What's a Scripting Language?

You'll hear a lot of confusion in people's voices around this question. In part it's because they'll hear a computer language dismissed as irrelevant, in a kind of snobbish tone, with the words "oh, that's just a scripting language". What the hell does that even mean?

Well, let's try to answer that. There's a kind of janitorial work that's rather rarefied and difficult, and not all that sexy, in terms of people lining up around the block to be sysops or sysadmins, and often it's a "rotate through" position like bar tending (which I've done, though without mixing drinks).

Being a good system administrator takes real skill and my mind darts back to Free Geek and that barefoot guy who liked Python because of its ability to work with files in a traditional Unix-style filesystem, as a workhorse for clawing through logs, setting up user accounts, cleaning out detritus -- whatever needed doing. Perl grew up in this same forest, a close associate of the several shells, Bourne's becoming the standard, awk, sed and all of those.

Some of the public's ignorance stems from not tackling batch file programming in DOS, or even if you did, that was nothing like the state of the art POSIX command line they were getting in college. I've not used VMS, did use CMS on an IBM 360/370, understood about the virtual machine concept, not in terms of a code running engine (ala CLR, bytecode VMs), but in terms of each user having the mental image of being in control of a whole computer, with mountable devices, tapes (where tarballs come from). Computers were all about tapes in the old days, with Turing Machines defined as having infinite tape (how blissful).

Anyway, I think it's the janitorial responsibilities that stamped Perl and Python as "working class" and therefore you get that snobbish tone from an inner sanctum, behind higher walls within the Ivory Tower, where you get these more "theoretical" languages (supposedly), tended to by higher priests with higher degrees of inner circleness, or at least that was the marketing of the day (dial back a ways, you'll find it's all there).

Given this is more about ethnicity than engineering, the category "scripting language" has not withstood the test of time very well. The Perl community has advocated embracing the term, and I think that's worth doing. But the lay public still hasn't understood what it means, so embrace it all you like it's still a big mystery. Now with Python embracing it, things make more sense, as Pythons do that (embrace things), as a species. So even if the computer science gets lost, at least there's something concrete to think about here.

Redmond's Mirth

:: antidepressant ::

:: happy campers ::

:: tip of the hat, from ubuntu ::

Reinventing the Sacred

:: isepp 2009 @ heathman, portland, or, etc. ::

The bus wasn't coming and I wanted a beer. I kept sneaking in to Oasis, getting in line. However the lady in front of me had the most complicated pizza order ever, obviously the high point of her day.

Step out, come back in. Maybe there's beer down the block, start walking to the next bus stop.

Cell call... the dongle for connecting a Mac to the projector is at the Linus Pauling House. I should drop plans to take the 14 and get Razz, high tail it over to said house and grab the supply, take it downtown.

Later: knowing I'll be turning left in front of the Schnitzer, I try to phone in. I should have tried Glenn, didn't know he was part of Kauffman's entourage, but could have guessed. Find parking (Smart Park, entering on 10th).

Fun getting to go backstage, ushered by Mentor Graphics personnel. Gavin had beat me to it with the dongle, which is just as well, as we were but minutes before show time at this point. Terry thanked me just the same.

Leslie, also a Wanderer, had scored a ticket, later joined us for the reception at the Heathman. I drank quite a bit of red wine, ate asparagus and cheese, listened to the conversation, butting in now and then, took some pictures.

We (me 'n Leslie) started at the head table with Mentor Graphics people, but when Stu showed up after generously answering a lot of questions, we switched to a different one, surrendering our seats to Aldona and Allen Taylor.

At this new table, we talked about burying pets, among other topics. Our table mate, a big fan of Charles Dickens, had twelve acres somewhere. She had used a backhoe and forklift to bury a horse (more than one?). The hole was like 20 feet deep (seems excessive). Leslie had lots of problems trying to bury her cat because of shallow sandstone and other animals.

We got on to this subject in part because of Moon Kitty's recent incineration.

Stuart was relaxed and in good spirits throughout the evening. He'd been talking to Terry a lot and wove in some of those themes. He answered more questions from the podium, talking about a dog he knew (Windsor), other topics.

His talk inspired people to open their thinking to new possibilities. That's maybe harder to do than it sounds.

I drove Aldona home (she's also a Wanderer).

