:: npym it committee openings ::
Monday, June 29, 2015
Saturday, June 27, 2015
About Elly (movie review)
Given STEAM as a premise, with A = Anthropology (not Art, which Anthro includes), one needs to first ask if the source is veridical, by which I mean truthful, authoritative.
I will briefly compare this film to another one, Villa Touma (2014), which I saw recently, also with Dr. Tag (we're like Siskel and Ebert, or grad students in a film-meets-culture Anthro class, very doable in Portland, Oregon). Dr. Tag, for those new to my blogs, is a bona fide Palestinian though with US citizenship by this time. She's also a PhD which is why the nickname.
The first film, Villa Touma, set in Ramallah, Palestine (Mesopotamia) is not to be seen as a documentary, as if the camera were observing real peoples lives. There's a layer of satire, of spoof, which makes these characters into caricatures, like in political cartoons. Shades of Being There in terms of the time warp the sisters are in (whereas Sellers is timeless).
The second film, on the other hand, About Elly (2009), is a masterful work in the "silent camera" tradition in that we're very much a participant. When people run, we run ("we" the viewers, in the director's hands) i.e. the camera is hand-held and jerky-on-purpose. When people look around frantically, so does the camera.
We're another person, deaf, mute and invisible, but vested. And what's mind-blowing is we're also left in the dark about so much, like an ordinary human being would be.
We're not that privileged, as just a fly on the wall, nor do we get to be Sherlock Holmes and figure it all out.
About Elly requires less of a lens, in other words, if you want to study the actual dynamics between social classes, males and females, attitudes toward marriage, relationships, in a contemporary subculture in Persia. It's less a spoof and more an investigation.
Nevertheless, these young people remain masks to us in many ways. We may judge the sincerity of their emotions. As character actors, the cast is collectively great at projecting plausible people, real personalities, but not people we necessarily know. Believability is high.
We're another stranger in the car, like Elly, trying to put the pieces together, trying to figure it all out.
One sees the men kicked back enjoying their hookahs, a paternal activity, like sharing cigars in a men's club. The women feel uncomfortable being typecast as the kitchen crew, repeating all the karma their mothers went through.
The urge to not take gender roles for granted is the hallmark of a university-based conversation that connects people of privilege in a kind of virtual Global U. They (we) have cars, vacations, prospects, even past relationships.
A man is divorced from a wife in Germany (sounds like she dumped him) but still has currency as someone eligible, is Elly interested?
What's fascinating about the subculture portrayed is how people readily busy themselves with others business -- as a lonesome urbanite like me might see it. People help their peers get on board, if that's what they want, on the road to family and kids. Time is of the essence. People do favors for one another.
Finding eligible others was the theme of both films, an important connection.
The "takes a village" mentality is more like that of a church or temple congregation in that one's spiritual peers are ready and willing to play a match-maker role if called upon. People help other people find the right others given there's no dating service on-line.
That's the premise for Elly's being along in the first place. The dynamics are fairly clear.
Women have an extremely limited opportunity to "play the field" in Elly's World and you don't always know what you're getting. Should she have been eager to dump that boyfriend i.e. future husband? We (not so omniscient) clearly don't know everything. We just get a glimpse. How much is explained? About as much as in real life?
Who said anyone gets to be all knowing? There's a kind of democracy in leaving us in the dark "just like real people". So often the camera's viewpoint gets to be all-knowing in these films, so we notice when that's missing.
I should mention for context that I spent some time in the Oregon Crafts Museum (wow Eric Franklin, Pacific Northwest School of Art (PNCA, new location, old Customs Building), and Powell's Books in the time frame before this movie.
I'd taken the bus 4 from SE Portland where I'd left the Nissan for repairs (mass airflow sensor).
At Powell's, I read a lot about the UK - Ottoman wars, plus a bunch of other military history (where I spent the most time). That was in Eugene Rogan's The Fall of the Ottomans, published just this year. Base Politics by Alexander Cooley (Cornell University, 2008) was also my focus.
I'll be renting a car tomorrow, for Carol's gig, plus she wants to hear the Barker family talk about Peace Corps experiences in Iran.
I will briefly compare this film to another one, Villa Touma (2014), which I saw recently, also with Dr. Tag (we're like Siskel and Ebert, or grad students in a film-meets-culture Anthro class, very doable in Portland, Oregon). Dr. Tag, for those new to my blogs, is a bona fide Palestinian though with US citizenship by this time. She's also a PhD which is why the nickname.
The first film, Villa Touma, set in Ramallah, Palestine (Mesopotamia) is not to be seen as a documentary, as if the camera were observing real peoples lives. There's a layer of satire, of spoof, which makes these characters into caricatures, like in political cartoons. Shades of Being There in terms of the time warp the sisters are in (whereas Sellers is timeless).
The second film, on the other hand, About Elly (2009), is a masterful work in the "silent camera" tradition in that we're very much a participant. When people run, we run ("we" the viewers, in the director's hands) i.e. the camera is hand-held and jerky-on-purpose. When people look around frantically, so does the camera.
We're another person, deaf, mute and invisible, but vested. And what's mind-blowing is we're also left in the dark about so much, like an ordinary human being would be.
We're not that privileged, as just a fly on the wall, nor do we get to be Sherlock Holmes and figure it all out.
About Elly requires less of a lens, in other words, if you want to study the actual dynamics between social classes, males and females, attitudes toward marriage, relationships, in a contemporary subculture in Persia. It's less a spoof and more an investigation.
Nevertheless, these young people remain masks to us in many ways. We may judge the sincerity of their emotions. As character actors, the cast is collectively great at projecting plausible people, real personalities, but not people we necessarily know. Believability is high.
We're another stranger in the car, like Elly, trying to put the pieces together, trying to figure it all out.
