Blogging from PDX

I'm hanging out in a mostly empty Portland International Airport (PDX).

The cleanup guy is excited about the Blazers, especially this new guy from Spain, also says the weather will be good tomorrow, like 85 Fahrenheit.

This is a good airport for Fuller School MVPs to fly into, given the dramatic use of tension to suspend walkways from a curvacious IVM-like canopy.

I'm sipping a Wendy's Frosty [tm], enjoying the free wifi, revisiting this IAM site and reading about 7 Hills Ranch.

And speaking of presidential politics (below), I found lots of interest in this NYT article about McCain, Abramoff, and Indian gaming.

Debate Night

This event sparked a lot of interest in our household, although ultimately a football game at Franklin High took the teens' attention away.

I watched it all, with a few trips to the kitchen (no beer though -- although off my year long beer fast, I don't drink it all by my lonesome, keeps me trim).

My thanks to Glenn for the Eddie Bauer jacket with removable liner, which I wore to lunch with Dave Fabik today, in Old Town again. I got a $40 ticket because I forgot to take Razz through DEQ in time. Tomorrow would be a good opportunity to do that.

Telecommuting

A fun aspect of using VPN and such to access the work site, is your water cooler crowd might be a bunch of Quakers, like on Quaker-P.

Then it's "back to work" in some cube farm in a basement bunker some place, with people in tighter fitting clothing -- Qs tend to go for baggier looks these days.

But then I'm just imagining the clothing, as I'm not talking about Second Life or any fancy avatar interface in this context.

Mostly it's just chatter, like what you hear on the radio, all the action imagined.

But then I have a policy of working with clients I'm also able to meet on occasion, so when I imagine the facilities or water cooler in question, it's more than just guesswork.

My congratulations to the crew of Shenzhou 7 on attaining orbit.

Please Sir...

My title is an allusion to the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, also made into movies, and featuring grovelly (as in subservient) underclass boys and men begging for a wee bit more bread from the nasty authorities.

Cleveland High School isn't like that. The authorities are kind enough and the students are respected. But in terms of infrastructure, one can see Merry Old England under the hood: one jump rope for ten kids, calculators unused because of no budget for batteries, a general sense of going nowhere, a stale environment. This is the world of Major Barbara & Co., still going strong these hundred plus years later.

You'd think we wouldn't leave our pipeline to languish, given our need for skilled, high tech workers in ToonTown. That's where Saturday Academy comes in, other supplemental institutions with a charter for change. It's all about finding alternate routes, in addition to the well trafficked.

Of course a better outcome would be Cleveland attracts new sponsors in the business community anxious to do a more inspiring job of product placement than the vending machine crowd, which boasts of its inappropriate offerings, very "nose picking in public" these soft drink peddlers, but then that's Dickens for ya, full of colorful, twisted characters.

:: product placements ::

Multnomah Teens

Andy Cross & Co. are launching a new cycle of kid friendly programming under the aegis of Multnomah Monthly Meeting.

Jimmy led an away team to Movie Madness, where our krew snagged Batman Begins. I provided hospitality and some large cheese pizzas from Rovente on Hawthorne.

Tara showed off Spore, downloaded yesterday, to curious onlookers.

:: spore ::

A fun time was had by all.

Other Quaker business: I signed up as a friend of John Woolman College today, looks interesting.

Also I felt like quite the Quaker animist at the Wanderers Fall Retreat this year, lollygagging on the lawn with Murphy and Sophie, a couple of kooky canines, while the adult humans discussed heady matters in their lodge.

Joe's lecture on wood-working and the Tao was well crafted, including a power tools demo with a slab.

Terry wrestled with his latest ghosts, looking at themes in economics.

Formative Meetings

As I was sharing on a Quaker list this morning, I'm interested in Quaker meetings for business and worship that design themselves around open source and social networking tools, a marriage made in heaven if done right.

Qs have a long tradition of journaling, which today might mean blogging (as I'm doing here), but that's on the more individual level.

At the meeting level, the recording clerk distills the essence of a business meeting into minutes, and these become available to others concerned with the work of a meeting.

