Approved: Long Distance Membership

Multnomah Meeting took an important step today in accepting a request for membership from a person who lives in closer proximity to other Meetings than ours, in another country.  This made the request somewhat different from that of a would be Isolated Friend, where local meetings do not exist, by definition.

What is established by this move is a precedent whereby Oversight is empowered to usher through membership requests, minus the criterion that everyday attenders and/or members of the Meeting need to be able to visit with and/or serve on committees with X before X's membership is considered and accepted (or denied).  Perry recommended that our Faith and Practice be amended accordingly.

Rather then give average attenders equal opportunity to meet X, it is sufficient for a smaller group within the Meeting to proffer a recommendation of membership and to go through a seasoning process, whereas for many in the Meeting, the person is "sight unseen".  This precedent could be useful if the prospective member is in prison for example (e.g. Bradley Manning) and cannot be expected to travel to Portland, Oregon.

Another important precedent associated with this membership was our preparedness to accept X as a Quaker, a person within the Religious Society of Friends, with or without membership in a specific Monthly Meeting.

As someone privy to the Oversight meetings, I can attest that those who were most concerned that membership be primarily a geographically based institution were prepared to say denial of membership in Multnomah Meeting did not constitute a rejection of the claim that this person was already a Friend based on other criteria besides membership, and indeed the Oversight Committee was prepared to embrace X as such even if the business meeting had accepted its recommendation to stress geographic criteria and deny membership (for now, unless / until X relocated to Portland).

However, this last point is hardly a dramatic shift in policy as we have increasingly come to see the institution of membership as but one way among many to signify one's commitment to the Religious Society of Friends.  To become a recorded member is to manifest a type of team spirit that not all Friends may choose, perhaps because not living close to an ideologically compatible Meeting (although if other meetings follow our lead, this may become less of a barrier).

As I wrote in my internal email to Oversight and shared later with Anne Hyde:

Members are telling the world that they will not hypocritically and unaccountably contradict themselves and say they're NOT a Quaker, e.g. if the going gets rough and Quakers seem more unpopular in some circles, for their unwillingness to countenance slavery, or dropping bombs, or whatever.

In becoming a member, one is publicly and in a communitarian spirit, saying "I am a Friend".  In contrast, someone who does not choose the badge of membership is freer to do like Peter and deny his friendship with Christ.  "Are you a Quaker?"  "I attend, but am not a member" -- that's an "out" (a distancing) you don't have if you've publicly recorded yourself as a member (in a "world readable format" as we say in these days of the Internet). 

A member is publicly demonstrating a level of commitment. 

Non-members are free to demonstrate a high level of commitment in other ways of course i.e. membership is not our only measure / criterion whereby commitment is measured.

People often compare it to marriage, versus simply living together and keeping whatever vows / commitments private.  Membership is more like a public vow of loyalty, though I won't say oath.

Now that we have "membership at a distance", I think the doors are more open to geographically distant individuals to enjoy membership status, even where Quakers and Quaker meetings are close by, but are perhaps of a different lineage or tradition.

This freedom gives individuals more ways to customize their membership, by possibly choosing a "home base" that is not close to one geographically, but does seem closer psychologically.

In the age of cyberspace and Cyberia, it stands to reason that distance is less of a factor.

From Oversight minutes from our last OC meeting (before today's Meeting for Business):

Kirby emphasized the institution of membership could be designed differently to permit long distance affiliations, and that we were somewhat closing a door.

That door is now open more widely than ever before.

Spring Breakers (movie review)

I've started on a plan to watch a lot of Harmony Korine films.  The Bagdad kicked it off with Spring Breakers, but Christine (a film maker) showed me Gummo first.

The film somewhat mocks the Spring Breaker as a type, a species, that never wants to break character.  Once in a swim suit, they stay in a swim suit, or partially out of them, as if clothes really had no protective value (and they don't, against bullets).

