A quiet purpose of weather reporting is to remind people what their country looks like, and to provide a sense of community. In this jet age, the concerns are likewise practical: a portion of those viewing will actually encounter weather on the opposite coast later that same day.
An interesting aspect of international travel are weather shows which encompass more of the globe. Sitting there in your waiting lounge, you see what's up in Dubai, Dhaka, Jakarta, as well as Paris, New York, Rio De Janeiro. CNN specializes in these kinds of weather reporting, and has a lot of market share in airports.
What's interesting about USA TV is how immersed one gets just in some meticulously devised parochial consensus reality. There's not much global data. USAers have to go to the movies (e.g. Bourne Supremacy) to see much in the way of major capitals. The isolationism and inward-focus of the USA psyche is extremely evident on the evening news. If you've just flown in from the UK, where the BBC is far more aggressively global in its coverage, the contrast is enlightening, and some would say frightening.
The promise of multi-channel cable and satellite was more exposure to the "big world out there." Ted Turner experimented with this, in the early days. But these experiments seem to have dried up of late, as more channels turn to home shopping, reruns of syndicated sitcoms or cop shows, and sports. And then, of course, there's the weather channel -- and the food channel.
Another venue through which USAers get some whiff of the outside world (beyond camera shots from embedded journalists, looking over the shoulders of US Marines), is so-called 'reality TV.' These are game shows, typically competitions, played out against the background of the world stage. The site scouts do a good job coming up with romantic or engaging backdrops.
A question I have is how long we'll be able to perpetuate the cognitive dissonance that comes from these two forms of 'reality programming': through the lens of the game player, and through the lens of the demolition engineer (aka soldier). The spectacle of USAers playing with fast cars, cavorting in luxurious resorts, doing "fun stuff," goofing off, "surviving" in a completely phony, made-for-TV set of circumstances, contrasts very sharply with the War on Terrorism programming (lots of swoopy graphics, battle maps, retired generals, sanitized death). These seem like two different planets: the inviting one we goof off in, and the one we demolish, because it scares us.
The rest of the world wonders: how do these USAers manage to play in the sun, cavort in phony realities, while at the same time they enjoy bloody rampages through Fallujah. Between these two extremes, they seem to consume very little programming about the rough politics and complex economics that might bring some realism to either genre. Are we looking at two sides of the same coin? Neither reality TV nor the War on Terrorism seem very grounded in rational thought. We see two basic currencies at work: longing for the good life, and fear.
I guess a question for TV executives right now is whether this kind of programming is going to have much of an aftermarket outside the USA. How tolerant of USA-style entertainment will the world be? Do they really care who "survives" in some romantic faux-Thailand, even as Fallujah burns? Perhaps executives in the UK might like to brainstorm a more grounded and intelligent hybrid that mixes heaven and hell using a different alchemy.
I propose more of a futuristic and hope-inspiring approach (I go with longing over fear, any day), wherein high tech industries show off their ability to enhance civilian life, including in difficult circumstances (shall we stage episode one in Southern Africa, near Cape Town perhaps?). This proposal might be something to meet about on my next trip to the UK.
If the USA is hell-bent on remaining parochial, and wants to push its schizoid mix of "fun in the sun" and "bloodbath in the sand," let it. I bet the UK television market could use this poor planning as an opportunity to signal its greater sense of realism -- an important signal to send, given the proximity of other European markets nowadays finding USA TV increasingly alien, bizarre, a horror show from another planet.
Followup:
Notable improvements in CBS News by mid-December, e.g. check Dec 14, 2004: note the more global perspective; the far healthier groove.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Some Political Swerves
There was a time when this school in Tehran had cloned much of my since-relocated teleport.com synergetics website for its engineering department. All traces of that seem to be gone by now, but 't'was fun while it lasted, and I thought a good sign. Thanks to the home-spun links, I learned that the Ayatollah Khomeini's tomb features an octet truss. I even traced some of the contractors (Iranians do geodesic domes too).
Fuller schoolers have already given us some blueprints for working on a joint jihad/crusade with Persia and environs, focusing on architectural synergies (mosques with geodesic domes for example).
For all his faults, I don't think Saddam Hussein's focus on building lots of palaces was necessarily one of them, ditto re King Idris of Libya (pre Qadafi). When you don't see a broad solution to the living standards plight, you concentrate on public works that stand out as a showcase of native talents. Sure, it looks avaricious. But it's also a way of leaving a positive legacy. Just leaving stockpiles of WMDs is nothing to boast about.
Sure, Saddam imported a lot of non-native furniture, art works and the like, but the basic architecture and construction were Iraqi and kept a lot of people employed, a lot of families fed. We've seen this pattern at work since the ancient Egyptians. One could argue that many of the USA's "defense industry" programs are no less wasteful (and no less a form of socialism, ala Newt Gingrich and company -- he talks about a "culture of ownership" but profitable shareholding in prime defense contracting depends heavily on tax subsidies, we shouldn't forget).
None of this is to mitigate Saddam's flaws as a dictator, but to the average Iraqi, those flaws are starting to look pretty OK in hindsight. Saddam never declared war on his own people to such an overt degree as Allawi has, to the point of leveling one of his own cities. Yes, there was awful retribution for the armed uprising in the south, and against the CIA-supported Kurds in the north (Kurds make up much of the fighting unit attacking Fallujah), but with nothing like this level of fire power, half-ton bombs and so on.
To have an occupying military use this level of technology against an indigenous para-military is really something new in Iraq, and it's quite apparent that the ranks of those overtly hostile to the corporate military have just multiplied, are on an exponential growth curve if present trends continue.
I call it the corporate military (with the corporate media transparently doing its PR) in concert with President Eisenhower, who clearly saw the possibility of a private sector takeover of the Pentagon ("military-industrial complex" was his coin -- the Vietnam War was the beginning of the wholesale privatization, which many WWII vintage career soldiers didn't like or trust). Fuller extrapolates through Critical Path (LAWCAP etc.), and we find contemporary write-ups of the phenomenon coming from the think tanks, even from within the beltway.
