New Circuit Designs

 Here's the deal:  the core geometry in the Bucky stuff was baked enough to go mainline forty years ago and nothing much has changed on that score.  

However the context is not "Bucky was right about everything" but "this is what the guy thought, a mover and shaker in this world."  Then we look at what "mover and shaker" meant in his case, and the thoughts. 

Linus Pauling:  to have great ideas, have a lot of ideas. 

Lots of historical data connects to his bio; he made it easy for us to cast his foreground (private sky) against a shared backdrop (world history as theater).  

We could start with World's Fairs (Expos) and talk about how the Congress opted out of hosting any more of them within the USA.  I was taking in another Youtube on that around 3 AM last night.

We might want one in the Shire anyway, no need for Mordor to get involved (we speak in code?).

We could start with the capsomere counts in the viral nucleocapsid, should it have an icosahedral one.  Sars-2 doesn't, as many do not. 

However the main thing is not to stop at domes and spheres, but to dive into the straight edged (hard nosed) concentric of polyhedrons as he conceived them, in a language game of his own devising.  

This was all ready to go mainline forty years ago (as already mentioned).

Said core geometry is Platonic and requires one major breakthrough insight, that our modeling of 2nd and 3rd powering didn't have to be expressed with squares and cubes.  

It's not that the right angle choice was wrong, as if Synergetics "disproves" our practice.  Practices weave into forms of life, and what proves them seaworthy is the test of time, which of course involves stresses.

High school minus any Bucky stuff is not really American enough for my taste.  

I'd expect our sprawling network to keep passing the torch, whatever that looks like.

TG 2021

I've been playing the Quaker card a lot more, being hellbent on pumping out some signature curriculum to my vast network of Quakerish schools, a global network, in the future.  

I might be long gone, a sort of psycho-historian (parsed through Asimov's Foundation).

Anyway, we had an authentic n8v American presiding, in a classic nuclear family setting.  Carol and I were the visitors.  She was able to climb the front steps on her own.  Both directions.

Urners are into dogs too.  Carol has some fear of pythons, which both families also have.

More Quaker History

I've been fussing around in /cryptography lately, as eliteschool/Crypto, the Jupyter Notebook, was not clear on the AKS primality test, what it is.  

It's still not entirely clear on that, but more because it talks about something else, relevant to primes and composites, that I take to be relevant to the proof of AKS also.

But really we're focused on Pascal's Triangle (PT), as always in our Gnu Math curriculum.

That PT property is one you likely know, if you've been following Numberphile and other "keep us current" mathological type channels.  Category Theory...  

That the row number of PT evenly divides the members (other than 1 of course) on that row, if an only if that number is prime.  Skipping 1 of course.  We talk about -1 elsewhere.

Like row 3, 1 3 3 1 defines the prime 3, whereas 1 4 6 4 1 fails the test (row number 4 fails to divide 6 without remainder).  The Jupyter Notebook features a PT generator, written in Python, and this test as a sieve or filter.

OK, that winds up my warmup. We were talking about /Crypto, where prime versus composite reigns supreme (as a distinction), so now lets segue to Elizebeth Friedman.

She fell in with Shakespeare early in her career, where she sharpened her code skills and met her future husband.  They and their sponsor climbed a steep learning curve ladder and ended up becoming like another Bletchley Park eventually.  Elizebeth faced her own enigmas.

In my Quakerish curriculum we're linking her to Prohibition and to the early Bucky who socialized with Al Capone.  That helps sync up the timelines for for these several protagonists we'll be following.

The tie-back to Shakespeare is convenient, given our Memory Palace focus ("the urb it orbs").  Globe Theater architecture was about the microcosm, as well as the play within the play.

I notice Github decided to break Jupyter Notebooks linking back to their own repo as the default option.  The benefits of cloning and owning the repo locally, versus viewing it online, has just increased.

Urbit Urbus

Fake School

Way back in the WayBack [tm], I was saying the Clintonistas were underestimating Qanon, precisely because it went to the concerns of younger netizens, too young to vote  in fact, about predatory adult practices I needn't get into with a sophisticated audience like this one.  

 Yes I'm talking about Pizzagate and so on, you may scroll back in my blogs.

These days though, and also in support of the kids, I'm mocking the Q folks for the shallowness of their research at the end of the day.  From our chat session on Zoom last Saturday:

10:39:45 From Kirby Urner to Everyone:
    Re conspiracy theories: The Qanons always boasted about doing their own research, following breadcrumbs, but were manifestly not good at doing that.  Even a cursory search on the web links their much vaunted “Mockingbird” to Ed Applewhite.  They don’t go there.  They’d find us. They’d lose control.

What am I talking about "They'd find us."?  Simply that Qanon pumps up Mockingbird as one of their dots to connect, but then fails to connect it.

C'mon kids, don't be as dense as your parents, my contemporaries.  Get a clue and study more of your heritage.  The Applewhite guy retired and went on to collaborate with his boyhood hero.  Who was that again?

C'mon kids, if you're not getting time with the bash shell, ask your doctor if that's good for you.  In the Beginning was the Command Line.  Read it yet?  If you're in high school, has any math teacher mentioned RSA (public key crypto, but also the Republic of South Africa matters too)?  

Yes?  Congratulations, there's hope for your high school.

Seriously, in this Internet Age, you have Net right there staring you in the face, all day every day. So if your school isn't talking Graph Theory, as in nodes & edges, as in V + F = E + 2, then maybe stop calling it that?  Why would you call that "school"?

Fake school is as real as fake news.

Imported Tweet

I would encourage Facebook and Google to leave the country before subsidizing irresponsible posers in DC and no I'm not talking about the recent election. So far Google hasn't use WMDs "by mistake". Whatever socially responsible investing it does, let it not be thru a faux USA.

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) November 15, 2021

Revaluation of Values

What did Nietzsche mean by a "revaluation of values"?  He didn't mean we should sit around passively awaiting the new code of conduct or whatever.  The work is a personal interior undertaking, the kind of work no one seems to get paid for, yet desperately needs to get on with.

Take "empathy" for example, sometimes defined as "putting oneself in an other's shoes". Normally this is seen as a positive, whereas "jealousy" is the name of a sin, not a virtue.  To bring "empathy" and "jealousy" closer together might seem more like opposing proton beams, bashing the grammar.  Precisely. Philosophical investigations resemble the work of CERN at some wavelengths.

For me to really wish for your lifestyle, I need to imagine it.  I'm jealous of your shoes, more comfortable, more durable than mine.  You have stuff that I want for myself.  I can imagine myself going through the day as you, happier and more satisfied than I am in my own life.  That all sounds like empathy to me i.e. I'm putting myself in your shoes to the point of wishing I were more like you.

Now we might trace all the caveat neutrinos emanating from this opposition.  Lustfully imagining oneself as another, directing that much libido into a fantasy life, is a root symptom of so many pathologies, whereas working on developing empathy and compassion is more generally seen as a cure.

Lets define narcissism as deep empathy with one's self.  You have a lot of compassion for yourself, and in a "me against the world" model, this is as it should be.  The healthy ego basks in its own source of warmth and doesn't need the company of others to stay strong.  However this also sounds a lot like the description of an egoless person, if such exist.  Is your classic narcissist on the verge of enlightenment, needing only to see self sufficiency as a divine duo, a state of grace?

