Re: Paulings on OPB (Wanderers List)

Thank you very much Lynn.

It is my fond hope to be able to share that with family members. We don't subscribe to television services at this time.

I saw it myself on a big bright HDTV and thought it was well crafted and packed with interesting facts.

They did a good job recreating the chem lab in the basement.

So that was a rooming house run by his mother then? I could see where having all those rooms would come in useful.

The show emphasized the importance of diet and nutrition in some of his own chapters, helped us see why orthomolecular medicine would be a lifelong focus.

But then we all have a body (yeah I know I know, speak for myself), so the real question is why aren't we *all* more into it like he was?

He comes off like the smart guy in the room, that's for sure, with a partner who recognized his talent (and vice versa).

Kirby

- Hide quoted text -

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 10:30 PM, Lynne Taylor <lynne@laurelwoodart.com> wrote:

I have taped it on a DVD for those of you who missed it.

Lynne M. Taylor
Laurelwood Art
(503) 985-7374 (503) 317-4003 (503) 985-8765
www.laurelwoodart.com
art@laurelwoodart.com (for art business)
Lynne@laurelwoodart.com (for personal mail)

A Gathering for Bill

:: celebrating bill sheppard ::

Yakking on Facebook

I was anticipating Donald Trump's withdrawal from the race shortly before I caught up with the story.

His reasons were different of course, but I think siding with the "birthers" against the first native son of Hawaii to become president, just reminded everyone of the tricky sick stuff people do around legal documents.

If you've been on the receiving end, you know how they show up with a "title" to your ancestral lands, and "prove" that it's theirs. This used to be called the Doctrine of Discovery, though of course it's nothing more than naked imperial aggression, as practiced by any number of empires, including the Vatican's, with its Emperor-Popes.

I can see where politicos are on the defensive these days, about holding on to Hawaii. North Americans of Anglo-European heritage have no natural right to these islands and their dissing of a native son president by seditious Lower48 low life just reinforces that obvious fact. "Why submit to such obvious inferiors?" There's no good answer to that question.

However, rather than simply drop out of the union, I think calling any income from Feds "reparations" on the books (in the history books) will go a long way towards leveling the playing field. Empires finally paying their bills looks like an end to their vicious tyranny. Lets get on with the reckoning.

Philosophy Talk

I've repaired to TaborSpace for the weekly Wittgenstein Study Circle.

Some may think I'm a naughty geek for embracing some brands of quasi-nonsense as pertinent to philosophers. Many had hoped to be free of nonsense, meaning say Heidegger, thanks to logical positivism.

Wittgenstein was to be one of their heroes when, Krishnamurti-like, he turned his back on his following, or at least dispelled notions of his being heir to some crown of the crowd pleasers. He had too much integrity for that.

Aris kindly lent me Sex At Dawn, borrowed through Satya and making the rounds among Portlandia's cogniscenti. I've been writing a lot about anthropology and ethnography lately, ever since our previous meetup, where one of our guests was an anthropologist (this was prior to Dr. Sonnenfeld & son), and on through the C3 event at Reed, which has continued to have repercussions.

Wanderers happened this morning and a lot of it was animist talk, music to my ears in some ways. Trisha spoke of her hummingbird problem, while I regaled people with stories of rats.

On Monday night, Tara and I were pleased to show up at the Bolton residence on invitation from Maureen, to celebrate Dr. Charles Bolton's 90th birthday. Actually, his birthday isn't until December, but this was an opportunity to get together with Erin again. Erin is the son of Maureen and a talented architect, Harold Long. This is a family I've watched evolve since returning to Portland in 1985.

Erin spends a lot of time teaching scuba, putting students at their ease in some of the still destination worthy parts of western Thailand. We shared lore about that part of the world quite a bit, extending into stories about Burma, where some of us had been. We had to leave early because Tara is studying a lot and I have a full plate of work.

Anyway, I've been a naughty geek in not seeing this brave new cyberspace as somehow by default a product of analytic philosophy. Some of their champions take too much for granted I'm thinking, and convey that sense in some of my posting.

Now I'm attending a webinar, organized by Maria Droujkova and hosted by Gizem Karaali (Pomona College) and Mark Huber (Claremont McKenna College). I'm wearing my hat as an OST curriculum writer these days. I was showing Alex the ASCII art version of the Mandelbrot Set we've developed, a pedagogical device taking advantage of Python's expressiveness.