The community of top shareholders, newly advantaged by the GOP, and with tax and borrowing authority, has taken all branches of government and delegated foreign policy to a small, select few. Innocent Americans, completely out of the loop, are being set up to experience the consequences, given the scale of the blowback this foreign policy entails.
One may hope that profit-hungry CEOs will do the math, and realize there are wealth-producing alternative scenarios involving a more collaborative approach to world affairs, vs. these unilateral Fourth Reichian assertions of global dominance ala the New American Century. The so-called RINO's have made a deal with the devil, in signing away the soul of their party to the Apocalyptic Right.
A sign of sanity would be to talk openly and factually about the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Today's terrorists are terrified within reason too much of the time -- their worst fears keep being realized (why?), as the tanks keep rolling through their heartland. This "Axis of Evil" business is really childish cowboy stuff. Neither Iran nor Iraq needed to be transformed into mortal enemies (nor Syria). Moderates in the Islamic world are finding it ever harder to make their voices heard, as fanatics clash with fanatics preaching a gospel of violence and destruction.
There's still a chance of a new more stable equilibrium, but given how far this ship is listing, to the point of taking on water, it's a miracle that we're still afloat.
Fuller schoolers have already given us some blueprints for working on a joint jihad/crusade with Persia and environs, focusing on architectural synergies (mosques with geodesic domes for example).
For all his faults, I don't think Saddam Hussein's focus on building lots of palaces was necessarily one of them, ditto re King Idris of Libya (pre Qadafi). When you don't see a broad solution to the living standards plight, you concentrate on public works that stand out as a showcase of native talents. Sure, it looks avaricious. But it's also a way of leaving a positive legacy. Just leaving stockpiles of WMDs is nothing to boast about.
Sure, Saddam imported a lot of non-native furniture, art works and the like, but the basic architecture and construction were Iraqi and kept a lot of people employed, a lot of families fed. We've seen this pattern at work since the ancient Egyptians. One could argue that many of the USA's "defense industry" programs are no less wasteful (and no less a form of socialism, ala Newt Gingrich and company -- he talks about a "culture of ownership" but profitable shareholding in prime defense contracting depends heavily on tax subsidies, we shouldn't forget).
None of this is to mitigate Saddam's flaws as a dictator, but to the average Iraqi, those flaws are starting to look pretty OK in hindsight. Saddam never declared war on his own people to such an overt degree as Allawi has, to the point of leveling one of his own cities. Yes, there was awful retribution for the armed uprising in the south, and against the CIA-supported Kurds in the north (Kurds make up much of the fighting unit attacking Fallujah), but with nothing like this level of fire power, half-ton bombs and so on.
To have an occupying military use this level of technology against an indigenous para-military is really something new in Iraq, and it's quite apparent that the ranks of those overtly hostile to the corporate military have just multiplied, are on an exponential growth curve if present trends continue.
I call it the corporate military (with the corporate media transparently doing its PR) in concert with President Eisenhower, who clearly saw the possibility of a private sector takeover of the Pentagon ("military-industrial complex" was his coin -- the Vietnam War was the beginning of the wholesale privatization, which many WWII vintage career soldiers didn't like or trust). Fuller extrapolates through Critical Path (LAWCAP etc.), and we find contemporary write-ups of the phenomenon coming from the think tanks, even from within the beltway.
The community of top shareholders, newly advantaged by the GOP, and with tax and borrowing authority, has taken all branches of government and delegated foreign policy to a small, select few. Innocent Americans, completely out of the loop, are being set up to experience the consequences, given the scale of the blowback this foreign policy entails.
One may hope that profit-hungry CEOs will do the math, and realize there are wealth-producing alternative scenarios involving a more collaborative approach to world affairs, vs. these unilateral Fourth Reichian assertions of global dominance ala the New American Century. The so-called RINO's have made a deal with the devil, in signing away the soul of their party to the Apocalyptic Right.
A sign of sanity would be to talk openly and factually about the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Today's terrorists are terrified within reason too much of the time -- their worst fears keep being realized (why?), as the tanks keep rolling through their heartland. This "Axis of Evil" business is really childish cowboy stuff. Neither Iran nor Iraq needed to be transformed into mortal enemies (nor Syria). Moderates in the Islamic world are finding it ever harder to make their voices heard, as fanatics clash with fanatics preaching a gospel of violence and destruction.
There's still a chance of a new more stable equilibrium, but given how far this ship is listing, to the point of taking on water, it's a miracle that we're still afloat.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Hero (movie review)
Now this was an interesting film, beautifully choreographed in gorgeous settings. If a westerner made this film, she might be accused of over-simplifying in broad brush strokes. But the calligraphy is very Chinese, which speaks to the authenticity of the model.
As a user of the Fuller Projection, I'm of course plunged into the analogy 'Our Land' = 'Spaceship Earth.' We're faced with the same problem of too many warring states, each pushing an agenda, none feeling responsible for the whole. But of course I'm not interested in addressing this problem through the agencies of a warlord or tyrant, ala the King of Qin in the film.
For me, the answer lies in generalized principles, which key players in the movie access through calligraphy, to the point of bending natural law (or participating in its extension). The martial arts derive from these first principles.
A foe from Zhao, in a position to stop the king, comes to share this vision of 'Our Land' through his study of the living word. So ultimately, the creation of China (a concept) is owing to a shared vision, a communicated realization, not the private megalomania of one particular cult around some super-idol personality.
The final sacrifice in the film is by the king's co-equal (he too comes to comprehend the big picture) -- the network, in death as well as life, is peer-to-peer (democratic).
Fuller's vision of a bloodless transition to a more supranational psyche, wherein pre-existing nation-states become the provinces, is likewise democratic, a result of massively parallel networking, by humans and their machines combined.
There's no emperor per se (or posit God if you want a monotheistic model), only a shared science shining up through the calligraphy, informing the arts (including the martial ones).
