Working the Lists...

Math Forum:
Re: Metric System (not the only)
Re: Math Anxiety and Work /Study alternatives (for credit)
Re: Tetravolumes as a proposed standard
Re: Story problems
Re: Physical Activity Levels (a variable)
Re: Calculus Mountain

Wittgenstein List: (these links unlikely to work)
Fwd: from a Fuller School list
Re: Family Resemblance and Mathematics

Synergeo:
Re: DC June
Re: Gnomon Studies, school standards
Re: Operational Mathematics (meaning through use)
More Storyboarding (Digital Mathematics Curriculum)

PSF list:
members only

WQM / MG list:
approved sheepdoctor

By some lights, there's no "working" here, just goofing off (aka futzing around) on the Internet.

Then there's other stuff that I did today. Twenty blocks walking. Yemen a topic (I've never been there). Touched base with AFSC last night, not just about Haiti. A call about Africa (Uganda).

Our company's best cook is away on leave so I'm the chef by default. I'm making: an onion potato and broccoli topping (oil, water base), over brown rice and some kind of bean. I'll have some popcorn later.

Others in this radical household have already turned in for the night (that would include the pets). Nope, spoke too soon.

Is there a radical middle? Was Ben Franklin a radical? I'd call him a revolutionary certainly.

How about Mark Twain? Have you read his more satirical "adult" essays? His anti-imperialist invective?

Before these listservs (mail reflectors) became relatively easy to join, a group called Action Linkage encouraged people to run these by snailmail. I joined at least a few such groups from my mailing address on Rhine Street in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

I was also an early adopter of an IGC account, using PeaceNet I'm pretty sure, through dial-up access. This was pre Web.

I'd read Network Nation (Turoff & Hiltz) in Jersey City, along with Computer Lib / Dream Machines (Ted Nelson). These works spoke to my condition. When hypertext (http) finally arrived, I was hot to trot. The Zeitgeist was strong within me, some philosophers might say, although that's not something unique about me -- the very meaning of Zeitgeist in a nutshell (it's not about any one of us, we share in the spirit).

As a Quaker, I have other words besides Zeitgeist I might use. In Synergetics, the Holy Ghost is mentioned, probably not in itself sufficient to make it a Catholic title. I've seen Noosphere. Some speak of telepathy, with or without allegiance to a God concept (many namespaces == many ontologies). We often speak of Spirit or Light, preferring to attend to it than to define it.

Placing a premium on intuition is what it comes down to in practice sometimes. I know Applewhite relied on intuition quite a bit, which likely explains why he worked with Fuller as well as he did, despite ups and downs (we had those too).

Wanderers 2010.03.02

I just finished my meeting with Patrick, who is looking hard at various psychometric issues around education initiatives.

That sense of young people running away from technological careers is haunting a lot of people. Recruiting is a concern. What would the commercials look like (in theaters?), what would be their aesthetics?

The National Guard has been facing this question. Disaster relief, after an earthquake, eruption, tsunami, flood or storm, have been realistic enough themes. The prospect of getting stop-lossed in Iraq isn't mentioned.

My mind drifted back to Journal Square in Jersey City, and the two big ideas I'd sought to champion, as a penniless individual:

(a) put IMAX in the Stanley Theater so area universities could assign for-credit viewings, in addition to serving the general public

(b) put a high resolution illuminated billboard on the back of Loew's, with a Fuller Projection as one of the display options.

Some of the IMAX films I imagined the universities would assign had a distinctly geometrical flavor. I was just starting my study of Synergetics at the time, plus had taught high school mathematics for two years.

Having an IMAX sized screen doesn't mean only using that format.

Back to Patrick's problem, he's definitely interested in 60-degree coordination motifs. You could think of bees, or hexagons, as symbolic here. The flavor is biological, organic chemical. Posting these remarks from the Linus Pauling House seems highly apropos.

An effective recruiting commercial helps one project oneself into some positive future, doing something vital (critical) as well as technical. Minus a credible curriculum, the PR comes across as hollow.

Having the futuristic backdrops be real, not just movie sets, adds credibility, but then is this a positive future we're showing?

Getting stuck in some tent in the desert, unwelcomed by locals and forgotten by an inattentive public back home, is hardly anyone's idea of rewarding community service. The movie Jarhead looks at this existential predicament.

Exchange with Japan?

Those few of you following these blogs closely, have seen the various references to a set of international schools, some of them within the Lower48 + Alaska + Hawaii, others not.

Students tunnel through a sequence of these schools in the course of getting their educations, with many families already accomplished hosts, others still in training. The school dormitory is the more well trodden path in some neighborhoods, as we're talking about a kind of boarding school, for students far away from home.

More recently, I've been storyboarding a TV series involving a tropical paradise. Coconuts count as money, with the thermodynamics of "open system Earth" spelled out in some segments (lots of computations with energy). Think of Bill Nye the Science Guy as an influence.

These same coconuts are also stand-ins for idealized spheres, forming the basis for triangulations (three coconuts) of the island's topography, and tetrahedralizations (four coconuts) of various spatial designs (such as kites).

These tropical island animations (anime) will be standalone and/or dropped into contextualizing shows. Think of Sesame Street as another influence. I call them "mathcasts" because of their somewhat high level of mathematical content. We're doing a lot with polyhedra for example.

Finally, I'm looking at some TV documentary about Portland's under-culture and its ties to the Silicon Forest. Japanese audiences have an interest in high technology. Then there's the music scene and youth concerns, such as peak oil.

Laughing Horse Books and Video is nothing more than a simple storefront, nor is Duke's Landing all that visually imposing. Would there be any tie to ONAMI? Through Linus Pauling House, yes, though perhaps a tenuous one.

Speaking of science and the Pauling Campus, ISEPP has a lot of raw footage, as earlier noted. This treasure trove might be edited to tell more of the Linus Pauling story as well, how his boyhood home became a headquarters.

I'm not the only historian telling this story, have my version connecting to Quakers on nearby Stark Street, thanks to the ESI connection.

There's a kind of intellectual tourism one might do here without leaving one's chair, but if making a documentary, it'd be worth making the rounds and taping these places for real, while they're still in fairly good shape.

The interviews would need to be translated. I've got some HD previews, they're not suitable for Youtube (or other public venue) at this time. Besides, my camera work is somewhat amateurish.

Learning On-Line

:: elluminate session ::

:: maria moderating ::

Just like in the non-virtual world, I barged into the wrong room, took my virtual seat, and started wondering why this seemed like eXistenZ (a crazy movie).

