Sky Camp

I used this occasion to share my dream, of a helicopter lowered prototype in the wide open field, just there for the duration of the event, for Junior Friends to monkey in and around, then gone.

How we get there in just a year (with earlier prototypes showing up elsewhere in the meantime) is not by me joining the tiny planetary clique of billionaires, but by me exercising my skills as a director, collecting raw footage for the editors, using my connections, my chief forms of embeddedness, e.g. with the Quakers here. I only had a tent this time, and that might be it for me next time as well. No smorgasbord, no yacht parked in the lake.

The difference between my kind of movie-making and Hollywood's is the props are corporate sponsored as future real world, in some cases mainstreamed candidates. It's product placement of a kind, similar to what the military does for its theater-ready killingry. Livingry is cutting edge, ready for soap operas, and the backgrounds now compete more with the talent for audience attention, something for actors' guilds to get over (this is a genre, akin to the documentary, not a hostile takeover and/or ban on our favorite fictionalizing techniques).

We use fewer mock ups, more of an improv script, because this is "real time" (like ordinary life), not always with opportunities for "take two" type redoings. Not every director is trained to work in this way. Nor do I forbid myself the luxury of slow frame rendering, when such R&R type movie-making gigs get offered.

But this is a surge to Darfur and such places, a FEMA type scenario, with real lives at stake on the ground. So these languid pauses in Quaker boot camps nestled in the Pacific Northwest has this "save the children" urgency about it. The corporations sponsoring us don't take it all too lightly either. We're free to insert our Glad bag commercials, our SuperBowl XX..VI. But that doesn't mean we're not serious-minded about our responsibilities, such as these may be, to our fellow beings aboard Spaceship Earth, nonhumans included.

FEMA Villages

I met Arthur for a power lunch on Belmont. He's my former boss at CUE, during the Reverend Rodney Page era at EMO, and later a higher up at Ecotrust, a former xBase client.

He filled me in on some Quaker influences, as chronicled in Nixon Agonisties in Whittier, in South Carolina during the AFSC's participation in desegregation, and among the Klamath here in Oregon. Other gossip.

All that, plus the ongoing OLPC vs. CP4E thread, has me thinking of those FEMA Villages again, the ones not made of trailers by The Flintstones, more like a futuristic Dignity Village or Camp I Am.

They'd have a faster-moving queue of disaster survivors, with more slowly rotating staff managing the intake to placement cycle. Staff might be tasked to the different villages TSA style i.e. on a just in time basis.

These villages are not designed around any permanently located dwellings, but serve as removable temporary waystations twixt a disaster and a next chapter.

And no, a given FEMA Village needn't contain any geodesic domes, as if "by law" or anything like that. It's more a matter of who's coordinatin', exercising her or his artistic judgment.

Part of the Katrina Math curriculum (similar to Rainforest Math, but gnuer) is to ensure our HP4E thread continues, i.e. students at least have the option of designing and building geodesic domes i.e. we don't want this relatively new knowledge to get buried for hundreds of years, in some precious "dark age" of Flintstone contrivance.

Dish Chatter

So here's a question for you DirecTV jocks, somewhat rhetorical as I don't generally accept comments in my journal (too many iPod ads): should I initiate a trouble ticket regarding the circumstances recounted below?

So Tara clicks on 311 for America's Funniest Home Videos or whatever and gets 'searching for satellite' but no programming, though some other channels work just fine. Go to the other DirecTV box in another room, go to 311 and voila, no problem at all. And now Tara's got it too, like it just comes on. OK, go back to the other box, and now leave 311: and it's killed on Tara's in the living room, we're back to 'searching for satellite'.

Yet the behavior is unpredictable and seemingly not-weather related. Sometimes the main box seems blissfully unslaved from that other one, gets everything with no assistance and/or interference.

Whaddya say? I say it's under warranty, and I'm a new adopter locked in for a year, and I should explore my technical environment, so yes, let's initiate a trouble ticket. Also, my caller id went away, after a few days of service. I'm thinking confusion at Qwest, so I'll get a partner to check in to it during business hours.

Followup (9:15 AM, May 1):

The Qwest tech detected a cross pattern and cut me a fresh F1 to the crossbox near Hawthorne, for which I'm glad, but a deeper problem is caller id and DSL don't play well together. The workaround was to simply connect the handset on my desk to a different jack.

The DirecTV tech traced our problem to a bad connector left over from CATV days.

I was pleased by the professionalism and prompt responsiveness of both service providers.

:: qwest tech ::

Errata

I've been something of a Dennis the Menace character of late, knocking out core services in two important (at least to me) buildings: at my house and at Linus Pauling's house.

At my house, I wanted a caller-id enabled telephone on my desk, but replugged it into the second line, daisy chained with the Qwest modem. But there's no DSL on line two, so my LAN went dead. Qwest was on the scene within 48 hours, and did some other troubleshooting as well. My linebacker insurance paid off.

At the Pauling House, when hooking Jennifer to tcp/ip, I also messed with the phone jack, and apparently replugged something back in incorrectly, just like at my house. Barton notified Glenn, who was able to troubleshoot the problem when reminded of the shenanigans at my place, at the center of which I was the common element.

Rest assured I felt suitably sheepish about both errors and thank my lucky stars that Universe had the competence to compensate for them.

But I haven't even gotten to my worst error, which was to ineptly secure Naga's aquarium tank, such that she escaped her abode.

The odds of finding a small, hiding snake in a big house were against me. Yet I found her. But not before experiencing this little rollercoaster: loss of Internet and Naga the same morning.

I've done a lot of postmortems on these errors, have tried to learn a great deal from them. In general I'm on a campaign to reduce entropy in my life, with Dawn, my late wife, a standard bearer and inspiration in this regard. I'm less the poor slob I was when she met me.

I did my first Python for Wanderers class tonight, which I thought went splendidly. The number of total combined computer-related man-hours in that room was impressive, although women still own and control computer science as a discipline, the way I look at it -- again with the Wiccan spin or something close.

More Meetings

I was somewhat busier than usual today, what with the banking, the lunch at Portland Fish House, snapping a photo of Jennifer, diving into gnu math exercises and so forth, followed by a quick walk with Trevor over to Belmont and back, followed by a trip to the pet store to discuss Naga's care and feeding.

Trevor and I talked submarines, including the Japanese ones and the ones my uncle Bill Lightfoot writes about in his excellent Beneath the Surface.

Over lunch, Glenn and I discussed literature by R.D. McGown, which in turn references Bunce on music theory i.e. lots of Wanderer action, a lot of it in the arts of memory tradition.

Returned to mom's cell's voicemail box my congrats on producing a successful Chalmers Johnson event, pre all this R&R in Washington, District of Columbia.

News on TV, local six but on satellite, spaghetti & tomato sauce (I rinse 'em too), some coffee, some staying up late to do laundry and blog.

