Farmland Physics

A motif in these blogs is First Person Physics, which I started as a meme on a physics teacher list (AAPT types) at which point Dr. Bob Fuller recognized the potential and invited me on to his “pirate ship” (his enterprise), then seeking a next NSF grant. 

I became Bob’s project’s webmaster and got to join a meetup in Lincoln, Nebraska in the build-up to the application. I also got invited to an AAPT conference as part of the deal. 

When Dr. Fuller passed away, I was privileged to join an event celebrating his stellar achievement in physics andragogy and pedagogy. Among his acknowledged influences: Robert Karplus and Piaget.

Today was about First Person Physics on a farm. The farm is bordered by a scenic river and the architect-landscaper wants to take advantage of the view’s best vantage points, easily reachable by foot or electric ATV. 

However the river also floods periodically so no additional permanent structures are permitted. Rolling and re-angling a log, already nearby — albeit shortened with a chainsaw — to such a vantage point (the one by Walden Pond — no we’re not in New England) is permissible in terms of codes, but an unanchored log is likely to float.

The final design includes long metal bladed stakes that, when twisted into the topsoil, will anchor the chains over each end of the log bench, keeping it from drifting off. We’ll see if it works. The Gator was enlisted to help with the rolling and re-angling. Even a small log is too heavy for one person to manhandle.

This is where the concept of “energy slaves” enters in. We’re talking about what replaced horses, and human slaves before that (serfs, cow-pokes, many land-bound farmhands), namely John Deere and Kubota tractors, combines, wheel and reel lines, agricultural grade pumping and irrigation systems. 

A mechanized farm still needs personnel, but they may spend more time in the control room than out in the fields.

This Oregon farm where I do work-study is not an animal farm though. No chickens, no pigs, no livestock of any kind. The property therefore doesn’t need to be fenced. However, future owners have been kept in mind during the design process. The animal stalls and watering troughs are all in place, if currently unused. Sometimes a shepherd will rent grazing space, but they bring their own removable fences nowadays.

My suggestion to the owner was we organize university fleet vans to bring doctoral candidates and other degree program students out into rural Oregon for a look see, perhaps to participate in safe work best practices. Tour a windmill farm. Visit the AC-to-DC HVDC site near The Dalles, as well as BPA. 

Check out a data center or two (I recommend Facebook’s in Prineville), and take in a lecture on social engineering from the pros.

Stop in at the aforementioned farm for the rustic C6XTY museum, another roadside attraction. 

If this is your first time in America, so much the better. What could be more authentic than the home of Homer Simpson. You’ll find murals all over town, if you know where to look.

DevOps Retreat

I'm sure some geeks might complain about my use of DevOps here, as "development and operations" already has its own meaning, and people sometimes wish for a neologism versus any kind of revectoring. 

Like with Synergetics, Fuller's writings: there's more re-vectoring than neologism-ing going on, even though he’s accused of having a remote vocabulary. In many respects it’s the same dictionary, just he applies a different spin. That’s what writers do.

In my case, devops is closer to “curriculum development” but we’re factoring in “operational mathematics” more the way Bucky used that term, to imply that his mathy prose had operational significance (think “psyops”).

Am I allowed to say I’m on one of my circuits in my BizMo? Since I’ve done a lot to re-vector that word, almost a neologism, but not really, according the Urban Dictionary, I suppose it’s up to me. 

So my dog and I hopped into a BizMo, stopping for brunch in Hillsdale with Bradford and then continuing on south to our retreat site, there to engage in devops with the others, in a semi-luxurious environment (there’s even a “Walden Pond” with outdoor seating).

What others do I mean? 

These days, it only takes WiFi and some other gear to set up one’s mobile office. I’m able to work both synchronously and asynchronously without expecting others to the burn fuel it’d take to physically join me. My own fuel is subsidized (privately in this case) so it’s easier for me to hit the road maybe. 

Many of my counterparts do not have access to, let alone own, motor vehicles.

Per the embedded picture above, I’m using Gemini to flesh out what happens in Synergetics around Euler and Gibbs as anchoring proper names; how Fuller merges them into his own language, picking up on visual processing on the one hand, and emotional processing on the other (“process work” fits in around here somewhere).

That Euler + Gibbs synergy is a portal into First Person Physics, by way of the observer, and the observer’s psychology (operational). Applewhite, a collaborator on Synergetics, was “in it for the psychology” he once told me (I recall we were discussing pronouns and his including them in the index).

