Countdown to Zero (the game)

playground dome, Hillsdale, Oregon

As I was remarking to my fellow think tankers, you do not copyright titles, so we are really talking about a whole genre of game, with many internal axes or criteria, such as "how much math?".

The idea of a game based on a movie is not in any way new, of course, so I'm not loudly tooting my horn about this non-innovation. As a role playing game, you probably have a choice, each with a wardrobe (imagine dressing your Sim). You might be an FBI agent on a sting operation, somewhere in Colorado, with control panels to IAEA, Interpol and CIA. Your wardrobe includes snow shoes (optional accessory).

For those who didn't catch the movie, Countdown to Zero is a sobering policy film, a documentary, in which several powers that be, across the political spectrum, line up behind this policy of criminalizing and eliminating all nuclear weapons. Actually, the criminalization phase might be more of a medicalization phase where we chalk up WMDs to PTSD and treat the "military industrial complex" like any psychological complex in need of treatment. That's for game designers to decide.

Another axis is realism. To what degree is this set in the future, when presumably sensors are better, and infra-red webcams more affordable? More to the point: what actual datasets are publicly available giving known sources of weapons grade fissile materials? Where are the dumping grounds? The testing zones? Much of this information is already available to the eco-tourism industry, which is bringing people through Hanford, WA and to Nevada. Visits to retired missile silos make for great photo-ops and new uploads to Flickr.

When it comes to realism, you'll want to work with colleges and universities with a focus in environmental sciences. Serious schools take such studies seriously, if declaring an interest and attracting students on that basis.

The math does not have to be inordinately difficult. The concept of "half life" is fairly easy to get across, and students will better understand why producing all these toxins was considered criminal behavior. Many of the cleanup jobs are themselves life threatening and require special wardrobes and access to sensors. The role playing done through the game is actually preparation for real life for some stellar players -- another reason to take the math seriously.

Related reading:

Storyboard / Simulation

Background viewing?

Hurt Locker (movie review)

Les pointed out, as we settled in for this war movie, in a snowy horse farm, that it was directed by a woman. That did seem relevant, as we entered the surreal world of occupied Iraq.

The guys are in pause mode when it comes to developing civilian life skills. They've forked off into a hellish world they do not question. The language games revolve around rank, giving and following orders, demonstrating competencies with one's equipment, one's tools.

When the protagonist, Sergeant First Class William James, tries to re-integrate into his civilian persona, he feels he has no skills. Chopping carrots and pushing a cart through the supermarket only add to his sense of alienation.

Feeling like a fish out of water, not especially respected or understood, only separates him from his art, his work, which is disarming bombs. He needs to go back to the theater, to where he understands his rank and role in a social network.

In not questioning this man-made reality, simply taking it as a given, the film duplicates the atmosphere of a computer game, such as Half Life. Concrete wastelands full of wind-blown trash, any of which might be explosive, turns this into a first person Quake or Doom.

The film alludes to this, by showing the hero playing such a game. The army recruits with such games as well. The implied message is that life imitates art, and the Middle East has become a stage for acting out teenage fantasies of destruction and death.

The message of the film is rather clear I thought: war is a drug, and may become highly addictive. Finding some place in the world to live out one's destiny as a soldier becomes an existential requirement. Survival of the persona trumps survival of the body. Better to die for one's art than for no reason at all.

One of our Wanderers has a son who did that job of bomb decommissioning. Takes courage, and lots of it. The guy is somewhere outside the theater of war these days, though is still working with explosives.

Les and I talked about whether the XY chromosome was buggy. In a world where war is unnecessary, does the "male species" lack relevance? Many seem to think so, and respond by making sure war remains necessary.

Hurt Locker would work well as a double feature with Jarhead, as both are overtly philosophical.

More Global Data

Made in Sweden

Gasland (movie review)

John Fox is worried about what it might mean to allow hydrofracturing in his water table. Would toxins get into the ground water and destroy his habitat? Hydrofracturing is a process of injecting a brew of chemicals deep into the earth to release natural gases.

A complicated and unknown geology may offer little protection against seepage. Wells get contaminated and the the tap water catches fire. Streams go bad. Toxins trickle in (or flood in as the case may be). Animals (including humans) get sick and die.

John makes a pilgrimage across country, starting and ending in Pennsylvania, aiming to discover what's been going on. Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, Utah... Louisiana.

Are the denizens of the Lower48 still hell bent on destroying their own environment. Yes, apparently they are. Environmental protections put in place by a previous generation have been rolled back, as unfavorable to industry.

The largest unfiltered water supply in the world in upstate New York is the next target. People worry about "terrorists" poisoning their water supply. Ironic.

Lots of people enjoy natural gas though. Big city folk use it to cook with, heat their buildings with, power their "clean energy" buses with. Gotta have it.

What's happening to the countryside is a lot like what's happening to the Niger Delta or any region where rampant energy extraction occurs without much rhyme or reason. The locals are no match for the conquerors, who bully them into subjugation. There's little government to speak of, and no real national guard (in the literal sense, of guarding the people).

One might imagine ways to actually plan and develop energy resources in harmony with the ecosystem, intelligent designs. Such planning is hardly evident in the Lower48 though.

Any real science is short circuited as politicians try to create "jobs jobs jobs" (opportunities to "earn a living") regardless of the consequences.

Update (September 2017):  see this as a double feature with FrackNation for another point of view.  There's also a Gasland 2 out by now.

Quick Note

I enjoyed getting some training to serve as a judge of debate teams, and of other speech events. This was at Cleveland High School. As Nancy pointed out, it's a big poor public school with limited resources.

The state doesn't provide much funding for debate as a sport, even though this is such an obvious long term investment in cultivating democratic institutions. Government is half-assed and lazy, is Tara's view.

I'd been at Glenn's when she reminded me this was the 10th. Somehow, I'd always pictured this training happening on a Saturday, so was somewhat discombobulated.

Glenn and I had been discussing my global exchange student fantasies, which he tended to regard as too expensive. Why would taxpayers fund all that travel, over more local exchanges?

I took my general systems theory view that it's not taxpayers we're crediting, but the sun itself. Yes, human labor is mixed in... (more in my science fiction linked below).

The example debate, shortened for show, to give the new judges some exposure, was kind of interesting. The national forensics league had picked the "mosque at ground zero" meme for Public Forum (pofo) and was taken aback by all the backlash. For the first time, a resolution was retracted and replaced with: resolved: public forum resolutions should not be about sensitive religious topics.

Tara and I discussed it later. She sees debate as her sacred sanctuary, free from much of the crazy nonsense that infects the wider world. Keep silly religious topics out of bounds, and the sport will stay more enjoyable. My view was the debate format is pretty wimpy if not robust enough to handle run of the mill controversies, religious or otherwise. Wearing my judge's cap, she probably won. Keep the sport from getting too ugly by picking resolutions wisely.

On that particular issue, my view is religious installations, including temples, synagogues, mosques etc., maybe smallish ones, should be a feature in many an "office" building. Zoning should be for mixed use, including residential in more cases, so we have less mindless commuting. Why not work, sleep and worship in the same skyscraper?

I scribbled some more science fiction before I went to be, trying to be a good capitalist (means "using one's head"). I was also sparring with Brawley some more (he's a vet -- another topic), on whether it's a lost cause to try overcoming cubism. I think the Martian Math approach is being productive, as it lets me speak of Earthlings from a more external perspective (ETPV). I've been doing this on mathfuture as well.

Made for TV

So it's a week later at the meetinghouse (see below) and I'm learning a lot more about workflow design, even though that's already on my resume in places.

The idea of a "made for TV" Food Not Bombs maybe sounds cruel and heartless (too LA, too Hollywood), but in an era when we're counting down to zero, the ~bombs part has broad agreement and appeal, such that sponsors might want their brands front and center (or miss the boat).

