Independent Learning

Closing

2009-10-22T17:25:00.002-05:00

This blog is permanently going inactive. I'm continuing and merging with my other blog, "Confutus says", in a new "From the ground" which is tied to my web site.

More nations

2009-05-19T06:05:00.002-05:00

At the moment, the most attractive of the various possibilities for study is pushing the connections with nations and peoples so that all the nations on the site are linked. History in general, modern history, and now classical and medieval history have reached this point, and there are a few more that are close. I'm doing these a few nations at a time, spread out among seven or eight different topics. There's a continoual temptation to expand the list of topics I want to get to, far beyond what I can reasonably accomplish in a day.

Rattle, Rattle

2009-05-16T20:35:00.002-05:00

That was the feeling I got, speeding through history to add a few more nations to the major periods, and going through the centuries of modern history. I used to go through these adding one nation at a time, which was a snail's pace. Now I'm up to tortoise speed. There aren't many new insights, but this finally included some connections to what will be the early colonial period of Latin America.

The next most significant improvement was a revision of the paragraph introducing the modern history of Western Civilization, and getting that page properly linked back to the ones that refer to it. Filling proper detail for the subdivisions of Western Civilization and the specific centuries, to go to another level of detail, is only partly done.

Another one was sorting out the connections of English speaking peoples to Africa. Instead of a flat dozen nations, I have these connections sorted out by region. I still haven't reached more specific connections, but I'm getting closer.

Peoples

2009-05-15T22:58:00.002-05:00

Instead of going all the way through the nations, a project that takes a considerable length of time, I decided to just go and hit the high points of the major peoples. What I noticed this time through is that I'm doing a lot of interconnecting; adding new nations, sorting them into subgroups, and providing links to the subgroups if they aren't already there. This is often a supremely boring task to do over and over, so I try to break it up into pieces.
Yet, most sections of the knowledge base that I work on are hung up in just about this same area. It's hardly a wonder that I have a hard time getting to the nitty gritty of social analysis, or to the broad themes of religion, government, and economics, not to mention culture. I got through a round of these and I'm taking another look at history next.

And more history

2009-05-15T02:20:00.002-05:00

I decided to do a slight variant on my "what's needed most" technique, and started again with a pass through history. This time, it led me to classical and medieval history, where I'm within a few sessions of getting the nations linked to as far as there are pages. I then went to modern history, and and that's now a firm limit. So, I went into the 18th century and linked a few nations. These seemed to open up the possibilities for further examination considerably, and the 19th century did the same. The 19th century is the period when the British Empire was the predominant world power, and the most important nations it ruled are now present and accounted for. The 20th century is getting close to the limits on nations and cities I have included, and the early 21st century is not far behind. Since the 21st century page had reached a critical limit on size, I separated most its sociology section out on a separate page as I have done for others. I've been absent from work on modern history for some time, and it felt good to get back to it.

I then went to look at sociology. Sociology in general and peoples in general didn't have much I could do with them, and I didn't add any nations this pass: I want more more backed up demand for them before I add the next batch. Western Civilization was more interesting. The only major branches I am missing now are Scandinavian peoples in prehistory and antiquity, and Scandinavian and Balkan peoples in the future. The subdivisions will be a different matter, but I will get to them eventually.

I did a little review of the history of Western Civilization, and stopped when I got to modern history; I'll save that for the next pass through. I worked somewhat on connecting nations to Western Civilization, and got through Asia and Africa. That is some important groundwork for the modern period, when I get to considering which nations established which colonies in which parts of Africa. I've never been able to keep those quite straight in my mind, except for a few.

Next was a section on Anglic, or English-speaking peoples. I did quite a bit of pigeonholing of nations into groups in that subject, too, except on this I only got to Africa and not through it. These are presented in approximately the order of relationship they bear. I finally got most of the communities on this group pushed into the United States where they are most closely connected.

I did a similar review for the United Kingdom, which doesn't have quite so many nations linked to it yet. I didn't do much with the United States on this pass, but I will be doing more in the next one. Canada and Australia are set aside. Latin peoples are up next.

Update Time

2009-05-14T02:26:00.002-05:00

After struggling with planning of what work needs to be done most and taking a couple of passes through historical periods to clean them up a little, I would up rewriting the main index page of the knowledge base, and separating out the sociology aids from prehistory and antiquity, and did an update of the whole thing last night, so all the changes I've made in the past month or so are now visible.

As soon as I did that, I promptly went back to work on the knowledge base itself, and specifically on prehistory and antiquity. I know have these to the point where and end is in sight, that is, these are almost connected to the full range of nations and peoples. There is still some work to do: For instance, the 124 nations need to have a few more that are historically significant, and in sight doesn't mean there yet. However, this will be helpful. The next major work will be reviewing history of all these nations: Very few of them have actually been inverted as the rest of the knowledge base has, to go from complex to simpler aids. In addition to reviewing their history, I also want to establish links to topics of social structure and change, and these need to have historical sketches and examples from particular peoples. There will also need to be links to the grand systems of the world; religions, government, and economics.

I expect to be able to carry on informed discussion of these topics. Grand themes are nice, but they seem to be hardly a topic for social chat.

Sweeping through history

2009-05-08T22:09:00.002-05:00

AGain. The look through social structure and change, and through institutions, culture, and so forth didn't take very much time at all, considering how little progress I had actually made in history. So, I started over with history in general.
After going through the nations and cities I had connected to history, I am now current. That is, all of the nations and cities that actually have pages, are now at least mentioned on the main history page, and distributed to various peoples as far as I have considered appropriate. Most of the lower-level aids to history are also developed. Rather than going through these any further, what is demanded now is to go through the divisions of history to bring them up to date.

I went through prehistory, updating connections to nations, and appropriately distributed to nations, including updates of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa, and stopped with the Americas. I did similarly with Early prehistory, middle prehistory, and late prehistory, and with Antiquity.

There, I stopped. Dead stuck. I couldn't bring myself to slog through the millennia, doing a little bit of updating. I could, however, go on to classical and medieval history, modern history, and the future, adding and distributing connections to more nations and cities. So, what went wrong, and now what?

Partly, I think, I have a sense that other things need to be done, and many of these have to be connected with nations and peoples. For one, not all of the nations are present in the five major subdivisions of history, and none of them are quite caught up. For one, the nations aren't fully distributed to their various peoples: for instance, on the list of nations, there are several that belong with Western Civilization, that aren't there yet, and so with each of the other three groups.
Another is that these major peoples aren't fully connected with each other. Another is that Social structure and change doesn't have sufficient examples of nations to work with, and neither do Institutions or Culture. Another is that things like the agricultural revolution, hunting and gathering peoples, and the like are itching for me to work on them more. Another is that it feels like about time to do another update of the site, and I need to do a review of the largest files and see whether any of them need to have new pages split off in order make them more manageable.
So with all these other things competing for attention, I'm going to set the 5th millennium BC aside for now, work on a few other things, and come back to it when it begins to seem necessary and important.

Slogging around the world

2009-05-05T18:15:00.002-05:00

Sometimes it feels like it. Going through the various countries is often much more tedious than I expect when I do an overview. Nevertheless, it has to be done. I went through Western Civilization (which as the reader may recall is still mostly Europe since I'm dealing with ancient history and prehistory), and got links to web sites for the largest nations. The Middle East required inverting a couple of countries, but I keep imigining I've done more than I actually have for most of the rest of Asia.

I did finally get to African peoples, and tackled dividing up those nations. Here, I'm dealing with modern colonial-based nations, since I have only the haziest notions of native African peoples. This wasn't so hard to set up as I thought it would be. There is a UN-recognized Geographic region of West Africa which corresponds nicely to the way I had things broken down, except that the Mahgreb region I consider part of North Africa, which I am treating as culturally part of the Middle East. I moved Cameroon to Central Africa, since it seems to fit slightly better there. That left me with three regions: Southern Coastal West Aforca, with nations on the south side of the "bulge" of Africa, the Western West Coast, witn nations mostly on the western coast of the bulge, and Interior Western Africa, mostly those land=locked nations in the interior. A had thought about dividing these up by the countries that colonized them, but this kind of division would be broken up geographically and heavily biased toward nations of French colonial origin, and give even less attention to native African peoples than one based on geographic regions. This is a rough first draft, anyway. With all nations, closer tattention will have to be given to particular peoples within them.

I also added four more cities to the city list, and got to the end of the list, so I went to the City population site to notes note which ones will be coming next.
The next part shoud go a little more quickly.

More history

2009-04-30T17:19:00.003-05:00

I took a sweep through antiquity, and got the existing connections to European nations established and regularized. I also had most of Asia organized, and what's left involves the breaking down of Southeast Asia the way I have already mentioned. The next pass through will involve arranging peoples of Africa. I got just as far in Classical and Medieval history, except that have a connection to Balkan peoples. Still no Greece, which is going to be a pain when I get into the details. I also did the same kind of cleanup on early classical and late classical periods that I did with the four and a half millennia of antiquity.

I also started a review of Sociology. There wasn't much to it, except that I am going to be looking more at institutions and culture. For peoples of the world, I attempted a historical review, and so far, I have mostly four out of six divisions of Western Civilization, and Asia except for Southeast Asia, which I already new. I got the connections to cities as far as they have been included, which provides an incentive to start doing more of them.

I added four new nations, the Central African Republic; Moldova, Costa Rica, and New Zealand. I had to look up were Moldova is; it's wedged in between Ukraine and Romania, north of the Black Sea, and used to be part of the USSR. These are also not very high on the list of important nations I have to include, at least, not yet. I needed to finish out the list of links of Middle Eastern groups in order to categorize these, and went ahead and added links to Southeast Asian groups.

I also started a review of Western Civilization, which is well enough done already, and for all my sweeping, doesn't have enough new information to prompt any rewrites of the history I already have. I did get the list of nations that need to be linked almost up to the current list, and should have that on the next pass through. I also reviewed the connections to peoples, and got Asia linked up, with the new southeast Asian groups also.On the next pass, I'll do a review of Africa. I also got the list of cities of Western Civilization up to where it is current: The next pass, I intend to must most of these down into the subdivisions of Western Civilization. I didn't start these particular subdivision yet, that's the next part.

Peoples and another sweep

2009-04-29T16:59:00.002-05:00

I tried adding more information on Italian prehistory. I've been using Wikipedia for a lot of high level, basic information, and what it has on this period is very sparse, so the next time through, I'll have to do a broader web search. I found the support for French peoples and France in the subdivisions, and for Germanic peoples and Germany, and Northeastern Europe weaker than I had thought, and so will save them for another pass. Asiatic peoples were rather on the edge of what I was considering in the historical periods, so I didn't add much, except that I did add pages for the subdivisions of Southeast Asia. I have four of them; Mainland Southeast Asia, Island or Archipelago Southeast Asia, Australia, and Polynesia. Most of these nations are just stubs, but with the increasing developments in history and parts of it, many of them will be examined more closely on the next pass through.

I added four cities to the list. This reaches the end of cities I had gained from one of my references sites, so I will need to add some more the next time I reach this. I also did a little review of social structure and change, and didn't add much, but I will have some links ready the next time I reach this subject.

In examination of Institutions, I decided to adjust the order or priorities to go from oldest (as far as I know) to youngest, so European Pagan religions will be considered. Although I would like to consider governments from largest to smallest, the largest governments are connected to modern times, and I am looking for earlier foundations. I am not certain yet how to handle economics; but I think I'm going to stick with the largest to smallest, and broaden out a little faster than I would with other areas. Corporations are useless for studying prehistory, but the industries and economic sectors I am deriving from them are important. Families will have to be set aside for much of the early parts of history, because I just don't have enough information about them.

Culture also presents something of a problem. Since I am concentrated on early history, I will have to emphasize material culture more than I would other areas, since that is the only thing available for archaeologists to study. Anthropology, personal studies, and science are important and will be brought in, but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew just yet.

With this sweep done, there is little to do except begin another. With history in general, since the four nations I added weren't on the critical list, I set them aside for another sweep. I did tackled a re-examination of African peoples. East Africa has been growing and is almost ripe for subdivision. West Africa does need one, so I will be doing that when I get to those peoples. Most of the other aids to history have been developed far enough that I didn't need to do much rearranging; they will come up at appropriate times.

In Prehistory, I had left Latin peoples somewhat incomplete, with the connections of Italic peoples and Italy, and French peoples and France implied rather than explicit. I got those connected, I did the necessary rearranging of Middle Eastern nations. Other parts of Asia don't need much rearranging, but the divisions of Southeast Asia do need to be extended here, and African peoples also need some rearrangement. I took some notes on the extension of various other aids to prehistory which need to be worked on.

In Early prehistory, Western Civilization is in order as far as it is developed. The Middle East and the rest of Asia except for Southeast Asia are also in order, and African peoples need to be properly arranged. In Middle and Late Prehistory, Western civilization is now on order, and the Middle East is up for consideration.

I also did some expansion of Antiquity. Western Civilization is already in order as far as developed, and the rearrangement of the Middle East indicates that I can finally begin examination of the Sumerian and Babylonian peoples of Antiquity. I have mentioned how there are Greece and Portugal shaped holes in Western Civilization, but there has also been a Mesopotamia shaped hole in Antiquity which I can now start to fill. Asia up to Southeast Asia is also connected. I will also be taking a few cautions steps toward considering other aids. I stopped at the top of this section for now, and intend to resume with the particular millennia of antiquity.

Early history and Western Civilization

2009-04-28T17:08:00.003-05:00

I'm starting once again at the top, which for history, means consideration of nations of the world. There wasn't much to add to Asiatic peoples, this mostly just opened up the possibilities for lower level subdivisions of history, but I reached the magic number of ten nations to prompt a subdivision of Southeast Asian and Oceanic peoples. This will be tackled later, but it offers the promise of being able to consider these in more and more significant detail. I'm also itching to include things such as the agricultural revolution, European pagan religion, and local government along with the history, but I feel as If I should move cautiously.

In Prehistory, however, Asiatic peoples opens up a requirement to re-arrange Middle Eastern peoples in preparation to go into more detail on them. I many have mentioned that inserting Italic peoples instead of Italy, French peoples instead of France directly, and Hispanic peoples instead of Spain directly is a bit of a nuisance at this early period, but these will be required when i start getting into their overseas extensions in modern times. And there are still gaping holes where Portugal and Greece ought to be, but I'm slowly getting there.
Antiquity is pretty much developing similarly, so I don't have much more comment, except that I picked up that pesky half millennium this time through.
I also picked up Classical history, which still at this point has the gaping holes, and also requires a review of Middle Eastern peoples. I did mention a batch of cities, because enough of them existed during this period for them to make a meaningful contribution to the study of peoples in classical and medieval times.

I also began a sweep through sociology. The application of history is rather weak at this point, because so far, only peoples are very well developed. There isn't much new to say about the history of peoples at this point. In Nations, I decided to go ahead and add four more to the list: United Arab Emirates, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Singapore, and Croatia, none of which are on my list of must-haves, but I might as well get them out of the way. I also started a sweep through Western Civilization. The history is pretty much under control, and developing sociology requires that I look at nations and peoples that are connected to it. I overdid it a bit, and Now need to slow down and collect some of these nations into regions. Anglic peoples have a reasonably solid backbone of history, and so does the UK, and from Classical and medieval times on, London gets connected as well. I began a sweep through history of Latin peoples, and except for the missing Portugal, that's in reasonably good order. I went through Italian peoples as well, but now I need to stop and look more closely at the prehistory of Italy, which as I recall, was rather sparse the last time I looked at it. That's where I'll pick up again.

Shifting again

2009-04-27T19:45:00.003-05:00

After about a week when I doing more surfing of the web, and visiting sites repeatedly to see if there was anything new, I decided that the follow-the links approach was really going too slow, and it was boring and not very exciting. One of the things I do in such times is to take a few notes on what it is that I want to do.
I'm a great fan of the grand, sweeping overview, the thrilling possibilities of new connections just barely seen. I live for the moments when I can see how everything connects, fits together, and make sense.
And then comes the mundane reality when I try to put this vision into words and links, and then is where the gaps, and the missing pieces, and I haven't got to that part yet, and so forth starts to intrude. So I go back into the trenches to fill in the gaps and make the links work.

So, where I am right now. It ought to be well established that history requires that I work with the various peoples of the world, and so far, that means nations. So, one part of what I'm doing needs to extend the nations. Have I ever mentioned that I dislike alphabetical order? Sometimes it is the best way of looking things up, but other times, it isn't. I do have over 100 different nations on the list, but some of the smaller-but-important ones, like Greece or Israel or Ireland, tend to get pushed way down that list, and I haven't got there yet. And I don't like to just go adding nations. Most of my areas have huge backlog of nations I don't have connected yet. So, before I go adding new ones, I need to finish categorizing the ones I have.

But, when I've just distributed a dozen or so of them to the four major groups of peoples, I create a bit of "I'll get to it later". I went through the sociology-applied to history page and got Western Civilization straightened out. Goody. But now it's later for Asiatic peoples, and once I've done it to history, I need to go out to each of its subdivisions, create links to nations and parcel them out among peoples. So the grand sweeping world vision has a couple of chairs in the path of the broom.

