Storyboarding Ecovillages

The way I've used the word "storyboard" over the years relates to science fiction writing. In movie-making, a storyboard gives some idea of the planned movie's flow in a comic book style, with the drawings suggesting some of the camera angles.

Individuals going through a vista or environment looking this way and that, might be considered "immersed" in that environment. A new kind of camera, such as those used to develop Google Street Views, takes in almost a full bubble of vista.

A corresponding projector might fill a 5/8 dome with simultaneous data. Viewers need to turn their own heads to take in aspects of the recorded scene. These vistas may likewise be simulated, generated from models, where the vista has no real existence.

Science fiction is less literally a projected rendition than a movie-maker's storyboard. A science fiction novel may provide no pictures at all, as the technology of reading is such that the reader's imagination serves as the immersive environment. One learns to project in the "mind's eye".

Pundits disagree on whether a culture of TV and movies has weakened the mind's eye. Seeing lots of movies gives one more raw material to draw upon, especially when it comes to vividly presented fantasy worlds, so the argument could be made that visualization powers are increasing.

Some point to rising global IQ in the spatial geometry sector, claiming the IQ tests have to renormalize by as much as 7% from one generation to the next, given humans seem to be getting smarter in some ways (yet the average is supposed to stay fixed at 100 regardless).

Others suggest that visualization skills may be improving, but the ability to simply read with comprehension is in decline as attention spans have shortened and more people turn to finished products, canned fantasies, rather than imagining their own worlds. This is also leading to more uniformity in thinking, as people internalize increasingly similar vistas from widely distributed films and DVDs.

The ecovillages in my science fiction are informed by Bucky Works, both a book and (I'd suggest) a genre. In this possible future, the aerospace know-how currently used to militarize and rain terror from the skies, is used to develop these humanly affordable "peaceable kingdoms" complete with horses (where appropriate) and electric ATVs.

But how do such ecosystems survive, if not depending on frequent visits by 18-wheelers loaded with imports? The designer's job requires "bioneering" (ala John Todd and others), such that village inputs and outputs are not unrealistic and therefore unrealizable.

What are the energy sources? Where does the food come from? What health care facilities do we find? What happens when people die of natural causes? Do any trucks at all visit the site? Do we have roads to the village? A rail road? Perhaps there's only an airstrip. What kinds of cargoes do airplanes bring? What medicines? What functions does the ecovillage perform? Rehab for those suffering from PTSD?

Once one gets into the nitty gritty of ecovillage design, there's a lot to consider. The capabilities of the aerospace dwelling machines needs to be factored into the equations, but if these don't yet exist... what might we realistically imagine? How much power do they require? Who has the prototypes? Will companies replace their cube farms with ecovillages? Might we find a call center in the Andes?

The world's militaries and paramilitaries already engage in these kinds of studies on a large scale. War planners often assume roads will be constructed or improved. They also assume helicopter access, with or without surface roads. Locally grown food, such as gardens, may be featured on some bases, however most corporate designers imagine food stuffs coming from outside providers, perhaps from the surrounding community (such as fresh fish in Vietnam). A lot depends on whether one assumes a friendly or hostile surroundings.

Some of my more recent writing looks at medications, their supply and distribution within a camp. Weaning people off medications is sometimes a treatment goal. Other ecovillages might be specifically designed for cancer patients undergoing chemo and radiation. One might design dome-shaped outer shells, transparent to full spectrum sunlight, and then have a mix of facilities inside, including clinics and food stores.

This genre of futurism is already somewhat established in the literature. I'm certainly not the only contributor. Bucky Works is a real book, by J. Baldwin.

Views of America

Roger Paget graced our small group of Wanderers this morning. He's an emeritus professor of Asian Studies and Political Economy at Lewis & Clark College. From his written preamble:

Most citizens do not have the dimmest notion of what capitalism means for good reason. Even secretaries of the treasury and lions of industry, banking, etc., intone the ritual precepts oblivious of their fundamental vacuity in the contemporary world.... what is conventionally billed as an economic theory is in actuality integrally wedded to political interests. [ hyperlink added ]

He had some dots to share, inviting us to connect them. The first had to do with his repeated visits to Indonesia over the years (he's fluent in Indonesian). The recent economic crash in Asia, which preceded the meltdown in North America, has resulted in Indonesia reconnecting to its own resources. The economies there are bouncing back, but not as a result of the international system. Bretton Woods era capitalism, post WW2 LAWCAP, appears to be over in many respects, but that doesn't mean everything's going down the tubes. 

On another front, one of his former classmates is now a multi-billionaire and is funding important initiatives having to do with internationalizing the educational experience of many North Americans. Yet this same classmate is unfamiliar with Federal programs designed to encourage similar outcomes (more cosmopolitan thinkers and doers). Roger is very aware of the mutual ignorance that keeps public and private sector initiatives and programs oblivious of one another.

 

A more cosmopolitan level of discourse would help America rock. Roger is a classic liberal in many ways (he drives a classic VW bus, lives in Portland for crying out loud), meaning he's imbued with a sense of a powerful semi-omni-aware state, his state (the United States).

 

Here in the early 21st century, he's what I'd call a prime representative of USA OS, or the USA style of governing (steering), by means of institutions with checks and balances (to prevent despotism and waste) and with lots of participation by the people for the people (at least in theory). 

 

In another story, Roger talked about his delivering way more than an average number of babies, including his own. I'd been musing about male midwives in chatting with Laura, so was pleased to have this thread joined. He got into a relationship with Mercy Corps, which wanted to help mothers learn how to breast feed. No, it's not all intuitive, helps to have guidance. However, by the time he got to the front lines, he was like the only guy in the room explaining this agenda. The technologists and gynecologists were learning the more coldly robotic western ways, of birth by Cesarean, followed by infant formulas. We can blame literally soulless Nestles marketing, or we can blame westernized grownups for broadcasting the messages they're willing to pay for, spreading those memes (those lifestyles).

 

Roger spoke especially knowledgeably and with admiration for the Comptroller General's office, an appointment of 15 years, the longest in the USG short of a Supreme Court justice. This officer oversees the Government Accounting Office (GAO), recently renamed the Office of Accountability. The theory here is an auditing office with lots of overview, and somewhat immune from short term political pressures, could point out obvious (and not so obvious) errors in the operating system's design.