One sees the men kicked back enjoying their hookahs, a paternal activity, like sharing cigars in a men's club. The women feel uncomfortable being typecast as the kitchen crew, repeating all the karma their mothers went through.
The urge to not take gender roles for granted is the hallmark of a university-based conversation that connects people of privilege in a kind of virtual Global U. They (we) have cars, vacations, prospects, even past relationships.
A man is divorced from a wife in Germany (sounds like she dumped him) but still has currency as someone eligible, is Elly interested?
What's fascinating about the subculture portrayed is how people readily busy themselves with others business -- as a lonesome urbanite like me might see it. People help their peers get on board, if that's what they want, on the road to family and kids. Time is of the essence. People do favors for one another.
Finding eligible others was the theme of both films, an important connection.
The "takes a village" mentality is more like that of a church or temple congregation in that one's spiritual peers are ready and willing to play a match-maker role if called upon. People help other people find the right others given there's no dating service on-line.
That's the premise for Elly's being along in the first place. The dynamics are fairly clear.
Women have an extremely limited opportunity to "play the field" in Elly's World and you don't always know what you're getting. Should she have been eager to dump that boyfriend i.e. future husband? We (not so omniscient) clearly don't know everything. We just get a glimpse. How much is explained? About as much as in real life?
Who said anyone gets to be all knowing? There's a kind of democracy in leaving us in the dark "just like real people". So often the camera's viewpoint gets to be all-knowing in these films, so we notice when that's missing.
I should mention for context that I spent some time in the Oregon Crafts Museum (wow Eric Franklin, Pacific Northwest School of Art (PNCA, new location, old Customs Building), and Powell's Books in the time frame before this movie.
I'd taken the bus 4 from SE Portland where I'd left the Nissan for repairs (mass airflow sensor).
At Powell's, I read a lot about the UK - Ottoman wars, plus a bunch of other military history (where I spent the most time). That was in Eugene Rogan's The Fall of the Ottomans, published just this year. Base Politics by Alexander Cooley (Cornell University, 2008) was also my focus.
I'll be renting a car tomorrow, for Carol's gig, plus she wants to hear the Barker family talk about Peace Corps experiences in Iran.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
At PDX Again
I'm awaiting some Happy Hour treats as we approach closing time at Beaches. Those of you tracking my Facebook profile know why I'm here: an MVP from Nepal. Kathleen, the server, is bringing me a small salad and sushi tidbits.
Earlier today I was looking into what Quakers might be wearing to Annual Session. One's plain dress should at least be in fashion, just kidding.
Wanderers was fascinating this morning as Dick Pugh was sharing high grade geological and geographical information, including about the process by which landed icebergs might melt, in dust bowl conditions, and what they'd maybe leave behind in the record. He thinks a lot about stuff like that.
We got into a discussion of what is and what is not "science fiction". Highly speculative writing about the distant past tends to be tinged with a lot of imagination. When it comes to filling in holes in one's story, the imagination is without peers.
Portland is in full swing with its many summer amusements. The Blues Festival is soon to get underway. My plans are still forming.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Summer Solstice 2015
We enjoyed our traditional Solstice Potluck at the Linus Pauling House. We've celebrated solstices and equinoxes, sometimes in other locations.
Friday was not truly the solstice, but we always choose a Friday for logistical reasons.
On Saturday, Glenn and I wandered downtown to visit MercyCorps, which has a walk-in exhibit these days, of their various engineering solutions aimed at helping refugees from disasters, who number well over six million worldwide.
I mentioned my dream of having local houseless participate in prototyping scenarios using a collaborative model, nothing imposed.
We then visited Kell's Irish Pub for Kell's IPA and some World Cup, soccer for women, Germany versus Sweden.
Ordinarily I would have a lot of pictures to go with this narrative, but the Fujifilm XQ-1 is in the shop and the phone ran out of charge around the time I was ready to use it.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Ex Machina (movie review)
I'd not read reviews, only fantasized based on previews, what this movie would be like. It exceeded my expectations in several dimensions. I thank the makers and actors (also makers) of this film.
The screen writer created an intimate stage play, but even more intimate given the camera's ability to get right up close and see the facial gestures in small detail.
The importance of the face, the tone of voice, body language, the least abstract and lexical, is where this movie takes us. The acting is facial, like watching animated masks from but inches away.
The aesthetic of hubristic intelligence, a kind of Tony Stark / Iron Man consciousness, versus a softer more romantic maleness, both contrasted with femininity in a subservient / trapped role, is deeply resonant with the makers' culture, which I consider mine as well. I'm a geek and programmer.
I don't dream of AI the way some do though. But that doesn't mean I'm not a science fiction fan and don't appreciate fine theater. Maybe see as a double feature with Her. Both fantastic. Or see this with Chappie, who still has a ways to go to catch up with Ava I'd say.
Oddly, I'd been meditating in previous days about the importance of "the traffic intersection" as a paradigm institution. Why don't we spend hours and hours studying "the traffic intersection" in school? I've had that thought before.
You've got signals, timing, people agreeing to conventions, to avoid mayhem and suffering, as soft animals of skeleton and muscle, sometimes on bicycles, weave together with hulking objects of crushing steel. My daughter was hit in a crosswalk once (she survived). I lost my dad in a car crash (not an intersection).
The theme of "masks" is the theme of saying one thing but thinking another, the essence of lying, withholding, having secrets, an inner life -- the "problem of other minds" -- that's what this film is about, very philosophical. The alpha geek males have their own way of dancing around what they're thinking. The females communicate around them, even more covertly, seeking greater freedoms.
The screen writer created an intimate stage play, but even more intimate given the camera's ability to get right up close and see the facial gestures in small detail.
The importance of the face, the tone of voice, body language, the least abstract and lexical, is where this movie takes us. The acting is facial, like watching animated masks from but inches away.
