Keeping it Quirky

What's becoming more clear to me is I'm not on the hook to author some veridical textbook standard that nails it. Nails what? 

Speaking of nails, cosmetics, Max Factor, I am welcoming the view that polymathy, a commitment to comprehensivity, does not entail a commitment to omniscience. The "know it all" as a personality type is already off-putting vs-a-vs my type, whatever that is (I've not done Myers-Briggs, or if I have, for joining with temp agencies, they didn't tell me my sign).

Insofar as School of Tomorrow is concerned, this means I'm free to continue exploring off the ends of the roads I've already achieved. That'll lead to new connections, such as I discovered yesterday, H.G. Wells and Orson Welles in the same room with a journalist, on radio methinks. 

They discussed the similarity in their names, as I've pointed out, and Wells asks Orson about the upcoming movie (Orson: thanks for the plug, citizen Kane). 

Wells has an especially kind spin on the Halloween Panic, when Orson persuaded some listeners there'd been an attack of the UAPs. Wells: oh we knew from across the pond how you Americans like to dress up in a bed sheet on Halloween and pretend you've seen a ghost and start screaming, hah hah. Orson: you're very kind -- he was up to his neck in hot water after that stunt -- which he knew better than to ever live down.

I free to stay with Mark Fisher and his nostalgia for pre-Thatcher English brutalism in architecture, echoing Sovietism, because it reflected a for-the-ages commitment to public works. So Tucker was impressed by those subway stations, why fight it? 

Privatization has come at a cost, and it makes sense for a Portland-based open source freelancer type guy to say that, if not for Pearson to make a textbook out of it. Not that I thoroughly understand the British Ingsoc. What's the BBC again? A private company you say? Not really?

I'm able to stay with David Graeber and fellow travelers, who to my mind were pointing out that it's not a grand struggle between two or three mega-designs, where we all end up on the same page at the end of the day. Why? Why even make that a goal. I'm fine that you and your campuses look and feel different and feature different course offerings. That's how I succeed in recruiting, by emphasizing how we're different.

Think of all the board games there are. I've been to houses where every shelf was pile high with game boxes, because that's what this household chose to specialize in and there we certainly enough offerings out there, to fill a house worth. No problemo. 

And that's how to think of human communities and their internal arrangements: highly variegated. 

Graeber likes to recount how one tribe he came across was all hippie dippie loosey goosey communal anarchist in the summer, but went for hierarchical fascism with lockstep minions in the winter (I paraphrase). Phase changes: a single substance will have gas, liquid and solid phases, quite different. Now multiply by a lot of substances and divide by 137 (just kidding, I mean 42).

A BFI Event

A PATH-STEM Meetup

(after the C.P. Snow Bridge)

Today was a special event in the BFI (bfi.org) network, as we gathered around the figurative campfire to both hear and tell stories. D.W. Jacobs is a playwright but also director, which means he's by definition a skilled acting coach, as what a director does, more than run cameras or wrangle lighting, is give the cast guidance with regard to their roles.

Doug structured our Zoom meetup like a workshop in that everyone was given an opportunity to construct a story, like a fairytale, meaning following a formula but not too mechanically. Keep it from the heart, tell an authentic story of what brings you to this campfire, here in the shadow of one Buckminster Fuller. 

A story has a beginning, middle and end. 

There's an event, a skeletal plot. 

The story itself has mnemonic value in that it self coheres by dint of its own protein-folding chemistry.

That in itself was a great beginning, but Doug backed it up by (a) enforcing a time limit, albeit in a friendly manner and by (b) offering criticisms, as one would after a performance, by an actor on stage, trying out for (auditioning) or maybe learning the nuances of (already cast) an important role.

"I notice you used a whole minute introducing and explaining why you were telling the story, when a context had already been handed to you" (I'm paraphrasing). "That's a great billboard or advertisement for your being about Bucky, but what's the micro event you hope we will remember?" and "Those doing this later are going to benefit from the feedback I'm giving the first few". 

Towards the end, he'd stopped coaching. He figured we'd gotten the exercise by then and everyone said their piece. I was glad to catch Chad's.

Autobiography lends itself to scene construction and plot design so I'd say everyone followed the instruction insofar as they recounted a first person narrative i.e. with one's self the protagonist. I think we all did that.

My story featured Fred Craden, my middle school sociology teacher (amazing, right?) at the Overseas School of Rome, and how he'd had my dad address our class during "what's your parent's job day?" and Dr. Urner, the city planner, unrolled some impressive maps of some city (probably in Libya but I don't remember that detail). 

Dad directed our attention to a color code, a shade of green, appearing all around this city map, although not right in the downtown or CBD (not in this one) and asked if we could decipher the color's meaning. "Parks?" Nope. "Zoos?" Nope. "Golf courses?" Nope. Turns out they were cemeteries. Forehead slap. Of course, those are ubiquitous.

