Curating Control Rooms

Question Authority (School of Tomorrow)

Speaking of stereotypes, by the early to mid 1900s, if you wanted acceptance regarding matters STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics), it really helped to have Einstein's blessing. 

From that time onward, some kids felt parental pressure to "be the next Einstein" (and make mommy proud) and that meant chipping away at quantum mechanics, even though QM was not Albert's forte.  QM was sexier than "nuclear physics" (same thing), which earned itself a reputation associated with WMDs or WMSs (weapons of mass suicide).  How The Hippies Saved Physics is the book to read, along with Alec's new bio of Bucky Fuller.

Fuller was writing Nine Chains to the Moon (prefiguring space elevators and better satellite service) in an effort to educate humanity about its prospects.  He was not one to make a big secret of pending innovations, especially if these were positive, as humans needed some cheering news.  Economics had been so dismal, so doomy-gloomy.  Why couldn't we have some more positive science fiction?  But the publishing industry was getting push back.  "But Fuller is not the next Einstein" the control freaks railed.

Fuller's solution was pretty brilliant; he made friends with Einstein and scored a personal interview, after which Einstein could be counted on to stay in Bucky's corner, defending his right to share STEM stuff.  

The latter kept a kind of particle physics going, along with a model for combinatorics, and even named the E module after the guy.  Synergetics comes with BEAST modules.  E is for Einstein.

What I argue in the above video is that Fuller was a registered skeptic when it came to little stuff "explaining" big stuff, in the sense of "determining" or "nailing down".  

The chemical properties of the elements, in compounding, exceed the powers of QM to explain, just as biology outpaces chemistry i.e. we cannot predict (anticipate) based on chemistry, what all the biological attributes will be.  

That was Fuller's Pyramid of Generalizations:  the base does not hold up the apex so much as it's suspended therefrom.

In other words, Bucky's contribution as an American poet-engineer, was via the humanities (philosophy in particular), in the tradition of both New England Transcendentalism and later, Pragmatism, although he's not currently lumped with the latter.  Consider connecting No More Secondhand God to a William James type treatment.  I've added a lot of Wittgenstein to the mix.

My professor, the late Dr. Richard Rorty, in writing Achieving Our Country, was leaving the door open to continue with a brand of leftism that was not, thereby, derived from Marxism.  Marxism could be subsumed under Social Darwinism as a form of anti-capitalism.  However, as capitalism morphs, so do its dialectical competitors.  Mainstream Marxists may not be able to keep up (we shall see).

A superstition popular in some circles is that Fuller was trying to sneak in some alternative to the Standard Model.  His 4D Feynman type diagram (six tetrahedron edges labeled with energy particles in a proton-neutron transformation) and speculations regarding muons, suggested he saw his A and B modules, his MITE (another wedge, their combo), as somehow opening the door to a Theory of Everything (TOE).  

Certainly Fuller was free to speculate in this direction, but it's clear he didn't think a complete GUT (grand unified theory) was necessary for humans to achieve greater mastery in Universe.  The generalized principles inform all levels (frequencies) from micro to macro.  Humans were especially carved out to work in the medio range (between extremes of large and small).

However Fuller's Universe was "non-simultaneously conceptual" meaning "eternally aconceptual" meaning he didn't expect a static noun to replace the verb.  Logic has to co-exist with Chaos.  Our thought processes continue to adapt.  In every age, we seem to have those believing we're at a terminus, which turns out in retrospect to be one more station stop along some perpetual journey.

Humans were not tasked with finding the holy grail (some GUT or TOE) before they could manage to feed themselves, in Bucky's opinion.  More important was to overcome various forms of brainwashing that kept us in passive spectator mode, leaving decision making to others.  

Abrogation of responsibility leads to dangerous results at many levels.  Waiting for CERN to map out our future, as if hadrons could be read like tea leaves, was the bankrupt strategy of many bozos.  And yet CERN came through, with the WWW (or W3), our ticket to curriculum integration and more synergy.