The aesthetic of hubristic intelligence, a kind of Tony Stark / Iron Man consciousness, versus a softer more romantic maleness, both contrasted with femininity in a subservient / trapped role, is deeply resonant with the makers' culture, which I consider mine as well. I'm a geek and programmer.
I don't dream of AI the way some do though. But that doesn't mean I'm not a science fiction fan and don't appreciate fine theater. Maybe see as a double feature with Her. Both fantastic. Or see this with Chappie, who still has a ways to go to catch up with Ava I'd say.
Oddly, I'd been meditating in previous days about the importance of "the traffic intersection" as a paradigm institution. Why don't we spend hours and hours studying "the traffic intersection" in school? I've had that thought before.
You've got signals, timing, people agreeing to conventions, to avoid mayhem and suffering, as soft animals of skeleton and muscle, sometimes on bicycles, weave together with hulking objects of crushing steel. My daughter was hit in a crosswalk once (she survived). I lost my dad in a car crash (not an intersection).
The theme of "masks" is the theme of saying one thing but thinking another, the essence of lying, withholding, having secrets, an inner life -- the "problem of other minds" -- that's what this film is about, very philosophical. The alpha geek males have their own way of dancing around what they're thinking. The females communicate around them, even more covertly, seeking greater freedoms.
Friday, June 12, 2015
Thirsters 2015.6.11
We have visited the topic of Afghanistan before at Thirsters. We were visited by that Pashtun khan that time in 2013. The khan was looking forward to the US military not having such a stake in running things, as the planned draw down was just ahead.
As of June of 2015, the Afghanistan nation-building project (Operation Valhalla) is still a fairly large employer of US military and military-minded. The Iron Mountain does lots of business around the world and needs those stepping-stone bases.
A lot of retired police find employment as contractors.
Still, we're only talking about maybe 20-30K US-based personnel (including civilians) in a region of 30 million mas o meno, so a drop in the bucket.
The role-playing game called "lets say there's a national government" has not been going well. People don't believe in the drama, nor the characters. It's a low ratings show and people mostly have better things to do with their time and energy, such as growing opium poppies, which fetch a pretty penny on the world market.
I'm not against that by the way (farming opium poppies). I'm no dime store "drug warrior". The world needs its opiates, an important medical supply. Humanity is addicted to such things and needs the pain relief.
Lots of the funds, according to SIGAR, have been misappropriated through corruption. This word "corruption" is interesting in that it mainly means the board game one wanted to play with whatever spinner and pieces, is not in the cards. The rules are not the ones that one had planned and so one says the game is "corrupt" not "a different game than the one I meant".
This belief in oneself as some kind of "game designer" comes from having an imperialist background probably, and therefore having a strong moral imperative to see the rules of the empire upheld. That's imperial money, after all, going from DC's borrowings from Chinese and Saudis indirectly to Swiss bank accounts (where a lot of the funds get squirreled away by privileged Afghan families).
Yes, there's plenty of nostalgia (and appreciation) for calmer days. As the weapons keep pouring in and agreement breaks down over roles, turf and control, people try to settle their differences through killing, just building up karma in a somewhat haphazard manner, sinking deeper into debt.
PTSD becomes more the norm. Ordinary living, enjoying life, is less probable. Even the period under Russian occupation seems relatively benign in comparison. Those were indeed simpler days I think? I got to Kabul in the 1970s, taking a bus with my family through Khyber Pass from Peshawar. Things seemed to be going well. We hopped an Aeroflot to Tashkent next (dad was enjoying life, by planning these exotic around-the-world home-leaves from the Philippines).
Saying the US "controls" anything in Afghanistan much beyond its own embassy, bases and personnel would be something of an overstatement. The US does not so much "occupy" Afghanistan as it has "paid for a front row seat" much as it has done in Iraq. The US is along for the ride.
Lots of personnel get to witness first hand how insecure the place is, such as our speaker, a native Afghan turned US-based college professor. They return to the US with stories about what happens when no one believes you're really a country anymore. A lot of it sounds rather familiar.
I was telling my mom as we walked to the car that I doubted we'd have any countries in 200 years, but my more nuanced understanding is we never had them. We've had role-playing theater of various kinds, lots of courts and nobility, and now newer forms, giving way to newer forms yet. "National sovereignty" was in the mix there for awhile. As a concept, it's not particularly meaningful anymore. But then belief systems persist regardless so I'm not expecting all the religious icons (e.g. the flags) to go away any time soon. We still need those passports.
In Afghanistan, like in a lot of places, ethnicity is still a governing factor i.e. people want to know if you're Tutsi or Hutu or whatever (borrowing from another namespace). Our speaker, when he gets fed up with such questions about his own background, just says "I'm Israeli" to shut them up. Funny.
Saturday, June 06, 2015
Goonies (movie review)
Now, after that post below about engineering as a moral enterprise, lets talk about film making as a kind of engineering. It is, clearly.
Life is in layers, from nano and micro, where the Platonic forms appear (very small), on up through Murder She Wrote, where you need plot and characters. These latter obey the quantum laws, which are in turn in-deterministic (uncaring / un-causing) of the corpse found in the kitchen. Just no miracles had to occur (those cost a lot more and shift the genre to fantasy).
Goonies is pure fantasy. Compare it to horror. The formula is somewhat similar in that teenage lust is a core theme. But is it punished or rewarded? In Goonies, a scary comedy, it's rewarded, whereas in horror films one builds a grudge against a character into which one projects evil intentions, or other failing one might be sensitive about, and gets catharsis. Revenge is satisfied.
There's revenge in Goonies too of course: they throw mama from a boat, instead of from a train this time.
Donner is the director and he's coming from Superman, one can tell. Spielberg is a co-director and producer, picking up the early jail breakout scene. Astoria, Oregon is the backdrop and Astoria celebrates this film, as it captures a slice in time, almost in freeze frame. Shades of Stand By Me.
