Canonical Lesson Plan

Sometimes I get a request for a canonical lesson plan, one that will capture the flavor and style of Synergetics, by which they mean the Bucky stuff.

What I'm coming to on that score is the four random walkers starting from the same lamp post in the CCP (=IVM), and wandering for t time cycles.  

The four randomly arrived at balls define the corners of a tetrahedron which, upon having its six edge lengths get run through our volume computer, will turn out to always have a whole number volume.  In tetravolumes, that is. Four CCP balls define our D-for-diameter-edged tetrahedron of volume one.

In order to calculate the random walks, we use Quadrays as syntactic sugar.  The IVM ball packing is their sweet spot, which is why they're "IVM coordinates" by some accounts (including mine), in contrast to XYZ.

In order to calculate the sixth edge lengths, we simply perform vector subtraction between adjacent corners. Quadrays have essentially the same vector algebra as XYZ when it comes to adding, subtracting, and scaling.

Finally, in order to calculate the tetrahedron's volume, we use Gerald de Jong's formula, even though he has lost his derivation.  There's no denying it works well.  

Six edge lengths go in, fanning out from any apex and circuiting the opposite base, and the tetravolume comes out, natively, with no need for a modifying constant.  

The corresponding XYZ volume is computed accordingly, as IVM volume times 1/S3 (S3 being the Synergetics Constant for converting volumes).

In sum, we needed to learn what the IVM was, and to visualize movement within it as a process of hopping in one of twelve directions, by distance D, at each turn to play.  Then we needed to absorb the concept of tetravolumes.  

Getting whole number tetravolumes for the tetrahedra helps shock us into a mindset that might be open to the concentric hierarchy, wherein those rhombic dodecahedral cells around each sphere, each have a volume of six.

All of the above, along with figurate and polyhedral numbers more generally, including kissing point counts, form our IVM-XYZ bridge over troubled waters, the C.P. Snow chasm.

Heuristics for Teachers (continued)

City of Roses

 Try reading this as a kind of poetry.  It's about a rose, after all.

As Korzybski, the founder of general semantics, pointed out, the consequence of its single-tagging is that the rose becomes reflexively considered by man only as a red, white, or pink device for paying tribute to a beautiful girl, a thoughtful hostess, or last night's deceased acquaintance. The tagging of the complex biological process under the single title rose tends to detour human curiosity from further differentiation of its integral organic operations as well as from consideration of its interecological functionings aboard our planet. We don't know what a rose is, nor what may be its essential and unique cosmic function. Thus for long have we inadvertently deferred potential discovery of the essential roles in Universe that are performed complementarily by many, if not most, of the phenomena we experience. But, goaded by youth, we older ones are now taking second looks at almost everything. And that promises many ultimately favorable surprises. The oldsters do have vast experience banks not available to the youth. Their memory banks, integrated and reviewed, may readily disclose generalized principles of eminent importance.

 Exercise:  mine for memories of meanings for "rose" and be favorably surprised.

Mapping Out a Curriculum

Thinking with Mike Episode 5:  My Favorite Martian Mathematician

Synergetics in the Humanities

Excerpt from recent correspondence (email to Maurice, Apr 20, 2021, 3:02 AM ), regarding Kenneth Snelson's relationship with Bucky Fuller:

He was always trying to figure out where the narrative was going to go around Bucky.  Was the guy a genius or a crackpot and to what extent would tensegrity be tarnished or polished by the association?  Had he been victimized somehow, was the core question, e.g. by a mad man with a messiah complex?  A lot hinged on what a next generation did with the whole corpus.  He was still trying to see the future.  That's why he reached out to me, an early web guy focusing on Bucky stuff, both to warn me about what he called the Church of Bucky, and to get a sense of where said "church" might be going in future, as that would inevitably be impacting the Snelson story and reputation as well.

I don't think his question was ever fully answered, and that had been the problem all along:  an inability to reach consensus on the nature and/or level of Bucky's game.  He somewhat resented the sense that, as a Black Mountain College student, he'd been left to figure that all out for himself.  Bucky was looking at Snelson as a possible protege, and given how mission-critical the former thought his own work might be, that put Kenneth under a lot of pressure.  He just wanted to enjoy being a college kid and having a girlfriend.  That he was put in the position of needing to assess Bucky was in some ways infuriating.  Others should be helping more.  

To make a long story short, he eventually fell in with a crowd who assured him Bucky was pretty much a charlatan and he'd be doing us a service by fighting him directly and publicizing their tug-o-war over intellectual property (both were patenting).  Kenneth thought they had something like a truce, an understanding:  Bucky would stay out of the art world and leave "tensegrity as art" to Kenneth, as what could a design science guy need with pure art?  Then it appeared Bucky transgressed that line, and was moving into the art world himself, and that's when Kenneth put on his battle armor.  

But then people such as myself gave him pause. Maybe there was something to it all after all?  We discussed these matters at some length, why not?  He was a really charming guy, easy to get along with.  We both had daughters.  I took mine to New York City to visit that time, and show her some of my young adulthood haunts in Jersey City.  

We exchanged a lot of emails, Kenneth and I, none of which I've kept as if he'd wanted those kept, he'd have archived them on his end, as he was very organized.  Maybe he did, I don't know.  He was also handsome and athletic.  He didn't like old age and what it did to him.  He was having a brilliant life.  Who'd want to ever let go of such an amazing scenario?

The Algorithm

compute a tetrahedron's tetravolume given its six edge lengths

I'm pretty sure the first time I saw Gerald's algorithm it was already expressed in source code, Java no doubt. I've also implemented it in Clojure just for fun and suggest on my Youtube channel that students use whatever language currently interests them, i.e. use it as a Rosetta Stone entry.

The constant e.g. 288 or 144 (a 2nd root thereof) was already absent from Gerald's version, and returning in tetravolumes was already the goal. I don't claim that wrinkle came in with the Python.

Given Python's "duck typing" it's easy enough to use the same source code to use arbitrary precision inputs (way beyond floating points in precision) and to use such as the plane nets for A, B, T, E, S modules in Synergetics to get these volumes and to interconvert their expression with Koski's versions, involving Phi (Fuller avoided using both Phi and Pi in his invented language of Synergetics, whereas adding Phi back in simplifies a lot of the dimensions).

I've also been frequenting a certain Wayne Roberts Principles of Nature website wherein he proves how the area of what he calls a "eutrigon" (one or three angles set to 60 degrees) is A x B where A, B are the lengths including the 60 degree angle, and C is the opposite edge connecting A to B. Multiplication is a matter of specifying the two sides and "closing the lid" (adding C). Lengths 4, 3 would give area of 12 etc.

area in ETUs

Using the same volume formula and treating the unit tetrahedron as analogous to Wayne's "ETU" (equilateral triangular unit), I show the model is entirely analogous i.e. lengths A, B, C from a common corner (picture XYZ corner as analog) give A x B x C as the corresponding volume, once again with a "closing the lid" operation, this time on a tetrahedron vs. a triangle.

2 x 2 x 5 = 20

Given the fixed angle of the ABC corner (that of a regular tet), the remaining three lengths are already determined and easy to obtain, for the purpose of feeding into the 6-edge-eating formula above.

I personally don't need a whole worked out math textbook with proofs + index in order to encourage developing coding skills while imagining a reference "sculpture" namely the concentric hierarchy from Synergetics. Your typical arts and design academy, where fluency with computers is baked into the curriculum, would have reasons to include this segment.

concentric hierarchy

Russiagate Rolls On

Domestic Logistics

Tuesday this week was a mini day of reckoning.  Would the new appliance show up as the email promised, and work?  This may be the biggest appliance I've bought on the web, sight unseen (but for pictures).

