Meetinghouse Event

Melody told me about this event, some presentation about the Zapatistas.  What's up in Chiapas, Mexico?  I was curious, so I wandered over, hopping the 75 for a few blocks to save time.

The replacement camera (Nikon Coolpix S8300) had just arrived so I dropped by Freddy's for an SD card (none included).  Kingston 16 GB SDs were on sale for only $13 or something.

As it turns out, it was fortunate for the event leaders that I showed up, as their A/V solution wasn't working out.  The projector stayed blurry no matter how close or far from the screen so reading the menus was impossible, plus they hadn't brought any speakers.  

The Meeting rents out space but tends to not rent A/V equipment, however since I was there, I could access the meeting's projector and speakers and wheel them out.  After some futzing, we got everything working.

Portland has its own relationship with Chiapas and the Zapatistas.  Our presenters, not native Spanish speakers (many Zapatistas aren't either), had been eyewitnesses fairly recently (though not with PBI).

The indigenous people of Chiapas are trying to develop their locale independently of the central government and that's hard for many nationalists to stomach.  The fact that Zapatistas want to run their own school system is hard for the control freaks to accept.

The Zapatistas are routinely bullied, their crops burned, their assets stolen, by rival political parties (read "rival gangs").  The expectation is the new Mexican president, a PRI member, will turn a blind eye to the PRI's persecution of the Zapatista minority.  Other parties also engage in systematic harassment and terrorization against this unwanted (by them) upstart party.

Thanks to video campaigns, knowledge of this kind of harassment and displacement (ethnic cleansing etc.) is widely publicized.  New Yorkers know about it too.

The conversation then turned to the Drug Wars, which rage more in the north of Mexico, not in Chiapas.  One of the Mexican nationals in our group made a speech about how USAers only needed to educate their children to not want drugs, and all would be well.  

The impact of ending Prohibition was not discussed, although that's the direction many states in the North American Federation have been taking, slowly but surely.  Another Mexican national pointed out that we had strayed from the core topic, as the war on the Zapatistas was distinct, politically and sociologically, from the Drug Wars (aka Prohibition).

The primary group leader was in a hurry to catch a plane.  She went through a few more slides, after showing two videos and going over the history.  She put the meetinghouse doors on self locking, and returned the key to the mailbox (standard procedure).  I helped with cleanup, and locked the projector away, but then left the other group leader in charge.

I joined Patrick and Steve at The Bagdad, staying on until Happy Hour.

Tomorrow I have an AFSC meeting and will mention attending this event.  Melody was aware of it thanks to her AFSC connections I'm pretty sure.  She used to work with AFSC more concertedly back in Austin.

Study Hall

Even in Windows XP I was able to get VPython working on Python 3.2 in a virtualenv, editing through PyCharm.  Then I pip installed redis just to prove I could do it, having spent much of the morning reading up on that.  Looks like interprocess JSON with persistence.  I didn't understand about messaging as my client seemed to block on listening, so how was that gonna help?  WinXP has both server and client, though not recommended for production use.

A blooming buzzing garden of such tools and toys, running in ensemble, with simple demo code, pared down, for teaching purposes, is what Free Geek might help staff, if not host.  OSDL?  There needs to be something more contemporary than a museum, although there's no rule against museums being contemporary, so maybe that's not right.  Portland Knowledge Lab was how I used to refer to it, copying London's (where I'd given a presentation on my way to a meeting), but I let that go out of focus when the Active Space experiment ended, in disillusionment with Metro Wifi.

My audience or client base, updating from CUE days, are still those do-gooder nonprofits and idealists.  But we're not in Kansas anymore, using WordPerfect + dBase (my "good old days").  Today, it's more about mod_wsgi (still) and Tornado and noSQL.  The clay, the source, is all out there.  "Use the source Luke" is the new commandment.  But are we getting anywhere?  Is STEM gaining in traction?

Redis has you talking through a port, I gather through sockets.  Surely those aren't HTTP requests.  No, it has its own protocol.  Like JSON in that respect.  The guarantee is transactions are atomic, as this is one thread (each redis instance).  You could probably sell seats with this thing, and not promise the same one to any more than one.

Before that, I was boning up on gevent + gunicorn, a hot new way to serve processes.  I couldn't tell if I'd use Celery in addition to or in lieu of, but I get the idea:  lots of event loops running in user space, context switching there, rather than kernel space (the mod_wsgi solution).  I watched a talk on Blip.TV comparing that dynamic duo with more traditional solutions.  Where high availability is concerned, gevent + gunicorn is looking pretty good, a plus for Python.

I've got DjangoCon on my radar.  Should I duplicate this WinXP configuration on Lion?  Yes, that would seem prudent.  The PyCharm product is something I might get an academic discount on, once we've completed a work process, but for now I'm just using on free 30 day trial.  Will it use Akbar font if I like, is a next question.  I'll get back to y'all when I figure that out.

Design Science 2.0

Yes, that's a somewhat tongue in cheek allusion to Tim O'Reilly's invention, Web 2.0.  Actually he was just captioning an important plot twist (AJAX), thereby catalyzing it (by naming it).

Might DS2 be up for designing new religions?  The question is rhetorical, per Triumph of the Moon, in the Wicca is one of several "designer religions" of recent vintage. Or call it "social engineering", or call it Disney World (another example).

YouTubes of Mecca are interesting, even for people that go there.

Lots of Iranian kids are feeling drawn to their older-than-Islam heritage.  No different here, w/r to Xtianity.  The best religions are still ahead of us?  I don't think it's necessary to defend that claim.  There've been some good ones.

To add more religions is not to destroy existing ones, or if they're that fragile... there's always room for another tribe.  I was discussing these matters over cider, beer and cigars this evening, contemplating choices.

I mentioned appreciating a positive spin on "witches" as well as "wizards" and keeping the links with geekery, tools use, health sciences, technology.  Witches were / are STEM teachers, role models for girl and boy scouts both (one needs models across genders).

I don't know if putting a lot of attention on geometry makes it sacred, but from Synergetics I'd inherit its relevance to a grammar (in Wittgenstein's sense of a logic or language game).  The U = MP idea still looks pretty usable.  "Metaphysical" in the sense of what's not "physical" in the sense of wiggling needles.

But then polygraphs consist of wiggling needles, lets remember.  Neuroscience is building its inventory of instruments.  Lying or tainted truth takes its physical toll sometimes.  We pay a physical price for trafficking in misinformation, as propagators of meme viruses.  On the other hand, nature has many ways to divert attention.  She's a master of disguises.  Masks.

These are hardly new planks for a religious platform., but then we'd expect plenty of continuity.  Eternal / perennial philosophy is what it is, with an institutional framework.  I've been thinking in terms of coffee shops and didactic game playing, a casino for channeling surplus while building both brand and cause loyalty.

Faster Forward

I've continued to agitate, per usual, on behalf of STEM, contra the over-specializers.  I think feedback loops groom singularities and I'm one of them, but so are a lot of people.

Calling me a "spin doctor" is quite accurate though.  The term usually has derogatory connotations, so I'm not being boastful that much, except to acknowledge I'm pretty good at it.  I had good teachers.

The "Happy Camper Brigade" (HCB) as I call it took off for Patrick's place, thence to the coast.  They phoned HQS for an update about the detour.  They'll be going out of range.  I just texted a reminder to turn off cell phone power or the battery will drain.  I know Melody has a charger but they won't always be in a place to use that.

Have a great trip Alex, if I don't see you again before you go.

