Spring Retreat 2008

:: swag ::

I'm online from the Pauling House, shooting the breeze. Anagrams of Wanderers with the word "nerds" in 'em were on the board last night, but on Sir T's recommendation I consulted an anagrams server to get Errands, We and Darers, New.

Also, Kirby Thomas Urner anagrams to Your Bankers Mirth, which has an apropos grunchy flavor to it.

Patrick and I compared notes on the recently concluded Pycon, where I represented my firm as senior partner.

Lots of talk about ToonTown, its heritage (through art books and websites both), plus a subplot of me trying to upload raw video from my Pycon talk (session #53), through a Java applet running on Ubuntu, supplied by Google.

Some discussion of goofy hollow earth theories, adhered to by some Nazis.

I've strewn swag on the table, including Cuisenaire rods, an XO (green and white), some literature, some geometry toyz. A toy microscope showed up (blue and white), which Bill has been trying to repair.

But the gizmo that takes the cake is Terry's new Apple Xserver with three terabytes of storage. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with it out of the box.

Catching up regarding Eris, Quaoar and Sedna, thanks to Cosmos by Giles Sparrow, a beautiful gigantic tome.

More from Pycon

Listening to Mark Hammond's talk, Snake Charming the Dragon, is helping me assemble a better picture of Python's future role.

Sun's JVM, Novell's Mono, Microsoft's .NET, and Mozilla's Tamarin will serve as the basis for many future applications, not just web browsers, and Python, along with the newer JavaScript, will be a standard language for developers of these applications. Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flex both fit into this rubric.

Generic GUI development will inherit from browser-based tools, such as CSS, plugins, various XMLs such as XUL.

Regarding OLPC: Uruguay and Peru (Arahay) are among the early adopters, also Birmingham, Alabama. The software development process still has a ways to go. Ivan Krstić is the man on the front lines here, literally risking his neck to get XOs in the field.

Ian has been generous in sharing his talents, having me go through a recording of my talk on his iTouch while penciling in filenames on a time line -- a first step in his video post production process.

Catching Up

A counterpart from New Mexico came through here today, wanting to visit Powell's Books. I whipped up this quick floor altar to celebrate.

SnapShot

[ copying a snapshot of a shared Google Document, started by Alaska-based Anna, directly to my blog, from a coffee shop in Oregon ]

Test Hello All!

This is a test of this new tool I just learned about. It allows us to collaborate with others on the same file if we set up rights to share. I could see this could be very valuable to our project, especially as we move forward in the refinement of our new school design.

Please respond so we can test this.


Thank You, Anna 8)


Our new website launched at http://www.TECC-Alaska.org

Kirby adds: Bio Blurb (seems pretty easy to add stuff)

Here's an example Python module that's both a lesson plan (adapted from a New Mexico project) and runnable code.

Accentuate the Positive

Bucky often hearkened back to some popular tune of his day, when explaining his effectiveness (way beyond just moralizing, pronouncing judgments), his craft, involving trim-tabbing and such.

Inventiveness within language, coming up with a deliberately remote vocabulary, was a big part of it for him. While he (sometimes quietly) conceded when the competition had bested him, he at least kept a few words for himself: like spin.

What Bucky meant by "spin" is closer to what is today meant by "spin doctor" i.e. someone who imparts meaning in some sly and precessional way (that's Bucky's meaning of precessional).

Or maybe it just looks sly (crooked, weird) to more straight-ahead types. But for Bucky it was "deliberately non-straight" and in that sense perfectly natural (how nature does business).

Recent Chemistry

from Synergeo

We've had some buzz on the Bucky lists thanks to UCLA's announcement of another icosahedral microarchitecture, similar to the viral sheath, reminiscent of buckminsterfullerene. However, rather than stir up the Bucky talk again (like there's already that play), these science writers have found safe passage through Epcot and its signature Spaceship Earth:

Yeates and his colleagues have identified the proteins that play the critical role in how the structure folds in the carboxysome, a protein shell that is the best-known and most-studied microcompartment. The shell has a structure like a soccer ball or the large, iconic dome structure at the Walt Disney World's Epcot Center. [source]

So then dharmraj aka John Mac Cosham, active on Synergeo, whipped out the above, using some Canadian software to output a virtual world file, downloaded and rendered in my FluxPlayer plugin in FireFox for this screen shot.

These are the kinds of college level skills we're hoping to foment in some of the college prep charters our various vendors supply, including 4D Solutions.

Programming Unglued

Some who started their careers in the days of punch cards, think of programs and data as one stack of cards, data after program, all queuing as jobs for the CPU, printed output to follow. That was their paradigm, for then and for now.

Then came the command line or shell, interactive dialog. Workbench and toolbox metaphors predominated. UNIX a smash, ran for cash, until GNU gave us all free bash.

These alternative conceptions of "programming" (queuing lengthy "self sufficient" programs vs. enriching a namespace with tools) come to bear as we move on from just calculators, and really start using technology in the classroom, for real this time, not just Zoombinis (cool games).

In math world, we're used to little snippets, dense thickets, all floating in a haze of discursive prose. Functions abutt sigma notation. Diagrams obtrude (graphics). The vista is fragmented.

MathCad and Mathematica have done wonders to acclimate pro math users to the interactive and/or spreadsheet environment. On the other hand, both of these successful commercial products are themselves "big code" in the sense of reams of source all glued together by a mouse-and-keyboard event driven framework.

The user is "in" a game-like environment, just like "in" a Python shell (i.e. something is running, an interpreter we call it).