Upgrades at the biological level (e.g. better dwelling units) did not await new developments regarding the Periodic Table, in terms of predicting the individual elements from quarks and gluons and so on.  

We could improve the shelter situation regardless of what we were learning about neutrinos.

Explaining: Control Room

 

As old time readers of this blog may know, I often introduce my Control Room vs-a-vs a fleet of vehicles known as bizmos (business mobiles, see BizMo Diaries). 

That would give it (my control room) somewhat of a dispatching, monitoring and data gathering mission.  

The objective is to keep playing world game effectively, referring to another one of my blogs.  But then from there I've gone on to storyboard a global trucking exchange whereby drivers and other crew get experience bouncing around the planet, from gig to gig.

Along those lanes, a bizmo might be a logistics vehicle keeping the truck stops along a route appraised of new developments, or be about reconnoitering along a new route.  In the citizen diplomacy model, truck stops play an important role, and my Global University model sees them as extensible campuses, wherein a given driver (no specific stereotype intended) might get some academic time off in the work-study model (drive the roads, while learning the ways of your hosts).

As like the science fiction writer, I'm able to project into these roles, seeing the angles, without myself holding a trucker's license nor even owing a literal bizmo (I wasn't into owning).  These latter were posited as science fiction or computer model avatars early on, as I was thinking well beyond what was commercially available.  Ditto for the control room.  

I'm not the billionaire evil guy in James Bond movies, who runs all this infrastructure from headquarters, except here in my own threads (e.g. here in my blogs, for example).  I do own a 1997 Nissan sedan, but I cast it in a different role.

That being said, you could say science fiction is sometimes indistinguishable from investment banking.  An attractive prospect that has the gleam of a near future reality, is sometimes a mirage, yes, but sometimes it's not.  

Given this genre depends on technology that's already well developed, with new roads in Eurasia a theme (North America already having a cool network, Africa thinking ahead...), it doesn't come across as all Martian or even as sheer Lunacy (on the moon).  Terraforming is an old business around here.

Such a storyline anchors the model, however I'm well aware that the Dispatcher | Field Operative |  Territory | triumvirate is paramount in many a genre (of computer game or whatever).  As a GST guy (i.e. systems modeler), I'm not trying to deny myself the possibility of thinking about other configuration spaces that feature a similar design.  

The control rooms will likely themselves be involved in some network, and so on.

Portland Python User Group Meetup

I used my Trimet phone app to buy a fare on the new FX2 "bendy bus" (articulated) to the US Bank Tower.  

Since I was running early (4:20), I got off along the mall, thinking to replace my dilapidated library card, forgetting the main Multnomah County library is again closed for remodeling.  So I wandered around taking pictures, ending up at New Relic at the appointed time (5:30).

I'd not been to a PPUG gathering in many moons, as even before covid I'd been frequenting the PDX Code Guild.  

However a couple people recognized me as an old timer and my status as a co-organizer still pops up on Meetup dot com.  I reconnected with a guy who'd been at Dark Horse Comics before moving to Europe for several years.  He reported that Portland still gets respect in Europe, as a capital of open source and as a tech savvy little city.

Ernest Bonat PhD recently stepped forward as our main organizer.  He's also carrying the torch for the Hillsboro meetup.  Really, it's greater Portland that's tech savvy, and the Silicon Forest more regionally.

New Relic not only provided space, but bought us pizza.  We got to listen to a draft of their talk for the upcoming Pycon, about how they harness the Python import mechanism (complex by design) to inject their proprietary introspective monitoring software.  

New Relic monitors the health and safety of company websites that use industry standard Python web server frameworks, such as WSGI, ASGI, Starlette (including FastAPI) and Sanic.  They serve data dashboards relevant to many in the C-suite (CEO, CRO... CTO).

Then we had lightning talks.  The one about Jupyter Notebooks included some tips I'm planning to try.

