake cuddling with the Perl camel.  This went along with my quip that the Dutch windmill in the Republic of Perl background was "Guido's house", so close was Python to Perl, even if with some different philosophies (ours more zen).

Some Silicon Forest heavy hitters came out of the woodwork for this one and educated me on various matters, including Measure 98, as distinct from Measure 97.  They make sense as a duo.  I passed Peter Farrell's Hacking Math Class around, as suggestive of what Math + Pi, vs. Math + TI, might look like.  I also screened my Habitat for Humanity talk during the break, in part just to show off how the Pi 3 can stream Youtubes, no problemo.

After the meetup we checked out the new campus mural, gradually materializing to our immediate west.  The Far West becomes the Far East in that puzzle Christopher Columbus never quite figured out.  He was more interested in gold than worldly wisdom, is what the pundits say.  I digress.

Yes, to some extent I made Texas Instruments the bogey-man in my story, but not the good engineers who'd invented the microchip.  Of course the scientific calculator is a miracle to behold.  I understand how we might get somewhat cultish about it (I was, about the HPs).

TI is also in on the ARM action I'm finding, so it's not like we have to play either / or here.  Oregon's high schoolers might get more bash shell soon (the Linux dashboard / API) as technology permeates STEM and/or STEAM (A for Anthropology, part of PATH).  I'm not against showcasing Intel's Edison within #CodeCastle (a space of keepers). Stay tuned.

Neil Stryker and the Tyrants of Time (movie review)

My special "in" or "angle" on this production is I'm friends with one of the co-producers, the Taylor Twins dad, Allen Taylor, another Wanderer.

Thanks to Allen's mind-bending family, my horizons were earlier expanded by Evil Cult, my induction into the Stryker series.

That I saw this new 2016 movie almost back to back with the 1976 Logan's Run was perfect, as the Stryker films synthesize and parody a million hours in between.  I'd call it "gentle parody" because it jumps right in with its own twisted storytelling, with no aloofness.

Film has many sweet spots in lower budget realms, as in Serenity. TV has been both a curse and a blessing, in providing new techniques. I'm not the expert.

This film had a large crew and some surprisingly good production values.  Some stuff "looks fake" in the way Budapest Hotel looks fake -- quite on purpose.  Mostly what's on display is mastery of the medium.  Nic Costa and company have film making down.

The small Laurelhurst theater #3 was packed, as it had been in theater #1 after Logan's Run.  I'd stayed behind hoping to squeeze in but ended up buying a ticket for Sunday instead.  I walked both ways from my Richmond abode, through the same Laurelhurst park I'd been riding around just hours before.

Tyrants of Time is dedicated to film buffs, with so many implicit and overt allusions to its genres (horror, science fiction... ) that enumeration would be pointless.  Back to the Future might be a place to start.  Yes, the goblins look like Gollum.  Yes, that's the Star Trek guy (Walter Koenig) choosing to stay there.

Allen plays a cameo as usual and I was watching for him.  Note that Rob Taylor plays Neil Stryker and the Mad Scientist. That's part of the fun.

Labor Day Weekend

Newcomers to these blogs need those DVD series catch up segments, like in Lost, as if it mattered in Lost.  These blogs have long-running themes, and one of them is "what is work?" with "work / study" a connected meme.

In a physics sense, breathing and oxygenation of the blood is a huge workflow involving miles of tubing, and pipelines off photosynthesis whereby sunlight, atmospheric components, and dirt (with living minerals) are transformed into fruits and vegetables, and not only in Central America.

A human being outputs somewhere between 200-300 watts in some models.  Watts are already a per time unit, and brightness is a measurable aspect of burning energy more quickly, a higher wattage.  In economics we say "productivity" but then we also say "pace yourself".  We're getting into athletics.

An athlete "works out" and "trains" to perform in specific ways, in a kind of theater or play that's more kinematic than about spoken lines, though off the field we do interview players, as a part of the sportscasting genre.  Spoken line theater requires acoustics.  We have that inside the helmets sometimes, but not for broadcast in that case, as we don't want the opposing teams to lurk in on each other.

Human metabolism is only practical within a "phase space" of related parameters.  Your exact place in that phase space is fixed by "arguments" corresponding to those parameters, the latter (the params) being the algebraic "placeholders" like x, y in some linear or many-powered equation.

When you figure out the (x, y) pairs that solve the equation, you get a line or other manifold of points and may refer to individual points by their (x, y) address, by their args.  How much you care about "continuity" depends on the namespace.  Permeability may be assumed in cell biology.

For example, if you eat a huge amount and only exercise a little, your body has a clever way of banking the excess and saving it for a rainy day, when you'll have a way to "burn it off" maybe by shivering.  You've gravitated to a specific space in the phase space, a set of neighboring points wherein a human metabolism remains a continuing possibility.

However if that rainy day doesn't come soon, your slowing down may spiral and you'll wind up in bed having a hard time overcoming your own inertia.  A kind of Gibbs Phase Rule is involved.  How much pressure are you under?  What's the temperature?  When you can't get out of bed, your muscles start to weaken.  Astronauts know about working out in zero gravity, but for humans on Earth, countering gravity is their chief workout, even when swimming.