I tried to get another basement involved as back up, which we'd use today, given Lindsey is out of town.  We'll see if that works, where food storage is concerned.  In the meantime, I'm sure we can handle it (don't pass that back, if you read this in my blog).

Does thinking in nationalistic terms destroy an analysis to the point of unreadability?  Not usually.  You can still read the things, just they're not very smart.  Accounting for nationalism, on the other hand, is something else, and should always be done, if relevant.

I'm reviewing a lot of history these days, and not just through print media by a long shot.  Tara is in final count down.  Betsey from our Meeting will be visiting her in October.

Fast Forward

"Accelerating acceleration" seems to be the name of the game, shades of Alvin Toffler.  One's own life is its own succession of "future shocks".

I'm working with Saturday Academy again, to bring some of the latest technology into classrooms for young teens.  Mostly people don't provide that as a service.  I'm talking about Python 2.7 with Visual Python.  The computer lab is at a local university.

Tonight Tara and I hopped a bus to see for ourselves what this vigil around City Hall is all about.  A corner of the park where Occupy was based last October serves as a compact little picnic area.  Many of those present are homeless.  Cities do not always tolerate gatherings of this kind.

This particular initiative has been going on for awhile.  I've been reading up on the twists and turns in Willamette Week and Mercury.  Negotiating the status of R2D2 (Right To Dream Too), a long-running occupation of a privately owned property -- with owner permission -- has been a part of it.

Monday night I hauled food to Colonel Summers from St. David of Wales, and then headed over to Barley Mill to catch up on reading.  Then I returned to the park to chat with some of the people I know there, such as the Jennings, Melody and others.

There's too much going on to capture all the details, either for myself or these blogs.  I'm sure it's no different for others.  Lots just flows through the nets.

Tara and I took the 14 back towards the neighborhood though she alighted early to catch some comedy at Helium across from Lucky Lab.

I went on to Pauling House where Bob McGown was holding forth, but decided I needed to work instead so wandered over to Powell's Books on Hawthorne and jacked in.

Hours later, I'm still working, though I've shifted the venue.

I did find some time to post to the Wittgenstein list, thinking about thoughts some more.

:: franz hall ::

The Hunger Games (movie review)

Not unlike Cabin in the Woods in that the enslavers, the urban elite, has untold technologies it seems to only share with its "tributes" from the districts, the rural feeder zones.  No wonder the King (Donald Sutherland) seems nervous.  This would have to be a tense situation, especially for the 1%, anytime a strong underdog comes along.

They have maglev, amazing powers to control the environment, so why are the district people starving?  Somebody has to do the dirty work and oppression is the only way?  Mining (in District 12) looks as bad as ever.

OK, I admit it:  I was standing in line for food when the movie got started -- a little early by my calculations, plus this clueless couple got in front of me, not seeing the line behind.  Anyway, maybe it's all explained at the beginning.  Don't spoil it for me.  I'll see it again.

Last of OSCON

I've been puzzling in the rear view mirror, ever since, like reading my new Go language programming book at American Dream Pizza today.

One of the best talks was this enthusiastic woman, Kirsten Jones, with a clear mission:  to make our use of the web APIs less frustrating.  And she did that very simply, by showing us the best software for snooping on web traffic and getting those request and response objects clearly mapped, complete with headers, parameters, whatever came or went.

That genre of software proves its value over and over in her experience and she gave a really clear exposition about that, to an appreciative room.

In reverie, I was taken back to West Precinct, Jerritt Collord presiding, starting our class in Open Source for Saturday Academy, courtesy of Hillsboro Police Department, geared for youngsters in their region.  He had them thinking about packet sniffers immediately.

Even though Officer George Heuston, former FBI and white knight in good standing, was present and monitoring, he allowed Jerritt to proceed.   This was public information.  Geeks, and geeks in training, have a need to know -- especially if it's the web traffic through your own machine, not even talking about sniffing wifi.

The final keynote was amazing as well, all about fear and longing, motivation, "mind hacking".  A skillful speaker that guy, head and shoulders above so many.  I was enthralled, even though I felt I knew the ideas already.

Slides are an art form and I don't think that biomimicry guy made the right call, in opting out of sharing pictures in that Bagdad setting.  The standup comics get away with not doing that, but is that what we were there for then?

The military has adopted the lightning talk standard, per anthropological reports.  I can see why.  With slides, and five minutes, you can say a lot.  But then blog posts let you read at your own pace and have more hypertext -- it's more pull than push.

Need to know?  Keep clicking.

OSCON 2012 Day One

I couldn't see squeezing past those people with Naga in a bag (Python mascot) and my satchel, so separated from Steve and moved to the side of the auditorium.  This was the opening event in some ways, tutorials over, Camp OSCON behind us.

Tim O'Reilly's keynote had a simple message:  Open Source could do more to tell the story of how it's powering the ecosystem.

Like solar energy, it's often under-accounted (under-valued) because the sun drying clothes or growing food is unmetered.  Those little pie charts showing solar energy as a tiny fraction of the economy's input are talking about metered solar panel income.

That's not the same thing as wealth or value.  Most economists don't grok "cosmic accounting" very well, no secret there.  Economics has been pretty weak in the STEM department.

Take Comcast for example.  Who is making billions from whom?  Customers are paying to view content they themselves provide in many cases.  Comcast gets access to all kinds of free content from the Internet, an open bastion of a kind.  How much of this revenue is attributable to "open source"?  It's a question to look at, a story to tell.

Hewlett-Packard (a presence here), other companies (Microsoft), both thrive in and contribute to, this shared ecosystem.

A first principle, says Tim:  reap less than you sew, create more value than you capture.  Feed the commons, don't operate as a net deficit to your community.  Seems like common sense to me.

I'm in another Go talk this morning, more about the history and management within the community than the syntax, which was a focus of the tutorial yesterday.

I may not get much time to develop either my Go language or Blender skills, but they're both a source of inspiration anyway, in terms of what they're contributing and how they show off what humans working together may accomplish.

The education track was dealing in some interesting heuristics, however they happened to map rather closely to the status quo.  There's a brand of positive futurism that envisions a new standard or protocol, but if you admit hybrids (diversity, multiplicity), then we're back to "what's so" -- meaning it boils down to whether we all want to march to the same drummer.  We do not.  Nor do we want all others to do so, bottom line.

Like "metadata" tends to just mean what we carry around "in our heads" i.e. the persona as filter is better (because real thinking is finely tuned) than any robotized search algorithm.  I think we all know that by now.  Hyperlinks are "metadata" in the sense that human beings find the most relevant links, even if machines are in on the act, aid and abet the experience in various ways.

FERPA, ancestor of HIPAA in some dimensions, seems like a goofy law.  Students aren't bound by it, and may blab about so-and-so being a presence on campus.  Indeed, free speech rights conflict with the right to privacy sometimes.  My secrets need not be your secrets.

Democracies, for one, should be more into promising transparency and sharing data than clamping down on the free flow of info.  If you want your affiliation with an institution to remain classified, consider joining a private academy or LLC that makes secrecy a part of its culture, among other students / employees as well.

State funded institutions should be looking at their student populations as closer to public servants.  Public schools are about preparing people for life in a democracy, and a democracy of necessity provides lots of transparency, as well as some secrecy i.e. no one says you can't encrypt or otherwise protect access to your files -- and feel free to opt out of on-line campus directories and/or other records the school server may ask you about.

Better to offer courses on identity management and countering stalkers by exposing them, than to promise some high degree of anonymity and absence from public records of all kinds.  That's to promise the impossible and to set up unrealistic expectations among students.