There's a Survival aspect in the way these girl survivors winnow down to the two we're warned are baddest at the beginning.  They're bad all right (as in "bad ass" thinks the Breaker), hard core.  One might segue to Thelma and Louise at the end, given no good may come of it.  They think as one unit, as Borg, or two Debbies from The Oblongs.

One might think of this as the R-rated sequel to that It's Friday music video.

Now watch the first four minutes of this Occupy film.

You've just learned a lot about how hedonism and consumerism help contain the tribes.  "What?  Contain?  They're out of control!".

The Breakers proselytize, but aren't missionaries, and they have no standing army or sprawling priesthood.  They do not rape and pillage or set fire to small villages in Southeast Asia.  Yes, the girls enjoy the fundraising aspect, which is both thrilling and extortionist.  Girls with guns get awfully cocky.

With "gangsta girls" in charge, you go up a rung from imperialist Patriarchy.  Many will frown at that contention and say good Christians are more benign than this orgiastic frenzied devil-worshiping mob.  No, these were the good Christians, look how they call their mothers.  It's the men who seem more corralled and inhibited (not subdued, not unduly oppressed), and I'm saying that's a step up.

Girls are better at "going wild" in some ways, less Fascist-Apollonian, more Athenian.

How much like Burning Man (Burners) or the Country Fair near Eugene (Cascadians), or Rainbow Gathering?

The desert is less forgiving than sunny Florida, and hippies mix in their studies more, versus swinging to both extremes.  Protective clothing is likewise far more necessary in the forest.

Those hippies and punks tend to geek out more (Tarot anyone?), are more DIY, plus maybe use a different mix of controlled substances.

None of these "live forevers" (like in Groundhog Day) seemed interested in learning scuba or marine science.  Their inability to get passed eternal frolicking marked them as still bambi-like in those bathing suits.  They'd get older, if not badder.

No review of this movie would be complete without some mention of the soundtrack and the "loading gun" swipe sound. What could so easily be an amateur's touch proves an effective suspense builder.  It also sounds something like a camera (lots of shutter action).  The camera itself is a weapon and or precision tool, a scalpel perhaps, for this skillful postmortem.

The editing style is also worthy of notice, with short repeat loops, a kind of "going over a few times" (like "scratch" in DJ world), mixed with flash backs to longer ago.  Events emerge in collages versus one strict chronology, a scrap book effect, jumbled-frenetic.  Blended memories.

Terry Talks

Some will think of TED talks, reading that title, and indeed ISEPP's Pauling House now has a videographer who produces for TED.  However Terry's run longer and the live audience still gets the immersive experience.  ISEPP's venues are less of a studio, though sound mixing and video recording are happening.

Terry's talk is of course cosmic in scope, but also perfect for Portland, a boom town these days.  We're rational optimists out here in Oregon, still surrounded by an undefeated spirit that feels at home here.

If this were football I'd say Terry is making an end run around the defending Scientists by separating out the disgruntled engineers, less appreciated, and making them an opposition.  There's deliberate tension in setting up the dialectic that way, with Fatalism fading to Defeatism owned by science, with Engineering still a throbbing heart of possibility.

As a consequence, religion is both shut out, and shut in.  But you've got a discourse, with heroes, and philosophy.  Terry flashed through a sequence of champions versus the dunce cap B Team.  Paul Erlich is definitely B Team, along with all the other waiting-to-say-I-told-you-so pundits believing we'd be dead by now, instead of at 9 billion.  Paul Romer, on the other hand, another big picture speculator, is A Team in Terry's playbook.

Terry scoffs at apocalyptic doomsayers more than most, and urges some of the loudest of such to retire from the podium, given their track record is so bad.

How he gets there, to his position of Engineer-Optimist, is more through Karl Popper and lets say Hegel.  He's happy to admit he's not the first one to truck out a dynamic Noosphere (not a term he used, something I picked up through Princeton) that has direction, towards some "good" (how that's defined is maybe less important than agreeing there's direction, an alchemy of fear and longing, not just value-neutral "trying stuff at random").

