Power Lunch

I am grateful for my friendships. I learn a lot from them.

Thanks to Ron, I'm now downloading Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade files on Sun's VirtualBox, newly installed as a guest operating system under Win7. The laptop is to my left, connected by ethernet on my home office subnet. I'm staring at Old Faded, my refurbished monitor (less frills than even at Free Geek around here some days (Ron and I used to work there together)).

This has been finals week for my daughter. She's off with her friends celebrating that it's over, in the neighborhood.

I thought Lionel's latest contributions with the Wikipedia page were substantive. Koski thinks we've done a professional job. Everything CJ Fearnley added is still in the mix, along with my earlier edits. I'm not thinking so much in terms of a "fork" as a "merge" at this point.

I'm scanning the horizons for breakthroughs, thought this virtual convergence of math teachers looked promising. Real work happens through cyberspace, even if we don't get to move in to our virtual classrooms. We still need to feed, shelter and clothe ourselves. Education Automation (an old title, not unlike Skinner's Walden 2 in some respects) requires logistics on the ground.

Recapping Some Threads

I brewed up a tempest in a teapot last year, on both math-teach and math-thinking-l, focusing a lot of attention on what I was calling a "digital math" (DM).

Then I'd wonder somewhat wryly if we were really up to implementing such changes in "the lower 48", implying Alaska and Hawaii might be leading the pack in this regard.

I also campaigned for using more electronic media in place of wood pulp textbooks, as more environmentally friendly and easier to correct (update, fix, otherwise improve).

Well, I certainly got some feedback, and I've needed to revise my approach.

For one thing, "digital math" is just not conservative enough for most teachers. "Discrete math" sounds dry as bones maybe, but at least it's a recognized topic.

I filed an update to math-teach earlier today, with a note to PSF members just to let them know I'd mentioned Python Software Foundation in passing.

My little media campaigns aren't widely reported on or repeated in any case, so chances are none of this was on your radar (dear reader) unless you've been tracking these blogs for some reason, or dove in through Twitter or Facebook.

Getting more computer-savvy math courses, both inside and outside the 50 star states, remains on the agenda for lots of groups of course.

A goal is to reach out through teachers to a lot of underprivileged, not make this just be about elite schools pulling even further ahead.

Experimentation and innovation is the name of the game. Will we be able to engender the right spirit? What gets people in the mood to try new approaches?

What sponsors want to step up to the plate, put their brands on the line? Is this really about the government doing everything, while private industry kibitzes from the sidelines?

Anyone with semi-romantic ideas about capitalism should be arguing otherwise no? Industry leaders are wanted and needed on this one, both domestically and overseas.

Forging Ahead

:: 61-axes by vorthmann & hart ::

The Wikipedia project has been going OK (SNEC helping). I did some editing from Laughing Horse Books last night, after accompanying the collective on a recon mission under some bridges: the camp near Mercy Corps had been swept recently -- means the police had cracked down. Dignity Village and most shelters are full (need some new ones?). Met up with a church team from Tanasbourne, compared notes.

More editing today from Urban Grind. Then back to the Flextegrity workstation, keeping on keeping on.

Koski and I have both been focusing on great circle networks. He's got zonohedra and zero volume hexahedra to think about, some Pascal's Triangle rule.

I've been revisiting Fuller's trying to superimpose his A module's plane net onto his 120 LCD triangles, a result of spinning the icosahedron around its 31 axes.

David writes:

"Fuller states two possible icosahedra from the VE so 2*31 axis = 62. The whole enantiomorphic thing. Then adds the 25 great circles getting 87, but it is noted that the 3 and 4 axis of the VE are redundant, the three is part of the 15 axis and the 4 is part of the 10 axis in the five fold. Since he had doubled the 31 great circles he reduces the 87 by 14 to get 73; (3+4)*2 =14."

He's referring to this well-known figure (in geometer circles): Fig. 1132.01B.

More threading going on edu-sig, debating ghost policies regarding whether math teacher trainings through community colleges should be "objects first" or not. In Japan maybe? Intel says it's releasing funds, but money for STEM is like black ops sometimes. Where did it all go?

Like how many young women are getting some digital math in their schools, thanks to any kind of stimulus, public or private? Give us a breakdown by zip code area, thanks in advance.