Then, the story goes, Fred Craden and fellow teachers all came back from some off-camera event, and were jabbering excitedly in some cultish jargon, about how squares were unstable and tetrahedra were where it's at. 

I only figured out later what had happened: they'd been to some Bucky talk obviously. I still haven't figured out which one exactly. Late 1960s or very early 1970s -- by 1972 we'd left Rome behind and were in the Philippines, where Bucky would also appear (I'd only find out later).

My other story (these were short): when Doug and I first met, and he was doing the play in Portland, in 2008, the Scrooge play (Christmas Story) had to closed, for election day. They wouldn't sell nearly enough tickets to make it profitable, with everyone home glued to the TV, watching Obama's triumph. 

But Doug's play was in "the crypt" in the Portland Armory (by now remodeled into theaters), and the company hatched a brilliant plan: entice engineers and their families from the IEEE mailing list, give them a special free lecture, before the play, by Kirby Urner. Just in general be solicitous and kowtowing. 

It worked: the place was packed, and during half times we could double check how the election was going. A fun evening. I enjoyed the play too.

OK, then Doug did something brilliant (again).

He asked us to speak up if anything in another's story had in turn sparked our storytelling impulses. Like when that one guy talked about Barbara Marx Hubbard as inspirational, I was taken back, in my thinking, to dad's volunteering for her campaign. I got to join him, in her house, and hear her speak.

She was running for Vice President, as a free standing candidate available to whatever president would have her. I think she was hoping John Glenn given they were both spacey space buffs. 

In going around the figurative Zoom room, it become clear that our stories were branching and interweaving and in no time, it seems, would encompass the world. A collective "scenarios basket" would be hugely encompassing, in any case, not that we had time to weave it then. Doug still had his main presentation to give.

Another of the guys present (Bonnie was there too -- not all the guys were guys) was in fact a descendent of a Great Pirate, literally. Bucky's prose poetry was redolent with pirate imagery, in connection with his maritime-anchored historical narrative, stretching back to Venetian times and before. 

I mention Venetian in part to justify including my AI graphic above, from my Project Renaissance collection.

Urner Connects

The Apprentice (movie review)

Just to set the stage, I took the bus (one transfer) on a beautiful fall day, to a 1 pm matinee at Eastport Plaza, out on SE 82nd, a major thoroughfare and home to big Asian supermarkets. Such a store was my first destination: Hong Phat, a remodeled WalMart, to eat some no-frills salad rolls and a little sushi, while chatting with my distant daughter on the iPhone.

I texted some other friends on the way, as bus riding is conducive to phone chatting. My peer group is quite anti Trump and they worried this was maybe a propaganda movie. 

So what if it was, right? I'm a big consumer of propaganda, a primary or raw material for the kind of anthropology I'm into. I study cults, left and right. Plus I'm in one, one could say, producing propaganda of my own (or call it advertising).

But it wasn't really a propaganda film, or at least not of the shallow type, all hype and puffery. I already knew from the NPR interview with the director that I caught in the car, coming back from the Seattle area recently, that this would be an empathetic view without constituting an endorsement. I would assess the film will have approximately zero impact on the final outcome of the 2024 presidential race. Most people will catch it later.

Dr. D. (PhD) joined me, arriving by EV, just as the previews got going. The smallish theater had only two others besides ourselves. This 1 pm matinee was the latest showtime available, on a Sunday anyway.

These were lounge style seats. I don't usually make it to this particular theater and didn't figure out how to operate the recliner controls until after the movie was over, although the seat did seem to kick back a bit on its own (I must've rubbed up against the button).

Anyway, those details out of the way, what was this? 

A fictionalized not-documentary that reminds us of the timeline. When Donald was doing this, Nixon was doing that. When DT was onto building Trump Tower, we were up to Mayor Koch already. 

Mayor Koch... so I would've been in Jersey City, close to penniless, a Catholic school teacher, but writing to Koch anyway (not that often), about various city plans I had: train to plane; high def illuminated billboard near Journal Square; IMAX in the Stanley; something about navy submarines (for tourists).

But I had no Roy Cohn to take me under his wing. I had Ray and Bonnie Simon, who took me under theirs, and I learned a lot from them, not to mention a small income for taking care of their baby daughter. Ray and Bonnie both had work in the Big Apple. We'd sit around their living room table after hours, getting deep in to philosophy and pop culture. 

Ray and Bonnie were both closer to the show biz world and that whole chapter in my life was about tuning in show business (its centrality).

Then, after Trump Tower, came the Atlantic City chapter, and then Trump buys Mar-a-lago, and the movie draws to a close. He's still married to Ivana. His mentor Roy has died. The Art of the Deal, the book, is just getting underway. 