The shared meeting archive becomes a useful repository for historical information, such that newcomers needn't feel completely reliant on the selective memory of elders, oral histories etc., although these records may also be relevant.

Not every detail becomes public and transparency doesn't mean a complete lack of privacy.

Finding the right mix of secrecy and democracy is a topic many writers have tackled, especially in the business management section of your local bookstore, but also in the neighboring religious traditions, as religious institutions are businesses too i.e. serve economic functions.

I look forward to learning more from these and other sources.

Outsourcing Mania

As a long time business customer of my bank, I was somewhat perturbed to get a call from a non-bank entity, per caller ID, asking for my routing number, claiming I owed fines I couldn't find through my on-line window into my accounts.

This all seemed rather suspicious. When I called back to confirm, the receptionist just told me to "have a nice day" although she did answer the phone "U.S. Bank".

I took the matter to my local U.S. Bank representative on Belmont & Main, who assured me, after poking around in my accounts, that everything was in order and no, they'd never farm out to a 3rd party collections agency so sloppily.

Later he called me back: in fact my bank is sloppy, and I do owe the fines, which I paid there and then over the phone. They do outsource to collections, even in less than 90 days.

Live and learn.

Another Mad Cover

:: Mad Magazine cover, September 2008 ::

I'm mostly a lurker in this meeting, which involves modeling the issue of class size reduction (CSR) in Oregon, a focus of The Chalkboard Project, which is providing a real world example for testing working code, a Google appengine with an object model.

A semi-structured approach mixes SQL style thinking with a more XML based approach, as evidence and opinions are more subject to tagging, like on Delicious. Buzz crawlers take advantage of consistent tagging without requiring the grid-iron lockstep approach of only-tabular data, ala SQL. Both approaches have their upsides and downsides.

How does one extract implementable programming from position statements? Not every discussion yields practical, actionable minutes, as Quakers might put it. Sometimes "action minutes" even get flagged as such. A democracy engine might borrow this infrastructure, helping users refine their discussions in the direction of actual, executable programs (working code, implementable policies).

I'm learning a lot from Scott (ECF project lead for Eclipse) about Google's new GWT: develop an AJAX or more static GUI in Java using these various widget libraries, then generate the corresponding JavaScript for embedding in the client browser, no Java required. Use this as a front end to a Pythonic Google appengine maybe. What a concept! DemocracyLab is quite forward thinking in using these tools.

Although I did hit the gym last night, appreciate the new personal DVD equipped machines for "pedalphiles" (also iPod ready) that doesn't justify the maple bar I ate, while waiting for this DemocracyLab meeting to start.

I've got that latest Mad for political content, a good balance for my unrelentingly technical diet around GnuMath teaching these days. I've been collecting these covers lately (search my blogs?).

Mutant Aliens (movie review)

A wronged astronaut, Earl, breeds and trains mutant aliens to avenge his suffering. Not everything goes according to plan, his daughter Josie, her boyfriend Darby, also getting in on the act.

A spoof of space invader films, other genres, a Bill Plympton cartoon, verging on horror, except funny (and obscene), not least because of the brilliant sound track.

There's a "body parts" planet, noses versus fingers mostly, although this turns out to be a clever cover story designed to win the trust of the evil Dr. Frubar.

Be sure to catch The Plympton Diaries on the same DVD, a week to week documentary about the making of this film, in some ways a tribute to the animals who've been wronged as a part of the space program.

Wanderer Don used to take swimming lessons with Bill and his older sister Sally, back when they were all kids.

Business Trip

Given the high cost of fuel these days, I try to kill as many birds with one stone as possible, an English expression for which I solicit less violent equivalents, as our "Quaker saint" John Woolman was quite devastated by a certain bird killing episode in which he participated, and I try to honor his well-meaning intentions.

The mission started with another visit to Mt. Hood Kiwanis camp, which endured a severe winter this year, perhaps the worst in 30 years, leaving quite a bit of destruction, not to mention wounded psyches (we talked at some length with one of the traumatized).

