Reinventing the Sacred

:: isepp 2009 @ heathman, portland, or, etc. ::

The bus wasn't coming and I wanted a beer. I kept sneaking in to Oasis, getting in line. However the lady in front of me had the most complicated pizza order ever, obviously the high point of her day.

Step out, come back in. Maybe there's beer down the block, start walking to the next bus stop.

Cell call... the dongle for connecting a Mac to the projector is at the Linus Pauling House. I should drop plans to take the 14 and get Razz, high tail it over to said house and grab the supply, take it downtown.

Later: knowing I'll be turning left in front of the Schnitzer, I try to phone in. I should have tried Glenn, didn't know he was part of Kauffman's entourage, but could have guessed. Find parking (Smart Park, entering on 10th).

Fun getting to go backstage, ushered by Mentor Graphics personnel. Gavin had beat me to it with the dongle, which is just as well, as we were but minutes before show time at this point. Terry thanked me just the same.

Leslie, also a Wanderer, had scored a ticket, later joined us for the reception at the Heathman. I drank quite a bit of red wine, ate asparagus and cheese, listened to the conversation, butting in now and then, took some pictures.

We (me 'n Leslie) started at the head table with Mentor Graphics people, but when Stu showed up after generously answering a lot of questions, we switched to a different one, surrendering our seats to Aldona and Allen Taylor.

At this new table, we talked about burying pets, among other topics. Our table mate, a big fan of Charles Dickens, had twelve acres somewhere. She had used a backhoe and forklift to bury a horse (more than one?). The hole was like 20 feet deep (seems excessive). Leslie had lots of problems trying to bury her cat because of shallow sandstone and other animals.

We got on to this subject in part because of Moon Kitty's recent incineration.

Stuart was relaxed and in good spirits throughout the evening. He'd been talking to Terry a lot and wove in some of those themes. He answered more questions from the podium, talking about a dog he knew (Windsor), other topics.

His talk inspired people to open their thinking to new possibilities. That's maybe harder to do than it sounds.

I drove Aldona home (she's also a Wanderer).

Belated happy birthday to my mother, Carol Urner. She flew from LAX to Chicago to Washington DC yesterday, clearly feeling better.

Wanderers 2009.4.22

Jim Buxton is projecting pictures from his recent stay, with partner, in an off-grid XRL, solar and wind powered, in California.

I gave a "rolling thunder" (vs. lightning) talk about my GIS in Action talk, blending in a report from Chicago. I talked through the Flickr set then flipped through the PDF of my OpenOffice Presentation.

David Tver got a lot of value out of his early model programmable calculator, studying chaos, ray tracing, likewise from his Commodore 64. In my case, the HP-65 proved influential (RPN with stack).

Bill Sheppard had a stereogram of a nebula he'd printed. He jokes the images were taken 10K light years apart, to give the right parallax.

I was glad to get Warren and Carter Sande's Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners in the mail yesterday, a book for learning Python, also happy to see my name in the acknowledgments.

Thanks Jimmy, for letting me borrow the lawn mower again. I abused it some, but it proved up to the job.

Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope is in the news today.

School Spirit

Schools develop their own internal lore, as evidenced by those sometimes dusty trophy cabinets, posted research, other wall art. These exhibits betoken the life experiences of the scholars within, proud classes gone by.

Since the invention of the intranet, interconnected by the Internet (some of them), more of this lore might assume digital format. Last year's performances, edited, remixed, go into the hall of fame, perhaps retaining raw footage. Editors treat that issue differently. Version control systems (cvs, svn, bzr, hg) make sense. Python.org is in the process of switching.

Teachers are often known by their students i.e. several stars will pop out of the woodwork in various places, like Doug Strain, a student of Linus Pauling's at Cal Tech. We've met some other students of his, of Feynman's also. As more of a Princeton type guy, I'm somewhat the interloper, but we synergize well, in a kind of east meets west operation.

Take the PSF's interest in fostering outreach to educators for example. If your students start sending their work to our coaches, Vern Ceder for example, then we'll become aware of you as well, as their mentor. That might be OK with you, to have your students discovered. Perhaps you would like to brand yourself even more overtly as a teacher of Python. What might that look like? Perhaps we could help steer you to the right stuff, to our figurative Vaults of Parnassus?

As I was posting to Synergeo recently (#51525), we're fortunate in ToonTown, to be able to source high definition video clips suitable for sharing out through exclusive outlets, such as certain classrooms and/or coffee shops. You didn't see it on the Internet first, you saw it because your teacher has excellent access to some engaging material. The teacher is also trained in taking good advantage of said material, helping maximize the value you get from it. That's what real teaching is all about.

Grunch Net

Network Solutions finally nudged me enough that I reupped on the domain again, this time until 2013. They were having evident problems in the ISP department per posted technical advisories, so I passed on the offer to switch from Qwest as my back end.

If I drop Qwest, I'd probably be dropping the land line as well (remember land lines?), and the fax (5032311045 -- mostly gets stuff about Cancun and Acapulco). As of now, however, I've even got my DirectTV bundled through Qwest, albiet with slashed HBO, Animal Planet (not by choice), still have National Geographic channel. No Geek Channel, Pentagon Channel nor Al Jazeera, no VOA. But that's standard for Lower48 slumdog neighborhoods such as our 97214. Switching to Comcast wouldn't help matters. At least we have Hulu, Netflix and so on (Youtube etc.).

The Grunch website is a literary project, as was the small book for which it was named, R.B. Fuller's Grunch of Giants. I spell out some radical middle politics plus give it a retro flair (sort of Bob like, John Waters, hints of Mad), consistent with Esozone's "Other Tomorrow" aesthetics, i.e. let's imagine had we not kicked the can down the road on the Bucky stuff for so long, we wouldn't be wallowing in high banking fees and closing costs maybe, might even have better health care.

Of course "it's not too late" is the perennial hope. Under the front page veneer, I've got a lot of basic humanities readings, a lot of it in ruins, given it's ancient, but with a link to my blogs, which have remained quite contemporary in flavor. We're a lot of young engineers (including female, in Japan) and design scientists (Bucky's nomenclature), around Portland, around Chicago... everywhere actually (Vilnius, Gothenberg...), so hold on to your hats and let's fly. Yes, we could use some more help. The work isn't easy.

Speaking of hard work, I've put in some more time on the OS Bridge puzzle of harnessing local talent to pull at least a few of our local NGOs into the 21st century. I'm looking at PPUG as one of those talent pools we might recruit from moving forward, along with art schools, graphic design schools i.e. just because you're good at regular expressions doesn't mean you know how to draw airplane seat pocket materials.

We need talent from many walks of life, not just software engineering. Read the post below for more on the User Group concept? You could probably adapt what we're doing for needed upgrades in your area.