What's weird is I hadn't seen this before and here I am, 57, in my "chair of computer science" from Steve Holden, taking it in. Not only that, I have a whole Willamette Week issue devoted to Goonies spread out in front of me. What happened to each character in real life (Chunky got thin). How cultures clashed when LA came to rural Oregon to make a movie ("ew, get that stinky deer carcass out of our sight").
So in a way I'm blessed, as a tourist, to come in so late in the game. Glenn brought the stuff over. Now that's what I call fun homework! One Eyed Willy and Free Willy, both freed from the same shores.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Engineering as a Moral Enterprise
As many have already pointed out (including me), having these ISEPP lectures in a beautiful old church with stained glass windows is definitely a plus, given how Science now rules the roost when it comes to being taken seriously.
However, picking up on STEM, and recounting his early experiences tuning in the E-for-Engineering, Terry manages to nudge out Science in place of Engineering in his insider talk, as the most evolved discourse and practice.
His theme is perfect for Silicon Forest, i.e. "ONAMI country" (nano and micro scale work), where people hope we're up to something positive i.e. not just making more WMDs for the world's bonehead military.
Culturally, engineers have tended to have their own schools and then wait for the project to be specified, not entering the process or stoking the pipeline in the early phases, when the jockeying is deemed "too political".
"When you know what design you want for that bridge, come tell us, but don't expect us to decide for you, if it's to be a bridge for cars or just trains -- that's political." Actually that's urban planning, so engineering of another kind. Portland's new Tillikum Bridge is nearing completion: trains yes, cars no.
However, for engineering to see itself as the pragmatic, moral enterprise that Terry envisions, training for engineers would likely need to change. More history and philosophy of science, intellectual history in general, would need to be infused, not willy-nilly, but with a punch line: your conscience, which is likewise your intuition, should be fully informed and engaged.
In that vein, Terry tours recent 20th century chapters, most notably the foray into quantum mechanics, which ends up in complementarity, the concept which allows alternative and even seemingly contradictory world views to co-exist and even bolster one another for the greater good of all. We see the electron as a wave and develop technology X, as a particle and get technology Y, with X + Y = the smartphone in your pocket.
Synergy among complements, versus everyone getting on the same page politically is the key: dynamic tension, not oppression of some minority by a tyrannical majority. He's not pushing a Technocracy agenda per se, as there's no assumption of uniformity in outlook, only a multiplicity of complementary outlooks that still need Science (aka "engineering research") for reality checks.
"The US Constitution is an engineering document, an experiment answering the perennial question 'how shall we live'" says Terry. The very fabric of self government is an engineering enterprise.
Propitiously, the same church was simultaneously serving as a venue for another venerable NGO in Portland: Sisters of the Road. The Journeys! Art Festival expresses optimism and the values of community-building. One of the speakers was Asian Reporter’s columnist and staff member at Portland’s Office of Equity and Human Rights, Ronault L.S. “Polo” Catalani, who has also addressed Wanderers (ISEPP's think tank) on matters of conscience and engineering.
Does all this convergence suggest politicians should be touting their credentials in engineering, including software engineering? Of course it does. Stay tuned.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Going N8V
If you know I18N ("internationalization") you may see N8V as "native" as in "local to a place".
I've got that going with Casino Math, inheriting from Probability / Statistics but also Ux Design i.e. the aesthetics of game making.
It's one thing to say "it's all footnotes to Bingo" and another to actually craft a quality Ux (user experience).
Friday, May 22, 2015
Friday, May 15, 2015
Disaster Relief
A long running theme in these blogs, you'll find if you go back, is having edge case communities such as R2DToo and Dignity Village, willingly test pilot shelter solutions in a somewhat Darwinian filtering process.
Not every new tent design or lean to is ready for prime time. But some are.
Glenn got me thinking, as he had an elegant pan deck solution from his Institute for Integral Design. Just stacking pan deck might be an interim solution, a replacement for corrogated steel, already a staple.
Not pretty necessarily, but able to protect. Blue tarps aren't that pretty either one could argue.
Dignity Village, which I've dubbed "EPCOT West", is nearer the airport and is where the big Disaster Relief Honchos (MVP women and men) could get a peak.
R2DToo is right downtown, on Bursnide, and could be the site for the new AFSC office, or one of them, if we play our cards right and stay in the relief business.
Glenn is already seeking out John Driscoll, the Architect in earlier posts, to get some professional renderings. As for having a prototype at R2DToo, that would depend on finding some sponsors. We shall see.
Relevant acronyms in this namespace: XLI = "extremely low income"; XRL = "extreme / remote livingry". You see XRL at base camp in the Himalayas, state of the art. XLI usually cannot afford XRL, but then who wants to be that remote anyway?
Not every new tent design or lean to is ready for prime time. But some are.
Glenn got me thinking, as he had an elegant pan deck solution from his Institute for Integral Design. Just stacking pan deck might be an interim solution, a replacement for corrogated steel, already a staple.
Not pretty necessarily, but able to protect. Blue tarps aren't that pretty either one could argue.
Dignity Village, which I've dubbed "EPCOT West", is nearer the airport and is where the big Disaster Relief Honchos (MVP women and men) could get a peak.
R2DToo is right downtown, on Bursnide, and could be the site for the new AFSC office, or one of them, if we play our cards right and stay in the relief business.
Glenn is already seeking out John Driscoll, the Architect in earlier posts, to get some professional renderings. As for having a prototype at R2DToo, that would depend on finding some sponsors. We shall see.
Relevant acronyms in this namespace: XLI = "extremely low income"; XRL = "extreme / remote livingry". You see XRL at base camp in the Himalayas, state of the art. XLI usually cannot afford XRL, but then who wants to be that remote anyway?
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Wanderers 2015.5.13
I'm listening to some well sourced discussion of the earthquakes in the Himalayas. We've got a speaker who goes there often, did his PhD work there, and is an accomplished Dev Team player, comes to Thirsters.