Business Transaction

Jennifer @ Pauling House

The partnership decided to buy Jennifer, the Ubuntu box, from Derek, complete with keyboard and monitor, for $120. Maybe DWA'll be at least partially reimbursed from the coffee till, but that's neither here nor there.

Although the hardware was maybe priced a tad high -- the software is free -- Jennifer has sentimental value (to Derek too), plus I need a known quantity Linux box for my Python for Wanderers class, which begins next Thursday, in synch with my Pythonic Math class for Saturday Academy on the weekends.

Glenn was at work when I phoned and helped me set it up in the Pauling House. In just minutes we had an IP number and Google on screen, with speakers plugged in and ready to rumble.

Although I'll be projecting from a WinXP laptop a lot of the time, it'll be nice to demonstrate pretty much the same stuff running on this alternative open source platform. Wanderers wishing to familiarize themselves with a contemporary Linux distro will now have that opportunity as well.

recursive mural on Hawthorne

Wanderers 2007.4.17

Last night it was my privilege to present about Python Nation to Wanderer mathematicians and engineers, practicing and retired, some with years of programming experience e.g. both Bill (electronics) and Barry (banking) have an active knowledge of assembly language programming.

Given I usually teach this stuff to middle and high schoolers, I found last evening's venue a valuable opportunity to gear things a little differently. Jon made us coffee. Wine and beer were also available.

Part of my preparation process was to remove pretty much all traces of Python from the Toshiba laptop to start with, and install the 2.5.1 release candidate at the start of the talk. I wanted that "nothing up the sleeves" sense of bare Python.

Then I wrote, saved and imported all my code in real time, while projecting with the Optoma -- except when showing off such canned Standard Library modules as math and cmath.

I've saved the gist of my presentation as wanderers.py at my 4D Solutions/CP4E website.

Followup:
Class 0 (April 26)
Class 1 (May 3)
Class 2 (May 10)
Class 3 (May 24)

Rebooting Mathematics

Originally posted to Math Forum @ Drexel, hyperlinks added.

Back in the 1980s/90s I was suggesting a "makeover", then as now a popular genre on TV (plastic surgery channel, or just playing dress up). But the downside of such a meme is its "purely cosmetic" spin, inapplicable as that connotation may well be in specialcase.

So the new campaign uses words like "reboot" more often, while keeping "makeover" as a runner up.

Central to the reboot is this new focus on energy. We have Sol (our sun) like 92 million miles distant, as a primary source, and the relative vacuum of space (out past the orbiting junk heap) as our energy source. In between is what Dorion Sagan and others call the "solar gradient", which humanity rides kind of like a beach bum rides a surf board, piggy-backing on this vast tsunami of energy income courtesy of what Pharoh Akhenaten recognized as our biggest physical energy sponsor in these parts, to the tune of many terawatts per capita over an average lifetime.

What we then do is break this energy down into cycles, mainly the shorter swing weather cycles within the longer swing climate cycles, and our ability to tap in to those with "water wheel" technology, meaning these turbine like things (or literal turbines), feeding into the various distribution grids to the offices and homes and such, where the voltage is stepped down to like 220/110 at 50/60 cycles (visit geni.org for more info).

The mathematics comes in early, as we attach precise and engineeringly significant numbers to this picture, using spreadsheets, computer simulations or whatever you school curriculum experts have signed up for (as a parent, you may be downloading or purchasing at Fry's -- make sure you push for that homeschooler tax deduction as these supplies needn't be paid for twice). Solar gradient kwhs convert to grid kwhs which in turn convert to calories and kilocalories, joules and kilojoules. This is where we get to the food labels and the whole Super Size Me discussion around malnutrition (over as well as under -- an important component of any serious-minded public spirited self health curriculum, and just as appropriate under the heading of math).

Of course by now the purists are starting to object about all the french fries and milk shakes we're discussing, taking seriously as solar gradient income (hydrocarbons cycle). This sounds more like science class. But your counter, as one of the "gnu math" trained, is to remind parents that "geometry" is really "earth measure" and said earth is an actual planet, ours, Earth or Spaceship Earth as your text may call it.

We're not using K-12 as a platform to promote some psychological "disconnect" from the "real world" ala some of the negative press about Ivory Tower PhD level math (much of it undeserved). That's not a goal. Pursue that brand of necromancy in college or in private scholarship if you like, but don't take it as a sign of weakness that we're anchored in the astronomical and geological data bases, when it comes to getting our most primitive concepts across. We're not about turning our back on Animal Planet. The object oriented paradigm (OOP), intrinsic to our self-executing math notations, is especially vested in animals and animation, per the various geek-architected pipelines already well described in this Math Forum archive.

That being said, don't therefore misassume we don't have proofs. Our grounding in real world open source energy planning type curricula does not mean we're unable to justify and/or prove the logical consistency of our approach, by a lot of the same means used by the competition i.e. by those otherworldly philosopher types, steeped in their continuum metaphysics ala the calculus. Discrete math engineering, at the higher levels, is well typified by such texts as Concrete Mathematics (sometimes used at Stanford) and Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. We're not apologetic for our more digital spin, think it flies, carries water, plus leads to interesting careers for our grads. Your mileage may vary.

Related Reading:
Brainstorming About an Early 21st Century Technology Curriculum (Shuttleworth Summit)

Night at the Museum (movie review)

Tara and I took this in at The Bagdad (right, no h). We both liked it, maybe for only partially overlapping reasons (e.g. the happy ending).

Like I was pretending to be a movie director, watching the camera angles. "Hmmm, competent" I heard myself thinking: just your basic storytelling, with some of our greatest comedy actors.

Dick Van Dyke turns out to have evil motives, but he's still chim chiminy under it all. And by the way, I do like the way Sally Field does her gig with Boniva.

Count me an admirer of this slightly (ever less a percentage difference, logarithmically speaking) older generation. Gervais: hilarious... Ben, you're great.

And Robin, again the president!

Run for the Arts

Can you spot Tara and Rose?
Note girl on stilts
(click for larger view)

Winterhaven students ran or walked laps for the arts this afternoon, an annual fundraising event throughout Portland Public Schools, over a period of several days.

Meanwhile, parents on the school e-list discussed what to do in the event of rain. "Run anyway" is a strongly expressed ethos around here, since that's what ends up happening so often.

I managed three pictures before losing battery power, then left Tara a can of A&W rootbeer under her dentist-brand water bottle (ironic).

Angi at OnPoint was most kind and efficient when I stopped by to converge the IRAs plus get another read on those interest payments on our mortgage (the IRS wants to know). 2006 was mostly about going in the hole on our 2nd mortgage (aka "equity line") to keep ahead of the cancer, the plan being to eventually pay down this debt with Dawn's life insurance policy (National Life, Montpelier, Vermont).

Later I wrote back to a young woman who lost both parents to cancer when she was still new in this country from Yugoslavia. Now, six years later, she works for AmeriCorps and has friends like family. I salute her "courage to be" as Paul Tillich would put it.