That being said, if you want anonymity, I recommend distance education academies.  Other students don't see you unless you choose to attend events where you come out of the closet, as it were, as a peer or alum.  Your affiliation is a lot easier to keep secret when you're never seen in the parking lot.

Two Cameras

Two videographers capture the same performance in 2009, a Burning Man related event in Portland, Oregon.

I was videographer #2 with the trippy wandering camera.

Videographer #1 took an unwavering shot and got better sound.

Viewing suggestion:  roughly synch and play both at once, while muting the sound on #2 using the Youtube speaker control (then unmute #2 if you want to continue a little longer).
 

:: video 1 ::

:: video 2 ::

The performer, Lindsey Walker, had recently moved from Savannah, Georgia. She came in a Nissan with her own PA system (Bose), a keyboard, and a cat.

However, for this performance she made use of the house sound system.

What you're hearing though, is hand held camera pickup, hardly studio quality.

I treasure this song all the more now that she doesn't play it anymore, or at least not in this form.

Lindsey still performs in and around Portland, sometimes as a street musician.

You will see her (briefly) in the movie Occupation Nation by Portland's B-Media Collective.

From The Open Bastion

The Open Bastion's CEO is back in PDX, just in time for OSCON.  In his luggage, the brand new and newly branded Raspberry Pi.

A first order of business today, his first back, was to hook up the full size projector via HDMI cable, attach keyboard and mouse the the USB jacks, and hit On.

The Linux bootstrapping process percolated across the console to login, thence to startx, thence to the RaspberryPi desktop, this one with two versions of Python in IDLE, Scratch, a few games.  It's a minimal world, what some might call "structured", and ideal for kids.

OK, there might have been a bit more fumbling about.  For one, we needed a nonwireless USB keyboard, and for that I needed to walk a short distance to a second floor of a supplier.

The model I chose, for about $13, has extra large letters on the keys, which makes it look both kid and old people friendly at the same time.

It's a US keyboard layout of course, whereas this device is from the UK.  Need a double-quotes?  Try Shift-2.  Wild.

Nor have we gotten audio out at the time of this writing, choosing Force HDMI but maybe not having the right settings on the peripheral, a work in progress.

Of course I was looking for photo ops, as Raspberry Pi is still quite a new item.

Here are some pictures (click through to Photostream):

:: raspberry pi ::

:: a tiny device ::

:: back in rose city ::

:: projected desktop ::

Avatar Suits

 :: STEM teachers meet :: 

:: The Platonic Realm ::

:: STEM Text ::

More Movies @ McMenamins

McMenamins has been showing Cabin in the Woods, and more recently Chernobyl Diaries, both horror films, and both featuring bizmos.  So you'd think I'd post this in BizMo Diaries, but then they both featured Control Rooms as well.  You could say they were linked other tomorrows in that sense, via their control rooms.

In the meantime, Glenn provided a happier backdrop, talking about the wild creatures of Chernobyl (ala Keith Lofstrom and Stewart Brand), and of the light comedy Accepted.

Cabin in the Woods has Joss Whedon all over it, going back to the Buffy sequence with the boyfriend from some subterranean government.  Shades of Lost.  They've got a hexafence, takes out an eagle.  There's a hell mouth.  What's missing is the Catholic Church.  They're all engineers down there, minding the store.  They're actually the collective mind of the viewer as in Woody Allen's control room in the movie about sex.  That's today's control room in so many ways.  Of course Sigourney Weaver would be part of it.

Chernobyl Diaries starts out with Blair Witch jerkiness, prompting fears the movie will be all bouncing camera, but then she settles in under more confidant direction and I could relax and enjoy the ride more.  I'd had a long day and was still on duty, more like in Indianapolis, which was also a barrel of monkeys.

The bizmos are quite similar in both films and serve as conveyances into Other Tomorrows.  I've been thinking a lot about my high desert schools.  The planetarium (you need one even there) looks a lot like those golf balls in the UK countryside, big ones, so as you round the corner, perhaps in a van, but maybe on foot, you see like colonizers from another somewhat higher civilization.  They're living up to our heritage, more a maritime set?  We're not near the ocean necessarily.  Bhutan was like this (Druk-yul as they call it), minus the golf balls (back then).

Both bizmos met a similar fate, and neither proved a secure shell against danger.

What I found myself thinking, is when you have intelligent young people like this, at their peak in abilities in many dimensions, why not have some serious work in store, rather than all idle vacation.  Hard work actually builds skills.  Not that these troops didn't end up working hard -- much too hard, almost in compensation.  We resent they get a vacation I suppose, when all we could afford was a movie ticket.

Anyway, a "business mobile" is deliberately not portrayed as a "recreational vehicle" (RV).  That doesn't mean the work can't be fun, but this is expensive equipment and lots of communities have some serious needs that need documenting.  The teams get to swap around a lot.  This was also a topic with Glenn -- like time shares in Orlando but really nomadic sometimes: few possessions, yet institutionally wealthy.

Speaking of work, I was hitting the queues more than usual for a weekend, having an unusually occupied work week.  We got a lot done, turned a lot of corners.

Cabin... suggests it's helping us turn over a new leaf in that the horror film formula is not unconsciously / religiously followed: the Scooby Doo guy gets away with it. His smoke actually helps in the fight against Satan -- game changing.  He and the virgin somewhat turn tables on the eager voyeurs (deep out of site) as we don't see them ritually punished any more than we are at the end of the day.  The creatures of the deep become restless.

Wanderers 2012.6.19

Lew was focused on finding the right technology for the meetinghouse.  Our acoustics are actually quite good now, with music events quite doable on the 2nd floor.  We're mostly interested in keeping it quiet for our neighbors, not because the room can't handle music.  However Lew's challenge is the spoken voice, occasional singing.  He's looking at array microphones and their ability to direction-find a sound source.  Not a dumb idea.

I'd CC'd Lew earlier today, when SDW sent a memo on the kitchen.  FNB kitchen use is more my focus than Pauling House scheduling, where I'm nominally a listowner on the shared calendar (a Yahoo! gadget).  That was a solution from another era.  In SDW's case, it's the new baker we're seeking to accommodate.  Luckily, FNB doesn't do meat or lard.  We're not about to fill the atmosphere with grease.  A gluten-free baker has nothing to fear, and indeed it's a synergetic combo.

Anyway, I CC'd Lew because I was sharing about meetinghouse history.  We have some overlap with St. David, in terms of current and former members.  Chatting about our presence on Google Earth, thanks to Lew, is something of an ice breaker, when working with these other neighborhood religious groups.

The link between the Pauling House and the Meetinghouse is Doug Strain's company, ESI.  The corporate booklet gives 1958 as a date, whereas other sources say ESI vacated the building in 1956.  But remember:  the fire at the place on Macadam.  ESI moved out, then lost the new place in a fire.  Did they need to move back, temporarily?  I'm not privy to corporate archives, but the meeting archivist (Dr. Carl Abbott) might have some of those records.

More discussion of UAVs.

Cameras producing pictures that let you change the focus after the fact were another topic.

As a courtesy to one of the tenants, involved in alcohol counseling, we no longer bring alcohol to our meetings.  We've been criticized in the past for allowing it, but then wine is a social drink in this region, with OMSI lectures taking advantage of the McMenamins license to run a full bar.  We were like a Spaghetti Factory or Red Robbin in allowing minors, but with like a TED talk going on (no, not pole dancing -- that would have been down the street).  Private party rules applied, with no selling to the public either expected or implied.

We're getting ready for the Summer Retreat.  That time of year again.

