Visiting Faculty (School of Tomorrow episode)

More about Kailash Ecovillage: 

Camp C6XTY

Leela and Melody got to social distance in my backyard, much like old times.  We had a breezy summer evening.  Naturally the conversation turned to the protests downtown.  Melody has been studying the emergence of private militias in her neck of the woods.  Privatization has come a long way.

I've been continuing to recruit future faculty who might work Martian Math into some already favorite set of topics. My approach is to keep my content Humanities flavored (that sounds somewhat cannibalistic I realize), meaning I'm not spinning my home base as a place within STEM territory.  

We bridge to STEM, over the C.P. Snow chasm, with our C6XTY bridge (there's a marketing angle). The point of casting it this way is to not make STEM, mathematicians in particular, the bottleneck.  Given their track record, we can expect little to no help from the Mathematics Department on this one.  Philosophy has had to step up to the plate, with links to Literature.  We're more in PATH (Philosophy Anthropology Theater History) than in STEM.

You might think the rap above would have nothing to do with the Rastafarian | Pastafarian combo I'd like to see center stage at the Justice Center, once there's some serious equipment.  

Why not a full sound and light show, impromptu?  Food carts?  I'm not saying I'd go, because of Covid.  If the actual downtown presence shrinks yet continues to stream the process, I'll have felt part of something.

Seriously, I'd turn the downtown scene into a reggae festival, given the Blues Festival was denied us this year.  The link is the importance of streaming, and the fact of a larger audience watching from home. That's how our school works as well.  If you were following Lattice Gallery last winter, in downtown Portland, you were probably doing so remotely, perhaps from Japan or Korea.

Portlanders are missing all their favorite summer events and have needed to channel some of that disappointment into an already frustrating push for social change.  There's a need to keep it real and focused and not just go for fluff.  My suggestions qualify as "peanut gallery" as I'm more kibbitzer than producer in this picture.

Dr. D. and Glenn were also properly ordained for the occasion.  I'll plan to invite DB for the next one. We're still keeping the numbers down.  Blue House has been through many chapters.

School of Tomorrow: Place Based History Curriculum

See: Americana in Grain of Sand

Checking In from Portland

About Racism (Lesson Plan)

About Racism (a lesson plan)

Me: memetic, ethnic, cultural, software
Me: genetic, physical, hominid, hardware

Memes are not just miniature billboards on Facebook. I'm stealing from Dawkins ("borrowing") and making memes mean a lot more than commercial jingles or fragments from films. Memes comprise the "daydream" of what one muses about, considers. Memes come up in meditation, sometimes from deeper levels than Surface Me. A lot of memes come through television and other social media.

Genes do not always translate into visible traits and they don't define character, personality, moral qualities, other attributes of a soul. That's all epigenetic stuff. DNA does govern eye color, skin color, nose shape, physical features (inside and outside) more generally, and because physically inherited, is not nearly as transmissible or alterable (flexible) as memes or culture.

What is Race?

A given race is usually a mixed up soup, a mishmash, of both memetic and genetic traits, sufficiently memorable to form stereotypes, a kind of default mnemonic typology (like dwarves and elves). Racist cultures encourage thinking in such racial terms (by definition).

The notion of race closely relates to "breed" in animal husbandry, including the language of mixed or mongrel, versus pure (perhaps with pedigrees to prove lineage).

The names of the races and the stories behind them, form a kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting tableau, made from memes. The Book of Genesis is a good place to start, if looking for conceptual roots (i.e. memetic content), at least for some people.

We will be reading the stories of Noah, and the Tower of Babel to get a sense of how people thought (or even think today). We'll also be watching various animated and live action versions of these narratives. We will discover what forms of racism might be traced to this part of scripture by studying a variety of curricula.

Twilight Zone TV

We're aiming for a format Hollywood knows well:  a dedicated studio audience, providing a feedback loop, and in this case talent, as in a classroom where all are on tap to do Show & Tell. That was my Coding with Kids model when doing in-person classes in the local nearby schools.

