OSCON XV

The Open Source Convention, produced by O'Reilly Media with help from many stalwart sponsors (more every year), is always a blast of streaming data for the napkin-sized (when unfolded) neo-cortex, where, according to Jeff Hawkins, the equivalent of the CLA (Cortical Learning Algorithm) is running in distributed fashion.

Numenta's mechanized version, at the heart of Grok, is maybe the most important breakthrough in AI in a long time, we shall see.

Clojure is making more of a splash with me, and I got it working over a break on my Apple Mac Air running Lion 10.7.5.   I have Clojure and Node.js books open in Safari in tabs, and flip to them when blocking on other tasks (writer's block, web slow... multi-tasking, even if sequential, means not waiting for water to boil -- domestic tasks are oft done in parallel, yet one at a time).

Guido's keynote at Pycon, plus chatting with Yarko, has me realizing that PEP 3156 aka the Tulip repo, is Python's hat in the ring, where asynchronous I/O is concerned.  The flagship there has been Twisted, but now the language itself is building in more awareness -- not the first time Python has baked in some of what might have started 3rd party.

Speaking of concurrency, David DiNucci wandered through.  I saw him listening intently to Tim O'Reilly, of whom I took several photos as he held forth on Open Government (a topic).  Other Wanderers present:  Christine and Patrick.  I saw Mark Allyn from our Meeting.

There's also a bevy from work.  We hung out, at Planet OSCON, at a table, Tara again joining us, along with O'Reilly author Steve Holden of The Open Bastion, the conference organizing company (Apachecon, Djangocon, Apache Cloudstack Collaboration Conference and more).

Clojure is a LISP-like mostly functional language that runs atop the Java JVM (not unlike Jython in that respect).  Clojure also controlled the quadcopter drone, which appeared remarkably stable.  Its programmer:  a whiz woman, Carin Meier, who'd always wanted a robot friend, and with a degree in physics.  Perfect for Tara, sitting next to me through the keynotes.  She'd always wanted an Aibo, downloaded the manuals for one as soon as she could read at that level.

My philosophy of putting speakers to work at OSCON (have them deliver more than one talk if possible) seemed personified by Tim Burgland, both our Git trainer (as in Github) and our Discrete Mathematics teacher, where Clojure was featured.  He walked us through Euclid's Algorithm in its recursive form, and talked about the Euclidean Extended Algorithm for getting an RSA d from an e, given knowledge of phi(N).  I walked up to him after to mention Mathematics for the Digital Age, a high school discrete math text, featuring Python, that shoots for RSA as its grand finale.

The functional languages will likely grow a larger footprint at OSCON, as the incoming chair, Simon St. Laurent, is getting more into 'em.  He promised as much from the stage this morning.

Mark Shuttleworth had no sharp delta to surprise us with, just a continual phasing in of his (Canonical's) flagship products:  Juju, and maybe, if it gets the green light, Ubuntu Edge.

Juju shares a space with OpenStack, Puppet, Chef in that it's about spinning up combinations (bundles) of services.  The glue is in the "charms".  Mark's Foundation flew me to England that time, to discuss curriculum topics for three days (a select group) in East Kensington.

Speaking of Ubuntu, the Chinese government has selected that as its official OS of choice going forward, fairly recent news.  I attended a talk on OSS in East Asia (which doesn't include the Philippines).  Japan and Korea enjoy a freer Internet than mainland Chinese, as the latter are behind a great firewall, protected by Big Nanny.

I met the incoming chair Simon St. Laurent in the Skyview Terrac, a 7000 square foot gathering space at the base of one of the Oregon Convention Center towers.  Numenta was there too.

When it comes to East and West hemispheres growing more of a shared brain, the nexus formed by  computer science, OSS (free / open software), and global English (one might call it an evolving dialect, or family of dialects) is something of a bottleneck.  Piracy is also a problem as stealing what people want to be paid for delays mature development of competing projects.  If all you do is steal Windows, you will never acquire the skill set needed to hack on open source software.

Better translations out of English and into Korean, Japanese, and Chinese are sorely needed.  Even with a core / kernel in this shared code (Anglo derived) the user space (student space) needs better expression in local terms and characters.  Unicode is helping as well.  Japanese folks are proud of Ruby and lots of curriculum is being written for that language in Japanese.

Given the Philippines is already Anglophone in large degree, one might expect more of an explosion there.

Patrick Barton is especially interested in the Numenta stuff because of its focus on energy grids, where Grok is already used to predict the near future demand patterns, based on timeline data constantly streaming in.

A Major Monday

click here for slides

I had two major meetings on my calendar for today, each quite different.

The AAPT is back in town, at the Hilton, enjoying one of its two conferences a year.  The last time AAPT met in Portland, in 2010, I was the invited guest of one of its past presidents, Dr. Bob Fuller emeritus, University of Nebraska / Lincoln.  This year, 2013, we gathered to remember Bob and to listen to some of his collaborators and former students recount their experiences.

I met with Margaret Fuller again, and other family.  Margaret and Bob had long ago planned to attend the first reunion since 1964 of the Methodist English High School (MEHS) in Burma (Myanmar) this January.  Bob did not live long enough to see it, but Margaret was there and able to immerse herself in another side of her life partner.  Among the 670 alumni was Aung San Suu Kyi, another one of Bob's students (he was there from 1958 to 1961).

Had I been one of the speakers my story would have been somewhat similar to theirs in emphasizing Bob's eagerness to leverage digital technologies for their physics-teaching potential, including but not limited to interactive simulations.  I had worked with his team turning simple Excel spreadsheets from motion sensors, pasted to a ballerina, into ray-traced animations, with a pipeline of Python + POVray.  Our work was a free CDROM at the AAPT conference one year.

I was not aware Bob had developed Playground Physics and Amusement Park Physics to quite that degree.  I came along much later with my First Person Physics, a somewhat umbrella term for a kind of physics you learn through visceral first person experience (subjectively, in your bones) not just "objectively".  I can see why Bob found his thinking so consistent with my own and considered me one of his team.

click here for slides

The second meeting concerned the brick and mortar structure we call "the Pavilion" in the Buckman neighborhood.  Several religious groups and lineages, as well as non-professing, have structured relationships through community meetings there.  We're like an EMO. I showed up in my Reverend Billy mode, prepared to sound churchy with my prepared remarks.

However, I did not feel a need to steal the show and merely introduced myself from the back of the room, donning an AFSC Corporation Member name tag (left over from the last Philadelphia meeting).  Lindsey (Officer Walker) was doing fine in her Betty Crocker outfit (in turn somewhat suggested by Sketch, who'd advised her to "dress normal, like Betty Crocker").

Since the meeting was scheduled as a potluck and was our regular meal time, we just folded the two events together.  FNB turned up in large numbers, Satya and Fallon included.

Given I was in a suit coat on a hot day, and that I weigh too much, I was finding the meeting room hot and stuffy.  I hoofed it over to the McMenamins, the Barley Mill, where I explained to the bartender what we were meeting about in that nearby stuffy room.  She uses the pavilion too and wished me luck keeping it open.

I snarfed down a Boneyard IPA, like I'd done with Patrick the day before, and then grabbed a free Yerba (non-alcoholic) in a can on my loop through the Buckman park back to the church.   A perimeter vehicle (human powered) was giving them out for free.