Hero is also good at implying that the martial arts have a big pscyhological component (Fuller's "psychoguerilla warfare" -- cite Critical Path). One sees this in the black and white takes near the beginning: the battle rages, but the principals are really just standing still, with their eyes closed, meditating.
As a user of the Fuller Projection, I'm of course plunged into the analogy 'Our Land' = 'Spaceship Earth.' We're faced with the same problem of too many warring states, each pushing an agenda, none feeling responsible for the whole. But of course I'm not interested in addressing this problem through the agencies of a warlord or tyrant, ala the King of Qin in the film.
For me, the answer lies in generalized principles, which key players in the movie access through calligraphy, to the point of bending natural law (or participating in its extension). The martial arts derive from these first principles.
A foe from Zhao, in a position to stop the king, comes to share this vision of 'Our Land' through his study of the living word. So ultimately, the creation of China (a concept) is owing to a shared vision, a communicated realization, not the private megalomania of one particular cult around some super-idol personality.
The final sacrifice in the film is by the king's co-equal (he too comes to comprehend the big picture) -- the network, in death as well as life, is peer-to-peer (democratic).
Fuller's vision of a bloodless transition to a more supranational psyche, wherein pre-existing nation-states become the provinces, is likewise democratic, a result of massively parallel networking, by humans and their machines combined.
There's no emperor per se (or posit God if you want a monotheistic model), only a shared science shining up through the calligraphy, informing the arts (including the martial ones).
Hero is also good at implying that the martial arts have a big pscyhological component (Fuller's "psychoguerilla warfare" -- cite Critical Path). One sees this in the black and white takes near the beginning: the battle rages, but the principals are really just standing still, with their eyes closed, meditating.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
The Matrix
A B2B code we're using, signifying a shared philosophical commitment, involves recycling imagery derived from what Bucky called his 4D matrix, or IVM.
Clever rebranding aside, it's a well known framework in crystallography and architecture: just pack spheres together ala Kepler and you've got it (the CCP, the FCC) on your screen. The underlying computer graphics likely use the well-known 3D matrix libraries, which is not a problem. 3D embeds seamlessly in 4D.
Note that 4D as used above is what today's thinkers'd call a "meme" -- a take-off on "gene" but "of thought" instead of "of DNA" -- meaning it transmits much more quickly, and takes part in a more kinetic and mutable economy, that of language and culture.
In Bucky's youth, 4D had been recently coined and resonated with many thinkers, including Einstein of course, but also P.D. Ouspensky, a Russian, and many cutting edge artists (Linda Dalrymple Henderson has a good book on this). Bucky grabbed onto 4D (the meme) and combined it with architecture: newfangled and futuristic ideas about assembly line housing. Turns out Alexander Graham Bell was into using it as a space frame as well.
In hindsight, the once-volatile 4D meme appears to have settled into three stable compounds:
Signalling you're "4D" still connotes futuristic, high tech, long term, invested in over-the-horizon possibilities. Fuller's meme complex is especially easy to translate into attractive eye candy -- it's been good for that for years. So watch for it, and maybe you'll see what had previously been invisible to you, because you didn't know what to look for.
Clever rebranding aside, it's a well known framework in crystallography and architecture: just pack spheres together ala Kepler and you've got it (the CCP, the FCC) on your screen. The underlying computer graphics likely use the well-known 3D matrix libraries, which is not a problem. 3D embeds seamlessly in 4D.
Note that 4D as used above is what today's thinkers'd call a "meme" -- a take-off on "gene" but "of thought" instead of "of DNA" -- meaning it transmits much more quickly, and takes part in a more kinetic and mutable economy, that of language and culture.
In Bucky's youth, 4D had been recently coined and resonated with many thinkers, including Einstein of course, but also P.D. Ouspensky, a Russian, and many cutting edge artists (Linda Dalrymple Henderson has a good book on this). Bucky grabbed onto 4D (the meme) and combined it with architecture: newfangled and futuristic ideas about assembly line housing. Turns out Alexander Graham Bell was into using it as a space frame as well.
In hindsight, the once-volatile 4D meme appears to have settled into three stable compounds:
- In Einstein's domain, it meant 3D plus Time. "Time the fourth dimension" became the pop culture hallmark of relativity, both general and special, and from this meme complex we inherit the lingo of "three spatial dimensions" (before Einstein, you wouldn't need to say "spatial" because "temporal" hadn't been set off as a fourth dimension).
- In Euclid's domain the 3D coordinate system (also known as XYZ) has become extensible to n-dimensions (nD), e.g. you might have a 9D sphere with a center at (0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0), and a bunch of other spheres touching it, each with a 9-tuple address of its own. In this meme-pool, 4D does not connote Time. All the dimensions are "space-like" and get the same treatment. The great Canadian geometer H.S.M. Coxeter operated in this domain, the realm of nD Polytopes (e.g. the tesseract or hypercube).
- Fuller's 4D is neither Euclid's nor Einstein's. He went from hanging houses (houses and skyscrapers suspended from central utility masts) to geodesic domes by way of sphere packing investigations, similar to Kepler's in many ways (the rhombic dodecahedron is key). For Bucky, the tetrahedron, with its four faces, became tightly bonded with 4D. The tetrahedron is the simplest cage or container, made from the fewest bars (only six, compared to the cube's 12). Despite all this talk of ants crawling around spheres or donuts, with limited degrees of freedom, we're still thinking in volume. Flatland is unimaginable. Conceptuality is volumetric at its Kantian core. Rather than characterize space as "3D" based on "height, width and breadth," Fuller, ever the contrarian, labeled it "4D" -- because of the tetrahedron's having four corners and four faces. "Height, width and breadth" never really come apart as isolate or atomic, are more codependent than independent.
Signalling you're "4D" still connotes futuristic, high tech, long term, invested in over-the-horizon possibilities. Fuller's meme complex is especially easy to translate into attractive eye candy -- it's been good for that for years. So watch for it, and maybe you'll see what had previously been invisible to you, because you didn't know what to look for.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
A Catholic Economy
I've heard people complain that devouring the host upon transubstantiation is cannibalistic: "this is my body" and like that. But that's the point: it is (cite Love's Body, one of my favorites -- thank you NOB). And now more than ever.