Re-vectoring is often the better choice as one is leveraging pre-existing denotations and connotations, not starting over from scratch. Synergetics builds on our English language heritage, a kind of legacy medium, but alerts its readers (the alert ones at least) about the remoteness of the Synergetics vocabulary.

I’m All Right Jack (movie review)

Most readers will likely be entirely unfamiliar with this movie, that’s my guess. Peter Sellers. Rosalie, my librarian friend, knew it well, and recommended it, but she’s a least two standard deviations to the left (towards literate — as in left brain), not anywhere near middle of the road.

Perhaps I’m simply projecting my own ignorance, as an MMU student with less than full fluency in British culture. Maybe that’s why I found this movie so educational, as it wasn’t afraid to poke fun at (expose, dissect) both tiers of psyche in that social Darwinist environment. 

Management had split off against the Workers, white versus blue (as in collar) and education levels, as well as birthright land rights, made a huge difference in that respect. “Upper class” means a way of talking (the My Fair Lady insight) and projecting one’s insider (owner) status. Of course the whites and blues are all men and all Euro-white, with females (another caste) as trad-wives, moms and, if you’re lucky, rich aunts.

Of course there’s immense irony in the fact that the Peter Sellers character, representative of the working class, is unable to do dishes or darn his own socks. Minus the women’s caretaker role, the so-called workers are effectively ineffective. 

The leading character, a well-acted buffoon, is from the educated insider class. He’s something of a dandy. I found his over-reactions hilarious vs-a-vs those ball-playing women but then the joke was on me cuz I didn’t get this was a nudist colony until the closing scene. Duh.

So our educated dandy is too supercilious to get his hands dirty and the job interviews all bomb. They convince him to go undercover, as working class (the rich aunt is skeptical), at a missile factory and this is where the international relations figure in. 

The aristocratic Brits wanna sell weapons to their colonies in the Levant (a semi-country roiled by competing narratives) and make money the old fashioned way: by dreaming up illusionary scenes (like stage magicians) for the journos to report, while meanwhile they make out like bandits — cuz that’s what they are: next generation Venetian schemers as Bucky describes em (“Venetian” rhymes with “Phoenician” in Fuller’s quasi-Joycean vocabulary (long story)). 

The worker Brits are trying to resist over-exploitation by organizing around their spanking new ideology, a mash of Marxism and maybe Systematic Ideology (another native source of narratives). Peter Sellers plays a worker-bee indoctrinator, keeping his little army in position to exert leverage by inspiring his brand of groupthink.

But the goofy upper class doofus bungs it up, by not catching on (his level of self awareness is close to zero). He inadvertently subverts the labor unions, weakening their collective bargaining position, to where only strikes (stopping working) seem to be a way back to equilibrium. These strikes effectively spoil the business dynamics and the aristocrats see their schemes go up in smoke (which is just as well, as the Levant is better off without the Brit missiles).

The whole plot becomes a wry comment on the hopelessness of the entire economy, which nevertheless makes movies like this one, and brings us Monty Python.

As I was saying to Rosalie later: “I know this culture”. I was actually being groomed as an aristocrat in 3rd grade, wearing a tie, learning how a table was set with the manners to go with. 

I was a lone American (one of maybe two) in that school, not a boarding school. I’d go home to my American parents, but as someone increasingly Britified (I had the accent). Eventually they recognized the pathologies I was developing and they pulled me out, and sent me to a more American school.

I’d avoid any job-roles requiring a tie after that, as a rule of thumb, which in Britain might be a sign I was blue collar, a label I’ll accept (aesthetically, I prefer blue to white — tuxedos look infinitely stupid). 

However out here in Cascadia we’re more an egalitarian meritocracy, an engineering culture, meaning status is not conveyed through dress (millionaires dress down, not up) but by one’s level of fluency in STEM languages. 

In a nutshell: credibility as an actor, in a management capacity, requires knowing at least some computer science, like the workers do. That’s the gist of the so-called AI revolution: you need to talk like a geek to sound agentic.

But we’re talking about a science fiction future with respect to the 1950s. HG Wells might wanna take over the story at this point.

Travel Plans

Oops, I spaced out the presentation at Third Eye, the one Cloud told me about. If you saw my Sacred Geometry video… the presentation was about the Galactic Calendar included therein. 

