More Philosophy of Education

More banter with RH (from math-teach) -- typos fixed:

> "And the reason is....?"
>
> In my opinion, arithmetic is essentially the literacy equivalent

> to reading. It has a functional use in everyone's life, like reading.
>

The ability to read is not just one skill. What if graphs are involved, statistics? The science you might want to tune in, to follow debates about genetically modified foods, requires some mathematical background perhaps.

It's not just what math Obama might need. You also want your Supreme Court and Congress to have a fairly strong grasp of the technical issues.

> Beyond arithmetic, the skills begin to become "nice to have"

> rather than "must have". I generally share the same

> thought with the others that subjects like algebra exercise

> and develop one's reasoning skills, even if there will be

> no practical use later. But this isn't a must have, it is

> a nice to have, unless you have decided that you will

> be an engineer or some other math related career

> and then for you personally, it is a must have.
>

You've generally been dismissive of "math appreciation" as not the real deal, just like "physics for philosphers" can't really amount to a hill of beans in your book.

Calendars and navigation, architecture, surveying, map making... each one of these topics comes with skills you might learn, surrounded by stories of other civilizations. To fully understand history, one needs to be able to follow the math and science (e.g. the role of cryptography in ww2).

If we dont' consider "math appreciation" as part of mathematics proper, then we should at least allow it to surface under the heading of literature.

Dr. Susan Haack, a contemporary philosopher, is quite explicit about this: in her view, a distopian society we do not want to have, consists of docile non-scientists who can't follow the debates and
leave all the decision-making to the supposedly most qualified, the credentialed experts.

You want informed voters.

You also want people not easily manipulated or hoodwinked.

I say "you" in a general sense, realizing that informed and intelligent voters is maybe *not* what some people want. They'd rather have a lot of docile broom pushers who just smile and nod when told what to do by the ruling class digerati.

> What would be the "nice to have" element of reading?

> Or maybe I should say literature? I would propose that

> creative writing is a "nice to have" but not a "must have".

> Reading and basic writing would be "must haves" in my opinion.
>

Any educated high schooler should be able to read and write about how the Internet works, yes or no?

Any educated high schooler should have read a lot of civics, know about the history of the world, including recent history.

E.g. books by Edwin Black are appropriate for an American History class, or at least lengthy excerpts, along with related documentaries.

There's a difference between knowing how to read, recognizing the words, and being literate, being given the time, encouragement, guidance and freedom to read widely in many subjects.

Does a society afford people that freedom, people of all ages?

Or does it simply give them rudimentary reading skills and then push them out the door after 6th grade, handing them a mop if they don't prove sufficiently compliant or worthy in the minds of corporate eugenicists?

More Dreams in the 'Hood

Global Matrix Studios enjoyed some guests this morning, through an international school connection.

I wasn't especially talkative, more in the role of chauffeur, even though Jerome was doing the driving (he's good at cards I discovered, over coffee later).

I've been sketching a fantasy double deck office, converting the leaky deck above 4dsys (a router station) into a monitoring room, perhaps with a spiral staircase between them. It'd have to be part of some video stream and/or movie production, to make it worth the expense. Maybe Patrick has the connections.

The reality is I need to buy some more plastic from the hardware store.

Then came a quick haircut (someone new) and Food Not Bombs at the meetinghouse (and more wifi). Andy Cross came by and we went over some of what I'd learned at Djangocon (recently completed). I introduced him to the cooks. They bantered in Spanish.

I stayed late to clean up, again having the building to myself. Then the directory people showed up, intending to make phone calls, hearthkeeper among them (I hope I passed muster).

I packed up and returned to the Blue House (so-called -- there's also a Pink House).

Through the wifi, I was tracking the Python community's Diversity list, noting the link to an article by a Seattelite about bioinformatics, about including more of that topic at the high school level. This jibes with my curriculum writing as well.

That could be a focus of Pycon / Tehran I should think, as health care is ramping up in that youthful economy, with many future doctors, nurses, technicians. A Pycon / Chicago focusing on trucking might make sense, although here I'm thinking ESRI might want to get involved, as trucking has everything to do with GIS/GPS.

I was also in touch with Mosaic regarding the Business Intelligence position at PSU, which would relate to our work with Ktraks etc.

My thanks to Dr. Tag for dropping in for a family dinner last night, followed by a quick visit with 97214 geniuses (not at Pauling House this time). I had the PSF python (Naga) along (stuffed animal totem), plus two Django ponies.

I play the role of geek in this 'hood (namespace) and am somewhat expected to do geeky things of this nature. Fortunately, I'm not entirely alone in this regard, meaning I get to clown around with my peers when I'm lucky.

Glenn joined us at the new Chinese place on the corner of 39th and Hawthorne, in the Mason Building (Hawthorne Theater) across from Fred Meyer.

The tour included a look at Flextegrity models, though we didn't get to snap icosahedra together. This was not an actual workshop, more just a tour.

Inception (movie review)

The movie was about dreams and projections, keying off The Matrix theme.

My movie-going companion slept through most of it and was adamant that Hollywood's self-indulgence was precisely what was wrong with this once great culture. How could we bear to be insulted in this way? And at what opportunity cost? Why lavish such attention on fictional fantasies (waking dreams)?

I suppose I'm more in the mood for more serious-minded documentaries, especially about the recent past. More about the U2? Elections in Iraq?

We haven't had many Iraqi talking heads speaking their minds lately on any topic, other than the odd defector or refugee in past chapters, with sound bites used to galvanize and mobilize around somebody's war plans.

Lots of dead zones in the news, deliberate graveyards. Lets go back and talk about what was missed.

Also, getting more tetrahedra going, and not just on MTV, has been a priority in 97214, the zip code of geniuses.

I'd dispatch an away team tonight if I thought it'd improve the quality of our TV programming.

Anyway, back to the movie, of which this is supposedly a review, I enjoyed some of the special effects, especially at the cityscape level. My dad was a city planner and I was taught to appreciate cities for their character.

In the dream world of film, ideas get planted, that much is certainly true. Memes spread. Sometimes one needs to counter 'em.

I was back to the DoubleTree neighborhood, just two blocks away from the venue for Djangocon, reminiscing already.

This initiative to prototype various brands and types of voting machine (electronic and mechanical) in high school settings, complete with tabulating back ends, along with lessons about security flaws, scams, the sordid history of voting, sounds like it'll result in some dynamite civics.

Talking about dirty tricks, or just plain tricks, is not verboten, at least not among young adults needing to figure out what they're getting into with this democracy business. Lots more documentaries then. Stay tuned.

DjangoCon Day Three

The panel this morning was entirely on the topic of integrating NoSQL into Django. The term NoSQL seems to be one of those "universally despised but we'll say it anyway" kind of memes.

Given how our ponies are snuggly-friendly with relational database technology, there's a sense of outreach as well as girding for a possible future, in which NoSQL takes off a lot more than it has. Buzz words in this namespace today include: HBase, MongoDB, Riak, Voldemort, Neo4J, Cassandra, Hypertable, HyperGraphDB, Memcached, Tokyo Cabinet, Redis, CouchDB.

Alex Gaynor, soon to turn 20, spent a Google summer of code wrestling with the task of fitting Django's ORM API to a MongoDB back end. Some on the panel questioned the advisability of fitting a schemaless database into such a schema-based framework, but then Django is somewhat characterized by this API. What else would it mean, to add support for a NoSQL back end, if not keeping the API streamlined and powerful.

