Celebrating Soho

I was pleased to get this invitation yesterday, was thinking about it just now when buying a cup of Soho blend, mixed with Midtown, at Noah's Bagels this morning, en route to Cleveland High with Tara.

Soho (a neighborhood in lower Manhattan) is where Kenneth keeps a truly amazing studio, packed with memories of past glories, shades of adventures to come.

The last time Tara and I got to visit, he was preparing for a show at Versailles in Paris, showed us a scale version of his Supine Dragon. His Forest Devil is in our Portland Art Museum, plus I snapped this photo of his V-X-II in Chattanooga that time, am the proud owner of his Barrel Tower.

As Kenneth's first web wrangler back in the day, I studied his relationship with Bucky and his Portrait of an Atom, in addition to his tensegrity sculptures.

Thanks to my familiarity with this internationally recognized artist and his work, other noteworthy characters would contact me, including Julian Voss-Andreae (a Wanderer), who was later able to meet with Kenneth, as did Flextegrity's Sam Lanahan, first introduced to me by Fuller scholar par excellence Trevor Blake, thanks to the Tetrascroll connection (LaJean just sent me notice of their new shipping address).

Kenneth and E.J. Applewhite also had a good meetup, I think in part because they both considered me a loyal friend, thereby maybe helping to heal famous the Fuller-Snelson rift we've all read about (Ed was loyal to Bucky, through lots of storms and stresses).

In affording me this opportunity to collaborate on a web site, and in so many other ways, Kenneth has added value and richness to my life. I am forever grateful. The guy is as charming as his wife is adorable.

On a couple occasions, after staying with Kenneth, I would train up the Hudson to the Rhinecliff station to stay with Stuart Quimby and Cary Kittner, the dymanic duo behind the now defunct Design Science Toys, creators of Tensegritoy based on Snelson's work. Cary, a certified genius, was another early innovator in this emerging field, as was Sam.

Stuart, Cary and I worked as a team on StrangeAttractors, which I still sometimes use when showcasing my art to prospective new patrons (I did the ray tracings on the box and for the instruction booklet -- I also wrote the informative booklet that comes with the glow-in-the-dark Space Ball from DaMert, originally developed by Roger Gilbertson, whose "muscle wires" idea is likewise part of the elastic geometry mix).

Gerald de Jong's "elastic interval geometry" (EIG), pioneered with assistance from Karl Erickson, Russell Chu, other first power users of Gerald's Struck (a Java EIG application), was likewise inspired by the tensegrity concept, and helped spawn a whole subculture of new software development attractive to artists and designers.

I just got a note from Gerald yesterday in fact, pointing me to this open source Python project called Nodebox | Evolution, reminiscent of his Darwin @ Home in some ways (maybe check the embedded video at my studio's MySpace page).

I hope I get to New York on business one day soon, where there's lots going on in open source and design science.

Ghost Zomes

:: skeletal view ::

:: solidified view ::

D. Koski has been obliging me with better visuals of his "ghost hexahedra", newly present in his modular dissections thanks to some new numeric rules he's exploring, seeing what happens if he follows them. He updates the core Poly list used by geometers i.e. this isn't an exclusive to BizMo Diaries (not a scoop).

A ghost hexahedron is like a stick figure pressed flat. Three faces end up on either side of a flat surface. For example, the great rhombicosidodecahedron (aka "great rambo head") contains decagonal faces and these flat Penrosey zomes manage to tile them. I'm showing the fats above, but we also have thins.

Speaking of scoops, I'm still milking the 7.5 : 5 triacontahedron discovery, their phi/sqrt(2) radial ratio. I like this discovery because (a) it's expressed in tetravolumes, still a novel concept in some university departments and (b) because authors not citing our Coffee Shops Network as a source may be suspect (so a good way to trace the phonies maybe?) and (c) there's the rhombic dodecahedron tie-in, even better for marketing.

CSN is a source of a lot of contemporary geometry. We move this information straight from philosophical sources (like on Youtube) to our customers' LCDs (like on laptops), providing cool open source marketing concepts they might use on the job, especially if not taking the "winning through intimidation" Exxon Math approach (obnoxious and closed source).

Pizza Night

This was finals week and Tara's been studying hard. She and Rose well deserve this Papa Murphy's cheese pizza and Buffy Sixth Season I just went and got, also cookie dough, more for me (had a craving, might be pregnant?).

I'm gratified and honored we're getting a top UK mathematician for Pycon, good news in my inbox today. We've been going back and forth about early math education issues, with Stanford a third vertex, making a triangle (except if you're seeing it, then that's another point, so a tetrahedron then -- Bucky to Plato: don't forget that observer, important in physics).

I need to go present about the concentric hierarchy (of polyhedra) to Wanderers again, having pounded the bar with my fist, making my Guinness jump. My marketing skills aren't always top notch. Maybe try that Captain Grunch angle again?

A real Westinghouse would have the right puppets by now, cleared by the censors to talk like a pirate, say "triacontahedron" or whatever the bleep.

Kodak is laying off, when it should have been updating the pavilion at Epcot all this time. Conspiring to not have a future never made any sense.

How's Tom Connolly doing I wonder. Tom, if you're out there, I have your Alone in the Wilderness right here on my desk. Bob McGown, wondering after you too.

Admiring Javascript

I'm at the first Portland JavaScript Admirers, well attended, geeks cheering for CubeSpace. We've got lots of independent contractors, including my Hewlett-Packard friend from Pythoneers (how I'm logged in, wearing the fleece), whom I also invited to our Ruby meetings, first Tuesdays.

We have lots of new immigrants from other states.

There's another guy with glasses across from me into "Django backend, JQuery front end" same thing I'm learning.

Not everyone's an "admirer" yet -- we're free to be skeptics. One guy is up to having a falling out, having been an admirer. We're in all phases.

For those who don't know, Javascript animates your web browser from within, lives in the client, is otherwise known as ECMAscript. It stalled as a language during the lame "browser wars" (Netscape versus Microsoft versus...) but now people praise it, are discovering its true potential, in the form of FOSS toolkits and libraries especially -- what tonight is about.

The Javascript community does have evangelists (no surprise), so more competition for telepreachers of other stripes.

ActionScript, used in Flash, is a close relative of Javascript.

Javascript's "this" invokes in different ways depending on pattern, beware of cluttering your global namespace. Even though 'var' is optional, again you'll be messing with too many globals if you skimp.