Python's modular format brings both worlds together: big iron executables; a more loose fitting, seat of your pants, command line experience. Programming is like typing, like novelists and journalists experience. Except your machine talks back to you, and you're allowed to actually tell people that it does.

Functions are like fish in the tank, with mouth-like parenthetical syntax, just waiting for arguments. Python's own math module is a great example: the trig functions just sit there, waiting to be fed. And you feed them through parentheses, even if there's a GUI at some desktop level.

( click for larger view )

Big code runs in the background, but you also want that responsive interface in the foreground, a sense of driving, even if the steering wheel isn't connected to anything, that Fisher-Price like experience, kinda Stephen King like in some contexts (disconcerting).

In Python, that need for "glue" to bring it all together is typically expressed in the form of a testing regimen at the end of the module. If this code is actually being run as a main process (if __name__ == '__main__'), versus imported for random accessing from outside, then fire up a whole lot of tests, giving every feature of this module a miniature workout. Show what it'll do.

In sum, the in vogue eXtreme Programming "test as you go" techniques -- already satisfying to mathematicians because like proving up from axioms -- fit well with the more interactive, unglued aesthetic, wherein you don't necessarily want an obtrusive framework, making you pick from menus for everything, pestering you with questions, prompts or whatever.

Sometimes entering "just do it" is the most direct way.

New Entries

"clever disguise"

"2nd line: not centered, indented"

"cool hook"

Evening TV

Last night I dove into Lost mid-episode, having missed the previous (queued), while trying to eyeball an O'Reilly book on my laptop in Safari about the Linux kernel, trying to get some bang for my buck (I pay a subscription) -- all mildly disorienting. Kate always gets my attention though, plus all these intense others. Lost is quite riveting. We hope Sayid is OK.

Earlier we were attuned to the news (CBS). This election season is being plenty interesting. Like there's Kosovo all of a sudden, right on cue it seems, complete with a carefully staged rampage in Belgrade, go figure.

The chatter on the radio is about how we're back on track for an Academy Awards worth remembering. Hollywood is in a much better mood these days, what with the writers' strike being over.

The job of an operating system is to schedule the use of resources in an intelligent way, so that hardware, a scarce resource, though quite typically ample if well managed, is put to good use.

Processes get the illusion of having the computer all to themselves (within a process are threads), but in the multi-tasking paradigm, concurrency is more the fiction than the reality.

However, this was about an older version of the kernel on younger architectures, as true multi-processing has become normative in many computing environments, as we might say in modern geek (one of them "yawner talks" as we might say in hillbilly (a focus of Simpsons on Fox 49, an episode wherein Lisa helps the Spuckler kids become more urbane)).

US 193

:: artist's conception ::

Early press reports suggest the eclipse-night missile firing might have saved our bacon here in Portland, given the wayward spy sat's rapidly decaying trajectory.

Lots of journalists were saying how NASA needed to get its act off the stage, or risk taking a bullet, but now with the shuttle safe on the tarmac... it was show time at last!

Or did the projectile just clip off a rabbit ear? Hard to tell from this distance.

The Pentagon is doing some fancy signature analysis to see if the toxic payload of (N₂H4)_n leaves spectral traces in space, which'd be more like proof positive. Other agencies, observatories, have their eyes pointed skyward as well, checking for fallout.

In the meantime, I'm giving the navy my vote of confidence by walking outdoors, on a cold bright sunny day in late winter. Portland is beautiful this time of year. Last night's lunar eclipse was grand.

That being said, I was somewhat dismayed to learn that none of this recent rocket science counts as "already paid for" by the Star Wars initiative, as that was about building an anti-ballistic missile system (ABM), whereas this anti-satellite stuff (ASAT) is a whole different ballgame and required lots of last minute modifications.

Getting into this new business of shooting down friendly but out of control satellites, keeping humans safe from their toxic payloads, will cost a lot extra, the navy has been very emphatic about that.

Portlanders should be easy to persuade, in light of what's just been averted.

"moment of impact"
(click for larger view)

Py3K

Py3k + IDLE, checked out via svn, running on Ubuntu

Py3K was in some ways named in spoof of Y2K, which sounded dated as soon as it was over. Python 3000, on the other hand, would at least stay in the headlights a lot longer.

But in practice, the jump alluded to is not measured in solar years. Instead, it's a break point in the Python language's development, accomplished with a lot of smooth maneuvers, including a 2to3 converter (runnable in 2.5).

Yes, I see why apply was taken out. Instead of going apply(f,(1,2)) we just go f (*(1,2)) i.e. the asterisk unpacks the contents, makes 'em two arguments.

And no, and I won't miss reduce either, and so far no sign little lambda is going away (I bet Mary is really happy about that).

We're going to think in a more organized way about bytes and strings, by making these the two principal encoding types. In string world, we default to Unicode, but that's really a complicated standard, so utf-8 is more like it (not complaining -- as a user of Latin-1, I'm already privileged).

Making print a function: yeah, seems like the right idea. Guido is good at this stuff. I'll reserve comment on some of the more esoteric innovations, until some more opportune time.

Were I to start teaching new Pythoneers tomorrow, I'd stay with production 2.5.x, as learning core Python means learning core concepts, and these only get reinforced, not abandoned, i.e. one's comfort level only increases with future versions. In other words, learning 2.5 today means you still have 2.6 and 3.x to look forward to, and that's a good thing.

