Shift Happens Rapidly

I'm under the gun at work and regret not getting to the end of Jeff Goebel's slides today, but those that I saw were excellent and totally apropos for a Wanderers meetup, as the content was science.

Lots of STEM.

The topic was global climate change, but from a refreshing new angle.

Jeff works with ranchers, farmers, foresters, tribes, subcultures, to formulate land use and long range resource management plans based on buy-in and consensus.

He's been working with Deidre Schuetz, who presented last week, about her land and resource management projects in Senegal and Guinea.

As his slides made clear, keeping our atmosphere viable is all about the race between photosynthesis on the one hand, and carbon being lost to the atmosphere.

Rather than limit his focus on the fossil fuel problem (peak oil etc.), he understands that increasing biomass in and of itself is a way of countering global warming.

His arguments require only a high school understanding of geo- and biochemistry.  However, unless you've been doing your homework, you might not have the puzzle as put together as Jeff does.

Great talk.  We're still in for rough times though.  Jeff doesn't know how much a difference his approach will make, but he feels good about catalyzing it spreading quickly.

Perma-culture and so on are known sciences i.e. he's not looking to science fiction to save our butts, though I'm sure he'd welcome a few deus ex machina maneuvers, if we can swing 'em.

When Quakers go Trans

By my title you might be thinking I mean "trans-gender" but I'm talking about another kind of transition at the institutional level.  The ideas of "hormone therapy" and/or "surgery" still have application in this extended metaphor.

When a cis Liberal Meeting decides to pass for Pastoral, it needs to embark upon a somewhat lengthy process.  In the final stages, vital committees considered intrinsic to Liberal Friends, including Business Meeting itself, may be put on ice or shelved.  This is sometimes posed as "an experiment" i.e. lets put aside our structures and just have potlucks and family fun, not worry our heads about such worldly matters as Liberals (remember them?) might be concerned with.

A first sign that a change might be looming is when Friends cannot seem to fill their own Peace and Social Concerns committee.  Why should a bunch of middle class white people enjoying their privileges want to busy themselves with fighting the status quo?  Life is pretty good.  Lets focus on our families instead.

If you have a nice meetinghouse, you'll have "event center" possibilities, i.e. a steady income, and with a Pastoral Care Committee, you'll be able to divvy the surplus among the faithful, meaning mostly members, i.e. those who've demonstrated due obedience to the Pastoral team.

We Liberals sometimes call this form of Pastoralism "kiss butt Quakerism", clearly pejorative, but forgive us, the whole of Quakerism owes itself, in large degree, to throwing off any pastoral caste.  That some Quakers fell back into the slime and lost their evolutionary advantages is not tacit permission for all of us to fall from grace in such a spectacular manner.

The meeting I attend and have served for many decades, as Quarterly Meeting Planner when we host that event (WQM), as Overseer, as Peace and Social Concerns person, even as Assistant Clerk, appears to be undergoing hormone therapy with an eye towards becoming a Trans Church.

As a dry run, the Pastor-Clerks assumed record-level powers and made a secret deal with a radical political group many Liberals have real questions about.  Oversight was bypassed, except for its clerk, whom the pastoral team pledged to secrecy until the deal was done and announced to the world on Facebook, i.e. until it was too late.

News of the deal going down was leaked however, and a delegation of Liberals approached the pastors on bended knee, so to speak, to beg for lenience.  They brought a petition.  Don't sell out by committing a trophy meetinghouse, a symbolic property, so easily, and in such a back-handed manner, was our silent plea -- I said nothing during this April 13 meeting, as I was still trying to understand what was happening to our meeting (e.g. what is "CAC"?).

The pastor-clerks eventually relented, after taking a few days to consult with advisers (the CAC), saying they have great compassion for all members and if anyone feels bullied by any group, they're here to protect them.  A series of special meetings was called, to prove the sincerity of our protectiveness.

This about face totally pissed off the first group (understandably) the radicals with whom the secret deal had already been struck, but their wrath was probably worth the price, as the main point was in terms of internal Quaker politics:  Business Meeting must beg, not decide.  The pastors were in control and were making all key decisions, not the laity, i.e. the surgery was almost complete.

As an Overseer at the time, and of the Liberal persuasion, I understandably went ballistic, and that's where an Eldering Committee comes in, instigated directly by pastor-clerks against any lingering dissident Liberal: lets make an example of this dissenter, by loving him to death ("compassionate listening" they called it).