How about the furnace? Letting an oil furnace run out of fuel (my bad) puts air or worse in the line, making a restart difficult sometimes. 

One ends up phoning a technician. The technician usually does a hard sell on rebuilding the whole furnace. Should I convert the house to gas?  Not an option at the moment.

The new Samsung dishwasher appears up to the task. The guys who put it in clearly have their choreography down. Efficient.

The furnace wouldn't come on at first.  The fuel line from under the driveway is quite long. I kept at it, pressing the red button at long intervals, and finally, ignition.  The line was cleared.

I'm back to keeping the household running smoothly, for a 62 and almost 92 year old, during a pandemic. Many thanks to my friends who help out in so many ways.

Sociological Remarks

As the son of a city planner, I have to enjoy the dissonant zoning. Little Free Libraries are the epitome of middle class, whereas the Adult Bookstore is commercial strip mall zoning. 

Juxtaposing these two zonings sets off dissonant notes. 

Then of course the whole idea of "adult content" conflicts with tea-cuppy Victorian values, which provide the roots for what we consider anglophone middle class (piano, trivial pursuits, stable of "horses" i.e. Prius and Tesla).

Of Bioneers and St. Thomas Aquinas

Continuing with the appliance theme, the bionics, I got my yearly diagnostic at the hospital the other day. There's one number in particular, a physical dimension (width) we're keeping an eye on. No change. That's good.

I guess I like the term "bioneer" OK. Better than "bionista". I echo Guido's dislike of "pythoneer", much preferring "pythonista". So does that make me inconsistent?  Not really.  We want to keep the "engineer" meme.  "One who deals with engines".  Intellect:  that which busies itself with thoughts, while remaining its own thing.

I was lurking on Srikant's seminar room again today (52 Living Ideas).  The est Seminars sometimes endeavored to such collegiate levels, but in opening one's doors to the masses, you're not necessarily soliciting the most high brow of conversations.  This one was about "Faculty Psychology" or "the Psychology of Faculties" and, in particular, the cogitative (no, not cognitive) sense, per St. Thomas Aquinas. 

"Bioneer" for me is a slightly tongue in cheek swap-in for "farmer" where today's farmer is not some left-in-the-dark peasant, but a very globally aware technologist, at the intersection of a great many industries, from entomology, to chemistry, to climate science, to marketing, to cybernetics and synergetics.  Farmers make use of their cogitative sense at a high level.

Appliance Connection

I've been grateful the appliances have kept working. After the personal bionics, the avatar, and those around us, we want our machines to work, especially the life sustaining ones, like the furnace, air conditioner, for many a car. I running a two person household yet managing my Oregon Curriculum Network on top of that, pumping memes to the world.  That's thanks to appliances.

So yeah, the clothes washer went out.  My ex Sandia Labs friend, with the can do attitude, was all ready to buy some parts and dive in.  Bill Shepherd rescued my DVD player by soldering a new capacitor to the circuit board, per online advice.  Perhaps $60 in parts and some hours, would make the Kenmore good as new.

Calling around for a repair person wasn't getting me anywhere.  The web machine is still directing calls, but these go to a black hole. The economy is still in suspension.  The economy would prefer I buy a new washing machine.  That's what the stimulus check, if there is one, could be for.

My Sandia friend was also ready to solve the BP crisis, when British Petroleum (aka the Pentagon) trashed the Gulf of Mexico. Patrick had his aquarium tank fired up and started prototyping these giant sucking contraptions (giant at scale), designed for ordinary fishing boats to use.  Mobilize the fleet.

He's taken on other challenges: the python invasion in the Everglades; the need for easy verification of vaccinated status.

My sense of the problem with the washer is there's no diagnosis by telepathy. One has to take it apart to see what's wrong.  I've had it for more than five years probably, and it's not under any kind of extended protection plan.

Buying a new appliance, and protection plan, in this day and age, is a statement of confidence about our civilization, and even about so-called "capitalism" (a word I use for something else, but never mind). I'm expecting Home Depot to be around for another five years, and maybe even expand to other countries.

We need to get back to tourism, and not tourism in camo.  In exporting its youth in military uniform, instead of as civilians, the Americans wasted a few generations.  People are entitled to UBI as compensation for all this abuse maybe.  Monkey rule of humanity has been a bummer.

Of EQ and IQ

From the Polymaths & Polymathy group on Facebook:

Even if it's true that IQ is measurable and EQ is not, meaning you can't walk around with a numeric bell curve score for your EQ, that doesn't mean we don't each have a sense of gaining and losing EQ points over a lifetime.

You can suddenly have insights and understand yourself and others a lot better. Part of that just takes growing to adulthood. You gain empathy for people raising kids, by raising kids, and so on.

I think the game in both cases is to guard against losing points, which means exercise and train to stay at full potential (for you).

I believe EQ is trained by novels, movies, soaps, TV series (not all of them, just the ones that do). Also travel. Having friendships and community. EQ is developed and cultivated.

Even if we think IQ is somewhat fixed (everyone has a maximum they can't go beyond, similar to physical height and/or maximum strength), there's the question of whether we value it or not and/or have opportunities to "work out" in order to live up to our full potential.

Sometimes we're not rewarded for physical strength. Likewise, you my be stuck in a routine, not of your own making if you're not free, that has no use for your stellar IQ. Picture an Elon Musk type wasting away on a marijuana charge in Texas. Times a million around the world.

Humans deliberately sabotage their own smarts, to conform to social norms. Women have been especially so encouraged.

I'd say a polymath is someone who (a) values both IQ and EQ and (b) strives to "stay in shape" which means "round" (as in well-rounded). Life by its very nature is multi-topic, multi-subject, so the very process of staying in shape is going to take care of the poly part.

Playing World Game

How does one play it, this World Game thing I've been talking about? Even the subtitle of my Grain of Sand blog is Kirby Plays World Game.

Well, I'd say Natasha here in this Youtube is a player, in that she's sharing about growing up in her hometown. I just came across her channel recently, starting with the one where she takes us on a tour of her dorm block in her language school.  She's on a seventh floor sharing the space with her sister, likewise a language student.

Natasha had elected to learn Japanese, however owing to a teacher shortage, she was assigned Chinese instead, and English.  Her English is already quite good, which helps her join the world of traveling Youtube bloggers, the new citizen diplomats.

That sounds like a more exalted title -- "citizen diplomat" -- but its in some ways redundant.  As a player, you'll likely speak up for, most identify with, a subset of the total team.  This will help others communicate with you, through a somewhat standardized API.  You identify with some country, nation, camp, tribe or company and thereby serve as a representative or ambassador therefrom.  Perhaps your nation is one of the diaspora nations, not on any UN-approved map at this time?

Speaking of maps, Fuller's Dymaxion Projection was generally devoid of political data, sticking nominally to temperature (global average). The map was positioned in this way partly because of its role in the space of citizen diplomacy.  

Were Bucky to have published a veridical political map, he would have had to copy an authority, such as the United Nations, or maybe would have planted his own flag in some way, by drawing different borders. Either way, he would have taken a position on many political issues, simply by showing borders.

Rather than get involved in such border disputes, Bucky made it so that any nationalism worth its salt is concerned with the welfare of the entire game board.  He would supply and artifact, neutrally devoid of political data, and leave it to the individual players how they wanted to value-add.

Parochial adherence to some specific jurisdiction could be seen as negligent. Looking out for the welfare of a people, was tantamount to taking the welfare of all of the peoples into account.  We're a single unified ecosystem, a planet, with or without competently designed systems on the humans' part.  And that's where World Game comes in, and playing with competence.

