Saturday Night Thoughts

to the Math Forum
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Maybe check this related post from January, 2007 (also mentions Big Bird), and this one too, from March, 2006.

Meandering About Town

Per yesterday's Photostream, water under the bridge, mom went shopping for a new Congress Coaster (what I call 'em in her case, given her lifestyle) at Shamrock Medical, a four wheeled device for stabilizing perambulation, and for breaking on airplanes (the basket is especially problematic). She likes Nova brand especially, was coming off Enterprise.

Burgerville is strategically positioned directly across from Cleveland High, but with a burger and fries over six bucks a basket, there aren't the lunch time crowds you might think.

As a guy who works around cardiologists a lot, I have the counter-intuitive attitude that cheap burger is not a national treasure, just the opposite, so far be it from me to rail against that $200 deluxe Wendy's or whatever that was (some fundraiser in London, important enough to make it to CBS News that time).

Next stop: Lloyd Center, where mom and I both got new glasses from Lenscrafters yesterday, except she had a lens popping out, needed to get that dealt with.

In the meantime, Tara and I visited the orthodontist, coming up on Halloween again, but no costumes this time (it's still a little early). The guy at the counter in front of me had so many drive-me-crazy mannerisms that I had to keep taking walks down the hall, told Tara that if I were that guy's wife (he mentioned having one, many times), I'd shoot myself every morning.

More meandering occurred, both before and after the above episodes, and even in between. Life is like a river and so on, other cliches apply (a cliche was a phrase set in type by the printer and never disassociated back into the font buckets, as they got used so often it was cheaper to just permanently stock the phrases, as in "have a nice day" (today one might "define a macro" -- if people still use those any more)).

Eye Exam

I'm sitting here with dilated pupils, having just undergone an eye exam, after a dog ate my glasses.

Having interviewed Lenscrafters staff, I now know that dogs eating eyeglasses is in no way an unusual occurrence, maybe six customers a week with that story in a busy mall outlet. Cats do it too.

While waiting for new glasses, I browsed books in Barnes & Noble, including one called The Failure Factory by Bill Gertz, about a lot of folks I don't know (amidst the usual suspects) being livid, angry, engaged in shouting matches etc., characteristically "B team" (self-indulgent) behaviors. The author seems especially pissed off by the 2007 NIE, which suggested that Iran's ayatollahs might not be hell bent on joining that losers' club of nuke heads.

Another book I've been browsing lately, likewise by a journalist interested in the intelligence community: Crazy by Pete Earley, a first person saga involving finding appropriate treatment for his mentally distressed son, while continuing to bump up against the criminal justice system.

These 50 year old eyes are pretty OK if somewhat misshapen. The optometrist discovered some unexplained vertical scarring in the back of my right one, heavily pigmented, perhaps congenital, and not interfering with vision (I passed the peripheral vision test with flying colors). One eye is still correctable to better than 20-20.

No colonoscopy yet; maybe I'll wait until 51 as a birthday present to myself.

Duck Typing

There's this idiomatic expression "walks like a duck" in turn a shortened form of saying "if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck..." the implication being, it must be a duck.

In strictly typed languages, like Java, an object with duck-like behaviors ("quack quack") that isn't really a duck, might get frisked, then stopped by security, before getting through a functional gateway. This is called compile time checking, and involves declaring what types are accepted, as a part of the logic. Animals masquerading as other animals are likely a result of confusion, goes the theory, so let the compiler help you, by pointing out the error of your ways.

A scripting language like Python, in contrast, is more about checking at runtime, vs. design time, and there's no compiler as such, more just a translator, which takes us from a VHLL (very high level language) down to bytecodes, e.g. CLR in .NET / Mono etc.

In this paradigm, it's fine for animals to mask as ducks, without really being ducks, because all the function cares about is duck behavior, so if you walk, talk and quack like a duck, you're welcome into the inner sanctum, even if under the hood you're a platypus or something like that.

Play Preview

:: portland center stage ::

I played hooky vis-à-vis the televised presidential debate tonight (will catch up later), to attend a preview performance of R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe, this being some years since the last time I saw it, in Seattle.