We hope the new bridge is in place by October, although cars do have a way around, if not (we'll need to provide some relevant signage in that case).

Next stop: Kah-Nee-Tah, a Warm Springs tribal facility helping the three tribes in this area recover from forced relocation, and from a kind of ethnic cleansing that leaves people and structures standing, but wipes out languages and traditions (by design, as a policy).

Even the Bureau of Indian Affairs, originally a War Department entity, saw the folly of its ways eventually, realizes now that the indigenous heritage of North America is one of its greatest assets, and not just because of all the new wealth coming in thanks to international tourists looking for the real deal, although that's certainly part of it.

My final check-in is with family in Unity circles, Teri's church in Bend, where people know a lot about audiotaping a Sunday sermon for the archives. As a Quaker, I could use some new skills in this area, in addition to what I've learned using Youtube.

One of the first Unity ministers, now retired, is living here, in her 90s. This morning we visited some Gothic Christian web sites I've been exploring in connection with my American Transcendentalist studies. She found these "very interesting" which I expect is what many Goths would say about Unity.

Wanderers 2008.9.2

:: Linda Richards ::

Linda Richards is our guest this evening, a grad student at OSU. She's telling us about the two operational nuclear plants in Oregon, one at Reed College, the other at OSU. Followup: both are 1.1 KW capable and 40 years old, Mark 1 and Mark 2 TRIGA models by General Atomics respectively, with OSU's designed for 3.2GW pulse operation (thanks Keith).

Her research started with the question: what did Linus Pauling think of this reactor, when it was going in? She hasn't yet discovered the answer to that question, but in the meantime her studies have branched out to many related questions.

Linus was still alive during the Three Mile Island incident, was in Hawaii when it happened, getting some award. He spoke to his concerns about nuclear power at that time.

This is kind of a family event in that we're talking about the Paulings in his boyhood home on Hawthorne (age 11 - 14?), plus I have my own family here, Carol (my mom) and Tara (my younger daughter).

Linda is reading from No More War!, first published in 1958. Writing for a re-edition 25 years ago he wrote: "I hope that when the year 2008 arrives... the world will have survived and that the human race will still be here, although I will probably no longer be living, and I will no longer need to republish the book... because world peace will have been achieved." I paraphrased at the end there, as I'm taking notes live.

Now she's talking about Doug Strain's recollections of 1941, the National Guard's operation on the Cal Tech campus in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Linus questioned the registrar's authority to convene this meeting for hate speech, pointing out that Cal Tech was known for being an institution dedicated to reason and considered debate. The students applauded his boldness and views. Many thought he earned his Peace Prize right then and there.

He debates Edward Teller live on TV at some point, taking notes during the face-off, saving remarks for future archivists (Linda is passing copies of these hand written notes around now).

This was a really good presentation, well attended and video taped by Terry. Linda is a lively and thoughtful person with a very active mind, a natural Wanderer in my view. The Paulings are lucky to have such a qualified student digging around in their extensive collection. The Linus Pauling blog is definitely worth a visit.

Wanderers expressed their wish for Linda to give another presentation down the road, more specifically about Ava this time. She sounded quite willing to give it a go. Don set up an appointment between herself and Doug Strain for tomorrow morning.

:: Linus Pauling, age 7 ::

A Paved Over Past

I was watching Laura McKenzie's travel show on a CBS affiliate yesterday, an episode on Angkor Wat with its seven headed Naga sculptures, and on Vietnam, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh cities especially.

What was interesting was how little of America's wartime experience was alluded to e.g. Laura likes Saigon because it's "more western" i.e. French colonial -- no mention of USA colonial.

A younger person viewing the show might get no clue there had even been a war recently, although in fairness I was walking in and out of the living room, might have missed the newsreels and war footage (CBS has a lot in the archives).

But this was about attracting tourism, not teaching a lot of recent history, so I doubt much was shown even when my back was turned. Plus the badly misled Americans lost this one, a downer for some viewers, doesn't get them in the mood to think about tourism.

