Toward a History of Domes

You'd think Global U doctoral candidates would be fanning out across the land to chronicle the early history of geodesic dome building, as this was the architectural breakthrough for which the 1900s will be remembered in large degree.

A lot of the early pioneers are still alive and willing to talk.

Dick Lehr was only just caught on tape before he died. Other key players, such as with Synergetics Inc., TC Howard chief among them, may not have been taped yet, I don't know.

David Koski and I have been looking into it. Duncan Stuart is another one. Don Richter of course. Jim Fitzgibbon, Jonathan Smith, Jeremy Martin... Thanks to John Braley for some of this scholarship. Edward Popko has been providing some puzzle pieces as well.

However, in so many ways the Global U is broken and we get to live with the symptoms of that.

Getting a working curriculum is a top priority and philanthropy will have a lot to do with revivifying various moribund circuits, many of them "between the ears" in popular consciousness.

Or call it "connecting the dots".

Workaday World

Long time readers know I champion GST, pulled down from its dusty shelf, a little used abbreviation ("general systems theory"), as competition for Econ.

Econ deserves competition, by its own reasoning, yet college catalogs don't make room for such a discipline. They used to be smarter in colleges, at least relatively. Why those high tuitions again? A question for your Philosophy departments (ethics included).

Anyway, GST is heisting this word "work" (also used by Economists) to bring it closer to the Physics department meaning of "expending energy", or just "energy" (some work is potential, held back by a dam). There's no such thing as "not working", even in sleep.

"Unemployment" is with reference to an entirely different "cult concept": that of "the job". A "job" sounds like something out of the Bible (Book of Job). All the connotations of slavery, of servitude, of travail, get vested in "job". And yet we want them, desperately. This looks like a job for the Psych department. Calling Erich Fromm.

At least everyone is working though (so relax), employed in a job or not. Non-humans are working too, sometimes very hard (lots of power out, takes nutrients). Work is not about money necessarily, although it may well be about making long term investments. "Wealth is livingry" said Fuller, using a word his "peers" (snicker) refused to adopt, in contrast to "killingry" (their nest egg in many cases -- "peers" who think of "Barfie Doll" [tm] Richard Perle as a role model).

Hey, is it true Mercy Corps is sending recruiters around PDV? Anthropologists maybe. Or was it Medical Teams International? There's already overlap in staffing I'd think, twixt some of these old time volunteers and the Portland-based disaster relief industry (bigger here than Seattle's).

If I were head of UNESCO or UNHCR, I'd be studying Occupation logistics with an eye towards cross-fertilization. These are peacekeeper occupations, unlike #OccupyAfghanistan or #OccupyIraq, more Business Plot endeavors (the business-run Occupations get to use violence as much as they like, is one of the differences, even in contravention of international law).

The vets in #OccupyPortland have a lot of influence on others of recruiting age. Getting to camp out, learn skills, get trained, manage infrastructure, supply food, sanitation, telecomm, education services, fly around the world doing good: would you rather do this in the spirit of #OccupyPortland or #OccupyIraq?

I can see where lots of troops would be willing to jump ship, maybe bringing the Navy with them, as one of the more honorable services. The mercenaries might get left behind. #Glitterbomb Blackwater (yeah, I know, a new LLC these days, shares sold by wimpy Wall Street no doubt).

I couldn't find Time or Newsweek at Freddie's either.

Thoughts of Dad

This is the anniversary of my parents' terrible car accident on the highway from Maseru to Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State, in the year 2000.

Jack was a fantastic dad, showed me the world, and a way of living in it. I'm not a clone or even a close copy, but some of the character traits I like best about myself I attribute to his example and parenting. Our whole family was impressed with this man, and were very sorry to lose him so suddenly that day.

We are grateful mom survived the accident and thrived in future chapters.

We thank the rescue medics and health care providers of Bloemfontein for their professionalism.

The engineering community building the dam in Maseru, the diplomatic community, Quakers, friends of the family, all provided support as Julie and I helped with Carol's recovery.