I'd missed the Art Hendricks presentation and only stayed up to where they were going to consider padlocking our meeting structure.  They've already padlocked the one at Powell Park, meanly excluding thousands of non-voting high school teens from congregating there, so I know they're cruel and heartless, or at least poorly managed.  Why any building calling itself a Christian church would allow such a meeting on its premises... don't get me started.

That was just too sacrilegious a discussion for me to want to sit through it, especially wearing a suit in a stuffy room, so I absented myself before my Trimet ticket had expired, sharing my prepared sermon with Miz Melody later (she's the Reverend Billy fan).

I hadn't realized the Hinson Church had a full indoor gym with a basketball court and everything.  I didn't get a look at the kitchen but I bet it's more than adequate.  These privileged churchgoers have a lot of assets.

Zoning for Scouting

How might scouting relate to the local and global problem of refugee camps.  In Portland, we have R2D2 (R2Dtoo), an efficiently run protected area for tent users.  Tents in the city are considered "bad for business" by business owners, at least those not involved in the camping business.  Some of ours, such as REI, are, and urban chic does include the ninja sub-branch, with people living in trees if necessary, while the city planners pass them by, no zoning imagined, except perhaps by the airport.

Public facilities, the world around, are a hallmark of a society's willingness to support itself with public spaces.  Sanitation duty is a "dirty job" (one of many) though may be connected to jobs of high repute, such as sanitation engineer.  Lew Scholl of our Quaker meeting is a sanitation engineer and joined the team to Managua.  Much was learned of peoples needs and some collaborative achievements were engaged in.  My daughter went on that trip and helped mix concrete.

Teresina Havens, whose work I've been reading in the meetinghouse library, served on clean up crews for Tokyo's public restrooms.  Some Buddhist trainings involve taking on civic duty with gusto and learning humble tasks.  That's not unlike scouting, with its ethic of cheerfulness and helpfulness to others.  All without some Nazi / KKK pledge to "racial purity" or other dogma to weigh it down -- Buddhism has lasted thousands of years for a reason.

Scouts on snazzy bikes complement the ones in crew carts or bike carts, peddling warez (wares).  These might be non-commercial, like Freedom Toasters (a hybrid -- branded / sponsored open source CD / DVD copiers).  Helmet cams?  GPS?  I'd expect the chapters to work out their own best practices in response to actual conditions, as Food Not Bombs must.  Like our leadership is currently split on whether Buckman has enough relevance, given the siege at R2Dtoo and its "bad for business" tents.  At least there's a common front line.  Which is not to suggest tents in Colonel Summers.

In fact, people need ways to recycle and reinvent themselves, even within the space of a physical lifetime, more than once maybe.  Christians use "rebirth" talk, as in "born again", which should be enough of a hint that life changes are involved.  Tokyo currently has maybe 6K people living full time in "Internet Cafe" shared facility booth motels.  These are not a result of optimum planning.

Camp grounds with decorum, like scouting camps, with sanitation and organization, were what US tourists wanted to find in Germany after the war, and did.  Tourism means sharing the camps, what my own family did, especially in summers, the car's rooftop (a station wagon) crammed with gear, including a family-sized tent from Stronmeyer, the German manufacturer.

Yes, things are different in the winter.  The idea of a giant dome, with tents in it, is cliche in science fiction, but then there's a reason people migrate, north to south, south to north.  I'm suggesting we don't all have roots.  As Bucky Fuller pointed out, humans are not trees (though I bet others have noticed that too).

One summer, between jobs, we had given up the apartment and were in transition back to Florida, with a stint in the Middle East as AFSC camp leaders, working with Palestinian "boy scouts" (a rough translation as they could easily be fully grown men).  We drilled a swimming pool in the rock crust, hauling boulders to the dumping space, mostly in the morning hours when it was cool enough for such work.  But we camped in Rome that same summer, Camp Monte Antenna I think they called it. By the end of the summer we were living in a mobile home estate in Florida (mom's parents).  Next stop:  the Philippines.

The government already has a network of public lands and campgrounds it tends, but you need a motor vehicle and lots of gas, or lots of time on a bicycle, to get to them.  We are finding more and more youth with more and more time for the bicycles, which have improved in their design.  But the destinations need to be near cities or in them, as often as far away.

But then US cities are afraid of those "shanty towns" of sheet metal and no sanitation service, unplanned communities (like unplanned pregnancies).  Which is why I'm suggesting a planning style or zoning solution which raises expectations for these camps, and in some cases commits them to civilian service, and not just "dirty jobs".

You could have a mayor's family in such a camp even, or at least immediate offspring.  People in tents have responsibilities.  Many of them are idealistic and study science.  Some help place eco-sensors at leaky sites, places where potentially dangerous gases are emitted.  They're trained in the use of safety gear.  Important work.  Monitoring, advising, comparing notes, publishing findings.

Activists don't want sprawling mansions with a pool.  They want adventure and improved prospects for those with few.  You don't need to call it "missionary work" to make it worthy.  Nor must you call it "a pilgrimage".  But if you do use such religious language, and maybe manage to rope in Burning Man, that's not to your detriment either.

Wandering troupes of troubadours, sharing a bus, is an old meme in this ecosystem, pioneered by the Grateful Dead in the electric guitar era.

You don't need to burn a lot of biofuel and if you share cultivation in rotation, tending the crops in your care, as you travel, then you have access to a rotating cafeteria, year round.  You farm and you travel and enjoy your good health.

This does not make you a "threat to society" so much as a "strand of glue" in keeping humans informed and up to date, with time to plan rather than panic and freak out ("future shock" should be thrilling more than chilling, an opportunity to heal from something).

Will freeways get a bicycle lane?  That sounds horrific to truckers.  More likely are smaller single user electrical solutions, more solar power stations.  With an electric cycle with paniers, you've got something to get you around.

Trade for a fuel powered hog at the station or share a van, or follow the cyclists and their special high energy diets, ultra light gear.  That's certainly an athletic lifestyle and a great way to see the world.

Leave the freeways to buses and trucks that take both the travelers and their gear for longer hops, wheels up in Portland, wheels down in Salem.  People take their bicycles back and forth, to ride on either end.

Some have lightweight tents and are hopping from city to city, sometimes as troupes (as in scouting).

Make Them Fat!

 padlocked pavilion:  students keep out!

Here's how it works in America.  A brave generation of public spirited citizens invests lots of time and energy into city parks.  Large structures are made that shield people from the rain.  Public restrooms are attached.  A public high school is nearby and on break students are allowed to leave campus, a sign of their emerging adulthood.  Some may use the building to smoke when not in the rain, victims of earlier ad campaigns, but lets look at fast food.

Fast forward and you find the large proud structure at Powell Park is closed, padlocked.  The public high school is still there, with a Burgerville directly across the street.  There's a McDonalds or is it Wendy's (or both) a little further away.  You know the scene:  get teenagers obese, like the adults, milking them for easy profit.

I'm not saying Burgerville is bad or unhealthy actually.  Of all the fast food chains, it's probably the one I'm least worried about.  It helped our Cleveland Cannibals (speech & debate team) raise money, whereas the district itself is too starved, its funds blown away by other governments on worthless munitions, million-dollar soldiers etc.