People get driven to work in order to pay off incurred debt in many cases.  Every bill to pay becomes a debt, so lets summarize everything in nature, in chemistry, as a kind of bookkeeping in which energy laws must be followed, and not because humans say so, but because physicists don't find exceptions, or if they do they get new kinds of phenomena, like "dark energy" to compute with.

My schedule drives me to walk a few miles most mornings.  If you 3D print the Asylum District from say Sunnyside-Richmond out to the Mt. Tabor neighborhood, you'll notice a continual rise in altitude going east, in the direction of the Mississippi, parallel to the Columbia Gorge, perpendicular to the Pacific coastline.  I'll do work (in the physics sense) climbing to the top of Mt. Tabor and then descending.  I've made this trip over and over.

Without diving in to any "black budget" or "dark web" for my example data, I'm able to come around full circle and identify Labor with some kind of bookkeeping, relating to biophysical "expense accounts" such as flowers and bees incur, simply as a consequence of needing to stay powered.  They've got that wattage to work through, at a specific rate.  DWA / 4D Solutions got started in bookkeeping, as a fund accounting and computer programming partnership.

"All You Can Eat" restaurants sound like a losing proposition until you factor in the obvious:  a single human has a finite capacity, even if "pigging out" (as we learn from our farm days to name certain eating habits).  Biology kicks in.  You're not given take-home boxes, as you are where you buy by the portion.  The food is yours to eat now, not later, and that puts an upper lid on it.

In General Systems Theory, our Sims games (remember Sims?) may revolve around a refugee camp.  Able minded able bodies show up, with a mix of disabilities, everyone perfectly who they are, and self organize.

On TV they may say the children in refugee camps are getting no education but that's impossible as humans self program more intelligently than any Deep Learning neural net the AI people have managed to come up with.  AI people tinker in their garages, looking for magic algorithms, but humans are born with working equipment.

Confusing learning with school is a confusion on the part of the TV people, not the work / study students in the camps.

In GST one looks to the cafeteria line in an All You Can Eat setup wherein most refugees aren't into pigging out.  But they haven't room to cook or stash much food in their living quarters in some models.

They have a study carrel there, a PWS, with a Rasberry Pi... did you notice the science fiction elements here?  That's called "modeling" or "as if" (like on a Google Sheet).  We swap in different models of Cubby (importing from the CSN namespace).  In an earlier chapter, we were all about the XO, another educational device.

What I'll be doing on Monday is sharing about an API, what Harry Potter or his school mates wave their magic URL over to make the stone release its sword.  That's right, I'll be telling tall tales, sharing lore, around a somewhat technical subject, dry as bones if not jazzed up a bit.  I'll be presenting about that tiny Flask application I've been working on, the one with the Glossary, Periodic Table (unfinished) and Shapes tables behind a veil.

Farmers expecting to haul vegetables to the cafeteria from photosynthesis sites (solar powered), need the calories to do the hauling, plus the lifestyle, if done for long hauls, requires pacing.  The farmers may use a variety of comm devices and Linux-powered calendars to inform their HDTVs.  One windmill + storage battery may suffice for the electronics, with a backup generator.  The farmers intermix with the refugees, in terms of roles.  We may or may not need to model language differences.

In Martian Math, we may tell a science fiction story in which the ETs have safe refuge, on one side of the gorge, Earthlings on the other.  Or call it a compound, or campus.  The farms are nearby.  Assume the ETs and Earthlings overlap in the same metabolic phase space and are able to file through the same cafateria line and "pig out" together.  That's to serve plot line development. 

We're building a fictive phase space in which to engage in STEAM learning, with A for Anthropology, a part of PATH (see The Math Myth by Hacker).  In building a dam together, the Martians and Earthlings need to compare and reconcile different models of 3rd powering, the whole XYZ vs. IVM thing.

My morning walk up Mt. Tabor is a habit of longstanding, however given the new bike from a sponsor, I'm trending towards other loops that exercise different muscles and elicit other kinds of real time judgement.  Portlanders (PDXers) love to bicycle so I'm no sore thumb in blending in with the other cyclists, even with all this grey hair (or "white" as some call it).

Gateway to Asia

I often bill Portland as one of those Chinese Gate cities, where you may preview the so-called Far East, which is further West from our side, or maybe North along the coast and over to Nippon.

You'll find lots of Japanese influence in stateside culture here, including in the Manga section at Barnes & Noble.  You'll notice the book binding puts the cover on "the back", with pages turning from left to right.  Fewer magazines adopt that format, though still purport their authenticity as true Manga specimens.

At OSCONs and such you'll find Manga characters pressed into service for didactic purposes, teaching calculus, or maybe chemistry.

Japanese speakers may first learn about Synergetics + Linux on a Raspberry Pi, thanks to some fantasy characters talking about "spells" (Linux commands) and Wizardry (shades of Harry Potter).

The Japanese edition of Scientific American had that article by Yasushi Kajikawa, present at SNEC's creation.  We've had a lot of time to build on these modular studies since then.

Maybe in some back street in Okinawa you'll come across such an underground comic.  The fact that Antiprism + Povray were first pipelined in an Oregon VML (a subtype of PWS) won't matter.

That's just the ambient Pacific Rim economy hard at work.  Next up:  Anime.