Intuition and Science

The blend of an OMSI Science Pub at the Bagdad with an ISEPP lecture by Dr. Lisa Randall at the Schnitzer was quite "kick ass" I must say.

The three at OMSI were / are Oregon-based innovators: an ocean wave energy specialist, a graphic artist and war zone journalist, and an intuitive genius cook. Dr. Randall is a particle physicist teaching at Harvard.

Their stories were each fascinating (marquee below) and gave a sense of how following one's passion can be soooo the right thing to do (not talking about "crimes of").

This OMSI Pub was a co-production with Portland Monthly magazine, which provided the interviewer (a pretty good one). And of course McMenamins is involved.

Dr. Randall of Harvard was likewise spectacular. She was calm and respectful, yet happy to live up to her role of "smartest person in the room".

At the dinner after, I had two questions, a more popular one and a more philosophical one. I ran them by Tara and we agreed they were both interesting.

I led with the crowd pleaser: so what would really happen were an individual to walk through the 27 kilometer tunnel during a time of peak energy operation? What would be the biological phenomena we might expect? To Lisa's credit, she forthrightly admitted to holes in her knowledge, with zero defensiveness, and was immediately inquisitive herself. Here was a mind cut out for science: pure curiosity and a willingness to continually confront one's own ignorance, as an opportunity. Certainly her chosen field, high energy particle physics, is fraught with uncertainty and speculation, and also suspense, as the new machine (LHC) is more precise and more powerful than ever before.

My other question would have been a run through of my "particle physics as grammar" analogy, the one I ran by Dr. Robert Laughlin, just to get her comments. She'd been talking about this question of Agency, whether something external could perturb events without itself being a subject of scientific scrutiny (God would have to get in line under the microscope, just like everyone else). However, I'm more thinking of "agency within" with a more Ouija Board like synergy. No one feels in control because no one is: everybody is.

I didn't get to ask it though. Dr. Randall was timing her Q&A for the intervals between courses, so she could get some rest right after dinner, not stay late. When she got up a second time and saw my hand go up again, she said "you already asked one; who else has a question who hasn't asked one before." That was fair (I was more just being an ice breaker if needed) and I stopped putting up my hand after that, concentrating on the excellent wine and her witty responses to others' probing queries.

Back to OMSI Science Pub: it was great to meet Nirel's friend Patrick, who had been trying to deliver something to the Occupy Portland crowd when he was waylayed by some species of bigot-thug. He got into a fight, had this shiner. Dondi and Don were also present (we're all Wanderers).

I again saw Nate the videographer at the ISEPP lecture (we seem to be following one another around), Trish the teacher and gardener, Jessica (with her boy), Flextegrity Sam, Rick the engineer, Jon the musician, Jim the eclipse chaser, Lynne the artist, math guy Steve, Glenn with beads, David the applied mathematician, Joe the psychiatrist, Pat the realtor and Rhonda with Airstream and many others (this was the first of the 2011-2012 Pauling Memorial Lectures, so a kind of reunion in some ways).

Tara did a good job at the special table inside the Schnitzer, for people who had filled out the Portland Energy Strategies survey questionnaire, for a promise of free tickets. ISEPP made good on that promise, with Tara exchanging printed vouchers for tickets. Dr. Randall sat behind us (this was before showtime) being pleasant with people and signing copies of her new book.

Teacher / engineer: Annette von Jouanne – Electrical Engineer and Professor at Oregon State University, Pioneer in wave energy technology

Journalist / artist: Joe Sacco – Journalist & Cartoonist, Author of Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, and Footnotes in Gaza

Restaurateur / cook: Naomi Pomeroy – Owner of Beast, Award-wining chef

At WhereCampPDX

:: wherecamppdx ::

This geography focused unconference has been made all the more real by the fact that Metro is missing a valued coworker, Mark Bosworth. He went missing in Riddle, Oregon when volunteering for Cycle Oregon. He's a cancer survivor, about my age (a gray). Lance Armstrong is paying attention, per Twitter.

Given a building full of geographers, mapmakers and so on, you would expect them to be thinking of how to support search and rescue, or finding missing persons. How could our tools play a stronger role?