I might see applying Centers Network skills and/or Western Young Friend skills, but then these are somewhat generic and emergent already. And I'm not seriously thinking this has to be a Hollywood show, unless you mean Portland's local neighborhood by that name. This is community participation TV of the kind we were always promised. Doesn't mean we can't filter excerpts to the bigger networks like ABC. Now if we only had real optical fiber, that let small outlets share the infrastructure -- not what the monopolists are intending.

In the meantime, there's a lot of local awareness of the criminal syndicates building more bombs, buying their pet politicians, while neglecting infrastructure for children and old people. To the extent there's any DEW system anymore, there'd be some real push back from the Pentagon. I still think an open alliance with Cuba would be cool (bridge through CDI?), a noble alliance versus that nefarious international human rights violator known as Gitmo.

Given recent progress within the Global U, I could see where the real dollars would go with us, and not with the phonies.

However, I digress. Back to workflow: what if the sponsoring donors send too much food to the cooking plaza, where the kids are lining up to learn and showcase their cooking skills? True, the cooking happens daily, with bike trailers, electric conveyances, delivering servings all over town (yeah, like Meals on Wheels).

On a small scale, what this looks like is too much produce piling up. For example, Lindsey (a star student) has a superman complex (very Nietzsche): she enjoys lugging huge amounts of produce up hills with a bike trailer, distributing it to free porches, sharing it with friends (she built the "tractor bike" herself). Sure, we could use more heroes like her (the more the merrier), but I can see where a plethora of committed horsepower might overwhelm some of the cooking facilities or, more likely, their composting facilities (not every church is so well equipped -- nor every meetinghouse either for that matter).

One solution is to cultivate more urban gardens, like in Brooklyn.

There's a lot of useful work implied in this picture. In Global U terms, one may not get a cash advantage for participating, but consider the sponsor credits. Free time in a bike co-op or gym, movie tickets (serious-minded documentaries most likely), even access to conferences, concerts, travel. I'd advocate sending Lindsey to Havana if we could get that ice cream factory thing going.

Plus like one of the crew was saying tonight (a former Brooklyn resident): hanging out with F~B gives free access to coveted apprenticeships learning to cook healthy vegan and/or vegetarian meals for lots of people. That's valuable skills building. Our Gathering of Western Young Friends, using the kitchen facilities at Camp Myrtlewood, is likewise a training zone.

These kinds of rewards, more career related, count as income in anyone's book. All it takes is some organization and a willingness to pitch in.

How wonderful to have Quakers at the forefront. Logistics R Us.

Will Code for America step up to the plate? We hear a lot about that initiative. What open source fund accounting software is out there. Coffee Shops Network wants to know.

Meetinghouse Again

Food Not Bombs came off brilliantly last week. However, this week we're decimated by illness, though with a crew of under ten, that might not be the best word choice. I'm still fighting a bronchial condition, with abdominal pain from so much coughing (more at night). I'll steer clear of the food prep except for sterile procedures. Lindsey is just as under the weather with different symptoms, so is wisely out of the picture.

Satya and Cera came by the Blue House the other evening and spoke at length about Bhutan with my mom. I made a cameo appearance after Pauling House, saying the plane was early, so I had to move quickly. I was in and out the door in about 30 seconds. The MVP in question is the chairman of Python Software foundation, in town for GOSCON.

Speaking of GOSCON, the Ignite.gov event was the first ever Ignite for the government (.gov). O'Reilly is OK with the meme transfer, i.e. the spread of the brand from non-governmental services (NGOs etc.). The Ignite format allows for 20 autopaced slides at 15 seconds per, or is it 15 slides at 20 seconds per -- seems that should be up to the presenter?

In any case, the talks were excellent. I sat with two of the same folks I'd shared a table with at Barcamp 4, along with Rami Kassab (a presenter) and someone else from his company. Steve and I were both wearing Holden Web badges. Most the tables were occupied but were by no means packed. Small intimate conferences are a rarity in some circles, especially with so much going on between the developer community and government.

What did I come away with from these talks? Government is today seeing itself as a provisioner of data sets. That's something governments often do well: amassing data, statistics, large pools of information.

Making the presentation layer attractive, or thinking of ways to combine data sets to tell a story, is not something government should have to worry about. The developer community, the app builders, have those skills.

By providing a level playing field of data set libraries, the government fulfills its side of the social contract. Different players will come along and mine that data, sometimes for private gain, sometimes for public service, often as a combination of both (serving the public garners good will and customer loyalty to the brand).

Portland, Oregon has a fairly advance community accustomed to using data sets to create what are called civic apps. This might be iPhone and/or Droid apps. The data might be real time relevant i.e. when is the next bus set to arrive. That's a service anyone with a cell phone might avail of today (I was using it last night in fact, when talking the 14 back from downtown).

The data might be long term chronological and only changing slowly. We could say all of it is geographic at some level, defining geography rather broadly (biochemical processes within the body use energy in a time and place, so are geographic in that sense). Not surprisingly, many of those attending GOSCON have a GIS background.

I introduced Chairman Steve to Selena Dickelman, one of the chief organizers of this event. Amber Case was also present but too surrounded by discussants for me to want to break in. Later, at Kells, we met up with Deb Bryant of OSL, the lead protagonist in that Willamette Week article some weeks back. She and Nate were both primed to talk about public-private partnerships.

Nate had lots to say on the topic of EMRs (electronic medical records). Deb kindly consented to having her picture taken with the PSF totem (Naga, our mascot). Such as I've been around at the edges of GOSCON, I've been serving in the capacity of "snake wrangler", same as at Djangocon some weeks ago.

My request for a discount on school lunches was denied within just 24 hours. I probably shouldn't have reported gift income, nor does the form anywhere ask about expenses. That $500 a month for catastrophic coverage... when it comes to civic apps, I did not really see how this was a well designed one.

Lindsey's solar panel came today, for powering her battery charger and perhaps an XO-1 (experiments needed). How does one live lightly on the earth? She's very conscientious about recycling, including fabric and materials. Her boots, scavenged from a free pile, have lasted about a year with frequent patching. They're close to worn through.

Two of the cross-country bicycle guys from a few weeks back have showed up. Their buddy was hit on the road near Cocquille and had to be life flighted to Emanuel in urgent condition. They hitched back to Portland and are researching their options....

Here's Cera, gotta go.

Wanderers 2010.10.20

President Obama is in town today, but it's still too early in the day to expect any new traffic patterns. Carol wanted to attend the meeting but has a full plate.

Our presenter this morning is Dr. Karl Widerquist, Visiting Associate Professor in Philosophy, from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

This is a talk about academic political philosophers and some of the irresponsible factual claims they've made about "primitive peoples" without bothering to factor in much of the anthropological research.

A lot of their claims (e.g. "everyone is better off with private property" or "individuals appropriate; collectives interfere") tend to be no more than the superstitious projections of their day and age, a kind of post hoc justification for an ideology, minus many reality checks.

Philosophers tend to live deeply in Plato's Cave (a kind of movie theater for the mind's eye).

The myth, traceable to John Locke and contemporaries, starts with an untamed wilderness. Homesteaders and pioneers appear, thereby appropriating it (mixing labor with land).

Inheritance and trade among homesteaders develop, after which the State appears and begins imposing its will, rules, taxes etc. In a pristine state, private property precedes government -- or so goes the (unsubstantiated) theory.

Anthropologists typically classify societies into hunter-gatherer bands, autonomous villages (tribal societies), chiefdoms, early (archaic) states or civilizations.

The philosophers depict these as ancient patterns, with only states or civilizations remaining. However, one might see a campus as a semi-autonomous village (Cal Tech, Reed College). Urban areas have bands, camps or gangs. Proctor & Gamble and Unilever are chiefdoms, as is any company with a CEO, CFO, CIO, CMO etc. (C = chief).

