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Opensewer Gathering
#7
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Jump to: Cleveland | New York City | Ithaca |
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The first Ithaca Opensewer was a success, with a solid base of ten people attending (with various others popping in and out over the course of the evening.) This was the highest number of people that we've had attend a first meeting in a new city, so the response was encouraging! The flavor of the discussion was definitely colored by the fact that we're now in a university town - the scientific method and formal logic tended to predominate the structure of the discussion. Overall, this is probably a good thing. Another interesting point is that this group wasn't quite as rowdy as our Cleveland faction, but the discussion did touch on a few points of some pretty intense heat. Here are some highlights from the meeting: 7:45 PM - "Manifest Destiny, guys." 8:00 PM - "Come on, guys… Society has always been all about making money." 8:05 PM - "Society has definitely not always been about making money." This statement was followed by a very interesting story about a man who was the best drum-maker in an African village, the premium he charged for his drums above other drum makers, and why he still didn't make any money at it. I won't recount the whole story here, but email this person and she'll tell you all about it. 8:30 PM - "I'm tellin' ya, Manifest Destiny." 9:00 PM - "America provides a role model for the world." This statement provoked guttural noises and visible twitching and seizures from several members of the group. "Wait, wait! I didn't necessarily say that it was a positive role model." Everyone calmed down. 9:30 PM - "Every action taken by every person is good for society." Again, seizures, twitching and utter horror were visible reactions by members of the group. The person that uttered this statement was pounded by everyone, until he eventually defended his stance quite well and there was a collective thought of, "Oh, well he does have somewhat of a good point I guess." The point is, it's about equilibrium. Good and bad both exist in the world and they often strike a balance. 9:45 PM - "Why is it that the unintelligent people of the world are the ones making all the money?" 10:00 PM - "Hey! Manifest Destiny!" 10:30 PM - "Guys, I have something to say: ubiquity is ubiquitous. I mean, isn't it true?" Hmmm. 11:30 PM - "A:B|C:A+B." A is to B as C is to A plus B. A brief discussion of whether or not there are any underlying universal principles of value led us down the fateful road of talking about chaos theory, pi, the natural constant "e", and the golden ratio. "Does humankind impose its descriptive systems on nature, or are humankind's descriptive systems (language, mathematics) the results of discovering nature?" 12:00 AM - Around the time that chaos theory had come up, the group was splitting into factions and the discussions were turning a bit more social in nature. Shortly thereafter, the group disbanded for the night. What a riot. 12:17 AM - Jason goes into Wendy's (right next to Stella's) to get a hamburger and gets made fun of by the entire Opensewer group. "You're eating at Wendy's right after we spend 5 hours talking about misplaced values and homogenization of products? Way to be consistent, Jason." But Jason was hungry, and you shouldn't pick on him. Opensewer 7 Ithaca: Ten people, five and a half hours, thirty or so drinks, three articles, 63 opinions. A good kickoff. Thanks to Stella's in Collegetown for hosting us! At Stella's
Jump to: Cleveland | New York City | Ithaca
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