Wanderer Patrick Barton swung by 4D Studios for some wasabi peas, salmon jerky and beer. I showed him my propaganda mill (I was doing some stuff around mom). He's off to Prague next week.

Tonight: dinner at Jane 'n Dave's.

Extremely Remote Living (XRL)

:: desert moon ::

I had lunch with Ron Marson of Multnomah Meeting on Monday, meeting at Nicholas' Restaurant on Grand Avenue. We split a vegetarian meza plate, plus I got Turkish coffee and Ron had fruit juice.

Earlier, I shared some of the same XRL-related information with Trevor at Peet's on Hawthorne.

If Mercy Corps or other disaster relief outfit is going to deploy dwelling machines in extreme circumstances, it makes sense for personnel to train on the same or similar equipment in relatively safe local environments with similar terrain.

Ron specializes in teaching science and mathematics concepts using simple off the shelf supplies. His wife, Peg, does a lot of the art work. He has some background in Ghana, working for the Peace Corps.

I'd like him to present to Wanderers one of these days, about his experiences on the science conference circuit, working with NASA, his education philosophy and its translation into practice.

Trevor's presentation is already tentatively scheduled.

:: crooked river ::

Knotted Snake

:: Easter, 2007 ::

Spring Cleaning

I remarked favorably on the junk service guy's shoulder tatoo, calling it a Celtic knotted snake. He cited Neverending Story but also liked it for it's allusive similarity to the "mind of the Buddha" endless knot motif; he'd noticed, walking through our house, a lot of cool Tantric stuff.

Anyway, the two of 'em hauled off $239's worth of stuff by volume, including a wrecked electric lawn mower, destroyed portable A/C unit, and a much-abused double-sized heated waterbed from our basement.

I'd scored this latter when the Braithwaite's, hoping to relocate to Canada, offered it to our family. If I'd had my act more together -- was more of a handyman -- it might've provided a cool place to cop some Z's or otherwise loll. My bad that it never happened.

At first Tara didn't like this placement (below) for this bumper sticker, but I pointed out it is stuck to the bumper, just in a weird place. David Nally suggested we could put a Keep Portland Insane sticker right on the windshield -- smart cookie that David. Hillary made us some dinner tonight.

Competing Curricula

A theme of my writings of late is we need competition in order to remain strong and healthy.

Python competes with other agile languages for mindshare, true, but its best hope of staying in the game will involve developing countering forms of operational intelligence within Python Nation amongst its many subcultures.

We have some of that diversity even now, as evidenced by Plone, a promising sign.

Likewise, in the USA's pre-college public schools I believe we suffer from too much inbred complacency within the dominant math teaching ethnicity (not a genetic thing i.e. propagated by textbooks and memes more than genes).

Mixing it up more, on TV and computer screens especially, will help dislodge some of these dangerously retarding bottlenecks and logjams.

:: mite & two smites by dbk ::

Livingry

Drawing from the strength of Dawn's memorial service just completed, which drew us together from so many walks of life, I wish to transform our energy, our fire, into a sense of gratitude.

I am especially grateful to those who've come before us, blazing a way, including developing for themselves and for us these miraculous technologies of cars on freeways, jets in skyways, a growing toolbox of esoterica, some effective, against disease. Because of these things, we were enabled to experience a great healing in the wake of Dawn's life, an act of lovingkindness and a contribution to us all.

Humanity, bending technology to humane uses, has the potential to do well for itself, to alleviate suffering, to work, to enjoy.

I ask that I remain open to Mother Nature as a teacher for me, and as one who assigns me tasks. To serve God is not to turn one's back on the gift of creation, but to manifest a divine will in whose image we have our being.

Pan's Labyrinth (movie review)

The girls and I projected this on our living room wall, using the Toshiba + Optoma. Alexia fell asleep before it was over, Tara pronounced it a good movie and not all that bad, given she empathized so completely with Ofelia. Dawn had wanted to see this movie, given the title and buzz. In retrospect, we think she did fine without it -- but not that it was a bad movie or anything, just very violent (recalling her reaction to Lost City). Plus Dawn didn't much go for subtitles.

The film explores very strongly motivated characters each responding to a different set of cues. The little girl is the most off base, in terms of having a solid enough reality to walk through walls (in a manner of speaking). The military patriarch is self-indulging in some father-son cult that glorifies in death, and he ends up disappointed. In between is the Spanish civil war, more than ugly. The maid's scenario is the most heroic, next to Ofelia's, yet tinged with more realism (more machine world, less Narnia).

Monitored Enrichment

I'm not a huge fan of nuclear energy but recognize the technology is likely to stay with us, and could be less polluting than coal in some ways, once you factor in the scarring, although uranium mines can be ugly too.

Iranian consortia are well positioned to lead in enrichment, a vital step in the commercial supply chain, provided there's sufficient transparency, given their relatively clean track record thus far. Civilian fuel providers will contract with Iranian refineries for ready-to-install non-weapons-grade materials.

Given an historic insistence on secrecy coupled with a policy of first use, LAWCAP is in no position to be lecturing on the need for transparency in monitoring. Likewise, until the Grunch resolves its voting machine problems, it should maybe just shut up (in the Bill O'Reilly sense) about "exporting democracy." There's only so much hypocrisy an intelligent reader can bear.

Those fearing competition in a lucrative sector face an uphill battle keeping the Iranians from breaking in to the business. USA-based flagships could remain competitive however, if complying with the same IAEA-style transparency guidelines as everyone else. Competition will help keep prices down and should be encouraged by the WTO.

Any traffic aimed at nuclear weapons manufacture is equally criminal in every nook and cranny of the globe. That's easy to understand and therefore relatively easy to enforce.

Small Planet

Americans talk about withdrawing from Iraq as if there were some place to go to get away from all mistakes of the past, from any consequences for what's been started. Vietnam to the west plays a role in this thinking, as Asia seems peaceful right now, nonthreatening (except maybe for North Korea). "Will Iraq ever be like Vietnam?" many North Americans ask themselves, scanning the channels for answers.

Although North America pretty much stradles the northern western hemisphere, it's not immune from geopolitics, as our fearless leaders endlessly preach to us. But then do our fearless leaders have enough smarts to use a Fuller Projection, with world game models for winning against death by starvation, from exposure: twin terrors humans are naturally designed to fight.

This karma is not all bad let's remember. Baghdad has a bright future on many a storyboard, Iraq a strong, self-interested economy. Just because we've earned a thousand years of karma doesn't mean we're in hell. We Fuller Schooler geekazoids like having to work it all out on tiny Spaceship Earth, find this a very kwel planet. We want our designs to be dependable, reliable, high quality. Speaking of which, it's time to go get Razz from the shop.

Itineraries

Kudos to Southwest Airlines for juggling Alexia (and to Alexia for being a willing pin). The Chicago connection was about to fall through, and Seattle is too far to taxi, but an alert desk clerk realized a certain aircraft ended the day in Portland, so if Alexia just sat it out, passing through places like San Diego and Phoenix, she'd make it after all, which she did.