I had lunch at Laughing Planet on Belmont.  Yesterday:  Toney Bento.

Touring Earlham College

:: starting with parent / prospectives tour... ::

A Quaker Face

Consumer Story

Finding a yellow toilet is not the easiest thing in the world.  I'd fatally weakened the old one, by adding a big rock to the tank.  The rock swelled, making it impossible to remove without shattering the tank.

The Hollywood Aboy located a yellow Kohler, following up on some sleuthing by other household members.  Today, the new toilet arrived but minus one critical washer in Accessory Pack 1024390.  Mick tried to find a kit at George Moreland but no dice.  The washer is somewhat special in slipping over the screw head, making the tank flush (heh, English) against the bowl.

Aboy had too many in the queue to field my call for help in anything close to real time (my call was returned late the next day), so Mick stopped his clock and just made it his business to locate the part.  Kohler is a big name, you would think there'd be such a supply in this town.  Lets see what tomorrow brings.

No wait, Mick just called.  He thinks he's found a compatible washer.  Lets see if this story has a happy ending today then.  Today is Tara's 18th birthday for real (legally / officially), although we celebrated big time last night.

[ Brief interlude helping the daughter of an emeritus stats prof at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne.  He didn't know Jerry Uhl well (an inspiration behind NetMath) but they did go the first grade together in Pittsburgh.]

Hey Mick, good job.  Thanks for being a cheerful, hard-working and patient guy.  The new toilet looks like it will use a lot less water, even compared to when the other tank had a rock in it.

Coincidentally, my sister Julie is having toilet work done today as well, in her abode within Greater LA.  Carol flew off to Philadelphia.  We were at PDX by 6 AM sharing breakfast at Beaches.  She's on her way to Pendle Hill for the AFSC board members retreat.

At Tom's

Tom's is a good place to think of my grandpa Tom, the linotype operator who I knew as a champion shuffle board and solitaire winner.  He and grandma Margie were major characters of my childhood and youth.  I lived with them for an especially long stretch during my freshman year at Southeast High, in Bradenton, Florida.

I've been diving into fractals with wild abandon, the Mandelbulb especially, and then this other solution, which I've watched I don't know how many times, comparing machines for smoothness of performances (though some of the glitches are in the production, which is eerie and gorgeous... enough positive adjectives to keep it a source of fascination, talking about the music here too).

The thing about school now, is you get a lot out of staying home if you're self disciplined and have a pretty good Internet connection.  And shouldn't your community be providing ways to get together and share with friends?  Yes, these houses are themselves pretty good in many cases, I don't deny it.  If you've got one of those places, consider having it made (whatever that means), in terms of having a great setup for learning.

The thing about learning, though, is it's interactive, not a spectator sport (though spectating may be part of it).

My order just came.  I don't usually eat in the bar section with the pool tables, but we thought that'd be fun so why not.  SH got liver.  Me, just some blueberry pancakes, nothing else, and a Dead Guy.

Tara is at Laughing Planet celebrating her time with the Nicaragua contingent.  Betsey, an Earlham alum (as is Annis, some others in our extended meeting, Cradlers, Merkins...), likes us getting another Friend for that place, so we're celebrating that too.

I missed having my camera on me during these last great gatherings, most amazingly (for a host of reasons) the grand party at the Travis household.  Congratulations to both girls (of course women), Rachael (college) and Luci (high school).  Lynn and Tim are fantastic people with very admirable children.

The Snyders have pretty much finished their move to Portland; Joe sold his sheep. I haven't met their kids in awhile, all grown up.

The deep dive into fractals was not all together unprofessional; having authored my minimalist CropCircle Tractor Art in 2011, a Python module that does a Mandelbrot in ASCII, using "tractors" instead of "turtles" in wavy plains (planes) of grain (pixels).

Hyzy swept through, allowing the gossip that she's transitioning away from Western Friend, 2012 being her last as its chief -- a very responsible role in our community (means she's brilliantly skillful).  Hadn't seen Ron, or Dave in awhile, or Gayle.  Tom I'd seen in Philadelphia.  Or Rachael... like a big family reunion.  I'd originally just come as chauffeur for Tara, not realizing I'd been invited, but Lynn said my invite had bounced.  Hey, nice.  Good fun.

Today, Quaker meeting was packed to the gills.  Lew's 99 chair layout was pushed passed the limit most likely.  We remnant of Bob Smith's books was for sale at modest prices and I picked up one by an Anglo, exultant about some kind of Anglo race by the sound of it, somewhat ignoring the Philippines.  I'll use it as a reference sometimes.

From Southeast High in Bradenton, where I was living with Tom and Margie, then in a motel -- me and sis both, going to respective schools -- I moved to Manila.  We were a UN family back then, with fancy blue passports. I was happy with the change of channels, even it meant less Star Trek.

The Boltons are who I really think about though.  I haven't seen Chuck or Mary in a long while, and it was like the first thing I said to Carol when she got off the plane, is that we should get by there soon, in this time of so many milestones.

Sharing Ideas

:: a spooky hqs :: 


:: ideas go forth :: 


:: color coded concepts ::

Well Hello There

Thinking about Objects

objects get allocated within the heap, a finite space for objects. The Python interpreter thinks through partially overlapping namespaces connected by dot notation in temporary tree structures (import hierarchies). The top-level namespace is identified with the interpreting process.

Juggling Hats

I'm somewhat wearing my AFSC hat these days, having been drawn back to my foci from Asia-Pacific Issues News days, when I was editor.

I drove Carol to the meeting this morning, but didn't attend.  She's continuing to meet with one of our program committee in this coffee shop, where I'm doing my day job.  I can't help but listen in a bit.

I'll be joining this same committee for its first formal meeting, now that we've recruited our new Regional Director.  She'll be based in SF instead of Seattle, the way Susan was.

The neocon ideology goes on the rocks of hypocrisy quite often, most especially when "the spread of democracy" is proffered as a goal, but then what happens is non-democratically managed permanent cities are dropped in and stuffed with Americans living in slavery (stop-loss) or deliberately escaping from freedom (per Fromm).  No, it's not officially a POW camp (usually), but it's hardly a democracy, hardly one of Disney's experimental prototypes of tomorrow.

Case in point:  the island of Okinawa is riddled with non-democracies, which gives Japanese the impression that USAers are nothing but a bunch of Roman soldiers who don't realize the war is over (lots of jokes at the Romans' expense).  Or they think they're a part of the Fourth Reich or some foolish business (stand up comics are having a field day).

The curriculum is weak and kids graduate with little sense of history.  They get sent off to Occupy (one of the bases), and end up thinking, like Gen. Smedley Butler, that "war is a racket" and/or some kind of Business Plot.  But is it even that well thought out?

So the best place to focus on improving the curriculum, if the Feds plan to walk their talk, is right there on the bases, where Feds have the most control.  Show us how your curriculum is paving the way for a bright future, for the Okinawans included.  Don't just kick the can down the road, like Gen. Colin Powell did, by making militarism the solution for yet another decade.

Getting kids in base schools to report back should not be a problem.  I'm sure some enjoy the lifestyle and wouldn't want it to end.  But I'm not saying so-called "Girl Scout Math" (an operation) and the like has to mean giving up access to airstrips.  Small planes would come and go.

The new base wouldn't be needed, but that was a lavish and unnecessary expense anyway, on the chopping block like Manas (easier to chop given it doesn't belong to the Russians and Kyrgystanis the way Manas does).

