One of the themes / questions was "how do we sustain / build on the
energy we DO have?" and I figure one way is to simply stay in touch
and inform each other of possible opportunities -- software, events,
collaboration, internships for students, etc.  Novel, right? ;-) Just
call me Captain Obvious.


Good to hear from you Kevin.  Did we get to talk at Pycon?  I met up with Jeff Elkner at long last. Naomi and I waved at each other a couple times.

Today I'm helping an old college roommate, now a tenured physics professor, get VPython up and running in a Linux context (without wine, the Windows emulator).

A perennially useful theme on edu-sig, especially these days when subscribers like Wes bring big knowledge to the scene, is taking stock, taking inventory, regarding what our assets are w/r to very specific niche areas.

For example:  what does Python have to offer in the 3D graphics department, where the latter breaks down into "rendered" (still) and "real time" (interactive)? I think we can start out by agreeing there's nothing in the Standard Library for this.

My focus since the 1980s has been spatial geometry, as in polyhedrons, as in tetrahedron, cube, and so on. 

That's what brought me to Python in the first place, ditto the late Arthur Siegel of Pygeo fame (see early edu-sig archives).

Now it so happens that many elementary mathematics curricula do not do much with spatial geometry. 

When first introduced formally, geometry often tends to be planar. 

Calculators, even graphing ones, are poor at 3D, which might be one reason for sticking to XY plots.

Polyhedrons, if present, often appear towards the back of the textbook and their treatment extends to a few surface area and volume formulas.  No "dual" as a concept, no V + F == E + 2, no Descartes' Deficit, no space-filling.

My pilot math curriculum (Oregon Curriculum Network website) in contrast has always featured polyhedrons right from the top. 

We can call them "shapes" of the word "polyhedron" seems too difficult. 

By the time we get to learning to code, we're able to handle these longer words. :-D

Anyway, that's an invitation to start a thread.

Kirby