Divergent (movie review)

A charming and competent story of love and bravery in a delightfully apocalyptic Chicago, now more like a playground, a self parody, a gotham.

We're funneled into guilds based on aptitude but some of us can't be made to fit in.  Wandering beyond the perimeter appears not to be an option.  The sense of being penned in is palpable.

I'm already drawing a blank on the name of her guild, the Rowdies lets call 'em (boo hiss, I hear you), and they've got the place rigged with secret rope walks and other cool stuff.  Plus they're seriously into drugs.  One gets how Erudite might become power mad and get our heroes enslaved to do their dirty work against Abnegation.  Man, that rings a bell doesn't it.  Always war on the poor (because they're weak and helpless, and might be other nations so laws don't apply).  OK, that's infantile.

We didn't get to see much child rearing going on, like the heroes were all this semi-narrow age group.  I guess we saw some kids, did we?

Anyway, I think there is still room at front at The Bagdad for a platform based performance, of comedians or whatever, i.e. the new first run movie status doesn't physically block these other possibilities, I know nothing of license agreements.

I'd been looking for this Kate Winslet / Weird Al muppets video that must have been removed from YouTube, so her name was fresh in my mind.  She's the wicked witch of the west (not really).

You'd see why comprehensivists would appreciate this moving testament against "tracking" and "aptitude tests" (high stakes testing).  If Lego World was the mind of a younger lad with a control freak dad, this was the stressed out world of an over-tested adolescent geek wanting to hang with a tougher crowd.... was it Drapes?

Wheels Turning

 I've been surfing more web pages on the Ukraine, Crimea, Russia and such.  Wikipedia breaks the paradigm of "encyclopedia" by having such up-to-the-minute reviews, with revisions in progress, narratives in the making.  I've done my share of Wikipedia contributing / editing.  Stressful sometimes.

Multnomah Meeting seems to be gearing up to form a study group or something, but really most of our regional savvy is in Bridge City, with fluent Russian speakers, at least one.  I've been reflecting on my Lithuanian experience and thinking of Facebook pages to visit.

Nationalism in the sense of ethnicity, and nationalism in the sense of nation-states, have a very uneasy co-existence, with the former organic and natural, the latter forced and awkward.  Our maps are nation-free (liberated from those dictates) at least in some of our classrooms.

I'll check for Gorby's opinions shortly, when I have some time.  Haircut next.  Our "NATO professor" needs to look more clean cut.

Pi Day

Not wanting it to go by without mention even though blogging by cell from the airport is tedious.  I'm waiting for Tara to arrive and that's fun and interesting.  What about e Day?  I would it be an e Minute:  Feb 7, 1 hour 8th minute.  True, wrong base, but then so is 3.14.

School-to-Prison Pipeline

This pipeline has become a focus of the AFSC (ACLU too).

Private for-profit companies are contracting with so-called "states" to provide in-school security personnel who fulfill functions formerly performed by vice principals and guidance counselors.

Instead of going to the principal's office, you might be sent to a law enforcement agent.  A bed in a for-profit prison has your name on it in short order.

"Undocumented humans" are also funneled to detention centers managed by these same companies.

The neo-fascist "state" of Arizona is an example a political jurisdiction that has gutted itself and outsourced state functions to corporate entities.

The question of whether we still have a "USA" is up for grabs at this point in time.

Washington, DC, never a state, has declared wars against a number of peoples around the world without the consent of the governed.

Medal of Freedom winner Buckminster Fuller wrote "The USA we have known is now bankrupt and extinct." (Grunch of Giants, St. Martins Press, 1983).  Do they read that in American History class?

CS-enabled Algebra

We've enjoyed a rollicking debate on math-teach recently.  I reiterated a long-time position, that high school students deserved math credit for a discrete math sequence of topics we could provide, as an "excuse" to piggy-back the sharing of newer math notations used by various global subcultures, such as Intel and HP.

What do I mean by "newer math notations"? Simply: computer languages.