Zooming back, making the story become more generic, it's not always a given that someone missing wants to be found. Finding people is a chief function of police, and paranoia runs high around tools for "keeping track".

The Wall Street Journal was recently talking up the FBI's ability to track cell phones, whether in use or not. TV is packed with fictionalized superpowers that only adds to people's confusion about what's real (quite deliberately in some cases -- it's a lot less expensive to have people believe they're being spied on than to actually do the work, which may be impractical in many cases).

In the case of missing persons, with worried / anxious friends and family in the background, there's a lot of pressure to make "finding" easier, but that pushes against other scenarios wherein people are evading detection for one reason or another. Perhaps they're being stalked, spied on, followed in some way?

Privacy, in the sense of going off the grid, being hard if not impossible to find, is a valued freedom many strive to defend. The antithesis of a free country is one wherein you cannot hide, are under continuous surveillance. On the other hand, some people relish a voyeur's access, why they called it Keyhole (KH) originally.

I mostly didn't say much in the session on this topic, until the end, when I pointed to my cuffka and suggested these could be pre-equipped with sensors and handed out to volunteers during those kinds of search and rescue operations when you want to leave a clear trace of who went where.

A core frustration here at Metro is not having any place to aggregate data about all the searches that have happened to date. Handing out devices, and collecting them later for downloading data and recharging small batteries, would take the emphasis off of personal phones.

Cuffkas might also be worn by hikers, other people wanting their positions to show up on an LCD somewhere.

Igal gave a great talk on virtual realities and their associated geographies, pulling from a wide range of anime, manga and computer games. Some were light hearted and fun, like the replica of Venice on Mars, with girl gondola guides. Others were dark and twisted (more gothic and/or demented), with themes of madness and the more surreal side of life (some'd say "bizarre", others "weird").

The audience, for the most part highly media savvy, was quite responsive to this talk and quick to throw out other examples of virtual worlds (Narnia for example). "All realities are virtual" used to be my sig, back when I was posting from pdx4d@teleport.com.

One of the realities was based on an old German town, down to rather small details. Another reality involved French fighter jets. This was geography gone wild (geography on steroids).

During one of the breaks, I showed Igal the faux socialist realist memes I've been weaving into my Pythonic Andragogy, complete with Tractor Art. Given he reads Cyrillic, we slowed down and zoomed in on some of my slides. I gave him the whole presentation in under three minutes, including the Cult of Athena slide at the end.

Good practice for my next lightning talk opportunity.

At Ikea

A lot of ruckus was raised today, at Occupy Portland. Per my earlier chat with Melody, I'd be spending the evening in a slightly ironic setting: out by PDX (the airport), shopping with my daughter at Ikea.

The experience is apropos however, as I was discussing with Tara over coffee and other sundries: is it Swedish efficiency and smooth civilian operations that we're fighting, or just corrupt, overly weaponized, lazy / cowardly capitalism, as practiced by the wimps on Wall Street? A rhetorical question, obviously, as I'm defending Ikea to some degree, also Costco.

What's obscene about the business practices that run rampant in the US, a weakly governed territory held together with a rather weak glue, is the ugly lifestyles it engenders, the ostentatiousness that's synonymous with poor taste and a lack of standards.

The squandering of fuel oil in pursuit of pseudo-dreams and fantasies, as nurtured by screenwriters for TV, is especially symptomatic. The people have been reduced to wretchedness, in logistical support of such ugliness, and they're tired of it.

If the global idiocracy can think of nothing better to do than engage in war for sport and profit, then sure, the job is to topple such a fragile house of cards. That'd be the patriotic, not to mention intelligent thing to do.

Not that the October Occupation is over at the time of this writing. When I left, FNB was taking up a position to offer sustenance and morale, even as riot cops were amassing in the side streets.

There's always a chance the cops might spaz out and start firing tear gas etc., even though Portlanders are generally pretty good at handling themselves these days and the organizers are fierce about keeping this a sober if festive event with a minimal footprint in terms of damage to infrastructure. No pooping elephants or horses. The Rose Festival (which permits sidewalk camping) makes a bigger mess, with its Fun Center.