I appreciated a lot of new aspects this time. For example, just when the monologue veers into bridging the humanities to the sciences, the actor breaks into an obvious dance, whereas hitherto his clock-like precision has been more machine world in tone, a cheerful "robot Bucky" looking back on a cruel world, recalling his urge to leave it and resolution to stay (a bodhisattva moment).

The choreography is tight, and a tribute to Allegra's influence, as she brought out this more exuberant dancer in her dad, new levels of performance.

Once past intermission, we get to the villains in our story, our Wall Street lawyers, somewhat Wolfram & Hart like, exporting jobs overseas while cannibalizing FDR's New Deal, Eisenhower their unwitting puppet.

Individuals have smarts, take initiative, while corporations are literally soulless, so maybe The Grunch will turn out to be less of a killer than we fear? The impossible does happen.

This script packs a lot in, stays quite true to source materials, giving audiences a fairly painless, quite enjoyable, comprehensive introduction to one of our great philanthropists, a doer and a thinker. The printed program comes with an interesting time line, worth a gander.

Remembering Dad

I'm having the kind of day I think my father would have been glad of my having.

We honored one another in life, were good scuba buddies, both took a lot of (not stupid) risks.

I didn't get to look over his shoulder a lot, not being an urban or regional planner by trade, but that didn't keep me from seeing the importance and relevance of the work that he did, for our family, community and world.

Someday maybe I'll regain access to a Hi-8 tape player (Sony camcorder broken) and get my video of Jack Urner transcribed and edited. Travels in South Africa and Lesotho were especially fun.

New iPod for Tara, new cell phone for Carol. Lots of candles.

Note to partners: I used a business Visa to buy this individual membership in GreenPeace Activist Network, accounting as owner draw, hope OK.

:: joined under bagdad marquee ::

Send in the Bears?

When I was a kid growing up, the stock market was under the mystical aegis of two astrological powers, the bulls and the bears.

The bulls, being bullish, were herd animal optimists, sure of their progress as an unstoppable force.

The bears, in contrast, enjoyed pulling the rug out from under, making pyramids tumble, especially the cheap Ponzi type ones, like you sometimes find among realtors, but really any business of sufficient complexity can be a haven for frauds.

This sounds like a naive question, but wouldn't there be less panic if we brought back the old imagery and made it all sound more intentional? It's like there're no bears anymore, only scared bulls, like lemmings on steroids.

Either that, or lets invent some new animals to help with the stock market. I get tired of bipolar arenas as economic models ("too Manichean" as Walter Kaufmann would put it), donkeys versus elephants included. They don't do justice to the underlying complexity -- which maybe explains why no one in power is using them much.

Wanderers 2008.10.8

This was the night after the 2nd presidential debate, which I enjoyed at the Bagdad, Tara & Rose to my right, Trevor to my left, balcony situation. Of course we sat around doing some follow-up analysis, me talking up the backwards R (as in Toys R Us and/or DARPA), as a marketing gimmick, yes, but also as a sign of Respect (there's that R again).

[ source ]

If I'm "a buckaneer", then Buzz is maybe "an Apple devotee", as he likes those convergent "omni-devices", those grand unifications of phone, GPS/GIS device, camera, and web browser. I'm more of the utility belt school (if only they didn't look so dorky), have each device do one thing, and do it well (per GNU/UNIX).

On the other hand, it's fun to get lat/long burned in on a JPEG, maybe as XML, for world map placement.

That's another thing we talked about, this same Fuller Projection I hauled out to Mt. Hood Kiwanis this last weekend. Likewise Trevor's talk on 10-10 is about Bucky (Fuller).

We've been anticipating this season of buckaneer celebrations, having this new play to talk up.

Winter promises to be action packed this year, what with the election and all.

At lunch, I talked with Buzz about my work for the American Association of Physics Teachers, converting those ballerina moves into ray traced stick figures, taking data in Excel, outputting as AVIs on CD, with Python code in between (each teacher got one, that year in Sacramento, Dr. Urone steering).

Good seeing Nirel again. She's in the midst of a road trip, documenting it for her fans (me one of 'em, as are David and Shomar).

My friend Gordon has a new blog, Guido too.

The Future of Friends

:: quarterly meeting ::

The Future of Friends was our theme this for this quarter's gathering of Friends from points along the Willamette Valley, the Oregon Coast, Columbia Gorge, Boise Valley in Idaho.

