Diagrams

Achieving Escape Velocity

This was a period for doing curriculum development around Quadray Coordinates especially, as that meme had caught on and implementations were spreading, from my angle both inside, and outside, the scope of our QuadCraft project. 

QuadCraft had the tagline "A World Beyond MineCraft" or something like that, connoting our escape from rigidly rectilinear thinking. The TEXIT campaign (with variations) goes under this same heading.

Cloud Adventures

I filed a schedule C this year. If you’re new to the IRS tax code, this means I’m running a business, a teaching business in my case, a for profit, meaning I have to keep track of losses (expenses), otherwise how do we see if there’s a profit or not. You can take in a big amount, but what if you pass it all through, and then some, to subcontractors or PR folks of whatever variety? Stuff like that.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, electronic banking simplifies matters, as we no longer rely on a lot of hand-kept records, taught as part of check book 101 in the heyday of paper banking. Now you just download the PDFs or, better CSV files from your pay point (some transactions server, like PayPal), meaning whatever account (I just set up Swipe like a few days back) and there you’ve got all your transactions for the year. 

At this point, many would import the CSV into a spreadsheet, much the same as what I use: a Python DataFrame from pandas.

Anyway, to “cut to the chase” (I should ask Perplexity where that idiom comes from) I tallied up cloud expenses for keeping data in the cloud, and part of my harvesting that data involved using said cloud, at which point I realized my banking files where only in the cloud and I’d need to mirror them back to the local drive, not an immediate process. I was separated from my own banking files by a time delay and mucho geographic distance. Kinda dumb. How do I make sure I have a local copy?

Well, one thing led to another and I know have a 17.5 gigabyte file downloaded to Old Mac, the youngest of my Macs. I’m awaiting a next beefy box, able to run Blender no problem, a focus of Spring Term. However it’s not super important that I be buff with Blender as I’m surfing the ripple effects of having already done the necessary renderings starting in Visual FoxPro times, before shifting the more long term rails (investments) in Python.

An issue is I don’t have 17.5 gig to spare in Old Mac’s long term storage, so the target device of this download is actually an inserted memory stick (thumb drive) connected to Old Mac through its USB port (not USB-C, the older shape).

Big footprints in the cloud (and yes “big” is relative) can’t be shifted around willy-nilly like potato chips (lightweight matter), kinda like some forms of “money” (investments), which can’t always be liquid either. 

The cloud service in question took some days rolling up a zip file with all my stuff in it (the 17.5 gigabyte file I was talking about). Clearly my request went to a queue and needed to wait its turn. I’m not the only one wanting to back up what’s in the cloud with something more local to the scene in question. Cloud services might get cut off for various reasons having to do with internet connectivity.

One may curse and shout about the delay involved (that wasn’t me, I’m just projecting) but in “tree world” (talking about real physical trees) we don’t expect to transplant a particular specimen at the drop of a hat.

Deep excavation and even a crane may be required. The process could take not just days, but a week or two (I’m not the expert — I bet they even use helicopters on occasion). 

Laws of physics (they call ‘em laws) have relevance in engineering. It’s not all about “vendor lock in” and making money.  It’s about figuring out a business plan that doesn’t require “leaps of faith” of the kind the underlying physics simply won’t allow. One may express cynicism about a human design, but how is one “cynical” about Jupiter (for example) or even Saturn with the stupid hexagon? Calling Saturn’s hexagon “stupid” just sounds stupid, right?

It’s not a human-devised system all the way down, let’s remember. Which isn’t saying anything crazy. We’re just remembering humans are johnny-come-latelies to this picture, and aren’t exempt or miraculously excepted from following (“obeying”) those generalized principles (“laws”).

Martian Math

The Martian Math moniker is multi-layered. In the full blown science fiction tale I tell, Earthling kids are being trained in ET math, but the ETs are here, not on Mars, and they want to learn from us about hydroelectric dams, whereas Earthlings have a lot to learn from them, so a 2-way street is posited. Let's build a dam together; a jumping off point into electromagnetics topics.