From My Outbox

We could artificially create human "breeds" with pedigrees, and a lot of this goes on with inbreeding and nobility.  If we really wanted to play the game of "purebreds" versus "mongrels" in the human sphere, we could.  But for the most part, we don't want to.

When it comes to typifying humans by genetic makeup, there're so many ways to slice and dice.  Why aren't dwarves a race, or albinos?  We say "genetic anomaly" or whatever, but any genetic characteristic might be lumped into a breed or "race" by convention, should we wish it.

We could easily have "races of human" based on blood type only.  This would satisfy no one of course, because the whole point of racism is to have distinguishable outward characteristics that allow one to be classified.  Like if you speak Italian as a first language, you're obviously of the Italian race and so on. :-D

Learning to Work Remotely: An End in Itself

Back when O'Reilly paid our way to professional development experiences, I got to hang out with the  distance learning crowd (USDLA) in St. Louis.  Or maybe I should say "distance teaching" as I was learning from the teaching end of the business.

All of that was pre pandemic of course, at the time of the big earthquake in Nepal. I remember Leela (then Lindsey) calling me in my Hilton hotel room from Kathmandu, to say she was OK.  Hilton had taken over a goodly portion of the old Union Station in downtown STL, the site of our conference.

In those days, Michigan was giving some kids opportunities to take a distance learning class as an experience in itself.  A special school had set up facilities in several metro areas, whereby the kids would be in a learning facilities, complete with snacks and exercise equipment -- but their teachers were far away.  

They could practice their Zoom skills, or the old timey equivalent.  They could get ready for remote work.

Part of schooling today, is around developing the skills needed to work remotely.  Developing those abilities is an end in itself as well as a means to an end.  

Some teachers specialize in teaching remotely just as some specialize in teaching gym or home economics.  But then remote teaching works best for some subject matter, such as maybe history and computer science.  YMMV.

Contra Opinionism

I was grousing the other day about what Individualism (individuation) is not, actually reiterating a pet peeve of mine, first consciously formulated around high school.  

Now these were good schools mind you, as the parents were already at the top of their games usually, living a high life of some kind. 

What they all said they wanted you to learn was "critical thinking" which means how to think critically, but what does that in fact mean, let us pause.

What "critical thinking" doesn't mean, yet what comes across as a poor substitute, is being strongly opinionated on a wide variety of topics. This gets confused with "building character" i.e. someone with character is known to kvetch and moan, or praise and promote, about a very long list of notions.

What seemed to be happening is my classmates and I were being encouraged to express strong opinions about matters we'd barely considered.  The way to acknowledge learning about something, was to pass judgement thereon.  "Knowing about" meant "having formed opinions about".  Therefore, strong opinions could be taken as knowing.

I suppose a "knowing person" is what the schools coach us to become.  But how much of being "knowing" is pure affectation?  

What I came to was a disparaging opinion of "know it alls".  A "know it all" isn't just good at regurgitation information, which can be an impressive skill, but someone who invariably accompanies that information with some kind of judgement or spin.

Obviously I'm being opinionated and judgemental right here, so am I not hypocritical?  I may well be hypocritical on occasion but I don't see any logical contradiction in questioning an ethic, and an esthetic, which is itself about "being critical".

A reason distopians might give for the ultimate untenability of utopian communities with libertarian and democratic ideals, is that once you have a bunch of know-it-alls in the room, collaboration quickly becomes impossible.  The principals become too interested in jamming one another's plans.

However, if a primary reflex of most of the denizens is "not necessarily my business" or "I'm not prepared to venture an opinion" we could have a lot smoother functioning.  People are happy to stay on the sidelines and not feel aggrieved at every turn, because their opinion was not sought.

Race Versus Ethnicity

Nazism cobbled together social darwinism, eugenics, folk beliefs from the Bible about "sons of Noah", and the emerging science of genetics (no DNA known), to further the white man pseudo-science of "races".

I say "white man" to capture an ethnicity, not a race. Anglo-Euros with empires and slavery to justify, and control over the curriculum namespaces.

There's no "race gene" that divides 1/2, 1/4, 1/8... such that "by blood, I'm 1/32nd Black" -- that's utter nonsense, dumbed down to fit the arithmetic of an elementary school teacher. To this day, Anglo-Euros strut about talking about "race" as if it meant something, failing to see "ethnicity" as what they're really talking about. They don't get a decent semantics in school, and flounder and drown (figuratively) in their own poorly designed concepts. A racist is someone who believes in races.

A big diff between "race" and "ethnicity" is the former is imposed on you by authorities, who may insist you go by "mixed" whether or not you believe in their faux taxonomy. They won't let you "pass" as white if you're 1/32nd "black" or whatever ethnic nazi apartheid garbage they go by.

"Ethnicity" on the other hand is something I have more control over, even more than over gender it would seem to me (I can't change my XY to the XX of the stronger sex). I may be born into one ethnicity, yet die in another. Indeed, I'm able to tell people (versus be told) what my ethnicity is, and the vocabulary there is always changing.

Unsubstantiated Innuendo

Remember, there was already a SARS outbreak before this, traced by virologists, including the Wuhan Lab, to bat colonies. Bat-derived coronaviruses is today and was before a focus of the Wahan virologists, of course. We were warned years ago that another SARS-like outbreak was very possible. 

As Nassim Taleb puts it, this was no "black swan" event -- twaz foreseen and foreseeable.

So yes, Wuhan was studying coronaviruses, we knew that from the beginning. That's their job. They had joint projects with NSF funded scientists which Trump made a big show of cutting, in a moronic display of awkwardness.

So if there was a release of coronavirus by a contagious human, contaminated in the lab, that is not proof of weaponization or gain of function research.

Looking over the credentials of the WHO adviser, I am not impressed. Tell me exactly what look like genetic alterations to a naturally occuring bat-borne virus. 

Let it cross your mind that humans don't yet know enough about viruses to purposely modify their lethality, let alone synthesize them from scratch.

The Buzz

I'm hearing they just wanted "a few more days" to get to the bottom of these allegations, a rerun of Pizzagate in 2016 in a lot of ways. 

Giuliani and Sydney Powell were always making it seem like the big revelation was coming tomorrow. 

Just like 2016: stay tuned, and we'll have proof Hillary is Spawn of Satan. 

This kind of short term myopic "tomorrow is the apocalypse" science fiction, is worth mocking I think.

More Remarks on Race, Revised & Extended

The white African pictured above [Facebook] is of course Yolandi Visser. My parents moved to Lesotho sometime after Bhutan (from one mountain kingdom to another), which is surrounded by RSA (Republic of South Africa). 

Over the years, through many adventures, I've come to feel at home in that part of Africa. The idea of "white Africans" is nothing jarring or new. White refers to skin color yes, not race really. 

There's no "race" gene and conflating the world to "white brown yellow red black" is just comic book cartoonery. Fits on a brochure. Keep it simple, and stupid (KISS of death).

Re: My Parents' Perspective | 親からの観点 (movie review)

Tiffany doesn't identify as 3rd culture because she associates that with international schools, which she didn't go to. Fair enough. 

Her dad tells the story of how, when Tiffany was growing up in Japan, she'd talk about skin color very literally, as in RGB values. A person might be light pink, or tan, or... given her own dark skin, she'd of course know the difference. But it wasn't about race, yet. Then, after some time back in the states, Tiffany came home and talked about a "black" person, where you could tell the meaning had shifted, and literal color was no longer the meaning. That day was sweetly sad, a loss of innocence. 

The racist meme virus had claimed another victim in a way.

If hair, eye and/or skin color were a reliable indicator of ethnicity and personality then I could see where racism could keep a toehold. "White skin means you think as I do" -- that could work in some isolated setting, but fewer and fewer settings are that isolated.

