Perl World

:: from July 3-5, 2011 ::

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He's interested in the Quaker angle as well.

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

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

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

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

At the Carnival

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This morning was all business.

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

My usual themes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This One's For You

:: annual session, npym 2011 ::

We turned off on Hwy 512 just north of McChord AFB and the joint facility with Ft. Lewis. Check Google maps, satellite view if interested. A big Bud billboard supports the troops. That's a Euro company used to provide advertising encouraging a certain image of "American". Euros are always making up stuff about the USA. They like the idea of a "martian police" (a dick brain neocon concept).

I caught the org reps meeting, as an NPYM guy (AFSC Corporation), mom too, on the Board. I pointed out towards the end of the meeting that since Quakers scarcely do titles, these signs of role serve as badges or c.v. credentials when addressing non-Q 3rd parties, not just our internal agencies (FCNL, FWCC, WF, FLGBTQC, QUNO and blah blah alphabet soup).

Speaking of Quaker entities, a topic on our plate this Session is shall NPYM affiliate overtly with the Friends General Conference (FGC). My table at dinner was focused on this. Tom Head, on the committee to make a recommendation, finds the demographic argument compelling. NPYM isn't about to turn on a dime and change its character, so if consolidation is the name of the game, then FGC is whom NPYM should hang out with. EFI and FUM would have no truck with us.

Chris on the other hand, daughter of a Quaker minister in Whittier, thought NPYM was more a beacon on its own and should not sacrifice its unique heritage in some effort to blend with the Quaker hoi polloi. Her meeting had broken away from FUM but still kept an orbit, and NPYM too has its special path, less squeamish in some ways.

I told Gayle afterward I didn't think NPYM was giving up its identity either way, and that FGC too would be changed, should the affiliation occur.

I also suggested these relationships were not mutually exclusive and NPYM was in no way monogamous (think of the "sister cities" program). Given we look "East" (i.e. towards the Far East, as in Asia), we should be looking to affiliate with some of those regional groups as well.

NPYM could jump in with some Quaker branches in Japan. Look at the University Meetinghouse in Seattle. Clearly Zen is an influence, and Buddhism more generally.

Of course Quakers, especially of the unprogrammed variety, are quite esoteric and you won't find many of them anywhere, not even in Philadelphia. Getting permission to settle in Pennsylvania was a breakthrough. The western USA states let us keep to our own rule book pretty closely as well. We're able to freely build on historic friendships with pre-Columbians for example, such as the Stillaguamish. Ft. Lewis is close to Steilacoom.

The Friend in Residence talk was about a Quaker meaning for "clear". I could imagine doing some creative videography and twisting this into a meeting for wannabe scientologists, spreading clearness around the world and, even more to the point, getting clear themselves. Just a passing thought.

There was also this Kierkegaardian theme: to will the good is to will one thing. What might you really put your heart into, out of conflicting motives? Maybe nothing? Expectant waiting is the Quaker form of meditation, a kind of not knowing. Satori (Eureka!) is not an uncommon result.

Quakers have a knack for remembering about sangha (community) even while emphasizing the individual's mystical powers to connect directly to some source of "right action upgrades" (cloud services). That explains all this talk about "corporate worship" which has the sound of some zombie worship capitalistic idolatry and/or superstition.

The Friend in Residence quoted extensively from Margaret Fell and John Woolman, two of the anchoring bodhisattvas in our Friendly tradition.

Given our closeness to the airport at McChord, we get to see some interesting mechanical fauna in the flight path, at about the same height as over DK's place in Minneapolis, though not nearly as frequently.

I brought the PSF totem in a bag with some speakers, mentioned doing this on Diversity. Tara might use those speakers. She's playing several responsible roles during this Session, from JF recording clerk to presenter regarding their recent "away team" delegation (no, not to Cuba).

That was a part of my remarks at the end of the org reps meeting: I mentioned my PSF affiliation, pointing to the decal on my uniform. I also tried to get clearer on former President Hoover's trajectory. Some NPYMers are holding puzzle pieces about him.

As I was mentioning to Eddy and Marty, now that we've escaped the gravitational vortex of establishment Christianity, we should do more to dabble in its forms, using retrospective allusion as well as pioneering new forms. Why not have some Synods, like the Lutherans do. We could dress up more, invent some costumes. I've been looking at fashion anyway, in connection with those Tarzania courses (advanced STEM). "How about Quaker tattoos?" I was saying, before our paths forked (not mandatory of course).

Scattered Recollections

Early meeting with a new (to me) engineer, lots of stellar ideas. Much talk of the Tesla pump. Better sand blaster, better paint mixer. Economies will shelve a good invention, because more money is made with more breakable solutions. People coast on fragility quite a lot.

More news from the Gulf, where only now are some events from Katrina starting to wend their way through the courts. It all takes too long. Resistance to electronics?