Health conscious kids go to Burgerville and find things on the menu.  This isn't really about Burgerville as the villain, but about those who padlocked the park pavilion, forcing kids to become consumers whether they wished to or no.  It's the surrounding ecosystem that reeks.

It's the American way, to be of service to commercial establishments.  Just standing around in a Gazebo or Kiosk or Pavilion is considered "loitering" -- unless its a public park ("a loophole! -- must close it" thinks the idiocracy).

Repeat this story a thousand times.  Public facilities, non-commercial, not making a buck on fast food, are accessible to young healthy bodies.  Fattening food is placed directly in front of a school and options to stay slender are physically closed off by Parks and Recreation.

How do you spell "ugly", how do you spell "mismanaged".

What does Cleveland High School think of the closure?  Were the neighbors asked?  How many and when?  What was the process?  Were the students polled?

These questions are pertinent now because the very same mismanaged bureau, complicit in making teens fat and less thrifty, is now thinking of applying the same treatment to another health nut space, another public Pavilion in another public park.

People show up on bicycles and enjoy themselves, get out of the rain.  They share healthy food, have a picnic.

"They're having too much fun, they must go to Burgerville, they must be commercial consumers!"

The hive mind is buzzing again.

Come to Hinson Church at SE Taylor and 20th next Monday if you want to hear the hive mind buzz.

Fourth of July, 2013

This was a memorable event in that we had a guy physically wrapped in the stars & stripes shouting stereotypical patriotic slogans in a drunken yahoo style, a kind of folklore exhibit.

We were standing atop a high building with only intermittent guard rails so being truly falling down drunk (I managed to stumble, but because of a rooftop projection, not the beer -- it was getting dark) would have been dangerous.

The Waterfront Fireworks were not "on the dot" at 10 pm.  We amused ourselves watching other, more distant displays, we thought Oaks Park and probably Lake Oswego.  We could hear the Blues Festival, where a number of my friends were.  Then the closer fireworks got started.  I rediscovered the fireworks setting on my camera and experimented with technique.

These were mostly geeks I knew from around town, Python coders and so on.  I was accompanying our colleague from Brazil, Henrique, who was here for a World Domination Summit.  That maybe sounds threatening because most of us won't have been at said summit and don't want to be dominated, however I suggest one should translate it more as Self Mastery (world = self experience).

To have dominion in this world is to have a sufficient skill set to enjoy some satisfaction in piloting through life.  I'm not going to the conference either though, so I shouldn't talk.

"Jihad" has a similar translation BTW, as "inner conquest" or "transcendence of pettiness" (yet another spin).  In the Quaker tradition we similarly speak of "inward weapons" when using our war metaphors.

Independent... in the realization of "no one thing is Self" i.e. selfhood is not a thing (nothing). Repose in being "alone as everything" is different from the loneliness of separation and abandonment (isolation, confinement).  Each nation needed to see itself as responsible for its contextualizing world, and so transcended its borders to become a part of the "space program" (our shared campus, the "global U").

The withering of the state has been correlated with that growing sense of "globe-hood" many humans have experienced.  Thanks to global climate change, pictures of Earth from Universe, better telecommunications, more circling, we're more aware of our spherical selfhood, a network of convergences.

Average humans seem like blood cells in that they circulate, sometimes in cars and trains, planes and ships.  They may be likewise (like the blood) transporting substances of high potential ala 12 Monkeys.

Memes have the easiest time traveling, face the least resistance, but they're also ephemeral. Neutrinos flood out of the sun as lighter elements bake to heavier ones, hydrogen to helium, a fusing process.

Enormous energy gets thrown out but a lot of it is so close to not mattering, and yet has its significant role in cosmic bookkeeping.  That's lucky for life, as DNA is delicate.  Cosmic rays punch real holes but neutrinos are extremely unlikely to interact.  A giant tank of liquid, shielded from all else, only detects a handful.

Dancer in the Dark (movie review)

At first I thought this might be like Donkey Boy in another gender, but as we get to know the character she seems less and less alien in some dimensions. 

Dancer is more a continuation of my previously reviewed film by this same director, Breaking the Waves, which focuses on a woman of unnatural innocence who gets everything fubar as a consequence.

Selma Jezkova's loyalty to secrecy and "keeping mum" is too strictly translated into her native Czech I think.  She should have been more forthcoming in her own defense at the trial.  "Yes, I lied my way through the eye test, I just didn't want Jessie to worry" --  which explains how the conflicted / confessing cop got to the cookie jar.

Jessie is her son and the metaphor for their blindness (both use thick glasses) is strengthened in their mutual caring mixed with alienation.  They're not on the same page in a lot of ways.

That the mother feels guilt or even actual responsibility for Jessie's karma is something the court would respond to, but why not just tell it like the movie we all just saw?  Spill the beans already.  Relay each conversation.  Having secrets means you're capable of sharing them.

The film is scary.  Showing the state committing murder and the eeriness of the prison relationship... is it progressive blindness or madness, as the musicals become more hallucinatory in quality?  The music comes from another time, closer to our own. 

But then imagining an audience of voyeurs to one's life is like madness, but then so is a sense of being "on stage"... so then who isn't mad in that sense?  The eyes of others are upon us, if not literally in a theater.  

The movie twists around to ask that question.  It also asserts something about the musical:  the opera uses music and dance to express an underlying story that the banal plot lines of cinema verite (and real life) would not capture.  The surreal mirrors the real.  Art shows us other angles. 

In treating serious darkness with musical numbers, the genre is fighting back against rumors of being antiquated.

The musical episode, of the Buffy series, is a another one to link in.

The women in both these movies are "too child-like for their own good" one might say.  On the other hand, both are dealt a rotten hand of cards and it's easy to armchair-criticize. 

These films encourage empathy, but with empathy comes a desire to coach, to offer advice.  Many a sports fan knows that impulse.  You feel in their corner.

Recent Meetings

The Portland Peace Prize ceremony was at Mercy Corps this year.  Roz Babener, a founder of the Community Warehouse won the award.  Ibrahim was a nominee this year, another community leader.  I'm not that familiar with the prize or who has won it before.  Polo?

The film Authority & Expectations continues to make the rounds (Joanne's report).  Veterans for Peace was prominent in Christopher's report.

I'll mention about the "celebrating Mossadegh" event when it gets to be my turn.  John Munson, a guest here tonight, was also at that event at the Peace House.  He's involved in planning a fundraising event on September 14 at said Peace House.

This was just a short excerpt from our meeting.  The other meetings I'm thinking about include the Oversight Committee meetings and staff meetings.  Staff is spread around so we tend to use cyber-stuff and meet in Cyberia.

The role of email in supporting meetings is interesting, also discussion lists.  The ability to advance things in parallel is a focus of GST (general systems theory):

With my students I use theater as a good metaphor. You have actors or agents and scripts. You also have many stages, not just one, and characters that go between the stages. This is management theory or it's channeling electrons, depending on how tightly you want to tie it to actual microprocessor controlling.

David's main examples are macroscopic such as "making waffles". You need the waffle maker to be hot and empty before you pour batter in, and you need feedback that people still want more. Several waffle makers might run in parallel, just as many people eat simultaneously and so on.