The problem is, as Somalis repatriate in Tennessee, for example, you get ethnic tensions and rebalancings that belie the simplicity of "skin color" as the key parameter. People want to hate each other first, and look for distinguishing physical characteristics second.

In the language of the data scientist, skin color, eye shape, body type etc. have become less and less principal components in our model of the human persona.

Like, I am often seeking out ethnicity when I meet a person (say it's a date), which means everything from what magazines do they read (do they read), what profession and so on.

If, like an idiot, I conclude from skin color that I'm free to talk down or be rude somehow, as if I'm superior, then I stereotype myself more and more as a typical jerk. My reflexes are seeming more and more awkward as I'm surprised again and again by how sad and clownish I've become. Racism leads to awkward embarrassment, which is what is ultimately going to extinguish it, more than ratiocination, I'd hazard.

Case in point, my family, Quaker, once stayed at the home of then deputy defense minister of the RSA, formerly with African National Congress and now married into the Routledge family and a Friend.

That RSA would appoint a pacifist to the defense ministry was creative. On trips to weapons bazaars, where they'd wanna sell you every type of fighter jet this and bazooka that, the booth people would inevitably swarm around the little guy, assuming Nozizwe was the personal assistant. Imagine their surprise. 😀

Per my angle, "race" is hokum and a racist is someone who believes in races. That's OK though. Nationalists believe in nations, likewise social constructs and not unrelated. I don't expect either racists or nationalists to die out anytime soon, even if my own ethnicity takes neither too seriously.

My mission is to not force "true beliefs" on people, let them believe whatever crap they like and feed them anyway, don't hold their bodies hostage to meme viruses. Give everyone a fun life if possible. Waste less and we'll get there.

I do like "ethnicity" (over "race") for being plastic. Steve Martin raised black in the south in The Jerk comes to mind.

Given my high school in the Philippines and subsequent immersion in Asian cultures, plus my own studies and who knows what else, I have no worries identifying as Asian if people ask. Of course I know it's not my ethnicity they usually care about. The little check boxes are about my "race". I dutifully check "white" and inwardly sneer at my stupid ancestors and their superstitions.

Thinking of myself as Asian puts some distance between me and these other domestics around me, the ones who never left and don't share my 3rd culture expat upbringing. Feels right (to put some distance).

As to gender, I get from theater that we are able to play characters in movies, and it might get to where your "home character" is like a female even if your body is XY. A whole city, like Portland, might agree to go with that convention, that regardless of your body's XX or XY, you have a right to define a home base character of any gender.

But that's like a fleeting and fragile overlay in a subculture, like Vienna being sensitive to a special music. Outsiders are just gonna see it as weird, take offense, and think Portland is trying to export its idea of "life as theater" to the world (whereas in fact Portland is inward-turned and sometimes forgets there's "a world" out there).

In Defense of Public Medicine

Dr. Fauci gets a lot of criticism for "lying" and "moving the goalposts" etc. however let's think about medical practice more generally.

 
I may wish the doctor to only address my rational ego, to enlist the support of the persona I might imagine myself to be, and yes, that's important, but long practice has taught the doctor it's also a good idea to scare the bejeezus out of me a little, hit a button.

Flip side: the doctor knows I might live longer and more happily if I don't get the full "benefit" of knowing in detail all that could go wrong, given whatever condition. If I'm a worrier, I'll dredge that all up, but no need for the doctor to encourage such fantasies.

Don't tell the patient they'll very likely be dead in a year, if having a positive outlook has the effect of adding quality time. That's just not good medicine. Don't be all negative and extinguish all hope. You're a doctor, not a philosopher, let's remember.

When Dr. Fauci lied about the efficacy of masks, it was to triage the supply of PPE to front lines medical workers. 

"Just level with us doctor, if it's about saving masks for the front liners, just say so, we promise not to hoard."

 
An "honest Dr. Fauci" might reply: "yes you will hoard. Everyone will want their precious children to have the very best N95s, a black market will develop, and many of you will buy cases and cases of the things to sell from your basements, look at toilet paper. Our front liners will have to do what they're doing now, reuse surgical masks for days, like in Haiti. I know you. You'll break your promises in a heartbeat when confronted with the actual situation."

What's great about Dr. Fauci is he comes out later and reveals his technique, like a magician explaining his trick. 

Or he'll even tell you at the same time as he's "lying": "yes, I'm moving the goalposts because if you're tantalized by the prospect of 'herd immunity' you might start acting even dumber, idiot human that you be" (that's "honest Dr. Fauci" again). 

In sum, the medical profession includes psychology, and much as we like to imagine ourselves as rational beings, the model must be developed empirically, not just on wishful thinking.
Doctors as a part of their professionalism are not allowed to take our so-called "rational selves" too seriously.

 
Advertising, for better or worse, also includes psychology, and the lesson there is the same: if you want to induce a specific behavior pattern, it's more effective to bypass the rational "talk to me" earnest individual who erroneously regards itself as an in control sole proprietor of its psyche. Better to talk to the subconscious demon who actually runs the place. Politics 101.

Sometimes we get lonely, we rational cogitos, so well educated and introspective, because none of the institutions are really wanting to communicate with us as reasoning brainiacs. They're all too busy manipulating us to give us that courtesy.

 
But hey, that's a strategy based on results, and not entirely misguided. I'm for cutting public medicine (its practice) some slack.

The Great Unraveling

The way the Washington Post quickly jumped on Cozy Bear as a culprit, in connection with the SolarWinds narrative, undermines Russiagate.  The evidence-free fingering of the GRU makes the CrowdStrike story inside the Mueller Report less credible. Two pigs in the same blanket.

Likewise the Navalny shennanigans vis-a-vis novichok, have further undermined the Skripal story (Salisbury).  

The doubling down, on both fronts (hacking and chemical attacks) is backfiring. The facade is crumbling. 

Memoirs of a Princetonian (Class of 1980)

Withholding More Than Taxes

A curriculum introducing the concentric hierarchy of volumes 1, 3, 4, 6, 20 with other volumes (including irrational) interspersed, in the context of closest packing (non-XYZ lattice), does not have to purge itself of XYZ. It goes directly to the imagination and fills your head. Cartesian coordinates are welcome (but we glance at Quadrays for a different perspective).

You get comfortable with these geometric concepts early (in connection with natural and human designed architectures) and that means you get the history too: this bold futurist (tons of materials) returned from obscurity, thanks to his invisible army (fans, colluders, many of them Chinese speakers), and now it's not all doom and gloom, even though peak oil and climate change are still real (not denied). That bold futurism has returned.

All it would take is like a cooking show with polyhedron measuring bowls and some cartoons (animations). Given Youtube, you don't even need to wait for the classroom teachers to get on board (they tend to be extensions of big publishers -- I used to work at McGraw-Hill and saw it from that angle). But you do need to give kids some clues. Needles in haystacks take a long time to find (especially if you're not even looking for them).

We're one popular program away (like Sesame Street) from kids being fluent enough to know of their Dymaxion Map (Fuller Projection) and all those other conceptual tools he bequeathed to them, that the "corporate personae" (the liability limiting master controller pseudo adults) are now sitting on, withholding, deliberately suppressing, precisely because our American heritage is not consistent with the Great Tragedy scenarios they have in store for us humans (endless war, misery for the many, unfettered greed for the few --- we've already been herded around their block a few times, sacrificing the kids instead of teaching them).

(from somewhere on Facebook)

Bizmo Diaries (On the Road...)

Refugee City

The Economic Refugee Zone that I've focused on in these blogs (see sidebar for blog list) is taking shape here in Portland, out by the airport (PDX), as I've detailed in EPCOT West.