Dr. D. (PhD) was able to join us, coming from his presentation at Terwilliger Plaza (a retirement campus) regarding Humanists and Humanism.  He's president of the local chapter, and also a computer science guy, if not specifically into Python.  He has his own research project, revolving around a language for mapping out and implementing parallel processing schemas.  He drove me home.

How PPUG goes forward from here is unknown.  Will we get to meet at New Relic again?  Who will buy the pizza?  The usual rule is whoever buys pizza is welcome to promote and present about their company, including in recruit mode.  New Relic was operating well within the rules.  We expressed our collective gratitude.

Social Media

For those wanting lots of analysis from experienced people, YouTube, Rumble and so forth represent a bonanza. We never had it so good. This makes journalism way more difficult I suppose, as we're able to get to our sources rather directly. 

What's left for the career journalists to scoop up is from a leftover (legacy) second tier infrastructure defined by bureaucracies of old. They leak in the old ways, but their information has already been superseded.

Although not journalists per se, we also have the travelogue people, a lot of them politically aware, and some of them willing to report in routine fashion on what's trending in the local news. 

The upshot is, if you stick with legacy media, you're in a darker more insulated world than ever, the one concocted by self-interested bureaucracies, whereas if you pay attention to social media, you have a shot at piecing together a world.

Over on TrimTab Book Club, I've been discussing the tiny tome est: A Steersman Handbook, which came out in 1970, by a TV-savvy media person, Leslie Stevens.

Brett held up that obscure est: The Steersman Handbook, Charts of the Coming Decade of Conflict that he's acquired for his collection (me prompting).

The book is published in 1970 celebrating Bucky as an "est person" even before Werner Erhard invents his "est training" in 1971 and starts interviewing Bucky closer to 1980.

About the book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Est:_The_Steersman_Handbook

About the author:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Stevens

From Wikipedia:

Individuals named as examples of "est people" in the book included R. Buckminster Fuller, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ralph Nader, Marshall McLuhan, Malcolm X, Albert Einstein, Lewis Mumford, and Eric Hoffer.

Looking back from over a half century later, I think we can say there's a lot that the author got right in his description of The Movement. 

Those who immerse themselves in new media empower their intuitions, but unless they cling to old fashioned powers of articulation, i.e. the ability to write in linear formats, the hive mind doesn't rewire. It takes a combo of new media and old media to make a difference.

Recap: Data Science

So what low-down bottom line do I share with my students along this Data Analysis track? 

• That the Python ecosystem is but one of many and many of the tools we're learning (LaTeX, regexes...) bridge our respective communities e.g. Jupyter celebrates computer languages Julia, Python, and R, all early adopters of this common browser based interface to a running kernel
  
  
• That interactive dashboard type data displays are not necessarily tracking anything in real time, but many of them are, and real time tracking is an expectation many will have; so best to bone up on the relevant tools.

I focus a lot on GIS type displays as integral with data visualization i.e. displays driven by latitude / longitude.  

I'm not off topic, therefore, sharing about the various projections, and especially the demented Mercator, with Alaska and Greenland so grossly distorted.  

There's a time and a place for it, but we're not bound by it, would be the obvious message.

We're beginners and so establish our chops using well-known favorites: 

• seaborn
• pandas
• matplotlib
• numpy
  

but then we jump into pyplot and dash for a day, to confirm the heuristics we've been learning are largely transferable.  Pyplot is a lot like seaborn and dash depends on Flash, which we also tour, including via my own Flask-teaching website.

In some ways I'm in Coding with Kids mode in that I'm not in upper management.  I punch in and punch out and uphold my end of the bargain.  

Meanwhile, I bring whatever curriculum development skills to bear, adding to what's already a substantive and well-organized tour of an emerging terrain.

Arrowhead Math

My arrowhead is what the ancient Greeks called a tetrahedron.  It might be regular, and when doing our home base, our tent, or teepee, it is.  

That’s the “tent tripod on the Earth” model, the bump or convex dent. Concave dents hold water and other fluids.  Then we have those flying caltrop looking devices, but more commonly the XYZ 6-spoke flyer.  