No bag though. It came through Chicago, and I picked it up this morning with Larry, blathering in both directions about geeky stuff (they'd've delivered but why not a $50 voucher, a chance to catch up with a friend?). Anyway, great airline work. And kudos to Greg by the way.

The mercy care team is also in high gear, performing its services. I just got off the phone with Ellen where she talked me through resetting the pump. Any TPN during hospice is a matter of landing the craft slowly and comfortably, less of a crash -- a shot of whiskey on the deck of The Titanic is how I put it (except Dawn was more a tequila fan, had given up drinking by the time I met her).

Gayle and Elizabeth were her two pilgrimmage sisters on that trip to Ireland's holy wells that time. She also flew on her own to Glastonbury and those parts, that other time, meeting up with sisters there.

Dawn was first introduced to the Kirby concept in the abstract. She was shown a small closet like room, told it was my office, while meanwhile Kirby himself was in Bhutan. Which was all true. Later, she and Alexia went to Bhutan with me, by way of Chang Mai (Thailand) and Calcutta (India).

As for the Math Wars, they're always ongoing. Our side is winning these days, which hasn't always been the case. I prefer ending careers to real battlefield bloodshed -- more civilized by a long shot.

Wanderers enjoyed some dynamite presentation by a Mercy Corps powerhouse this morning. I missed it, but all reports were positive. Glad to meet over Thai food with "our" Japanese exchange student (just turning 23) and her friend (same age -- I guessed right), bound for San Francisco today.

Rearrangements

I moved our wireless access substation from the bedroom to the living room this morning, so wayfaring guests, like our neighbor, might better access the Internet from Dawn's HQS. We've got a ship's log goin' (Laurie's idea), plus other stuff.

The substation hangs off the house AC, which communicates tcp/ip over these short distances. It's funny to think of my browser frames traveling through the fuse box, but such is the state of the art in these parts.

I told Wanderers I'm fine with like South Park doin' its version of the Al Gore movie or whatever, "because even if the science is right, the fear and/or spin might not be."

The Windows patches worked fine, as did my satellite checked Casio, but for some reason the VCR box hooked to cable didn't update, even after unplugging/replugging during the move. And that clock's what I happened to rely on when I woke up this morning, so Tara was late to school.

Wanderers 2007.03.07

Again, I missed it, needing to catch up on office work, plus feeling feverish a little, having spent the previous night on the river on a stakeout of the moon.

Glenn filled me in over Thai food: an accomplished engineer of vast environmental experience, Charles Lytle talked about how the instrumentation has gotten really good, to parts in a quadrillion sometimes, to where it's getting easier than ever to trace pollutants to their sources.

This level of technical sophistication is a problem for the politically minded, who'd rather not see those detailed maps showing up on flatscreens all over the place. It's harder to just nod nod wink wink in the presence of so much empirical data. Polluting companies therefore can't simply arm twist, hoping their exotic pavement materials, or fireworks fallout, will go undetected and unreported.

Still, despite these advances on the Sherlock Holmes side of the business, law enforcement has a tough job: rains from the other side of the Pacific often have a higher mercury content than local laws permit and overfishing hurts everyone, but how good are those eyes in the sky at really catching those heinous criminals, especially on cloudy days?

Late Night with Dave Koski

Koski is the David Letterman of T-module geometry, where the T-mod is this wedge, both left and right handed, and 1/120th of a rhombic triacontahedron. A recent investor in ZomeTool, David has been assembling up a storm.

recursive construction of T with "remainder tet"

The other night, he reported finally getting around to the rhombic dodecahedron, the paradigm IVM shape, and finding it easy to build.

rhombic dodeca with embedded cube

Koski goes way back with this stuff, to the life of a scholar in and around Venice and Santa Monica, California, which is when we first met.

Thirsters Again

My borrowed copy of Burden of Dreams coming due, I swung by Thirsters again while in the neighborhood.

I partially caught up on a system for rationalizing English spelling, then tuned in a Reed College professor, ending up talking about R, which he uses to teach statistics, and J, which he hadn't heard of.

The political analyst across the table talked up corruption in Cook County politics, about how they paid people to knock new voters off the roles, other shenanigans, and about how Senator Wu seemed so circumspect (inscrutable?), despite recent press.

Actually, I think Wu was somewhat on target characterizing neocons as Klingons, not Vulcans. Plus I take some credit (not a whole lot) for getting those trekkie monikers applied to brands of Washington insider in the first place.

For example, I used the term "Vulcan" in May of 1999 with reference to the CIA's former executive director Nora Slatkin, her tenure overlapping Deutch's as then DCI:

Nora came from a background in defense, as did DCI Deutch. Some of us called her "the Vulcan Queen" or something like that. She was a tough cookie -- smart too.

But in calling her a Vulcan, I never intended Slatkin to be perceived as a neocon, who are more like Ferengi (I don't really see Condi as a neocon either though).

All this Star Trek talk led a Thirster from LA to talk about being one of the very few privileged enough to get on the Deep Space Nine set. I'd been talking about how Kirk's chair in the Paul Allen museum would never pass muster on HDTV (you only need detail to the limit of scan line or pixel density).

The Deep Space set was pretty detailed, but did contain Easter Eggs you'd never see on TV, such as Gilligan's Island lyrics on one of the space station's monitors (but "the real" Deep Space might've had those too, having a shared Earthian past).

More remarkable were the garish colors. What you need to do with color, to make stuff look good on television, is kinda odd sometimes.

Back to Thirsters, Lew assured me Gore's global warming road show rivaled the very best of the ISEPP lectures, and received high marks from the public. Lew compares Gore to Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould, even if Gore's scientific credentials are more humble than theirs.

Lew himself is way above average, in terms of being scientifically literate, but then he's a Wanderer.

Speaking of Wanderers, Linus Pauling might be another role model, though I was assured yesterday that if you really took as much vitamin C as LP recommends, you'd generate some nasty Fe3+ oxidants, so better not.

Fred was going on about how the Irish really took it in the neck for awhile. Worse than slavery, for awhile. More like The Gangs of New York.

I also chatted with a musicians' union leader who thinks local radio stations should be required to devote at least a percentage of their air time towards advancing the careers of talented locals, i.e. by playing their music. If the airwaves really belong to the public, wouldn't that just go with the territory?

In some parts of the country, finding enough talent to fill the slots might be a problem, but not in Portland certainly.

Why No Cookies in Math Class?

I suppose that's a catchy enough title. Kids don't want to always re-enter the same passwords on a personal computer, a tedious exercise if you're not worried about spying on yourself.

But a browser typically comes with privacy controls, meaning cookies get blocked by default, meaning it's unlikely you'll be rescued from tedium, unless you know how to tell your browser from which domains cookies'll be OK.

It's up to you, the user, to set these policies.