I tend to go back and forth on History, whether I want to start from the beginning and go forward, or start from the present and work back. Sometimes I do one, sometimes the other, and sometimes I do both at the same time. How's that for being mixed up? This time, I've decided to go for the beginning to forward, and see how that goes for a while. Fine, but because I've been working on the later parts of history, the first section, Prehistory, doesn't have a complete list of nations and they aren't distributed to the proper peoples.

Western Civilization in Prehistory doesn't have a full set of links, because Greece and Sweden are so far down the list in terms of their modern population that they haven't prompted a creation of Balkan peoples or Scandinavian peoples, and you can't do Western Civilization properly at any time before about 1400 without mentioning Greece. Fine. I'll add to nations. In the meantime, I need to straighten out what I do have for Prehistory. But...wait, I can't just pile on nations for Prehistory, because that a bigger pile up of Asiatic nations waiting to be distributed than there was for History in general. Which is fine, because Asia was more important than Europe was in Prehistoric times anyway. But I still have to stop and do the sorting, which goes along with my having to do it.

But this is really just too broad to be really meaningful. I need to break down prehistory itself and work on its subdivisions, which starts the whole thing over in with early Prehistory. Oh, I can't forget about the connections with modern history, because a great deal of what we know about prehistory came from studies that were done in the 19th century and 20th century, so I can't intelligently talk about who said what (such as where do these technical terms like upper paleolithic come from and what do they mean), without more than the bare-bones outline of the 19th century I have now..but I haven't got that far in my study of history yet. In the mean time, I'm going through Western Civilization (which is dreadfully incomplete as it is, because I have fewer nations to work with) and I find that that part isn't sorted out the way it is for the broader categories...As in, I still have to create links to particular nations like Spain, and I can't say much about it anyway because I've never looked in any depth at Spanish prehistory, except for maybe something about cave paintings which date to middle Prehistory anyway, and that needs to be approached from Spain anyway, which is primarily classified in a whole different section from history, so I need to straighten that all up. Except when I go to add Spain, (and shouldn't I include Portugal along with Spain, Italy, and France? Wait, that's way down on the list of nations too), It should properly go in a Hispanic nations category...never mind that Spain is a modern nation and didn't exist as such until after the collapse of the Roman empire, but the classifications of the Hispanic nations weren't needed until after the Spanish Conquest following Columbus. so Hispanic and Spain are, for this period, practically the same, so there's some duplication...
And now I get to go through similar stuff for Middle Prehistory, and Antiquity (yep, all four and a half Millennia of it), and I haven't even started in Classical and medieval times, where things get interesting, or modern times, where they get even more complications.
And besides that, Early prehistory covers a huge time span, and I'm not doing it any justice by not subdividing it. except that's so far down the list of things that eventually need to be subdivided that I'm not even going to think about it this year.

I consider that I'm doing well to finally have a review of Anglic peoples, and British Isles that mentioned each of the four major historical periods and their second order subdivisions.

And this is just one day's sample. So why do I go through all the hassle of trying to set up and sort out tangles like this? Well, It's like I said, I have this grand, sweeping vision that, when I stop to review it, gets me out of bed in the morning...

And more progress

2009-04-20T11:32:00.002-05:00

In the past week, I've been reviewing links from history in general to government and economics. There hasn't been much progress in prehistory or antiquity, but classical and medieval history has prompted a few more development within Western Civilization. For Modern history, I have finished up a round of looking at institutions, and gone well into areas of culture. The 18th century reached the end of a short cycle and began a longer one. The 19th century has also begun a new cycle, and the 20th century still a longer one. These will soon be prompting more developments in nations and peoples of the world.

Sociology has been in some demand, which has prompted the examination of links in economics, education, families, and behavioral culture. Peoples of the world have been somewhat less demanded, but have gone through social structure and change and into religion. Particular nations have been making connections to groups of Latin American peoples. Western Civilization has been going through reviews of history, and most of the groups within it have been touched. Asiatic peoples also have had a brief review of modern history, and several groups within it have been lightly considered. Communities have moved into consideration of institutions, and several areas within social structure and change have been lightly considered.

Institutions in general have been in considerable demand, and prompted a pass through history. Religion in has focused on Western civilization and Asiatic peoples, and most of the subtopics have been touched. Government has been considering connections to religion, and most of its subdivisions have been touched. Economics has begun to expand references to particular corporations, education has begun to include references to particular schools, and families have been lightly touched.

Culture has been lightly considered, compared to the other major topics, and the references have been to Western and Asiatic peoples. Most of the topics with it have been lightly considered. There has been little demand for Anthropology, or personal studies. Science reached the end of a cycle and began a new one.

More progress

2009-04-13T10:07:00.002-05:00

I meant to do something closer to a daily update of my prograss, but that hasn't been working.
History has been moving fairly rapidly; I reviewed connections to social structure and change, religion, and am at present looking through government. Prehistory, antiquity, classical and medieval history including the late medieval period, modern history including the 20th century, and the future have each had a little work done in them, but a great deal.

Sociology has prompted prog progress in government and parts of economics, but hasn't been going as fast as it was earlier. More progress has come in specific peoples, where I have been working through history and into connections with social structure and change. I have also finished a cucle of development of Western Civilization and begun another. Anglic and Latin peoples and Asiatic peoples have had some development. There has been a little progress with communities, and Social structure and change also finished a cycle, and I started another.

Istitutions in general have been referred to often enough to finish a major cycle of development and begin another. Religion has had a little development, and I inverted several pages and added them to the development program; Orthodoxy, Buddhism, and Taoism. Government has had a little development, and Diplomacy, heads of state, and executive systems have been brought into the program. Economic networks and Wal-Mart have also been included.

There was comparatively little development in Anthropology or in personal studies, except for bringing in social structure and change. Physical geography, Solar System astronomy, Chemistry, and physics have been inverted and added to the program, which means that all the second-order subdivisions have development in place.

Over a dozen areas are hanging on the edge of finishing a cycle so a new one can begin.

More progress

2009-04-07T20:11:00.002-05:00

The history section started moving again. Calls to areas of social changes produced two mew pages, on cultural innovation and institutional change in society. I also reviewed three of the major types of society. Prehistory has been calling on areas of anthropology, and is getting close to the start of another cycle. Classical and medieval history is just beginning another cycle with connections to other history. In modern history, I have been reviewing connections to government, and I'm now beginning to review connections to economics. The 16th, 17th, and 18th century have been touched. For the 19th century, I have been reviewing connections to anthropology. This is a approaching a review, also. The 20th century is progressing through culture at an introductory level. the late-mid 20th century, late 20th century, and early 21st century have only been touched.

Sociology in general has continued moving through particular governments. Peoples have been in even greater demand, and I have gone almost entirely through modern history, which accounts for much of the development of that subject. For nations, beginning a new cycle meant that I incorporated a number of nations in the alphabetical order, and copied my list of nations in order of population into the document I use for the development plan, for future reference. I've been adhering to that list a little too strictly, and I want to focus more on peoples. Western Civilization and the United Kingdom were only touched, and communities likewise. Several areas within social structure and change were lightly touched also.

Institutions in general have been connected to material culture and the beginnings of anthropology, and will be up for a review before too much longer. I have somewhat rethought the priorities on investigation of material culture, but those will be adjusted in the next round of development. Religion was only barely touched. There has been somewhat more focus on particular governments. Colonial empires came to the end of a cycle, which has been restarted, and World Government has also begun a new cycle. The UN has been brought into the development program. A couple of areas of economics, and families have been touched.

Culture in general was only lightly touched. Behavioral culture was connected to areas of anthropology, and should be up for a review before long. A couple of areas of conceptual culture, and several areas of material culture were touched lightly.

Anthropology finished a review of how institutions apply, and began one of culture. Particular groups are also approaching a review, and Human geography was referred to often enough to go through its links with history and start sociology. Human ecology was only touched.

Personal studies were also only touched, and there were no references to science at all, in today's development. With the number of areas approaching a new-cycle review, both of these should be getting more attention soon.

Latest progress

2009-04-06T18:43:00.003-05:00

History in general is not demanded nearly so much as it was a couple of weeks ago: the principal focus has shifted, as it properly should, to particular periods of history. Processes of change haven't been developed enough to be very useful to history this time around. There has been minor advance in middle prehistory For antiquity, there are rather few communities that date to this period. Analysis using social structure and change is rather superficial at this point. The 3rd, 2nd, and early first millennia have each had connections to various peoples to review. Classical and medieval history reached the end of a cycle, and I have a new program outlined for it. The late medieval period also reached the end of a cycle, and I have started a new cycle of examining its aids. Modern history and its subdivisions haven't been heavily demanded.

There is a continuing push for examination of sociology, I have progressed from examining religion, and begun examining government. There has also been a demand for peoples of the world, which has been pushing history, so I may be doing more with modern history in the next day or few. For nations, I reached the end of a cycle, but haven't yet begun a new one. There has been only a little work in Western Civilization, and none in any other peoples since the last post. Communities reached the end of a cycle and I have begun a new one, with some exploration of history. Social structure and change has been barely touched. Social change processes are early in a development cycle. Antiquity is a very broad area to attempt to apply to this.

There has also been progress in examining the institutions: I finished a pass through how conceptual culture applies to them. Religion is in a historical review, but there is not a lot of detail to add. Religious organization, practice, and belief have been touched, mostly by request from sociology. Government has also been rather lightly touched, and so have economics and education.

Within culture, I am reviewing connections to Western Civilization, and there has been some limited progress in behavioral, conceptual, and material culture, which has been reviewed as projected in the last post. Anthropology, personal studies, and science have all been touched, but there hasn't been substantial work in them.

More notes

2009-04-02T17:49:00.002-05:00

As well as surrendering voluntary control, I've also given up on complete predictability.
I've been going though Asiatic peoples in support of history in general. I've finished this cycle's consideration of history in support of sociology, and I am now looking at the institutions. I finished a cycle of aids for peoples of the world and begun a new one, so this will give my more support of history. Institutions in general are now being considered by using culture. Particular governments have finished a cycle of development and I have begun another. Culture in general is finished with the historical review for this cycle, and I am looking at sociology. Anthropology is working through institutions. The personal studies section has finished a review of aids, and I have begun another cycle, starting as usual with history.

Abrahamic religion, secularism, schools, material culture, and biography are on the edge of requiring new reviews using other aids. Others are fairly close, but not quite as close as these. However, a surge of demand may move one of them into being considered first.

Voluntary control

2009-04-01T10:50:00.002-05:00

I realized when I woke up this morning that, with the demand-driven development program, I have more or less surrendered direct voluntary control of where the knowledge base is going. Instead, the selection of which topics to develop next, and how fast, is being driven by the internal logic and collective needs of the various subjects. I have some control over that internal logic when I complete a cycle of development for the aids to a given subject, and outline a new cycle selecting which topics to develop or add the next time around. So far, I'm still doing a lot of inverting the order of topics being considered, with only a sprinkling of new links or pages.

History in general has not been moving as fast as it was: except with nations that are being newly reconsidered at this point in the cycle, there hasn't been much demand for it. However, classical and medieval history and modern history have been demanded more heavily. Prehistory is about in the middle of a cycle, Antiquity near the beginning of one, classical and medieval history near the end of one, and modern history near the beginning of one, with development in the near future to be focused on the Institutions. The 20th century and studies of the future are about in the middle of their development cycles.

Sociology in general is using history, now up to modern history, as its principal aid, and is still fairly heavily demanded. Peoples of the world are not quite as much demanded, but are approaching the end of a cycle. Although I haven't been demanding nations very heavily, I am somewhat surprised to see how slowly they are actually going. Western Civilization is about in the middle of a development cycle, and Asiatic peoples at the beginning of one, with African and American Indian peoples in the early parts of short, slow moving cycles. Communities are approaching the end of one development cycle, and the beginning of a new one, and social structure and change a little bit ahead of them.

Institutions have been moderately demanded, and are now finishing with a review of social structure and change, and are about to go through a review of how culture applies. I have just begin a new cycle for Religion, government is in the early stages of one, at history, and Economics has just begun once. Education and family are in the middle of shorter, slower moving cycles.

Culture is at the beginning of large cycle of development, at present focused on history. The major areas of behavioral culture and conceptual culture are in the middle of development cycles. Material culture is at the end of one, about to start a new one.

Anthropology in general is in the middle of a comparatively short and slow moving cycle. Particular groups haven't been heavily demanded, but human geography has been in fairly strong demand. Personal studies have been moving very slowly, but I am almost at the end of a development cycle, about to begin a new one. Biography is also close to a new development cycle. Science hasn't been called for much and is moving slowly, about in the middle of a new cycle.

For a few noteworthy developments, I have put a couple of specific biographies in the cycle for development of religion, although it may be a while before I get to them. For some time, I have been rather irritated that my development plans couldn't get to the connections between economics and material culture, but these are now (or soon will be) better established. I continue.

Latest progress

2009-03-26T20:01:00.002-05:00

The need-driven approach is starting to produce more results than just turning the base upside down. At present, I am going through the links of history to various nations and peoples. In prehistory, I am at present emphasizing links to the social institutions. For antiquity, I am just about to review the links, to see which ones I want to emphasize for this period. For the classical and medieval period, I am linking to the stocial institutions. I've been going through the links from modern history rather rapidly, and right now, I'm working through the various peoples of the world. There hasn't been much demand for studies of the future.

The sociology section has been getting quite a bit of demand, so I have been revisiting quite a few of these links, and I'm currently reviewing applications of anthropology. Peoples are also in demand, and there I'm reviewing links to culture. There hasn't been much demand for particular nations; this will probably come later. For Western Civilization, I am reviewing links to the social institutions. Anglic peoples and Latin peoples have been most heavily demanded, with Germanic and Northeast Europan lagging somewhat. I am also close to a signficant review of Asiatic peoples, and the Middle East is notably important. Links to communities and social structure and change have not yet resulted in heavy demand for these subjects.

The Institutions section has been had some demand, and I am at present working through peoples of the world. Religion is coming close to a substantial review. Government isn't far away, and neither is economics. Education and families will take a little longer.

I have recently done a significant review of how to develop the Culture section, and the connections to history are still missing pieces out of the middle. Behavioral and material culture are growing substantially, and I recently did an expansion of conceptual culture

Anthropolog is going slowly, but I am starting to review its history. The human geography section has been demanded more heavily than usual, and here is where I actually have a couple of new pages, in European geography. Personal studies and science are also being developed.

When I started going through the links from history, I started taking notes on what sections were being inverted, revised, linked, or created. So far, the most progress has been within sociology, with institutions and culture roughly tied for second place. There isn't quite yet enough new material to publish the latest version to the web: I'm planning that for when I have gone through the links from history.

More inversion

2009-03-06T09:27:00.002-05:00

In spite of the lack of updates, neither this blog nor the knowledge base has died.
I've been steadily working on the inversion project. So far, things seem to be flowing nicely. I just published the latest version.

One of the difficulties keep struggling with is that my process of development has seemed too rigidly mechanical, where a natural flow of topics according to how they are related to one another would probably be more useful. Some topics are more closely related than others.
So far, this approach seems to be working. For instance, in history, the emphasis is on modern history, and on the 20th century in particular. In discussion of the various peoples of the world, I have been emphasizing Western civilization, and Europe in particular. Development of the institutions still has a heavy emphasis on religion, but that seems to be under developed anyway. Cultural topics, which have been hard for me to get to because they are in the middle are developing better. One of the first new pages prompted by this version is in the area of European geography. I haven't worked down to the personal studies or biography much yet, that may take a little longer. The sciences are a bit slower to develop.

Visits to the knowledge base have been declining over the past few months, probably because I haven't put many updates up. I revised the site map somewhat, to try to make it easier for search engines and the like to index it. I suppose I'll see if that helps.

More inversion

2009-01-20T21:04:00.003-05:00

I've set aside the microindustry project for now. After a friend came over and we made a hobo stove, the weather here turned very cold, and then snowy. Perhaps in a few weeks or a month, I'll venture out to try it out.

That same friend noted that, as big as the knowledge base has grown, turning the whole thing upside-down will take some time. I hate to delay adding new pages and new links, but I'm trying to relax the strict formalism that has made work on the project feel like so unsatisfying so much of the time. I'm working with history both backward from the present and forward from antiquity, because different subjects emphasize different parts of it.

Microindustry

2009-01-05T18:57:00.004-05:00

I'm still working on the inversion project for the knowledge base. So far, I've followed this down through science, physics, mechanics, and particle mechanics to improve the content and links of this section; I had last worked on it last February.

