Monthly Archives: May 2012

First Five Callers…

Joy-of-Tech-Facebook

Just for the record, I much prefer Google+ to Facebook. On the positive side of the ledger, Facebook has brought into distant orbit a handful of long-lost friends. That is it for the positive side of the ledger.

Facebook seems tenaciously attached to its bad interface innovations. Facebook’s search function is laughable. The ‘be-friending’ central imperative is, for me, limited and not congenial.

Google+ has a slightly better interface, excellent search, and its users may access any other user. The latter advantage is very congenial to my open-ended approach to new relationships and incoming information. The serendipity factor on Google+ is by design central to its differentiation (as a platform) and its appeal to me.

There are ways to leverage Google+ which would make it an attractive vehicle for resurrecting the discussions that have mostly disappeared from my screen over the last ten years. Unfortunately, very few people I personally know are on Google+.

The upshot for my own usage is that the internet isn’t in the main a social space for me; it’s much more like a cosmic library.

Google+ Stephen Calhoun

Leave a Comment

Filed under humor

ARK: Totem In Yellow, Untitled Abstract, plus meta manipulations

Untitled-Abstract-Meta-Right-yellow-totem

Totem In Yellow - 2012

This piece started with this source ARK, (appropriated Random Kitsch.) Then two different parts were captured, manipulated in Photoshop and finally one selection was manipulated in Photo FX Pro.

Untitled-Abstract-1-2012
Untitled Abstract #1 (2012)

Untitled-Abstract-Meta-Left-web
Meta Left, Untitled Abstract #1 (2012)

Untitled-Abstract-Meta-Right-web
Meta Right, Untitled Abstract #1 (2012)

Meta-manipulation
screen shot of screen capture; so: ‘meta’

Untitled-Abstract-Meta-Right-Mosaic
Untitled Abstract #1 Mosaic


my naive art (archive)

2012

1 Comment

Filed under visual experiments, my art

Teaching Cartoon: Overdue

Overdue

1983 Berkeley Breathed

Leave a Comment

Filed under humor

An Enduring 40 year Mystery

Crede Calhoun w Crede and friend

My father, my younger brother, John “Funky” Friedman, sitting at the stone picnic table in our backyard in Cleveland Heights on the afternoon of my graduating from Hawken School, in 1972.

JohnF-Stephen-JamieC

“Funky” Friedman, Mark Hoerr, “Hoon,” “Amazing Dynamo Man” (Jamie Cohen) –likewise on that same day but earlier.

Whatever happened to John Friedman? (I ask myself.) He was with us at Hawken through junior year. His changing school did not alter our closeness or social pattern. I spent a lot of time gently opening the doors of perception while in the passenger seat of his red Toyota Corolla. At the time his collection of 8 track cartridges was second-to-none. His parents gave me my first and last martini. His brother Stephen was driving the first and only time I ever was in a car accelerated to over 100 mph, (on the way to the airport.)

And then, in the fall of 1972 he went away to college while I stayed in Cleveland. I don’t believe I ever saw him again. I heard he became a choreographer.

Leave a Comment

Filed under friends

The Quintessential and ‘Reunitive’ Hawk Tech Men of Seventy-Two

Hawken Men

Some hardly random notes about the 40th reunion of The Hawken School class of 1972. The frame to keep in mind is that I’ve been privileged to attend every five year reunion, and the reunions obviously commenced in 1977.

I ran cross country as a junior and senior. The 1972 team lost their first meet and then won twelve in a row to finish 12-1. My fraternal twin brother Tim, deceased in 1993, competed with a handful of strong willed young men to lead this team, the most successful team in 1972. The stress here has to be on willful competition between a few men because the guys in the team’s leading group all wanted to win the race at hand. There was nothing tactical about this approach. Every race seemed mythic in its consequence.

My own role was aptly noted in the yearbook: “Stephen Calhoun ran well until he got smart and broke his ankle.” This past weekend every one of this senior five strong cross country group, aside from my late brother, was at the reunion: Getanah, Jay, Steve, and Elliot.
Jay Jamie Tim
Jay Morrison, Jamie Cohen, Tim Calhoun – taken in Spring of 1971, track season

For three straight years Mr. Carter awarded me a D in Spanish. This doomed my grade point average. The funny thing is that he gave me a D despite the fact that I never learned a lick of Spanish. I didn’t enjoy school very much, but I really liked to read. I did my homework and was gregarious in class. Yet, my terrible positioning at the end of my formal educational career not only was entirely my own fault, it also has made it impossible to rate my Hawken experience highly. This has zero to do with the school itself, and everything to do with my own deficits and failure at the time to look forward more than, say, a day or two.

