Why No Cookies in Math Class?

I suppose that's a catchy enough title. Kids don't want to always re-enter the same passwords on a personal computer, a tedious exercise if you're not worried about spying on yourself.

But a browser typically comes with privacy controls, meaning cookies get blocked by default, meaning it's unlikely you'll be rescued from tedium, unless you know how to tell your browser from which domains cookies'll be OK.

It's up to you, the user, to set these policies.

So we throw kids into this virtual "oval office," surrounded with nifty freedoms, and then don't give 'em a clue. You get to be President Klutzo, some superhero Incredible who can't figure out how to work the netmeeting phone, drive the golf cart or whatever. What a wasted opportunity.

So you'd think math teachers, being the numeracy gurus in our culture, for little kids anyway, our having banned real geeks from actually teaching anything so elementary, except maybe on some exotic satellite channels you may be lucky enough to be getting, would be the ones to share this lore -- about how to allow cookies from Google, for example, but not from some fly by night with only a number, not even a DNS sig.

OK, well maybe the language arts teachers then? Actually that sounds about right, as XML and the DOM signify tree structures, like those old Outlines we used to do, with Roman Numeral major sections, like chapters, broken down into maybe a, b, c each with subsections i, ii, iii and so on, however the notation (this was all before those graphical "bullets" became available). Given language teachers already need to cover XML, why not let 'em handle the cookies part too?

Burden of Dreams (movie review)

This is the movie that goes with Werner Herzog's director's commentary track on Fitzcarraldo.

Werner plays himself as a crazed film maker, willing to risk life and limb (others' as much as his own) to get those special effects only obtainable if you do them for real. Tribal politics play a role, as the presence of indigenous Germans leads many to expect the worst and/or want a piece of the action.

Werner monologues about his existential problems with the Jungle's decadent opulence, plus shows a crazed Kinski losing it with the crew (bonus feature). Also in the bonus features, Werner eats his own shoe, for reasons unrelated to the making of this film.

For those skeptics and cynics who don't think this all really happened as portrayed, check out the clip from the first version (before the restart) featuring Robards and Jagger, as the split personality earlier cast for this role, and filled handsomely by Kinski once the film ran into problems (probably mostly around Werner's ego, though no one ever comes right out and say so on the director's cut).

This "making of" spends a lot more time on the rubber making process, rubber barons, and their love of opera, being so pivotal in the more fictive version.

Standards and Ramparts

So the typical scene is a wall (ramparts) with flags flying behind them. Or if behind, then presumably you're on the other side? Would that be outside or in? On a ball, a triangular walled city is really just an interface between two cities, both with three corners and three edges. Remember, Earth is a ball. Tale of two cities.

Anyway, so on my flag is this MITE, for Minimum Tetrahedron, and some initials RBF. We say minimal because tetrahedral but also because not handed: the right handed and left handed, inside out versions of one another, look the same. Then they fill space with no gaps, in terms of Couplers we might cast it, in our model of the IVM (a kind of holodeck for Scenarios Universe, our "show and tells," partially overlapping, eternally regenerative). Handed modules would be like the As and Bs, which comprise the MITEs but, like the left and right handed Ls in Tetris, can't just stand in for one another as substitutes ("some inside-outing required").

I took Carla and Scott on a mostly driving tour while Dawn underwent alternative therapies today. We left the GPS in the other car (their rental), so driving by feel, I approached Council Crest, only to veer around behind to Scholls Ferry (a road I'd haunted the day before, in service of my alma mater), winding to Hwy 24, into town via Rose Garden (made two passes at Portlandia), back under the cable car on I-5 to Humdinger on Barbur (near Dawn) thence to Grand Central Bakery in Multnomah Village, by way of old haunts (this was Matt's and my early boyhood neighborhood, pre Rome, my Markham Annex now a corporate campus, Piggly Wiggly gone too).

Cool interlude: we parked Razz at the Oregon Zoo lot and rode the Max elevator down to the station, hundreds of feet below through layers of sediment. Set into stone in this station is one vertical core sample, laid horizontally in a tube, with engravings suggestive of the millions of years that have elapsed, over the time of this core deposit's aggregating. Two trains arrived while we inspected the exhibit, one bound for Gresham (to the east) the other for Hillsboro (to the west).