PyBiz

I've been getting my feet wet in PSF world a little, thanks to Ian's new user group concepts. Parents like seeing what junior might be doing at summer camp, maybe take a few lessons, maybe volunteer, and the user group is traditionally open, though we're not that used to hosting kids. They'll need guardians. I forget how it worked with BarCamp where Ki Master George sold me a T-shirt that time, still below drinking age.

Of course I'm thinking ahead to the various coffee shop venues, where people might want to give lightning talks on a small stage, flanked by flatscreens, a kind of proto Pycon, more like karaoke, in terms of facing an audience. Open mic around open source? Why not? Already the status quo in thriving geek subcultures.

Show & Tell is a primitive genre, no reason to suddenly end it (like, there it is in elementary school, so where does it go? YouTube to the rescue in some cases).

My input, as non-board, non-executive voter, was simply to circle what I would call "the turf" (that which PSF protects): the website, conferences, user groups, and of course the purity of the code offerings themselves.

It's possible to hack an MD5 check I think (remembering a CRIME meeting at the zoo, HPD's George Heuston officiating), meaning you'll want some other checks as well (Python passes lots of tests, but how do you know which are the right ones).

Historically, I don't think counterfeit Pythons have been much of a problem, but with the success of any open source scripting language, you might get wannabe web sites with non-standard interpreters. At least the labeling needs to be clear. You always want to know: what's in the bottle. The PSF meeting at Pycon resolved to control the branding, in part to guard against precisely this contingency (case studies were mentioned).

To "protect" is also to nurture and grow, to enable to thrive, so I'm glad Vern Ceder is looking into Steve's idea of moving towards ISEF a little (the science fair motif), in terms of opening the floor to champions still in the schools, without employer compensation, yet who might get to exhibit, even if only in absentia, if only the right sponsors could find them.

Publishers need their poster children much as Nike needs star athletes to market sportswear. In saying "publishers" I'm not discounting colleges and universities, some with their own presses, some without. Having a cast is another way to value-add. Having your decals on a player says something about whom you value as an MVP. Brands use this to differentiate, niche market, B2B as much as B2C.

In floating the idea of a televised user group, I'm not seeking to compete with the many Internet venues. TV is still a distinct distribution medium in many ways, with its own set of protocols (PAL, NTSC). Yes, I'm aware of the direct to DVD option.

The point is, once we're able to edit more freely, we don't have to get it all with one take. On the other hand, presenters may not have the luxury of retakes either, so it's still "reality TV" in that sense (cameras get to visit the circus, but then the show must go on regardless, can't always slow down or repeat just because it's being recorded).

Of course Mickey Mouse Club is a model, even though I never watched it much (was out of the country). Everyone seems to know about it, if older than a certain age. Pee Wee Herman was more demented, frenetic, which might "play better in Baghdad" as they say. George (GW) running through with the reputedly rubber turkey was kind of like that -- made for TV, live action. Also "porno press guy" was pretty demented (this source says he had access to that Valarie Plame memo, for shame).

Anyway, Monty Python is the more logical source to turn to in our case, where much of the comedy comes from in the first place. I've offered a few skits, pitched various mathcasts (4D Studios work). I'd like to contribute more to such efforts, and not just around Python. There's all that "Bucky stuff" we're into, feeding out through commercials and so on. Heard of any good Quaker beers lately?

A more family-friendly EduPycon might also materialize (less strictly business), perhaps in a campus setting (like Pacific University's, or like Reed's -- to pick good local examples). A lot depends on how many faculty adopt Python for their schools. She plays well with others, Python does, like with Java and C++. To bring Python in doesn't mean kicking anyone out, unless disk space is really that much of a problem -- it usually isn't these days.

Service Calls

I'm busy slamming Lie to Me, Tara defending. I'm thinking "there's no reality like this" but she insists this is cool. These people with intrusive abilities to just tell us who is lying... what gives them that right? Police power fascism. Not new on TV. Yawn. I diss NUMB3RS as well, as my loyal readers might know.

Earlier, Tara'd had it with our busted remote, meaning no DirecTV in the downstairs. "Let's repurpose the upstairs remote" I said, patching in, "that way the one you're mailing can be for the TV we use less" (in my bedroom).

The guy ends up reading me like 30 codes for any kind of SONY. But we also had it on Video 3 instead of Line 1 -- and the remote is busted (stupid slidey thing, $15 to replace). Tara was also watching Jeopardy earlier.

Mom's cell was presumably lost, so I initiated the temporary suspension feature, but then she found it (way cool!). Again, more secret codes to reactivate, last four digits of my SSN.

A demented videogame for elementary school kids, complete with headphones, sort of stresses the "service call" skill: be polite and friendly, enjoy the experience, and be focused and detail minded, not spacey and diffused. Technical problems take presence of mind.

The PPUG list is buzzing with high level Django jargon, reminding me Leslie phoned, having heard about the electronic medical record initiative. Saving billions of your tax dollars.

Django (an MVC web framework) might be more for PostgreSQL however, a clinical research application. LMRs (legal medical records) might need a more schemaless environment, lots of pilot studies underway don't ya think? Could be good for Javascript too, CouchDB an attractive Apache project.

The ability to go against large test databases of scrambled information, no real PHI in the mix, is the kind of sandbox (testing environment) needed. We faced this at Free Geek on the MMT contract. I've written about the pseudonymizer in the same vein -- creates reams of "false identities" for simulation and/or identity masking purposes.

At Oasis today, it was all about RFID in the gurneys, playing air traffic control with lots of flatscreens, keeping patients from waiting, bottlenecking. Yes, you'll think of Wall*e maybe, can't be helped. Patient transport in hospitals is often on a bed or wheelchair, controlled by an orderly, other health care worker. Should the bracelet contain RFID as well? We're getting into hospital design and architecture here. As a Python guy, I'm more into the data streams than the data harvesting hardware, always pray for a simple enough API.

Knowing Experimentally

You sometimes run across this expression "knowing experimentally" in Quaker literature, and I latch onto it, thinking in part of Guinea Pig B, Bucky Fuller's sometime vision of himself.

I'm Guinea Pig K then; we each get "a self" to test the world with (a philosophical notion). Maybe it's a "virtual self" in some way, or, in the Buddhist sense, it's co-defined by the world. When our sense of the world changes, so too does our sense of self, and vice versa. Wittgenstein's Tractatus is a lot about this.

What puzzles me is when educators object to our planning around FOSS-based and/or "object oriented mathematics" with complaints that it hasn't been tested sufficiently.

There's a chicken-egg problem here, in that you don't get to skip the experimental part. Strong schools encourage trying new approaches, reward initiative, as only by testing new ideas in the field will we gain in experience.

In any subculture that innovates, you need the equivalent of "test pilots", people who'll "boldy go" (as they say on Star Trek). "Guinea pigs R us" in other words.