I'll check in with them later, after closing time.

At Red Square

I wiped out on the bike again last night, coming down the driveway too fast and putting all my weight on the front fork, leaning forward, accelerating (slowing down real quick). First Person Physics.

I suspect a feedback loop at work (a vicious circle) wherein the bending wheel caused the brakes to further seize, resulting in more forceful velocity change than ever.

The event was highly reminiscent of the "parking episode", wherein my front wheel dipped into the sidewalk tree's square of dirt right as I was braking. I turned that wheel into a tortured ovoid. Last night, I repeated the feat.

Safe to say, given the higher inertias, I went over the handle bars and landed on my back, first time out in my new paramilitary black field jacket from Andy & Bax (matches the black helmet). Officer Urner strikes [the pavement] again.

Two weeks ago, it was train tracks.

The bike shop on Belmont knows me by name. Red Square, a coffee shop, is across the street. I'm wearing my "Kremlin Kuffka" (with Nirel Foundation branding), a kind of homage to Shepard Fairey. This morning, I registered for the WhereCampPDX @ Metro.

:: cuffka.com ::

An Asynchronous Summit

These postings to the Wittgenstein forum have many points of interest in this Halloween season. [1][2]

Likewise this thread at the Math Forum.

Equinox Retreat

I've been dovetailing worlds today, the opposite of worlds in collision. Smoothly meshing gears.

I finally joined the #pdxpython channel on Freenode, long overdue. I'm using Chatzilla.

I introduced myself (to people who know me from PPUG already) and my agenda: to get back into the IRC groove in anticipation of #pdxfnb drawing some traffic.

Maria Droujkova of Math Future popped up on Gchat and kindly checked my "business cards" for spelling (she found a problem with the punctuation).

Then, at the cook site, St. David of Wales, I took some of the fresh vegan soup and added it to containers for bringing to the Linus Pauling House by bike trailer.

FNB meets Pauling House.

Chapter Change

I explained to Satya this morning that I thought Lindsey really did her homework getting to know Friends, myself included, and that proved a strong basis for anchoring Thursday's kitchen for a year's worth of fresh vegan Food Not Bombs meals.

I'm not ready to promote anyone else to her position, as trusted key holder, from within the ranks at this time. Now that Organics to You has moved to N. Williams, we thought this would be the right time to drop our weekly gig.

We both remain interested in the logistics of increasing participation in these kinds of intelligent operations. Neither of us plans to come off as over-zealous however. As a street musician these days, she's in no position to preach. I'm more a back office boob myself, am no Alex Jones with a bullhorn.

This disconnecting of our Multnomah Friends kitchen doesn't mean OTY can't continue to help feeding the hungry in southeast, as both OTY and the northeast chapter have made abundantly clear. Indeed, several of our regulars hail from northerly zip codes and could replace Lindsey as haulers (she was thinking of Jay in particular).

She enjoys hauling herself, leaving the meetinghouse today with an humongous train of trailers, after visiting OTY and bidding them adieu for the time being.

In this next chapter, we may find ourselves performing new roles.

Even the meetinghouse, a kind of learning center, will remain on-line in some ways. We continue with our various social concerns and campaigns (testimonies).

#pdxfnb on freenode

Friendly Discussion

I joined Multnomah Adults' Discussion (SMAD) for an engaging reading this morning. Gary has scraped some ostensibly "satanic" stuff off the Internet, about six pages, which we passed around, taking turns reading.

In this version, the angelic host is merely exercising the privileges of selfhood against a jealous Demiurge that would keep them servile. Some of their number get involved in human relationships, starting with Eve. They basically encourage the study of STEM subjects against the know-nothing boot lickers who wait upon the Demiurge, a jealous jerk.

We had some insightful discussion, treating our text as science fiction. Indeed, Gary said much of it had been written as recently as 1991. One of our discussants and been raised in a Satanic cult. She advised us that the taxonomy among Satanists was ramified (not unlike among Xtians) and this text we were reading had little if anything in common with the protocols she'd been reared on.

