Storyboarding Engineers

We've enjoyed some passionate discussions on the Wanderers board, between actual meetings in the board room around the long table. Those of us most active on-line may not be the ones who show up at the meetings and vice versa.

The solstice party was fantastic. Gus played some vintage radio from funnier times.

I've been going over with Keith some of the IAEA stuff I've been looking at in connection with these schools for diplomats. These are like OMSI camps in some circumstances, complete with caring for horses (more important than riding them -- it's more about them in their welfare, not you in the movies pretending you're a cowboy).

The cosmopolitan spin is about all getting along, even after we go back to our respective "bubble villages" in whatever grid sectors we monitor. Maybe EMO should have a role. Ecotrust definitely. GIS/GPS is a big part of IAEA "geocaching" (sometimes with assistance from FBI people).

Although you may be picturing boarding schools for mostly young people, it's not always that way. Picture a few thousand Camp Davids (maybe not easy, if you've never been there), and take the average.

The reciprocity in training and verification techniques makes IAEA duty not unlike TSA duty, and indeed, there's overlap, and I'm not just talking about 12 Monkeys type stuff. You might have a week's rotation in Colorado followed by a short stint in South Asia (many more states). All have their respective challenges. Multi-tasking is less wearying (at least to some -- others like to stay focussed on the one situation).

I've had to change my grading philosophy based on feedback from my boss. Given the kinds of jobs I envision, I was being a stickler for details, but at this early stage keeping high morale is more important. Many people lack the self confidence to jump in to this business.

Here are some excerpts from my correspondence with Keith, archived to our group:

What I write about are "bubble villages" that look something like

those DEW line encampments, or subsequent models. The people

living there tend to have strong backgrounds in STEM. They might

be bioneers like John Todd, or developers of the Garden of Eden

dome concept, like J. Baldwin.

The latter wrote Bucky Works, an interesting book that has served

as a basis for a lot of my screenwriting and science fiction planning

for over a decade.

...

Back to my original point, I see a lot of serious and immediate

concerns about the health of the biosphere and ecosystem being

corralled by this feckless discourse called "global climate change".

Like, I'm fine with trying to figure out of the global temperature

is going up or down and whether the sea level is being affected.

We need to monitor everything and have plenty of open data for

people to analyze.

But I think it's mind-numbing to imagine that "global warming"

is the only signature we need to look for, if the goal is to avert

catastrophe and provide for the well being of future generations,

of non-humans and humans alike.

Yes to a focus on global climate change (one of many).

No to any monopolistic hijacking of that debate by people

who think "climate" does not include the presence or absence

of nuclear weapons.

Their presence is warping everything about how humans behave

and that's affecting the climate. Getting rid of them is what

serious engineering is all about (unless maybe you live in

the Lower48 where it's more like Planet of the Apes these

days, monkey see monkey do etc.).

Over on math-teach, the topic is bandwidth again. We watched the RSA Animation about how adults are drugging their kids to keep them focused on too-boring-for-words presentations. I'm hoping the Ignite format helps address the boredom issue, and that we can give students better self-management skills where "brain meds" are concerned.

On Synergeo, Rybo is learning to say "meds" instead of "medications". In my book, that's a positive. Yes, idle banter, but among feuding factions, so an improvement in our internal affairs (buckaneer world).