As of today, here in Plague Times (covid-19) we've seen no action by "powers that be" to enact any of the EPCOT West scenario planning.  We have no real "powers" at the moment, only baronies, like the Water Bureau.

The vista is pretty bleak at the moment.  For PR purposes, all we can do now is keep the images flowing, letting the world know you don't want Americans backseat driving your development plans. 

We've got major PR firms on top of it I'm sure.  Don't look at me.  Check my Asylum City playlist.  I'm the guy who saw it coming.

Remember LaTeX From Camp?

Hey high schoolers, remember Camp?

What might look like super hard STEM, with all those Ramanujan Identities, turns out, from another angle, to be typesetting.  As the typesetter for the mathematicians, you did not need a degree in whatever they were going on about, but you did need some skills when it came to arranging symbols.  That's setting type.

Thanks to Steve Jobs, who rescued business computing from being the unimaginative dullard monster  Microsoft / IBM had in mind, we got highly developed fonts a lot earlier than we might have.  

The only other technology that might have saved us, from the dreary fate MS DOS had laid out for us, was LaTeX, the brainchild of Donald Knuth. 

As it is, we got Apple LaserWriters and PageMaker and desktop publishing, and I got a job at CUE (Center for Urban Education).  That's when I picked up some of my skills as a trainer, and to some extent a desktop publisher.  

I usually got high marks for working with people.  Some of my lecture presentations might have been too weird for some tastes.  I wasn't auditioning for prime time commercial television, let's put it that way.

Anyway, coming back from Memory Lane:  remember our Covid Camp earlier this year?  Some of you might still be following.  

We didn't do a lot with LaTeX but we did explore Jupyter Notebooks, and their ability to make use of the LaTeX layer, a built-in JavaScript library I assume?  Right, the MathJax JavaScript library.

Famous BizMo

:: Henry Ford Museum ::

Election Postmortem

The Trump legal team is amping up a public perception that the vote favored Trump out of the gate, but then the blue horse mysteriously (i.e. deceptively) overtook the red horse just in these corrupt blue cities, places akin to Portland, where chaos reigns. Anti-Trump votes flooded in from nowhere, even after polls had closed. That's the hand wavy scare 'em story Guliani tells. It's the most obvious thing in the world this was all planned in advance.

That's close to the mark in that this was all expected (different from planned). Same with expecting another sars. People say you planned, but you merely anticipated the likelihood.

What the chanting mob doesn't hear are the sober voices, even ahead of the election, offering a likely scenario: Trumpers think it patriotic to hit the polls on election day, pro forma, as that's the Norman Rockwell all American Apple Pie GOP thing to do. Dems, on the other hand, realize there's a plague, are in lockdown and are voting absentee. More than in any other election in history, especially in big cities, it's about voting absentee.

So what happened, in many a big city is: they counted election day votes first, as they came in, and then turned their attention to these piles and piles, many coming in after election day anyway, but postmarked that day or before. We all know the scene, I'm reciting a litany.

Same day patriot MAGA votes made it look like Trump was roaring ahead. But this was anticipated and named: the Red Mirage. The big blue cities do have more Dems, and those votes were counted last. When all were counted, Blues dwarfed Reds. It's not nefarious. Not only is evidence of fraud lacking, but the "big obvious fraud" they want you to see, has an innocent explanation.

Random Facebook Groupthink

:: sugar lobby ::

A big problem is the journalism always stays shallow, like are you for or against Medicare for All (M4ALL)? As if that's what matters. Who says it's even possible?

"But other countries...." Don't give me that. The states have only recently gelled into a federation and just a couple generations ago the whole experiment nearly fell apart in a civil war (the whole idea of a "civil" war is a bug in the horse and buggy English language). "America" (as in the "the United States") is indeed exceptional, but maybe not in the sense people mean. I'm more in Ann Coulter's camp: the USA doesn't really exist. Never has, not really. Not by her criteria (control of borders and so on).

If you want government involved in healthcare, think prevention, think how we used to see vicious anti-tobacco ads, gross lungs (like on Canadian cigarette packs even now). Imagine many vigorous ad campaigns aimed at fast food, dangerous toxins, exposing past crimes (like that movie about DuPont, Dark Waters). Imagine free detox camps on federal lands, like scouting for adults, where friendly government employees teach you life skills and help you get your life back. Just imagine. A completely different world.

Today's non-existent wimpy destroyed carcass of a government does not dare stand up to the cowardly capitalists, who need to hide behind its Big Daddy skirts, pointing at scary competition (Huawei, Citgo, TikTok...). The Corporate Cowards are too busy using the dead carcass of Uncle Sam as their shield, to ward off competing profiteers. Your medical state, your health, has zero significance. You can die tomorrow. FEMA just has to pay for the refrigerated truck. That's the "public health system" you pay taxes for.

Americans are going down in history as the most ripped off population ever. They had a bright future there for awhile, but after WW2, the private sector started cannibalizing and cannibalizing. All that research, all that Manhattan Project, ended up enriching a few families. The Business Plot succeeded (the first time failed). But you wouldn't know that from reading the press, because the press is owned by the ones who did the good eating. Talk about "fat cats" but who draws those anymore? You must fear Russians. You must love your Corporate Persons and their fake news. They rule you. Obey.

A real public sector could afford to give every American citizen a fitbit if they wanted one. Several government channels would give unbiased health advice. Not paid for by the sugar lobby, what a concept. As it is, the sugar lobby has direct access to child optical nerves via cartoon commercials. No "government" push back, how could there be? When there's no government.

A real public sector could afford to give every American citizen a cell phone, stocked with apps needed to do business with government, claim benefits, schedule activities, volunteer. We all know having a phone is like a prerequisite for getting anything done, but there's no Verizon SafetyNet [tm] is there? Shareholder operations have no responsibility to citizens. The government does, but it's long gone. The USA (1776 - 1983) was a bold experiment.

Broken in What Sense?

I sense a lot of confusion when it comes to in what way the elections system is broken. On the face of it, just making people wait hours and hours in line is symptom enough of the abject poverty of (lack of investment in) public infrastructure (the whole idea of a "public sector" is somewhat fuzzy in this age of privatized warfare).

Greg Palast and others focus on voter roll purges, where little postcards go out (this is one technique) and if the occupant fails to respond, they're kicked off the eligible voter rolls. Another technique is to very sloppily share rosters of names across states and purge "likely duplicates" that aren't likely to be duplicates at all. This is done in the name of being "conscientious" and "protecting against voter fraud" (of a kind that's not at all common: voting multiple times).

Thanks to modern media and growing public awareness, this kind of systematic voter suppression is becoming harder to get away with, but it's also not the kind of cheating we're looking at on election night, in terms of ballot counting. In that case we have deeper concerns about closed source proprietary machines with possible back doors.

The time to address this real and legitimate concern is *not* in the middle of the election of course. Making all these simmering backburner issues come to a boil right now has everything to do with sowing chaos and confusion and weakening the legitimacy of the "ruling" party.

Again, as a 3rd partyist, I'm not against the DNC and GOP ripping into each other against the backdrop of both having diminishing relevance.

As a 3rd partyist, I'm not too chagrined if neither the GOP or DNC feels it has much of a mandate to do whatever, other than repair the public sector. We're doing our own research on what that means. Our state governor needs to publicly share plans for the vast economic refugee camps we may be needing soon. Unlike Syrians, we can't just walk to Europe.

New Curriculum Technologies in the Global U

Random Comments

I'm pleased with the new realism seeping into the political sphere, meaning people are waking up to the fact that organized crime is running things, with tacit approval from the benefitting authorities.

