Mathematics in Nature

The Ivory Tower was in many ways designed as an escape from a harsh, cruel "real world" and "academic subjects" tend to be conducive to those wishing a life of quiet study, a purely monastic existence.

Of course marine biology, geology, other empirical sciences, tend to push our bell curve further away from such an indoors extremum, but the fact remains we're culturally inclined to insert a firewall between bookish types and athletic types, creating a nerds versus jocks kind of taxonomy (also a tyranny).

In contrast to these ethnic cliches, our integrative learning approach asks that we cut across these diabolical conventions. Finding mathematics in nature is not something to just read about. And especially now that we have fractals, it's easy enough to set a Cartesian-like canvas of XY cells in front of some scenery, and call that a complex plane, then iterate Mandelbrot style to achieve some coast of some island (like in Lost or wherever, maybe Uru).

The lab sciences have always been something of a bridge between the indoors and outdoors lifestyles. Heartening in this regard is this "math lab" meme, already out there, meaning we don't need to invent it from scratch (yay). Also under "maths" (in Britain a plural), come game-like simulations, which may be self-referential (cellular automata for example), but might just as well be about something (an ant colony say). Nowadays we run simulations as programmed executables, such that a well-equipped math lab includes workbenches (workstations) for programming.

Putting all this together, one can see why competence in driving one of our electric ATVs just goes with the territory. If you can't drive one of those, you'll have a harder time meeting the requirements of our math curriculum. And if you can't point to the current location of Saturn (might be under your feet?), then how can you claim to know your spherical coordinates properly? Sure, maybe those other math teachers let you get away with just being a nerd, but we don't think that way out here. We're extremely remote remember (but joining us is still a possibility, if you do your math homework).

More Twists

The "petting zoo" as I call it, has filled with more animals that people like to hunt, feel are fair game. In a puritanical society, hunting down one's fellow man for sport is OK, as the latter may be stereotyped as possessed by demons and therefore of Satan's army.

Portlanders have inherited some of those "holy crusade" memes that made the Teutonic Knights the terror of Varmia in Copernicus's day (I've been reading Dava's latest). He was always being vexed by this gang of retard-bullies (as he probably saw them).

Caught up in the hunt will be lots of cuties still in there (talking OPDX campus), like dolphins and whales caught in the trawler's net, even some best-in-show kitties. Why be cruel to such innocents? America eats its young, spits out its old.

So the outrage might build, generating yet another backlash, and maybe a Thirty Years War or something suitably religious.

Saints, statues, more souvenirs... ain't European culture grand?

FNB pulled out yesterday (I took down the sign myself) because these are not ethnic vegans and our food was going to waste -- precisely the thing we're about countering (food waste). There's only so much we might do for the bloodthirsty.

The Anglo-Euros (mostly English speaking) never mounted an impressive show of their ability to provide social services, even though they have the technology. I didn't see eye exams happening, nor drug counseling, with attractive brochures about cool farm-like schools around the state, where ranchers have realized the bonanza to be had in helping street youth get a grip.

I've been storyboarding such schools for a high turnover student body of wannabe and actual diplomats, mixing it up, making networks that'd dampen the outward war impulse. The usual USIS / USIA kind of thing, back when the USA still had a State Department (since dissolved as far as I know -- or did I miss something?).

To that end, OPDX has been useful. I've seen more up close how a real estate bubble works. You could barely get a tent spot after the launch of the new zip code area (a proposal), whereas now they're all underwater, more like Stockton, CA. Sleeping bags come in faster than people can use 'em, so they get trashed after one night in the rain. It's a culture built on throwing away, as kids around the #OccupyIraq camps will be happy to attest (not much of an exit plan there either, or "endgame" as we say, except in some rarefied circles like in Obama's Wars).

Portland's future property values depend a lot on how the plan to put the parks to some serious uses, for civilian trainees working on their camping / disaster relief skills etc., get implemented on the ground. We've billed ourselves as high IQ, so don't want to go bezerkezoid in too embarrassing a fashion. How would we "put a bird on it" then?

Schools are under the same pressure as the parks (many tempting athletic fields, some in mixed use parks, like at Grant), given all the new gear and their need to develop GIS / GPS skills.

Currently, USA kids are getting leap frogged right and left, given the ineptness of their adult supervisors. Effective andragogy is almost unknown here -- only a few early adopters by the looks of things. Democracy is in a shambles. The Idiocracy (a mob psychology) reigns supreme (much like Beef Supreme in Idiocracy).

Basically, if your school has no electric ATVs, you're going to be in some serious competition with those that do. Put the key in your kuffka ("stuffka for your kuffka" is a kristmas kampaign).

At the Dealership

Once at the Ecomotion dealership, I gravitated to the electric ATVs, babbling about Project Earthala and how we'll need ten of 'em.

Of course I hadn't thought it all through. Recharging from what power source again?

Yes, I'm a little shocked at how immature Earthala still is, my high tech XRL showcase, somewhere in the Oregon high desert.

You'd think, with all the storyboarding and ToonTown nearby...

But then I remember: North America inherited the dregs of Europe to start with, kind of like New Zealand and Australia did. Dump all the basket cases on indigenous peoples, make 'em their problem (a pretty cruel policy).