 

He ended with a few pointed remarks about the Koch (pronounced "coke") brothers, recently featured in The New Yorker, as a way of bringing up the disproportionate influence of moneyed interests on the affairs of state. If academia fails to rally and defend a cosmopolitan center (liberal because open and diverse, not narrowing and controlling), then we may go off the deep end into another fanaticism, perhaps a despotic fascism. I took this to be the gist of his thesis.

 

I don't know if Roger is a member of our Wanderers discussion list. I don't think so or he'd have posted something by now. The preamble was forwarded by Don. Had he been on the list, he'd've known we've already been discussing the Koch brothers some. 

 

I've been making lots of links in my posted remarks to Edwin Black's books, which I'm plowing through, and which have everything to do with (a) fossil fuel addiction, and (b) a lingering classism linked to racism which seeks to defeat any kind of democratic system, Jeffersonian or otherwise. 

 

I reiterated these comments in the ensuing discussion, along with my standard identification of USA OS with a kind cyber-nationalism, a geek school of thought which tends to virtualize nationhood, such as by using Bucky Fuller's deliberately nationless world map, his "game board" for playing World Game. According to this view, the USA is powerful in proportion to the degree its design principles are evident anywhere in the world. 

 

Democracy grows with a people's self-organizing for self-determination and cannot be imposed from without (an oxymoron). We may learn from one another however, so it's not like every wheel needs to be reinvented. 

 

The civil rights movements, starting with Gandhi's resistance to imperialism, taught people a lot about how to be more effective, how the use "the force" (precession). Young people are especially keen to throw off any yoke of tyranny, as they have their whole lives ahead of them as the saying goes. Older people may have a next life to think about, and some are hoping to spend it right here.

 

Every generation hopes to steer a little closer to utopia (or God's Kingdom if you prefer such language), learning from mistakes of the past (or repeating them).

 

Given the USA's Forest Service is in Brazil, while the CDC is doing health work in Africa, and the FBI (supposedly domestic / internal) is investigating corruption in Afghanistan, it's obvious that national borders are becoming somewhat vestigial. Fuller saw this happening way back in 1983 (wrote a book about it), and got a Medal of Freedom shortly thereafter.

 

All we need next is a Chinese peace corps in Detroit, providing needed clinical services and urban farming skills to refugees from a dying political economy. Once people are helping out every which way, we'll have our more well-rounded "Cosmopolis," our one "global university" with a giant spherical campus (and a moon for an annex). 

 

Is this our Novus Ordo Seclorum then? Our Promised Land?

 

That depends on your virtual nation's and/or ideological perspective. 

 

If the planet really gets its act together and starts taking care of its students, then maybe we should call it Finlandia. In the meantime, it's more like the Wild West perhaps.

 

Roger has a deep soothing voice. I told Lindsey later that he sounds just like Noam Chomsky to my ears, even if what he's saying is different. That was a complement by the way, as I think Noam as an accomplished rhetorician.

 

Given how I'm prone to multi-task these days (part of what it means to be a geek), I had to take a short leave to chauffeur my daughter to Cleveland HS (went to "college night" tonight) after she missed the bus.

I also tapped tapped on my keyboard, self-promoting as a kind of "not mathematician" who is yet weighty as a Friend, a posting I later shared with the chairman of Python Nation as he's mentioned in passing (by title). We're expecting Steve back in Portland for GOSCON in a few weeks.

Willamette Quarterly, 2010

:: fall 2010 willamette quarterly @ mmm / unity ::

I've journaled about this event several times over the years. Last year I agitated to stage it here in Portland, at the meetinghouse, instead of trucking out to the Kiwanis Camp. The planning committee took up that idea, and so it came to be. We had over 109 people and brought in sufficient revenue to cover renting the Unity Church multi-purpose room and kitchen down the street, for meals.

I joined Nancy Irving's interest group. She was on vacation from her job in London as General Secretary of Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), staying with the Abbotts. To the extent Quakers have a global office, this would be it. However, given it's a spirit-led faith without a credo, the central office is not expected to produce detailed statements regarding "what Quakers believe" that all faithful would sign on to. FWCC may know some of what's going on though, has some overview perspective.

[ In the meantime, Holly reportedly led a brilliant walking tour of nearby CSA sites (Community Supported Agriculture), an activity Lindsey had helped to organize (and would have led, if not for an illness). Larry joined this walk, and later showed me his new gizmo: a thin pocket sized access point, a wifi hotspot, through which his iTouch and laptop both connect to the Internet. Quakers are pretty up on this stuff. And wow Ron, congrats on losing 65 pounds! ]

As an example of sharing overview, Nancy talked about food insecurity in the Philippines, where the economic crash in the Middle East in 2008 resulted in many construction workers returning to the islands, with the resulting boom in housing construction wiping out enough cultivated land to create a deficit in rice production. Needing to import rice is a new phenomenon. In the meantime, there's an exodus of professionals with any kind of health care training, which contributes to poverty levels at home.

I did not attend Friday night's program on food issues (the theme of the quarterly). Instead, Patrick joined us on the back patio upon returning Tara from her babysitting duties. Lindsey, recuperating, joined us and we talked about food, the state of the world, social justice and all the rest of it.

I butted in a few times with some off the wall rants about how money isn't the problem, as Energy + Intelligence is pretty much all we've got. How does this relate to Geography + Geometry, my other unifying heuristic? I'm not sure we should get into that here. In the middle of our discussion, Simon showed up with a care package for Lindsey, lots of squash and kale, the kind of stuff she can eat.

Program Clerk Elizabeth Fischer and I went for a walk to get her photos at Walgreens. She didn't think food ethics had really percolated to the top of the interest group agenda. The recent April 2010 article on food issues in Friends Journal also seemed rather lame in her view (Applying Quaker Thought to Food by Shaun Chavis), with the author, who writes about food for a living, agonizing about whether he could live without lobster tails or pate foie gras.

There are those lobster tails again...

More permanent buildings are going up and some, already built by Afghans and deemed not good enough for American habitation, are scheduled for reconstruction. Even in distant FOBs like this one, the building boom is prodigious. There’s a big gym with the latest body-building equipment, and a morale-boosting center equipped with telephones and banks of computers connected to the Internet that are almost always in use. A 24/7 chow hall serves barbequed ribs, steak, and lobster tails, though everything is cooked beyond recognition by those underpaid laborers to whom this cuisine is utterly foreign. [source]

Welcome to the Global U, eh? The biggest educator on the block is the military, as I was pointing out on the Math Forum earlier.

People would ask me what I've been up to. Some had only vaguely heard about the Food Not Bombs group using the kitchen (a pet project of mine).

