Home Schooling

Probably a lot of kids are staying home from school, with parental permission, because said guardians are persuaded that Coding Train is providing a more personalized experience, in more useful skills, than the local commuter schools.

That sounds paradoxical because how would Youtubes over the wire be "more personalized"? Well, it's not the student teacher interaction that's one-on-one, so much as the task at hand: to customize the personal workspace. Build your own file system.

Students herded from room to room, with or without a locker, don't get the same opportunity to outfit a workspace.

The homeschoolers are telling Dan to try pipenv instead of virtualenv.  That's good feedback for me as well.  I'm one of the home schoolers.

Party Time

Hey, I'm pleased the Idlib scenario didn't go straight to blood, like some shoot out in Westworld, or should I call it the Park?  Remember Punishment Park?  Now there was a dark movie.

I have some Proseco to celebrate, no not especially Islamic of me, but many ethnicities stand to gain, if we're able to move the Global U towards a more constructive set of rivalries.  Congratulations to everyone working on the rebuilding of Aleppo, especially that central mosque.

I'm also celebrating the Fall Equinox.  ISEPP hosted Wanderers at the Linus Pauling House.  Terry explained his research into the history of the philosophy of engineering.  He's on a first name basis with Sadi (Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot) and Lazare Carnot  (Sadi's dad).

The latter was smeared in some circles because of his loyalty to French Republicanism.  Nietzsche respected him for his sticking to his guns.  Laplace was smeared too.  This happens to intellectuals, as their power and influence, including postmortem (especially postmortem), gains them enemies.

Russian and Turkish commanders are working on the Idlib scenario.  Erdoğan and Putin had hours and hours of meetings.

Speaking of Turks, I've been picking on the Gulenists a lot, expecting them to advertise a future-friendly STEM through the charter schools, in tandem with the Quakers.

However that's putting a lot on their shoulders, given they're transplants in many cases.

Raising the flag of some Verboten Math is just going to attract the spotlight, when they've already been the subject of any number of FBI investigations.  Wading blindly into American politics is a recipe for getting in too deeply i.e. "in over one's head" as they say.

I think I'll give those Sufis a break and switch my focus to the Jesuits for a change.  That's another religious sect with a commitment to education.

I've worked quite a bit around Catholic schools (and teaching hospitals) and don't doubt the high level of commitment.  The decision to keep a tight lid on the Bucky stuff must trace to the highest levels.  Surely pure inertia can't be the explanation.

I've taken up the investigation (inquisition?) on Gab.ai for the time being.

Terry has discovered some engineering literature we might have taken for granted would already be translated into English, but has not been.

Take Coriolis for example.  We may have learned about the effect, but what do we know about the actual guy?  A lot of his writings have never been published in English.

I've never been put off by skin color, and mostly get along well with the dead.  I'm not averse to learning more from the "dead whites" (and will soon enough be joining their number -- not to sound morbid or anything).

A long time ago, scientists argued about "vis viva" or the motive force.  They considered it a property internal to a moving body and akin to its inertia.  How to account for it mathematically, in symbols and computations, was a question for that day.

Mass figures into the equations, most certainly, but then so does velocity, and perhaps to a second power?  Is a projectile with twice the velocity thereby empowered to do four times the work?

Jean Bernoulli contributed some clever reasoning showing why E = mvv was more likely to get us somewhere, and indeed it did.

Nowadays we have E = mcc (Einstein), as well as E = hf (Planck).  E is for Energy, v for velocity, m for mass, h for Planck's Constant and f is for frequency.

Random Responder

Youtube's AI recommended I see this, and the reporter was hoping I would share the free information.  Here's me sharing it.

North Carolina was undergoing intense flooding, with the Brunswick Nuclear Reactor in the way of the storm.

Shades of Fukushima.

Big in Japan

Poppy

Kirsten Dunst 

"Potorando"

Ironclad Logic

Proposals to make Idlib a "West Berlin" met with scant attention, as no side could see a way for dissenters to maintain an enclave.  With casinos.  The airstrips would be for humanitarians, and diplomats could make speeches from the permanent outdoor Woodstock style sound stage. Mix in some Arab Spring vibe, some Occupy, and keep the Syrians free of invaders from the sky.