Synergetics is more coming from the ETs than from the Earthlings; ergo Synergetics seems alien, strange, weird (pedagogical positives when managed properly). The Earthling kids in our Martian Math class also learn how the ET kids learn Earthling math. TetraBook goes here. Tested at Reed College and other places around town c/o Saturday Academy.

And once we’re in the mood (mode) for science fiction: War of the Worlds and the Orson Welles reading thereof are important, as a fork to both H.G. Wells and his non-fiction (world between wars) as well as fiction (Time Machine), and to Orson Welles going forward into Film Studies (Media Studies). That War of the Worlds anticipates the virus (as yet unknown) in some dimensions (see web pages) is a jumping off point into biology, virology, crystallography, STEM in general.

Finally, Martian Math may be contextualized in its Silicon Forest context as one of four maths: Casino, Supermarket, Martian, Neolithic. The idea here is Martian is forward-facing futuristic (all the future), Neolithic faces back in the direction of prehistory (all the past), Casino covers risk and chance, probability and Supermarket is all about logistics, commerce and distribution. 

Martian - Neolithic is a time arc, whereas every age, every time slice (every now), has to compute in terms of possibilities, probabilities, and operate logistically using inventory (the BE DO HAVE of GST).

However it’s all supposed to stay flexible and optional. There’s no one right way, but when I do it I experiment and expand in specific directions, as would anyone.

Looking Ahead

The above was a quick sketch I then shared on Telegram in a faculty lounge context, while at the same time adding a record to Photostream; my usual workflow. The meme is an old one in these journals and elsewhere: General Systems Theory as competition for Economics as conventionally imparted. Once you change Econ enough, it starts to look a lot like GST, so lets agree these labels, as in what they mean, is malleable.

In GST, we’re not bound by some theory that humans are somehow the source of all economic value, as in value added, as if nature’s bounty were somehow off the books or unaccounted for. Likewise we value free software and its role as a serious good, hacked on by a few, of benefit to a few million or more.

What I expect some teachers will do is similar to what I do: mix in a lot of David Graeber’s stuff, such as Debt: the First 5000 Years.

A lot of explorers (wanderers by choice) come to our corner because they are looking for geopolitics, some flavor of language game that’s world focused. Fuller was known for his global map and his geoscopes, in addition to the spheres and domes, which were of course related. The corporate schools never wanted to touch the stuff, and so here we are.

As a boomer… except there seems to be some movement to carve out a Generation Jones, not saying I get it, as if the other generational boundaries weren’t likewise blurry? (how much is superstition vs sound anthropology?) …in any case, atop my being a Joneser, I’m one of those “third culture” expat types by upbringing, even if I’m back in the homeland by now (and have been for decades)… As a boomer I’m atypical in having picked up the GST banner, which most my cronies here left to languish (ditto Cybernetics).

You’ll find David Graeber in the School of Tomorrow orientation materials on GitHub, in case you’re still looking for a place to get started.

The Alto Knights (movie review)

I picked this out almost at random it seemed, though the MMU angel might’ve been guiding my hand to stay within the noir lineage somehow. I was in the mood for something in New Releases and paid an extra dollar for that privilege. We rented Scarlett Pimpernel at the same time.

Robert De Niro plays both gangster principals, friends turned enemies, meaning he appears playing against himself in several scenes, in ways film allows but not live theater. You’re not meant to be thinking “special effect”; you’re expected to forget entirely there’s just the one actor behind both characters. Dave looked it up later to confirm. We went in no realizing this was going to happen.

What I found interesting in terms of timeline is the events were right around the time of my birth, late 50s, early 60s (in the 1900s). I remember those car makes and models were indeed prevalent on the road back then, although these memories are dim, plus cars evolved quickly in terms of shape and size, and even underlying technology to some degree.

The idea that “everything changes” and yet some people find it hard to adapt, to let go of old patterns, as one of the two principals most clearly demonstrates. He has come back from hiding overseas to an entirely changed United States, New York City in particular, and he expects to pick up where he left off, in his own mind, as supreme leader of the underground crime scene.

