Journal Entry: Quaker Business

I cancelled my recurring payment from PayPal to the QuakerQuaker discussion list.  I was putting a lot of eggs in that basket, and shouldering some of the costs.

However the domain name behind the site has been parked with GoDaddy and the security certificate is now invalid.  Chrome complains bitterly when I want to go there.

Today I deleted several videos from the site, that also appear on Youtube.  I'm just getting into practice.  I may be deleting a lot more.

In the meantime, I've had a good ride, enjoyed the site, and am grateful for the valuable service, worth it to me at the time.

Addendum:  funny watching The Atlantic make Russiagate sausage right before I eyes.  I sent 'em a note about it, saying I was mocking this article on Facebook.

Planet of the Humans

I started watching this right about the end of Earth Day 2020, near midnight in my Asylum District zip code.

The thesis is sort of:

We the innocents, the sheeple, the dupes, have been led by our corporate masters to bow down before faux green-washed altars to our own virtue, as planet saviors, while behind behind the curtain, they're using a diesel generator.  

Like picture an Earth Day sound stage, that they tell you is all solar and wind powered, all brought to you by renewables, but then actually they're burning wood chips, because forests are green aren't they?  And renewable (they grow back).  Either wood chips or natural gas, the latest craze (cleaner than coal if you don't mind fracking).

Meanwhile, solar and wind are hardly a panacea, as we don't have enough storage capacity to level off peak demand.

We don't talk about any smart house solutions with the battery on the client side (if you've got wind, charge your own batteries).

Either way, the battery making process is ugly and takes lots of fossil fuel.

The imagery is designed to frighten and dismay its audience with evidence of its huge carbon footprint, as it's called, and we go back to something between overpopulation as the problem, and people living in gross, ostentatious ways, people that look pretty much like us.

Nothing new there, the rhetoric since the 1970s at least.  A lot of the doomsayers didn't expect us to reach 2020 in fact.

We're really going to have to stop driving so much as commuters, and take a hard look at where the energy is going to come from.  Even an electric car is not a soul saver.

As someone who enjoys mega-projects and large scale engineering, I'm not especially dismayed by all that dismaying footage, but of course the highest technology in the picture is always nature's.  We humans are hers, after all.

Destroying nature's technology to make way for more technology doesn't always look that smart if we're serious about investment banking (science fiction, screenwriting).  We know how it is with  those humans: you can't trust 'em to do what's right, because they're greedy little buggers who like to dress up and drive fancy cars.

Even Al Gore, and that 350 guy, got greedy and sold us out.  They all sell out.

Damn them.  Damn us.

The Planet of the Apes ending, where we regret our stupid ways, is likewise sadly tragic.  We've really made monkeys of ourselves.

I look at that Planet of the Apes imagery myself in School of Tomorrow, and think "we are devo" in a lot of ways (overspecialized and so on). As Bucky liked to say:  Darwin got it backwards.

via GIPHY

FNB World (Food Not Bombs)

You'll find lots about FNB in these Quaker journals of mine, as I participated as a food hauler, with bicycle and one or two trailers, and as a cook. Later, as a vet, I'd just show up and eat, chatting with some from the old cast (e.g. Satya) while meeting newcomers.

Now that we're practicing new distancing rules and so on, I'm guessing the online manuals, the basis for the organization, are out of date.  Whether the continuing momentum (inertia) goes forward with the same name or not is a matter of semantics I suppose.  Perhaps some manuals have been updated.

I just unfroze some tofu from my last FNB meet up, pre isolation protocol, and although I was skeptical of its texture, Leela (aka Lindsey in former chapters) texted it was pretty OK this way.  I just fried some up and added like some soy sauce (I think that's what it is, unlabeled), and hey, it soaks stuff up nicely, like bread.

I'll be done with my frozen burritos shortly.  I munched on one of those on camera (see Youtube channel) awhile back, sounding a little sorry for myself because no one wanted to join me in my Geometry World (like Minecraft in some ways).

But these are actually pretty good burritos, even if unfrozen.

Rescuing the Concentric Hierarchy

beacon

A question from a reader was "what good is the concentric hierarchy beyond being like a pretty picture?" referring of course to the Bucky Fuller geometry I yak about a lot.

What if it is just a "pretty picture" meaning a sub-language featuring Platonics, their combinations and duals, with translated "volume" and "area" concepts to equivalents computed slightly differently?

By "sub-language" I mean a subclass of language semi-intelligible to other non-native speakers. Mathematics would be a set of many such sub-languages, but so would be various shoptalks and philosophies that may contain maths, but aren't themselves purely maths.

Synergetics is one such sub-class language, one of those philosophies that contains a geometric framework, namely said concentric hierarchy with a rhombic dodecahedron of volume six and so forth.  The pretty picture.

Should we teach a philosophy containing a pretty picture?  Is that a question about moral imperatives?  Is this an "ought" question?

Perhaps it's more like a question to tour guides.  We discover this abandoned old section of the museum and wonder if we should open it to the public.