Effective education allows people to synchronize more successfully, moving events ahead more smoothly. What might have taken lifetimes only takes a few years. The karma doesn't spread and fester as much, if justice is swift, or at least that's a Tantric theory (anyone wanna back me up on that?).

You'll have an ancient estuary go bad with a leak at 18 feet only, with just one contractor on tap to clean up. Why hurry? The pay is for time. Let the ecosystem die then, if it's profitable to let it. That's our reflex-conditioned society in a nutshell: programmed to externalize.

The problem with engineering today: they can't seem to design an economy that makes any sense. Rewards are for what everyone agrees are idiotic results. We so often pay ourselves, reward ourselves, to stay incompetent. A sorry truth.

Real solutions would threaten the status quo, and that's what people protect, because what's known feels somewhat secure, even if it's clearly sub-optimal (to put it mildly).

FNB went smoothly today, just Blue House on duty this evening. LW is working on a new song. Many of our party have headed to Rainbow Gathering. I sliced mushrooms, cut up kale, spinach, lettuce, onions, garlic... plenty of work for two people.

The meeting with Anna went well. We wound up at Common Ground just before closing, Steve Holden joining us. That was last night.

Just now: over to Holden's for a G&T. Reported on the shuffling in DC-based positions. I reaffirmed my sense that edu-sig is an important list in Python World.

Tara watched Contact again. Don has re-anchored closer to Blues Festival, as it's that time of year.

Source Code (movie review)

Comparisons with Groundhog Day are inevitable. The movie is about a brave hero who takes impressive action over and over. He develops a complete mastery over his scenario. 12 Monkeys also comes to mind.

There seem to be a lot of loose ends, but the movie isn't about solving mysteries so much as evoking them. Humans respond to their situations. The camera gives us an up close study.

The quasi omniscience of the ghostly camera gets played with in this film. The point of view goes back through a grate. When we look in the big reflecting ball, there's no evidence of an onlooker. As an audience, we're the uber-voyeurs.

That's how films usually work, but this one is somewhat playfully and self consciously about the viewpoint. We hop among minds and realities.

Philosophers should use these expensive special-effects-laden works to anchor some of their discussions. One gets more out of a story like this than from some "brain in a vat" story with no plot.

Why be so snobby? Discussion is enhanced by having these shared reference points.

Wittgenstein loved films, found them a cleansing shower after too much of his day job.

Open Source Law

I'm attending OS Bridge 2011. We just heard Portland's mayor, Sam Adams, give his keynote, which was about Portland's commitment to funding startups.

We have a few of those, according to the buzz. At least one is a part of the beltway economy, meaning it traffics in federal government contracts for data collation and intelligent visualizations.

Of course McMinnville has also been a part of such networks, going back through aviation more than computing.

Law is Code and We're Here to Open Source It was a good talk, by the Oregon Laws people. Making the law accessible is where the private sector is doing value added.

I asked if any legislature were using version control. Everyone laughed, already knowing lawyers are too stuck in the mud to be doing that yet.

Sketchy Ethnography

:: exploring the Twin Cities of Minneapolis / St. Paul ::

City planning was a big part of the conversation while I was here, with some mention of my dad and our family's concern with Libya's future, some 50 years ago minus a few. The plans dad did were for about 50 years forward, so even if they were followed (as some say they were), they'd be about at their horizon limit by now. Other planners would have had to be doing some homework in the meantime.

Minneapolis has light rail to the airport, like PDX. It also goes to Mall of America, which I had no reason to visit on this trip. My trips were by gasoline powered vehicle, small convertible and van. We did some walking to the Museum of Imperial Russian Art, just off the nearby exit from I-35 W. That was an engrossing exhibit, about the marching towards populism known as Socialist Realism, a type of art Stalin favored, and that has since turned to self parody and self reflection, via Shepard Fairey and others (Dead Kennedys parodied Nazism, fast forward to South Park), verging on psychedelic in some schools of art.

I'm somewhat the emissary from Portland on Pirate Party business one might say, helping to organize some campaigns. David is thinking of taking on the 59ers, those who apply Miller's Rules to get the 59 stellates of the icosahedron, a classic topic by now, right up there with uniform polyhedra. The rules might come across as somewhat capricious to some, as they admit some rather goofy monsters into the mix. Couldn't we pare down? Koski's critique of the Archimedean honeycomb duals seemed to get at least steelpillow's attention (using an Internet alias -- some of you know who I mean). The Pirate Party courts Esozone, Subgenius etc. and so these geometrical esoterica are a natural fit. Speaking of which, we watched John Brawley's new video of his Icosahedron in a Grotto (Portland has a Grotto too).

What does a smart diplomat do in such circumstances? If you're a real pro, you go to a neighborhood block party in Tangletown (its doors you admire). Then you join Omar Ansari's Surly Brewery in its festivities, now that the law has been changed, permitting destination factory towns, more like Disneyland but with more alcohol. Oregon has these already and does a great job with them (witness Edgefield). And you tour a neighborhood hard hit by the tornado three weeks ago. There's an urban legend that hotter urban CBDs and surroundings repel tornadoes. Comforting, but no deterrent to the one that put down here recently, ripping through a swatch of residences.