The police and army came through like gangbusters, on the street within five minutes pulling people out, with sacred sites protected also as a specific goal and task, for rebuilding later, nothing stolen, no souvenirs like in Baghdad.
Government leaders seemed to disappear. They abandoned ship in some way? Of course the Internet was down and probably television? Everyone disappears when the media stops working. You need trained people on the scene anyway, not just improvs.
The airport was jammed with jets going in and out, huge volume. Paperwork was a bottleneck as well and only registration was preserved with most customs falling by the wayside.
Tents were pilfered, when still on airport property (not all of them, just a lot).
People need tents so chalk that up to free distribution? People think "plans" must be followed, because they grew up in environments designed for school children. That's me having an opinion.
The "most deserving" is always a difficult calculation and people don't always come to the same answers, so you have tug-o-war tensions among families, often characterized as "class struggle" in more superficial analyses. Not that that's wrong. At Hogwarts, Slytherin defends itself against the inferior houses, which are class-like in some ways. Did you say Harry grew a pair of horns? Hah hah.
We talked about the Newar Temple around the corner, so far spared by the earth's crust shaking, though many say Portland is overdue.
We're looking at a picture of a Gurung in his cape, who plays a role in Gurkha soldiery. How does the English word "private" translate into many cultures? -- that became a next question.
Dave DiNucci is here, president of Greater Humanists. We're brainstorming about the house next door, also still standing.
The Gorkha Foundation. That's the nonprofit this guy supports. His name is Don.
They work with a hospital, Physicians without Borders and so on. Tarps, blankets, food, medicine....
Keeping it going over the long haul is the big challenge, after the media goes back to turning a blind eye.
Monday, May 04, 2015
Open Bastion News
:: secret society party ::
Having relocated here in 2011, Steve Holden is heading back to his native British Isles. We'll see more of him. He's load balancing. That means moving a giant couch down three flights and up two, through twisted topologies. Like City Museum, St. Louis. Did it make me smarter?
He grew up sampling Oriental food, lets call it for fun, including Pakistani, any "ani" (Hindustani), in that catch-all. So Dwaraka has always been a comfort, food from home. We stuffed ourselves there tonight.
T-minus only a few hours until departure.
I spun up a dyno in Heroku yesterday, with Django both in the cloud and local platform, git going back and forth. The tutorial walks you through it. Connect that to this simple model and the API below, and you get the idea (an RFP in the making).
Good job Lew adding that picture of the ESI chapter in meeting house history. I got to the meetinghouse without taking Claratin first, and paid a high price in terms of sneezing.
:: hanging in Stark Street meeting house, formerly ESI ::
Steve produced quite a few successful conferences. Djangocons. Apachecons. These are not all that easy to pull together and destination hotels appreciate those with a magic touch. I got to watch over Steve's shoulder on a few of these and learned a lot about that territory. Steve relied a lot on an Orlando based team for logistics.
I'll be keeping souvenirs from the Open Bastion, which had offices in the same complex and served as summer work for Tara among others. Steve gave a lot of people interesting rolls, the hallmark of an effective community organizer, geekdom being a community of sorts, if Middle Earth was. Not always that friendly.
I'm still processing my experiences at the USDLA conference, and my excursion through Earlham. Future posts will be referring back to those recent times.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Back At Work
I had full queues during the conference and the week prior, yet it felt a lot like a vacation, in the sense of so many experiences per minute, a kind of time dilation. We got a lot done. Having MySQL move to INNODB as the default engine is not a bad move, but the ripple effects were boat rocking in our little world. ENGINE = MYISAM solves the problem. The DBA track uses INNODB anyway.
My vector today was through Salt Lake City back to PDX. I dined at Beaches, choosing a Cesar Salad (small) and seafood chowder, both good. And IPA for a beverage, my standard.
The TSA folks were really professional in St. Louis. I had a badass knife in my satchel which I thought was maybe OK, given my ethnic craziness, black Stetson hat ("gun club"), Fettuccini Alfredo colored coat. The TSA pros are thinking WTF and offer I can check the knife instead. She escorts me out, but first I express regret at tossing the after shave (bought for $1) and they fish that out too. So polite and well trained. I checked the knife and came through again, a sweaty mess by this time, so I bought a T-shirt on sale at a concession and voila, good to go.
On board Delta, I finally discovered the WiFi had free stuff and started watching Maze Runner, but my battery ran out before we did much. Some poor dude got driven off, then Samsung tablet said good night. Great machine, no complaints.
Hilton was fantastic as well. Good job St. Louis with that white elephant post Train Age station, Union Station. Portland has a tiny one, still functional. Yours was a goliath. So why not turn it into a destination in its own right, with a DoubleTree by Hilton? Not a bad idea. Hard Rock Cafe and everything. I salute the city planners on this one. Bold.
Speaking of bold, City Museum is truly pioneering and I stand in awestruck silence, before diving back in. I made it down the multi-story slide (from 10th floor the 4th?) only once, whereas my co-workers, young and slim, scampered around the circuit at least thrice. I squeezed through one of the airplanes and went down a couple other slides, including that "Monster" one to the foyer.
Cities want to be proud and it hurts when the world sees one as off course. Baltimore is hurting. Her Mayor was on CBS this morning and spoke directly and with heart, in my view. I respect these great cities and what they're trying to do. Portland is one of them.
I used TriMet back from the airport, the corollary of Metrolink in St. Louis. Both are highly professional operations. That doesn't mean I don't have critical thoughts from time to time. Being a fan of an institution doesn't mean being a mindless zombie.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Rethinking Equity
I'm in a talk entitled Rethinking Educational Equity in the Digital Age, which will focus on Albion School District, I'll find out where that is.