Belated happy birthday to my mother, Carol Urner. She flew from LAX to Chicago to Washington DC yesterday, clearly feeling better.

Wanderers 2009.4.22

Jim Buxton is projecting pictures from his recent stay, with partner, in an off-grid XRL, solar and wind powered, in California.

I gave a "rolling thunder" (vs. lightning) talk about my GIS in Action talk, blending in a report from Chicago. I talked through the Flickr set then flipped through the PDF of my OpenOffice Presentation.

David Tver got a lot of value out of his early model programmable calculator, studying chaos, ray tracing, likewise from his Commodore 64. In my case, the HP-65 proved influential (RPN with stack).

Bill Sheppard had a stereogram of a nebula he'd printed. He jokes the images were taken 10K light years apart, to give the right parallax.

I was glad to get Warren and Carter Sande's Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners in the mail yesterday, a book for learning Python, also happy to see my name in the acknowledgments.

Thanks Jimmy, for letting me borrow the lawn mower again. I abused it some, but it proved up to the job.

Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope is in the news today.

School Spirit

Schools develop their own internal lore, as evidenced by those sometimes dusty trophy cabinets, posted research, other wall art. These exhibits betoken the life experiences of the scholars within, proud classes gone by.

Since the invention of the intranet, interconnected by the Internet (some of them), more of this lore might assume digital format. Last year's performances, edited, remixed, go into the hall of fame, perhaps retaining raw footage. Editors treat that issue differently. Version control systems (cvs, svn, bzr, hg) make sense. Python.org is in the process of switching.

Teachers are often known by their students i.e. several stars will pop out of the woodwork in various places, like Doug Strain, a student of Linus Pauling's at Cal Tech. We've met some other students of his, of Feynman's also. As more of a Princeton type guy, I'm somewhat the interloper, but we synergize well, in a kind of east meets west operation.

Take the PSF's interest in fostering outreach to educators for example. If your students start sending their work to our coaches, Vern Ceder for example, then we'll become aware of you as well, as their mentor. That might be OK with you, to have your students discovered. Perhaps you would like to brand yourself even more overtly as a teacher of Python. What might that look like? Perhaps we could help steer you to the right stuff, to our figurative Vaults of Parnassus?

As I was posting to Synergeo recently (#51525), we're fortunate in ToonTown, to be able to source high definition video clips suitable for sharing out through exclusive outlets, such as certain classrooms and/or coffee shops. You didn't see it on the Internet first, you saw it because your teacher has excellent access to some engaging material. The teacher is also trained in taking good advantage of said material, helping maximize the value you get from it. That's what real teaching is all about.

Grunch Net

Network Solutions finally nudged me enough that I reupped on the domain again, this time until 2013. They were having evident problems in the ISP department per posted technical advisories, so I passed on the offer to switch from Qwest as my back end.

If I drop Qwest, I'd probably be dropping the land line as well (remember land lines?), and the fax (5032311045 -- mostly gets stuff about Cancun and Acapulco). As of now, however, I've even got my DirectTV bundled through Qwest, albiet with slashed HBO, Animal Planet (not by choice), still have National Geographic channel. No Geek Channel, Pentagon Channel nor Al Jazeera, no VOA. But that's standard for Lower48 slumdog neighborhoods such as our 97214. Switching to Comcast wouldn't help matters. At least we have Hulu, Netflix and so on (Youtube etc.).

The Grunch website is a literary project, as was the small book for which it was named, R.B. Fuller's Grunch of Giants. I spell out some radical middle politics plus give it a retro flair (sort of Bob like, John Waters, hints of Mad), consistent with Esozone's "Other Tomorrow" aesthetics, i.e. let's imagine had we not kicked the can down the road on the Bucky stuff for so long, we wouldn't be wallowing in high banking fees and closing costs maybe, might even have better health care.

Of course "it's not too late" is the perennial hope. Under the front page veneer, I've got a lot of basic humanities readings, a lot of it in ruins, given it's ancient, but with a link to my blogs, which have remained quite contemporary in flavor. We're a lot of young engineers (including female, in Japan) and design scientists (Bucky's nomenclature), around Portland, around Chicago... everywhere actually (Vilnius, Gothenberg...), so hold on to your hats and let's fly. Yes, we could use some more help. The work isn't easy.