Characteristically, there was no overt government presence, as emergency services to residents are increasingly verboten in Private America, as evidenced by Orlando's banning citizens sharing free food in public parks with hungry neighbors. Any such "short circuiting" of the money economy is regarded as "underground" even though it's the background from which the monied emerged.

The Pirate Party questions privatization, starting with Ludwig Wittgenstein's "theories", which Dr. Cornish calls a "no ownership" metaphysics. That might sound Communistic to some (more like a not-for-sale military), and indeed there's a sense in which Grunch of Giants (a party favorite) was more subversive than anything dreamed of since Karl Marx (says so right on the back). This is not a party that seeks majority status however. Perhaps thanks to Quaker influence, it stays deliberately tiny and elitist, and fields few candidates.

So yes, the weather is rather dramatic compared to Portland's. The tornado was severe, the lightning and thunder storms are higher powered. The heat spikes and the cold spikes are both more exaggerated. The roads take a real pounding in the winter, meaning many more potholes and wear and tear on motor vehicles. They gave up using DEQ-style emissions testing to keep the rolling stock on the newer side (more efficient) because falling-apart older cars simply fall apart under the stress of cold winters and all the sand and salt in the streets. The Elm trees have been dying. Perhaps Ginko, an older species, will do better in the Early Plasticene (or is it Late already?).

The Back Office

Control Rooms

In the early days of GST, I would write about the personal workspace (PWS), envisioned as a place for "value adding". I also called it an edit/recombine studio, which sounds like it might have something to do with DNA, but I was thinking more of audio and video editing. One takes in snippets, contributes one's own, then splices them together in new and interesting ways. Presto: value added.

The PWS sounds somewhat individualistic. In an endeavor to extend the "knowledge worker" economy, I was drawn to the Star Trek namespace for "away team". Post WW2, North American couples would wander in romantic, war-devastated Europe, as war-torn peoples desperately endeavored to heal. They would take slides using Kodak products and come home to show friends and family. My grandparents were of this generation. One could call it "intelligence gathering" but one didn't. One called it "tourism" (in some ways a prelude to "adventurism").

When I look at my leaky roof office, an amateurish add-on by previous owners, to a house originally placed here around 1905, I think of something more comic book, like with a bat pole for sliding down, and a spiral staircase. LCDs grip metal poles and may be swiveled and angled. Something like that. I'm previewing a Garden of Eden "smart house" of that Other Tomorrow, where people enjoy appreciably better living standards (I've dubbed it Columbia, and pitched it for television).

I was spieling with my edu-sig buddies today, outlining my use of Tractors in place of Turtles, hence Tractor Art. Rather than fight the socialist realism that suggests itself, ala Shepard Fairey, I say embrace it. Tractors rule. The etymology is interesting: to drag, which is obviously to plow, is to work (tractatus), to pull against friction. Gaining traction, as we say. Turtles have it a little easier, if sea turtles, though on land they're quite ungainly. Few of nature's creatures have managed amphibious lifestyles as well as humans with their aqualungs (scuba gear).

Where there's a tractor (worker) you've got to have a field (working environment). The Farm class defines little more than a 2-way array made of ASCII. We might speak of "ascii waves of grain" while conjuring a kind of minimalist xkcd meets Norman Rockwell kind of vista. The socialist realists, their cartoon avatar tractors, are sometimes of the CropCircle type (a subclass). These will plow a Mandelbrot Set left to their own devices. I've already logged that in some detail.

Tonight we looked at the Eddy Crouch / Carol Urner idea of an Area Program Committee for the Region (AFSC jabber). Pending a green light from staff, this looks likely to happen, somewhat imitating the Colorado model.

Focusing on August 6 as an annual Disarmament Day, which might extend to forswearing use of a forked tongue or some other such psychological weapon, if not into carrying guns or knives around town (some do so by permit, and besides knives have generic utility), would be one possible option, as a kind of test drive. The Regional Director helped organize the meeting and staff were present, as the Executive Committee was just starting to convene, meaning MVPs were in town. Was this more like Philadelphia, or just Portland being weird?

Christian Scientists built The Mapparium, the better to play World Game. But we all have Google Earth now. Actually, many of us do not, and libraries are under-served, but enough have used it to know what it feels like to access global data at medium bandwidth. Some of the in-out-around landscapes have a Salvador Dali flavor, with freeways drooping over cliffs, not properly filled in. Gifted engineers like Lew go in and add like the Multnomah Meetinghouse.

A "smart house" was supposed to be highly energy aware and had all kinds of self diagnostic electronics. This dream for the future was postponed for so long that people resigned themselves to "stupid houses" for the indefinite future. We now live in Stupid House World (SHW). We have little sense when it comes to energy. Our need for teacher education is dire.