What's ineffective is to respond with moral outrage. Since when has "rule of law" applied internationally? The United Nations depends so much on donor nations, with the city-state of DC quite willing to pull the plug, should the UN get in the way of its world domination objectives (not shared by other city-states across the land, nor by Canada).

The idea of sovereign nations respecting one another's sovereignty sounds nice on paper (Kellogg-Briand Pact for example) but in practice it's still powerful crime families and various mafias vying for turf. There's a separate set of rules for the very rich. That's not at all new. That's history.

If you want to express outrage, I suggest it be towards infantilizing schoolish textbooks written by craven professors who have to pretend otherwise. It's our curriculum that's to blame for our awkward inability to face the world cooly, without a lot of self-pitying cynicism.

---

Poor immigrants, refugees, spread across North America in a couple hundred years and threw together a ramshackle, ad lib style of government based on the idea of individual freedoms and government staying out of everyone's business.

A pandemic hits, not the first time, and thanks to a great freeway system and no precedent for "isolating" whole counties or states, huge numbers of Americans die.

The Americans don't have a real country yet, according to Ann Coulter (Adios America), as the "citizen" and "borders" issues were never settled and no serious national public health system was ever put into place. Americans like to put Americans in cages (prisons etc.) as that seems the easiest way to solve things ("just criminalize it" -- the national motto if there were one).

250 years is not much time, even in historical terms.

Amazing they managed to get a stimulus check out. Those computers (Hollerith machines) have proved their worth at least.

Mostly, the government, such as it is, is about protecting the interests of those who prop it up.

If we ever want something more, we'll need to consciously create it. An engineering feat. Not a job for mostly lawyers.

---

From my point of view the educational system extends to include the socialized military. Families send their males (mostly) to military academies, which are boarding schools. Pirate Party USA supports residential mixed age high schools, with same gender options, that need not be military oriented. Lots of magnet schools drawing from across the land. Mixed age because high school is something you need every 10 years or so, as the fundamentals change. Like today if you don't know HTML you're illiterate, yet eligible to serve in government (why?). Free high school (it pays students -- UBS *) would help boomers get a grip. Parents and kids often enroll in the same courses and do the same homework, no stigma in doing that.

* UBS = Universal Basic Scholarship = UBI but with income compensating work/study.

---

The border and citizenship issues that go with: 

(a) engulfing a huge amount of land in a hurry and 

(b) importing and depending on slaves and agricultural workers, can't be dealt with overnight. 

Covid has exposed our complete lack of a real public health system because we don't have much of a public sector. All that hype about how rich a country this is mistakes private for public wealth. We used to have more of the latter but since WW2 the public sector has been cannibalized to an extent it's no longer possible to tell the truth about it in "polite" society. 

People react with infantile outrage, instead of wanting to roll their sleeves up and deal with the karma. Better to let them believe in their "government" then. Let them sleep.

---

FEMA has played a very low profile during the Covid Crisis, perhaps having learned from the Hurricane Katrina debacle, to stay out of the limelight. 

The new approach was to push it out to the governors to handle the problems, and compete with them.
The "FEMA camp" meme is mostly used to terrify people, lest they actually be served by their government in times of need. If only the public sector could find a way to help refugees from the private sector.

A lot of our private sector economic refugees go into the military, and I'm sure the Pentagon would be unhappy if civilians could avail themselves of socialized services to the extent the military does, without the price tag of undergoing brainwashing and training in after birth abortion techniques (state sponsored homicide).

Americans have a huge internal refugee problem and yet have been conditioned to see any organized move to help them as the hand of a globalizing anti-Christian conspiracy.

The homeless population doubles and doubles, with malign neglect somehow morally superior to whatever the Chinese are doing (at least we have Chinese to accuse of human rights violations, a convenient "feel good" outlet).

If FEMA sets up tent cities for economic refugees, then pretty soon the public will expect treatment for drug addiction. Such expectations could only undercut Murder Inc., where the big bucks are still made. Killing humans still pays more than helping them. Economics at work, right?

Insurance Story

I've been putting off yakking with my car insurance lady, about an accident over a year ago by now. Exactly what was I paying for in terms of damages?  

We'd pulled over and talked, I didn't see any dings, everything looked fine and she agreed.  Then comes the call from her insurance about something that happened on a Saturday.  That's not when it happened.  Yet my account was dinged.  I need to follow up on that.  Scrounging around for a number...

OK, we had an excellent therapy session. We talked about 2017, and how the date of the accident is wrong. But no big deal. That's what I needed to hear, and what got charged (claimed and approved).

Now I'm in line to get a tracking app that will measure my mileage and adjust my rate accordingly. I'll be one of the guinea pigs.

What would Medicare for All really look like?  I still think GI phones, which you won't want to use in subterfuge because it's designed to track. Keep a private phone for other purposes.  At least poor kids at the border get the apps, because America is for Americans.

I also talked to customer support. If the rooster sound in the distant background was added, for texture, much as people on Zoom stage their heads (audio version), then brilliant.  I much prefer the "rural setting" picture of customer support.  Relaxed on a beach somewhere, with a data helmet?  Lucky me someday, right?

I know it never happened on a Saturday, since I was driving home from Sellwood Middle School. Probably a Friday then?  I gave her my business card for contact information.  I'm glad everything got settled.

History Repeats

The big story I'm following is what appears to be the crumbling of two stories, interconnected. The original plan was (a) link Trump to GRU (b) GRU to chem attack in Syria (c) chem attack to Skripal incident. British Intel failed to pull it off. Not surprising.

— Kirby Urner (@thekirbster) October 19, 2020

Moving Targets

I'm experimenting with high bandwidth self brainwashing techniques by tackling a series of difficult topics, but not ones for which I need a huge amount of prep.  MIT chemistry, with a focus on orbitals, was a good starting point, given the Linus Pauling House is such a topic (search these blogs?). 

But my resume shows I'm more an applications developer than a chemist.  Instead of chemical reactions, or nuclear reactors, shouldn't I be grokking React?  You read my mind.

However React hasn't been just sitting pretty, nor has Vue.  Both these Javascript frameworks, favored by Web developers, have their successive versions.  Hence the title of this blog post: moving targets.

Where to jump in?  

In high bandwidth brainwashing, our approach is not so linear.  Get a lot of dots on the sphere, even as you connect them.  We can think about the "best sequence" on a second or third pass.

PDX Code Guild was using JQuery when I started visiting.  By now they're using Vue, with a Django back end (another moving target).  Newbies should do well starting with Vue3, if jumping into web development through a Code School.

High Bandwidth Brainwashing

Back in the early days of the internet, I used to campaign for higher bandwidth formats. Sometimes what's hard about school is not that the teacher is going too fast.  The teaching is meted out at an agonizingly slow rate, aimed to last about twelve years. The teacher is under no obligation to keep pace with students.  It's a one way street.  Stay with the pace of the teacher or get singled out as too slow or too fast.

As expected, with the sudden tsunami of alternative channels, those wanting the higher bandwidths could produce and consume at their chosen frequency.  It's not like a given student always consumes at the same rate.  Per Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics, one adjusts to match the content.  Other reading comprehension strategies pertain.  

I scored 790 with my best combined SAT scores.  Both times I was consistently high on both scales.  Add that I'm living in the Philippines and I'm easily interesting material, for whatever student body a recruiter might be building that year.

However all of the above doesn't mean I adore brain teasers and crossword puzzles. Nor do I esteem myself as a master of trivia.  My Go skills suck, Golang whatever.  However I enjoy movies and lectures about what I'm not good at.  Where I'm low performing, I look for complementary instructors and entertainers.