Wanderers 2010.1.9

We're going around the table introducing ourselves. Our guests are from Borneo. Adrian Lasimbang from near Kota Kinabalu and John Paisley. Here's John's thumbnail autobio:

BSEE '87, came to Portland that year to work in test and measurement at Tektronix which lasted for 5 years when I discovered I'm terminally self-employed and went back into residential construction. Presently owner/president of John Paisley, Builder, Inc. I've worked with The Borneo Project since '95 protecting indigenous peoples' land rights from timber, mining, and other extractive interests, through projects such as community mapping, longhouse construction, village scale microhydro, solar-powered, satellite-linked internet at remote villages, and preschools for Penan (an exceptional group of hunter-gatherer nomads).

We have a therapist and zoo guide visiting with us tonight. She knows about orangutans, which is what took her to Borneo last year. She and I have chatted before, during the Appreciative Inquiry seminar.

I made a quick trip to Frys this morning. The Win7 laptop had a loud and vibrating CD/DVD drive, but seemed to work, until I pushed it to a limit, in trying to read an Ubuntu 9.10 iso. It burned OK, but would not read it, even though my desktops would. Frys graciously exchanged it. That's good, as this is a work machine. The 150 GB backup device came in handy.

Patrick and I were looking at Beautiful Soup at Angelo's this evening. This cool guy engaged us in talking about gauges versus metric. Turns out he's a glass blower and has this cool Youtube about trying to "blow lava" (as if it were glass, which it sort of is -- Pele's in this instance).

Small villages in Borneo, using micro-hydro for power, do manage to gain Internet access in some cases. Bringing in trainers helps minimize the negative effects of future shock. The communities retain control over their own adaptation process and that proves a more satisfying and sustainable process. Kids don't need to trek off to school, learn right there in the village -- a valuable development.

Coffee Shop Meetings

Regarding TT (teacher training), I diagrammed a workflow, pretty primitive, while waiting for Rami, an MVP Oregonian ramping up around Django.

This is all based on old news though (from last summer), mixed with a little recent email. Were I a journalist, I'd probably be called into the editor's office, to be asked if there's really a "there" there.

Django is a content management system (CMS) that allows developers to build more full featured web platforms, such as ThinkSpace.

Django is written in Python and provides a free and open source library of tools one needs for talking to databases and presenting well styled web pages to the user. You also get session management, user authentication, an admin back end.

These tools come as a tightly integrated Python package (in site-packages) and work right out of the box. The rest is your own secret sauce.

In a separate meeting at Starbucks, I learned about the Red Card, while explaining my philanthropic gaming idea, basically a "U drive" lottery system, with shop patrons taking credit for their donations to charities. You'd need the right banks to accept the incoming funds and convert them to EFTs as a service.

Speaking of coffee shops, I was in Lyrik again this morning, hobnobbing with Joe about Flextegrity again. We pulled up the folder and rolled through some slides. Last night was a grand opening for some new pieces, several of which sold.

If I stick with photography, then the story comes to you, perhaps in far away Japan. It's not either/or though. Local venues make sense. Lindsey is always strong-arming people towards Muddy's, which I appreciate. Aimee and I are thinking of going there next time.

I was glad to see Allison Randal is getting nominated to the PSF Board. +1.

Message Traffic

The catastrophic events in Haiti have galvanized AFSC into action. I was encouraged by the quality of the email, complete with embedded article, pictures, and donate button, signed by the executive director. This went to various e-lists, was forwarded into the mix. Lots of scam artists have gotten into the act as well. Plus no amount of money is any substitute for real logistics on the ground.

Would these hexayurts help? We'd need a new kind of reality TV to find out maybe.

Yes, another Sleeping Bag Fundraiser is in the works through Laughing Horse Books. Musicians from Portland's legendary scene are focusing attention on human misery here in Portland. Lindsey Walker is planning an all acoustic event (not amplified) at our meetinghouse on March 3, in collaboration with Elizabeth Fischer, our Program Committee clerk. The money is handled transparently. Our musicians aren't getting paid, they're getting exposure as committed and caring for their community.

Good seeing Jeff at Alberta Street Pub, the night of that Spanish language class at Laughing Horse Books (moved over from Liberty Hall). He's a Wanderer with training in international business, including in China.