Investigating TI cult for breaching US firewall twixt church and state. https://t.co/9VLxjWSxQn Tweet if your school unfairly pushes TI only

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) September 2, 2016

Church of TI crosses church and state line as "required device" on state tests. Opt out. Church of TI may be against your religion. #Quakers

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) September 2, 2016

Gift Shop Item

Show your #geek AWESOMENESS with this t-shirt! #javascript #git #coding #angularjs #php => https://t.co/HeI8iHfVlr pic.twitter.com/taCDRYrBIi

— Programmer Republic (@programmerrep) August 27, 2016

Commerical Message

Not just for Quaker schools anymore...

"Lux Blox: for Friends" @Videogenique on #Vimeo https://t.co/zrTMhx6gl6

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 30, 2016

Comic Classic

Addicted to War is not Logicomix, however I'd connect them, philosophically. Bertrand Russell was a pacifist.

I linked to the latter graphic novel, out of Athens, from QuakerQuaker this evening.

I carried Addicted to War around the neighborhood today, constructing photo ops and archiving the shots, helping WILPF re-circulate an old classic.

Hawthorne is the site of the Linus Pauling House, Linus being a pacifist as well.  That think tanks out here would be into such lampooning is hardly surprising.  The zip code areas are not carbon copies of one another.

... found this looking for stop action studios for nat, cool!

POV-Ray on a Pi

Getting POV-Ray to compile on my Raspberry Pi 3 took some doing.

I don't consider myself an expert with this particular tool chain.

Good practice.

Here's a reconstruction of the steps I took, though a lot more trial and error went on.

Now that I have both Antiprism and POV-Ray on a Pi, I can "blow bubbles" such as the above.

We're spreading this savvy to Oregon's schools.

I'm also scheduled to address a middle school in Texas, about programming more generally.

Got little @Raspberry_Pi to render https://t.co/CLBHYjHFtk shapes. See shapes API at https://t.co/pNmZaH69pY - scroll down for renderings.

— Kirby Urner (@thekirbster) August 27, 2016

The unit volume tetrahedron API is considered too radical for kids, is treated more as a Mars attacks kind of thing, hence Martian Math. #4D

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 27, 2016

Martian Math: a Silicon Forest initiative & end run around test makers who bleep over some best parts. https://t.co/ObhIGN2mEq #CodeCastle

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 27, 2016

From Providence

I've come here with Carol many times, I've even worked here.  I'm in the cafeteria on the ground floor.  Carol needs to come back later this week as her measures are out of whack.  She's lower energy as a result, but up for walking around the grocery store next.

I've shared the Harold Kroto email with the Physics Learning list, an association of physics teachers concerned with best practices.  Our discussions are free ranging.  I'm not a physics teacher so much as an invited guest.  Dr. Bob Fuller recommended me to this listserv.  We're also yakking about what counts as "CS-friendly math" at the high school level (CS = computer science).

Computer science and physics are both explicitly concerned with the time dimension, its advance.  Mathematics has "pure forms" in the Platonic sense that don't change with time, a tetrahedron for example.  In the Synergetics language we call these "pre-frequency" if drawing attention to the eternal aspects, the surface and central angles mostly.

When it comes to vectors, as used on CAD (computer-aided design), 3D printing, these may be timeless.  Once time enters the picture, it's a matter of computing a "next frame" and a "next frame" after that, as when making animations.

Gerald de Jong, Karl Erickson, Russell Chu and a few others, were involved in early animations based on elastic vectors, meaning structural members that resisted further compression, or further stretching, according to various simple formulas.

Gak!  My next stop was the grocery store, top-level parking, where I discovered:  no computer satchel on the back seat, with mom's walker.  Oh yeah, I'd put that down next to the car, in the hospital parking garage.  Oh God, I'd felt a bump backing out and idly wondered what that was.  Putting two and two together, that was me driving over my own computer.

I asked mom to accompany back to the scene of my misdeed, for emotional support, dreading the smashed device I would encounter.  Instead a kind lady had it leaning next to her pickup across the way, and was dialing for Lost and Found.  She was going to turn it in.  Nor was the computer gone or inoperable.  Everything survived.  My camera had been in my pocket...

Mentally, I'd gone through some of the process of not knowing many passwords.  I rely on my computer to store them.  I need to print out a hardcopy backup again, right away.

Basement Again

I'd say WiFi is a tad iffy down here, even 4dsys1, but I'm getting signal, and work proceeds.  We're having a heat wave and Lindsey strung up Christmas lights and left it uncluttered for the most part.  She moved away quite awhile ago, divides her time twixt Oregon State University and the Kathmandu area.

Thanks to getting the toilet fixed, there's nothing too out of whack, at least not in current weather conditions.  You'd think I'd be using this space more, at least when it's hot.  Well, here I am.

I've been reconnecting with writings by Anthony Judge.  We're not in a Vulcan mind meld or anything, just I enjoy catching up and recall when he analyzed the Bucky stuff sometimes.

I referenced @laetusx (Anthony Judge) in this blog post on QuakerQuaker: https://t.co/yVQRvQLLFZ (citing a recent essay). #4D #M3 #Quakers

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 21, 2016

Speaking of which, I'm in a nomenclature clash with the "civil war" terminology being deployed right alongside maps that are clearly multi-state, if going by the old globes.