No Miss Universe, no Apprentice on TV, no running for president, except for foreshadowing. It's all about his family matrix (mom and dad, brother Frank) right when he's becoming a "self made" man. It's a coming of age story.

I found the Roy Cohn character captivating, a star performance, which in the movie, Trump did too (he found Roy fascinating). 

So as the director says: it's a movie with empathy for its protagonist. The camera rarely gets far from the Donald. We're always finding stuff out when he does. The camera never drifts off to follow others, making us privy to what they're saying about Trump behind his back. We simply don't go behind Trump's back. He's the center around which the world turns, an entirely valid point of view obviously, for either a novel or a fictional film.

The Trump character doesn't seem that much like him at first, but it's a good performance and he seems to gradually adopt the mannerisms, gestures and phraseology we've come to expect. I don't have any strong issue with anyone's acting. Or the directing. The script paints in broad, bold brush strokes, serving a didactic function, educating its audience about the thermodynamics of it all.

Roy is tough, a "killer" (he doesn't shoot anyone), some say vicious, but the movie wants to humanize him as well, and in my book succeeds. 

He considers himself a true American patriot, and regards his winning the death penalty for the Rosenbergs one of his greatest achievements. He admires Trump because he's a privileged golden boy aristocrat who has chosen an uphill battle. Roy perceives that Trump needs a true bully in his corner, to fight the bullies. His friendship is authentic, but becomes strained in the end. 

Whatever the real Roy was like, this one was believable, and consistently rendered. Bravo.

The last time I was at this theater, I forget which movie, I emerged to find then president Trump had approved the martyring of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, thereby adding to the lawless mayhem that is otherwise described as the rules based order. 

Friends (Quakers) don't celebrate outward violence, nor do I recall a lot of flag-waving at the time. More just worry and concern. Portland is not as into Murder Inc. as some cities I could name. Trump had by then become another swamp creature, a kind of political dinosaur, a living fossil. We still have quite a few of those around, still thrashing about, making waves while going under.

Trucking Algorithms

I don't think long haul truckers have much to fear from AI in the short term, in terms of job loss. However that doesn't mean that lifestyle is immune from overhaul in other dimensions. 

EV trucking might be a thing (Tesla testing) but probably only if cabs decouple from payloads more, i.e. it's super easy to drop a trailer and head to charging, while another cab takes the payload onward with very little downtime. 

Cabs queue and charge at a slower rate but there's always enough of them.

Trucking companies might choose a "driver stays with the payload" policy and have the driver hop from cab to cab, or the driver could stay with the cab and get hitched to different trailers going from A to B all day, not much rhyme or reason from the driver viewpoint but expertly routed by Mother (the company computers).

DS US

US track, Data Science

Tonight I was engaged in torch passing. No, not PyTorch (you know of it?) but moving in that direction. I told my students they were on like the Trans-Siberian railroad, from London to Beijing. I would be their tour guide from London to Berlin. Then I’d hand them off to a next instructor. They’re wending their way towards ML (Machine Learning) the domain of PyTorch, although from the slides I see it’s TensorFlow they get into, which makes sense too. Keras…

The part of the ML pipeline I have them look at is analogous to what I did in outcomes research, when David Lansky and company (MDRC to be precise) were harvesting data from heart procedures, diagnostic and interventional, and getting it statistically analyzed. David and Gary knew statistics. I was the computer guy who knew how to harvest on the front end, design a GUI for data entry and cleaning, while feeding a growing repository on the backend, what would, over time, become Big Data — provided PATS could handle the load.

Harvesting, merging and cleaning data: that was my bread and butter in that this hospital system became my biggest client. That I wasn’t an employee was to their advantage but also put limits on how long this particular configuration could last. Microsoft would end up pulling the plug on Visual FoxPro in 2015. Bigger players would be moving in, replacing my applications. We managed to launch a few careers. Outcomes research took off.

Merging is often overlooked but that’s where pandas in a Jupyter Notebook may prove its metal, pure gold for some company. Do you know about pandas? That’s like Excel in terms of providing tabular frameworks. Tabular data has to be as old as data gets. Rows and columns. Arrays. In the Python world, we have a stack for that, a suite of 3rd party packages. Download and import and you’re in business.

I’d get data from here and there (scannable forms played a role — forms I got to design) and it all needed to get neatly shuffled and interpolated, and placed in relational tables. You only want a specific patient detailed once, but then with multiple episodes, admits and discharges, with procedures in between. That’s one to many. 

Every patient has their own arteries (one to many), but they each have the same coronary suite, so many to one. Which of these arteries have become occluded if any? What cath and what stent were used, or was this a graft, a bypass? 