I was gonna introduce myself as “from across the street” as that’s where Center for Science, Peace and Health has its shingle out. I’d told Cloud I’d be there and all the next day that was my plan. Then I woke up early Tuesday to realize I’d missed the boat.

I keep thinking I’m on the brink of visiting Greater LA, but then stuff keeps getting in the way. Like that galvanized iron kitchen down pipe that finally became irreparable, and had to be replaced. That happened quickly but then a city inspector needed to sign off on it (how it works in Portland) and my plumber mostly works in the neighboring state, with different rules, plus July 4 festivities obtruded. 

The July 4 festivities (Blues, fireworks, summer movies) were welcome and I wasn’t in a super hurry, but neither was I gonna take off for LA to see my sis and other peeps, or even drive to destinations nearby, as long as the plumber was gonna need access to the basement, and, as it turned out, my local WiFi. 

The test and city sign-off were completed yesterday.

On the recommendation of family members, I started watching For All Mankind on Apple TV. I suppose it’s believable that NASA personnel would have been that glum about humans finally landing on the moon if they didn’t feel they’d done it themselves. Humans get programmed with an “us vs them” mindset pretty early — we see the children getting brainwashed. Even with the Marxist-Leninist label removed, the Russians remain the “them”. Russophobia is endemic among the Manifest Destiny dolts, and let’s not forget Sinophobia. The Mickey complex is indeed deeply psychological.

Sydney and I would be up for Wandering with that BizMo, checked out from the BizMo fleet library, so to speak. That’d help with the prototyping (thinking Trucker Exchange, Silicon Forest stuff). I’d be one of the seniors involved, coming in more as a curriculum developer, as my School of Tomorrow has some work-study concepts that might further spread, while benefitting from all the fine tuning. In the meantime, I’m Wandering multi-modally, making ample use of the Nissan.

I’ll head over to Third Eye Crossing later today and buy some of that merch I was gonna get at the presentation I missed attending. That’s a business I wanna support, a neighbor.

Adventures in Wonderland (movie review)

The actual title is longer: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a possessive possessive. This is the one wherein we find Peter Sellers and Dudley Moore, to name two big future stars, in heavy makeup. The movie is pre CGI and uses old school special effects to produce Alice’s adventure, in color, with sound (she even sings and dances; it’s a big part for Fiona Fullerton).

My topic these days is “fairy tales” and, sure, we can argue what constitutes same. Alice’s universe has no entities called “fairies” unless we count the Tweedle Brothers who might be gay, but that’s an entirely unrelated etymology. What’s important is to discount the narrative itself as purely fiction, so we don’t get hung up wondering “how much of this is true?” (answer: none of it is, and she wakes up in the end).

Another confluence was Dr. D, over at Blue House for post dog-walk dining (we were a five-some: three humans and two dogs); he’s been immersed in the Alice lore in past chapters, involving a commercial publishing enterprise and book launch just down the street from Wanderers (Linus Pauling House) on Hawthorne, at Fernie Brae, which no longer exists (Third Eye still does though, across the street).

What struck me, and Dave reassured me this was a main point of the novel, is how blasé and go-with-the-flow Alice was. Her reality was turned upside-down and yet she preserves her even, good temper and optimism, yet not without some exercise of judgement. She draws on her priors and updates quickly. She’s your quintessential Bayesian.

I’m reminded of a quote buried in the Wittgenstein corpus somewhere, maybe in the Investigations, maybe in On Certainty, where he says (paraphrase): “what if I woke up one morning and everything had changed? …Maybe I’d just join in.” I want to add “like Alice”.

Once we identified Peter and Dudley through all that makeup it was easy to project forward and picture them in future movies. I love Dudley in Bedazzled (with Raquel Welch as Lust) and Sellers in so many, but especially Being There.

Backstory: I entered Movie Madness (MMU) with the intent to rent I’m OK Jack, on Rosalie’s recommendation, but to my surprise I couldn’t even find it in the database. However that search did lead me to the Sellers shelf in the Foreign Films section (UK/British) and from there I selected this Alice movie, and a small anthology of early (1930s) British comedies. I haven’t watched those yet. 

At this point I realize the movie is actually I’m All Right Jack and that may well be in the collection. I’ll check next time I’m there.

Gifts from Japan

Sydney and I visited with our friend newly back from Japan, accepting gifts to pass on to our circle, pictures also. 