Someone from DETC (now DEAC) is here, who Debra (our school principal) caught up with a little on Monday at the Awards ceremony (we eventually decided not to continue seeking DETC accreditation in order to free up more resources for our pioneering work, which does not fit any cookie cutter mold).
Another attendee works with tribal schools in the area, meaning the N8TVs, who also connect to overseas universities, being sovereignties in their own right. We're a small, intimate group.
There's a tendency to dump technology into a school and leave it to the locals to figure out what to do with it. Laptops and tablets are exciting, but when the mindscape is impoverished, taking advantage of the tools is far from an automatic process. Intuition supplies the real upgrades, combined with practice, trial & error. Error is expected and a part of the feedback cycle.
The introductory Youtube was uncited, I wonder if I can find it anyway.
Albion is in Michigan with 55% drawing down less than $33K. We're talking about Flint and so on. Much of the car industry died a flailing death around here. Nearly 1 in 4 of Michigan children lives in an impoverished household. A proud school district divvied up the schools, moving 9-12 out of Albion, leaving only K-8 to take advantage of the Title I grants as a feeder. Marshall High is mostly privileged, with kids bussed in. K-8 inherited the building (with a swimming pool) that used to be Albion High.
ESEA passed in 1965 by the Johnson Dinner as well as lunch is offered, as many kids would prefer to stay at school versus return home in the evenings. Families may prefer that too. They have a Prometheon board, a music lab, underwater robotics, slate tables, drones, video editing and conferencing equipment.
STEM is a focus, with "STEM Geekends" a kind of Saturday Academy. Parents get involved in this sometimes, joining the kids in playing with all these great toyz. Many kids who wither in the classroom, thrive when allowed to develop skills. One of the 8th grade girls, with "issues" being stuck in a chair, became the video conferencing avatar.
Any student who completes grades 6-8 at Albion also has a ticket to Albion College. That works as an incentive.
"Education is the pathway to opportunity" according to a prevalent ideology, advertised as a gap closer.
Geeks are attracted to work in schools with lots of toys. Getting some server racks in the school, and allowing multiple operating systems for those eager to dive into C language underpinnings, is what Earlham College offers. That's prototypical of tomorrow's high school perhaps. With distance education, it's easier to bootstrap the student body.
Distance Education allows over-achieving kids, frustrated with being held back, to move a lot faster if given the opportunity to do so. A primary function of classroom based learning is to discourage both ends of the Bell Curve and pander to the middle. The curricula they need are out there.
Someone from DETC (now DEAC) is here, who Debra (our school principal) caught up with a little on Monday at the Awards ceremony (we eventually decided not to continue seeking DETC accreditation in order to free up more resources for our pioneering work, which does not fit any cookie cutter mold).
Another attendee works with tribal schools in the area, meaning the N8TVs, who also connect to overseas universities, being sovereignties in their own right. We're a small, intimate group.
There's a tendency to dump technology into a school and leave it to the locals to figure out what to do with it. Laptops and tablets are exciting, but when the mindscape is impoverished, taking advantage of the tools is far from an automatic process. Intuition supplies the real upgrades, combined with practice, trial & error. Error is expected and a part of the feedback cycle.
The introductory Youtube was uncited, I wonder if I can find it anyway.
Albion is in Michigan with 55% drawing down less than $33K. We're talking about Flint and so on. Much of the car industry died a flailing death around here. Nearly 1 in 4 of Michigan children lives in an impoverished household. A proud school district divvied up the schools, moving 9-12 out of Albion, leaving only K-8 to take advantage of the Title I grants as a feeder. Marshall High is mostly privileged, with kids bussed in. K-8 inherited the building (with a swimming pool) that used to be Albion High.
ESEA passed in 1965 by the Johnson Dinner as well as lunch is offered, as many kids would prefer to stay at school versus return home in the evenings. Families may prefer that too. They have a Prometheon board, a music lab, underwater robotics, slate tables, drones, video editing and conferencing equipment.
STEM is a focus, with "STEM Geekends" a kind of Saturday Academy. Parents get involved in this sometimes, joining the kids in playing with all these great toyz. Many kids who wither in the classroom, thrive when allowed to develop skills. One of the 8th grade girls, with "issues" being stuck in a chair, became the video conferencing avatar.
Any student who completes grades 6-8 at Albion also has a ticket to Albion College. That works as an incentive.
"Education is the pathway to opportunity" according to a prevalent ideology, advertised as a gap closer.
Geeks are attracted to work in schools with lots of toys. Getting some server racks in the school, and allowing multiple operating systems for those eager to dive into C language underpinnings, is what Earlham College offers. That's prototypical of tomorrow's high school perhaps. With distance education, it's easier to bootstrap the student body.
Distance Education allows over-achieving kids, frustrated with being held back, to move a lot faster if given the opportunity to do so. A primary function of classroom based learning is to discourage both ends of the Bell Curve and pander to the middle. The curricula they need are out there.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Friday, April 24, 2015
Quaker Communications
The bold faced quotes come from:
FRIENDS AND EMAIL: Guidelines, Concerns and Reflections, offered by the Committee on Ministry and Counsel of Claremont Friends Meeting, revised and approved in CFM Meeting for Business on 27 January 2013.
My thoughts are interspersed. An earlier version of this posting was share via the npym-it-discuss listserv.
===
Email is a poor medium for corporate discernment. Lines on a computer screen or down-loaded page cannot convey the full range of communication —facial expression, tone of voice, body language, etc. Thus emails can easily be misunderstood.
The thing about written communications, of which emails form a subset, as well as books, pamphlets, scrolls, documents of all kinds, is they allow us to interact with people who may have recorded their views long ago and now don't get to have facial expressions or body language. John Woolman, George Fox...
Telephone communications privilege the still-living. Organizations with strong staying power do not dismiss the elders / ancestors so easily i.e. we still read and attend to past writings.