We've added another Ubuntu laptop to the family, given the Sony had to go off to meetings in Philly. True, Sims 2 doesn't easily run on this distro (right?), but Lost at abc.com certainly does.

Background reading:
Re: minimalist vs. maximalist spectrum (Feb 18)

More Rocket Science

Yeah, the Russians are right, there's an ASAT aspect to this USA-193 story, and the military'd rather have kept the whole op covert, rather than make a public spectacle of itself.

But this is an election year, and a leap year, and the public wants a reality check. Just what have we been paying for with all this Star Wars stuff since Reagan? Now is a chance to find out. And given it's not so clear why we fight, in the old fashioned way, old conventions about cover-ups have evaporated. Too many privatized civilian agencies, ready to blow the whistle -- and so it's official news then, can't have it both ways.

Indeed, it's spun as not so hopelessly staged, like one of those test shots from Vandenburg, but as still with plenty of variables (almost realistic): an expensive piece of equipment, lost in a risky game of chance, is plummeting towards Earth filled with toxic fuel, no predicting where it'll hit (Moscow? London?). Hollywood couldn't have done it better, and I'm not saying I don't believe it, even if Britney doesn't.

Whereas the old Pentagon might've just said "fuck 'em" (and what else could they say? -- no sense running around like Chicken Little, setting off a public panic), the new Pentagon has to put some walk behind its talk and actually try and shoot the sucker (because sometimes stray sats need to be shot?), or else fess up that rocket science is still pretty darned hard to get right (we knew that already). At least there's a window for more than one shot (80%, the declassified figure, is hardly for sure).

Also, in my view, orbiting space junk full of poison / toxic stuff is already a "weapon in space" so it's not a matter of if / when. Another victory for military intelligence, to have that thing out there, being evil. Or does Hubble have that same 'zine stuff inside? I like Hubble. Time to go Google and bone up on "sat guts" (satellite anatomy). I'll see some of you out there.

Oh, and put a self-destruct feature in next time guys (we've all seen those movies) -- not really spies are ya, or you'd've thought of that (or did the failsafe break this time? Malesh).

Pythonic Art

Various graphic designers have been putting forward some alternative designs for a EuroPython logo.

Above, some examples.

Below: what Pycon USA is using these days.

The Holy Mountain (movie review)

This movie gets attention for the meta story behind it, appropriate given the finish, wherein Jodorowsky tries to frame the frame, an exercise in self-consciousness for the viewer, who by this time may be fairly drawn in.

According to this back story, which adds to its mystique, this Mexican film (1973) was suppressed for the longest time (to avoid scandal), and is still almost impossible to find. Anyway, isn't the collective unconscious supposed to be suppressed? -- that's what makes it unconscious after all.

Our protagonist is engaged in a quest for enlightenment, also billed as a search for immortality. He struggles to escape identification with Jesus, difficult given his crucified appearance (which tourists appreciate), yet he remains within the alchemical tradition, wherein even excrement (raw film) might be turned into gold (through smart editing and enlightened commentary).

In the alchemist's lab, each avatar on the team gets to explain his or her planet.

On Venus, our Don Juan type makes the accouterments of love, while on Mars it's all about weapons (naturally). There's a police state planet, with eternal executions and mowings-down, and a another planet (different from Mars) devoted to the manufacture of war toys for kids, always carefully crafted with the next enemy in mind (Peru in this case). On the architecture planet (Pluto) we find some foreshadowing of those Japanese capsule hotels.

One could choose to look at all this as an acting troupe, director-alchemist included, in the process of bonding, getting comfortable emoting and disrobing together, clowning around for the benefit of an observer-voyeur -- fun stuff to look back on at the end of the day. Others see it as a "spoof of religion" and indeed the wisdom clichés get thickly applied, like too much makeup.

Pacific Shift

Tests on 500 trailers, finally begun last month, are being performed by CDC, the lawmakers noted. "The Committee is concerned about the independence and scientific integrity of any indoor air testing for formaldehyde levels in these trailers done under the auspices of FEMA," Miller and Samson wrote.

"For those who are too poor to live elsewhere, FEMA's position remains as it was in 2006: there are no possible adverse health effects that can't be cured by opening the windows," they added.

[Lawmakers Fault FEMA on Trailers, Washington Post, January 29, 2008; Page A03]

Perhaps the silver lining to this story is it has become obvious to even casual observers that Washington DC is paralyzed when it comes to taking meaningful action in the face of emergencies, either domestically or overseas.

DC is no more than a sandbox for puffed up bureaucrats, powerless and ineffective, playing blame games with Congress. Brain dead self-described "strategists" manage a killing machine in Iraq, with no clue as to why they're there or what their real mission is (big ideas anyone?).

This is all very helpful to our economy out west, when it comes to attracting investment and new talent, as it reinforces what we've been saying all along: the east coast is for losers (an exaggeration of course, but then advertising is supposed to be pithy).

More Grid Talk

[me commenting on a 2006 blog post by journalist William Shepherd]

Interesting post. The argument about insurgents seems off base as we already have plenty of long line transmission where that's not really a problem. Generally insurgents want to make a political point, want the PR, and have other more visible ways to attack than to head for Alaska or Siberia. When was the last time the Alaska pipeline was blown up?

The idea that we get plenty of energy is more compelling, and will be the strategy of smaller communities. However, huge urban areas often snarf so much Kwh that the only realistic way to provide is by importing from a long distance away. Hauling coal by locomotive is a chief way of doing that today. Economies of scale should be compared, apples with apples.