The argument that these are archaic forms relates to what constitutes the "highest" authority, i.e. anarchic bands (with no head person giving commands) didn't have to report to a chief or be patrolled by a police. Colleges pay taxes, engage in commerce (town/gown relations).

In conventional accounts, the nation-state is nowadays considered the highest authority, with the above configurations turned into an evolutionary tale of how the state emerged, a kind of dialectical materialism.

In hunter-gatherer bands, large game is considered a common resource no matter who kills it. In an autonomous village, access to land is flexible and non-exclusionary, with households entitled to their own harvests. Every household does its own farming, including the village administrators.

Only in large chiefdoms, consisting of multiple villages, does one find people with the power to exclude others from resources. Chiefdoms introduce the idea of a chain of command with an owner at "the top".

With the evolution of states comes tyranny and slavery, kingdoms. This pattern emerges around the world. Land tends to be a gift from the central authority, perhaps in exchange for military conquest (land was deeded for deeds).

The modern concept of private property turns out to be a recent development, emerging in Europe rather late in the game (1500s). The idea of private property spreads through colonialism and through establishment by governments. The romantic libertarian notion that private property begins in the earliest primitive societies, the government coming later, is eminently debatable.

Private property as currently understood is through government. Centralized government does not represent the usurpation of pre-existing property rights in primitive societies, but is more the vehicle for the creation of private property rights as an institution, beginning with the rights of monarchs (chiefs).

Property ownership and real estate ownership are distinct concepts. Nomadic or herding societies may not stake ownership of ground by surveying and fencing (like ranchers and farmers), but will recognize ownership of wives, sheep and goats.

Chiefdoms seem a gateway to tyranny, almost universally. The Iroquois seem to be one notable exception.

The talk was not a lot about maritime trading and the subcultures aboard seagoing vessels (pirates etc.). How a given ship is organized is a variable, even where titles of captain, first mate, navigator might have conventional meanings.

During the Q&A, I brought up the Doctrine of Discovery again, which several religious traditions are threading about. There's a need to unravel some of the mysteries behind "property" and own up to a new form of calculus that doesn't bank on the supposedly inherent superiority of one people (religion, ideology) over another.

Jim Buxton brought a generous haul of chanterelle mushrooms again, a quasi-yearly even in October and a day I look forward to. He set them out in a box with bags for us to truck them away in. Given the theme of Karl's talk, I thought this most apropos and highly civilized. Jim Buxton is a great chief.

Back at the Blue House, I advocated donating a portion of my haul to Food Not Bombs tomorrow, perhaps as a garnish or ingredient (not as bulk produce). I'm not a chief chef though.

My vision is lots of Youtube cooking shows as F~B turns into a gourmet occassion, with restaurants, farmers markets and warehouses eager not only to donate ingredients, but their personnel, as what better way to market superior quality product than in these potlatch potlucks in the park.

I need to backpedal though, as if word got out about this underground gourmet "fooding", we'd be inundated with tourists wanting to take but not give. The same phenomenon is evident in the FOSS community, where "giving back" often only happens in exchange for generous self-helpings to the work of the ages.

Our mostly under-the-radar operations, through FOSS covens and Zen dens, keeps our sponsors visible among an inner circle of cognoscenti, earning good will, without the overhead of a lot of over-the-top hype, or push advertising (no Crazy Eddy commercials required -- though around here we think of Tom Peters).

The New Atlantis (movie review)

This obscure DVD, a talking head documentary interspersed with theatrical re-enactments, is Volume One in the Secret Mysteries of America's Beginnings series. The material is not anything that oughta be kept secret, if the goal is to provide a deeper understanding of past and contemporary myth-making. The content is certainly PG enough to share in an American History or Literature class, is not even TV-14.

I agree with the premise of the filmmaker that the ideologies driving the colonization of the so-called New World, by the English in particular, included these so-called occult and/or esoteric brands, the Freemasons and Rosicrucians in particular.

The screenwriters don't want to come across as mindless shills for the Masons, and so frequently cut to disapproving voices tsk tsking about "witchcraft" and "the occult" (as if Christianity didn't have its share of occult teachings).

The disgraceful kidnapping and murder of one Captain Morgan, who supposedly divulged some Masonic secrets, is re-enacted such that one could understand why the ensuing backlash took its toll on membership.

Francis Bacon is the pivotal figure throughout the narrative, cast as the successor to John Dee, a core member of the Rosicrucian school.

Dee was at first a confidant of Queen Mary (daughter of Henry VIII), but he fell out of favor (for not being Catholic enough?) and was later confined, along with Mary's sister Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth 1) for whom he became a mentor as well.

Given the Pope had declared Queen Elizabeth and the Anglicans in contempt, a secret service formed around the new Queen as a protective body, headed up by Sir Francis Walsingham.

One could see where these secret societies would have a role countering the Roman Pope, and later the King of England during the American Revolution. The formation of underground (sometimes literally) secretive societies in the face of persecution and/or prying busy-bodies is an ancient design pattern.

The Boston Tea Party, a protest against the East India Company, was organized by such Masons as Paul Revere. This is perhaps ironic in light of today's "tea party" seemingly wishing to disavow any such "occult" and/or "outlaw pirate" affiliations.

The documentary, being of recent vintage, connects a lot of contemporary dots, including the National Treasure movies (deemed too literal and materialistic), Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, and several other lesser known scholarly works. The Masonic philosopher Manly P. Hall gets a lot of attention.

The script claims John Dee is the model for Marlowe's version of Faust, Rowling's Dumbledore in Harry Potter, and even Ian Flemming's "007" (Dee's occult signature). And yes, there's a whole chapter laying out the Baconite view that Francis Bacon, Dee's protege, was a principal ghost writer behind the Shakespeare plays, not the Stratford-based actor, who provided the cover story (Mark Twain was also a Baconite in this sense).

Speaking of Shake-speare, the story about "spear shakers" Athena and Apollo as core archetypes for Bacon and his cronies -- with a tilt towards Athena -- is perfect PR for Coffee Shops Network, likewise anchored and tilted.

Sir Francis Bacon comes across as passionate about alleviating misery and contributing to collective prosperity through invention in language. He sought to improve English, based on his experience of what the French were up to. As a curriculum writer, he was doing his best to have the inevitable colonization of the New World be a positive experience yielding lasting benefits, even a paradise on Earth if possible (hence the title: New Atlantis).

I was reminded of E.J. Applewhite's Paradise Mislaid, which title suggests we might have gone astray with respect to Bacon's metaphysical program. Applewhite lived a life of the mind and was an admirer of both Bucky Fuller (with whom he collaborated) and J. D. Bernal. Does today's curriculum promote such mental aliveness, or does idiocracy prevail? Utopia or oblivion?

What may annoy some science-minded viewers of this DVD is the murky blend of experimentalism and spiritualism shared not only by these historical figures, but by some of the contemporary talking heads. Perhaps John Dee felt he could contact angelic beings, but today you need to see a shrink if they catch you thinking like that.

I'm not saying I think this is a great documentary that somehow "reveals all" (whatever that might mean -- nothing probably). The analysis of the Woodstock era North American counter-culture of the 1960s is quite superficial.

Linking Britney Spears and Madonna to the occult seems more like naked piggy-backing on popular culture, in an age when the Masonic subculture has reached a low ebb -- which is not to deny an age-old link twixt celebrity / court culture and esoteric science fiction. Indeed, a core point of the movie is people like Ben Franklin would have little choice but to frequent the eating clubs of the spoiled witless (somewhat notorious for hanky panky, especially in the projections of the puritanical), when seeking sympathy for the USA's upcoming forking off (Declaration of Independence).

In remaining tightly focused on a very few secret societies, many other factors, such as slavery and the genocidal "manifest destiny" ideologies, are overlooked or simply absorbed as footnotes to an unquestioned Anglo imperialism (somewhat Reichian to begin with, as if Atlantis were some "superpower").