Other stories I've been tracking: the one about John McLaughlin doing stuff (op-ed) behind the scenes (I recall his making an appearance earlier in my blogs); the one in Scientific American about shutting down the supply chain for all weapons-grade nuclear materials, a blanket ban.

Regarding compassionate engineers just doing the right thing, I think a lot of that goes on. The unsung heroes outnumber the sung, at least in some especially treacherous areas. Waiting for politicians to agree may result in life-threatening delays, dangerous meltdowns, loss of vital services.

Geodesic Domes with a Made in China label? That could be a business. Of course we have room for more than one player.

On the more prosaic side, I've been rave reviewing the 2nd edition of Litvin & Litvin, aka Mathematics for the Digital Age. I showed it to Jeff. I also showed it to Patrick. Rami said he's taken a look at the web site. Robert Hansen is even thinking of marketing angles, a breakthrough as he and I have had some heated arguments on math-teach.

The Wittgenstein list is pretty hot these days. I'll anchor to one of Sean's. Explore in this neighborhood if wanting some juicy posts on the Tractatus. You'll find me quoting a passage from The King of Infinite Space regarding Donald Coxeter's relationship with Wittgenstein. I'm also back to appreciating Henry Le Roy Finch and his book Wittgenstein: The Later Philosophy (Humanities Press, 1977).

So Donald Coxeter's scenario partially overlaps these two others I've studied intensively: Bucky Fuller's and Ludwig Wittgenstein's -- an interesting triangle.

Reality Checks

:: math meetups ::

At the checkout lane in People's Food Coop this evening, I came across The Big Ideas of 2010, the latest issue of Adbusters. The centerfold or double page spread towards the center, was all about mechanized bombing with "game changing" drones, as controlled from Nevada or other cubicles. The verbiage about the weapons seemed mindless and laudatory, the familiar cruel hype. The message of the spread seemed to be that war by these means might be continued indefinitely, if for no other reason than doing something else might be considered defeatist.

I was disturbed by this nightmarish article, especially because of its context. Here we were in a mostly organic, progressive, worker owned food coop, the kind of institution Portland prides itself in supporting. Why would the magazine rack include such psychopathic propaganda? Was our world imploding this quickly?

Lindsey was stocking up on supplies (grains, beans, onions, carrots), some of which will stay at Harrison Street, some of which might go to Duke's, where she's planning to get her food handler's license and whip up a southern vegan meal during the next "private undercover party" (one of our Ignite-like events). She didn't see the article but thought it might be tongue-in-cheek, a spoof. I wasn't so sure, was feeling disoriented.

At about this time, the Clerk of Oversight phoned me, aware that I was slogging through hell in some way. I'd been at the two hour committee meeting that afternoon, left a little early when Tara texted, saying she might be coming down with something. I ferried her home from a friend's on SE Clatsop. She'd been using the bus both ways, as I'm working to conserve fuel, and promote teen independence (as a high schooler, her student ID also counts as a bus pass). She's seeming better this morning, off to school on the bus again.

I'm hoping to get together with Friends and give more of a sense of my picture over here. Just keeping these journals is not the complete practice. We have clearness committees and stuff like that.

I've been in touch with Gary Litvins about Mathematics for The Digital Age and have an OSCON proposal in draft form wherein that book gets mentioned towards the end of the abstract. Here's what I've written:

Oregon teachers have plans to start field testing a new kind of mathematics course in 2010 that would count towards fulfilling the legally mandated three year minimum mathematics requirement for a high school diploma. Learn how the Python community has been supporting these efforts and how the open source community more generally is becoming involved.

Other developments such as poster sessions at Pycons, an upgraded turtle graphics library, new on-line resources and published titles, suggest future trends in education.

The appearance of Mathematics for the Digital Age and Programming in Python, by Maria and Gary Litvin may signal a sea change in high school level mathematics teaching, or perhaps it simply represents a confluence and positive synergy of many long term trends, including the bias towards teaching more discrete math topics at the high school level.

From a math teaching perspective, I think the Litvins text is a breakthrough. Students use it at Phillips Academy in Andover, considered one of the nation's top schools. I've been going on Math Forum asking for advice from my peers: if we wanted to spread a course more like this around Oregon, how would we do it?