Distance education is confusing sometimes.

Maria D. popped up in my gmail chat window warning me I was in the wrong room. Praise Allah for quasi-omniscience.

I jumped over to this other group, already in progress. Here's the anchoring web page.

Here's a link to the recorded session.

Related reading: posting to edu-sig (February 26, 2010)

Spring Cleaning

Some people wonder what it's like, collective ownership. They think a company must be very different, and yet an employee kitchen is a common feature of any ocean-going craft, a good shared metaphor, and sometimes the literal truth. So like my rice cooker is with the Laughing Horse crew, such that staff might feed itself. Other provisions schlep back and forth, such as many of the movies I've been reviewing. It's a videos collection, not just a books collection.

Speaking of kitchens, ours was long overdue for an overhaul, which I accomplished to some degree this first pass.

I do not glow with pride that I succumbed to habits of accumulation and am now saddled with a homeowner's inventory. What I would like is for more informal meetings to occur such that I am able to treat my visitors with gifts, which they could hint about. I have some interesting articles of clothing, a book collection, some art, some kitchen supplies. These could become souvenirs, as many of them have been for me. Remember your visit, come again.

An exchange student could grab four or five outfits in route to a zip code area of longer stay (perhaps a horse ranch near Sisters), along with some interesting reading. I have many CDs. LW donated her collection to Muddy Waters during its attempt to stay afloat.

I spilled popcorn in the basement freezer awhile back and need to shop vac the thing, defrost it completely. I stuffed the smaller freezer upstairs, after doing some triage. Kind friends brought us provisions when my wife Dawn Wicca was going through her years fighting breast cancer. Not all of those provisions got used. She died at home, surrounded by family and friends, on March 17, 2007.

Again, I am regretful over having so much stuff. My desire to accumulate has been replaced by a wish to get a lot more bare bones, while also getting more opportunities to share information and compare notes with other Grunchies, other brands of diplomat-scholar.

The cook and volunteer grounds keeper (a musician, studying Spanish) is pretty good at getting us patched in to these Portland networks, education-wise. I'm looking forward to leading more Martian Math classes at Duke's or wherever. The other night was a blast.

Dr. Tag, faculty member, is well connected within the United Nations, as well as to local universities and colleges, other NGOs, so that's another source of hope.

Remembering New York

From some back office email:

For my part, I've been mostly piloting a high school course. I was a full time high school math teacher, before working at McGraw-Hill in computer literacy texts (did some other stuff in between).

LOGO and BASIC were where the junior high market was heading (1980s), not anything I had any control over or any say in. I was low on the totem pole, evaluating others' submitted texts and rolling my own for possible future textbooks.

Publishers hedge their bets by exploring in-house a little, trying to stay ahead of the curve. Not saying they do a lot of this. Depends who they bring on, plus 1980s was a heady time. Hugh Kenner was writing a regular column for McGraw-Hill's BYTE: Eliza versus Racter (early conversation bots) was a memorable one. My office mate Ray Simon and I tracked Dr. Kenner in other contexts as well (a talented writer, famous James Joyce scholar).

One of my tasks was to show off LOGO as more general purpose, without relying on the turtle feature as much. I'm reminded of Daniel Ajoy's work. He went much further in this direction (I know him from edu-sig).

One could argue I should not have been wasting my time with LOGO, should have been tasked with showcasing LISP or Scheme. Take it up with my bosses.

I had some cherished reforms of my own I'd have liked to introduce (more emphasis on world geography, cartography is a mathematical discipline), but the drum beat was California and Texas.

These were the big markets and we would jump through their hoops.

This was all before much electronic publishing and the subsequent breakup of monopolistic empires based on the economics of wood pulp.

Back in those days, a lot of us thought computer programming would be sweeping into the schools thanks to the PC revolution.

To some extent it did, but scientific calculators had claimed their place in the sun, and in math class at least, more or less monopolized as the only technology in the classroom -- right through the free software revolution to this day in 2010. Who could have guessed it?

I'm talking somewhat parochially in any case, as not every economy is taking this same route. Some are leapfrogging the calculator era, jumping right into computers. South Africa is an innovator, not just copying or importing reforms.

I don't think Papert or anyone else anticipated the Lego Mindstorms phenomenon, which took the LOGO lineage back to its robotic roots.

Papert did a good job of explaining his vision, his dreams, but then what happens next is not so predictable.

By the same token, Albert Einstein was not "the inventor of the atomic bomb" even if his clear articulation of mass-energy equivalence is what got that ball rolling.

Personally, I'd consider the rise of procedural programming far less of a disaster than nuclear weaponry nor would I lay it at any one person's feet.

I don't blame Bill Gates for the vast army of Visual Basic programmers trying to use .NET on Windows, even though his knowing BASIC was one of the early dominoes. Who predicted .NET back then?

Why not be charitable?

On the topic of .NET, what's the status of IronScheme I wonder, and does it run on Mono. Let me go Google... Found the stub on Wikipedia.

Remembering Boston

Carol, my mom, phoned from her airplane seat this afternoon, having landed in Boston. She got there early, to prep for a meeting she's co-organizing. Her aim is to be catalytic and effective, not be some kind of dictator or boss. She's pretty good at her job.

AFSC flew me out to Boston many years ago, to (a) attend the Manhattan Project II meetings and (b) research the AFSC's youth program in that city.

Daniel Ellsberg was a keynote on (a), sharing his vision of massive cleanup efforts, rivaling Manhattan Project I in terms of commitment and scope. The OMSI exhibit on Hanford, site of Manhatten I, or parts of it, relayed the huge and ongoing investment, as people work to save the Columbia Gorge from even higher levels of contamination. Other cleanups are also underway, with no end in sight at the moment. So Daniel Ellsberg was right.

My research on (b) helped me envision programs for Portland, on which LAAP and UV were later based. I don't take all the credit, as my role was to help locate and hire staff. The staff (Don, MaryAnn, Pam... Marco) then implemented some of the many of the proposals. Those were some golden years. I treasure my few momentos, such as two Certificates of Appreciation on the wall of my office.

During that same visit, I took in the Mapparium, noted the control room. The need for reliable global data, in close connection with decision-making, is a theme now as much as then. Wherever the headquarters may be, one needs timely and relevant input, otherwise one just works in the dark. Satellites have greatly improved matters. So have individual travelers, uploading to Flickr, Picassa or wherever else. My thanks to Nirel for the India pix.