Again, mixing "good" with "evil" values in your investigations, exploring the new polarities and tensions that result, is the form of exercise.  Consider it character building.  Consider keeping a journal, perhaps even online.  Quakerism traces to some of the same roots as Emersonianism, which I speculate would be found in a Mithraic context, pre-Christianity.  Thus Spake Zarathustra suggests such uber points of view.

Musings on Theme Park Planet

I was surfing in a Jungian Space yesterday evening, out for dinner with some heavy hitters I know or was getting to know.  Dwaraka was open for indoor seating, per our current zip code protocol (not that protocols are defined at the zip code level -- I refer to Asylum District, here along Hawthorne Boulevard, 97214).

Lets pause for a moment to cite Ken Kesey and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, his novel and later a movie Ken didn't much care for.  That novel put Oregon in the map nonetheless, as thematically about mental health and/or the lack thereof.  Asylum State.  With the double-meaning of "asylum" as "sanctuary" and/or "hangout" and/or "safe space".

What might asylum mean today?  Where might you enjoy an outdoor concert while tripping in some way, without fear of arrest, but in potential need of medical attention?

I'm tempted to go on about Portland's particular place in PsyWar Space (the business of the "intelli-seers") but at this point lets talk about the space of meetups, newly facilitated by Zoomer culture, and also Meetup the website.  

The catalysis of online meetup culture, thanks to covid and people staying at home more, trading First Life (more driving and flying) for Second Life (more virtual) conventions, has sparked an acceleration in the conversation.  New equilibria get established through communities comparing notes, and not just through owner-controlled mass social media.

I'm thinking here of ISEPP Wanderers meetups 52 Thinking Ideas, with Thinking Society of Philadelphia and Humanists of Greater Portland as supporting actors.  This was happening in my backyard, but also through related listservs and emails. 

Humanists were already studying the job of ship crew worker, several weeks back.  I've been looking at the truck driver role for several years myself, not as a driver myself, but as a role play designer (call it "cosplay" if you must).  

The idea here is to apply design principles (ala The Design Way) to lifestyle design, wherein lifestyles contain their workflows, such as truck driving, heavy equipment operating, jet engine development and so on. 

The so-called "dirty jobs" are not outside academic experience, per the polytechnical institute model.  Include housework in the above.  The focus of Fuller's Dymaxion House was its unique particularity along one dimension, but its function in family life along another:  as shelter against the mortgage holders and the related slave driver regimen of both parents working (or lose your home), kids abandoned (to daycare shelters).

In place of polytechnic, think polymathic just as readily.  The "maths" in "polymath" come from "mowings" etymologyically, i.e. the condensed harvest from any "field".  The Silicon Forest is polymathic and its curricula are designed accordingly.  Like check out mine.

How this all connects around on Planet Jung is The Design Way by Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman invokes James Hillman and other Jungians, and dwells on the importance of the unconscious in creating "organic" solutions that are "with the grain" of a situation.  

A commitment to comprehensivity (polymathy) gets the ball rolling, providing a wholesome starting context, with experienced judgement suggesting when to transition from analysis to implementation. "Analysis paralysis" is a stalling out to avoid, although maybe not in sciences wherein simply describing the status quo is the final objective. "Paralysis" might mean "arrived at the station" in that case (mission accomplished).

Harold Nelson doesn't use the term "Feng Shui" that I could find, but I'm sure many of his followers do.  On Planet Jung (in the space of depth psychology) we permit Alchemy, Feng Shui and Astrology (interconnected "failed paradigms" and/or "pseudo-sciences" to some), to perpetuate some of their ideals, not as scientific truths, but as intentional associations and mnemonic systemic structures of potential value upon selective amplification.  We live as players, not as cogs.

The Design Way posits Truths, Realities, Ideals as orthogonal axes.  

Ideals must be served by Truths in the long run, and the Realities provide the necessary feedback, without which steering would not occur. 

"Are we leaving the ideal path because our truths are wrong, or because we have been lazy in updating our truth tables?"  We sometimes get behind in telling the truth.  Reality overtakes our storytelling.

Again, if you don't bother to have at least these three independent axes in your model, you may more easily become disoriented, as you'll confuse ideals with facts in need of proof, or special case realities, with what's true in general.  

Whatever the case, keep in mind your worldview is (a) yours to keep designing and (b) never finished.

What would Disneyland be without all the "fairy tales" it weaves together using some of the highest tech of the day?  Even "humans making a success of themselves" (Fuller) is but a fairy tale we may embrace, or laugh off as somehow beneath or beyond our ken.  Did we have some better story in mind then?

Does choosing to remain oblivious make us devils?  

Humanity bereft of any cause for hope might pass for the subhuman-tormented, as lost souls, in some dark novel (science fiction?) about mental illness.  "Ill to the point of losing our humanity" reminds us of the benefits of getting our collective mental health back.  "Humanity" still registers as a positive, even if, as creatures (monsters), we abandon our ideals and reconcile ourselves to cruelty and inhumanity as our lot.  

Will the pendulum now swing the other way then?  There's always the hope that these dystopian moods are but cyclic.

Just Say Space

Should I write a memo or something? I just had a realization in marketing space.

CMO here, Chief Marketing Officer for CSN (Coffee Shops Network). So why don't I post on that blog instead? Isn't this company business? Yes and no.

The realization is this: our marketing is being done for us when it comes to "namespaces" (pointing back to PSF Python, see below), in that the pros are just saying "space" and "spaces" and have been for some time.

It's OK to drop the "name" in front.

"I work in the space of advertising" sounds about right. As a phrase in the new vernacular, and also what I do in CMO mode.

I promulgate the idea of (design a space for) playing games for charity, stealing the acceptability of church bingo and drawing from casino space for some of my aesthetics, not to mention video lottery games.

You choose where the money goes, from a menu of options. Build a profile in the process. Be a hero.

Actually that's more spelling out a business model, but leaving out the circuit diagrams I've buried at the CSN blog, to keep patent trolls at bay.

There's a bigger picture around designer giving, the strategic application of funds to specific scenes in the various movies we're making.

Now I'm starting to wear my Asylum City hat, which is not that different when it comes to emphasizing prototyping. Asylum City draws experience from refugee camps, outdoor music venues (sound stages), the Oregon Country Fair, and even Occupy Portland (OPDX).

So that's the memo: just saying space is OK in this space i.e. when we're talking about the various namespaces we're operating with or within.

===

(base) Kirbys-MacBook-Pro:elite_school mac$ python -m this
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
(base) Kirbys-MacBook-Pro:elite_school mac$

Trucking and Social Media

Some readers might be surprised to learn that I've long used the cab of the long hauler truck as my paradigm PWS (personal workspace) in GST, even more than the cubicle.  The cab of a truck is a work-study space, and driving may take fierce concentration.  You may also sleep in your study carrel. 

The Trucker Exchange Program is a meme more than a program, even if I've taken inspiration from such as Bob Textor, whom I didn't know well, but I joined his drinking party anyway.  Thirsters at McMenamins. 

He had to do with sensitizing the budding Peace Corps to the importance of Anthropology (the A in STEAM says no one but me).  In terms of diplomatic corps, State Department types, I knew my dad of course, and James Lambert.