I realize that nations come and go on this bubbling chaotic layer we call "civilization", and so the existence of variable lag times and "Doppler Effect" (as spun in Synergetics) makes plenty of sense.  We don't all talk the same way, duh.

In other words, sorry for sounding obtuse, when Turkey and a non-UN (unrecognized) state of Kurdistan, another unrecognized state, yet identified, and additional existing (recognized) states all overlap, of course it's a hodgepodge.  But how is it a country at war with itself?

People are still seeking some victory within the old framework, as if infrastructure depletion and "collateral damage" were worth some price for what future?  Where was this all going?

Good article, so sad that a meltdown has turned all factions into warring factions instead of working together. https://t.co/uVvoKHRpUZ

— Kirby Urner (@thekirbster) August 20, 2016

I'm tripping down memory lane, remembering how in Jersey City, after Princeton, I was writing in terms of a Housing Project and Language Project.  It's not that I was planning to be "in command" of these projects i.e. I was not having fantasies of becoming a dictator, I just wanted a framework to think within, other than what had been handed me.

The Housing Project was a lot like "Orlando time share" but then came new life with AirBnB and like that.  The housing stock would be shared more, with people sampling various lifestyles.  "While I'm away, you can stay at my place" type deals.  Some properties, such as the hotels along El Camino, come to seem like cultural institutions, meaning religious in origin (that's one way of putting it).

The Language Project was like poster art.  I drew a few of my own, simple pictures, like of the Earth from satellite / spaceship with captions like Game Park, and Spaceship.  Wild Life.  Nothing earthshaking.  More recently I've come to Teaching Hospital as another good caption.  Global U.

I was doing PR for the Bucky stuff in some ways, having picked up PR skills ("ad man" instincts) living in Rome, a cosmopolitan capital.  Beyond that, I was simply aware that language was always changing, and we could "watch the wheels go 'round and 'round", like John Lennon did in his famous song.  I'd go on to become the Buckminster Fuller Institute's first webmaster, though not for long.

That I'd approach Language in this general way is predicted by my interest in Wittgenstein's philosophy, with background reading in psychoanalysis.  Yes, I know, 8th grade is considered young for Freud but then prior generations didn't have Interpretation of Dreams on a high school library shelf.  We did, at OSR.

Language-oriented philosophy appeared to be getting into the same insights as the psychoanalytic generation, with Wittgenstein's bridging to anthropology somewhat completing the (Vienna) circle.  I enjoyed the luxury of studying all this at Princeton (Class of 1980), getting a snapshot.

And how is it a "civil war" with all these "countries" involved. Our nomenclature lags the facts on the ground? https://t.co/YBmIwvSkfc

— Kirby Urner (@thekirbster) August 20, 2016

I'll admit "civil war" keeps it sounding contained and that maybe soothes nerves.  I'm all for soothing nerves.  When the US was at it's own throat over what the future would be, people did not know the outcome and wondered what we would see, looking back (the back-looking vista keeps changing too, as we learn more).

In the face of uncertainty and wonder about the future, sticking with a known vocabulary may be a choice in self defense.  We don't jump ship until we have another ship to jump to, if we can help it.

On the other hand, we need to protect the integrity of shared language in terms of meaning, as it's breakdowns in shared language that account for so much of the strife.  The need to be truthful is also a requirement for traction.

There's an urge to make sense.  The opposite of "making sense" is maybe "fiddling while Rome burns" (to pick an already famous image).  But with Rome already burning, what else was there to do?  Might as well fiddle at that point.  Anticipatorily nipping the causes of war in the bud was what George Fox was more into.

Anticipatory Design Science.  Looking ahead.  Planning.  Warring is the postponing of planning, which then has to be done anyway.

In other news, we tweeters (I've had my face in that) saw a dog in zero G, a samoyed Glenn guessed from my description.  The dog appeared to be on the space station, which got my head spinning imagining the logistics, so I went browsing.

I came to a source persuading me this dog was on a Vomit Comet. Yes in zero G, but not for a long time.

Glenn was by to show me some amber, the good Baltic kind with lots of bugs in it.

I'm not just tweeting all day, however as a writer and code school teacher, math teacher and so on, I need to advertise that I'm out here and show off a portfolio. My "enough web dev to give traction" demo (a Flask application) has been time-consuming of late.

I'm hard at work in my "studio" in other words, or PWS (personal workspace) in General Systems Theory (my blend at least).

Yakking About Health Plans

I got an ESL teacher on the phone in Florida, working a second job as a licensed insurance agent.  We were discussing my plan options.  He called just a few seconds after I filled out some POSTing web form, giving my age and weight.

I'm not the big expert either but pulled the plug during verification, when I realized there was no reimbursement to medical providers, simply advocacy up front, negotiated fees for service, which I'd need to pay.  "No cap" sounds good, until you realize they mean "on your expenses".

The information was going by too fast.  We oldsters actually do need time to catch up, if coming in from the sidelines.  One needs orientation, meaning Youtubes.  How about have some government officials actually explain what to do and how it works.  Don't leave it to some "private sector" even if the latter has a role.

The rules seem ever changing.  Trying to make a sale and explain the New World Order in a single sales call is asking a lot of these sales folks.  I got to talk to the supervisor later.  He understood where I was coming from, but then the higher priced options had no real benefits unless I needed chemo or whatever.