As a bit of personal background, I was growing up in the 1960s when the environment was becoming an important topic, and I developed something of an interest in renewable resources that can be done on a small scale, sustainable basis. I'm also interested in innovation and doing things as inexpensively as possible.
So, the wooded hillside that I've mentioned that I live next to (downhill from me, fortunately) is economically entirely unproductive, or it would be if anything were done on a large scale. It's too small for conventional forestry or logging, which would leave nothing but an ugly, barren hillside. It's too steep for agriculture, or building. There isn't much that can be done in the way of conventional forestry or logging, or agriculture; especially since I don't own the area and don't have the rights, or know-how, or equipment. What it does have is brush (including the multiflora rose I mentioned last post), fallen trees and tree branches, and trash (I've seen a vacuum cleaner, a lawnmower, and various tires) . If I can figure out what can be usefully done with this, it should be extensible I've seen a lot of property more or like this around town.
On a small scale, I can do some unobtrusive experiments. I mentioned the bush I've pretty much cut down, but it has many neighbors just like it. I talked a bit about it about that species to a friend who is a professor of agriculture at WVU and runs a farm in his spare time, and confirms my impression of it as a pestiferous species. What do I do with it once I prune it down to the roots? It would seem to be only fit for burning.
The question is, burning how and where? When I was playing around with information from New Mexico, and I came across creosote bushes (a species I'm familiar with from Arizona where I was raised), I was wondering what can be done with them. I was thinking about aromatic oils, and whether they could be extracted, and I came across mention of distillation. Distillation? of wood? so I looked at that a little bit, and moved on, in the process noting that it was once a chief source of methanol, wood alcohol. Well, methanol is one of the simpler organic compounds, so I've been running across it in my studies of organic chemistry.
So, I was doing some study of small woodburning stoves, wood combustion and pyrolysis, and distillation, all of which are more or less related in theory, and after sleeping on this for a few nights, came up with an experiment I want to try.
The ordinary burning of wood doesn't directly burn the wood at first. What it does is force it to give off combustible gases, which in turn heat the wood further, driving off more gases, until at length nothing is left but ash. The temperature depends on the composition of the wood in question, and on the rate of mixture with the oxygen in the air, which would be rapidly depleted
if there were not some kind of air flow. This is usually supplied by a chimney: The burned gases get hot, less dense, rise, and create an airflow. The difficulty is that this combustion is incomplete. The exhaust gas (smoke) contains not only air, somewhat depleted in oxygen, and the end products of water and carbon dioxide, but it also contains carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, ranging from the simplest to the heaviest; many of which are somewhat toxic and irritating and unburned particles of fuel. More efficient combustion occurs when there is a better mix of air and fuel, and when combustion takes place at higher temperatures.
Much a similar process occurs when wood is simply heated in the absence of oxygen; it gives off combustible gases, some organic liquids, and leaves charcoal behind. Producer gas, wood alcohol, and charcoal have been produced for centuries. Charcoal is interesting, because it's a renewable resource, and something of a substitute for coal. However, producing it is an old technology and rather wasteful of wood.
So, in the interest of efficiency, I've decided to experiment with a device in two parts: one a stove, where the primary interest is in combustion, efficient burning, and heat, which drives the other part, the oxygen-free destructive distillation of wood. This should yield combustible gases, which in the absence of good gas handling material, I can feed back into the stove. However, before burning these gases, I want to extract some of the volatile organic compounds, at least those which are liquid at normal atmospheric temperatures, and range from tars to alcohols. The solid should be charcoal, which can in theory be used to experiment with glassworking and metalworking.
However, all this is theoretical, and to make an idea like this work, I need to do some experiments and observations. I've asked another friend if he would be willing to help me make a hobo stove, as the first stage of this experiment, so I can get started.

Inversion

2009-01-02T15:07:00.002-05:00

Partly as a result of the alternative approach to study I mentioned in my last post, I decided I needed to invert the knowledge base, or turn it upside down. That means, in this case, going from more complex to simpler. In the various breakdowns I've used for working on it, things seem to go more easily if I do it that way. However, I'm beginning at the science end, so it's something of a hybrid.

In informal explorations of the local neighborhood, I've taken an interest in the local biology. It's the middle of the winter, so what I see most deals with biology, and particularly plants. I started attacking a bush with pruning clippers in order to clear a path down the hill so I can follow the runoff from my apartment's parking lot. This had the thorns (technically prickles) of a rose, so I spent a few hours searching the internet, and came up with a probable identification, Rosa multiflora. This bush had the high, arching branches associated with this species, abundant prickles (although some of its neighbors are more so). I couldn't find the clusters of tiny rose hips associated with this species at first, but found some the next time I attacked it.
Since the multiflora rose is now regarded as a pestiferous intrusive species ( it was intentional introduced some 80 years ago) , I figure no one's going to complain if I cut a few of them to pieces. I've been wanting to make contact with someone to give me help in plant identification, so I finally tracked down one of the county extension agents (by phone), and luckily got hold of one. Based on my description of the plant and where it was growing, he agreed with me that that's probably what it is, but a definite confirmation will have to wait a couple of weeks until everyone is back from vacation.

As part of my look at small scale, inexpensive industry, I started looking at stoves for heating. I'm not interested in the home scale, I'm interested for now in experimental, small scale heaters. There are some varieties that run on small branches and twigs, but since I rent and don't have property or much of a budget for tools and supplies, these aren't much use to me. This led me into what is called the pyrolysis, or destructive distillation of wood, and I got a quick review of the chemistry and physics of wood combustion. This interests me for several reasons, from both theoretical and applied points of view.

I'm taking a number of passes through science history, and started with modern history, concentrating on the 16th century. I expanded this century into 20 year periods, and so far have Copernicus and Kepler as major figures. I've looked briefly at the application of Sociology and institutions. I'm also taking a look at expanding other areas of science.

Part of the motivation came from a renewed interest in chemistry. My version of the periodic table is now filled out, and I'm in the revising the appearance of the alphabetical list of elements.
I've also created a few more compound pages, including the simplest organic compounds, those with only one carbon atom, although I have notes on those with two carbon atoms. Organic chemistry gets very complicated, very fast, as the size of the carbon skeleton goes up.

In the process of filling out more details for the particular compounds, I found myself looking for physical properties, which suggests a review of physics, and thus led round about to deciding to invert the whole knowledge base. I started this with mechanics, particle mechanics in particular, but I will want to consider this in more detail.

New Direction

2008-12-19T17:53:00.002-05:00

The new direction I was taking at the end of my last post has seemed like an interesting enough direction that I have decided to pursue it somewhat more, and set aside the work I have been doing on history for a while. For some time, I've been frustrated that I can't seem to get to the practical, middle portions of the knowledge base.

I got a certain ways into pursuing the New Mexico direction, looking up real information for fictional characters, and decided that this was also a good approach for directing my own studies.
In the process, this turned out to give extra incentive to practical activities. I have a tendency to set aside some of the ordinary, mundane tasks of living aside until the last minute, which leads to more stress than I need to deal with. This also connects to what I've been grouping under administrative tasks, of record-keeping, financial management, so I've been working the pas two weeks on sorting the papers I keep into files. So, as a side benefit, my apartment is cleaner and looks better. I've also picked up my study of computer science, re-started my studies in Spanish, and taken a few outdoor walks, and done a little work on the history outline in the Knowledge Base to December. I've also given some time to considering community structure, and constructing maps of my local area. Yes, Google, and Mapquest, and Rand McNally all have maps on line, which is a useful geographic learning tool.

For some time, I've been speculating on renewable energy, and the various technical problems involved in the capture and storage of naturally-generated power. For a lot of purposes, we are dependent on the extraction and burning of fossil fuels for heating, motor fuel, and electricity. There are all kinds of technical problems with sources such as solar energy and wind power, since electric power is not easily stored, and the idea occurred to me some time back that one of the missing links is electrochemical fuel generation. I'm also interested in small technology, rather than the huge plants we usually use.
I was browsing the web and found that there are people who work with small, or micro scale hydroelectric power, but there isn't much off the shelf technology for it. It would not be a large technical problem, since motors and generators are in theory the same device run in different directions, but in practice, the equipment needs to be designed and optimized for a particular use. There isn't nearly the demand for a variety of small generators the way there is for small motors.
This prompted my curiosity on the generation of hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis, and again, there isn't much off-the shelf technology available for it.
This has also re-invigorated my interest in science. I took a walk down the hill near where I live, and though about the local ecology involved in a mixed deciduous forest area, in the Appalachian plateau (near the Monongahela River, resulting in a lot of hills and river and stream valleys). I'm not familiar with the various kinds of trees and plants, to that gives me some practical direction of study. This had something to do with my thoughts on hydropower, and I've also been interested in erosion. This, in turn, prompted some interest in Chemistry, and in looking up some formulas of fluid physics.

The other part if what I've been doing lately involves consideration of New Mexico, specifically Las Cruces. The State of New Mexico has promised funding for SpacePort America, contingent on five major steps. The Environmental Impact statement has been completed and the FAA/ACT has issued a license for the facility, which completes four of the five. The one remaining is to secure an "Anchor Tenant" for the spaceport, and that is expected to be completed by the end of the month. A construction management firm has been selected, and bidding for specific contracts should begin soon, with construction to begin early next year.

Several years back, when I began watching as the X-Prize was offered to prompt the development of reusable suborbital space vehicles, I noted Bert Rutan of Scaled Composites was one of the few contenders with the capability to actually build hardware, and I noted that his vehicle, SpaceShip One, carried by White Knight One, won that prize. Richard Branson founded a company called Virgin Galactic to use a new, enlarged version of that vehicle to carry paying passingers into suborbital flights. Virgin Galactic will be the anchor tenant for the spaceport, and the carrier aircraft, White Knight Two, has recently begun flight testing. I'm watching all this with some interest.

Current quarter

2008-11-25T19:14:00.003-05:00

I've been working for the last few days mostly in the last couple of months, October and November. Some of this involves summarizing events in the United States, and in the process expanding particular states. Some of it involves creating links to education and families. This is interesting because it brings forward the possibility of categorizing events according to, say, principally economic, or principally government, or principally religious. This is still in progress, and I need to widen the links from October to fill in a few gaps, and continue with November for the most current events.

In an entirely different development, I occasionally dip back into science fiction role playing games, Traveller, to be specific, and practice world building as a way of thinking about and organizing various ideas. Although this is primarily set in the far future, It's not too hard to adapt one version of it or another to the near future, or even the present. I decided to look up information on the New Mexico Spaceport that's been under discussion, and tracked it down
to its planned location near Las Cruces, New Mexico, and see what I could see about actual progress. (New Mexico is evaluating bids from principal contractors before one is selected to manage the project, as nearly as I could tell.) In the process, I've been learning about the various tourist and other attractions and something about the city and the region.

New update

2008-11-21T18:09:00.002-05:00

I've published the latest version of my web site. It seems that I have a misdirected link somewhere, that's causing my web site editor's link checker to reference a whole bunch of files that don't exist, but that's a nuisance rather than a real impediment.
For some time, I've been wanting to cut down on the size of the site map and break it into a number of parts, so that search engines can index it better. I started that, but I'm not nearly done yet. I mentioned that I had a connection to current events, which is good, except that development of links from the fourth quarter aren't up to what they are for earlier quarters, so I have some catching up to do.

I've also begun working on other areas. For instance, in the United States, I have about 20 of the 50 states grouped into three major regions, many of them with a place to put notes on history of the particular state, or region. I'm gradually adding provinces to China, as well.

I'm starting to make better progress at digesting the stream of disconnected facts into organized knowledge, which will give content and meaning to the knowledge base, instead of having mostly a skeletal collection of links to content-barren pages. It remains to be seen how this will go.

More recent history

2008-11-15T18:56:00.002-05:00

I'm starting to look all the way up to the 20th century level of history to make sure that I have precedent for the aids links at lower levels. That, and the early 21st century, are being linked to types of societies as the most interesting links I'm adding. For 2008, I'm starting to make forward progress instead of just catching up. At this and lower levels, interesting links are being made to the sciences. I skipped the 2nd quarter again and went to the 3rd quarter, where I'm adding events to analyze to August 2008. I had hoped to do more analysis for September 2008, but this is coming together slowly. For the fourth quarter, I'm getting closer to the state of development I have for the third. For October 2008, I have the list of events to analyze, and am starting to break his down by countries and topics. This is one of the marks I've been looking forward to reach, so I have a pretty much continuous record from August to the present. The next goal will be to fill in the gap between where I left off last June, and August. The last few passes have gone into the future, but since by the time I got to it, I was getting worn out for the
day and not making any further progress, I skipped it for once.

I had made a list of the largest files, and I use this as a rough guide to the pages that need to be split up. Very large, fat files are much more difficult to work with. The history of sociology, or history applied to sociology, was one of those, and I've been procrastinating creating a new page with just the modern history part for some time. That wasn't quite as tough as I had been expecting, so I went ahead and separated out the modern history part of peoples of the world, and wound up writing expanded summaries of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. I also separated out modern history of Western Civilization onto a separate page, and made rather more progress on connecting biographies pages to it. The Anglic peoples section I pretty much skipped over to get to the United States, which has been nagging at me for some time. This was large enough for a split, so I separated out the sociology section to a new page and did some tweaking of the format. US History is one of the largest pages in the whole base, because so much of it has been simply copied wholesale from the fat month-by-month pages. I'm afraid it's going to get bigger before it gets shorter, but I made a start on condensing it with events of November. I also took the trouble to expand a few more state pages.

Up to this point, a good deal of my work in the knowledge base has been more or less limited to the creation of links between different pages so that I could quickly jump from one to another, and it's been at times a rather mind-numbing routine. However, all this groundwork is starting to pay off, and I will be doing more analysis and writing which requires (and permits!) actual thought, rather than semi-mechanical linking and compilation, although there will still be plenty of that, too.

Catching up

2008-11-12T19:42:00.002-05:00

For the past few days I've been working rather heavily in the current year. The late 2000s have nations pushed well ahead of where I am currently working, because I did so much on this a year agon, and then set current events aside to work on other parts of the knowledge base. However, there is still connection of other areas that needed to be done. I have set events of 2006 and 2007 aside for now, but hope to get back to them before too long. The major concentration is on events of this year, 2008. I have also set aside development of the first quarter and second quarter, though I expect to get back to this. In the third quarter, I haven't done much with July lately, but I've been working in August, adding events a day at a time. For September, my notes on events are more or elss complete, and I am working on rearranging them by nations and topics, so this will invomve more analysis and rewrite than other areas. I've been working intensively on the fourth quarter, to try to get this caught up on current events, and I have notes on them for about halfway through October. November is now up to date, as far as my principal source goes.

I have also been working with the future, including the near future, which breaks down to the current month. There are events that are scheduled but have not yet occurred in November, and a few more scheduled for December. For the next quarter, I'm looking at January, and I'm also reviewingn connections for the next year.

Sociology is going rather slowly, with all the effort in history. I've been working on developing the pages for the States in the United States, since they are so important for analyzing history. I've also picked up the program for adding states of India. I'm a little further ahead on provinces of China. I have also extended the list of cities, and I will be working on connecting these to the proper peoples. I've had intentions of going deeper into social structure and change, but haven't reached that far in my daily efforts. I haven't been working much with other areas lately, except as they are being connected to various periods of history.

Working back

2008-11-06T20:26:00.003-05:00

Almost 30 years ago, when I returned from two years in Bolivia, I started a project of clipping
from newspapers the prominent events of the day and trying to write a continouous story based on current events. It quickly got out of hand, and I gave it up, but it was fun while it lasted.
A few years later, I tried the same thing. I've been trying to build toward that same sort of thing in the knowledge base.
Over the weekend, I've been concentrationg on a narrow slice of history; the section that deals most closely with current events. It's a challege to keep up up with, them, since so many occor on a daily basis, and at the same time I'm trying to keep up with them, I'm also trying to expand the knowledge base in other areas. I think I have enough nations and other related topics to
come closer to keeping up. At this point, it's still to be seen, whether I can succeed.

Early 2000s

2008-10-30T18:40:00.002-05:00

Actually, this begins with the early 1990s, which I extended back a year to 1992, but don't have much useful content. However, I did finally adjust the site map to reflect the current pages, which have extended both backward and forward since the last update around March.
In the late 1990s, I added a nation for each year, and did some minor tweaks of the information from modern history.

For the early 2000s, the year-by year analysis has been updated to reflect events in India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. These are well worked over, but there is value in looking at the largest nations. I addded another quarter to 2004, and did some preliminary work in the quarters of 2005 getting ready to begin adding nations.

Early 21st century

2008-10-29T17:52:00.003-05:00

I finished the last round of expanding months of 2008, and got this caught up to what I had done for the 3rd quarter of 2008. This time through, I started at the first quarter of 2005, so this was an extension backwards. I got all the way through to 2007 3rd quarter and started picking up Monts with August. I had already created a page for this before, but this time I'm checking the links and topics I let slide the first time around. I have a bit more summary in 2008, especially in the 3rd quarter now. The last time I did serious work at this level of detail in history, several months ago, I was seeing a lot of Pakistan, so now I have a better sense of what has happened there since then.

2008

2008-10-28T18:50:00.000-05:00

Today's developments are limited to the gradual expansion of events of the past year. I've noted that India and China have both made significant achievemts in rocketry, launching satellites. I don;t know if I've noted that China completed its third manned spacefulight, which makes it a place to be watched.

Recent events and an update

2008-10-27T16:40:00.002-05:00

I've been working mostly on recent events for the past few days. I don't know that I mentioned that I now have pretty much a continuous sequence of periods from earliest prehistory to the present, with no gaps. Not all are equally detailed, and I don't have all the content filled in, but
I have a solid backbone so that I can hange everything else on it.

For now, within history I am not going to be creating pages at any more detailed level than monthly, unless from time to time, complex, fast-moving, complex events require it.

I also pushed my way through the list of US States and now have a page for each. There isn't any content to most of them yet; that will have to get filled in later, but it's a start.