Many of them (by no means all) use "dot notation" a grammar of noun.verb() and noun.adjective (or call it property, or attribute).  The period or dot is important.  A.b means A has some feature named b, maybe its age or its level of enlightenment.

With dot notation, you've got behaviors responsive to arguments, and you've got persistent state, and no, that's not the only lingo out there, just one of 'em.  A CS-enabled algebra would be friendly to this ethnicity's lingo, among others (not exclusively).

I've suggested our economy in Cascadia, high technology intensive, could benefit from a school system that allowed for these alternative for-math-credit courses.  They'd be elective in the same sense trig and stats have been elective.  Yet three years of math credit is mandatory, in Oregon, for a high school diploma.  You have various ways of adding up to that.  The goal:  make discrete math courses count (some say "digital math" courses -- the labels are not that critical).

Cascadia, if you've not read Wikipedia, is the Pacific Northwest coastal area north and south of Seattle, some say all the way to the Bay Area, some draw a line at Arcata.  It's more a science fictional jurisdiction and one of the "nine nations of North America" popularized by urban legend and some key writers.  Northward, we could reach well into British Columbia, so-called.  These are thought experiments you may indulge in, as a way to review some geography if otherwise bored.  Good exercise. What other nations might you name?

This script was not my solo creation.  On the contrary, I was overlapping with high school computer science teachers anyway, joining the annual programming tournament at Willamette University through Free Geek.  When I presented at OS Bridge, the Software Association of Oregon was in the audience and it was from SAO that I learned of the concrete proposal to wedge in a discrete math course or sequence, geared for high schools.  Teachers from all over the state were encouraged to brainstorm about content of this for-math-credit offering.  We had a day long meeting in Sherwood, a neighborhood south of Portland out toward Wilsonville along I-5.

To sum up, I sometimes cast myself as an unregistered lobbyist, not often seen in Salem, yet definitely with an agenda.  My Oregon Curriculum Network has consistent / illustrative content.  Determining where I'm coming from is not that difficult, per the aforementioned math-teach thread.

If you want to join in the debate, I encourage finding regional colleagues, as the issues we raise tend to manifest in different ways by region.  Having solutions in one area does not automatically imply a translatable result.  There's no one-size-fits-all panacea.

Princeton Club of Oregon

:: global netnight on mentoring ::

Inequality for All (movie review)

I discovered at the meeting house today that my Samsung Galaxy 3 had no battery charge.  This is my primary surface for reading OSCON proposals.  I plugged it in and left it charging, to watch this documentary from Movie Madness, an employee pick, and a relatively new release, taking in phenomena up through 2011 and the Obama administration.

Because Reich is a former Secretary of Labor, in the Clinton administration, having served in other political capacities in DC starting with Robert Kennedy and Gerald Ford, the narrative is DC-centric and uses a mostly nationalist perspective.

He joked about being an aide to Lincoln when lecturing to Berkeley students, most of whom were not yet born in the Carter years (his students fill a vast lecture hall and spanned more than a single generation -- and that's not counting the DVD and "e-tube" audience). Most of his self-directed humor is not about his age so much as his height (he's quite short), a result of a rare genetic condition.

One of the rich guys interviewed, a talking head, made a point I've been thinking about as well: no matter where you stand on the investments and income scale, a human body is like a 200-300W bulb, burning those calories, building those proteins, replacing those cells, and nothing more than that.  So what is "wealth" at the end of the day?  We're all roughly equal in getting some nature-provided equipment, with which to do stuff and sleep.

I'd say the movie makes an unintentional pun on "karma" and "car", because Reich's Mini Cooper is a focus, an icon, while the rich guy gets to show us his Audi, the best you can get.  So body + car might be a wealth summation.  But I think the lobbyist interview says it best:  you're paying for access i.e. wealth is access.  If you have "good karma" then that means you're lucky enough to have the level of access you need.