Would the Siberia connection make it more affordable to power Calgary or Detroit? These are the kinds of questions (some of them already answered in the minds of the author's "monopolists" I suspect, given recent patterns of investment).

I like the point about the war with Iraq not really being about oil, but the spread of western banking. I wouldn't call that initiative "victorious" at this point however. It's more of a blending that's going on, like a Vulcan mind meld. Telling "east" from "west" is becoming increasingly difficult and those who over-indulge in such talk brand themselves as children of the 20th century (Fuller was more from the 21st).

Wanderers 2008.1.30

David and I met for lunch over Thai food, with me getting an update on his company's decision process and visualization tools.

Consider a science fair. One may be hard pressed to find even a single judge who has compared a given pair of projects (A,B), given the comparison matrix increases as a 2nd power of the number of projects. Flooding the scene with judges means too little overview on the part of each judge and/or contestants overtaxed with too many interviews.

However, even with a sane number of judges, chances are very good of finding multiple cases wherein two judges have a 3rd project in common, i.e. the pairs (A,X) and (B,X) both occur for multiple Xs. The differences (A-X)-(B-X) give a sense of (A-B), the comparison we wanted to make. Collating all such instances may net significant new information, which David's latest prototype is good at extracting.

More Quaker Politics

I realized in my meeting with Gordon today, at Jim and Patty's for coffee and tea, that I don't need to disturb the peace among Quakers just because I think I'm some kind of futurist (and hey, so does The Oregonian -- with two articles in back issues, featuring me predicting "hypertext kiosks" in one, more global grid action in the other).

There's a whole spectrum to accommodate and if the goal is to be free of encumbering and unnecessary bling, then there should be a flavor of Quakerism that fits.

In a kind of Sims 2 cartoon, I think of our own Kathy Hyzy in the MMM library, talking about diversity among Friends. We treasure diversity, even as a relatively small liberal group, which makes us all that much more impressive. My Quakers on YouTube distillation, which I shared with Gordon by iPod, gives some sense of our multifaceted shape.

On the other hand, I think the AFSC, the action arm of Friends, should be more willing to embrace the future, in the name of staying effective, using the available tools. Lots of non-Qs in AFSC, by design, so making AFSC higher tech does not necessarily imply Qs are all on the same page, with regard to technology (lots of diversity, lots of experimental approaches -- our F&P not set in stone, even within just NPYM).

My thanks to Gordon, another geek, and others I've been in dialog with recently, for helping me get more clarity on my potential role. Also, having met with AFSC a few times recently, I'm not too worried. Staff was teaching me stuff about Facebook I didn't know, not vice versa. Where AFSC is concerned, I'm on the receiving end of a lot of good teachings and I kind of like it that way (humbling). Keep up the good work ya'll.

Speaking of The Oregonian: Opus quite funny today (high tech a concern), Dilbert too.

PowWow @ Peet's

source

Today was a lot about [feeding Naga] the Tetrakaidecahedron.

Now you may rightly raise your eyebrows, a lot of you, as you're thinking which one?

Do I mean Kelvin's Cell? Or are we talking the one that BCCs with the squashed dodecahedron?

Heck, even the cuboctahedron is a tetrakaideca, given the latter simply means 14 (perhaps your age even now?). Funny bumper sticker: Heck is for people who don't believe in Gosh (OK, only kinda funny).

See Synergeo 37796-97 for more on this tetrakaideca business (or go Google?).

My thanks to Glenn Stockton for bringing a copy of The Parsimonious Universe to the table -- reminds me of my Hargittai volume snapshot, also @ Peet's (Nick also present today, so some talk of Stallings).

source

Greek Polytheism

I think a better way to teach Greek mythology to today's high schoolers might be to use the analogy of a mixing board and/or a multi-track editing system.

Each god or goddess gets a track, and it's a matter of compensating, perhaps overcompensating, swinging the pendulum back, continuing to accommodate what Neoplatonists later called the Holy Spirit, or just Spirit if you didn't see the need for a qualifier.

Many philosophers like to say Zeitgeist instead, given their Germanic heritage and/or distrust of people who say "holy" for a living (an old "stones & glass houses" story, still plagues Old Europe).

Then you had these cults around each deity, basically ad agencies, PR firms, think tanks. On the ground, there'd be a war, like with the Trojans or something, Persians whatever.

Outward wars tend to be sick and twisted by definition according to my own Quaker F&P, so what's called for is therapy, and physicians with a sense of social responsibility.

You figure out what remix will maybe help restore peace and prosperity and lead to happier, more liberating pursuits and co-venturing.

In a modern context, for me, that'd mean more Athena and less idiocy, like I've been in this cult of Athena for some time now, duh. We have a longstanding alliance with the cult of Apollo, lots of other details I could go into, but why let the competition in on our secrets right?

New Toyz

my kit

A gnu math teaching suggestion:

After pouring out your cube into three tetrahedra, and before losing focus on your cube, quick switch to another cube model and demonstrate our 24-MITE dissection (perhaps with CubeIt! or maybe with something homemade) i.e. nail it right there, before proceeding to your octahedron or other basic shape.

Sounds like a (lesson) plan.

And don't forget the Coupler while you're at it? Lots of ways to go, per hypertoons.

Anyway, let's keep those suggestions flowing. I'll be incorporating some of them, but hey, don't wait for me to hog all the fun.

my studio
(click for larger view)

Friends of Jung

I joined a throng of strangers, plus a Wanderer friend, to find out what J. Pittman McGehee had to say on the subject of love.