When you fill'erup with gas, think of the innocents going to feed your exoskeleton, babies included, ground up and gone. This was my body. If you feel some guilt over that -- well, if the shoe fits, ya know.
It's trully a sinful world order, I think you'll agree. Doesn't need to be this way (our error is willful). The fate of your eternal soul hinges on what you plan/intend/will to do about that (yes, I'll sermonize -- we Quakers call it testimony and yes, we lay people have been authorized to stand and deliver, not just the clerics).
And I wouldn't pretend decrying abortion gets you off the hook, if I were you. Oil into Blood. That's not just a tiger in your tank. That's some fresh squeezed from Fallujah, some Body of Christ, at only $2.89 a gallon.
When you fill'erup with gas, think of the innocents going to feed your exoskeleton, babies included, ground up and gone. This was my body. If you feel some guilt over that -- well, if the shoe fits, ya know.
It's trully a sinful world order, I think you'll agree. Doesn't need to be this way (our error is willful). The fate of your eternal soul hinges on what you plan/intend/will to do about that (yes, I'll sermonize -- we Quakers call it testimony and yes, we lay people have been authorized to stand and deliver, not just the clerics).
And I wouldn't pretend decrying abortion gets you off the hook, if I were you. Oil into Blood. That's not just a tiger in your tank. That's some fresh squeezed from Fallujah, some Body of Christ, at only $2.89 a gallon.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
The Forgotten (movie review)
Not such a good flick. One of those in which the psychosis turns out to be the reality, but with too many loose ends. The cool thing about reality (and science exults in this) is that it cross-checks to a high degree. The Pythagorean theorem holds: know a few things about a triangle, figure out the rest. Detective work, police work, works. Fuller's omnitriangulation. But The Forgotten spares itself the hard work of omnitriangulating the alien reality revealed by the NSA. Let's itself off the hook, delivers cheap goods. That doesn't mean it's not entertaining. Just not 'great art'.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
The Pentagon: Public or Private?
To what extent is the Pentagon privately owned and operated? USA taxpayers don't manage to cover expenses (cite deficit). A lot of the management is outsourced.
This move to electronic voting without even the possibility of audits is further eroding the sense that the American people have any real say with regard to ongoing military adventures.
Big media will be tasked to glue these two together (a national will with a military force), but then, big media is likewise privately owned and operated -- with some of the same Pentagon players waving the flag on television. The War on Terror remains essential programming.
What's kept it together in the past was a set of principles. The claim that bombing Fullajah is part of a principled campaign to bring freedom and self-determination to the people in Iraq commits big media to some very thin ice. People increasingly call it "corporate media" with good reason. Our legal contrivance called "the corporation" has outstripped government institutions, in terms of global influence and command over assets. The private sector rules.
This move to electronic voting without even the possibility of audits is further eroding the sense that the American people have any real say with regard to ongoing military adventures.
Big media will be tasked to glue these two together (a national will with a military force), but then, big media is likewise privately owned and operated -- with some of the same Pentagon players waving the flag on television. The War on Terror remains essential programming.
What's kept it together in the past was a set of principles. The claim that bombing Fullajah is part of a principled campaign to bring freedom and self-determination to the people in Iraq commits big media to some very thin ice. People increasingly call it "corporate media" with good reason. Our legal contrivance called "the corporation" has outstripped government institutions, in terms of global influence and command over assets. The private sector rules.
"More than two centuries of law have been enacted to protect Americans against Big Government. These laws begin with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and include ethics and transparency laws, restrictions on the political conduct of officials, limits on official pay, and the uniform military code of justice. These laws apply to officials, not contractors, on the presumption that officials are in control. The rules do not apply—or protect the public—when, as is increasingly the case, contractors are doing the basic work of government, and government lacks the expertise and experience to control the contractor workforce." Commentary by Dan Guttman, The Shadow Pentagon: Private contractors play a huge role in basic government work—mostly out of public view.Of course, it all comes back to private individuals at the end of the day (no one here but us chickens). Fortunately, many of us, including those with businesses, and of various political and religious persuasions, still have faith in those same principles which guided the USA's original founders. We should not be expected to follow blindly, when other enterprises and schools of thought, including much bigger ones, decide on a course for disaster. Computations show some reason for hope, even yet.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Won't You Join Us?
I invite disaffected USA dems to join our global jihad/crusade against hunger and dire poverty. We're planning to use high tech, sophisticated media, new civilian prototypes, per the Project Renaissance and World Game models.
This is strong moral high ground and there's certainly plenty of limelight to go around. So don't despair. You too may choose to play a starring role in fulfilling this divine plan to render humanity a lasting success aboard Spaceship Earth. Audition today!
This is strong moral high ground and there's certainly plenty of limelight to go around. So don't despair. You too may choose to play a starring role in fulfilling this divine plan to render humanity a lasting success aboard Spaceship Earth. Audition today!
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Campaign Begins: Recruiting Talent Now
Excerpt from my post of today to math-teach:
What I think the world needs are more venues for people to audition. They go to temp agencies, do a typing and 10-key test, maybe a personality profile, then get sent to a cube to do some clerical stuff. The Hollywood and TV venues are cram packed with aspirants, many of them quite talented. Theater languishes (I just saw a guy play all parts in King Lear, and do it well, with only about six people in the audience)....
I'm hungry to employ all the natural talent I can get, and I really don't have time to provide a lot of compensatory training. The situation is too urgent, too ugly. The kind of fairness you're talking about is just unaffordable right now, in light of all those global university students who get no opportunity to audition whatsoever. Their situation takes priority.
The curriculum is broken (witness Sudan). Let's recruit the most creative, imaginative, and talented people we can to fix it (and just because you're already a college professor doesn't necessarily mean you have the most aptitude for this work (but you should have ample opportunities to audition, certainly)).
Here's a link to the complete text -- part of a couple much longer threads.