More history

2008-10-22T20:38:00.004-05:00

I've been pretty much working in modern history for the past couple of weeks. I decided to go
through and extend the aids in each of the 20 year periods. This also means that quite a few more subjects have links to these periods, but there still isn't much depth to them. I've done the same (extending the aids) to 5 year periods of the 20th century.

Update

2008-10-02T20:12:00.002-05:00

I finished the review of the Sciences and published the latest round of updates to the Web, so they are all now visible.

Now I've started a new round.
For History in general, I've done a little cleaning up of the history using sociology page, distributed a few nations to the various peoples, reorganized the connections to Latin peoples and to the Middle East. For the history using institutions, there weren't many new sections in the last round, so this mostly involved starting to put the companies in better order in the economics section, and cleaning up the connections to science.

Prehistory also got a little bit of cleanup and distribution of a few particular nations. Again, the Latin peoples and Middle East benefited most from the reorganization. I didn't go into particular periods of prehistory this time.

Antiquity in general got the same treatment: a few more nations connected, and a reorganization of Latin peoples and the middle east, and the connection to sciences done a little better. Likewise, I didn't go into particular millennia of history.

All of these areas need better development of social structure and change before I go into the details of such things as religion and government, but they need to be developed and connected to more recent periods of history first.

Anthropology and Personal studies

2008-09-30T23:49:00.004-05:00

I got through the section on human geography. Some of the lower level pages hadn't been touched in two years. I didn't add much, a link or two to each, but this slow growth in the detail pages is part of the process. I got through human ecology, physical anthropology, demography, and social foundations sections as well. Many of these are so far linking back to high level areas in the sociology section.

Since I'm creating two links, that is, when I link from one page to a second, I also create a link from the second page back to the first, this means that in some cases, I do more work on a subject through the links back than I did to its page in the first place. This is helpful in speeding up pages in the neglected middle sections.

I also started in on personal studies, and did a review of biography. I didn't go much deeper on most of the various subjects that still need to be linked to biographies. Once I got the sociology and peoples sections linked, the urgency of doing biographies started to fall off, and these are being handles more indirectly now. I also did a review of he psychology section. I didn't quite get through the human body, which will be the next subject up. I'm still on track for finishing this round by the weekend.

Institutions, Culture, and Anthropology

2008-09-29T16:46:00.002-05:00

Skip a day, and thing just start piling up. I went through the government, making new connections, and developing a few more. In Economics, I had been having some trouble with how to organize the various companies. I had decided to handle them similarly to the way I've been handing nations: assigning them to industries as they come up, but I hadn't yet done much with that approach. I also added links to a couple more universities, but since these don't seem to break down into types like companies, do, I may have to rely on the geographic and regional organization. I have reached a little but further into families as well.

Going through the culture section took me a couple of days. In the Behavioral culture section, I created a number of links. The conceptual culture section was a little more pleasing: I finally have a page for philosophical schools and doctrines, and there was some satisfying progress on applied sciences. I didn't quite get to do much with math, and did less than I would have liked with literature, graphic arts, or language, but if I don't follow the program, I get really bogged down. Material culture is also an area I have been wanting to develop, so I'm pleased with what I did this time around. Some of these sections haven't been touched in almost a year, so it's really about time I did something more here.

I've begun working on Anthropology, and after an initial review, I started in on particular groups, which still lack specific detail. I'm hoping to identify significant ones from a study of history. I also started in on human geography, but only the main page so far, and not specific details.

I should be able to go through the remainder of Anthropology before too long, since this section isn't really detailed. By the end of the week, once I've finished reviews of Personal studies and Science, I should be ready to publish the updates that I've been reporting.

Religion

2008-09-23T18:14:00.002-05:00

In another split, I created a new history of religion page. I did minimal addition of new nations, since this is already so well advanced over other topics, but I did a little connection of social structure and change and education. I also advanced the number of biographies connected to history, about 1/4 of the way through the list.

In particular religions, I managed to create links from each division of Abrahamic religion, the major divisions of Asiatic religion, several of pagan religion, and secularism. Some of these pages hadn't been touched in a year, so this was some progress. I still don't have proper subdivisions of religious organization, practice, or belief. These will have to wait until I can start examining the particular religions in more detail.

I also reviewed the main government page. The history section is updated, but like many other history sections it lacks enough detail to make it interesting. Sociology is extended a little bit better, and connections with economics are better developed. I also did some connection of individuals to government.

Next up are details of government, and possibly economics.

Social structure and change, and institutions

2008-09-22T18:07:00.003-05:00

I took a pass through social change, social types, and social structure. About all I can say is that I made fairly minimal progress except for connections to particular nations and various high-level pages, although including them into the development cycle was an achievement in itself...some of the lower level pages hadn't been touched since last December.
I also took the main institutions page, went into history, and updated the discussion of the histories of religion, government, economics, and educations. This is still frightfully superficial, until I can get to those subjects and dig further in. I also separated out a page for the application of sociology to institutions, so that the main page for institutions looks a little more like the main pages for history and sociology itself. I did a little bit of filling in connections to culture. I thought about adding more connections to individuals, since those are on the general program, but the list of individuals is already getting lengthy, and I want to cut it down a bit by moving some of these individuals to particular institutions.
Next up, Religion, an area I've been anxious to get back to.

Non-Western History

2008-09-20T18:51:00.002-05:00

I did the separation of Oriental history from the rest of the discussion of Oriental peoples that I had planned. I also took a quick glance through Central Asian and Southeast Asian peoples, but didn't do much with them. Southeast Asian peoples are nearly ripe for subdivision.
I also separated out African history from African peoples. Western Africa and Eastern Africa are also nearly ripe for subdivision, but I will need to add more nations, and I'm holding back a little on this until I have more history.
I also separated American Indian history from American Indian peoples, and added a link I've been meaning to add for some time, that gives an overview of the various American Indian cultures. I expect to be going into more detail on these in the future, but didn't do much with them on this time through.
I also reviewed the Social structure and change pages. I paid special attention to giving more content to the history section, but it's still much too superficial, and I will need to go into more detail of social change, social types, and social structure. This is better connected to religion and Government, though. I'm particularly interested in a connection with mathematics that may be coming up the next round through this subject.

Peoples

2008-09-18T22:19:00.003-05:00

I did a little bit of work on connecting Hispanic peoples to history: I think it looks a little better now. I also separated out a page for Sociology of the 19th century from the 19th century page.

In Sociology, I finished a rewrite of the history applied to sociology page, but it still looks a bit barren of real content, and I'm going to have to go through it again. I made a little more progress with history applied to peoples, through the 17th century. I also finished the connections of individuals on the Hart 100 list to peoples in general. and now can concentrate on locating them with particular civilizations. Within Western Civilization, I'm about halfway through the list. I took the history of Anglic peoples and separated that onto a new page, I did a few more pages for divisions of Hispanic American peoples. Within Asiatic peoples, I got about a third of the way through the biography list. I rearranged Middle Eastern peoples (not for the first time), and among South Asian peoples, separated out a history page. I also began creation of a series of pages for the states of India. Next up are Oriental peoples.

Time gets away

2008-09-18T22:19:00.002-05:00

I had intentions of doing a summary of daily progress, but once I skip a day, it just sort of piles up. I've pushed connections with the early 20th century back and widened those of the early mid 20th century. Useful information doesn't really begin until the mid 20th century, and I have some widening access to the Cold War. The late-mid 20th century is also connected. In the late 20th century, the pages for a year by year record are extending to earlier times. I've also picked up the quarter-by quarter summaries beginning in 2005, and month-by-month for 2008, and I've also done some work on the future.

For sociology, I've done a little bit of updating on the history of sociology, although it's still a bit sparse on detail. I've also revised the history of peoples of the world, to include quite a bit more detail than I had before, with a little more rewriting yet to go. I'm nearly done connecting my list of biographies to peoples of the world. Western Civilization is being handled indirectly through history and other subjects, and I'm about a third of the way through lining biographies of people prominent in Western Civilization to that area. For Anglic peoples I linked a couple of biographies. I did get a number of pages for states added to the USA, and I expect to be working in those a little more.

Latin peoples are where I made a little bit more detailed progress. I decided (again) to rearrange the order I was presenting them in. I had a list of countries that hadn't yet been assigned to particular groups. French peoples no longer include just a single country. Most of the countries went to Hispanic peoples and I finally decided that a semi-historical division was in order:
Spain itself, and then Hispanic Mexican, Hispanic Colombian, Hispanic Peruvian, and Hispanic Argentine. These four groups plus Brazil make up Latin American, and part of the reason for dividing them this way is that they roughly correspond to the viceroyalties of the Spanish American Empire. There wasn't much to add to other groups of Western Civilization this time around.

New Forum

2008-09-05T23:25:00.001-05:00

I've just converted the Independent Learning Forum to new software, and will be reorganizing it. The link on the sidebar should work correctly.

19th and early 20th century

2008-09-05T17:31:00.002-05:00

For the 19th century in general, I made a few connections within social structure and change, institutions, culture, and anthropology. I also did a substantial amount of work with biographies, and now have all of them distributed to particular periods of the 19th century. In the divisions, I did some work with Germany. For now, I'm looking mostly at Asiatic peoples. I did some with Egypt, Turkey, and Iran that gives something of a better foundation for their importance in the 20th Century. I did some connections in Southest Asia including the Philippines and Vietnam. Yes, I decided that its history before the French occupation was looking into after all. For Thailand, I took note of when its current boundaries were settled. In Africa, Ethiopia required a little bit of study. Connections with religion, culture, and Anthropology were made.

The 20th century didn't advance connections with particular nations at the general level much, since these are all well advanced, but connections within social structure and to applied science and demography were made. Some of the particular divisions dealt with France, Turkey, Iran and Congo, and I have reached the point where I can resume working with the United Kingdom. In the early 20th century I created a stub page for the early 1910. For the early mid 20th century I have started a more solid connection to the United States.

The mid 20th century is more of a challenge, and required a little more of a careful look into the United States, Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia. I still don't have much on the World War II period, but more of the Cold War is starting to show up.

I didn't make any progress on linking individuals to other areas, except for the 19th century to particular periods, but that counts. I intend to do the same for the 18th century next time I go through it, and in the meantime do more connecting to other areas as I get to them..

For anyone looking at the Independent Learning Forum, access is temporarily shut down while I work on getting the new version up. I should have it back in another day or two.

Another round

2008-09-04T18:23:00.002-05:00

I had intended to move away from history, but wound up starting another round of it. I started in late medieval times, mostly just checking to see which of the centuries could be advanced a bit. Only one of them, but the next round I will should be able to do more.

For the 16th century, I don't have much on the United States at all; This is the period of mostly exploration of the coast, to which I paid less attention than I might have, and has gone rather hazy in my memory. I'm doing a bit better in China, the period of the Ming dynasty, and in India, when the Mughal empire was growing. I really can't do much in Indonesia without the Dutch and the Portuguese, and it looks to be a while before I get to either of them in much detail.

For the 17th century, in the United States I'm dealing with the early colonial period. I have Brazil as a Portuguese colony, and I'm not yet much interested in it. Russia was starting to expand. In South Asia, including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the Mughal empire was at its height, but the British were starting to exert influence. China is concerned with the transition between the Ming, and the Qin (Manchu) dynasty which followed. Examination of Africa would be beginning, but there's really not much content to it yet. Basic connections to Anthropology and personal studies have been made.

For the 18th century, The history of Mexico is somewhat interesting. Germany, before the 19th century, is somewhat chaotic. Japan starts to be of some interest, but this was mostly the feudal period of isolation. The Philippines have to be better connected to Spain for me to extract much of this period, and I'm not terribly interested in Vietnam before the French period. Nigeria is mostly set aside. I am starting to link details of social structure and change to these periods, and Connections to most of the institutions have been extended.

I started to work on the history of sociology and the history of peoples, but I realized that the history of sociology is rather thin without a little more reference to peoples, and the history of peoples is a little thin without reference to particular peoples. When I got as far as Western civilization, I decided to back off and try this again later.

The program of connection of individuals to peoples is progressing; This is now about 2/3 done, and the next level of detail involves things such as Western Civilization and Asiatic peoples. Connections of individuals to African peoples or American Indian peoples is practically nonexistent. One of the things I want the knowledge base to do is to point to where the gaps are so I can fill them. I'm not quite there yet. Connection of individuals to Western civilization is about 1/3 third done, and that's involved mostly a review of what I have already accomplished. I've caught up to that part of the program so I can start extending and adding to those connections.

Earky 21st century

2008-09-02T21:21:00.002-05:00

That takes care of the latest round of history. There's not a whole lot to report except a few more connections to anthropology and personal studies, and a slight broadening of year-by-year events since 2002.
The links to of particular individuals to peoples of the world are about halfway done now. That's still only scaffolding for the more specific links to particular peoples, but that's progress.

Recent 20th century

2008-09-01T19:38:00.003-05:00

Within the late-mid 20th century, (1961-1980) I have more developments of the larger nations (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Russia). Within the late 20th century, (1981-2000) I have developments for Bangladesh, Russia, Nigeria, Japan, and Mexico. I've also extended year by year developments back to 1996 and have the US connected to 2000. There have been various connections to science, personal studies, and anthropology, and some to education and economics.

I also have all the individuals on my top 110 list connected to Sociology, so that's one step toward the connections to "where". There is a batch of connections to periods of the 18th century, a batch of connections to peoples of the world, and a batch of connections to institutions in general I want to examine, so there's still plenty to do there.

20th century

2008-08-30T16:55:00.002-05:00

I went back to working on in modern history. The 18th century didn't yield much; I did some connections with Northeast Europe, Africa in general and Nigeria in particular, Mexico which resulted in extending the Americas, particularly North America and South America, the Philippines, and Vietnam, as better connections to science, personal studies, and social structure and change.

The 19th century was a little bit more productive; I had connections to Germany, Egypt, Ethiopia, Turkey, and Iran, which mostly gave better connections to the Middle East. I did some connecting to families and social change and types.

I continued to the 20th century, and got to the mid 20th century, which includes the ability to focus more directly on 5 year periods. I like the finer level of detail, which lets me "see" such things as the Korean war.

I haven't neglected the other connections I mentioned in my last post. Each 20 year period of the 20th century now has links to all the individuals in the Hart 100 list who lived during that period; and I should soon be able to do the same for the 19th century (working backwards until I run out of pages that are linked to biography). I've also made connections for most of the people on the list to the sociology page although these connections are less directly useful, and meant mostly as scaffolding so I can connect them to particular peoples and nations later.

It is not a great surprise that this lists primarily those who were active during the early 20th century and the early mid 20th century (up to about 1940). There is only one person on the Hart 100 list who is still living.

Live question #1. Who do you consider to have been the most prominent or influential individuals of the past 8 years, that is, from 2001 to the present? Why?

Almost ready

2008-08-29T13:55:00.002-05:00

Over the past week, I've been attempting to regularize my order of development of subjects on the Knowledge Base. A couple of major developments are now pending. For one, I have pretty much connected a continuous line of history pages at 20 year intervals from 1500 to the present, and I have organized methods for updating them. There are enough nations to put a little meat on the bones of a bare skeleton of time. It's becoming necessary and important to examine major social changes, religion and government, and major elements of culture. Also, I now have historical connections for all the individuals on the Hart 100 list.
I've been hesitant to announce plans, because they have been likely to change, but the thing is close enough to being what I consider live and fully functional, that I can see how it's going to work. For one, although modern individuals are connected to centuries, about half of them l of them have been connected to individual 20 year periods. Finishing the other half will be important. That will give me connections to who and when. That's between a couple of days and a week to finish in a satisfactor manner.
Another phase is to connect these to sociology, peoples, and countries. That should take a weak or two. Another is to connect them to particular areas of effort, which will take another week or two or three. All this will gives me a connected who, what, when, and where for discussing major topics, a picture I can fill in with adding more individuals and details. From here on, I'll be reporting on the progress of this project, and actively inviting commentary on things I have left out. I'm enthused.

Latest additions

2008-08-21T16:07:00.002-05:00

I have a new batch of updates for my web site. In science, I've gone back to do a little updating on the scciological connections within astronomy, earth science, and biology. I've also done a little on the human body and psychology. I mentioned that I had pages for the Hart 100 list done, but now I also have the 10 runners up. I've been working on their connections with history and have about 2/3 of them down to the century level so that when they lived can be found. I'm working on connecting where they lived and what they did, but that's coming along a bit more slowly. I've also done some work in the anthropology section. Human geography is starting to make progress; in some of them, the last time I worked on them was about 9 months ago. Culture is starting to develop well, and I made some useful connections in all its subdivisions. The institutions are going a little bit slower, but I have some important interconnections. I didn't do much with sociology or history this time around. I've been working on these so heavily that other connections have suffered.