Once Dawn rejoined us (chauffered by Peg), we proceeded to the Chinese Garden, which the three enjoyed, as I took Razz over the Steel for some gas. Scott and Carla fly home tomorrow. She works in an Italian restaurant. Her boy Steve wants to pit for NASCAR and like that (a worthy goal I'd hazard).

Yesterday was OMSI, fruit smoothies.

Control Room Collection

Mercator Projection

So given the name of this blog, which got started looking in on Al Jazeerah's (which has since come a long way), I feel it appropriate to mention others I come across, both fictive and for real.

In the fictive category, I just saw The War of the Worlds (1953 edition) last evening, and noted the huge Mercator they were trying to win their war with.

What I hadn't quite realized about the plot, was the good professors had the right idea, about using some biochemical counter, but succumbed to the generalized panic attack, ending up in church and without any laboratory solution.

While the idea from the pulpit may have been that prayers were what saved them, I think H. G. Wells was inspiring an even deeper faith in our Earth's design: it has an immune system (so best to stay on its good side (we've had some experience...)).

Fuller Projection

Corporate Screencasting

I've been graced with a new VFP 9.0 Professional, completely legit, thanks to connections and UPS Ground, and last night polished off a demo screencast of inhouse academic assets, stuff we use to harvest clinical data for outcomes research, in support of the hospital's teaching functions ("what works for how long" is, after all, critical clinical information).

Meanwhile, on edu-sig, we're on the subject of teaching Python to non-CS majors, people with only a casual need to code, as a part of some humanities major for example.

"Do we share about OOP (our so-called object oriented paradigm) with the tourists?" might be a good way of capturing a key question.

I say that we should, but leveraging recog over recall skills, i.e. we make it look easy, with cartoons and such, without putting lots of pressure on students to cough up or regurgitate, i.e. you don't have to try this at home (but feel free if you want to, not a dangerous activity (though frustrating and tedious at times)).

I still have a high opinion of Visual FoxPro as a development environment by the way. Xbase was never a stupid language (though it may be used stupidly), with its procedural pointers to tabular data, combined with fast relational indexing, exposed in control structures. Best of all, it has an interactive command line (the infamous "dot prompt" in dBase), like Python does.

Then came the OO revolution, with Microsoft buying Fox as a dBase killer, once Borland's plans, to stick with the brand "dBase" (Ashton-Tate's) became clear.

Did the language die an ugly death at Microsoft's hands? No, I don't think so. The product remains an elegant solution in many situations and I'm glad Redmond keeps putting muscle behind it, despite end users going gaga for Microsoft Access (a part of Office no less). VFP wasn't just about using objects from other languages (more the VB model), had its own class defining syntax, more like in "VB#" (i.e. VB .NET).

What's great about xBase is you have this procedural way of stepping through tables and you have embedded SQL.

Sure, I can see why we'd use Oracle, Postgres or MySQL as a back end, but when it comes to creating a usable user interface, I still think the "thick client" has a future.

Making everything work in a browser "just because we can" isn't a deep enough philosophy to persuade me otherwise -- not yet anyway, XUL notwithstanding.

The "Surge"

I haven't seen many journalists linking this verb "surge" to its ironic appearance in the CIA's literature, namely in Lindsay Moran's little book Blowing My Cover (ISBN 0-399-15239-3). I include this quote in my book review (January, 2005):

Ironically, in early 2003, not long after my return from Macedonia, I was "surged" to the Near East (NE) Division in order to help gear up for the invasion of Iraq. During my short tenure in Iraqi Operations, I met one woman who had covered Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program for more than a decade. She admitted to me, unequivocally, that the CIA had no definitive evidence whatsoever that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed WMD, or that Iraq presented anything close to an imminent threat to the United States.