The main line of the thread I'm copying from above is over on Math Forum, where math teachers and others are discussing a recent article in the New York Times.  However the branch I'm citing went to Synergeo.  That quoted passage is a reference to Dr. DiNucci's report a couple weeks ago.

Mom's report sounds like Linus Pauling's reminding us that humans have irrevocably changed the environment for all future life on Earth thanks to carelessness with radio-toxins.

That's is hardly news in 2013, but is a theme of this year's ceremonies (Disarmament Day, August 6), which are shaping up.  Mom was just at a planning meeting at PSR.

I'm not a huge fan of the If I Had a Trillion Dollars campaign, which is hardly a problem as it has lots of trackers and backers already.  It encourages the kind of contrary-to-fact thinking associated with Washington, DC.

However, I did enjoy Gavin's project to do "A Periodic Table of the Presidents" which he kick started on KickStart.

Apparently AFSC has already budgeted money for the QVS intern, application due in February.  Quaker Voluntary Service is only this summer opening a house in Portland, I don't know where yet.

I've modeled the Blue House as somewhat similar in design:  a platform for engagement in both planning and carrying out vital operations.  Several of us reported on The Door Project.  I left the check from Multnomah Meeting / Junior Friends program for our door.

I forgot to mention in my report about Lindsey continuing to run a Food Not Bombs serving, in support of the vigil at City Hall, and making use of the kitchen at Right to Dream Too.

Having some loose criteria about casting is a good idea, but a strong director often has a deeper knowledge of her or his actors / agents / objects than merely broad brush stroke ideas.  The devil is in the details, but in this context that "devil" is an angel (in terms of providing leverage).

Organizations with lots of actors but few directors or casting advisers (the job of HR) experience different kinds of failure.

Effective activists learn how to work in parallel and asynchronously.  The action does not necessarily stop or bottle-neck just because one's focus has shifted elsewhere.  This focus on concurrency is important, and hypertext is one of the ways to acclimatize to concurrent organizing.

Self Profiling

Breaking the Waves (movie review)

On advice of a film school veteran, I queued this one up (no, not Netflix, Movie Madness).  Lars von Trier directs Emily Watson and others through a Midwinter Night's Nightmare one might say.

Emily is torn by religious convictions and her joyless parents have little of the "cheerfulness" of the Eagle Scouts.  They have a brain dead religion and there's not much available in the way of big city alternative lifestyles.  

The girl and her beau are well on the way to reinventing the entire sex industry, from phone sex to other kinkiness (A to Z) thanks to their powerful mutual attraction yet separation by circumstance (he's got an oil rig gig, no option to bring women friends -- pre-Internet you know).

The film bears rewatching though I admit to getting squirmy when the camera I'm in barges into somebody's bedroom or bathroom when I haven't been invited.  They likely wouldn't appreciate me standing there gawking.  Part of it is preferring Narnia creatures maybe, like that Ice Queen isn't bad.

Anyway, back to the soap:  she's ridiculously innocent and so the lamb to the slaughter theme seems inevitable.  I'm glad I saw this in close proximity to Mr. Lonely, with the Marilyn impersonator still resonant.  Yet she's selfish as well and punishes herself for that in true schizophrenic style.  The corny ending is just that:  how sailors have always dealt with tragedy; they weave a tall tale.

The hypocrisy of the audience position is pretty farcical if one shares the puritanical disgust for the fantasies of a paralyzed man.  The best way he knows to continue a sex life is in is head and how can we blame him in that sense.  It's just he has no idea how terribly unsexy are the scenes she's throwing herself into for his sake, i.e. his imagination is not up to remote viewing at this point or he'd use a long cane to pull her off stage (she claims a psychic bond, but it's hardly hifi -- not their fault as they were just getting started).

She's selfish with regard to the doctor, who does have feelings for people, but walks his talk as an ethical guy.  He's not about to be entrapped in some awkward (compromising) situation.  The story has to hold water (eventually).  But here she's done a full frontal assault on his person without much empathy for any relationship but hers and Jan's.  

He wants to talk and get to the bottom of things, be authentic, but she'll have none of it really, because her intent is to use him, not love him.  She stops hearing from God right around that point, but then the connection picks up again -- low bandwidth as usual (I know, I know, who am I to judge).

The scene I'll call "the medical inquisition" is important as the good doctor wants to express the basic goodness of this woman who has all the churchmen throwing stones (at least mentally) -- their younger selves personified by the boys who push bicycles, taunt her and throw physical stones.  

Those boys are the next churchmen, well along the way in their brain dead religion.  We see that as the "priest" role models his disdain and disgust for the hapless Lamb of God (he might have felt like kicking her and didn't, so lets give him points for self control).

As the audience, we know what the good doctor means, and we're not sitting in high judgement like the others.  We're voyeurs too.  The ship she got roughed up in is beyond the inquisition's jurisdiction.  There's no talk of arrest or seizing the vessel -- that's just not in the cards.  These landlubbers know their place as but peons.

The irony is how her prayers keep getting answered i.e. her narrative is upheld,.  Between herself and her sister's heartfelt wishes, there's Jan, a good fellow, staggering back to his feet, a knightly champion of his wife's memory.  However because it's not during some church event in response to "receiving Jesus", people just shrug it off.  Sometimes people get better, so what? Better to taunt the joyless churchmen with the Miracle of the Bells.

She's the saint in this picture, which doesn't mean should couldn't have benefited from more therapy.

Eagle Scout Ceremony

:: some of bsa's newest eagles ::

We were privileged to attend this ceremony put on by BSA Troop 24 in Oregon.  I know one of the two new Eagles from both AFSC and Food Not Bombs work.

I've been mixing some of this experience into my writing at the Math Forum, thinking more about "virtual presidents" and "USA OS" etc.

The ceremony included a leader of the Elks, a fraternal organization, and of Veterans for Peace.  They both made speeches and presented gifts.

After the ceremony we adjourned downstairs.  Carol climbed at a couple flights, even though she carries oxygen tanks in her walker.

Transitions

"Transitions" might be a euphemism for "altercations" in some cases, some of which I'm party to, others of which I only observe, or contribute to more as a coach, someone else the boxer in the ring.

Under "smooth transition" might be Carol's annual migration, arriving last night, Inogen in tow (an oxygen maker).  Delta, then Alaska helped her get here.  Who didn't help was the Washington party who blocked egress from my driveway.  Fortunately my neighbor was observant enough to identify another car we could get moved and I didn't have to call the towers.  I left a trenchant note on the windshield.  A minor glitch in the grand scheme of things.

No, the CoC (Code of Conduct) was not conceived with reference to the EEOC (I had a front row seat watching its evolution) much as people trained in the latter's view of things might want to ape their cultural imperialist brethren and try to lecture us on what we "really mean" by terms like "harassment" and/or "discrimination" and/or "don't be mean" -- as if we needed schooling from Washington DC in diplomacy (as if anyone did -- OK, some could benefit).  That was my reaction to the working group proposal, but I'm not one to rain on a policy wonkers' parade, let them wonk.

Then I got testy with Hansen again and got into seriously tooting my own horn.  The censors decided to give him the last word in public, with Anna in on the CC'd reply.

