Looking Ahead

The above was a quick sketch I then shared on Telegram in a faculty lounge context, while at the same time adding a record to Photostream; my usual workflow. The meme is an old one in these journals and elsewhere: General Systems Theory as competition for Economics as conventionally imparted. Once you change Econ enough, it starts to look a lot like GST, so lets agree these labels, as in what they mean, is malleable.

In GST, we’re not bound by some theory that humans are somehow the source of all economic value, as in value added, as if nature’s bounty were somehow off the books or unaccounted for. Likewise we value free software and its role as a serious good, hacked on by a few, of benefit to a few million or more.

What I expect some teachers will do is similar to what I do: mix in a lot of David Graeber’s stuff, such as Debt: the First 5000 Years.

A lot of explorers (wanderers by choice) come to our corner because they are looking for geopolitics, some flavor of language game that’s world focused. Fuller was known for his global map and his geoscopes, in addition to the spheres and domes, which were of course related. The corporate schools never wanted to touch the stuff, and so here we are.

As a boomer, except there seems to be some movement to carve out a Generation Jones, not saying I get it, as if the other boundary’s weren’t likewise blurry? How much is superstition vs sound anthropology? In any case, atop my being a Joneser, I’m one of those “third culture” expat types by upbringing, even if I’m back in the homeland by now (and have been for decades).

You’ll find David Graeber in the School of Tomorrow orientation materials on GitHub, in case you’re still looking for a place to get started.

The Alto Knights (movie review)

I picked this out almost at random it seemed, though the MMU angel might’ve been guiding my hand to stay within the noir lineage somehow. I was in the mood for something in New Releases and paid an extra dollar for that privilege. We rented Scarlett Pimpernel at the same time.

Robert De Niro plays both gangster principals, friends turned enemies, meaning he appears playing against himself in several scenes, in ways film allows but not live theater. You’re not meant to be thinking “special effect”; you’re expected to forget entirely there’s just the one actor behind both characters. Dave looked it up later to confirm. We went in no realizing this was going to happen.

What I found interesting in terms of timeline is the events were right around the time of my birth, late 50s, early 60s (in the 1900s). I remember those car makes and models were indeed prevalent on the road back then, although these memories are dim, plus cars evolved quickly in terms of shape and size, and even underlying technology to some degree.

The idea that “everything changes” and yet some people find it hard to adapt, to let go of old patterns, as one of the two principals most clearly demonstrates. He has come back from hiding overseas to an entirely changed United States, New York City in particular, and he expects to pick up where he left off, in his own mind, as supreme leader of the underground crime scene.

The friend who returns to New York, from hiding out, is the hot head version of De Niro. The friend to whom he left the racket pre WW2, to manage in the meantime, has done so quite successfully, per the consensus of other crime bosses. Costello is the relatively cool-headed De Niro, who most anchors this drama. He’s the one who get shot in the opening moments, put somehow lives (inconvenient).

One of the funnest parts was on the drive to upstate NY, seeing the signs for Palmyra. The hot head gets into an argument with the driver, against whom he holds a grudge, about whether the Mormons really got started in Palmyra. The driver is correct in thinking they did, but given he’s already botched the murder of the other principal he was tasked with by this one, his boss on the backseat starts to physically attack him, causing the car to swerve a bit. A third passenger tries to restore equilibrium as a moderating influence.

The film is meant to be anthropological as well as historical. We’re exploring an ethnicity, and how it operates, albeit highly dysfunctionally. 

Education vs Research

Education vs Research:  this distinction came up in our Knowledge Engineering meetup this morning. Research advances the frontier of a discipline, or call it a subculture. Education is about catching people up, getting them to the frontier in the first place. 

Not that getting to the front has to be a long trip. Low hanging fruit in abundance is a characteristic of many of budding ecosystem. But then you want to be sufficiently trained when you get there.

And that’s the pitfall:  in the mad dash for fame and glory, for one’s original research, the commitment to teach, to educate, and thereby pass the torch, gets overlooked. How many are willing to forego mining for gold in order to teach mining?

In my First Person Physics endeavor, which gained me entry to the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), I got to know some of these education-focused pros, such as Dr. Bob Fuller, who considered Dr. Robert Karplus to be one of his mentors.

Princeton University is supposed to focus on Education over Research in being more about giving undergrads a fast track vs trying to make a name for oneself by heading a pack of grads and postdocs. 

Celebrating a Centennial

I know most of the entertainment channels plan to focus on the 250th, a nice round number, counting up from 1776, but as I'm telling my peer planners, that's not my gig. The Times Square ball has already been programmed. That's big corporate account PR stuff outside of my price range or market. However, Route 66 is in my ballpark or bailiwick or whatever we call it (arena?).

The “desert highway” trope is important, such as in my introduction to the “vane” in various lesson plans, where one might picture a rusted windmill, and say a gas station. Then came the rhyme with 1.06066… which was like a puzzle piece fitting in (Wittgenstein: to what?).

I’m not suggesting Route 66 itself is in Cascadia at any point, and yet as memes they share that property, of being memes, not official, off the grid in a sense. Route 66 was officially decommissioned in one corpus, but resurrected in another. This kind of stuff happens in anthropology. It goes the other way too: something alive and with agency in one subculture, will be seen as innocent of any agency in another.