Forcing Javascript to act as if it had classes, not just objects, gets gnarly (too clever) IMO. "Prototypal inheritance" leaves me a skeptic, but I still admire Javascript.

SproutCore is client-side MVC in a browser, not trying to emulate another language, is inspired by Cocoa, Ruby on Rails. Sproutcore is for writing thick (200K?) clients in a browser, but as one page concepts (like Gmail).

Observers, triggered by setters and getters, keep bindings up to date, e.g. take action to update a view.

The function(){}.property() method is similar to Python's, weird syntax though.

To an old dog like me, this feels a lot like working with FoxPro's canned widgets: SC.Grid, SC.SourceListView, Form Controls... Talk JSON to the back end, CouchDB adapter?

JQuery makes it really easy to select DOM elements and manipulate 'em. JQuery is in the same ballpark as Prototype, another JS toolkit. JQuery seems more array-based, so I'm think the J alludes to the Iverson-Hui language (good mnemonics, even if unintended).

Geeks are exuding pleasure about JQuery, especially the rich library of plugins. Prototype is messier and doesn't support plugins so easily. Prototype provides for richer programmatic stuff whereas JQuery is quite "thin".

JQuery 1.3 is way faster than 1.2, thanks to the reworked CSS selector engine with a Sizzle breakout (Sproutcore might use?), other optimizations. Instead of browser sniffing, it does unit testing to figure workarounds i.e. instead of reading what's on the label, it administers its own tests.

CouchDB is written in Erlang and stores JSON, serves HTTP. "Use this anytime you've been frustrated by SQL". It's based on Mapreduce (shades of OSCON), has a built-in test suite. Each table is a big Btree, schemaless (heresey), ACID compliant. CouchDB's mapreduce is more flexible than Hadoop's. Map is a harvesting, reduce is a processing, often a tallying.

Fun Spoof

This School of Rock idea is an old one, but it helps to get a refresher course every now and then.

There's lots of cross-traffic between "rock star" and "clown" (in terms of face paint and getup) and so, more vicariously, "geek" (a carnival attraction).

Dark Side of the Sun

:: artist's concept ::

Like seeing is believing right?

Of course this sounds like an Ali G. ism, like his asking Buzz or one of those straight arrow astronaut guys, if "man will ever walk on the sun.. like in winter, when the sun is cold".

Here though, seeing the dark side is a real space program event, couched as a conundrum:

"This is a perspective we've never had before," says STEREO mission scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters. "We're now monitoring more than 270 degrees of solar longitude—that's 3/4ths of the star."

"After all these years," she laughs, "we're finally getting to see the dark side of the Sun."

(Editor's note: The Sun has no dark side. That was a solar physics joke.)

Ali G. to Noam Chomsky: "how many words to you know?" Chomsky seemed annoyed, a bit of a slow dog, but hey, not everyone's a comic genius, at least not all of the time.

Wanderers 2009.20.1

Tara managed to at least catch the new president's speech from PPS, though equipment troubles kept some of the musical numbers from reaching her public high school.

She's been working on getting a speech and debate team started, having sampled Lincoln's and discovered her penchant for civic life.

Given it's so "bloody cold" (a UKism) I chauffeured her to the library last night after the CBS News, showing up late for Wanderers.

Steve Spiegel gave what I thought was a clear and concise presentation, full of good advice for improving community mental health, including political justice between cultures [ala DemocracyLab in my thinking], fewer messages about social status, and more respect for charitable subcultures [thinking Coffee Shops Network].

He wondered why he didn't get a more appreciative audience in academia, with me suggesting his thinking was "not obfuscated enough" (i.e. was too easy to understand).

Another interesting fact about Steve is he suffered intensely stress from the Vietnam War, though not from having directly partaken of the violence in distant Southeast Asia, but from not feeling effective enough in stopping the war where it began, in the North American psyche.

That war made him crazy and this little philosophy he's distilled to a few sheets of paper is what helped him get through it.

Others around the table, such as Dick, Glenn and myself, were in Asia around that time. My short time in Vietnam was as a civilian tourist however, whereas Dick was in Korea during some of the worst parts. Glenn was at an NSA listening post very close to the DMZ. He's not our only Wanderer with NSA experience -- thinking of Don Benson.

I've temporarily signed in to the Chicago user group pre Pycon, got up to 53 slides yesterday, focusing on "topics" versus "lore". How might a high school math teacher and corporate trainer both cover the same topics while keeping the material engaging and audience-appropriate?

Lore is not just about banter or telling jokes, although that's part of it.

Another secret is Pascal's Triangle is never an inappropriate topic, if handled mindfully and age-appropriately.

Best wishes to Barbara, off to California again. Sorry Gordon -- sometimes this absent minded thing catches up to me. I'll make it up to ya.

Morning after: Nancy and I had coffee at Fine Grind today (greetings to staff), talking anthropology and religious "isms": Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Quakerism, even Jungianism. Nancy, a Wanderer, has personal experience with a number of these traditions, being a child of her times (eclectic, open to other cultures).

Transitions of Power

:: learning about OO ::

In the old days, I tell my students, numbers were stupid, they couldn't do anything, didn't know anything. Operators descended from heaven, like space ships, and caused numbers to be added and multiplied.

But in Python, everything is a snake, a live object, including numbers like 1 and 2, and they have knowledge of addition and multiplication "in their bones" (__ribs__). When you go 1 * 2, that's not a space ship, bristling with static methods from on high, from the alien "knows operations" land, that's invoking an innate ability of the integer type.

It's a change in gestalt, especially if you start with the old one.

[ more context on edu-sig ]

Tara and I are both working today (school is work), she for no income. Mom phoned. Alexia spent the day with us yesterday, is interviewing for a new position.

The inauguration is bein' a blast, watching the two first couples, now the veep couples, shaking hands. Why is Cheney in a wheel chair today? (volume muted).

Helicopter. Well done.

MLK Day

As a preacher of non-violence, MLK did not eschew the Bible, a container for violent stories, but with a purpose of teaching, enabling, empowering. For the longest time, this was the only shared soap opera. No one watched Lost.

Likewise in geek lore, we have some scary talk about world domination, making the world work. Our inspired choreography might include subversive action, such as in Serenity, a favorite geek movie.

Glenn was over this morning with new insights from Hamlet's Mill, some of which I attempted to capture on my white board. His Sumerian style geometry (ancient, yet about thinking globally) is a great antidote to my more mundane and workaday Supermarket Math (lots of SQL, lots of stuff about food). But then I've got my spices.