Sydney is a chocolate English Labrador.  Her main hobbies are eating, sleeping, and grazing like a cow, smelling things. She’s so well-behaved she’s earned her right to walk around the block leash free.

In the news, the Lower48, part of the post USA diaspora, is being subjected to tyrannical rule by a Monster U (aka USSA) engaging in reckless out-of-control warring with no popular mandate. 

Post USA indeed. Pretty obvious, if there’s some awareness.

We look to the Global U to help us with teach ins, about how we got here and how we might make it to a next chapter.

Scapegoating one man is relatively easy. The people hiding behind the scapegoat enjoy having their human shield.  Wealth creation (adding life support) takes more planning.

Our syllabus uses technical shoptalk like LAWCAP and GRUNCH, a lot of which got amplified in the Occupy chapter (which we’ve been revisiting this Summer Term at School of Tomorrow).

For lunch I had Korean BBQ, from a food truck in one of the pods I frequent.

Pattern Language: the Alcove

:: annotated mother goose atop global matrix ::

Sheep Detectives (movie review)

I caught this one on Prime, my curiosity piqued by a positive review from Beth, who has years of experience raising sheep in rural Oregon, and is also a retired librarian who consumes media at an amazing rate, like Rosalie does. 

This so-called Mercado Group (where our book club got started) has been meeting for years and is a steady source of guidance when it comes to my studies, especially when it comes to fiction.

Sheep Detectives is a clever movie, weaving the whodunnit genre, the murder mystery, with more existential explorations of mortality. The sheep do not have an adult human’s view of death, except the older wise ones who remember stuff. Usually, sheep just want to forget.

However what keeps sheep wanting to remember are unsolved puzzles, such as who killed George, their good-hearted shepherd who has been hoping to reunite with his two kids, whom he had put up for adoption (I’ve forgotten why already, baa!). 

A good memory is a prerequisite for detective work. Lilly, a loyal and intelligent sheep, teams up with the elder sheep to bring the killer(s) to justice. She fights off the temptation to go unconscious, prizing self awareness which is likewise awareness of otherness (Synergetics for Sheep could be a slide deck).

The most singular trope in this move is that of the “winter sheep”, a divergent introvert that wants to belong as a youngster but over time learns to accept its loner status, with a more distant relationship to the herd.

We have both a noob (a lamb) and a senior (older sheep) of the winter type, helping us plot the trajectory, the arc, of such an archetype, portrayed unpromising at first (an ugly duckling) but as noble and helpful to the herd’s long term survival in the end (swan). 

Sheep dynamics are a kind of mind dynamics, which includes being super forgetful.

The integration of live action actors with animated talking sheep is quite impressive. These two forms of mammal intelligence, four legged and biped, seamlessly share the same sense of humanity, including a sense of loss when dear ones depart, and a wish to avenge victims of foul play by detecting the perps.

The dynamics in question map to individuals for sure, but also to more Machiavellian entities, such as states, which likewise engage in subterfuge (e.g. false flag attacks) as well as bumbling, clueless behavior. What inspires the bumbling police guy to snap out of it, finally, are the off camera (from his point of view) antics of the sheep, whom we might map to other fairy tales with invisible spirit worlds (e.g. ghosts). 

X-Day Again

I’m not gonna devote this blog post to church (of the Subgenius) arcana. Per my Fun Homework YouTube you might know that I don’t have anywhere close to the encyclopedic knowledge of church lore to the extent some do, whether ordained or not (I never had reverend status).

Instead, I’m gonna continue with my account of July 4, the day before (X-Day is celebrated on July 5, and is like a family event, never in competition with Burning Man. There’s a documentary you could view.

So I got off to an active start with the bike loop, like old times (S2P). Then what? Well, I got into Wandering mode meaning I had all kinds of fantasies about where I was going, with some pegged objectives (catch the fireworks at least), so I didn’t set out to see Minions 3 at the Fox Tower Regal. Again, I had the theater mostly to myself. I enjoyed the movie a lot and will get back to it later.

After that, I circled back to the waterfront having come downtown by FX2, and whaddya know I got a perfect direct line of sight to one of the main Blues Festival stages, just north of the bridge, on which I was standing. Great sound. Great bands. Great crowd, with many pouring across the bridge in both directions, which had to get raised soon after I arrived: two, not one, two fireworks barges were ready to take their places for the after dark show.