Wanderers 2011.04.26

:: Peter Donovan ::

Looking back three days later: I'd "raced" (who with?) to Pauling House on reminder from Don, from the park where we serve, to the lap of Mt. Tabor. I hadn't remembered we had an invited speaker, from Eastern Oregon, from even beyond the high desert where Sam & Judy take care of Judy's mom (of Unity church, a New Thought manifestation of the American Transcendentalist variety).

But I wander.

Peter Donovan is what you might call a "deep ecologist" although that sounds a bit too ten-years-ago (or was it twenty?). His concern for the Earth is evident. Someone told me later he has a lot of background in the shepherding, in Hell's Canyon or one of those. Which brings me to Bill Sheppard (means "sheep killer" more like a wolf), whom many of us are visiting these days. I included Nirel in the huddle via Skype, used in IM mode (what a lot of users do, same at work).

He talked about the whole carbon cycle and went through a lot of classic experiments tying it together: where carbon comes from and where it goes. The net loss of coal to the Earth has changed the atmospheric mix and it's clearly getting hotter, humans or no humans. Lots of fires, many of them deliberate. Stewart Brand worries about the Venus future, if humans don't take self organization to a next level. And clearly humans do effect the climate in the plastics department, if we admit that climates have such a thing as plastic. The word "biosphere" was in many ways more prescient, as humans clearly are affecting that. Our presenter spent some time praising the Russian who came up with it, has had Margulis on one of her visits. It all comes down to coal and nukes and oil and solar and wind and rain. There's a vast Phase Rule computation going on, with degrees of freedom, pressure, temperature, all viscerally accessible. It's not like planetary changes can't mess with your head.

My question was about glaciation and what he felt about the remineralizing role the glaciers might have, and of returning the Earth to cold storage, after another age had burned through its metabolite and made a junkyard of the place. He seemed to agree it came down to soil richness as so critical to the equation. If we want to prolong the life of metabolite, we should maybe not worry if lots of pavement returns to grassland, simply as a natural process. The homeostatic tendency is a real one and there's no reason every mile of paved road needs to be preserved as vital infrastructure, let alone parking lot. Major ecosystems of the future will include abandoned industrial sites as much as they include sunken wrecks of seagoing vessels, many of WW2 vintage. Suburban subdivisions have their various trajectories, as campus facilities, co-housing cube farms (study studios) and whatever. People will still find ways to make use of them.

We talked a lot about those fires, those hectares of jungle sacrificed to a few seasons of growing, then grazing of scrawny beef, turning pharmacopias into carnage for the fast foodies. North Americans took the same route and denuded vast tracts, some still under cultivation, though heavily dependent on fertilizers.

The FNB crowd tends to be seriously vegan, and athletic. I kid you not when I mention a triathelete in training, who comes to us for his calories and proteins. Fresh organic produce direct from the Earth is hard to beat and Friends have a pretty nice kitchen, although that St. David of Wales one is quite a bit bigger (as is the congregation).

Our Wittgenstein Study Circle met at Lyrik next time, a variation on the theme (of a Coffee Shops Network). I became the proud tender of a larger flock of tomes by or about Ludwig Wittgenstein, to be corralled on the Time Capsule (our art deco hemicylindrical book case in the foyer). Alex enjoyed getting to meet Keiko. I showed him my corner office.

The Horse's Mouth (movie review)

The art of movie watching has changed since the advent of the DVD and its random access through a front end menu. This one goes to the original opener, Daybreak Express, a random "documentary" set to a Duke Ellington piece that is truly a great work of art.

Horse's Mouth is the filmic world making fun of the static frame oil painter's, in some degree. The movie's director is likewise teaching his art ("the sculpture is so big, it's out of frame") in the longish interview. You'll want to see that, and the documentary on the documentary (Daybreak Express), so get the DVD.

As fluke would have it, I'd gone to Movie Madness for this DVD, only to find it checked out. Since I was in the Alec Guinness section (they file by actor quite a bit, as well as by director and genre), I settled for Hitler's Last 10 Days. In some ways, I couldn't have picked a better pre-quel (in historical terms), as here was a frustrated artist, Adolph, who would have been so benign as this later bass voice fulminator, same guy in a lot of ways. I'm remembering how Aguirre became that "rubber baron" in Fitzcarraldo, a later lifetime. If only these guys could have waited?