But that somewhat just postpones the tautology.  Why is access so valuable?  It's a means to what end?  More wealth == more experiences to treasure (as memories, once over)?  Wealth is a well-sustained expectation of being able to maintain high living standards tomorrow and the next day?  A kind of near term sense of security?  Access to medicines.  Access to education, information, training, skill building exercises.

Much wealth takes the form of public infrastructure, facilities shared by "strangers" and not just some "in group" or congregation / club.  Government that cares about "joe public" and "the middle class" is of a different type than government of, by and for the rich.

When Fuller signaled the demise of the USA of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence in the early 1980s (Grunch of Giants, St. Martin's Press), he's heralding the corporate-persons-controlled Citizens United USA of today, a different "Lego Land" than before, which many rich people find more awesome (although Reich reminds us that even the rich do better with a strong middle class than with a weak one -- the virtuous cycle turns vicious at some point tipping point).

We could go on and on with this investigation, into what people mean by "wealth".

Anyway, the rich guy basically agrees the system lacks smarts, since where his money gets invested stays a black box to him in large percentage, meaning "control" is hardly the right word for what you're gaining.

It's not like he's automatically "in charge" in proportion to his making thousands of times more than the average joe.  Having many times more money does not mean calling proportionally more of the shots.  I'm sure the same might be said of Jack or Jill CEO:  net take home pay is not a measure of commensurate insight into inner workings.

The metaphor of a sailing ship is still apt:  it's your ability to adapt to the shifting weather that sustains you, not some heroic ability to "control".  That ability to adapt depends on more than just you, but on your crew (personnel) and your gear (tools).

Speaking of ships, Reich and Clinton were both Rhodes Scholars and met on the ship the selected scholars would traditionally take across the Atlantic.  That's when they first started to become friends.

During the Joys and Concerns portion of business meeting (at the very end) I expressed my relief that Jen had found another home in which to have her baby, given Carol's ongoing need for that room.  The Buddha Room is still in need of refurbishing (having been reconstructed for $12K), but as a nursery / bedroom?  I expressed my expectation the home birth will go well.

The timing had been ironic in that Peter (another Princeton alum) was telling Wanderers about his time in Vietnam in the far north, aiming to assist leveraging cell phone access to gain better health care for ethnic minority moms, and finding in this particular case that cell phone access was already high and so was birth-in-facility (versus home) an indicator of a developed health care infrastructure in his criteria.

That's what had surprised him.  What surprised me was getting an email that very evening, from someone 8.8 months pregnant, requesting a guest room.  It was just that her original plans had not panned out and finding another place was a long slog.  She's stayed here before, a stalwart of our FNB / post-Occupy (OPDX) community.  She's a joyful, kind woman and should be a great mom.

Gnostic Musings

Glenn tromped through the winter wonderland to Blue House today, though with warmer freezing rain, walking became more treacherous.  He and I would later appreciate the dribble of cinders on 38th.  We weren't the only pedestrians taking to the middle of the street.  Besides, trees were dropping big loads, maybe icicles.  Who wants to be hit by one of those?

We discussed the Gnostic literature, where we overlap some, Glenn being a voracious reader on many topics and me hosting a borrowed collection that's brimming with titles.  I've been sampling, enjoying some memories.  Pico della Mirandola and Cosimo di Medici -- these were figures I'd encountered before.  I hadn't realized Dame Frances Yates, as some call her, had left us that long ago (1981).  I'd read some Pico (in translation) at Princeton.

Cosimo played a role similar to Jung's later, in getting an early bird look at some ancient documents.  Cosimo's score purported to be the writings of Hermes Trismagistus, though a later critic would denigrate their authenticity as such.  Jung helped curate some of the more recent archeological finds, newly uncovered mostly-Coptic sources.  The hay day of Gnosticism is anchored between two and three hundred years after Jesus.  Mining sources for alternatives to established theologies has been a pass time of the rich and famous (who else could afford the risk or gather the information?).