Those wanting more stories (true ones) got to hear about my ideas for GIS / GPS applied to trucking along various routes. Not everyone's cup of tea, I realize.

I forgot to bring along any Flextegrity but the guys in our Men's Group already know about that project, and some of the science fiction that goes with it (Project Earthala and like that).

Carol had a WILPF meeting downtown. Other friends, in the meantime, were busy downtown, protesting those FBI raids awhile back. Americans are nervous about their civil liberties going away.

Persecution of the undocumented ties in, as a kind of mean-spirited nationalism distracts people from developing positive futures, investing in workable plans. John Munson led a group on this topic, including references to AFSC's underground railroads.

I also talked to Gayle about my hopes for Havana, keeping it free from speculators who just want to recreate the casino culture of yore, bringing back organized crime and fast food.

The global university network might counter with some work / study programs that take advantage of the relatively unspoiled vista, giving students more opportunities to build on system architectures that reflect the ethics they study in philosophy classes.

That emerging vista may or may not include a Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory, with ties to Vermont and "hippie values" (such as open source) that have become incorporated as a part of The Grunch's legacy (my thanks to Laura for cluing me regarding The Hippie Museum in Tennessee).

A challenge here is to create branding opportunities sans the baggage of LAWCAP's antiquated notions of "corporate personhood" (aka Voodoo Economics). Land use planning based on GIS / GPS technologies is what future food security depends upon (satellites too!).

"Democracy" is not synonymous with "uncontrolled development", nor is "free enterprise". Lots of old timer capitalists believe in land use planning. Look at Disneyland: no KFC.

Nor need Mecca include any Christian churches.

The idea of a "theme park" transfers to both urban and rural settings. Like, why would Havana want to become a cheap carnival, given high literacy rates, refined tastes?

Back to Willamette Quarterly Meeting (WQM): I enjoyed connecting with Joe and Jane Snyder again.

Switchboard Activity

I've been posting up a storm on the Math Forum and need to provide some "supply chains" (links). I also posted something to Synergeo reiterating our thinking about the 7.5 volumed rhombic triacontahedron (what I've elsewhere dubbed the "NCLB polyhedron" -- regardless of volume).

I was up early for surprise chauffeur duty, for the global U student we're gladly hosting as a welcoming Quaker family. She's disciplined herself to not use her car (dubbed the "torture taxi") except for medical emergencies, and this was one of those times.

No health coverage, just an "average American" and a brilliant leader in my book, a brave and free spirit (yes, many people own those qualities, I recognize).

I've got the FNB trailer if you're out there reading this, and wonder where it is. I have limited contact information, as you might expect. I started an email thread with Satya and Cera, but they may be outta town.

As it turned out Satya and Cera were just recently back in town and Cera showed up at the meetinghouse to take charge of the cooking (she's an experienced cook, had just been serving as chef at a Zen retreat closer to the coast).

At the park, I experienced a small world moment as it turned out Satya used to live across the street from Alex, son of Aung San Suu Kyi and Micheal Aris, author of several books on Bhutan (where my parents used to live).

Lindsey is coordinating with Lew on the phone about that Quarterly Meeting interest group. Even if she can't lead it herself, the show must go on.

Equinox Retreat

Temperatures are dropping. Summer is done. The thermostat in the refrigerator conked out. I was lucky to find a repairman on a Saturday.

I read old Wiki pages by students in Israel, talking about elephants and whether they had a sixth sense that warned them of tsunamis (not that adding a "sense" really explains anything, might as well add a "dimension"). One of them wrote about Gaza. This was on Wikieducator and I was conversing about conserving elephants with Mr. Wong (a Wikieducator user) in China, saving elephants being a theme of his business school curriculum. I shared about the Global U recruiting campaign to get more people seeing themselves as global university students (giant spherical campus).

Walt has hooked me up with an interesting new correspondent, a deep thinker in Canada named Ted, Lakota heritage, who writes about site-based situational learning, versus a more western model based on cookie cutter jobs (template roles) and individual volition (as if "place" were not a causative field, as if only "the individual" were the locus for action). Walt and I had been yakking about the Zeitgeist... We've been talking about David Peat and Blackfoot Physics among other topics.

My post to Synergeo from earlier today (while the repairman was working, including out buying parts) includes more on the bamboo bike trailer delivery network from some hypothetical Unilever ice cream factory in Cuba. That company has been working pretty hard on getting more recycling and composting going, including in the Lipton tea making process.

The Synergeo post connects back to the Math Forum for more details. This is a Harvard Business School type project in that we're recasting metaphors to better align with modern computer science concepts. The API between an enterprise and government is up for redesign, given all the changes in Cuba these days. The population is highly literate and attuned to such challenges. The rest of the world could learn from work / study programs along these lines, perhaps without disrupting Havana's status as a "fast food free zone" (a commercial edge, attractive to tourism).

Trish joined Glenn, Don and I for some more Youtubes on the big screen for the 2nd night of the retreat. I was drawn to WW2 era Private SNAFU toons by the great Dr. Seuss. Laura Cooper (Goodbye Party) was again influential. We also watched that 7 minute Blu toon again, and listened to Leonard Cohen (Don is his fan), also Mad World. Trish pointed us the the sand painting artist Kseniya Simonova, as well as to her own toon-like drawings on Facebook, pictures of her handsome young son, and the amazing sidewalk art of Julian Beaver.

I was glad to hear back from John Belt, who dropped me a note while in the middle of teaching a class for SUNY / Oswego. Sam, Glenn and I were in a meeting at Bridgeport, connected in real time by wifi. John had recently been staying with Joe Clinton and had showed him Sam's book. Sam Lanahan and Joe collaborated over about a two year period in Elizabeth, New Jersey some decades back, both having been students of Buckminster Fuller at different times.

My writing to Ted, the Lakota guy, included a sketch of the bizmo concept, which has somewhat blended with the Holden Web flying circus idea at this point. Geeks and circuses go together, what can I say? What institutions would (or already do) sponsor bizmos? What control rooms would (or already do) dispatch them? I saw some plans for Afghanistan bizmos go by in Dr. Beebes slides, but when I asked about 'em she said they weren't there yet.

Arabs Gone Wild

Portland's Arab-American community turned out in force for this comedy troupe. Our venue: The Aladdin. The crowd was enthusiastic and appreciative, which was galvanizing to the performers. Portland is also sometimes known as Little Beirut after all.