Since I'm propagating memes more than I'm administering program, I don't have to worry about taking credit for the rising self esteem among truckers, where "self" stands for "role" i.e. "job".  The idea of a "role" is more appealing I think.  

Theater is it.  World Game.  A play within a play within a play... Disney beat me to it, with cast members instead of employees. We see that holds all the way up, to Top Mouse.

The romance of the trucking lifestyle, if only as a glimmer in the Eye of Possibilities, is enough to keep the would-be future trucker generations circling.  Let's make it a reality while we can. Like while we're not truckers, in my case, but active truckers may join us too.

I'm some member of the movie crew in one scenario, following some experienced long haulers doing OBOR (Silk Road) or something in Africa, or Texas, or in Oregon or Australia.  

I help with curriculum around trucking, to provide continuity, helping to design a global exchange regarding work-study opportunities.  The job (role) involves more tourism and diplomacy.  We depend on truckers to work things out.

A Battle for Market Share

The joke about 5G is that "it isn't about mind control" whereas of course it is.  Not in a tin foil hat sense, but in a marketing sense. The FCC needs you to be OK with 5G, as does Qualcomm, and really, what's your problem with it?  

Do you intend to obstruct the right of free peoples to make use of those frequencies?  We already use them, for cooking.

The PR maze makes it look like the anti-5Gers have a problem understanding the difference between nuclear bomb type fallout radiation, and the kind we all use to listen to the BBC on FM.  

5G is way down below the visible spectrum with radar, microwave, and other ice cream melting frequencies.  5G has nothing to do with gamma rays.  The G does not stand for Gamma, you sillies.  You conspiracy theorists who think people haven't done their homework.

That other animals besides humans might already be making use of invisible frequencies is in many circles considered balderdash, except in the sense that loud sonar or rocket blasts could break the hearing and peace of mind, to the point of self destruction, of various species.  

If SpaceX blasts the surrounding turtle space with trauma and drama, it's not a given the sacred species will "bounce back".  

The science will tell us, if and when, but by then it may be too late.

Research seems to show that animals brought up in the presence of 5G suffer no ill effects presuming just a trickle of power.  Blasting power through devices not meant to handle it, usually causes damage, to phones and IoT devices included, not just nervous systems (wiring is wiring). 

Ear drums get damaged when subjected to 2G rock and roll (when the giant amps and speakers made their debut, and kids stood right up next to 'em).  Stand right in front of a radar at the wrong time, and you're asking for trouble.

But are all the concerns around next generation telecommunications owing to concerns about brains in a radio frequencies ocean?  Not at all.  Other paranoias run just as deep if not deeper.  Stay tuned.

City of Transients

In the ordinary English I inherited from birth, a "transient" is someone who hangs out around the Greyhound bus station, not really from around here, and soon to move on (with our encouragement, "we" being the people who live here).  You could use "transient" interchangeably with "undesirable".

The revenge of the "transients" came with "tourists" who would come through laden with the gift of a hard currency. One's role in life was now to be authentic, loyal to one's traditions, so the outsiders could gawk at one's behaving so quaintly. The Amish could set up a roadside gift shop, and get the hard cash needed to procure from "the grid" (or "the English" in their jargon).

"Transient City" is more fun than just a giant dreary Greyhound bus station, however I admire the Greyhound brand and so wouldn't mind working it in.  "Disneyland for Bums" doesn't get it right either, because a Wanderer is possibly a college professor, someone else skilled, serious, hard working.  Among the bums be anti-bums. The quantum physics of "particles in transit" includes a representative percentage of every human variety (even the rare types).

I'm fine with working backward from the scandalized of the future.  Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg) does this with the anti-AI circus, wherein the anti-AI bash the AIs (the robots). My time-tunnel scenario was through the 1960s and Woodstock. Harlem had a blow-out around the same time (a giant party). 

Music is core to Asylum City, as is the willing participation of government agencies ala Oregon's Vortex 1 festival, brought to my attention by Alan Potkin and tracked by me ever since.  

The Oregon Country Fair in Eugene, Oregon is another model.  Expand that to include a whole suburb of a larger City, with sound stages and FM radio bubbles, and lots of internet with storefront gamer shops.  Wait, didn't I just describe the 1990s?  

Where are the sports stadia and intramural events?  At the schools of course.  Scholars and athletes are encouraged to cavort, and even be the same persons if possible (a Greek ideal).

The transient nature of tourists coming here, to live awhile, then move on, based on new connections and situations, leads to a camaraderie one finds among tourists.  Some are too full of stories to ever shut up about and are hard to be with, especially if one is bursting with stories as well.  Others have an endless supply of travel tips and whet the appetite of Asylum seekers to get out, to see the world, to quit the venue of Wanderers, Flaneurs, Tourists and rejoin a more static community, a Terminus (station, placement).

Not all my visions of Asylum City are this sprawling.  As I write, I find myself picturing current situations, the shanty towns, the refugee camps, stretching for miles.  How do we shape these into more festival centric "tourist traps" destined to drain, eventually, of those truly wishing to move away for awhile (they deserve a vacation), while serving as strange attractors for others.  

Those who leave, may return (e.g. to Gaza), to see how a steady flow of tourism may shape a place that's ideal for transients.  Airport transit lounges provide a clay for our imaginative play.  Ambient Music for Airports.  Hello Brian Eno.

Scheherazad Numbers

On the Zoom call yesterday, with simultaneous chat (text dialog), I found myself weighing in on what I thought Bucky Fuller was up to with these uber-composite numbers, pregnant with prime factors, and going for a large number of digits.

We're used to large digit integers from cryptography these days, and the idea of a "wrap around" gear wherein our composite is the modulus for totatives, co-primes to N.  Scheherazad Numbers would have those too, but maybe not as many as we'd expect (depending who "we" are), given their size.

Flash to the Antikythera mechanism, reconstructed from ancient blueprints (a rusted specimen, subjected to X-ray analysis), and we find a gearworks up to tracking local astrophysical phenomena.  Integers can do it pretty well, if at high enough frequency.  So could a computerized Antikythera with Scheherazad Number limits to precision, hold its own?

The theory includes trig tables and all manner of digital operation, within the confines of this high frequency integer space, however expressed as a decimal.  The Numbers provide a degree of resolution, without dictating a specific scale, much as RGB provides "millions of colors" and no more.

In Buckyverse we have this "nature is not using pi" trope, which stands for the whole phenomenological argument over whether pi has trillions of digits of significance in any future physics, or does Planck insure a limit on precision / certainty (Heisenberg too)?  Bucky comes down on the side of uber-precision being attainable, but infinite precision being the fetish of infinitists, a school of thought he's pitted against.

In other words, nature gets through the day without needing our trillion digits computer generated versions of "pi in theory", as fun as this target is to reach for.  Incommensurability is a real phenomenon sure enough. I don't think of Synergetics as "in denial" vs-a-vis what Euclid proved:  that the 2nd root of two could never fully resolve as some p/q with p, q integers.  Rationals have their limited exactitude, but then what doesn't in phenomenological space and time?