Recent progress

2008-08-03T01:54:00.002-05:00

I have been working more or less consistently on the knowledge base for the past couple of weeks. As usual, it is mostly a slow, incremental process: This time I have been concentrating more on connecting nations to topics within science, personal studies, culture, and the like.
A significant milestone, though, is that I now have individual pages for all the people mentioned in the Hart 100 list. As I may have mentioned on the biography page, this is by no means an exhaustive linking of important individuals and I would certainly dispute some of the rankings. (for instance, I don't see how John F. Kennedy ranks above Lincoln, or why Stalin, Hitler, and FDR made the list but Churchill didn't.) But it is a start.
One of the more obvious and serious deficiences of the knowledge base is that I don't have links to particular works...Many of these people are noted for what they did or invented, but many are noted for what they wrote. I've been wanting to get to a list of important litarary works, but since it's be buried in the middle of the knowledge base and hard to get to from either end, I wind up running out of steam before I get to it. There is also the fact that I want to construct it in some kind of historical order, which is hard to do. At least linking it to the important authors, which is something I can put in historical order, gives me a way to do this, so I hope to get to it soon.

Where was I?

2008-07-16T09:58:00.003-05:00

Oh yes. It seems I've done a full cycle of additions since I last posted, and published the lastest version to the web. I haven't done much with science, since I'm just starting to work down into its major subdivisions. I haven't done much in personal studies, either, except add several more pages that mention historical figures. I hope to do some linking of these with history in this round. The connections with anthropology don't seem especially fascinating at this point.

Since culture is such an important and neglected area, I'm going to start going into more detail on in, linking it to nations. I was going to wait until I had gone all the way through institutions, but that seems much to long to wait, and cultural subjects are more important. I'm pleased to be making more progress with economics, but several of these subjects need more detail, and while I will get to them in a couple of rounds anyway following my work with social structure and change, getting down into the nitty-gritty detail is more important. Social structure and change is shaping up fairly nicely. I'm also thinking about cautiously picking up connections with cities again.

Prehistory was a bit mechanical, although I finally have the middle east connected all the way to earliest prehistory. The nations I connected to areas of antiquity didn't produce much excitment. either. The most interesting thing going on there is that I have reopened inquiries into particular centuries of late medieval times. I had set these aside until I had 20 year divisions all the way through modern history, so getting to this point is something of a milestone of accomplishment

Modern history is approaching a level of connection that's starting to get more interesting. For various reasons, I'm personally interested in the development of economic and trading networks and religious and political philosophy and ideologies in modern times, and I need a substantial background of historical detail before I can discuss these intelligently. Nearly every period is filling in an important gap somewhere.

Details of the 16th century are still not yet far advanced. In the 17th century, having Spain connected is a big help. At the 20 year level of detail, I'm working with the giants of Asia. For the 18th century, I'm mostly working with the larger nations of Asia, but I'm also starting to make progress with Russia. The 19th century is working with some of the larger but not giant nations of Asia and America. This is still a few rounds away from having reference to the British Empire.
The 20th century is more promising than useful yet, but I'm finding the 5-year interval is giving me a much clearer and sharper view of history and international developments. The early mid 20th century still has stubs, and the mid 20th century is also just getting started. The US at 5-year intervals back to the Korean war and China at that level of detail is extending my knowledge. The late-mid 20th century is starting to include India, Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan at 5 year intervals, which is providing a much clearer and sharper view of these nations. For the late 20th century, Bangladesh, post-Soviet Russia, and Nigeria in the late 1990s gives a much clearer, sharper view of what was going on. I'm also extending one year intervals so that they will include events since Sept 11 01.

20th century

2008-07-11T20:18:00.002-05:00

In the early 20th century, I have a connection to Germany, but that isn't much use without more of Europe. The early-mid 20th century has a better connection to Egypt, but that isn't really central to the period. By the mid 20th century, I'm mostly catching up to stuff I've already done.
The finer detail at 5-year periods doesn't start to be useful until about the 1960s-1970s. Reviewing this jogs memories of events I knew about, but didn't pay close attention to. So does working with the 1980s-2000s, where I've been mostly reviewing events in South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). Starting in 1998, I've picked up going on a year-by year basis, but this doesn't have real material until about 2005, and the next few years have been connected to nations at a superficial level well ahead of where I'm working.
At this point, I stopped to review whether any of my files had grown big enough to be worth splitting. A few had. Asiatic history and the History of Western Civilization are both big enough to split, but I need to divide sociology using history and history of peoples first, and they aren't big enough. I did split China history and India history into separate pages. US history is big enough, but not well enough connected to other areas. In the process of working on history, I added another state or two to the US, and another province or so to China, and created a page for names of the states of India.
I also started around to work on connecting other areas to peoples of the world. I added more pages for individuals, but didn't do much connecting, except to India. Areas of anthropology have been connected to Asiatic peoples in general, Oriental, South, and Southeast Asian as well as Anglic peoples. Areas of culture are connected to Latin, South Asian, and African peoples. as a very general level.

General work and history.

2008-07-10T16:05:00.003-05:00

I did a little more inquiry into religion, but mostly went on to social structure and change. Social structure, social types, and social changes all got some attention and better connections to nations, although it's fairly plain that I'm going to need culture and institutions to do these properly.
Another round of history has the extension of Ethiopia, Turkey and Iran back into prehistory. North Africa is now extended back to earliest prehistory. Within antiquity, I extended mostly Europe into this period. This is mostly part of European prehistory, and is still obscure and controversial, in spite of all the archaeology that's been done in Europe. Classical and medieval times prompted connection to Asian pagan and African pagan religions., and some extension of Ssutheast Asia, Latin peoples, and Central Africa.
Modern history now has at least a stub for every twenty-year division since 1500, which will allow quite a bit better precision in examining classical and medieval history. The 16th century isn't much advanced yet, but in the 17th century, I've reached another milestone and US history is now pushed all the way back to the first permanent settlement; Jamestown. There are the beginnings of connections to Western Civilization, Asiatic peoples, and in particular, Oriental peoples. For the 18th century, there has been some work in extending South Asia, Southeast Asia, Anglic, and Latin peoples. For the 19th century I have connections to Northeast Europe, South Asia, the Orient, and Southeast Asia, and the beginnings of connections to Africa.
This usually tends to throw off side branches. I've begun doing a little more work on adding particular states to the United States and provinces to China. India is another country that needs more attention to its states. The 18th century repeatedly suggested connections to economics and trade.

2008-07-08T20:29:00.002-05:00

After finishing a round of history, I started in on various other subjects. In most areas besides history, the links to specific nations and peoples of the world are far less advanced.
The connections of my personal studies group were fairly uselessly abstract, but I took the opportunity to add a few more pages for individuals in the biography list. The added connections of various parts of anthropology to various nations also weren't very useful. The highly abstract principal areas of culture also weren't much help.
Since I was skimming the surface and not getting much in useful connections, I decided to go to a deeper level. Although I mention that I want to get into economics, I didn't get much beyond reviewing what I have already done. Government did better. I wound up connecting some of the larger nations to different areas of government, which gives some advance in content. Religion still isn't as well developed as I would want, but I got several nations to have a little more about religion in general.

Late 20th century Asia

2008-07-08T00:52:00.002-05:00

For subdivisions of the 19th century, I have mostly been making better connections with south and southeast Asia: not ll of it, but a few of the larger nations.
The 20th century is also being better connected. Nothing up through the mid 20th century is very useful yet. but from the 1960s onward, I have wider connections. For the late 20th century, starting in the 1980s, I have, for nations such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Brazil, something a little better than the dead boring "I don't know" and "I haven't looked at this" that I tend to plug in when I'm just mechanically making connections. I'd at least like to have a name of a country's leader in a given 5 year period.
However, there is at least potentially so much politics and economics, (not to mention everything else) packed into a 5 year period that such a note is the barest hint of all the other complicated doings that are going on. That will be coming, eventually.

Latest work

2008-07-05T21:55:00.003-05:00

Some of the recent work I've been doing in Antiquity is starting to involve parts of Western civilization at earlier and earlier times. Most of the history of European peoples before the Romans is murky and depends on archaeological evidence, which is often rather ambiguous.
For the classical and medieval period, I've been looking more at a few countries in southeast Asia and Africa. although these early forays don't have a whole lot of context of neighboring nations to them. Modern history is getting more serious attention. I'm very near to having at least stub pages for the entire 16th century, and the 17th century is starting to include a few more particular nations, though still mostly the big ones worked back from the 20th century. The 18th century has a little more detail, although a lot of the attention is going to nations such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. I' don't have the British linked to this much yet.
One of the awkward parts of the knowledge base was that, with all the emphasis I've been putting on nations, I didn't have many external links to them. I've added a bunch so that when I need quick facts on history, or population, or land area, they will be more handy.
I have started to break down a barrier that's been bothering me: that is, including more pates for the States of the US. This is partly because consideration of the 17th century has very nearly reached the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth, and I will probably want to start working individual states forward in order to add detail to US history. I've also begun adding provinces for China. I'm a little concerned that I don't have much source material for Chinese history, but I'm sure there's plenty if I look for it.
When I was working earlier in antiquity, I decided that I needed to finish a chain of historical links to pagan religion, which is now done at the 5-century level for classical and medieval history and for modern history. I also picked up something I had left behind, which was a review of Judaism through the classical and medieval period. For some reason, Islam didn't come up, nor did many of the Asiatic religions, although with the the countries in Southeast Asia in classical and mdeieval times, I've been seeing more and more references to Buddhism.

I'm Back

2008-07-03T21:21:00.002-05:00

The last I posted here was when I was involved in my computer programming project, Intensively, for about six weeks, and then I took about a month off playing a game.
I'm now back to working on the knowledge base.

I've been working fairly intensively on connecting content to my history pages, so that they aren't all just outline. I'm starting to make some progress there: when I go from one of the bottom level periods and look at the peoples and nations, there is now enough information that I'm starting to see a flow of events. There's still a lot more to do, since some of the most important nations don't even come in until fairly far down the list. The current version has about 16 nations worked back early prehistory. Antiquity has a reasonable sampling of the origins of ancient civilization and empires, classical and medieval has a part of European history, and in modern history I'm starting to look at most of the major Western empires, as well has having a breakdown of periods by 20 years almost all the way back to 1501. As I'm looking at European countries during this period, I'm noticing more than I had done before how all the royal families are related.

This isn't exactly news to those familiar with European history, but I've always been afflicted by the who-was-involved-in-the-war-of-the-something-or-other-succession-and-I-can't-remember-which-one-it-was-or-why-I-should-care-about-it disease. But, it's a little more interesting, now that I'm starting to be be able to put it into the bigger flow of European, and world-wide events. Likewise, I've never been particularly interested in just how and when Britain got control of India in the first place, let alone such foreign places as Burma and Malaysia. But I have enough pieces in place that I'm starting to see a pattern and find the same kind of satisfaction I get doing a jigsaw puzzle.

I've also picked up a little on the 20th century, going by five year periods since World War II, which forms a major landmark in world history.

I should have an update of the site, soon.

New project

2008-05-02T16:27:00.002-05:00

In many ways, computers and their programming are still tied to decisions that were being made when computer hardware was expensive. This is particularly true with mathematics. It has occurred to me to do some experimenting with different choices, so I started a project of emulating a sub-microprocessor, to see what I can do with different concepts.
There's not much you can do with a processor that operates on only bit of information, and not much more with one that does only has two. With three bits, however, it's possible to do a little more. I've coded the two bit version, but haven't yet tried running it. The three bit version is at the design stage, not yet written. A four bit version is in the works.
I've been pondering for some years about how to do programming with abstract mathematical objects, and how one might implement the abstract objects of set theory and other mathematical structures. I've also been thinking about how to do computer implementation of my ideas on three-valued logic. There are various ways of representing numbers: The fixed-size binary of most computers are useful for many purposes, but not all. few computers work with fractions and rational numbers, and hardly any with approximate numbers. Complex numbers are also a possibility.
There are various people who have developed packages for these things; and my C++ text offers several of these as exercises. I've also had some ideas on doing algebra with computers. However, these are all fairly special-purpose packages. What I'm interested in is common methods that are suitable for the relative novice, not for someone who has studied numerical analysis.
I also want to tie that to science, which involves more and different branches of mathematics, such as geometry, which is tied to graphics and animation.

It's one thing to have a grand vision of everything I'd like to do; it's something else again to make it a working reality. So, I've added C++ to the languages I've been studying. In C, I'm working a little on the analysis of sample programs, types of functions, statements, and data types. In BASIC, I'm also working with sample programs, output procedures, and the read-data statement pair. The if-then and goto statements together with relational expressions give me the elements for building control structures such as loops and branched statements, so that principles of structured programming can be used instead of so-called spaghetti code.
in Assembly language. I'm still digesting notes on the assembly and link phases of programming mechanics. I'm still doing analysis of specific programs, as well as exercises that can be run in DEBUG. More detailed analysis of program parts, including the header, where various types of symbolic constants can be declared, the data segment, where space is reserved for variables, and the code segment, which has the actual body of programs is being done.
I've temporarily set aside my investigations into other uses of DEBUG, the BIOS, and the operation of video hardware, but theyre ready to pick up when I feel up to it and they are important enough. I've also done a bit of condensing of my notes on data representation, and I've reached signed binary numbers.

More small gains

2008-04-29T22:07:00.002-05:00

There hasn't been much progress on my various topics in information representation, but I think I'm going to switch the order and consider characters ahead of numbers. One reason is that characters are more general, but the other is that usually, each of them takes up smaller space. I'm running across character strings more and more often in my reviews of Assembly language and C++.
I haven't made a whole lot of progress in the hardware, but I'm starting to inch into it, especially in considering video in more detail.
I'm also starting to get a little more detail on the BIOS services.
I'm getting a reasonable, workable picture of assembly. I have enough of the syntax organized to be useful, and I'm familiar with the basic data types. There are still some assembler directives to work on, but I'm making progress on program structure, and on the maechanics.
There's been less progress on BASIC or C, but still a little.

I got an Assembler version of the program I did working (though I had to look at the results in the debugger, since I still don't have output routines). I also got a BASIC Version and a C version working and running.
One of the differences between Assembly language and C is that the roles of the various operators and expressions is different. In Assembly, all the operators are applied and expressions evaluated at assembly time. In C, most of the operators are applied and expressions evaluated at run-time.

Small gains

2008-04-25T17:54:00.003-05:00

My explorations in the the explanation of video hardware and its operation today were uninspiring, especially since my principal source is seriously outdated. I use it because I want to learn the basics, the older way, in order to see how things have changed or improved.
I did a little more digging into the BIOS. I'd written down a number of the interrupt vectors, and in the process of checking them over, I found that several of them had changed: that is, there were different values in the segment part of the address. I'm not sure what the pattern is. I haven't actually tried disassembling any of them yet, although I may get around to doing that.
I did a little more organization of my notes on assembler syntax and the operations used by the assembler; Directives including symbol definition (the equates, giving names to constants ) and data definition are getting attention. Assembly language devotes more resources to the to the size of its variable than their contents, which are left up to the programmer. As far as assembly instructions I am considering mostly (unsigned, single byte or word) addition, and I'm trying to get a better handle on the various addressing modes used by the instructions. I'm also starting to work on the unconditional and conditional jumps and the call instructions.
I touched only lightly on Basic programming, with a look at the assignment (let) statement.
In C programming, I made little progress in any any one area, but more significant progress in others. The distinction between integer and floating point types is significant, again with most of the emphasis given to the integer types. Well. I'd like to have a better look at floating point arithmetic, but it's not really critical at the moment.
I also gathered some information on the phases of programming design. In the middle, implement (build) or coding stage, I sorted these out into comments; the use of descriptive names for variables and routines, and the formatting of programs, such as indentation and spacing.
I finally decided to group the execution of the program with the last phase: testing and maintenance. This is because in translated language, the assembler and compiler usually turn up a batch of syntax errors, which must be fixed. Then there are linker errors, and finally the logical errors; in which the computer finally does exactly what you told it to do, which is not necessarily the same as what you meant to tell it to do. Testing to uncover hidden bugs is a more advanced process.

I thought I'd try to implement the programming cycle for a problem I borrowed from one of my physics texts. If a man runs a four minute mile, what is his average speed in miles per hour and feet per second? The design wasn't hard for such a trivial problem, but exposed a number of difficulties.
First, in the assembler, I didn't have output methods. I know how to print a character or a string, but a number has to be translated to a character or string in order to display it. Second, several assumptions wound up being hard-coded into the program. I need to go back and document these before I do an updated version.
Methods for doing output are part of the language in BASIC: what was lacking was facilities for defining symbolic constants. Conversion factors "Feet per mile", "minutes per second", Seconds per minute" so I had to use constants.
The version I was best pleased with was the C version. I haven't tried running either the BASIC or the C version of the program yet: I was happy to get through the writing phase.

The answers are 15 mph and 22 ft per second: sure I can do it by hand, but the question is, can I get the computer to do it? Then, for any given distance? Any given time? Distances, time, and speed given in whatever units I like? Then, what if the speed and distance or given, or speed and time? And what if the speed varies? What about other physical quantities,
While the programs may be trivial, they are first steps toward a larger goal. One of the reasons I faltered in my progress in science was that I hated the drudge work of doing conversions between systems of units. If I can get the computer to do it for me, I can go on to more interesting concepts. At least, that's the idea.

They still work

2008-04-24T20:42:00.003-05:00

Late last night I picked one of my books on numerical methods in C, and found a reference to how floating point numbers are treated in the PC family. I was looking for information on how they are formatted for calculations on the old 8087 math coproccessor and its descendants which were incorporated into later Intel processors, but I didn't find it. I didn't fund as much as I wanted to on numerical methods in general, but I do have book back in Nebraska on the subject. However, information on floating point calculations at the machine level is pretty sparse in all my available materials.