It's not a given that every back end key-value or document store is a good fit. In the case of MongoDB, there's enough of a one-to-one mapping to make the bridge or database adapter. Google's BigTable is likewise "close enough" to a SQL engine (though it isn't one) to support a somewhat Django-like API within it's Appengine framework.

One has other ways of using such NoSQL utilities as redis inside Django. Django is just Python after all, so if its a matter of simply importing another module and using it, you may do so directly, through whatever API Python natively provides. Use this alongside ORM connections to SQL engines. It's not either or (like, use the zodb module why not?). How is redis different from just using a memory cache like memecache? The API does a lot more.

On the whole, the panel was reassuring the PostgreSQL would always be enough of an "out of the box" solution to throw at so many of life's many challenges. Don't let the "rip tide of lies" (i.e. all the empty hype) around NoSQL pull you off balance. The Django community is experimenting, outside of core-dev.

Imaginary Landscapes

Malcolm Tredinnick is a master of GeoDjango, which talks the language of maps. He demonstrated an imaginary landscape he'd devised. The PNG provides texture, but the underlying TIFF, some 19 MB of data, provides the real details.

OpenLayers serves as a clearinghouse, knows where to go for what data to populate the different layers. Show all restaurants of a given type in a given zip code area.

PostGIS supports data selection based on bounding boxes, so when you zoom in or pan, it sends back the right objects.

You'll want to cache tiles, especially the background ones that don't change. Several open source projects do this, and support Python bindings.

Mapnik is another piece of the puzzle, a strong source of Earthling data.

Malcolm emphasized the importance of using a whole planet, even if your region is but a small island. The geometry engines all assume a latitude-longitude context.

Given my Geometry + Geography paradigm, I'm of course interested to what extent internal anatomy might be considered a GIS problem. Bodies are not planets, but they are geospatial.

What file formats accommodate both planets and livers? When one zooms in, on a city street, it's worthwhile to show infrastructure, such as under-street pipes, optical fibers.

One zooms in on a body the same way, showing what's inside. Indeed bodies walk on sidewalks.

Geography is all inclusive of special case "scenes" whereas geometry is generic (about shape in general -- what we call "pre-frequency" in Synergetics). Does x3D (VRML) support GIS?

Seeking Diversity

One of the threads on math-teach is back to racial profiling, sorting everyone into a few groups. This gets to seem like a mindless bureaucratic activity sometimes, so one looks for the check box for "mindless bureaucrat" on the forms, as that seems the most prevalent species.

What I learned from watching international conference organizing, is that some countries do not permit their governments to inquire about their "race" or even "ethnicity". There's no broad agreement that central government tabulators have a right to such data, especially in light of how many of these questions are based in corrupt science in the first place.

The concept of race did not survive modern genetics intact, and ethnicity is all about memes in any case, not genes. So much about Social Darwinism is bogus, and yet continues to haunt public debates, sometimes just beneath the surface, sometimes overtly.

The concept of "breed" (as in breeds of dog, horse) is a social institution and invention. Yes, it's possible to breed traits in and out. However no simple fractions or "racial substance" will be found, in either "mixed" or "pure" form. No "racial substance" was never found in any DNA, and yet the concept persists as a meme virus, as "something in the blood".

In any case, schools will (and do) practice a kind of alchemy, when it comes to seeking diversity. A public will want to second guess, might be looking for statistics. Demographics about ethnic makeup, social class (the kinds of statistics people were discussing on math-teach) remain in demand. What if the school doesn't keep them, doesn't know.

Perhaps the tally is on "first or native language". You wouldn't know how many "Asians" were in this tally. You might be able to piece this bit of information together to your own satisfaction from other records, but the school would not readily support this API and/or way of pigeon-holing people.

If it's a school into which one hopes to gain admittance, then you're hoping various traits you may have will not count against you. You think about your odds.

Roving Buses Again

Perhaps one of those slides in Dr. Beebe's Afghanistan talk got me thinking of literal BizMos again, those business mobiles that go to state fairs and such places, helping orient visitors to their various options. When showing up at a school, they're more likely to be representing universities, networks of school systems. Teachers get recruited too, not just students.

Another option is to use the bus as a testing center. These might be engaging games at various workstations, and the games are what's being judged, not the students. The students are guest players comprising a focus group and giving feedback. Why is this worthy of school time? Because the games are didactic in nature, reinforce school subjects. That's why teacher feedback is especially valuable.

I've filed these ideas at the Math Forum, a file cabinet where I've stuffed a lot of my best ideas. I'm into using the Internet filing system to share useful ideas, appreciate others doing that.

The Math Forum versions have a somewhat different spin, as I bring in the Coffee Shops Network idea of having the games fund worthy causes of the player's choosing, a way of disbursing profits made from the game.

Players may record their patterns of disbursement, which becomes a portfolio, a chronicle of their heroics. Of such stuff one's identity and reputation is comprised, so these games may be said to build character.

FOSS in Afghanistan

Tonight we are listening to Maria A. Beebe, PhD, talking about E-Learning in Afghanistan. She's with Afghan eQuality Alliances.

Afghanistan is of course made up of a large number of ethnic groups, prone to feuding. Negotiating peace amidst power struggles is naturally difficult. Anthropologist Dupree (1973) talks about alternating phases of fusion and fission when giving the history.

Islamic law supports womens' education, but of course ethnicities vary in their interpretations of this law. The Taliban, many of them orphans, may have an especially harsh approach because of their sense of abandonment.

Women have come into higher education. Women were encouraged to become engineers under the Russians. University learning was discouraged during subsequent years, under Mujahideen and Taliban.

Implementing E-learning has involved building computer centers and setting up standards. Pairing lecturers with US universities was a priority, with a focus on getting more engineers.

A masters program in public policy and administration was set up as well, so that policies might emerge with a sense of ownership, not simply imposed by the UN, World Bank, NATO or whatever.

Chisimba is being used for distance learning purposes. University of the Western Cape has provided some technical support.

This is a USG-funded project, with NATO providing the international bandwidth via satellite.

Some bandwidth comes from Iran, although a USG-funded program is not supposed to pay for that piece, given feuding between those states.

Women who tasted university-style education when still in their 20s during the Russian period, are among those most eager to see higher education making more inroads under Grunch.

The French would like to stop criminalizing drug production (lift Prohibition), as the world craves opiates, always has.

That's a more enlightened approach than the USG is able to muster of course, given its puritanical roots and sense of entitlement when it comes to world policing. The Drug Wars rage on.

This higher education program was not dependent on US military or private security contractors. On the contrary, US armored vehicles and personnel carrying weapons are actively discouraged from visiting the campuses, as this makes them targets for military actions by opposing groups, of which there are many.

Internet and campus neutrality are important policies where freedom from armed conflict is concerned. Armed conflict, an expression of ignorance, lack of intelligent planning and skills, is not conducive to studying (a vicious circle).

Tabor Walk

I was roused from my pile of mattresses by Glenn, late getting started this morning, so an opportunity to partially overlap on a walk. The New Seasons is really coming along. We visited Mt. Tabor.

Glenn has been checking with sources. Exodus gets tagged for having discovered the cone:cylinder 1:3 relationship, where they both share the same base and height. Then Archimedes got that a sphere in a cylinder occupies 2/3rds its volume. He wanted that on his grave stone, and according to stories this is how a Roman scholar later found it, in want of repair, and had the grave site restored. We should have more monuments to the guy and this discovery, why not? Plus math-geometry needs its tomb of the unknown, from which many a discovery has derived.