Turning to voting machines, I see a lot of the same ahistorical USA Today style "tourism journalism" i.e. let's not stir up trouble with too much realism or recent history. Lets fall back on that dream of free and fair elections we learned about in civics class (do we still teach civics in public schools, or was that abandoned for lack of courage?).

A sign of growing viewer maturity would be more shows that dig up what we know about voter fraud through the ages, including in America. These shows could start way further back, not dwell on Florida or Ohio or any recent elections at first, just start moving in that direction.

Let people in on more of the inside story, about how their government really works, or doesn't.

Like, we hear a lot about voter fraud in principle, but not much about the nitty-gritty. Where's the Discovery Channel show called Elections I wonder? The focus could be outside the USA as well, as experiments with democracy aren't confined to North America.

Conspirators of Pleasure (movie review)

This is one of those avant-garde Czechoslovakian classics you won't get to see unless you live near one of those hard to find video places, or have superb dial-up access of the type hardly anyone has (yet). It's right up there with The Holy Mountain on the weird scale.

It won't really spoil it to say the animation is sparse, mostly live action, with each of the characters in a solipsistic pursuit of pleasure, but in ways that actually depend on, leverage, one another's complicity, i.e. they're all in this together, and it looks like hard work.

For example, one of the guys is in love with this news anchor, and the timing of their affair is apropos each of them, apparently broadcast for the world to see (in her case), but each is quasi-alone.

She's got this foot fetish involving fish fed with bread balls, which have been pre-filled with dreams by the delivery woman, who knows the guy with the chicken fixation, umbrella wings sewn in the scary lady's apartment across the hall and so on (I'm leaving out some of the key puzzle pieces, so as not to spoil it for you).

The viewer / voyeur does not stay unimplicated, i.e. if you enjoy movies like this, you'll probably fit right in, as in "welcome to Czeckoslovakia!".

Mathphobia

Re: Managing Emotions in the Math Classroom
Posted: Aug 27, 2008 10:36 AM

> Mathphobia is a matter of feelings. Has anyone talked
> with their math students in the classroom about their
> feelings for math and continued the discussions with
> lessons or exercises that help the students be
> realistic in their emotional response to math?

Re: Mathphobia

I agree feelings come into it, but there's also an intellectual component behind the repulsion I think we should take seriously. Lots of psychology going on, in that here's an inter-generational setting with some wisdom of the ages being transmitted, and it's kind of dull and not beautiful, how could that be? Why is geometry especially so godawful bereft of gorgeous visuals etc? Why are we so far away from the arts? Where's the stuff about music, which if you've looked into it at all, is highly mathematical, all about ratios, not talking about Mozart Effect or listening to Bach to get smart, talking about restoring some integrity to the culture, instead of feeding it out as ground beef, fast food.

Unless other teachers in other classrooms make a special point of some "phobia" then I think dwelling on this in math is merely digging a deeper hole, like how Condi put it -- gotta stop digging. Math teachers just make it worse by making student resistance into some form of mental condition. They should be looking at the content of their discipline with an eye towards radical reform i.e. the last thing on earth Haim wants us to really talk about.

Kirby

PS: so what's your trick for embedding little emoticons that show up via the web interface to this archive? I've never seen that done before on this particular list (sort of makes my point no? -- a math list with no pix should be an oxymoron of sorts).

Escaping Light Pollution

Our city-bound math and/or geography students might well register skepticism as to the relevance of studying Celestia or Stellarium, both open source projects, as what's the likelihood of ever seeing the stars? In a big city, you don't see them, nor is the school system offering to bus you to anywhere that you might.

Portland Public is a little different in having a week-long Outdoor School for elementary school kids, although there's no assurance these few nights away from the city will include a stellar vista, given how clouded over this region gets, at all times of the year.

Escaping the city limits remains more a family responsibility i.e. the classroom-bound teacher assumes students will get to see real stars at some point, and not just on the concave inner surface of the OMSI planetarium.

Heading out the Gorge during summer break, checking out Multnomah Falls, the fish hatcheries and dams, Sam Hill's Maryhill and Stonehenge, Crown Point, remain popular ventures, but then one needs to stay out late enough to see the Milky Way, perhaps from a stern-wheeler in the Columbia.