Going forward, we get to Blake and Swedenborg, and Jung whom I've mentioned.  But also the Transcendentalists, including of the New England variety.  Bucky Fuller's Tetrascroll contains the classic Gnostic inversion of the Genesis story, meaning exaltation of the snake (Naga) as an avatar of Sophia (gnosis), Eve the emissary of a higher Self.  Women tended to have full powers relative to men in Gnostic institutions and this, Glenn and I agreed, is maybe what most roiled the emerging Patriarchy, the self appointed Christian Orthodoxy, i.e. those "highly motivated men" hell bent on putting a stop to the Gnostic heresies.

I've been thinking of how Dee's or Bruno's Monad resonates at the far end of the 20th century with Fuller's Dymaxion or VE.  We're talking about an ordinary cuboctahedron, six square faces and eight triangular ones, which in Fuller's Synergetics became the Vector Equilibrium of volume 20.  He'd call it the VE (the strut pattern was a focus, not looking at a "solid").  That kind of metaphysical symbolism marks Synergetics as a work in the humanities, its tetrahedron a bridge to STEM.  But the literary critics have not been too keen to swallow that magnum opus as a work on their side of the fence.  Getting it listed as Philosophy at Earlham College was an uphill battle and then some.

That raises the question of to what extent Quakers might be latter day Gnostics and such.  These matters may be debated as if an empirical truth could be discovered, but of course "it's complicated" is the real answer.  The mystical Quakerism of Rufus Jones is a close neighbor of New England Transcendentalism, some might saw a pure form of it.  By some transitive law implicating Walt Whitman and Emerson to some extent, we get a continuation of the Gnostic tradition.  But again, that's just storytelling and myth, not set in stone dogma.

:: tetrascroll, limited edition full size ::

Wanderers 2014.2.5

Great introductory talk this morning, taking us into the weird world of a nation-state system in shambles, with the still-cannibalizing LAWCAP writing "trade agreements" (aka "treaties") the populace is not allowed to read, yet which are supposed to be passed at the highest levels in DC -- "fast tracked" most preferably.

We were learning about the Trans Pacific Partnership, another NAFTA-like codec.

"Fast track" powers are currently not in effect yet the Obama execs would love the cut of the pie that they'd get if they could heroically deliver the bacon.

The bacon's avid recipients would be those "private investors", the ones busily suing governments to recoup on might-have-been (speculative) profits.  "You said we couldn't, so now pay us for what we might have had."

It's so easy bullying governments, after having successfully dismantled them in so many ways already.  They have no dignity left it seems, pomp and circumstance notwithstanding.

Some of the representatives in the US Congress who still take their jobs seriously are insisting on doing at least some reading of the LAWCAP edicts.

The Intellectual Property and Environmental chapters were wikileaked awhile back which helped stir the public at least a little (mostly the mass media steers clear of TPP).

As someone at the open source / open data end of the spectrum, I wonder which big pharma company will be first to open source some important drugs voluntarily instead of being seen for all time to be fighting tooth and nail in a knee-jerky LAWCAP manner to be a deliberate bottle neck / choke point versus a healer and benefactor of humanity.

You'd think the branding people would understand "brand loyalty" better.  Isn't the market supposed to be drenched in information?  That's what Pareto Optimality is all about, no?  Transparency?  Shared awareness of costs?

Such a ridiculous spectacle these "corporate persons" provide to the world stage.  So worthy of parody.

Climate Change

When asked about "climate change" I often say I don't trust the English word "climate", which means something like "long term weather".  It's so restrictive.

People "Borgify" the world, such that it shines at night, with a cosmopolis from Boston to DC, to name one of the bigger ones, and as long as CO2 doesn't increase that's considered "no change in climate"?  Yet the world has been anthropogenically terraformed.  The biosphere is super-obviously different.

So I like "Biosphere" better than "Climate" for its meaning and contribution to conceptuality.

Does that make me Russian?  At least it marks me as a GST proponent.

To make something like "global average temperature" the one point of debate is to dumb it down a whole lot.  Lets talk about peak oil?