Can we hedge against such an eventuality affordably, per actuarial statistics?  Apparently not?  Not in the USA that is. I'm not talking about Dubai at the moment (what's a health plan like there I wonder?).

Go look for Obamacare on the Web, and say "welcome to Shark World" under your breath,  This is the USA they're selling today as "numero uno" in terms of great places to live.  However, if shopping for a new country to join, be forewarned.  They're somewhat in disarray in this fish tank.  But then when have we ever really figured it out? Look at history.

There's a difference between the process of planning, and selling plans.  Plans need to be made before they're salable.  I suppose that's obvious.  My dad helped plan for the Tripoli of the 1980s, from the standpoint of the 1960s.  The plans were followed, or so we heard.

Maybe "wellness plans" are indeed the coming wave, or is that how it's always been or whatever.  So I Googled on "wellness plans" -- it was mostly about caring for pets.

The plan provider even looked up my doctor's name.  He was very personable.  However it takes more than one visit to Best Buy to figure out about computers.  Health plans are no less dense with information.

Having companies ravenous to hook a new customer without allowing said customer to engage in a thought process, is not going to work out in the long run, unless the libraries get really good at simply imparting practical information.  Has that been happening when my back was turned?

Should libraries turn into call centers, or add call centers to what they do?  I'd answer calls about specific topics.  I'm not some know-it-all about everything (not a "walking encyclopedia" -- I could never win at Jeopardy).  There's no one "go to librarian" who knows it all, plus they don't all speak Vietnamese, if that's called for.

The dream of a World Wide Web (or World Around Web if thinking globally) close matches this idea of a "library", staffed with real people, not just bots reading scripts.  The responses come asynchronously mostly, not instantaneously over the phone.  At least that's true in my experience.

An older guy like me, in good health (not on meds) in his late 50s, is able to get in on a wellness plan, but major medical maybe not, unless through an employer.  DWA (our mid-life partnership) was a self employing "gig economy" type player (lots of clients, per resume, and my wife had as many), so that meant paying for our own coverage, which she ended up needing, for chemotherapy.

There was something called Obamacare in the picture, but this was never really explained.  Where's the web page again, to enroll?  They say the deadline has already passed.  But I was covered before, thanks to a California employer, so how was I supposed to jump ship?

When people clamor for "single payer" I think that means a system they understand.  I'm one of those guinea pigs in the system with an out-of-date picture of how "medical coverage" (the game) is currently played.  There's probably a whole TV channel devoted to the subject, or a Youtube channel.

No doubt you'll find a gazillion blogs chattering about these topics.   

Grain of Sand readers probably aren't coming here to find out about health insurance.

They auto-call you now, when you fill in a web form and click, almost immediately.  The calls are scripted and recorded.  I bet a lot of people fail in verification, like I did, when I realized I didn't yet know the language and backed out.

They say "hold your questions until the end" as they're hoping to get you to sign on some dotted line.  But sometimes the sales process is so lightning fast you have no idea what you're buying, if anything.  A description of the benefits will be mailed to you latter.

Yes, all in English on the face of it, but what does that tell you?  That we're in some play by Shakespeare? ESL == "English as a Second Language".

Carol (WILPF elder, 87) is up for Fred Meyer's by car.  She and I missed the John Taylor talk at Thirsters.  She's not as strong sometimes.  Yep, we made it.

Classroom Formats

The "two teachers per classroom" movement is addressing itself to the student:teacher ratio issue in a way that requires less floor space.  We may still cram 30-40 students into the room, but we have two teachers in charge.

In practice, the teachers do not always co-present.  In a lab setting, both might walk around to the stations, helping individuals and teams.  Or one teacher goes to code school, if a STEM teacher, or even an English teacher brushing up on grammar and typography, fonts and the like i.e. HTML + CSS.  Then they switch and the other teacher gets PD (professional development).

However, we've learned from sportscasting that two engaged in banter, repartee, dialog, may be far more enlightening than a lecture format.  Have two geeks chattering, with an eye towards inclusivity, having students chime in, and you have a new model for bootstrapping into fluency, as a beneficiary of this "sportscaster" format.

I also like the "talk show host interview" format and plan to use that more in my classrooms.  I do both "brick and mortar" and "virtual" appearances.  For years, my mode was asynchronous, meaning student work would queue and I'd "slay the queue" (evaluate submissions), either marking them "done" or "in need of more work".

Two teachers per classroom: think of sportscasters, two people fluent in whatever shoptalk, cluing the others.. https://t.co/2T7edboL5s

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 18, 2016

That was our "grading system":  you keep chipping away until the mentor says it's OK, and is able to back up those decisions with reference to specific criteria i.e. it's not just subjective BS.  This was Python programming; I'm not saying every discipline is able to communicate itself so much in this way.

More recently, my mode is "radio show broadcaster" in a closed circuit television type environment.  We have about twenty or so students, able to ask questions in real time.  Mostly they see a talking head (mine) in a window, with my desktop filling their window or screen.

I give them lots of privacy and don't turn on their cameras unless they're asking to be put on.  I've been looking forward to such classrooms, so I'm not complaining now that I'm getting the opportunity to use them.

Deke the Geek just left a copy of The Oregonian, Metro Section, in my box.  I'll be going through that this morning, as the focus is on education this time.  I was on the front page of the Metro Section once, in the 1980s, holding a Fuller Projection on a post card.

