These videos back-to-back show one way to lower a ladder to the younger set, just getting into academic subjects.
I'm starting from the bigger picture (above) and then showing how Python might supply the ladder's rungs.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Curriculum Development
These videos back-to-back show one way to lower a ladder to the younger set, just getting into academic subjects.
I'm starting from the bigger picture (above) and then showing how Python might supply the ladder's rungs.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
What is Globalism?
In this "thoughts for the day" video, I challenge the stereotype that a "globalist" is interested in some New World Order featuring some one world government. That we have one world, in the sense of planet, is indisputable (OK, maybe "have" is the wrong word -- it has us), but there's no one world government today. Lets focus on the cybernetic truths of the present moment.
Indeed, what I bring up instead are "virtual nations" or "diaspora nations". A lot of would-be nations failed to luck out, or had their native lands stolen from them. Rather than read these out of history, doesn't it make more sense to include them? We already have supranational corporations, and world religions. Humans self organize on many "levels".
Although the battle lines were drawn, and the nationalists were keen to intimate that the globalists were the bad guys, no debate really happened. That a globalist has to be some billionaire oligarch is also highly questionable. Why do we settle for the "for dummies" version of everything?
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Global Grid
What's going on here?
I'm inserting myself into an ongoing debate, but at a different frequency.
The global grid is not just a Chinese idea. You need to tune out an important chapter in Western Civ, namely World Game, to think so. That's what historians have been doing: tuning us out.
Chinese and Russians enjoy playing World Game with us, because we've done our homework.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Wanderers 2019.2.19
I haven't chronicled a Wanderers meetup in awhile. Tonight's had all the elements. Or at least the more unstable ones. I will explain.
Dick Pugh, the former high school physics teachers, meteor man, and sometime before that, a worker on top secret projects for government labs, also known as the Manhattan Project. He launched into his well-rehearsed lecture on radioactive decay, through all the byproducts. Isotopes anyone?
I used a pause to interject Hugh Thomforde's story of going to the Cook Islands to share about pearl farming. The locals seemed interested until he mentioned the pearls would need to form around "nuclei". They suddenly lost all interest, thinking he was starting down that ugly path. Hugh had to further "disambiguate" as we say on Wikipedia.
Dick went on with the radioactive decay lecture (shades of Asimov). I remembered I needed to buy fish and ducked out through the back door to grab the last sockeye salmon fillet. I was back in my chair before anyone missed me.
The history books say Japan was the only country nuked, forgetting the fact that the US nuked itself, over and over, and yes, with people there. Sometimes the people were put there on purpose. Who knew that lithium might get involved in the chain reaction? The Bikini explosion was a bit more than was planned for. Even the mainland got nuked, many locals irradiated, although not on the scale of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The long and short term health effects on Americans in the vicinity was all a part of the experiment.
After Doctor Strangelove came out, the word went around the circuits Dick was in (top secret) to keep quiet about it. No comments were welcome. What was eerie about that film was the cockpit sequence, wherein they had the whole procedure realistically displayed. Dick said they'd redacted some of those parts, in later editions of the movie.
We talked about other topics of course. Barbara brought up the PDX Death Café events: "At a Death Café people drink tea, eat cake and discuss death. Our aim is to increase awareness of death to help people make the most of their (finite) lives." How would you like to be remembered? What were your accomplishments and so on?
I've been looking back on some of that myself, doing a retrospective set of videos. From the Underground Railroad is my latest attempt to encapsulate what I've been up to, all these years. At sixty, I'm statistically likely to get some more years, but that's never a promise or guarantee.
Francher has been reading 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep and gave us a synopsis. I see I can get it for my Kindle for $10, however I recently split for Safari Books and might have reached the end of my reading budget. Besides, I'm still plowing through the free Gutenberg Press version of H. G. Wells, on Washington and the Riddle of Peace.
Don's boat Meliptus almost went down last night. A leak around the exhaust pipe went undetected until he was back to the boathouse and about the close down. He heard the aft bilge pump working. That was his cue.
After stuffing a towel in the hole, he managed to turn the boat around and hoist it up be its rear (no room at the gas dock). Had he not heard the pump, it very likely would have sank to the bottom.
Dick Pugh, the former high school physics teachers, meteor man, and sometime before that, a worker on top secret projects for government labs, also known as the Manhattan Project. He launched into his well-rehearsed lecture on radioactive decay, through all the byproducts. Isotopes anyone?
I used a pause to interject Hugh Thomforde's story of going to the Cook Islands to share about pearl farming. The locals seemed interested until he mentioned the pearls would need to form around "nuclei". They suddenly lost all interest, thinking he was starting down that ugly path. Hugh had to further "disambiguate" as we say on Wikipedia.
Dick went on with the radioactive decay lecture (shades of Asimov). I remembered I needed to buy fish and ducked out through the back door to grab the last sockeye salmon fillet. I was back in my chair before anyone missed me.