The grid-matrix you see lying on your back, talking about stars, is the same one you might use looking in, at earth from space, for navigation.

The matrix you choose will reflect your ethnicity, plus you needn't choose just one. Sometimes we use LCD triangles for spherical stuff, other times a global matrix of hexagons and pentagons, other times lines of latitude and longitude, with the ecliptic clearly showing (relates to Saturn, not in the same disk as Venus and Mars, more in alignment with our 23 degree tilt).

Either way, we want more outdoor school type activities, more challenges to the body, not just the mind, and yes, under the heading of mathematics and/or computer science why not?

GIS work requires getting out and about, whereas getting all pasty-skinned drinking Jolt under fluorescent lights in some windowless cube farm is not our idea of how to develop one's future job skills, even in engineering.

The CSN idea includes "template shops" where we field test our ideas, plus planned-in rotation among staff. Many of the jobs involve moving between shops, not as an onerous duty, but for those wishing the challenge of broader experience. The Laughing Planet guy said "where do I sign up?"

Back when Nirel's latest incarnation of Schröedinger's Cat was Seattle-based, the idea of trading staff with our Pauling House campus looked appealing, given how short a drive it is. Even easier would be five or six around LA, maybe trading with Portland.

However, some of our shop designs map to wilderness areas, are more into serving weary hikers who've made it to a BarCamp (computers provided, though you might pack in a small one). There's no airstrip here, only infrequent helicopter service. A few full-timers live here year round.

A coffee shop is a place to trade stories, update one another, plus gives visitors high bandwidth uplinking back to their home office, presuming some sort of encrypted VPN.

Airplanes have interesting kitchens in terms of being compact, but that's not to say a CSN kitchen has to be all about storing individualized portions on trays, hot stuff in separate warmers. That might be the delivery system in some research outposts, but usually there'd be more homegrown produce from some Garden of Eden domes (or whatever brand).

Navy ships also have interesting kitchens, suitable for team building experiences.

Recruiting staff for CSN should be easy, once the prototypes work out more of the kinks. The 2012 target for rolling out some of our back office services to a wider public is not a critical bottleneck, just a date to work back from (a NASA style count down, with a critical path implied).

Our message to CSN customers: start building your track records now, start showing us you know how to pick winners, give us a sense of your identity. Vendors are somewhat in the same boat as network game suppliers perhaps using Java, Shockwave or Flash, though some use a thick client design.

"What would I support if I had the wherewithal" is valuable market research information, especially associated with credible demographic statistics, but is also critical information to voters in democratic societies. Where were you on OLPC? What have we to thank you for? This is where politicians will want to shine, in sharing their track records, even if just nickles and dimes (low voltage). Match your walk to your talk, demonstrate your integrity.

Many a political career might start in a coffee shop, especially those designed shops for networking purposes (the "networking salon" idea goes back to at least the 1980s, was the talk in Jersey City when I served as a high school math teacher).

Our CSN CTO has lots of freedom to engage in greenfield development, while others might leverage their marketing experience. Enfranchising around charitable giving is an idea whose time has come. Let people do their own steering, literally vote with their dollars (as they've been doing all along).

Worthy NGOs, get ready for a facelift (a new marketing context), and a lot more dough to play with, if all goes according to plan.

Playing with Dolls

A diet of Sims and music videos results in... Sims music videos, duh.

These aren't too serious, in terms of content, but in terms of skills, we're looking at creative TV-making with whatever the environment has to offer.

You'll find a lot in this genre, and that's a good sign. A next generation will know how to make television (knows already, at a tender young age).

For a younger crowd, or adults in the mood for more weirdness, there's always I Need a Nap, with Weird Al and Kate Winslet [ sorry, video selfishly removed ]:

PPUG 2009.1.13

I took a break from my spartan cube (Kermit), to join PPUG, and later OS Bridge in Roman (a room) -- long day at the office, with a lunch break at Rams Head.

Announcement: Northwest Python Day, January 31st, 9 am - 5 pm (lots of lightning talks!).

On tonight's menu: meta classes, deque, stupid dict tricks (Jason), Natural Language Processing, except John isn't here, so no meta classes, dang! We're about 30 strong.

Women are pretty much running these meetings (not always overtly), which is encouraging, especially after all that disappointing news on the Math Forum, about declining enrollment in some dying (as in withering) academic programs.

A deque (pronounced "deck" -- or "dee que" by some) is a double-ended queue, found in collections. It has a rotate method which is kinda cool. Jason also showed extendleft with rotate, "wildly faster" than extendleft with reversed.

dict.__missing__: collections.defaultdict lets you specify the type of the default "nothing" you'd like as a value -- could even be a function (any callable with no args). A newer approach is to subclass dict to gain access to __missing__, which will be called whenever __getitem__ fails.

OK, John Melesky is here (bus problems).

Python Metaclasses: never use them (opening joke). "There are parts of Python where thar be monsters." Decorators might fall into this category, descriptors... "They're not actually that bad" (pretty coherent, but unpythonic, non-obvious). Hmmmm, I'd not heard of "class decorators" before.

[ long convoluted example goes here, originally involving exec, with an environment at least -- reminds me of Foxpro's "&" i.e. macro substitution -- made less crufty by our group process, enhancing the lambdas (we rock) ]

John: "we're getting almost Perlish" (too clever by half?). I'm fairly persuaded I don't want to use metaclasses very often.

The natural language toolkit (NLTK) looks fascinating. Monica Toth knows her stuff. Here's some of what you get:

Corpus: a database of speech or writing samples intended to demonstrate how language is actually used. from ntlk.corpus import brown will give you access to the 1,161,192 words and 57,240 sentences in that collection. You can do probabilistic and statistical work against a corpus.

Wordnet: a lexical database of words and "synonym sets", or synsets. from nltk.wordnet import * gives you a relations() method on a word like "door". Get all hyponyms for door using door[0][HYPONYM] e.g. car_door, double_door...

from nltk.chat.suntsu import * gives you access to suntsu_chat(), your own personal chat buddy (a chat bot -- Eliza is there too as eliza_chat(), also nltk.chat.rude() -- fun for kids).

NLTK: The documentation lags the reality in this academic, research-oriented package. Linguists have a language all their own.