Watch more documentaries then, lots more. But at least weave some of these threads into your world model as well. Keep the secret societies on your radar, if you want your analyses to remain credible. Also keep in mind there's a fine line between "secret" and "accessible only with study and practice".

Too many people forget that "intellectual property" refers to the capabilities of those who know some craft, have some skills (like computer programmers). Scribbles on paper, a few diagrams, do not in themselves constitute the transmission of the relevant metaphysics.

In other words, don't forget to "know thyself" in your efforts to know the selves of others, and choose your friends wisely.

PPUG 2010.10.12

Michelle Rowley is introducing "Thunderdome" -- Pythonistas are coming forward with lightning talks on various modules. At least the name sounds exciting. Abstract Syntax Trees... (ast).

Jim is here, one of my clients. I'm counting 30 men here with Michelle, whom I identified to Jim as our fearless leader.

ast is highly esoteric. It builds a syntax tree from Python expressions. We're looking at a module that parses PHP yet converts it to Python. Next we're learning about dis, also abstruse, from Chris McDonald. dis spits out the assembly language like byte codes for functions 'n stuff.

Earlier today I did some light exercise by climbing Mt. Tabor (that might sound like a big deal, but Mt. Tabor is a local park surrounding a dormant volcano, like a butte). The next exercise was somewhat heavier: I pulled the Food Not Bombs bike trailer from a pickup site

Adam Lowry is lecturing on the operator module, tying it back to dis.

The select module is "used for I/O multiplexing". Yikes.

Regarding our 30:1 male:female ratio, I invited a gender specialist to join me (she was at the Mercy Corps meeting), maybe give me a read just for fun.

One can't learn everything from just the one meeting of course. We could use more anthropologists and documentary movie makers in our midst (what I came to at Djangocon, surrounded by so many "pink ponies").

I'm having a lot of deja vu today, about a lot of things. We're also looking at __main__ and __builtin__.

We adjourned for beers at Bailey's, where I enjoyed Hopworks ESB quite a bit (was on the bus, so didn't mind the extra pint). I was honored the maintainer of python-gmpy was with us.

Casino Math

Tom Siegfried, editor in chief of Science News, kicked off our the 2010-2011 Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture series last night, at Portland's central Broadway venue, the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, his name in lights.

Most of Tom's talk was a walk through the rise of statistics, from its inception in the world of gambling (hence my title). Cardano got the ball rolling, with Pascal and Fermat picking up the thread, then de Moivre and Adolphe Quetelet (a lesser known but one of Tom's favorite thinkers).

Quetelet was pioneering the notion of "human physics" i.e. predicting social trends and phenomena using statistical methods. Applications to molecular dynamics, stochastic analysis, was more a derivative of nascent sociological sciences than vice versa, a point often overlooked by those claiming the soft sciences are always trying to imitate the so-called hard sciences.

The arbitrary P=0.05 correlation threshold required to prove "statistical significance" has its own history, which was more spelled out in the printed program than in Tom's talk. Safe to say, a lot of studies misapply statistical reasoning, meaning drugs that shouldn't be out there are, and some that should be are not -- among other consequences. The process of aggregating studies to get a larger sample size and perhaps a more significant outcome is also regularly botched.

In general, people have a poor understanding of probability theory, which demands improbable events, flukes.

Then Tom went off the deep end in a culturally approved way, by discussing a "multi-verse" picture of branching universes. The discourse was especially interesting to those five-to-ten of us in the world who read Synergetics, as Boltzmann gets credit for "eternally regenerative Universe" ideas in Fuller's work, and here it was all about "Boltzmann brains" and their likelihood in alternative universes. I disagree that "infinite time" is an antidote to "never" i.e. I don't agree that what's "infinitely improbable" is somehow bound to occur given infinite time.

Ascribing meaning or sense to "infinitely improbable" occurrences is problematic to begin with i.e. how does one know if one is confronting such an outcome even if it does occur? If a monkey types a work by William Shakespeare (say Macbeth), why would we agree this was "random"? Perhaps the monkey was suddenly possessed by some well-versed ghost? Remote controlled by hidden grad student by means hitherto unsuspected? Who has authority to give the "true account" in this alternative world? In a multi-verse, anything would seem possible, including far-fetched explanations for incredible events. Sounds familiar doesn't it?

The entire exercise seems more like a safety valve, a licensed "letting off steam" in an otherwise pressurized system (alluding to Boltzmann again, and how his thinking is featured in Fuller's philo). Language needs to exercise its grammatical capabilities sometimes. Philosophy is a playground, largely unsupervised these days (so watch out for rusty nails, hidden pitfalls -- most your grownups are on vacation).

After the Heathman dinner of cod with eerily moving parts (some kind of garnish -- very eXistenZ), Tom answered some additional questions. He expressed a "Google is evil" point of view, i.e. here's a company dumping hard-won value added writings into the commons at no cost, undermining publishing as we know it.

No wonder science has become so much the sex slave of moneyed interests with axes to grind. There's almost no way to sustain oneself as an independent, self-respecting, objective private investigator anymore.

Science journalism is likewise under pressure to sensationalize, to hype murky findings, simply to stay in the game. The economics seem unsustainable, which makes the job difficult, sometimes discouraging.

I also entitled this journal entry "Casino Math" because of my Heuristics for Teachers on Wikieducator. Puritanical readers may have a problem with this nomenclature because of strictures against gambling, but it's true to the history of the field, as Tom's talk well illustrated. Universe has casino-like aspects regardless of what games people play, as one of the questioners pointed out, saying "Even if God does not play dice, He seems to have a serious gambling problem" (audience laughter).

I was happy Tara could join us for this event. We took the bus to and fro. She gamely ate the cod, if not the mushrooms, and shared many insightful and intelligent remarks about the talk and proceedings.

The next day, Terry phoned me at American Dream Pizza, where I was waiting (on chauffeur duty). He wanted me to accompany him in treating Tom to an intimate dinner with some PSU students interested in further discussion. Twas my distinct privilege.

We spent the evening at the McMenamins on the Park Blocks, quaffing beers, munching on snacks, and discussing the pros and cons of various philosophical positions, such as determinism versus macroscopic randomness.

Terry drove me home in his brand new Prius after leaving his distinguished guest at The Heathman.

Wanderers 2010.9.28

Dr. Cari Coe of Lewis & Clark College regaled us with stories on Tuesday, regarding land use planning in Vietnam. One of the ministries is hoping to protect remaining forest lands using a national park system. Local residents have land claims stretching back through time, and the national park overlay creates two levels of story.

Is the central government being successful in conserving these resources?

Deforestation is a problem all over Asia (and the world) and forest management really needs to extend to beyond a few protected areas. Creating new forest lands (a kind of terraforming) was not among the topics discussed however. This was about preserving some old ones.

Cari's research was on behalf of the Vietnamese government and some banks, maybe the World Bank among them. She speaks fluent Vietnamese and had a woman traveling companion or "minder" (also a friend) to give more authority to her visitations.

They traveled by motorcycle all around one of the nature preserves, interviewing about 103 families in three provinces. Cari had been to Vietnam before and is a motor bike enthusiast with lots of hands-on savvy when it comes to their maintenance.

The study is somewhat inconclusive as to the long range impact of these plans, but that doesn't mean her findings were not valuable. On the contrary, a detailed snapshot emerged, as nothing replaces field work and actual feedback from the villages.

Writing policy in some centralized bureaucracy gives no clue as to whether these policies are being followed and, if so, how.

Her status as an obvious outsider, a North American, helped interviewees speak more freely, was her impression, since she had no obvious affiliation with up-close participants, party to whatever rivalries or tensions.

Rice paddies and forest lands are deeded to caretakers and beneficiaries on timed leases, according to the latest model.