The solution that seemed to be shaping up last August was to simply fire up the new course under the heading of discrete and/or digital math, per state standards. There's already a section in the standards for such material.

However the real question is where to find the teachers, when to equip them with the few additional skills needed to take some well-known and conservative content, and make it ready for the digital age. In the case of the Litvins text, that means learning some Python.

Would we field a small army of Python trainers then? That seems like a possible strategy, should funding become available. Or perhaps these teachers are simply learning Python on their own? Having been a high school teacher, I know there's a lot of pressure just to keep up with the existing schedule. Preparing to teach something new would mean time away from other duties and teachers on the front lines may not have that luxury, absent some institutional work flow.

I may be too out of the loop on this one. Should someone else give this talk then? Maybe this blog post will garner some feedback.

Exercise 8 in Chapter 10 (2nd edition) gets into V + F = E + 2, Euler's Law for Polyhedra. That's the kind of stuff I get into through my Oregon Curriculum Network web site, also very vested in Python. I've tended to use VPython, a 3rd party library, for my Saturday Academy classes, which makes it relatively easy to get colorful polyhedra on screen. I haven't done much with PyMol yet, another add-on our chemistry teachers might enjoy.

Having since checked that Adbusters web site, I think Lindsey is correct that I was reading a spoof. More like The Onion then? On the other hand, it just seemed too real. These drones are much worse than V-2s, plus are used against people with no air defenses to begin with (no RAF). Calling these remotely piloted know-nothing drones "weapons against blow back" is simply ridiculous, but then I could hear some faux counter-terrorism expert saying just such a thing, perhaps over a secure phone from some ski trip somewhere. Are these the same anonymous faux experts who disbelieve the NIE, think we should be bombing civilian power plants in Iran? Who put them in charge?

Once home, I focused on filling out an application form for a part time tutoring job. I wrote to Stu Quimby on Facebook, asking if I could use him as a reference. My work on a geometry toy is more relevant to math students than some of that database work for the outcomes research people at Providence Health System.

Getting a digital age math course option out to students will require innovation at the institutional level, the design of new roles, new work flows. As an army of one, all I might do is point in that positive direction and suggest this might be our ticket to a brighter tomorrow. I am quite aware that the Obama administration wants to get the focus back on education and jobs, not to mention health care. We might well have a bigger army here soon. On the other hand, innovation is a difficult process taking skilled managers. ONAMI was an inspiring, showed me that Oregonians still have that pioneering spirit.

Education in the digital age means using more viewers like Google Earth and Microsoft TerraServer. The news shows are already using those. TV has already improved in that sense.

My thanks to Carey Carlson for sending some philosophy PDFs, somewhat in the Russell-Whitehead lineage. Also thank you Tom Higgins for pointing me to Roger Ebert's blog. My prayers for John and Eve Talmadge, cousin Mary, Grace, cousing Pat and her mom.

Some Adjustments

Trevor's latest music CD is a masterpiece. I made a special trip upstairs to warn my daughter to prepare herself if she was going to come downstairs.

These sounds are sometimes both inexplicably eerie and hauntingly beautiful in ways only music and life can be.

I needed to backpedal on some misapprehensions I had about Nietzsche, namely that he was Austrian. I made a post hoc change to Philosophy 101, tweaking the time stamp (a ritual gesture, means "shifted" or "adjusted").

Paul Laffoley's blog gives me a new angle on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom I've been yakking about recently. I'm having some deja vu about all this, not sure why:

My only objections to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) are first, he refused to believe in the existence of Extraterrestrials, meaning that the Earth was the only place in the Universe where intelligent life exists; and second, as a student he participated in “The Piltdown Man” hoax in 1918 in East Sussex England by burying a Neanderthal human skull without its mandible and then substituted a chimpanzee mandible. The attempt was to make the World believe in the existence of the fabled “Missing Link”.

Trevor rightly points out that Grunch.net has this retro 1990s flavor, suggests I convert everything to WordPress, including these blogs. As it is, Synergetics on the Web is a hodgepodge of different styles and fonts, lots of hand-coded static HTML.

My thinking these days is "grunch" and "grunge" go together ("grunge of giants"?), meaning we start from the fact of a downscale planet, don't pretend we're richie rich. Yes, there's this "GRoss UNiversal Cash Heist" connotation (GRUNCH), but that simply means we have nowhere to go but the future, no choice but to invest, one way or another.