I've put a fair amount of stress on my Saturday Academy pilots, which you'll find written up in scattered posts within these blogs. Here were my tests, my results. Others could copy. I shared lots of lore, not just technical stuff. I made my source code freely available.

And so, that's a wrap in a lot of ways, one guy doing what one guy might do.

In terms of a circus, setting up a tag team of "gnu math teachers": it's a fun idea and would likely help galvanize our economy to new heights. The goal is to boost enrollment in STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and math.

This isn't at the expense of other subjects so much as a matter of more successfully converging them. Philosophy used to have some responsibility for achieving a good mix.

Sometimes I think the Quaker schools might be up for more experiments of this nature, starting with leadership in some of the flagship colleges. For all I know, that's what a goodly number are trying already.

In the meantime, the existing math track has a lot of problems i.e. we know experimentally that it's broken. But sometimes staring at something broken is more fascinating than coming up with new solutions.

Fighting fatalism is the name of the game.

Positive Developments

:: quinn & nick, paradox cafe, belmont ::

Johnny Stallings, the pro actor who does Shakespeare in state prisons (and at Catlin Gabel), just radioed his pleasure that the USA president plans to take a stand against nuke weapons on Sunday.

My mom will like that too.

I've been using the "launching party" metaphor, timing some post-Pycon "gnu geometry" advertising to coincide with what North Korea is up to, building upon earlier spoofs. I've enjoyed working this thread, which can get pretty twisted.

Tara won a speech and debate round, pretty good for a noob. She's a quarter-finalist.

My thanks to Dave Fabik for the "I'm Blogging This" T-shirt, very apropos, wore it to the gym this evening (and here I am, blogging about it).

Speaking of the gym, I watched Fox on the little screen on my elliptical thingy, found it hilarious. Some guy was ranting about fasces (rhymes with feces) and finding them on the back of the mercury dime. Hey dunderhead what about in the U.S. senate if you just wanna scare people? And hey, talk about kooky: he had John Bolton on for a guest.

The Future of the Image

:: future of the image ::

Whereas Pycon was a boost, I'm still anxious about sluggards in academe needing it handed to 'em on a golden plate, whereas the art colonies have already come through, reproducing the Fuller Syllabus almost verbatim as both museum quality and shovel ready.

So where's the buzz, outside our little OCN / CSN "meme machine" I wonder?

Last night I got an inkling: a recognized art critique played off some French intellectual's futuristic counterpoint, invoking the animist themes familiar in these writings, plus claiming a priority for the graphical over the lexical, while meanwhile cleverly obscuring their distinction.

He knew this was Obama country, so we experienced some shared mirth at the expense of certain neocon bloggists who've only just begun to discover how Shepard Fairey's work plays off of Sino-Soviet socialist realism, by going one better.

Those of us tracking the Obey Giant campaign all these years have no trouble understanding why such art would come in handy, come time to focus on something as real as the USA's presidential contest. Speaking of which, I should have said "gaggle of geese" not "gander of geese" (thx to Haim, erstwhile spar partner, on Math Forum).

Dr. W.J.T Mitchell started as he ended, by invoking popular culture, Jurassic Park and The Matrix in particular (the latter presages the image "going away" leaving nothing but transparent data -- one of two ends in a spectrum, so then we steered in between).

For those from the philosophy department (moi included), there was plenty of thinly veiled Platonism, tinged with Nietszsche's aphorisms (more a "tuning fork" than a "hammer" in this new twilight zone).

I'm grateful to Glenn for getting me out of my cave and onto the Max down through Old Town. We stumbled upon Phyllis Cole, my co-worker at CUE, friend and neighbor in Brooklyn (pre Richmond, where Dawn and I first started this business together). Phyllis is with Metro now. Cool.

We went out to Low Brow Lounge after the talk for a gear shift, noticed other art students doing the same. Glenn and I both have art talks that'd fly with this crowd (Portland's young intelligentsia). I could do one tomorrow if called upon, have a couple others already scheduled through spring.

From Rivendale

The title is an allusion to a plenary session introduction to Open Spaces yesterday. Our speaker said he bounces around among a lot of computer conferences, many of them FOSS related, and Pycon is the most like Rivendale in Lord of the Rings. He feels like he's discovered an elvyn capital. Of course geeks ate it up.

This same guy referred to the Hyatt lobby as a "fragatorium" i.e. that cliche first or second level any designer of a first person shooter comes up with -- we laughed about that too).

Our benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) Guido van Rossum, is giving a keynote. "I'd like to just stroke your egos and be done with it, but since you've asked me to keep giving a keynote...."

He's making jokes about Twitter, which has changed things. There's a paparazzi aspect to it all, especially if you're an MVP people like to yak about.

Python is 19 years old this year. "She can vote, drive a car... she can't drink yet which is OK with me" -- he's stealing from Larry Wall's talk about Perl (he alludes to Larry. He's looking forward to another 19 years. "We face our demons and come out with a better language, a better community").

He's really interested in the anthropology of what's going on, as Python Nation becomes increasingly global, spontaneously self-organizes in various ways. Pycon is a big part of it.

His parting words were of reassurance: Python is in good shape, isn't in any danger of going away, is just getting stronger, thanks to this community of ours. In that context, he's becoming more retiring, less likely to travel. The nuts and bolts of community leadership are not his exclusive concern (despite his exalted title). We're very fortunate to have such an authentic leader and language designer in one package. Guido is one of Python's best features.

Package distribution, dependencies and revision control remain key issues. There's general consensus that we're moving out of Subversion to something else, either Mercurial or Bazaar most likely. The decision between those two may be reached in the next few days.

PPS to Kill LEP High?

Thanks to Wanderers for sending a link to this editorial in Willamette Week.

The school board is set to vote Monday night, March 30, on the recommendation to close LEP. And it is extremely unlikely the seven-member board, with the exception of members Martín González (who is running for re-election) and Sonja Henning (who is not), will oppose the recommendation, which the superintendent supports.

I've supported LEP High, as well as the whole concept of charter schools, from the start, as we need that experimental spirit.

Every generation has a right to start schools. Indeed, all public schools have a charter, so "charter school" isn't very precise. It's more a question of whether your charter is of recent vintage or not (i.e. how old is your charter?).

Having observed LEP's adventures for some years, I've been aware that it was never very popular with the older charters, who feel threatened, suffer from a siege mentality. Alaska seems more enlightened in this respect, as Anna is reporting "The Alaska Charter School Association Conference in Juneau was a huge success this past weekend" (email of March 24). We shall see.

I've been highlighting Portland's FOSS community as leading edge in this conference. LEP High, one of the few to use Edubuntu, other open source tools, has been part of my promotional rap, my boosterism. I should probably ratchet that down a bit: this news comes as a reality check. Portland's FOSS community may be leading edge, but that doesn't keep us from living in the dark ages in other respects.

