Sapience

I thought there should have been a way to put favorite links on my blog, but as nearly as I could tell it would have meant messing with the template, which I didn't want to do. So, I switched templates and I can put favorite links here.
Too bad there's no word yet from Beagle 2; it may have gone the way of the Mar Polar lander a couple of years ago. But there are a couple of more vehicles on the way by the wweekend, so we can hope for good news.
My applications for a domain name hasn't gone through yet, so no web site, but I'm continuing to work on it.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I don't have much to say about today's news, except to note that attacks on US troops appear to be down some 50% since Saddam's capture. It looks like the hard work the intelligence people have been doing on identifying the sources of the resistance is starting to pay off.
I've finally picked a Web host and plunked down for a Domain name registration, and unless there are problems, I should have my site up by the new year. Rather than surfing the Internet and searching the web for more good links for this blog, I have more tweaking to do on the content of the pages, and many of the links I find will be going there.

Confutus

Some thoughts on the latest news. There are reports that Saddam Hussein is naming names of who had knowledge of weapons caches and money in foreign banks. He is a known liar, so any information coming from him has to be confirmed, but he may be trying to plea bargain a death sentence. Trouble is, he's bargaining with American interrogators. If the Iraqi people are permitted to try him, I don't think this will be enough to earn their forgiveness.
There is also a report that the US has a goal of handing over Iraq to a provisional government by July, and is backing off plans to do a wholesale restructuring of the country. As I mentioned earlier, this is a move in the right direction. We've freed the Iraqis from a brutal dictator and satisfied ourselves that he poses no threat to the US; so it's time to get out, let the Iraqis decide their future for themselves, and focus on the other homes of Islamic terrorism.
The earthquake in Bam, Iran, is certainly a tragedy, but the American people ought to be generous in their aid to the victims, as much as we can. Somehow, the people of Iran need to know that America is not the Great Satan that the zealots who govern them have been proclaiming.
Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, has been the target of assassination attempts, apparently for his cooperation with American attempts to destroy al-Qaeda. I hope he sees that terrorism is just as much a threat to his own government as it is to those of his enemies.
Again I see that the courts are still resisting any restrictions on the right to abortion, in spite of persistent attempts of state legislatures to restrict the right. On constitutional principles, this is wrong, wrong, wrong. There is no provision in the Constitution that gives the Supreme Court a veto over any Presidential order, Act of congress, decision of a lower court, state legislature, or locally elected school board. This is a right claimed for the court by Chief Justice John Marshall at the end of Jefferson's presidency over a partisan dispute over control of the federal judiciary. Although in many respects it makes the judiciary an equal partner of the executive and legislative branch and provides an additional check on their power, it becomes possible for unelected and unremovable judges to create law by judicial decree, and impose it on an unwilling people. Attempting to overthrow individual decisions by constitutional amendment is difficult and often unwise, because of unintended side effects. There needs to be some mechanism, short of a constitutional amendment, by which the people of the US can reject an odious decision of the courts. I'm likely to discuss this at more length in the future. I really should include more links to related discussion, but since I'm working on a web site as a companion to this blog, and I can put lots more links in a web site and gather them into related areas more easily than I can here, I will come back to this later.

Confutus

Doing more work on my web site. I find that adding people is helping drive its development. I'm more or less adding them in order of Hart's ranking, even though I don't always agree with his ranking, and I have no unambiguous criteria for rating someone's influence.
I do a lot of reading. Recently, "Bush at War", "Master and Commander", "Sense and Sensibility", and "Exploration of Africa", plus a whole bunch of encyclopedia articles on the people in my biography list: there's more ideas that go through my mind than I can begin to account for here. A few of them:
The late 18th and Early 19th centuries were interesting times, historically speaking.
Notably, I see that the European explorers of Africa in the 19th century were determined and courageous men, who went through almost incredible hardships in their explorations. Whatever their other faults, I have to admire their fortitude.
Although it would be nice to be able to keep up with events all over the world and put them into historical perspective, this is hardly possible for one person to do. For now, I need to do a lot more filling in the gaps.
Although many philosophers of the previous century had attacked religious belief as ancient superstition, it seems to have been the theories of Charles Darwin that were most successful in creating doubt among most people. Another thing on my long list of things I would like to do someday is to consider his various arguments, and those were that were made by his supporters, more carefully.

After months of buildup, it only takes a few days for Christmas to be forgotten for another year. Next up, New Year's Day, and then getting through the winter.

I have started working on a web site again. The most active parts of it are dealing with significant individuals in history, and connecting them to other areas of study. I'm looking at the individuals mentioned in Hyperhistory, but this tends to overlap the biographical list in the Encyclopedia Britannica a bit too heavily. The emphasis is on political and cultural figures. Most religious and business figures are underrated in news reports and the like. I would like to include families, but most of these are too small to be really significant in world affairs. There is a work by Michael Hart that ranks the 100 most influential. I don't necessarily agree with the rankings, but until I get have more information, it will do for a starting point.