Continuing Threads

We've had a lot of good discussion this month on math-thinking-l. The computer science group wants to work with the math teaching group, that much is clear.

I'm thinking big picture in this thread on math-teach, dreaming up ways to continue offering remote basing as a lifestyle, yet closer to home and for different skills building reasons.

I filed some more autobio to the Wittgenstein list, as a way of getting some math tied together.

Wheels Turning

I met up with a friend at Safeway, a death and dying counselor and teacher, among other skills. I've been facing a lot of that lately. While she waited for her car to get worked on, we walked back to Lyrik, where I'd not been in quite awhile. Joe was painting a new sculpture.

At both Safeway and Lyrik, I worked on some hard writing, often deleting and starting over. This was to math-thinking-l. I'm glad Maria came back and quizzed me, regarding what pilots had been completed. Reflecting back on my work, I feel like it got some wheels turning, ones that we needed to have turn.

That our household works this hard for no compensation, on getting the local economy back on track, is hardly the capitalist model. More of a war time model if you ask me. Ben Franklin loyalists, leading a 2nd American Revolution, versus the inertial conditioned reflexes of a vast army of mindless consumers trained to stay greedy and ignorant. At least the USA was on our side, if not its would-be puppeteers.

A Python VM in Go?

Python currently has three to five VMs, depending on who you talk to and how you're defining a VM. The obvious ones you will get in Eclipse are the C, Java and C# VMs.

A Go VM would of course leverage the advantages of a Go engine, while allowing continued use of Python as the API of choice.

Per studies at Michigan State, other anecdotal evidence, using Python as a "gateway language" has none of the negative connotations of "teaching language" in the sense of "you'll never see this in the real world". You'll see Java too.

PyPy and UnLaden Swallow may be added to the list. I don't know enough about Parrot to say anything intelligent about it.

To keep any of these subcultures going, students need ample time to poke around in the inherited libraries, getting their feet wet with what a language might do. Java's class library is quite vast, whether accessed natively or through Jython.

Non-programmers maybe think "a computer language" has nothing to do with "a literature", as if just knowing a few rules of syntax is all one would need to just buckle in and go. On the contrary, those few rules of syntax then gain you entre to a vast forest of goodies.

No one explores a vast forest over night though. Providing ample time for exploration is a precondition for getting any work done. Work / study is a repeating cycle.

Just because you "know English" doesn't mean you've studied Shakespeare. To each language, a literature pertains, a library. Heritage matters. Javascript, Objective C, PHP... these are APIs to tool sets, control panels to multiple engines.

Note: a VM is a virtual machine, as distinct from a library. The job of a VM is to run a lower level language generated by a higher level language as a result of an interpretive process. Both Python and Java compile to bytecode languages for runtime execution. You may distribute these bytecode files without the source if you wish, licenses permitting.

Disconnecting the Dots

I believe I have found the one lesson plan, in all the math-related lesson plans officially blessed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), which introduces measuring volume with a unit tetrahedron.

The author of this lesson plan is following a template, considered illustrative of best practices, so my remarks below should not be construed as a critique of one writer. Rather, I am pointing out what I think is broken about math teaching: it is deliberately bereft of an historical dimension, is divorced from any storytelling, any lore. As such, the math is missing a Z axis, a depth dimension. The math is flat (as in beer).

There's a stated goal of studying the relationship between edges, surface area and volume, when the angles remain constant (when the shapes grow and shrink while remaining self similar).

A tetrahedron is constructed, then doubled in length along each edge through a process of stacking four of them corner-to-corner, leaving the octahedral void of the octet truss at the center. Welcome to the CCP (IVM, FCC).

This octahedral void is then made into a shape (not illustrated) and dissected into pieces according to the sequence below, to show that its volume is 4x that of any of the original tetrahedra.

from Synergetics Folio

The volume 8, 2-frequency tetrahedron assembled from 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4 is called a Kite for some reason, perhaps because kite string is used (or crotchet thread). Those familiar with the lore know that Alexander Graham Bell created kites of this nature, but his name is not mentioned. The teacher may know. The storytelling is left to the teacher.

So now you have some story. Discover more. Encourage your students to do likewise. Lots to learn. And the math topics will keep weaving in.

Once you learn about hexadecimals and Unicode, you will be ready to think about bracelets, like you might receive upon check in to a Club Med resort. Do these show your name in your native Chinese or Thai, or do they just show bar codes or what? Likewise in hospital work: how much of your own language will you get to see on the monitors? Unicode helps, but the mathematics is complicated, lots of trade offs to consider (like why retire perfectly good equipment even if the newer stuff has more bells and whistles?).

LW was on KBOO (FM radio) tonight briefly, abiding by all the rules (Portland's left is highly professional). I was getting my shoes on for PPUG when she came on. Then I decided I needed to blog about this lesson plan, and how difficult it is for storytellers to make up for all the missing storytelling.

Having more literate well-read mathematics-aware students and teachers is always a godsend. That's why we form schools, user groups, collectives, clubs. We look for good company.

Anyway, not to pick on the NCTM too much, but I do find it ironic that they're building their old logo here, the one their lawyers told them to back away from. There's a story there too.

Just call me old skool.

Connecting with Friends

:: click for context ::

This rough sketch from the GENI web site includes Portland, a point of interest around here.

I've just added some new blurbs to the BFI web site, archiving with Pauling Campus engineers, suggesting Quaker organizations might affiliate with GENI more directly, why not?

AFSC and FCNL are both boasting "green buildings" these days, and this project is about intelligently designing our shared energy infrastructure, including in the Middle East.

More to the point, collaborating on global infrastructure is how we focus on ethical uses of technology, removing the occasion for wars.

Friends also have their scattered schools, so it makes sense to connect other dots as well. Perhaps our Computational Thinking course will attract a few teachers?

In terms of branding the stuff as specifically Quaker (a somewhat whimsical notion), I've already done some work to keep that possibility alive.

We want our children to be proud of our taking a lead role when it mattered.

Jotting Notes

I was helping my Indonesian student again tonight. He's an undergraduate from physics in the State University of Surabaya and is learning English and Python at the same time, tackling a really steep learning curve.

I referred to him on edu-sig, also sent him that link to the IndonesianLanguage page at Python.org (hi Carl), not sure if that helped at all.

We use a shared whiteboard sometimes, type code back and forth. What about Python tutorials? Dive Into Python is an old favorite. Even this WikiEducator page is pretty good, ahem (note: WikiEducator will be out of service on February 6 as WE upgrades to the new WYSIWYG editor). Think Python is good.