Speaking of hard work, I've put in some more time on the OS Bridge puzzle of harnessing local talent to pull at least a few of our local NGOs into the 21st century. I'm looking at PPUG as one of those talent pools we might recruit from moving forward, along with art schools, graphic design schools i.e. just because you're good at regular expressions doesn't mean you know how to draw airplane seat pocket materials.

We need talent from many walks of life, not just software engineering. Read the post below for more on the User Group concept? You could probably adapt what we're doing for needed upgrades in your area.

PyBiz

I've been getting my feet wet in PSF world a little, thanks to Ian's new user group concepts. Parents like seeing what junior might be doing at summer camp, maybe take a few lessons, maybe volunteer, and the user group is traditionally open, though we're not that used to hosting kids. They'll need guardians. I forget how it worked with BarCamp where Ki Master George sold me a T-shirt that time, still below drinking age.

Of course I'm thinking ahead to the various coffee shop venues, where people might want to give lightning talks on a small stage, flanked by flatscreens, a kind of proto Pycon, more like karaoke, in terms of facing an audience. Open mic around open source? Why not? Already the status quo in thriving geek subcultures.

Show & Tell is a primitive genre, no reason to suddenly end it (like, there it is in elementary school, so where does it go? YouTube to the rescue in some cases).

My input, as non-board, non-executive voter, was simply to circle what I would call "the turf" (that which PSF protects): the website, conferences, user groups, and of course the purity of the code offerings themselves.

It's possible to hack an MD5 check I think (remembering a CRIME meeting at the zoo, HPD's George Heuston officiating), meaning you'll want some other checks as well (Python passes lots of tests, but how do you know which are the right ones).

Historically, I don't think counterfeit Pythons have been much of a problem, but with the success of any open source scripting language, you might get wannabe web sites with non-standard interpreters. At least the labeling needs to be clear. You always want to know: what's in the bottle. The PSF meeting at Pycon resolved to control the branding, in part to guard against precisely this contingency (case studies were mentioned).

To "protect" is also to nurture and grow, to enable to thrive, so I'm glad Vern Ceder is looking into Steve's idea of moving towards ISEF a little (the science fair motif), in terms of opening the floor to champions still in the schools, without employer compensation, yet who might get to exhibit, even if only in absentia, if only the right sponsors could find them.

Publishers need their poster children much as Nike needs star athletes to market sportswear. In saying "publishers" I'm not discounting colleges and universities, some with their own presses, some without. Having a cast is another way to value-add. Having your decals on a player says something about whom you value as an MVP. Brands use this to differentiate, niche market, B2B as much as B2C.

In floating the idea of a televised user group, I'm not seeking to compete with the many Internet venues. TV is still a distinct distribution medium in many ways, with its own set of protocols (PAL, NTSC). Yes, I'm aware of the direct to DVD option.

The point is, once we're able to edit more freely, we don't have to get it all with one take. On the other hand, presenters may not have the luxury of retakes either, so it's still "reality TV" in that sense (cameras get to visit the circus, but then the show must go on regardless, can't always slow down or repeat just because it's being recorded).

Of course Mickey Mouse Club is a model, even though I never watched it much (was out of the country). Everyone seems to know about it, if older than a certain age. Pee Wee Herman was more demented, frenetic, which might "play better in Baghdad" as they say. George (GW) running through with the reputedly rubber turkey was kind of like that -- made for TV, live action. Also "porno press guy" was pretty demented (this source says he had access to that Valarie Plame memo, for shame).

Anyway, Monty Python is the more logical source to turn to in our case, where much of the comedy comes from in the first place. I've offered a few skits, pitched various mathcasts (4D Studios work). I'd like to contribute more to such efforts, and not just around Python. There's all that "Bucky stuff" we're into, feeding out through commercials and so on. Heard of any good Quaker beers lately?

A more family-friendly EduPycon might also materialize (less strictly business), perhaps in a campus setting (like Pacific University's, or like Reed's -- to pick good local examples). A lot depends on how many faculty adopt Python for their schools. She plays well with others, Python does, like with Java and C++. To bring Python in doesn't mean kicking anyone out, unless disk space is really that much of a problem -- it usually isn't these days.