Theme song for this campaign: On The Turning Away, Pink Floyd
Relevant link: GST Global U
What I think the world needs are more venues for people to audition. They go to temp agencies, do a typing and 10-key test, maybe a personality profile, then get sent to a cube to do some clerical stuff. The Hollywood and TV venues are cram packed with aspirants, many of them quite talented. Theater languishes (I just saw a guy play all parts in King Lear, and do it well, with only about six people in the audience)....
I'm hungry to employ all the natural talent I can get, and I really don't have time to provide a lot of compensatory training. The situation is too urgent, too ugly. The kind of fairness you're talking about is just unaffordable right now, in light of all those global university students who get no opportunity to audition whatsoever. Their situation takes priority.
The curriculum is broken (witness Sudan). Let's recruit the most creative, imaginative, and talented people we can to fix it (and just because you're already a college professor doesn't necessarily mean you have the most aptitude for this work (but you should have ample opportunities to audition, certainly)).
Here's a link to the complete text -- part of a couple much longer threads.
Theme song for this campaign: On The Turning Away, Pink Floyd
Relevant link: GST Global U
Monday, November 01, 2004
Great Pirates
No word yet on if/when the radio interview re Great Pirates will become accessible. Not my decision. I suppose we could have mixed in some actual audio clips from Bucky (fair use), citing his Everything I Know as our source. Here's a link to some printed transcripts wherein Fuller mentions pirates (lots more in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth). Perhaps it's not too late for this. James?
Einar's CD (Introducing the FANG) came in the mail. Cool! I'm always scanning such works for toy and puzzle possibilities, which at least in times gone by I'd raise with Stu Quimby of Design Science Toys. He has limited resources to commit of course, so most toy ideas end at the one-of-a-kind curiousity phase (he has a great collection).
Nowadays, with the big box stores taking over the toy market, there's precious little room for speciality items, esoterica of all kinds. Thanks to the web, however, there's still some possibility for parents to find these rare gifts for their kids. Yes, that's a commercial (or call it product placement, whatever).
So tomorrow is election day in the USA. I voted days ago, by mail, thanks to Oregon's enlightened way of doing things. Of course I'll be interested in the results, even though I don't consider contemporary USA presidents to be among the great pirates, usually.
Like, even Winston Churchill didn't feel he'd penetrated the inner sanctum. To quote Prouty:
Einar's CD (Introducing the FANG) came in the mail. Cool! I'm always scanning such works for toy and puzzle possibilities, which at least in times gone by I'd raise with Stu Quimby of Design Science Toys. He has limited resources to commit of course, so most toy ideas end at the one-of-a-kind curiousity phase (he has a great collection).
Nowadays, with the big box stores taking over the toy market, there's precious little room for speciality items, esoterica of all kinds. Thanks to the web, however, there's still some possibility for parents to find these rare gifts for their kids. Yes, that's a commercial (or call it product placement, whatever).
So tomorrow is election day in the USA. I voted days ago, by mail, thanks to Oregon's enlightened way of doing things. Of course I'll be interested in the results, even though I don't consider contemporary USA presidents to be among the great pirates, usually.
Like, even Winston Churchill didn't feel he'd penetrated the inner sanctum. To quote Prouty:
"There is, in Lord Denning's book, The Family Story, a most pertinent reference to the words of Winston Churchill during a heavy bomber attack on Rotterdam during World War II. Denning reports that Churchill, during a conversation among friends, made reference to a High Cabal that has made us what we are. In that sense, Churchill's High Cabal equates with Fuller's Invisible power structure... For a man in Churchill's position, and at the war-time peak of his public career, to make reference to a high, or higher, cabal defines the subject. We live under the influence of such a cabal today, whether we realize it or not."OK, so that sounds like a conspiracy theory. When the topic is great pirates, that's somewhat inevitable, no?
Sunday, October 31, 2004
More on Project Renaissance
We had a good thread on the Collab list the other day, wherein I explained my model the public/private cooperation might involve private firms sponsoring employes to work in NGOs, with an eye towards field testing equipment and building skills.
Project Renaissance attempts to recreate a synergy we find in defense contracting. Private enterprise invents new weapons, and gets politicians to start wars in order to test them under realistic conditions in theater (and to generate new orders). However, I'm thinking a civilian focus would be less misanthropic all around.
My own private consultancy, 4D Solutions, subsidizes my participation in Collaborative Technologies in this way as well -- it's mostly about skill building, including management skills. Thanks to my time with Free Geek, I'm much more attuned to the ways in which open source solutions might fit the bill in NGO world (and in GO world as well, for that matter).
I syndicate a lot of my bookmarks by the way.
Happy Halloween!
Project Renaissance attempts to recreate a synergy we find in defense contracting. Private enterprise invents new weapons, and gets politicians to start wars in order to test them under realistic conditions in theater (and to generate new orders). However, I'm thinking a civilian focus would be less misanthropic all around.
My own private consultancy, 4D Solutions, subsidizes my participation in Collaborative Technologies in this way as well -- it's mostly about skill building, including management skills. Thanks to my time with Free Geek, I'm much more attuned to the ways in which open source solutions might fit the bill in NGO world (and in GO world as well, for that matter).
I syndicate a lot of my bookmarks by the way.
Happy Halloween!
Friday, October 29, 2004
Busy Day
Caught Terry's (Fresh Air) interview with Josh Rushing, the CENTCOM guy from Control Room. Good Marine. I'd say he has already contributed to bridging the communication gap vis-a-vis Palestine. I thought so when I saw the movie, but his willingness this afternoon to venture into civilian radio space with his heart-felt concerns was indeed refreshing and took real courage.
Met with an HPD (Hillsboro police) officer and an Intel security guy around the issue of how to build a basketball court in cyberspace, by which I mean, a fun, engaging space where youth and police have a chance to work out together, building rapport rather than animosity.
That's a sort of Norman Rockwell picture I realize (a real experience for some youth), but converging it with computers and open source sort of ain't (is a bit more surreal I'd have to say -- not necessarily a bad thing).