By the time the fireworks started, I was back on the east side (of the river) where a custom DJ booth took advantage of the echo under I-5, and they did an excellent job of it. Their music made a perfect soundtrack for the visuals, the fireworks. And yes, I did notice all those people having dinner on the bridge in that cordoned off area. Very imaginative.

I walked from my viewpoint through OMSI parking lots to Tilikum Crossing, the same stop where I often hop on the FX2 with my bicycle. This time though, given the emptying out of the downtown, the FX2s were hopelessly full, so I decided to walk to Powell and grab a 9, transferring to a 75 at Chavez, with enough layover time to shop at Safeway for all American cheese puffs and Diet Dr. P. 

There’s a corny carnivalesque aspect to July 4 ceremonies. People are serious about not being too serious. I overheard some people singing the theme song of Team America, World Police, which is satirical. 

A sense of pride emanates from a cosmopolitan city like Portland cuz, for all the negative spin doctoring, it’s that proverbial “melting pot” people keep registering their skepticism about, as too pie-in-the-sky. 

But it’s the on-the-ground reality, this wealth of diversity sharing in the festivities. We’re not talking about speculative eventualities. We’re melting in a melting pot whether we like it or not. The Portland vibe is we like it, as we already melted long ago and just wanna stay what we already are: weird. 

We wear that word “weird” as a badge of pride, all kidding aside, and with the support (not opposition) of the commercial sector. Visitors have come to expect said weirdness just like when you’re in Gotham you expect there might be a Joker lurking in there somewhere. Ditto: weirdness lurks. Think “incommensurability” maybe.

Blues Festival on KBOO

Toy Story 5 (movie review)

One might wonder at my choice of time tunnels. The avatar: a white haired senior, clearly an old guy, riding alone on the bus in a tie and Python-branded sweater, because today it’s chilly enough for such garb, even in summer, when Europeans are experiencing record heat. I’d been to Quakers earlier (Bridge City Friends) and didn’t bother to change before heading out again. I often wear a tie when riding the bus.

The choice of time tube (as in program): bus and walk to and from Pioneer Place Regal Cinemas and take in Toy Story 5, 1:20 Sunday matinee. The senior price: somewhere between $12 and $13. 

I had the auditorium all to myself but for what I assumed were a parent and young child in the row ahead of me. The child seemed about the age of the two star kids in this movie.

Toy Story 5 is for sure made for children, and for parents of children, who have that shared concern about sociality, meaning not only finding friends, but the right friends. With whom is it OK, in the sense of beneficial, to hang out? 

Families tend to feel their way forward in America, more than they’re handed a list of pre-approved playmates, although it’s also the case that some communities are very ingrown and isolated, even in the 21st Century. That may be by choice. Diversity is the name of the game, which doesn’t mean “without boundaries”. Not every community has a sense of a shared public space. This movie recreates single family wooden homes in both a suburban and rural (as in horse-owning) setting.

Toy Story movies always harp on the same theme: the kids who own and actively play with these toys are growing up fast and the dolls therefore have a sense of their own mortality (sense of doom), an approaching death of relevance. They’ll end up on a box in the garage, or they’ll be donated, passed along. At best. The dolls in Toy Story 5 have been through several owners. They’re jaded, Woody has a shiny bald spot, and, as toys qua toys, they're losing ground to screen devices.

I have nothing negative I want to say about this movie. On the contrary, I felt witness to a serious yet humorous investigation into childhood issues around belonging. Inside Out 2 was another one in this genre. These movies (I’m talking about the “for kids” genre) serve a real purpose, both reflecting and refracting.

It’s not like I’m not moody. I’ve got the AirPods and Verizon and have my various antennae, for times when I’m walking or on the bus. Today I waited until I got home to walk the dog, before tuning in about the dirty wars (a redundant characterization in a lotta ways). Kids just wanna have a childhood and watch some cartoons, but so-called Adult World, or Machine World -- kids with guns in a lotta cases -- comes at them fast. Many get born into some nightmare scenario, whereas the stars in Toy Story are just coasting through the usual ups and downs.

My favorite aspect of this movie was the whole shipwrecked shipment of Buzz Lightyears, all groupthinking together, a mini hive mind on the move. There’s a satirical flavor to the Buzz legion that transfers over to Rambo movies and the wider genre. Males in packs. Team players. A fun ethnicity.

Cowgirl Sheriff (the star) is pointed and direct in her manner, goal driven, a born leader (if toys are born). Woody shows up, also somehow high ranking and already with a partner, allowing for an uncomplicated romantic subplot involving Buzz (he has a crush on Cowgirl). 