The USA was right from the onset swarming with maladapted religious crazies and the like, not geniuses most of 'em, like those Nation Builders like Franklin (none left like that I don't think -- an extinct species).

So I cut 'em some slack (and pray the Russians aren't likewise this stupid).

The Lobbyist

I used to blog about myself as a "lobbyist" which probably conjures images of living the high life and lunching with high level mucky mucks.

As it turns out, I did have a consulting gig with Associated Oregon Industries (AOI), directly across from the legislature in Salem. They want the rule makers to know: "we're watching you like a hawk" (paraphrase). Me? I was a lowly application developer, writing Visual FoxPro for their LAN.

Anyway, as a lobbyist I was in league with those pushing "digital mathematics" as an alternative way to fulfill math requirements. The Silicon Forest economy is all about bits and bytes, so the idea was to convert an old and rotting vocational track, into a more computer science like track, and let students opt out of college prep calculus and go through something more like engineering (cue Terry).

What really happened is the code school economy grew up between high schools and universities.

After the 20- and 30-somethings decide they're sick of low pay grunt work, they raise their sights to more computer skills for better income, the trophy being "full stack engineer". The industry itself (picture old Chamber of Commerce) will certify you're job-ready, no need for an expensive four year degree from some dot ee dee yu.

If we think of life as a game of Snakes & Ladders, we know it's good to find ladders and climb them. The snakes have a way of sneaking up and providing themselves. No work necessary, to ride a slide.

Fast forward to today and I have a bevy of pre high school kids, on the brink of high school, and I'm bagging up all of high school math, as I learned it, and mixing it up with more discrete / digital / computer science type stuff, per my former "career" as a lobbyist, and feeding it back to them.

JupyterLab, Python, crypto, group and number theory... I call it "lambda calc" (with real lambda calc a core logic) in contrast with the "delta calc" of Leibniz and Newton. They're both math tracks through high school, per my chalkboard diagrams of the curriculum.

I'm accelerating at high speed into what I see as a bright future for schools that don't have to compromise as much, when it comes to their certifications. I picture those Quaker boarding schools, but add much higher tech (electric ATVs) and better animals (like we have here in Oregon).

SimCity Thinking

I have to admit my admiration for Uber's clever follow-up offer after my finally getting around to using their app and service:  free meal delivered on us, $45 value; then a week later: $25 if you use it now. The sight of a shrinking asset provokes action, although in my case I'm resistant, and it helps that if I follow their offer I'm back in Atlanta (which I'm not, at the moment). 

I think a lot about the delivery economy but maybe not with enough inputs, as I'm not a business consultant so much as a skills trainer in a working class ecosystem. I'll show you how pandas will give your data visualizations that professional zing that makes your cubicle a hub in whatever network you're in. I've never worked for Amazon directly, although my code school was subsidized by its outreach programs that summer, as I recall.

Anyway, the idea of fleets of flexibly routed vans delivering in high volume, versus browsers showing up in parking lots in private cars, leaves me thinking we're likely economizing in shrinking the mall culture. Yes, the web took the place of storefronts in large degree. That's ephemeralization at work, meaning as a species we're under pressure to economize, even when we'd prefer to make a lifestyle more permanent.

Derek and I were in agreement, in recent living room conversation, that better infrastructure, extending camping, for a nomadic lifestyle, perhaps on wheels, as a multimodal adventurer or whatever, would answer a need in some of our subcultures to "live outdoors" in some essential way. Dense urban living is too claustrophobic for them, or too stationary. 

A nomadic lifestyle doesn't have to mean in a tent. A yurt with ample floor space in some hexagonal grid pattern (random lake shaped) would be an improvement over a phone booth shaped tiny house in my view. Electric ATVs come to mind. You might book a yurt for some months or weeks and move on to a next one, with variations in make and model.

A lot of boomers hope to retire to a mildly active lifestyle, recreational in nature, like in Florida. 

I had the privilege of retiring in my teens, while going to high school while based in a mobile home park for retirees. The homeowner association might've frowned on our extended stay (me and my sister) which is why mom flew back to Bradenton and moved us into a roach motel (not that the trailer -- er mobile home -- didn't have "palmetto bugs"). 

Indeed, absent Yurt Villages (high tech), the Florida option still seems a good deal, not that I'm the expert or share that plan for myself. Like I said: been there done that. I'm not dissing that lifestyle, which is pretty comfortable I admit, but I'd use my stays in that trailer (I'd be back) to reinvent myself, perhaps into an airport manager (that book was interesting but I wasn't sure how to break in).

I ended up finishing high school in Manila, dad having scored a gig with UNDP. We had UN passports for the whole family. I proudly display a UN flag as part of my living room decor to this day. I also keep flags of Bhutan, Lesotho, and Republic of South Africa, right here on my desk; places I've come to feel some allegiance to and fondness for, in addition to these various states in North America (Oregon being my home base nowadays -- I'd like to explore them more, Birmingham, Alabama was fun).

Another city older folks retire to is Las Vegas, which markets itself as a destination for recreational living in general. The new MSG Sphere is open, and showing Grateful Dead, a live performance with giant screen backup. I talk about that in this blog post (in my philosophy blog), which is actually a YouTube.