For one thing, the EEOC stuff is all about employer-employee relationships, but when strangers aggregate in a business hotel or campus to update one another in their shared profession, that's not about supervisors and supervisees.  Attendees are guests, of the hotel, of the conference program.  They are not slaves of, they are not employes of.  The guests are also "respecters of" various rule books, some unwritten.  There's always new space to carve out, old space to reclaim, so all of this takes work and role playing.  I favor "rotation" as a management style, which is also effective against typecasting (though some embrace an image).

There're lots of CoCs out there, lets not forget, so we also should not over-indulge the illusion that only ours is in force, as if the board game were entirely ours to set the rules around.  Not entirely true is it?  So whatever your CoC, remember you live in a hybridized world, which is not a bad thing, it's what keeps you from being a dictator, and that's a good thing (for you included).  In science fiction, each school of thought gets to sketch its Utopia, like Quakers did in Pennsylvania.  In practice, no one agenda trumps the rest.  Most European immigrants preferred to invest in Indian Wars and/or Slavery, at least in some regions.  Philadelphia was less a capital for those institutions than say... you guessed it, Washington DC again.

However, as astute historians have picked up, it's not smart to completely discount other cities and their roles.  Chicago has made a huge difference in academics, right up there with Boston.  Las Vegas took some games that were cooking in Havana and recreated them close to LA, reaping a bonanza.  New York City is way more than a financial capital, but then so are London and Tokyo, not forgetting Paris and... this is sounding like a game called "capitalism" don't you think (what world capitals do you know?)?  What's the hog capital of the world?  Where is "Toon Town" really?  Cities vie for reputation, form alliances.  Portland (Oregon) and Austin (Texas):  keeping each other weird.

Such talk excites a rebellious peasantry, suspicious of being typecast as country bumpkins, like Scarecrow of Oz, presumably a metaphor for the farmers, who knew more than they could afford to let on (this is a theory in literary criticism, linking Oz to the gold versus silver debates, theories about money).

The University of Illinois, with its advanced computer science and Mathematica-based teaching, cannot be cast as second fiddle.

But "there there" I say in mollification, I'm making use of metonymy, synechoche to be precise, wherein "Chicago" really means "the whole of that bioregion" and its peoples -- many dating back for centuries, well before the recent waves, the self-styled "documented" and their gang lands (Mafiosi, Yakuzi, whatever WASPs (a real West Side Story and of course a source of endless graffiti (some of it quite alluring))).

I talked to David Koski tonight for 95 minutes, from my side a few updates, from his a circling of the "T & E Module express", a fast train into the ticking center of the synergetics concentric hierarchy.  The T and E are both the same shape but sizes come apart based on surface:volume ratio, much as triangles come apart in spherical trig, as never similar unless congruent.  The E is a little bigger, but is likewise a logical slice of the golden cuboid and 1/120th of a rhombic triacontahedron, our NCLB Polyhedron for those following the thread of Pentagon Math (and about a thread is all there is sometimes).

Blowing up the T-made Triaconta from 5 to 7.5 creates the meetup with the volume 6 rhombic dodecahedron.  Blowing up th E-made Triaconta, by phi, is what gives the phi rectangles PV edged Icosahedron of 18.51, husband to the smaller Pentagonal Dodeca, both in the Platonic Five if we wish, this "super RT" their marriage.  Volumes are in tetravolumes with unit tet as one (edge PV).  The T-modules have volume 1/24, just like the A and B, but their Triac is .9994+ the radius.  E and T come apart, as E's radius is one exactly (it's diamond-face to diamond-face diameter that of the IVM ball, again PV).

Altercations I'm in the sidelines on:

(A) Should AFSC plan on changing digs in Portland, Oregon any time soon?  Staff seems happy where it is and there's no room back at the Stark Street meetinghouse.  However, our committee seems unsettled about the issue.

(B) Should SE Chapter FNB declare itself an athletic event wherein car use is a foul, out of bounds?  Of course these rules only extend so far.  Lindsey and Satya have both set an example of what vegan powered bicyclists might contribute, were they given at least one chapter.  But it's not a matter of "being given" where anarchy reigns (no King to appeal to).  The leadership simply challenges people to not bring their car-based lifestyle onto this particular stage.  They get to everywhere else.  Where's the "no car use" town, or just part of town?  Europe seems way ahead on that one.

A Last First Day in May

The maxi taxi was kept busy today, with three different drivers.  I poked around on-line, ended up with customer service, on a Sunday, to make sure I had current proof of insurance in the glove box of this 1997 Nissan, in an earlier chapter an escape pod from Georgia (the state not the country).

Denny is in, from Shanghai, our Isolated Friend and family, home to roost, like a jet coming in after Snyders, also Isolated, but just hours by car away.  Like us, the Snyders have also been active with Bridge City and, in fact, one of today's Nissan drivers was from that other Monthly Meeting in our NPYM branch in Portland.

I missed Meeting for Worship (m4w) however, as I was accompanying high school friends to our community organizing and service event at the Food Carts.  We took over a tented section off to the side, where the business had yet to open, and ordered mostly from a breakfast trailer across the court.

This Food Cart Pod has high self esteem, and justly so.  The Mac 'n Cheese guy is the Buzz Lightyear of his category, with a cool art deco kiosk on a palette, straight from the kiosk factory.

Tara had other social obligations at Slappy Cakes nearby, the always-crowded-on-a-Sunday cook your own pancakes at the table place.  You can't just safely retrofit a place, this took some forethought, and hence the market edge.

Our Food Cart meetup has to do with the Door Project, which involves campers downtown.

Me on Facebook today, adding to another Friend's thread:

The US sees prison as its way of sheltering its homeless. Criminalizing sleeping in public space (camping) helps shorten the circuit twixt a jobless existence and a forced labor existence where you get to make desks for the school kids (if lucky). Prison also keeps you from voting which is convenient for a lot of people. Warehousing homeless in jails is just how America deals with it -- and no, this doesn't make it the envy of the world. Seems more like Mordor. Sauron for president. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sauron-For-President/187727034637119

I'm plowing through a Kindle version of Popko's excellent primer on subdividing spheres by geodesic methods.  He's one of the pioneers in the field and had a front row seat on the geodesic dome's grand debut in architecture and logistics.

I'm enjoying his narrative, in addition to the mathematical explanations.  He's good about including the names of more players, such as T.C. Howard, Duncan Stuart, Don Richter and others. I recommend this resource to STEM students.

Speaking of STEM, we talked a lot at the carts about how Portland has been forced to cut back on Outdoor School, reducing it from a week to three days;  more evidence of the decrepitude of our Republic as it slides into its Bananahood phase.

Blundering On

Speaking of blunders, there's increasing agitation among Pacific Islanders regarding the likelihood that militants who depend on LAWCAP's welfare system are going to further despoil the Pacific environment as they put on a show of doing their "work" (a kind of theater).

Mostly males engage in this lifestyle.  They enjoy being told what to do and carrying out orders, don't actually prize thinking / acting for themselves that much.  They cost a lot to sustain and their "war games" help exhaust peak oil, putting more strain on everyone.