Most of what I looked carefully at in C was rehashing things I've already studied, and likewise with C, Progress in assembly also fairly minimal. I'm inching toward being able to use the BIOS routines, which also brings in looking at the interrupt vector table in low memory.
The larger accomplishment came in testing out the mechanics of programming on the three languages I am working on right now.

The night before last I downloaded Turbo C from the internet, and in the process of trying to set it up, accidentally erased everything that wasn't in a separate directory from my C: drive. I tried to undelete it, and found that Win98 doesn't include the undelete command that Dos 5 used to, and since I hadn't gone through the recycle bin. Those files may be theoretically recoverable, but I'm not counting on it. But they included the autoexec.bat file, which set up my assembler TASM for use: I'm not big on mixing working files with those that the assembler itself uses, so I uses a separate work directory. I also recall a config.sys file, which I think tells DOS how to set up my CD, but I may be able to get that back another way. On the positive side, I did get Turbo C set up.

So, I tried everything out. I had several sample programs available for testing: Assembly language. I also had some experience with what can go wrong with assembly language: First, about four typos kept the program from a program from assembling at all, then it wouldn't terminate properly. I rebooted in DOS mode and tried it there, and after it did what it was supposed to, instead of quitting like a well behaved program should, it started giving me garbage on the screen. The, after a keypress, more garbage. What??? So after another reboot, I went back to the source (for the fourth time.. and found it. Instead of the DOS exit routine at interrupt 21 hex, I had sent it to 21 decimal, which was used on the original IBM-PC to set up for cassette tape services. I have no idea what that routine does now except Nothing Good if you call on it by accident.

The trial of BASIC (GW BASIC if you must know) worked well, except for my dyslexia of the fingers, until I was done and wanted to exit the interpreter. Quit didn't work. Exit didn't work. Bye didn't work. Stop didn't work. So another reboot and a hunt on the Internet for the documentation I'd noticed but glanced over last week. Oh. System is the magic word. Well, that wouldn't have occurred to me.
The trial of Turbo C worked better. I This was the compiler I used to learn C, so I was already roughly familiar with its quirks (once I remembered how to send the compiler output into my working directory instead of mixing it up with the compiler's own files). One of the sample programs used an escape code to create a "beep" sound. So, I wondered, will I get a beep?
No such luck. Down with the beepy DOS, up with the musical"Windows" sound. Could I get something else?...maybe, if wanted to do it bad enough to figure out how.
So, I've refreshed myself on the mechanics. Now, If I only had some creativity...

Moving on to physics, I did a little review of mechanics and the mathematical preliminaries. This is the kind of thing that tends to lead me off on tangents, so I'll mention it more later.
Sometime way back when, I picked up a copy of the chemistry textbook I used in high school. No, the fundamentals of chemistry haven't changed as much in 40 years as the state of the art in computer hardware, but a glance through the contents suggested that some concepts I've been a bit fuzzy about are more clearly explained there than in some more recent college-level textbooks.

I've noticed that I've included some computer jargon. Sorry, there's no help for it: I've reached a point where I baffle the beginners and bore the professionals by belaboring the obvious.

PS. One of the sample programs was one for calculating the worth of your weight in gold. So I had to know. I looked up the current price on the internet and modified the program accordingly, put myself on the scale, and came up at just under 5 million dollars.

Back from hiatus

2008-04-23T17:05:00.002-05:00

For the past month I've added nothing to this blog, because I've been intensively involved in, well, a self-education (or rather re-education) project. My brother has sent me some of my personal library which has been sitting in his garage in Nebraska, and it included about half my computer programming reference library. Another box of books included most of my physics and chemistry references.
So, I've been absorbed in reviewing my computer programming. My skills are old and rusty and somewhat behind the times..actually, I've been 5-10 years behind the technology since the 1970s, and struggle to catch up. I've updated the "About" page on the SKB site to include more of my intellectual history, as well as links to my studies on logic and science fictional world building. I intend to create a "Poor Man's Computing" page to include information on older languages and systems that have been abandoned by the Micro$oft empire in its pursued of the latest and best technology.
Also, since I have my physics and chemistry references now available, I may be doing more work on those sections rather than the history which has been my primary interest for the past while.

More nations

2008-03-10T19:09:00.002-05:00

I;ve added several nations to the knowledge base, and in the process reached a milestone. I've been unhappy with my division of "latin peoples" for some time, but I wanted ten in the category before I split it. I finally reached that, so my studies of Western civilization will now go rather better.

Countries

2008-03-06T20:45:00.002-05:00

One of the frustrating things about trying to do history or intnernational studies of any kind is that I've been adding countries in pretty much strict order of population. That isn't working. Some of the historically most interesting countries, for instance those with a long written history or widespread international political or economical influence, are not the most populous. That means thas that the practical utility of the knowledge base is badly crippled: I can't even talk intelligently about the early 20th century of India without reference to the British empire, or Indonesia without the Netherlands, and although there are plenty of nations in Latin America, I haven't had enough of them listed to distinguish french-speaking from portuguse-speaking countries.
I did some connecting of biographies to the particular 20 year periods of the 19th century, and some additional connections of biographies to particular individuals. I know from having done this analysis before that with my current listing, this is going to be rather heavily biased toward 19th century Britain. Fine, I can fix that by looking more carefully at other nations and periods, but I'll have a starting point to work from, For now, however, the frustration with trying to do European history without Austria, Hungary, or even Greece is just too much. When it comes to literature or mathematics, or even techniques of building construction...I surrender. Strict order of population has to go. I've been creepy crawling with adding nations: Time to put on some speed.

Science and back to history

2008-03-04T22:50:00.002-05:00

I decided to take a break from history and do some work on science, and completed a bunch of categories that had been unfinished and hanging. However, after a few days of this I decided that it wasn't being driven by the actual needs of the rest of the base and went back to history.

I also decided that adding just one nation at a time was much too painfully slow and inefficient, especially since their order of historical importance is only weakly connected to their size in population. Since I don't have a ranking in order of historical importance, and it would be a real challenge to come up with one, I've decided to go back to taking them in bigger chunks.
I started that with prehistory, and found that I hadn't worked all the various blocks of nations back that far. Same with classical and medieval history, although I added enough realize that m classical and medieval overview of western civilization was bad, and rewrote that. I got all the various blocks of nations connected to modern history, so that part's fixed.
So, going into detail of modern history. I started with the 17th century, and went ahead and finished adding pages for the 20 year subdivisions. I have this done for 4 of the 5 centuries of the modern era, and I'm anxious to get this finished up. I'm also inching backwards through the 18th century and added more nations. I started adding some biographical references to the 20 year pages of the 19th century and I'm looking forward to getting back to it.

Still more history

2008-02-12T23:41:00.002-05:00

I've gone through the classical and medieval periods of history, linking another nation to each period, and expanding a bit on histories of associated peoples in the process. I've also done the same for most of modern history up to the 1960s.
This time, I've also taken a look at the biography pages associated with each period. I noted that there were a few that I hadn't touched since I created them four years ago. That's an excessively long time to be waiting to get around to it, and I don't yet have a great deal to add to each person, but I'm getting closer.
A reader sent me a link to information to the Archimedes Palimpsest which was recovered and is being examined by scholars. If I were interested in the detailed parsing of Greek mathematical text (a fantasy which has occured to me at various times), I would love to follow it up more closely. For now, I'm just going to have to file it under "Interesting. Someday, maybe, if I live long enough, I might get around to that". But, seeing how long it's taken to get back around to Thomas Edison who has been in the Knowledge Base almost from the beginning, I'm not promising anything.

Another round of history

2008-02-08T20:59:00.000-05:00

I'm really, really going to sit down and start going through other areas more carefully.

For now, I'm back to prehistory and antiquity. Although there is some slow but steady progress at broadening the connections to various nations, there haven't been any really enlightening developments: Just more detailing of what I don't know. I have been making more connections to social structure and to families. The next time through I should have a little more to say about religions, government, and culture.

Lstest

2008-02-02T14:34:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to make a progress report, but haven't managed it yet. I ran into a wall again when I moved beyond history, so I starded something a little different. When I got partway through history, I swiched to so a summary of what I was doing in particular other areas, which helped quite a bit.
Within Early prehistory, I added a link to Pakistan. Since Brazil wasn't inhabited yet, it pushes Indonesia into Asia and India to South Asia. I now have connections to all the areas of social structure and change, and, somewhat reluctantly, families. I'm considering customs, language and speech, and (since I've already linked foodstuffs) tools and technology. I could probably make more progress here if I considered human geography, human ecology, and physical anthropology, but there hasn't been quite the demand for those areas.
Within middle prehistory, I added a link to Bangladesh, which pushed Pakistan into Asia and Indonesia into Southeast Asia. Indonesia has to have been at least partly inhabited, since Austrialia was peopled during this period, but I haven't yet found any details.
Within Late prehistory, I added a link to Russia, which pushed Bangladesh into Asia and Pakistan into South Asia. I haven't specifically named Megarh as the neolithic site, but that's the earliest one that has come up. I know that there were earlier and larger settlements in the Middle East, but I haven't gone that far back in their history.

In antiquity, there are more nations listed than I have properly integrated into particular periods of history
To the 5th millennium BC, I added Nigeria, which pushes Russia into Western Civilization, which now has a minimal presence to the beginning of antiquity.
To the 4th millennium BC, I added Japan, which pushes Nigeria into African peoples, which now have at least a minimal presence here.
To the 3rd millennium BC, I added Mexico, which pushes Japan into Asiatic peoples, and Bangladesh into South Asian peoples. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about that country or region in the Bronze age.
To the 2nd millennium BC, I added the Philippines. This pushes Mexico into the American Indians, and Brazil gives me reason to add to South American Indians.
To the early first millennium, I added Vietnam, which pushes the Philippines into Asia, and Japan into Oriental peoples.

Classical and medieval history has peoples and communities connected more than they have been integrated into the subdivisions.
To early classical history, I added Germany, which pushes Vietnam into Asia and the Philippines to Southeast Asia.
To late classicl history, I added Egypt, which pushed Germany into Western civilization, and aallowed Russia to prompt the addition of Northeast European peoples to it for that period.
To early medieval history, I added Ethiopia, which pushes Egypt into Asia, and Vietnam to Southeast Asia. A little more useful was the addition of Dacca, which seems to have been founded about this time.
To late medieval history, I added Turkey, which pushes Ethiopia into Africa, and Nigeria into Western Africa, which was now linked.
At this point, I turned from adding more nations to history into more detailed consideration of particular peoples. I finally searched for, and found a site which gives information on American Indian cultures and languages, which will be useful as I do more development of this area. I also did a little bit of long-overdue linking of cities to particular peoples and a few nations.
I've begun making links from social change, social types, and social structure pages to particular nations, so that should have something to work with.
I didn't make much notworthy progress among the social isntitutions, but in the material culture area, I have at least subdivisions sketches out for all its areas except one, and that should be coming soon. I've also reordered the topics within that subject.

Modern history

2008-01-26T20:55:00.000-05:00

Mostly what I accomplished this time around was to add cities to the various peoples in the various centuries of the period, as well as pretty much the same batch of standard links. Also started going into more detail into particular periods, and while several 20 year slices from the 18th century on got more development, there wasn't much new information added. Likewise when I went into 5 year periods from the late 1960s. The next round through history should go a bit faster, since I won't have to add so many city links.

For now, I've started again on Sociology, which doesn't need many new links, until particular periods are better developed. I want to do a little bit more generalizing on modern history. Peoples also require few links, but the history of peoples is a bit bare compared to what I have developed in other sections, so I will want to expand on this a little starting in antiquity. For Asia, I split out the Asian history section from the main Asia page. I'm almost ready to do the same for the Western Civilization history, except that hasn't been growing so fast, and it's going to by noticeably more incomplete.
I had taken links to history almost entirely out of the communities page, since it was far overdeveloped compared to the actual number of communities I had linked. I've started to put some of those links back in, since various periods of history now actually do have particular cities linked to them. I also inserted a number of links to peoples and nations, since some of these now have links to particular cities. I'm starting in on Social structure and change next.

Antiquity to Classical again

2008-01-25T02:15:00.000-05:00

I've been going through the subdivisions and, withough mentioning them individually, adding links to human ecology, Asian geography, foodstuffs, language, customs, education, particular governments, Abrahamic religion and Asiatic religion, and social types. I've also been going through and picking up references to cities. There aren't many as old as the early first millennium BC, but there is another one or two in each successive period. I'll be mostly relying on these to guide whether to subdivide particular nations, eventually. In roughly the late medieval period, I've made a few more connections of specific cities to specific nations, which is helping give them detail. The connections to Abrahamic and Asiatic religion are starting to give a reasonable outline sketch of their history.

Prehistory plus

2008-01-23T12:39:00.000-05:00

I came back around to to the top level and started in with history again. This time, I added a few links to the main history page: languages of the world, customs, and economic production.
Prehistory now has links to foodstuffs, language, customs, occupations, economic activity, and pagan religion.
Early prehistory has links to biohistory and the human body,
Middle prehistory has links to geohistory, biohistory, the human body, demography, Asian geography, foodstuffs, language, customs, and social types: a significant expansion of it. I also added a link to Pakistan, which pushes Brazil to the Americas and the United States to North American Indians.
Late prehistory has links to geohistory, biohistory, the human body, Demography, Asian geography, foodstuffs, language, customs, education, and social types. I added a link to Bangladesh, which pushes Pakistan into Asia and Indonesia into Southeast Asia.

This time, I decided to divert from the straight pursuit of history and look at the targets of these links, especially those that have more than one link to them.
Within Earth science, there is a link to the planets, within Astronomy. Geohistory got a link to atmospheric science, in preparation for study of climate change. The Cenozoic got a link to Sociology, so that eventually I can start looking at national resource, for instance.
I didn't see any obvious resources for biology or biohistory, but Cenozoic life got a link to institutions.
I didn't see any need to expand the main Personal studies page, but the Human body page got links to biological behavior, religion, and communities.
Likewise, I saw no need to expand the main Anthropology page, but demography got a critical link to the human life cycle, human geography got linked to ecology, which opens up the possibility of biogeography, and Asian geography was linked to science and human ecology
The culture page got a couple of long-overdue links to Middle prehistory and late prehistory. Material culture has been short on specific examples, so I started linking to cities, beginning with Tokyo. Foodstuffs also need specific examples, so I started linking that to communities and nations. Conceptual culture also got linked to Tokyo, and language to religion. Behavioral culture got links to New York City and Indonesia, while customs got a link to peoples of the world, and occupations a link to religion
Within Institutions,I skipped the main page. Education got links to New York City and Indonesia. Economics got an important link to social types, and economic activities got a link to culture that I have been wanting to make for what seems like ages.
A lot of these links were made in the reverse direction as well, so I'm not going to trouble to track them all.

I don't get it

2008-01-21T21:06:00.000-05:00

I had intended to do quite a bit of work among peoples of the world, but when it got right dow to it, my energy and interest fizzled. I didn't find Asian peoples in general all that significant, nor Western civilization, or even social chage and types. I found myself skipping over government and economics, and only a token movement at occupations within the area of behavioral culture, nothing in anthropology or personal studies or science. Instead, my attention is turning back to history, and its finer divisions.

Modern history

2008-01-18T19:00:00.000-05:00

I didn't see a while lot to add to mdern history's main page that eeither hasn't been, or doesn't need to be added to the main history level first. The particular centuries are a different matter.
In the 16th century, I added or reviewed links to human geography, occupations, education, and social types I also added a link to Ethiopia, which pushes Egypt into Asia and Vietnam into Southeast Asia.
For the 17th century, I added links to the same first four subjects. There would have been a link to Turkey, but that was already in place. But it pushes Ethiopia into Africa and Nigeria into Western Africa, which weren't in place yet.
For the 18th century, I added links to those same first four subjects. There would have been a link to Iran, which pushed Turkey into Asia and Egypt into the Middle East, if those weren't already in place. This is also the leading edge of progress backward into the past. Most of the page I liked to were already in place and developed to where I wanted them, there wasn't much real progress.

For the 19th century, I expanded the connection to human geography, and added one to occupations. The others were already sufficiently developed. This already had a link to Thailand, so there wasn't need to add one.
The mid 19th century got a link to religion, to Tokyo, and to the United States. (The Mexican War, for anyone keeping track). Adding cities at the same time I add nations will complicate things a bit, but hopefully not too much.
The late-mid 19th century got a link to behavioral culture and government. From this point, I'm adding links to cities that ought to be there if I had been adding cities from the start, so Tokyo and Seoul. Adding China pushes the United States into Western Civilization and American Indian peoples: the US Civil war and reconstruction go in this period.
The Late 19th century has links to Conceptual and behavioral culture and to government: Most of the others I wanted were already in place. Adding Mexico City pushed Tokyo and Seoul into Asia, and adding India to the list of nations pushed China into Asia. This was the period when China came close to being carved up by European powers.