The Gibbs Phase Rule is the common core topic we should get back to in STEM education.  The 21st century is still shedding.  1900s muck ("dead skin") must be forgiven (or what else might we do with it?).

Anchorman 2 (movie review)

I started my afternoon thinking to watch Bronies, a new documentary about the subculture of mostly males who like My Little Pony cartoons.  But it wouldn't boot in my DVD player.  I watched a Ground Hog Day special feature I'd never seen instead, this DVD being in my permanent collection, then returned the bum DVD for a trade, which I'll review later.

Having returned to Movie Madness a second time, I walked on to Horse Brass, an Olde English Pub style place, and had some yummy beers while reading Willamette Week, about what it's like to work at Voodoo Donuts (well written) and some movie reviews.  One of the reviews persuaded me Anchorman 2 might be worth the price of admission and I was at Lloyd Center faster than you could shake a stick, whatever that means.

I was disoriented for whatever reason and stumbled into two cinemas showing different Disney cartoons (Nut Job and Frozen) before I finally found Cinema 1, as in One.  Anchorman 2 had just started.  The old team was getting together and heading to New York to help GNN take news to the new 24 hour format.  CNN was to some extent the target, but also Fox in that the CEO was "Aussie", but closer to Crocodile Dundee.  Not much like Ted Turner either.  Idiocracy in general is a target... I started to snore (literally) during the later climactic scenes involving Jaws allusions (lots of shark footage).

What the film reminded me to write about, however, is another documentary I saw while down for the count with a lung-related illness: Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie.  Believe it or not, I don't believe I caught a single episode of this talk show, though I did see a few of Oprah's and Donahue's. This documentary chronicles better than most the arc of US television, at least in one of its dimensions. Moral:  don't smoke so many cigarettes, it's not even cool.  Quit completely if you can. The animation, which added a lot, reminded me ever so much of Ralph Bakshi's.  I used to live in Jersey City, which would be your stereotypical source of audience members (that show owed a lot to its audience, its level of participation).  Again, not really on my radar at the time (Universe being non-simultaneous and only partially overlapping).

More Espying

I think in Olde English you still had that E in Espying.  In any case, thanks to my generous science-minded friend Patrick, I have an infrared web cam in my attic, motion activated.

I was hoping to brag to bored listeners about the opossum, i.e. possum, in my attic, but I'm thinking that myth has been veritably exploded by now.  Lowly rats are to blame for all that noise we've been hearing.  Not poltergeists either.

/locationhistory is boring on Google these days as I'm a home body for the most part, managing my medical conditions and getting my work done.  This is about as other end of the spectrum from James Bond as it gets (continuing the spy theme) though I suppose a Le Carré character / Friend could be this puttery, a good cover for something-or-other, and suitably English-seeming (constant gardeners, those Brits).

I'm committed to not killing the rats.  They're being entertainment, talent on TV, and so deserve payment if anything.  On the other hand, they lower my property value so I'm intending to trap and release.  I hope to get to it shortly.

actually these are squirrels -- the rats went away

Chronicling (Captain's Log...)

Yep, that was the drive today, Google already knows.  How?

My Android, coupled with my Gmail account, is allowed to tell Google its cell tower.  The tracing is therefore hand-off to hand-off, more like bee lines than a GPS trail would leave.

Do you have an Android and use the GPS services with authorization to talk to Google Maps?

Check /locationhistory to see if there's data.  Thx to LV.

:: spying on self ::

Cousin Mary's is a place where I often learn things from books I'd maybe not have encountered otherwise.  A treasure trove.

Here were two that I browsed on this latest visit:

:: table top reading ::

Happy New Year!