The movie opens with some kitchen utensils getting married, within a girl’s imagination, with the other toys playing along. We’re clearly in a space where “getting married” is imagined often. That’s not unique to Disney movies, obviously. 

This story keeps the married couples heterogenous in that parent couples are conventionally nuclear. No isotopes. Nothing molecular. 

It’s not meant to be a soap so much as a coming of age action thriller involving favorite toys getting lost and found. Again, The Inside Outs are somewhat similar. Science fiction? OK, it’s a soap, but deliberately easy to follow. Keeping track of who’s who is a learned skill.

I agree with this message also: letting the screens do all the work and not exercising one’s own powers of imagination through creative improv dollhouse style play, including with others (thereby making friends), is likely to come at a cost. Many parents would approve of that message.

So don’t let them shame you for diving into fairytales, anime and manga, where useful info lies encoded. Have a real inner life, in the first person, vs trying to outsource your emotions. 

A rich fantasy life is something to protect, vs bargain away for high pay. When they pay you to deliberately impoverish yourself, maybe its time to change the job description, or even switch careers. 

Parenthetically speaking, I’ll add that I don’t find STEM subjects to be inherently unimaginative, especially when we make it STEAM, by adding Anthropology.

Screen-based Sims and SimCity showed how the dollhouse simply re-emerges in the digital realm. We get a play within a play almost no matter what we do. 

Some of these screen based simulations might be more focused on the engineering. The Buzz Lightyears might even be into that, if sober. 

I was intrigued by some of the previews. One in particular, the claymation one by Laika, features Portland (before the portal is entered). WildWood I think it’s called.

Podcast on Substack

Polydactica: Interview with Kirby Urner

A Wanderer Interviews another Wanderer

Listen on Substack

Wanderers Meetup

Flickr Album: Summer Solstice Gathering 2026

Book Club Meetup

Our conversation circle touched on some of my Pirate Party planks today, not that I raised them as such, only that boarding school naturally arises once we have our planning hats on. We talked about the ongoing experiment with the dorm, in Mitchell School District #55 in Oregon. Different mixes of gender and subculture have been tried.

Sometimes I try out what will eventually become segments in more formal presentations, about Nietzsche for example, and how his sick and twisted sister helped shape his legacy into a form suitable for Third Reich exploitation. We learned that whole story from Walter Kaufmann. You may have heard me on YouTube covering that segment already.

After the conversation circle, I drove to WinCo, streaming Candace’s Ep 352, which is about how the private sector has replaced the public one in the military. 

In this post nation-state world, it’s private mercenaries all the way down, although some inherited the decals of their ancestral states and still flaunt them. Some people dress up like Romans or re-enact the Civil War. 

We see a lot of creative anachronists using live ammo, and starring in tawdry melodramas written by Urizen’s slaves. You can probably tell I’m not a big fan of today’s military-minded scenario programming, for use “in theater” as they say.

We saw our Republic fading with that Ollie North crowd and it only got worse: “never mind about the constitution and civilian control, we have our own agendas”. But then we had the 1960s assassinations before that. The fragile Union had been on a bumpy road ever since it had become an empire, having been birthed to fight one. Some would say the Philippine-American war was the beginning of the end.

Fictional television played a big role in helping folks jailbreak out of their narrow so-called “thinking caps” which no longer fit. Shows like Breaking Bad for example. Financial fluency also increased thanks to the crypto chapter (another soap). Fictional TV continues to be informative.

Anyway, those of us keen to regenerate a public sector are still allowed to brainstorm about what that might look like. 

It’s not like everyone will be on the same page, nor do they need to be. A common mistake in social engineering is to suppose too large a scope. At the other extreme, an experiment might be too minuscule to really matter. The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears has an obvious interpretation; there’s too hot, and too cold, with a sweet spot in the middle.

The days of “too big” publishing, which takes a “one size fits all” approach to schooling, are ostensibly over. It’s no longer about what they’ll need in Texas and California and let the others accept their choice as a consensus. We no longer need consensus on that level. The technology allows us to localize, even as we import from the various curricula, on tap around the world. 

The personal workspace, or “nerd cave”, has taken over as the place where education primarily happens, punctuated by field trips, more likely by smaller van than big school bus. Their scheduling might eventually be seen as a county level responsibility. In the meantime: it’s private sector. 