Teacher Training:

A PCC person and I met before class yesterday (she's a teacher). The meeting was not about Python this time. Portland Community College has a building near OMSI. I had a meeting there about Python awhile back. That was not about teacher training though. The math-through-programming idea was still pretty new in 2010.

Speaking of adult education (andragogy), I did not manage to access the virtual classrooms at Educon (Philadelphia) via Elluminate. Maria had sent around a heads up. Lots of logistics, somewhat ambitious. Pycon doesn't even try to stream live. I'd seen a couple talks listed that appeared to be about digital math.

Teachers are organizing across the land to come out with a more world class mathematics track. However there's not much uniformity, based on my windows into the action. Lots of experiments (and that's as it should be). Nor is it clear, based on feedback from Korea and MIT, that an "always on-line" style will promote focus and concentration.

Multitasking may trash one's ability to write lengthy coherent thoughts? Essay questions elicit single paragraphs, in a style more like here: fragmentary (these are jottings). Korea now has detox centers for students overly addicted to digital distractions. Games tend to be implicated as neurologically addictive.

Recruitment:

The effectiveness of computer games as recruitment devices is undeniable. The institutions behind them create the live opportunities though, for better or for worse, so best to not reflexively blame the fantasies. Advertising a game as a recruiting tool adds some serious spin.

Philanthropic gaming (per CSN) might likewise inspire higher commitment levels, beyond donating profits as an outcome of game play. Disaster relief per Sims gets one thinking about logistics, supply lines, temporary facilities. Health workers have many of the same concerns as soldiers in the field (often the same field).

Reported story: Laughing Horse collective did direct service to homeless people all day today. All the gear was disbursed, as well as vegan food. Cold rainy night. Military surplus sleeping bags most welcome.

Education Proposals:

Most grant proposals for education seem to focus on developing new web sites, less on developing educational games or providing teacher training. I agree web sites have an anchoring role. Sponsors like to have their logos displayed. However, organizations need to be known for their people too. A website and nothing more is too absentee.

Somewhat cross-disciplinary teams from the private sector might work with the teachers, not to replace them but to equip them with new skills. Unions need not object in that case (this is not an end run). Where is this model already working? Do we have allies in the UK?

Eliciting Versus Imposing Solutions:

There's no imposing a framework on people, if the goal is to have lasting institutions. Edicts from on high stir resentment and excite efforts to sabotage.

On the other hand, feuding factions may choose to import a management team, at least for the interim. Italian hill towns would sometimes bring in the mayor as an outside consultant. Visiting experts may help catalyze a framework, design new workflows, based on what has worked in other contexts.

Those village electrification projects in Borneo only work because of indigenous support for them, including with engineering. One needs to be able to diagnose and repair locally, perform routine maintenance.

However, the design for those tiny electrical plants (no dams required) came from multiplying experience around the world, especially in mountainous areas. Bhutan has micro-hydro as well. Every situation yields its lessons and "doing more with less" means not always repeating the same wasteful mistakes.

Villagers get Internet now (some of them), meaning these kids have a newly realistic option to stay in the village. Education comes to them. Place based education.

The Indonesian student I'm working with is highly self motivated.

Curriculum Delivery:

Creating cohesive and mutually supportive town-gown relations is part of the equation. I would gladly sit through classes on Wordpress, Django, Javascript, delivered by Wanderers I already know, maybe copying the four meeting format I used for teaching Python that time.

Lightning talks (five minutes) are at one end of the spectrum. Bucky's eight hour talks were further out, more like a serialized TV show.

The user group meetups give a foretaste, but many intelligent adults, eager for this material, would never think of attending a user group. How might we offer free classes? The Princeton Computer Center (another PCC) had those in my day, with members of surrounding community, not just students and faculty, welcome to attend. Reed College?

Free Skool provides another model for delivering curriculum, as does Laughing Horse Books, especially since the closing of Liberty Hall, although not to the degree Free Geek has been able, in terms of providing us with workstations (thinking back to my class for home scholars). West Precinct was in the forefront years ago, with that Red Hat lab.

How does one make work / study a safety net? Another on-line discussion. I've suggested programs for vets. Start the training even while awaiting rotation.

David Koski forwarded Magnus Wenninger's posting to the Polyhedron list, saying "But now I must tell you what I have to say. Ludwig Wittgenstein is my favorite philosopher..." (January 31, 2010).

My guy in Indonesia is back in his chat window. Gotta go. " thank u mr kirby I will always remember the kindness of Mr. Kirby."

More Musings About Television

My best advice as a consultant has been to phase in some futuristic aesthetics through commercial advertising. I grew up watching Carosello in Italy and came to appreciate the genre, of television advertising, as an art form. When my friend Mahlon came over, one of our favorite activities was to make audio commercials by recording them to cassette tape.

The visual vocabulary of the more 60-degree based synergetic geometry is well enough defined to generate any number of short scenarios, any of which might provide context, a backdrop, for placing some product or service. Our computers get more of a workout doing these kinds of clips, and we get more experience fine tuning our message.

The other suggestion has centered around reality television, not as a game of elimination, like Survivor, but as unfolding documentaries. The Kennedy brothers had the right idea when permitting ABC TV to videotape their handling of unfolding events in Alabama. Governor Wallace was likewise accessible, giving valuable data for later analysis.

Am I just describing TV news shows then? Not exactly, as I'm imagining a dedicated crew that not only follows the action, but participates in direction, in decision-making.

To take an example: through local community access sources, one may obtain training and access to equipment, for not a huge amount of money. Glenn and I signed up for last month's orientation but it was canceled.

Portland's matrix of innovative art colonies and musicians, its network of coffee shops, frequented by various radical thinkers, might provide an interesting backdrop, as each episode followed the doings of some group or character. Musical interludes might be interspersed. In terms of "underground cable" this would be in line with what's already on the air.

My concern though is that Portland is not sufficiently interesting to say Japanese audiences, other demographics who might really groove on the messages, both commercial and otherwise. In fact, community television doesn't accept real commercials, so all these product placement ads would have to be faux, and that seems a waste of energy and resources.

Better to have some real products and services, real companies putting their brands on the line.

We could go out through Internet channels instead of community broadcasting (its not either/or). Portland might be part of the mix, but only if the Japanese producers want to commit the resources, because they know best what would work with their target demographic.