I asked a stupid question about Wsgi. Maybe we'll hear about Orange next time? We might also learn about RDF, an alternative to SQL for defining models. I signed up to yak about Vpython.

Produce Row: yes John, you're correct that "NATO professor" and "nutty professor" don't rhyme so much as alliterate. Thanks for the more detailed background on RDF, and Illinois politics.

A Romp in the Archive

:: Alan Watts & Bucky Fuller ::

A Day at the Museum

I'd been hyping Wild Beauty to Tara and today was the last day, plus I'd missed much of the 2nd tier (lower level), wanted more puzzle pieces, then there's the whole rest of the gallery.

We took in the 2K year old Chinese artifacts (some look good as new), later Japanese and Korean pieces.

One sign lectures the Chinese about Western superiority (barbarians do that), another was sexist, saying an eminent scholar no doubt sketched the pictures, but the embroidery would have been done by women. Given the culture of that day, this probably made sense.

Yes, Sarah Ladd was connected to Portland's Ladd of Ladd Addition fame, was his daughter in law. She and Lily White ran the photography boathouse, a place for their guests to learn the skills in the company of some intelligent role models.

Sam Hill was King of Roads, Lancaster his engineer. The Columbia Scenic Highway was a dream come true for a generation of Americans, until a "been there done that" feeling set in, paving the way for I-84.

The movie Cars captures some of the feeling, of destroying wild America. You kill the soul of a place. Healing takes time, and more enlightened generations.

The tunnel connecting the two buildings is shorter than WDC's to the East Wing, but the converted Masonic Temple is somewhat reminiscent in containing a mobile, many contemporary pieces, including the tensegrity sculpture Forest Devil by Kenneth Snelson, a native Oregonian and friend. Tara well remembered our visit to his studio in Soho that time. There's also a Picasso sculpture, and a photograph of Steve Martin (the actor) by Annie Liebowitz.

By this time I was sweltering, feeling too grungy, walking around in my railroad tycoon gown coat, minus the Quaker futurist hat. Checking the gown coat didn't help, so I found the only XL T-shirt in the gift shop, which turned out to be a winner (lovely design). That solved the problem.

We left "Wild L. Hickcox" (related to Bill somehow, serious about photography) to savor the remaining pix in peace. Five Mile Rapids, Big Eddy... Army Corps of Engineers negatives, many aerial views.

I also bought First Americans for Michael, celebrating his birthday this evening (Michael, no fair peaking until you open it).

Addendum: Michael called it my "Abramoff hat" -- I said I was impressed he'd noticed the resemblance.

About Habitats

I had a great interview with a Habitat for Humanity fund raiser today. I think she really understood the vision (she said I should be on the Obama team). We're all in this together, eh?

Note:  if you're getting this, remember Google is not infallible:

Happy Go Lucky (movie review)

This reminded me of Wendy and Lucy a lot, as in Wendy grows up and returns to the scariest scene in her childhood, to study that same weirdo under the bridge or in whatever wilderness.

She's as adorable as ever, and the guy (guys) just as weird (can't say I'm proud of the species, after taking these in).

Sally Hawkins plays an ascended master, an enlightened Bodhisattva. The Flamenco teacher is also highly endearing, as are pretty much all the women in this film, when you get right down to it. Civilized, superb social skills, what's not to like?

The guys, on the other hand, are another matter, although you have to hand it to the taxi driver: that guy can act. As actors, they're great at playing real creeps (the back doctor is OK, and the love interest ain't bad -- we're all glad that she finds someone, certainly she deserves the very best).

Anyway, I found the film engaging, if discouraging. I'm back to being an Anglophile. Flush me away, any day!

Flaky Flickr

I'm adding a new Synergetics set, an assortment of useful images, however the API is fighting me. Here's what I'm getting:


Could be we're underpowered in the back office? I've heard of that happening (smile). I logged the service interruption in Facebook as well.

Google's new video chat service worked well for me last night -- completely my fault the microphone wasn't working.

"How many energy slaves does it take to screw in a light bulb?" An "energy slave" is like a robot work horse from the old science fiction stories, or from those movies about Pharohs, where casts of thousands build a pyramid or whatever.

Thanks to automation, we're each empowered to build pyramids of a kind, even if mostly in cyberspace. All those server farms and SQL engines represent thousands of clerics, scribes, scholars, maintaining your family albums, your blogs, way better service than kings and queens of old could afford, plus now it's world readable.

People ask me why "world readable" is important, as obviously no one has time to track millions and billions of blogs.

But "world readable" just means accessible from any airport or wifi cafe, so someone near and dear, on a trip, visiting a work site, might check in from time to time, and vice versa. Yes, this could be done more privately (and often is, by me as well), but there's also self marketing and being accountable for one's time, coordinating the enterprise.

Fuller had the right idea in chosing to maintain a semi-public profile even before Facebook. He was ahead of his time. Hey, they weren't as smart about polyhedra back then either.

energy slaves grumpy today

Topical Writing

Here are some quotes of the day, somewhat punchy, culled from my higher than average output (hyperlinks added, fixed a typo).

I'm also working on a bid, other proposals, steering my small business in choppy waters, helped Tara with homework, cleaned the refrigerator, uploaded to Photostream.

To Wanderers:

...Put another way, just because we don't believe in Santa Claus doesn't mean we have to stop watching coyote cartoons, or making them, sharing them with progeny -- "selfish memes" at work, you might say, and you'd be right (but "selfish" in a way that asks no apology -- great ideas are meant to stick around, a truism and a good one).

To Quakers:

I side with those using "originals versus illegals" as in the current political climate it helps to lump everyone together who doesn't have special rights to declare sovereignty independently of the USA, just because of Euro descent or whatever.

Those elite few within the USA with special sovereignty status (and perhaps extra freedom to sell July 4 fireworks) get special bragging rights as "originals" whereas "the illegals" are doing all this finger pointing about who has the right "documents", can't get their own laws figured out, build huge fences, bridges to nowhere, other boondoggles (very backward and uncivilized, probably owing to rotted brain matter from bad food in supersized portions (a leading theory anyway))...

For those unfamiliar with American Transcendentalism, it owes a lot to Fuller's great aunt Margaret, also Marilyn Ferguson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, plus some Swedish folk like Emilia Fogelklou, who trace back to Whitman (more a Unitarian but those ties are real, with Unity and New Thought also these days, including in Portland (Yoko Ono also a powerful influence, whether or not Quaker, in terms of her highly developed, non-violent, psywar abilities (psywar as in सत्याग्रह satyāgraha -- sorry if the Sanskrit didn't work in your browser)).

