Saturday, May 31, 2008


We burned some gallons heading over to Barry's and back, well worth the trip though.

Washington's Vancouver area is a bedroom community for Portland. Multiplying our I-5 commute by so many trips daily equals how many tanker trips? Both the cars and the oil tend to come by ship, yet the Pacific Northwest still doesn't have a great maritime museum. Some armory in Seattle...

We're approaching that season of "Olympic size" measures. So how many swimming pools of oil do we burn in a day I wonder. Quantification needn't be drudgery, especially if you enjoy the competitive ethos the athletes have cultivated -- very much about numbers, numeric records, like baseball.

In one of Bucky's futuramas, say in Education Automation, we turn suburban homesteads into part of an extended global university network, so more people have incomes while boning up for new jobs, home schooling often a necessity, given the high turnover in some sectors.

The Web is in principle secure for most payments, incoming and outgoing, thanks to RSA, large databases, other infrastructure. Crediting home scholars includes credentialing, with authentication servers helping with routing, matching, even head hunting.

You can't "get it all" on The Web though. We still need those hands-on trainings. Practice makes perfect. In so many walks of life, there's no "getting by" with just what's in the books, that just doesn't hack it.

Like think of theater, and having to staff thespian societies of one kind or another, but role playing for real sometimes, not just in fantasy.

Some stay home more than others though, perhaps in need of more monitoring, per the CareWheels model Ron told us about.

Thespes, according to legend, was the first thespian to break free from the chorus (the herd) and pioneer the monologue as a religious art form. So we were told at the recent induction ceremony at Winterhaven, Tara among the new troupers.

Until Thespes, actors tended to sing or chant their lines as a unit, more like a school of fish.

Once individual actors emerged, playwrights immediately saw their potential.

Barry's party included a number of us Wanderers, including Terry, who likes to quote great philosophers.

Some quote he attributed to Hegel plunged me back into meditating on Athena again, her Roman name being Minerva. I stretched out on the grass and relaxed deeper into it, leaving the conversation.