I'd attended the Axis of Evil here in Portland in November 2009, but this was a different line-up. No Ahmed Ahmed this time, nor Tissa Hami.

Two of the comedians, Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid had been subjects in my friend Glenn Baker's documentary (along with Ahmed and Tissa). I went up to Dean after the show to say hello from Glenn (he knew immediately whom I meant), and to shake Maysoon's hand. I wanted to blurt out how much I admire her but was shy, plus she was swamped with other fans telling her much the same thing.

A quick poll of the audience discovered large Palestinian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Syrian contingents, with fewer from Iraq and Egypt, plus even fewer from Libya. Iranians were present but not polled as Iran is not considered an Arabian nation.

These were in contrast to "whites" (also present) although these categories remain problematic, as many Arabs check "white (non-hispanic)" on the government forms. I'm told "Middle Eastern" is being added to some of the bureaucratic tabulations.

The show reminded me that social comedy is a lot like group therapy. People have an interest in healing by gaining some distance from their pain, and laughter, with a touch of compassion, goes a long way towards creating mental health.

The comedians need healing and therapy as much as anyone, and a friendly audience presents a great opportunity to regenerate one's psyche. Kader's lampooning of Dr. Phil as a source of non sequiturs was funny to me. I was likewise amused when Spears pulled the rug when he tried getting a piece of her that time.

Social comedy traffics in stereotypes, self-consciously and by design. Arab identity has much to do with extended family, food, discussing prices, dressing in various ways. The segment about a TV show adapted from The Price is Right, called The Price is Not Right drew peals of laughter.

A traveling troupe is also in a position to compare notes and update those present with a sense of the times. After some months of relative quiet and benign media, the people now seem angry, with the level xenophobia creeping up the scale.

The comics referred more than once to Ellis Island and the promise of America as a land of opportunity. We embrace newcomers. That's not the mood in California though. Anti-immigrant sentiments are again spiking, especially among "whites".

George Bush has continued as a source of comedy. Aron Kader admitted it's simply harder to turn Obama into a comic figure.

The jokes seemed mostly on the safe side, edgy but not politically all that risky. At a time of such anger, why stoke the flames? Maysoon, who has cerebral palsy, did a sketch about trying to shake Arafat's hand at the UN. As they both quivered, they were unable to connect. Most of her routine was about a new husband-to-be, rescued from a refugee camp with the promise of a visa.

Much of Kader's rap was about gender differences and communication. Guys get paranoid and feel manipulated when gals express their wishes in a round about matter, don't seem to get to the point. Guys don't like to interpret, though may be cryptically brief in their wordless expostulations. The comedy is in the mannerisms and delivery, so I'll not attempt a more thorough account here.

Peace Garden

[ VIDEO NO LONGER AVAILABLE ]

The projects chronicled in the above video, a Rock Beats Paper production, have come along a lot further since then. Camera, narration and editing by Rick Flosi of The Goodbye Party, with Lindsey Walker providing additional narration.

The juniper, which used to look like a phage, now looks more like a banzai tree.

Wanderers 2010.9.14

Jon Bunce is explaining his derivation of the synergetics constant, based on my presentation on Martian Math awhile back. David Tver has joined us, and Trish, a former student of Don Wardwell's. Jeff is working a Javascript gig, injecting more AJAX into some gnarly library.

The PSF Snake (Naga) came along for a photo op. I know that seems frivolous and many wonder why I bother. Anthropologists may be more forgiving in hindsight.

Was I productive today?

I made some follow-up contact with two of my clients. Actually, one was a client of a client, but that's OK.

Does anyone care if there's fast food in Havana? What a luxury it'd be, to get away from ugly strip malls. Some cities should remain blissfully free, of large outdoor billboard advertising as well.

I've been listening to Fidel, agree with his remarks in Iran: studying the holocaust in Europe is more productive than trying to sweep it under the rug. There's no point coming off as ignorant. Edwin Black's War Against the Weak is also a good read (available in Farsi?).

I've got several of Edwin's books on hold through the library. The Multnomah County library system is truly excellent in my opinion.

There's a fine line between "denying" and simply "ignoring", easily crossed.

David Tver is talking about IBM and the holocaust, a recent thread on the Wanderers list (initiated by me). Some curricula visit this chapter more than others, perhaps when introducing SQL (Structured Query Language), the successor to simpler tabulation machines.

A more recent story, less horrendous, involves Russian security services ostensibly cracking down on pirate users of Windows, in this case some opponents of polluting industries and their political allies (similar to Greenpeace).

Thanks to all the negative publicity, Microsoft is backing away from cooperating with these services, by issuing a blanket license to the supposedly offending nonprofits. The latter claim they were using non-pirate copies to begin with, having anticipated this kind of harrassment by the police state authorities.

DjangoCon Day Two

Sometimes I think anthropology departments must be too full of fluff, as we don't seem to attract many field workers to these tribal events, complete with totems, self-government issues, exogenous and endogamous challenges.

How to pass the torch? Who gets a commit bit?

The Django community only has 14 people with a commit bit, and really low bus numbers on some aspects of the code.

A "bus number" is how many people getting hit by buses would result in zero people remaining to maintain, enhance, otherwise work on some feature, application or code. Django's object-relational mapper (ORM) for example: few people are conversant with it among the inner 14, ergo "low bus numbers".

James Bennett gave a great keynote yesterday on the need to open up the core to more committers. These sentiments were echoed in Eric Florenzano's keynote of this morning, which focused on weaknesses and downsides of Django and the community.

These kinds of rants are valuable and expected within any group that expects to thrive over the long haul I should think. One needs to handle criticisms that emerge from deep within the ranks, perhaps with more alacrity than those more casual criticisms coming from outside, from those with less of an investment. Eric is not a core committer, but he does spend many of his waking hours wrangling Django.

Andrew Godwin's talk focused on the non-relational databases out there, of which there there are many, and efforts to make Django work as a front end for some of them. Document stores may have some schema-like aspects, which means the concept of a "model" in Django may still be apropos.

Considering electronic medical records again, an underlying structure is the time-line, as each person's "life thread" (as Greek mythology viewed them) is a chronological sequence.

:: the three fates ::

Medical devices committing data to an EMR need to authenticate patient identity and then find the appropriate point on the time-line to place the data, perhaps with clinician annotations.

Somehow, the URL to this data, being consulted at a later time, will trigger the right viewer to load, perhaps in its own window, thereby decoding the data and rendering a readily decipherable visualization, assuming a trained eye. Perhaps a cine will play; a short video clip of a beating heart, before and after angioplasty.