Why Japan? Japan is one example of a Pacific Rim economy. The synergetic geometry I'm describing has had some serious Japanese students, at least one of whom I've had the good fortune to meet, in both LA and DC. I'm also wondering if the Coffee Shops Network concept might gain a following in a culture already so vested in Pachinko (パチンコ), video arcades.

Getting lots of LCDs illumined with colorful polyhedra, spinning, unfolding, refolding, exploding into modules, reforming, all with an isotropic vector matrix for context, seems like the kind of project a Japanese animation house might eagerly take on, especially with paying customers wanting to advance their brands with these aesthetics.

My not-for-profit Portland Knowledge Lab model was about building up a vast library of mathcasts, shared assets, some of which might derive as spin-offs from these commercial activities. Local area companies would co-sponsor and share resources. Local schools might be among the most avid consumers of these collective resources.

A lot of great video gets left on the cutting room floor (figuratively speaking) when the final commercial is less than a minute long. Spreading more of the futuristic aesthetic on an open source basis, with low to no cost barriers to entry, is another way of jump starting or bootstrapping the market for civilian high technology we're hoping to sustain.

No one is suggesting that XYZ 90-degree coordination is under attack and must soon surrender to some invisible army of "tetrahedralists". Synergetic geometry might remain esoteric even while informing our imaginations -- more than our more conservative textbooks for awhile.

Forays into alternative and/or radical non-Euclidean thinking is not everyone's cup of tea, nor need it become so.

On the other hand, investors look for signs of conscious awareness in company management, and potential profit centers signaling their willingness to run with the ball, to serve as torch bearers, will likely have some marketing edge, both B2B and B2C.

Yes, the flavor is admittedly somewhat counter-cultural, but since when did a culture advance without encouraging its own artists, writers, musicians, animators? Avatar is now the top-grossing movie of all time, not just because of the special effects, but because it speaks to our situation.

In sum:

Let's serialize some reality based TV, complete with signature commercials, product placements, perhaps buffering the clips in partially public databases (e.g. Youtube, BlipTV).

If we're using Portland as a backdrop, then let's branch out to follow the work of NGOs such as Mercy Corps... Northwest Medical Teams. Observe local attempts to deal with homelessness and a depressed economy.

Regardless of Portland's role, we need to galvanize the show with positive futurism and a spirit of multi-disciplinary collaboration.

Regarding Portland in particular, it makes sense to focus on open source and making educational resources freely available.

Invite various talking heads to provide an intellectual framework.

Invite various kinds of audience participation.

One Year Later

View Larger Map

From February 2, 2009 (edited):

So here we are at the start of a new chapter. I've upgraded my existing blog templates, plus launched a new blog.

There's some focus on Afghanistan in my writings, given I'm a buckaneer, and given the stories in Critical Path, Fuller's work for the Expo in Kabul.

The Russians were so impressed by the 200-ft. diameter dome at the 1959 U.S. exhibit in Moscow that they bought it. “Mr. J. Buckingham Fuller must come to Russia and teach our engineers,” garbled Premier Khrushchev. [BFI link]

In today's news, there's a non-NATO military base in Kyrgystan getting put on the chopping block. I wondered if there'd be any TV coverage but so far it's just a lot of wire service chatter, plus (somewhat amazingly) Wikipedia is already tracking the story (an encyclopedia as a source for breaking news -- not your grandmother's Britannica eh?).

So where on Earth is Kyrgystan you ask? Google Maps to the rescue.

Being able to embed Google Maps right in my blog is a cool feature. Again, Fuller wrote a lot about the ongoing omnitriangulation project, getting all that global data neatly packaged in a sharable format.

Google Earth has done a good job of making global data accessible to our Global U students and faculties, looking forward to more.

As a Friend, I'm naturally committed to civilian applications of these technologies, including in Afghanistan. I know the military is sometimes frustrated when tasked with nation building. "Building Valhalla" is not part of its job description.

Update 2010: Russians gave a green light to keeping that Transit Center going, after a significant rent hike. The dining hall is being expanded in anticipation of an influx.

Geometry Storyboard

Three mutual perpendiculars were not an option, given the initial axes, so this is not a cube.

A first hexahedron.

This one builds flat.

A squashed zero-volume hexahedron. These count.

Removing extra edges.

The third possible hexahedron, starting with the 60-120 rhombus.

Not zero volume.

Adding to the zero volume base plate.

A zonohedron is born of four hexahedra. An hexagonal prism.
A rhombic dodecahedron in disguise.

\

Admin Questions

I've been reading some top job descriptions and comparing with my experience. Some of these overview desk jobs look through multiple ports, called viewpoints, each aimed at portraying a stakeholder's view. A stakeholder is someone with a relationship to the system under study, might be an end user, a regulator, a quality tester.

One imagines these stakeholder vistas, when designing new systems. However, the critical questions in many institutions have to do with what systems to upgrade, retire, leave as is, replace immediately and so forth. The baseline is whatever is operational today. Polling and surveying need to happen, one might even recommend reality TV crews, or at least some still cam artists who know how to storyboard. The interviewee stays anonymous in many cases, unless playing some kind of celeb or star role.

Which systems are causing the most frustration? Where are vendors offering a better alternative? Which systems depend on which others? If we upgrade, what might break? If we don't upgrade what might break? The pressure is on, because we know that doing nothing is risky too, maybe the riskiest option. So plans must be drawn and, what's more, followed.

One wishes for better than management by fantasy i.e. continuous polling, feedback from the front lines, needs to be a part of any management system.

Objects First?

We've had some recent discussions on edu-sig regarding an esoteric "objects first" approach to learning Python.

Actually, what's more esoteric is the context: a high school mathematics class. Who would expect a computer language to have much traction in such a setting?

However, assuming a few such exceptional courses, the next question is when to broach the topic of "objects".

My bias has been to step back from "computer languages" completely and remember where the idea came from in the first place: from ordinary language.

Puppets, cartoon characters, and yes, flesh and blood sentient beings, all may be contemplated in terms of a nominalist paradigm, wherein everything has a name, and those names serve to anchor both behaviors and attributes.

How old are you? Do you have a cell phone number or email address? Maybe not. Those would be attributes in any case. From my posting (fixing a glitch):

In sum, I think the best way to teach [about objects] is not as a strictly computer science topic, but just a science topic more generally.

Something like full blown UML would be overkill, but if your job is to design an airport, or manage one, it makes perfect sense to ask "what are the objects I need to be dealing with, and what are their attributes and behaviors?"