Service Calls

I'm busy slamming Lie to Me, Tara defending. I'm thinking "there's no reality like this" but she insists this is cool. These people with intrusive abilities to just tell us who is lying... what gives them that right? Police power fascism. Not new on TV. Yawn. I diss NUMB3RS as well, as my loyal readers might know.

Earlier, Tara'd had it with our busted remote, meaning no DirecTV in the downstairs. "Let's repurpose the upstairs remote" I said, patching in, "that way the one you're mailing can be for the TV we use less" (in my bedroom).

The guy ends up reading me like 30 codes for any kind of SONY. But we also had it on Video 3 instead of Line 1 -- and the remote is busted (stupid slidey thing, $15 to replace). Tara was also watching Jeopardy earlier.

Mom's cell was presumably lost, so I initiated the temporary suspension feature, but then she found it (way cool!). Again, more secret codes to reactivate, last four digits of my SSN.

A demented videogame for elementary school kids, complete with headphones, sort of stresses the "service call" skill: be polite and friendly, enjoy the experience, and be focused and detail minded, not spacey and diffused. Technical problems take presence of mind.

The PPUG list is buzzing with high level Django jargon, reminding me Leslie phoned, having heard about the electronic medical record initiative. Saving billions of your tax dollars.

Django (an MVC web framework) might be more for PostgreSQL however, a clinical research application. LMRs (legal medical records) might need a more schemaless environment, lots of pilot studies underway don't ya think? Could be good for Javascript too, CouchDB an attractive Apache project.

The ability to go against large test databases of scrambled information, no real PHI in the mix, is the kind of sandbox (testing environment) needed. We faced this at Free Geek on the MMT contract. I've written about the pseudonymizer in the same vein -- creates reams of "false identities" for simulation and/or identity masking purposes.

At Oasis today, it was all about RFID in the gurneys, playing air traffic control with lots of flatscreens, keeping patients from waiting, bottlenecking. Yes, you'll think of Wall*e maybe, can't be helped. Patient transport in hospitals is often on a bed or wheelchair, controlled by an orderly, other health care worker. Should the bracelet contain RFID as well? We're getting into hospital design and architecture here. As a Python guy, I'm more into the data streams than the data harvesting hardware, always pray for a simple enough API.

Knowing Experimentally

You sometimes run across this expression "knowing experimentally" in Quaker literature, and I latch onto it, thinking in part of Guinea Pig B, Bucky Fuller's sometime vision of himself.

I'm Guinea Pig K then; we each get "a self" to test the world with (a philosophical notion). Maybe it's a "virtual self" in some way, or, in the Buddhist sense, it's co-defined by the world. When our sense of the world changes, so too does our sense of self, and vice versa. Wittgenstein's Tractatus is a lot about this.

What puzzles me is when educators object to our planning around FOSS-based and/or "object oriented mathematics" with complaints that it hasn't been tested sufficiently.

There's a chicken-egg problem here, in that you don't get to skip the experimental part. Strong schools encourage trying new approaches, reward initiative, as only by testing new ideas in the field will we gain in experience.

In any subculture that innovates, you need the equivalent of "test pilots", people who'll "boldy go" (as they say on Star Trek). "Guinea pigs R us" in other words.

I've put a fair amount of stress on my Saturday Academy pilots, which you'll find written up in scattered posts within these blogs. Here were my tests, my results. Others could copy. I shared lots of lore, not just technical stuff. I made my source code freely available.

And so, that's a wrap in a lot of ways, one guy doing what one guy might do.

In terms of a circus, setting up a tag team of "gnu math teachers": it's a fun idea and would likely help galvanize our economy to new heights. The goal is to boost enrollment in STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and math.

This isn't at the expense of other subjects so much as a matter of more successfully converging them. Philosophy used to have some responsibility for achieving a good mix.

Sometimes I think the Quaker schools might be up for more experiments of this nature, starting with leadership in some of the flagship colleges. For all I know, that's what a goodly number are trying already.

In the meantime, the existing math track has a lot of problems i.e. we know experimentally that it's broken. But sometimes staring at something broken is more fascinating than coming up with new solutions.

Fighting fatalism is the name of the game.

Positive Developments

:: quinn & nick, paradox cafe, belmont ::

Johnny Stallings, the pro actor who does Shakespeare in state prisons (and at Catlin Gabel), just radioed his pleasure that the USA president plans to take a stand against nuke weapons on Sunday.