After 20 years, a parcel of rice land reverts to the government and the lease will need to be renewed or renegotiated. If the land is being used according to plan, it's more likely to remain with the family that works it. These agreements are registered in little booklets.

One goal of the research was to find out which families had booklets, and how they got them if so. In theory, protected park lands should not be deeded out, but given local authorities made the arrangements, forcible land reform i.e. confiscating lands from those with historic ties to the park lands, was not really in the cards.

The system is more like a "land lending library" than a system of titles and deeds on a market, with inheritance (where zoning and land use policies may also apply). Forest lands are lent out for 50 year periods.

The slides included some GIS and I wish I'd asked more about how much GIS is getting used in the ministries. I've been posting about GIS to math and Python discussion lists, most recently regarding Singapore's use of GIS /GPS and its possible applications (along with GST) to long haul trucking along the old trade routes, from Istanbul to the Stans, via Tehran.

American Dream

I'm at American Dream Pizza (not eating, plenty of food at home), chauffeuring my mother to and from the hospital. She's in relatively good shape, enjoying better eyesight as a result of cataract surgery.

Glenn wanted to share some of his most recent breakthroughs, extending his more-than-a-decade studies of what he calls his Global Matrix. Per Quaker thinking, it's given to each of us to distill a one-of-a-kind dharma or teaching that is that of God, the gift of a personal angle.

The upside is we have a precious and unique point of view. That's also the downside, as a "private language" is a kind of "black hole". The good news is also the bad news. There's still a lot of bandwidth though, for cross-fertilizing ideas -- what Wanderers is all about, so Glenn was definitely in the right place this morning.

Sam Lanahan joined us (a rare occurrence), along with the self-proclaimed mayor of Bonnie Slope (a privilege). The room was actually packed.

Let's see how I might map Glenn's thinking for Synergetics readers (yeah, right, pile the esoteric on top of the esoteric and see if that helps -- sometimes it does).

Picture two unit-radius spheres, just touching. Each is a "complex space" inside, meaning we have operational models for thinking about quaternions (Hamilton) and octonians (Graves, Cayley).

The symmetries inherent in complex number space (which he links to Lie Algebra) give us polyhedra, the figurative hallmarks of spinnability (+2) as well as concavity/convexity (x2).

The paired Platonics and their derivatives occur in both of these "kissing spheres" which have a "fixed point" singularity where they touch.

The Lorentz Attractor enters in (a butterfly with tilted wings) along with personal biographical data: some time studying languages, cracking codes for the NSA, followed by a lonesome Arizona vista, developing a system in solitude, with repeated visits to the Big City for reality checks (quantum logic courses at PSU, Cascade Systems Society, Wanderers). Or to the Santa Fe Institute, for a two hours session with Stuart Kaufman lo those many years ago.

I'd characterize Glenn's talk as a nutritious meme soup, a hefty stew. He's a craftsman and whereas homemade mnemonic structures may not be the norm in academia, that's no reason to clamp down. We've not had many centuries in which auto-didacts were in a position to share their art, when the content was most germane to the "upper classes" (so-called). Times have changed.

During the conversational period that followed I managed to get Sam's OK to show his book around. He and Buzz looked at the new eCommerce pages that make Flextegrity components available to the world. Bill Sheppard read aloud from Carl Sagan's book regarding the stellar and pivotal role played by the Paulings, in getting atomic bomb testing partially criminalized.

I thank Trish for patiently enduring a tour of my blogs, as I explained some of what my life has been like over the past year or so, with special emphasis on the poster art of one James Jameson.

Yesterday I formed some paragraphs for the Quakers attempting to set forth more of the Food Not Bombs philosophy. I'm hoping FNB helps me fine tune my rendering such that I accurately reflect the group's dharmas. I'll write more about that in BizMo Diaries sometime soon.

Speaking of FNB, my heartfelt thanks to Lindsey Walker for working on my bike at Bike Farm yesterday, hauling it in her trailer, along with boxes of food for a North Portland disbursement site. Aside from occasionally borrowing my daughter's, I've been cycle-less since Tinkerbell was stolen over a year ago.

Repairing Voting

Today is Free Software Day and geeks in my lineage (open source) are expected to stand up for democratic rights, even in an electronic age. Especially in an electronic age. Here's from today's stash of writings (typos fixed):

Imagine something similar to vote by mail in Oregon. You don't
all have to vote on the same day, there's at least a week. You
need not take time off work. You'll have a way to vote online,
by entering your PIN. Email confirmation will come back to your
email box, showing how you voted and giving another number you
can use to find your vote. You needn't keep it a secret how you
voted -- be as public as you like (your choice).

Traveling overseas? No problemo. There's a way to vote from
your iPhone.

There's also a lot of votes taken throughout the year, polls. People
are in the habit of voting often if they want to. So they know
if their credentials are working, i.e. it's not a matter of being
surprised on "election day" (once a year? once every four years?).
On the contrary, a trusted voting infrastructure is used almost
daily, by at least some set of eligible persons (you might have
needed to register -- like now).

It's easy to imagine working solutions that are light years more
advanced than what we have today. People generally feel satisfied
with the systems and understand how they work. Access is quasi-
universal. Literacy rates are high, infant mortality is low, and
the debates on TV are intelligent and to the point.

People in this future look back on our ranting raving dark age of
crazy-making punditry, and fall to their knees in gratitude that
at least it's not 2010 or thereabouts, when everything was just
nuts! They weren't even teaching about Bucky hardly at all, when
so much depended on waking up to brighter prospects.

Hard to explain, how our ancestors could be so slow.

Something in the water? Lead poisoning?

That's what some speculate happened to the Romans. Brain rot
eroded their civilization from the inside out. Fast food?

I've written quite a bit about voting and voting technology in these blogs already.

You may ask why I haven't instituted tagging for your reading convenience, or turned on comments to this post.

Well, I come to the Web from a Quaker background and was just thinking of these as my journals, world-readable for sure, but not water coolers for people to gather around and chat with each other.

Lots of blogs out there serve that purpose (literally millions at the time of this writing), so I hope it's OK.

The Internet is Broken

Many have said this before (including me), and the truth is, in the wild and woolly world of the free Internet, so-called consumers are fair game, for every kind of spam, scam, virus, you name it. The sign should read: prey enter here.

If you're behind a well-maintained firewall, using free protocols and well-thought-out systems to engineer from within, then this same technology feels robust and secure to you. You're not just out there by your lonesome, a hapless Windows user with a new laptop.

Why are schools leery of the Internet? They lack sysops. Those making money, sometimes the very scammers mentioned above, pay the top talent to work for them, leaving the public sector somewhat undefended, in a vulnerable position.

I know what you're thinking: Pentagon to the rescue. When it comes to protecting the security of ordinary civilians from predatory attack, isn't that what our homeland security forces are for? This is a touchingly innocent way of thinking, and school administrators have every right, on paper at least, to be thinking that way. Like of course your government is here to protect you.

In the next chapter, more students will master the necessary skills and help their schools build up safe and protected domains. Champions will step forward, helping young people fortify their minds and bodies, and sharing the necessary memes to not fall prey so easily as their adult forbearers, from when the Internet was still new.

:: predators R us ::

A Serendipitous Opportunity

:: congressman david wu addressing djangocon ::

Chairman Steve, whose Holden Web is producing DjangoCon this year, decided at the last minute to upgrade his airplane seating from Dulles to Portland (IAD to PDX) to first class. He wound up getting to sit next to Congressman David Wu of Oregon's first district. They got to chatting, comparing notes, both being social adepts, and by the end of the ride Congressman Wu was willing to consider addressing our conference. He chairs the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation for the House Committee on Science and Technology after all, and knows about the importance of open source to Oregon's (and the world's) economy.