Front Burner / Back Burner

replit with Julia and OEIS number sequences

My pedagogy around teaching any computer language is to have the target language e.g. Python on the front burner but then compare and contrast with one or more back burner languages e.g. Julia, Clojure... 

Replit makes it easy to walk my talk in this respect.

I'm eager to demonstrate starting a new Jupyter Notebook and having a choice among languages. Ju for Julia, Pyt for Python, Er for R.

The focus is ball packing: triangular and square numbers (figurate on a plain (plane)); tetrahedral and cuboctahedral (= icosahedral) in space.

A student is co-developing a lexical skill (coding language) with a graphical skill (visualizing balls packing in space). 

Python replit and OEIS A005901

This way we get an algebra-geometry bridge before (independently of) a coordinate system (which comes next).

Bizmo Redesign

 

Yes, humorous.

Critical Path

We discussed this silly story: science fiction about a rogue Soviet branch of the KGB that leaked about its rogue activities to Bucky, who shared them in Critical Path, during our meetup the other day.  

Just kidding. Bucky has a similar weapon, a submarine aircraft carrier, but not quite like we see in this toy design.  Bucky is an experienced cold warrior and gives Russian intelligence a level of credibility.

Americana

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).

From My Outbox

Here's an exercise.  I'll do two exhibits (think of World Game Museum), one connecting Bucky into the Humanities, the other bridging to Sciences more, pursuant to your question. I'll try to keep it pithy.  Anyone might do this exercise, thereby strengthening the IVM Bridge.

The Humanities

Allegra liked The Pound Era, she told me.  I think in the early days we all thought what we needed was a next Hugh Kenner, someone of high literary caliber.  Ed expressed strong affinity for Kenner as well, and maybe tried to be the missing literary figure in writing Paradise Mislaid, tackling that biggest question: what is life exactly?

However, before closing the book on these connections, we should remember the circumstances of Pound's era:  he was repatriated in shackles having been caged by the US Army for his joining the Italian fascists and broadcasting their worldview on radio.  

He faced the death penalty, but so many of his friends were in high places and they managed to get him committed to a mental hospital instead.  For like twelve years.  After which he went back to Italy, from when we get that famous Bucky-Ezra picture, Noguchi there too.

I've speculated that one of "those in high places" who helped keep Ezra's living situation at St. Elizabeth's remain livable all those years, was cold warrior James Jesus Angleton.  Ezra was allowed to entertain, and did.  James in his younger days had traveled to Italy and met Ezra then, before Mussolini and all that rot. Angleton then published a poetry mag, named Furioso, with Ezra's input.

A lot in the Angleton file is still under wraps I gather, as an Intercept reporter discovered recently, hoping to score a story.  Georgetown University had the papers by then.  The article says they were originally curated by another CIA guy, by the name of Ed Applewhite.  

I uncovered and shared in my Youtube channel how the CIA has a document on file, with Buckminster Fuller in a footnote, for having recommended for service a British journalist.  Mission: contact Ho Chi Minh and secure his cooperation against the Japanese.  This was before the great betrayal, as some would see it, which made HCM public enemy number one.

“Fenn’s was the only name [Gordon] would agree to.” Charles Fenn, born in the United Kingdom, emigrated to the United States in his early twenties. He became a news photographer and journalist; joined the Associated Press in 1941; and covered the war in North Africa and Asia, including the Japanese invasion of Burma. In 1943, in New York, Buckminster Fuller, an advisor to OSS, recruited him. He was commissioned as a Marine lieutenant and sent to Burma to run MO operations, in which he excelled. In June 1944, he was sent to China, where his duties expanded to include intelligence collection operations under the cover of AGFRTS.   Source: Bartholomew-Feis, The OSS and Ho Chi Minh, 96

The Sciences

Why was C60 named "buckminsterfullerene"?  

Sir Harold Kroto, who shares a Nobel Prize for its discovery, tells the story in my blog.

[ blog post snipped ]

Orientation for New Recruits (School of Tomorrow)

Rules of the Road

In our day and age, it's push​-​button simple to ​"​hit record​"​ and, without anyone else on the call ​being notified, ​and ​the video meetup gets saved to storage media.  

I'm not necessarily talking about the host or moderator making a recording, in which case others might see a pulsing red dot or other signifier, reminding them a recording is happening.  On the contrary, when any random person on the call hits record, that person gets a copy of the screen action, without raising any flags.  What happens to the recording after that?

The Grateful Dead were well aware of this issue at their concerts.  Anyone could tape the event, with the new devices.  Their policy was "go ahead" rather than to try policing and even punishing those creating, and even selling, "bootleg" tapes.

We have the same situation with television.  I have the ability to record whatever is coming over the "telly" (UK) or "TV" (USA).  I still have older VHS equipment able to do this.  Nowadays more people use DVR.  

One motivation for recording TV shows is "time shifting" i.e. the programs get broadcast at time X, but you'd rather watch them at time Y.  You may also wish to watch them more than once.

​Another motivation is mashups.  With raw material from several sources, an editor might cobble together overview reviews of specific online conferences, each with multiple venues (channels, tracks).  

Perhaps the audio track is supplied by some narrator providing a personal view of the activities.  Videos from Burning Man have this flavor.​ A chief attraction of Burning Man, a major spectacle, is the opportunity to take and make videos.

The awkward approach is to let these new technological superpowers go unacknowledged and then, after the fact, invent rules and policies designed to rein them in.

Do others on the call have to promise not to record unofficially?  ​Must they sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement)?  

​Do we insist that only those with hosting privileges have the right to hit a record button?  

When do we grapple with such questions?

The hosting body might reserve the right to produce the "official" version of the content, perhaps later edited, yet explain to participants, including invited guests, the possibility of "unofficial" taping by anyone on the call.  

The same hosting body might decide to release no official recording whatsoever.

What if excerpts from unofficial recordings make it to public forums?  Is this a travesty, a transgression?  What were the rules ahead of time?

In this day and age of rapidly evolving technology, it's a mistake to assume we all share the same codes of conduct and that it's OK to take for granted specific practices​, as if we're all on the same page by default.​

The past is not a sufficient guide to create the future, which is why explicit discussion and hammering out of the rules ahead of time is essential for any organization planning to wade into th​is new​ set of realities I call Cyberia (cyberspace).

On My Radar

Yes, in claiming to have a "radar" (not really a claim, more semantic heritage, an allowed metaphor) I'm thinking of Krystal and Saager, whom have kept me company, unbeknownst to them of course, through a first chapter of Covid.  

North Americans called it "lockdown" and I thought that too extreme, as in most zip codes we were free to move about, albeit with fewer places to go.  More a "lockout" in that we were kept out of businesses (bars and restaurants, libraries, anywhere "inessential").  Paris was more heavy handed than New York City by a long shot, or so was my impression.  

Saager and Krystal were the stars of The Hill channel's Rising, and then moved on, rather recently, to start their own channel.

Youtubers are the new rock stars, joining together and splitting up, just like the bands of old, and making music together, in duets, trios, perhaps in solo.  Hey, I'm one of them, way off in the weeds somewhere and barely looked at, given the esoteric content of what's on my shelf.

I spent the morning gawking at the floods in Belgium-Austria-Germany along those major river basins, all swollen with torrential rains.  I'm also following societal meltdowns (ostensibly state failures) in South Africa (Durban especially), Cuba, Lebanon and of course Haiti, where a foreign mercenary force murdered a president.