This would be different than the many many classmates who smartly leveraged the opportunity in high school. My class is awesomely, in the main, and decades down the track, accomplished. However, other than the moments in which guys lauded the school, (and by implication I was reminded at those moments how the school amplified a purposeful approach,) most of the reunion was taken up by catching up and clueing in to the state of our stories, rather than to the state of our stature.

For this kind of goal I am, ironically, well prepared and purposeful.

This process (of reuniting) is much about grasping the different ways each of us has come to grips with our own adult life. I am tempted, in recognizing how this remains a striking feature of our coming together, to coin a term, reunitive. Somehow, we seem to do this ritual re-bonding easily and so I reckon we are, as a group, evidently reunitive.

jay

Jay Morrison, (picture provided by Getty Ambau.) Jay and Getty, were two fellow cross-country runners; although anytime we ran together–forty years ago–what I saw of them was their speeding off into the distance ahead of me.

Old men.

We aren’t that old –

Wise men.

Yet, we haven’t all survived –

Humble men.

Our middle late middle age wanes –

Truthful Men

S.Calhoun

Terminus

It is time to be old,
To take in sail:–
The gods of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: ‘No more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent;
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
There’s not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while
Still plan and smile,
And,–fault of novel germs,–
Mature the unfallen fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,
Who, when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath
The needful sinew stark as once,
The Baresark marrow to thy bones,
But left a legacy of ebbing veins,
Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,–
Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.’

As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
‘Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed.’

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Leave a Comment

Filed under friends

Class of ’72

Hawken School Class of 72

The iconic yearbook picture, Hawken Upper School, Class of seventy-two. Three quarters of the guys in this crowd scene actually were seniors. We took a bunch of silly photos on the same day. This one ends spiked by tragedy because a hyper-grinning Jamie Cohen is at the front on the left, and he passed away suddenly in 2008. And, second from the right, holding the manual, is my fraternal twin brother Tim, and he passed away in 1993. Jamie was my closest friend throughout high school and in my innermost circle for the ensuing thirty-six years.

I have gone to every five year reunion since 1977. I immensely enjoy the ritual reunion, but the twin draws for me are to see a few men I have sustained over the years great affection for, and, to otherwise do informal social-psychological research and ethnography about the development cycle of my classmates, and so do this also of a sample of males of certain background, milieu, etc..

This has evoked the following matrix, posed here as generalization and hypothesis.

Development Matrix

Leave a Comment

Filed under friends

Ready For Willard?

Luckovich - Look bad h/t Mike Luckovich

Willard ‘mittens’ Romney really really really really wants to be the next President. As his wife said, “It’s Mitt’s turn.”

It may seem to some that the existence of an uber-stiff character such as Willard Romney is more the stuff of literature rather than real life. It seems to be likewise the case with the entirety of Romney’s moment; his having arrived at this juncture to represent, literally the 1%. There are a bunch of heightened contradictions in the collision of Randian one-percenters, Tea Party patriots, and, the audible gasping of the legions of rural and evangelical middle-aged male white tribesmen. Yet, Romney seems to me to be an implausible unitary figure, except here he is mantle-in-hand, and, what do I know?

As I’ve mentioned before, for me and my vote, I will likely always pull the lever on a plutocrat from the left side.

Thumbs Up h/t Mike Luckovich

Friends have recoiled when I suggest that our next President, unfortunately, will be named Willard. (My own guess is that Eric Cantor will be the veep.) The reason for this estimate is not the mood of the country, the high unemployment rate, or, exhaustion with gridlock. It’s simply that the PAC’s aligned with Romney will spend and do whatever it takes to support the message that Barack Obama will completely destroy the country in a second term. The daffy Bro Koch plutocrats and their ilk will spend Obama’s forces into the ground.

Romeny’s campaign will pivot. This fear-oriented campaign will cost right wing donors upward of $2 billion dollars. In light of this sense of mine, that Romney will also say almost anything to win, that his mendacity is epic, and that the consequence of his election is surely to be a regional war in the mid-east, my interest in his complicated personality, fifties-style technocratic outlook, and, his ripe messianic Mormonism, wanes quite a bit. Yup, he strikes me as a very fascinating character when seen through the psychological lens–so what?