My mom will like that too.

I've been using the "launching party" metaphor, timing some post-Pycon "gnu geometry" advertising to coincide with what North Korea is up to, building upon earlier spoofs. I've enjoyed working this thread, which can get pretty twisted.

Tara won a speech and debate round, pretty good for a noob. She's a quarter-finalist.

My thanks to Dave Fabik for the "I'm Blogging This" T-shirt, very apropos, wore it to the gym this evening (and here I am, blogging about it).

Speaking of the gym, I watched Fox on the little screen on my elliptical thingy, found it hilarious. Some guy was ranting about fasces (rhymes with feces) and finding them on the back of the mercury dime. Hey dunderhead what about in the U.S. senate if you just wanna scare people? And hey, talk about kooky: he had John Bolton on for a guest.

The Future of the Image

:: future of the image ::

Whereas Pycon was a boost, I'm still anxious about sluggards in academe needing it handed to 'em on a golden plate, whereas the art colonies have already come through, reproducing the Fuller Syllabus almost verbatim as both museum quality and shovel ready.

So where's the buzz, outside our little OCN / CSN "meme machine" I wonder?

Last night I got an inkling: a recognized art critique played off some French intellectual's futuristic counterpoint, invoking the animist themes familiar in these writings, plus claiming a priority for the graphical over the lexical, while meanwhile cleverly obscuring their distinction.

He knew this was Obama country, so we experienced some shared mirth at the expense of certain neocon bloggists who've only just begun to discover how Shepard Fairey's work plays off of Sino-Soviet socialist realism, by going one better.

Those of us tracking the Obey Giant campaign all these years have no trouble understanding why such art would come in handy, come time to focus on something as real as the USA's presidential contest. Speaking of which, I should have said "gaggle of geese" not "gander of geese" (thx to Haim, erstwhile spar partner, on Math Forum).

Dr. W.J.T Mitchell started as he ended, by invoking popular culture, Jurassic Park and The Matrix in particular (the latter presages the image "going away" leaving nothing but transparent data -- one of two ends in a spectrum, so then we steered in between).

For those from the philosophy department (moi included), there was plenty of thinly veiled Platonism, tinged with Nietszsche's aphorisms (more a "tuning fork" than a "hammer" in this new twilight zone).

I'm grateful to Glenn for getting me out of my cave and onto the Max down through Old Town. We stumbled upon Phyllis Cole, my co-worker at CUE, friend and neighbor in Brooklyn (pre Richmond, where Dawn and I first started this business together). Phyllis is with Metro now. Cool.

We went out to Low Brow Lounge after the talk for a gear shift, noticed other art students doing the same. Glenn and I both have art talks that'd fly with this crowd (Portland's young intelligentsia). I could do one tomorrow if called upon, have a couple others already scheduled through spring.

From Rivendale

The title is an allusion to a plenary session introduction to Open Spaces yesterday. Our speaker said he bounces around among a lot of computer conferences, many of them FOSS related, and Pycon is the most like Rivendale in Lord of the Rings. He feels like he's discovered an elvyn capital. Of course geeks ate it up.

This same guy referred to the Hyatt lobby as a "fragatorium" i.e. that cliche first or second level any designer of a first person shooter comes up with -- we laughed about that too).

Our benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) Guido van Rossum, is giving a keynote. "I'd like to just stroke your egos and be done with it, but since you've asked me to keep giving a keynote...."

He's making jokes about Twitter, which has changed things. There's a paparazzi aspect to it all, especially if you're an MVP people like to yak about.

Python is 19 years old this year. "She can vote, drive a car... she can't drink yet which is OK with me" -- he's stealing from Larry Wall's talk about Perl (he alludes to Larry. He's looking forward to another 19 years. "We face our demons and come out with a better language, a better community").

He's really interested in the anthropology of what's going on, as Python Nation becomes increasingly global, spontaneously self-organizes in various ways. Pycon is a big part of it.

His parting words were of reassurance: Python is in good shape, isn't in any danger of going away, is just getting stronger, thanks to this community of ours. In that context, he's becoming more retiring, less likely to travel. The nuts and bolts of community leadership are not his exclusive concern (despite his exalted title). We're very fortunate to have such an authentic leader and language designer in one package. Guido is one of Python's best features.