In recent discussions with David Koski, he's focused on the analogy twixt the cone, half-cylinder, sphere and full cylinder and the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron and rhombic dodecahedron, by focusing on the common ratios 1:3:4:6. In this case, the cone in question shares a base with a hemisphere 2/3rds the half-cylinder's volume (Glenn and I called this half-cylinder a "tuna can" with height = sphere radius, not diameter). If the cone is 1/3, the half-sphere is 2/3, and the sphere is then 4/3, a fraction familiar from (4/3)( pi )( r )( r )( r ). The "tuna can" itself is volume 3, if the cone is 1, hence the ratios 1:3:4:6.

For the first part of our walk, Glenn's sources and the Koski conversations were a jumble and I was confused. The cone Glenn's sources talked about was 1/3rd the double-cylinder (two tuna cans), so already half the volume of the cylinder-contained sphere. I'd only just awakened. Actually I'd been tossing and turning, but about other issues. The night before, I was up late watching a disturbing documentary.

Once atop Mt. Tabor, we met an intelligent Protestant (no, not an oxymoron) who wondered if we'd give him two minutes of our time, not to end with a request for money. He had a stop watch. I said "two minutes is not a long time, so sure" and he launched into a debate he'd been working on.

According to his "Wanderers presentation" there's a school of thought that says Jesus was a great teacher and all, but he couldn't have performed miracles, the counter to which is that early Christianity, with all its travails, would not have gotten going based around some "nice guy" or "decent human" action figure (plus the teachings were quite radical for their day).

Glenn responded with some perennial philosophy notions of avatars, descendants of deities, who periodically show up to save humans. I mentioned a polarity, with a spectrum in between: on the one hand, the "miracles never happen" group denies any supernatural phenomena as a matter of principle, while on the other hand you have a group that assumes miracles happen all the time, as a matter of course. At either extreme, Jesus would not prove an exception to the rule.

I enjoyed the "lightning talk" and mused how Portlanders could do "philosophy in the park" more often, just show up with the intent to have these debates and discussions, perhaps using these recognized templates (e.g. the two minute presentation). We wouldn't need to have official sponsors, though I could see where some brands might want to become associated with civilized intercourse of this nature. Beats television in some ways. Like, we got some real exercise (Mt. Tabor isn't very high, but every calorie counts).

Babies (movie review)

Babies is not narrated, uses music and environmental noises for sound track. This helps recreate a baby's world, not beset with lots of yammering. Adults play their roles, but not as generators of lots of talk balloons.

What's most striking about this film is that it focuses on healthy babies just having pleasant childhoods, no trauma, no strife.

The four families are all dignified and provide nurturing environments. The different civilian lifestyles, though diverse in their resource consumption patterns, do not seem in need of drastic overhaul.

There's no message about helping anyone out of their poverty, as these families do not seem "poor" and their worlds are not war-torn.

The film is also not trying to be comprehensive. One could see sequels featuring other ethnicities, but sticking to just four families.

I saw this at The Bagdad with the one baby I'm genetically responsible for, now a young woman embarked on a life adventure of her own.

Lurching Ahead

There's this guy in The Adamm's Family I think it was, Lurch, kind of the butler. When I did some volunteer logistics for the est people awhile back, I remember some kid, looked like a younger me, calling me Lurch. The grownups around him wanted him to shush, as I was obviously just another one of them. A room full of Lurches, what a concept.

Trains lurch when they start up again, and every car down the line gets this tug on the coupler, to get moving. Good seeing Leslie and others at Oversight yesterday. I ran by the Food & ~Bombs plan, got some preliminary nods. I've circulated the proposal on Facebook as well, where I do some of my Quaker business.

The math teachers are yakking about globalization again, with Robert Hansen sounding a traditionalist theme, in contrast to a recent Keith Devlin posting. I chime in along the way.

The Toshiba is having weird disk problems. After chkdsk I was able to xcopy the ktraks subdirectory (a VFP app PSU is using), but I'd not want this to be the source copy, as the external drive version might have remnants of file corruption? I wish I understood NTFS better, or ext3 for that matter.

I see F15s as bloated and wasteful (today's Wall Street Journal). You don't need to burn vats of fuel to get thrills in this world. A lot of carbon footprint for what? Save it for a rainy day? Ward off the desert? Terraforming is not just about doing stuff on Mars, obviously (the Rovers did make a difference though).

How many deep silo workers inheriting VFP applications will want to use Python as a ladder out, more into the open? That's a joke... Snakes and Ladders. I don't know the answer, but let me point out that xBase ended up as an interactive, C-extensible, dynamically typed language with user-defined classes. GUI integration was more ambitious (Python leaves that to 3rd party libraries). Some will go with Java, or Jython maybe?

Microsoft would rather not compete with its own products, seems to be the wisdom in Redmond, and rewriting Visual FoxPro (VFP) to make it 64-bit is beyond anyone's job description. That'd be like trying to rewrite MUMPS (the M language) -- or is somebody doing that?

Yes, I know about Ed Leaf and the Dabo project, have blogged about it before. We're not just talking about one ladder. PythonCard helped a lot of people learn GUI programming outside the VB sandbox. Lots of VFP in Prague they tell me (hi Kathy).

For a lot of developers, it's more about giving up the thick client model completely and making the web browser the stage where it all happens. Not everyone's there yet, nor needs to be. Web apps are thin clients. Are iPhone apps considered "thick" then?

People hard at work on their respective projects around here. The side yard is a low key stockpile of bamboo varieties, amidst the vegetable beds, providing raw materials to piece workers building bike trailers. On the storyboard, they're painted pink, but that might be more an in-house joke at the Blue House. I'm not the chief planner on this one, so don't expect details on Facebook (or Plaxo for that matter).

Barton, Portland Energy Strategies, is coming by. I was mentioning his interest in developing simulations with some other energy companies. Dr. Nick is vectoring this way. I recently uploaded some pix of his mom, the late Gill Faure, to some interested NGO (at Nick's request).

Welcome Home

I'm celebrating having my daughter back from Jamaica, where she'd been on a Quaker service trip, with other young Friends.

Lynn & Co. picked her up from Seatac, though I'd been planning to all week. This way, I got to cram for my Martian Math course up to the last minute.

I've launched the 4D thread on math-teach again, which won't be new to my readers on Synergeo. Thanks to Joe for jumping in, giving me someone to spar with.

I still think my idea for a fleet of bizmos, a lifestyle for roaming teachers with a control room for centralized dispatch, was a good one. Someone should make the movie someday.

I was somewhat dismayed that health care took precedence over ending the misguided wars, once USAers thought "change" was in the bag. That doesn't mean I'm against health care reform, given we're all in the business of dying (civilians too) and could use the services.

I was glad to see the physics curriculum tilting towards health care, and away from "how to build a better bomb" ala Countdown to Zero -- at least that was my take on the AAPT conference.

My first class went fairly well today, even though we sort of dove into the deep end. I appreciate these kids and their zest for learning.

Wanderers 2010.7.28

I was late to the meeting this morning, as I'd been working out in this conversation with math teachers, as to the relevance of philosophy within their discipline. I sense some divergent views.

Hansen says philosophy and science went their separate ways over 400 years ago.

Haim keeps invoking Marx and various "isms" commonly known as "ideologies" (e.g. Communism, Capitalism... Anarchism). Is all this philosophy then?

Math teachers aren't always clear on their definitions at first, yet share some commitment to get more definite over time (math aficionados are accustomed to definitive thinking).