Of course we say "brainwashing" is bad, because what's implied is an involuntary reprogramming. However when studying or cramming, wanting to get good at something fast, we actively seek out effective shortcut or time-saving techniques. If the connotation is "I'm brainwashing myself, with stuff I really need to know" then the innocuous meaning is you're seeking like a PhD in something.  We all wish for the magic pill that gives us Spanish, or Devanagari or whatever. 

Cosmography for Teachers (School of Tomorrow)

My arc in the Youtube stash as been towards integrating Synergetics into the philosophical literature. I've been announcing this as my project for some time, however announcing is not the same as doing, so inevitably, if into walking my talk, I'd have to do some walking. I hope my accounts come across as fleet footed and not overly pedestrian.

"Target acquisition" has ironic meaning if depicted as someone getting a target (e.g. "kick me") posted on his back. One may appear to purposely enter the crosshairs of others, trained to shoot at specific signs, by disguising oneself, on purpose, to get their attention.  In taking Harold Bloom on board, in my latest Youtube, has the School of Tomorrow painted itself into a corner?

My wiring diagram is pretty simple:  extend New England Transcendentalism through No More Secondhand God to Synergetics and its "geometry of nature". Technology is hers.  Automation is hers. Humans flail about in their Earthly Kindergarten, yet we see have gained traction, to the point of bearing some responsibility for the biosphere as a whole.  We are the Borgosphere already.

Back to Harold Bloom, he presages Jordan Peterson in bemoaning a turn of events within University, where ideological currents now run counter to his tastes.  Taste, like smell to Nietzsche, means a lot to opinionated scholars.  Dr. Bloom makes it clear that for him it's all about time management.  You have only so many hours to read, so why waste your time with not the best?  That's a compelling argument, unless maybe you're doing anthropology or natural language analysis.  Perhaps you're into observing, or seeking, some operational dialectic, Marxian or otherwise.  "Whence this 'taste'?" in other words.

Indeed, I've used the A where PATH crosses STEAM, to mean Anthropology, not Art, because I'm willing to subsume Art.  That's my heresy, shall we say.  Philosophy, as practiced by Wittgenstein, is in many dimensions turning the arts of Anthropology upon one's own matrix (subculture), thereby setting up some recursive vertigo in some disciples.

Back to Bucky, we need to remember one of his working assumptions was nationalism, a new kid on the block to begin with, would certainly morph in the face of jet travel and globally embracing telecommunications. He lived from the 1800s to the dawn of the internet, and was already fully into hypertext when he died.  Remember Dr. Vannevar Bush anticipated search engines in the 1940s.  Technology expresses through us, the invisible hand moving us, inclining us, by means of invisible chessboards, using pieces the ranks of which we scarcely guess.

In other words, Bucky was looking for signs of demise, among sovereignties, in the very concept of sovereignty.  When nation A carpet bombs nation B, that's an obvious sign of no sovereignty, i.e. that's not a relationship among coequal kingdoms, free to make their own alliances.  

The nations haven't really gelled, given the disrespect of sovereignty we have all witnessed.  Furthermore, the USA had proved itself incapable of passing an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for women.  Those of us getting The Graduate Review (for esties), saw Dr. Fuller's essay foretelling the USA's demise as a likely consequence. By the 1980s, the Grunch had completed its "tunnels under Disneyworld" takeover, per Fuller's Grunch of Giants subversive narrative.

School of Tomorrow (Supermarket Math)

Supermarket Math? Check out Digital Math, a Silicon Valley offering.

Ulka's Python course is good too.

Wanderers Meet on Zoom

This was close to our standard Equinox Party, and in the absence of the pandemic, we'd be gathering at the Linus Pauling House around now.

We're catching up using this higher bandwidth technology, about changes in our lives since our last gathering, months ago.

Fall Term 2020: Kick Off Lectures

Update from Portland (School of Tomorrow)

August Sixth 2020

August Sixth has special meaning around here, and for the world, as it marks the first time an atomic weapon was used by humans against themselves, with strong intent. Another detonation would follow, over the city of Nagasaki.

Humans were nuking themselves in various "tests" as well, irradiating themselves and their environment. Many thought nuclear war was inevitable, and many still do, so low is the average faith in politicians and the political process.  Religion was marginalized earlier.  What's left?  A sense of self preservation maybe?

Portlanders have typically turned out for a simple ceremony, emphasizing Japanese-American friendship, in a park with that moniker.  That ceremony has been suspended this year, has have most formally planned group events for the summer.

We're hoping that friendship stays strong and remains mutual, much though it may have been tested since that darker age.

Visiting Faculty (School of Tomorrow episode)

More about Kailash Ecovillage: 

Camp C6XTY

Leela and Melody got to social distance in my backyard, much like old times.  We had a breezy summer evening.  Naturally the conversation turned to the protests downtown.  Melody has been studying the emergence of private militias in her neck of the woods.  Privatization has come a long way.

I've been continuing to recruit future faculty who might work Martian Math into some already favorite set of topics. My approach is to keep my content Humanities flavored (that sounds somewhat cannibalistic I realize), meaning I'm not spinning my home base as a place within STEM territory.  

We bridge to STEM, over the C.P. Snow chasm, with our C6XTY bridge (there's a marketing angle). The point of casting it this way is to not make STEM, mathematicians in particular, the bottleneck.  Given their track record, we can expect little to no help from the Mathematics Department on this one.  Philosophy has had to step up to the plate, with links to Literature.  We're more in PATH (Philosophy Anthropology Theater History) than in STEM.

You might think the rap above would have nothing to do with the Rastafarian | Pastafarian combo I'd like to see center stage at the Justice Center, once there's some serious equipment.  

Why not a full sound and light show, impromptu?  Food carts?  I'm not saying I'd go, because of Covid.  If the actual downtown presence shrinks yet continues to stream the process, I'll have felt part of something.

Seriously, I'd turn the downtown scene into a reggae festival, given the Blues Festival was denied us this year.  The link is the importance of streaming, and the fact of a larger audience watching from home. That's how our school works as well.  If you were following Lattice Gallery last winter, in downtown Portland, you were probably doing so remotely, perhaps from Japan or Korea.

Portlanders are missing all their favorite summer events and have needed to channel some of that disappointment into an already frustrating push for social change.  There's a need to keep it real and focused and not just go for fluff.  My suggestions qualify as "peanut gallery" as I'm more kibbitzer than producer in this picture.

Dr. D. and Glenn were also properly ordained for the occasion.  I'll plan to invite DB for the next one. We're still keeping the numbers down.  Blue House has been through many chapters.

School of Tomorrow: Place Based History Curriculum

See: Americana in Grain of Sand

Checking In from Portland

About Racism (Lesson Plan)

About Racism (a lesson plan)

Me: memetic, ethnic, cultural, software
Me: genetic, physical, hominid, hardware

Memes are not just miniature billboards on Facebook. I'm stealing from Dawkins ("borrowing") and making memes mean a lot more than commercial jingles or fragments from films. Memes comprise the "daydream" of what one muses about, considers. Memes come up in meditation, sometimes from deeper levels than Surface Me. A lot of memes come through television and other social media.

Genes do not always translate into visible traits and they don't define character, personality, moral qualities, other attributes of a soul. That's all epigenetic stuff. DNA does govern eye color, skin color, nose shape, physical features (inside and outside) more generally, and because physically inherited, is not nearly as transmissible or alterable (flexible) as memes or culture.

What is Race?

A given race is usually a mixed up soup, a mishmash, of both memetic and genetic traits, sufficiently memorable to form stereotypes, a kind of default mnemonic typology (like dwarves and elves). Racist cultures encourage thinking in such racial terms (by definition).

The notion of race closely relates to "breed" in animal husbandry, including the language of mixed or mongrel, versus pure (perhaps with pedigrees to prove lineage).