Another CIA analyst, whose opinion I'd solicited about the connection between Al Qa'ida and Iraq, looked at me almost shamefacedly, shrugged, and said "They both have the letter q?" And a colleague who worked in the office covering Iraqi counterproliferation reported to me that her mealy-mouthed pen pusher of a boss had gathered together his minions and announced, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."

Like former CIAer Robert Baer of Syriania fame (haven't seen it yet), Lindsay registers little beyond disrespect for the neocon ideology that resulted in America's biggest blunder. Baer: "I think the neocons have done more damage to the United States’ reputation and foreign policy than anybody since—I don’t know when. They’ve opened Pandora’s box in Iraq." (MotherJones, July 5, 2006).

The sad part was how these wackos, many of them "government insiders" (i.e. nut jobs in many cases), managed to infect the mass media pundits, by riding the post-911 wave of panic and hysteria.

Journalists are easy prey for cynical spin doctors in times of national distress. Let's remember that lesson and not repeat these same mistakes.

I applaud the CIA's decision to move some of its most important (mostly training) facilities far beyond the beltway, in part just to get away from all the corruption and crummy intelligence that goes with living around Washington, DC. Presidents have long sought similar getaway havens, even if only 60 miles away at Camp David. DC just gets too oppressive at times.

Followup (related news stories):
Pre-War Intelligence Acts 'Inappropriate,' U.S. Finds, Feb. 9 (Bloomberg).
Pentagon Watchdog Slams Prewar Intel, Feb. 9 (CBS News).

Synergeo #32395

In my first storyboard, I paid some attention to social service and academic achievement i.e. a design scientist is someone willing to mix it up in the real world, not just push for Ivory Tower credentials, as the latter without the former may be quite meaningless.

However, the main thrust of my storyboard was to find a bridge, starting in the known and moving towards the unknown (assuming a demographic still somewhat unfamiliar with even the basics of Fuller's metaphysics).

I start with the Qyoob (Cube) and use it to establish the 3D-hood of ordinary space. A 3-vector zig-zag on the corresponding simplex also combines these notions of "3" and "spanning basis vectors" but of course when the zig-zag is bent that way, you're thinking "spatial" the whole time, which is more the Synergetics mindset (we don't believe in Flatland per se -- a rickety old Victorian belief system, ala Abbott's scifi by that name).

Over on wittgenstein-dialognet, I'm chatting with philosophers about this namespace thing some more. coxeter.d and fuller.d aren't synonymous. That doesn't mean we put these two scorpions in a bottle and make 'em fight it out. On the contrary, both steam engines and diesel engines create torque from liquid fuels. The goal is to investigate the mechanisms, to reach an understanding of inner workings, not to prove one or the other "can't work" (as if there weren't ample evidence that they both do).

So in moving from coxeter.3d (Euclidean 3dness) to fuller.4d, I'm not trying to "make Coxeter wrong" in any important dimension. Rather, I'm juxtaposing two "ways of looking" with a nomenclature (a namespace) to suit in each case.

I think one of the gross errors in some of the secondary literature to date is this idea that "if Synergetics is right, then XYZ goes out the window". On the contrary, Synergetics is not about pushing any math to the back of the bus. Synergetics isn't going to stay at the back of the bus either though -- that's what academia is still trying to wrap its mind around (slowly, very slowly).

Anyway, I want to get more technical with the Coupler on a second pass, making this the bridge from XYZ thinking to IVM thinking. It's very easy to place 8 MITEs around (0,0,0), one per octant, and to see this as an entry point into IVM style cogitation, wherein two of the Coupler's equators become the "fish lip" rhombics connecting IVM (= CCP) balls, with the K-points as "tongues touching" perhaps.

I've segued from stickworks.py to coupler.py for the benefit of my Pythonic math teacher squadron. They'll be the first on the block to have a VPython view.

http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/stickworks.html

Synergetics Storyboard

:: a short ego trip ::

I propose an order for topics, throwing in side lights along the way. Start with the cube and really talk up its heritage, the genesis of xyz.3D for example, then move on through the MITE and concentric hierarchy to elucidate our alternative ivm.4D-based namespace. However, in dwelling on the lattice (IVM), don't neglect to (a) spin stuff, talk about arcs, circles and spheres and (b) keep a focus on the aperiodic shapes.