These workspaces might be in office buildings, repurposed. You might be learning algebra on some 28th floor of a mixed-use high rise, and getting paid in some form (catalog options?) for your self improvement work. Society benefits from improved selves, which is why it pays to pay the self-improving.

Diamonds (movie review)

I’m talking about an older flick from Movie Madness, selected from the Classic Actors Kirk Douglas shelf, that provides another puzzle piece in our Film Studies. 

We’ve already seen Kirk Douglas playing the old geezer opposite Burt Lancaster in Tough Guys, that train robber movie (they steal the train itself). 

We’ve also seen Secondhand Lions, with the coming of age angle: a young male learns from a different pair of grumpy geezers (his ancestor predecessors). 

What a young person learns: old guys often make stuff up in the name of storytelling, and to glorify their own exploits (thereby winning admiration), and yet sometimes what seems an unbelievably fantastic story might turn out to be true. 

More often though, having such stories turn out to be true is what turns the movie itself into fiction. All these aforementioned movies are completely made up, we shouldn’t forget that. They don’t even claim to be “based on a true story” which doesn’t mean a whole lot anyway.

But then I’m forgetting one of the most important puzzle pieces, The Harder They Fall, featuring the corrupt world of boxing from which Kirk Douglas now hails, post stroke, and so with a speech impediment. But still he’s the Polish Prince, committed to overcoming all obstacles. In getting his brains knocked about a lot, he’s living the American Dream. 

From that other boxing movie, he gets Bogart’s old flame, Lauren Bacall. Not that she’s opposite Bogart in that movie (his last, she outlived him), where he’s paired with Jan Sterling. The woman is usually the positive influence, as the man, Bogart, faces money problems.

Those ill-gotten diamonds (back to Kirk Douglas) were real after all (after the head fake with the fake ones), so, happy ending, he gets to stay out of the old folks home and live gracefully on a farm with Bogart’s ex. Given this film is a Kirk Douglas vehicle, we understand why it goes there.

Kirk’s two sons are struggling with their own mid-life issues, which include having healthy relationships with their own offspring. Dan Akroyd plays the boomer dad, Lance, divorced and sharing custody of the 15 year old for whom this movie is mostly made (his demographic that is).

What makes this film more edgy is how transparently it’s an ad for Reno. Can you spell it? R-E-N-O (I’m quoting dialog). Not Vegas. Repeat not Vegas. The hotels are nice, kid friendly, great food, and you’ll win both at cards and at the slots in ways that are supremely satisfying. 

You’ll even be a hero and prevent gramps from getting mugged (you’ll chase down the mugger and get the money back — how often does that happen?), but do stay out of the back alleys if you’re a tourist. Go back into the casino where it’s safe and where you’ll be appreciated. Or maybe visit a really fun brothel (tip the waitress for a referral). Reno has it all.

Come to Reno for your midlife crisis and maybe strike it rich! Nevada put a lot of energy into helping out with this film, that much is obvious both from the content, and the credits. It was filmed on location.

USA OS

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Async vs Sync

:: innocent whimsy from the negative left ::

The catalogs need to keep their offerings sounding contemporary for the most part, to meet prospects where they are, in terms of the current street talk amongst the vulgate. Not that everyone speaks the same vulgate. Marketing must be tailored to be effective, unless appealing to universals, which of course most commercials do at some level.

Once enrolled in say Systems Design, one encounters the syllabus around which other experiences, such as meetups and lectures might be built. Typically a cafeteria style catalog based system, such as a university, will give a try-before-you-buy grace period. 

Dive in, get a good sense of it, and then decide; feel free to bail. I’m accustomed to such a system. A further nuance: sticking around to audit but not committing oneself to time/energy requirements, either in terms of tuition (although audit fees may pertain, as at a rock concert) or in terms of meeting deadlines and having a recorded grade.

Typically, a prospect will have ways to survey a course without taking the probationary step as even just that step may look like an unnecessary detour in the rear view mirror. “Can’t I just read ahead myself, as an autodidact, like I’m used to doing, and not submit to your no doubt tiresome lectures?” Yes, of course, that’s where async comes in. 

A perennial problem with a bell curve classroom is the presenter is expected to accommodate whatever dimensions the real time attenders bring to the space. I call that a “problem” more from the standpoint of an attender with high aptitude who feels the presenter is slowing it all down for the benefit of other attenders. 