My thanks to Wanderers for helping me stay grounded. Thanks also to Willamette Week, for taking a sympathetic position.

Pycon Lightning Talks

Hbase vs. Voldemort vs. CouchDB. But now: Cassandra -- out of the Facebook community. Another entry in the non-relational database world. Must follow-up.

How to give a Lightning Talk is a lightning talk. We take the 5 minute limit pretty seriously, although you're free to use less time. Have the next speaker setting up if you're lucky enough to have switchable podia.

Git is out as Python.org's version control manager. So Bazaar or Mercurial?

John Hawyard is talking up science. "That's funny", not "Eureka!" is the epiphany in science. The discovery of X-rays is the story he told. He's talking about bugs, the really hard ones, reminds me of The Bug by Ellen Ullman. Science and debugging have a lot in common (is that why it's called "computer science"). This is a talk on chance and serendipity. Knowing what you're talking about and stopping when you trip on something, is the way to find the bug you were not looking for (surprise). Interesting humanities-tradition talk. This is one those deep thinkers he my

Psycopgwrapper: Sean Reifscheider polishing the DB API (for PosgreSQL).

Ian Benson is now up in front, waving The Guardian ("twitters and blogs"), thanking everyone who has helped with the rapid progress of AlgebraFirst since this same conference last year. He only took 2.5 minutes, well demonstrating his Python cultural savvy (another deep thinker in my workshop).

We leafleted all the chairs last night, like a thousand, shades of CN logistics (I used to be a super).

Later lightning talks: Brazil is a hotbed of Pythoneers, with the government running several Plone sites. Alexander Limi and Alan Runyan, also Bruce Eckel, have been among the invited international speakers.

Bitter Debates

I'm aware of two especially bitter debates these days, one macro, one micro -- letting you decide which is which.

Some neocons don't like the USA's plans to help the Middle East inter-connect its electrical grids, more like in North America, with Texas sort of like Iran in being a source of new power plants. No one wants more weaponized nukes obviously, but as the submarines have shown, it's possible to run these things without going Chernobyl. More hydroelectric might also be usable, depending on grid configuration. I'm not the expert in the room on these topics. Write to GENI maybe?

Likewise, some MIT trained computer scientists are looking askance at what's been happening in computer science at their alma mater. What had been a Scheme based introductory class, a common gateway to geekiness, has turned to Pythonic robotics as more anticipatory of tomorrow's working environment. That may be what industry is planning, but many "old skool" engineers miss that "close to the metal" feel.

The good news is if the new approach is successful in recruiting newcomers to computer science, then there's plenty of time left to dive into LISP and/or Scheme. Just one course does not a meal make. Plus if you don't want to go in that direction, you've still learned some Python, and that's a plus on your resume I'd say, admitting bias.

Airplane Reading

Walking with Nobby is somewhat frustrating yet entertaining. We get wisps of where a sensitive mind was looking, getting away from Dionysus, but not really, not in NOB's namespace. He allies himself with engineering, mentions both Bucky and Wittgenstein (I'd known that before).

He's vectoring towards chance, or luck, but we avoid "synchronicity" because there's allegiance to Freud over Jung in this text and it's not like there's a real theory here, just a meta-politics of some nature, poets feeling their way forward (autopoiesis, dialectic). Dr. Nick had earlier highlighted some of the salient points, especially the link to John Cage, again on the topic of chance, Apollo vs. Dionysus, or system versus not.

David Koski phoned as I was wheeling my bag towards the bus and shuttle center at O'Hare. Alaska Airlines delivered me on time and in good shape. I wish the hotel wifi was working (and it's only supposed to in the lobby), but you get what you pay for sometimes (hotels.com found me this room). The hotel shuttle's radio was recruiting for cia.gov and advertising mortgage restructuring. I phoned David back once I got to my room to continue the conversation (ongoing). He's working night shift these days, is on his day off.

Ian had a video clip for me this morning, about public key encryption (Diffie-Hellman) as used by Amazon. The segment is apropos given I've queued public key cryptography as one of those Python for Teachers topics, with attached lore (something I went over again with Wanderers yesterday). I'm not suggesting one right way to tell the story but here's a good example of embedding something technical / mathematical within history / mnemonics, complete with challenges and heroes. Or we could use a more fictional backdrop.

If geeks want to pass on their subculture's lore, then it's up to them to figure out how. Outsiders don't know it that well. Getting this UK government secret into civilian use was something of a coup (GCHQ had realized the possibility, but others would eventually discover it and make it public, such that now it's in every web browser).

Ian's flight doesn't get him here until tomorrow.

What I hadn't known about Nobby before was that he served in the OSS as a compatriot of Herbert Marcuse, tasked with discerning the psychology behind fascism. Marcuse's later critique of Love's Body only served to spread its fame. I was impressed with what a strong hiker he was, into his 80s. Dr. Kaufmann didn't think Marcuse was all that great a thinker. Also like Nobby, like Nietzsche, he was a "hard bed" for his friends.

His relationship with Dale includes a lot of teasing, a kind of sparring, yet is based in trust and true friendship. They talk about sex, drugs, rock and roll, especially given Dale's generation's spin on those. NOB, clearly into esoterica yet wanting to be democratic, accessible, is beginning to study Mormonism. I'd not heard of the Oneida experiment but then there's lots I don't know.

Blogging, as a genre, relates to NOB's advocacy around the aphoristic writing style. He was into fragments, letting the spirit connect the dots. As someone highly skilled in the liberal arts, he could commit to memory and use hypertext without any outward http. Thanks to the web, we needn't be that skilled to get some of these same benefits.

Sometimes I found myself taking the part of the grandson defending the grandfather against the son. But then I was right away grateful for DP's staying on target, their unity-twoness. Great coupling guys!

Competitive Gaming?

In a post queued for tomorrow on the CSN blog, I take up the subject of proprietary games, cite a somewhat violent one (Half Life 2). I know cynics are thinking I might be hiding behind AVP talk, using Quakerism as a mask, while giving a green light to tastelessly violent video games of no socially redeeming value. Am I selling out to make money then?

The question is misconceived in the sense that I'm not playing traffic cop, am not some uber-censor handing down edicts on what people might play. Personally, I'm looking forward to cooperative, team-building sports, not necessarily indoors, that make use of new toyz.

Geocaching is certainly a start, already has group aspects.

The question about proprietary games "in principle" is more properly a concern for the CIO probably, but I'm already somewhat aware of his thinking on this issue. Engineers want layers of open source at strategic levels within the chip-to-cloud stack. Closed off, veiled and/or private levels (as in proprietary) are not an anathema. It's only if private interests become greedy and seek to exert some kind of stranglehold on resources held in common, that we must be prepared to defend our freedoms.