:: old recruiting poster (click for larger view) ::

Loneliness

 Dr. John Cacioppo was given a highly laudatory introduction by Dr. Art Kohn of Portland State.  I ran into Art at Peet's recently.  He's a Wanderer like me.

Art made the case that humans suffer more for psychological than technical reasons these days.  He saw this as a potential snub to engineers, but I didn't take it that way.  Means we're doing our job.  If your physical needs are being met and your remaining issues are psychological and/or metaphysical, that's a huge step.

Dr. Cacioppo doesn't exactly draw a mind/brain line like Bucky does, but the same dichotomy between conditioned reflexes on the one hand, and consideration / reflection on the other, bears some similarities, especially where mind-over-brain is concerned i.e. reprogramming or upgrading one's pattern of responses (or response-abilities).

The empirical studies John has been engaged with over the years have sharpened the focus on humans as social animals who tend to waste away when self perceived as cut off from their fellows.

"Perceived" because sometimes so-called objective measures of one's degree of isolation come out differently, and in any case never correlate as closely with diseases and discomforts the way self perceived isolation does.  One is one's own best judge and/or worst enemy in these situations.

Heart attacks are more deadly when induced in lonely rats, he warns.

How to fight back against loneliness?

If you're forced into masking your identity and getting reinforcement for a persona you're not, that may be alienating.

I felt the absence of philosophy, which used to have more to say about the human condition, before getting run over by computer science.  Philosophers would tease apart the many components of loneliness and help build vocabulary, in itself a way of fostering communication and fighting back.

I wanted to ask an anthropological question about ethnicities that accepted communication with the dead.  You're a lot less lonely when you have lots of ancestors to chat with, or at least feel observed by.  To what degree are belief systems isolating?  Might not belief in ghosts mean less loneliness, greater mental health?

Instead I picked up another thread in anthropology:  his recent service to several US Army forts, to help them study and deal with high suicide and depression rates.

Given the way Madison Avenue and others leverage the herd instinct to boost insecurities, with various products the answer, and given wars are sold to the public as products, with the same appeal to our insecurities and worries (nurtured and refined for this purpose), I was wanting some reassurance that he wasn't just a motivational psychologist in disguise, trying to get soldiers to escape from freedom as dutiful slaves with no minds of their own.

Dr. Cacioppo replied that the army was sincere about its concern and responsive to his requirement that all the research stay open and unclassified.

Another questioner asked if he was "embedded" and he demurred, saying that's not how it was.

The loneliness suffered by insurgents, insurrectionists and subversives, might also be addressed by his trainings (he doesn't lead them himself and they go for eight hours).

He's not trying to stop that percentage of humans who buck the herd, deviate from norms, uphold new ethics.

Terry explained I was Quaker, so stereotypically concerned about the treatment of freaks (including peace freaks) and weirdos at the hands of so-called "normal" people ("the herd" to crib from Nietzsche).

Trevor joined me for this event, including the Heathman dinner (where much of this dialog occurred).  This was also my birthday dinner (54).  The waiters were kind to me, gave me lots to drink (Trevor and I were bussing home anyway, took the 15).

Elizabeth Braithwaite, in the meantime, joined Tara at Cleveland High, to experience debate culture and bid on a cake at silent auction, a fundraiser for the Cleveland Cannibals.  They got me a good one from Helen Bernhard's.

I liked it that Dr. Cacioppo recommended serving food to people in need as a way to enjoy the benefits of community.  It's a two way street in that you get to eat too, on many levels. FNB has been like that.

Segue

I continued with the theme below on the Wittgenstein list (Sean's).  The Yahoo! archives is as valuable as what's in any bank vault, from some points of view.  Where the word "securities" comes from in some degree: scraps may be treasure, a phone number, a key name.

The distance education world is one I've frequented in several roles:  current and former high school teacher (back then it was current); contributing editorial consultant with McGraw-Hill; and then more as a lobbyist / reformer / geek about town.

Oregon Curriculum Network grew out of the latter efforts, subsequent to five or so years with CUE (Center for Urban Education).

These days, I provide instruction via distance education circuits, to a faceless crowd.  Having everyone veiled, not just the women, and because of technology, not garments, makes this a somewhat different experience.

The narrow bandwidth is nevertheless right where it needs to be, in terms of advancing learners towards their goals.  The annual staff meeting is underway.  Last night some of us stayed up to watch The Birds (Hitchcock) which mentions Sebastopol.

Russian River is also nearby (check Google Earth).

The school has its origins in the University of Illinois and Ohio State.  Lots of thinking about andragogy and what helps students get real results, led the school's founders, a core team, to implement a "useractive" approach which emphasizes active (versus passive) engagement.

"Active" might just mean typing and mousing around, versus watching videos or taking in text.

Only some disciplines are narrowly focused to this set of skills.

No, this is not appropriate circuitry for all kinds of learning, obviously.  That's why the teachers themselves need to get together in person, in clumps or as an almost complete crew.  We did something like this a year ago, and so on going back, though I only joined in the winter of 2010.

Transitions

I huddled with parents of other prom goers.  We snapped our cameras furiously, capturing these precious moments.

I was happy to get to know these people better, even as we come to the end of a chapter.

Then I drove to the pharmacy with only seconds to spare.

In my book it's not sinful to hate the suffering in this world.  In this case, hate is a kind of furious fighting back. 

A sword of compassion is a sword nonetheless.

A scenario, or time tunnel, is both a tunnel of sorrows, and a tunnel of joys.

Much sadness and grieving is with us at all times.

There is no need to paper over this reality.  Why waste energy in denial of what's real?

Joys are real also.

Beltane

Wittgenstein actually wrote about Beltane some.  Not everyone knows that.

He investigated disturbing aspects of the Highlander ritual, finding echoes of pointless cruelty.

An "echo" need not be interpreted as meaning "from distant times" ala Frazer.  These associations have an immediacy in everyday grammar.

See Brian R. Clack's Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion (Palgrave, 1999), 135-54, Chapter 8: Frazerian Reflections:  Wittgenstein on Beltane and Human Sacrifice.

Uncle Bill Lightfoot came by for lunch at Bagdad.  I gave him the Bayard Rustin DVD, Brother Outsider.

Good to see UE starting up again (picture below).

I've had an engagement with Multnomah Friends to present about AFSC as a part of the Quakers 101 workshop that's ongoing.

I spoke about Bayard Rustin and Smedley Butler as two pivotal Friends.  The study of their lives will connect many dots, if you're looking to construct your own reality.

Then a fire later.  It's Beltane, after all.  HB2U Trevor, good to share those cigars.

HB2U LW

Paying my respects to Dr. Wittgenstein, a philosopher of strong character and commitment.  A really serious guy, as Sean points out.

HB2U, from Kirby.  PS:  here's some Religious Art FYI, from today:

New Atlantis

That's a heavy-hearted title.  Who knew, when they built this city in the forests, made a Stump Town, then Portlandia, that they were building atop jello pudding.  Shake time is roughly 300 years mas o meno.

There's a sense of the past tense in living here, sweet mortality.  As if we're already gone.

What happened in Japan is haunting as we feel next in line.

At OMSI we watched some places in Turkey in the danger zone, a film.

Is this what they call "escapism"?

Is it only an "ism" because it doesn't really work?

Our zip code might shake a little less, being on the Mt. Tabor shield.  The local martial arts studio has already reinforced.  People take training classes, watch movies of their impending doom.

Life is sweeter in that light, which no doubt accounts for some of the atmosphere.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (movie review)

I got back from Wanderers to find Lindsey and Melody exulting over this documentary, saying it was right up my ally.  I had just been exposed to Drunk History at the meeting and was still reeling from all the fun there, so went upstairs to the Ikea (my mattress -- way better than the pile I had before).