He doesn't much lean on Bucky Fuller or even American Transcendentalism back to Whitman.  He relies on Pragmatism instead, with lots of emphasis on John Dewey.

He'd just given this talk, or one like it, in China, and he freely admitted out at outset that his Engineer Ascendent memes maybe had a receptive audience there, not just because of recent great leaps forward, but because of a Marxian schooling in the background, wherein history plays out against a backdrop of a larger evolutionary tale, seamlessly the same thing, Nature a steering committee.  We could say Marx absorbed some key memes from Hegel, much as did Schopenhauer, and these memes resonate in Chinese thinking as well.

To get to this pinnacle minus Bucky or Wittgenstein is all the better for me.  I'm not going to be accused of just cribbing from Bristol, nor he from me.  We're coming from different foothills. Yet we both understand synergy and more-with-lessness.

How many man-hours does it take to produce one lumen's worth of power?  We effortlessly channel light, ergs, straining our spines relatively less per unit.  More like the PR around magic in the old days: as though you could wave something called "a remote" and choose "a channel" (or frequency) -- we know how to do that today, even from a young age.

Thanks to my board member valency, I was able to replace a cancellation and bring Trisha in for both the talk and the Heathman Dinner (a yummy slice of salmon with accoutrements).  She's a working mom, artist, hard worker, free spirit, just the right kind of Oregonian to appreciate Terry's upbeat hypertalk.  Glenn, Don, Steve and I joined her, closer to MHCC, from which she hails, for a reunion of sorts (not the first time at Pub 181), and a visit to her newest digs.

Suburbia and the Global U.  New circuit designs...

We stayed pretty late for old guys, but I had my morrow's trek to prepare for:  a long drive to Florence, Oregon by way of Big Bear Camp, and thence to a Girl Scout camp for our WQM gathering.

During the Q&A, both in the church and at the hotel, Terry was on his best diplomatic behavior.  He knows how much distrust there is for myopic, self-aggrandizing, environment-despoiling "engineers".

The proud / loud industrialist who leaves an eco-disaster behind, hiding behind a sham, self-justifying ideology, is a stereotype, and Terry is doing his best to dodge attempts to stick him with it.

He knows we've been awful.  He's not denying that humans are mistake prone.  Trial and error is not banished from his equations, just he thinks there's "cosmic genius" in the trying (noncomputable), or there's what the Quakers call "that of God" in each participant (some sense of the whole).

Portland AFSC Support Committee

Our conference call yesterday was a telephonic nightmare, though everyone was in a good humor about it, and we found workarounds on the fly.  The non-office group that started the Star Cafe conference call, including our clerk, patching in from Greater LA, could hear one another, but we in the office could not be heard on speaker, and if anyone picked up the receiver, the phone's speaker would die.

The old phone system, potentially high end, fashionable at Victoria's Secret, had become unusable.  Discontinuities in management left old passwords inaccessible.  Factory resets?  The work fell to Mireaya.

These glitches, and those with the leased photocopier, have nothing to do with landlord relations.

Sharing the building with the IWW is a plus for a number of reasons.  On the whole, it's not a bad situation.  There's wheel chair access and East Burnside is a happening place.  The Catholic Archdiocese and AlbertinaKerr are both in the same neighborhood.

Our agenda was packed as usual.  Pedro and I talked earlier, about some of my correspondence.  I'd been endeavoring to connect Navajo and Wabanaki efforts, or at least raise awareness of parallel / convergent narratives.

Native peoples of North / Central / South America feel they have an automatic right to not have their movements (immigration status) controlled by immigrant populations from other continents.  They're not the immigrants in this picture -- they've been here much longer.  Some of this sentiment will be expressed in the upcoming May 1 festivities.