As Grand Poobah Snake Wrangler (what's on my nametag), I was outside the hotel to meet the congressman's car and usher his party to the Banquet entrance of our DoubleTree hotel, where Russell Keith-Magee, president of the Django Software Foundation (DSF), officially met our guest. Steve, in the meantime, had been holding forth in the ballroom in front of 250 geeks, building suspense around his special surprise guest. Who would that be? Steve Jobs? Jacob Kaplan-Moss? The identity of our impromptu visitor had been kept secret.

Congressman Wu delivered a short and pithy speech about the importance of high technology to Oregon's future in particular. Both software and hardware are a focus here, with an emphasis on medicine (e.g. OHSU) and nanotechnology (e.g. ONAMI).

He expressed appreciation for open source, understood that it was not just about "free as in beer" but about sharing standards and solutions. Innovation emerges from such a process, as the creation of the Internet itself attests.

Traditionally, our model for society has been "a top-down pyramid" said Congressman Wu. Nowadays, however, and for the first time, the model is more "a geodesic dome" with nodes connecting around in all directions.

If our open source community would realize its own power and responsibility to do good in the world, then the attitudes and behaviors of the surrounding society will accommodate and reciprocate. Open source will have come of age.

He also spoke of the importance of starting early with STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), from kindergarten onward. Getting more open source technology and teacher training into our schools sounded like an initiative his office would support.

Chairman Steve ceremoniously provided the congressman with an iconic pony, as our motto this year is "everyone gets a pony". David Wu wondered if he might have two, one for each of his children. Given his status as our honored guest, the necessary arrangements were promptly made.

Out in the foyer after the speech, the congressman remarked to Steve that "a topic for another day" would be finding out why we're so disproportionately male (a fact hard to miss from the podium). What happens that leads females to drop away from STEM subjects and careers in technology? Steve assured him that we're working on this puzzle.

Technology Talk (TT)

Get a couple hundred geeks together, and esoterica happens. I was somewhat in and out on the scaling Django talk. This shop (Disqus) provides commenting services for huge numbers, millions of users. There's no down time. Maintenance mode means the comments are read-only, with new ones getting queued.

Advice to the weary: if you haven't taken the plunge and opted for MySQL or PostgreSQL, this group recommends the later, for doing a lot more. They use Slony-I for replication, failover. Lots of in-memory indexing keeps things fast (talking server side -- no mention of HTML5's SQL cache on the client, not a standard feature these days).

I'm snake wrangling and brokering ponies. Nancy needs two more and I've got a text message into Steve asking the whereabouts of those six we set aside earlier, after the photo op.

A delegate lent us his Pink Pony hat, size large, which fit over the PSF snake's head perfectly, though to eerie effect. After taking a few pictures of this unified beast, with a secret teaching (namely Django is Python), I set the display back to showing two creatures, getting along well (more how it appears to the casual observer, Django being an application of the Python language, not Python itself).

Good seeing Andy McKay again. We discussed urban farming in our respective environments and it's beneficial effects. Tending to gardening tends to relax the mind, which may lead to more rapid development, faster fixing of bugs. That book on Geek Cooking seemed a step in the right direction, I may have mentioned.

Birthdays

:: terri's birthday party @ taborspace ::

As Lyn Gordon explained at the rise of meeting today, our custom of first Sundays is to celebrate the birthdays of anyone born in that month, this month being September. Lyn himself was a September baby. People stood up in turn and let us know whose birthdays they were celebrating.

I thought of some, but didn't add to the festivities. My late wife Dawn Wicca was born on September 20th. Marian's birthday, September 11th, is the same as our wedding anniversary.

We don't consider it overly morose or maudlin to celebrate the dead with the living. Meeting itself was much about death, sorrow and tragedy, or the "ocean of darkness". Our faith is not about always looking away from the depths of despair.

Those with the strength and ability to be with and assist those in misery, without adding to it, are encouraged to do so. Ron spoke eloquently of compassion as the fountainhead of creation.

In a few minutes, I'm off to set up chairs for another birthday party, Terri Grayum's 60th.

I was happy to chat with Marian Rhys, Harriet Holling, Sonya Penny, Eddy Crouch, and Aimee Ford Conner today in the social hall, where leftover birthday cake was served. Aimee is also remembering some tragedies in her life, thinking ahead to October.

Betsey Kenworthy reminded me about the laptop, which I will leave in the office inroute to my next encounter.

Terri Grayum's 60th was a delight. I was amazed by the Danceability duo, their polished and engaging performance, despite the carpet. Their next stop: the nation of Columbia. I had some quality time with Carol, Tara and young Aubrey on the church steps. Our neighbor over the back fence was there with her son. I met some new-to-me people, and experienced an amazing space (TaborSpace) right in our neighborhood. Good job Presbyterians.

Debate in 97214

(click for larger view)

A topic for debate in our neighborhood, given the New Seasons is to open soon, is whether we're on board with a planned campaign to discourage the selling of products with a Made in Israel label.

I'm concerned the plan is hypocritical, as the same kinds of injustices the campaigners decry are practiced in the name of the USA as well, so Made in USA products should be boycotted by the same reasoning.

When many USAers were practicing discrimination against those of Japanese heritage, rounding them up and sending them to camps, confiscating their property and so forth, some private companies made a special point of hiring Japanese, trying to compensate for these gross injustices (for which the USG later apologized).

So it pays to look beyond any Made in the USA label and to scrutinize the specific companies involved.

Take Ben and Jerry's for example. The parent company may be European, but those hippie era home grown Vermont-based values still permeate the subsidiary. If I were wanting to discourage the USA's persecution of Japanese Americans, would I boycott Ben & Jerry's? Not likely.

Our 2 Dickinson Street cabal was certainly on board with, and a co-organizer of, the divestment campaign aimed at getting Princeton to drop from its portfolio any companies that profited from South African apartheid.

I'm concerned that going by nation-state labeling only encourages nationalistic pigeon-holing. People start identifying with so-called "nations" in neurotic ways, basing their entire identity on what "nation" they represent. Why not go by zip code or county or sports team?

Taking nations too seriously is a form of mental illness according to Albert Einstein, who could have been the first president of Israel.

Those of us interested in doing God's will, having a Promised Land that's healthy and happy, recognize that nation states are not "of God" in the first place.

I'm on board with disavowing these Doctrines of Discovery, or any idea that land held by Christians or Jews or Muslims is somehow "redeemed" versus other land held by others. That's atavistic, antediluvian, dark ages thinking.

God is too great to be captured and/or represented by any one human religion, a teaching of many religious thinkers.

Israel has no more "right to exist" than the United Kingdom, Iran or the USA. They're all equally human contrivances, awkward and ungainly social institutions, doing as best they can, muddling through the day.

Humans, being rather pathetic creatures, have a terrible track record when it comes to so many institutions. That's a lot of history in a nutshell. Misanthropists have a field day when it comes to history, saying "I told you so" with every turn of the page.

Vain and silly humans may be proud of their social constructs, but they're no more than theater at the end of the day, the stuff of soap operas.

What's the opposite of a boycott, where you consciously reward brands or companies you think are doing a good job? Carrot Mob is a step in the right direction there.

That's what I'd like to see more of. If you're a radical or activist of some kind, come out with a list of products you think we should buy, if "voting with dollars" is the game you wanna play.

That guy who wrote Fast Food Nation spoke in Portland (I went with my youngest daughter), and dared to mention Burgerville as not so terrible, if you really wanted that kind of food. That took guts I thought. It's much easier to criticize than to endorse.

That's why cynics have such easy mental lives, as it takes little imagination to be cynical about everything. Just being a "cynical journalist" takes little courage or skill.

Tomorrow's GUIs

The concentration of web cam feeds in some "security office", where it's impossible to monitor in real time, is not the only sensible arrangement, when it comes to gluing work / study positions into co-functioning circuitry.

Imagine your dispatcher could watch the pallets pile up on the loading dock, as the truck backed into the bay. The trucker has a comm link that includes video. There's room in the rear cab for multiple feeds, for consulting when not rolling.