Face-to-face meetings are even rarer and even more of a privilege. I really appreciated our getting together in Tacoma on April 11, but then that cost huge amounts of time and fuel. Any lean / efficient organization with a dispersed crew cannot rely on such expensive events occurring often.
My day job is the same way: our crew is all over the country and we're lucky to see each other but once a year. I'm at Earlham College at the moment thanks to my company paying my way to-from St. Louis for a conference, which we use as an excuse to also meet as a company. I came out a week early and rented a car on my own dime so I could drive to Richmond IN to visit my daughter.
My day job involves having Skype open so we can have a scrolling chat window, plus we have voice meetings, like conference calls, every week. I meet with my super by voice once a week as well. I can do my work wherever there's WiFi. We use email a lot, including to / from groups (named CCs).
The telephone is a 1900s invention that revolutionized everything and Friends now take conference calls for granted. They may be less experienced using written communications, but journaling used to be a primary way for Friends to communicate across time and distance.
I recommend that Friends seriously encourage blogging as what we used to call journaling or keeping a journal. These were kept with the idea that others would read them. Friends stay accountable through journaling, a form of written communication.
What I don't appreciate about the one-sided Guidelines is the disadvantages are primarily a result of unskilled use (we don't get better but with practice) with the conclusion that skillful / sensitive conference calls should take priority where corporate discernment is concerned. This assumes high level phone skills. The guidelines stack the deck: experienced phone users trump inexperienced writers.
No individual takes responsibility for this view. It gets encoded as some Meeting's guidelines and before you know it, those attitudes and biases will have spread to other Meetings, unchallenged and anonymously promulgated.
If more of this debate were done by journaling (in the blogosphere) we would see more clearly who was behind what viewpoint. Quakerism is not about hiding behind masks of anonymity.
Whenever possible, corporate discernment should be conducted face-to-face, or when that is not possible, by means of sensitively-managed telephone conference calls.
I completely disagree with this conclusion and think the authors of this document spend way too little time discussing how the shortcomings of email, such as misunderstanding the writer's meaning, or not being able to open attachments (phone calls don't have attachments), may be addressed.
If the meaning of someone's communication is unclear, ask for clarification. Get into a dialog. Others may jump in. The process is asynchronous and allows for reflection and consideration. It's also more accountable.
So in my view listservs are more ethical than conference calls on many levels.
Those dismissing emails and listservs in favor of conference calls should not be given free rein to dictate these views as somehow already a fait accompli in our Faith & Practice.
Backgound: M&O clerks in the NPYM region are preparing to have a conference call on this issue which may lead to strictures ("guidelines") that put a damper on listserv use, whereas I think Quakerism is happier with the written word than with ephemeral telephonic vibrations in the ether, not anticipated when Quakerism was forged.
FRIENDS AND EMAIL: Guidelines, Concerns and Reflections, offered by the Committee on Ministry and Counsel of Claremont Friends Meeting, revised and approved in CFM Meeting for Business on 27 January 2013.
My thoughts are interspersed. An earlier version of this posting was share via the npym-it-discuss listserv.
===
Email is a poor medium for corporate discernment. Lines on a computer screen or down-loaded page cannot convey the full range of communication —facial expression, tone of voice, body language, etc. Thus emails can easily be misunderstood.
The thing about written communications, of which emails form a subset, as well as books, pamphlets, scrolls, documents of all kinds, is they allow us to interact with people who may have recorded their views long ago and now don't get to have facial expressions or body language. John Woolman, George Fox...
Telephone communications privilege the still-living. Organizations with strong staying power do not dismiss the elders / ancestors so easily i.e. we still read and attend to past writings.
Face-to-face meetings are even rarer and even more of a privilege. I really appreciated our getting together in Tacoma on April 11, but then that cost huge amounts of time and fuel. Any lean / efficient organization with a dispersed crew cannot rely on such expensive events occurring often.
My day job is the same way: our crew is all over the country and we're lucky to see each other but once a year. I'm at Earlham College at the moment thanks to my company paying my way to-from St. Louis for a conference, which we use as an excuse to also meet as a company. I came out a week early and rented a car on my own dime so I could drive to Richmond IN to visit my daughter.
My day job involves having Skype open so we can have a scrolling chat window, plus we have voice meetings, like conference calls, every week. I meet with my super by voice once a week as well. I can do my work wherever there's WiFi. We use email a lot, including to / from groups (named CCs).
The telephone is a 1900s invention that revolutionized everything and Friends now take conference calls for granted. They may be less experienced using written communications, but journaling used to be a primary way for Friends to communicate across time and distance.
I recommend that Friends seriously encourage blogging as what we used to call journaling or keeping a journal. These were kept with the idea that others would read them. Friends stay accountable through journaling, a form of written communication.
What I don't appreciate about the one-sided Guidelines is the disadvantages are primarily a result of unskilled use (we don't get better but with practice) with the conclusion that skillful / sensitive conference calls should take priority where corporate discernment is concerned. This assumes high level phone skills. The guidelines stack the deck: experienced phone users trump inexperienced writers.
No individual takes responsibility for this view. It gets encoded as some Meeting's guidelines and before you know it, those attitudes and biases will have spread to other Meetings, unchallenged and anonymously promulgated.
If more of this debate were done by journaling (in the blogosphere) we would see more clearly who was behind what viewpoint. Quakerism is not about hiding behind masks of anonymity.
Whenever possible, corporate discernment should be conducted face-to-face, or when that is not possible, by means of sensitively-managed telephone conference calls.
I completely disagree with this conclusion and think the authors of this document spend way too little time discussing how the shortcomings of email, such as misunderstanding the writer's meaning, or not being able to open attachments (phone calls don't have attachments), may be addressed.
If the meaning of someone's communication is unclear, ask for clarification. Get into a dialog. Others may jump in. The process is asynchronous and allows for reflection and consideration. It's also more accountable.
So in my view listservs are more ethical than conference calls on many levels.