Hospitals currently store these cines on their own servers. To what extent will EMRs be independent of specific health care systems? Each person accumulates some gigabytes of medical data over the course of a lifetime.

Many bureaucrats have already thrown up their hands, saying the problem is too difficult, can't be done. Other say that, however it's done, their job will be to inter-connect the various implementations, not source any specific solution themselves.

However, given how under-served people are, in so many regions, opportunities for greenfield development are myriad. Doctors without borders aren't required to use HL7 or follow legislative guidelines specific to any one country.

Within a culture of open source, opportunities will develop and get shared. Closed off silos continually reinvent the same wheels whereas those who share more strongly encourage their peers to keep up to date.

Data migration services will evolve to transform one kind of EMR into another.

Yes, what I'm describing is the "messy scrap book" model at a high level (organized temporally), with specific fields being structured, as worked out among various specialists and vendors.

Might a SQL database serve as an outermost wrapper, perhaps with XML fields for less structured data, with patient identity and chronological sequence serving as primary relational keys?

I'm not looking for a single answer or solution.

Researchers will plow through EMRs seeking to generate clinical research records (CCRs), many of them scrubbed of any traceable identity information, yet still associated by case history. Having fragments of the genome decoded does not imply identifiability.

Additionally, those "donating their bodies to science" (a well-known idiom) might nowadays sign a release allowing unmasked identity information to become available to a wider circle of authorized personnel. Medical literature is already full of case histories of identifiable personae, mixed in with the more anonymous.

The data stays authentic, is not some arbitrary mix. Fictional identities may be synthesized by algorithm to mask the actual ones, but in ways that support valid correlations and therefore conclusions. Arbitrary changes to age, sex, weight, history of smoking, should not be messed with, as medically relevant data points.

Open source data sets, freely downloadable, give researchers shared access to common pools.

Intelligently designed viewers and data harvesters with built in anonymizers will facilitate extracting patient data minus patient identity. Data sets packed with thousands of true case histories will be gold to researchers, all the more so because loss or theft of this data will not represent a security breach in terms of patient confidentiality.

Day One at DjangoCon

Steve Holden served as master of ceremonies this morning. I got roped in as mic runner during Q&A, a role with which I'm familiar (I was mic runner for Sir Roger Penrose once, another great mind).

The upshot of the first plenary: the Django community is doing a fantastic job of promoting Python's relevance to the "world livingry service industry" (like hotels, rental car agencies and such) however developers are in short supply.

Universities with "emergent technologies" tracks are more likely to be providing some relevant content. Many remain decades behind. In my own view (it's my blog so I get one): high schools could be doing a lot more. Again, I circle the Litvins' text as prototypical, already retrofitted for Python 3.x.

One footnote: now that the Django Pony has become so woven into the lore, some geeks are feeling leery. Is it too late to back away? Certainly not everyone feels this way, but yeah, there's that potential for teasing, of being teased, because of one's "flippant" (the word used) mascot.

Steve took the bull by the horns by suggesting we're duty-bound to keep it light in some dimensions, and the Django Pony is the very embodiment of lightness (and yet also opens the psyche to investigations of disappointment, being spoiled, optimism versus pessimism and so forth, not to mention the innocence of youth).

Setting Up @ DjangoCon

Yes, some people have to work on Labor Day, especially hard-working service personnel in all those hotels, where some people go on vacation during Labor Day weekend.

One of the first things they teach you about labor is its division. Not everyone gets to go on vacation at the same time. In many submarines, you had fewer bunks than men, because not everyone sleeps at once on a submarine.

Then people sort themselves by skill sets, and levels of skill within those skill sets.

For example, Admirers of Javascript is the name of an actively meeting group here in Portland. HTML5 is getting a lot of buzz. Will it include client-side SQL? Sqlite has been proposed. iPhones apps use it, am I right (I don't have one)?

The Djangocon conference, on the other hand, is less about the user-facing interfaces, and more about what the servers need to be doing, fetching and storing data, returning views. Django is a web framework written in the Python computer language, one of several. The original developers hail from Lawrence, Kansas.

Do these two skills sets overlap? Django and JavaScript + HTML/CSS? You betcha.

Other skills involved in organizing a conference: encourage professionalism among hotel staff; pay attention to your environment, including smells; have a way to print name tags, labels, easily right on the spot.

BuckyBall Day

Google joined the festivities by commemorating the discovery of the BuckyBall. I got some emails from people from whom I don't usually hear (hi Josh, welcome back to the land of Mexican food).

David Koski first alerted me with a phone call, which he placed in the midst of setting up his new Apple.

As those up on their lore maybe know, the discovery of buckminsterfullerene came two years after Fuller died in 1983. His collaborator E.J. Applewhite lived to see the scientific community embrace this new discovery, and nomenclature.

Twas my distinct pleasure to attend the First International Conference on Buckyballs in Santa Barbara, as a representative of both the BFI and ISEPP. I got to meet Harold Kroto and many of the other researchers exploring this fascinating topic. I also crossed paths with a Nanotubes conference in Gothenburg.

The hexapent, or soccerball shape of the buckyball, is one I sought to popularize under the heading of HP4E (hexapents for everybody), an allusion to Guido's CP4E (computer programming for everybody).

Glenn Stockton promulgates this and related memes through his Global Matrix Studios (currently a part of the Linus Pauling Campus on Hawthorne Boulevard). Are we like Mad Men or what?

:: documentary on c60 ::

FNB Food Prep

:: fnb @ mmm ::

Lew Scholl, clerk of Property Management, is yakking in the kitchen with Lindsey and Cera. They're talking about New Thought churches. I'd been out running an errand, though I'm nominally supervising this event, as the key bearer.

There's a conference call on speaker phone going, regarding Quarterly Meeting planning. Food security, urban farming, CSAs... these are themes this year. Lindsey knows a lot of the CSA groups and is coordinating with Joyce on a possible interface, perhaps here in the social hall (where I'm blogging from).

Betsey Kenworthy, now Assistant Clerk of the Meeting, was by earlier and got to meet Cera and Satya when they showed up. Jan Kjerne was here as well. Another FNB volunteer came through with some additional food contributions.

The group brings the food on bicycle trailer, preps it, then pulls it off to be served in a public location not far away. I've participated in the operation, so know some of the ropes.

Lew and I went around testing our laptops, to see if the wifi's radius has improved.