Jerritt Collord and I co-taught Adventures in Open Source at this police facility this June. I think we developed useful content, but the outreach and presentation techniques need to be fine tuned. The police should get more credit for this good faith effort.
Other meetings today as well. Still didn't have time to courier the Needs Assessment to MMT but that's OK as wheels are turning. Did manage some domestic fun, such as preparing the pumpkin for carving and watching a Japanese cartoon on DVD. That was at the top of my list today. I'm not interested in being a workaholic if that means no family life. Of course many knowledge workers feel the same way (and troops, all sides).
Met with an HPD (Hillsboro police) officer and an Intel security guy around the issue of how to build a basketball court in cyberspace, by which I mean, a fun, engaging space where youth and police have a chance to work out together, building rapport rather than animosity.
That's a sort of Norman Rockwell picture I realize (a real experience for some youth), but converging it with computers and open source sort of ain't (is a bit more surreal I'd have to say -- not necessarily a bad thing).
Jerritt Collord and I co-taught Adventures in Open Source at this police facility this June. I think we developed useful content, but the outreach and presentation techniques need to be fine tuned. The police should get more credit for this good faith effort.
Other meetings today as well. Still didn't have time to courier the Needs Assessment to MMT but that's OK as wheels are turning. Did manage some domestic fun, such as preparing the pumpkin for carving and watching a Japanese cartoon on DVD. That was at the top of my list today. I'm not interested in being a workaholic if that means no family life. Of course many knowledge workers feel the same way (and troops, all sides).
Monday, October 25, 2004
Blast from the Past
I got an email from Einar Thorstein recently. Way back when Russ Chu, Bonnie Goldstein, and Hal Hildebrand were thinking of doing the BFI archive in Smalltalk (Bonnie's initiative, Russ's motherboard, Hal's smarts), back when Yasushi Kajikawa came to UCLA to talk about his geometric investigations (Jay Baldwin, Ed Applewhite were there, among others), a big thread was how to modularize 5-fold symmetric geometries.
Yasushi's system had just been published in the Japanese edition of Scientific American. David Koski was exploring phi-scalable T-modules and other tetrahedral derivatives of the golden cuboid (had some excellent assemblies of well-known polyhedra -- great puzzles I thought). And Einar Thorstein was a 3rd, more geographically remote pioneer of a 5-fold symmetric building block system that we were talking about.
Now Einar has some more to say on the subject, and offered to send me a CD. Looking forward to it. Good to see us getting together again, and this thread re-awakening.
Followup Nov 5, 2004:
Got Einar's CD about FANG from Berlin -- a set of PDFs with lots of pictures, high production values, lots of new shop talk and abbreviations. David Koski has a new blog. All good.
Yasushi's system had just been published in the Japanese edition of Scientific American. David Koski was exploring phi-scalable T-modules and other tetrahedral derivatives of the golden cuboid (had some excellent assemblies of well-known polyhedra -- great puzzles I thought). And Einar Thorstein was a 3rd, more geographically remote pioneer of a 5-fold symmetric building block system that we were talking about.
Now Einar has some more to say on the subject, and offered to send me a CD. Looking forward to it. Good to see us getting together again, and this thread re-awakening.
Followup Nov 5, 2004:
Got Einar's CD about FANG from Berlin -- a set of PDFs with lots of pictures, high production values, lots of new shop talk and abbreviations. David Koski has a new blog. All good.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Memo to Pundits
I think what a lot of you commentators are missing is that we now have proof that "shock and awe" was committed against an essentially defenseless country. No WMDs to protect the Iraqi homeland (something USAers reserve for themselves in more than ample abundance).
And there wasn't much bluffing: the Iraqis were somewhat in disarray, leading up to the attack, but essentially correct in their accounting to the United Nations.
Yet on USA TV there's precious little balance given to Iraqi casualties. You'd think the losing side would be less arrogant and chauvanistic, given where it's heading in the history books. Don't you at least want to say you're sorry? Apparently not. OK, then.
Followup, November 3, 2004:
The voiceless victims of Bush's misadventure
U.S. media ignores human toll of 'shock and awe'
Joe Conason
The New York Observer
11.03.04
While the nation's quality newspapers dutifully reported the Hopkins study, its release five days before the Presidential campaign may have robbed it of impact. Certainly there were no impassioned cable-television debates over what that troubling data means. Nobody seemed eager to ask whether 100,000 dead civilians might be too many -- particularly since we know there were no weapons of mass destruction threatening us, and no significant connection between the Al Qaeda terrorists and the Iraqi regime. Americans who consider the war an act of vengeance on behalf of those murdered on Sept. 11, 2001, ought to consider the proportion that these numbers suggest.
Full text
And there wasn't much bluffing: the Iraqis were somewhat in disarray, leading up to the attack, but essentially correct in their accounting to the United Nations.
Yet on USA TV there's precious little balance given to Iraqi casualties. You'd think the losing side would be less arrogant and chauvanistic, given where it's heading in the history books. Don't you at least want to say you're sorry? Apparently not. OK, then.
Followup, November 3, 2004:
The voiceless victims of Bush's misadventure
U.S. media ignores human toll of 'shock and awe'
Joe Conason
The New York Observer
11.03.04
While the nation's quality newspapers dutifully reported the Hopkins study, its release five days before the Presidential campaign may have robbed it of impact. Certainly there were no impassioned cable-television debates over what that troubling data means. Nobody seemed eager to ask whether 100,000 dead civilians might be too many -- particularly since we know there were no weapons of mass destruction threatening us, and no significant connection between the Al Qaeda terrorists and the Iraqi regime. Americans who consider the war an act of vengeance on behalf of those murdered on Sept. 11, 2001, ought to consider the proportion that these numbers suggest.
Full text
Saturday, October 23, 2004
King Lear (play review)
Talk about taking a play to heart!
Johnny Stallings enthralled us last night for a marathon performance of King Lear. He played all the parts -- a one man show. Sometimes one character might be prone or kneeling, another standing; he'd be back and forth without missing a beat, or a breath. Then, as earnest narrator, he'd break in and deftly bring us up to speed on background details, covert operations.