This type of frustration is standard in classrooms, but may not be a problem for a professional presenter as their job is to distribute the frustration load such that all payees (assuming a fee) get their share (frustration builds competence), or, if there’s no fee, people stand to gain according to their own level of investment i.e. the presenter isn’t there to “put a lid on it” in terms of value, and yet every session is capped in terms of meeting some average benchmarks. From the standpoint of the slower, the process may seem equally unfair as the presenter moves on to the next segment, unconcerned about some not getting it.

The async curriculum is less about presenter classrooms, although these remain important, and more about how a curriculum might be explored in between more formal synchronous meetups. The word “homework” comes with the lame connotation of “assigned” whereas “the freedom to wander” (more like “play”) is what a home sweet home should provide. It’s not for anyone else to dictate what a given PWS wants to dive into (PWS = personal workspace;  picture a work-study studio).

Do I ever get around to Martin Buber in my curriculum for example? In my own career as a browser with a browser history I’d likely reflect back on my time as a student under Walter Kaufmann at Princeton, as he talked about Buber quite a bit. Buber was definitely on the syllabus.

Kaufmann didn’t like “thou” as a pronoun anymore than he liked “superman” as a translation for “uber-mensch” or whatever Zarathustra was on about. He preferred a straight “you” so “I and You” (thinking Buber) and for “superman” he went with “overman” as “uber” goes with “over” quite frequently (overseer = supervisor).

OK so I had Walter Kaufmann as a professor, that might put me on some mental maps. Does that mean I also link to Kierkegaard in my syllabus? Questions like that. 

“What does the School of Tomorrow do for me, in terms of extending my sense of orientation within some vista?” 

That’s a question each prospect needs to ask as its own “me ball” i.e. as an avatar within said system (curriculum). The decision might be: not now, but I’ll come back later for a second look. That’s perfectly reasonable. 

“Incommensurability” is another hook.

Campus Outpost

Prompt: Make a picture: A forest child in Cascadia, a Native American from the Columbia Gorge region, is also an experience drone flyer. She keeps each of her drones inside a miniature geodesic dome of the kind hippies have used forever in that part of the country. That off grid lifestyle blended nicely with the high tech aesthetic associated with the tribal outposts in the Alaska-Siberia region, where the new electrical project is currently planned.

Hotel Colonial (movie review)

Exercising Wanderer Skills

Greetings from CrowTown

One of the themes in these logs is navigation (broad brush stroke), starting with School of Tomorrow hypertrails through Cyberia, but also getting into literal cityscape navigation skills such as bus and subway riding. In rural areas, we might switch to ATVs (I got to operate one of those last week in fact, on a farm, gas powered, not electric (not an EATV)).

Those of you perusing these logs may be thinking: yeah but isn't wandering around on the bus and subway all day kind of a lonely old man occupation. So you have your bus binder reading, and camera, bag of goodies, so what? That's not an appealing lifestyle or even with reach for me.

Got it. But you may have a relative you think should get out more... but as to the solo operator feature, that's not the only mode. You have multi-operator wandering to reconnoiter, and I'll be practicing that today again, scheduling a bus ride such that I'll be joined by another Wanderer (yes, he's been to Pauling House for a gathering) at a different stop from where I get on.

I think I've yakked about this before, but it bears repeating: when the Brazilians would show up for a Portland OSCON (at one point the Portland part was taken for granted, before the OS Bridge chapter), they'd already be using telecoms to the max, rendezvousing with one another as if they'd been practicing for years, which they had been in many cases. Not surprising really; Brazilians with an opportunity to come to an OSCON tended to be "genius class" in their niche geekdom.

So yes, your skills might mean you get to use the same skills in a different city, maybe Madison or Boston or one of those other "ending in on" places (London...), or maybe we're doing more than just playing word games. Portland is in the midst of its treasure hunting season, so my mindset might be tinged by the "leaving breadcrumbs" aspect of our CrowTown festival.

Joining another party on the same bus woulda been a real challenge back in my more youthful days in Rome, Italy, where bus and subway riding was my lifestyle as a teen. I'd go solo and/or with friends. So yes, I'm reliving my teen years to a degree, but actually today it's all much easier to get fancy, because of smartphones and real time texting, not to mention TriMet Trip Tools, which I access through my phone-based HOP app, the same one that I pay with (it's hooked to my Visa -- but would that work in Brazil?).