Speaking of teacher education, Glenn is back to his studies of Megalithic Era cosmologies. The importance of Orion's Belt and the World Tree is evident across many times and cultures. The span of the solstices around the equator, the lunar and solar cycles, the snakes that would try to eat the sun (eclipses)... these mnemonics were all there and tightly organized. They knew of the ~26K year precessional cycle, about 1 degree every 72 years. These people weren't dummies. Idiocracy R Us.

Earth's Doom

:: final night ::

by Fsgregs

Cowardly Capitalism

Cowardly Capitalism (CC) is the type that's risk averse and can't accept the idea of going head to head with non-profits or other governments when it comes to providing world livingry services, such as rental cars, jet rides, hotel accommodations, education and health services.

A military is allowed to have these services, but only in exchange for agreeing to carry out immoral acts, much as the children are expected to do overseas.

Brave Capitalism (BC), on the other hand, is not threatened by the idea of a government running its own airline or rental car company, hotel chain, hospital chain. Just another kid on the block. Governments manage according to different ideologies than most businesses. Some won't do well with trains, others will be stellar.

The ridiculous myth you get from the whiners is that it's all or nothing. They talk about "nationalizing the oil" or "nationalizing the banks", as if a government couldn't have just some banks and not others, or just one of the major oil company brands, a rental car company. The USG didn't need to take over Avis or Hertz, to have its own niche.

Switching military over to civilian circuits, like when NASA went more Mouse in Orlando, is a great way to leverage existing skills and assets. The USG already operates a lot of guest housing near airports. We could have more meetings on bases, "we" being civilians without obvious rank, not trying to crowd that seniority system or pretend to certain kinds of training. We're special in other ways.

I was ranting about this when Dave called from Minneapolis. We have this rivalry going, about which city is more on the forefront in ways we treasure, such as bicycle friendliness. I think our drivers could be more courteous, but so could our cyclists. When I come to an intersection along Springwater Corridor, the drivers often stop right away, eager to prove they're on board with these urbane values. I was on said Corridor just recently in fact, even though EmoKid (the bicycle) is losing about a pound a minute from her front tire.

TinkerBell was stolen you may recall. We have crime in Portland. Our family car, Robin, was swiped as well, from the Lloyd Center Theaters parking lot, while I was seeing the movie Troy. After that, we got Razz, another Subaru wagon. Razz met her end in the high desert, no one hurt, still drivable. She was totaled, at which point I found another car in the neighborhood rotting in a driveway, the owner having come to Portland with an expressed goal of weaning herself from motor-vehicle dependence. I was just trying to do a reverse lookup on her license plate when I again encountered Cowardly Capitalism.

This is publicly collected information, made available from government sources, but rather than allow you the people to access it directly, you get to be told that the data is there, but you need to subscribe for X dollars to some private data service, a dot com, in order to reach this dot gov data. It feels slimy and gross. What filthy little businesses want to charge me to access my data about my own car, or other cars that share the road.

If you pilot big metal at high speed on public roads, don't expect to stay anonymous as a matter of personal rights. You're not anonymous behind that plate or license. Anyone can pony up the $40. But they shouldn't have to. If this were really a Land of the Brave, we'd be defended against such smarmy commercial practices. Cowardly Capitalists are aided and abetted by those "on the inside" who are cowardly in the same way. They join government precisely to undermine and defang it, a kind of mole.

Lets allow the government to have a rental car agency. The bookkeeping will be transparent. It'll be a profit center, helping pay for the hospitals. Lots of summer jobs. Some electric options. Discounts if you have a valid USG passport (retro nationalism has its perks, citizenship still matters in some ways).

Once some of the other government companies are in play, we'll have more attractive career segues for ranking personnel. Some may just keep doing what they're doing, in perhaps repainted university facilities, transit centers or whatever.

Rango (movie review)

Long time readers of my blogs, people who know me in other ways, know I'm a fan of cartoons (animation). I'm sometimes that only gray haired guy, the loner, amidst families crawling with kids, at your local neighborhood theater.

Yesterday, my birthday (53), that cartoon was Rango and I went with my daughter (16.9). We were 10 minutes late, so that voids my right to give a rating or score according to the Association of Movie Reviewing Bloggers. Here's someone else's review, giving more of the storyline (my reviews are generally for people who've seen the movie).

ILM knows how to do fire, water and earth (dirt, desert). The alchemy of Clint Eastwood style spaghetti westerns plays in full force here, right down to the religious fervor of the beleaguered. Many films get the nod. A thousand Wild West movies crowd into one.

The time is now though. The characters are playing out this retro "we can't be gunslingers anymore" narrative while Las Vegas is already fully developed. It's the 21st century we get to forget. For an hour, we're at home with our ancestor creatures -- most of them movie stereotypes...

Which stereotypes cartoons have an uncanny ability to reinforce, or even create from scratch, given the effectiveness of animators in their presentation of ethnography, part real, part fiction.