Runways, airplanes, control tower, concourse, baggage carousels, parking garage, fuel tanks, snack and gift shops.... we don't have to spend a lot of time on any one institution, and we don't have to write even a single line of code if that's not what we're into.

The idea is to have students look at a knowledge domain and start analyzing it in terms of objects, as a prelude to problem solving. Don't need a computer.

Not every teacher will be comfortable with this approach. The teacher trainings I envision, perhaps even in North America, go over these approaches as options, leaving it to teachers on the ground to configure their own curricula. Download and customize, internationalize.

Speaking of internationalization, Wikieducator is switching to a new WYSIWYG editor on February 6. Some of us are testing it now, including by writing in Chinese.

* * *

On another topic, continuing the thread below, I'll report having supported all four nights of said Sleeping Bag Fundraiser. The bags are on order under LW's auspices, are shipping to Laughing Horse. I'm not on the distribution team and have handled no money.

I'm grateful for what journal entries I've managed to contribute regarding these efforts. Community service has a place on my resume.

Supporting worthy causes, sometimes with a public record, other times not, is what Coffee Shops Network is/was all about. As a volunteer marketing agent, at least for the idea, I'm expected to walk my talk.

Philanthropy is everybody's business, even if one is living on the edge.

* * *

A positive future vision is worth keeping alive. However, special effects, laser light shows, appealing Sketchups, only take one so far.

At this point, a lot of us would settle for less mayhem.

Many Chinese organizations are getting pretty good at disaster relief, are among the first responders anywhere. Civilians need rapid deployment capability as much as anyone.

A sane and productive culture, likely to experience market growth and attract new investment, is able to compete as an aid giver. If your only export is pain, you lose.

Troop Maneuvers

I've been neglecting to chronicle the Laughing Horse Books Sleeping Bag Fundraiser Marathon, which has been going on these last two nights, part three this evening. The music has been high quality, with different PA systems on the two nights. Tonight is the Bose Tower again. I transported it per plan.

These musicians are not playing for money, are sometimes donating generously. Musicians seek a place to share their art with an appreciative audience. Some get nervous when the turn out is low. Grace told a story of Johnny Cash coming to the Rose Garden (or was it the Memorial Coliseum) when the promoter hadn't done the job. He played to just thirty people, a true professional.

Of course it's all a matter of scale. Laughing Horse won't hold a lot more than thirty people and that's about how many we had last night. Yes it was cold. As the old guy in the room, I wore some layers.

The youth debating culture is haunting the halls again, at PSU today. Yakking about economic sanctions. Are they an extension of the just war theory? That begs the question of whether they're an act of war.

USAers tend to relate to some post WW1 period, as imposers of sanctions, forgetting their Revolutionary past, when more on the receiving end. This colors positions, probably even the judging. Were USAers on the receiving end of sanctions today, this might not be a big news story. Who would want them to know?

I agree with those bloggers applying a kind of POW status to voters who never wished for these wars and now feel unable to escape their tyranny. Waking up in jail every day is what it's like in Baghdad and Kabul, including for many sons and daughters who would rather be back in their home states.

Repatriation Facilities

I was yakking with Maria Droujkova (blog linked to the right) about our ecovillages idea, shared pretty much universally. Voters would have an easy time approving the storyboards, were our policymakers up to drawing them intelligently.

She'd just been reading Walden 2 and, though never a convert to Behaviorism, was willing to grant BF Skinner was on target with some of those suggestions for promoting both physical and mental well being. Fuller's Education Automation (1962) was similarly about "freeing the scholar to return to his studies" -- another idea for a safety net, based on yet-to-be-invented Internet technology (work/study programs create the backbone of a world class economy in this design science classic).

Civilizations need multiple incubators, with different memes in different ones.

This takes me back to the Project Earthala thread. Earthala is a paradigm ecovillage, suitable for use in simulations. Subclass it, to get various types of village: disaster relief, semi-permanent, research, traveling circus, school... place with a view. These are not mutually exclusive categories, obviously.

Aimeé contributed the name, forwarding from Peter. Sure, it might be a child's name, like Moon Unit, or Moon. I took it for the name of a village, though the word "project" maybe disguises that fact. Camp Earthala then? Like Government Camp on Mt. Hood.

Camps help serve a rebooting function as well. When troops make the transition to civilian life, they may still need some camp time, some skills-building sessions. Just dumping men and women at a bus stop willy-nilly, with no families in some cases, is not really a wise policy.

When a unit makes the transition together, then personnel may be described as "an incoming unit" vis-a-vis some semi-permanent staging area that offers career placement services after retraining. The unit gradually disperses, with reunions planned.

This was our federally funded workflow at CUE, after a fashion. Quoting from my work history again:

Developed and led multiple retraining classes for eligible older workers in Apple and PC office applications (word processing, spreadsheet, database and desktop publishing) under contract with the Portland Private Industry Council. Visited job candidates at worksites for follow-up tutoring in employer applications during a federally-subsidized six week probationary period.

Say you're coming from base X in Iraq and want to join a new charter school in Mississippi. The school is staffing up as a government program, and offers a new kind of math class, as well as some GIS/GPS training. Military surplus equipment is a part of the equation. Several faculty positions are earmarked for vets, per whatever federal legislation.

The charters need not be eco-village based. We have many openings in urban areas. The goal is to find some fast track that provides some continuity, including for the single veteran in need of more skills. The camps themselves require design, building and maintenance, another source of employment.

Of course many voters will be asking themselves why existing military bases don't serve this transitional function. The most obvious answer is you need civilian management where transitioning to civilian lifestyles is concerned.

Presumably policymakers are busy developing screening criteria. Some camps are better equipped for vets with more serious cases of PTSD. These camps have more of a VA stamp on them. Other "camps" are little more than residential colleges within pre-existing academic facilities. The course work is customized but the flavor is more GI Bill than VA treatment center, with transfer a possibility on a case by case basis.

Finding ways to fast track large numbers of vets out of Iraq has been a goal for many a Pentagon planner (if we're to believe election results). Orderly staging, dis-assembly, shipping and handling... these are contracted services in some cases, but only in support of the chain of command.

Having the camps be 21st century in design, versus a clone from some 1900s blueprint, requires the services of some of the same aerospace players. What news stories might we tell? Is everything classified? Do any of these ideas break in to the media bubble? These are timing issues.

