Three typos fixed for this web edition, embedded hyperlinks activated.
Historical note re "silly farce" -- just days later, the Great Soap Opera of 1998 got underway in Washington, DC.
Return to February 20, 1998 memo...

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 09:22:38 -0800
To: synergetics-l@teleport.com
From: Kirby Urner <pdx4d@teleport.com>
Subject: Re: Syn-l: production of A/B modules

>Why not fold mods out of paper? 
>
>I'll post some foldable patterns on my modeling web page within the next
>few days if anyone is interested. These have the advantage that they can be
>scaled into any size you'd like. They can even be mass-produced as die cut
>card stock and pre-folded. Also re-cyclable.
>
>Rick
>

<TECHNOINVECTIVE>

Paper is a fine idea of course.  I had cut-out A and B mod patterns in 
heavy line as a part of my handout for the teacher workshop at Oregon
State (Beyond Flatland).  That workshop proved that the subject is 
highly teachable.  I had a 5th grade teacher asking something about a
four frequency VE within the hour.  I don't fault front liners for not
getting the curriculum reinforcements they've long deserved.  It's the
officers further back, the curriculum gods supposedly paid to brainstorm
tomorrow's fare, which I think went to sleep, became oblivious numbskulls.

I realize I'm a hardliner and maybe sound a bit psycho to others 
because of this -- a price I'm willing to pay.  I say if you don't know
at least the baby math we're teaching, which has been available to the
public for over a quarter century, then you're a dick-brain (named for
dick-brain Dick Nixon) and fail the mininum requirements to hold public 
office.  We have a lot of cretins running the show in DC.  They haven't 
read their Fuller and are unqualified to practice law or anything else 
as a result.

That's just technoinvective I realize -- but this is how it's starting
to look to a younger set as yet preverbal in a lot of ways.  I don't think
this kind of mouth open amazement at the sheer idiocy of Fuller's 
contemporaries is going to be bleeped over -- we might as well get used 
to it.  And all those documentaries and end-of-century retrospectives 
which glance over or barely touch on, or ignore completely, this major 
historical figure... it will just leave the kids rolling their eyes, 
squirmy in their seats, to even be in the presence of such unevolved 
life forms as we present to our descendents at the end of the 1900s.  

"The Age of Oblivion" might be the movie or book.  The thesis will be 
that the misinformation campaigns of the Cold War caused real and severe 
brain damage, and although these people functioned as if intelligent, 
were actually casualties, alive only in the hospital sense, pretty much
brain dead otherwise.

Of course we really were quite intelligent, and made significant strides
in positive directions.  And the brain damage may have been necessary, 
as we were preprogrammed by previous centuries to use any weapons at 
our disposal, and were poised to nuke ourselves off the planet.  
Misinformation aimed at killing off our higher faculties (university
level especially) in certain key areas was the price we had to pay 
to keep fingers off the buttons.  

Fuller's insistence that he was just an average human were on target 
-- he seemed like a genius because he stayed awake and lived closer to 
the true potential of a human being.  Others lost much of their humanity, 
taking the misinformation to heart and dying like flies, mentally, as a 
result.  

Now we live in a giant loony bin, running around spouting a lot of 
intellectualese, sporting fancy degrees and looking spiffy, but it's a 
lot of strut and puff.  We don't even know baby math.  We're idiots.  
What a silly farce this has turned out to be.  Hah hah!

</TECHNOINVECTIVE>

Kirby