This video view of the warehouse loading dock could be in one of several HTML5 windows. The point is those web cams connect people who communicate with one another, aren't just for monitors looking for someone doing something wrong (which depresses morale, inspires anger at "big brother").

Web cams need not be about intrusive monitoring, invasions of privacy (although they might be), as many a video blogger will attest -- because they were in control. If that's your friend on the other end, watching your back, helping you manage, then you'll not have the same bitterness as when snooped on by enemies, unseen voyeurs behind one-way glass (the setting in many a movie, especially cop shows, also Bruno).

The "silent spy in the sky" model might stay in the picture, but it's selfish to hog all the warehouse video and not let people who work with the warehouse actually see what the scene is.

Civilians could be so much more productive if allowed to enjoy what some soldiers of fortune already get to play with. Viewing audiences know from sporting events, from the Discovery Channel, how routine it is to place multiple cameras around an event space.

Having a web cam on the truck, usually pointed at the road, would be an option. Some enterprises use that to match up with a maps view. Here's where the truck is, here's what the truck is looking at on the ground, in terms of traffic and weather.

In the case of Wanderers, we tracked a blip in real time but the Google Street Views were not updating in real time, were just a rough approximation (whatever happened to be in the database from the last time a Street Views car went through). We were sitting at our HQS in Portland while the Buxtons traversed middle America.

Looking at bio-diesel options for Blue House heating. The idea of an extended campus might include a college finding a heating oil supplier that met Keith's criteria (one of my advisors on fuel). Once again, trucks are involved. Or should we phase out heating oil entirely?

I used to write science fiction on one of the Physics lists about robot trucking systems (ZTSs) that'd extend DARPA's research into self-piloting vehicles. Some particular freeway might be set aside for testing, not shared with unsuspecting motorists.

Low volume studies in macro-sized packet switching using machine intelligence need not take priority over outfitting ordinary trucks with better GIS/GPS however. This was never about ending all the driving work out there. That would neither be practical nor desirable.

Speaking of GIS/GPS, NASA's concerns about a possible solar eruption, hard on satellites, is percolating to the top of the inbox as something to talk about in concert with other brands of 2012er.

This beats getting hit by an asteroid or invaded by ETs (new ones), in terms of realism.

Notes on Trucking

I've often exulted how knowing something about computers gains one entre to any number of disciplines, given they all have a need for computer services. Case in point: I've worked in transportation, summer camp registration, even in the cardiac operating room (after hours) testing my heart operations data collection application (CORIS).

These days, I'm learning more about trucking. Transportation Management Systems will help dispatchers organize shipments and hand them off to trucking companies. LTL stands for Less Than Load, meaning only part of the truck gets filled. Does one book a direct LTL delivery, a multi-stop, pass on to a pool? The experienced dispatcher needs a head full of geography and lots of experience. But what if that level of experience is unobtainable? Enter software assistants, the equivalent of part- and/or full-time employees.

Microsoft's Visual FoxPro (VFP) was a highly capable product but has fallen on hard times. VFP coders are being herded into .NET solutions, but feel their productivity dropping off. Although not a TMS, the trucking software I'm looking at is in VFP and the question is how to migrate it to something else eventually. The program is already running live, in production, with paying clients, so the mentality is one of gradually swapping in Python components, swapping out VFP components.

The hybrid (VFP + Python) might look pretty convoluted though. Imagine FoxPro accessing its own native tables through a Python COM server that in turn uses ODBC for its back end. Could this be ungainly? Will I be swallowed up in the trucking world and Earthling Math?

MENWFZ

MENWFZ = Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (not "men with fezzes" although that could be a mnemonic, unless one perceives an ethnic slur of some kind).

I just pulled up a bunch of articles on this idea, which is not a new one, but which "has legs" at the moment.

Many journalists say it's aimed against Israel, but that's to ignore the double-edged sword, as those signing the agreement would be opening themselves to disambiguation, versus following an "ambiguity" policy.

Iran wants to be on record saying it has no such weapons nor plans to develop them. Whether this is true or not is independent of the fact that nations without nukes enjoy disproportionate kudos and credibility these days.

If you want to be trusted, you won't be a source of WMDs, for anyone, not even yourself. Iran gains credibility every day that goes by without evidence of actual stockpiling of weapons grade fissionable materials.

IAEA does get to pry.

The same protocols apply to the USG as it goes with a "demand zero" policy and an across-the-board criminalization of these weapons. The focus needs to be on cleanup and safe storage, a whole other can of worms which the Obama administration has been facing. Cleaning up after nukes is no picnic, as the Hanford cleanup crews will attest.

However I understand those who say the verification process is still insufficient. Part of the problem is public education. What sorts of civilian nuclear power plants share the same food chain as weaponry plants? As with so many issues in our modern world, the definitive journalism on this subject actually has to contain quite a bit of science and engineering.

Beware of the "soap opera press" which turns every story into some episode of Dallas, or tries to pretend it's Team America (world police). If there's no science content, just intrigue and maneuvering, then you're more likely dealing with more armchair know-nothings and their comic book paranoias.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons each have their own worlds. Where they partially overlap is where much of the action is these days. Stay tuned. The next meeting is in Washington, DC they tell me.

Philosophical Essay (2nd Draft)

In recent essays regarding how we've countered the knowledge explosion, in ways other than by simply narrowing our respective knowledge domains, I've come to a notion of Philosophy (as a discipline) as an incubator for glue languages.

A "glue language" is one that is deliberately designed to cohere multiple other disciplines. I would claim this is (a) not a new vision of what philosophy does and (b) is akin to some types of poetics, which stands to reason as metered oral tradition ragas & sagas were indeed a way for cultures to encode and transmit vital knowledge.

Another thesis, non-Wittgensteinian in the sense of arguable (debatable, either way), is that the recent chapter in philosophy (pre linguistic turn) namely the rise of analytic philosophy in the form of symbolic logic as a "mirror of the world" (Tractatus idea), was about the noosphere (zeitgeist, holy ghost) giving birth to computer languages, as dreamed of by Leibniz, Ada, Grace Hopper... a different lineage than those analytics like to own, but arguably more the main line, with the benefit of hindsight (a view of history).

Logic matured into that which runs most of our infrastructure by this time, at the low level record-keeping level, and even at the real time control level, where humans tend to spontaneously operate. Philosophy again appears in the driver's seat (as it might have been seen in trivium-quadrivium days) once we allow it to give birth to computer science as one of its own (as Athena from Zeus).

However, this computer logic is low level and largely content free. It gives us ways to store and retrieve, but is not spontaneously integrative except insofar as it allows us to sift through, synthesize and summarize super-human amounts of data (more than any one researcher could hope to personally collect and analyze).

The next level or challenge, is to develop more glue languages, designed as tools for human thought, that help us navigate these wilds, this new "cyberspace" ("steering place"), i.e. this new governing area (not to be confused with Area 51).

Wittgenstein's later philosophy opens doors to glue languages by leveling the playing field, providing a clean beginning. How could many languages be true at the same time? Isn't that just relativism? SWM and I used to debate this on wittgenstein-dialognet.

In focusing on the "doing" in symbolic games, rather than their "pointing" to some supposed "public object" or one true "in itself world", he turned language inside-out, made it seem more like what we see in the case of computer languages: a kind of executing or processing of energy, a vectoring of content this way and that. A strong religion is like an efficient FORTRAN program, in keeping memory working hard for the greater glory. A different ideology or religion would operate differently, yet still get work done. The "forms of life" approach allows for different reference frames that all share the same "c" ("c" for "certainty").

Lots of computer languages do the work, not just one, and we see no contradiction. We see "forms of life" connecting to "grammars".