Only the human imagination itself is as powerful.

Rango is richly textured. If you haven't seen it, see it for the scenery and music if nothing else, though I'm not myself complaining about the characters and their appreciation for the value of potable water.

Earthy Day

:: earth day in pdx, 2011 ::

I got a call from 12th and Stark, where we mostly think of the abandoned school, which I'm thinking our Ministry could take over (might just leave it as is, like a war monument). I met up with the architect.

I wandered about running my camera, juxtaposing the dome and the tepee in that classic retro way. So Portlandia. Good use of tension, with those tetrahedrons pulling. FNB had a booth, I found out later.

Matt returned my call. Maybe next weekend, we'll have that beer.

I'd just been paying my respects to one James Jameson in a philosophy thread and who should happen to be there, along our later route, but the man himself. Even Lindsey hadn't known he was back in town, and they're FB friends (LW and I are not, though we were once and might someday be again).

Mostly I'm just some expat American, roaming among my people, somewhat on the quiet side. I don't play the guitar or sing much. Glad to enjoy a bright sunny day, even with the allergies kicking in, and then the fire after dark (though it never really gets dark in the city, thanks to "light pollution").

Today, it's Easter.

Unknown (movie review)

I enjoyed seeing Liam Neeson again, having taken a liking to the guy in Kinsey.

When he and that taxi driver were laughing in the bedroom about the noise through the wall, I was thinking their private joke was he'd worked on that movie.

Anyway, twas good to escape through The Bagdad by immersing myself in someone else's problems for a change, and to vicariously tour Berlin again, a former Cold War capital.

As I was imbibing beer, I had to find a strategic moment to empty out. The car chase was a good time for that, as action thrillers almost always have them.

Interesting to see who is the target in this movie: someone wanting to benefit mankind in a believable way, by making something valuable be free and open source.

Gifts of "intellectual property" are accepted as subversive by the worldly audience for whom this film was intended. That tells you something right there: the myth of Prometheus is still alive and well.

The plot seems tight within the conventions of Hollywood screenwriting, though people keep leaving the scene of a crime (after smashing up a whole city, or maybe just one bridge, one doesn't usually just walk away and get lost).

The ringleader complains about the brief case at the airport being a loose end, but I'd say there were loose ends all over the place (pretty sloppy). For people trying to stay "under cover", they sure seem to make a dramatic spectacle of themselves.

Roller Coaster at Reed

:: harmonic convergence ::

I've been enjoying the roller coaster ride at Reed College (metaphoric). I'd misread the program calendar so had given up on seeing "Juliet Alpha" do a PowerPoint based on his most excellent anthropology blog. Glenn and I just got back to 97214 from Eliot 103, where he spoke. I was happily surprised that I still had this chance.

Alpha's daughter went to Reed. His real name is John Allison, and he was here to warn present generations of what was coming: more of the same, in the sense of COIN type programs openly directed at those who might cut off its funding, the security-minded sponsors of modern warfare.

John's chief beef was that the Afghani people he'd lived with as an anthropologist some decades before (his contemporaries then and now) were being targeted for mayhem and his only role was to provide window dressing, like a flower at a funeral parlor.

"Winning hearts and minds" among the empire's victims is no longer considered either realistic or essential. The main thing is to please the bread and circuses crowd, and to scare it with images of domestic monsters they might need defending against.

The US Army has played this role of pleaser protector for a long time and every generation gets to play out its version of the narrative, taking up roles in the drama, though in Glenn's case he did COIN training with the Navy before serving as a cryptographer in theater then joining the cast at Antioch and becoming a "granola hippie" (the real deal, raising a family off the grid).

The Reed kids in the room, thoroughly embedded and "sewn in" as John put it, were using words like "narrative" and "trope", knowing it's science fiction they'll be living (of one kind or another), have lived to this point.

Elaine suggested it comes viscerally, not just through the imagination, to act on principle and conscience and to raise one's level of consciousness. The discourse sounded political but might just as well have been Buddhist -- not that Elaine had any kind words for what she called "new age racism" (neo-liberalism) nor had she ever felt especially worshipful towards the Clintons.

Initially, Juliet Alpha (John Allison) had had hopes of making a difference from the inside (as well as earning a hefty pay check), as if imperial reflexes stretching back to Roman times and before might be effectively countered by some academic alchemy. Quite the contrary, universities are in his view mostly outposts of this same culture, hell bent on conquest. Complicity is the name of the game, especially when Iron Mountain pays the bills.

"Kinetic warfare" (outward violence) continues unabridged but shoppers at Trader Joe's will be lenient and forgiving and not protest the wars too much, because this is now a kinder / gentler America; an anthropologist with a human face, is supposed to keep shopping secure. Hence the HTT program, which costs many schools and hospitals -- yet contains elements of both.