Links between Hanford and the bombing of Nagasaki in particular were discussed.  Apparently there's some new research available, in the form of an award-winning student project.

These are not official minutes by the way, and I'm not the recording clerk.  My role is to help mind the relationship between our Yearly Meeting (NPYM) and the AFSC.  This is distinct from the MMM - AFSC liaison role, which is linked to Multnomah Meeting's Peace and Social Concerns Committee, currently experiencing turnover as its clerk prepares for a Friends Peace Teams adventure.

The community service interns were generous in letting me photograph some of the squares for the Drone Quilt that's being coordinated at a more national level.  AFSC is just one of many participants in that project.

The Door Project is also benefiting from intern support.  Some Portland Public Schools have a community service requirement, more like scouting (our newest committee member, welcomed last night, is an Eagle Scout).

Speaking of PPS, Cleveland High parents are up in arms over the budget cuts.  As I put it in my written report to our committee:

Regarding the May Day theme of fighting back against oppressors who
are dismantling social services in order to feed their fevered dreams
of imperial domination, parents at Cleveland High School are up in
arms (see below)....

Those who preach austerity and cutting the budget while squandering on
military jobs (because it's easier and lazier to kill for what you
want than to negotiate a peace) have no business representing
themselves as "the USA", a nation that went bankrupt (morally as well
as financially) sometime in the mid-1980s according to Medal of
Freedom winner R. Buckminster Fuller.  Of course some hope for a
reawakening of her democratic principles.

Launch Sequence

...162, 92, 42, 12, 1.  That's a lowering frequency in to a nuclear sphere of 1, where the grammer of Synergetics may locate a point of inside-outing and a corresponding 1, 12, 42, 92, 162 expansion.  Bow tie Universe and all that.

The progression hooks to Coxeter in the recent biography, The King of Infinite Space.  This was a mathematical discovery Coxeter approved of, found merit in, and your mathematics might be only high school grade, and yet still you might prove it.

As I posted to Math Forum, in my posited Lucky Devils Academy (LDA), you have a slow, leisurely, relaxed approach to sequence and series generation.  You may introduce recursion in various ways.

Even fractals are color coded sequences, where those that converge are the black Mandelbrot points (example fractal), while those that diverge are colored according to their rate of divergence.  At Saturday Academy we took advantage of the University of Portland's excellent projector system and watched some Mandelbulb movies (another brand of fractal).

Sooner or later we get to Python, where we explore and implement math objects, including sequence and successive sum generators.  You're using Python for something it's good at.  My recent examples to Math Forum included Bernoulli Numbers and Gregory Coefficients (I'm not claiming to be the first to express those algorithms as generators plus I'd done Bernoulli Numbers before, though less elegantly).

1, 12, 42, 92, 162...

Of course I have an ulterior motive in sharing generators in that 1, 12, 42, 92, 162... describes a growing octet truss, a piece of scaffolding. The bars between the hubs describe tetrahedrons and octahedrons.

With a new model of 3rd powering, demonstrated with a tetrahedron, we get relative volumes of one and four.  Other whole number and incommensurable volumes click into place forming what Bucky will call the "concentric hierarchy".

As a grand central of connected concepts, it's hard to beat the density of relationships within this graphical / lexical matrix of shapes and sequences.   The Lucky Devils come away from this reading / viewing program more savvy about Python, the micro-architecture of the virus, and the geometric facts that will help with their STEM studies.

Wanderers 2013.4.17

Today's discussion veered into Intellectual Property.  I think Fuller's universal scholarship, paid for by the benefits accrued to us all by the leading innovators, has been sidelined by a gambling system that walls out most would-be participants.  Safe to say, I'm not a big fan of the current IP regimen and don't really care what the Supreme Court has to say on the matter.  Washington DC is a corrupt little town (OK, major city) that hasn't earned the right to dictate to anyone, about anything.  Actually, it has subsystems with integrity and that complicates matters.  I'm a fan of some offices.  But IP law is BS.  I have no problem with the fact that it's crumbling.