Likewise Oversight -- soon to be renamed Pastoral Care Committee if the kiss-butts have their way -- was not really a factor in making this decision, either to go with the radicals or to cancel.  The hormone therapy was almost complete.  We're a Quaker Trans Church in the making.  That's the fashionable trend these days.  Pastors rule!

True Liberal Meetings are a vanishing species perhaps.  Don't assume simply checking the Faith and Practice will get you the truth.  Ours is riddled with misleading inaccuracies and, at this point, I'd say outright lies.  It says we have a Peace and Social Concerns Committee.  That's covering up the fact that we don't (no meetings in ages, nothing on the calendar going forward, AFSC ex oficio... gone).

So yes, I see our Integrity testimony as falling by the wayside here, but minus any Peace and Social Concerns, who's to be concerned about it?  You see how it all fits together, in an almost hermetic way.  Quakers are brilliant around process, that much is clear.

Membership Matters

A friend of mine was asking about membership in the Religious Society of Friends.  How does that work?  I was recounting a story of a fun little family that got rejected for membership, which is what triggered the question.  How does it work?

The way it works normally is a Monthly Meeting will want to clear you for membership, in return for your demonstrating loyalty to that particular meeting, paying your dues so to speak.  If you live far away, you won't be able to participate much, so you'll be directed to a more nearby meeting most likely.  At least that's how it was at Multnomah until recently, when we branched out and offered long distance membership to someone in Canada, without the labeling of Isolated Friend.

Once a Monthly Meeting clears you for membership (write a letter to Oversight to get the ball rolling), you're on the hook in terms of coming to business meetings and serving on committees -- unless you attain Released status.

This coveted Released status lets you (a) retain your membership in the Monthly Meeting and (b) keeps Nominating from tapping you for chores, or Oversight from snagging you for clearness duty.

Obtaining elite Released status requires having some ministry or testimony the meeting adjudges worth taking on the road.  You're a spokesperson for Quakerism at that level, and that gives you an alibi, a justification for being "off the hook" vis-a-vis regular membership duties.

Finally, there's what I call Walt Whitman Friends, which are people who eschew the shackles of any particular Monthly Meeting yet manage to worm their way into Quakerism nonetheless.  Walt Whitman never joined a Meeting but walked and talked like a Quaker and Quakers would like to claim him as one of their own. 

Birthright Friends used to be in this category, not subject to a clearness process, but most Monthly Meetings no longer accept such an entitlement.

On the other hand, if your currency as a Quaker is relatively weak, your lack of a formal membership in any Monthly Meeting may be used to demote you.  You'll have the rank of attender.  You'll find members sometimes being snobby towards you; they can't help themselves usually.

Both non-members and Whitman Friends have a fair amount of clout in a Liberal Friends meeting.  Liberal Friends are serious about not taking titles too seriously, including that of "member".  Jesus never invited us to form a membership club after all, that's just after-the-fact bureaucracy, added-on infrastructure, like a fan club.

So non-members will oft be found riddling a Liberal meeting, providing walk-the-talk integrity to the Equality Testimony, showing the world that the whole "membership" thing is to be taken with a grain of salt (member = officially cleared cheerleader in large degree).

Having members is important though.  It boosts the morale of a meeting to have a few pillars of society step up to the plate and roll up their sleeves.  These pillars don't see committee work as a chore or obligation so much as a privilege.

Both members and non-members may share this more enlightened perspective.

Like, how often do you get to do serious role playing in a 350+ year old language game that encourages personal and corporate growth, one centered around a shared business (the meeting itself)?  What a great sandbox to work and play in.  And you don't have to be rich.

Prying Open a Generator

A Python generator is very like a function but is characterized by the keyword yield, and preserves state between calls.

For example you might have a generator that keeps spitting back a successive digits of Pi, but to do that, it needs to keep track of internal values between called to pi_digits.__next__() or whatever.

Do we have a way to take a generator that's already been advanced through several yields, and study the internal values of its state variables?  Yes.

Steve Holden wrote some code like the following to show me how it's done:

The output is:
3
42

... the current values of i, and n, respectively.

Using a FrameType object, you get to act like a debugger and get into the current state. This technique applies to more than just generators, but I think generators are a good example of something the guts of which you might want to peek into.

Lifetime Achievement

Carol got her lifetime achievement award from US Congressman Earl Blumenaur today.  She's a rallying figure in the nuke weapons abolition movement, which I blog about here a lot, like mother like son (dad was anti nuke weapon too of course, ours being a pacifist / Quaker family).