Lew has a new Youtube up about the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage, which recently stopped through, and took over the meetinghouse. I missed being there at any point, so was glad to catch this video.

FNB (Food Not Bombs) is good at logistics, has been doing this for years. There's an Episcopalian congregation helping out as well. Satya is a Buddhist monk.

Pycon / Tehran?

:: trucking route ::

I'm monitoring Diversity for more feedback on this idea. Some of the language specialists (unicode geeks) I'm tracking watch that water cooler for signs of the times.

Vilnius was one I got to (a EuroPython), and really enjoyed. Aieste is a Facebook friend but I don't understand most of what she writes, given she speaks at least four more languages than I do. I've been to Pycons in Washington, DC and Chicago.

Pycons may happen in parallel, although in terms of PSF people getting together, that's not always in the cards. Pycon / Singapore (Asia-Pacific) happened over the summer. I helped mind the (curriculum writing) store at OST while Holden Web took a tour, including Nippon.

People wanting a Pycon in Baghdad or Tel Aviv don't have to worry too much about sequence ("simultaneously" is OK). Even when the distances are not so great (quite drivable by North American standards) it's enough work to get visas to have to pick and choose.

In the meantime, short of full-fledged Pycons, we have local user groups. Some of these are informal, on-campus or off, and may not yet be listed on the community Wiki, unlike Portland, Oregon's or Chicago's, both of which have been going a long while.

Sharing Light

I walked to Quaker meeting on Sunday with the express purpose of attending early morning adult discussion, which exceeded my expectations. The theme was "pride" and was clerked by this new guy.

Like any congregation (we usually don't use that word), there's welcome turnover, a small trickle of newcomers checking us out. This brand of Quaker stays esoteric in that it doesn't proselytize or otherwise try to make itself especially understandable. There's a library, lots of lore on the Web.

My 81 year old mother also walked the 2/3 mile each way.

Then I met up with clerk of Property Management (a committee) to discuss a pilot test we'd like to run. No amplified music this time, nor much use of the piano. This was a proposal I originally dispatched through Oversight, then subsequently sought to involve Peace and Social Concerns.

We're gearing up for Djangocon in Portland, which is close to sold out. Django is one of the flagship web application frameworks, written in Python. Its design encourages best practices and is consistent with many emerging industry standards, in how it dispatches HttpRequests to view managers, which in turn consult any databases in the picture (model-view-controller). That's all kind of technical, but then lots of my readers are software engineers, other brands of geek.

Another example of a web application framework is the popular Ruby on Rails, which was used for this Urban Edibles web site. A proposal to migrate this site to Django resulted in Rick, Laura, Lindsey and I attending some sprints. Although the spirit of socially responsible coding was present, we were not the right permutation of cards to form a winning hand (luck of the draw) and so we made not much headway as unpaid volunteers. At least Backspace appreciated our business.

Rick has recently been by the Blue House on a work project with Lindsey. Wanderer Consoletti has been a campus guest, also of Portland Energy Strategies (I dispute many of Nick's views, have not used him as my emissary or anything, he does his own thinking).

I've been reading Saying No To Power by William Mandel, which is making the rounds through Friends. I'll have more to say about this illuminating autobiography in future blog posts. He says some entertaining things about Quakers.

The recent back yard party with school teachers was just in time, as the weather turned cold and rainy almost immediately thereafter. I had some Martian Math toyz in tow. Our company included a Fulbright scholar, plus a full time teacher from Beaverton getting ready for a stint in Finland, as a student of that country's education system.

Greater Portland benefits from having such a cosmopolitan teacher cast, is partly what attracts families to work in this area.

Sharing Darkness

Fictional works may engage our empathy or libido, may present us with villains, characters we love to hate. I am not anti-fiction, and yet I do often worry about its abuse, as a way to channel caring away from the real world into various imaginary ones controlled by soap companies (the root meaning of "soap opera").

In contrast, I have been advocating entwining technical skills trainings with historical content, adding back time-lines where they may have gone missing. Consider the WW2 era Holocaust in Europe for example, and its ties to ideologies and literature emerging as a consequence of Darwin's theories.

The story has been told many times, but not usually in the context of studying the mathematics of record-keeping, or the language of SQL (structured query language). Edwin Black helped move us in that direction. Other scholars have followed his lead.

It's precisely when one is learning about "keeping tabs", collecting information about people in data warehouses, that it makes the most sense to investigate abuses, failed civilizations, inhumane applications of these kinds of technologies.

Schools with a reputation for "denying the Holocaust" or simply refusing to give it any focus, might want to try a different tack and actually pioneer a more direct approach. Study the Eugenics movement intently and relate it to the science of record-keeping. Use the topic of SQL as a bridge to these dark chapters, even as we investigate its power to do good.

One cannot change the past, but one might improve one's prospects for a better future by studying it, not forgetting it.

Am I saying a mathematics class should be an unrelenting tour of the worst parts of human history? No, but only because we should also tour the best parts.

History needs to be there though, smack in the middle of all that technical content.

Think of catalogs of pharmaceuticals, which talk about what they're good for, but also discuss side-effects, contra-indications. When we talk about record-keeping, we need to also talk about privacy issues, abuses of power.

The voting process involves record-keeping, databases.

The right to vote is hard won, for men, women, members of oppressed groups. Going over these travails, even while discussing the anatomy of a voting system, would be a more responsible kind of mathematics education than always focusing on fictional and/or imaginary realms.

Always bleeping over the dark side just feeds it more power, by keeping student awareness low and adding to the sense of a conspiracy of silence and/or apathy where nightmare circumstances have taken hold.

Advocating for serious-minded history in the mix is an extension of my "how things work" approach. A mathematics education should aim to explain how things work behind the scenes, often invisibly in ways undetected directly by the senses.

"How things break" is a subcategory of "how things work" and should focus on healing and repair, restoring quality, preventing future breakdowns. If mathematicians want a reputation for being more logical and cool headed, this should be evident in their manner of engaging with real world problems, not in their ability to exempt themselves from even considering our existential predicament as "humans in Universe".

As a radical math teacher, you could say it's part of my job description to make activists feel less lonely, less like the only kid on the block who remembers and feels moved to do something before it's too late.

One might deride such curricula as being "for bleeding hearts" but I prefer to think of them as suitable for present and future diplomats, and in this day and age, that's a highly distributed function, not confined to embassies.

Increasing the student exchange volume within the Global U somewhat depends on heightening awareness of time-lines, meaning one develops the skills to investigate new chronologies and connect them to what's already known.