I spoke with John Wish afterward who extolled Gary for his intelligence, and quality walking sticks (Gary has a Lord of the Rings air about him, would probably thrive in New Zealand).

Meeting for Worship was a lot about community. Our delegation from Jubilee House had returned. I used some of the time to study a book entitled Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia by Edward Baltzell. He was writing in the turbulent 1960s, comparing it to the 1600s in some dimensions. Quakers as proto-hippies?

Eve Menger was present today. We know each other from Wanderers as well, lots of history. I mentioned having just come across her father's story again, in "some esoteric philosophy I've been reading". I was talking about this book Alex found at Powell's and is letting me read: Wittgenstein: From Mysticism to Ordinary Language by Russell Nieli.

These latest two SUNY Press books have felt more alive and contemporary to Alex and myself, we think because Wittgenstein is finally getting more recognition as a shaman (to sound ethnographic about it). Kimberly, in The Jew of Linz called him a magician. Of course these are not academic categories and such terms are easily confused with metaphysician. Perhaps "alchemist" is better.

In any case, the many references to George Fox and Quakers, by Nieli, a Princeton quasi-contemporary (we had some of the same teachers) is helping me shrink my world. That may sound like a bad thing ("shrink") but in the vernacular I'm using, it's more like "more with less".

Message Traffic (rad math)

From:	Kirby Urner
To:	pdxfnb
Date:	Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 2:21 PM
Subject:	Re: SE chapter: starting Thurs Sept 1 prep

Our new cook, just finding work, was glad to get Corrina's bike,
pulled Satya's trailer to the park.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/6104537430/in/photostream

( bike in basement, plus lock, with David's replacement knives --
unopened boxes)

He was eager for updates on our SE comic strip (silly sit com, PG-13)
as he'd been away for days.

Lindsey announced her no-gossip-about-others policy while proceeding
to gossip about herself at great liberty.

I was glad Satya came by and reminded me about adding vinegar and/or
lemon to lentils.

We must have had over 200 red peppers to play with. Expect to see
some today (they're in prime condition -- thanks OTY).

I have this dynamite recipe I'm hoping to use for FnB one day, but
don't mind sharing ahead of time:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2008/07/together-friends.html

The molasses would be too sweet for some of our associates, and the
onion verboten.

However it does have sour ingredients. Thumbs up. Not my invention
(not taking credit).

I might just make it a side dish instead of an entre.

We were semi-silently marking one year of service where Multnomah
Friends are concerned.

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/09/quaker-doings.html

I saw David's new flyer, verbose / micro-print, took it off to my
perch (where I sometimes go when on duty).

Again, we all have active imaginations so if you have a different idea
of PR, shake your booty.

I've got my daughter Tara, recently returned from Managua, advising me
on aesthetic possibilities (and/or traps to avoid).

Kirby

- Hide quoted text -

On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 3:16 PM, kirby urner wrote:
> Opening 3:30 today. Heading over...
>
> See ya'll.
>
> http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/09/quaker-doings.html
>
> Kirby
>

Wardrobe

I was yakking with Steve at Horse Brass about how Quakers (Friends) have traditionally gotten along with military personnel.

The rank and file wanted to draft George Fox as a commanding officer of some kind, or at least that's the rumor (scholars welcome to chime in -- on Facebook maybe?). Annis Bleeke (FWCC General Secretary, Ret.) confirmed the elements of this story during social hour just today (I was showing off my new bike helmet, looks kind of German or Darth Vadery).

In my own case, this heritage has translated into wardrobe concerns. I've been eyeing abandoned US military bases and military surplus stores, as campus and prop inventory respectively, when writing my "girl scout math" curriculum (some boyz allowed), a kind of interactive theater.

We just visited Portland's top military surplus store yesterday, to stock up. One of our household is heading out of the country (no, not for Pycon / Cuba). She's in Houston right now.

Steve suggested "extra-military" rather than "para-military" would be more the label I'd wish for -- less controversial. I'm easy with either, as a Friend.

Brand names such as Fox and Coyote have already been deployed.