So we throw kids into this virtual "oval office," surrounded with nifty freedoms, and then don't give 'em a clue. You get to be President Klutzo, some superhero Incredible who can't figure out how to work the netmeeting phone, drive the golf cart or whatever. What a wasted opportunity.

So you'd think math teachers, being the numeracy gurus in our culture, for little kids anyway, our having banned real geeks from actually teaching anything so elementary, except maybe on some exotic satellite channels you may be lucky enough to be getting, would be the ones to share this lore -- about how to allow cookies from Google, for example, but not from some fly by night with only a number, not even a DNS sig.

OK, well maybe the language arts teachers then? Actually that sounds about right, as XML and the DOM signify tree structures, like those old Outlines we used to do, with Roman Numeral major sections, like chapters, broken down into maybe a, b, c each with subsections i, ii, iii and so on, however the notation (this was all before those graphical "bullets" became available). Given language teachers already need to cover XML, why not let 'em handle the cookies part too?

Burden of Dreams (movie review)

This is the movie that goes with Werner Herzog's director's commentary track on Fitzcarraldo.

Werner plays himself as a crazed film maker, willing to risk life and limb (others' as much as his own) to get those special effects only obtainable if you do them for real. Tribal politics play a role, as the presence of indigenous Germans leads many to expect the worst and/or want a piece of the action.

Werner monologues about his existential problems with the Jungle's decadent opulence, plus shows a crazed Kinski losing it with the crew (bonus feature). Also in the bonus features, Werner eats his own shoe, for reasons unrelated to the making of this film.

For those skeptics and cynics who don't think this all really happened as portrayed, check out the clip from the first version (before the restart) featuring Robards and Jagger, as the split personality earlier cast for this role, and filled handsomely by Kinski once the film ran into problems (probably mostly around Werner's ego, though no one ever comes right out and say so on the director's cut).

This "making of" spends a lot more time on the rubber making process, rubber barons, and their love of opera, being so pivotal in the more fictive version.

Standards and Ramparts

So the typical scene is a wall (ramparts) with flags flying behind them. Or if behind, then presumably you're on the other side? Would that be outside or in? On a ball, a triangular walled city is really just an interface between two cities, both with three corners and three edges. Remember, Earth is a ball. Tale of two cities.

Anyway, so on my flag is this MITE, for Minimum Tetrahedron, and some initials RBF. We say minimal because tetrahedral but also because not handed: the right handed and left handed, inside out versions of one another, look the same. Then they fill space with no gaps, in terms of Couplers we might cast it, in our model of the IVM (a kind of holodeck for Scenarios Universe, our "show and tells," partially overlapping, eternally regenerative). Handed modules would be like the As and Bs, which comprise the MITEs but, like the left and right handed Ls in Tetris, can't just stand in for one another as substitutes ("some inside-outing required").

I took Carla and Scott on a mostly driving tour while Dawn underwent alternative therapies today. We left the GPS in the other car (their rental), so driving by feel, I approached Council Crest, only to veer around behind to Scholls Ferry (a road I'd haunted the day before, in service of my alma mater), winding to Hwy 24, into town via Rose Garden (made two passes at Portlandia), back under the cable car on I-5 to Humdinger on Barbur (near Dawn) thence to Grand Central Bakery in Multnomah Village, by way of old haunts (this was Matt's and my early boyhood neighborhood, pre Rome, my Markham Annex now a corporate campus, Piggly Wiggly gone too).

Cool interlude: we parked Razz at the Oregon Zoo lot and rode the Max elevator down to the station, hundreds of feet below through layers of sediment. Set into stone in this station is one vertical core sample, laid horizontally in a tube, with engravings suggestive of the millions of years that have elapsed, over the time of this core deposit's aggregating. Two trains arrived while we inspected the exhibit, one bound for Gresham (to the east) the other for Hillsboro (to the west).

Once Dawn rejoined us (chauffered by Peg), we proceeded to the Chinese Garden, which the three enjoyed, as I took Razz over the Steel for some gas. Scott and Carla fly home tomorrow. She works in an Italian restaurant. Her boy Steve wants to pit for NASCAR and like that (a worthy goal I'd hazard).

Yesterday was OMSI, fruit smoothies.

Control Room Collection

Mercator Projection

So given the name of this blog, which got started looking in on Al Jazeerah's (which has since come a long way), I feel it appropriate to mention others I come across, both fictive and for real.

In the fictive category, I just saw The War of the Worlds (1953 edition) last evening, and noted the huge Mercator they were trying to win their war with.

What I hadn't quite realized about the plot, was the good professors had the right idea, about using some biochemical counter, but succumbed to the generalized panic attack, ending up in church and without any laboratory solution.

While the idea from the pulpit may have been that prayers were what saved them, I think H. G. Wells was inspiring an even deeper faith in our Earth's design: it has an immune system (so best to stay on its good side (we've had some experience...)).

Fuller Projection

Corporate Screencasting

I've been graced with a new VFP 9.0 Professional, completely legit, thanks to connections and UPS Ground, and last night polished off a demo screencast of inhouse academic assets, stuff we use to harvest clinical data for outcomes research, in support of the hospital's teaching functions ("what works for how long" is, after all, critical clinical information).

Meanwhile, on edu-sig, we're on the subject of teaching Python to non-CS majors, people with only a casual need to code, as a part of some humanities major for example.

"Do we share about OOP (our so-called object oriented paradigm) with the tourists?" might be a good way of capturing a key question.

I say that we should, but leveraging recog over recall skills, i.e. we make it look easy, with cartoons and such, without putting lots of pressure on students to cough up or regurgitate, i.e. you don't have to try this at home (but feel free if you want to, not a dangerous activity (though frustrating and tedious at times)).

I still have a high opinion of Visual FoxPro as a development environment by the way. Xbase was never a stupid language (though it may be used stupidly), with its procedural pointers to tabular data, combined with fast relational indexing, exposed in control structures. Best of all, it has an interactive command line (the infamous "dot prompt" in dBase), like Python does.

Then came the OO revolution, with Microsoft buying Fox as a dBase killer, once Borland's plans, to stick with the brand "dBase" (Ashton-Tate's) became clear.

Did the language die an ugly death at Microsoft's hands? No, I don't think so. The product remains an elegant solution in many situations and I'm glad Redmond keeps putting muscle behind it, despite end users going gaga for Microsoft Access (a part of Office no less). VFP wasn't just about using objects from other languages (more the VB model), had its own class defining syntax, more like in "VB#" (i.e. VB .NET).

What's great about xBase is you have this procedural way of stepping through tables and you have embedded SQL.

Sure, I can see why we'd use Oracle, Postgres or MySQL as a back end, but when it comes to creating a usable user interface, I still think the "thick client" has a future.

Making everything work in a browser "just because we can" isn't a deep enough philosophy to persuade me otherwise -- not yet anyway, XUL notwithstanding.