The very next morning though, I was abrim with schemes to view this thing and do work at the same time.  An exercise in multi-tasking.  I took it to Glenn's place (it's a library borrowing).  The story was so compelling I had to shut the laptop and just watch.  Glenn was highly amused also.

This is a movie about street art.  Two of the artists are already in my book collection:  Shepard Fairey and Ron English.  Banksey is here in my blogs as well.  So many dots connected, by Mr. Brainwash, the French guy videographer who then joins their ranks as "one of them".

The DVD has great extras but pointedly does not get into "the making of" the main feature, even though much of the feature was about how the film had been made -- up to a point, then we're left guessing.

I learned so much from this film.  My thanks to Melody for her excellent tastes and information.

Comic Aside

:: FaceBook chatter ::

:: political analysis ::

Wanderers 2012.4.4

We talked about peak helium a lot today.

I was on my laptop a lot of the time, listening to Nate, Lew etc.  Grading, posting, writing to Alexia.

Nate is working on the problem of providing better connectivity to large outdoor gatherings, such as folk music festivals, by means of aerostats.

That's one of several projects he works on, including electronic medical records (a place of overlap).

Flextegrity in Spring

Middle East Studies

I was running some errands in delivery mode, taking some paperwork to La Salle High School near Clackamas Town Center and picking up a few wine bottles for the chairman's suite, getting passport pictures.

I got a call regarding the meetup organized by Portland State's Middle East Studies Center, part of its outreach to district school teachers.  I'd attended this event once before.  I was at the venue within minutes.

Sometimes these Middle East discussions get volatile.  I learned that at a last meetup, two of the gentlemen, one in particular, had gotten really voluble discussing the issues and the restaurant was having second thoughts about allowing the group to return.  I was the only male this time and the conversation remained quiet.

What occurs to me is a lot of these worries about "what to wear" (veil or no veil) go away in the distance education world I frequent.  Middle Eastern women wanting to learn Python, Javascript, MongoDB, have plenty of opportunities, given ample bandwidth.

The course materials might be in the local language, even if some of the instructors only communicate in English.  Tatia, of Lebanese heritage, had been clear on the model.

On my way to Tarboush, a venue my Wittgenstein Study Circle has also used, I followed a Prius with a 99% bumper sticker.  Demonizing a full 1% of humanity, or around 70 million people, seems somewhat over the top and I chided Friends, during the workshop around Occupy at AFSC HQS, to be less exclusionary.  It's "that of God in everyone" not just in some 99% (the criteria of division remain unclear).

Once I got there, one of the teachers introduced herself as retired from formal teaching, but currently representing Occupy "the education wing".  I don't claim to know all the deputy ministers or whatever her position and was glad to get my picture taken next to her.

I'm glad our Ministry of Education is continuing to look at the Middle East -- at its refugee camps especially.

The 2-letter country code system may have broken down, leaving many people nationless, but that doesn't mean we can't provide better connectivity through subdomains.  Several refugee camps might be linked together behind one umbrella domain, along with a university or two.  Many URLs might take one to the same place.

Some of the dot mil facilities might be reachable by a different front door, in line with Marshall Plan type repurposing.

I talked about Hawo's Dinner Party (the DVD) and the work I learned about at the AFSC meeting in Philadelphia.  Religious practices, practices in general, tend to be divisive.  Dietary restrictions are just the beginning.  When it comes to sharing houses, as we do around Portland quite a bit, we find ourselves using a lot of check lists. 

Mixing vegans and carnivores is sometimes more trouble than its worth.  Just because they don't live together doesn't mean they can't share commit rights to the same Subversion repository or whatever (we're converting to Subversion at work).

Tatia suggested we could get our course materials translated for free, and I think she might be right about that.  Plus there's Google Translator and so on, for when the readings are not too technical.

Dr. Tag sees a lot of problems with patriarchy.  I'm not sure what constitutes patriarchy exactly, but the Somali students have been asking good questions, such as why it took women so long to get the vote in the USA, and why there are still relatively few women in the US Congress.  Getting USAers to talk about their own deficiencies, versus their ideas for how to fix other peoples, is usually good therapy.

:: poster child: arab spring ::

From Bagdad Chat Room

Glenn and I welcomed Julie to Portland at Tabor Hill Cafe.  She and Steve will be using the rental car to see more of what the Pacific Northwest has to offer.  They drove back from Pycon.

I've been doing some more thinking about what spin to apply to some of this geometry content, whether "coordinate system of nature" is too much hype.  As long as XYZ is not making that claim, I think we're past the point of needing to promote any human artifact too heavily or highhandedly.

The ISEPP lecture on Thursday reminded me of the importance of the power rule where omnidirectional growth is concerned.  Volume goes up as a 3rd power, surface area as a 2nd power, meaning S/V = 1/r, which is roughly how we see the melting point of gold changing, as we shrink down to fewer and fewer atoms, more like ... 162, 92, 42, 12, 1 (the reverse of what I usually give).

Matt and I met up for dinner at Barley Mill last night, visiting Palio (Ladd's Addition) for coffee.  Then I went by Food Not Bombs (SE 17th & Taylor) to check in with the cast.  We have an additional house guest from back east who was taking it in. I actually skipped eating as I'd just done that with Matt.

I snagged Perez Zagorin's book Francis Bacon at Hawthorne Powell's this morning, while running errands in the neighborhood.

I'm having a couple Irish coffees.  Physicians have a strong meaning for snakes, in bringing forward their caduceus.  Most Irish I meet are jovial about St. Patrick's supposed feat.

Occupy Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a spread out motherboard accustomed to dealing with convergence / divergence.  We were whisked in and out of San Jose airport by taxi, van and shuttle bus.  Others simply drove from nearby digs and parked out behind the Convention Center, which is attached to the hotel, a Hyatt Regency (shades of Chicago).

Some critics of our Portland setup express frustration that the Oregon Convention Center, built to a similar scale, is unattached to a residential suite.  However an overflow event such as Pycon occupies several hotels in the vicinity, so the question is moot in the experience of many attenders, or at least Portland's easy Max ride from DoubleTree should be contrasted with hoofing it from the Hilton in Santa Clara across the highway.

Python plays well with others, like I sat next to a Rails guy at lunch on the 2nd day.  There's a natural affinity between our respective communities, with several revolving doors. The 1st day I was at the PSF members lunch, trying to herd Jack Diederich there in border collie fashion as he'd mentioned his intention to be dutiful at the party on Thursday night (I got a haircut on Hawthorne, but am still recognizably some blend of sheep dog (he got away)).

Facebook switched to the timeline format around now, so more like that long sheet of butcher paper in the D.W. Jacobs rendering for Portland Center Stage.  That was the 2008 apogee of "Bucky Power" in Portland.  I've been surfing the ripple effects ever since.  Allegra joined in the opening festivities, where mom and my daughter got to meet her.  Trevor was very much a part of these events, delivering a lecture on the Portland Center Stage mezzanine, as I had.

I was networking with the Friends of Fuller at Pycon for sure, with David Koski phoning from the vicinity of the TC Howard dome in Ohio, getting his shots, while I had the ESRI guy pause for this picture:

For contrast, distorted Mercators all over the place, with (some) geeks conscious of the discrepancies (cite Spotify meeting).

