BarCamp 4

:: barcamp 4 @ eliot center ::

I woke up with the sense of gentle tendrils pulling me downtown. I'd need to go on my bicycle, in the rain, to keep it a pure experience. I blundered about the house, scarcely believing I was going to an event I'd only just tuned in the night before. What better time though? Better than staying home and being sick.

The registrars and Eliot Center management were most gracious in allowing me to wheel the bicycle into an unused classroom. I'd forgotten my keys at the house, so couldn't lock it to a post. Bicycles do get stolen around here.

Not everyone is interested in stratifying by age, drawing attention to the obvious demographic pyramid, with a broad base of young geeks in their 20s and 30s, with a dwindling number towards the peak. Ward Cunningham wanted to explicitly address the span of generations and have us interact cross-generationally. We were "young" if we considered HTML a first language, "old" if we'd ever programmed an Apple 2e.

A lot of us were a lot older than that. When we got a show of hands as to who'd ever used punch cards, not only did several go up (including mine), but a gent in the corner actually produced one, passed it around for show & tell purposes. For the most part, Ward got us to sit facing one another in two groups, the so-called old and the so-called young. Some oldsters preferred to mingle with the more youthful however, but no one really cared.

Keith Lofstram's ServerSky talk has progressed since I first tuned it in at Wanderers (at the Pauling House). He imagines relieving Earthian power grids from needing to fuel data centers, by moving this capability into orbit. His brand of science fiction features solar panels thinner than paper and steerable by light pressure alone. He's pretty "out there" and BarCamp is the perfect place for such speculation. Just working through some numbers on power demands, energy sources, in big picture terms, is plenty edifying. The basic thermodynamics of the solar system come across as more intelligible if cast in terms of a long term story wherein humanity plays a role.

On my lunch break I headed over to the library and read some collected essays by Richard Stallman. If there's an elder statesman for Geek Nation, he'd be the guy. Without free software and a willingness to question the ethics of those who make helping one's neighbor illegal, we would have no assets to boast of.

After lunch, I sat in on a discussion of Haiku, a reincarnation of BeOS. Is it going anywhere. Having diverse operating systems represents a well spring of ideas and feeds those hungry to do original, ground-breaking work.

The workshop on Brain Meds was interesting, mostly a litany of warnings to just stay away from most modern "crazy meds", especially the anti-psychotics. However, the discussion was nuanced and delved into related medical topics such as sexual dysfunctions, insurance, generic versus brand name. The two girls leading the talk had medical diagnoses that were covered by insurance. One researches and writes for a blog on this very topic.

Free beer followed, courtesy of Widmer.

Did you know that generics can be plus or minus 20% the dosage of a name brand and that's OK with the FDA? The advice was to stick with a known manufacturer, once you found a right dosage, or you could be in for a nasty surprise when switched by insurance to a supposed equivalent.

I was glad to see geeks taking responsibility for sharing about such personal matters in a frank, no nonsense style. Most television and politicians are relatively gutless. There might have been some extra nervousness in the room as a result of taking on these topics, however Portland BarCamps are nothing if not experimental and cutting edge.

Igal's Train Porn was one of the most interesting. I'd been fascinated by trains as a kid. Dad and I had an HO scale train set when I was still in the single digits. I'd also had the good fortune to ride many a funicular and even a few cog railways in Europe. North America has fewer of these. I'd never seen that wild 1950s way people got to Timberline Lodge before the newer highway was built. A bus suspended from tension lines and using its on-board power to "fly" over the snow, ascending 2100 feet in 10 minutes.

Speaking of the Pauling House (where Wanderers meet), my science fiction about bringing it into the Unilever fold have so far proved unsuccessful, were never on Terry's radar to begin with I don't think. Besides, what would an Anglo-Dutch conglomerate want with such an asset? The company is already holding other property just a few blocks away, so why be redundant?

Which reminds me... one of the young geeks had a "Silicon Forest" tag on his BarCamp badge. He spoke knowledgeably of the history, shared the lore. He knew quite a bit about Doug Strain, but hadn't connected him to Linus Pauling. I filled in some of those details for him.

I also met another rad math teacher type, Tom Henderson, espousing Punk Mathematics. Perhaps we'll collaborate as time goes by (as the world turns). InshaAllah.