Doing Hard

"Doing hard" is in contrast to "doing easy", taking me back to that funny movie from Laughing Horse Books and Video, based on a short story by William Burroughs.

I've asked David to come sit next to me in my office so we could surf the net and shop for the knives and case I managed to lose for him off the back of my bicycle. I want him to come out ahead.

We had way too much food, got started late, were lugging a piano (toy Casio), didn't get much help. Thanks to Betsey Kenworthy for taking the compost. She was there for the Nicaragua delegation meeting.

Here's what I posted to the Riseup pdxfnb list:

Alas, one of my worst FnB days ever.

I found David's chef knives (velcro roll) left behind at the
meetinghouse and stupidly put them on my bike rack, not well secured.

They didn't make it to the park.

I am committed to replacing every last one of them.

If anyone sees a nifty knife set appearing on Craig's List -- I'll buy
it back, oyster knives and all, no questions asked.

Dropped somewhere between 43rd and Stark and SE Taylor and 34th....

Also, I think starting our OTY pickup at 3 pm, when food prep starts
at 3:30 is just nuts.

We used to do our pickup at like 11:30 am.

Toting a battery powered piano slows things down, need extra time for that too.

Glad Elise came buy to give me a hug. Tre was kind to me at the park.

David is taking it well too, though clearly upset and disappointed.
I'm really sorry guy.

Kirby

Google Drones

These came up in a meeting at Bagdad today -- like the cars but higher, and sent to remote areas a lot of the time. Just for surveillance of course, not psycho dark ages stuff from some Dr. Evil horror show.

True, not everyone likes the idea of being on HDTV. Low flying, over criminal stockpiles... what do we choose to call "against humanity" then?

Does "prohibition" mean "no nukes"? A lot of schools think that way, yes. Verification remains a part of the picture, especially over a region as large as North America.

Board Games

:: multnomah meeting ::

Jay and I were chatting at the park about a possible Food Not Bombs board game: a map of some city, different kinds of pieces. Yes, it could be a computer game, like Sims -- it should still have a map though, lots of 'em.

Blue House is of a specific type, a subclass of "FnB machine" (thinking in terms of programming now, object-oriented). We're not specialized to store or refrigerate more than average, whereas some network households may focus on storing and sorting, more like our warehouse suppliers.

Given warehouses are already in the business of storing, I'm always looking for ways for the households to not absorb any more waste than necessary. A "just in time" supply chain means perishables are picked up and used in a timely manner with little need for long term preservation. The focus is on throughput not stockpiling or hoarding. Each kitchen has its FnB stores (shared and/or partitioned). These kitchens may be institutional (e.g. St. David of Wales) or based in a private residence (e.g. Pink House).

Blue House has produced some specialty krauts, other pro-biotics, but our kitchen is not pressed into service in the prep window, some three hours before a park serving. We're an asynchronous supplier of specialty items. Some of our bike rovers are likewise well connected to specific kitchens or stores who appreciate FnB as a valuable community service (which it is).

Our 1950s vinyl kitchen with stainless steel counter tops looks made-for-TV, and I could see doing some shooting here for the training films and promos, but when it comes to food prep our role is to serve as a gateway to one of the institutional kitchens: the one at the Quaker meetinghouse, formerly an Electro-measurements (ESI) property and before that one of Jantzen's knitting factories. The Friends have done extensive remodeling and expansion over the last 50 years or so.

We might call those "supply houses" and a bike with trailer might be routed to go by one or two enroute to a church or meetinghouse. Or a bike with trailer might dash over to a warehouse supplier.

Most warehouses dealing in produce have a walk-in refrigeration unit with a palette or more of produce slated for composting, yet still with some fresh, healthful items for which no one has a use -- until the waste mitigation system is installed (here's a bike with trailer), at which point many vectors point away from that palette to various kitchens and distribution sites.

The idea of a control room taking feed from GPS devices, with helmet mounted web cams and ear buds ("that looks like a good box of avocados, how about grab it?") feeds the next generation science fiction version. This goes with the fleets of biodiesel powered trucks running on Asian restaurant cooking oil, bringing CSA goods in, taking compost and combustibles out.