I'm so far unable to see Milk, even though it's close by at The Bagdad. Too much happening, no frills allowed. I appreciate getting the invitation though. Someday I'll have a social life again. As things stand, I'm grateful for congenial coworkers. Increasing the supply of qualified personnel remains a top priority. I'm seeing some positive signs, amidst a lot of unrealism.

I'm glad the FWCC meeting went well. I appreciate hearing from attenders Eddy and Leslie, as well as from Nancy herself. Had I not been so immersed in Wanderers Retreat XVII, I might have made at least part of it, even though Canby is a ways (just south of Oregon City).

From the Top

The plan in these blogs has been to surround the nonprofit sector, which includes military services (but not to the exclusion of others), with R&D aimed at improving effectiveness, already the norm.

However, our civilian "livingry" in being prototypical of spreading lifestyle options, attracts public focus in the form of reality television with product placements. The entertainment sector serves a bridging function here, helps people participate in the dream weaving.

Concomitant to the above is a recruitment drive for designers, artists, and of course engineers. Finding the right curricula to match our goal spaces remains a challenge. I've been urging a mix of object oriented programming and spatial geometry, with sufficient attention to recent advances in pedagogy and andragogy, including some streamlining metaphysics (philosophy talk).

These kinds of dreams have a long history and track record, especially if you factor in pioneering encampments and deployments of the recent past, along with nomadic and pilgrimage activities (today called "tourism" by the travel industry). The prospect of expanding habitats onto and under the oceans has guided much of the science fiction.

My principal focus has been providing new health care options in the form of remote communities, not "cut off" from the rest of the world, but secluded and therefore more in control of their own influences. These might be clinics, places to work through PTSD, retreat centers for voluntary associations. I haven't tried to be the comprehensive development planner, beyond envisioning a kind of shared context.

Getting a footprint for object oriented mathematics using inspired forms of futurism is a recruiting goal, given the feedback, which suggests we're currently turning off students in droves pre-college, steering them away from engineering and/or technology tracks.

The perception that engineers work in faceless bureaucracies, mostly for Dr. Evil types who plan and build WMDs, is not without basis in fact. We've had an uphill battle so far, countering this PR nightmare. A fleet of "circus buses" was proposed, to tickle the positive futurist fantasies of school kids more directly. Sponsors were sought.

CubeSpace Anon?

I'm tempted to stay with the cube farm today, have some quality time with VPython, which has a lot of new features. However, sometimes it's about damage control 24/7, as when USAers are bitching about their economy yet still spending $10 billion a month or whatever on military bonuses for "doing the wrong thing". It's not like there's much patience or understanding out there, for how to have it both ways.

The analysis coming out of Japan is typically manga-seeming: once Texans saw those homey green-style freeway signs around Baghdad on their televisions, the limbic system kicked in, truckers going "hey, we could drive on those roads, make big bucks", and the rest is history. The truckers invaded (hiding behind neocon fabrications and lies) so they could feed hungry families back home, pay for air conditioning.

There was never any "military strategy" or ideas about "saving face" -- stuff for the Pentagon and diplomats to worry about i.e. "not our department". "Don't mess with Texas" was the main thing to say, seemed to justify everything, Enron included.

Of course Iraqis know how to drive trucks, so there's an easy solution, once USAers decide it's not worth their $10B per month to act out their inner Roman imperial monster truck-driving children (the "superpower" fantasy, driven by Marvel comics). Stick to your own NAFTA highways and I-69 why don't ya?

Like I said, Japanese intelligence has these like "comic book" explanations for everything, lots of shelf space at Powell's.

Animal Planet

Tara and I took some time off yesterday, me to get a haircut, then we headed to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden near Reed College to feed the fauna (water birds, some of them diving underwater).

The geese will eat directly from your hand.

Then we went shopping at Trader Joe's for lunch snacks, bulk supplies (frozen salmon, soy bacon, vino... dog food). The mango sorbet looks like a low fat alternative to some of those other options.

Tinkerbell has a flat and I've been too preoccupied with math wars to mess with it. However, now that spring has arrived...

Today: more MVP from the airport duty (looking forward), Pacific University in play. Tomorrow: beginning of Wanderers retreat (I'll see some of you there).

Speaking of animal planet, I'm glad to see our more minimal TV package (no Al Jazeera) still has the National Geographic channel. We're enjoying it. It's not like there's a shortage of media in this town.

:: pycairo release 1.8.4 is now available ::

Celebrating Wicca

You wouldn't suppose we'd be celebrating Wicca on St. Patrick's day, but in our family this is a day for remembering and honoring my dear partner Dawn Wicca, a mother, sister, valued friend for so many, bookkeeper of high commitment and integrity with a long track record of grateful clients, whom she treasured.

She was also a spiritual teacher and practiced Celtic disciplines. Her business, Turning the Wheel, a subsidiary of DWA (like 4D Solutions) was all about inviting a few families to our back yard and patio, to do handicrafts, share lore, maybe dance the Maypole if appropriate. We never did the bonfires on this property, however we're not the only family living out these traditions, so yes, bonfires were lit, safely and with no sense of ill will towards fellow creatures, humans included.

Part of the lore is one of non-capitulation to later forms of Christianity that seemed to insist on monopolistic powers (not all Xtians do), with no tolerance for defiance. Some people insist that St. Patrick's disbarring of snakes from the Irish homeland was a thinly veiled dig at Druidic cultures, which found their ways more constricted, less accepted in public with the spread of more Roman Imperial forms of thinking. Writing in counterpoint:

I realize there's some irony in speaking so kindly of Python on St. Patty's day tomorrow but of course in my family we're glad to have Celtic lore alive and well, and besides there weren't any snakes before that so helluva job guy! Might make some fun skits ("did you get rid of the tigers too then?").

When Dawn joined Quakers, not just to keep me company but in honest appreciation for the stars she discovered (Teresina Havens for example, who lead a seminar on Buddhism), she wanted her Clearness Committee to understand that she didn't profess to be Christian (Jesus didn't either) yet she was a sincere scholar who immersed herself in his mysteries, studied the people around him (his friends), and didn't this constitute possibly being a Friend of Christ, an Amigo? The Clearness Committee thought yes, Christianity is not a requirement for Friends, Christ's own shining example making that clear.

The girls will be joining a small circle this evening, whereas I'm giving the aforesaid talk, out on the heath, a ghost warrior (these "math wars" I fight are highly metaphysical you've gotta admit), still bearing my Dawn's standard with both pride and gratitude.