If the plan is to keep going nightly through August, producing free content with lots of volunteer security, e.g. Wall of Moms, then the least we can do is corporately sponsor a nicer sound stage.  The idea of writing over the graffitti with other temporary graffiti, simply by slapping up a blank canvas, is being tried elsewhere in town.

The major audience, also taking in advertising, other current events, is what we might call the TikTok crowd, although of course many geezers are following on Facebook or one of those.  Social Media.  The camera people are likewise the audience self organizers. I've been one of the geezers, staying put in my own zip code and wearing a mask in public.  Except when I'm walking by myself or with a trusted-to-be-safe other... anyway, you know the code.

The melodrama spikes when the soap opera turns to images of the president gassing his own people and all that.  Not with lethal gasses.  Deep, long-lasting injuries are authorized. 

Public sympathy is with an underdog and if vandals are mobbing the monuments, per the Dork City narrative, then the federal marshals are underdoggy. 

The Wall of Moms removed some of the fencing getting in the way of the future sound stage maybe.  Bashing soccer moms is a symbolic way of hitting the insecurity button, which tilts the public the other way.

Our corporate sponsors will want to make it clear they're not encouraging tacky S&M (sadism + masochism) complete with costumes. Other banks are lending to that group. 

If you follow the money, we just wanted a better soundstage and some replacement graffitti, with volunteers doing most of the programming ala the public cable TV channel model.  Except we're more reliant on social media. 

We see and process the clips the next day e.g. the Wall of Moms being charged with MacArthur like forces (I'm referring to the attack on the Hooverville in Dork City that time -- Smedley wrote about it).

As with Occupy, I'm wondering where to take it indoors as the weather cools, summer's longest day behind us in this northern hemisphere.  

We didn't have covid in 2011.  I ended up moving the Ministry of Education into Washington High School.  Long time readers might remember that story. WHS was abandoned at the time, but for art colonies. 

In a later chapter, the revamped venue showcased the Buckminster Fuller Archives at Stanford University, set to music by Yo La Tengo.

Gothamite Bizmo

I know not whose bizmo this is.  American Gothic.

Thanks to social media, a lot more imagery flows across my metaphorical desktop (which is also literal in being a GUI desktop).

Part 2: Thinking Out Loud

Steffan makes the point that thinking about equi-distance arrays, either 2D or 3D, is likewise to think about social distancing in the abstract.

Six students in six hexagons around a central teacher.

In volume, twelve around one, at the corners of a cuboctahedron for maximum omni-symmetry.

Even without a literal arrangement, we're still thinking about compression and tension i.e. what strategies help keep social distancing more relaxing?

Packing people in a room and asking them to practice safe distancing is just creating a lot of stress, obviously.

Parts 1 & 2 appear together in Coffee Shops Network (CSN).

Campus News

Hey there patrons, investors, alums, future students, faculty...

I'm sure you're all eager beavers (Oregonian expression?) and want to learn everything about the roof of my house.  

That's been the order of business this morning, as in:  why doesn't it leak?  The High Powered Homes says it's three tab, common in the 1990s.  Not what's called "architectural" which is more the standard today.

Underneath though, is an older higher grade shaker.  Like they don't make anymore.  That accounts for why I've gotten away without re-roofing for this long.

The remodel to make this more like a Linus Pauling House, non-profit owned and operated, open to sojourning faculty, students, would include a new roof with more ventilation, other interior changes. 

The old metal and vinyl kitchen is still fully operational. What would the 2 Dickinson people do?  

I learned some of my adult livings skills at 2D.  The group home scene.  At Princeton University.  Lets do that again. 

So the estimator is sitting out in his truck.  We've been through the different grades of roofing, economy, performance, and high performance. 

The Owens Corning solution, backed by a transferable warranty, is an entire construction system. Their platinum installers get high marks for durable solutions.  High Performance Homes is one of those platinum installers.

I'm saying: hey, where's the university in this picture?  

Housing Services kinda sucks when you add all the solutions and divide by eight billion.  Let's talk about Food Services.  Welcome to the Global U, right?