Connecting my past work with trucking and routing (optimizing delivery schedules) to FnB is part of the larger scale waste mitigation effort. When resources are tight and need to be shared, with some solutions more optimal than others, far more serviceable, there's momentum to develop the simulations and get into anticipatory design mode.

Blue House is close to community kitchens and provides overnight parking for some of the bike trailer fleet (SkyBlue chiefly). We also do low level carryover, some refrigeration. My inventory in the staging area currently consists of squash, zucchini, cucumber, tomatoes, some fruits, carrots. These were retrieved from the park yesterday and will be picked up by the Tuesday crew later today.

My goal has been to render the model with sufficient transparency to support transferability and scalability (scaling down as well as up). I put a lot of emphasis on the learning opportunities the free school provides for those wanting to master cooking for large groups using a somewhat "just in time" approach.

Thinking Claymation

I was chauffeuring the chairman around, showing him Produce Row. Hawthorne and Morrison bridges were both mostly shut, so I was surmising Bridge Pedal was happening tomorrow morning.

Having just checked the web site, I see I was wrong. I'm glad I'm wrong because getting to our event would be difficult with that many bridges closed.

We went to Office Depot so Steve could better equip his Portland office. Earlier, at Angelo's with Steve and Patrick, I thought I'd texted Patrick's cell number to Melody (with permission) but later my phone showed no trace of such an outgoing message (Melody later: confirmed receipt). This phone also tries to sell me stuff, which I consider rude.

Another day in purgatory I guess, punishment for sins I'm still committing most likely.

Bridge Pedal has Catholic connections so yakking about it, and sin, in the same post might actually be apropos.

At Steve's with Glenn I was saying how I was now Will Vinton's friend on Facebook. He's the founder of a famous claymation studio here in Portland. From his picture he reminds me of Jesse Ventura and G. Gordon Liddy.

I was leaning against the wall on the floor, doing some chuckling, taking a break from my queue at the carnival (geek fest, feast, nutritious meal).

Portland as ToonTown, is what I was again connecting through to at Math Forum, under "shovel ready". Steve has Python.TV registered, so why not? We'll need a lot of workshops perhaps, but then so did the WPA (perhaps we'd be able to bring more Python to the UN?).

Tomorrow I hope to see more of the thread with GS about population pressures in a world game context.

FNB on FB

Click for larger views...

Perl World

:: from July 3-5, 2011 ::

Jeff Zucker is here, my old friend and associate from CUE days (that was Center for Urban Education). We sat around the table in the foyer of the ballroom, catching up.

I'm walking the talk of the totem toter, diving deep into Perl culture coming from snake charming (a related brand of geekery). The totem spent the whole convention at the Perl Foundation booth, nuzzling with the camel. An inflatable globe also got into the act, perhaps signifying world domination (yet again, yawn).

Apropos of this theme, Trish hosted a Perl versus Python debate on the convention TV station, if we might call it that. Is Netflix a TV company or an Internet company?

We've been talking about Python.tv, the domain name.

The debate was most friendly. Steve thanked Perl culture for helping to get this O'Reilly circus off the ground in the first place. OSCON is an outgrowth of the Perl conference. In coming to State of the Onion, I'm in some sense at the core. I may not stay for lightning talks though.

Staff is over on Hawthorne welcoming a new mentor. I'm eager to meet him too. My schedule took me back to 97214 for Food Not Bombs duty, adjutant to officer Walker (Blue House has offices).

Once David showed up, I was sure she had enough help, so bowed out, having helped with those coconuts, washing and sterilizing serving utensils, sharing some Quaker lore with our kitchen mates.

Earlier, at the Expo, after yet another excellent Google lunch, Scott sidled up to me yakking about Simple Gifts, as frequently cited by Copland in that famous symphony of his.

He's interested in the Quaker angle as well.

Trish was emceeing the televised debate with Chairman Steve and Peter. They took turns counting from 10 to 1, showing slides, going through their respective languages' best features, each somewhat teasing the other, a good-natured rivalry.