Now I'm at Lyrik, waiting for a meeting to start. I call this my "corner office" and use it to connect some dots, e.g. to Martian Math.

Apropos of this history, I got to chatting with Jody via Gchat. She's the former owner of this place, when she named it Fine Grind, after which I named my Fine Grind Productions when needing to produce some backdrop video for my theatrical appearance at Portland Center Stage, as "dymaxion clown" (went over well, as a lecture on election night to the IEEE -- not what Bruno was doing back then).

I bring up Martian Math because of the course I'm starting next week, after a quick trip up north (I'll be driving the torture taxi). Tomorrow morning, Glenn and I plan to scope out the site again, maybe walk in the canyon. He's doing Neolithic Math.

It's a summer camp and they've got segments spread across the time-line. My segment is "the future" and of course is science fiction in that sense -- but I won't skimp on having real math in the picture.

One question is: how flaky is J (I've requested the J-language be installed in the lab, a rock-stable language but there may be something "special" about this installation, I've been warned by the staff).

So the fun at Wanderers this morning was tracking Jim Buxton as a dot on Google Maps. We had the option of a Street View based on his spatial coordinates. Of course the stills we were seeing were whatever the Google immersive camera car was taking in on that day, not some live video feed from "the bizmo" itself.

He was somewhere in North Dakota. Don tried to hail him by cell, let him know we were looking over his shoulder (slowed to 47 mph going through Bismarck), but got switched to voicemail. We used an Apple Powerbook and a computer projector to share the experience with everyone around the table, including a couple visitors just passing through.

View Larger Map

Media Campaigns

Re: Happy talk, aka. More philosophy...

--- In synergeo@yahoogroups.com, "John Brawley" wrote:
>
> "Keeping the flame alive" is almost defeatist. Smacks of Fate.
> How about "renewing the truth" or "running with the torch" or some such?
> You guys should act like _insurgents_, not like semi-hopeless monks burying
> books in sandy caves....
>
> JBw


I'm sticking with my story of Bucky hoping to keep the flame of hope alive in Grunch of Giants. I thanked Dick for quoting the passage I was thinking of.

That's all that I said.

I'm accused of happy talk, but then I was talking about someone else, not me.

Fuller was indeed a great source of hope for many people, a great leader in many dimensions. Awesome guy.

I'm not trying to come off as "the next Bucky", any more than I'm trying to be "the next Einstein".

I'm more into running these little media campaigns to see where they go. Some of my recent ones:

Stop-loss is Slavery
Starvation is Torture
Ban Fast Food in Cuba
Evacuate (then bomb) Gitmo
End Qyooban Boycott
XYZ = Old Fart Math
Aristotle was Right!

Swap Meet

Proposal to Swap Left and Right

I was thinking, politically speaking the right enjoys an unfair advantage simply in having seized upon "right". "Left" still goes with "sinister" and you'll see how the whiteman textbooks all have "positive X" to the "right" while "negative" is always "left".

Things started to seem more equal when "left" and "right" brain got into the act, as the "left brain" was all that lexical rationality, so maybe left was OK. Ah, but that is to forget the great switcheroo: your right hand is controlled by your left brain, so same guy on top, in other words (they're in cahoots).

Anyway, the proposal is to swap left and right. Everyone keep your positions, keep being "radical" or "far" or "far out" if you need to be, but just take the other side's word for the time being, say for the next year or so, then maybe swap back. This is to eliminate the hidden bias of the "right" (a left brain conspiracy). So like Rush is far left and Chomsky is far right.

Think you can handle it?

Just for a year?

Your IQ might go up a tick, might be worth it.

Smooth Motion

by dwyllie

Generating Random Cities

Noted on edu-sig.

Some Futuristic Math from today's writings.

New Circuit Designs for Motherboard Earth (1995)

Happy Birthday Julie!

Inspecting Disaster Zones

Also, nix on paying the debt for all those weapons. Those were LAWCAP's idea. Citigroup can pay for 'em with all that laundered drug money eh? Uncle Sam doesn't have any nukes either -- those are criminal and therefore belong to organized crime syndicates (terrorist networks). That's why we need the IAEA, FBI and other police, to put the spotlight on those criminals. Plenty of bad guys to go after. [from post of June 8]

Recruiting for the "away teams" needed to assess and monitor the super-toxins and other controlled substances associated with nuclear WMD storage and manufacture is an IAEA concern.

Having these sites cordoned off with "police tape" as criminal investigation sites means we're looking at forensics and the attendant training.

The treaties promote symmetry, even though there's an inner circle of criminal syndicates holding on to these weapons, shielding themselves behind nation-state iconography.

Some inspectors of Persian heritage might find themselves suddenly in Colorado one afternoon, installing more web cams. A fleet of jets, contributed by forces for good, keeps personnel moving.

Many hope to advertise their support as program sponsors, and to build brand loyalty thereby.

Was this a surprise visit, or was plenty of advance notice provided?

Surveillance from space might suggest whether any surreptitious activities had been triggered.

Exceptions for civilian power generation and nuclear medicine have already been granted.

Military power generation, as on submarines, many carrying outlawed weapons, is a different matter.

No world body has been certified to make the rules for the sovereignties, so it's the court of world opinion that registers its bias.

Tilting against nukes may seem like an exercise in futility, however many arms control experts continue leaning in that direction.

The drain on resources is non-trivial. The growing risks to present and future generations is unjustifiable.

The wars are killing us, although they still profit a few in the short term.

Committing crimes against humanity is a great way to squander good will and have your brands lose their magic.

Nation-states without nuclear weapons already have disproportionate clout and credibility thanks to a cleaner record.

Rules of the Road

Re: rules

--- In synergeo@yahoogroups.com, "coyote_starship" wrote:

The theft of livelihoods from hoi-polloi by roadway bandits to fatten their Baal is tantamount to child sacrifice, as president Eisenhower so eloquently stated. If ending world hunger is not on your agenda, then I'm curious what tops your list instead. Usually advocacy of some kind of veiled culling is encrypted in the platform, an unconscionable eugenics, a war against the weak. Rather than "feed the hungry" it's "feed only the right hungry (right in my judgment)."

Hyperlinks added by Alan and myself.

Working with vZome

vZome is Scott Vorthmann's virtualization of ZomeTool, an ingenious geometrical supply built around this injection molded hub and plastic rods of variable length. Ideally, students would have ample access to this building supply. However, it's not necessarily practical to be assembling a rhombic triacontahedron in your airplane seat on some jet ride to Tokyo. For times like those, you have vZome. For other times too.

As of this writing, we do not have a corresponding tool for Flextegrity, and could use one. The Elastic Interval Geometry genre (EIG), starting with Struck, then Springdance, Springie, and Darwin @ Home, has taken us a long way in the right direction. The Flextegrity application would likely be in this EIG lineage.

vZome rods are not springs, but are of fixed length and color-coded. The hub's angles are also fixed. These constraints constitute a self-auditing aspect to vZome constructions, which its power-users come to appreciate.

My project is to take some recent Koski vZomes and pull them up in Scott's Java app (vZome). Next, I will boot up Camtasia Studio and see to what degree I am able to faithfully capture the live operation of vZome on screen, for saving to disk in some movie format, suitable for uploading to Youtube.

This is the kind of thing we could be doing in Canada, trying to get around the Qyooban Embargo (long story). Some of the vZomes show off Verboten Math (e.g the 7.5 RT and 6.0 RD inter-twining), stuff not usually made available in the USA, especially not in high schools -- unless you're lucky enough to have a RadMathNet household in your zip code area (97214 has a few).