In the 20th century, most of what I wanted to add had already been added, but France would have been the next nation.
The Early 20th century included new links to material culture, economics, and an update of links to it from social structure and change and social change pages. Since many nations had already been added, This would have included Indonesia, pushing India to Asiatic peoples and China into Oriental peoples. Adding New York City would push Mexico City into Western Civilization and American Indian peoples.
The early-mid 20th century included new links to all three major areas of culture, economics, and the updates from social structure and change, and social change pages. Adding Bombay would push New York City into Western Civilization. Adding Brazil would push Indonesia into Asiatic peoples and India into South Asian peoples.
The mid 20th century got the links to and from other ares I mentioned with the previous period. Adding Delhi would push Bombay into Asiatic peoples, which would push Seoul into Oriental peoples. Adding Pakistan would push Brazil into Western Civilization, which would push the USs into Anglic peoples, and it would also put Brazil with American Indian peoples, and the United States into the North American Indians.
The late-mid 20th century got the same batch of other areas linked. Adding Sao Paulo to the city list, pushed Delhi into Asia, and Bombay into South Asia. Adding Bangladesh would push Pakistan into Asiatic peoples, which would push Indonesia into Southeast Asia. This has the effect of calling to attention that I have mostly ignored the recent history of Pakistan, so there's a gap I want to make up when I next look at Pakistan.
The late 20th century was already linked to most of the areas I wanted to add. Adding Shanghai would have the effect of pushing Sao Paulo into Western civilization. Adding Russia would push Bangladesh into Asiatic peoples and Pakistan into South Asian peoples.
The early 21st century already has all the links I wanted to add. Adding Los Angeles would push Shanghai into Asiatic peoples, which would push Delhi into south Asia, and Bombay into India, where it rightly belongs, which creates a solid link between a nation and a city for this particular period. Adding Nigeria pushed Russia into Western civilization and Brazil into Latin peoples (Also bringing Mexico City with it).

With this pass through history done, I'm in a better position than before to turn to study of what I call Sociology.

Antiquity to medieval, revisited.

2008-01-17T19:35:00.000-05:00

On another passs through the antiquity section of the knowledge base, I did some linking of the main antiquity page to physical geography.
For the 5th millennium BC, I have new links to human geography, to conceptual and material culture, to economics, particular religions, and social change. I added Bangladesh, which pushes Pakistan into Asia and Indonesia into Southeast Asia. I also revised the information on Pakistan just a little, but the decription of findings at one archaeological site reminds me that I need to add links to information on occupations to history and sociology.
For the 4th millennium BC, I added mostly the same links, added one to Russia, which pushes Bangladesh into Asia and Pakistan into South Asia.
For the 3rd millennium BC, I added mostly the same links, but went into specific detail on pagan religions, plus one to Nigeria, which pushes Russia into Western Civilization. I might have spent some time in the Harappan civilization, but decided to wait and do that at a later time
For the 2nd millennium BC, I had mostly the same links to add, plus one to Japan, which pushes Nigeria into African peoples.
For the early first millennium BC, I had mostly the same links to add, plus one to Mexico, which pushes Japan into Asia and Bangladesh into South Asia.

For Classical and medieval history, I added a link to Asian geography, one to occupations, and one to recreation and entertainment.
For links to early classical history, I added the same links as for the 3rd millennium BC, except for adding a link to the Philippines, which pushes Mexico into American Indians, and Brazil into South American peoples.
For links to late classical history, I added the same links as for early clasical, except for adding a link to Vietnam, which pushes the Philippines into Asia and Japan into Oriental peoples.
For links to early medieval history, I switched a little. Human geography still, and occupations, but education, since economics was already connected, and I didn't extend particular religions: I'll do that next time through. I added a link. I also added Germany, which pushed Vietnam into Asia and the Philippines into Southeast Asian peoples.
For links to to late medieval history, I did most of the same links as for Early medieval history, plus one to Egypt, which pushes Germany into Western Civilization and Russia into Northeast European peoples.

Prehistory

2008-01-16T22:13:00.000-05:00

I had intended to go through the Sociology and Institutions sections more thoroughly, but when It came down to it, none of them really caught my attention with things I had was really interested in looking at. So, I started over in history, with prehistory. This time, though, there are a few teeth in the subject.
In reviewing what I have in prehistory, I was reminded that I wanted to connect this better to human geography, and with the emphasis on Asiatic countries that's been been given to it, to Asian geography in particular. That subject's been hanging incomplete for a while, so I added an East Asia page, and linked prehistory to it. I also found reason to link to the hunting and gathering societies page.
In Early prehistory, I made connections to Geohistory, and to Asian geography. I also added Indonesia, which pushes India into Asiatic peoples, but that's as far as I was going to go with this, because at this point in history, I'm not sure there was the same kind of cultural division that is seen later.
In Middle prehistory I added links to Human geography, Behavioral and conceptual culture, and social change. I added a link to Brazil, which pushes Indonesia into Asia and India into South Asian peoples, This provided a little incentive to add links to Asian geography to Sociology and Peoples pages, as well as to Asiatic peoples.
In Late prhistory, I added the same batch of geographical and cultural links, and social change. Adding Pakistan pushed Brazil into American Indian peoples, and the United States into North American peoples. Some of the characteristics of the peoples added to Pakistan suggested that I do something I've been wanting to do for a while: create a new page for food-related occupations, History is now linked to this. In the use of sociology in history, I also created a link to horticultural societies, which in turn have a link to Culture that will prove useful.

Classical to present

2008-01-16T10:47:00.000-05:00

After filling in more links to sites dealing with the classical and medieval period, I did a little more development of particular sections.
In Early classical history, I added links to areas of culture, to government, and particular religions. I addeded a new link to Mexico, which pushed Japan into Asia, and Bangladesh into South Asia. The link to mexico will eventually lead to Meso-American history, but that still needs some development.
In Late classical history, I added the same kinds of links to other areas, a new link to the Philippines, which pushed Mexico into American Indian peoples.
In Early medieval history, I added the same kinds of links to other areas, and a new link to Vietnam, which pushed the Philippines into Asia, and Japan into Oriental peoples.
In Late medieval history, I added the same kinds of links to to other areas, and a new link to Germany, which pushed Vietnam into Asia, and the Philippines into Southeast Asia.

In Modern history, I found that I already have a number of links to other sites, so I skipped the general page and went straight to particular centuries.
For the 16th century, I added links to areas of culture, government, and particular religions, and added Egypt to the list of nations. During this period, this was under the rule of the Ottoman empire which I haven't discussed, yet, but that's coming. This addition pushed Germany into Western civilization, which pushed Mexico into Latin peoples (Since the Spanish Conquest began in this century)
For the 17th century, I added the same kind of links. I also added Ethiopia to this century's list of nations, which pushed Egypt into Asia, and Vetnam into Southeast Asia.

For the 18th century, I added the same kinds of links to other areas, and added Turkey to this century's list of nations, which pushed Ethiopia into Africa, and Nigeria into Western Africa.
Since modern history is getting another level of detail, I reviewed the status of pages I added some time ago, the late-mid 18th century and the late 18th century. There isn't much to add yet.

For the 19th century, most of the links to culture and institutions had already been added.
Iran would be added to the list of nations, which pushed Turkey into Asia, and Egypt into the Middle East. This division will be worked backinto earlier and earlier periods as I progress.
Most of the divisions of the 19th century were being expanded a little. For the Late-mid 19th century, I have a connection to the US which includes the Civil War era.
For the late i9th century, I added a connection to China, which includes its near partition among nations of western civilization, and moved the United States as an example of Western civilization, and American Indian peoples.

The 20th century is already well developed in other ways: This would include discussion of Thailand, which would push Iran into Asia and Turkey into the Middle East if this were not already done.
For the early 20th century, I added a connection to India with its agitation for home rule or independence from Britain, which pushed China into Asiatic peoples. Western nations were no longer trying to carve up China amongst themselves, and I'm not sure why. This is a question for further study.
For the early-mid 20th century, I added a connection to Indonesia (Still called the Dutch East Indies, at this point), which pushed India into Asiatic peoples, and China into the Oriental peoples group.
For the mid 20th century, I haved a connection to Brazil, which pushes Indonesia into Asia, and India into South Asian peoples.
For the late-mid 20th century, this would have a connection to Pakistan if it were not already developed, pushing Brazil into Western civilization and the US into Anglic peoples, and also Brazil into American Indian peoples and the US into North American Indians.
For the late 20th century, if this were not already done, adding Bangladesh would push Pakistan into Asia and Indonesia into Southeast Asia.
For the early 21st century, if it were not already done, adding Russia would push Bangladesh into Asia and Pakistan into Southeast Asia. This concludes the latest foray into history, but I will be back to it before too long.

More Antiquity

2008-01-14T22:24:00.000-05:00

Since I'd started work on prehistory, I skipped over early prehistory and went to middle prehistory. Addition of Indonesia pushed India into Asia and China into Oriental peoples. These are most likely not where human societies originated, so I will need more work here.
In late prehistory, addition of Brazil pushed Indonesia into Asia and India into South Asian peoples. This still isn't a very broad perspective, but it is a start.

When I got to antiquity, I took a look through the sites world history links to and made a bunch of links that antiquity can link to. There is a fair amount of information on those sites that's going to take a while to digest, but it does provide some raw material to look at.

In the 5th millennium BC, I added connections to material culture and to government and to social structure and change. Addition of Pakistan pushed Brazil Into American Indian peoples, which pushed the United States into North American Indians, which is not yet much developed.

In the 4th millennium BC, I continued the additions to material culture, government, and social structure and change. Addition of Bangladesh pushed Pakistan into Asiatic peoples, which pushed Indonesia into Southeast Asian peoples. That gives Asia three major divisions, and I'm still woefully ignorant on southeast Asia.

In the 3rd millennium BC, the rise of bronze age civilization and literacy along with it gives so much weight to material culture that I had to link to conceptual and behavioral culture as well, in addition to the government and social structure and change links. Addition of Russia pushed Bangladesh into Asiatic peoples, and Pakistan, along with India, into South Asia. This starts to focus a little more on the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley.

In the 2nd millennium BC, all three areas of culture had to be connected, and I added government, and linked specific religions. Addition of Nigeria pushed Russia into Western Civilization, and I would like to take a better look at the Indo-european expansion.

In the early first millennium, again all three major areas of culture needed to be connected, and I added links to government and to specific religions. Addition of Japan pushed Nigeria into African peoples, which now have a better link to antiquity.

2008-01-12T18:10:00.000-05:00

I mentioned that I'd continued with my review of history.
For the second millennium BC, I added a reference to Russia, which pushed Banbladesh into Asia and Pakistan into South Asia. This also brings up connections to the Indo-European peoples that I'd love to pursue, but will have to set aside for a while

For the early first imllennium, I added a reference to Nigeria, which pushes Russia into Western peoples, which pushes Brazil into American Indian peoples for this period.

For the early classical period, I added a reference to Japan, which pushes Nigeria into African peoples.
For the late classical period, I aded Mexico, which pushes Japan into Asia, which pushes Bangladesh into South Asia, and highlights how very thin my knowledge is in this area.
For the early medieval period, I added the Philippines, which puses Mexico into American Indian peoples.
For the late medieval period, I added a connection to Vietnam, which pushes the Philippines into Asia, which pushes Japan into Oriental peoples and allwes something of a contrast with China.

For the 16th century, I added Germany, which pushes Vietnam into Asia, which pushes the Philippines into Ssoutheast Asia.
For the 17th century, I added Egypt, which pushes Germany into Western civilization, which pushes Russia into Northeastern peoples.
For the 18th century, I Added Ethiopia, which pushes Egypt into Asia, which pushes Vietnam into southeast Asia, before the French conquest.
For the 19th century, I added Turkey, which pushes Ethiopia into Africa and should have put Niteria into Western Africa, but I'm not sure remembered to do that.
For the 20th century, the addition would have been Iran, which would have pushed turken into Asia, which would have resulted in expanding the middle east, except that I have already done this.

This suggested that I start doing for the next lower divisions of peoples the same kinds of things. This has been developed to 20 year periods starting in the late 19th century. By the time I get to the early 21st century in the present day, Im at the level of adding Bangladesh, (already done), which suggests that most of the progress is going to come in earlier decade, which actually sits rather well with me.

Having gone through history, I thought to go through the peoples, add another community and another nation, and see what pushing those connections led to. As it turns out, not a great deal of change to what I already had. Among Asiatic peoples, the history is turning out to be far more satisfying, but that isn't really leading into any deepeer analysis of society, which is where I would like to go. I don't know if I've mentioned that I'm itching to subdivide nations, but since I'm going back through and adding detail, I need to get caught up to that point, again.

I also didn't see much push for improvement in religions, although I had connected most of the sudivisions of history to religion if the connection wasn't already there. I'm going to have to, in the next pass through history, form links and particular governments, as well as links to more specific areas of culture, because those are areas I need to work on.

Since I went through all this fairly quickly, I started over again with history, and this time took the trouble to add links to prehistory. A couple of those have solid information. It's also about time to publish all thes updates to the website, but I'm going to wait until Monday to do this.

In a separate matter, I did some research on the net in Astronomy, mostly related to trying to trach down how the color index of stars is related to their temperature. I'd like there to be an equation that relates them, but I couldn't find it, and access to the University library's axtronomical references is a bit difficult.

2008-01-11T21:18:00.000-05:00

In the latest round of my studies, I've been trying an older approach that I set aside for a while
The lastes version has me working in prehistory. I'm trying to start with countries and expand out. Early prehistory to about 40, ooo BC is hard to access from sources that start in history: This topic goes more with archaeology, but I don't quite want to go into that subject right now.

For middle prehistory, I expanded the countries connection to India and added a link to Asiatic peoples. Archeological research has not progressed as far as it has in Europe, so the story of how the earth was peopled by modern humans is seriously incomplete.

In later prehistory, I added a connection to Indonesia, and within Asiatic peoples, created a link to Oriental peoples. This does not mean that the Chinese people have the oldest civilization; I just haven't got to adding older but less numerous cultures. I've also started creating links to religion: not that I know much about religion in any part of prehistory, but so that I can add more links when I do know somethings.

Antiquity is a little bit easier to handle, and I start with the 5th millennium BC. Following my program of adding countries in decreasing order of population, this meant adding Brazil, this pushed Indonesia into Asia and India into a link with South Asia. Neither the Orient nor South Asia is well documented for this period, so this involves a bit of armwaving.

The fourth millennium BC adds Pakistan, which pushes Brazil into American Indian peoples, and I'm anxious to split these into regions based on countries, but still haven't done it yet.

The third millennium BC adds Bangladesh, which pushes Pakistan into Asia. So far, the Harappan (or Indus Valley) civilization appears most prominently, but I haven't yet begun to consider the middle east. Indonesia guides a link with Southeast Asian peoples, about which I know nothing in antiquity. This might be a good subject for reading, if I could get to it.

2007-12-06T17:04:00.000-05:00

I've advanced a little in examination of social structure and change. Particular chnges, such as the industrial revolution and modernization, social procesees, social types, and social structure are all being examined.

In religion, several connections were advanced my last time through, and this time I focused on catching up a little on Asiatic religions, especially those in China and Japan, and those that originated in Persia.

As I read the news and news summaries, I'm often slightly confused by the alphabet soup of international Governmental Organizations and why they are important. I've added pages for the European Union, NATO, and the CIS (I was surprised that was still around: the individual nations get more attention now), and the World Trade Organization. I may do some rearranging or alternate connections, but this will be useful when get these developed as far as current events.

More peoples

2007-12-05T15:02:00.000-05:00

After doing a review of Asiatic peoples, next up was a review of Western civilization. Since many of these nations are smaller than Asiatic peoples, they are a bit harder to get to. For Anglic peoples, the most accessible is the United States, and although I didn't really want to consider its history separately from the rest of it just yet, the accumulation of events just about forces it. The Latin nations form a big block. I'm close to forming groups of these and anxious to get there. Northeast European peoples are developing rather slowly, except for Russia, and so are Germanic peoples. Balkan peoples aren't yet to the point where I can do much with them, and it;s going to take a while to get to Scandinavian peoples.

I've had a little more success with the division of African peoples. I recently reached a critical point where I should break these into Western, Eastern, Central, and Southern African peoples, and connections to them were made in modern history and some of its subdivisions. American Indian peoples still don't have enough connected nations for me to subdivide, but this will be coming soon, about the same time as Latin peoples.

Taking shape

2007-12-04T19:14:00.000-05:00

I think I'm getting somewhere. For about the past month, I've been trying to track events on a day-by-day basis, or at least a week-by-week basis. In the process, it's been pushing me to connect more and more recent periods of history to more and more nations. I have this extended as far as the 20th century, the last seven years, and and up to the current year. I'm close to getting the current quarter and current month extended to most of the nations I have in the knowledge base. Getting caught up that far is a satisfying accomplishment, and will be a big help in analyzing daily news and current events.

In going through peoples, the addition of nations has reached a point where I can start taking a closer look at particular peoples of the Middle East. I had this broken down into some categories, but then decided to approach this from the point of view of particular nations, and hadn't got caught up. I reached a point where I could re-think and rearrange those subjects, so some long-dormant categories are coming active again. There are quite a few events associated with Israel and neighboring countries, but since most of these are fairly small, it's going to be a while before I can get to them. I'm not quite to the point yet where I can follow reports on the war in Iraq. By my rules of development, which I have to follow more or less in order to keep from getting compleely lost, I still need to add a few nations in order to get Iraq into its own little category in the current month. I note that Egypt has been rather quiet in international news lately. I've also noticed an ongoing conflict between militant Kurds in Northern Iraq and Turkey, which is something I would like to follow as well. I'm also getting closer to being able to follow events in Iran. There isn't as much progress on other peoples of Asia, although a lot of current attention has been focused on Pakistan. India is rather bigger, but a lot of events escape attention.