"Originals versus Illegals" also good for AFSC work (dovetales with "no human being is illegal" -- but then if you insist...).

Here's a free school supply, helpful when teaching programming to Quakers (a "rich data structure") in the context of learning American history (all about programming, of one kind or another (these days TV and Web programming)):

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2008-December/008884.html

In terms of Genesis being our creation myth (as Quakers) the operative word here is "myth" i.e. "fairy tale" though of deep import maybe (cosmogenetic tales often contain core dharmas, teachings, helping progeny navigate in a difficult, wild world).

To Synergeo:

No one wants to be made fun of. The perception of this being some kind of circus with odd types of clown, made it all that much harder for the more straight-laced to buckle down and find a foothold. Buckminsterfullerene was their ticket, but still didn't connect them to the volumes hierarchy, still forbidden territory in terms of sharing with high school kids, at least in the lower 48 (an allusion to USA politics, start of 2009)...

Again, the professoriate isn't eager to appear gullible, so runs screaming from any -24, -20, -6, -4, -3, -2.5, -1, 0, 1, 2.5, 3, 4, 6, 20, 24 bow-tie-with-jitterbug, not wanting to get caught in some trap, never mind there's nothing really wrong with the math and running away screaming doesn't necessarily improve one's reputation either. Probably better would've been to take the bull by the horns when Bucky was still with us. Now it's too late for that, although not for the material (these polyhedra ain't goin' anywhere).

New Year's Eve

I'm surprised to find wifi at Camp Myrtlewood, a little passed the turnoff to Remote, Oregon on Hwy 42 (Margaret explained to me later it's more for staff than for campers, given the low bandwidth).

Young Friends are piled in front of the fire, squeezed into couches, just like old times, as we await the witching hour or whatever.

The kitchen, nay the entire meeting hall, has been remodeled since my day, though I'd toured on an earlier visit (Men's Retreat probably). John says the flooring is still from my time.

I sneaked into the walk-in fridge for a glass of milk and got a bit weirded out when the door closed behind me, but of course it's perfectly safe (just push, says the sign -- unreadable in the dark, but really, I wasn't worried).

Joe and Jane Snyder are here, providing some continuity with a distant past, when another generation (mine) filled the chairs.

Jane was recently in Italy with her sister, celebrating her retirement from a creative and trend setting teaching career. We compared notes on Rome especially, my home sweet home for so many years. Dr. Joe is being his erudite self (another Princeton alum), seemingly studying that Bible 24/7.

I've brought along my XO, black hat, and some big city views, which I mostly keep quiet about (I'm here to listen and learn, not preach or teach).

Later...

Back at the Snyders, we got out some art books, on Subgenius, on Dali, prompting memories of Friend Gerard Roscoe and Salvador's Last Supper respectively which latter used to hang in the Stark Street meetinghouse when I was little. I had my Obey Giant book along, chronicling some of Shepard Fairey's engaging campaigns.

Note to Kathy Hyzy of Western Friend: Colin says hello, we had some intelligent conversation.

As an outsider, I couldn't help but pick up on some of the issues causing the most stress during business meeting. For the most part though, during meeting for worship, Friends expressed quite a bit of happiness and satisfaction with how things were going, unlike in other years I remember.

We welcomed in the new year with gusto.

Quaker Business

Today marked Tara's first experience on an adult Quaker committee, Multnomah's Peace and Social Concerns. I dropped her off at the meetinghouse so I could buzz over the bridge to catch the tail end of the Bridge City business meeting.

At our meeting in North Portland this evening, an informal event, we took a trip down memory lane, comparing notes from the Clinton years:

1. then CIA Director John Deutsch flying to some high school in LA to disavow any agency drug trafficking in crack cocaine;
2. killing the guard while destroying the veterinary supply plant in Sudan with a cruise missile;
3. bombing the European city of Belgrade, starting with the Chinese embassy.

Those too were sick and twisted years. Most of us at the meeting had lived in Washington DC, some of us (not me) had been born there.

I had my OLPC XO along for the ride and acted like ol' Captain Grunch on the back of some cereal box, yakking up plans for world domination, purveying a more hopeful brand of futurism (e.g. children with laptops, with or without the crank units).

Then it was off to the gym to catch Joe Biden on Larry King, yakking about getting back on track in the eyes of world leaders. The derailment happened a lot longer than eight years ago.

On Fox, our American Dad was going ape over his son's getting a little too deeply into "commie stuff", the kind of kitsch you might buy at Missing Link on Hawthorne (formerly on Belmont).

So will this geoegraphy-by-dodecacam idea from Google spark renewed interest in "duals" as a topic in the better Quaker schools? The dodecahedron's dual is the icosahedron, the basis for viruses (1, 12, 42, 92...). That's the tack I took at the Math Forum today, as I'm always trying to get back to our primitive sequence of polyhedra, a kind of gem collection at the core of our philosophical system.

Why that's important is a lot of our best futuristic planning and heritage attaches thereto, through the writings of American Transcendentalist R. Buckminster Fuller: lots of telegenic topics, Medal of Freedom, dome-building Marines.

However, with zero corroboration from elementary and/or high school text books (not because the math is wrong) this remains quasi-verbotten and/or subversive and/or completely ignored material. Too many wholesome whole numbers, too much organic goodness, too much hope.

OK, I admit to having a Fuller Projection at Cleveland in the global studies classroom (and at Multnomah Meeting for children's program), and yes the geometry teacher knows V + F = E + 2, but that's just a drop in the bucket. ETS hasn't given a green light yet. Its standardized tests expect no knowledge of A & B modules, or MITEs.

There has gotta be some really strong philosophy keeping the Bucky stuff at bay, or we'd be a lot further along by now with the smarter, greener houses, the better health care.

Apparently our nation's curriculum writers are awaiting Princeton's next move, as that's where all the top notch philosophy happens in this country. Or is it the Woodrow Wilson School we need to be watching?

Welcome back to Wanderer Allen Taylor, recently returned from wandering in Costa Rica. Terry, ISEPP CEO, is still out and about someplace. Dave Ulmer is still in his bizmo, last I checked (Dave invented geocaching awhile back, I think I mentioned).