Bonus, enough Mormon doctrine to allow anybody with an interest in comparative religion to be able to recognize connective threads between statements of doctrine here with other mass varieties of traditionalist fundamentalism. Oh, you didn’t already know prayer cures sexual deviancy?

Of course, on the Mormon account, we’re all Mormons–whether or not we recognize the revealed wisdom of Smith and Angel Moroni.

The following address was given by Bishop Keith B. McMullin at the 20th annual Evergreen International Conference held in Salt Lake City, Saturday, September 18, 2010

Bishop Keith B. McMullin
Second Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric

There is no more highly charged topic on the public stage today than the one dealing with same-gender attraction. Advocacy groups, politicians, and voices from the fields of law, science and religion trumpet their respective views with great fervor. The media fans each spark of controversy into hotly contested debate. Amid this contest of opinions, several things become apparent.

First, far less is known about the causes of same-gender attraction than is claimed to be known. Preliminary findings are touted as proven facts while retractions or contradicting evidence about the same issue receive little, if any, attention. The result is an abundance of untruth and distortions worthy of Isaiah’s warning:

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! . . . [Who] justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him! . . . They have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel”(Isaiah 5:20–21, 23, 24; see also 2 Nephi 15:18–24).

Second, the personal well-being of those struggling with same-gender attraction often declines with each so-called public victory for same-sex attraction. Increased public acceptance of same-sex behavior inevitably leads to a diminution of personal, righteous behavior. When sophistry prevails, the strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life is obscured. Hence the Savior’s warning: “Enter ye in at the strait gate; . . .Beware of false prophets, [who] come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:13, 15; see also 3 Nephi 14:13, 15).

Third, in the chasm between man’s ways and God’s laws regarding same-gender issues, there stand earnest souls yearning for understanding and solutions to what for them is a moral conundrum. Initiatives to legitimize same-sex attraction deepen their moral conundrum. For example, the cultural adaptations to same-gender marriage will, in time, make the prospect of eternal marriage and family more difficult to attain. Wide acceptance of same-sex attraction will inevitably foster greater deviance from God’s laws. These moral disparities remind us again of the Lord’s words:

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9; see also verses 10–11).
Continue reading

Leave a Comment

Filed under current events

Glory Toon, Sassy Toon

Glory Toon Camera app

I have been mostly successful at resisting every photo FX (ie. effects) app for IOS that comes down the pike. No thanks, Instagram. (Preferring instead to compulsively acquire iPad music-making apps.) However, a review for ToonCamera caught my attention at the reliable clearinghouse AppAdvice.

In our house, we most often aim our cameras at cats.

Sassy Toon

Leave a Comment

Filed under cats

Empty Space

Geek meditation Session

Leave a Comment

Filed under humor

ARK: Portal

Portal

Portal; 2012.

This piece is not very attractive, on one hand; and, yet, for me, it has this sci-fi feel, that I am intrigued by, on the other hand. It’s programmatic. I’m wondering if this piece might be a good candidate for the giclee “scale-up.”

ARK of course is appropriated random kitsch. My visual experiments are archived here.

Leave a Comment

Filed under visual experiments, my art

Sonny

Cat-mouflage

Squint, and he disappears.

Cat-Pike -Position

Pike Position

Leave a Comment

Filed under cats

Free Play Perfection

LArry's Back

Larry's Back

Free Play Softball May 7, 2012

hat tip to Gwen and Laura

My definition of an ideal Sunday softball morning at Field #8, Forest Hills Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, USA, North America, Planet Earth, is when a minimum of sixteen people show up by our moving-target-of-a-start time.

Full field, baby! (This is partly selfish, I hit between right and left center, nowadays after decades as a severe pull hitter, so I really need to face three outfielders.) Our group has become very resourceful, so we can have a game with five-a-side, but, let’s face it, full field even with the batting team supplying the catcher is beautiful.

Yet, nine-a-side is perfecto! Add in flawless weather.


Pick-up softball every Sunday at 9:45am – see you there.

Leave a Comment

Filed under experiential learning

…didn’t want the women’s vote anyway

Well, the GOP didn’t want many women’s votes. This hurt the GOP in swing states several months ago. It will be interesting to see how the longstanding triumvirate of abstinence/anti-abortion/subservience to hubby, (obviously a mainly evangelical position,) is given new ideological life in the campaign.

war-on-women

Martha in the Middle

Leave a Comment

Filed under current events

Freeplay!