Wanderers 2007.1.31

I actually missed most of Bill Sheppard's Wanderers presentation, as Tara and I were accompanying Dawn to the hospital for another scan.

Here's from #1298 in our eGroup:

Bio from Bill:
Born: Yes. Sometime in the last century.
Relatively normal K-12 schooling.
Correspondence course in electronics during senior year of high school.
US navy for 4 years as electronics technician.
BSEE U of Denver, last century.
Worked for a few companies.
Clinical engineer at OHSU.
A year and a half with Project Hope in Grenada (after our glorious invasion).
Was registered professional engineer, State of Oregon.
Nothing else notable.

I've been an admirer of Bill's minimalist factals and stereographic polyhedra, all generated from custom assembler on an old dot matrix printer, written at so low a level Windows can't handle it (but comes close -- might be an issue with video RAM), so he boots into DOS.

Then he has this instrument called Not-a-Theramin, with a very simple circuit wired to two sensors. Gordon Hoffman was by and admired the elegance of Bill's circuit's design, thought he could use it in future Saturday Academy classes.

I'll check with Bill to find out if he'd like to open source these resources and add links here accordingly.

Later, Glenn showed us some of the fine handicrafts he's done, including a handmade letter opener with a tropical wood sheath, an antler handle, and a stingray's stinger for a blade.

Sims

So it's a First Day, Sunday in layspeak, and I'm keeping it holy by goofing off, as our Lord said we should, not working, at least one day a week (the "virtual Sunday" concept -- keeps supermarkets open 24/7/365).

So that was to mean letting Tara install Sims 2 on KTU3, so I could test Camtasia Studio against Sim University. Ah, but Disc 2 has gone missing. In scrounging for it, I found Quake 4.

Given my Quakers Play Quake bumper sticker, I should install that, and show how I suck at playing it (but I do play it, from time to time, mostly just against myself, losing often).

Some of my detractors decry the fact of avowed pacifists indulging in stylized violence of any kind, but the whole point of pacifism is to style how we might wage war nonviolently (they say that's a contradiction, I say it's the Lamb's War (Jihad)).

Nope, Quake 4 is short one disc as well. Some other time then.

I still like Jevetta Steele's rendition of Bagdad Café, from the original soundtrack, the best of all the renditions I've heard.

Python for Math Teachers

Python for Math Teachers: Getting Started from Kirby Urner on Vimeo 
getting started



Python for Math Teachers: Looking Ahead from Kirby Urner on Vimeo  
looking ahead


Python for Math Teachers: Subclassing for Beginners from Kirby Urner on Vimeo 
classes and subclasses
(click here for high resolution version)

[erratum on this 3rd clip, classes and subclasses: parentheses "()" -- not curly braces "{}" -- trigger the Dog constructor __init__, as well as the __call__ method on our callable dog objects]

My blurb in the Math Forum pointing to these shorts. Where to go from here? How about Working with Stickworks? Or maybe read more about __rib__ syntax.

Presidential Races

OK, I'm glad Hillary Clinton is in the running, as that'll give us a chance to refocus on the bombing of Belgrade.

Starting a hot war in the Balkans seemed the height of reckless stupidity to me, but I'm not sure the national security team of that era takes any responsibility for letting that situation get so out of hand.

I ate at lunch at Toney Bento's today, in honor of the Kosovar Relief Effort (Mercy Corps et al, likewise on the front line in Beirut).

With deepest thanks... Mercy Corps

Almost as reckless as another hot war in the Middle East, but I'm not sure George Bush could've stopped it, given Unconscious America, so best to put a bright face on it then. Either way, it's a referendum on war, and political dabblers therein.

And besides, I've already announced my bias against anyone with 109th Congress experience, so I'm not expecting any overtures. I'm glad to see Richardson entering the fray. Governors seem more even keeled to me. Congress has been quite "special" of late (Church Lady allusion).

