Monday, June 11, 2007

Back again

No, there haven't been any disasters. I've just been sidetracked for the past couple of weeks.
For one, I got in a debate with some feminists on a mailing list, which ate practically a whole weekend. and then I decided that my development guide wasn't working the way I wanted it to, and started it over. It's still not entirely caught up to where I had it, but it's close enough that I'm generating new links, as well as getting around to some topics that have been waiting forever for me to even touch.

History is not greatly changed. There is still a distinct emphasis on modern history with a secondary emphasis on classical and medieval history. Within modern history, there is a significant emphasis on the last two centuries, and in the last century, mostly on the last 30 years. I am giving a bit more attention to the future.
The emphasis on what I call sociology is being shifted. I've put a lot of emphasis on development of particular nations in the past few months, until I found that the nations I was most interested were too recently added and too far down the list for me to get to, and plan for developing them was too rigid and inflexible. So, now, I have fewer nations scheduled for development, but more emphasis on the major groups of people. Western civilization and Asiatic peoples, are the predominant groups. I also decided that my list of cities wasn't adding much, so this has been rather toned down. On the other hand, the investigation of social structure and change has developed well in the last few months, so It's getting a more prominent role.
I'm also giving more attention to the institutional areas; more religion and government that I had. I'd like to flatten this out a bit more, with attention to economics, education, and families, but that should begin to happen as more areas are better developed.
One of the developments I'm most pleased with is that some long-dormant areas are starting to be reactivated. Sports is a subject I've been avoiding, since I have no great personal interest in them. Quite some time ago a friend who is an engineer asked where I was going to put a section on that: Now I have a more specific answer. Math is another area I've been avoiding, for a different reason, in spite of the fact that I am very much interested in it, and that's showed up on my development list. Literature promises to show up soon, and various forms of physical objects should also start appearing.
Another area I've neglected for a while, simply because I didn't know much about it, is various parts of what I call anthropology, but that's about to be fully included.
Personal studies are also being brought in. I consider this to be one of the more interesting developments, because a lot of history, society, institutions, culture, and so forth is linked to biography. When I started working on this version of the Knowledge base, I build a lot of it on biographies, and then I shifted away from that approach, so I will be glad to get these worked back in.
Science is another area I am anxious to get included, because I have a lot of personal interest in it. However, I've found that there is a whole lot more to the world (at least, the human world) than science accounts for, and I've been scrambling to catch up in everything else. But that, too, is getting worked in.

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