The Syrian refugees are being pushed out by people who covet their lands.  We learn simply by seeing who takes the vacant apartments.  Make everything too violent for a middle class to tolerate, and take over.  That's the streets of New York.  We saw it in Aleppo.  Just arm everyone to the teeth and stoke hostilities and you're in business.

No one suggests turning it off at the spigot, where the factories spew arms by the box car full, day after day.  To pay a fortune for an arsenal and not use it, not need it?  The public needs theater to justify the expense.  They need to see themselves being the good guys.  It's a lot of expensive fireworks, but what else works?  If shareholders are going to stay in the money, we'll need to showcase why our products are truly worth the expense.  How's that for ironclad logic?

From the Sidelines

Originally shared on Facebook:

RT is way better than CNN. After Air America closed, a lot of my fave broadcasters moved to RT America. The DNI report talks about RT too.

The problem is, Russians have every right to "meddle" in the sense of sharing opinions, so the key thing is to find (A) something illegal e.g. GRU hacks into private servers and (B) link that to a strategy of the Trump campaign.

It's easy for me to believe the leaks to Wikileaks, whether from Seth or the Guccifers or whatever, were fortuitous for Trump, but not something his extended family could bank on in advance. None of these nefarious doings were in their control.

Sure, Trump could joke about going after Hillary's missing 30K emails (grin), but the notion that GRU hackers took that as their cue, and in a "lets roll" moment sprung into action ("after hours"), hacking Hillary, is a fictional genre stretching to embrace a few measly bread crumbs, an attempt to turn them (the bread crumbs) into a thick juicy plot (a soup). I'm only sensing a thin gruel so far. Got more thickener?

Conservation of energy laws are against this over-reaching ever succeeding. Something from nothing on that scale is too trick or treat, too sleight of hand. Our sense of credulity is over-strained. The idea of GRU hackers glued to their TVs waiting for Trump's secret instructions (encoded as a joke in a public speech), and not even letting it wait until morning (it's not like the DNC would be suddenly competent), appears ludicrous to me.

In other words, the indictment as it stands is too flimsy to base heavy history on (like impeachment), so far.

What the FBI is lacking, is gravitas.

The Theresa May government finds itself in somewhat the same position with its Novichok and White Helmet story lines. Neither are going so well, at the time of this posting. MI5, or is it MI6, is looking silly.

For further reading:
PolySci: A Look Back at Russiagate

=== 
And now, with a little help from Alphabet (Google translate):

RT лучше, чем CNN. После того, как Air America закрылась, многие мои любимые вещатели переехали в RT America. В отчете DNI также говорится о RT.

Проблема в том, что русские имеют полное право «вмешиваться» в смысле обмена мнениями, поэтому главное - найти (A) что-то незаконное, например. GRU взламывает частные серверы и (B) ссылается на стратегию кампании Trump.

Мне легко верить, что утечка в Wikileaks, будь то Seth или Guccifers, или что-то еще, была удачей для Trump, но не то, что его расширенная семья могла планировать заранее. Ни один из этих мерзких дел не был под их контролем.

Конечно, Trump, возможно, пошутил, что HRC пропустит 30 000 электронных писем (ухмылка), но мнение, что взломщики GRU взяли его в качестве своего реплики, и вскакивают («послезавтра»), чтобы найти недостающий тайник HRC, это вымышленный жанр, чтобы покрыть несколько крошечных сухарей, попытка превратить их (хлебные крошки) в густой сочный участок (суп). До сих пор я чувствую только тонкую кашу. Получили больше загустителя?

Сохранение законов о энергии противоречит этому процветанию. Что-то из ничего в этом масштабе слишком трюк или лечить, слишком ловкость руки. Наше чувство доверчивости чрезмерно напряжено. Идея русских хакеров, изучающих их телевизоры, ожидающих секретных инструкций Трампа (закодированных как шутка в публичной речи) и даже не позволяющая ей ждать до утра (маловероятно, что DNC будет внезапно компетентным) кажется смешным меня.

Другими словами, обвинительное заключение в его нынешнем виде является слишком хрупким, чтобы основывать тяжелую историю (например, импичмент).

То, чего не хватает FBI, - это гравитация.

Правительство Theresa May находится в том же положении, что и сюжетные линии Novichok и White Helmet. Ничего не происходит так хорошо, во время этой публикации. MI5, или это MI6, выглядит глупо.