Elaine Brown was the invited speaker the night before, and she did a wonderful job explaining her position on the 13th Amendment, which bans involuntary servitude (slavery) within the USA jurisdiction. The slavers get around this ban with euphemisms, as slavery is alive and well. Even where prison time is being served as punishment, free labor is expected on top of that, in an economy which feels entitled to such services.

Yet the currently unincarcerated seem complacent and quasi okay with this new state of the planet, or world order if you prefer. Reed College is comfortable and how would making speeches in Pioneer Courthouse Square make any difference? I was reminded of my time at Princeton, where ending apartheid in South Africa was a number one ambition. We needed to shine for each other, as a next generation lighting the way. We were our own primary audience.

Like John, Elaine is somewhat at a loss for answers. She knows there's a zeitgeist, and it works in mysterious ways. It's not that her generation was genetically more heroic, just that the meme wars have taken us into some new spaces.

History does not repeat.

Maybe the young will have some heroes, and not just obsess about Charlie Sheen or whatever is going on in the moment (Michael Jackson was not mentioned).

Prior to Elaine's speech: COINTELPRO 101 (the movie). This is being shown in high schools and middle schools, where the typical reaction is a sense of betrayal i.e. why is my adult community not daring to give me more of the real story?

Welcome to vast wastelands of ignorance kid. It's not like everyone has time to ponder weighty matters of Empire and its sorrows.

I forgot to mention that Elaine Brown had been a leader of the Black Panther movement.

John had served in the military in Korea, prior to getting that PhD in anthropology and working with the Afghanis. Then he got recruited by British Aerospace and Engineering though CLI for this HTT job, as an embedded anthropologist who would be one of the "good guys".

Times are hard in the US and the only jobs are military and intelligence, which overlap in the prison (so-called justice) system and the media. There's a sense of Sparta meets Athens, and the movie Avatar.

Elaine's adopted son is the 13 year old Little B, tried as an adult and serving a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit against a person he didn't know. Kip Kinkel, on the other hand, loaded up and shot a lot of people, but was given kid glove treatment by comparison. This is how the mother of Little B would tend to see it. The packed Reed auditorium appeared to empathize and gave Elaine two standing ovations. She also quoted Buckminster Fuller appreciatively, which I took as a signal.

Wanderers Gone Wild

:: Wanderers at Large ::

I'm way behind on my blogging of Wanderers events. Bunce is writing the Lorentz contraction formula on the white board, having brought this 5D model (his namespace), milled on a 3D printer in urethane (or something, Steve is amazed by its density, stone-like, closer to marble). Yes, these things exist. Could be used as a vase. Answers Buzz's question (by the coat rack): what's a universe where all black holes go to the same place? Sculpture was about $500 for a one-off. No patents need apply.

Steve did his QM For Kids as a two parter and I only made it to the 2nd part. Lots of notation, with simple 2D vector models, easy to get kids up to speed. Except we need to not use this word "kid" to scare off the needy adults. As soon as they came up with NCLB, I knew we needed NALB. Bunce wishes Tver could have been here, as this has been a math topic between them.

The "cosmic zero" in this model has no physical location, though it's modeled by the center of this thing. John took his drawings to a wood place first, but they were thinking two parts glued together. Sherpa Design came through with this 3D printed neolith. Now we're talking Lie Groups,... "six trumpets". Sounds apocalyptic... or like a fun cartoon.

The other not-here-today Steve's punch line is he gets to these well-known experiments that confirm QM models, ala Bell's Theorem, over some of these other statistical models. Mentions of "Bell's Theorem" ring a bell for me, a resonance in the blogosphere.

We're discussing Bill's prognosis. He's back with us today. Steve Mastin is conducting the interview.

Set Design

I think it'd be way against code to trash the Blue House and replace it with a dome. You might think, as a Fullerite, that I'd be all for doing that, but as a matter of fact, I'm into preserving the historic character of the neighborhood and all this wood, as configured, is way more valuable than what it'd be in a recycling heap.

That being said, the Evaluation and Monitoring Room (aka the "control room") is going to acquire a new cover of some kind or another. Some guy plans to saw off the fence, which will make it easier to build the temporary deck atop the doomed flooring. Should a two-story movie set arise, budgeted by the film company? What about Duke's then? Our fates seem tied in some way. I've imagined a spiral staircase and metal framework, more like a fire station. LCDs and speakers, computers, screw onto poles, in a kind of minimalist system, perhaps a Home Depot product down the road, or Office Depot as the case may be.

No, I don't think a loan officer would be in the mood to underwrite such a thing, given Coffee Shops Network is already getting juice, or some business is, barely keeping the lights on (with heat intermittent in balmy Rainforest, Oregon (he says I'll need a "tiger loop")). Retrofitting "this old house" with energy monitoring devices just echoes that ever receding end-of-the-rainbow dream of a "smart house".

It's an open secret that Americans are mostly into "stupid houses" these days. The idea that each of your appliances could be held accountable: that's still considered Jetsons territory, even though the technology has been around since the 1970s at the latest. The central thesis of Idiocracy is borne out once again.