Another time they featured me as a local futurist.  I was anticipating "hypertext kiosks" in local hospitals, where people could browse about insurance plans.  Sure enough, within some years, Providence Health System had precisely that.

HP4E (continued)

HP4E is a long-running campaign: "hexapents for everyone" is what it means.  A role model campaign was Guido van Rossum's CP4E, or "computer programming for everyone".  The latter had DARPA funding for long enough to get Tkinter + IDLE out the door, which popularized Python among Windows fans, one of the largest user bases in the 1990s.

You'll find the gamer community, around Civilization especially, were hip to the idea of a "macroscope" (globe) divided into, not trapezoidal, not quadrilateral, but hexagonal, and a few pentagonal tiles.  That's a "look".  If you're into fashion, you know about "looks".  The hexagon goes well with carbon chemistry.  Why?  Graphene.  Nanotubes. Buckyballs.

As a long-time attender at ISEPP lectures, run by my friend Terry Bristol, I've been privy to a lot of hexapent talk. I even have an email from Harold Kroto, let me share it:

Date: Mon, May 27, 2013 at 8:40 AM
Subject: RE Buckminsterfullerene

Dear Kirby
Thanks for your update and link to your very interesting blog

FYI
At the end of a lecture a few weeks ago I was asked
by Martin Saunders how the name came about ...
Ed Applewhite's account indicates that I named it
and Rick did not like the name (at the time!...somewhat
of a euphemism actually!) ...but does not
give the context.  Here is an email I sent to Martin:


Dear Martin
It was very nice to meet up again and remember our discussions at Masada I shall send you a copy of our MS on Ne22 in carbonaceous chondrites as soon as I have refined the first draft and also make any useful comments (should I have them) on your MS on He@C60 as soon as I can.

At the end of my talk yesterday you asked how the name Buckminsterfullerene arose

The sequence of events is as follows: Smalley and I wrote the original draft of  the discovery manuscript together.  At one point the question arose at to what  the title should be. Smalley asked me to suggest a possible title.  I responded on the spot with these words: “C sixty colon space Buckminsterfullerene”.  Smalley typed this in exactly and to my memory made little or no comment and I guess did not think too much about it at the time.  I concocted the title on the spur of  the moment because Buckminster Fuller's structures had been one (there was another!) of the strong influences on my thinking about what the structure of C60 might be.  This was partly because I had visited Buckminster Fuller US pavilion at Expo Montreal in 1967.  In addition this beautiful night-time photograph

in special copy of Graphis magazine, devoted to Expo67, had made a very strong memorable impression in my mind.  I had suggested that we withdraw a book by BF from the Rice library which Smalley did. I was a visitor and had no library credentials.  There are very few images of the simple truncated icosahedral (soccerball) structure in the book though there is one and BF is actually standing in it.

At the time I was quietly satisfied that the –ene ending worked so perfectly from a chemical point of view and furthermore the name, though rather long, scanned very nicely...doubly satisfying.

In the Ed Applewhite article http://www.4dsolutions.net/synergetica/eja1.html (extract attached) Smalley corroborates the fact that I gave C60 this name...a name that Smalley really did not like at all as is also indicated in the Applewhite article.

Some time later Smalley received a letter from Alex Nickon about the name.  He was so disenchanted with it at the time that he gave me the letter and told me to respond as it was my invention. I did respond and here is Nickon's book entry:



I hope this answers your question satisfactorily!

Best wishes
                      harry

Messed Up Mercator

There must be another way...  (of course there are, so many!)

Not the most familiar way, considered obscure, but with some nice features.

World maps as a math application: we get GIS / GPS in the mix early in Quaker schools. https://t.co/qvfhzZDsnJ (but in other schools too).

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 15, 2016

We go from Unit Volume Tetrahedron (UVT) off the deep end into late 1900s American History, a tumultuous time. Sociopolitical theories. #4D

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 15, 2016

Digital Islam

VR hijab meets Cyberpunk. #Digital_Islam. See more than just Pickachus. Escape the Matrix. https://t.co/8oWg2PRIqj

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 13, 2016

Hijab meets Cyberpunk VR.

VML (Verboten Math Lab)

Sent to the principal's office when they found out you're a Raspbian? Set up a Verboten Math Lab @ home https://t.co/RsjTN8vmmC #LearnHex

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 12, 2016

Note:  that's math, not meth, no dangerous chemicals, just a Raspberry Pi and Hacking Math Class by Peter Farell (I met him at a Pycon this year):

Set up in a basement maybe?  The Eye of Mordor is scanning the horizon...

Remember, Church of TI is Oregon's State religion, when it comes to what thou shalt bring to math class and AP exams.

Practice kneeling and pretending to fit in. A friendly church may be offering free WiFi to the huddled masses, check phone poles for info.

Curious about Verboten Math?  It's a meme in these blogs.

So what are Quadray Coordinates? Not just for private Quaker schools. Very like XYZ but no need for negative numbers in point addresses.

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 15, 2016

Airline Talk

Although like many US Americans, I have a credit card that accrues Frequent Flyer miles, I am not a frequent flyer these days.  I've flown a lot in my day, over a period of decades, so it's not like I'm a noob in that namespace.  I've been in London, Vilnius and St. Louis in the last decade or so, also Georgetown (2012).