Connecting Dots

A couple news stories that need connecting:

1. In India, inequities in how people in India get treated as members of diplomatic corps overseas, versus privileges granted foreign visiting ambassadorial staffs, have come under scrutiny.  The issue of "diplomatic immunity" more generally is being raised, to which is connected the culpability of military and/or mercenary units, their liability for damages.  To what extent will the nation-state shielding of yesteryear protect them from scrutiny today?
2. The other story focused on Qatar and was about indentured servant employes who came as migrant workers at the mercy of some construction company (we're looking ahead to some Olympics).  One question is at what points in the agreement if any, during orientation, may a servant raise an exception and bail?  Another question would be to what extent new families are allowed to form under the watch of these companies.  Pretty soon we're talking Pharaoh and the prison / slave class Hebrews.

I suppose what connects these stories is the common backdrop of human rights, and should the rights of humans pass a lot of symmetry tests we might call "fairness criteria"?  To what level do we tolerate curtailment of freedom and allow instead "compensation" in the form of clams, silver dollars, or other desirabilia.

Schools come under scrutiny, as well as sometimes work to call others to account.  Their faculties may or may not assess the worth of other schools -- many do, just as companies do -- and publish their findings.  We're in an era when a great amount of shared information is having an equalizing effect, in the sense of erasing caste differences.

Pi Lab

The owner of The Open Bastion is outside the US jurisdiction at this time, in the UK, but his trusted co-workers had plenty to do, thanks to the generosity of both Holdenweb and the Wolfram Corporation, in particular the latter's decision to port the wolfram-engine and mathematica to the Raspberry Pi, a cigarette case sized computer that costs even less than the XO (One Laptop per Child) but, to be fair, comes minus peripherals, meaning keyboard, mouse and monitor.  It's ready for all them though.

Steve was lavish in terms of banking on these gizmos and outfitted four workstations complete with LCDs for the HDMI output, said mouse and keyboard, plenty of SD cards, network cables to the router.  Trevor, the Pi Chief, let us in with his key.  He'd been busy assembling quite a number of images (operating system + filesystem) using NOOB.  This boot loader gets in front of the boot process and offers a choice of images.  Tara and I started trying them out while Trevor showcased a latest favorite, which looked a lot like a hotel guest room TV, offering a menu of options.  More TV than computer -- a change in flavor.

For our purposes though, on the wolfram-engine project, the wheezy image proved sufficient, and after I finally remembered to plug in the network cable, sudo apt-get install... worked like a charm for both products (mathematica included).

I've heard rumors about the GPU being locked up on the Pi board i.e. maybe it's not being fully utilized, but I don't have that story.  Mathematica runs, but if you burden it with lots of graphics, you'll find it runs slowly.  But remember:  what it's doing are things no scientific calculator is offering at this price point.  Unless you count all the peripherals, but those tend to be needed anyway.  People need a big screen, even students.  I'm just wondering what advantages the UK will reap if it really goes in this direction.  I doubt the US will attempt it, except in pockets as always.  Each zip code is its own microcosm, like a fractal.  Those that march to the same drummer tend to lose out.

Patrick joined the fun mid-process.  He's been practicing with Amazon instances in the cloud, a different department one might say, plus he's working the same queue as I am re Python / OST.  Having a Pi Lab so close to my office is a big help in my work, as I'm able to appreciate more of the STEM education conversation, and not only in the US and UK, but in other parts of the world looking into the same crystal ball and trying to discern their cyber-futures.

We had a great solstice potluck at Wanderers this evening @ Linus Pauling House.  Lots of exotic characters (I'm happy to be counted among them), with Tara joining too, but feeling a need to supervise the pet situation, with a poodle joining the Blue House cast.  The basement crew is in "away team" mode.

For further reading on MathFuture:  Traditional HS math vs CS

Twelve Years of Slavery (movie review)

I arrived at the movie theater directly from a comfortable winter Norman Rockwell family scene, with tree decorating and a crackling fire.  Definitely "the North".

Other critics aren't saying this so let me be original:  the two guys who entice our hero to Washington, DC are a lot like the two tempters in Pinocchio.  And Pinocchio is in turn related to the Biblical story of Jonah in some ways.  Certainly this guy loses everything, enters a living nightmare in the belly of "the South".