A human glue language provides inertial guidance, a kind of homing device, a gyroscope, except this "glue language" is not monolithic or "the one true system" ala Hegel or the Tower of Babel -- both closer to the logical core / divine order than your average joe and/or structure, but neither the "last word" as the world keeps changing, which in turn requires upgrades (sometimes in answer to our prayers).

We're ethically precluded from calling "it" (our glue language) "finally done" and/or "instantly true" (as if "the truth" could be captured in a snap shot per the old "picture theory" of meaning) i.e. living systems are about becoming, adapting, not about "the end of history". One comes to see in a new way.

My final thesis will be that this Bucky Fuller gestated glue language called "synergetics" (not to be confused with its fraternal twin -- see Wikipedia for disambiguation) is one such post linguistic-turn philosophy. Its purpose is less to "corner truth" than to "orient and contain an outlook and overview" i.e. to organize a vista around some "me ball" (the observer). This is a legitimate service for a philosophy to perform and is what many a philosopher has sought to provide.

Synergetics explicitly glues polyhedra, long a source of fascination and insights for natural philosophers, to a "connect the dots" model of "thinking in the round" (i.e. systematically). A lot of "hard science" content is linked in by this model and glued together using a prose-poetic style. Jungian psychology would be another example of a prose-poetic style, another glue language.

A lot of geometry enters in as well.

In Synergetics, one gets a kind of "mnemonic brew" that might be considered toxic or corrosive if branded as a pure science (see the preface by Dr. Arthur Loeb), but refiled as a literary philosophy, this potion turns out to be benign, safe to swallow (or so I would report -- though others might say it has rendered me alien).

Lyrikal Afternoon

No, not a typo. Lyrik is a neighborhood hangout in 97214, a place for networking, holding forth with one's peers. I'm thinking either Dr. Nick or John the Architect might join me, though I've made no special arrangements.

Mostly, I'm just wanting to stay out of the way, as Food Not Bombs is using our household's kitchen, might be using the meetinghouse next time. I offered to help, but my volunteering the facilities was apparently assistance enough.

I'm not widely known for my great cooking abilities, especially when it comes to large groups, although those Teresina Lentils are kick ass (not taking credit for those though, just following a recipe).

I'm supposed to contact the Property Management Clerk at the meetinghouse and see about transferring Thursday's operations to the more industrial strength kitchen on Stark Street, the former Electroscientific Instruments building. A lot of the food is uncooked, the same produce you'd find in a grocery store, so excessive use of energy, pots and pans, is not part of the picture. Indeed, the bike trailer comes with its own cooking equipment, such as it is.

I've suggested we take a look at Martian Math as a discussion list, over on the math teacher forum. So far no takers, so I'm upping the ante. We don't have "all the time in the world" to get to the bottom of some of this stuff. There's real work to be done and I'm under no illusions that it'll all get done in time if we're just looking to some small group of poor slobs at their workstations. Recruiting is the name of the game, has been for awhile.

To let off steam, I'm back to Punch & Judy on Synergeo, either watching or participating. Call it a mosh pit. Synergetics is steam punk, or at least punk, or at least... slam dancers R us. Rybo to me: "You full of whatson bozon poop.....what a lack of moral integrity.... :--( sad"

Speaking of which, we're also trying to torture the Yahoo! rich text editor into delivering up a radical math sign (trademark, whatever). It's sort of working, thanks to Alan's suggestion we switch to UTF-8. Let's see what a cut and paste operation does (remember, your browser has settings too, and sometimes "Western" is not what you need most): √я

Followup:

Facebook profile is loading blank tonight. F~B didn't happen as I'd originally imagined -- hardly any cooking at all this time. Checking into bio-diesel for home heating after re-reading Hyzy's posting on that (old newspaper article).

The Willamette Week cover story on the open source cure for what's ailing health care, is somewhat encouraging, though the art is looking so retro. This thing about geeks being "old hippies" is maybe too much lore, too little technical detail. Will we go with something like Cassandra? Given all the problems Facebook is having (not just talking about my missing profile), that's probably not reliable enough a system for medical record keeping. Tokyo Cabinet? Thx to Laughing Horse for the tip.

For further reading:

Draft Essay to some Math Teachers (on another list)

PPUG 2010.8.10

Our Portland Python User Group spanned several tables. Our spot at WebTrends was not available this month, so we repaired to Produce Row, newly remodeled. Impressive.

I took my place at the head of one table, making more room for Michelle to join Josh. They fed me beer and a piece of sandwich respectively, leaving me feeling the grateful circus seal. But did I have any worthy tricks?

I tried to bring up Visual FoxPro at one point, but the geek I was telling my story to drew a blank. I'm this old fossil I realize. At least "dBase" rang a bell, but I gave up trying to talk about anything PSU.

Another theme of the evening, for me anyway, was Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC), its rules and regs. Some of our Python super stars are minors, coming to conferences from out of town. Where can they socialize and how late? At Produce Row, until 9 pm. I got back to our Chairman on that issue later the same evening, as Djangocon is coming up and these questions are relevant.

Having just completed Martian Math, I had some momentos in my bag to show around, including the new Flextegrity book. Some Python was used in the making of the two graphics I'm credited with. POV-Ray was my other tool of choice, for rendering.

Some of the things geeks are into sound like critical infrastructure. There's some switched messaging going on, serving those cell phones. Some Java application listens in real time on thousands of ports... sounded low level. Python does other tricks.

More Musings

Given my house mate's many years working a computer science job at the management level, we sometimes get into arguments about what a next move might be. I'm grudgingly respectful, as she did help me get my resume in better shape, having been tasked with reading them, and evaluating interviewees, before she transmogrified into her Portland incarnation. I say "grudgingly" because I'm reluctant to see the obsolete military-industrial way of doing things as superior to Portland's. I guess sometimes we still learn from one another.

As for myself, I made a career as a Portland-based applications developer mostly working for what we might call "public sector" entities: not-for-profits, county agencies, even a national government or two. My rates were relatively low, as I was idealistic about my work and wanted to be affordable to these types of clients. In the early days of the PC revolution, a solo coder slinging dBase, and later FoxPro, could handle a number of clients as an independent contractor. That's how I made my living, for the most part, though with some other gigs on the side.

Fast forward to today, and I'm somewhat won over by the idea of multiple coders using version control, coding within some framework that's not too twisted (a pun on Twisted, which I respect). The solo coder model is less viable -- one needs a team. FoxPro, in the meantime, is being phased out by Microsoft, with its developer community in the process of disbanding.

At least the computer science department within a university should be hacking on its own stuff quite a bit, eating its own dog food. What better way to learn, than to have access to these internals, organized according to whatever industry standards.

At the secondary school level, I have this vision that faculty and student apprentices could do their own IT, not outsource everything to the district or private vendors. Again, some measure of self-sufficiency, of autonomy, is the hallmark of a serious school.

That vision might be a pipe dream however, given how teachers are rarely compensated for anything much beyond direct teaching in the classroom. They don't grow in their experience this way, which is one reason so many schools lag so far behind: the relevant skills of are just not in demand within academe. Rhetorical question: is this healthy?

"IT is the giant blind spot within higher education" one consultant said to me the other day, having looked into the matter for a couple decades. At the level of dean or provost, IT seems too trivial and mundane to be concerned with. One or two levels down, and there's no longer enough sense of the big picture in any one office to make intelligent planning possible. At least that seems to be a common enough picture.

I tried to rope in another consultant whom I respect, to maybe help get something jump started in our "Global U" (a generic moniker). You'd think Portland, Oregon, an "open source capital", would have computer science departments ready to jump at the opportunity, to serve their own ecosystem, the statewide higher education system.

Well, maybe we do. But is anyone in the chancellor's office actively soliciting their help? Staff has been cut rather dramatically, and IT is something we outsource to Asia is it not? The brain drain appears to have reversed, or at least there's a leveler playing field (a cause for optimism for the future?).