As Smedley Butler pointed out in no uncertain terms, war is a racket.  The USAers are being groomed to hate / fear the North Koreans by LAWCAP's investment bankers, as stockpiling antipathy is a necessary prerequisite to the massive waste, the orgy of destruction, called "war" in modern times (more it's just barely managed mayhem, and a way to win fat contracts).

George Orwell and President Eisenhower were both prescient.

In earlier times, we had this myth that civilians could control the militants in sophisticated democracies, whereas Banana Republics where characterized by "juntas" who "governed" by self-appointment and cronyism.

The Gitmo saga has made this myth a lot less believable.  Presidents have been shoved aside in the mad rush to create a post USA or pseudo USA of gigantic proportions.

It's hard to "just follow orders" and "defend democracy" at the same time.  With enough choosing the former over the latter, one loses that which originally supplied some legitimacy to one's cause.

Brilliant Blunders

This was the title of Mario Livio's new book, just out a couple days ago.  He'd spoken in WDC and Seattle about it already, ISEPP / Portland being his third stop.  Tomorrow:  Science Friday with Ira Flato, a talk at PSU (Kramer Hall) and another book signing at Powell's.

ISEPP has hosted Mario twice before in Portland.  I thought this time he seemed more rested, but then I think the noosphere's in a better place as well.

Mario puts real leg work into his books and tries to discover for himself what's so.  He's something of a myth buster, e.g. exploding canards about Phi (esoteric to know any).

This time he disabused us of the idea that Darwin had been aware of Mendel's work.  He didn't have the paper, and the one book he had that mentions Mendel still had the relevant page uncut (you had to cut open pages more back then).  Mario had a picture of that.  And besides, even if one had read that account, it was superficial and wouldn't have amounted to a hill of beans for Darwin.

Darwin's blunder was to assume with his times that heredity was a kind of blending.  Traits would shmoo together, not stay sharp.  Such a model actually works against the possibility of evolution by natural selection, as some critics subsequently pointed out.

Einstein's blunder was to take the cosmological constant out of his equations, once universal expansion was discovered.  He thought universal expansion made said constant unnecessary and regretted having introduced it.  On the contrary, the latest empirical results suggest an accelerating rate of expansion, making the constant useful.  He should have kept it.

Finally, Linus Pauling got DNA wrong, publishing an inside-out, triple helical version.  Mario thought his alpha helix discovery primed the pump in that he'd withheld the latter discovery for thirteen years while he sought verification, and then was proved right all along.

Given the pressure to find the structure of DNA, he decided to risk a theory that, in retrospect, went against basic chemical principles (all those mutually repulsive phosphorous atoms would need lots of hydrogen bonds to hold them together, but then how would DNA register as an acid without exploding?).

I asked during Q&A if we Portland, Oregonians, proud of our native son, should keep circulating the story that a third Nobel Prize might have been his had he been allowed to go to England to see Rosalind Franklin's pictures.  The numbskull State Department, terrified of McCarthyites, a kind of low-brow know-nothing, had denied him a visa.  That denial is on display at OSU, a badge of honor.

Mario dispelled this myth as well, saying Pauling did make it to England shortly thereafter and ignored the opportunity to collaborate with Rosalind.  "So it was his own damned fault" I concluded, to audience laughter.  Mario shares the view that the McCarthy period was a dark one in this country.

At the dinner, Mario talked more about telescopy and astrophysics.  He's the head of the Space Science Telescope Institute these days, a fitting position in an illustrious career.

He also talked about art, expressing high admiration for Vermeer (he collects art books, had just bought two that very day at Powell's for $150).

I asked if, budget permitting, a telescope similar to Hubble, in Earth's orbit, would still be useful to science, even in if the James Webb works as advertised.  He was more starry eyed about an L2-placed large array that would look sharply at distant Earth-like planets, something Webb might start to do (if all goes well).

I'd remembered from my three day stint at STScI how some of the folks wondered why Earth-pointing telescopes (aka "spy satellites") of somewhat similar design, could get replaced yet their Hubble couldn't be, for budget reasons.  Why those priorities?

Joe Arnold asked a series of questions about geniuses going off the deep end, making "blunders squared" so to speak.  Newton, for example.  Didn't has work in alchemy make him at least a third crazy?

Terry piped up about the poverty of any cosmological narrative back then and the need to resort to theological terms.  Science was not yet up to shouldering such burdens as the story of the cosmos, and yet humans have a need to explore that regardless of how little is known.

Another question during the Q&A was whether the rate of new discoveries was tapering off.  Mario thought the life sciences were poised for exponential expansion, whereas physics, particle physics in particular, had the boosted power of the LHC and maybe advanced LIGO to look forward to (a gravitational wave detector), but then what?   There might be fewer breakthroughs to look forward to there.  Science is not monolithic after all, is more amoeba-like.

Finally, at the dinner we talked about communications with extra-terrestrials and whether we should be concerned about revealing our presence, as Stephen Hawking seemed to counsel.  Mario thought the difficulties in communicating across a "generation gap", in terms of how long the relative time a life form had been around -- a difference of perhaps a billion years -- would be as great a barrier as the gap in distance.  How well do we "communicate" with bacteria?

The problem with our notion of "intelligent life" is we have so little to compare it with, other than its diversity on planet Earth.  What would dolphins say I wonder?  If a lion could talk we would not understand him.

Tara got a personalized copy of the book while chatting about her interest in physics.

WQM (Spring 2013)

:: coast trip / quarterly meeting ::

Camp Cleawox is a favorite of the Girl Scout subculture, and it was our privilege, as Quakers from around the Willamette Valley and beyond, to converge there.

I came late on Saturday, having enjoyed Terry's talk Friday night, a long-anticipated event in our little ISEPP world, partially overlapping with said Quakers, through Doug Strain et al.  Carl Thatcher knows some of the story.

I've cast Girl Scouts big time in my science fiction, which trends towards the "Tarzania" variety, or, in more urban settings, highlights nomadic chic, with gizmos.  Sometimes we ride in bizmos.  Couldn't resist.

The camp was good at re-grounding me in the realities, in this case of what forest life is like, when you're in close quarters yet clumped, with paths in between.  Are they meeting in the other hamlets?  Is there a party tonight?

The Lodge supposedly has a schedule, but a lot of stuff is ad hoc.  Some girls feel sadly left out.  They think the popular girls are maybe running things.  At camp, we test out theories, and begin a life long process of constructing a model of reality.  Camp David is no different.

I pitched my tent amidst those already adjacent the lodge.  I was uncertain about temperature, having forgotten to bring blankets.  A Friend lent me one, but I'd heard some warnings about how cold it was the night before (when I was still in Portland).

As it turned out, May 4, 5 were really warm at the Oregon coast, with locals exclaiming about the heat.  We didn't get to a temperature drop until Nye Beach in Newport, a steamer clams stop for me.  The mom and daughter (passengers) phoned ahead for Chinese food.  The mom was on a pilgrimage to revisit Sylvia Hotel, which in her day let beach front rooms for only $60 a month.

The girl scouts do Girl Scout Math, which doesn't fit the stereotype of just noodling with a pencil.  There's algebra involved, and some calculus, but also using forces, maintaining equipment, hauling supplies and inventory from point A to point B.  Scouting in other words.  Navigating, organizing, not leaving it all to the Boys.  Designing, building... I've used Food Not Bombs as a role model, when it comes to cooperating, urban planning, counting calories, making friends.