The friend who returns to New York, from hiding out, is the hot head version of De Niro. The friend to whom he left the racket pre WW2, to manage in the meantime, has done so quite successfully, per the consensus of other crime bosses. Costello is the relatively cool-headed De Niro, who most anchors this drama. He’s the one who get shot in the opening moments, put somehow lives (inconvenient).

One of the funnest parts was on the drive to upstate NY, seeing the signs for Palmyra. The hot head gets into an argument with the driver, against whom he holds a grudge, about whether the Mormons really got started in Palmyra. The driver is correct in thinking they did, but given he’s already botched the murder of the other principal he was tasked with by this one, his boss on the backseat starts to physically attack him, causing the car to swerve a bit. A third passenger tries to restore equilibrium as a moderating influence.

The film is meant to be anthropological as well as historical. We’re exploring an ethnicity, and how it operates, albeit highly dysfunctionally. 

Education vs Research

Education vs Research:  this distinction came up in our Knowledge Engineering meetup this morning. Research advances the frontier of a discipline, or call it a subculture. Education is about catching people up, getting them to the frontier in the first place. 

Not that getting to the front has to be a long trip. Low hanging fruit in abundance is a characteristic of many of budding ecosystem. But then you want to be sufficiently trained when you get there.

And that’s the pitfall:  in the mad dash for fame and glory, for one’s original research, the commitment to teach, to educate, and thereby pass the torch, gets overlooked. How many are willing to forego mining for gold in order to teach mining?

In my First Person Physics endeavor, which gained me entry to the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), I got to know some of these education-focused pros, such as Dr. Bob Fuller, who considered Dr. Robert Karplus to be one of his mentors.

Princeton University is supposed to focus on Education over Research in being more about giving undergrads a fast track vs trying to make a name for oneself by heading a pack of grads and postdocs. 

Celebrating a Centennial

I know most of the entertainment channels plan to focus on the 250th, a nice round number, counting up from 1776, but as I'm telling my peer planners, that's not my gig. The Times Square ball has already been programmed. That's big corporate account PR stuff outside of my price range or market. However, Route 66 is in my ballpark or bailiwick or whatever we call it (arena?).

The “desert highway” trope is important, such as in my introduction to the “vane” in various lesson plans, where one might picture a rusted windmill, and say a gas station. Then came the rhyme with 1.06066… which was like a puzzle piece fitting in (Wittgenstein: to what?).

I’m not suggesting Route 66 itself is in Cascadia at any point, and yet as memes they share that property, of being memes, not official, off the grid in a sense. Route 66 was officially decommissioned in one corpus, but resurrected in another. This kind of stuff happens in anthropology. It goes the other way too: something alive and with agency in one subculture, will be seen as innocent of any agency in another.

Remote Base Designs

So it’s Curry Week in Portland. I should explain. We have this “food of the week” tradition, that doesn’t map to every week, in which eateries voluntarily sign up to offer said food in the form of a “special” of some advertised amount, say $10.

My peer group tends to take these weeks semi-seriously in that we’ll go out of way to plan a stop at this or that restaurant or food truck or pub or whatever, that is showing up on the maps. Social media plays a big role obviously. In my neighborhood, food trucks abound and today I have two on my list, meaning I’ll be flipping a coin (so to speak) at some point.

Speaking of coin flipping, as you might know if a connoisseur of my curated content (these blogs), my statistics and probability vane (think of a windmill) goes by Casino Math, a search term herein and elsewhere in my writings, where a certain Digital Math of the Silicon Forest is featured. Is Wikieducator still working? We were getting indications it was taking on water.

Casino Math is meant to highlight both the history of the social sciences, and the physical sciences as an offshoot (contrary to stereotypes), and the fact that the institution we know as “the casino” (minus aberrational examples such as on Catalina Island (no gambling)) is a concentrated example of what we know about “odds” as well as human psychology (they go together — predicting human behavior is an art, true, but also a science).