The elite academies I'm envisioning would provide plenty of stargazing opportunities, because situated sufficiently far from Greater Portland to make that feasible. I call them "elite" because of the opportunities they offer, thanks to their innovative design, committed staff, and students motivated to share generously with peers.

Portland's open source philosophy both informs and sustains our curriculum on many levels, such that surrounding communities benefit, and participate in keeping a given school localized and steeped in regional lore, much of it tracing back to times before Lewis & Clark or the Oregon Trail, into the dim reaches of geological time. Affiliations with tribal councils and interpretive museums will suggest plenty of work-study and skill building scenarios, sometimes involving canoes.

The Dalles area is a candidate location, as are high desert locations closer to Bend. Making a resort ranch work economically, by turning it into a part time school or training center (or "boot camp" if you will), is not just my idea. Those horses need some interesting work, trails to follow and such (means crews, people wanting to tend horses).

Those public charters and/or private academies wishing to federate might share data in common. My latest set of schemas for serving up Polyhedra include a Vectors table with points of interest A-Z. Rhombic dodecahedra anyone?

Learning the SQL needed to create, populate, and selectively withdraw from such data banks would be a mostly indoors activity, although consulting said info through web services would routinely occur in the field, sometimes through special hand-held devices, connected by wifi back to the basement rack space.

Spatial geometry and vectors lead us to field work in many disciplines, including civilian rocketry, as we map our terrain, take inventory of flora and fauna, monitor atmospheric conditions and so on. Students gain a first person appreciation for the real physical forces involved, don't just squeak by with white board abstractions.

Sustainability Guy

Jeffry Goebel regaled us with three stories in chronological sequence, from his impressive consulting career:

• turning a dying resort ranch in Hawaii into a profitable enterprise, solving labor disputes;
• working with the Confederated Tribes of Colville on implementing a shared holistic goal;
• improving crop yields by 78% in a part of Mali, West Africa, without using expensive chemical fertilizers, also helping end a pattern of violent conflict

The theme in each case was sustainability. Jeff has a strong sense of energy-based economics, understands agriculture as packaging energy, getting market conversion to cover production costs and then some.

He came prepared with hand-outs and 3x5 cards, as he had some questions for us, wanted answers in writing.

One question he asked was what we thought about his presentation and what we learned from it. Wanderers were both admiring and somewhat frustrated in not having a bigger window, more insights into his techniques.

I could see right away he's good at taking fear out of the equations. He makes it easy for people to identify and unify around a holistic goal, then work as a team, overcoming self-limiting beliefs in many cases.

Keith asked if he used the same vocabulary with each group (good question). No, like the tribal groups translated their goal-making process into their own favorite symbols. Recovering lost heritage was at the core of their plan, as culture itself is what they strove to sustain.

Like many management theorists and practitioners I've met, Jeff has his mix of metaphysical diagrams, a logical structure, ways of mirroring collaborative processes. I was reminded of some of the eXtreme Programming (XP) and Alternatives to Violence (AVP) trainings I've attended.

You might think one could just bottle and sell the theory part, and more scenarios would become sustainable as a result, as tools for effective collaboration spread outward.

However a lot of the results stem from experience and integrity, less easily bottled, the courage to teach 1000 head of cattle to respond to a whistle, surrounded by skeptical cowboys wondering what a guy in shorts, claiming to be from Dallas of all places, could ever teach them.

Another question was closer to Art Kohn's "what shall I do?" I hope we were helpful.

Good seeing Lynne again, and Milt.

Friendly Technologies

Quakers have been mulling over some of these new networking tools and asking themselves how these might open new opportunities for our spiritual practice.