Product Placement

I stopped in at Mulligan's in route to Dollar Scholar for some Hanukkah doodads (part of our annual neighborly gift exchange -- amidst latkas (or latkes)), a chance to compare notes with a CIO type. We're in parallel universes in a lot of ways, up against obstacles, casting about for opportunities.

In my preferred future, Columbia Gorge hydropower charges the batteries of these cool ATVs, some in reality shows, computer camps with a purpose (and lotsa props). Recruits from around the world, eager for GIS skills, for logistics training, coding skills, rub shoulders with Pacific Northwest faculty, making us more cosmopolitan than ever. Could be good. So, who wants to sponsor and what's XRL and why don't I speak plain English for a change? That would be a change.

Speaking of which, apparently the Lewis & Clark Party came pretty close to armed combat with some Originals over the dog episode. Their Newfoundland, named Seaman (not Scannon) apparently got itself kidnapped. Happy ending though right? We should have more cartoons, more manga, more anime. This is a good story, worth retelling with different spins, and not just the dog part. Tell us about all the fish grandpa, before the great dams. Sea lions... Tell us more about those peoples, like from Warm Springs, where they came from, how they lived.

Happy Hannukkah!

More Newsgroup Traffic

Chris Fearnley of SNEC writes:

Like everyone else, I've been thinking through the most recent examples of GRUNCH (GRoss UNiverse Cash Heist)[1] and the partial collapse of our money-focused instead of "real wealth"[2] focused economic system. I've been thinking about some of the ideas Bucky gave us to be effective at times like this (all quotes are Bucky's):

• "There is no energy crisis, food crisis or environmental crisis. There is only a crisis of ignorance." What facts are most in need of broader disclosure? How best can we disclose these critical facts?
• "The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done."
• What "local-Universe problem-solving" do you see to do "in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe"?
• "Emergence through emergency": now might be a propitious time to polish and present options for how to contribute to Humanity's real wealth assets to improve its cosmic accounting balance sheet.

This global crisis may just need the kind of bold, creative, omni-responsible problem-solving and initiative-taking that Bucky's Synergetics inspires us to adopt! I look forward to hearing about the initiatives and solutions you all are pursuing in support of our "eternally regenerative Universe". All hands on deck!

He then gives some links, like to Ron Resch's art, to a magazine called Hyperseeing where Dmitri Kozlov got an article published, and to an upcoming workshop on cellular automata, in connection with which Dr. J.F. (Jim) Nystrom, is looking for papers on the applicability of Synergetics.

Hal Hildebrand of Smalltalk fame used to chat with me about this topic (Synergetics and CA). This was before Wolfram's A New Kind of Science and its trans-human model of what we mean by intelligence (e.g. whales as Grunch CEOs).

This just in from Linda Richards:

Checking Global Data

The Google Maps service is nothing if not impressive, gives a whole new meaning to public planning with help from shared geographic information systems (GIS), a mission at Ecotrust as well.

However "unverified listings" such as shown above, returned upon searching for "Dignity Village, Portland, Oregon" are sometimes unintentionally ironic: it comes under Retirement and Life Care Communities, Assisted Living Services and Facilities.

The site is actually just over to the right (click picture for larger view).

OK, back to Facebook, adding a link to Immersive Media (thinking ahead to possible projects requiring "situational awareness").

:: me in a tree house
(photo by Cary Kittner) ::

More About Christmas

:: solstice party, December 20, 2008 ::

The Manger Scene encourages reflection on several themes: the importance of non-humans in the life of the Spirit; the class equivalence of Magi and Shepherds, when it comes to seeing the Light amidst darkness; Mary as a mother, experiencing joy amidst economic hardship and the real challenges and sufferings of child birth.

I've dwelt on these first two already. Mary's centrality, in birth and in death, is more a theme at the Grotto, an important destination for those into spiritual travel, as my wife Dawn was so into. We've frequented the Grotto as a family for many years, or I go there on sacred occasions with my friends and relations.

Back to my first theme (non-humans): I'm grateful for Sarah Angel today, as she's truly enjoying the snow, wanting to play, even chased her own tail for awhile, just for old time's sake.

Party @ LPH

Stan Freberg

Gus is showing Penny Boston's Ted Talk about life on Mars, about ETs more generally, me having projected some Russell Towle vids (mathcasts) which Wanderers appreciated.

Penny is the keynote speaker at the Contact conference next year (silver anniversary), Gus also a speaker, Larry Niven, Carlo Sequin, Seth Shostak... Kim Stanley Robinson (RGB Mars).

Gus and Penny make a good couple I think, both Mars freaks, into hopper bots 'n stuff.

Gus is here with Don and Glenn. Small gathering. Glenn and I went shopping for minerals this afternoon, a neighborhood event.

Cities at Night was another hit, although I'm not sure in what sense cities are "caught" in that triangle he mentions.

Tara is baking Fate Cakes at Laurie's, a family tradition. Elizabeth took Tara shopping for some new clothes. We're all thinking of Dawn.

Her Turning the Wheel business keeps on turning.

Humble Beginnings

Under the old rules of the game, a lucky winner in the shareholders' sweepstakes might endow a foundation and have philanthropic activities carried out in his or her memory and name. Fred Meyer comes to mind, a local grocer who earned a fortune, endowed a foundation.

In the meantime, most scrabble to get by, manage a few acts of charity, maybe have good enough accounting to take the tax deduction. However taxes, like tolls, supposedly feed the public good (sometimes we're skeptical), and you have to pay them, so that those valving these funds on your behalf (you elected them maybe?) might do your bidding, in terms of funding worthy programs.

Given the point of sale already features a sales tax in many states (not Oregon), and that vendors have their good will building campaigns (in addition to advertising) it's not a big leap to give customers an opportunity to practice philanthropy and have this go on their record (anonymous donations still an option). Instead of invisible others channeling funds on your behalf, you make your own decisions, more like a stock buyer, investment banker.

In the world of foundations, boards sometimes look for those tiny, esoteric operations that will earn them a reputation as intelligent social networkers, good at leveraging. Just as NGOs boast of their funders, so do funders tout their more signature success stories (a two way street in other words).

A philosophical (contemplative) ambience, well provided with study materials, is conducive to creative philanthropy, gives customers an opportunity to really think about what programs they want to help sponsor. There's lots of software in this picture, much of it open source.

Water Cooler Buzz

OK, so it wasn't a water cooler exactly, adult beverages involved, but the story begins with my wondering why cereal boxes haven't been rushed into service to explain about OLPC around the breakfast table.