Although small in numbers, it's about quality more than quantity, and lots of magical switch boarding occurs. My first task, after locking my keys in the car at the campsite, was to phone AAA and get roadside assistance. The dispatcher sent a locksmith from Brightwood.

Our panelists and moderator Jane Snyder did a superb job I thought, of exploring our theme from various angles, with the younger voices talking up the Internet, older voices sharing more from their travels and encounters, with AFSC (Jeff Hunter) and Friends Peace Teams (Ann Dusseau).

Kathy Hyzy (a younger voice) certainly gets around though, in her capacity as Western Friend editor. Sarah Hoggat of George Fox College (the seminary), and blogger, told us of her spiritual voyage, winding up for now in the safe harbor of Peggy Parson's Freedom Friends Church in Salem, Oregon.

I spent much of my time chatting with Leonard, a former chef and abbot's assistant in some zen abbey in California, more recently a computer programmer, ardent student of Hellenic philosophers, of Spinoza, an admirer of Pierre Hadot and his Philosophy as a Way of Life. He's been getting to like Hume as a person, even if he disagrees with the philosophy. Of course I threw Bucky Fuller's Synergetics into the mix, and Wittgenstein's philo ("early or late?" he asked -- showing me he knew his stuff).

I also spent quite a bit of time with Children's Program, going on a nature walk, playing indoor games. It rained most of time, sometimes lightly, sometimes more torrentially.

Debbie, Pam, Jane, Diane and Gayle did a marvelous behind the scenes job I thought. We all did, judging from the informal feedback I'm getting.

Rocky Garrison did a great job of hosting community night, especially if you count his daughter Emily's considerable stage talents.

Sarah shared some tap dancing, her CD playing on my Ubuntu Dell through Derek's audio cables (on loan), through the Kiwanis Club's main hall's (quite adequate) sound system.

Claymation Station

Readers following my more esoteric threads through these blogs may recall Karl Menger, dimension theorist, and his proposed "geometry of lumps" in a famous anthology about Einstein's ideas.

In ToonTown we call that "claymation geometry" in that points, lines and planes are distinguished by ratios, not dimension number. Points are pointy, lines more like sticks, planes like rolled dough.

This is the naïve way we might think about it as children, until disabused of such "foolish notions" by dyed in the wool Euclideans, who want us to worship their "abstractions" (Euclidean points can't be seen by the naked eye, don't reflect photons or participate in the same world as photons).

But we're OK with saying cartoon worlds aren't "the real world" either (obviously). We just don't go out of our way to buy those same axioms, much as Bucky didn't in Synergetics, yet still managed to sound coherent to those of us taking the time to decipher his thinking.

In our "geometry of lumps" points, lines and planes (none of them infinite) are like computerized primitives, say in VPython or POV-Ray, and they're reminiscent of arrowheads in terms of the tetrahedron being the topologically simplest wireframe enclosure, setting off inside from outside, like clay does.

Followup to the veep debate: I thought both candidates really put their hearts into it and the questions were well aimed. I watched from a reclining position on the upper floor of Back Stage, scootched up against a pool table, looking almost vertically at the flatscreen TV. By the time Ron and I got to The Bagdad, the main theater was already packed, no newcomers allowed. Jody met us under the marquee.

Tara and Rose had front row seats, with pizza and everything.

Anyway...

Here's hope tonight's debate isn't such a disappointment to the world community.

The so-called "debate on foreign policy" was all about killing someone who may already be dead, with not a word of hope for Palestine or anyplace else. Just whiner wannabes on Wall Street, wallowing in self-pity over their popped real estate bubble, refusing to connect the dots and admit some connection between their zero credibility in the financial markets, and zero reputation for courage on the world stage these days.

These aren't investors or risk takers, by any stretch of the imagination. Just a lot of control freaks with ignorance their chief excuse (not!). Political pandering and farce is no substitute for real substance.

Political Remarks

To the Wanderers, I wrote:

I think people are being awfully mean to this Palin character. John's using her to get the XX vote, said so himself, and she's trying to rise to the occasion, having been put in a somewhat impossible position by her party. She's giving it her best shot. [2851]

By "mean" I don't mean Katie's sharp questioning of Sarah and other key players, which is both welcome and professional. I'm talking about a lot of the shrill ugliness, typical of American politics.