Having the OST badge made a difference in terms of who wanted to talk to me.  We have little direct competition at the moment.  Steve had hosted an all night gathering in his suite the night before and left Vern to discover me as the interviewer for a sampling of posters.  I yakked with climatologists (including financial), the CERN software guy, and the guy from Bump, which runs Diesel (an open source project with adapters to MongoDB).  You might try following links through Python.tv (not redirecting, texted Holden Web) if you want to find those and other snippets.

How was this an Occupy then?  Well, you could say this is an economy contra to Wall Street's.  Although JP Morgan had a booth, Silicon Valley is somewhat self feeding and not taking direction from any "bosses" in New York or its puppet DC (the latter being more about lawyers than engineers).  That doesn't mean "non-compliant with government" though, as the latter has come to depend on the same GIS / GPS infrastructure.  Google Earth and the space program (e.g. NASA) go hand in hand in a lot of ways.  Geeks have their Ignite.gov and their GOSCON, so what else is new?

Yes, there's a counter-culture with hubs in California that thrives on diversity and is friendly to the world.  That's really news to nobody, so it's not necessarily a CNN story when these kinds of Flying Circuses self-organize and happen, in the US, Brazil, Cuba or Singapore.  The media trucks don't fill the parking lot.

I came back to my co-workers with news of potential recruits, pretty much as I had around Occupy Portland (OPDX).  Interesting and talented people frequent these places.  Call it a freak show if you like, we won't necessarily be offended (were you trying to be mean?).

(I come in at 29 mins 10 secs or so)

Wanderers 2012.3.7

Dick Pugh and Barbara Stross were with us this morning, always big news.  They were colleagues in my daughter's current school so many years later.

I devoted quite a few hours in on United -- which doesn't take cash in the cabin (OK by me) -- reading that Democracy Despite Itself book, as well as the Wittgenstein one.  Lots of wheels turning.  The politician in the opening, who says psychologists should wear pointy hats and brandish wands, had a point I think, and might be the kind of guy I'd vote for someday.

Is democracy a luxury that depends on darker underpinnings?  More debates needed.  We pretty much resolved at AFSC to keep the curtains raised on the blight of slavery, which has hardly gone away with the advent of privatized forced labor camps preying upon wayfarers and pressing them into service.  Moving about one's planet, one's birthright, should not constitute a crime.  Keep those public roads / channels open so that more wandering humans might fly their friendly skies.

Interesting to see Immanuel Kant writing on democracy.  You shouldn't get away with calling yourself a "philosopher" and not have remarks on file that would constitute "sticking one's neck out" on the questions of the day.  Kauffman was entitled to strut as braver in the positions he took, not just anyone could have delivered those lectures in the Princeton physics building (Frick was it?).  Anyway, if I can't find what you said when it mattered, at the brink of this or that, then please accept my skepticism of you'd lay claim to that title.  Nor is academic experience alone usually sufficient (Kauffman again).

My last day in Philly was with Chris and Jeannie, serious scholars and community organizers for our Synergetics Explorers Club (as it were).  They've been immersing themselves in all manner of open courseware offering ala Glenn's "Open Source University" meme (he may have caught it from somewhere, as such memes are "blowing in the wind").

OPDX is not having much success with conventional mayoral politics, with Cameron, one of our candidates, expressing some relief that his competition, Tre, has been temporarily incarcerated once again.  That latter detail came up at Wanderers this morning, which was mostly a meeting about chemical and/or radio toxic substances, lots of stories and lore.  Dick was yakking about Teledyne Wau Chang when I got there, late from Noah's Bagels (I brought a baker's dozen, three kinds of shmear).

TarBoush was a splendid place for another catch up session last night.  I hope Suzanne makes one of these meetups again soon.  Note to self:  I need to ask Maureen about the Moody kid, another Nietzsche scholar.

While visiting Upper Darby, I got to see some of the video from the RISD event.  I'm sorry I missed this opportunity to meet up with Pearce.  I don't think I'm going to make Gathering for Gardner again this year, though I've given it some serious consideration and posted the invite proudly in the Blue House kitchen.  I saw where Dr. Nystrom mentions "quadrays" in his talk.  He has to be one of the few explorers to take them up in earnest since their elaboration by David Chako et al (myself a part of that dev team).

Keeping up with other Pythonistas is the name of the game here.  I wrote to Nate about the auto-mosque generator for Blender (it might do churches as well).  Cyberspatial interiors can't face a physical Mecca maybe, but then the latter may have a cyber-interior as well, that we face towards.  Speaking of which, I saw about hackers doing something with the Vatican website recently.  I was having lunch and watching the LCD behind David NiNucci's head, so don't expect me to source any details.  Ask CNN?  CBN?

AFSC and Ethnic Phobias

We're getting briefed on some of the programs AFSC is engaged in.

Washington DC has a way of channeling refugees to targeted parts of North America.  For example, after the USA ended its occupation of Vietnam, a lot of refugees from that region were directed to the Portland area.

The Center for Urban Education (CUE) where I worked, was involved in managing this influx.  More recently, the obliteration of Somalia (people still pretend it exists -- nationalism is a lazy ideology, with lots of inertia) has resulted in lots of Somalis moving to Minnesota, Tennessee and so on.

After CUE, I did lots of program work with AFSC, as the program clerk, to work on tensions between ethnicities resulting from the various waves of immigration.  Latino students were not necessarily getting along with the "Chinos" i.e. Asians.

Lots of different cultures get stereotyped e.g. just as a person from Mexico might have a hard time distinguishing a Laotian from a Filipino, so might a Vietnamese not appreciate the differences between Mexican and Guatemalan cultures.

The education process is a lot about geography, learning the stories of the different human scenarios and their inter-twining.

Jiway Tung joined us by voice from Yogjakarta.  We learned about AFSC's work with partner organizations helping to promote some of the same inter-personal and leadership skills we nurtured in the Portland area.  Bringing groups together and doing things in common, as well as having separate programming, is a fairly useful activity.

Hawo's Dinner Party was along the same lines.  Shelbyville gets introspective about being at an historical cross-roads.  Not so long ago, Anglos were a rarity in this region.  The newest arrivals, from Somalia, have rocked the boat a little.

We should remember that European cultures have immigrated in huge numbers over the last few centuries. There's no one way street when it comes to Anglos either -- they're everywhere by now (witness Australia). Helping disparate ethnic groups find ways to get along is important work everywhere. Often the schools are having a hard time coping.  That's where NGOs may step in, including religious groups of all stripes.

The Parliament of World Religions has a similar focus on inclusiveness, tolerance, getting along with aliens.  If we're visited by ETs (e.g. Martians), similar skills may be required.  Indeed, it's interesting to rank ethnicities on their ability to get along with other ethnicities.  The patterns repeat over and over, but the outcomes are different based on some variables.  How cosmopolitan are the people to begin with?

My "schools for diplomats" (a theme in these blogs) are really schools for everyone, as in a planet such as ours, where "intelligent life" has jet airplanes, lots of ships, satellites, television, everyone is a diplomat.

Munching on Medical Data

ISEPP took the risk of inviting an industrialist versus an academician to address the Portland lay public, an audience reminiscent of Wittgenstein's Vienna by some accounts.  Speakers like to unveil stuff in Portland, as do movie people.  Several in our circle had known David Cox from their shared high school (same school as Tara's, and formerly a business school before joining the public fleet, accepting that charter).

Pfizer, and one extrapolates to other pharmaceutical companies, is seeing vast wastelands of useless patents in fields were the name of the game is to learn science, meaning one needs a culture of openness and open data (a true society).  You can try to play lip service to those ideals, and get away with it for awhile, but then the physics of the inevitable kicks in and you realize you're stalled and/or slipping backwards, forgetting your science, your know-how.  That sense of an impending dark age provokes an avoidance reflex.