The "Surge"

I haven't seen many journalists linking this verb "surge" to its ironic appearance in the CIA's literature, namely in Lindsay Moran's little book Blowing My Cover (ISBN 0-399-15239-3). I include this quote in my book review (January, 2005):

Ironically, in early 2003, not long after my return from Macedonia, I was "surged" to the Near East (NE) Division in order to help gear up for the invasion of Iraq. During my short tenure in Iraqi Operations, I met one woman who had covered Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program for more than a decade. She admitted to me, unequivocally, that the CIA had no definitive evidence whatsoever that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed WMD, or that Iraq presented anything close to an imminent threat to the United States.

Another CIA analyst, whose opinion I'd solicited about the connection between Al Qa'ida and Iraq, looked at me almost shamefacedly, shrugged, and said "They both have the letter q?" And a colleague who worked in the office covering Iraqi counterproliferation reported to me that her mealy-mouthed pen pusher of a boss had gathered together his minions and announced, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."

Like former CIAer Robert Baer of Syriania fame (haven't seen it yet), Lindsay registers little beyond disrespect for the neocon ideology that resulted in America's biggest blunder. Baer: "I think the neocons have done more damage to the United States’ reputation and foreign policy than anybody since—I don’t know when. They’ve opened Pandora’s box in Iraq." (MotherJones, July 5, 2006).

The sad part was how these wackos, many of them "government insiders" (i.e. nut jobs in many cases), managed to infect the mass media pundits, by riding the post-911 wave of panic and hysteria.

Journalists are easy prey for cynical spin doctors in times of national distress. Let's remember that lesson and not repeat these same mistakes.

I applaud the CIA's decision to move some of its most important (mostly training) facilities far beyond the beltway, in part just to get away from all the corruption and crummy intelligence that goes with living around Washington, DC. Presidents have long sought similar getaway havens, even if only 60 miles away at Camp David. DC just gets too oppressive at times.

Followup (related news stories):
Pre-War Intelligence Acts 'Inappropriate,' U.S. Finds, Feb. 9 (Bloomberg).
Pentagon Watchdog Slams Prewar Intel, Feb. 9 (CBS News).

Synergeo #32395

In my first storyboard, I paid some attention to social service and academic achievement i.e. a design scientist is someone willing to mix it up in the real world, not just push for Ivory Tower credentials, as the latter without the former may be quite meaningless.

However, the main thrust of my storyboard was to find a bridge, starting in the known and moving towards the unknown (assuming a demographic still somewhat unfamiliar with even the basics of Fuller's metaphysics).

I start with the Qyoob (Cube) and use it to establish the 3D-hood of ordinary space. A 3-vector zig-zag on the corresponding simplex also combines these notions of "3" and "spanning basis vectors" but of course when the zig-zag is bent that way, you're thinking "spatial" the whole time, which is more the Synergetics mindset (we don't believe in Flatland per se -- a rickety old Victorian belief system, ala Abbott's scifi by that name).

Over on wittgenstein-dialognet, I'm chatting with philosophers about this namespace thing some more. coxeter.d and fuller.d aren't synonymous. That doesn't mean we put these two scorpions in a bottle and make 'em fight it out. On the contrary, both steam engines and diesel engines create torque from liquid fuels. The goal is to investigate the mechanisms, to reach an understanding of inner workings, not to prove one or the other "can't work" (as if there weren't ample evidence that they both do).

So in moving from coxeter.3d (Euclidean 3dness) to fuller.4d, I'm not trying to "make Coxeter wrong" in any important dimension. Rather, I'm juxtaposing two "ways of looking" with a nomenclature (a namespace) to suit in each case.

I think one of the gross errors in some of the secondary literature to date is this idea that "if Synergetics is right, then XYZ goes out the window". On the contrary, Synergetics is not about pushing any math to the back of the bus. Synergetics isn't going to stay at the back of the bus either though -- that's what academia is still trying to wrap its mind around (slowly, very slowly).

Anyway, I want to get more technical with the Coupler on a second pass, making this the bridge from XYZ thinking to IVM thinking. It's very easy to place 8 MITEs around (0,0,0), one per octant, and to see this as an entry point into IVM style cogitation, wherein two of the Coupler's equators become the "fish lip" rhombics connecting IVM (= CCP) balls, with the K-points as "tongues touching" perhaps.

I've segued from stickworks.py to coupler.py for the benefit of my Pythonic math teacher squadron. They'll be the first on the block to have a VPython view.

http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/stickworks.html

Synergetics Storyboard

:: a short ego trip ::

I propose an order for topics, throwing in side lights along the way. Start with the cube and really talk up its heritage, the genesis of xyz.3D for example, then move on through the MITE and concentric hierarchy to elucidate our alternative ivm.4D-based namespace. However, in dwelling on the lattice (IVM), don't neglect to (a) spin stuff, talk about arcs, circles and spheres and (b) keep a focus on the aperiodic shapes.

Wanderers 2007.1.31

I actually missed most of Bill Sheppard's Wanderers presentation, as Tara and I were accompanying Dawn to the hospital for another scan.

Here's from #1298 in our eGroup:

Bio from Bill:
Born: Yes. Sometime in the last century.
Relatively normal K-12 schooling.
Correspondence course in electronics during senior year of high school.
US navy for 4 years as electronics technician.
BSEE U of Denver, last century.
Worked for a few companies.
Clinical engineer at OHSU.
A year and a half with Project Hope in Grenada (after our glorious invasion).
Was registered professional engineer, State of Oregon.
Nothing else notable.

I've been an admirer of Bill's minimalist factals and stereographic polyhedra, all generated from custom assembler on an old dot matrix printer, written at so low a level Windows can't handle it (but comes close -- might be an issue with video RAM), so he boots into DOS.

Then he has this instrument called Not-a-Theramin, with a very simple circuit wired to two sensors. Gordon Hoffman was by and admired the elegance of Bill's circuit's design, thought he could use it in future Saturday Academy classes.

I'll check with Bill to find out if he'd like to open source these resources and add links here accordingly.

Later, Glenn showed us some of the fine handicrafts he's done, including a handmade letter opener with a tropical wood sheath, an antler handle, and a stingray's stinger for a blade.

Sims

So it's a First Day, Sunday in layspeak, and I'm keeping it holy by goofing off, as our Lord said we should, not working, at least one day a week (the "virtual Sunday" concept -- keeps supermarkets open 24/7/365).

So that was to mean letting Tara install Sims 2 on KTU3, so I could test Camtasia Studio against Sim University. Ah, but Disc 2 has gone missing. In scrounging for it, I found Quake 4.

Given my Quakers Play Quake bumper sticker, I should install that, and show how I suck at playing it (but I do play it, from time to time, mostly just against myself, losing often).

Some of my detractors decry the fact of avowed pacifists indulging in stylized violence of any kind, but the whole point of pacifism is to style how we might wage war nonviolently (they say that's a contradiction, I say it's the Lamb's War (Jihad)).

Nope, Quake 4 is short one disc as well. Some other time then.