Apropos Python, Guido's computer language, the link to snakes is more than a name collision, but the link to Druids might be a stretch. I comment on that in a recent letter to Aimée:

Admittedly, Python (the computer language), is maybe more Dutch than Celtic, but there's more to this battle I'm waging... which certainly have [sic] Celtic elements e.g. this drawing is by some famous Celtic drawer guy:

Fig. 321.01 Universe as "A Minimum of Two Pictures"
Drawings by Mallory Pearce

Manga Code

Computer science (CS) traditionally includes various flavors of pseudo-code, designed to be somewhat agnostic, true (gets one out of the advocacy business), but more important, uncluttered with extraneous detail not relevant to developing the rudimentary level of understanding we're aiming for, i.e. to use a true production code syntax would just bury the lesson in cruft.

This is not about dumbing it down, but of being respectful. You're a busy executive, a FOSS boss between meetings, riding Amtrak both ways, with only so much time for technicalia, best that those sessions be packed and comprehensible, relevant. You don't need displays of snobbery reminding you that you're out of your field, out of your depth. This colloquial, non-patronizing style was pioneered by "for dummies" and "for complete idiots" titles. "Explain it to a caveman why don't ya?". Pretty soon, cavemen were selling us car insurance.

When Python came along as "executable pseudo-code" i.e. as very non-crufty, even economizing with whitespace, the new possibility was to write "manga code" as I'm calling it, a kind of comic book or cave painting version of a more complicated production environment. Or call it the "open source" version (thinking back to Linux and its citations to computer science texts, its monolithic kernel with modular plug-ins extension architecture).

Manga code has the advantage of actually running in other words, meaning the runtime environment, not just the compile time source code, has andragogical significance.

Buried in my specific example of "manga code" for Coffee Shops Network (CSN), is vendors getting the proceeds above a "worthy cause" waterline, as if your heroic idealist is now suddenly co-opted, Marcuse style, is now shilling for Mars. Here's a screen shot:

>> compare with circuit <<

I'm proposing a different gestalt however: having topped out for your worthy cause (e.g. AFSC, FCNL... QUNO), you're now a company MVP taking a victory lap, adding luster (and profit) to your proud back office sponsor. Yes, you're "carrying Mars on your back" so to speak, but not as a slave, as a hall of fame friend of the sponsor, like on Facebook. Let your vendor glow in your limelight. Then on to the next game.

But doesn't the model show the vendor benefiting from your loss or failure to star in whatever practice session? The house got some compensation just for booting the game, but we'll say the vendor bonus was simply "unexpressed" i.e. the players working for this product don't yet have the strength to intercept its game loop and start feeding their resumes. The trophy goes back to the warehouse, unclaimed. Better luck next time, takes practice, takes patience.

The vendor wants star players because that's better advertising than always winning your bonus back, because your games are simply unplayable, don't help the worthy causes or anyone but yourself.

If we picture the CEO of Mars coming in to CSN and playing for a favorite cause, then the victory lap might feel like "income to me!" i.e. "I've earned good will and now I'm getting paid for so doing, best of both worlds". However, the manga code above makes "Me!" compete with the other worthy causes, another way of netting a reward, then effectively mailing a negative bonus (cutting in to vendor territory, claiming turf) which the company actually celebrates, as now you're their champion (one of many we hope).

Put another way, at the hardest levels, it's between you and the vendor (who may be the game author). Innocent bystanders (worthy causes) don't get caught in the crossfile. It's the difference between "their product" and "their product with your name on it" i.e. those high level points are yours to win. Games without winners tend not to have takers. Like sure, a vendor could put out a game that says Game Over right out of the gate, but who'd wanna play it?

I'm not claiming to get all of the above across in my manga code. This is additional description. The culture already has the pattern ingrained, so once I point to it, I don't have to work too hard to sketch in the details.

People know what its like for a company to put someone out front as their figurehead (could be a fictional or cartoon character, like Popeye). CSN is offering miniature versions of that, each game an experience, but also a toting system for adding your gains, should you, the paying customer, wish to keep a tally or track record of your feats.

That's a way to find matching players, other coworkers, to strut your stuff in other words, whatever that may be in your case. "Showing what you're made of" is not sinfully prideful (i.e. vain) necessarily, just an honest labeling of ingredients, lets people know what they're getting. Social networking software wasn't born yesterday, especially if you factor in all the pre-computer analogs.

Stress Tests

You might see where China is getting impatient, if the long term plan is to avoid any storyboard and just talk about how to jump start moribund industries, to force a return to business as usual, a losing proposition. They're investing in Pepperland, not Blue Meanies, if that makes any sense. This will require "imagination" as Spongebob might say (remember viiv?).

Fortunately, the art community is striking the flint, rubbing two sticks, trying to get something going. The Bucky exhibit, recently at the Whitney, is moving to Chicago. I hope to take it in during my stay, given 4D Geometry is integral within my Portland-made brand of Pythonic Math. My two XOs already trace to friendly ties with Hong Kong (XOs run a Python GUI atop Linux, known as Sugar). I wasn't a direct participant in G1G1, although I admire that campaign.

Speaking of Bucky, there's a new book coming out that I somewhat expect to fall in the "Bucky as Britney" genre (soap opera stuff), given I was at no point contacted about the hard core Synergetics aspects (bleeped over by Whitney as well). Anyone claiming "due diligence" will at least cite my work in this area. That's likely not the focus though, probably something more tabloid.

Matrix of Sytes

:: honeycomb of Rites (a kind of Syte) ::
by Claudio Rocchini
GNU Free Documentation License

:: Three kinds of Syte, ways to face-bond two Mites ::

Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

:: Mite (minimum tetrahedron): (A+, A-, B-) or (B+, A+, A-) ::
Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

QuadPod

by Hollister (Hop) David
(with attribution to me)

HB2U Barbie

I can't resist passing one on from Greg Palast today (a Facebook friend):

March 9, 2009 -- Barbie's 50 years old today - so I thought I'd share with you one of the weirdest memos I've unearthed in my years of investigating corporate maledictions. Passed to me from inside Mattel, the toy company, with an August 12, 1997 time stamp. "TAR" stands for Tibet Autonomous Region

Palast adds: Please friends, note the humor.

Anyway, the marketing department is very wrong about the DL not having accessories. I watched Katie's analysis of the Barbie phenomenon on CBS News, excellent scholarship, lots I didn't know, such a pro she is.

Connected Campaigns

Shipping Jobs Overseas?

An AFL/CIO canvasser just came to my door, working the neighborhood. I shared some of my worries about finding people with "the right stuff", echoing some recent correspondence with other math teachers:

We know K-12 is terribly broken and is in the control of know-nothings, but there's nothing much we can do about it except take jobs overseas. Obama wants to punish us for doing that, whereas I say let him deliver that "world class education" he promised, and start using FOSS on commodity hardware and throw out those stupid hamster-brained TIs...

Out here on the Pacific Rim, we just can't afford to stay in the 1900s sucking our thumbs, although they're trying that in California, given that girly-man governor they've got.