Fortunately, we're surrounded by evidence of great civilizations, including some very recent ones, such as the Apollo Project, which put humans on the moon.  More to come (in the pipeline and/or incubator right now).

The giant project to decipher the genome has yielded big data for sure, but the statistical correlations with diseases are relatively slight, giving subtle clues as to mechanisms.  What you need to find are concentrations of shared diseases and find correlations there.

The individuals should be enrolled as responsible medical team members, to an MD level in specialty i.e. with respect to their own condition (MDs licensed to practice on people besides themselves are not permitted such narrow self-centeredness).

Dick Cox encouraged us to begin the ascent to a more enlightened society, not out of some altruistic do gooder sense so much as a need to get on with the business of learning science and really finding drugs that work.  We just don't have that many yet and the side effects are killing us.  Drug company people take drugs too, have an investment in being smart about self-administration.  Some top researchers have first hand experience with the diseases they treat.

DNA research has opened plenty of doors, but to walk into this new world of medical science we have to be free and open with medical records in a way that doesn't miscast either government, industry or insurance as ipso facto "the bad guy" i.e. there are legitimate get-the-job done configurations that aren't interested in wasting anyone's time on scandalously poor ethics or impossibly wasteful and/or ineffective treatments.

There's too much ignorance about the body and how it works, about nature, to squander precious lives on soap operatics and melodrama.  Dialing back to preventative therapies is still the best approach, but that means seeing the tendencies, knowing the signs.  When you're preventing, you're preventing against, which means the diseases have shown themselves.  This is more of an Asian attitude perhaps, in that you're not looking for "cures" so much as negotiated settlements, tolerable equilibria, steady states.

Happiness, including on into old age, is legit to pursue, and not just because the US Constitution says so.

At the dinner afterward, I asked if I were one of the bad guys per his model, in that I was in the business, at least until recently, of purging case records of identifiable traits, i.e. I was into anonymizing and pseudonymizing major data sets.  Yes, I was a bad guy.  He used the word "encrypt" but I don't see myself doing that so much as rendering petabytes of case data innocuous as a public good, e.g. not subject to blackmailing purposes or leading to divorce action because of revealed details in peoples private lives.

However, we've detoured into a technical footnote as the allegiance between medical sciences and free open source computing has only just begun, yet has been one of those exponentially more relevant curves.  Many people have no problem being up front with their identity when presenting with various diseases and will not mind having their DNA fingerprint a part of the public record.

Those less interested in helping science in that way will not be coerced into doing so as protecting record privacy and security also relate to integrity i.e. if the data gathering models are not themselves clear and public, then the outcomes data will not be trusted -- could be just someone's faked / randomized noise, for sale at high prices.

The ability to authenticate to trusted sources needs to be part of the model as well.  But then banking is not a complete stranger to these issues.  Bank your genome.  Consider it yours (whom else would it belong to -- nature herself maybe as you're her baby) and perhaps some of your income might come under a kind of "thanks for the memories" in the chart of accounts (i.e. thanks for the samples, the records).  Pay people for being who they are, what a concept.  That's usually more applied to horses these days.

I'm expecting some of the upcoming conference events on my calendar to give me more of a sense of Big Data and medicine.  I'd say Pfizer is definitely not alone in thinking Portland has a role to play in designing the data collection centers and sharing the data.  The local buzz matches the global in this case.   Something like Google Earth but for the body, built with filters so you might see different demographic cross-sections... such public goods with pro versions might be one outcome of the upcoming data crunching and visualizing era.

People with exotic diseases have much to teach us and should not have to worry where their next meal is coming from as medical science works with its students -- as long as they don't mind cafeteria food (we hope there's a Food Not Bombs like end of the spectrum, fresh and vegan, with some of the healthier patients doing their own prep and serving).  The Global U will have better and more humane infrastructure as we shluff off the old snake skin.  To be continued.

Camera's Eye

:: little shopper ::
(p:ear)

:: riding high ::
(mcmenamins collection)

Wanderers 2012.2.14

Lynne Taylor is here talking about her paintings, water colors.

The Internet domain name stuff from a previous meeting is still on the board.  Linus Pauling House.

It's "two dog night" (Nirel has one in a bag, helping with her daughter's move), and Blueberry (a veteran attender).

Shomar is missed.  I was thinking about David earlier, thinking we should have dinner.

The first painting represents the new hadron collider at CERN and the particles they seek.

The second has lots of nanotubes and DNA and stuff.

We have two bottles of double dog dare (cheap wine on the table).

Lynne's paintings have frequently featured as covers of ISEPP programs, handed out at the concert hall (usually the Schnitzer downtown).

We have some visitors tonight, first timers.

Tomorrow I'm giving a talk on the Bucky stuff at Quakers, having dropped the ball earlier.

One of our guests had been on Ken Kesey's bus that day.  She was later a college English teacher, wrote poetry.

Her cousin, also present, was a career fireman with Portland's fire department.

Craigmore Creations has move out, taking the fancier table and chairs.  We're using the standard institutional folding tables with an assortment of chairs, some stackable.

We talked about Henk Pander and his show.

David called last night.  We talked about Nick Espinoza whom he knows, an inventor of "glitter bombing" -- a Blue House topic conversation sometimes.  Speaking of acting up activists, I hear Tre might be campaigning for Mayor.

I was writing about democracy again today, on the Wittgenstein list, mentioning DemocracyLab.

We spent most of the evening going around the table.  I brought one of the Pinot Noirs, and some cheese and crackers.  I drank some coffee.  Looked at pix of the newer stealth boats (still pretty secret).

Yes Men Fix the World (movie review)

I recommend seeing both if you can deal with either.  These films are great satire, but then the clowns are really high on that wire, which had better stay taut.

There's a Sesame Street air about the whole thing, a kind of lecturing to moral imbeciles.  How does one get across a sense of top management?

Copy TV.  Those newscasters are so good at pontificating -- there's a reason the preacher is in the pulpit.

The Halliburton disaster suits are especially rolling-in-this-aisles funny.

We watched it at Blue House, LW & M snuggled on the couch, me slogging through a standard workflow on the Air, chuckling along the way.

Dow tried to take 'em out, with the "cruel hoax" line (against the people of Bhopal -- I'd thought of that too), delivered perfectly.

That could have sunk 'em, and their only recourse was to head to Bhopal and hang out, actually get the reaction.  Yes, some had wept for joy, but then understood the heroics, like the heroics behind that Other Tomorrow New York Times edition.

Shades of Sasha Cohen (another brave heart).

The guys express their fear levels in several ways, including during the opening credits.  The fear of losing one's head, to the guillotine, for using it, is not empty paranoia when you really are about to address a few million people as the faux representative of an evil empire.

But then the real representatives have their fears too, in looking so greedy-inept with their lame form of faux capitalism (which is about using other peoples' heads, mostly -- Milton Friedman's especially if you can afford the look).

I understand the nightmare these guys live in.  They win their battle over and over, keep making their point.  But what really changes?  The goal isn't winning then?  It comes as a revelation.  Conditioned reflexes don't change that fast and the three laws of robotics get broken left and right (positronic might have been better dontcha know (yes, an Asimov allusion)).

There's a Doppler Effect at work.  Every event is also a potential time bomb, MIRVed to hit (have some impact) in multiple elsewheres in a chain reaction, leading to tipping points and avalanches.  They teach about these patterns in Systems, at Wanderers, common as rain.