Close Encounters

Thanks to Dr. Fuller's actively cultivating his network while alive, something my dad did really well as well, a lot of us never knew each other, even though we closely identified with his agenda, at one time or another.  I'm not surprised that I keep encountering new people who count big time as friends of Fuller.

Patricia Ravasio is such a person.  Per her recent autobiographical The Girl from Spaceship Earth, we know quite a few people in common.  I only met once with Lloyd Sieden, at a Bellvue coffee shop, whereas D.W. Jacobs and I have crossed paths more than that.

Ditto Foster Gamble, who sings Dr. Robert Gray's praises in one of the Youtubes.  Bob and I were both at the SNEC founding, at Russell Chu's rented place in DC, some October as I recall, but what year?  To date, that's the only time I met Bob in person, that I can recall.

Yasushi Kajikawa came all the way from Japan for that SNEC summit.  Applewhite joined us, and Dr. Joe Clinton.

Even though Foster and I both went to Princeton, our scenarios did not intersect.    I learned about his work from Alex, in my Philosophers' Circle.

So instead of "small world" (a cliche of sorts), let's say "big world" for a change.

I stopped off somewhere in the Southwest to visit Dr. Amy Edmondson that one time.  Matthew and I were driving my sister's car from Montclair NJ to Greater LA, visiting Applewhite in route (that's when he gave me a Synergetics Dictionary).  Harvard Business School was still in Amy's future back then.

I also met up with Dr. Arthur Loeb, her mentor, on a hitchhiking trip up to Cambridge, when still at Princeton.  He was friendly.  We had a good talk.

In terms of where I come down regarding energy, I consider World Game a context for facing our energy needs as a species and making some hard choices.  The terminology is maybe messed up, but that's Tower of Babel for ya.  The point is to keep talking about it, in some detail.

I'd think those most interested in phasing out fossil fuels, among those accepting climate change (I accept it), would embrace the language of Peak Oil.  Whether we shift our weight or not, it looks like we're over the hill in that chapter.

We don't have the option to endlessly guzzle, even if the climate didn't matter (which of course it does).  Is commuting smart?  People living campus-based lifestyles don't need to drive as much.

Synergetics Dictionary has no entries under UFO.  I don't think Fuller was banking on any new sources of energy we didn't currently know about in the 1970s and 1980s, not even cold fusion.

He did place a lot of faith in humans staying inventive, however his thesis regarding humanity's possibly attaining a new homeostasis, one we might consider successful, did not critically depend on such deus ex machina Jodie Foster like plot twists (thinking of Contact, a fun movie).

Patricia doesn't talk about UFOs in her book, I wasn't meaning to imply that.  She thinks about C60, and why not.

Foster is wide open to the possibility of a truly alien intelligence and the science that might represent, and I'm not against such speculation.  Fuller speculated too, as was his prerogative, as did Stephan Hawking. We're free to make mistakes.  As a species, omniscience is not our forte.

Patricia's autobiography reminds me of Valerie Plame's in that both writers feel they're undergoing extreme vetting, and choose to be unflinchingly honest about a lot of personal details, giving us insights into their characters to help us assess their respective stories.  Lindsay Moran also takes that path in her retrospective.

By this time, Dr. Fuller is so invisible that bringing his stuff to light really does have the flavor of a spy novel, with a hint of the paranormal now and then.  That's in keeping with Fuller's spirit as Telepathy is in Synergetics Dictionary quite a bit, along with "only the impossible happens" (cue "synchronicity").

Patricia is vetted by a psychotherapist and the whole book seems like a lie detector test.  Did Bucky really say those things?  Weren't her notes lost in a basement flood?  She's not nearly as self erasing as say Carlos Castaneda, who left everyone guessing until his wives wrote their books.

Her psychotherapist doesn't see anything crazy about her wanting Stanford to make better use of what's in its archives (that's where Fuller's papers ended up, much as the Linus and Ava Helen Pauling papers ended up at OSU).  None of Stanford's course offerings took advantage of this fact.  Even Princeton did better.

I'm looking forward to continuing to meet new people with karmic connections to the Bucky stuff, as well as meeting again with the many I've met (Allegra and I had breakfast that time in Portland, when the D.W. Jacobs play was in town).

My continuing to camp out in this area has been a gift that keeps on giving.

Also, I'm pretty autobiographical as well.  None of us are pretending to be objective disembodied narrators like in those old know-it-all documentaries that simply told us what's what.