I'd never fully grasped the plot until Stallings laid it bare.
Plus he chatted amiably with the audience both before and after (after we'd snapped out of it and stopped sitting dumbstruck). There was no "off stage" in this scenario. His young assistant sold tickets at the door and ran the lights.
Brooklyn Bay, 1825 SE Franklin. Fridays and Saturdays through October.
I liked this space too, for its starkness and its industrial obscurity. Might be a good space to rent for a recruiting event some evening, complete with a 2K lumens projector (was eying them at Fry's on Friday) and a stellar audio system. I could roll up in my BizMo and give some mind-blowing overview.
Speaking of overview, another fun movie is Warriors of the Net, which I showed on my home network to my daughter and neighbor friend earlier last night. A simple cartoon about TCP/IP, but with pretty good production values.
Today, we went rollerskating. I'm terrible, but improved considerably in the 90 minutes I allotted myself.
Johnny Stallings enthralled us last night for a marathon performance of King Lear. He played all the parts -- a one man show. Sometimes one character might be prone or kneeling, another standing; he'd be back and forth without missing a beat, or a breath. Then, as earnest narrator, he'd break in and deftly bring us up to speed on background details, covert operations.
I'd never fully grasped the plot until Stallings laid it bare.
Plus he chatted amiably with the audience both before and after (after we'd snapped out of it and stopped sitting dumbstruck). There was no "off stage" in this scenario. His young assistant sold tickets at the door and ran the lights.
Brooklyn Bay, 1825 SE Franklin. Fridays and Saturdays through October.
I liked this space too, for its starkness and its industrial obscurity. Might be a good space to rent for a recruiting event some evening, complete with a 2K lumens projector (was eying them at Fry's on Friday) and a stellar audio system. I could roll up in my BizMo and give some mind-blowing overview.
Speaking of overview, another fun movie is Warriors of the Net, which I showed on my home network to my daughter and neighbor friend earlier last night. A simple cartoon about TCP/IP, but with pretty good production values.
Today, we went rollerskating. I'm terrible, but improved considerably in the 90 minutes I allotted myself.
FBI to Track Violations of Federal Funding Rules
From the current administration's White House web site:
Although you may invite participants to join in your organization's religious services or events, you should be careful to reassure them that they can receive government-funded help even if they do not participate in these activities, and their decision will have no bearing on the services they receive. In short, any participation by recipients of taxpayer-funded services in such religious activities must be completely voluntary. For example, a church that receives direct government aid to provide shelter to homeless individuals may not require those individuals to attend a Bible study or participate in a prayer preceding a meal as part of the government-funded services they provide. But they may invite those individuals to join them, so long as they make clear that their participation is optional. (Italics added).
I'm glad the FBI is starting to collect data around this issue. Reports of violations will be taken seriously by the executive branch, as this is the front line in the religions | state interface, which interface must not be allowed to degrade.
That the words "church" and "Bible" are used, and not "synagogue" and "Torah", or "sangha" and "Dharma" should not blind our executive branch enforcers to abuses outside the Christian sphere. No organized religion, Christianity included, is an official state religion in the United States, a fact outsiders sometimes find hard to fathom.
On this point of no official state religion, something to make very clear to Iraqis and Iranians (among others): if ever they're contacted by a member of a religious network and actively encouraged to confuse said network with USA OS (my name for the US operating system of government), they should contact the appropriate federal authorities with all relevant details (perhaps the Embassy in this case, given the FBI's purview is domestic).
The intent is for Homeland Security or any equivalent clearing house to make sure the information gets back to those best able to prosecute the case, should an investigation verify any religion's attempt at a covert and illegitimate power grab.
The USA is the puppet of no particular religion or theology, by design. The world still very much needs such entities. I would encourage the Iraqis and Iranians to respect our choice, even if theirs is to promote Islam as the official state religion.
Although you may invite participants to join in your organization's religious services or events, you should be careful to reassure them that they can receive government-funded help even if they do not participate in these activities, and their decision will have no bearing on the services they receive. In short, any participation by recipients of taxpayer-funded services in such religious activities must be completely voluntary. For example, a church that receives direct government aid to provide shelter to homeless individuals may not require those individuals to attend a Bible study or participate in a prayer preceding a meal as part of the government-funded services they provide. But they may invite those individuals to join them, so long as they make clear that their participation is optional. (Italics added).
I'm glad the FBI is starting to collect data around this issue. Reports of violations will be taken seriously by the executive branch, as this is the front line in the religions | state interface, which interface must not be allowed to degrade.
That the words "church" and "Bible" are used, and not "synagogue" and "Torah", or "sangha" and "Dharma" should not blind our executive branch enforcers to abuses outside the Christian sphere. No organized religion, Christianity included, is an official state religion in the United States, a fact outsiders sometimes find hard to fathom.
On this point of no official state religion, something to make very clear to Iraqis and Iranians (among others): if ever they're contacted by a member of a religious network and actively encouraged to confuse said network with USA OS (my name for the US operating system of government), they should contact the appropriate federal authorities with all relevant details (perhaps the Embassy in this case, given the FBI's purview is domestic).
The intent is for Homeland Security or any equivalent clearing house to make sure the information gets back to those best able to prosecute the case, should an investigation verify any religion's attempt at a covert and illegitimate power grab.
The USA is the puppet of no particular religion or theology, by design. The world still very much needs such entities. I would encourage the Iraqis and Iranians to respect our choice, even if theirs is to promote Islam as the official state religion.
Friday, October 22, 2004
Mark Satin at Powell's Books
I attended a presentation by Mark Satin at the local Powell's on Hawthorne last night. One of those C-SPAN type events: intimate book store setting, attentive and intelligent audience, super articulate speaker. His book is Radical Middle: The Politics we Need Now.
I haven't read the book yet (did buy it though), but just based on his rap, I see this as an ideal interface to a politics for my own school of thought.