Package distribution, dependencies and revision control remain key issues. There's general consensus that we're moving out of Subversion to something else, either Mercurial or Bazaar most likely. The decision between those two may be reached in the next few days.

PPS to Kill LEP High?

Thanks to Wanderers for sending a link to this editorial in Willamette Week.

The school board is set to vote Monday night, March 30, on the recommendation to close LEP. And it is extremely unlikely the seven-member board, with the exception of members Martín González (who is running for re-election) and Sonja Henning (who is not), will oppose the recommendation, which the superintendent supports.

I've supported LEP High, as well as the whole concept of charter schools, from the start, as we need that experimental spirit.

Every generation has a right to start schools. Indeed, all public schools have a charter, so "charter school" isn't very precise. It's more a question of whether your charter is of recent vintage or not (i.e. how old is your charter?).

Having observed LEP's adventures for some years, I've been aware that it was never very popular with the older charters, who feel threatened, suffer from a siege mentality. Alaska seems more enlightened in this respect, as Anna is reporting "The Alaska Charter School Association Conference in Juneau was a huge success this past weekend" (email of March 24). We shall see.

I've been highlighting Portland's FOSS community as leading edge in this conference. LEP High, one of the few to use Edubuntu, other open source tools, has been part of my promotional rap, my boosterism. I should probably ratchet that down a bit: this news comes as a reality check. Portland's FOSS community may be leading edge, but that doesn't keep us from living in the dark ages in other respects.

My thanks to Wanderers for helping me stay grounded. Thanks also to Willamette Week, for taking a sympathetic position.

Pycon Lightning Talks

Hbase vs. Voldemort vs. CouchDB. But now: Cassandra -- out of the Facebook community. Another entry in the non-relational database world. Must follow-up.

How to give a Lightning Talk is a lightning talk. We take the 5 minute limit pretty seriously, although you're free to use less time. Have the next speaker setting up if you're lucky enough to have switchable podia.

Git is out as Python.org's version control manager. So Bazaar or Mercurial?

John Hawyard is talking up science. "That's funny", not "Eureka!" is the epiphany in science. The discovery of X-rays is the story he told. He's talking about bugs, the really hard ones, reminds me of The Bug by Ellen Ullman. Science and debugging have a lot in common (is that why it's called "computer science"). This is a talk on chance and serendipity. Knowing what you're talking about and stopping when you trip on something, is the way to find the bug you were not looking for (surprise). Interesting humanities-tradition talk. This is one those deep thinkers he my

Psycopgwrapper: Sean Reifscheider polishing the DB API (for PosgreSQL).

Ian Benson is now up in front, waving The Guardian ("twitters and blogs"), thanking everyone who has helped with the rapid progress of AlgebraFirst since this same conference last year. He only took 2.5 minutes, well demonstrating his Python cultural savvy (another deep thinker in my workshop).

We leafleted all the chairs last night, like a thousand, shades of CN logistics (I used to be a super).

Later lightning talks: Brazil is a hotbed of Pythoneers, with the government running several Plone sites. Alexander Limi and Alan Runyan, also Bruce Eckel, have been among the invited international speakers.

Bitter Debates

I'm aware of two especially bitter debates these days, one macro, one micro -- letting you decide which is which.

Some neocons don't like the USA's plans to help the Middle East inter-connect its electrical grids, more like in North America, with Texas sort of like Iran in being a source of new power plants. No one wants more weaponized nukes obviously, but as the submarines have shown, it's possible to run these things without going Chernobyl. More hydroelectric might also be usable, depending on grid configuration. I'm not the expert in the room on these topics. Write to GENI maybe?

Likewise, some MIT trained computer scientists are looking askance at what's been happening in computer science at their alma mater. What had been a Scheme based introductory class, a common gateway to geekiness, has turned to Pythonic robotics as more anticipatory of tomorrow's working environment. That may be what industry is planning, but many "old skool" engineers miss that "close to the metal" feel.

The good news is if the new approach is successful in recruiting newcomers to computer science, then there's plenty of time left to dive into LISP and/or Scheme. Just one course does not a meal make. Plus if you don't want to go in that direction, you've still learned some Python, and that's a plus on your resume I'd say, admitting bias.