The incentive to open might be to bring in more foot traffic, but what if that's not really a goal?  One assumes a museum has a sense of self preservation, but "museum" might not be the right model.

I suppose the counter-question is:  what have we got to lose in teaching it, given it goes down smoothly for the most part and needn't take a huge amount of time?  Why not swallow the pill, if it does no harm?

That's probably the question then.  We're still trying to judge harm.  Or is it that we've swallowed the pill already, and now are finding some of our practices coming under a different kind of scrutiny?  The ordeal of morphing to adapt to the cosmos is not one Synergetics begets, so much as anticipates.

I think if we'd swallowed the pill already, we'd see more symptoms, such as more Youtube clips featuring said concentric hierarchy.  The evidence is more that a tiny subculture keeps the sub-language alive, like one of those native or indigenous languages on the verge of extinction.

Be that as it may, the question remains:  should the anthropology or sociology museum allow or encourage tourism in this area?  Or maybe it's an art museum?  Does the concentric hierarchy constitute art?  We asked the same questions around Flextegrity.  That Tensegrity is art, and widely excepted as such, is encouraging.

I'm thinking Synergetics, and the pretty picture it contains, "hangs by a thread" and that thread is Tensegrity.

Given the art world has accepted the latter, there's a good chance it will accept the former, in due time.  In fact we've seen signs of that already, in exhibits subsequent to the publication of Synergetics, including notably Lattice Gallery in Portland, Oregon, October - December on SE Broadway.

But also at the Whitney in New York, and the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (2009).

Citizen Diplomacy

I suppose the idea of "global citizen" sounds hokey as it never had any legal meaning, even if the UN Declaration of Human Rights underlined the self evident:  that human beings matter above and beyond the hokey melodramas they're made to star in.  They're a phenomenon of Nature, it sounds silly to point out, I realize.  We trash Nature, and are taught to laugh about it.

Anyway, enough moralizing. The point here is that of course a diplomatic crew, by job description, is acquiring and communicating intelligence about the terrain it traverses, in service of T4P and whatever sponsoring commercial carrier.  Nothing to stigmatize here, or get upset about.  There's no point screaming "espionage" when you're simply doing what everyone expects of you.

Gathering intelligence is a part of your business and way of adding value, which doesn't mean you just wander off over private property trying to ferret out secrets.  You become privy by being invited, and by proving trustworthy with the information (which sometimes means sharing it, perhaps without attribution to an original source, per the journalistic code of ethics).

Prowling around in the ambassador's office after hours, with a flashlight, is more private detective work than diplomatic. We need not confuse roles.  Not that diplomats can't be sneaky, or good at prying loose clues.  However our truckers have to get on to the next check point or place of business.  The analytical picture will develop from multiple reports.

The diplomat is familiar with "official channels" which is where the official truck stops come in. You'll have approved ways to be on panels, give talks.  If you've got a pet peeve, expect a track for that, if only the hallway track and ad hoc interest rooms.  Geeks bring their "unconferencing skills" to the table (thinking Barcamps, OS Bridge and so on).

Yes, there is government presence.  Why wouldn't there be?

Consistency and safety checks happen.

These are not "anything goes" hubs (these rucker havens, these asylum cities) of no discipline.  On the contrary, keeping a busy world hub going, with truckers coming and going, requires a tight ship to some extent. Think of a well run airport (PDX comes to mind).

That's not to say R&R is out of bounds either.  Even tight ships may have their cinemas and swimming pools.  Counter-culture cultures abound.  Diversity happens.  The cosmos is cosmopolitan. Truck stops may have dance and theater, in many languages.

For those just joining us, the year is 2030, lets say, and truckers have become accustomed to freelancing on a global basis, which doesn't mean without loyalties.  You may be your own business and still have a preferred list of customers, or a list of "goods" you would like to not be complicit in handling, plus you're not for being deceived.

Some drivers, let's say the better ones, won't transport poached animal products on principle and even advertise this fact.

At the core of our Global Trucking Network (GTN) is the network of Truck Stop Hubs (TSHs), which have evolved quite a bit from their early days along the Federal freeways (the I-system) of North America.

Those freeways still require a lot of maintenance, even with the "zombie truck" fleets (what we've also called "driverless") but then so are trains (e.g. subways) often robotic and just as intermodal.

Global University talk is a jargon and paints us all as students and faculty, we know that.  Long ago, specialization took specific forms, such as in Victorian England.  Some people were aristocratic and tea-cuppy, while others did so-called "dirty jobs" that needed doing, amidst many that were largely unnecessary.

Trucking stayed necessary, even unto the Era of Extreme Automation (people argue on when that started).  The class associations that used to set off university people as distinct from truckers, didn't survive the transition to a next century.

In addition to performing as students and faculty, we engage in maintenance, admin, janitorial and security.  Thanks to work-study, all jobs are part of some academic program or other.  You may certify as a black belt in some, a newbie in others.

The Quakers thought a lot in terms of nominations and rotating duties.  Your community would provide you with opportunities to become well-rounded, an investment in pooled abilities.