We also talked about the impending fluoridation of Portland's water supply.  This is one of the few municipalities not to add fluoride yet.  I'm against doing it, as the environmental impact of higher fluoride levels on salmon runs, such as this impact has been studied (not much), suggests that it's both significant and negative.  I'm tired of humans whining about their teeth, claiming they're too lazy to brush with fluoride and need their dose to be administered through the public water supply.   What lazy good-for-nothing jerks, to risk salmon runs out of inertia.  That sounds exactly like humans though, oblivious to the welfare of any but themselves, ugly stupid ape-like numbskulls that they be.

I didn't have the luxury in wallowing in my misanthropy though.  I was glued to my computer, actually plowing through my case load, or "slaying the queue" as I put it.  Lorri calls me a slayer (blush), which makes me feel buff, whereas I'm anything but, and with two pizza slices for lunch (no breakfast) the situation is unlikely to improve -- and a beer, C-Note by Lompoq Brewery.  We ate after Wanderers at Oasis, right across from the Bagdad, scene of many event in this blog, from OMSI science pubs to movies.

Then I went to Fresh Pot next to Powell's on Hawthorne and slew the queue for many more hours.  By late afternoon, I was ready to take a crowbar to my ceiling again, in the Buddha Room, and pull down more dry wall.  I'm trying to get that room back in shape as my office / studio.  Then I went upstairs and slaved away in Tara's room, turned upside down (figuratively) by my other daughter's crashing there for several weeks, with two pets no less.  That was a fairly smooth interlude actually.  She got launched in a new job, serving in one of these far flung answering services that lets people work from home, kind of like CareWheels was going to be, had that been allowed to take off (Canada said no, I thought stupidly).

I've been reading Wittgenstein's Poker, which so far is good on chronicling the deterioration of the Ludwig-Bertrand friendship.  Bertie did a lot to give Wittgenstein a leg up, but the latter grew disillusioned with "logic" as it was then conceived and pioneered in new directions.  In retrospect, I'm glad the protege outgrew the master, yet I'm quick to acknowledge Bertie's positive impact on me as a boy.  His books, in the parents' collection, helped galvanize my interest in that subject (philosophy).

Philosophy of Science

Yesterday was a philosophical day, in terms of ethics / aesthetics (some say "esthetics").  "How much shall I eat?" was one of the queries.  Quakerism bases itself on "queries" and "knowing experimentally":  probably a reason Quakers tend to not run away from STEM.

Two philosophy parties were in the Friday night picture.  I went to both.  I ate at both.  Then I went back to the first one and had a (very thin) slice of cake.  I should call them "dinner parties" to be more accurate.  The second was in the Heathman and followed a philosophy of science lecture by John Dupre.

Now today, Saturday, I'm with Dupre again.  We're in the Pauling House listening to Terry bounce around in his namespace, influenced by John Dewey.  If we look at this as the philosophy that steers his choice of lecturers, then I'd consider it elucidating.  We're hearing what makes Terry tick.

I brought two books in my briefcase I don't expect to get to share, except asynchronously, such as here.  Both books were edited by Robert G. Fuller, the physics professor.  He died not long ago.  One book is about Robert Karplus, his mentor, the other about Aung San Suu Kyi, his student from that time he taught in Rangoon, at British Methodist Academy.  He continued to track her trajectory ever since.

We learned more about that region of the world from Peter recently, the other Princeton grad at Elliot's talk (besides me) who therefore knew about Blair Hall and Blair Arch.

Terry casts two archetypes named the Scientist and Engineer, which he contrasts.  In theater or psychology, we could set this up in two minutes as a premise for some melodrama, yet to be unveiled.  That's the suspense:  will there be a plot, after the preamble?  Stay tuned.  In Bucky's namespace the plot is eternal regenerativity, how to keep it all going.

