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Coffee Shop Math (math for adults)
Posted:
Dec 14, 2006 3:50 PM
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So I'm doing one of my manly activities, chowing down
on quiche (feta spinach) in a dog friendly coffee shop.
The guys adjacent were talkin' manly stuff too: a storm's
comin' in, likely to blow down some trees, meanin'
lotsa sawin' up later, some woods bein' harder than
others. Gotta have the right tools or jus' fogeddaboutit.
At approximately 135 degrees on the XZ plane, small hand
@ 10:30 on an analog 12 hour clock face, positive X-axis
out my right shoulder, negative Z out my back, (0,0,0) at
my heart, Y to the ceiling (i.e. a left handed XYZ, like
in POV-Ray http://www.povray.org/ ), there's a flatscreen,
displaying current weather (satellite loop cartoon), a
comic strip, temperature projections...
So per NALB (still in committee), what should we provide
to coffee shopping adults, real men like me, real women,
wanting to bone up on math, cut some new teeth?
Free wireless makes it easy to envision. Some federal
department, worried about the quality of current grads,
could compensate with some online resources. Some
agencies already so provide, starting at a young age.
I joined my fellow males in conversation, regarding the
Kim family (http://www.koin.com/Global/story.asp?S=5798515 ),
which made a wrong turn and suffered enormously as a
result. I suggested signs at the border: Welcome to
Oregon, a Dangerous State. It's still relatively easy to
get killed here. We're maybe seeing that on Mt. Hood
again too. http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=4848644
Some countries, like Bhutan, only admit a few hundred
tourists a year, yes to protect cultural integrity, but
flip side: who wants the bad press of tragedy after
tragedy, as kindly New Yorkers plunge to their deaths,
having misjudged the terrain in some way?
Oregon isn't *that* dangerous, and we're flooded with
tourists, welcome them with open arms. But we won't lie
to ya, at least when we're bein' honest: it's still the
Wild West out here in some dimensions, and I'm not talkin'
gunsmoke or John Wayne, just plain ol' Mother Nature,
clean, pure -- and deadly.
Alaska is even worse, my coffee mate related. But thanks
mainly to basic training in the army, he'd lived to tell
the tale of his getting lost in our forests, with compass
and topo-map ("you had it made" I said).
Three things you get from the army, essential to survival,
he went on: (1) how to use your gun (2) land navigation
skills (3) first aid.
I suggested (1) was less relevant in Oregon, especially if
you're vegetarian, and (2) should include GIS/GPS, i.e.
telecommunications, with bare compass and map landnav as
fallback. Ward quizzed me on (3): what do you think most
people die of, in field accidents? Me: bleeding to
death. Ward: exactly -- so you learn how to stop the
bleeding, at all costs.
I went back to harp on basic language skills as another
prerequisite, including for armies. Like if you'd just
taken the time to learn one word of their language, like
"salaam", you might've saved yourself a bullet in the head
down the road.
We shared some dark laughter, kinda like they do in
Alaska, when yet another dumb tourist from LA or wherever
wanders off to "look at the glacier" and is never heard
from again.
Ward apologized for the Alaskans, for snickering about
death, but I said you got that working around the police
as well i.e. when you see so much suffering and dying, yet
don't have any easy way to stop it, you tend to make a
joke out of it, just to stay sane.
Home viewers got a sense of that humor from the M.A.S.H.
units in Korea, eventually serialized in a much loved T.V.
show M*A*S*H ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068098/ ),
developed from the earlier even darker comedy
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066026/ ).
Anyway, the flatscreen at 135 degrees gives me some ideas,
about how we might interface to NALB adults, using "push"
technology already highly developed by geeks. We have the
Google property YouTube, we have static HTML, JavaScript,
...AJAX. There's nothing to stop us from bringing a
larger adult population up to speed, including those
strange talkin' vietvets in Seattle Center or wherever (
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2006/11/seattle-center.html ).
And I'm not sayin' only the federal government is entitled
to play these outreach games. Plus feds often outsource,
as Zorro suggested, so even if fed logos appear, that
doesn't preclude players from Contractor City, wherein
reputation is everything, from earning brand loyalty and
good will. I have a lot of favorite private sector
brands I'd love to see involved in our coffee shop kulture,
both as content providers and sponsors.
So this may be the ticket for my A & B module flying team
assemblies, T modules, Koski's golden cuboid's tet
fragments etc., all coming together and flying apart,
making various space station polyhedra in some kind of
screen saver, visualizer or hypertoon. I've already
published some "pyoneering" work aimed in this direction.
http://www.google.com/search?&channel=s&hl=en&q=python+hypertoons
OK, time for a refill on that coffee. I come here
sometimes when Dawn sees a local witch doctor, followed by
another caregiver consultant. Although the place is dog
friendly, I don't bring Sarah Angel (why make the other
dogs jealous?).
I tuned in USA Senator Ron Wyden (OR - D) on Thom Hartmann
on KPOJ AM this morning, talking up universal health care,
even if not single payer. I find it refreshing to hear
some positive futurism for a change -- less smotherin' to
young children and gray panthers alike, more promisin'
than all this irresponsible fear talkin' of the recent past.
They say if Kim had just walked the same distance in
another direction he'd've encountered a lodge. OK, but
1:360 ain't very good odds. His performance was heroic,
and I wish his cell phone had been able to tell him his
ping was triangulated, even if the call didn't go through.
He maybe wouldn't have lost hope after so many days and
stayed with the van. But of course it's easy to second
guess from the remote comfort of my coffee shop armchair,
well after the fact.
Kirby
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