In that spirit, I've been focusing on trucking as a citizen diplomat activity.   You'll find some of my writings on Medium.

Yakking About Curriculum Matters

My impression is IB math (EU curriculum) is more likely to feature 3D vectors with rotation matrices i.e. stays geometric longer.

The YouEssIans (USians) go for that "geometry sandwich" with two slices of Algebra for bread. David DiNucci showed me an article about that.

The meat (10th grade geometry it's often called) is very thin, in the sense of planar. Mr. Euclid is milked for his proof of the proof concept, and meanwhile we're not "wasting time" with 3D printing or CAD renderings.

A lot of people are getting nervous about Shop and real tool use. Weren't schools supposed to teach about trades too? That's where a more hands-on geometry with SQL practice, in storing and retrieving the vectors, face topology, might help.

Milo Gardner suggests the big chunk of Euclid traces to political agendas to suppress all things German. Gauss and Number Theory needed less airtime. However along this same "lambda calc" track that'd feature SQL and real tool use, we'd put more about crypto. Number Theory is back on the front burner, along with Fermat's Little Theorem and Carmichael Numbers.

The Climate Change "Hoax"

"Climate change" is a hoax not because the climate isn't changing. Planet Earth has been completely transformed by its human inhabitants.  That's obvious.

Look at all the new, exotic radioactive elements in the environment, the plastics, the changed gas mix, the cities, the dammed rivers, space junk, the landfills.  Look at the sheer volumetric weight of human beings as a species.

Still not as much mass as termites, all told?  Add the weight of the buildings, the pavement.  Of course the planet has changed, and continues to change, thanks to human activity.

The hoax part inheres in singling out one parameter, such as global average temperature, and/or the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and pretending that's the one variable that matters, when it comes to talking about this isolated "climate" concept.

Were we to talk about the "biosphere" instead, there'd be no argument.  But "climate" is something narrow, relating to ozone, ice ages and greenhouse gases.

Even though it's obvious that human activity continues to change the biosphere, debates rage, because we're fixated on global sea levels.  The number of species may be plummeting, the Amazon jungle dwindling, but if sea levels stay the same, well then climate change must be an illusion.  Ridiculous no?

I'm not that trusting of a "climate science" that tries to carve out a narrow niche and reduce itself to merely academic debates. 

We're just minutes away from a nuclear holocaust, on any given day, but somehow that's not the business of climate scientists.  Even though a nuclear holocaust would grossly alter our life support systems aboard Spaceship Earth.

A climate science that's not about preventing nuclear war, is not a serious science at all.

American Heritage (MATH)

I tip my hat to the Yang campaign (impressive) at the end of my talk.

Note to self: timeline slightly backward, as the Bucky Symposium at GWU was before the Python conference (Pycon).

I did get to visit with Ed -- including in Georgetown, and take that picture in my blog post: Ayatollah of the Tetrahedron -- but I had to bow out of the ensuing Python conference (Pycon) where I'd been scheduled to talk (on hypertoons).

Ed and I had planned a next dinner, but that one I had to miss. Dawn had just received her diagnosis.

Asylum District Lore

SuperBowl Sunday

I don't know if SuperBowl is really CamelCase, but as a Geek it makes sense to capitalize in that way. We have our ethnic idiosyncrasies too, after all.

I wasn't really expecting to catch the Super Bowl, in that I hadn't scheduled it, but on the other hand I'm a regular at a certain Asylum District "krobar" (a generic for me, Cork & Tap is the legal name) and the game was already in the thrilling 4th quarter.  Kansas City was down, and our dinosaur-friendly bartender is from there.  When they came back to win it, she was ecstatic, which was fun to witness.

Glenn was there to my right.  Dr. D. was on vacation from what we call HH, although that could mean HopHouse (nearby) and HH is all day when the krobar is open.  Cross-eyed crossword puzzling?  Crypticism creeps into American Lit through other sources besides me I'd hazard.

Speaking of "hazard", the Daisy Duke in Dukes of Hazard should not be confused with Patty Duke, who married "Gomez" in The Addams Family.  Patty Duke was a celebrity on the HDTV on an earlier evening, where old game shows are a staple when the SuperBowl isn't showing.  The other screen is always sports.

Then you might think of Daisy Mae, funny how these may all blend together.  Americans' "hillbilly" archetype is a part of the infusion.  I'm not planning to offer any exhaustive treatment here.

Daisy Dukes (safe search setting on, DuckDuckGo) were a type of cut-off popular with some "guys" (gender neutral), a fashion statement.

That's right, we analyze popular culture a lot, as we sip our various brews.

This time, on SuperBowl Sunday, I decided to stick with three consecutive 10 oz. ciders, a blood orange (blew the keg), the replacement peach-raspberry (tint of Vicks candy), and the a sour raspberry, which is really a beer but with cidery overtones.  I was one of the last to cash out.

Today on the day job (OCN) I'm able to apply Miller-Rabin (not a beer) to the problem of filtering out what aren't Mersenne Primes. School of Tomorrow is showing off again, trying to recruit high schoolers into an alternative PWS (home-schooling environment).