Earlier today I showed Christine, a photographer, the Kenneth Snelson book.  I was wanting to share the 360 degree photographs, but she went through all of it, including his Portrait of the Atom with its curious electrons, sometimes rendered with quirky effects.

Complementarity, experimentally demonstrable, is another of Terry's plot elements.  He says local vs. nonlocal, particle vs. wave, are similar to left and right handed.  We have a minimum of two paradigms, says Terry, and they're not reducible to one another.

At the first party, I received a gift from the scholar who's birthday we were celebrating:  Wittgenstein's Poker.  That's a book I've long been meaning to read.  I will post about it more on Sean's list.

Terry's philo is a lot like Erhard's but presented differently.  He gets to where there's no determining "the meaning" and that's freeing for him more than angst-producing.  Meaninglessness is not heavy but an invitation to create meaningfulness.

Terry's attack on the Scientist archetype coming from the Engineer's angle is in danger of being a straw man argument.  To have straw men, one may need straw worlds.  It's the world of one static truth, a machine, that's made of straw here.  Terry advocates pluralism.  One still needs theories and models though.  To say there's no ultimate final ideal car is not an argument against having cars or developing new ones.

Pycon 2013

:: from Portland to Pycon ::

I dipped into basket case status getting here, having sent the Razr M through the wash (insured, a $99 deductible / slap).  On top of that, I miscalculated the Max time and stood in the wrong line at Alaska.

If I'd gone to a kiosk (no line) and paid for one bag, then I could have jumped to the front in pre-paid bag.  Not knowing that, or figuring it out, I queued behind the languid folks for Hawaii, getting my hit of adrenaline (clock ticking).

Do I live longer for these steroidal moments, brought on by attacks of stupidity?  We shall see.

What to do with the extra time?  Beaches.  Happy Hour.  Just snacks, beers.

The day before I ate a lot, both literally and metaphorically, in a busy engaging day.  Sam is cutting ties with Flextegrity, setting it more adrift, so Trevor and I descended, like vultures.  Sam was liberally sharing, letting go of a certain bicycle parked for three years.

We visited his storage unit.

The exercise felt Food Not Bombs like, rescuing soon-to-be compost.  Apropos of that, Adam phoned mid-exercise, needing the meetinghouse key for FNB work.

Speaking of storage units, Trevor showed Sam and I to a secret location (cinematic) where he's stashed more tons of Fuller-related material, with many thanks to Joe Moore.

Some of Dawn's closest friends and I walked the labyrinth at Unity, joining in her memory.  Alexia is house sitting in a neighboring state.

Then came a meetup and catching up with an FNB friend, followed by Wanderers.

The next day was my flight on Alaska.  Getting some last minute Alpo for Sarah contributed to my lateness.

The consequences of missing my plane were not that great in this case.  Having WiFi at PDX let me keep working pretty much the whole time.

Holden had flown down the day before.  I found him with Brian Curtin, Jack Diederich, other luminaries, having beers in the lobby.

We hobnobbed for awhile.  Brian has been working with our Code of Conduct, applicable at Pycons.  Did the Ukraine PyCon of 2012 really attract 4K attenders?  Some of us were skeptical.

The talk on abolishing the traditional 9-12 high school structure, didn't make the cut unfortunately.  My lightning talk did make the cut:  Python for Adults.  Maria Litvin is here, has participated on one of the panels.  This was our first Education Summit.

Lots of interesting people.  I finally got to meet Michel Paul (picture below), with whom I've been conversing on edu-sig for quite awhile.

Our keynote speaker was Walter Bender, founder of SugarLabs, which produces free software for the One Laptop per Child program's flagship computer, the XO.  Walter knows Ed Cherlin obviously.

Henrique was here with at least seven others from Brazil (Steve thinks more like fifteen, which he's happy about, his trip to Brazil a career capper as PSF chairman in some ways -- Van is doing that job now).