Another thing to see on the DVD is the original trailer. How did they tease their audiences in 1958? The film world, inheriting from vaudeville and penny alley, was titillating the neo-Victorians. There's a nude, from the back. Maybe if I pay my tuppence, they'll turn that camera around. Those gutsy artists, with all their angst. Alec Guinness sure knows how to play 'em.

The poignant story is about the youngest most earnest actor in the film, paying tribute to Alec Guinness as the "artist wannabe", only to die of a sudden illness before the movie was done shooting, and needing to recruit a voice to finish the dubbing. Like I said, you'll want the DVD version.

Yes, the fulminating Hilter character couldn't help but connect me to the carousing introvert in that stage play movie about Nixon, again on DVD. That's only to praise the acting. It's hard to really "be" these "responsible" men (and women).

The world of actors and directors, promising new talents, only partially overlaps the world of painters. They grab a "big tubes" guy off the street, on advice from Kenneth Clark, and he goes nuts with the canvases, knowing his art will live on, as that of a fictional character's, by some talented novelist. Holy smoke, what an opportunity. But to have to commit to that wall, that the filmmakers had intended from the beginning would be knocked down (five cameras, from every angle)... he understandably had a hard time with that. The world of transient media, committing to film: it's like jumping out of an airplane (one gets attached to one's creatures).

The director does a long riff on his "God's light" theory of illumination. Too many light sources, and you've doomed your look and feel. How intriguing, to hear from these pros. Our world's intersect, partially overlap, almost touch.

Just Use It

From an ad campaign I've been orchestrating:

Multitasking Again

Buzz is updating me on FB re the DL on the standoff between rivals in Tibet (virtual nation).

Google is reminding me it's about to pull the plug on any video content I've hosted on Google Video, news to me. Lots of downloading and uploading (to Youtube). My critic is hot on my trail.

A discussion of Free Will on the Wittgenstein list probably seems like a waste of time, but I'm busy fleshing out this post-PIC memeplex that's meta to same (PIC = prison-industrial complex, as some call it).

The local temple, Pauling House block, is doing as service, as is Santo Daime, both today. Then there's the play at the school. However, I'm feeling deadline pressures so can't pull away from the desk job right now. HB2U AA.

Too crowded for me though (the temple). I told the two I was coming in with that I didn't want to add to the discomfort if the concert was already packed, which it was. I got a few shots of the perimeter and headed over to the Bagdad for Unknown.

Carol is in Boston. Tara's aunties took her out for breakfast and shopping today, for the next debate contest. Other members of the household are on their respective and concurrent tracks. Time slithers on.

PPUG 2011.04.12

PPUG = Python Portland User Group. I took the bus, having a Workingman's Red at Bagdad as I awaited the 14, transferred to 9 at 6th and Main.

I was pulled towards the Pauling House as well, as Duane Ray was going through telescope lore, Bob McGown in attendance (he'd been to like half of them). I almost skipped boarding.

The chairman, Steve, and I texted to and fro, while in transit, stuff about various keys, given Open Bastion (west) is a part of the same complex as Glenn frequents, in terms of living quarters (or chambers, as one might have in some dorms).

PPUG was great once I got there, certainly worth making. I'd invited at least one PSU Systems person. The place was packed, almost every chair occupied.

I got to read in Infinite Jest along the way, and the guy who sat next to me at the meeting was like "Is that your first time through?". I'm going like "Finnegans Wake" at which point the old guy in front of me swings around, wants to see it. I tell him "this is different".

Then the same guy with the laptop starts pulling up Parthenon pix while multi-tasking, doing slides about concurrent queues. That gets me to go off at the end of the talks, asking if he knew of the Parthenon Code (like Da Vinci's but completely different) and did he know how the Python fit in? You see, as a PSF member, I'm known to pipe up with this Cult of Athena biz from time to time. I've been designing a philosophy and biz model on this basis. Turns out he's with Parthenon Software.

Adam Lowry knocked out a couple modules from standard library, the traceback module, which will do more for debugging when exceptions get raised, and the cgitb module for pretty printing such output, making it be all HTMLy. Of course the frameworks usually supply their own better runtime messaging.

Then Chris Pitzer compared Python to Javascript, with each interactive in a split screen presentation, using customized tools in both cases. A tour de force, and at a pretty deep philosophical level. JavaScript seems somewhat alien to Pythonistas, in its use of the new keyword to bless a function, turn it into an object of some kind.