The First Unitarian Church has this useful Eliot Center where I've been to a Johnny Stallings fundraiser to help prisoners, and at least one BarCamp, maybe two.

Today the place was packed with Quakers, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Womens International League for Peace and Freedom, Columbia Riverkeepers, and observers from myriad other groups (see slides).

We had a panel which yakked about the Marshall Islanders' lawsuit against the slothful / inefficient / incompetent Nuke Nations, who under the NPT have agreed to shed these signature hallmarks of an idiocracy in the making.  Some Nuke Nations are outside the NPT though, understandably skeptical the others will abide by it.

When people lined up at the microphone, I took off to get some neighborhood context shots and catch up on correspondence.  I'm getting pretty good using my thumb to keep the business flowing.  However my day job is not doable on a smartphone.  I digress.

Carol's role was to accept our appreciation, which she did gracefully.  I will refer to this event more in future.  Hanford and its impact on the Columbia River was a big focus.

People are still slow to absorb that seepage is not a danger that might occur, but an actuality.  They're still thinking the price is avoidable.

The challenge is to expend wisely.

The Congressman's speech was in part about getting a handle on what's really being spent.  Big expenses are not that easy to track sometimes, as you might imagine.

Friend Barnes reminisced in the background about this being the 25th Anniversary of Tienanmen Square.  He was there, saw what happened.  Around him, mostly denial.  I was glad to provide a listening ear.

Art Piece

For those of you who want a conversation piece, this is a sculpture of myself pole dancing at The Last Supper.

 Thank you Mark Allyn, for adding some light and levity to my day. Very Burning Man.

Tapping Away

Still stumbling along. On a tablet tonight, from some apartment. So slow.

VBC site visit with Sunanda today, old hippie much recovered post Eugene incident. Lives in a 12 x 6 Calistoga unless I have wires crossed.

Village Building Collective is in its 14th year.  Was at Saint David of Wales where Food Not Bombs was also welcomed, same chapter. Now it's Sunnyside Methodists who get the focus. Cool.

We had lunch at New Seasons after I slept through a staff meeting, duh. Up to 3 AM in my defense.

Enough for this tablet tonight.

Final ISEPP Lecture

I am hoping this was the season finale and not the grand finale, but much is beyond ISEPP's control.

That's the tiny nonprofit behind the Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture Series which Terry organizes, and Mentor Graphics sponsors, in tandem with other sponsors, including schools such as Oregon Episcopal.

Terry gave the wrap up talk and did manage to connect the dots for people, especially if one had been to the other lectures he referenced, which I had for the most part. Terry might be described as less apocalyptic sounding than some, even in the face of ongoing climate change.

The Heathman Dinner was excellent. Good catching up with Buzz, stroke victim recovering with Final Cut Pro.

Another good restaurant nearby: Southpark next to Arlington Club across the street, where Applewhites stayed that time they came to visit (in 1996).  I ate there today (at Southpark), discussing Oversight business with a Friend.  The wait staff stopped serving water owing to a public health advisory.

OST Summit: Lake Tahoe

Connected Comments

commenting on Quaker practice unbound



commenting on Multnomah Friends Facebook page

Double Whammy

May First was a big day for yours truly.

The May Day mobilization went off without a hitch, me the photographer, like last year.  The AFSC Portland page is even better as another photographer took over from me once the march got underway.

Then Trevor had a book signing at Mother Foucault's, also well attended, with the author reading from his Confessions of a Failed Egoist.

Tragic Loss

Our neighbor and friend.

Coast tightrope walker swept into ocean
By Associated Press: April 25, 2014, 8:22 PM

PACIFIC CITY, Ore. — Authorities say a Portland man trying to walk across a homemade tightrope between two large rock sections on the north Oregon coast is missing after a large wave hit him and swept him into the ocean.

Tillamook County Sheriff Andy Long said Friday that 25-year-old James Michael Alejandro was climbing on a rocky area of Cape Kiwanda with several others Thursday afternoon when he connected a single rope between two large rock sections above the water and tried to walk it. Witnesses say he was briefly seen in the ocean but they lost sight of him.

A Coast Guard boat and helicopters searched by water and air but didn’t find Alejandro. Long cautions that coastal ocean currents are strong and large waves are common in the area.

Cogitations

Everyone's a spy now.

I'm probably the last kid on the block to get two-step verification, the Google service where if you log in on an untrusted computer, you get a text message to your cell phone for verification purposes.  You need to enter that too, or you're not you.

Since I'm on a company computer borrowed from another staffer while mine's in the shop, I took the opportunity to make it not trusted, meaning really no computer is (to me).  There ya go, welcome to spyville.