I'm watching Boomers and Millennials debate about who's to blame for the falling living standards, if that's what's in the cards.  I'm tracking TYT breaking away from anti-imperialist channels (Jimmy Dore's a flagship), in the ongoing oligarch-funded think tank wars.  I catch excerpts of Joe Rogan from time to time.  I tune in debates about Critical Race Theory.

For my day job, I continue hammering away at my example high school curriculum.  The feedback I got on NCTM Math Forum, at least from some corners, was the work that I do is terrible.  My detractors do not necessarily admire Jupyter Notebooks regardless of who is authoring them.  

But they also may have a beef about my content.  I keep hearkening back to a specific "Zen garden sculpture" (one of my names for it), a set of nested polyhedrons, almost a logo for a School of Thought (invisible college), with its own relationship to the various think tanks.

Back in the day, I used to express worry about the "cannibalization" of Synergetics.  The cookbook Synergetic Stew had been disturbing on that score.  However as time went on, I came to see this sculpture (with moving mechanisms) as akin to a beating heart, which could be surgically disentangled from the rest of Synergetics and held aloft by an accomplished doctor.  I would try my hand in that role.

I'd tell the Millennials that Boomers were too quick to dismiss the Bucky stuff, nor are most Millennials passing that torch to the GenZers.  How many does it take, to pass it on?  

Anthropologists know the pattern:  grandparents (an older generation) bond with the grandkids (a younger generation) while working parents, the middle generation, stay focussed on their careers.  

Boomers are looking back, GenZers ahead, with Millennials mired in their own fleeting now moment, on the treadmill (referring to the gym or to work), racing in the maze (the "rat race" we've called it).

Celebrating Allegra

Since the heatwave, which took Portland, Oregon to Las Vegas level temperatures, we've had pleasant summer weather. This morning I was able to do outdoor chores even in late morning, mowing, weeding and the like.

We live without air conditioning, although it's been offered. Power fans do the job. I'm still using oil heat in the winter as this house came with a muscular model and we're not hooked up to municipal gas lines.

Last night I shared about Allegra's passing with her friends and admirers on Curt McNamara's Trim Tab Book Club listserv. "Call me Trim Tab" it says on her dad's gravestone, a fitting epitaph.

I sat outside in the backyard with Glenn, as twilight spread, reminiscing about my several encounters with Allegra and her family over the decades.

I was lucky to be a contemporary, with a partially overlapping scenario.

D.W. Jacobs writes today on Facebook:

Today, is Bucky Fuller's birthday. Bucky was born July 12, 1895. Yesterday morning, his daughter, Allegra, passed away. I met her in early July, 1995, in San Diego at the Centennial celebration of Bucky's birthday. She was a major force in the world of dance. She danced in Balanchine's company, but then moved into dance ethnology. She was Chair of the UCLA dance department for 25 years, where she founded the Center for World Arts and Culture. 💖She was the best of friends and a mentor and guide for so many people all over the world. http://allegrafullersnyder.com/

Canonical Lesson Plan

Sometimes I get a request for a canonical lesson plan, one that will capture the flavor and style of Synergetics, by which they mean the Bucky stuff.

What I'm coming to on that score is the four random walkers starting from the same lamp post in the CCP (=IVM), and wandering for t time cycles.  

The four randomly arrived at balls define the corners of a tetrahedron which, upon having its six edge lengths get run through our volume computer, will turn out to always have a whole number volume.  In tetravolumes, that is. Four CCP balls define our D-for-diameter-edged tetrahedron of volume one.

In order to calculate the random walks, we use Quadrays as syntactic sugar.  The IVM ball packing is their sweet spot, which is why they're "IVM coordinates" by some accounts (including mine), in contrast to XYZ.

In order to calculate the sixth edge lengths, we simply perform vector subtraction between adjacent corners. Quadrays have essentially the same vector algebra as XYZ when it comes to adding, subtracting, and scaling.

Finally, in order to calculate the tetrahedron's volume, we use Gerald de Jong's formula, even though he has lost his derivation.  There's no denying it works well.  

Six edge lengths go in, fanning out from any apex and circuiting the opposite base, and the tetravolume comes out, natively, with no need for a modifying constant.  

The corresponding XYZ volume is computed accordingly, as IVM volume times 1/S3 (S3 being the Synergetics Constant for converting volumes).

In sum, we needed to learn what the IVM was, and to visualize movement within it as a process of hopping in one of twelve directions, by distance D, at each turn to play.  Then we needed to absorb the concept of tetravolumes.  

Getting whole number tetravolumes for the tetrahedra helps shock us into a mindset that might be open to the concentric hierarchy, wherein those rhombic dodecahedral cells around each sphere, each have a volume of six.

All of the above, along with figurate and polyhedral numbers more generally, including kissing point counts, form our IVM-XYZ bridge over troubled waters, the C.P. Snow chasm.

Heuristics for Teachers (continued)

City of Roses

 Try reading this as a kind of poetry.  It's about a rose, after all.

As Korzybski, the founder of general semantics, pointed out, the consequence of its single-tagging is that the rose becomes reflexively considered by man only as a red, white, or pink device for paying tribute to a beautiful girl, a thoughtful hostess, or last night's deceased acquaintance. The tagging of the complex biological process under the single title rose tends to detour human curiosity from further differentiation of its integral organic operations as well as from consideration of its interecological functionings aboard our planet. We don't know what a rose is, nor what may be its essential and unique cosmic function. Thus for long have we inadvertently deferred potential discovery of the essential roles in Universe that are performed complementarily by many, if not most, of the phenomena we experience. But, goaded by youth, we older ones are now taking second looks at almost everything. And that promises many ultimately favorable surprises. The oldsters do have vast experience banks not available to the youth. Their memory banks, integrated and reviewed, may readily disclose generalized principles of eminent importance.

 Exercise:  mine for memories of meanings for "rose" and be favorably surprised.

Mapping Out a Curriculum

Thinking with Mike Episode 5:  My Favorite Martian Mathematician

Synergetics in the Humanities

Excerpt from recent correspondence (email to Maurice, Apr 20, 2021, 3:02 AM ), regarding Kenneth Snelson's relationship with Bucky Fuller:

He was always trying to figure out where the narrative was going to go around Bucky.  Was the guy a genius or a crackpot and to what extent would tensegrity be tarnished or polished by the association?  Had he been victimized somehow, was the core question, e.g. by a mad man with a messiah complex?  A lot hinged on what a next generation did with the whole corpus.  He was still trying to see the future.  That's why he reached out to me, an early web guy focusing on Bucky stuff, both to warn me about what he called the Church of Bucky, and to get a sense of where said "church" might be going in future, as that would inevitably be impacting the Snelson story and reputation as well.

I don't think his question was ever fully answered, and that had been the problem all along:  an inability to reach consensus on the nature and/or level of Bucky's game.  He somewhat resented the sense that, as a Black Mountain College student, he'd been left to figure that all out for himself.  Bucky was looking at Snelson as a possible protege, and given how mission-critical the former thought his own work might be, that put Kenneth under a lot of pressure.  He just wanted to enjoy being a college kid and having a girlfriend.  That he was put in the position of needing to assess Bucky was in some ways infuriating.  Others should be helping more.  