Finally, Michelle Rowley did a superb presentation on how to give presentations, with lots of credit to Moshe Z. She practiced as she preached, completely meta to her talk, and therefore present in her fearless if nervous way that inspires. I bet we'll have no shortage of talks for a long time to come, provided we don't get diverted into some calamitous situation like has overtaken Japan.

I bussed back to 97214, texting old contacts from my cell while awaiting the 4, deleting some. Those Wanderers I caught up with had clearly been inspired by the telescope lore. Having taught Python at the Space Telescope Science Institute, I could see where I'd feel pulled to both events, like by gravity's rainbow.

Richard Stallman at PSU

For those who don't know their philosophy, Richard Stallman is one of our premier pragmatist - ethicists. His training in logic revolved around LISP, one of the more sophisticated executable notations. His work in that brought us Emacs, much as Bill Joy's research brought us vi, later updated to vim by Bram Moolenaar.

At the end of his talk (I've caught it before), Richard likes to pause, walk over to his bag of tricks, and pull out a robe and a halo. He transforms into St. I-GNU-sius and starts spouting all kinds of offensive mock-religion, Subgenius style. This tends to disarm those who decry his wearing some holier-than-thou halo, as clearly he makes no bones about doing so.

Stallman's rap is well-structured in an Hegelian trope, with Logic on the one hand, History on the other. The thesis - antithesis pair is unfree versus free software. Their fusion is an unholy alliance that colors the chronology (history).

Those wanting (and defending) liberty above mere convenience make a point of not using those portions of the Linux code that masquerade as part of an "open source" kernel, but are no more than slapped-in binaries, mostly support for higher end video cards, wherein the competition is cut throat and trade secrets are jealously guarded.

Such competitive environments tend to challenge the "love thy enemies" approach of sharing source with all comers. The proprietarily minded are simply among the most selfishly misguided, and so are in special need of liberal arts alchemy (new world geekery). SAAS and Apple both get special treatment, along with DRM (all tools of Idiocracy).

He then went on to spell out the four freedoms in detail and why each one mattered, and what the symptoms might be, were each one curtailed.

There's the freedom to run the software only when and if you wish, the freedom to share it with others unmodified, the freedom to modify it as you please, and the freedom (option) to help others by republishing the altered code.

Seeing through the eyes of a debater / judge, I could see that Stallman has reached a well fortified position. I've been circling his name in our Wittgenstein Study Circle, as one of the greats of our age.

Without GNU, there'd have been no free C compiler and the Linux kernel (named for Mr. Torvalds, as Stallman calls him) would have been a long time coming. GNU helped connect all the dots and sparked a revolution in computer engineering that still baffles many classical economists.

Second tier (academic) philosophers, self-marginalized from today's core cultural conversations, have had relatively little to say on this revolution or its implications. Their reluctance and/or ignorance and/or timidity has left universities semi-rudderless when it comes to answering student questions about the ethical integrity of their own computing practices.

Why do universities use closed source software to manage their own internal affairs? You would think they'd be more interested in walking their talk, plus giving faculty and students more insight and control over their own code. Does PSU eat its own dog food, or lazily piggy-back on Banner like everyone else (we know the answer, but why not form that consortium we've been talking about?).

Stallman brought a toy Gnu to the podium, maybe from Finnegans, probably cost him like $8.99. He auctioned it off for a cool $450. He was also able to control the room's temperature (a tribal center built for just such convenings of tribal elders) simply by flapping his arms and uttering friendly directives. The man still has both power and charisma and philosophy has been lucky to have him (computer science too).

I sat with students in the Systems department, whom I've befriended (John is the architect, introduced to me by Dr. Consoletti).

The Beat Goes On

The local media have switched to disaster relief as the number one topic, knowing well we're not good at it. Katrina, Rita, the earlier tsunami, the floods in Pakistan, earthquakes in Italy, China, Chile, New Zealand... and now the big one in Japan, complete with out-of-control nukes.

Portlanders have realized they've stashed almost all their emergency vehicles on the east side, so if only one bridge remains, which is optimistic, they'll be OK. Of course emergency vehicles may not be apropos in unnavigable rubble.

Whereas national guards and emergency agencies need to be training, forecasting, planning, which includes deploying in "away teams" to share the work elsewhere, gaining valuable experience, the resources are caught up in nefarious "war games gone wild" where the species deploys its least-competent-to-cope technology: killingry.