Airplane Reading

Walking with Nobby is somewhat frustrating yet entertaining. We get wisps of where a sensitive mind was looking, getting away from Dionysus, but not really, not in NOB's namespace. He allies himself with engineering, mentions both Bucky and Wittgenstein (I'd known that before).

He's vectoring towards chance, or luck, but we avoid "synchronicity" because there's allegiance to Freud over Jung in this text and it's not like there's a real theory here, just a meta-politics of some nature, poets feeling their way forward (autopoiesis, dialectic). Dr. Nick had earlier highlighted some of the salient points, especially the link to John Cage, again on the topic of chance, Apollo vs. Dionysus, or system versus not.

David Koski phoned as I was wheeling my bag towards the bus and shuttle center at O'Hare. Alaska Airlines delivered me on time and in good shape. I wish the hotel wifi was working (and it's only supposed to in the lobby), but you get what you pay for sometimes (hotels.com found me this room). The hotel shuttle's radio was recruiting for cia.gov and advertising mortgage restructuring. I phoned David back once I got to my room to continue the conversation (ongoing). He's working night shift these days, is on his day off.

Ian had a video clip for me this morning, about public key encryption (Diffie-Hellman) as used by Amazon. The segment is apropos given I've queued public key cryptography as one of those Python for Teachers topics, with attached lore (something I went over again with Wanderers yesterday). I'm not suggesting one right way to tell the story but here's a good example of embedding something technical / mathematical within history / mnemonics, complete with challenges and heroes. Or we could use a more fictional backdrop.

If geeks want to pass on their subculture's lore, then it's up to them to figure out how. Outsiders don't know it that well. Getting this UK government secret into civilian use was something of a coup (GCHQ had realized the possibility, but others would eventually discover it and make it public, such that now it's in every web browser).

Ian's flight doesn't get him here until tomorrow.

What I hadn't known about Nobby before was that he served in the OSS as a compatriot of Herbert Marcuse, tasked with discerning the psychology behind fascism. Marcuse's later critique of Love's Body only served to spread its fame. I was impressed with what a strong hiker he was, into his 80s. Dr. Kaufmann didn't think Marcuse was all that great a thinker. Also like Nobby, like Nietzsche, he was a "hard bed" for his friends.

His relationship with Dale includes a lot of teasing, a kind of sparring, yet is based in trust and true friendship. They talk about sex, drugs, rock and roll, especially given Dale's generation's spin on those. NOB, clearly into esoterica yet wanting to be democratic, accessible, is beginning to study Mormonism. I'd not heard of the Oneida experiment but then there's lots I don't know.

Blogging, as a genre, relates to NOB's advocacy around the aphoristic writing style. He was into fragments, letting the spirit connect the dots. As someone highly skilled in the liberal arts, he could commit to memory and use hypertext without any outward http. Thanks to the web, we needn't be that skilled to get some of these same benefits.

Sometimes I found myself taking the part of the grandson defending the grandfather against the son. But then I was right away grateful for DP's staying on target, their unity-twoness. Great coupling guys!

Competitive Gaming?

In a post queued for tomorrow on the CSN blog, I take up the subject of proprietary games, cite a somewhat violent one (Half Life 2). I know cynics are thinking I might be hiding behind AVP talk, using Quakerism as a mask, while giving a green light to tastelessly violent video games of no socially redeeming value. Am I selling out to make money then?

The question is misconceived in the sense that I'm not playing traffic cop, am not some uber-censor handing down edicts on what people might play. Personally, I'm looking forward to cooperative, team-building sports, not necessarily indoors, that make use of new toyz.

Geocaching is certainly a start, already has group aspects.

The question about proprietary games "in principle" is more properly a concern for the CIO probably, but I'm already somewhat aware of his thinking on this issue. Engineers want layers of open source at strategic levels within the chip-to-cloud stack. Closed off, veiled and/or private levels (as in proprietary) are not an anathema. It's only if private interests become greedy and seek to exert some kind of stranglehold on resources held in common, that we must be prepared to defend our freedoms.

I'm so far unable to see Milk, even though it's close by at The Bagdad. Too much happening, no frills allowed. I appreciate getting the invitation though. Someday I'll have a social life again. As things stand, I'm grateful for congenial coworkers. Increasing the supply of qualified personnel remains a top priority. I'm seeing some positive signs, amidst a lot of unrealism.