I'd always been curious about Oregon Friends of Jung, having grown up a Freudian of sorts, a focus in 8th grade (his Interpretation of Dreams in the school library), then Chaim Potok's The Chosen was fun, Woody Allen movies, later shifting gears though.

Anyway, I thought this guy did significant work, wielding those three Greek roots eros, philia and agape, mixed with more modern taxonomy ala DSM-IV and with more than a dash of mainline Protestant or Christian or whatever that was (big cross behind him, in a Methodist church -- no way to escape it and besides he embraces his religious credentials).

His value system grated against mine somewhat, but hey, it's not like he's my father or anything.

Although he had a structure to his talk, you could tell he was exploring, learning, discovering more about himself. Bottom line: compassion for self (among others) is critically important.

I'd gladly attend some of these other lectures I see scheduled, though not at the expense of missing my own workouts (it's one thing to watch other people work out -- I don't allow myself to just play a spectator role).

And speaking of workouts...

Show & Tell

I produced this "metoob" mostly as a test of some new equipment, in particular the QuickCam Pro 9000 by Logitech, with Carl Zeiss optics. I'm feeling OK about the investment.

That's CubeIt! from the Huntar Company, mine from Math 'n Stuff, and Barrel Tower by Kenneth Snelson. Ed (E.J. Applewhite) was also my friend.

I rolled over my regular glasses in my sleep last night, snapped a temple (since fixed), hence the sunglasses. I make no excuse for the hat (I've tagged this with "Quakers" among other labels).

Polymorphic XP

"Polymorphic" is a fancy way of referring the the multi-valence of words, including some acronyms and abbreviations. XP in Windows XP is maybe not the same XP as in eXtreme Programming. Or is it? Maybe we'll never know for sure.

In any case, eXtreme Programming (XP) refers to an evolving discipline (new discoveries every day) aimed at increasing programmer productivity. The Hollywood stereotype of free caffeine-stoked beverages in a cooler, offices conducive to overtime, aren't necessarily up to date regarding the latest practices around pair programming or multitasking.

My XRL is a cross between XP and URL, with a hint of eXtreme roller coasters, like Matt and I patronized that time at Six Flags, about 40 miles north of LA on I-5 (drove by it again just the other day, quite a sight even from the freeway).

XRL might also get decoded as "eXtremely Remote Location" instead of "L for Livingry" (in the sense of "gear," and set opposite "killingry" in Bucky Fuller's lexicon).

Recruiting for XRLs

An XRL is an eXtremely Remote Livingry situation, perhaps in some windswept high desert, complete with electric ATVs and training in the safe handling of rattle snakes (Glenn knows a lot about such things).

Those tracking my Winterhaven chapter recall my big push around Celestia and Stellarium, also features in some of my Saturday Academy classes.

These OMSI-like astrolabe and planetarium type tools help orient campers (e.g. BarCampers) vis-a-vis their local galactic space-time situation, which all seems more sensible when not trapped under a big city's light pollution dome. "Are city folk more self-absorbed because they can't see the stars at night?" some ask.

In any case, XRLs often feature HDTV and plenty of bandwidth. Hooking a laptop to the dome's AV system shouldn't be problematic.

Given the setting, it's more your Bob McGown and Allen Taylor types we need to "abduct," as you need that "forest ranger" or "tour guide" tier, able to interpret what's on screen, in terms of what's outside, and vice versa.

Amateur astronomers have an edge, in other words, when it comes to filling some of those key staff positions -- even better if your astronomy skills dovetail with your navigation skills in some way. Plus it helps to know what to eat or not eat, other kinds of awareness, in terms of a given terrain, ala Cascadia Wild.

source blog

Launching the Mother Ship

Tonight Multnomah Friends celebrated a job well done in their newly remodeled facility.

Janet and I reminisced about the old lighting fixtures (as kids, we had plenty of time to stare at the ceiling).

Shortly after I got there, archivist Carl Abbott gave a quick synopsis of the building's history, including the Doug Strain chapter, which ended around 1963 on the stipulation that the AFSC have offices in the new Meetinghouse as long as it wished.

Fittingly, Marco was present, kids in tow, from the local office.

Lots of appreciation was expressed for the architect, by all accounts a very talented woman, and for the site supervisor, who learned a lot on the job, and for the couple who acquired the "house next door" allowing Friends to walk their talk by recycling, rather than wasting, an entire residence, by moving it some ten blocks away.

Excerpted below, an invitation from me to Wanderers, in recognition of the historic overlap in our respective trajectories.

Yo Wanderers!

There's already been some cross-fertilization twixt Ws (Wanderers) and Qs (Quakers) thanks to many historical and contemporary exigencies.

In case any of you are curious to see the inside of the newly remodeled Stark Street facility, which used to belong to Doug Strain's company before the zoning rules changed, there's an open house this evening from 5pm to 9:30pm, a potluck.

Nancy Ankorn and Don Wardwell joined me in their wandering capacity. Mark Allen sat with us and shared about his adventures in clothes-making and, more recently, welding.

weekly announcement bulletin
Jan 6, 2008

Pythonic Algebra

The above screen snippet shows two algebraic functions, everyday inhabitants of classroom textbooks, getting wrapped by some Pythonic OO thing such that we're subsequently able to compose these functions using the multiplication operator, at no extra cost to administrators (Python is free).