Of course that's just an insider joke about the Governor of California. I do tend to rant about calculators a lot, as a bottleneck in developing new curricula around STEM subjects (cite Chicago Talk, Pycon 2008).

My point: in many cases, we're attempting to lure opportunities to our region, in areas where our candidates either already match the job qualifications in terms of skills, or would be affordably trainable.

Like other developing economies, we seek long term investors, collaborators, partners in development.

We're looking to bring jobs from overseas, not keep them from leaving i.e. they're not here to begin with.

Storyboarding Tomorrow

Autonomous living unit, 1949
Buckminster Fuller
© Buckminster Fuller Institute

I admit getting a little testy with Sunanda today, when he called me at Fine Grind, where I was manning a comm center with Andrew and Derek.

Yes, I think Recode Oregon sounds like a fine idea: decriminalize collecting rain water (like in Brazil right?), make it legally OK to engage in environmentally sound self preservation type practices, permaculture and whatever, all good.

But I'm impatient with any solutions involving 'this old house' so exclusively, much as I treasure having a roof over my head.

Somewhere, somehow, we need to stop relying on "art colonies" to do all the hard work for us. When do we transition from prototypes to civilian product lines not subject to waterboarding by the mortgage industry? That's what our Medal of Freedom guy was after.

The idea of an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) was a good one. But again, it's not all up to The Mouse in Orlando. As FOSS capital, we hope to contribute in some way.

Why the Dymaxion House was so special, wasn't so much that it hung on a mast (although that was cool) but that it was built by engineers from Beech Aircraft.

Once you have an enclosure of sufficient size, you're able to garden and get by with more "movie set like" structures, for privacy and compartmentalization, but not for primal defense against the elements (the job of the shell).

That's one of many possible factory designs, check your catalog for more options (what catalog?).

What TV channel was this again? The taxpayers' channel? Everything else is a rip-off maybe?

Or let's just talk about money instead, how there isn't enough to go around (and never will be the way it's set up).

Why focus on engineering projects in the midst of a credit freeze? Why indeed.

Are FEMA trailers really the best we might do?

From a Cult HQS

I'm simmering down, practicing consilience, having entered one of our temples to Athena.

Over on Synergeo, I've been practicing my Great Rambo Head strut and puffery, amping up the decibels on my air guitar, the better to kiss my purple private sky. My fans expect it. Tarot deck: the Jester Jihadist. Beatles on the speakers here, covered by another group, sounds religious (shades of Sun Ra).

Here's a conciliatory paragraph from my outbox, hyperlinks added:

I'm not fighting Coxeter though, think he was gracious enough to step aside and see what the younger generation would do, and what they did is what we did: we developed a really decent body of work, complete with Chakovian coordinates, elastic interval geometry, flextegrity, tensegrity, your modular studies, Hargattais' stuff, Yashushi's and so on and on, i.e. we were stellar, and all took inspiration from Fuller's stunning success.

I slam dunked my plane reservation for Chicago today, looking forward to a reunion of sorts. Although I was instantly approved for the new Expedia credit card, I won't be eligible for the discount on this purchase, used the usual business Visa.

Speaking of Visa, I had the friendly waiter guy bill me in advance, as I have to bolt at a moment's notice, as on-call chauffeur, ISEPP escort etc. Yes, we could use computer science to harp on Incompleteness, but why not capture video directly from the philosophy department, where we know this stuff cold?

Neverland... (movie review)

I've had this since NPYM 2008, a Netflix borrowing: Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army about the abduction of Patty Hearst and surrounding events. What a slacker I must be, eh? We tried playing it at Dave's just now, but it's either too scratched, or the format is just not backward compatible.

Anyway, here I am waiting for Alexia to give some guidance on her birthday cake, just blocks from Helen Bernhard, a family favorite. I've got the DVD playing in the background, determined to get through it this time, sipping a mocha.

These were high achievers who couldn't follow the post WWII logic, wherein the army that defeated Hitler now seemed to have come down with the same disease, akin to mad cow. The students went crazy, mirroring Nixon's apoplexia.

The nation was in turmoil.

Having Nixon elected to a second term went down pretty hard. Paranoia ran high and the scene got to be very 12 Monkeys, crazy Brad Pitt their natural born leader. SLA: "White farmers in Rhodesia?"

Murdering Marcus Foster made no sense. Walter Cronkite's voice....

I'm reminded of the turmoil reflected in Japanese student culture, in this other movie that's fun, not a documentary though.

Why is the audio so good? Overdub? Are the mikes really that good? I like the spooky "symbionese" music -- sounds Middle Eastern. Reporters yukked it up quite a bit, lots of booze at the crime scene, very Hunter S. Thompson.

The U2 and CIA got involved.

Mr. Hearst reminds me of William F. Buckley in some ways. Patty's accent is also pretty upscale: "Mom should get out of her black dress, that doesn't help at all."

A drawback of DVDs like this is you don't have footnotes and sources clearly displayed (the captions help). We need a new format that drives Web links on the side -- hit pause and follow.

OK, management is kicking me out. This coffee shop is not 24/7 after all. Alexia called about her cake. Marionberry cheesecake it is.

Five Cubes

:: cube space ::
by David Koski

A Wanderer @ CubeSpace

I'm calling myself a Wanderer since ISEPP's Terry Bristol said I could represent ISEPP in Chicago. I've made a career working with nonprofits in Portland, so feel pretty comfortable in this role, even though my 4D Solutions isn't itself a 501(c)(3).

I've invited some coworkers in health care to join me tonight. It's no secret that I see a bright future for FOSS in health care, especially around clinical research and medical records management, two separate infrastructures, yet coming together in many ways. You'll find I'm in plenty of good company in thinking this way.

OHSU is here, a guy from the research applications group.

Governments like FOSS, as do academics. Thanks to free and open source software, powers once only available in the private sector (like truly serious SQL), are now available to any kid with a laptop, any professor with eager students, basically any government department with computing needs (which is all of them).

If the taxpayers fund the development, saving results in "the commons" makes perfect sense, even if some of the pieces stay in private silos (especially data, some of which is highly confidential, obviously). A bank using FOSS isn't thereby divulging anything.

Portland JavaScript Admirers have convened for a second time. There's a mailing list, a web site, plus you can follow on Calagator. We meet at CubeSpace, Portland's geek HQS (for software -- not competing with Free Geek). Ad: Women's Networking Group meets in Roman on second Tuesdays.

Our main focus tonight is Apache CouchDB, a document database, written in Erlang. Merlin Albery-Speyer is our first speaker.

We're getting a recap of how ORM takes SQL to/from objects (like what Python likes). We're thinking differently here, with documents much coarser grained than objects. JSON, not SQL, will be your API of choice. As an RDBMS guy, I'm a little freaked out (I'll get over it).