Nevertheless, I only got the Delta story, about computers going out, through Twitter, in a Portland neighborhood, land-lubbering in a drizzly setting.  Yes, August rains.  I wasn't in transit at the time, not even by bus (that would come later in the day).

Yes, I remember another story, about a T1 or other data line getting cut, and that shutting down a service, I should Google that.  An airline is a huge operation.  I used to study airport management for entertainment, in a trailer park (mobile home estates) in Florida (Bradenton).  Airport management is but a tip of the iceberg.

I said "it's not my business, I'll gladly take in opinions and maybe in a hundred years venture to say something".

Not so Patrick's crew, off by airplane this morning. Patrick has put in a lot of miles. He came by with some leftover Ja Civa's cake, which I may never have tried.  That's a respected neighborhood bakery we're all proud of.

When I teach object-oriented programming in Python, I'll suggest Concourse, or maybe LuggageSystem as a class name, suggesting they conceptualize an airport in terms of components, for software modeling purposes.

Patrick thought in the EU that airlines were less lax because the administration was less prone to spoil the enterprises and let them get away with too much unskilled management.

These were broad brush stroke considerations on Patrick's part, regarding matters we have only a metaphysical (psychological) understanding of.

AI isn't really a big help right now, though search and pattern recognition certainly are.  What's in vogue right now is seeing if we can dump vast amounts of big data through neural nets and get the AI bots to tell us what to do.  However the GIGO principle still rules.

MEMEX, a meme lobbed from the past by one Vannevar Bush in 1945, was on the money, hit the bulls eye pretty closely.  Good aim.  That's Google search, and like that.

We absolutely benefit from the ease of retrieval, relative to having a duplicated library of books with ladders and so on, with an entire estate built to maintain it.  We call those "server farms" today, and get the http responses back electronically, in milliseconds, by tcp/ip packet.

I asked if the EU business climate was the reason for Brexit, that the UK wished for a more relaxed business climate as maybe people perceive in the US.  Thanks to tort reform, this has become the new place to get rich quick, goes the hype, maybe.

My thinking had turned to "tort reform" as a movement, given my recently viewing Hot Coffee, a documentary focused on that topic.  Hasn't McDonald's had PR problems in the UK as well?  That's a tangential question.

For those just joining us, Google only recently became a subsidiary of Alphabet, in a reorganization designed to compartmentalize operations, reserving Google for search (which includes searching Google Earth, a big data operation).

Speaking of search, we had an interesting discussion of correlation and signal composition, by algorithm, at the code school last night.  A double-E gave the talk, I came late by urban train.

Hot Coffee (movie review)

This 2011 film got some additional attention in retrospect thanks to Jamie Leigh Jones finally getting her day in court (spoiler alert, stop reading if you don't want to know the ruling).

However hers is but one of many cases discussed, and win or lose, the point is the integrity of the jury trial system.

Pointing out that the US Chamber of Commerce is no more than a glorified lobby, is helpful, same with the Federal Reserve in a way (not mentioned in the Constitution -- anyone can use the word "Federal").

But then so are the DNC and RNC glorified lobbies, entirely dispensable to the US style of government, if going by original blueprints. Hundreds of parties would be just as feasible.

What the Founding Fathers designed, was three branches of government providing checks and balances, with the Legislature and Executive branches supposedly controllable by money.

The Supreme Court, on the other hand, cannot be wined and dined.

However that premise is somewhat undermined by the later discovery that state judge elections are in fact buyable.  TV ads are quite persuasive when viewers are trained to stay uncritical by high school teachers.

Karl Rove was able to lead a gang of business-minded Texans to buy what was legally for sale.  The US Chamber of Commerce was pretty happy about the Reagan-Bush Era and the resulting change in climate.

Today we see Congress able to block any Executive appointments to the Supreme Court, irreparably harming the system, tearing it down.

Giving ordinary people access to the court system was proving inconvenient for business, as juries would empathize with people and seek to find just solutions.   Just $800 for third degree burns thanks to inhumane kitchen practices was not sitting right with the people.

By branding citizen lawsuits as frivolous, simply a "get rich quick" scheme by trial lawyers, the businesses, including doctors, would enjoy greater impunity than mere limited liability status provides.

Profitability could be protected also, by means of caps on awards, with insurance premiums still rising or held constant.

Likewise employees could be made to bargain away any right to court access by mandatory binding arbitration agreements as a condition of employment.  Without a growing body of case law, with decisions locked away in silos, the paralysis of the justice system became complete.

Loss of access to the courts is what happened to Jamie Leigh Jones, who was sent off to enjoy opportunities in Iraq only to find herself an easy target for a predatory coworker.

The perp knew he'd get off if it ever came down to "he said versus she said", which it did, finally.  He was right, though she had to go through hell and high water to find that out.

With these new measures in place, the US as a system continued to crumble.  The date of its official demise will remain debatable.  Sometime around 1983?

The executive branch had been turned into an instrument of Empire by the Halliburtons of the world.  US Americans could now be exiled to overseas bases, turned into refugees, while investors, eager to play a "supporting role" could reap the profits from their exploitation.  Many young people died for their president.