To make a long story short, he eventually fell in with a crowd who assured him Bucky was pretty much a charlatan and he'd be doing us a service by fighting him directly and publicizing their tug-o-war over intellectual property (both were patenting).  Kenneth thought they had something like a truce, an understanding:  Bucky would stay out of the art world and leave "tensegrity as art" to Kenneth, as what could a design science guy need with pure art?  Then it appeared Bucky transgressed that line, and was moving into the art world himself, and that's when Kenneth put on his battle armor.  

But then people such as myself gave him pause. Maybe there was something to it all after all?  We discussed these matters at some length, why not?  He was a really charming guy, easy to get along with.  We both had daughters.  I took mine to New York City to visit that time, and show her some of my young adulthood haunts in Jersey City.  

We exchanged a lot of emails, Kenneth and I, none of which I've kept as if he'd wanted those kept, he'd have archived them on his end, as he was very organized.  Maybe he did, I don't know.  He was also handsome and athletic.  He didn't like old age and what it did to him.  He was having a brilliant life.  Who'd want to ever let go of such an amazing scenario?

The Algorithm

compute a tetrahedron's tetravolume given its six edge lengths

I'm pretty sure the first time I saw Gerald's algorithm it was already expressed in source code, Java no doubt. I've also implemented it in Clojure just for fun and suggest on my Youtube channel that students use whatever language currently interests them, i.e. use it as a Rosetta Stone entry.

The constant e.g. 288 or 144 (a 2nd root thereof) was already absent from Gerald's version, and returning in tetravolumes was already the goal. I don't claim that wrinkle came in with the Python.

Given Python's "duck typing" it's easy enough to use the same source code to use arbitrary precision inputs (way beyond floating points in precision) and to use such as the plane nets for A, B, T, E, S modules in Synergetics to get these volumes and to interconvert their expression with Koski's versions, involving Phi (Fuller avoided using both Phi and Pi in his invented language of Synergetics, whereas adding Phi back in simplifies a lot of the dimensions).

I've also been frequenting a certain Wayne Roberts Principles of Nature website wherein he proves how the area of what he calls a "eutrigon" (one or three angles set to 60 degrees) is A x B where A, B are the lengths including the 60 degree angle, and C is the opposite edge connecting A to B. Multiplication is a matter of specifying the two sides and "closing the lid" (adding C). Lengths 4, 3 would give area of 12 etc.

area in ETUs

Using the same volume formula and treating the unit tetrahedron as analogous to Wayne's "ETU" (equilateral triangular unit), I show the model is entirely analogous i.e. lengths A, B, C from a common corner (picture XYZ corner as analog) give A x B x C as the corresponding volume, once again with a "closing the lid" operation, this time on a tetrahedron vs. a triangle.

2 x 2 x 5 = 20

Given the fixed angle of the ABC corner (that of a regular tet), the remaining three lengths are already determined and easy to obtain, for the purpose of feeding into the 6-edge-eating formula above.

I personally don't need a whole worked out math textbook with proofs + index in order to encourage developing coding skills while imagining a reference "sculpture" namely the concentric hierarchy from Synergetics. Your typical arts and design academy, where fluency with computers is baked into the curriculum, would have reasons to include this segment.

concentric hierarchy

Russiagate Rolls On

Domestic Logistics

Tuesday this week was a mini day of reckoning.  Would the new appliance show up as the email promised, and work?  This may be the biggest appliance I've bought on the web, sight unseen (but for pictures).

How about the furnace? Letting an oil furnace run out of fuel (my bad) puts air or worse in the line, making a restart difficult sometimes. 

One ends up phoning a technician. The technician usually does a hard sell on rebuilding the whole furnace. Should I convert the house to gas?  Not an option at the moment.

The new Samsung dishwasher appears up to the task. The guys who put it in clearly have their choreography down. Efficient.

The furnace wouldn't come on at first.  The fuel line from under the driveway is quite long. I kept at it, pressing the red button at long intervals, and finally, ignition.  The line was cleared.

I'm back to keeping the household running smoothly, for a 62 and almost 92 year old, during a pandemic. Many thanks to my friends who help out in so many ways.

Sociological Remarks

As the son of a city planner, I have to enjoy the dissonant zoning. Little Free Libraries are the epitome of middle class, whereas the Adult Bookstore is commercial strip mall zoning. 

Juxtaposing these two zonings sets off dissonant notes. 

Then of course the whole idea of "adult content" conflicts with tea-cuppy Victorian values, which provide the roots for what we consider anglophone middle class (piano, trivial pursuits, stable of "horses" i.e. Prius and Tesla).

Of Bioneers and St. Thomas Aquinas

Continuing with the appliance theme, the bionics, I got my yearly diagnostic at the hospital the other day. There's one number in particular, a physical dimension (width) we're keeping an eye on. No change. That's good.

I guess I like the term "bioneer" OK. Better than "bionista". I echo Guido's dislike of "pythoneer", much preferring "pythonista". So does that make me inconsistent?  Not really.  We want to keep the "engineer" meme.  "One who deals with engines".  Intellect:  that which busies itself with thoughts, while remaining its own thing.

I was lurking on Srikant's seminar room again today (52 Living Ideas).  The est Seminars sometimes endeavored to such collegiate levels, but in opening one's doors to the masses, you're not necessarily soliciting the most high brow of conversations.  This one was about "Faculty Psychology" or "the Psychology of Faculties" and, in particular, the cogitative (no, not cognitive) sense, per St. Thomas Aquinas. 

"Bioneer" for me is a slightly tongue in cheek swap-in for "farmer" where today's farmer is not some left-in-the-dark peasant, but a very globally aware technologist, at the intersection of a great many industries, from entomology, to chemistry, to climate science, to marketing, to cybernetics and synergetics.  Farmers make use of their cogitative sense at a high level.

Appliance Connection

I've been grateful the appliances have kept working. After the personal bionics, the avatar, and those around us, we want our machines to work, especially the life sustaining ones, like the furnace, air conditioner, for many a car. I running a two person household yet managing my Oregon Curriculum Network on top of that, pumping memes to the world.  That's thanks to appliances.

So yeah, the clothes washer went out.  My ex Sandia Labs friend, with the can do attitude, was all ready to buy some parts and dive in.  Bill Shepherd rescued my DVD player by soldering a new capacitor to the circuit board, per online advice.  Perhaps $60 in parts and some hours, would make the Kenmore good as new.

Calling around for a repair person wasn't getting me anywhere.  The web machine is still directing calls, but these go to a black hole. The economy is still in suspension.  The economy would prefer I buy a new washing machine.  That's what the stimulus check, if there is one, could be for.

My Sandia friend was also ready to solve the BP crisis, when British Petroleum (aka the Pentagon) trashed the Gulf of Mexico. Patrick had his aquarium tank fired up and started prototyping these giant sucking contraptions (giant at scale), designed for ordinary fishing boats to use.  Mobilize the fleet.

He's taken on other challenges: the python invasion in the Everglades; the need for easy verification of vaccinated status.

My sense of the problem with the washer is there's no diagnosis by telepathy. One has to take it apart to see what's wrong.  I've had it for more than five years probably, and it's not under any kind of extended protection plan.