And yet we're just truck stop Joe and Jill.  There's future shock for ya, hello Alvin Toffler.

What's been happening?  Lots of course.

Dave Koski is legitimately excited about this number 2√2ø^-2  as in Emod * 2√2ø^-2 = S mod.

These so-called "mods" are tetrahedron shapes, components defined in Synergetics 2.  That's the magnum opus by Buckminster Fuller in collaboration with E.J. Applewhite since transplated to the web.  Dedicated to H.S.M. Coxeter aka King of Infinite Space.

David and I have yakked about such things for years, fun shoptalk (namespace, whatever).

I've been looking at a new title:

Back to the Future

David Pearce Snyder is on the ISEPP board so has behind the scenes influenced Terry in ways we'll never know about (grin).  He's lectured for ISEPP before and was as lucid as ever, in bringing us his view of the future, which is very metrological, in the sense of "metrologist", one who measures (Doug Strain was one of those too).

Demographically speaking, the North American population is aging and youth will be at a premium. But beyond that rather well know fact was the good news:  the gigantic onslaught of new tech that really takes time to accommodate, has been accommodated to the point where we might even thrive again.  We were in a dip, if you look at the numbers.

I really appreciated this big picture perspective.  My dad was a futurist and would have loved these ISEPP lectures, this one in particular I think.

Bravo Mentor Graphics and other sponsors, and Terry for picking winners way more than chance would allow.  We must be doing something right, eh?

What the talk was really about was the future of higher education, a topic of keen interest to me, given I'm in the teaching business, in Cyberia (cyberspace).  MOOCs started off on the wrong foot maybe, but much was learned.  Universities are adapting or going under, the usual thing.  I'm being vague as you had to be there.  These lectures get recorded, Glenn on camera.

The Heathman dinner was excellent as usual.  I let Christine have my other ticket as she's a stalwart and adds perspective to Wanderers a lot.  I get two tickets per lecture as another board member, but not an advertised one i.e. I'm not the big name futurist David is, though I did get two write-ups in The Oregonian as a futurist (only Metro section I'm pretty sure).  Small potatoes so far.

You don't have to go to a four year college to have a good life, but neither should you regret going if that's what you did or are doing.  Many doors are open.  This is not a bad time to be alive.

State of Society

During a our final review and approval of our State of Society Report during Meeting for Business recently, one Friend asked if membership issues had really been "divisive" as the report states.  The clerk called on a member of Oversight to test the validity of that word.  "Divisive is what fits" came the reply, in paraphrase.

I followed up later, as another member of Oversight, with more details, as there's no reason to leave Friends in the dark on this matter.  I wrote (by email):

As another person on Oversight besides [X], I can vouch for membership being divisive in the following sense:  

some see [sic] witnessing others becoming members should be only observed and conducted by other members, whereas others have no problem with non-members witnessing the entire membership process, even convening the clearness committee for that purpose. 

I'm one of those who sees no contradiction here as we value transparency and have no secret rites in our faith and practice i.e. members-only (other than to satisfy the state that we map to their corporation laws).  As a non-member, I have convened many a membership committee with no qualms about my ethics.  I celebrate people's heeding the inward call to serve, which takes many outward guises.

Recorded membership is one of many practices Friends engage in to signify their loyalty to the Religious Society of Friends.

Unlike the Tallahassee Friends, who according to our documents see becoming a member as a kind of detailed vetting, an integrity test, almost an initiation or hazing, I look for a willingness, an eagerness, to publicly identify as a Friend in a way that deserves the backing of some Monthly Meeting.  The meeting will not disavow so-and-so when they publicly proclaim to be a Friend.  That's the social contract.

However, we do not certify, as a meeting, that so-and-so has met a lot of deeply spiritual criteria.  Presumably so-and-so wrote a letter to Oversight and a clearness meeting was convened.  We do not require any criminal background checks, e.g. we are not assuring the public that Y is not a child molester.  We hope not, and will be surprised if so, but let us not mislead the general public into thinking a member has somehow been through some thorough quality assurance program in order to "come out" as a recorded member.

We do not hire expensive Internet services to study the public record, as we might if you want to work in the children's program as one of two supervisory adults, as required by our insurance company (another item of business during the same meeting).  As a third adult in the room, you would not need a background check or social security number.

No, that's not how the process works, in the case of something routine like membership.

We're encouraging people to come forward as Friends and deal with the consequences in the aftermath (for the rest of their lives perhaps).