That's how group theorists want us to think of functions, or permutations, as elements you might chain together by means of a binary operation variously called composition or multiplication.

f(g(x)) and g(f(x)) are respective synonyms for (f*g)(x) and (g*f)(x).

Does commutativity pertain? That depends on the group, if it is a group. Maybe it's a ring too.

Welcome to high school algebra.

The wrapping Function class, shown below, overloads both __mul__ and __call__. We don't just want to compose them, we want to pass them arguments (food) and have them do work (expend energy).

click for larger view

Related thread on math-thinking-l.

More Family Album

:: glenn stockton, cousin alice ::

:: himalayan xmas ::

:: xmas in so-cal ::

:: bumper stickers ::

Other News Blips

News of Iranian swift boats feinting attacks against imperial armor in the Straits of Hormuz, has percolated to the surface just in time to promote Spartans in Darkness, a new history of the NSA based on recently declassified signals intelligence. Parallels with the Gulf of Tonkin hoax may be overdrawn however (history doesn't actually repeat, according to Heraclitus).

The CIA story seems to have fizzled, with some so-called experts saying the CIA should sit at the feet of the Brits and Israelis when it comes to learning how to torture people and lie about it -- all pretty Banana Republic if you ask me (hey, just ask Sayid).

I agree with Katherine Heigl: "leave her alone" (re Britney). How about we focus on Kenya instead? Or Sri Lanka.

Silicon Forest News

:: an XO atop my Ubuntu Dell laptop ::

We made it back from LA just in time, as winter storms closed around us in the following days. We're hunkering down, telecommuting between power flickers, UPSs often called upon.

I was somewhat amused that when Intel announced it was peeling off from the OLPC project, it was my phone that started ringing (I'm sure others' did too). I'm not all that surprised though, as OLPC has figured in my writings and slide presentations for some time now, plus I even quit an important Fuller Schooler committee to make time for this work (staying friends with the chairman though, plus now I'm back on committee, as the OLPC work is mostly done).

Somewhere between "Quaker animism" (me) and "Pierce's existentialism" (Terry), I inserted a reassuring write-up for Wanderers (#1954). The campaign to get an Intel Inside logo pasted on some flavors of XO was more of a marketing gimmick than anything, to draw attention to some smokin' new chips we're all looking forward to (yum, new Intel chips).

But the default AMD chip is working just fine from the point of view of our clients. Plus Intel has every freedom to inject its own offerings in the market (Classmates or whatever). The XO is highly specialized, customized for a niche demographic, which leaves the field wide open to other $100 laptops (closer to $200 as of this posting).

From my vantage point in Python Nation, the XO is a robust little platform stuffed with goodies: lots of literature, lots of programs, lots of pointers back to MIT and its infamous OpenCourseWare, and back to Hollywood, where G1G1 helped with many a fun party.

"What's important to sales is sales people who really believe in what they're selling" goes the old maxim, and there's lots to like in this picture.

Data Display Tool

That's a rough estimate of my mileages using a new API from Google, thanks to Guido for the heads up. This'll be a good way to teach about paramater passing via URL.

Onward to 2008!

tara & luci, 2007

Musical Theater

I mostly just review movies in my blogs, not trying to be a jack of all genres or anything, but that doesn't mean we don't take in plays, musicals, other performance arts.

Among the musicals in recent memory: a light hearted A Christmas Carol at the Armory, courtesy of Rocky of Bridge City Friends; Jacob and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat at Jesuit in Beaverton, as guests of Nancy of Wanderers (her daughter was truly stellar); and Wicked at The Pantages Theater in Hollywood yesterday, thanks to Carol Reilley Urner, my mom. Plus Tara was actually in the OATC troupe doing Schoolhouse Rock this summer, under the tutelage of Jo Lane.

I liked that Canadian show Slings and Arrows (not claiming to have caught every episode), which does a lot to remind us that movie acting and stage acting are a lot alike, yet quite different (somewhat ironic, given this was television).

Live performance is more like real life on the fly, is more demanding, as it's not so easy to do retakes or just piece together short scenes in the editing room. Movie directors tend to favor actors with live performance backgrounds, or so some will tell you, as less likely to need a lot of coaching (which not all directors are prepared to give).

I like that Buffy episode, Once More with Feeling, for it's gentle spoofing of the musical genre. I found it satirical, yet not mean spirited, given all those darling characters.

National Treasure 2 (movie review)

So this Book of Secrets episode begins with the phony end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln, resulting in contemporary speculation about whether Thomas Gates was a co-conspirator with Booth. However, given our omniscient camera viewpoint, we already know Gates was killed by KGC operatives.

The funniest moment in this film is when Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) successfully pisses off the Buckingham Palace security guards (all a part of his clever plan). In cinematographic terms, the car chase through London is a groundbreakingly impressionistic blend of sights and sounds.

Perhaps his and Abigail's acting out will remind tourists to keep their family squabbling less public -- shouting on your cell phone may also be rude, plus have some respect when you dress to visit holy places and shrines OK? Let's all just try to behave a little less foolishly shall we?

On a more serious note, the film at least alludes to JFK's tenure and assassination.

So I eventually tired of all the pseudo-adult bickering (ex partners trapped in old arguments). Yes, relationships are like puzzles, and so why are these premier puzzle solvers and translators so bad at them then? And why was the City of Gold built to look like a tacky Hollywood movie set? Poor craftsmanship apparently (lotsa leaks).

We came home to the news of the cowardly, insane assassinations in Pakistan. Maturity is in short supply on Animal Planet, especially among humans.