Hunger Project on Synergeo

Per Diet for a Small Planet, if you want to feed more humans a healthy diet, you need to not run so much feed through cattle on their way to the dinner plate. Bucky ate a lot of steak, and spinach. Some people crave meat. I'm not saying to not be a meat craver. But if you're not one, and not a smoker, then why start? Eat lower on the food chain if you can afford to. You will be popular and score lots of dates (if that matters to you).

The word on the street in Havana should not surprise you: no McDonalds and no Burger King. How about Ben and Jerry's, in the Unilever portfolio? That might be different, in terms of floating the decor and best product (minus any notion of "corporate personhood" of course -- that stays within USA borders, where they seem to know what it means (the Supreme Court does at least, right?)). No, I'm not suggesting a "cigar flavored" ice cream.

Getting the concentric hierarchy as an OLPC app is at least as important as the iPad / iPhone and other versions. I've got it on iPod, podcast downloadable (see Synergetics on the Web).

Around here, we're close to zero meat, except mom is a meat craver sometimes, and we don't blame her. Actually, we all eat some meat, given the opportunity. But when we buy, it's usually more like rice and beans. As a "radmath" house in the Pauling Campus network (one of several), we have plans for rain barrels, solar panels and such, right down to the trim color.

That's what home economics class is all about, whether offered at a book store, Washington School or wherever.

What we don't have is a huge budget as Havana is poor. Showcase homes, with appliances by Google (control panel connected to house meter), other sponsors, are not out of the question, once the embargo against Bucky is lifted against the United States (there's a ring of oil companies trying to fence her in, other obnoxicists).

Where there's excess food available, there's no excuse for people not having food. Where there's no excess, there's a transportation problem or a transit problem, or the potential for more farming. Portland's neighborhoods maybe don't have the vegetables Havana's do, but there's lots of emphasis on urbanites doing some of their own food raising. Chickens are permitted etc. I don't actually know all the rules (just that we're well within them).

For how long this ban on high fat fast food? Fast Food Nation is a popular film in Cuba they tell me, as it provides a fairly bleak analysis of the North American "paradiso". Lets not say I'm the expert. Couldn't tell ya. Maybe a long time, as tourists want and expect that "commercial free" atmosphere, something they can't get at home, and often crave with a vengeance. Keeping Cuba pretty commercial free might just be the ticket. That doesn't mean no interesting work. S3 cartoons require lots of computers and studio time, maybe in cahoots with University of Toronto?

Kirby

Synergeo 60786 re: Martian Math

re practicing multi-culturalism

"all math is ethno-math"

One of the bright ideas Dick came up with recently (seriously folks!) was the idea of Martians making a delivery, of a tetrahedral yard of concrete. Just making it a yard was in itself brilliant, as that term contains "thirding" as a concept, which'll get us to 2-frequency (where concrete is born! (joke)).

So what are Earthlings to do, to get ready for the delivery? Make a mold for the receptacle, using root2(2) on every edge (of a cube). Carve out that internal tetrahedron, like in a dug-out canoe, and have the Martians fill that up. That'll be your yard of concrete. That's about 1.414 yards to each edge.

Those who didn't "get" Synergetics don't understand the Martian instructions and build a "cube root of 3" cube instead, with edges about 1.44 yards. That cube is too big and they're wasting materials. From a Martian perspective, these people have a mental disability. In the Martian equivalent of the DSM, there's an entry XYZ (let's call it) that gives a more spelled out version of the diagnosis / prognosis.

Now some sticklers might come along and say our cube is two half-yards on a diagonal, and since 2*2*2 = 8, this must be a 2-frequency cube. If the tetrahedron is 8, the cube itself must be 24. At this point, you get an argument between the two Earthling camps: should the edges be 2*root2(2) or 2*root3(3)?

There's another sect in this picture, with yet another interpretation of the Martians' instructions. What do they think? We might have to wait until a next episode to discover that.

Kirby

Moratorium Proposal (Synergeo)

I like the idea of a moratorium on new PhDs until we deal with the Bucky stuff with more integrity. It's a philosophy department thing. Unless you're up to date at least a little, how can you be a "doctor" thereof?

Princeton should announce this. Small grad school as it is. Turns out it's just a gesture, as it takes about 30 minutes to screen the concentric hierarchy in a way people get, especially with 4D IMAX [tm].

I also think it'd be worthwhile to padlock all the public high schools for a day, another token gesture, underlining the fact that this funny business of denying students access to their heritage has gone on long enough -- so stay home and watch Youtubes, like what they show in the military ("off your duff math").

Operation Padlock could be carried out by the National Guard, as it's their job to protect security at home. The governors could order the action. Students would mostly love it of course, as it's another day off from the holding tank prison. Great recruiting tool for the Guard, probably double its popularity overnight, especially when people understood the motives.

We need to turn some North American bases into Reboot City operations, where people get some new skills, train in logistics. People will call these brainwashing camps (which they are already) but ultimately will feel more secure if there's some continuity with the decals. If we reskin everything to look "UN", the neo-Nazis will go crazy (as if they weren't already). These should be run by civilians though (as the military already supposedly is).

Lets see which service, Army, Air Force or Navy (or Marines) is the first to have cool concentric hierarchy cartoons in its officer trainings, along with all the positive futurism attendant thereto. I.e. lets see which service is the least cowardly.

My guess is the Navy will be first, even though the radomes were mostly an Air Force thing. Clearly you can't be a legitimate Admiral or General and not know about World Game etc. (unless you're in some mercenary-moron outfit, wearing a clown costume).

Probably sounds weird for a Quaker to be wanting the military to shape up and make sense. You go with the army you've got...

Also, nix on paying the debt for all those weapons. Those were LAWCAP's idea. Citigroup can pay for 'em with all that laundered drug money eh? Uncle Sam doesn't have any nukes either -- those are criminal and therefore belong to organized crime syndicates (terrorist networks). That's why we need the IAEA, FBI and other police, to put the spotlight on those criminals. Plenty of bad guys to go after.

Kirby

Learning Reading

[ from Math Forum, fixed some typos ]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Robert Hansen wrote:
> Landmark School
>
> $45,000.00 per year.
>
> It would take some time to study the ramifications
> of that one fact.
>
> Also, they tutor (I should hope so at that price).
>
> I am less than convinced now than when we started
> this debate.
>

I've been perusing this whole thread. I liked the part where Pam talked about decoding words, not just getting stuck on trying to memorize a whole bunch. You need good mnemonics, which requires delving into heritage, roots (root = radical).

So, for example, we delve into ancient Greek for our hedra, our polyhedra. Tetra, Penta, Hexa, Septa, Octa, Nona, Deca and so forth. Ennea. Triaconta. Icosa. Building these associations takes time and is an exercise in reading. People who think mathematics is just noodling iconic symbols around, while never reading or writing anything polysyllabic, have another thing coming.

One curriculum segment I've worked on takes us to Kanji i.e. Japanese characters heisted from Chinese and repurposed in many cases. We study the Kanji for polyhedra (such as rhombic dodecahedron) while learning about Unicode, the binary basis for encoding all these symbols (including a lot of the math noodling symbols from Iraqi math (aka algebra)).

Spatial geometry tends to be polysyllabic as well as cram packed with acronyms and abbreviations. That's just like the IT world in some ways (although here we find an emphasis on single syllable posix commands, many quite alien by today's standards, yet fun to learn about in math class). Ergo, it's good training for 3rd graders to learn about these space-filling tessellations that'll be on the test.