The film fit well into my own studies, of pro-slavery Christianity and divisions among Quakers, stereotypically working the Underground Railroad, but in actuality on the fence as established Meetings and not wanting to be seen as contravening (subverting the authority of) said Washington, DC, the nation's "capital" (cite Hunger Games).

The former overseer, down on his luck and paying off his debt by selling himself into servitude, is an interesting character, not just because he betrays our hero.  He's the guy Quakers are afraid will scare away black people.  Friends of my persuasion have an Oversight Committee and there's a stir amongst us to abolish said committee in favor of some more pastoral-sounding, less hard-edged committee.  That way none of us have to wear the label of overseer, which, after a movie like this, would seem at best an embarrassment and at worst an admission of a serious crime against humanity.

I'm against our brand of Quakers losing its edginess and instead recommend continuing to hack away at those ropes that bind us to the so-called "mother ship" of Christianity.  If it's a game of distancing from a specific terminology, then let's speak of Christians without so much of that "we" flavor.  Those Christians sure knew how to throw a dance party, we could say of the slaver couple, a not so happily married twosome.

At the New Thought Interfaith Panel, my mom, representing Quakers, got her own slot, along with Baha'i, Hindu, Scientologist and Essene (Islam, Jewish, Atheist etc.).  That seemed a positive step.

We may still embrace the Bible and of course Jesus himself, our friend and rabbi forever, without pledging allegiance to that twisted snake basket of belief systems unified by Emperor Constantine to consolidate control over his empire. Quakers already do not recite the Nicene Creed, a sure sign of heresy.  Why not officially leave the fold, at least among certain Meetings.

Christianity is deeply flawed and perhaps unsalvageable, as we see in this movie.  Or maybe it will heal from its horrible past.  Either way, Quakers need not tie their karma (fate) so tightly to this albatross.  We have a direct relationship with our principals and need not identify with these mostly priestly outward forms of the church-going, even if we affiliate and coalition with. 

I'd rather distance Quakerism from Christianity as a whole than hack away at our own internals and gut ourselves of Oversight.  We need not be ashamed of having overseers or admit cosmic guilt for attempting to practice responsible self super-vision.  It's all about how we spin it (overseeing).

Back to the film, I enjoyed Brad Pitt's part.  He's the modern voice in the film, speaking the mind of the audience which has been witnessing all this in horror.  "You must not be from around these parts" says our hero (in paraphrase).  "You're right, I'm from Canada" says Brad.  I almost laughed out loud, because Canada is even still sounding and acting smarter than Washington, DC ever could or did.  What a zoo, that city of pseudo-roman and modern architectures.

The bad guy slaver and the director have worked together before I've learned.

I respect the bad people in this movie for really doing a good job of acting.  They condemn one another in Biblical terms in ways that sound authentic, which is why I would never give up on the Bible as a source of soap operas, meta-stories, polemics and invective.

The Bible, a great storybook, is not the enemy.  Christianity, on the other hand, may deserve to be treated that way from time to time (with tough love). 

Look at Christians today and their two-faced support of nuclear weapons only for themselves and their friends.  Sound familiar?  How many Christians actually support abolishing nuclear weapons?  We should run more polls.

Out of the Furnace (movie review)

This was a case where I was at a cineplex in a time slot, quickly scanning summaries to find something starting within 15-30 minutes.  That narrowed my options considerably.  I went with Out of the Furnace because of the big names, like Christian Bale and Willem DaFoe (I consider myself a fan of both).

Christian plays the antithesis of the American Psycho guy.  He cares little for appearance (except he's handsome) and is not proud or loud.  He's pretty much your Bruce Springsteen all American, somewhere close to New Jersey.  But by now that's so retro / ethnic is to make it like National Geographic and Bridges of Madison County.

It's not that kind of love story (Bridges...) though, it's grim and violent.  There's the more twisted younger brother, the one who ends up in Iraq, tour after tour and gets more and more bent out of shape.  He's explosive and that sets it off in others.  The world is too dangerous for the likes of young Rodney, who has already paid too high a price.

