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The Jitterbug transformation can be reduced to the rotation of a triangle inscribed in a cube. If the rotation is constant around the vector described by the cubic diagonal, and the triangle's vertices are constrained to follow the x, y, and z planes defined by the cube, the triangle will move along the vector in an inverse-square relationship to its rotation. Consequently, the jitterbug seems to "bounce" between phases. Eight triangles, four rotating clockwise and four rotating counter-clockwise, comprise the jitterbug which collapses into a regular octahedron with each "bounce." The three phases of the jitterbug transformation are associated with three polyhedra. The first is the cuboctahedron, or truncated cube, which Richard Buckminster Fuller called "the vector equilibrium." All vectors, both the edge vectors and radial vectors, are the same length, and may thus be thought of as the vector representation of the closest-packing of equi-rad...

I used the programming language, Ruby, and SketchUp Make 2017 ® to create the following animations demonstrating the geometrical transformation known to its discoverer, Richard Buckminster Fuller, as the Jitterbug . The jitterbug transformation is typically modeled as hinged vectors and rotating triangles. But as the vectors are meant to model the joining of sphere centers, I've here replaced the vertices with spheres. The doubling up of edges at the octahedron phase of the jitterbug is here represented by merging and diverging spheres. Different views and rotations reveal some interesting characteristics of the transformation. If the view rotation is synchronized with the rotation of the top and bottom triangles, the transformation resembles a pump with spheres orbiting around its equator. A different angle and without rotation, the spheres merge and diverge at right angles. Finally, the conventional view of the jitterbug, with its synchronously rotating triangles replaced...

Jan 11, 2020 We discredit our intuition as only a subconscious sense that has direct access to metaphysical truth, and in doing so, we credit our technology to truth's divine incarnation. But Truth is the ego that denigrates the creative genius of our conceptual intuition. Truth validates and justifies anything we do, no matter how self-destructive and mercenary. Where intuition is the conduit between our God and our technology, life suffocates under the self-righteous weight of truth.

Jan 9, 2020 Art is all of us. It isn't a genius and their disciples, the artist and their agent. Art is not a spectacle we watch, it is the life we live.

Jan 8, 2020 If power must be, let it belong to others. The last thing we want is to rule the minds of others. Life would be oppressively dull if we were the gods of passive drones. Let them believe they own us, and let others believe they're owned. We're vulnerable only in our pride.

Jan 7, 2020 I would propose a future only if assured that I would not be taken seriously, only if all ideas were neither prophetic nor true. Whether inspired or objectively ascertained, truth is only our consensus. We each have our finite experience, our individual talents, and our own intuitions. Our inventions are useful to others or not, our insights are provocative or irrelevant depending on exigency and circumstance. I would propose a future only if this were a community without heroes, without privilege, power, and disaffection. If this were a democracy.

Jan 5, 2020 The pioneer women, those that packed their dowries into trunks and trekked to sod houses on quarter sections of townships they'd be responsible for turning into towns. In lieu of society, they had children. Civilization was preserved in Bible readings at the hearth, and the flat prairie accommodated the simple geometries of their world. All were straight lines and right angles, and the cross, rather than the crucifix, became the emblem of their faith. The men obliged and built churches and schoolhouses, donated their time and money to the infrastructure and institutions that subdued the wilderness and established God's dominion. Today we call it God's country because no wilderness remains. The section lines of the surveyors and cartographers who followed the armies have all been dutifully inscribed in the landscape, crosses and interstices, plats and parcels, crops of taxable grain, tithes and offerings.

Jan 4, 2020 The testament remains, cementing our identities and impeding progress. The masterpiece and its testimonials are reefs and broken ships, islands and continents of faith in a ceaseless sea. I leave these behind like drum beats, not to measure my progress but to acknowledge the moment. These are not signs, but holes in the signs of others, fractures in the faith that replaced experience. I am not the shipwreck but the hole that sunk her. You made me dangerous by gathering up my rhymes and chanting me into circles until you'd made an icon of my poems. We don't need heroes, but we need the holes they leave behind.