I wonder if I’ll be able to wire my Visa card to my bitcoin wallet at some point. Use the card mechanism but backend it into whatever store of value you’re able to make fungible in the moment. Best to have a buffer in hard currency with a backend able to take more time, as bitcoin sometimes required, especially with mining costs what they are.

Yes, money talk is Casino Math in a lotta ways, but also Supermarket Math. So now you’re wondering about Neolithic and Martian Maths, as the two remaining. Of course we’re free to look at “money” through all four lenses, with Neolithic reminding us of how “kind” and “currency” might overlap, in the form of promised cows (bovines), redeemable thanks to IOUs issued in their stead. With the sovereign’s picture. A man of his word? A hard currency would suggest yes.

What about on Mars, will we use money? Did they need money on the starship Enterprise in the TV show? 

I don’t really see these as the questions to be asking, at least not of me. I wouldn’t know. More to the point is what will “money” mean when we’ve had some centuries of experience using crypto?

When I hand over my Visa (or swipe it myself actually — most food trucks don’t need to even touch the card), I imagine paying in something worth burritos, or curried chicken wings, or… you name it. Once in the catalog as a priceable item, you’re in the world of “frequencies” (how rare a thing is). Statistics is all about the relative frequencies of various types of event. Lookup the etymology of “fluke” as in “unlikely thing happening”.

We have these plans for “glamping” campuses in extreme remoteness, meaning the airplane or helicopter doesn’t come every day, more like a base camp, as in mountain climbing, but without presuming that specific climate. Some base camps are too high for planes or helicopters anyway. So maybe one needs to hike in. The circuitry is based on “food trucks” which are like the animal branded lodges of old, with extended families and exogenous relationships.

In our diagrams, we have stratification based on length of stay, planned or actual. Some faculty or staff are full timers and stay during off season, when the tourists have left, but with more to come. In Las Vegas terms, you need the locals to offset the peak and valley rollercoaster of feast or famine. At the height of tourist season, the locals have work. When visitors taper off, they get more of a playground, given they know the ropes already.

Revisiting Grunch of Giants

What killed the USA as we knew it was the Supreme Court legislating that money is speech and corporations are people. At that point, AI (phony intelligence) took over. If there’s such a thing as human intelligence that’s not just AI, we still have a chance of pulling out of this tailspin. But I doubt we’ll have nations as we know them today. Too impractical. I’m glad the US led the way, in celebrating its own demise amongst a small circle who actually get it, what’s going on. Most people are clueless, which has always been a challenge where democracy is concerned.

Interpenetrating diaspora nations, people of all nations mingling, touring, basing bases… that’s the reality on the ground, not pens with fences around them, although that’s the logical conclusion of the nation state mentality, quite psychotic, good thing the boomers won’t be with us forever (present company included).

I wasn’t suggesting the GOP intentionally instigated the USA’s demise. I’m alluding to a long history during which the Supreme Court went along with the railroaders, expanding the upgrading of slaves to full humans per 14th amendment (still not with voting rights in practice) to include promoting corporations to full personhood (still limited liability, still monsters) by the “same” reasoning / rationale. That all happened a long time ago, post Civil War. 

Then you have Citizens United opening all the power chairs to Corporations (dead, soulless, artificial beings with no conscience or consciousness — AI in other words — with superpowers endowed by law). That Business Plot (echoing the earlier failed attempt, frustrated by Smedley Butler) was completed by the 1980s and ever since it has been downhill for the vast majority, as silly humans fail to compute the consequences of their own actions. 

Like of course the nation-state system would never survive a corporate takeover. A takeover is a takeover. You live in the private sector today. There is no public sector to speak of, only a fake one. If you want to rebuild a public sector, go ahead, is what I’d advise and encourage people to do. But in the meantime, I don’t see anything but oligarchy, around the world. City-states. Nations are for children to believe in, like Santa Claus. I’m not being cynical. I’m OK with nations gone. I don’t have any religious conviction that any of them are still real.