When you're at the end of your rope, you resort to extreme measures and here we are, suffering big disasters, and our younger generation is already deployed, doing other things for Iron Mountain. They were pretty easy to recruit they tell me. So what else is new.

So many of these skills are transferable to civilian scenarios, which is why converting those military bases into girl (and boy) scout training camps makes so much sense, although not every circumstance is well simulated in the tropics. A "freezer building" might help, a place to acclimate before deploying to Oklahoma some winter.

Lindsey's lyrics have veered into dark allusions to this species incapability. We find it hard to look at ourselves in the mirror sometimes, and art helps us do that.

In other news, PyDev 2.0 for Eclipse is out. We've been tracking this, given its importance at work. I sent around some memos just prior, reminding readers of what we had learned during the last staff meeting, people flying in from Illinois, Oregon, St. Louis.

Systems Studies in Portland

Akbar Version

Originally uploaded by thekirbster.

My thanks to John Driscoll and Glenn Stockton for helping me get back in the groove.

Inside Job (movie review)

I went into this movie already biased in advance to sound critical if it didn't focus enough on what I thought was the problem: any number of obese and/or sleek Americans crowded into hotel ballrooms listening to the self appointed real estate mavens yak up the lifestyle of buying and flipping for no money down.

All kinds of cable TV about it, just buy the tapes. It was a craze, sweeping the culture. I was there, and remember.

Yes, a Ponzi scheme of vast proportions, but one in which Mr. and Mrs. SUV-owning American were happily complicit, while goofball presidents went on their golfing and bombing sprees, a little bowling, always the LAWCAP dupe and/or puppet (sorry, insider jargon). So New York figured out a way to feed the greed. What else do you do with your uncontrolled brats? Reason with them? Good luck with that.

The film devotes all of about 8 seconds total to a quick shot of such a hotel ballroom (or was that a megachurch?). The people jump up and down like maniacs, enthused by their prospects in real estate. Yes, it was crazy time. But it was also "grass roots", like the dot com boom.

Then it interviews a tearful bottom-of-the-Ponzi evictee on the wrong end of a predatory loan.

Nowhere in the middle are the armies of mortgage brokers caught up in the frenzy of get rich quick, with these mythical lifestyles on Wall Street trucked out like so much celebrity pizzazz, with large-to-middle-sized gym-going Americans not-so-secretly resentful and jealous, trying to clamber and claw their way to the top of the heap.

Is this anything more than Hollywood getting back at a rival here? Is that why the Academy Award?

OK, now that I've gotten that out of my system, I found this an educational video, like one from Khan Academy about liquidation and refinancing of moribund zombie corporations. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Like Waiting for Superman, it paints this idyllic never-never-land of some recent past of financial security, just after nuclear and other holocausts and just before the lights went on around the world and other people decided to make cars as well.

Was that back when most people couldn't get loans of any kind, or go to college? Did women yet have the right to vote?

Yes, there was a period of sustained growth in North America, after much of Europe, as well as Japan, had been bombed and burned to smithereens. Is that all because people were more honest back then, or just more hard working?

That old canard about "shipping jobs overseas" is a little bit shop worn by now. Workers of the world unite already. This campus is yours. Don't forget to study hard and know thy enemy and/or thyself (if there's a difference).

But instead of more responsible analysis, it's a blame game again, with this broad brush Puritanical streak, this zealous going after of the medical records and addictions of these bully boyz 'n girlz on Vice Street, pursuing happiness in ways other mags market as "glamorous".

Hey, here's an idea, lets all fight a moral crusade against hormones. Doesn't work.

When the camera zooms in on the high heals of some supposed hooker wearing Prada or whatever it is, I fail to choke up with righteous outrage, like some swaggering Jimmy Swaggart on steroids. The sex industry may be ruthless and cruel, but neither was it born yesterday.

I'm against Prohibition, remember, think a lot of organized crime is nothing more than "good people" being hypocritical and moralistically unrealistic about human nature. The high incarceration rate is an index of cultural immaturity (imagine China without the martial arts).

Some maybe think it's "not Quakerly" to make room for Portlandia's TV-MA "party on" attitude. On the contrary, I'd call it "plain speech" (though it's also Asian in flavor).

To take another example, the narrator's voice goes a pitch higher in outrage because Credit Suisse doesn't grovel and obey some Uncle Sam edict that Iran's money must not to be laundered, and that its real and true energy needs must not be met by a domestic uranium enrichment program.