Safe at Home cartoon

April 8 Freeplayers

Ken had already split. I’m holding the camera. Opening day for some, but for me, spring training day, April 8. We’re resourceful, so we can play with whatever the gods of weekend sports grant us.

I’m about ready to drive the gear over to Forest Hills Field #8 for our first five star weather of the new season. The Freeplay Softball league is open to anybody over 13 who can put up with our veteran nonsense, declining skills, and, as you can see, partial nakedness. It’s a pick-up game. We have extra gear.

And, it remains a twenty-two year experiment in self-organizing play, started at it was by David and Alice Kolb.

9:45am every Sunday.

Leave a Comment

Filed under adult learning

“He’ll Do That Because He’s A Republican”

What of one of Stewart’s implications, not overtly given here, in this otherwise pointed critique of expected hypocrisy? Are Romney’s concrete beliefs best left completely off the table? If so, are such beliefsbest left off as a matter of respect for which salutary principle?

See: Pennies from heaven: How Mormon economics shape the G.O.P; Chris Lehmann; Harper’s Magazine; October 2011.

Consider the following:

(Interestingly, Mormonism may be the best example of a contemporary living religion–where its doctrines are subject to active revision through the workings of its internal political economy.)

Leave a Comment

Filed under humor

New additions to the art archive

Travail

Travail

New additions to the archive. . .of my visual experiments; aka my naive art.

Note–to scroll through the archive, the link is in the lower left, as in:

older entries

Leave a Comment

Filed under visual experiments, my art

Revisiting the 2×2 Matrix – Part 1.

Never Wrong Matrix

What I term a ‘four square,’ or matrix, derives in modern times from The Boston Consulting Group’s Growth-Share Matrix. I devise my own four squares and collect any others I encounter. At times the 2×2 Matrix in either its ‘cross’ or ‘four squares’ versions have done duty in my work to help depict human situations. For example, I have employed the following one and used it as the basis for a learner to reflect upon the challenge of having it both ways.

Dr Puck' s problem matrix

MDFI Matrix aka Dr. Puck’s Problem Solver

Such visual devices have come to be known as 2×2 Matrix. The essential book on the use of the 2×2 Matrix in business, The Power of the 2×2 Matrix, presents authors Alex Lowy and Phil Hood’s understanding of the tool’s value as an aid to decision making. The Power of the 2x2 Matrix They write:

2 × 2 Thinking is inherently and profoundly transcendent in nature. Two people face an identical problem differently: one sees an insurmountable problem, while the other perceives options and opportunities. Systems thinker Jamshid Gharajedaghi calls these two approaches either-or versus both-and. Confronted by tough choices, the either-or reaction is to feel trapped and obliged to pick one or the other. The both-and response draws us automatically to a new and different perspective, where it is possible to search for ways to reframe the problem or use conflicting factors in the solution.

2x2 Matrix

The Institute for Manufacturing at The University of Cambridge describes the matrix yet misses two central capabilities, the use of the 2×2 Matrix to plot values, and, the implicit relational dynamic given in the identification of what in this description is termed characteristics.

A two by two matrix is a useful tool for initial sorting of qualitative data.

The axes should be chosen so that, e.g., the data with the most desirable characteristics will fall into the upper left quadrant and the least desirable in the lower right quadrant. While groups may be unable or unwilling to assign absolute values to qualitative data, they usually find it relatively easy to come to a consensus as to which quadrant something belongs in.

Generally, the two by two matrix is a useful tool for categorising things that can be reduced to two simple variables, particularly when quantitative information is unavailable and qualitative judgements must be made.

It enables a rapid clustering (or separating) of information into four categories, which can be defined to suit the purpose of the exercise. It is particularly useful with groups as a way of visibly plotting out a common understanding or agreement of a subject.

2×2 Matrices I’ve found, from the growing collection:

Robotics Matrix

Inscrutible Robotics Matrix

Social Media and Business Qualification Matrix

Management Matrix

Unsatisfying to me, “Management Matrix”

I devised the following to depict the tension of oppositions betwixt four entangled philosophical themes.

Unity Matrix

The 2×2 Matrix is a very Batesonian device too. I haven’t beta tested a workshop during which learners build a view of their self (or what-have-you,) using the format, yet, it seems a good idea!

1 Comment

Filed under adult learning, Gregory Bateson