2007-11-17T19:51:00.001-05:00

I've been examining events of the last two years a little bit more. by gradually broadening the range of countries I know something about in each month. That's a rather slow approach, but it's been working for me.
Although this might suggest attention to particular countries, I can't do much with them until these perios have a more complete list of events. Instead, they are prompting a closer investigation of religion and government. I have been putting off a more detailed examination of these subjects for quite some time, but it seems appropriate to begin turning my attention to them.

Catch up

2007-11-13T21:59:00.000-05:00

After a long weekend with other commitments and a day of catching up, I have more events of the last two years grouped by nations, Events for November are now more up to date.

Current events

2007-11-09T12:01:00.000-05:00

At various times I have wanted to discuss current events. However, I have been rather handicapped by my lack of knowledge about various affairs, and from the commentary I've seen on the various political blogs, a great deal of the discussion is ignorant and prejudiced. My knowledge base has reached a point where I think I can begin to discuss current events, though not necessarily on a day-to-day basis This will probably branch out to other areas of knowledge.

Events that have been in the news include protests against the government of Myanmar (Burma) and the state of emergency in Pakistan. The last is of some interest in the US because Pakistan has been an ally in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Other than that, I don't have a great deal to add.

During the last month or so, I have been adding to my various lists of events to give me some matieral to work with. A great many of them are associated with government, and I lack a solid background in political science. I am attempting to expand this with examples from history and various different countries, a rather slow process.

SDK

2007-09-29T20:52:00.000-05:00

I got the CD with the SKD I ordered earlier this week and spent a while browsing it. This is a valuable reference and has the kind of documentation I need: I could figure out what I need to know about Windows Programming from here. Actually writing programs to do something is going to take a little bit longer, because I need to study and try out some of the basic functions.

Figuring it out

2007-09-25T19:59:00.001-05:00

I took another look at the couple of Windows tutoral web sites I've found, looking specifically for graphics information, and I found some stuff I half-recognize, but not the specific things I was looking for. I also looked at the header file in my compiler, and found among the definitions technical information on what parameters go in various definitions, but (obviously) no summary of what those parameters do or what they are for, or which functions do which.

I did another search for an older version of the Microsoft Platform SDK that has documentation on those functions. Microsoft has a link to a company that still has CDs containing earlier versions that I might be able for only the cost of shipping, (The current oldest one they offer themselves requires at least Windows 2000) . We'll see whether its useful.
In the meantime, I'm using the same compiler I used in school, but it had a number of visual components I could drag and drop onto a form. (I've never liked the drag-and-drop style of programming), and I couldn't find those components. So I went digging through the help files, and after a bunch of trial and error, found how to tell my compiler to use them, so I'm a bit happier about that.

Programming Study

2007-09-24T17:03:00.000-05:00

With my recently revived interest in Computer programming, I'm about ready to pick up where I left off about 5 years ago. I had taken a Windows Programming course in 1999 and didn't make it all the way through. I kept my textbook (Petzold's Windows Programming, 5th edition)began a review a couple of years later when I was living in Nebraska, (The date on my last program is September 2002). I got somewhat sidetracked and didn't get as far as I would like.

Now that my interest in the project has revived, I'm stuck without my Windows bible, which is still in Nebraska. I tried to find a copy of the Windows Platform SDK that has documentation for all the functions, but since Microsoft has gone to Windows 2000 and Vista, they're no longer making the old SDK available, so no help there. I tried locating copies of Petzold in the local libraries: No, on the public library, no on the closest University libraries. I tried locating people locally who do programming. One has left the programming field and is in Law School, and he may or may not still have a copy, and may or may not let me know if he finds it next Sunday. No on the next closest library: The nearest place that seems to is Pittsburgh, 50 miles away from me, which is rather inconvenient if I want to keep it as a reference. I tried looking on eBay to see if I could pick up second hand copy for minimun price, no luck there. Next try, Amazon.com Success! I can get a used copy for a reasonable price. I just have to wait a week and a half.

In the meantime, just as in writing, if you want to lern how to program, you have to sit down and practice, on a daily basis. So, I sat down and looked up pieces of all the code I have in dusty computer prograns, and came up with three versions of a basic Windows Program. I've now figured out (again) how to do one of the most basic things a program should do: Print a message on the screen. There is still a lot more I want to learn how to do, but until I can get some documentation, it's going to be very slow going. I've never quite figured out the mechanics of doing graphics in any version of programming languages I've studied: I hope to break that barrier.

In the meantime, I've been refining some of my ideas on how to do some basic physics programming: moving particles around in a space, so I've made a little progress toward one of the applications I've had in mind for a while.

Prehistoric anthropology

2007-09-18T17:54:00.000-05:00

For a while I have been working mostly on the science end of the knowledge base, but it's all been routine and not terribly interesting. I decided to to back and take another at the topd-down approach I had been using.

This time, i've started with prehistory and made some connections with geological and biological history, which most noticeably overlap with prehistory. Since I don't have any specific people from prehistory, I'm working on connecting the basics of anthropology to it. This appars to be a reasonably promising approach.
In the process of applying anthropology to prehistory, I have been doing a little work on connecting areas of anthropology to the physical and natural sciences. Since the more detailed levelds of anthropology so far consist mostly of vague, general, armwaving, there isn't much more progress or real content to report just now.

I was feeling a bit bored and too tired to work on the KB the other day, so I looked up an old computer game I used to play way back when: Dungeon Master. It's been placed on a web site and I can run it in the DOS window (of Win 98).

That, in turn, has somewhat rekindled my interest in computer programming, so I've also dusted off the urls for a couple of web sites that offer tutorials on Windows API programming in C and C++, and with my trusty old Borland C++ 5.0, I've begun trying once again to understand how a basic Windows program works. I have the basic idea, but the details are something else again.

I want to give another try at doing (or emulating) elementary science with my programs, so there is some vague connection between these ideas.

History again

2007-08-06T18:52:00.001-05:00

I've been rather quiet here the past couple of weeks. For one thing, I've been working steadily on the knowledge base.

There are a quite a few areas of history I would like to look at more closely. One of them is prehistory. There is a lot of detail that is skipped over in various accounts of how mankind originated and peopled the earth, but I need better tools to investigate this. This leads into a more specific area, the ancient middle east, especially the development of religion, and various tantalizing hints that keep coming from scholarship. This leads further into the classical world, where I am interested in both Greek philosophy and Roman government, and origins of Christianity. I am nearly as interested in the development of Islam as of Medieval Christianity. I had a hard time tracking who was who in the Medieval era in the course I took in Western civilization. In modern history, I have something of an interest in Latin America as well as the United States and Europe, and the progress of civilization during all these time periods. This eventually has the potential to lead into current events, but in this area, my reach has exceeded my grasp.

But therein order to discuss any of these periods, I need more detail on the specific peoples involved. which is where I have been spending a fair amount of effort lately. More on that, later.

Curiosity and desire

2007-07-23T22:44:00.000-05:00

I was describing the Knowledge Base and the new Independent Learning forum to an acquaintance over the weekend, who commented that it must take a lot of discipline to study a subject on your own.
In some respect, I think it does, but I would tend to describe the required qualities differently. They would be curiosity and desire. Children tend to be curious, they are avid to explore the world around them, although I've known some who seldom asked questions, but were inclined if anything to act out their curiosity. As they get older, and especially as they are confined to the limited environment of a school, they tend to lose that curiosity. An independent student, a life-long learner has to keep or regain something of that quality.

What's up

2007-07-16T18:53:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to develop contacts with someone in the unschooling community, without a lot of success.
Mostly in the last few days, I've been working on the knowledge base. About two years years back, I spent some time poring over chemistry books in the University library trying to figure out how to classify chemical reactions. After letting that information compost in the back of my mind since then, I was following a thread of curiosity and creating links sometime in the past three days, when I came across chemical reactions. A classification that fits what I remember about them sprang up and introduced itself. Next time I lay hands on a chemistry text, I'll have to see whether it really works. I've also been wandering back and forth across language and linguistics, and thought I'd resurrect some old notes on the subject, rather than leaving the page as a stub waiting for future developments. I've been wanting to get around to that subject for the longest time, and finally got there.
I've also been anxiously hovering over the Independent Learning Forum, so far, I'm pleased. I'm getting plenty of visits or visitors, and have picked up a few members and comments. The weblog analysis program my site host uses reports that quite a few of them are coming through here. Thanks to all my readers, whoever you are.
On top of that, I've been following current events and a couple of debates...I have some commentary on the past week's worth of that over on my other blog, From the Ground.
I took a break from all this to go over to the local Barnes & Noble and do some leisure reading I liked "The Ninth Talisman" by Lawrence Watt-Evans. I like his protagonists attitude of of "trying to do the right thing without being too sure what the right thing really is". I also took a look at "1635: The Baltic War", but really, the cast of that series is getting so big I can't keep track of who's who, especially when I don't have the last five books at hand to go remind myself. It's getting as bad as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and won't everyone be relieved when that finally reaches the end.

School emptiness

2007-07-11T18:26:00.000-05:00

I was looking over one of the political blogs that I've been following lately, and ran across a link to this analysis of Why Nerds are Unpopular.

Rather than repeat his points and his powerful critique of the whole educational system, about all I can say is, Hear! Hear!

College level unschooling

2007-07-09T13:07:00.000-05:00

One of the things I've found as I've looked into the various home schooling and unschooling movements is that most of the available sites concentrate on parents teaching their children. A great many are geared toward creating and selling curriculum. Sites intended for self-education for adults tend to focus on various degree-granting programs. There certainly don't seem to be many sites to support college-level unschooling, except in a few special areas.
That bothers me. As I browse the Intenet and see the various discussion boards, I'm apalled by the amount of name-calling, free substitution of personal opinion for verifiable fact, and horrendously sloppy reasoning on the part of supposedly educated men and women. It almost seems that if you want a true education, you just about have to go out and get it yourself.

Unschooling

2007-07-06T20:08:00.000-05:00

Not long ago, a conversation with an acquaintance drifted to what I was doing with my life. I described my work on the Knowledge Base, and we talked a little about my disappointment that no one seemed to be interested. The conversation drifted to publicity and marketing, and he suggested that I needed to more clearly identify my target market, and since I had suggested home schoolers, he thought I might start there.
I set that idea aside, since I was wrestling with other things, but since then I've set up the Independent Learning Forum, which gives me a little more freedom to explore home-schooling and independent education. A Google search led to the Wikipeda article on home schooling, and it seems that my beliefs about education have a lot in common with those who advocate unschooling. So, as a believer in self-eduction, I'm about to go practice it and look into this more closely.

Independent Learning Forum

2007-07-05T00:43:00.000-05:00

Since I set up this blog, I've had a lot less commentary from e-mail than I expected. Since I upgraded my web server account so that I now have access to statistics, I see that the Sapience Knowledge Base is indeed getting traffic, but no one is taking the trouble to give me any feedback on the site. For some time, I've been interested in trying to build a community of independent learners, and a web-based forum has been on my wish list. That wish has become a reality, and the Independent Learning Forum can be found now at
http://www.sapiencekb.com/forum This suggests another shift in emphasis for this particular blog, so I plan to be putting announcements about the Knowledge Base on that forum, while I talk here more about techniques of self-directed education.

Update and rambling

2007-06-30T18:49:00.000-05:00

I mentioned a while ago that I was thinking of just taking notes on a day's work on the knowledge base and wandering through it. This represents the kind of work I do on it in a day, and illustrates how this organization connects a hierarchical organization, but also gives the user of this knowledge base freedom to ramble. Where I've gone, others may follow. Suggestions from anyone who uses the knowledge base may well influence the decisions I make in developing it.

I started in science, and connected to the Royal Society, one of the oldest learned societies, and a major influence in the development of modern science, which led to a reconsideration of history. For this subject, I decided to go into particular groups and connect to the World History association, which led back to history. I decided to look at material culture, and connect a particular page that I had developed, Communications technology. This, I decided, has roots in science so I went back there. There, I decided that studies of material culture have progressed enough since I wrote that section that I needed to revise the application of it to science entirely. This led to revisiting material culture, and I reached an important development point by adding a page for clothing and dress. I decided material culture had a connection to physical anthropology. This has some connection to geohistory, which I connected to solar system, history, which is so undeveloped that it led back up to science. Continuing the development of science lad to language, which I have hardly looked at for a while. This needed some development of personal studies. I decided to look at its history and push that back to late classical times. I wasn't quite sure how to go about developing that, so I skipped to early medieval times. This led me to considering Pakistan, which let to human geography. Human geography had an almost complete set of subdivision, so to finish it, I added Oceanic Geography. To more fully incorporate this, I went to the next higher level to consider Anthropology. Review of the fundamentals of that subject led to Geohistory. Here, saw that I had another almost complete set of subdivisions and I could add Precambrian geology. This led back up to Geology, which needed a connection to the structure of matter, which needed a connection to quantum physics, which needed a connection to nonrigid mechanics, which I connected to Sociology. I decided to approach this by examining some of its early roots in middle preahistory. This led back into physical anthropology, which this time I pursued into its roots in study of the human body. The human body has a partial set of subdivisions, so I stopped to add human disease, and back up to personal studies again. This time, I decided to push the connections to history back further into early classical, which led into biographies. I had decided earlier that I needed to start adding more biographies, so I added a page for Napoleon. Biographies connect somewhat to social foundations, and here I added a new page for social control. This led back up to Anthropology, which this time I connected to ecology, and I added a new page for system ecology. Taking this back up to biology, I decided that I could start pushing its history a little but further back, and connected to the 18th century, which I referred back to biography. The next entry to be added to that list was Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Here I decided to start checking Late medieval history to be sure that everyone who should have been added by now has been. This led to Martin Luther. Luther I connected to the social institutions, and here I decided to go back to the beginnings and connect this to middle prehistory. Middle prehistory could be connected to human ecology as the next logical step, and here things begin to get a bit tricky, because I really don't like the way I had divided human ecology anymore. This page was old enough and my general approach has changed since I last worked on it, so I rewrote the biology section again. This let back to biology, and I took this back to the 17th century, which led back to biography and the addition of a page for William Morton. I decided that since I'm using the application of history to biography as a method of searching the biographical list, I don't need to link biography directly to either history or classical and medieval history, since these now no longer have direct connections to individuals. Historical individuals have long been distributed to the particular periods, and now, so have classical and medieval individuals. Early classical, late classical, early medieval, and late medieval history now each have a set of prominent individuals. That wound up the day's work.

Site upgrade

2007-06-29T10:04:00.000-05:00

Doteasy.com, which hosts the Sapience Knowledge Base, just offered a deal for full service that was too good to pass up, which is going to let me add some features that should make it more interesting. Before I publish the current version, I want to get the site map current.
I've started to revive my other active blog, From the Ground as a political/current events blog, so I've been doing a little work on that, somewhat at the expense of this one, but I haven't dropped work on it.

I decided that no version of the planned approach was working well, so for now, I'm just going to let the SKB just grow naturally and see what happens. So far, that's resulting in more developments in science, in areas that I have neglected, and it's occurred to me that, rather than providing dry summaries, it may be more interesting to any potential readers to describe some of my meandering progress.

Science

2007-06-21T22:42:00.000-05:00

I keep experimenting with different approaches to building and expanding the knowledge base, because no one of them works all the time. I had about given up on a bottom-up approach, but I thought I'd give it another try.

There is a lot to be said for simple appreciation of nature. Going for a walk outdoors, seeking the sky clouds, sun, moon (if it's up), trees, grass, birds, bugs, and small animals, the breeze... All these are ways of experiencing and appreciating nature. Every day, even every hour, brings its own new experiences. All the various parts and facets of nature seem to be woven together, almost in one seamless web., and this overall, or holistic view, is an important part of understanding and appreciating nature.
But, for the purposes of science, it's necessary to focus on one thing at a time, and by convention it's useful to group things that are similar in some way together. The trees, grass, birds, bugs, and small animals, we recognize as living things. Even the sticks of wood that have fallen from the trees, we recognize as once having been living, and for a time we focus on them and call the subject biology.
The ground we walk on, the clouds, the breeze, and any streams that may happen to be flowing nearby, we recognize as nonliving, and are part of earth science.
The sun and moon belong to astronomy.
There are two more branches of science, which are less obvious: The substances things are made of is considered as part of chemistry, and heat and warmth, and light and darkness, and sound are considered to belong to physics.
What's often missing in education is the ability, once we have isolated and analyzed all these things and taken them apart, is bringing them back together and appreciating the whole.

Also, there is the fact that the study of nature is a human activity, performed by people, acting in society. The tools, ideas, and occupations that scientists use and follow, the social institutions, the communities and peoples that produce them, and the history of the whole scientific enterprise are also connected, so that the whole can be overwhelming to contemplate. So, I go back to looking at one small piece at a time.