Instead of coming off as apolitical, Mark comes off as intensely political, and radical, but not far left or far right -- reminds me more of Fuller in Grunch of Giants (like, how apolitical was that?).
He argues that all the mainstream camps are indulging in an artificially dumbed-down food fight that amuses, even enthralls, even while it panders to baser instincts. Is this Jon Stewart's problem with Crossfire too?
The cost is certainly enormous: we don't get any real work done. The whole system is stalled, while we pretend to be idiots.
I liked his invocations of Ben Franklin as a hero (one of mine as well). He does not apologize for moving to Canada during the Vietnam Era and running an underground railroad to help his peers escape an ideologically corrupt enterprise (retrospectively, their analysis stands up to scrutiny -- even secretaries of defense have said so).
However, looking ahead, he thinks a universal draft would be better -- one that puts non- or para-military options in the mainstream (no more esoteric CO program for a few Quakers -- turn that into a major program). So all serve (if young enough -- sex doesn't matter), but all have some choice over what one's service to one's country looks like, in practice. Of course, many will still choose the navy.
During the Q&A, I spoke up about how a universal draft might help with my reality TV projects. Capitalism uses product placement and slickly edited scenarios to broadcast new lifestyle options, many of which could be focused on these alternative service personnel and their new high tech gizmos ala the design science revolution and open source.
Maybe I'll finally get my bizmo (like an RV, but more compact and business oriented, wired), so I might get work done while recruiting for the home team (Satin makes good use of sports metaphors by the way).
Maybe at this level of commitment, we'd stop so one-sidedly focusing on the war toy generals -- those guys who come on TV and romanticize their missiles and jets (dot-mil soft porn), slobbering at the thought of seeing them in theater.
There's more worth longing for out of the USA than tired/expired neo-Roman imperialism (not Ben Franklin's trip either).
My thanks to Nick Consoletti, Ph.D. for finding out about this event (he asked a good question about Bohmian dialog) and to Michael Sunanda, also in my company for much of yesterday (see Adventures in Radioland).
I haven't read the book yet (did buy it though), but just based on his rap, I see this as an ideal interface to a politics for my own school of thought.
Instead of coming off as apolitical, Mark comes off as intensely political, and radical, but not far left or far right -- reminds me more of Fuller in Grunch of Giants (like, how apolitical was that?).
He argues that all the mainstream camps are indulging in an artificially dumbed-down food fight that amuses, even enthralls, even while it panders to baser instincts. Is this Jon Stewart's problem with Crossfire too?
The cost is certainly enormous: we don't get any real work done. The whole system is stalled, while we pretend to be idiots.
I liked his invocations of Ben Franklin as a hero (one of mine as well). He does not apologize for moving to Canada during the Vietnam Era and running an underground railroad to help his peers escape an ideologically corrupt enterprise (retrospectively, their analysis stands up to scrutiny -- even secretaries of defense have said so).
However, looking ahead, he thinks a universal draft would be better -- one that puts non- or para-military options in the mainstream (no more esoteric CO program for a few Quakers -- turn that into a major program). So all serve (if young enough -- sex doesn't matter), but all have some choice over what one's service to one's country looks like, in practice. Of course, many will still choose the navy.
During the Q&A, I spoke up about how a universal draft might help with my reality TV projects. Capitalism uses product placement and slickly edited scenarios to broadcast new lifestyle options, many of which could be focused on these alternative service personnel and their new high tech gizmos ala the design science revolution and open source.
Maybe I'll finally get my bizmo (like an RV, but more compact and business oriented, wired), so I might get work done while recruiting for the home team (Satin makes good use of sports metaphors by the way).
Maybe at this level of commitment, we'd stop so one-sidedly focusing on the war toy generals -- those guys who come on TV and romanticize their missiles and jets (dot-mil soft porn), slobbering at the thought of seeing them in theater.
There's more worth longing for out of the USA than tired/expired neo-Roman imperialism (not Ben Franklin's trip either).
My thanks to Nick Consoletti, Ph.D. for finding out about this event (he asked a good question about Bohmian dialog) and to Michael Sunanda, also in my company for much of yesterday (see Adventures in Radioland).
Thursday, October 21, 2004
John le Carré on Bush
"Probably no American president in history has been so universally hated abroad as Bush: for his bullying unilateralism, his dismissal of international treaties, his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures, his contempt for institutions of world government, and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war — and now anarchy — upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship but had no hand in the events of 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the United States in a dirty war against Iran."
So writes
So writes
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
We Are Borg
Had some fun today. I finally got to tour the PHS server farm and control center at the Tigard Business Center. Paid a visit to PHS666 (name changed to protect the innocent), a server I've long used, but never seen. Just some box in a rack, surrounded by any number of boxes just like it.
GE came up in our meeting a lot. An IT guy said any GE employee found in possession of posters or screen savers of the Borg Cube with a GE logo on it, was summarily terminated. No sense of humor if true, and confirmation that the image is accurate.
Followup:
The conference call with GE went well. Centricity sounds like it will meet our needs, at least in terms of hemodynamics being open to outside queries and all that. I'm glad we got to talk.
GE came up in our meeting a lot. An IT guy said any GE employee found in possession of posters or screen savers of the Borg Cube with a GE logo on it, was summarily terminated. No sense of humor if true, and confirmation that the image is accurate.
Followup:
The conference call with GE went well. Centricity sounds like it will meet our needs, at least in terms of hemodynamics being open to outside queries and all that. I'm glad we got to talk.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Memo to the Media
OK, I'm ready for the media to reveal to me who are the anti-occupation political candidates in
These candidates must exist, must have had a lot to say by now, if the process in
So, please lift the curtain. Let's not be covert. Show us the Iraqi debates. Show us now, not after November 2.
So my message to the media is this: show us that the Iraqi democratic process is genuine, or let's be clear that a foreign military, posing as the
I ask again: has the US military been replaced by a private mercenary force working hand in glove with hidden bosses to hoodwink the USA's citizens, to make them think one thing (that democracy is really a goal in Iraq), while meanwhile it secretly plans something else?
Does anyone still defend the
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