Anthony Mason had the right idea in that January 5 piece on CBS News, which Katie said was terrific. Will new shelter solutions be a part of the mix, or is the plan to just do more FEMA trailers from here on out?

A Math Talk

The reason I promote hexadecimals so much has less to do with understanding everything there is to know about bases, including negative and irrational number bases, and more to do with comprehending some details behind the ASCII-to-Unicode story.

Expanding the number of permutations of 1s and 0s, by adding slots, doubling their range with each added new one, means growing by powers of two. At four bits you have 16 permutations, mapping to the digits 0-F.

Since when was F a digit?

Since hexadecimals: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F.

Two such digits represent eight bits and that's conveniently called a byte (I'm reminded of mites, sytes and kites for some reason). Four bytes look like this: 12 AB 5F EC.

8 bits gives 2**8 or 256 permutations, enough for much of Latin-1 (like Roman letters), but not enough for all the world's alphabets and ideograms, math symbols, cursive glyphs in joining groups (ways to connect to one another -- important in Arabic and Syriac scripts).

By widening the field from 8 to 32 bits, one boosts the range to 2 to the 32nd power or 2**32 or 4,294,967,296 (more than four billion slots). Only the first 21 bits are really needed at this time, leaving room for the shared symbol space to double many more times.

Think of at least three reasons we might need to add code points (hint: what if Teilhard was wrong?).

My thanks to Carl Trachte for this blog post.

Another Debate

This is actually Wanderers 2010.1.5, if you're flying that airline, however I'm more the Martian this evening, coming late, leaving early.

I've got the client laptop, so had to remember the pass code (WEP). Bill Sheppard gave me a clue. I asked in pen on a postit (sticky 3M) so as to not interrupt proceedings, which is all about systematic errors in GPS readings, Mt. Hood guy, lots of listeners.

You need a minimum of two systems if you're going to prove the errors are systematic in the first place.

This debating coaches web site is interesting to me; I forwarded it around. This might explain some election shenanigans? "Drill baby drill"? Was that Exxon or what?

Barry: an under-ocean DC line across the Bering Strait would never work. You'd need 10 feet of insulation plus there's nothing but wilderness on both ends. He also despises windmills as flaky and loud, ecologically destructive (too many roads). I also wanted to ask him for an opinion about thorium reactors -- some other time perhaps.

Trevor has some great new information, such as show times in WDC, for the D.W. Jacobs play about Bucky.

☂ D. W. Jacob’s play R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER: THE HISTORY (and mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE will be performed May 28 - July 4, 2010 at the Arena Stage Crystal City in Washington, DC. Doug tells me: “Crystal City has put out an international call for artists to create outdoor works of art around Bucky themes and concepts, etc.” More information available from the Arena Stage.

I'm to meet with Trevor tomorrow, have some ideas to run by. Our Private Undercover Party motif, developed through Duke's, might be just the ticket for a teaser / preview of Tetrascroll (a cosmic fairy tale).

One of our Cascadia Wilders is relating her experiences with little handheld GPSs, what happens when a satellite goes goofy (because setting). The more satellites the better, but you'll get sucky readings if the alignment is bad. You need to know how to read that. Digital math, an outdoor sport (sometimes) is / was gonna do that for ya. In Alaska maybe?

The client laptop is Windows7 with the latest Office. Word is way different. I spent the evening adding drop shadows to those two of Koski's, showing vZome with twisted greens, courtesy of Dave Koski.

Aldona just walked in, armed with info on algae (a potential fuel source -- so much more space efficient). Good seeing her. Steve Mastin, Jon Bunce... some people I don't recognize. That guy looks like retired brass, an unusual species in Portland -- I could be wrong. Anyway, he looks familiar. I'll call him Bob.

The debaters seemed pretty certain that WDC was remiss in not accepting the offer of technical assistance.

Trevor cites Bucky in Playboy suggesting homosexuality might be one of those gentle taps on the brakes Malthus favored, a godsend. Apocalyptic types prefer oblivion to utopia so they can say "I told you so" though.

The new translation of Wittgenstein replaces Anscombe's "queer" with something different, even though that's what she heard, in English. Is this improving her translation or copy editing? Sean is right to ask the question, even if it's much ado about nothing.