Art of Note

from Chapter 5, Flextegrity on-line

Genki Sudo - World Order のパフォーマンスユニット - 須藤元気

From my meeting with Ovo

Listening to Women

Women do seem to have the role of suggesting the wiser course, with more thought for the future.

Sure, that's a generalization. I'm thinking of Belau (bet you weren't) and the Compact of Free Association. The women hoped the men would stand by their Nuclear Free Zone position (this was a small tropical island nation, expressing defiance and a fond hope for a nuclear free world).

Through several plebiscites, the men did, before they caved. Or at least that's one way of telling it. Roll the tape forward and Valerie Plame Wilson becomes the new voice of sanity, urging the men to reduce their nuclear arsenals to zero.

Not that much has changed, beyond the names and the places...

In that spirit, of listening to the women for a change, I was privileged to join my mother and a large crowd of well wishers to celebrate the life of Pat Hollingsworth. She'd stayed the course, fighting for women's rights and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

I was pleased that her family encouraged us to toast her memory with Jack Daniels. The Quaker Meeting had suggested alcohol would be inappropriate (not my policy) but we had too many people for that venue anyway. Hoffman Hall is much bigger.

Pat was a superb pottery maker (among other talents) and her estate was giving away numerous pieces. Mom selected a handsome mug.

Yvonne brought her dog and sang songs, taught us a game ("conkers") from her childhood. Another man made a stirring speech, about not giving up.

Afterwards, we visited the Wall of Fame, part of the Portland State University campus, whereon my mother's name is carved in stone next to Mary Bolton's, with Pat's just inches away.

The Womens International League for Peace and Freedom memorialized many of its star players here, although Barbara Drageaux chose to stay off the list for some reason.

When I got home, I learned of the death of Benoît Mandelbrot. I'd opened for him once, giving a talk on fractals on short notice. Cool dude.

Peace Garden (continued)

Click here for Part One.

Vote!

20/20 Hindsight (movie review)

We're watching a movie, 20/20 Hindsight: Censorship on the Frontline, an interview with a whistle blower, Richard Grove, who tried to go to Frontline etc. with this story about a software application, owned by Legato and then EMC, that contained a "back door," a way to defraud investors and circumvent the strictures of Oxley-Sarbanes.

The irony was the software in question was advertised as supporting Oxley-Sarbanes, the anti-corruption legislation. The software actually provided circumventions of the laws it claimed to support. Just delete the jar file: millions of emails go away.

The whistle blower brought his case to court. Everything he asserted was proved, according to Grove, but the judge ruled that the statute of limitations had run out.

I was reminded of the Doctrine of Discovery and its "statute of limitations" defense. If there were a problem with this "law" it should've been raised years ago. Likewise the idea of "corporate personhood" can't be overturned this late in the game (say the courts), as it wasn't overturned when it should have been, years ago.

Capitalizing on ignorance, using fear to manipulate, is not a new phenomenon of course.

Rhetoric and persuasive speech, even if full of fallacies, is the way to control behavior.

Getting paid to speak persuasively, using intimidation where needed, tends to short circuit the intellect, says Grove. Emotional content, feelings of insecurity, is the basis for making a sale, especially of gold and silver.

Putting your intellect back in the driver seat is an antidote to fear. The media might have been that intellect, but that hasn't been happening.

Grove is a fan of Tarpley, is hardly a cheerleader for the Obama or Bush teams. His project these days is to help people in thinking for themselves. He's gone back to the trivium / quadrivium for heuristics, in contrast to "outcomes based" education, which he regards as promoting subservience and dependence. He's also a 911 "inside jobber" (believes in a conspiracy to recycle the real estate).

The interview and Grove's subsequent career reminded me of this quote:

Never before in all history have the inequities and the momentums of unthinking money-power been more glaringly evident to so vastly large a number of now literate, competent, and constructively thinking all-around-the-world humans. There’s a soon-to-occur critical-mass moment when the intuition of the responsibly inspired majority of humanity, in contradistinction to the angered Luddites and avenging Robin Hoods, faced with comprehensive functional discontinuity of nationally contained techno-economic systems, will call for and accomplish a world-around reorientation of our planetary affairs.

R. Buckminster Fuller
“Can’t Fool Cosmic Computer”
Grunch of Giants (St. Martin’s Press, 1983), pg. 89

Oh Superman...