So at the other end of Blue House would be these (sometimes remote) learning center experimental communities of tomorrow, that work with future prototype high tech and invite tourists, inspectors, auditors, critics.  

We're not trying to disappear behind some occult fog here.  The goal is transparency, more than you're used to perhaps.

The job would be in the ballpark of $20K < re-roof < $30K.  However, before tackling the roof, I need to get the trees and shrubbery cut back from the house.  Another stimulus might be needed.

Me on Facebook:

I had the roof looked at today. It's not leaking, just I lucked out that it has a good cedar shake roof under the 1990s 3-tab (I learned some new jargon). Just collecting numbers. I'm jealous of the Pauling House being owned by a nonprofit. How do I get to be a nonprofit too?

Happy Holidays!

:: PDX ::

Lots going on!

July 4 was of course a somewhat muted affair, but a full moon, and I exercised what liberties I had, to goof off and stuff, but also to do some serious housework, and to accompany Carol on a supervised walk around the block. I was on a family call earlier.

July 5 is of course X-Day, big on the Subgenius calendar, and is my sister's birthday.  On X-Day, the cult members pray to be abducted by the flying saucers. When that doesn't happen, there's a ritualistic explanation, in terms of misinterpreted scripture. Great excuse for a picnic, but this year it's a virtual picnic.

And then, there's Christmas in July.  Long time readers of this blog know about my "king who came late" mythology. He has a name now: Mitra. He's a Friend in some way.  The other three kings have come and gone. What gift hath this new king brought?

The Xmas in July meme has been blatant about its commercialism from the beginning. The Santa Hat is Mithraic in origin as is as the Statue of Liberty crown and torch (like Columbia's). You may see where I'm going with this:  Quakers venture back into business ("feel their oats" as we say).

Not that they ever left entirely.  However the book Quakernomics makes clear that Quakers enjoyed something of an economic heyday in the age of early industrialization by means of steam and steal, electricity would come later.

Quakers had been a persecuted minority but were now enjoying their reputation for business integrity.  Lots of companies gave themselves a Quaker spin. Barclay's Bank. Lloyds of London. Cadbury... Nowadays Pepsi carries the banner forward, with the oats guy.

I'm not suggesting there's some way to make history repeat, only that Christmas in July is an opportunity to shape not just a specific date, but a season, almost an ethos.  I'm looking forward to more commercials that capitalize on this idea, although I know I won't become a fan of all of them.

Back to Subgenius, no I haven't seen the new Kickstarter funded movie. I know it's out and has been in theaters, and I've seen a trailer. My guru Rev. Onan Canobite has traveled I believe to Austin, TX for an opening. This was all pre covid of course.

We're on lockdown protocol per company orders and if I do anything it'll be from a social distance. However that's not as dire as it sounds. I have a small patch of land, big enough to accept delivery of another 92 C6XTY balls, with the expectation of doing a 3-frequency this time (I have a 2-frequency 42 baller already assembled in the staging area).

:: Quakernomics Talk, Linus Pauling House, 2014 ::

Police Story

Yes, I tell the same stories over and over. I meet with new listeners. Like on Facebook.

From Facebook:

Speaking of police work, I was contracted by a local police precinct back in the days of Napster because, get this, the police were tired of being used as the scary authorities asked to go into schools and scare the shit out of junior for illegally copying, like those FBI banners on VHS and DVDs that threaten you with higher fines and more years than manslaughter if you share what are in principle freely dupable digital assets.

The police had discovered they lived in the Silicon Forest, capital of open source, and the public schools were too fuckin' lazy to teach any of that stuff, just wanted to be mouthpieces for lawyers and big business, make the police be the enforcers.

Once the police put it together they said "fuck it, we'll teach Linux and stuff ourselves" and they hired me and this other guy to go into the police station to teach teens. They hoped to get a lot of Latino immigrant types because that's who was here for the American dream, but instead we got privileged white kids, really fun and smart I might add, who had less inherent fear of police.

So in that sense, the program failed. But I still say the police were thinking logically, and yes, the public schools are in many dimensions too lazy to be salvaged.