Kids would be excited about getting one (a laptop, whatever model), not right in the box necessarily, mixed in with the Trix, but eventually, through school maybe, as tools for democratic participation, a way of working for Uncle Sam.

What does the cereal box say?

That got me on a rant about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS -- yummy in Cocoa Krispies), which has an ad campaign going, big bucks for TV, wherein this girl offers this guy a Popsicle, and he balks, worried about HFCS. Is he thinking about diabetes, about morbid obesity? The ad doesn't say.

Some of these differences are cultural. Like when growing up in the Philippines, we'd see MSG commercials from Ajinomoto with kids just pouring the stuff on chicken legs, like some kind of salt. In North America on the other hand, MSG ranks with DDT in some circles (another three-letter devil at first welcomed with open arms).

If you look at the ingredients for ketchup, you might see HFCS as an ingredient, right ahead of regular corn syrup. They say a bottle of Heinz Ketchup contains more sugar than a bottle of Coca Cola, but then no one downs a bottle of ketchup in one sitting (or most people don't).

Ketchup and fries: that's the fast food emporium's signature "diet" -- a great way to super size (want a shake with that?).

One of our number mentioned Twinkies' woes, perhaps unrelated. Twinkies and Wonder Bread have a long history together, from Continental Bakeries, through IT&T, Ralston Purina, and now IBC.

Voluntary Associations

USA secondary schools tend to inculcate a sense of rank and privilege among football players, but without setting up payroll and rewarding in monetary terms. The rewards come as perks, with the promise of payment later, if the player makes the cut and becomes a star athlete, a route open only to a lucky few.

Likewise, the business world or "private sector" as some call it, is able to cut across pay scales using voluntary formations recruited from many walks of life within a company. These might be actual sports teams, or community service squads. Perhaps a small group of health professionals joins an "away team" to provide much needed services in trying circumstances.

People who might not come face to face in the everyday workflow, now become pair programmers in some silly exercise (silly in the sense of transient, not in terms of intent), thanks to the workshop context, possibly run by outsiders. Disrupting entrenched patterns of bureaucratic communication may be the life-saving tactic in many a dying business. Relationships formed in a workshop may persist to positive effect. New possibilities arise as a result.

All too often, the infighting and feuding that led to these unproductive relationships have mostly faded from corporate memory, and yet still the CFO and CSO hardly ever sit at the same table (for example), to the detriment of all concerned. Volunteer opportunities may counter such semi-paralysis, break the ice, restore fluidity to the workplace.

This Centers Network I sometimes write about, was an example of such a voluntary association that cut across obstructive fences at a citywide level. As a Logistics Supervisor for seminars and trainings, I got to interface with hotel managements, soap opera stars, even the wife of a big city mayor (one of the seminar leaders). In my walk of life as a math teacher in New Jersey, I'd not have had these networking opportunities, with individuals of talent and with a desire to serve.

Thanks to my volunteer hours with the New York Area Center, I met this guy Harry (pseudonym) who distrusted his business partner, was co-owner of some bar. Whereas a lot of us might think owning a bar in Greenwich Village might be some dream come true, the bees knees, Harry just wanted a settled family life like he saw in Sears-Roebuck catalogs. Last I knew, he'd joined the Church of the Latter Day Saints in hopes of fulfilling his dream.

There's this somewhat ridiculous misperception that to be involved in volunteer work is by definition to be taking time away from one's legitimate (i.e. directly compensated) professional responsibilities. Even basic R&R is a part of self-pacing however, which is why taking paid holidays may be a job requirement (i.e. not so voluntary). But here I'm talking about work, sometimes quite difficult and challenging, outside the usual routines.

You'll find this bias in movies like Mary Poppins, where the banker dad is obviously too puffed up with self-importance to take his own personal or spiritual growth seriously, let alone directly raising his children (the Victorian model was to interpose a trained professional, a nanny, invariably of the female persuasion and optimally French speaking).

In some business subcultures, "volunteer work" was associated with "charities", and was therefore viewed as something the women should look after, as somehow less important, more marginal, whereas the males, the "real bosses" (aka soulless monsters) would have only their selfish money-making as a professional focus, never mind about Ubuntu (Sangha).

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I'm guessing my readers are likely familiar with these somewhat knee-jerk habits of thought, characteristic of an antediluvian way of thinking. I'm glad we're no longer of that mindset, at least not among most Wanderers and/or Quakers I work with (both good examples of voluntary associations). We know we're not just spinning our wheels when we go "off the clock" as it were, to more freely associate, engage on committees, take field trips or whatever.

Let's remember that community service used to be a major point of those "artificial persons" before those clever lawyers railroaded their "corporate personhood" philosophy down our throats, on the back of the 14th Amendment.

Not surprisingly, a next generation, better informed about past mistakes, equipped with more hindsight, is brainstorming new business models that mix in these democratizing, self-steering components right from the get go, thereby creating a new crop of "agile" companies, more nimble, less crash-prone, less trapped in self-defeating design patterns.

Spider Lilies (movie review)

This chic flick is also interesting anthropology out of Taiwan, rated NR (for Not Rated), but in Portland terms I'd say PG13, despite the eroticams and suggestive language.

For non-Chinese, this movie helps remove any prejudice about Chinese in the context of Internet chat rooms. Westerners tend to project the nightmare hunt and peck experience it'd be for them, to say anything quickly like LOL, whereas native users just rattle the stuff out, hardly thinking about it. Words like 'silence' and 'sorry' stay in Latin-1 sometimes, a testament to cross-cultural influences.

The studious older girl grew up in Japan, so you'll maybe hear how her accent is different. Jade (with green hair, though we in the audience know that that's fake) is the extrovert, wanting to recapture the innocent love these two experienced as consenting pre-adults, and before the proverbial sushi hit the fan and all hell broke loose. In the confusion, they both wonder if self-indulgence is to blame (especially the introvert), which they try to sort out as the film unwinds.

The males in this film are mostly damaged goods and/or pieces of work. The two "good guys" suffer from speech impediments, whereas the others are just downright mean and/or manipulative. Taiwan is apparently no utopia either.

As young women, both are making their way in the world, working hard, staying strong, and supporting dependents. As consenting adults, less confused, they'll make a great pair, but this film isn't focused on the happy ending.

Grinch Glitch

Santa & Co. was hoping Google would streamline the wealth redistribution system this year, by setting up this machine in the Grotto, where orders and demands might be processed, after sorting them by naughty and nice (standard protocol).