One also needs to develop the skills to present what one has learned, effectively and economically. Technical skills enter in here, such as how to coherently summarize data, how to blog, how to use social networking media etc.

Source to Sea: The Columbia River Swim (movie review)

Christopher Swain made it his life's goal to bring attention to the state of the Columbia River, which is somewhat horrific, though like a film in slow motion. The radioisotopes and other toxins that leach into this once great wildlife refuge, along with the dams, have brought it to the brink.

This is one of the world's most contaminated bodies of water. A great heritage has been lost. The once vast salmon runs are now memorialized in museums, replaced by cultivated hatchery fish.

It's a story repeated around the world, where humans lack the capacity to self-organize and manage their civilizations effectively. Their engineering is of poor quality, their technology nowhere near as finely tuned as Mother Nature's.

The film includes footage from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, a movie Ken Kesey somewhat despised. In the film, Chief Bromden is put in there for alcoholism, whereas in Kesey's novel his distress is specifically owing to the flooding of Celilo Falls, which took place in 1957 (one year before I was born, so I've never seen them except in archival records).

Suicide rates and alcoholism soared when Celilo and Kettle Falls were destroyed in the name of "progress" (a tricky word), by The Dalles Dam and Grand Coulee Dam respectively.

The prospect of removing some of these dams, or allowing them to simply decay, is broached. Given the current level of greed for power, that may not happen for awhile, but these people are patient.

Barge traffic depends on keeping the river navigable (trains don't care so much). However, if the uber-toxins under Hanford further contaminate the river, those dams may be the least of our problems.

There's a thank you in the credits to Lloyd Marbet, for helping to close Trojan.

Christopher set some records with his 13 month swim in icy cold currents, with interruptions to raise some money. He has since tackled other bodies of water. He reminds me of Roz Savage, whom I've been writing about recently (again), who also ministers about the ecosystem, the interconnectedness of all things.

I include the Celilo Falls episode in my Martian Math curriculum, as an example of terraforming. However I don't imply that terraforming, while transforming, is always for the better or towards making a planet more habitable for human beings. We might like it to be, but humans make mistakes. A few mushroom clouds make that point in this film.

Open Source & Health Care

I read the Willamette Week cover story again, then posted some analysis to the Linus Pauling House list, asking for feedback.

My primary questions revolved around walking one's talk and/or eating one's own dog food. If open source is ingrained within Portland, Oregon's culture, as the article avers, then where is the evidence of that in the public sector?

The article focuses on the private sector and some non-profits, but pointedly points out that the gubernatorial campaigns have not seized on this issue. From a GOSCON point of view (as distinct from OSCON), the thesis for debate might be: if it's government funded, then it needs to belong to the public, meaning open source software should be the result (if software is a result).

Why wouldn't that be a criterion? We're talking civilian applications, like medical records, so if Mercy Corps gets it for free... well, that's what keeps Uncle Sam being a hero, not just some war junkie or spoiled addict who squanders his inheritance -- and the good will of his public.

Imagine for a minute, a university system where students got to study and even hack on the very software used to run that university. They would grasp the difference between public source and private data, already confusing to many.

I've worked around hospitals and know that's a confusion. Some executives suppose that open source means lax about security.

Others suppose it means no one to call when it breaks. I see more legitimate concerns here, even when the solutions are proprietary, as there's frequently disagreement about what's the weak link in the chain: is it a problem with the hardware, or perhaps with Windows itself -- the buck gets passed around, and may not stop anywhere, any time soon.

The argument that more eyes on the source means fewer security leaks has merit, but needs to be encountered in some real world contexts.

Let's teach more about cryptography, not just for the hell of it, but to improve peoples' shared model of what's going on under the hood. We need to focus less on fictional television, which provides fantasy versions of the various professions, and more on reality shows, and not just of the trivial game playing or soap opera variety.

Let's have some community television that does a good job explaining RSA for example, or Diffie-Hellman. Have the source code be public and freely downloadable, through the TV show's web site (with episodes also viewable on line, like with dimensions-math.org -- airing on community television these days).

If you understand how these systems actually work, you know what level of paranoia to dial in, versus what's "over the top" made-for-TV horsepucky. Computer literacy is a prerequisite for authoring sane policies (rules of the road), but how many politicians get the time to sort it out?

I'm suggesting a university background in which these concepts become second nature, because you get ample exposure to working examples via textbook case studies that are also real world.

This kind of education would be what Oregonians need, to not drop the ball.

Given the education system is more an extension of the state, and given the Willamette Week article is not reassuring when it comes to the state's role, the case for vigilance and some political pressure seems clear.

If the Feds are seeking to mandate that doctors automate more effectively by 2015, and if billions are on tap to motivate solutions to these problems, then lets connect the dots and see those billions helping to create software infrastructure that's essentially free to these doctors, not a burden but an opportunity and sometimes even a joy to use (because designed with and by other doctors).

A given practice may want to pay for customization or added features, but this isn't a matter of giving away public money to private companies, only have to buy everything already paid for a second time, at exorbitant prices. That'd be to repeat all the errors of the military sector, which gets ripped off by its cozy revolving door club.

Civilians don't need that high level of secrecy, need the freedom to collaborate in the clear. The liberal arts model applies and universities, not just government labs, are an appropriate venue for doing the work. Teaching hospitals, such as OHSU, are especially well positioned.

That's another reason (the need for openness) to not cast Portland as directly competing with other centers of innovation necessarily (e.g. Prague, Vilnius or wherever). Open source geeks need to pool resources (that's their process), using talented groups in various hubs.

Hospitals able to spell patient names in their native languages will have an edge, and such internationalization will come about more quickly because Portland is well-connected and cosmopolitan (like Cape Town), not xenophobic and not protecting all its secrets from the prying eyes of other states.

Portland has the potential to serve as such a management hub and center of innovation, but only if it pays attention to its own education, teaches about extreme programming, test driven development and all the rest of it. The O'Reilly School of Technology (based in California) might be a role model in this regard.

The public sector needs to keep pace, not leave private companies wondering where all their new recruits will be coming from.

Related story:

Back when I was co-editing Asia-Pacific Issues News and writing about problems with civilian nuke plant designs, in both the USA and Japan, I was struck by how the Japanese protesters were focusing on engineering issues, tracking the details of micro-fractures, paying attention to the technological internals whereas the USA protesters, in contrast, were always seeking to expose a scandal in moneymaking terms, finding villains and/or moralizing, but mostly ignoring the engineering.