Q1: the [depicted Schlafli orthoscheme of the cube]
fills space with itself and a mirror image
(a) true
(b) false

Q2: [picture] fills space with:
(a) [picture]
(b) [picture]
(c) [picture]
(d) none of the above.

However, in place of [picture] think of something more like LiveGraphics3D (per Math World) or VRML / x3D. The "textbooks" are online, ergo at least five times more colorful and interactive, less than half as expensive, and not made of dead trees trucked from distant factories using peak oil. A win all around.

They're also quickly fixable, when mistakes are discovered, provided we have a responsive publisher.

The spacefillers are starting to get simpler names in some curricula. Let me preview:

Minimum spacefiller: mite

Mite face-combines with another mite to make: rite, lite, bite -- three species of syte.

Two sytes make a kite, of we now have three: kit, kat and kate.

Some old skool geometers may object that these naming conventions are incompatible with what's on the books, in terms of the tri-rectangular disphenoid tetrahedron (the rite) already having a name on wikipedia (which is editable by people just doing their jobs).

The point is to jump in and out of namespaces. These are local variables more than permanent assignments. When you tour in a new country, all the food names are changed, but it's the same foods (at a primitive level -- the recipes may vary wildly). Likewise, no matter what you call it, a Smite or a Schlafli orthoscheme of a cube, you'll need that mirror image to complete your space-filling tessellation. We have a toy to help and to provide more tactile understanding. It's not all about visualization. Kinematics enters in.

[I think reading specialists know the importance of body language. Learning to crawl (before walking) is a good precursor to left/right differentiation. Don't just sit 'em in front of the TV if you want 'em to be highly coordinated). Crawl before you walk, walk before you run (and don't forget to "toddle" some)]

This thing about price tag is a no-winner, as the minute something worthwhile shows up, you set it out of reach. I don't think I should discuss my pricing, as that'll immediately be used to prove that my approach cannot succeed, because we do not have the resources. Actually, we have plenty of people willing to tutor the young, and it's actually part of human biology to look for opportunities along those lines, as teaching others, not just the young, is self-reinforcement, is a way to stay in shape yourself. What a civilization is is people always teaching one another (a life long process).

Like, suppose we say we use Mathematics for the Digital Age and Programming in Python. Someone comes back with the fact that some schools already using it cost $xx * 10**x per year, so why bother? The public schools will just never have that kind of money. Do you see the complete non sequitur here? This is an argument completely without logic. Maybe the Russians gave us the copyleft rights for free electronic alternatives and we're doing more with OO right out of the box. So what? It's not about the economics, it's about pedagogy. Lets give them all scholarships in our mental models at least, and then talk about "what and how should it be?" not just "how much will it cost?".

I've proposed the following state standard: kids need x number of nights when they get to view the stars "live" i.e. under a naked night sky minus light pollution, such that the stars are directly and brightly visible. Exceptions apply, but the whole middle of the Bell Curve is expected to meet this requirement or... no high school degree. Period. A culture that can't pay for that, can't organize night sky experiences for millions of kids, is just too dumb for the history books. Lets get some new managers.

The next best thing: a planetarium for every high school and/or elementary school. Not that expensive. Any civilization worth beans would do that, I'm sorry. We have the technology. We just don't have the smarts (a self reinforcing cycle, as people with no clue end up just talking about money (the great cop out)).

There have been no substantive economic arguments on math-teach to date that I'm aware of, e.g. explaining why we skipped a whole generation. The Idiocracy ("Ed Mafia" per Haim) has other explanations (they're rewriting the DSM as we speak, so I'm thinking we should contribute new edu-speak in terms of psychological complexes. What led people down this path in the first place? I have my theories, similar to president Eisenhower's in some ways).

People forget that blitting pixels to multiple screens is dirt cheap, likewise sound waves to speakers. There's a whole new distribution architecture already in place, yet the food fighters in Math Wars are still thinking in terms of truck and train loads of physical wood pulp textbooks. This is too retro for words really. Can we even talk to these people? Stone Age prehistoric, these math warriors.

That's why I like the One Laptop Per Child campaign, which actually doesn't depend exclusively on the XO line to get the word out. "Adults will just hold you back, as they impose the patterns of their own childhoods. What else do they know?" Sure, some kept up, pioneered, but there's a Bell Curve.

You get too many old guys remembering their glory days and wanting to help little Johnny learn how to swing that bat. No contemporary skills. Skipped generation types. Don't even know what the minimum space-filler is. Good thing you've got a way around 'em then (those boomer-geezers). So lets rock.

Rad Portland

Duke's Landing on Belmont

Laughing Horse Books

Outlining

• GEOMETRY BASICS
  
  
• Rhombic Dodecahedron (starting point)
• inscribed cube
• inscribed octahedron
• Concept of Dual
• cube - octahedron
• cuboctahedron
• Angle versus Frequency
• 12-around-1: 10 * F * F + 2 (cuboctahedral numbers)
• 12-around-0: 10 * F * F + 2 (icosahedral numbers)
• virus morphology
• geodesic domes and spheres
• buckminsterfullerene
• VE <--> Icosa (Jitterbug)
• 25 Great Circles (VE)
• 31 Great Circles (Icosa)
• LCD triangles
• Spherical Networks
• vertex, face, mid-edge axes
• poles as +2
• 2*P*F*F + 2 (Coxeter paper)
• Concentric Hierarchy
• A & B modules
• Mite, Sytes, Kites
• Coupler (1)
• Rhombic Dodecahedron and the Coupler
• Coupler in XYZ
• Rhombic Triacontahedron
• toy: Ball of Whacks
• T-E modules
• RT volume 5
• RT volume 7.5 (K)
• RT volume 15 * root(2)
• RT / RD relationship
• Tetrahedron as Unit
• 24 A modules
• Unity-2
• IVM (toothpicks)
• two kinds of voids
• 4 IVMs
• Dimensions
• 4D / 4D+
  
  
  
• GEOGRAPHY BASICS
  
  
• Time (space-time)
• clocks
• time-lines
• time codes
• adding into the future, subtracting into the past
• time scales (geological vs. human vs. pico)
• rates of change (ratios)
• Space
• Coordinate systems (including latitude/longitude, degrees)
• Girding/griding the planet (GIS/GPS)
• Mapping/addressing schemes
• Length and number (ratios)
• Area and volume
• Objects
• Shapes
• spatial networks (polyhedra)
• plane figures (triangles especially)
• Objects organized in sets
• types of number
• operations with number types
• permutations and combinations (DNA)
• Objects organized in hierarchies
• subtypes (rationals a subtype of real a subtype of complex)
• geometric hierarchies
• biological taxonomies
• APIs: exposing objects to users
• Fractions, Decimals, Percents (rational number type)
• Polynomials (solving, graphing)
• Vectors
• adding and subtracting
• scalar multiplication
• dot and cross products
• Matrices (translation, rotation, scaling)
• Events
• Communications
• Symbol systems and codes
• Energy
• kinetic energy (units, dimensions)
• heat energy and temperature (conversion constants)
• Frequency (links to time)
• color / optics (the spectrum, visible and not)
• Rates of Change
• velocity vectors, acceleration, slope, gradient
• derivative
• anti-derivative (integral)
• Event-triggered objects
• mouse clicks and key presses
• Probability and Permutations

Trekking Onward in Weirder Portland

Philosophy of Mathematics

In light of the many math-related posts below, you'd think I'd be working full time on those video clips, looking over the shoulders of skilled professionals of various stripes and spots, a zoo of "cool cats" in beatnik terms (a bi-gender appellation, and not one of opprobrium).