Larry and I dipped into Florence for coffee, from where Tara and I got in touch about her return.  The night before, another Friend and I were at an amazing restaurant in Old Town, the one with the bar and the cakes and the giant chalkboard menu, crab encrusted halibut etc.  We got the last table.  Lucky devils.

I did manage to join in a Meeting for Worship. The testimony against torture was strong, somewhat despairing that we were stuck here for so long, a problem child, error prone beyond wise.  Could Universe afford us?  Are we too needy to survive?  Perennial questions.

May First Festivities

:: May 1st / PDX ::

I don't take it as sacrilegious or even trivializing to take in May Day (May First) as a fashion event.  Yes, I'm talking about the red and black, the workers of the world, as well as the displaced and "undocumented" (plenty of disk space, and how is a Facebook account not a "document"?).

I've grown in my respect for the fashion industry over time.  Yes, lots of money and resources, but the usage of same is relatively benign.  Models push towards extremes, an athletic achievement, and the human imagination clothes them.  Picture a Survivaball [tm] on the runway in Milan!  Grin.

I was backup, in the batter's box, in case extra muscle was needed, but for the most part I was free to move about and shoot pictures from various angles.  I liked this woman's simple cut dress and somewhat elven boots.  This Peruvian look was interesting.  Peru is a focus these days, because of TPP (some WTO-like nonsense).  I'm already looking for the spoof web site.

Ironically, I had a full day of work to put in and wasn't billing AFSC for time on the clock.  I'm volunteer through NPYM to keep an eye on things Quaker-related where this Committee is concerned, one steered by many Meetings and even some Churches, though EFI has a history of feeling repelled by various species of Red, not to mention Brown (UPS has rescued Brown as an OK uniform color -- a handsome service, for both women and men).

AFSC is a creature of Haverford College and such places, a rather cerebral / academic institution that panders to the neurally endowed.  Some claim such pandering is inconsistent with Diversity but that's like saying a circus doesn't have enough variety of freak.  Spoiled brats are freaks.  Who is in no way a freak of nature, raise your hand?

I find it amusing that all these white people stormed into North America in order to accuse the people here of moving about illegally.  The King of England hath spoken and there shall be no Trespass and blah blah.  Dang but idiocy spreads quickly, can't contain that UK and its private property obsessions, with some groups qualified to lord it over others where forest lands were concerned.  Robin Hood and all that.  Monty Python sums it up.

Some of the guys, a few gals, were demonstrating their right to be anonymous, to where you couldn't even see their faces (though for some, that was more a costume and they kept monkeying with it, so we saw them).  I, on the other hand, was sporting my AFSC name tag.  True, it got twisted and lots of times you couldn't see it, but I was basically the only one wearing a lanyard with my name glaring out through the plastic.  A fashion statement there, even a bold one, though I'm more behind the camera where recording models is concerned.

Lots of people had their cameras.  You demonstrate some distance with those, if you want to.  You might be a journalist from a skeptical far right political group, just exercising your right as a member of the public, to mingle with traitorous curs.  But then you have the option of self branding in various ways.  Me with my name tag, others with colors, such as red and black.  Carry a sign, hold a balloon, just show your solidarity.

The police were on the clock too and not especially unfriendly.  This is good practice and low key, a time to get out the bicycles, motorcycles, horses, even like a SWAT team or two to guard the bridges, in case the anarchists made a break for it and tried to unite with the forklift people in those East Side warehouses, where Willamette Valley produce is handled.  What if the Reds took control of the tomato supply?  The police were ready.

I thought the Asian girl (Cambodian?) behind me was one of the most fashionable, with bright layers, designed to change as the day progressed.  Bright orange (the NGO's theme color), blue, black... Awesome.  I also enjoyed meeting up with Crystal, back from Arizona.  Given partially overlapping scenario Universe it may be months before I see her again, one never knows.  We worked on Verboten Math together for Portland Free School.

On the way from my car, other side of Burnside, I went by the Door Project and snapped a few doors (means I took their picture).  Then I interviewed a guy about zoning for camping, what we call "shanty towns" in the rest of the world, but don't want for our too-good-for-poverty "developed" world.

If we upgraded the services and technology, the way Occupy Portland was attempting to do for itself (with not much cooperation from the Pentagon, known for its occupation equipment and aspirations), then camps more like Dignity Village, not right in the heart of downtown, would be feasible  (expand the Clackamas County TRP program?).  Something for Metro to think about?  Not in a vacuum.  Many great cities wrestle with these same planning / zoning problems.

Not that you can't have skyscraper villages, perhaps a section of floors.  This guy was tired of the inside of a tent and would probably not be first in line for a Cubby [tm] either, no matter how much WiFi was provided.

Lindsey was trying out a new look as well.  Compare Occupy (then) with May Day (now).  She and Melody (a couple of two years) were headed to a film showing.  Some of the youth Melody works with have been busy on film projects and these are starting to come into the public eye more.

Division Growth

The title is reminiscent of the "multiplication by division" meme, yet in this case also means a street close to my current position, parallel to my street.  Division Street.  Some are using the division sign, as a marketing device.  Each street develops an identity.  Hawthorne is flanked to the north by Belmont and to the south by Division, a tri-some.  In 97214, that's a coordinate system that makes sense.  My activities have density here, if we draw the zig-zaggy world line.  Also Rome.  New Jersey / Manhattan area.  WDC.

Glenn and I sampled a coffee shop that's been there awhile I think, but who knows how long.  We were amidst a lot of leveling and rebuilding.  I don't know about every city but Portland is in a boom town phase in some dimensions (not all, no, not all).  The patch of town at the bottom end of the cable car (the overhead tram) was one of the fastest growing zip code areas in North America there for a bit, in terms of the size and rate of its building, or so I heard, not able to cross-check.

Speaking of cross-check, Glenn was a source of information on the Knights Templar today.  His reading forays take him to this and that topic.  His claim was the Jolly Roger was officially a Knights maritime brand.  I find the Internet echoes that story all over.  I've always made an esoteric link from that symbol to the XO, which the XO site playfully deals with.

Portland gets perceived through the lens of Grimm, not just Portlandia, the former a lot less grim than the Miami-centered Dexter, the latter, skit based, being more directly spoofy.  Last night Blue House viewers went through a Season One episode featuring a pig like pork eater who lived in a geodesic dome that blew up.  Our Airstream hero guy (trailer HQS near the Fremont Bridge) can sniff out these fairy tale creatures, thanks to his own freakish paranormal abilities. I was curious whether Portland would be overtly outed as the backdrop for this fiction (vs. "anonymous Gotham"), as Miami serves Dexter and as Phoenix serves Breaking Bad.  Yes, that's the approach taken.

Speaking of Division, I enjoyed lunch with friends at New Thai Blues on Tuesday.  That was my last recorded use of the new Alaska Airlines Visa card.  As of last night, I had to cancel that sucker, for some reason not in my wallet.  A new one is on the way.  Monday was Food Not Bombs, a classic.

Django Unchained (movie review)

If you come to Django directly from reading Bucky Fuller's Speculative Prehistory in Critical Path, then you can bet one meme comes through strongly and clearly:  the caste of people who get to mount horses and lord it over others, taking advantage of their human + nonhuman size, is a real factor in storytelling.