Buying a new appliance, and protection plan, in this day and age, is a statement of confidence about our civilization, and even about so-called "capitalism" (a word I use for something else, but never mind). I'm expecting Home Depot to be around for another five years, and maybe even expand to other countries.

We need to get back to tourism, and not tourism in camo.  In exporting its youth in military uniform, instead of as civilians, the Americans wasted a few generations.  People are entitled to UBI as compensation for all this abuse maybe.  Monkey rule of humanity has been a bummer.

Of EQ and IQ

From the Polymaths & Polymathy group on Facebook:

Even if it's true that IQ is measurable and EQ is not, meaning you can't walk around with a numeric bell curve score for your EQ, that doesn't mean we don't each have a sense of gaining and losing EQ points over a lifetime.

You can suddenly have insights and understand yourself and others a lot better. Part of that just takes growing to adulthood. You gain empathy for people raising kids, by raising kids, and so on.

I think the game in both cases is to guard against losing points, which means exercise and train to stay at full potential (for you).

I believe EQ is trained by novels, movies, soaps, TV series (not all of them, just the ones that do). Also travel. Having friendships and community. EQ is developed and cultivated.

Even if we think IQ is somewhat fixed (everyone has a maximum they can't go beyond, similar to physical height and/or maximum strength), there's the question of whether we value it or not and/or have opportunities to "work out" in order to live up to our full potential.

Sometimes we're not rewarded for physical strength. Likewise, you my be stuck in a routine, not of your own making if you're not free, that has no use for your stellar IQ. Picture an Elon Musk type wasting away on a marijuana charge in Texas. Times a million around the world.

Humans deliberately sabotage their own smarts, to conform to social norms. Women have been especially so encouraged.

I'd say a polymath is someone who (a) values both IQ and EQ and (b) strives to "stay in shape" which means "round" (as in well-rounded). Life by its very nature is multi-topic, multi-subject, so the very process of staying in shape is going to take care of the poly part.

Playing World Game

How does one play it, this World Game thing I've been talking about? Even the subtitle of my Grain of Sand blog is Kirby Plays World Game.

Well, I'd say Natasha here in this Youtube is a player, in that she's sharing about growing up in her hometown. I just came across her channel recently, starting with the one where she takes us on a tour of her dorm block in her language school.  She's on a seventh floor sharing the space with her sister, likewise a language student.

Natasha had elected to learn Japanese, however owing to a teacher shortage, she was assigned Chinese instead, and English.  Her English is already quite good, which helps her join the world of traveling Youtube bloggers, the new citizen diplomats.

That sounds like a more exalted title -- "citizen diplomat" -- but its in some ways redundant.  As a player, you'll likely speak up for, most identify with, a subset of the total team.  This will help others communicate with you, through a somewhat standardized API.  You identify with some country, nation, camp, tribe or company and thereby serve as a representative or ambassador therefrom.  Perhaps your nation is one of the diaspora nations, not on any UN-approved map at this time?

Speaking of maps, Fuller's Dymaxion Projection was generally devoid of political data, sticking nominally to temperature (global average). The map was positioned in this way partly because of its role in the space of citizen diplomacy.  

Were Bucky to have published a veridical political map, he would have had to copy an authority, such as the United Nations, or maybe would have planted his own flag in some way, by drawing different borders. Either way, he would have taken a position on many political issues, simply by showing borders.

Rather than get involved in such border disputes, Bucky made it so that any nationalism worth its salt is concerned with the welfare of the entire game board.  He would supply and artifact, neutrally devoid of political data, and leave it to the individual players how they wanted to value-add.

Parochial adherence to some specific jurisdiction could be seen as negligent. Looking out for the welfare of a people, was tantamount to taking the welfare of all of the peoples into account.  We're a single unified ecosystem, a planet, with or without competently designed systems on the humans' part.  And that's where World Game comes in, and playing with competence.

From My Outbox

We could artificially create human "breeds" with pedigrees, and a lot of this goes on with inbreeding and nobility.  If we really wanted to play the game of "purebreds" versus "mongrels" in the human sphere, we could.  But for the most part, we don't want to.

When it comes to typifying humans by genetic makeup, there're so many ways to slice and dice.  Why aren't dwarves a race, or albinos?  We say "genetic anomaly" or whatever, but any genetic characteristic might be lumped into a breed or "race" by convention, should we wish it.

We could easily have "races of human" based on blood type only.  This would satisfy no one of course, because the whole point of racism is to have distinguishable outward characteristics that allow one to be classified.  Like if you speak Italian as a first language, you're obviously of the Italian race and so on. :-D

Learning to Work Remotely: An End in Itself

Back when O'Reilly paid our way to professional development experiences, I got to hang out with the  distance learning crowd (USDLA) in St. Louis.  Or maybe I should say "distance teaching" as I was learning from the teaching end of the business.

All of that was pre pandemic of course, at the time of the big earthquake in Nepal. I remember Leela (then Lindsey) calling me in my Hilton hotel room from Kathmandu, to say she was OK.  Hilton had taken over a goodly portion of the old Union Station in downtown STL, the site of our conference.

In those days, Michigan was giving some kids opportunities to take a distance learning class as an experience in itself.  A special school had set up facilities in several metro areas, whereby the kids would be in a learning facilities, complete with snacks and exercise equipment -- but their teachers were far away.  

They could practice their Zoom skills, or the old timey equivalent.  They could get ready for remote work.

Part of schooling today, is around developing the skills needed to work remotely.  Developing those abilities is an end in itself as well as a means to an end.  

Some teachers specialize in teaching remotely just as some specialize in teaching gym or home economics.  But then remote teaching works best for some subject matter, such as maybe history and computer science.  YMMV.

Contra Opinionism

I was grousing the other day about what Individualism (individuation) is not, actually reiterating a pet peeve of mine, first consciously formulated around high school.  

Now these were good schools mind you, as the parents were already at the top of their games usually, living a high life of some kind. 

What they all said they wanted you to learn was "critical thinking" which means how to think critically, but what does that in fact mean, let us pause.

What "critical thinking" doesn't mean, yet what comes across as a poor substitute, is being strongly opinionated on a wide variety of topics. This gets confused with "building character" i.e. someone with character is known to kvetch and moan, or praise and promote, about a very long list of notions.

What seemed to be happening is my classmates and I were being encouraged to express strong opinions about matters we'd barely considered.  The way to acknowledge learning about something, was to pass judgement thereon.  "Knowing about" meant "having formed opinions about".  Therefore, strong opinions could be taken as knowing.

I suppose a "knowing person" is what the schools coach us to become.  But how much of being "knowing" is pure affectation?  

What I came to was a disparaging opinion of "know it alls".  A "know it all" isn't just good at regurgitation information, which can be an impressive skill, but someone who invariably accompanies that information with some kind of judgement or spin.

Obviously I'm being opinionated and judgemental right here, so am I not hypocritical?  I may well be hypocritical on occasion but I don't see any logical contradiction in questioning an ethic, and an esthetic, which is itself about "being critical".

A reason distopians might give for the ultimate untenability of utopian communities with libertarian and democratic ideals, is that once you have a bunch of know-it-alls in the room, collaboration quickly becomes impossible.  The principals become too interested in jamming one another's plans.