Given I'm an older man now, I practiced projecting on the old guy side kick as my avatar in the ring.  You know how when you go to movies you pick a person...  I shouldn't say that as if novels weren't offering the same thing.  Any fiction.  Any history as a subset of fiction.  Fact is the fiction most agreed upon?  I ramble.

The bad guy in this movie has aroused our ire right from the opening scene, where he behaves like an out of control bully.  One wishes for Bruce Lee to jump out of the big screen and deal with him right then and there, but this is not a martial arts film.

Object Oriented Thinking

I was hanging with Deke (@dekebridges of Twitterverse) the other day.  You don't get 50K followers or whatever it is by being a bot.  Deke is a Penrosian Node in a non-computable space, a neural net given over to meme filtering, amplification, and propagation.  He's an instrument of the Zeitgeist.

I'll call him Lawn Mower Man for short (just kidding, insider allusion).

The thing about Deke is he likes Wendy's and one in particular.  He's brand loyal, to this instance (the special case), and to the class or template, the species.  This is Python talk, the computer language, just like Java jive at this level (Smalltalk, C# or whatever).

There's the pie-in-the-sky Platonic Wendy's in a Platonic strip mall (which need have nothing to do with stripping or strip bars, no need for see-no-evil monkeys to avert their eyes), and then there's the actual brick and mortar on-the-ground site-specific Wendy's, which typifies the ideal in an actual instance.

It's a Wendy's with a self, to continue the Python talk.  And it's not just a mindless affiliation in Deke's case.  He sincerely likes the chili f'rinstance.

Anyway, as we were driving around he suggested we might stop at Wendy's.  I said "I'm a Taoist, I don't fight the Way, when with Deke, go to Wendy's" and we did.

Deke just called.  Gotta go.

ISEPP Kick Off: 2013-2014

Terry picked a great speaker to kick off the lecture season this year.   Eric Drexler is a clear thinker who really helped get the ball rolling on nanotechnology.  Skip Rung, ONAMI director, gave the intro for obvious reasons.

Drexler was very aware and conscious of this being a Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture.  Not all of our speakers take that so much to heart, and they're not required to, but it so happens that "nanotechnology" was greatly aided and abetted as a field by the work of Linus Pauling.  Eric tried to convey how some people become so important and pervasive in their influence that you don't directly name them anymore.  Speaking of which, I think he managed to not say "fullerene" the whole lecture, though nano-tubes and graphene were key themes.  We don't have to cite Newton every time we use the word Gravity either.

What happened to nanotechnology is that the term became highly politicized, such that Eric has to do extra work up front to carve out the space that most interests him:  the space of building very tiny nano machines, like with gears.  These would work together in nano-factories to produce nano objects by the billions.  This kind of thing already happens in the electronics industry.

We're already surrounded by nano-devices and maybe don't call them that.

The future is bright, in terms of "more with less" continuing to mean something.  It twas a "Dymaxion Evening" with "dymaxion" being Fuller's coin for the "more with less" concept.

Eric's chart about exploratory engineering reminded me a lot about my GST "limits of language" poster.  He colors in a "forbidden zone" where realistic science fiction cannot tread, more the realm of fantasy.

However even within the "allowed zone" one might boost living standards to a point where the "war no more" people had a winning hand.

Silent Running

The above screencast, by David Koski, was meant to have sound.

He narrated over the phone what was going on.

I thought I could keep it in my head, but the zig-zag pattern of three tetrahedrons in the frustum is frustrating to memorize.

Start with ye regular old tetrahedron then move a face outward from its opposite vertex to make the edges phi (1.618...) times what they were.

The three zig zag tetrahedrons inside are now 1/phi, 1, phi in ratio, where 1 = the volume of the original tetrahedron.

You may generalize this result to non-regular tetrahedrons.

Related reading:
Constructing the Desert Tetrahedron (Dec, 2013)
Multiplying Desert Tetrahedron by PHI (Dec, 2013)