I'm glad the FWCC meeting went well. I appreciate hearing from attenders Eddy and Leslie, as well as from Nancy herself. Had I not been so immersed in Wanderers Retreat XVII, I might have made at least part of it, even though Canby is a ways (just south of Oregon City).

From the Top

The plan in these blogs has been to surround the nonprofit sector, which includes military services (but not to the exclusion of others), with R&D aimed at improving effectiveness, already the norm.

However, our civilian "livingry" in being prototypical of spreading lifestyle options, attracts public focus in the form of reality television with product placements. The entertainment sector serves a bridging function here, helps people participate in the dream weaving.

Concomitant to the above is a recruitment drive for designers, artists, and of course engineers. Finding the right curricula to match our goal spaces remains a challenge. I've been urging a mix of object oriented programming and spatial geometry, with sufficient attention to recent advances in pedagogy and andragogy, including some streamlining metaphysics (philosophy talk).

These kinds of dreams have a long history and track record, especially if you factor in pioneering encampments and deployments of the recent past, along with nomadic and pilgrimage activities (today called "tourism" by the travel industry). The prospect of expanding habitats onto and under the oceans has guided much of the science fiction.

My principal focus has been providing new health care options in the form of remote communities, not "cut off" from the rest of the world, but secluded and therefore more in control of their own influences. These might be clinics, places to work through PTSD, retreat centers for voluntary associations. I haven't tried to be the comprehensive development planner, beyond envisioning a kind of shared context.

Getting a footprint for object oriented mathematics using inspired forms of futurism is a recruiting goal, given the feedback, which suggests we're currently turning off students in droves pre-college, steering them away from engineering and/or technology tracks.

The perception that engineers work in faceless bureaucracies, mostly for Dr. Evil types who plan and build WMDs, is not without basis in fact. We've had an uphill battle so far, countering this PR nightmare. A fleet of "circus buses" was proposed, to tickle the positive futurist fantasies of school kids more directly. Sponsors were sought.

CubeSpace Anon?

I'm tempted to stay with the cube farm today, have some quality time with VPython, which has a lot of new features. However, sometimes it's about damage control 24/7, as when USAers are bitching about their economy yet still spending $10 billion a month or whatever on military bonuses for "doing the wrong thing". It's not like there's much patience or understanding out there, for how to have it both ways.

The analysis coming out of Japan is typically manga-seeming: once Texans saw those homey green-style freeway signs around Baghdad on their televisions, the limbic system kicked in, truckers going "hey, we could drive on those roads, make big bucks", and the rest is history. The truckers invaded (hiding behind neocon fabrications and lies) so they could feed hungry families back home, pay for air conditioning.

There was never any "military strategy" or ideas about "saving face" -- stuff for the Pentagon and diplomats to worry about i.e. "not our department". "Don't mess with Texas" was the main thing to say, seemed to justify everything, Enron included.

Of course Iraqis know how to drive trucks, so there's an easy solution, once USAers decide it's not worth their $10B per month to act out their inner Roman imperial monster truck-driving children (the "superpower" fantasy, driven by Marvel comics). Stick to your own NAFTA highways and I-69 why don't ya?

Like I said, Japanese intelligence has these like "comic book" explanations for everything, lots of shelf space at Powell's.

Animal Planet

Tara and I took some time off yesterday, me to get a haircut, then we headed to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden near Reed College to feed the fauna (water birds, some of them diving underwater).

The geese will eat directly from your hand.

Then we went shopping at Trader Joe's for lunch snacks, bulk supplies (frozen salmon, soy bacon, vino... dog food). The mango sorbet looks like a low fat alternative to some of those other options.

Tinkerbell has a flat and I've been too preoccupied with math wars to mess with it. However, now that spring has arrived...

Today: more MVP from the airport duty (looking forward), Pacific University in play. Tomorrow: beginning of Wanderers retreat (I'll see some of you there).

Speaking of animal planet, I'm glad to see our more minimal TV package (no Al Jazeera) still has the National Geographic channel. We're enjoying it. It's not like there's a shortage of media in this town.

:: pycairo release 1.8.4 is now available ::