Whereas the SQL model uses JDBC or ODBC (say), the persistence layer for CouchDB uses HTTP as the connection, with a host/database/document looking API -- which is how Django looks to a client as well, thanks to Python.

I asked about ACID compliance, which started a cascading conversation, enlightening I thought, really high caliber.

There's no schema, just JSON maps. Use GET, PUT (create or update), DELETE, POST (for bulk operations i.e. batch).

A map function emits (key, value) pairs, a map, sorted by the key. This is equivalent to SELECT (with filters). Because sorted, it's easy to do ranges.

The web interface makes this easy to play with. The optional reduce function then works with this map. Basically: get your ducks in a row (map), then do something with those ducks (reduce).

J. Chris Anderson of Apache is our second speaker. He's a world class expert on CouchDB, a principal developer. He's working on Sofa as a test application (a blog -- are blog and chat sort of the "hello world" of web apps?).

The delivered Peer-Based Replication feature is how local offices sync with HQS, basically Couch yakking with itself over HTTP. Geeks are geeking out over this topic, about 25-30 of us, all males at the moment (Audrey joins later).

There's a _show and _list being demonstrated, which render the JSON as HTML -- these are Javascript functions, that run on the server, and show up in the URLs. I'm not accustomed to thinking of JavaScript as server side, but that's how CouchDB is designed, around Spidermonkey.

Design documents store application level stuff, like validation and rendering. I guess I'm seeing why this is for JavaScript Admirers, even though there's Erlang involved.

This is all cutting edge stuff. I don't see us diving into it right away in a production setting. I could see using it for medical devices, other inventory management tasks, where local workstations sync to a back office. I get the impression it's blindingly fast if used efficiently i.e. speed is a real benefit, and small changes to data, requeries, won't require moving mountains.

Actually what occurs to me later, is this key-value pairs approach maybe is the future of the medical record, mined with map-reduce to get clinical research views, perhaps for feeding to more traditional SQL engines. The patient-centric, individualized "whole enchilada" i.e. the document "atom", is precisely that unit of storage for which CouchDB is best suited. Note to self: explore in more depth.

Our third speaker, Adam DuVander is presenting about Mapstraction. Adam is with the Legion of Tech, Portland Web Innovators. He's writing a book about mapping APIs for New Starch Press. Mapstraction takes 11 map APIs, like Google's, Yahoo's. This makes it easy to switch around between back ends.

This is something students could be playing with in PPS, just need some latitude and longitude coordinates. Geography and FOSS are like peas in a pod. The Javascript looks something like this:

      function londonJavascriptNight(map) {
// create a lat/lon object
var myPoint = new LatLonPoint(51.520832, -0.140133);
// display the map centered on a latitude and longitude (Google zoom levels)
map.setCenterAndZoom(myPoint, 12);

This reminds me of Cities At Night.

Next I'll grab a couple brews at Lucky Lab -- no wait, cell phone, need to head home.

Hey Derek, sorry I missed you at Fine Grind today, got sucked in to my own soap opera. Best wishes on your trade fair gig, other projects! Kim & Jimmy, many thanks for the bouillabaisse, definitely "brain food" like you said. I wrote up a storm.

Speech Night

I watched tonight's politics from a kicked back arm chair position, tuning in at 6:30 PM PST, Tara coming home from work a little later (she gets dinner thrown in, I dined on cold cereal).

I found myself musing about camera angles, how they get those drift shots (slow pans at balcony level or thereabouts).

I used to sit in those balconies sometimes, especially in the Senate, then I'd go back to my typewriter and make comments, sometimes send them. This was in the 1980s. I was pretty civic minded, curious to see this democracy in action, maybe get a foot in the door, plus we didn't have C-SPAN yet, or at least I didn't. Those balconies were put there for a reason (to encourage onlookers, and kibitzing).

Note to self: I have to rewind that tape I didn't make and check out that one face in the crowd. Web site maybe.

Leave it to the fiscal conservatives to kill our Disneyland-to-Vegas maglev train, dammit all to hell.

Anyway, I agreed with the commentators that we saw a lot of bipartisanship, but is that a good thing?

I'm not persuaded "two parties" is really best, seems awfully bipolar, so I do cringe a bit when it gets too bipartisan. Mono-partisan wouldn't be any better, like at least we have two, plus I like the idea of "parties" (whoever thought of calling them that?).

Appropriately, I found myself working with another "inaugural ball" from David Koski, echoing an earlier speech-making occurrence (inauguration day).

Family Night

We're camped around the living room TV, including two dogs, watching an Academy favorite.

Dinner was Ethopian, and a chance to compare notes with the proprietor, with a focus on WWII. "Who was Haile Selassie and what was his connection to the Rastafarians?" is what we wanted to know. We learned a lot.

Earlier, I was corresponding with Friends about some of my projects. From an outgoing email:

For my part, I took the billboard thing seriously, along with my long-standing concern (AFSC related) to work with Native Americans on restorative justice, which puts me at loggerheads with some Friends, e.g. one John Wilmerding of John Woolman College, because of their Prohibition Era associations around gambling and casinos.

That's somewhat a translation away from my native namespace, "restorative justice" being closer to the CERJ way of talking.

Tomorrow I'm to lead some adult discussion. I mentioned Appreciative Inquiry in my queries. Let's focus on what's working?

One of my guests, a physician, is curious about my sagas around health care, also about my mom (mom's room is the guest room). I explained a little about MUMPS versus SQL and a dutch boy cartoon.

We also watched a bit of Zeitgeist Addendum (memes in a suitcase) which I'd seen previously -- not that exciting right? Like where does energy from the sun enter this picture? Pharaoh Akhenaten seemed to have a stronger grip, though he was maybe somewhat overbearing. I saw Sun Ra perform live that one time -- a bit of a non sequitur, but for the Ra - Aten connection.

From Synergeo #48573 some hours later:

Typical of gringos, they think it's money that's in short supply, whereas the real problem is an oversupply of people thinking the way they do. If you know anything about anything economic (e.g. home economics, no longer taught -- too basic) you know that energy comes from the sun and we're surfing a solar gradient. I have to go back to Egyptian sources to find much lip service to that effect. Today's econo-heads want you to think central banks and the Federal Reserve are a source of wealth. Any building with columns. There's this superstition that traces back to Roman times, used by the emperors for their Ponzi schemes even then (how little has changed).

Anyway, I agree that explaining economics more clearly is a big priority right now, given all the distrust of financial institutions. Maybe spice it up with some GST? Saturday Morning cartoons might explain it? Kids need to be clued too.

According to Tom, Princeton's Paul Krugman is calling for glasnost (a truth process), although that's a translation as well. Bishop Tutu is coming to Oregon soon, so maybe that's a good sign?