However, the MITE fights rage on, with the ortho-scheme of the cube considered a primitive but for its handedness, which puts it more in the category of an A, B or T module. Maybe talk to Frank Zubek about it?

The Hall Tetrahedron reduces to Q, the Schlafli shape. How does "handedness" relate to "congruence" in these cases?

Either way, the MITE is original for its own left / right dissection, which has non-overt characteristics: talking about those A & B modules again.

Isn't it interesting to find a thirding of so basic a nature? I'm on record suggesting Synergetics is non-trinitarian (thinking of unity-2), however the Mite is somewhat evidence to the contrary.

Stories and Exercises

In another window, I'm connecting with Python's tempfile module, useful for setting up test fixtures in unittest.

My questions are again regarding the technical skills versus lore axes, their relative mix in curriculum writing. What's the right mix of stories and exercises? One needs those stories to give the exercises meaning, whereas the latter give substance to the stories.

Designing Applications

Regarding software development, like at PSU and places, it's not bad workflow to imagine some "pie in the sky" version of in-house software, as a way of projecting the "what's so" of current best practices. Envisioned software, aka vapor-ware, serves a real management purpose, as it helps people mentally codify what they're doing, even if the application is never committed to silicon.

However, it might be implemented in some cases i.e. inheriting an office already steeped in ideas of some dream application, if guided by realism in some crucial respects, is what application developers much appreciate.

A lot of the hard part is already done at that point. The workers have developed the details, and, being closest to the job, are likely among the best qualified to have done so, so a win.

But then how much did the teams learn in high school about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, SQL, ORM, MVC, XML, DOM. Getting this computer science stuff into more common use is a challenge.

I'm eying making an end run through the humanities, not waiting for math teachers to catch up. The DOM (Document Object Model) is the kind of structure we encounter in Rhetoric, and XML is but Punctuation of a new kind (per Gene Fowler of Waking the Poet fame -- rolled his own XML editor in Delphi).

I tend to blend the computer science stuff with the spatial geometry stuff. I have a lexical-graphical bridge through Geography one might say, a sometimes fantastic domain (like a Wonderland, or Narnia... an Uru) which maps data in theater (as in Globe Theater).

The Geoscope

Google Earth is a good example, though here with a realistic vista: a virtual Geoscope, ready for overlays of whatever data layers. Then check Google Mars and Google Moon (both available in 2010).

ESRI provides a lot of capability to professional cartographers and geo-scientists. I've seen some of those tools in action.

Whereas high schools can't be expected to always afford the latest high end equipment, in demand by career professionals, the open source commons has already provided some strong capabilities adequate at least wrangle the concepts.

The GIS features in PostgreSQL, coupled with GeoDjango's ORM, are more examples of a tool sets able to supply maps to end users. Exercises involving geo-caching, including in metropolitan areas, also wilderness, will perhaps take advantage of these tools.

Is this a school server? Then perhaps the local environment is already modeled in some detail (say the Mt. Tabor area in Weirder Portland). Students gain a feel for that overview perspective.

Math Reform

Xref (May 2010):

The Elements of Algebra -- Groves responding to Urner
The Deprecation of Algebra -- Urner responding to Niederberger
The Elements of Algebra -- Urner responding to Bishop
The Elements of Algebra -- Urner responding to Groves
Re: The complexity of multiplication -- Urner responding to Hansen
Complex numbers: how early? (Urner)

Popping in re mathematics foundations (Urner) -- Wittgenstein list [Wittrs]

Four Axes for Reformers (Urner) -- with 2nd edition to Synergeo

Posting up a Storm (Urner) -- thread on mathfuture

Re: the complexity of multiplication -- Urner responding to Niederberger

Topic: The complexity of multiplication (with correction) -- Urner responding to Niederberger
Re: What math is, or was! -- Urner responding to Haim (pseudonym)
Re: What math is, or was! -- Urner responding to Haim again

Re: Challenge to Haim -- Urner responds

Re: What math is, or was! -- Urner responding to GS Chandy

Space-filling Tessellations -- Urner responding to Ihor

Math for Welders -- Urner

Rhombic Triacontahedra etc. (Synergetics list) -- Urner

[Edu-sig] Factory functions: synthesizing top-level names -- Urner / Python Nation

Re: The Real Scandal in American School Mathematics by Anthony Ralston -- Urner responding to Hansen

[Synergeo ] Re: RadMath Update -- Urner responding to Fischbeck

Spreadsheets R Us -- Urner

Re: Different Classes of Geometries -- Urner responds to Tim

Cold War Operations

Last night we screened a bunch of videos. I came in late from my meeting with Patrick.

I saw one on UFOs / Area 51 (the usual aggrandizement of the Air Force, which gets to network with aliens pre American Dad), and another on the Federal Reserve. In between we screened The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Truth Shall Set You Free, apparently recorded off The History Channel.

I'd seen this very same JFK video years ago, having rented it from Movie Madness. I thought it was one of the more cogent in this genre. There's an interview with the special forces guy, the guy who studies gray scale photography, the retired FBI guy... Lee Harvey Oswald's wife Marina.

Coincidentally, I was revisiting the Prouty web site at the time, maybe tracking down some UFO reference. Or was it the U2? Yeah, I was revisiting the U2 again.

Watching conspiratorial videos while having a searchable Internet handy is a different kind of experience.

Allen Dulles wanted to bully the Russians with the U2 right up to the summit with Eisenhower, even though the USA prez had requested a halt to those overflights.

Prouty is consistently adamant that Gary Powers was not "shot down" and even suggests that the plane, previously damaged, had belly-landed (again) safely, with a payload of non-regulation incriminating evidence. Allen Dulles agreed the U2 could not have survived a direct hit (was he talking to Prouty?).

Certainly Gary himself survived, although the Eisenhower administration didn't know this at first, and so was caught red handed telling a number of bald face lies. These embarrassing developments derailed the summit, with Khrushchev coming across as anything but compliant following this (24th?) flagrant violation of Soviet airspace. This U2 incident had perhaps sabotaged early plans to "win" the Cold War. Theories abound, questions remain.

What's poignant about this 1995 JFK movie is how the interviewees feel they're finally going public with some deep secrets, perhaps at some peril to themselves -- but does anyone really notice or care anymore? Here we are in 2010, with a gaping hole in the history, a seemingly indecipherable knot it's perhaps easier to just walk away from.

People are used to the idea of an official story of what happened, surrounded by a plethora of wacko theories. End of story. There's a three story geodesic ball to look out through (Reunion Tower, rotating restaurant), if you want to study Dealey Plaza as a casual tourist.

I fall into the tourist category myself, as I don't boast any special credentials as a student of this event. Thom Hartmann, interviewed for this film, is way ahead of me. I was but a few years old, living in Portland, when this event occurred. I've studied the Prouty materials in some depth though, in part because of my interest in Asia (I grew up in the Philippines for most of my high school years).

Indications at Col. Fletcher Prouty's web site are that neither President Lyndon Johnson (part of the motorcade) nor Bobby Kennedy saw the assassination as the deranged actions of a crazy loner. Prouty never implicated Johnson in the assassination in any way, which I gather a subsequent episode of this documentary film series eventually did (I've not seen that episode).

Subsequent to the Bay of Pigs fiasco, attempts against Castro's life were ongoing out of the Attorney General's office, despite an agreement with Khrushchev to stop acting like the Mafia.