OK, tough call, as certainly the Americans betrayed our trust on that score (sorry Einstein), but it's at least an item of controversy. Why should we buy the narrator's "mind already made up" point of view? What does this know-it-all know about Iran that we don't?

And that's what a lot of the interviewees are quietly asking, in their evasive answers: what did you expect? What planet are you on? France? Tell me about it.

OK, I'm raving again. Hey, I admit it, I got angry. This very rude old lady behind me thought nothing of yakking on her cell phone when the feature had already begun. The story line was complicated and I wanted to concentrate, didn't see why I had to put up with her rudeness -- but I kept my mouth shut.

More than that, I agreed with the movie's analysis that Economics, as a discipline, lacks professional ethics, but so what? People have been saying that for years and hey, it's not the only discipline that goes un-policed (unregulated), given ethics has gone out the window in an anemic philosophy department. I'm the GST guy remember, offering a competing invisible hand.

And yet, despite the bankruptcy of the curriculum, people keep lining up around the block to give their life savings to colleges and universities, so junior might become a fancy pants on Wall Street or whatever the hell, with the Smedley Butler's of this world (a decorated Marine) expected to give their lives for free markets. Go figure. Hypocrisy strikes again.

The way everything got framed within the parable of Iceland was actually pretty brilliant, as was the analysis of conflicts of interest among academics. These sell-your-soul professors trade on their academic reputations by writing puff pieces for money. Their wallets get fat as their thinking becomes thin. Yet the filmmaker inconsistently berates these people for resigning when they're needed by their country. Make up your mind: did you want them running things (at least keeping up appearances), or not running things?

The parallel with corruption in the sciences gets made (by the interviewer) but seemingly without the same realization: that professional ethics aren't especially better there either. Scientists need funding and puff science is more the rule than the exception, where twisting arms in Congress is concerned. Junk science, like junk bonds, is big business.

The thing about ancient Rome was the hoi polloi wanted bread and circuses, had a somewhat insatiable appetite for same. You could have an emperor like Marcus Aurelius (played by Obama, say), introspective and contemplative, and yet it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in the hinterlands, where the imperial legions were manifesting their "manifest destiny" (to rule the world), and still do to this day as Americans Gone Wild (in a theater near you).

How do you tell them the war is over? Maybe that's where this Youtube comes in?

Reviewing Pi Day

Followup writing:

Pi Day Ideas (Math Forum)

Useful Speech

Related writing:
Posting to math-teach @ Math Forum, 11 April 2011

Pycon 2011

Using Python in Education? Contribute to our brochure!

Tomorrow is Pi Day!

Adventures in Philadelphia

Twas my good fortune to join with the Ben Franklin Thinking Society the other morning, just two blocks from my hotel (Club Quarters). The topic was education reform, and we came from many walks of life.

One of our number was a psychiatrist who'd worked with some of the roughest kids, like that boy who'd witnessed a murder, heard gun shots at night, and slept with a knife under his pillow while shivering with fear. He forgot to take it out of his day pack, and when school authorities found it, expulsion was the only bureaucratically mandated solution. Yet this kid was a victim, not some perpetrator / bully. This scenario gets repeated endlessly.

To me, that analysis seemed highly nationalistic at first, with pronouns to suit. I heard a lot of "we" and "them", though when I pointed this out, many were quick to signal their allegiance to homo sapiens in general.

Chris Fearnley and I then meandered on through the Drexel University campus (from where the Math Forum is hosted) to a coffee shop, to continue our somewhat random discussion. Neither one of us had proper rain gear, and so made our way back by jumping from one overhang or doorway to another. Back at my hotel, we talked about global data and Hans Rosling. Coincidentally, the guy was on CNN just a few hours later, on Fareed Zakaria's show.

My airplane trip back was the next day. I took SEPTA from Suburban Station (in the heart of downtown), direct to the airport. I enjoy flying Southwest. No seating by class, just first come first serve (in terms of when your boarding pass was printed). At lunch today, Stockton seemed to know a lot about their management philosophy.

Both directions, I read the O'Reilly book Statistics in a Nutshell. What's interesting to me is the examples that get chosen. Nothing too controversial. The usual stuff about "IQ". Yes, cigs cause lung cancer, and legal drugs lead to problems or maybe it's the other way around, or was it illegal drugs?