The Unitarians have been thinking about this too, my thanks to a Friend for passing along this link:

A STEADINESS OF DAYS
A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich
All Souls Unitarian Church
New York City June 1, 2008

Excerpt:

The distinction between traditional blogs and Twitter — between answering the question “What are you thinking?” as opposed to “What are you doing?”—has a theological dimension as well. In traditional terms, religion has usually been understood as a set of beliefs or a body of doctrine, which believers are called upon to accept as true. These beliefs are typically described in an inspired scripture and compiled into an authoritative creed. The liberal tradition in theology, initiated by Frederich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century and clarified by William James in his lectures on religion at the dawn of the 20th century, insists that religion is not mainly a set of beliefs. Rather, religion is first and foremost a way of life.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then the ultimate religious question is not “What are you thinking?” but rather “What are you doing?” If you want to know what we think is important, look at how we spend our time. If you want to know what we value, look at how we spend our money. If you want to know what we believe, look at how we live.

I recognize some of Galen's themes in Karen Armstrong's writing, when she talks about the importance of practice over simply believing stuff. I would add though, that blogs don't have to be about one's opinions, may also be a chronicle of one's doings or whatever. But he's right that bloggers tend to be opinionated, use their blogs to register these opinions (in my case, that means lots of movie reviews for example).

Reviewing a Review

[ originally Message #42826 in Synergeo, dated yesterday, typos fixed, links added ]

So I'm looking back at an American Scientist, Vol 76 #1, Jan / Feb 1988, where this guy Branko Grünbaum, University of Washington, excoriates (disses) Amy Edmondson's A Fuller Explanation.

First, he doesn't like that she uses his "multi-digit designations of chapter and verse", a cheap shot at his and Applewhite's bothering to provide a convenient referencing system, common in philosophy since Wittgenstein's Tractatus and before.

But mainly he regurgitates the conventional chatter that Fuller, although "an original... inventor" (token butt kissing) is devoting the later part of his life to "pretentious pop philosophy devoid of any basis or merit". Ahhh, a verdict so soon...

So of course he can't abide Amy's attempt to use the currency of his inner circle, the Birkhäuser name, the academic claptrap of his smug professoriate. He takes the publisher to task, and the editor. Tsk.

The logical fallacy here is begging the question -- of whether Fuller was doing legitimate philosophy with this particular anti-Bucky team rushing to premature judgment, quickly closing the door on further study in academia once he was safely dead and gone.

That plan hasn't worked out though, as Fuller had some real and lasting contributions to make (duh). In retrospect, one might conclude Amy stretched too heroically to make a bridge to a dying culture, but one can't blame her for at least giving it a college try. I admire her gumption.

Grünbaum is right about the triakis icosahedron though, better surface to volume ratio than icosa, because closer to spherical. And yes, we keep doing everything we were doing around spheres, just note that we're happy enough with the physical ones, don't need the "perfect" abstractions really i.e. "approximate" is more our style (copying nature's perfection, not imaginary perfection -- JB and I debated this for quite awhile I recall (the meaning of "perfection", not required we all agree)).

Kirby

More Mathcasting

colliding A & B modules

prepare to be surprised

Note: it's not all that clear what A & B modules are from these videos, but they're sorta fun nonetheless. Remember, practically no one was talking about A & B modules back then. -- Kirby

Back to Basics

I was relieved to hear Danica McKellar, one of our TV-literate "gnu generation" of mathematician, inveighing against the misuse of prosthetic calculating devices in the early grades. The equivalent in computer world is jumping right to a drag and drop development environment without knowing anything about what's happening under the hood, be that SQL, HTML or Visual Basic.

Know-nothing grads of such "house of cards" curricula then get jobs as "programmers" with most employers none the wiser -- until real change happens. Without mastery of the basics, one becomes overly dependent on out-sourced IQ.

This idea of "the future" as some place where people just sit back and push buttons, leaving "real thinking" to nebulous others (high priests?), was all premised on the bankrupt Artificial Intelligence program (remember HAL?). In actual fact, we need thinkers, not robots, and not helpless dweebs who can't multiply their way out of a paper bag.

Of course knowing the times tables eventually becomes second nature, just more reflexes at the end of the day. But the point is you've learned to train your own body and mind (good precedent!), like an athlete does, through hard work and perseverance. Indeed, mental arithmetic could be taught as a subcategory of physical education, a twitch game, using interesting streaming media for feedback -- there's a lot of that already.