I cooled my jets in the jacuzzi and was more upbeat when later posting to edu-sig.

I also joined a Polyhedron elist today and posted some appreciative remarks regarding the recent Koski filings. I see other names I recognize in the archives.

Zoo Disaster

The LA Times today is reporting on page one about an irresponsible zoo that doesn't know how to contain its tigers.

Visitors whom the tiger mauled to death, and the animal star killer, shot dead by police, paid a very high price indeed.

How about no more captive tigers in the San Francisco Zoo until 3008? That'd be my idea of justice well served.

Update: I watched the news conference from my treadmill @ 24 Hour Fitness. Casualties at that time: two killed (one human, one non), two injured (human).

Map Psychology

Having lived in Europe for so many years, I'm aware of the pomp and circumstance attendant upon crossing a so-called border (so-called because these people can't seem to make up their minds, like to gerrymander).

Europeans then look at a map of the USA and see more like one color, with the states thinly outlined, and anyway what do those states even matter given everyone eats at Burger King and gases up at Chevron?

But the truth of the matter is the territorial USA is even more ethnically diverse than Europe's, having inherited that mother lode plus we had a ton of cultures going before they really got here en masse. All those plastic franchise signs paint a thin veneer of shared culture over a vast expanse. We all need gas, we all go shopping (mas o meno).

In the history books, you'll find lots of Norte Americanos going psycho over all this diversity, thinking it's a bad thing and must be conquered. That's laughable if you think about it, because the messianic "save America for the Americans" fanatics are always ethnic sectarians of one brand or another, a tribe of some kind.

Back to the Euro folk: in seeing the advance of Golden Arches and such icons across their land, fantasies turn to occupation by the Borg, some single-minded mono-culture that knows what it's doing going into Iraq. These fantasies are just that: delusional paranoias.

Globalization is not a dictated, creepy cult phenomenon, staged by some chosen few, but a natural consequence of diverse cultures reaching some compromises in order enjoy commerce with one another. This is not a new challenge (learning to get along), but the pace has picked up, given the big crunch, not so much in terms of population (there's still room to spread out), but in terms of more happening closer to the speed of light (e.g. satellite telecommunications).

Trip Prep

As the solstice draws nigh, I felt moved by the spirit to clean up Dawn's meditation space, aka our branch office of Portland Knowledge Lab (PKL -- somewhat patterned after London's). We've also got a portable altar ready, borrowing mostly from R.

Some of the coastal Friends I plan to visit got to know me through Camp Myrtlewood, a Church of the Brethren facility (see Urner geneology for more ties). We were young then, juggling torches, sharing memes (sometimes jeans). Obviously we came from many walkx of life (including this AI guy from Apple), although most were from Oregon and California, a few from Washington.

When my partner Dawn Wicca joined Quakers, she was clear with her clearness committee she wasn't Christian and would that be OK. In our neck of the woods, it most certainly was, at least in her case, as our brand of Quaker doesn't require buying in to the Protestants' authority structure, nor JudeoChristendom's for that matter, much as we might study the Bible (not the only holy book).

These latecomer colonists are welcome to their rituals, their shopping, but don't "own" this time of year in America and some Friends simply prefer to celebrate rebirth and reawakening with people who are very clear that they've never been subjugated by aliens (think of it as an Independence Day kind of thing).

That being said, Dawn was also very Catholic, both in upbringing and outlook, was awed by the priesthood's mastery over ritual, especially around Easter time.

Saturday Market 2007

Weight Loss

A down side of my no beer diet is some of my outfits gained a gunny sack appearance, unfortunate this time of year, when people are on the alert for people to assist. Or maybe I'm just too much the scrooge to buy clothes that fit?

I'm afraid a security webcam or two might've caught me trying to adjust my belt, tuck in my shirt, a strange routine for a hallway pedestrian at full stride (rewind, replay...).

Today though, I compensated with my Wild West leather jacket and beaver fur hat, which I mostly saved for my dramatic exit, and some remark about the horse in the parking garage (a joke of course -- though I did see real goats grazing from my level 5 vantage point).

It's not just the no beer (a vow over vodka in Vilnius); I'm getting to the fitness club somewhat more often as well. TinkerBell, my bicycle, hasn't been out much, since the weather got colder.

I was sorry to hear of the collision between a cyclist and a P.T. Cruiser in Gresham today. All around Greater Portland, you can find these little markers, where cyclists have died. Yet on the whole, I find our drivers to be more courteous and bicycle-aware than average.

Management by Rotation

cafepress.com

Usually the CEO, CTO and CFO of a company have their faces published in various glossy annual reports, on coffee mugs or whatever, so their ability to "blend in" among the rank and file is compromised.

A 2nd tier manager enjoys more anonymity, plus may have been recruited from within the company to begin with, so won't be seen as "just clowning around" if she or he joins a baggage handling team or some IT project for a spell on the front lines.

The CBS News team is another real world example, of a managing editor still doing field work, while those more often on assignment, or hosts of other programs, jump in to anchor from time to time as well.

Such management by rotation helps keep a crew limber, cross-trained and resilient, plus sustains a two way street of reality checks flowing, such that "the field" and "the head office" don't become divorced worlds, each with an exclusive, insular culture.

Of course a given special case reality is way more complicated than sketched above. For instance, you can't just hop between jobs and bleep out the training part, unless maybe you're going back to something you were good at already (frequently the case, but why not challenge yourself, pick up some new skills?).