I noticed the surface of Surface has this geek chic looking guy with some mutant tetrahedrons, a sign of the times. Prepare for another invasion of Beautiful People™.

issue 63

Three Pictures of Dawn

leaving the pagoda, with tara

third window from the right

enjoying some tea

photos from today
by K. Urner
Olympus Stylus 720

Fitzcarraldo (movie review)

A fun way to watch this movie, if of a Buddhist slant, other reincarnation religion, is to see our dashing Fitzgerald as Aguirre reincarnated.

True to karmic form, he's learned a thing or two in the afterlife. For example, he's now much better with women (which isn't saying a whole lot, given where we were in Part One).

Herzog provides this outrageous director's commentary, providing this back story about how the movie had to restart when Jason Robards and/or Jack Nicholson fell ill and/or thought life was too short, and Mick Jagger (Herqueque?), though willing to forego many pleasures, had gigs to get back to.

So it was back to Klaus Kinski, always Werner's top choice, but too inclined to freak out in the Peruvian Jungle (witness Aguirre).

That scene with Fitzgerald going absolutely bats in the belfry, wanting his opera house, rivals the best of Jim Carrey, with or without a mask. And he gets one in the mix, dreams do come true, which is the happy ending... and that this movie got made, yay.

Snow Day!

:: Portlanders enjoy the snow ::

So the day after MLK day (well celebrated in these parts), Portland gets it in the face. At least Tara's in heaven (she loves Portland snows). PPS closed reluctantly, boasting "snow routes" until almost 8 AM.

Last week, we flinched (schools closed), but just got a light dusting. Parents whined, deprived of day care. Last night we put on a brave face, girding for a "dreary commute," but got this winter wonderland instead.

The rest of the country is also making up for lost time, in this Weird Winter of '06-'07.

:: Franklin High School,
Portland, Oregon ::

Intelligence Failure

I noticed on 60 Minutes last night that the president continues to feel a failure of American intelligence is what led USAers to attack Iraq, thinking to pre-empt any use of WMDs against the USA homeland.

I would think he'd be reassured to know that American intelligence was tracking the UN's progress and coming to the same conclusion as the Blix team and Scott Ritter: there were no noteworthy, ongoing WMD programs in Iraq, just some plans and intentions -- much like you'll find in any military organization.

On the other hand, various constituencies in charge of the machinery of government, had no interest in the public discovering that Iraq was defenseless. This information was apparently concealed from the military as well.

So yes, there was a failure, but only in the sense that the machinery of government had fallen into less intelligent hands. That's why Negroponte was brought in, to help address that situation (mission accomplished).

Today, I don't think we'd be that stupid, although a high level of vigilance is always required, to keep our intelligence community smoothly running on rails, not jumping the tracks.

Happy New Year!

:: some belated bubbly ::

The above PKL static JPEG alludes to a recent thread on Synergeo, wherein one John Brawley of Tverse has been drawing our attention to this "dunce cap" model. Notice how the cap's triangles rise a little more steeply than their square underpinnings.

The bubbles are of course an added special effect, from JASC PaintShop in this case. I've tried to capture the gist of our Synergeo discussions, in this mathcast archived at Math Forum, and from the quasi-mythical Iraqi province of Bordûm.

Replying to a poll on KOIN News at Six: I like Beervana (a play on Nirvana) even better than Beertown (or "BeerTown" in geek), but accept both/either as alternate monikers for our Rose and/or Bridge City.

Now we just need a Portland-made beer named Samsara (in Klingon?).

Dawn is doing DreamQuest tonight, at Trinity Cathedral, just like old times. She went with Carolyn dressed to the nines in an Owl Cape, handmade by Phyllis of TBC.

Bumper sticker I saw today, on some Oregonian's car:

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (movie review)

My long term readers know I don't always review movies in chronological sequence (what a silly order to go by for anything, right?), so here I'm meditating on a 1972 classic, filmed in the wilds of the Peruvian Jungle starting not far from the ancient Incan capital of Machu Picchu.

I've watched this a few times before, but not recently, and never with the interview with Werner Herzog, the German and English speaking director (maybe Incan as well?). I fell asleep listening to him, and not because I was bored, but because I'd just come from a lecture on sleep disorders at Wanderers by a Shakespeare quoting practicing psychiatrist (packed house), and I came home of two minds: to watch this movie; and to sleep, perchance to dream.