Diem, a fellow Catholic, was still alive at this time. JFK wanted to get all USA personnel out of Vietnam by 1965, which might've sounded like an admission of defeat unless some other shoe was to drop. Ed Lansdale, the original quiet American, wanted to return there, though not in the capacity of assassin (McNamara, then defense secretary, considered him willfully insubordinate in that respect, per A.J. Langguth's book Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975).

Given these behind-the-scenes machinations, blowback of some kind was anticipated, though perhaps not at this high of a level, and contingency plans had already been drawn up to prevent the spread of panic, in the event of retaliation.

The cover-up described in the film has to do with the size and nature of the wound, and of course where the bullets might have come from (the under street drainage system provides a new angle). Someone else who saw the original autopsy photos confirms the gaping hole etc. These images were then doctored to match the official story (analysis from the gray scale guy). Divulging this information at the time was strictly verboten (special forces guy).

That Prouty was at the South Pole during the assassination suggests he could be the innocent insider (the tour guide) who would gradually help us understand what had really happened. He points to his friend Ed Lansdale, with a corroborating second opinion, as presumably present on the scene. He writes to Jim Garrison, appears with Oliver Stone, and tries to make himself understood as the real "Man X" -- played by Donald Sutherland in the Oliver Stone film JFK, with Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison.

Prouty fingers Social Darwinism (aka Malthusianism) as driving the "make-war" policies of the post WW2 military-industrial complex. He quotes Bucky Fuller in this regard (in JFK). This was also the Nazi ideology (eugenics), which not surprisingly had (has) many adherents among the moneyed, per War Against the Weak by Edwin Black.

These "not enough to go around" philosophies are self-fulfilling prophecies in that way, as squandering resources on killingry is a sure fire way to assure that there isn't enough livingry. GST takes a look at this trade-off, known to classical economists as "guns versus butter."

Followup: Trevor reminded me that he has some archived correspondence with Lee Oswald's ex-Marine friend Kerry Thornley, hauled before the Warren Commission because of their earlier association in the military. This encounter left lasting scars, as Kerry concluded he was "the next patsy in line" if the LHO story fell through. Trevor, fine with believing the lone gunman theory, hosts Kerry's The Dreadlock Recollections online. Trevor also showed me a copy of Drawing Down the Moon at Powell's, wherein Thornley gets credit for The Discordia papers, prototypical of Subgenius writings in some dimensions.

Surplus (movie review)

Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers, chronicles the descent into irrationality occasioned by the industrial revolution.

Unable to tear away from "earning a living" models, humans endlessly churned out more and more of what they already had too much of, while neglecting their own basic needs.

Future shock apparently involved acknowledging our need to radically improve our cognitive approach to "the economy". Was it really all about shopping until we dropped? Could there have been other answers?

Questioning materialism used to be the quaintly anachronistic job of various once-a-week religions and had a "tsk tsk" neo-Victorian and/or Puritanical flavor. As that questioning has become more urgently existential, much of the religious response has converged with philosophical and scientific investigations.

Instead of the fires of hell, we have global warming to contemplate and/or thermonuclear war followed by nuclear winter. A sense of human culpability keeps us in the game as having agency. We seem to have a steering function, even engineers think so. This keeps a flavor of "testing" in our Global U (Spaceship Earth).

We Can Fix This is exemplary of a more hopeful, less purely destructive, response (a road show, coming soon to The Bagdad). The Coffee Shops Network idea was likewise an attempt to harness our best impulses to support the front lines.

The film uses mockumentary techniques similar to those of Emergency Broadcasting Network in Electronic Behavior Control System for example. Multiple talking head shots, mostly of media personalities and authority figures, get spliced together to mouth some of the film's biting commentary.

One of the longest takes, and most eerie, is in a sex doll factory. These are among the best money can by. We get the grand tour, and learn how body type, head, skin color etc., might be mixed and matched per patient tastes (one could view these as medical devices, akin to prosthetics, and therefore covered by insurance). Shades of AI. Factory and cubicle workers doing calisthenics in unison, inter-spliced with the sex dolls, provide an Orwellian commentary on the dehumanizing effects of the matrix.

George Bush insisting we fight terror by shopping (our "way of life" after all), and Steve Balmer whooping it up for Microsoft, come across as twin icons of some kind of hypertrophic global materialism.

Both are reflective more than instigative, doing their jobs as jester archetypes, properly suited for the masquerade. Anonymous spectators take comfort from the hype, as they do from televangelists, shock jocks, other colorful clowns.

"Know your audience" is the dictum for commercial advertisers, as well as for filmmakers.

One might easily come to see rampant materialism as "the matrix" which traps us in unfulfilling and dehumanizing scenarios. Experiencing said "matrix" as imprisoning is a first step toward liberation in that case, and is an awareness this film seeks to foment.

In the foreground and haunting the sound track: our token "terrorist" who wants to fight back without being too tame about it. Smashing a few windows is civil disobedience in his book, not violence against persons.

Violence against persons, on the other hand, is what matrix shoppers tend to consider a "divine right" in contrast (including by proxy, against strangers in distant lands). Their sense of security and right to over-consume go hand in hand.

This film was released in 2003 and is a part of the Laughing Horse collection. Thanks to recent reorganization, these films are getting more opportunities to circulate beyond just those few radical households that know about them.

Private parties, teach-ins, networking salons etc., with music, presentations, and projected films, are not in violation of copyright, even where covers get played. Fair use rights pertain.

Movie Madness on SE Belmont may have some hard to find videos (and it does), but some of those at Laughing Horse (10th & SE Burnside) are next to impossible to obtain.

Surveying History

Webster Tarpley was being sharply critical of Freedom House on Russia Today (RT), making fun of the Bush Institute's workshop on cyber-freedoms. This led me into reading up on Freedom House, which took me (again) to Bayard Rustin, a gay activist Quaker and former chairman of said NGO.

Tarpley wrote George Bush: the Unauthorized Biography (about Bush Sr.) a book our resident Lyndon LaRouche afficionado Brian Hutchings used to cite often on Geodesic and Synergetics-L, the latter being the precursor the Synergeo. Tarpley has his share of detractors, such as among Noam Chomsky admirers.

I ended up reading the Tarpley bio of Bush Sr. a long time ago. The section on Leo Cherne is especially apropos per Tarpley's remarks on the RT Youtube.

The Tarpley investigation of Nazi connections was more tempered and balanced in Kitty Kelly's book I thought. Per War Against the Weak, the USA's aristocratic intelligentsia was pretty much across the board into Social Darwinism and eugenics in those days, feeding a Hitleresque mindset.

Now I'm curious whether Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a gay activist associated with the MLK campaign, might have known and/or worked with Bayard Rustin.

I've been reading the Speak Truth to Power document again, which agonizes about the erosion of freedoms in America thanks to its new post-WWII wartime economy. The Cold War proved somewhat devastating to personal freedoms, much as the War on Terror has. Freedom House was a staunch foe of McCarthyism I notice.

James Woolsey, of Who Killed the Electric Car? fame, is also a past chairman of the Freedom House board of trustees, a fact Tarpley also mentions on Russia Today.

Here's mention of Kiyoshi, from Smash the Church, Smash the State, edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca:

At antiwar protests, gay men used campy new tactics to fend off cops and defuse tensions. As Kiyoshi Kuromiya relates in City of Sisterly and Brotherly Love (Marc Stein, Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000), “We’d go up to a line of cops with tear gas grenades and horses and clubs. And link arms and do a can-can. Really threw them off guard.”