We're not saying all of those consequences have already been dealt with, nor that so-and-so has reached the top of some spiritual ladder, nor even a higher rung.

We do not pretend to having criteria to measure your "rung level" on any spiritual ladder, though individuals on the Clearness Committee, or anyone, during the seasoning period between meetings for business, may express their reservations about Z e.g. if Z seems too immature and / or clueless about Quakers and Quaker history and/or does not behave in a way consistent with Friends testimonies, that's something to point out.

Given it's a social contract between the meeting, and the individual, both sides get to think about it.  Then to agree to this contract is not to make a lot of corollary claims about Z other than that she and/or he is now accepted as a recorded member.  He and/or she is willing to publicly identify as a Friend in a way a meeting agrees to back or certify.  We hope Z will not be hypocritical then, going forward.

Wanderers 2014.4.8: WW1

Gordon Hoffman did a stupendous job synergizing with Wanderers, letting other old timers chime in with fascinating facts and factoids, adding texture and nuance to an already-tasteful presentation.

Gordon is qualified to call himself a truly vested individual when in comes to WW1, and right away we should point out that, at this point in history, extremely few people with USA passports, with USA citizenship, are seen to frequent the monuments to its war dead in Europe.  This is rightly seen by many as anomalous.  But then the USA stands out in many ways that leave Europeans somewhat perplexed, if not dismayed.

I'm truly not so-qualified, i.e. my insights into WW1 are still in early Big Bang inflationary stage, where I double my understanding every thirty minutes.  I've been reading a lot of history recently, lets say "of the Vienna Circle" to stay brief about it, along with that compendium, Human Smoke (on my Kindle).

Having Gordon's slide presentation plunk down in the middle of these studies really helped things crystallize for me.  Following the changing map of Europe is as hard as inverting a matrix or finding its eigenvalues.  Historians take in hyper-dimensional spaces for breakfast.  That being said, I have a lot more learning ahead of me (duh).  Thank you Gordon, for accelerating my process.

He handed around some small items from his collection.  Dick Pugh was there, another master of the show and tell, sorry to miss Mastin, and Glenn.  Terry, you should come to more of these.  But then it's such a small venue.  Anyway, it was what it was, which was fantastic and educational.

Gordon was and is a major galvanizer of the Saturday Academy subculture in which I've participated and blogged about at some length.  He's blessed with a surplus of attention, one could say, whereas a deficit of same has become the norm.  He shares his scholarship with the rest of us, and he enjoys the opportunities his life affords.  Search elsewhere in these chronicles for more.

Thirsters 2014.4.3 and 2014.3.27

We've been learning a lot about land use and land use planning at Thirsters recently.

Oregon is blessed with some forward-thinking zoning laws that most "states" don't have, being states more in name only.

Developers don't have as free a hand in Oregon to blemish and blight the landscape with their suburban monster malls and chintzy McMansion subdivisions of short half-life.

Our coastline is relatively unmarred with human ugliness, compared to California, the scarred state.

However, Washington County has been suffering from extremely weak leadership and went whining to the legislature when the District Court slapped down it's illegal land grab beyond the boundary, stealing class one arable land.   Most of Helvatia was saved, but only just, and the rapacious are angry over their defeat.

That land grab (rezoning) would have been a no-no in Governor McCall's day, but the Thoughtless Generation doesn't believe in planning ahead, as we've seen with Mt. Tabor and Tri-Met both recently.

A dumbing down has occurred. 

Boomers and younger are turning out to be semi-retarded in many ways, might be all those For Dummies books, hard to say.  More likely too much milk and super-size fries.  A fast food diet makes ya stupid.

Last week we learned about how Portland State University is staying remarkably respectful as a kind of go-between between Federal agencies and native populations of the North American southwest (e.g. Nevada testing area) with long term land use and sustainability on their minds.

Oregon has not yet fallen prey to the depraved, at least not as much as in other states where zombie "walkers" (corporations feigning personhood) stalk the landscape, imprisoning humans for profit and despoiling the landscape.  Arizona comes to mind, with a shudder, a state likely already lost to greed and terminal myopia.

E Module Mensuration

Quoting from Dave:

T = 1/24 = .0416666
E = (√2/8)(ø^-3) = .0417313

So, the T & E modules are close in volume, and the difference was what Fuller expounded on in Synergetics 2.

If the Rhombic Triacontahedron is 120T modules, it has a volume of 5 tetra volumes. Alas, the "radius" was not exactly 1, but .999483.