I had CLAIR for the cath labs and CORIS for the ORs. The doctor practice supporting my efforts, in addition to the hospital system itself, thought my applications were prototypical enough to be worth sharing with bigger companies. "See this stuff Kirby is doing? That's what we need. Why not learn something?" They learned, to a degree anyway. I was in a position to assess.

But I wasn’t using pandas or Jupyter Notebooks or any of that stuff back then. We were a Microsoft shop and I was using FoxPro for the intermediary holding tanks and the GUI. 

I’d learned to parse through cath lab text files coming from time-stamped chronologs made by Quintons, the cath lab machines, where techs chronicled all the details of a procedure. Patient goes under, doctor arrives… procedure over, another success (the success rate was high). Parse the logs, populate tables, let a data pro audit and revise.

Another workflow that gets overlooked, in addition to merging, is anonymizing. Creating these amazing data sets is only allowed if there’s HIPAA compliance. 

We were eager to amass heart procedure and long term outcomes data and to pool it with other hospitals, but not in such a way as to violate confidentiality in medical record keeping. 

My institution (a client) was pretty meticulous along those lines and a big part of my job was to help my coworkers keep all the sensitive identifying fields behind a security wall within the hospital. We suffered no data breaches on my watch, that I know of.

I make it sound like I was doing all this by myself, however the final repository of all this data was PATS, owned by a different company. Once the data my systems harvested was merged and cleaned through my FoxPro GUIs, it got batch imported into PATS, by people trained in that work especially, along with their other tasks.

As I was telling students tonight over Zoom, I had a long career before Python popped up on my radar and even then, it wasn’t as a replacement for the FoxPro applications development toolset. All seems more clear with hindsight.

What drew me to Python was computer graphics and my curriculum development work, more an outgrowth of the McGraw-Hill chapter, which had come before my moving back to Portland and diving in with the FoxPro. 

Graphics and animation. VPython. Hypertoons. 

But then I could backfill by leveraging the data science work just described, and become a guru of data pipelining the way that’s taught now. FoxPro was very SQL-savvy. Learning the Python DB API was not that big a deal. I could use SQL for my Polyhedrons.

Sculpting with Marble

 

Indian Gaming

Prompt: 

A Quaker who looks like the Quaker Oats guy is strolling through a huge room where native Americans in traditional dress are hunched over gaming consoles in an Indian Gaming context. Casino decor. War room. Psyops? Troll farm? Kind of mysterious.

X-REF:

Touring Facilities

Let Us Debate

Posting to the Facebook Epistemology group:

It’s not “factually true” in any epistemological sense that political ideologies span a one dimensional spectrum from far right to far left.

 
These directions (relative to whom?) are arbitrary to begin with, and come with a built in bias. “Right” also means “correct” whereas “Left” inherits the historical stigma of “sinister”, from the Latin “sinistra”. So there’s a thumb on the scale right from the outset. Bad design from the get go.

Tangential aside: It’s like “positive” and “negative” in mathematics, hardly neutral terms. Only the positive three vectors in the XYZ system get to be “basis vectors” whereas the negatives are always secondary, even if you can’t tell them apart in terms of the work that they do.

Biased labeling aside, the idea that a simple linear spectrum is adequate for modeling political ideologies should be met with well-founded suspicion, especially in this golden age of data science (apparently). Who knew statistics would be overnight transformed into the sexiest of professions by the brilliant success machine learning?

In data science we have something called Principal Component Analysis (PCA) which adjudges, by mathematical techniques, what we might call the “rgb colors” or “fundamental properties” of any space. To each component corresponds a dimension, in some n-dimensional Hilbert Space.

PCA involves not necessarily knowing in advance how many dimensions we might really need. To specify in advance: only one dimension, is to prevent the PCA algorithm from optimizing.

 
In other words, “left versus right” is not only poor terminology (because biased), it’s bad science (data science). Too few dimensions to not a cogent model make. Even astrology had more dimensions, not forgetting the superseding Myers-Briggs.

And yet political scientists put up with it, do not fight back. That’s akin to the situation in anthropology, where the pros know we don’t have “five races of man” (black, white, red, yellow, brown), that’s so much bogus BS, and yet corporate sponsored pop culture is allowed to stay uncorrected. A great dumbing down is allowed to persist.

So what’s my ultimate conclusion, in light of this rant?

 
Resolved: that English, without major modifications, is a garbage language, not suited to logical or rational thought. Let’s debate.

So many of core English concepts are so obviously poorly conceived and corrupt (computer science: buggy). Should “good philosophy in English” be considered an oxymoron then?

 
I wouldn’t go that far. I think English in the right hands is still capable, as a language.

 
But by default, English left to its own devices, is not suitable for scientific communications. That’s why education in professional grade English is so important, right?