Portland Energy Strategies might be another candidate for upgrading, as well as the Pauling House. Product placement, lifestyle modeling... Californians like to showcase what's new. Oregonians have a more retro aesthetic to inject maybe, which viewers will find comforting. The "dream of the '90s" and all that, something to use as raw material anyway.

Of course this is all science fiction (aka investment banking). Any real control room involved in dispatching bizmos, say, would likely need more space. The idea of pro-actively doing useful things has its allure, versus simply "countering terrorism" or otherwise making this another "fighting the bad guys" game. CDC and FAO tend to have more mature players than those who think 24 Hours is worthwhile television. Counter-terrorism requires a steady supply of terrorists for job security. Making enemies is a full time job for many a family in WDC.

Open Source Photocopier

I rewatched Revolution OS last night, after a well attended FNB. Jay did a good job with those zucchini from the Blue House (prepared at St. David's). Melody gets the potatoes this afternoon, for Pink House prep.

This time I notated the time signatures where O'Reilly was mentioned or featured, as I was sharing this with OSTers, many of whom have probably seen it.

Combining the ethic of Make: and DIY, I'm envisioning a course built around an open source photocopier, meaning you may explore and experiment with it in any direction without hitting a brick wall of proprietary "eyes only" layers.

The microcode, circuit diagrams, drum architecture (if it has one), are all laid out and for free, with parts obtainable. Robotics has already taken this route, as has bioengineering. Sometimes we overlook the more mundane, yet printing machines of various description play a huge role in the workings of human societies.

How might your average city kid, male or female, of whatever "race(s)" and/or "creed(s)" avail him- or herself of said assets? Or average rural kid, or statistical outlier? There'd be these learning shops full of strategically placed products, much like is found on some university and corporate campuses today. People who already know the business get to be trainers.

I was thinking to see Inside Job this week (with Tag, Jody and/or Suzanne?), which is not about 911, but about all those people playing real estate games in airport hotel seminar rooms, being like the Werner Erhards of "get rich quick" Ponzi-like operations, all dressed up and corporate (a lot of this was post the dot com bust, another big let down for many canny investors).

When that all went away, as obviously it would, many dream bubbles burst, kind of like in Yugoslavia (more Ponzis gone wild), which became once again Balkanized. But I haven't seen the movie yet, so I'll save it for my review.

I also need to write to Nick (still in Eugene, where Rick and Cody went). Did Amber ever find her way back to Hannah's and John's?

I don't know if the University of Havana would be interested in the photocopier idea, on top of all the ice cream (another set of open source plans). Perhaps Japanese campuses already have closed source versions they'd be willing to declassify. Even if they're older models, you're building up the folk knowledge any service-oriented culture will need. Yes, of course I have my eye on the Pauling Campus, as usual.

Wanderers Retreat (spring equinox)

Yet again I missed an opportunity to see the next movie after The Cup by that cool Bhutanese director. I'm not despairing though, and used the time wisely to continue my visit with Rick and Cody, whom I hardly ever get to meet.

Their visit over St. Patrick's Day ("we're back") was well timed and appreciated. I'm glad they got to meet Alex.

I spent a lot of the day with David Feinstein, a rare privilege. He vectored one of his inner circle through Pauling House, a protege working in Tri-Cities, and chalking up another in the XX column, Trish having invited her friend from yesterday, and Jessica bringing her girl.

Mostly we who show up tend to XYs, with me sometimes offering up some archetypal Athena talk (feminist?) in somewhat the Francis Bacon tradition (via Nashville).

Tara has invited Reed over to see a movie. LW, free schooler, is practicing with R2. Having "qualed for nats" Tara is looking toward Dallas, then some other American states, including south of "the border" (bell sound), Friends a factor.

Trisha wanted me to explain "Quaker" and I did an account based in the 1600s, which is around when the East India Company began. I should have talked about branches in GIT, sometimes mergings, ala this O'Reilly book I've been reading.

Yes, these are somewhat random notes for building upon later (in Facebook?). More happens on retreats than meets the eye. Glad Rick and Cody could come by Pauling House last night, to meet some of the crew.

Lots happening on the discussion list as well, though a lot of it's dino talk (antediluvian). Tara and I made Hotcake House memories, also the site of tonight's victory dinner.

Speaking of privatized military firms (what the nats were about), I'm not noticing much civilian procedure whereby another front for warfare was entered, as a fait accompli. We saw the committing of inventory and personnel without much formal legislating or even policy debate. Talk about wagging the dog...

The premise: that some phenomenon in "the Arab world" is the monster, versus some more inter-generational breakdown (more a natural process than a beast to be contained), is resulting in some miscalculations.

Why not connect more dots, in Thailand, Burma, Greece? Big cities, small countries, brimming with hopes and dreams, want more democracy, why should that be a surprise? "Passing the torch" to a next generation is not always a smooth process. Perhaps with better media, it's getting smoother?