I still like Jevetta Steele's rendition of Bagdad Café, from the original soundtrack, the best of all the renditions I've heard.

Python for Math Teachers

Python for Math Teachers: Getting Started from Kirby Urner on Vimeo 
getting started



Python for Math Teachers: Looking Ahead from Kirby Urner on Vimeo  
looking ahead


Python for Math Teachers: Subclassing for Beginners from Kirby Urner on Vimeo 
classes and subclasses
(click here for high resolution version)

[erratum on this 3rd clip, classes and subclasses: parentheses "()" -- not curly braces "{}" -- trigger the Dog constructor __init__, as well as the __call__ method on our callable dog objects]

My blurb in the Math Forum pointing to these shorts. Where to go from here? How about Working with Stickworks? Or maybe read more about __rib__ syntax.

Presidential Races

OK, I'm glad Hillary Clinton is in the running, as that'll give us a chance to refocus on the bombing of Belgrade.

Starting a hot war in the Balkans seemed the height of reckless stupidity to me, but I'm not sure the national security team of that era takes any responsibility for letting that situation get so out of hand.

I ate at lunch at Toney Bento's today, in honor of the Kosovar Relief Effort (Mercy Corps et al, likewise on the front line in Beirut).

With deepest thanks... Mercy Corps

Almost as reckless as another hot war in the Middle East, but I'm not sure George Bush could've stopped it, given Unconscious America, so best to put a bright face on it then. Either way, it's a referendum on war, and political dabblers therein.

And besides, I've already announced my bias against anyone with 109th Congress experience, so I'm not expecting any overtures. I'm glad to see Richardson entering the fray. Governors seem more even keeled to me. Congress has been quite "special" of late (Church Lady allusion).

I noticed the surface of Surface has this geek chic looking guy with some mutant tetrahedrons, a sign of the times. Prepare for another invasion of Beautiful People™.

issue 63

Three Pictures of Dawn

leaving the pagoda, with tara

third window from the right

enjoying some tea

photos from today
by K. Urner
Olympus Stylus 720

Fitzcarraldo (movie review)

A fun way to watch this movie, if of a Buddhist slant, other reincarnation religion, is to see our dashing Fitzgerald as Aguirre reincarnated.

True to karmic form, he's learned a thing or two in the afterlife. For example, he's now much better with women (which isn't saying a whole lot, given where we were in Part One).

Herzog provides this outrageous director's commentary, providing this back story about how the movie had to restart when Jason Robards and/or Jack Nicholson fell ill and/or thought life was too short, and Mick Jagger (Herqueque?), though willing to forego many pleasures, had gigs to get back to.

So it was back to Klaus Kinski, always Werner's top choice, but too inclined to freak out in the Peruvian Jungle (witness Aguirre).

That scene with Fitzgerald going absolutely bats in the belfry, wanting his opera house, rivals the best of Jim Carrey, with or without a mask. And he gets one in the mix, dreams do come true, which is the happy ending... and that this movie got made, yay.

Snow Day!

:: Portlanders enjoy the snow ::

So the day after MLK day (well celebrated in these parts), Portland gets it in the face. At least Tara's in heaven (she loves Portland snows). PPS closed reluctantly, boasting "snow routes" until almost 8 AM.

Last week, we flinched (schools closed), but just got a light dusting. Parents whined, deprived of day care. Last night we put on a brave face, girding for a "dreary commute," but got this winter wonderland instead.

The rest of the country is also making up for lost time, in this Weird Winter of '06-'07.

:: Franklin High School,
Portland, Oregon ::

Intelligence Failure

I noticed on 60 Minutes last night that the president continues to feel a failure of American intelligence is what led USAers to attack Iraq, thinking to pre-empt any use of WMDs against the USA homeland.

I would think he'd be reassured to know that American intelligence was tracking the UN's progress and coming to the same conclusion as the Blix team and Scott Ritter: there were no noteworthy, ongoing WMD programs in Iraq, just some plans and intentions -- much like you'll find in any military organization.

On the other hand, various constituencies in charge of the machinery of government, had no interest in the public discovering that Iraq was defenseless. This information was apparently concealed from the military as well.

So yes, there was a failure, but only in the sense that the machinery of government had fallen into less intelligent hands. That's why Negroponte was brought in, to help address that situation (mission accomplished).

Today, I don't think we'd be that stupid, although a high level of vigilance is always required, to keep our intelligence community smoothly running on rails, not jumping the tracks.

Happy New Year!

:: some belated bubbly ::

The above PKL static JPEG alludes to a recent thread on Synergeo, wherein one John Brawley of Tverse has been drawing our attention to this "dunce cap" model. Notice how the cap's triangles rise a little more steeply than their square underpinnings.

The bubbles are of course an added special effect, from JASC PaintShop in this case. I've tried to capture the gist of our Synergeo discussions, in this mathcast archived at Math Forum, and from the quasi-mythical Iraqi province of Bordûm.

Replying to a poll on KOIN News at Six: I like Beervana (a play on Nirvana) even better than Beertown (or "BeerTown" in geek), but accept both/either as alternate monikers for our Rose and/or Bridge City.

Now we just need a Portland-made beer named Samsara (in Klingon?).

Dawn is doing DreamQuest tonight, at Trinity Cathedral, just like old times. She went with Carolyn dressed to the nines in an Owl Cape, handmade by Phyllis of TBC.

Bumper sticker I saw today, on some Oregonian's car:

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (movie review)

My long term readers know I don't always review movies in chronological sequence (what a silly order to go by for anything, right?), so here I'm meditating on a 1972 classic, filmed in the wilds of the Peruvian Jungle starting not far from the ancient Incan capital of Machu Picchu.

I've watched this a few times before, but not recently, and never with the interview with Werner Herzog, the German and English speaking director (maybe Incan as well?). I fell asleep listening to him, and not because I was bored, but because I'd just come from a lecture on sleep disorders at Wanderers by a Shakespeare quoting practicing psychiatrist (packed house), and I came home of two minds: to watch this movie; and to sleep, perchance to dream.

So Aguirre is this mental case who is out to conquer the region, knowing it's been done in Mexico, that the history books are full of such games of pirate treachery. He's too sly to nakedly seize power, but crowns an underling, who shows backbone, bless his heart, but eats too much. Then we have the two XXs (another XX appears later, and fails, like her husband, to hear the Word of God): the delicate princess in the sedan chair, somewhat reminiscent of Kate in Lost, in terms of situation and regal bearing, if not outward behavior, and Aguirre's daughter, gorgeously solitary in her suffering under this tyrant father, who only wants to do it for her. Very compact and psychological. Plus Mother Nature is all around.

During the sleep disorder lecture, which was about the normal sleep cycle, in contrast to all the pathologies, I was tap tapping on my laptop about this number 6174. If you take any four digit number, zeros OK, but never all four the same, and flip it to maximum and minimum permutations, i.e. 6741 and 1467 (always inverses in that way), and subtract, and keep doing it, eventually you'll end up in this "kernel" (6174). I give more details about all this in the Math Forum.