How many people think we should put the coke back in Coke (in small amounts)? It'd probably have to be a bar brand. Speaking of which, I sipped alcohol (Dewer's) on the first leg for $5 (Philly to Denver), then stuck to ginger ale and water on the final hop to Rose City. I was so immersed in a book on Git, the version control system, that I missed my Hollywood stop, had to back track from Lloyd Center.

Tara managed well in my absence. Our house guest, LW, a free schooler and beneficiary of our Quaker family scholarship, is continuing to work hard on her music, has really mastered R2 (her drum machine). Why are USB to MIDI cables so expensive and hard to find in this neighborhood?

Note to Wanderers

[ originally posted to the Wanderers list ]

Greetings Wanderers --

I'm in the "Quaker Vatican" as some wryly refer to this place, Friends Center in Philadelphia.

Over lunch we (those at our table) talked some about how this myth, that slavery is a thing of the past, needs to be exploded. Human trafficking and forced labor without rights are commonplace, including in North America.

Slavery is alive and well.

That's important to acknowledge in Quakerdom, which has specialized in fighting slavery over the centuries. Our work is not done -- far from it.

Here's a blog post, FYI:
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2011/03/corporation-meeting.html

You'll notice I refer to the "criminal syndicates" behind nuclear weapons stockpiling, testing and proliferation. This is a logical extrapolation of the Linus Pauling philosophy (to identify such WMD production as criminal activity -- a tautology really).

Yes, much engineering is of a criminal nature (obviously), but then much engineering is vitally life-supportive.

I think of medical science as another kind of engineering, shifting the meanings as usual. I see no reason to talk the way everyone else does, somewhat unthinkingly.

Per my remarks on "climate change", I don't buy the idea of "climate" either, as long as there's any question whatsoever about whether humans have drastically altered it. Of course they have. Just look out any airplane window.

We have an ecosystem, a biosphere. Distilling everything to a debate about global temperature is mind-numbing (and deliberately so, I'd argue, a trend encouraged by those who gain by narrowing the discourse).

Likewise our definition of "torture" is corrupt, if it neglects to include slow death by starvation as one of its forms. Malign neglect of the starving is effectively a pro-torture position.

[ funny story: the neighbors started referring to the building on Stark Street as "the torture church" thanks to this sign, subsequently removed ].

On Sunday I get to attend a meeting of the Ben Franklin Thinking Society.

Kirby

Chatter Box

Gotta head over to Fred's soon for bread, a lunch standard (PB&J). Koski: to call. File: FZ. Here at Glennspad (wifi) having checked out newest version of Global Matrix Studio in DS on Asylum Ave.

Worked through a queue, basic inbox. I used to do GST in terms of PWSs (personal workspaces) with two credit wheels, like the ends of a cylinder. Inputs and outputs. In between: value added.

I've uploaded some pix from Sonoma, now turning my gaze to the Far East (Philly). The Middle East is like Reno.

FNB tonight: talked to some cycling genius who'd biked his way across North America. Road quality varies a lot between states and counties.

Sonoma, with an abundance of pavement, is seriously planning on letting a lot of its road bed go back to like gravel. All that asphalt was unsustainable. No, not a bluff, a change in land use.

Hard to find a way over the Mississippi in a bicycle. Go north to Kentucky, just over the border. Otherwise it's all freeways, pandering to the dominant paradigm.

One of Barry's friends is buying a Tesla.

Good catching up with LT this afternoon, thanks to T (Cleveland) having left her calculator somewhere on the ski trip. One of hers goes to Grant. T got to sit with Khafourys at the dinner for Brian Greene (who was tightly scheduled, reports Glenn).

SB in AK yet? Talked with RS. Heading out for that bread now.

Open Secrets

:: Steve Holden in Portlandia ::

Steve Holden knows how to throw a good party. Elizabeth Mazzara knows how to find a good venue. The Secret Society, as it's now called, has a long history as a HQS for fraternal organizations, i.e. mostly men.

Overcoming any "color barrier" in Masons was a part of its history. Thursday evening (February 17) we were breaking new ground by inviting many digerati and illuminati of Portland's legendary (and diverse) open source community. No, this wasn't the most wheelchair accessible of venues (Wayne couldn't have joined us).

Portland has this reputation, for being an open source capital, but is it for real? Steve assured us he'd be sorely disappointed if there was little substance behind the hype. He's shoved a lot of poker chips onto Pioneer Courthouse Square, one might say (metaphorically speaking). He's gambling (banking) on Portland's walking its talk, still being somewhat pioneering, brave even.