So at 52, I'm not at the pinnacle of my athletic career. To live in the world of my dreams, I'll likely need to be reborn, perhaps as some Tarzania type (a female Tarzan). A traditional Jungian projection (anima... anime).

Fantasies aside, I picked up that Food Not Bombs box the wrong way, in that walk-in refrigerator, and sprained my lower back pretty good. At "college night" last night at Cleveland High, I hobbled around like I needed a cain, looking somewhat pathetic (because I didn't have one).

Before that misadventure, I'd tackled some plumbing upstairs in the 105 year old Blue House, placing a bucket beneath a sink full of corrosive toxins before unscrewing the curved piece of pipe ("the trap"). The pipe piece went plunk into the overflowing bucket and splashed some of the toxins in my eye. Coulda been worse, a lot worse. Why wasn't I wearing my glasses? Events conspire sometimes...

A lotta civilians would like a kind of boot camp experience, a way to get in shape, learn some skills, without other grownups being super mean and sending them off to kill or be killed. They'd like to be part of a solution in some way, welcomed as world game players. Movie stars work hard for such treatment, and such roles. In my Project Earthala communities, we have a lot of "off your duff" stuff to do, if you have a young body needing to stay trim, or an older one, likewise predisposed.

Wanna work on a railroad, even literally?

You may do so, for academic credit, while learning history and general systems. Might be in Russia someplace.

But you're not here as a prisoner.

The work / study people flit about. You'll meet some of them again... and again.

Our discussion this morning (while cleaning) was about so many office buildings zoned to where you can't legally sleep in them. The night time janitorial service doesn't want to be stumbling upon snoozing personnel. No, you'll need to drive 50 miles to get to a bed from your cube farm, or ride some bullet train. Those are the zoning rules.

Gazillions of people slosh in and out, because home is not suitable for working and work is not suitable for taking time off work.

Work is a place that you "go", as in "go go go" (all that fossil fuel, sluicing down the drain -- welcome to Planet of the Apes).

Anyway, the fantasy was of small firms, wandering bands, troupes, with banners (logos, coats of arms -- such as I just returned to Djangocon sponsors), coming into a city and setting up shop, perhaps only for six months. They have live-and-work style offices, more like lofts, more like studios.

Perhaps the job is to teach urban farming techniques, help set up another plantagon, get the software tuned, train some friends, get some training, share some music... and move on, to another city with floorspace.

You don't buy a cube farm in a sky tower and a hotel room by the airport.

Or maybe you work in a home, outfitted as a workplace.

The Blue House is all futuristic by then, lots of monitors (including on-board energy use), lots of two-way communicating, routing, both in real time and asynchronously (like today).

New toons are getting made, XRL (a kind of livingry) is being field tested. We're a management hub, like CUE used to be for "refugee resettlement" in some other war against terrorism, another chapter in fighting fear.

Should this be Reality TV? The Pauling House people talk a lot about streaming.

Given I'm embedded in this old school urban grid, I'm only somewhat able to walk my own Global U talk. I've done my best to conflate the commute, to have my studio and sleeping quarters be ship shape, not spread all across town. The torture taxi stays in the driveway a lot.

In doing Food Not Bombs today, I rode a bicycle to the Quaker meetinghouse, towing a trailer full of sustenance. Marian Rhys is here, helping Cera (Sara) and some new kids in town, part of a cross-continent cycling team.

Their plan is to ride both ways, to start back by looping south (as far as New Mexico? -- I haven't asked 'em).

Working in the kitchen, pealing potatoes, washing pots and pans, is somewhat close to my Ecovillage fantasy.

Sure, Lockheed-Martin has failed us, Boeing has let us down. EPCOT was a disappointment (sad for Disney). The "best toys" are uncool. The engineers built us a railroad we don't want or need (remember MX missiles?), at great expense in shared living standards. Welcome to our self-inflicted slums then, a sad memorial to Bombs Not Food. I hope our progeny have compassion and forgive us our many tresspasses against them.

This unpleasant reality doesn't keep us from dreaming some American dream however. The power of nightmares is only finite after all.

We may be a conquered people, slaves to an alien ideology, a kind of "complex" (as the Jungians say), but one day we may again breath free, having tossed off the sorrowful yoke of empire.

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