The history books say Japan was the only country nuked, forgetting the fact that the US nuked itself, over and over, and yes, with people there. Sometimes the people were put there on purpose. Who knew that lithium might get involved in the chain reaction? The Bikini explosion was a bit more than was planned for. Even the mainland got nuked, many locals irradiated, although not on the scale of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The long and short term health effects on Americans in the vicinity was all a part of the experiment.
After Doctor Strangelove came out, the word went around the circuits Dick was in (top secret) to keep quiet about it. No comments were welcome. What was eerie about that film was the cockpit sequence, wherein they had the whole procedure realistically displayed. Dick said they'd redacted some of those parts, in later editions of the movie.
We talked about other topics of course. Barbara brought up the PDX Death Café events: "At a Death Café people drink tea, eat cake and discuss death. Our aim is to increase awareness of death to help people make the most of their (finite) lives." How would you like to be remembered? What were your accomplishments and so on?
I've been looking back on some of that myself, doing a retrospective set of videos. From the Underground Railroad is my latest attempt to encapsulate what I've been up to, all these years. At sixty, I'm statistically likely to get some more years, but that's never a promise or guarantee.
Francher has been reading 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep and gave us a synopsis. I see I can get it for my Kindle for $10, however I recently split for Safari Books and might have reached the end of my reading budget. Besides, I'm still plowing through the free Gutenberg Press version of H. G. Wells, on Washington and the Riddle of Peace.
Don's boat Meliptus almost went down last night. A leak around the exhaust pipe went undetected until he was back to the boathouse and about the close down. He heard the aft bilge pump working. That was his cue.
After stuffing a towel in the hole, he managed to turn the boat around and hoist it up be its rear (no room at the gas dock). Had he not heard the pump, it very likely would have sank to the bottom.
Heading into the Linus Pauling— Deke Bridges (@dekebridges) February 20, 2019
House, #Portland #Oregon
for a fascinating presentation
on nuclear history, concepts,
and builds.
Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, oh my.
A Wanderers meeting is always
an education.#pdx #science #history #nuclear pic.twitter.com/VRptCi3bzU
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Friday, February 15, 2019
Tuesday, February 05, 2019
Regarding Waterman Polyhedra
Steve was into a lot of projects besides the polyhedrons these videos are about. I was not a collaborator on these projects. Many besides myself worked on the Waterman Polyhedrons. I was maybe the first to promulgate the term "Waterman Polyhedron" (Steve was too modest to do that himself).
Monday, February 04, 2019
A Triple-A Story
So Carol and I were all set to back out of the driveway, when I realized the battery was dead. I have a Python script you'll have maybe heard about, if you've come here through other blog posts (they tend to link to each other).
Time to call AAA, but was my membership up to date? I feared not as my wallet card had expired. However, the good news is I was paid up and membership services switched me over to the jump starter crews, by way of dispatching (why we're here in Control Room).
My Android (smartphone) was meanwhile at death's door on the charger and not up to taking calls. I kept looking out the front door so as not to miss the AAA business mobile.
The battery bounced back with sufficient infusion from the car's internal recharging system, petrol powered. We joked about the mountain of World Cup soccer balls in my front yard (the C6XTY sculpture).
AAA's parting advice was to take the car on a journey, an adventure, off the beaten path (I added that last bit). I invited Carol but she'd rather just stick to the original itinerary post test drive. I took the Nissan to FuBonn, the giant ("") Asian mall (biggest Asian mall in Portland) and stocked up on noodles and some international beers (Myanmar and Singha).
The 1997 sedan performed well, having a newly rebuilt underneath. Melody's rig had gotten that same way when she got hers redone in Olympia, not even risking it to Portland where repairs were planned. You need a strong rig if heading over the ridge to California.
In between all this car talk, I've been pumping out some new "U200bs" as I call them, again inventing my own slang. Hashtag hashtag.
I'll end with a flashback to the Superbowl on NFL Day, an event in Atlanta in the opulent Southwest. I started watching the preshow at Hop House with Glenn, then raced over to Cork & Tap (the formal name) for a growler refill while still happy hour. But they'd extended it. I stuck around for an IPA then headed home with some groceries. I ended at Derek's place where he used the kitchen to bake our pizza. I brought the growler but we stuck to coffee. All of this going around was on foot.
Python 3.8 has been released to the curious testers and I'm tempted to grab a copy. Python is under active development and isn't expected to contort as it did when we jumped from 2.x to 3.x -- a jump announced well in advance and managed bravely. The was to work out a few kinks in the first iteration and shift the language to a more comfortable long term form.
I'm glad AAA was able to respond quickly, and also that the event was not a roadside emergency, or getting stranded in a parking lot downtown, again with Carol as I recall. I blogged that event too, and others before it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