Omega Party

:: omega party ::

I'm no expert on the history of this place, having just set foot in the door a few minutes ago. Obviously this used to be a neighborhood church and was designed with that purpose in mind.

Buzz and I met at Laughing Horse this afternoon. He wanted to learn more about tensegrity, having come across it through my blogs. I showed up with Kenneth Snelson's newest book. We stood on a street corner with his daughter, about Tara's age, thumbing through it, while waiting for her ride to show up.

In his authoritative Tensegrity, R. Moto says he's not crowning Kenneth the Father of Tensegrity only because he's not a kingmaker, hasn't the power to bestow that title. This seems a diplomatic communication of his sentiments.

Speaking of Kenneth, I was pleased to read about his recent in-studio meetup with Gerald de Jong. Good news. Gerald has been a Snelson fan for many years.

Gerald was our house guest in the 1990s, during which time we drove to the Kasman-Chu residence in South Seattle for a geometry confab, followed by a rendezvoux at Karl Erickson's to learn more about elastic interval geometry and Gerald's emerging Java application (Karl was an early power user, as was Russell Chu).

Even back then Gerald was committed to using a cigar shape, like a shiny balloon, for his elastic intervals. Darwin at Home, his more recent EIG application, still reflects this aesthetic.

Gerald had come from the Netherlands to attend JavaOne in the Bay Area. We would meet again at a party in Santa Cruz, after another JavaOne, with Bonnie DeVarco, Joe Moore, other scholars and luminaries.

These in-person meetings were infrequent. However we'd been meeting in Cyberia as avatars, in Bonnie's virtual high school, or in that other "world" devoted to matters geometric. ActiveWorlds had come online long before Second Life and we were among the early adopters, investigating educational uses for this shared communications infrastructure.

Speaking of neighborhood churches (Kenneth pokes fun at me for any "church of Bucky" vibe), I've been preaching to the choir on Synergeo again. My welder friend darmraj is pointing out that practically no one on the planet devotes any attention whatsoever to our friggin' MITEs, their tripart dissection. We're just a bunch of crazy die-hards at this point, floundering amidst the flotsam and jetsam of unused nomenclature.

Quoting myself preaching:

This all seems kinda backwards doesn't it. A rag tag crew of buckaneers, scattered around the world, is stuck knowing more about primitive space-filling shapes and crystal lattices than most people ever wanted to know. That's a natural consequence of taking Fuller seriously and is proof that this curriculum works, in terms its of students developing higher reading comprehension, better powers of concentration. You'd think that'd attract some attention?

Preaching to choir, talking to self.... blah blah.

Buzz and I then adjourned to the book store. The collective was holding a staff meeting, so we kept our voices muted, hung out in the foyer, running our laptops, connecting to Facebook. Buzz shared about an already up and running Pacific Rim manufacturing concern with an active R&D division. He was yakking about shelter solutions, polyurethane fabric. Like tents? We'll see where he goes with this.

Over on the Wanderers list, I came across this sad blog post from one of our global university students, shared by Gus Frederick of Silverton. Hossein is like the Dick Pugh of Iran, an award-winning science writer studying astrogeology on his own dime. The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology has offered him a scholarship, would be happy to get him, but he can't get a visa from the US authorities.

Bucky Fuller considered nation-states a cruel holdover from those divide-and-conquer great pirate days. They encouraged parochialism and self-destructive behaviors. A more supranational mindset was emerging, thanks to telecommunications and decreasing misinformation, so humanity was in a race against the clock in Grunch of Giants (1983). World Game, with its focus on the global electrical grid, would help reorient and anchor the new thinking in this brave novus ordo seclorum.

Lindsey has started her set. Burn Out seems appropriately apocalyptic under the circumstances. It's closing time at Liberty Hall, a final performance. "The curtain's coming down, and everything is gone. The banquet's left the hall, the débutantes are bald, there's nothing left to do..." The acoustics are excellent, her performance bold, to my ears flawless. Portland is blessed with a truly vibrant music scene.

Other bands have arrived and stacked their equipment along both sides of the room. Only another eight hours to go. I'll be exiting shortly, wandering off on foot to find Michael and Matt. We're celebrating Michael's birthday today.