Engineering is harder to follow than soap opera politics. The Americans seemed relatively lazy in their journalism, required less of their readership.

Willamette Week openly worries Oregonians might be too lazy.

If we're not teaching digital math with some programming by this fall, in some of Oregon's public high schools, I'd say that's pretty clear evidence the diagnosis is on target. It's more the public sector we need to be watching then.

President Obama has already expressed support for open source at the Federal level. Lets hear what state governors have to say.

Their recent rallying around math standards has not been encouraging, because they contain nothing new, but rather codify and calcify a lot of musty dusty content, put a damper on innovation.

What to remember here is that standards set a floor, not a ceiling, and centers of excellence should not hold back when it comes to embracing the future and covering more digital age topics (e.g. SQL).

Helping improve the health care system will require us to think more like doctors and engineers, and less like lawyers and race track gamblers.

Are we up to it? We shall see. This is not just a Portland problem.

Corruption (editorial)

The neo-liberal / neo-con press likes to talk about how President Karzai is so "corrupt" -- as is much of the "developing world" (used to be "3rd world").

The self-righteous tone, coming from an occupying force with no business being there, is pretty awesome. "What? The Pakistanis don't really want us here either? How corrupt could they be? How unfair, as we're only here to help."

The hypocrisy is too deep to stand up in, as there's no way to explain either "operation" (as in "botched surgery") except as a result of greed, fear and ignorance ("corruption" in other words).

What was the original mission in Iraq?

To oust Saddam Hussein and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), although what gave any leader the right to pre-emptively strike, in the absence of clear and present danger, is still an open debate (oh yeah, right: "911" means "debate over").

The Americans were stampeded, against their better judgment, into committing an atrocity. They listened to their so-called best and brightest. Same mistake under Kennedy.

True, some semblance of obeying international law was mocked up by Colin Powell and his team, followed by invasion, occupation and the Bremer Edicts (remember those?).

The WMD thing fell apart pretty quickly, just as Hans Blix and Scott Ritter knew it would, and Saddam was captured by the Kurds and turned over to a vengeful militia.

Some elections were held, with the winners ever promising they'd get the Americans to leave.

So much for democracy.

So what's the pretense today, for hanging out in Iraq? There isn't one really, except one: people need the work i.e. jobs, jobs, jobs.

Americans don't wanna leave Afghanistan because then they "might look weak" -- as if using that rationale were anything beyond the epitome of weakness.

If that's really the game, then game over already. Who's fooling whom?

Again, people need the work. It's a living. Jobs, jobs, jobs is the only reason people flock to Afghanistan.

A crashed economy in the USA provides a big incentive (could these phenomena be coupled? Insightful analysts sometimes connect those dots).

Clearly, the best way LAWCAP knows to "stimulate the economy" is via military spending. This has been true for some decades (since FDR) and the corporate welfare state has become highly dependent on its insolvent Uncle Sam, its dutiful puppet.

"Give us defense contracts or we'll give you death" is the message to cowed politicians, who line up to toe the party line (it's a one party state with an institutionalized opposition -- the better to get nothing done, which is kind of the point).

Now president Karzai of Afghanistan has issued an edict of his own: private security forces should leave or stay sequestered to their embassies. "But that's impossible!"

Immediately we hear about the jobs, jobs jobs that will be lost, by the poor Afghanis as well. Plus Afghan security forces are so corrupt, whereas the occupying "international community" is just there to be professional, to show how it's done.

When politicians talk about a troop draw-down, it's always "redeploy" -- journalists are careful to write that way too. No one wants to suggest a reduction in "absolute numbers" (heresy!).

The broad unspoken agreement is: "defense spending" must go up up up, and eventually the entire population must be in permanent military mode. That's what the War on Terror is all about no? Jobs jobs jobs.

A hard-nosed economist might suggest that paying people just to sit home and watch TV would cost the world far less, in terms of lives lost, oil squandered, opportunities denied.

"Redeployment" should be to vast video-game playing facilities (arcades on steroids), minus the killer drones on the other end. The games could be educational. Real money could be channeled. Sounds like Wall Street.

Could soldiers become bankers then? Having tasted what truly bad investments are like, they might well make better ones. Lets turn some big banks over to veterans and see if they invest in health care and scholarships for themselves. That'd be a bigger stimulus than private security forces. Worth a try?

Hawthorne Street Fair

I've been thinking about Senator Ted Stevens a lot, not like I'm some know it all or something. The headlines, several days ago, took me by surprise.

I might glance at a hard copy of The Wall Street Journal now and then (eclectic reading), but I fall behind sometimes, on many stories. I sometimes read The Nation in hardcopy as well.

Then there's Common Ground, where I used to read Z, sometimes Mad. Television is packet switched or off DVD for the most part. That dish you'll see driving by: not decoding. However sometimes I visit the neighbors and watch their hi-def.

The car has been mostly for Quaker business, such as ferrying mom and her walker, sometimes only one way. Tara's Jamaica commute was handled by train and another Quaker family, with plane hops through Phoenix. The trips to Reed, first week of August, were also to haul teaching supplies, stereo speakers. LW, co-owner, doesn't drive it, pulls a bicycle trailer, does urban and bike farming.

I've been looking at storyboards for math teaching cartoons. The imagery Glenn gave me, from his time on a big dam construction project, blended with my memories of the Lesotho construction site, other hydro, to come up with this Martian versus Earthling vista: a chasm across which a crane is suspended, delivering buckets of concrete.

Various narratives branch from here, many of them involving multiculturalism occasioned by having Martians in the picture. Saturday morning time slot? Maybe not.

We ventured forth into the street fair, mingling, routing by a spectacles shop, a place where you might get your eyes checked. Close to Noah's Bagels on the north side of the street.

They fixed my sunglasses for free, so now I look a little more like my blog picture.

Most of the rest of the day, I was writing my cartoony scripts, looking for early adopters along the lines of this Martian Math curriculum, a module in this bigger Digital Math thing that I'm doing, in cahoots with various schools and teachers. I blogged at the BFI about some of this stuff.

Richard Hawkins and I worked on ClockTet a long time ago. He did all the heavy lifting with the Silicon Graphics workstation. I was doing these scripts, much as I'm doing these days, and dreaming of hypertoons (since implemented in Python, albeit in prototype form). This geometry cartoon featured at the Fuller Centennial in Balboa Park, San Diego, the subject of my GENI write-up.