"Learn both" was Trish's advice, as a PHP coder.

You can see me on the video towards the middle, during the crowd shot: a hunchy gray big guy with the green PSF snake, which I was in the process of transporting back to its hovel on the Max and bus, given the booth fest was to end. At the booth fest: lots more talk with Computers for Kids (hand-me-downs, not spanking new OLPC stuff), and DemocracyLab. Open source TV production.

State of the Onion: mixed with lightning talks this year. I'm learning a lot listening to all this. I should go look for a bus soon.

At the Carnival

I think O'Reilly was working boldly with "symbolization" here, to use a term I learned from Trevor's ethnography on the Technocracy movement.

From 6 pm to 8 pm, one of the capacious Oregon Convention Center exhibit halls was turned into a memefest centered on the carnival theme: cotton candy, corn dogs, nachos, popcorn, caramel apples, what amounted to rides, games, photo booth... pinball machines.

Everything free to conference attenders and in unlimited amounts... for two hours.

I left around 7:33, having saluted my new Brazilian friends from last night.

Why this carnival imagery was deep, in a form of life sense (just "lifestyle" sounds too shallow), is the etymology of the word "geek".

The original geeks were in carnivals, down on their luck, and willing to engage in self-demeaning activities in front of gawkers, such as biting the heads off live chickens.

None of that went down here. We've come a long way. This was a wholesome event, even with a few true children. The rest of us faked it pretty well.

I dorked around a bit myself, made the bell ring with the hammer a few times, played Star Wars pinball, and floundered through the inflated obstacle course, falling off the cliff in the middle and taking the "death door" out the side (I wasn't the only one to perish in that way, though some managed to climb back out -- I even witnessed a rescue, of one woman by another, in true girl scout fashion). I rode a "monster tricycle" a few laps.

This morning was all business.

I rolled through my queue on the laptop, working the day job, teaching school for this same O'Reilly company. I'm on a superpass this year because I helped with some of the tracks, stressing medical research data (harvesting from medical records, sharing), and of course Python.

My usual themes.

During the first lunch yesterday, I had a long talk with a medical data person, with offices around the world. At today's lunch I just listened.

One of my neighbors from across the street is here too.

Today's talks: the OSCON Data track is in a state of mulling things over. The Internet has thrust us into a state where swift evolution of data storage tools is a fact of life.

Open code is better code, and some of these tools just wouldn't hack it as proprietary offerings. They need to get worked on.

If you're a LinkedIn or Netflix, you don't want to wait for some vendor to fix bugs and make enhancements. You hire your own talent and get to work, on whatever it is.

Netflix is building out atop Amazon, about to fire up in South America, with other services to follow. They're happy enough with this solution to be willing to give up "Roman Riding", meaning one leg on each horse as they dash around the ring. Their own data center is the other horse.

How wonderful to be able to configure a ring of Cassandra machines in Japan with the touch of a button.

Netflix makes deals in Hollywood and then actually sources the streaming formats and DVDs from master originals. They're involved in the actual digitization process. Their GUI front ends serve off Java Tomcat.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is more into in-house solutions, not renting in the cloud. They use lots of Harry Potter sounding open source tools, plus Kafka, which they may be willing to take public soon.

In-house development with the perspective of working on "products" is an advantageous mindset, as more general, sharable solutions also tend to be more robust, have a longer half-life.

If you just do vertical market silo stuff, you become unintelligible to yourself more quickly. I could hear a kind of anti-pattern against private language, shades of Wittgenstein.

The State of New York sent some people. Like in the other states, the political machinery is old and creaky and also not particularly accessible to ordinary people.

You might think it would be easy to look up the laws and monitor new ones as they wended their way through committee. You would be wrong, at least until recently. New York had been charging a hefty subscription to anyone wanting access to real time information. This has been changing, thanks to a small crew of geeks and a more aroused public.

I settled in to the HTML5 / CSS3 track again for the afternoon (up until carnival time), continuing to grade student work and monitor threads.

On the bus and Max to and from, I managed to finish How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser. More on that some other time.