However, if a primary reflex of most of the denizens is "not necessarily my business" or "I'm not prepared to venture an opinion" we could have a lot smoother functioning.  People are happy to stay on the sidelines and not feel aggrieved at every turn, because their opinion was not sought.

Race Versus Ethnicity

Nazism cobbled together social darwinism, eugenics, folk beliefs from the Bible about "sons of Noah", and the emerging science of genetics (no DNA known), to further the white man pseudo-science of "races".

I say "white man" to capture an ethnicity, not a race. Anglo-Euros with empires and slavery to justify, and control over the curriculum namespaces.

There's no "race gene" that divides 1/2, 1/4, 1/8... such that "by blood, I'm 1/32nd Black" -- that's utter nonsense, dumbed down to fit the arithmetic of an elementary school teacher. To this day, Anglo-Euros strut about talking about "race" as if it meant something, failing to see "ethnicity" as what they're really talking about. They don't get a decent semantics in school, and flounder and drown (figuratively) in their own poorly designed concepts. A racist is someone who believes in races.

A big diff between "race" and "ethnicity" is the former is imposed on you by authorities, who may insist you go by "mixed" whether or not you believe in their faux taxonomy. They won't let you "pass" as white if you're 1/32nd "black" or whatever ethnic nazi apartheid garbage they go by.

"Ethnicity" on the other hand is something I have more control over, even more than over gender it would seem to me (I can't change my XY to the XX of the stronger sex). I may be born into one ethnicity, yet die in another. Indeed, I'm able to tell people (versus be told) what my ethnicity is, and the vocabulary there is always changing.

Unsubstantiated Innuendo

Remember, there was already a SARS outbreak before this, traced by virologists, including the Wuhan Lab, to bat colonies. Bat-derived coronaviruses is today and was before a focus of the Wahan virologists, of course. We were warned years ago that another SARS-like outbreak was very possible. 

As Nassim Taleb puts it, this was no "black swan" event -- twaz foreseen and foreseeable.

So yes, Wuhan was studying coronaviruses, we knew that from the beginning. That's their job. They had joint projects with NSF funded scientists which Trump made a big show of cutting, in a moronic display of awkwardness.

So if there was a release of coronavirus by a contagious human, contaminated in the lab, that is not proof of weaponization or gain of function research.

Looking over the credentials of the WHO adviser, I am not impressed. Tell me exactly what look like genetic alterations to a naturally occuring bat-borne virus. 

Let it cross your mind that humans don't yet know enough about viruses to purposely modify their lethality, let alone synthesize them from scratch.

The Buzz

I'm hearing they just wanted "a few more days" to get to the bottom of these allegations, a rerun of Pizzagate in 2016 in a lot of ways. 

Giuliani and Sydney Powell were always making it seem like the big revelation was coming tomorrow. 

Just like 2016: stay tuned, and we'll have proof Hillary is Spawn of Satan. 

This kind of short term myopic "tomorrow is the apocalypse" science fiction, is worth mocking I think.

More Remarks on Race, Revised & Extended

The white African pictured above [Facebook] is of course Yolandi Visser. My parents moved to Lesotho sometime after Bhutan (from one mountain kingdom to another), which is surrounded by RSA (Republic of South Africa). 

Over the years, through many adventures, I've come to feel at home in that part of Africa. The idea of "white Africans" is nothing jarring or new. White refers to skin color yes, not race really. 

There's no "race" gene and conflating the world to "white brown yellow red black" is just comic book cartoonery. Fits on a brochure. Keep it simple, and stupid (KISS of death).

Re: My Parents' Perspective | 親からの観点 (movie review)

Tiffany doesn't identify as 3rd culture because she associates that with international schools, which she didn't go to. Fair enough. 

Her dad tells the story of how, when Tiffany was growing up in Japan, she'd talk about skin color very literally, as in RGB values. A person might be light pink, or tan, or... given her own dark skin, she'd of course know the difference. But it wasn't about race, yet. Then, after some time back in the states, Tiffany came home and talked about a "black" person, where you could tell the meaning had shifted, and literal color was no longer the meaning. That day was sweetly sad, a loss of innocence. 

The racist meme virus had claimed another victim in a way.

If hair, eye and/or skin color were a reliable indicator of ethnicity and personality then I could see where racism could keep a toehold. "White skin means you think as I do" -- that could work in some isolated setting, but fewer and fewer settings are that isolated.

The problem is, as Somalis repatriate in Tennessee, for example, you get ethnic tensions and rebalancings that belie the simplicity of "skin color" as the key parameter. People want to hate each other first, and look for distinguishing physical characteristics second.

In the language of the data scientist, skin color, eye shape, body type etc. have become less and less principal components in our model of the human persona.

Like, I am often seeking out ethnicity when I meet a person (say it's a date), which means everything from what magazines do they read (do they read), what profession and so on.

If, like an idiot, I conclude from skin color that I'm free to talk down or be rude somehow, as if I'm superior, then I stereotype myself more and more as a typical jerk. My reflexes are seeming more and more awkward as I'm surprised again and again by how sad and clownish I've become. Racism leads to awkward embarrassment, which is what is ultimately going to extinguish it, more than ratiocination, I'd hazard.

Case in point, my family, Quaker, once stayed at the home of then deputy defense minister of the RSA, formerly with African National Congress and now married into the Routledge family and a Friend.

That RSA would appoint a pacifist to the defense ministry was creative. On trips to weapons bazaars, where they'd wanna sell you every type of fighter jet this and bazooka that, the booth people would inevitably swarm around the little guy, assuming Nozizwe was the personal assistant. Imagine their surprise. 😀

Per my angle, "race" is hokum and a racist is someone who believes in races. That's OK though. Nationalists believe in nations, likewise social constructs and not unrelated. I don't expect either racists or nationalists to die out anytime soon, even if my own ethnicity takes neither too seriously.

My mission is to not force "true beliefs" on people, let them believe whatever crap they like and feed them anyway, don't hold their bodies hostage to meme viruses. Give everyone a fun life if possible. Waste less and we'll get there.

I do like "ethnicity" (over "race") for being plastic. Steve Martin raised black in the south in The Jerk comes to mind.

Given my high school in the Philippines and subsequent immersion in Asian cultures, plus my own studies and who knows what else, I have no worries identifying as Asian if people ask. Of course I know it's not my ethnicity they usually care about. The little check boxes are about my "race". I dutifully check "white" and inwardly sneer at my stupid ancestors and their superstitions.

Thinking of myself as Asian puts some distance between me and these other domestics around me, the ones who never left and don't share my 3rd culture expat upbringing. Feels right (to put some distance).

As to gender, I get from theater that we are able to play characters in movies, and it might get to where your "home character" is like a female even if your body is XY. A whole city, like Portland, might agree to go with that convention, that regardless of your body's XX or XY, you have a right to define a home base character of any gender.

But that's like a fleeting and fragile overlay in a subculture, like Vienna being sensitive to a special music. Outsiders are just gonna see it as weird, take offense, and think Portland is trying to export its idea of "life as theater" to the world (whereas in fact Portland is inward-turned and sometimes forgets there's "a world" out there).