The blogosphere is more about peripheral vision. Looking at possibly positive futures directly, in newspaper centerfolds or on TV newscasts, is somewhat of a lost art since the 1950s or so. A renaissance in this area has a somewhat retro flavor, calling up images of the WPA.

One has little chance to plan for the future when taking it day by day. Having Uncle Sam express a willingness to invest in civilian repatriation programs is politically prudent. Will more initiative need to come from the private sector?

The will of the American people was clearly expressed in 2008, so it's not like I'm the only one supporting the relevant lobbies (e.g. FCNL). Iraqi voters have likewise elected to regain their sovereignty. The people of both nations see pretty much eye to eye.

Plans for an orderly withdrawal are necessarily a core focus of the bureaucracy these days. Let's hope the supervisors are being somewhat hawkish in making sure all this planning is really getting done. They're the ones who'll have to answer, if no storyboards were drawn. Consider mine duly submitted!

Cyber Nations

Many cultures and ethnicities persist in cyberspace. They set up schools there, share lore.

Supranational concerns such as Disney, with campuses in Anaheim, Orlando, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, with a new one planned in Shanghai, is a "cyber nation" or "virtual world" with a footprint on the ground. It maybe doesn't show up on maps of sovereign states, but that's just one data layer among many.

In GIS world, we speak of "data layers" and understand that ecosystem features working on geological time have a different kind of persistence than come-and-go political features.

Tibet is another example of a cyber nation: a great tantric culture with facilities all around the globe. Without Tibetan culture, I doubt humanity would still be viable (my personal bias). The campus in Lhasa is still a headquarters, but so are places in Colorado or even Portland. Dharamsala provides an anchor.

The fact physical human animals cannot breath, eat or drink in cyberspace means we cannot simply retreat to this 2nd world and make it a new home. Our 2nd world is a mental world, a noosphere, the next best thing to telepathy.

The original meaning of "cyber" is "to steer" and for sure cyberspace is having a steering effect in human affairs. The exponential speedup in global communications is giving humans another way to sort through the information. Obviously misguided policies have a shorter half-life as forcing people to act against their own interests is an expensive proposition. Or will the clash of ideologies only become more intense?

Fuller hoped that a shared focus on engineering and artifacts, nuts and bolts infrastructure such as the global grid, agriculture, energy sources, would help us stay focused. World Game was about the basics of life support. Religious wars would not hijack our collective brainstorming, if we kept our minds on the science. Emergence by emergency.

Experience the Music

:: venues ::

I got caught up in the spirit of Adrenaline Week at Muddy's, which sent out an SOS (again). This was well timed, as Flipside, their new venue, is finally ready for business. Will they succeed in raising the money or get thrown out on the street? I have no idea, too early to say -- count me a skeptic.

In hopes of going more grunge-punk with some of this Fuller stuff, I even thought we could unveil Tetrascroll there for a few hours, take advantage of foot traffic, sent some encouraging words to the sponsor. But since when does Silicon Forest do SE Portland?

That's a joke question: SE Hawthorne was where ESI and Tek were born. ESI moved to SE Stark Street, then SW Macadam, then back to SE Stark after the fire. I know less about the history of Tektronix, am not the resident historian. Doug Strain got his first break from Hewlett-Packard. They liked his super-sensitive ohm-meter, were ready to take orders by the time he got back to his hotel room.

Re Muddy's, Lindsey did her best to line up some bands on short notice and some radio show is going to help out. I copied her blurb off of Myspace.

My focus is finding suitable venues, wouldn't have considered Muddy's pre Flipside. Urban Grind? Pauling House? Have camera will travel.

I was thinking a series of "private parties" (like art gallery soirees), everything word of mouth (including Twitter). Tetrascroll is like an underground comic book after all, an illustrated cosmic fairy tale.

Tetrascroll is also pretty big by the way, not just any room can handle it. It's not wall art, takes floor space. They had one in Chicago I'm pretty sure.

If I sound uncertain about Chicago, that's because we only had about 30 minutes to breeze through the exhibit back in March, trudging through snow to get there on the subway. I didn't want to miss my flight at O'Hare. Ian was likewise on a tight schedule, but willing to brave it, if only to get Steve on record saying he'd bring forward some proposal to the PSF board (a promise Steve made good on).

When Portland Center Stage was doing the Bucky play, I was thinking Tetrascroll on the mezzanine. Then I was thinking LCDs showing esoteric commercials for futuristic stuff, like newfangled shelter commercials. These could be pure atmospherics, utopian science fiction in support of the Doug Tompos character (Buckminster Fuller) in an already sophisticated multi-media production (by D.W. Jacobs).

Theater goers, milling about before show time, would start getting the bigger picture.

I got as far as delivering a performance of my own, on election night no less (doesn't mean I didn't vote). I projected some video for a backdrop (a Fine Grind Production), had some art pieces in the foreground (including Barrel Tower, a Kenneth Snelson original).

That was a gratifying experience, although again, I make the same point: I shouldn't be the only one doing this, with the whole number volumes 'n stuff. Trevor did a talk as well.

In earlier chapters in Jersey City, where I used to teach high school, the politics were all about competing with Manhattan across the way, and where the railroads decided to go. We watched Jersey City Soft Focus, a documentary, and learned about this history.

I was wearing my developer hat even then, looking to get some Fuller Projection on the back of Loew's.

They weren't printing billboards on polyethylene back then, and besides, who would sponsor such a thing? I suggested an airline, like Pan Am, with strands of neon to show routes. Too surreal? Too Lost? Plus the Fuller Projection just looks different, attracts attention.

Obviously you'd want to test market first, maybe in your own airline magazine in the seat pocket in front of you, before committing to some outdoor display off Journal Square. I was young and inexperienced then, what can I say?

Portland has a port, certainly, and trains right through SE, coming over Steel Bridge from Union Station. Clearly some of the same dynamics apply, with Seattle in the role of Manhattan (our giant rival to the north). The analogy is quite imperfect though. The economy around here had more to do with logging (hence "Stump Town").

Then FDR promised government stimulus money for Bonneville Dam, which had this Bridge to Nowhere flavor. Who would ever need all that power? Portland was too Podunk. The skeptics sneered and jeered. Yet today Columbia River hydro-power is a leading export, bringing revenue to our region.

Google plugged a data center directly into the dam at The Dalles (Celilo Falls) for the same reason an aluminum plant might: to take advantage of electricity hot off the generator. No leaky long line transmissions, no outages because of high winds.