Speaking of ugliness, I posted the following to Quaker-P, regarding the recent incident at George Fox College:

Some of the more paranoid alumni suspect the work of agent provocateurs i.e. campus outsiders trying to get some negative spin going on Quakers, hit 'em where they live.

I suspect ordinary students behind the deed, given the aforesaid history and the fact that you don't have to profess Quaker values to gain admittance to said prestigious academy.

Anyway, the FBI is working on it, will maybe find out something.

Responding to Critics

Critics of our Gnu Math agenda say it's doomed for the same reasons New Math was doomed: no way to retrain the rank and file math teachers in time, and any attempts to do so will merely breed resentment and backlash, end of story.

My reply is simple: the Internet.

Back in the 1960s, when USAers were feeling panicy and self conscious about their lack of math and science skills, a tiny elite tried to introduce a lot of contemporary "best thinking" to an initially receptive "we'll try anything" audience, but there was no Internet to press into service this time around.

Things have changed, and now we don't even consider trying to move the big textbook publishers in our direction.

Maybe that tail will wag eventually, but it's the rest of the dog we're most concerned with e.g. Web sites, Youtubes, Flash, podcasts and so forth.

Emphasis on the Internet isn't just a matter of convenience either, it's a matter of (a) reaching students where they already prefer to be reached, i.e. we work in their medium of choice (cyberspace) and (b) a lot of the mathematics we're teaching in gnu math is geared around these very technologies e.g. computer languages and tcp/ip.

Because of this different mode of implementation, there's no point waiting for some thick "door stop" of a "gnu math textbook" to come down the pipe, no point mobilizing "parents with pitchforks" to militate against such a choice or curriculum option.

We're not planning any offerings in that regard.

We're way past that point, in terms of distribution and market penetration.

Plus we appreciate multicultural diversity and recognize that many ethnicities might choose to stick with more traditional fare, don't care for our product, don't even wish to sample our wares.

I have no objections to that. Free country.

Portrait of an Artist

[ photographs on display @ Fine Grind ]

Jody Francis -- Reflective Images -- self portrait of sorts

I have always had a fascination with the reflective image in photography. It represents itself as an understated act of repetition.

Reflection: the image of somebody or something that appears in a mirror or other reflecting surface.

Act of Reflection: the process or act of reflecting something, especially light, sound, or heat.

A Forum Fragment

You may have seen a classification of sequences into:

(a) convergent
(b) divergent
(c) periodic / oscillating
(d) chaotic

We start using more ... (dot dot dot) with sums of terms, investigating whether we're approaching a limit or not -- the on-ramp to calculus.

High school texts often skimp on (d) chaotic because that's a new branch since the 1800s, and as we all know, anything 1900s is quasi-verbotten in that locked down slave ship of a sad sorry discipline called K-12 math teaching -- nothing much to do with actual math.

In Gnu Math, we skip from the 1800s to around now, which is a big shock to some teachers, but a real boost and eye-opener to those students lucky enough to "get it".

[ original thread ]

Fall Changes

:: remembering Hollywood ::

:: perfect, uncarved ::

:: new meter from PGE ::

:: orange & black candles ::

Revising and Extending

When I talk about Sam Lanahan, I usually start with their visit to Malacañang, Mrs. Marcos wanting to get them new shoes, Bucky & Sam having just come from the midwest or somewhere, their shoes clearly inappropriate.

I hook my own bio into this telling, as I too was in the Philippines at the time, still in high school, not tracking Bucky much, though I'd heard of him from my earlier Overseas School of Rome teacher, Fred Craden.

I've been telling the story as though it was through E.J. Applewhite's son, a contemporary of Sam's at the same high school, that Sam got his gig with Bucky, but last night at our meeting Sam clarified: it was more through his mom's relationship with that family (the Applewhites) that he owed his initial introductions as a potential side kick.

Ed spent a couple boyhood years in Tahiti by the way per this bio blurb in Chemical Intelligencer.

Wanderers 2008.9.16

:: retro 4D futurism ::

Dr. David DiNucci is giving a talk on parallel computing, which I'll attempt to summarize below.

What I'm thinking about this evening is how tame and lame is the futurism of our day, as expressed by wannabe world leaders. At least the shared dream of freeways with cloverleaf interchanges was bold and well defined, much as people diss it today, want more rail back in the picture.