So, the Rhombic Triacontahedron's volume was really 5.007758 or 120 E modules, when the radius is exactly 1. Kirby figured that out, how to get the radius for the exact volume 5 Rhombic Triacontahedron, which is .999483 or (2/3)^(1/3)((ø^1)/√2)).

The radius in question for the Rhombic Triacontahedron is from the origin to the center of the rhombus. The radius to the long leg to the short leg is ø^1:ø^0:ø^-1 or 1.618034:1.000000:.618034.

This was an epiphany for me since the E module derived from the Rhombic Triacontahedron had a radius of 1, so the legs were .618034 and .381966.

Increasing the edges by ø^1 we have a long diagonal on the Rhombic Triacontahedron that is the same as the icosahedron's edge of 2, which fully inscribes within the Super Rhombic Triacontahedron.

By increasing the radius by ø^1 for the 5.007758 E module Rhombic Triacontahedron, we get the Super Rhombic Triacontahedron.

Thusly, an E module is 120th of the 5+ volume Rhombic Triacontahedron or (√2/8)(ø^-3), and the next larger sized E module derived from the Super Rhombic Triacontahedron is ø^3 larger or √2/8 expressed as E3.

Quoting from me:

The blue icosa is the standard 18.51 of Synergetics, as is the yellow cubocta ("VE") of volume 20. The other shapes are all non-standard in having that 1.851 edge, 1/10th of the volume number, but here an edge.  The green cubocta, has those smaller edges, which is in turn the interval for the whole 4F tetrahedron.

Which is why the yellow cubocta sticks out. What defines the "non-standards" is the tetrahedron to which our standard icosahedron is flush.  The small green cubocta has a volume between 15 and 16 whereas the yellow one has volume 20 as you know.

The icosahedron + its dual = rhombic triacontahedron of whatever size.  In the jargon Koski and I have been using, the "super RT" would be the standard (18.51) icosahedron + its dual, combining to form this rather large combo.

It's when you scale down that super-RT by 1/phi that you get the RT mother-of-Emods i.e. 120th of such is what is named an "E module" in Synergetics.  David measures in those, and phi-up, phi-down versions of those, in terms of place value (base).  The video expresses volumes in "super-RT sized Es" plus standard Es, one could say.
  

Then in Synergetics we have the "T module", a fine distinction, in that the T's volume is exactly that of the A's and B's, whereas the E's is only really close (the exact ratio being a focus in Synergetics 2 another number with phi in it, though Fuller avoided greek letter stuff).

The Thoughtless Generation

The horrific mutilation and scarring of Mt. Tabor, an historic site, is due to begin this October.

The Southeast Examiner ('The Fast Track Reservoir Disconnect' by Midge Pierce, April 2014) pleads with neighbors to fight this elective mastectomy / self-disfigurement, but for $7 million, the contractor-mercenaries are lined up behind one of the most loathed politicians in Portland's history, Nick Fish.

This ignorant and suicidal attack on our own infrastructure and water system is psychopathic to the core, yet citizens already know that governments will run amuck and commit to policies more damaging than any army of vandals could ever hope to imitate.

OMSI, a once great science museum, has not heeded proposals to model the civic water system to its citizens.  I think by now it's too late.

This sell-out, once great museum is complicit in the denigration of Portland's living standards, in its refusal to go with place-based education.

We all learn to overlook what's happening locally in exchange for the fiction of "caring" globally.  Sappy liberals are as much to blame as butt-ignorant ditto heads.

Our "environmentalist state" is in the process of being betrayed at the deepest level, by the odious Nick Fish in Portland, and by a weak / spineless governor, all set to let the coal economy exploit our infrastructure for the purely private gain of greedy idiocrats.

Politicians:  the scum of the Earth.

Speaking of betrayal by mercenaries, the fast tracking of the Transpacific Partnership trade "agreement" has attracted nothing but scorn from Cascadians.  This is the process by which governments delegitimize themselves and commend themselves to the ash heap of history.

We aren't surprised to see Washington DC first in line to self-disembowel.  That city has been a gutless wonder for longer than I can remember, a ceaseless source of bad / depraved decisions.  Why do people listen to DC anymore?  I know I don't.

May the family names and company brands of those who participate in the war on Mt. Tabor live on in infamy as traitors to our city.  Historians, do your homework.  These were among the truly depraved of our planet, as bad as Blackwater.

Remember not to be like them.  Have some self pride.  Be a generation the world celebrates, not an execrable monster of which history is ashamed.

HB2U YouTube