That dam started operations in 1957, a year before I was born. No one was thinking about data centers back then. These are what Stuart Kauffman calls "exaptations" -- unanticipated consequences, naturally occurring non-computable leaps (ala Penrose). People still miss Celilo Falls.

When I say "grunge punk" I'm in part referring to specific exhibits in Paul Allen's Experience the Music Project (EMP). Probably tourists should go there, and to the Science Fiction Museum in the same building (in Seattle Center), if wanting to really appreciate youth culture in our region.

Speaking of science fiction, I've gone back to pressing for "dot notation" in some 3rd year high school math class. No, I'm not talking AP or IB in particular (our two accelerated tracks). I'm talking about a student feeling somewhat burned out after two years, doing say algebra then geometry, the standard textbook fare.

Oregon requires one more year minimum for that high school diploma and here's this bright shiny new math lab down the hall, with some promise of a new approach. Vector graphics with Python? Sounds interesting maybe. Sign up this September?

My proposal is we train teachers in place, encourage a self-selected few to take these classes, even choose summer camps if feeling that motivated. You won't get a math teacher using Python ala Mathematics for the Digital Age (Litvins) if she doesn't ever get an opportunity to learn it herself. Does the district provide in-service training then? What's the workflow?

You'd think I'd have all the answers by now, but lets remember I'm not a PPS employee, just an invested parent and citizen struggling to make ends meet. I'd like to help grow the economy as much as the next guy. There's no point being out of the closet as a futurist if you can't think of a future worth aiming for.

I popped that resume up on Facebook, have been getting some good pointers. Clearly I have a lot of background as a trainer and workshop leader, tried to tease that out. I've done the Python with spatial geometry direct-to-students (B2C) but when do we get other teachers more involved (B2B)?

Revisiting Malthus

I fought traffic to get Tara to physical therapy on time. I was grateful to get the one waiver for missing a slot on December 31.

Liberty Hall continues to play out. Some of its former tenants are now renting space alongside AFSC offices on Burnside, or perhaps were already. The Omega Party was one of three fundraisers aimed at paying off bills and closing up shop. This effort proved successful to within $100 of the final goal.

While in the waiting room, I read the June 2009 issue of National Geographic, the report on looming food shortfalls, and the consequent rising prices for staples.

The green revolution uses powerful chemistry and whole ecosystems go wrong if the associated pesticides and fertilizers get out of control and contaminate the water table, get into the food chain. This has already happened in parts of the Punjab.

These green revolution fertilizers and pesticides are in turn made from increasingly expensive fossil fuels. Farmers are unable to sustain their former practices. The investment banks are rolling up their sleeves again: it's still about agriculture, the first green revolution has only bought us some time.

Agriculture is the perennial number one news story for humans in Universe, as the photo-synthetics are the solar energy harvesters turning soil and gases into digestible nutrients. As mammals, we're not able to directly build bone and tissue from solar energy. We absorb amino acids and carbohydrates, directly or vicariously, from plants and phytoplankton -- the true meaning of bio-fuel (biomass, food).

Quoting Fuller:

1005.20 Biospherical Patterns: Here we see the interplay of all the biological systems wherein all the "life"-accommodating organisms of Earth's biosphere are exclusively regenerated by energy sent to Earth by radio from the energy broadcasting stars, but most importantly from the star Sun, by which design-science system the terrestrial vegetation and algae are the only energy radio-receiving sets.

This may seem like a dry technical lecture, but the point of the NG article is we can all become heavy meat eaters, and starve ourselves with an unsustainable lifestyle (unhealthy to boot), or we can go back to thinking of meat as the rare exception, not some staple to be consumed on more days than not.

Diet for a Small Planet is old news by this time. Getting protein through livestock is ten times less efficient than consuming it directly.

Our own household diet is moving in the right direction. Dairy is mostly gone, though I got some milk and eggs (the latter on sale today, only $2 for 18 per a bar coded coupon in the paper). We're mostly a squash, onion, bean, potato and rice family these days. There's some chicken in the freezer.

Lindsey is a highly trained ascetic and joined our ship's crew as a cook. She's teaching us more vegan habits, as well as greater frugality. I only dine out on special occasions, usually work related. Peanut butter, wheat bread, cereal (so yes, there's still some milk). I haven't had a steak in months if not years. That's close to bragging, but why boast about not engaging in self-destructive behavior (e.g. meat every night). Corn meal... pasta.

I'm not complaining here. My family is fortunate to have any food at all, given all what goes on in the GU (global university).

Back to Malthus: the National Geographic article says maybe he was right. If we expect to keep eating huge numbers of animals then maybe our only hope for salvation is genetic engineering, Monsanto doing GMOs. Is pie in the sky genetic science is going to save us from ourselves, as we pig out on pig? China bears the brunt of reader projections here, as we're treated to an extended view of pork-loving Chinese, the giant hog farms required, even though North Americans have an even larger per-capita carbon footprint.

Of course I'd like it better if some of this essential gardening could go on in somewhat high tech circumstances. Like Buzz and his Korean wife were agreeing, they'd like to keep using their low energy consumption toys, like cell phones. A domed-over community garden might double as a community, a school? A computer projector or HDTV doesn't consume a lot of power, yet we're still talking about electricity and that's not a big focus in this article, except as a power source for irrigation pumps.

The biggest brake on population growth in Fuller's world game modeling was increasing electrification. Interconnecting and expanding the various grids was his focus. Russian and American engineers might conspire to link grids across the Bering Strait, were the economics conducive (see Critical Path).

Regarding Malthus, I've been hard on what I call WMBS, echoing some complacency perhaps. As National Geographic makes clear, the situation is dire on this planet of mega slaughterhouses, huge mono-cultures. The more legume-based interweaving of nutrients, around Malawi I think it was, seemed a way less fossil fuel intensive route. We should ramp up on those ecovillages and plan to keep using Facebook. Electrification and agriculture, power consumption and climate control: these will remain my concerns. Yes music too.

I never dissed Malthus by the way, nor Darwin either. Go back and check.

The National Geographic article mentions the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also rock stars. The idea of having musical performances drive a fundraiser is a tested model and often works. There's a proposal in front of Multnomah's program committee to do one in March, open to the public, Quaker sponsored. This is about concurrency, running in parallel, not being too serial or sequential.

I'm allowing reader comments starting this year. Up until now, it's been Quaker journal = Blog, but Quaker journals don't traditionally come with comments. That's too atavistic though. As a concession to the present, I need to allow them. If it's blatantly a dog food commercial, I might snip it out.