The names of the races and the stories behind them, form a kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting tableau, made from memes. The Book of Genesis is a good place to start, if looking for conceptual roots (i.e. memetic content), at least for some people.

We will be reading the stories of Noah, and the Tower of Babel to get a sense of how people thought (or even think today). We'll also be watching various animated and live action versions of these narratives. We will discover what forms of racism might be traced to this part of scripture by studying a variety of curricula.

Twilight Zone TV

We're aiming for a format Hollywood knows well:  a dedicated studio audience, providing a feedback loop, and in this case talent, as in a classroom where all are on tap to do Show & Tell. That was my Coding with Kids model when doing in-person classes in the local nearby schools.

If the plan is to keep going nightly through August, producing free content with lots of volunteer security, e.g. Wall of Moms, then the least we can do is corporately sponsor a nicer sound stage.  The idea of writing over the graffitti with other temporary graffiti, simply by slapping up a blank canvas, is being tried elsewhere in town.

The major audience, also taking in advertising, other current events, is what we might call the TikTok crowd, although of course many geezers are following on Facebook or one of those.  Social Media.  The camera people are likewise the audience self organizers. I've been one of the geezers, staying put in my own zip code and wearing a mask in public.  Except when I'm walking by myself or with a trusted-to-be-safe other... anyway, you know the code.

The melodrama spikes when the soap opera turns to images of the president gassing his own people and all that.  Not with lethal gasses.  Deep, long-lasting injuries are authorized. 

Public sympathy is with an underdog and if vandals are mobbing the monuments, per the Dork City narrative, then the federal marshals are underdoggy. 

The Wall of Moms removed some of the fencing getting in the way of the future sound stage maybe.  Bashing soccer moms is a symbolic way of hitting the insecurity button, which tilts the public the other way.

Our corporate sponsors will want to make it clear they're not encouraging tacky S&M (sadism + masochism) complete with costumes. Other banks are lending to that group. 

If you follow the money, we just wanted a better soundstage and some replacement graffitti, with volunteers doing most of the programming ala the public cable TV channel model.  Except we're more reliant on social media. 

We see and process the clips the next day e.g. the Wall of Moms being charged with MacArthur like forces (I'm referring to the attack on the Hooverville in Dork City that time -- Smedley wrote about it).

As with Occupy, I'm wondering where to take it indoors as the weather cools, summer's longest day behind us in this northern hemisphere.  

We didn't have covid in 2011.  I ended up moving the Ministry of Education into Washington High School.  Long time readers might remember that story. WHS was abandoned at the time, but for art colonies. 

In a later chapter, the revamped venue showcased the Buckminster Fuller Archives at Stanford University, set to music by Yo La Tengo.

Gothamite Bizmo

I know not whose bizmo this is.  American Gothic.

Thanks to social media, a lot more imagery flows across my metaphorical desktop (which is also literal in being a GUI desktop).

Part 2: Thinking Out Loud

Steffan makes the point that thinking about equi-distance arrays, either 2D or 3D, is likewise to think about social distancing in the abstract.

Six students in six hexagons around a central teacher.

In volume, twelve around one, at the corners of a cuboctahedron for maximum omni-symmetry.

Even without a literal arrangement, we're still thinking about compression and tension i.e. what strategies help keep social distancing more relaxing?

Packing people in a room and asking them to practice safe distancing is just creating a lot of stress, obviously.

Parts 1 & 2 appear together in Coffee Shops Network (CSN).

Campus News

Hey there patrons, investors, alums, future students, faculty...

I'm sure you're all eager beavers (Oregonian expression?) and want to learn everything about the roof of my house.  

That's been the order of business this morning, as in:  why doesn't it leak?  The High Powered Homes says it's three tab, common in the 1990s.  Not what's called "architectural" which is more the standard today.

Underneath though, is an older higher grade shaker.  Like they don't make anymore.  That accounts for why I've gotten away without re-roofing for this long.

The remodel to make this more like a Linus Pauling House, non-profit owned and operated, open to sojourning faculty, students, would include a new roof with more ventilation, other interior changes. 

The old metal and vinyl kitchen is still fully operational. What would the 2 Dickinson people do?  

I learned some of my adult livings skills at 2D.  The group home scene.  At Princeton University.  Lets do that again. 

So the estimator is sitting out in his truck.  We've been through the different grades of roofing, economy, performance, and high performance. 

The Owens Corning solution, backed by a transferable warranty, is an entire construction system. Their platinum installers get high marks for durable solutions.  High Performance Homes is one of those platinum installers.

I'm saying: hey, where's the university in this picture?  

Housing Services kinda sucks when you add all the solutions and divide by eight billion.  Let's talk about Food Services.  Welcome to the Global U, right?

So at the other end of Blue House would be these (sometimes remote) learning center experimental communities of tomorrow, that work with future prototype high tech and invite tourists, inspectors, auditors, critics.  

We're not trying to disappear behind some occult fog here.  The goal is transparency, more than you're used to perhaps.

The job would be in the ballpark of $20K < re-roof < $30K.  However, before tackling the roof, I need to get the trees and shrubbery cut back from the house.  Another stimulus might be needed.

Me on Facebook:

I had the roof looked at today. It's not leaking, just I lucked out that it has a good cedar shake roof under the 1990s 3-tab (I learned some new jargon). Just collecting numbers. I'm jealous of the Pauling House being owned by a nonprofit. How do I get to be a nonprofit too?

Happy Holidays!

:: PDX ::

Lots going on!

July 4 was of course a somewhat muted affair, but a full moon, and I exercised what liberties I had, to goof off and stuff, but also to do some serious housework, and to accompany Carol on a supervised walk around the block. I was on a family call earlier.

July 5 is of course X-Day, big on the Subgenius calendar, and is my sister's birthday.  On X-Day, the cult members pray to be abducted by the flying saucers. When that doesn't happen, there's a ritualistic explanation, in terms of misinterpreted scripture. Great excuse for a picnic, but this year it's a virtual picnic.

And then, there's Christmas in July.  Long time readers of this blog know about my "king who came late" mythology. He has a name now: Mitra. He's a Friend in some way.  The other three kings have come and gone. What gift hath this new king brought?

The Xmas in July meme has been blatant about its commercialism from the beginning. The Santa Hat is Mithraic in origin as is as the Statue of Liberty crown and torch (like Columbia's). You may see where I'm going with this:  Quakers venture back into business ("feel their oats" as we say).

Not that they ever left entirely.  However the book Quakernomics makes clear that Quakers enjoyed something of an economic heyday in the age of early industrialization by means of steam and steal, electricity would come later.

Quakers had been a persecuted minority but were now enjoying their reputation for business integrity.  Lots of companies gave themselves a Quaker spin. Barclay's Bank. Lloyds of London. Cadbury... Nowadays Pepsi carries the banner forward, with the oats guy.

I'm not suggesting there's some way to make history repeat, only that Christmas in July is an opportunity to shape not just a specific date, but a season, almost an ethos.  I'm looking forward to more commercials that capitalize on this idea, although I know I won't become a fan of all of them.

Back to Subgenius, no I haven't seen the new Kickstarter funded movie. I know it's out and has been in theaters, and I've seen a trailer. My guru Rev. Onan Canobite has traveled I believe to Austin, TX for an opening. This was all pre covid of course.

We're on lockdown protocol per company orders and if I do anything it'll be from a social distance. However that's not as dire as it sounds. I have a small patch of land, big enough to accept delivery of another 92 C6XTY balls, with the expectation of doing a 3-frequency this time (I have a 2-frequency 42 baller already assembled in the staging area).

:: Quakernomics Talk, Linus Pauling House, 2014 ::