Congress had proved too spineless to protect its people (Al Franken and Al Gore notwithstanding).

Now the judicial branch was hollowed out.

Al Franken is a star in this film for his brilliant maneuver:  anyone doing business with the Pentagon at least, would not be allowed the customary "cowardly capitalist" outs.  KBR had no choice but to allow a trial, which it won.

Most citizens are losers though, and the US continues to enforce Prohibition without their consent.  Even the bankers are getting mad.  Continuing to pretend it's the dark ages just adds to the sense that we're done with our legal system, and something else is taking its place.

I expect BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) to trump the award caps etc., along with more systems like Yelp for doctors.

People will find out which companies played a "supporting role" in vicious land and oil grabs, human trafficking, other malpractice, and simply refuse to reward them economically going forward.  I know I'll never buy BP again, if I can possibly avoid it.

Accelerated Learning

Given the agrarian origins of the one room schoolhouse, which gave Johnny summers off, to work in the fields, the curriculum was designed to be repetitive.  Johnny would forget much of what he'd learned over the summer.  Some review would be in order, come fall.

Around 8th or 9th grade, come Algebra, Johnny and Jill would learn about "functions", math objects one calls with arguments, getting something back.  Or maybe they just pair inputs with outputs.  During the New Math era, formal definitions were provided.  Functions need not be numeric.

Along with functions, comes their composition.  Given functions f and g, Johnny learns to write f(g(x)) and g(f(x)), but it all seems a tad meaningless and questions may be raised, by this or that student, regarding when these concepts will actually be used.

In the meantime, everything that happens on an industrial scale, tends to happen because of software, because of code.  In learning to code, we learn about functions too, and their composition.  One pipes to the next.  Functions are chained together.

In the Python computer language, decorators are all about composition of functions.  In the code below, from tonight's code school class, UFO "abducts" (composes with) innocent_bystander to return a well-disguised proxy, identical with the original right down to its docstring.

I use the ABC TV show Invasion as a stage-setter, for story, with no requirement that students watch it.  The plot is clear enough:  extraterrestrials in the lake eat and replace innocent humans with identical clones, so outwardly the same, that even the clones themselves do not suspect they're but proxies of their original selves.

CODE:

OUTPUT:

The @wraps decorator completes the disguise, carrying the __doc__ and __name__ attributes from the original to the proxy function.  The cloning operation is complete.

Now that high schools are under some pressure to include coding, the question is:  in what sort of course?  The common assumption seems to be that any programming homework would logically fall under computer science, not mathematics, which is immune from needing computers, because well equipped with calculators.

Math students calculate.  Computer science students compute.  That difference is enough to drive a wedge through a school and unnecessarily multiply the number of times the same content is covered.  In math, Johnny learns to calculate with vectors.  In computer science, he learns to compute with them.

So on the one hand, we have mathematics looking for ways to prove relevance, and on the other, a discipline of proven relevance that's kept distinct from math, despite hitting a lot of the same topics.

Both math and computer science involve functions, plotting, algorithms, data structures, tabulation, summation.

However the assumption is math teachers cannot be retrained in place to add coding, because that's not what the textbooks include.

Innovation, original curriculum-writing, as a part of the math teacher's job description, seems too much of a stretch, despite teachers wishing to actually teach, and thereby regain higher status.

So not only is Jill given summers to forget, with repetitious fall reviews, but she's subjected to two separate approaches to a lot of the same material.  Composition of functions is taught in math class, without much context, whereas computer science involves passing functions to functions that return functions.  But we won't call that math.

Computer languages have the ability to take the drudgery out of repetitive computations, freeing the programmer to focus on the logic, the algorithms.

Rotating a polyhedron by applying the same rotation matrix to all its radial corner vectors, is tedious by hand, whereas once coded, happens at thirty frames a second or more.

Are polyhedrons and their scaling, rotations, translations, part of math or computer science?  Will students learn about polyhedrons from two sets of textbooks?

Not only are Johnny and Jill subjected to yearly repetition and review, but the very same topics get covered within two different treatments.

Given all the unnecessary redundancy and repetition in the curriculum, accelerator programs have many ways to provide a head start and speed things up.

If we don't assume students are forgetting and starting over every year, plus learning the same concepts twice through two different treatments, we may be in position to at least double the curriculum's effectiveness.

What will serve Jill and Johnny well over the years are keyboarding classes.  Coding is here to stay, at least for a good while, and it's primarily a keyboard activity, not a drag and drop graphical activity, Scratch notwithstanding.  Typing remains an important skill across the board.

The Youtube Channel

This interview is of historical interest in my view. [October 20: swapped a different one in, from around the same time, as the original link went to a canceled account].

Wikileaks is a grown up reader-funded public institution, tied to Ecuador, appreciated by the RNC (or at least the Trump campaign) for its revelations about election rigging.

TV journalists consult Julian not as a man on the run, but as a CEO of something. More like Snowden.  I'm not saying that's wrong.  I appreciate hearing the views of both from time to time.

The "Youtube broadcasting system" (shades of EBN) has helped level the playing field.

CodeCastle on Twitter

For more context, click here.

A 10,000 foot overview of #CodeCastle in high realism sci-fi on Q2: https://t.co/h4sFJsuFGR (Quaker chatter) @npym_it

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 1, 2016