The Academy Awards helps keep the wheels turning, as does the awarding of Nobel Prizes. David Feinstein's comments reminded me again of the importance of merit in meritocracies, often signified with bits of resume and credential. I'll have more thoughts about that another time.

For all these mixings of worlds, I'm hoping to mix them more.

Stewart Brand at Reed College

:: Stewart Brand at Reed College ::

Glenn and I got there way early, as I was having paranoid fantasies of lines around the block and not being able to get in to the Kaul Auditorium. Stewart Brand, co-founder of Co-Evolution Quarterly, Whole Earth Catalog, the WELL, Clock of the Long Now, with tons of other street cred, is like a superstar in my little fish pond. I was expecting most of Portland to be there.

As it was, the auditorium was comfortably capacious for the many Reed students and faculty, with a smattering of Wanderers. Don joined us closer to opening time. Those who got there early got to see this Youtube (or one very like it) which Stewart clearly found hilarious and ingenious because of the guy's inventing an English-sounding "language" (I'd just come from a Wittgenstein study group session where we discussed the "private language argument", so this seemed peculiarly apropos).

Stewart is a big picture thinker, taking a uniquely individual angle on stuff. He thinks cyber-government needs to charge the externalities of coal burning back to the coal burners (that'd be most of us), so we'll have to pay a lot more for the privilege. Cheap coal is both trashing the climate in ways that might kill us (the Venus Syndrome) while keeping competing solutions at bay.

He's finding wind power to be something of a boondoggle and favors civilian nuclear plants, including the kind that eats the nuclear weapons captured from those antediluvian criminal syndicates who still think about using them. The smaller plant designs, well under a gigawatt, would bring the power sources closer to the villages or townships.

He's pro solar, but doesn't like the idea of bulldozing thousands of acres for these vast arrays of panels. Wind farms are likewise land hungry.

Will there be fusion in our future? He's an older gray guy, so is quite aware of how long we've been hearing that hype, but he doesn't mind contributing, including by providing the voice-over for a rather elaborate cartoon about the latest ignition scheme.

On the whole, his slides and videos were top notch.

Stewart has a lot of respect and admiration for humans slogging in slums, building cities at a higher rate than ever in history. He's not dismayed by poverty, but encouraged by trends. We just need to keep harvesting that energy, without triggering a Venus Effect (ala Lovelock) and enjoy a bright future.

Energy includes biomass of course, and he's pro genetic engineering. As an open source hacker type, he takes the Freeman Dyson view that monopolistic control of biotechnology by corporations is already a thing of the past. Monsanto could go belly up tomorrow for all he cares, yet bio-engineering of new food stuffs, some with medicinal properties, is here to stay. Which doesn't mean that all applications to date have been well managed or sustainable.

Listen to those closest to the technology in question, such as farmers and foresters, he counsels -- a way of making friends and allies. He'd been a logger in Oregon in a past chapter, as well as a rock music show producer. "Loggers love the woods" he intoned. He has the sensibilities of a politician, although he's happy to pick arguments with libertarians or anyone who thinks civil servants are to blame for the world's ills.

The central question of our age, he said, is whether democracies can self-organize to the extent needed to get their ecological house more in order. The global climate conundrum is going to remain a scary source of inconvenient truths.

He likes that new variety of vitamin A rich rice (hitherto a missing ingredient), and sees anti-GMO sentimentalists as unwittingly condemning more children to blindness, as a result of the delays they'd imposed on the roll out of this genetically engineered product.

During the Q&A, many questioners took different points of view. Stewart was always happy to refer back to his sources and reading list, so we could delve more deeply and appreciate where he was coming from.

Stewart reminded me of Duane Ray, one of the Wanderers in attendance. Duane asked me if I was pro or con nuke plants and I gave a somewhat count-intuitive, counter-cultural response, practicing counter-intelligence on Americans to comical effect (Duane laughed).

The faculty member making the introduction (biology and environmental sciences department) mentioned Stewart's intelligence community connections, plus we'd heard talk of the CIA at the PPUG after-party from some guy in police work, relaying some CTO views. Stewart didn't seem at all worried about those Persian nuke plants, which currently borrow their fuel from a Russian fuel bank (library). He mentioned Valarie Plame of Countdown to Zero fame.

Stewart also thinks there's a right way to do fish farming (as well as a wrong way) and humans should let more of the wild stay wild, far less interfered with. Why eat any wild fish at all? Grow your wood crops and leave natural forests alone too. Bring back beavers. Introduce more diversity. This is his vision of how humans should live: as catalysts for nature's abundance and propensity for innovation. Accomplishing this goal requires keeping global temperature in check -- his highest priority.

Reed's campus is quite beautiful. People who get to live there must feel ultra-privileged. I don't know if its environmental sciences department has a "weapons inspector" major or course (something I've been pushing for OSU), but there is a nuclear reactor on campus.