Tarantino really runs with it.

In Fuller's telling, the other caste of landlubber was the on-foot migratory type, the shepherd, the infantry guy trudging through the mud.  Whole peoples wandered, sometimes pastors with their flocks.

Then you had your sea-goers, more or less hard core.  These were archetypes (stereotypes), as what he wove for us was cosmo-graphical and somewhat unbelievable unless played backwards as encoded glimpses of the far future, when we have ways of tele-projecting our mer-people.

Tarantino has a lot of fun with this film.  His ideal audience has already gone through a strong comic book / manga phase, understands about fiction and science fiction.  The uber-violence is cartoon violence, developed from over-exaggerated caricatures engaged in tense contests of will.  The Wild West has long provided such a back drop for our morality plays.  Science fiction like Serenity takes this Old West as a template.

The movie is set just before the Civil War and the protagonists are almost time travelers from our day in their level of alienation from the slave-riddled South.  The German might be typecast forward as a post Civil War carpetbagger.

The parody of the KKK, making fun of those little eye holes (figuratively speaking) is part of the film's wry comedy.  Westerns tend to be uber-comical for their exaggerated lines, and their uber-violence.

One thinks one is getting deep inside the South's psyche with DiCaprio, but Candyland is deliberately hard to decipher.  The slave head of household is a behind the scenes father to the estate, as he takes a brandy in the back room and elders the gentleman farmer.  The slave sees through the ruse, is not blind like his master.

The German guy is not used to not getting his way and feels somewhat bullied.  His North-South altercation DiCaprio what leaves Django on his own, and the movie posing as a prequel, which is another Western cliche:  a hero is born, more movies to come, Unchained but the first about our bounty hunter's rampage through the West, the next batman.

If you want to enjoy this film but cannot stomach the violence, e.g. if you're Quaker, then I suggest watching Seven Psychopaths first as a warm-up exercise.  Get used to these excesses of the imagination, qua imagination.  No one is suggesting that real life is really like this.

Wanderers 2013.4.9

Two of us around the table were Princeton alumni, and so knew of Blair Arch, Blair Hall, and maybe Blairstown, New Jersey.  John Insley Blair was to railroads in the industrializing east, near New York, what Sam Hill was to roadways in our area:  an entrepreneurial make-it-happen kind of guy.  He pretty much personified the railroad tycoon of the 1800s, friendly to Lincoln, likewise in the railroad biz.

Yet he's not a well known character based on the histories we read today.  Check any grand sweeping view of US history on the shelves today, and see if he's in the index.  Elliot Trommald, our historian story teller, pointed out that the New York Times had tried to objectively rank financial giants, in terms of their holdings adjusted for inflation, and by their measures Blair was certainly up there with JP Morgan, other heavyweights.

Given Elliot is an historian, he understands there's a lot of forensic science involved, police work, and piecing together puzzles.  What may account for Blair's relative obscurity, strangely enough, was his handwriting.  So much of it seems impenetrable.  He was self educated, self made, to a great degree, and kept all his own books.  He played it close to the vest.  This makes it difficult for those who come later to decipher all that went on.

Elliot has done a lot of work looking into this man and his family.  The Scribner family and company intersects with the Blairs through John's daughter.  Even with so much unreadable handwriting, there's much substantive history to be woven from this cloth.

Elliot has also studied Lincoln quite a bit and presented to Wanderers about him before.  As an illustration of the forensic challenges, he circled a certain quote about the dangers of corporations, oft repeated, including recently in a book by Al Gore, that really cannot be attributed to Lincoln. The paragraph has the lilt and cadence of a pseudo-Lincoln (Lincolnesque), and that fools people, some of them always (the gullible make so much history possible).

Many of our guests that evening wanted to discuss the concept of "corporate personhood", what that means and how it came to be that the money games were so obviously slanted to serve those puppeting corporate persons.  This seemed a murky area in that few of us present had much legal training in corporate law.  What's an "artificial person" versus a real one, and could "artificial people" tell lies to protect themselves?  What would Asimov say?

:: click for larger view ::

Birthday Party (Spring 2013)

Sarah and Bob are dear friends from Wanderers circles, although Glenn and I first met them at Esozone.  Don met them at Terwilliger Plaza, where he was part of an inner circle caring for Doug Strain.

Glenn, Don and I, as an older posse of Wild West types (it seemed) joined Bob & Sarah, her sister Katie and partner Scott, Michelle and Jessie (the later of The Modern Golem, a Portland band) in a reserved room at one of Portland's best Japanese restaurants.  We enjoyed a fantastic time together.  Bob, like myself, is a Bucky Fuller fan and our memories drifted back to the D.W. Jacobs play in 2006, when I got to have breakfast with Allegra.  Bob had come to Esozone in 2008 to catch Trevor's talk on Bucky.

Yikes, first I started entering the special room in giant clod hopper shoes, such that I felt awkwardly like the monster in Young Frankenstein trying to play his role.  Then, upon removing my shoes (exposing big fuzzy white socks) I fumbled the camera, sending her crashing to the floor.

This was my third, count 'em 1, 2, 3, Nikon Coolpix S8200, the best camera ever for me.  Fortunately, a corner of the plastic housing took the brunt, cushioning the delicate internals as she hit the concrete. With an over-abundance of super-glue applied the next day, she is probably sufficiently repaired to last well into 2014 if not longer, InshAllah.

The quality of the pictures appears undiminished.

I posted to dev@democracylab this morning, after breakfast with Steve Holden, emeritus PSF chairman, writing:

"""
I have worked in the voting industry by the way, for Project Vote! aka
Americans for Civic Participation, based in DC at the time (I was support
staff for field people).  That was the Reagan-Mondale contest.  I learned a
lot about electioneering then.  Here in Portland I've been active with
DemocracyLab, which pioneers new forms of social media which might be
considered democracy-advancing.
"""

Kirby, member of Python Software Foundation, to David Mertz, Elections
Administrator, Python Dictatorship

Context:  PSF members recently voted by secret ballot, David Mertz
administrating.  We had record participation via an eVoting mechanism.
However the ballot itself was changing up to the last minute and that
confused some voters as to what they were voting on, such that the members
private list is filled with debate about whether to re-run the election.  I
say "Python Dictatorship" because we use the title "Benevolent Dictator for
Life" (BDFL) with respect to Guido, the guy who got the ball rolling and
continues to guide Python-the-language as a work in progress.

The members list archives itself is private and that's OK. Most of the content would bore those not vested to some nitty gritty level in the future of this group.

Likewise some AFSC lists and meetings are by invitation or come with a role. In government, they use the word "classified" which is short for "restricted access".

Software provides micro-management over readability and writability, such as via the POSIX ownership infrastructure (chmod etc.). At higher levels, within CMS frameworks such as Plone, administrators have all sorts of ways to curtain off and refine views.

The whole idea of "need to know" is the basis for any great piracy (enterprise) as we learn in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (one of Bucky's).

Speaking of AFSC, the scoop there is I've been circulating some Linus Pauling House research into the roles Quakers played with regard to "Indians" (in the sense of native Americans). I'll share more of that in these blogs at a later time.