An interesting feature of this Jungle search party is how little people talk, and when they do, it's not to resolve anything, except when it's in writing and made part of the official record. Mostly they just gaze into their own souls and/or play the flute. Even the horse seems more interior, a ghost horse, than exterior.

I salute Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski (a magnificent Aguirre), for inspiring the confidance and level of participation they got from such a marvelous and intelligent cast. And speaking of movie directors, I caught the NPR interview by Terry Gross of Richard Linklater. Towards the end, Linklater is basically razzing kids who want to grow up and make movies ("the chances of that happening..."), which I imagine grated on Terry's nerves a bit (anyway, did mine), but going back I heard a caring teacher, really spurring young listeners to rise to the occasion and live their dreams.

Don't just be a spectator in this game of life, and always remember: Mother Nature is watching.

My thanks to Mike Hagmeier for reminding me about Aguirre (Fitzcarraldo reenqueued), and to Trevor Blake for steering me to the 6174 discussion, over coffee at Peet's.

Funny Story

Ever preparing to fight the last civil war, the American generals girded themselves. Katrina hit first, which didn't count, because she's Mother Nature, and Mother Nature always wins.

Back on the ground, what happened next surprised people: the West Coast declared war on the East Coast, and the latter capitulated immediately, sparing us any unsightly bloodshed.

And once again, the USA generals were caught unprepared.

The moral of this tale: war is always surprising.

Local Activism

Winterhaven parents are up in arms because the School Board plans to close it down, separating the program from the building, and then moving the program to a strategic location far away from its current one, thereby disrupting many lives, for the sake of the children.

Their idea is that if the program is such a good thing (which all claim that it is), then it deserves to be in a bigger facility, so more kids might join. The idea that the school's relatively small size might have something to do with its success, doesn't bubble up as relevant, even though that's what the students are claiming (who listens to them?).

Nor can they think in terms of spreading a successful program, rather than closing it down to reopen it elsewhere, as that would mean two Winterhavens, which'd confuse everybody. Rather, they must perform a heart transplant, and save one community by killing another.

Something you have to understand about School Board people: they're volunteers with busy lives, surrounded by paid staffers with hidden agendas. There's a lot of wheeling and dealing that goes on. I doubt parents know even the half of it.

Some Winterhaven parents were rather vocal this year, objecting when the military came around with its annual bus 'em to brainwashing "science" briefings ("wow, look at that cool jet fighter"). Most schools just get in line because they're "too poor" to offer such "science" on their own, but Winterhaven, proud of its science, was less compliant.

Could there be an element of retribution in this School Board maneuver i.e. let's show activist parents what happens when they question authority a little too loudly? I'll ask my connections in Salem if they think there's a link.

Follow-up: likely no link, but there're plenty of other reasons to want to kill Winterhaven. On the other hand, parents have gotten wise to the fact that the democratic machinery of government gives them an upper hand. There's a meeting this evening. Stay tuned.

Nutty Gemstone

Here's the first in a three paragraph essay I posted to Math Forum yesterday:

I bank on kids having an innate desire to test the waters, since even comfortable niches keep sliding out of reach over the horizon going backwards. By which I mean: the push to grow up is relentless and not under any child's conscious control. They outgrow clothes, teddy bears, monster chess, lullaby lyrics and so on, in quick succession. Were it not for Sims and Sims 2, most teenagers would be too adult-minded to play with dolls anymore, but with 2nd Life, it's adults going back to doll play that's happening (so yes, there is play in adulthood).

In case you're wondering, no, I'm not piloting any 2nd Life avatar. However, I did spend hours in ActiveWorlds (AW) closer to that time when Bonnie and I attended the same party in Santa Cruz, hosting Gerald of Java World, of Fluidiom later, other luminaries.

Bonnie had already done, or was soon to complete [editor: review timeline], an AW High, with a library and art gallery linking into neighboring spaces.

In the educational branch (AWE), we built on the science fiction assumption that ActiveWorlds used an IVM (octet truss) for referencing constructs, and built a university, to which we invited people for seminars, a Fuller School dollhouse (cute) or SimVille, a little Buckydom.

:: heron ::
(photo by R. Sonnenfeld, NMT)

Indexing Copyrighted Works

I watched a panel discussion on satellite last night, well into 2007, regarding Google's intent to search engine the pre Internet database of print media.

Publishers feel it's their right to capitalize on copyrights they might own, perhaps owing to deals with authors, while meanwhile librarians exult in the new ways their great libraries might serve as front ends to whatever electronic stash Google in the long run manages to amass, including by data mining in Princeton's Firestone and Fine Hall libraries.

I think the trick is to see it both ways, and to recognize that authors aka authorities deserve compensation, one way or another, but exactly how they get it is what keeps changing.

Publishers too perform value added, not just through distribution, but by banking on stables of authors, assuming some risk. Universities, also publishing ventures (as academic presses) likewise assume such risks, in providing tenured and other tracks to their human resources.

Strong business models help stabilize this picture, giving authors more time to focus on exercising their best skill set, meaning less worrying about where the next publishing deal is coming from.

In the old days, Google's intended function, which is to "bring to mind" the books you might wanna look at, based on some keyword scans, was best served by living scholars. Indeed, living scholars are still Google's chief competition in that we're each proprietary search engines, able to connect things up pretty neatly, especially in some chosen field or discipline.

When it comes to quality linking and match making within a tight field, you really can't beat a real human.

Google, on the other hand, is in response to the exponential curves we've been seeing in print for quite some time now, curves made yet steeper by the Internet itself.

The need for machine indexing, ala Vannevar Bush's MEMEX, ala CERN's need for hypertext (to cohere particle physics), has never been greater, in the sense that individual human beings, capacious and intelligent though they are, don't have mastery over that scale of a database, minus these new power tools.

Google, like a multi-story crane, bulldozer, supertanker, is a result of coordination and group effort, by individual humans, to make a superhuman difference. Nor is Google the only such player, but is well representative of our need for media indexing on a gigantic scale.

And let's remember that as authors, not just as readers, we crave these new levels of access, akin to higher security clearances in the spy novels and TV shows. "So what secrets top these top secrets I'm getting?" is the perennial question.

A lot of the new stuff worth reading, watching, listening to, will have availed itself of such higher levels of access as the new indexing technologies provide, we may lip smackingly anticipate. We'll understand our history better, our selves better, is the promise of what might be characterized as a philosophical enterprise (building a new meta level).

We really need that element of brute force, those harnessed teams of big dino gigahertz and terabyte computers, to plough through such a vast acreage of electronified materials, and Google has primitive muscle of that nature (e.g. in The Dalles, Oregon), and not only Google. Several panelists expressed their belief that the USA itself would have more potential. But why see it as either/or?

Relevant:
Peter Suber's Open Access News (blog)