Today's investors tend to watch helplessly as various 20th century lifestyles prove unsustainable, too expensive. So where're all the new 4D solutions? Not much is offered in the Bucky Works tradition, i.e. North Americans are still turning their backs on their own best heritage.

I was glad to see the RNC moving a baby step from hyping the hydrogen car, a time-buying agenda, to the electric car, with Ford pushing a prototype for 2010. The DNC has much the same rap.

But motorvehicles alone don't constitute a vision of the future. What's missing is imaginative, positive near futurism, the bread and butter of investment banking.

Excerpting from the Wanderers e-list (something I wrote earlier today):

"Capitalism" connotes dirty coal fired Britain in the Charles Dickens era, rich people scrooges, unwashed masses with no health care. Not a bright happy picture. As such, we're keen to stamp it out, let's just do it.

However, back to nomenclature, is a farming community that does everything sensible to keep the scene sustainable, from crop rotation to genetic breeding to best practices and yada yada precluded from calling itself "capitalist" as in using its head? I don't think so.

My problem with Economics is it's all below the surface, is filthy with connotations but with precious few denotations. It's been taken over by advertising, a branch of psychology (psychometrics, like Patrick does). As a discipline, it deserves competition. Enter general systems theory or GST.

David's talk is cleverly animated in Flash and not too technical, uses lengthy extended analogies involving pebbles in a bucket, making waffles. He's teaching about the problem of deadlock, an old problem in parallelism (everyone waiting for everyone else to go first, would be an example).

A lot of these problems are addressed by SQL engines seeking ACID compliance, a model for parallelism Microsoft esearchers might be considering within its Haskell based subculture.

We have an attentive, participatory audience.

Good seeing Aldona, of Lithuanian heritage, and Steve Bergman, sitting to my left. We have a new person as well, with a degree in international business.

Songs in the Studio

:: photo by captain wardwell ::

Clear Creek Distillery shares space with this art studio, where we gathered tonight to hear Lucinda Parker, the vocalist, accompanied by Jon Bunce on guitar.

They performed Four Favorite Sonnets by Jon Bunce, including Ozymandius by Shelly (1792 - 1822) and Euclid Alone Has Looked by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950). Lucinda also sang some tunes collected by Mátyás Seiber, an Hungarian Jew who fled to London just in time, was much later killed in a car crash in South Africa, like my dad.

Ay Me She Frowns by Francis Pilkington (1565 - 1638) was the opening number, a song to sing to your girlfriend when you've pissed her off, was the story there.

Lucinda's husband Steve runs the distillery, known for its brandies made from fruits from Mt. Hood. I'm reminded of the pear brandy of Bumthang Valley (Druk Yul) not surprisingly given the Swiss heritage behind both.

Hot Lips pizza and primo wines were enjoyed by all.

Jon remarked how the staff at the Apple Store, where he just bought a new Mac, wore color coded uniforms reminiscent of Star Trek's, in denoting techie, officer, or communications. He asked about it, but the staffer didn't know about TV that old.

I was reminded of that juror who wore a Star Trek outfit to court, using her brief moment of fame to make a statement.

A Friendly Wedding

:: kathy, stacy, betsey (photo by eliz) ::

Our tribe gathered in North Plains this afternoon, with family and friends from across the nation, to affirm the marriage of Kathy Hyzy and Stacy Woodbrook according to the good order of Friends, with Multnomah Meeting's clerk Betsey Kenworthy officiating.

Tara and I both signed the certificate, along with myriad others, after a period of expectant worship, during which people offered their love and encouragement to the happy couple. I helped out with the pirate pinata, fun for the kids, and consumed some of Stacy's fine homemade beer. We brought way too much of our lentil dish, given the abundance of good food, had fun making it though.

Of course there was some small talk among Friends during the reception afterward, of the various political dimensions of marriage, affairs of estate and so forth, an always shifting picture. Bonnie Tinker and I compared notes on the doings of other tribes, the Coquille in particular, with Elizabeth Braithwaite attending.

Probably many felt as I did, glad of our simpler ways and plain dealings. I felt complemented when this out of towner and friend of Stacy's told me I looked just like he expected a Quaker should look (even minus my black hat I was thinking, plus I couldn't find my camera, look forward to getting some pictures).