Python is gathering momentum in South America, as evidenced by the increasing number of Pycons.  Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela all have active Python users.

Wanderers 2013.3.6

Don invited me to turn my AFSC adventure into a formal talk.  I took awhile to respond, and Micheal Sunanda, not often around, had signaled his willingness as well, so we split the platform.  He actually left the building during most of my talk, whereas I puttered in the kitchenette, making coffee, during a lot of his, also dove into emails.

What I emailed was my exultant sense for having Elizabeth Furse join us for the AFSC part of the meeting.  She's worked with AFSC, which I hadn't known, out of Seattle, and for sure knows Arthur Dye, a former director there.  Elizabeth had visited Wanderers recently, thanks also to Don, and impressed everyone with her command of US / NavAm relationships (I use "NavAm" as an abbreviation for Native American, with plenty of resonance left over to mean an airline ala PanAm, connecting airstrips within NavAm bases and/or connected sovereignties -- been doin' it for years).

Eddy and I had just been to the corporation meeting (annual), both in the same capacity:  as NPYM representatives.  Yes, we have a lot of acronyms going.  I've blogged about some of these before:  WQM, FUM, EFI, FGC, GWYF, QUNO... FCNL.

Ironically, what Elizabeth had to teach me today was that Quakers were perhaps at the forefront of that "kill the Indian to save the man" movement that was so counter to NavAm interests.  A major portion of Friday night at Friends Center was about this genocidal campaign.  We reviewed slides of the concentration camp boarding schools where the young natives were coralled brainwashed, forced into thinking like Anglo-Euros, much to their detriment in terms of continuing the family lineage and traditions.  These cultures continue to feel decimated and healing is going to take awhile.  Yet perhaps a corner has been turned, that's the good news.

So I see the need to dig more deeply, into Quaker works in this area.  Having work camps together still is an important tool of diplomacy from a Quaker viewpoint.  My parents were camp leaders as late as the 1970s, wherein Palestinians, Israelis, and a smattering of cosmopolitans from American University of Beirut, all hunkered down to build a swimming pool in solid rock.  This was before the general erosion of an older intelligence that kept a relative peace in many areas where conditions have since deteriorated.  This was in Ramallah, not far from Jerusalem. 

These camps were entirely voluntary however.  In the WWII chapter, they were less so, as conscientious objectors were assigned to them willy nilly.  I know it sounds like I'm rambling but we're intersecting Doug Strain's scenario, and his associations with AFSC are quite significant, his associations with Linus Pauling at Cal Tech even more so.

Prison State

During the breakout session at the AFSC meeting, people dispersed to various rooms to learn about programs.  I went to the presentation on some of the prison work that goes on.

The US has an immature understanding of humans and likes to make everything a morality play with goodies and baddies.  A lot of this thinking was inherited from England, a likewise under-developed civilization of mediocre collective IQ.  Organized religion has a lot to do with it.

The US incarcerates a huge number of people, a growing profit center for many public and private organizations.

Prisoners = free or almost free labor, and compared to the boredom of doing nothing much, many prisoners would prefer to be doing something skillful.  Making furniture is a chief activity.  The government itself thrives on slave labor in this way.

Calling it "slave labor" is of course loaded.  The double standards involved warrant the term, some would say.

Identifying products suitable for boycott because made by prison labor was not a strategy suggested by staff.  Prisoners often prefer work to idleness and would be disappointed to lose their manufacturing jobs.  Not that they necessarily would, as the USG and state governments are a reliable customer.

Chinese consumers should educate themselves on what products for sale in China might be made by US prisoners.  Whether to boycott or not is an individual choice.

I think school children, if sitting in desks made by prisoners, should be made aware of that fact.  The study of prisons and prison systems is a great 8th grade topic.  At Overseas School of Rome, we had Sociology as a subject in middle school.  Fred Craden was my teacher.  I don't think most US based schools offer sociology am I right?

Our staff presenters were from New York and Michigan respectively.