A party is also a switchboard, if properly designed, with the live music not too loud, drinks flowing freely. Steve and Elizabeth had seen to the chemistry, and I think we achieved critical mass. Many reported having satisfying encounters.

For my part, I had illuminating conversations with the new dean of PSU's School of Engineering and Computer Science, Renjeng Su, D.Sc., and with Bart Massey, one of the associate professors.

We talked about the proposed digital math curriculum for high schoolers, and the possibility of PSU eating its own dog food when it came to nuts and bolts course management software (currently outsourced, but amenable to a consortium-based approach).

Speaking of consortia, I got an ear full regarding the electronic medical records picture. The USG is using Medicare / Medicaid reimbursement as a lever. If you want to participate in a USG medical expenses reimbursement program, your software will need to meet certain standards, in terms of the reports that it gives. It's not enough to simply register events (e.g. patient X treated for condition Y). One needs to show one followed an accepted protocol, and provide information about outcomes.

In order to ensure compliance, it's not sufficient just to buy the "certified" software and have it sit on the shelf, unused. A doctors' office or hospital has to show (prove) "meaningful use", meaning said certified software has to be up and running for a specified length of time, with more than token patient coverage. The goal is to have the software gradually accommodate more and more of the USG's strict reporting requirements. As you might imagine, many vendors are happy to add to the cost of health care by providing this software at exorbitant prices.

Of course it'd have made more sense if the USG had ponied up early, put its money where its mouth is, and pumped some free and open source solutions of its own into the mix. Business bookkeeping software might have taken the same route.

Perhaps it's not too late.

In the meantime, small groups of early adopter doctors have seen the light and have begun to champion the idea of open source medical records software. I had the good fortune to meet a few of the core players in this domain.

Adam Lowry of Urban Airship was quick to offer good reality checks, when I shared with him my vision of a noSQL "scrap book" approach to medical records keeping.

My concern has been to keep it multi-paradigm and multi-lingual, such that "a witch doctor in Nepal" (a purposely incongruous image) could get a word in edge wise, should the patient wish such analysis (Dx and Rx) in the "scrap book" (EMR).

Perhaps most future doctors choose to avoid this patch of esoteric recordings, while one or two experts might mine that section, following related URLs, not just to devices with long memories (more expected in "western" hospitals), but to entire theories of health and illness, perhaps alien to most readers.

Lets just say I start out from a "zoomed out" point of view.

Anyway, Adam assured me that it was API and UI that I needed to think about, not so much the back end, as SQL / noSQL will generally co-exist in some complicated ecosystem (ala Facebook).

One measure of a system's efficacy and power is its ability to export to other systems. Vendor lock in is one of the biggest challenges facing any given patient, as if you commit to having your records stored in System A, yet later want to copy them to System B, you may or may not be out of luck.

This is mostly science fiction from the standpoint of current patients of course. We still live in the dark ages using 1900s IT. I'm glad the USG is trying to spur us on, much as it worked to expand the HDTV standard.

Yes, industries share these same goals and may be realistically modeled as having partially overlapping agendas vis-a-vis the USG.

Other systems may evolve in a more spectacular fashion, given the USA is not widely respected for its health care programming. Canadians do it better in many ways.

Speaking of democracy, or the lack thereof, we had a strong representation from political players, including from the Bus Project, Congressman Wu's office, and the Democratic Party of Oregon.

Private foundations were also represented.

Specific technologies also had their reps, or so one might presume to categorize. I think of Selena as a Postgres avatar, whereas Urban Airship sing's Python's praises (not that it's either/or obviously -- open source technologies form an ecosystem). OpenEMR is a LAMP stack project with P = PHP.

After our open bar and appetizers experience, some of us joined Steve for further conversation and edibles in Toro Bravo downstairs. The venue was packed, but not uncomfortable.

Our group proved adept at trading chairs, ala eXtreme Programming practice, the better to have more varied conversations. The switchboard experience continued, even around a long table.

And the communications continue in cyberspace, and are leading to follow-up meetings.

Steve made a splash, and scored a tactical victory of sorts, for our community as a whole. Thank you Steve. You're a world class catalyst.

Yes, "open secrets" is a bit of an oxymoron, as is The Open Bastion, Steve's newest company. Or think of it as a koan. We're open and freedom-loving, but we're not undefended and not without friends in high places. "Don't tread on me."