However, Python Nation's benevolent dictator Guido Van Rossum apparently submitted something completely "off the scale" on the naughtiness meter, and broke the machine.

There's a headline announcing a search for the guy, perhaps to demand an apology. Here's the news bulletin on Channel 6:

Channel 6 TV News: Christmas Crisis Unfolds

Of course this may have something to do with a finalized Python 3.0 coming out. Up to the last minute, some skeptics didn't believe he'd really go through with it and release a truly backwardly incompatible Python (wasn't "plays well with others" one of the mottoes?).

In that case, I think journalists are making a mountain out of a molehill, probably misinterpreting the action (not the first time) as of course PY3K was long in the planning, Y2K a model, and no one close to the action is actually that panicked about it.

Maybe someone should tell Santa?

Car Czar

Now there's a fun concept. You can see Detroit already starting to relish the prospect of some poor slob bureaucrat they can kick around, now that they're getting this bridge loan to a next administration, which will cave to further demands. When you own such a huge chunk of the family wage jobs market, it's easy to exert leverage.

A fun response would be to reassure the American auto workers that the Car Czar will indeed be an office in the Kremlin, and that our goal is to ensure their well being, get these crappy "CEOs" off their backs (glorified lobbyists, whiners, entitlement freaks) and provide a safety net. Whether we can rescue ugly models of car no one cares about is another matter. Probably not.

The capitulation of capitalism to some new world order, is that what we're seeing? In that case, let's dust off our science fiction writing skills and start brainstorming what's next. What shall we do with reality television, now that it's a genre? How will Alaska figure into it? Are we building a bridge to nowhere or not, I forget? And what about that energy grid? At least let's find out what's going on with superconductivity -- lot's of good journalism on that already.

As BizMo Czar, I'd like to meet with the Car Czar and compare notes. I want a lot of recyclable parts in my fleets, have them be green in the sense of enviro-friendly, downright tree huggy, in comparison to Detroit's little monsters.

In the meantime, I've been brainstorming with friends about my upcoming Chicago talk, plus some fun skits / cartoons in the tradition of Monty Python (Python's namesake). There's this "guards at the gate" motif we might go with, to help explain what goes on when we pass variables to functions or methods in computer algebra, a kind of "entrance interview".

From an email with collaborators:

Guard: Hello then, you an Integer?
Unknown: No, I'm a Duck.
Guard: A Duck!?
Unknown: Also a Snake.
Guard: A wot?
Unknown: I'm in Python, everything is a snake in Python.
Guard: Want some coffee mate? I think you must've been drinkin' a bit eh?
Unknown (to the Python-aware audience): See what I mean?

What the geek audience realizes is this must be a Java guard (note his obsession with coffee), ergo he's somewhat unfamiliar with the concept of duck typing, hence his obvious confusion.

Kids will do these on YouTube, share with their peers, another way of spreading computer savvy without bothering those poor overworked math teachers, already weighed down by their parabolas, other heavy responsibilities.

Some YouTube R&R

I'm working fiendishly on too many projects, risk burn out. What keeps me going sometimes is a good laugh, and I don't find just anything funny. For example, sitcoms with laugh tracks tend to rub me the wrong way, as do aircraft carriers for some reason, although I understand they must have sex appeal in some circles, plus I'm a little jealous of Harry, who got to go on one. However, Ricky Gervais on HBO was pretty hilarious the other night, and I was able to dig up this shorter version of his sketch about Humpty Dumpty, the nursery rhyme of "nighty night book" fame. I especially like the King's horses part, more drawn out on the version I saw.

 

Also, this revised Mary Poppins trailer, making it out to be some kind of horror flick, more gothic, more Stephen King, puts a big smile on my face. Aimee liked it too. I've shared both on Facebook with my Quakers and others. I'm finding that to be a lively place, a good break from my heavy duty job responsibilities, which have me staring into vast vats of bubbling source code, some of it quite putrid (not saying that's bad, just it's a dirty job some days, like on Discovery Channel).

 

They're podcasting from Fine Grind today, just got a bulletin / reminder, gotta go soon. Feeling more refreshed. Cleaning gutters again tomorrow, not with Matt this time though. Yes, Michael, I want to be at your birthday party, will send email confirmation. I hope Tara's enjoying her first debate team experience, somewhere in Clackamas County. Hey, good news, State of Oregon paid me back $60 after I paid that traffic ticket, no contest. I should go cash it, need the dough, or maybe Congress will give me that bridge loan (joke). My friend D.W. said he might be making it back up here. I'm in line to see his Bucky play again, get something different every time I go.

Presidential Tapes

I've been interested in the taped conversations we've been hearing lately, from past Vietnam War era administrations under Johnson and Nixon.

President Johnson seemed to have a better appreciation of his situation, in saying he'd need to be stripped of his war powers, maybe kicked out of office, before he capitulated to anti-war sentiments.

Like a typical Texan, he put troops in harms way (intentionally), then considers it his patriotic duty to protect said troops from harm come hell or high water -- a kind of begging the question as to why the troops needed to be there in the first place, especially in light of the low value North Americans tend to put on the lives of other "far away" peoples (cite General Westmoreland in Hearts and Minds, dismissing Asian attitudes towards death as "not like ours").

Buddhist students get schooled in the arts of debate, much as American children are in our better high schools. They're prepared to defend themselves in ideological and psychological games of poker. But then the Texans are always losing (because stupid?) and pulling out a gun, refusing to play fair. The rest of the nation pays dearly.

I'm glad Texas is out of power these days, don't think it should have been allowed in the Union, big mistake, look at Enron (shades of GM?).

Go Britney! Our music millenium is off to a great start.

Teacher Resources

Elite academies involved in internationalization experiments around the XO, Pango or whatever, might enjoy Python 3.x's liberal top level identifiers policy.

Don't let the uniform Latin-1 appearance of the Standard Library scare you off.

Looking to give your students some R&R? They'll enjoy learning vector field concepts even during recess with Auditorium, not that snow fields and ice rinks can't teach the same things (remember: First Person Physics).

I showed up at Lincoln High today, met with some of the talent, brought home some paper work. I saw Saturday Academy posters, a Linux lab, lots of good quotes in the hallways, ads for a winter coat drive, notes about Oregon's hunger problem.

Having spent more hours in Cleveland and Grant, I found this visit a real eye-opener.