So Aguirre is this mental case who is out to conquer the region, knowing it's been done in Mexico, that the history books are full of such games of pirate treachery. He's too sly to nakedly seize power, but crowns an underling, who shows backbone, bless his heart, but eats too much. Then we have the two XXs (another XX appears later, and fails, like her husband, to hear the Word of God): the delicate princess in the sedan chair, somewhat reminiscent of Kate in Lost, in terms of situation and regal bearing, if not outward behavior, and Aguirre's daughter, gorgeously solitary in her suffering under this tyrant father, who only wants to do it for her. Very compact and psychological. Plus Mother Nature is all around.

During the sleep disorder lecture, which was about the normal sleep cycle, in contrast to all the pathologies, I was tap tapping on my laptop about this number 6174. If you take any four digit number, zeros OK, but never all four the same, and flip it to maximum and minimum permutations, i.e. 6741 and 1467 (always inverses in that way), and subtract, and keep doing it, eventually you'll end up in this "kernel" (6174). I give more details about all this in the Math Forum.

An interesting feature of this Jungle search party is how little people talk, and when they do, it's not to resolve anything, except when it's in writing and made part of the official record. Mostly they just gaze into their own souls and/or play the flute. Even the horse seems more interior, a ghost horse, than exterior.

I salute Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski (a magnificent Aguirre), for inspiring the confidance and level of participation they got from such a marvelous and intelligent cast. And speaking of movie directors, I caught the NPR interview by Terry Gross of Richard Linklater. Towards the end, Linklater is basically razzing kids who want to grow up and make movies ("the chances of that happening..."), which I imagine grated on Terry's nerves a bit (anyway, did mine), but going back I heard a caring teacher, really spurring young listeners to rise to the occasion and live their dreams.

Don't just be a spectator in this game of life, and always remember: Mother Nature is watching.

My thanks to Mike Hagmeier for reminding me about Aguirre (Fitzcarraldo reenqueued), and to Trevor Blake for steering me to the 6174 discussion, over coffee at Peet's.

Funny Story

Ever preparing to fight the last civil war, the American generals girded themselves. Katrina hit first, which didn't count, because she's Mother Nature, and Mother Nature always wins.

Back on the ground, what happened next surprised people: the West Coast declared war on the East Coast, and the latter capitulated immediately, sparing us any unsightly bloodshed.

And once again, the USA generals were caught unprepared.

The moral of this tale: war is always surprising.

Local Activism

Winterhaven parents are up in arms because the School Board plans to close it down, separating the program from the building, and then moving the program to a strategic location far away from its current one, thereby disrupting many lives, for the sake of the children.

Their idea is that if the program is such a good thing (which all claim that it is), then it deserves to be in a bigger facility, so more kids might join. The idea that the school's relatively small size might have something to do with its success, doesn't bubble up as relevant, even though that's what the students are claiming (who listens to them?).

Nor can they think in terms of spreading a successful program, rather than closing it down to reopen it elsewhere, as that would mean two Winterhavens, which'd confuse everybody. Rather, they must perform a heart transplant, and save one community by killing another.

Something you have to understand about School Board people: they're volunteers with busy lives, surrounded by paid staffers with hidden agendas. There's a lot of wheeling and dealing that goes on. I doubt parents know even the half of it.

Some Winterhaven parents were rather vocal this year, objecting when the military came around with its annual bus 'em to brainwashing "science" briefings ("wow, look at that cool jet fighter"). Most schools just get in line because they're "too poor" to offer such "science" on their own, but Winterhaven, proud of its science, was less compliant.

Could there be an element of retribution in this School Board maneuver i.e. let's show activist parents what happens when they question authority a little too loudly? I'll ask my connections in Salem if they think there's a link.

Follow-up: likely no link, but there're plenty of other reasons to want to kill Winterhaven. On the other hand, parents have gotten wise to the fact that the democratic machinery of government gives them an upper hand. There's a meeting this evening. Stay tuned.