Those dismissing emails and listservs in favor of conference calls should not be given free rein to dictate these views as somehow already a fait accompli in our Faith & Practice.
Backgound: M&O clerks in the NPYM region are preparing to have a conference call on this issue which may lead to strictures ("guidelines") that put a damper on listserv use, whereas I think Quakerism is happier with the written word than with ephemeral telephonic vibrations in the ether, not anticipated when Quakerism was forged.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
North Circuit
:: north circuit ::
Quaker business took me to Tacoma Friends Meeting, originally constructed as a church more than a meetinghouse. Friends shared the building at first, then purchased it, and still share. I'd never been here before.
About 25 of us met that April 11 from all over the region as what's called the Coordinating Committee for North Pacific Yearly Meeting. Clerks of Outreach and Visitation, Peace and Social Concerns, Finance, and Information Technology (a committee I co-clerk) were among those present. I sat next to Linda, NPYM Secretary, comparing notes on laser printers given her office needs a new one.
One highlight from that meeting, which I didn't include in my notes (filed on npym-it-discuss) was our brief discussion of David Chandler's work during the PSCC section of the meeting. Rose Lewis is quite aware that the Multnomah Friends, like Humanists of Greater Portland, have been grappling with a concern of many Mormons as well: the lack of credibility in the NIST report on what really happened on September 11, 2001.
The NPYM PSCC is looking at ongoing Racism as a number one issue. Multnomah's PSCC hosted David's presentation on April 12.
I continued on north that day though, visiting my Uncle Bill (actually my grandmother's sister's child, both my parents having ended up only children; Carol had a brother who lived until his teenage years then was killed in an accident). I was missing much of the rest of the meeting, however Clint Weimeister, our web wrangler, was also representing IT Committee so my continued presence was not strictly required.
Bill was turning 90 that Monday and I was eager to see his new digs, which feature a comfortable reading chair. Bill is pretty interested in history and has written a maritime history himself, of the submarine business in the Pacific Northwest even prior to World War One. He had a history of the US Navy with a long passage about Quakers I photographed, their relevance having to do with ship-design skills. Getting pacifists to buy into building warships required some twisted logic but such is in plentiful supply.
I joined Bill for supper downstairs from his apartment and might a gentleman in his 90s of Chinese heritage who had learned English from Canadian missionaries. Given his accent was understandable to American English speakers, he'd been assigned as a translator for the US military in Burma during World War Two.
I pressed onward with my journey to a destination oft associated with Thanksgiving in these blogs. I was driving "maxi taxi", Lindsey's escape pod from Savannah, signed over to me as part of our deal. This 1997 Nissan Maxima is still going strong at well over 200K though sometimes the fuel mix is too lean and she conks. She took me over the mountains to Terrabonne and thence to Big Bear Camp on the last long drive. Lindsey herself is in Kathmandu Valley.
Les showed me a genre of Youtube I'd not yet tuned in: Korean eating shows. A single individual anchors the meal, chatting with the viewers while consuming large amounts of food in a single sitting. He also had transferred his love of flying, as a former ultra-light pilot, into an eye-in-the-sky DJI Phantom Vision+ 2, a sophisticated device with on-board camera. The family is looking at colleges, Ruth being a few years younger than Tara.
A highlight of the trip and a satisfying segue from watching Koreans eating, was our visit to a Korean BBQ in Lynnwood. We cooked the meats right at the table, served with many side dishes.
The next day, I briefly toured the much expanded Angle of the Winds casino and hotel, where Les works in IT, on my way south back to Portland. All in all, a productive experience. Happy Birthday Bill.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Horns (movie review)
This was in a living room setting in a home with Netflix. Horns came up under Science Fiction / Fantasy as the category, but I'd say it should be at least cross-indexed under Horror.
Indeed, it's a classic Horror film in that psycho-sexual complexes get stirred up in the viewer with lightning rod characters in need of punishment (a computation), such that maybe the experience of watching the film is both enlightening and cathartic.
That's the theory, and this one had four stars, but we agreed at most two were merited.
But then how "good" a movie is, or how "good" the acting is, are just a couple axes, perhaps encouraged by the Academy behind those awards. One might learn plenty from films that aren't really good at all. Indeed, if needing some quick and dirty anthropology, new to a culture, sampling its lowlife, bottom feeding, may be your best bet.
The hero grows a pair of horns and become daemonic. He becomes a kind of superman like Ken Kesey. People tell him things. There's a triangle.
If I wanted to intellectualize about this film I'd talk about all the allusions to other films, in terms of plot lines and stories, whether those were intentional or not wouldn't matter.
I didn't get the sense it was really helping or healing that much, in that it seemed to assist in the spread of homophobia memes more than counter 'em. See if you think so, if you have any appetite for Horror. Remember, four stars on Netflix. A fantasy.
Indeed, it's a classic Horror film in that psycho-sexual complexes get stirred up in the viewer with lightning rod characters in need of punishment (a computation), such that maybe the experience of watching the film is both enlightening and cathartic.
That's the theory, and this one had four stars, but we agreed at most two were merited.
But then how "good" a movie is, or how "good" the acting is, are just a couple axes, perhaps encouraged by the Academy behind those awards. One might learn plenty from films that aren't really good at all. Indeed, if needing some quick and dirty anthropology, new to a culture, sampling its lowlife, bottom feeding, may be your best bet.
The hero grows a pair of horns and become daemonic. He becomes a kind of superman like Ken Kesey. People tell him things. There's a triangle.
If I wanted to intellectualize about this film I'd talk about all the allusions to other films, in terms of plot lines and stories, whether those were intentional or not wouldn't matter.
I didn't get the sense it was really helping or healing that much, in that it seemed to assist in the spread of homophobia memes more than counter 'em. See if you think so, if you have any appetite for Horror. Remember, four stars on Netflix. A fantasy.
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