These flyers might have drone aspects, depending on the world we’re in.  Yes, computer game talk.  That’s a new anchoring shoptalk at FSI, with Gary our project lead.

Do we need at least flyers for birds eye views?  A rule when world building could be that we have no disembodied viewpoints.  We do have tiny insect-like flyers.  

As a “first person” you’re enabled to “look from” these myriad viewpoints, but all are embodied and have their physical limitations.

The term “quadray” may evoke “quadcopter” and sure, we’re fine with a drone-friendly shoptalk.  The quadcopter is a familiar drone design. 

The caltrop inside the regular tetrahedron, however, has any two of its rays at 109.5 degrees to each other (that’s rounded).  Here we get to jump into trig.

However, before jumping into trig, our games exercise the notion of “vector sum” by adding these pre-existing rays in obvious ways.  The parallelogram model holds.  Connect the tips and reflect the resulting triangle.

We have six pairs, for example, that cancel each other except for contributing to the length of a bisector.  The six spokes of XYZ have now emerged.  The caltrop begets the jack.

Then we have sets of three defining the edges of a quadrant.  They cancel (balance) by adding to the length of a ray out through the face center.  The four sets of three add to give the vertexes of the inverse tetrahedron.

We might add any pair (parallelogram model), then a third quadray (parallelogram again).

The tetrahedron and its inverse define the merkaba star (or stella octangula), likewise the corners of our duo-tet volume 3 cube.  That’s right, volume 3, and our tetrahedrons are volume 1.

Jumping into trig, we want students to remember the A modules, 12 right and 12 left.  The quadrays define  their spines.  The fact that the origin floats above the floor, 1/3 of the way to the opposite apex, gives us a tent pole to play with.

In jumping to trig, we focus on the arccos (adjacent FE / hypotenuse CE) = acos(1/3) = angle CEF.  That gives 70.5287794, which, subtracted from 180, is our intra-quadray angle:  109.4712206.

The fact that Buckminster Fuller and friends would add substantively new language games around polyhedrons starting in the 1970s with the publication of Synergetics, when rectilinear orthodoxies were already well established, would give arrowhead math a subversive and/or discordant aura.

Discordant themes tend to set up a dialectic and drive discussion and debate in the direction of a new synthesis.  We see that happening in connection with Pentagon Math.

A Critique of Protestantism

Here's my theory, about Christianity more specifically, because of my own experience with that religion (I'll claim ignorance with respect to many others -- life is finite):  one gets groomed to think "rendering a moral judgement" is ultimately what's called for.  

At the end of the day, we're waiting for some verdict.  

Elon Musk is good.  Elon Musk is bad.  My attitude is more:  who the fuck cares about your moral judgements in this matter; there's lots more that's more interesting to talk about.  Including with respect to Elon.

Kinda like that.

Now I may have the impression the Catholics are less judgemental, hence their name ("catholic" as in open minded, worldly, cosmopolitan), whereas Protestants are all about raining "fire and brimstone" (whatever that is) upon their moral inferiors.  

All that resentment about a "holier than thou" attitude traces to English pricks right?  I'm kidding.  You'll  find pricks in every culture.  Tea cuppy Victorians (soccer moms) and like that.  

As if your moral pronouncements were what the big drum roll was all about.  We were all in suspense about if you thought it was good or bad.  That's such an arrogant attitude.  

It's not that we don't care what you think, it's that you just assume it's your moral attitude, your ethnic bias, that we're interested in.  Why not ask us what we think matters?  At least once in awhile?

Why do we have to care if such and such offends you.  Were you asked?  Entitlement.

Making Judgement Day the most important day in eternity, seems to be a hallmark of Protestantism especially.  Why not Easter?

Chattering About Quadrays

 

What does ChatGTP know about Quadrays in 2023? 

A is for Anthropology. 

Erratum: "tail-to-tail" at 180 degrees (not "tip to tail") -- talking about vectors. 

Talking Points on Medium.