Even as a top manager in your firm, you may need to join a specific "away team" as a neophyte apprentice, a "lower down" in terms skill level, and be willing to take direction from these more adept professionals, even as they learn from your high level ways.

Many a Western (movie genre) featured this plot, of an urbanized big shot, say a banker, reduced to needful dependence on local fur trappers, ranchers or even Native Americans in some cases.

A stint in the field may be a humbling experience for a boss type although sometimes "humbling" really isn't the word for it so much as "eye opening." A stint in the field may also be refreshing and revitalizing i.e. is duty to look forward to, to welcome, to not shirk or pass off as mere "busy work" to an underling.

Physicians are especially aware of this revolving door experience, simply because we're all mortals ailing of this or that terminal condition (i.e. life as we know it). Healers more generally find themselves on both sides of a healing equation, as patients of other healers, and so no wonder then that so many symbols of reciprocity ornament the medical literature.

An inspiration in the background: John R. Coleman, a former president of Haverford College who used to take low paying service jobs to keep some perspective. Another inspiration: the Centers Network, which implemented quite a lot of rotation among its volunteers and staff.

Here we're talking about a consciously designed aspect of a company's infrastructure, set up not as punishment but as an intelligent design aimed at sustaining the vitality and longevity of any long haul business venture.

Of course an older archetype is from Chinese philosophy, in which the emperor is forever disguising himself in peasant clothing and going out among his people. Given published photographs were less prevalent in those days, this was actually a more imaginable practice, plus one could always resort to disguises, various cloaking devices and so on.

Quaker Infrastructure

from the Laffoley archives, early works

I was comparing notes with a former Presbyterian on the Vietnam Era this morning. Whereas the AFSC was openly providing medical services on both sides, its traditional humanitarian calling (for which a Nobel Prize had been granted), the church-goers were launched on a relatively slow moving, deliberative approach, more professorial.

Activism is an anathema to some temperaments as it bespeaks "acting without guidance" or, in Quaker parlance, without a sufficient leading.

Given we'll always have a bell curve of temperaments, smart religions, other bureaucracies, take at least a two-pronged approach: give activists immediately relevant operations to manage; give analysts the time they need to really think before acting.

One of Paul Laffoley's more difficult instruments is this gyroscope of embedded gyroscopes (Levogyre, 1974). This seems a most definite allusion to what Bucky Fuller termed "precession," a phenomenon associated with gyroscopes, but by which he meant something more like "attractive, yet other than gravitationally." To be precessionally related is more like twisting as a strand within the same rope, and is how many a business partnership operates, though you still need core bookkeeping services to keep partners on the same page, more or less.

I think of the concentric hierarchy of meetings (monthly, quarterly, out to yearly) as like Laffoley's gyroscope. Here is a space for contemplation, deliberation, however fast or slow. Let the minutes season at the monthly level, then percolate outward, tilting the outermost rung in this omnispherical ladder, even as other minutes impinge, coming from other angles.

At the center, in a monotheism, is one source of all good. Polytheisms more focus on the concerns of top management, where not everyone gets the luxury of one overview. Atheisms are tired of crediting dieties for everything (angels whatever), wish humans would have the guts to simply take responsibility once in a while.

Given the AFSC does not mandate a specific religion among its staff, awareness of these and many more mindsets becomes a focus of Quakers as well, given their job of oversight with respect to said activist agency.

Wanderers 2007.12.5

I showed up late, per usual on Wednesday mornings, to catch the balance of an excellent, highly technical presentation by Wanderer Nancy Ankorn, CPA. She ran through the for-profit business models defined by the USA tax code: sole proprietor- ships, partnerships, C & S corporations, LLPs and LLCs.

From my viewpoint, the partnership information was the most interesting. And yes, the K-1 is a lot like a 1099.

On the back burner (via the Ubuntu Dell), I participated in an exchange on Quaker-P about religion and business. So when are Quakers going to run some key businesses again, like in the good old days? I don't think the oats guy is really a CEO, more of a figurehead, like Betty Crocker.

Nancy really knows her job well, and what with the rules always changing, that requires lots of study. The apparatus she monitors forms a basis for lots of flashy North American soaps, like my friends in Dhaka (Bangladesh) would watch. Turns out Nancy and I are both Warren Buffett fans.

Amazingly, Jim Buxton joined us this morning, despite major flooding in his neck of the woods.

Mirroring Public Views

Accurate surveying is a gold standard in whatever discipline, and that includes politics, unless "the pulse of the public" really doesn't matter, in which case you're probably not as high up in office as you'd thought.

Philosophical question: but how do you determine accuracy if all you have are competing surveyors, isn't that a chicken-egg conundrum? Sometimes you just have to shoot the philosopher (just kidding -- they used to say that about engineers too). Actually there's a better answer: reputable companies tend to reach very similar, if not precisely the same results, i.e. lots of cross-checking and fine tuning goes on (competing surveyors is a good thing).

Social networking software is providing students of public opinion with new tools, little ships in a bottle able to model ships of state, other big enterprises, fairly well, or at least that's what's being advertised, as in: "punch in your data, customize the picture, and the generic power of our model will give you some most interesting predictions, and this ain't just hocus pocus neither."

A side benefit of all these new pools of polling data is it's increasingly hard for fly by night shops to simply make stats out of whole cloth. The bad apples in the bunch become more apparent, as social networking accelerates the reality checking. That's actually how democracy is supposed to work, so don't take this as a report on some crisis. Sit back, relax, and make sure you keep voting (your thinking does matter).