Speculations

The sudden fires lit to inflame fears of Koreans is helping us trace the veins again, like having some radioactive dye in the blood stream.  Various offices light up.

The National Forensics League (NFL) will be looking at Korea soon I bet.  There's a tendency to track headlines and see what the kids come up with, brilliant as some of them are, at winning arguments.  Politician parents, other relatives, sit in, fingers in the wind, gauging, looking for eigenvectors (strong winds) in the Matrix.

Imagine a town in which a large percentage of adults got by on skateboards.  Someplace flat, like in Florida.  Why should all those "trailer parks" (sorry:  "mobile homes estates") be limited to the 55 and old set (for which I will soon qualify)?  That joke about young people retiring in Portland is only sort of true.  A lot of us are telecommuting.  Yes, it looks like I'm just hanging out in a Starbucks (doing that now), but I'm working, actually winning my bread as they say.  Like a paid seal, or sea lion, eager for fish.  Welcome to Sea World.

Joke:  where should we put the Sea World in Iran / Iraq?  Answer:  How about Little Beirut?

More seriously:  allowing dolphin and whale diplomats access to more landlubbers is a priority.  A lot of factory ships haven't changed their ways in response to peer pressure and we'd like the landlubbers to understand when we take their twisted fantasies about shooting people and start seriously hindering the eco-terrorists of this world.  And by eco-terrorist I don't mean the green-minded hippies who camp in trees to protect them.  I mean those who would destroy the environment while paying the politicians to look the other way.

Steve is about to help kick off Write the Docs, Eric Holscher's creation.  He's likely to be one of our newest PSF members once this voting period is done.  We have like two weeks to ponder the ballot, familiarize ourselves with its content, before voting secretly using Massimo's software (David Mertz an adviser).

I've been commending Massimo of Web2Py fame for his most excellent eVote software, which PSF just used again, to rave reviews.  Not that we didn't have a tantrum or two.  The tent has gotten quite big and the geeks within are idealistic.  There's been lots of hype around Python and there's a sense of a Banana Republic wanting more respect on the world stage.  But all virtual states are back of the bus from a United Nations point of view.  Not everyone gets to play dress up and mean it, the way real diplomats get to do, with or without portfolio.  Massimo offered to write some additional voting software for OSI.  Whether Karl will take him up on it I don't know.

Kudos to the Portland AFSC for the Drones Project (maybe not the official name) involving LEP High students.  Making allusions to "a quilt" is a nice touch.

A flatland Florida village with skateboards a primary means of getting around, why not?  I'm not saying hit has to be Manatee County, though I do favor the enviro-sensors and maybe drones planned to help protect said creatures (manatees keep getting hit by stupid boats).  Hunters who stray off season our out of zone are going to see their actions monitored as well.  We can't afford to let humans play fast and loose with the rules as much, whether hunting or fishing.  Snow Crash an inspiration.