Work on yesterday's entry was interrupted. I was looking through more pages on Jesus genealogy, and it strikes me again how much partisan bias goes into some of the discussions. There is a real difference in attitude and approach between "don't know" (for sure), which prompts a search for missing information, and a partisan "don't believe" which excludes relevant information. This applies to many other studies, besides religion.

I went to my notebook and started writing down important events and notes in world history. When I finished the list, I recalled several others, and rewrote the list a couple of times. Then again. By about the fourth pass, the list was two pages long and growing. I've done exercises like this before, but it demonstrates that everything is connected. Categorizing the list in terms of historical periods, regions or countries, religious, political, cultural, or biographical events leads to other areas. Each of these areas prompts more investigation and suggests other important historical developments. Uncertain recall of dates suggests the need for more research, and documentation of my sources as well as bringing to mind awareness of still further interconnections. The development is nonlinear and suggests that a web page would be a good idea for helping track the interconnections.

The chief difficulties are financial: At present I am limited to resources that are "free". I expect to be exploring ways to make these ideas more accessible, more interesting, and more useful. In the meantime, Happy holidays, or Merry Christmas, whichever you prefer.

Confutus

Mention of Jesus as a historical figure tends to lead into religious disputes, which I would prefer to avoid as much as possible, but it does lead into the middle of human history. Nevertheless, many of the prominent and influential people of the world have been religious more than political.

No one knows for sure if the US can successfully set up a postwar government in Iraq, but the intention to withdraw and allow the Iraqis to govern themselves is commendable. Never mind whether it was a mistake going in: The question is what we do now and what we do next. A somewhat more immediate issue is whether the citizens of the US can successfully govern themselves, and although government according to the will of the people is preferable to rule by tyrants, othe countries need not necessarily adopt the US model with all its traditions, some of which may well be mistakes.
The question of US Imports of drugs from Canada is one of those requently recurring problems. I see that the FDA is calling it illegal, citing the fact that quality controls aren't carried out under its supervision. I wonder why drugs are cheaper in Canada, and why there are import barriers, and exactly what the law on the subject is, as well as why it is.
When I went back to my news source for Asa, I found this visit to be all commercials, with no news. A better source seems to be Asia Newsnet I see there seems to be slow progress on getting other nations besides the US to help in Iraq, and some progress on forming a government in Afghanistan.

I started following my own advice and looking at the New Testament as a historical source for Jesus. Starting with Matthew, the first thing that appears is a genealogy of Jesus. This was intended to show that Jesus was a rightful heir to the ancient throne of David, and thus qualified to be the Messiah that was expected by the Jews. In today's world, this of no great moment, but it would have been a controversial and explosive issue political issue in 1st Century AD Palestine, to both the Jews and the Romans.
A preliminary search of the Web reveals three major points of view: One, that they establish a case that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, Second, that such claims are invalid, and Third, both genealogies are fabrications. A Google search under "Jesus Genealogy" shows that none of these opinions are entirely unbiased.

Most of the events that will prove most significant to future generations go quietly unnoticed, while many that gather much current attention are comparatively insignificant. I may follow TV Guide and do some cheers and jeers of my own. Cheers to Egypt, for its relative moderation and attempts to mediate and tone down the violence in the Middle East. As I recall, it was Anwar Sadat of Egypt who broke ranks with the other Arab nations and signed the historic peace treaty in 1973, and was assassinated by extremists in his own country for his attempts. The attack on the Egyptian diplomat upon his visit to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem looks like the same kind of thing. Jeers to whoever thinks peacemakers are traitors.

The intense focus on the middle east tends to draw attention away from the other nations in the world. It can be useful to take a look at other events in Asia, for instance China and India, even if they don't grab the headlines. In particular, Pakistan is neighbor to Afghanistan and has had connections to al-Qaeda.

I mentioned the importance of religion, and the reference there is a starting point for more detailed investigation. One of the major alternatives to religion, at least in the Western world, is philosophy, and in fact these two overlap considerably. I hope to explore the relationship in the future.

I haven't yet much mentioned the role of government. Although I tend to be politically conservative, I agree with many liberal points of view. So far, I haven't mentioned the US presidential race, partly because there are so many candidates it is hard to investigate all of them, partly because I have so little influence on it. As a matter of principle, I believe:

D&C 98: 10 Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.

I'm not entirely certain that it is possible to determine whether a candidate is good, honest, or wise from examination of his or her web site. I will be looking for more information on the subject. In the meantime, the closer and more local the race, the more likely it is that an individual can make a difference.

I might mention there that I have suspicions about the morality or virtue of most major corporations. On general principles, the unrestrained pursuit of money and profit by those who are already wealthy is not a good thing. Given that major multinational corporations have a larger budget than whole countries, I find it somewhat surprising that they get so much less attention than politics.

In education, I am in favor of libraries, the internet, and anything that makes it easier to pursue knowledge independent of educational institutions, although these have their place as well.

Although most people's lives have a great deal to do with culture, this is such a broad subject that it's hard to tackle except by considering it in small pieces. None of those today. Likewise, I have nothing on particular social groups.

There is so much that could be said about Jesus, especially at this time of year, that I won't say much. The best account is found in the New Testament. Whether you believe it or not, it's impossible to hold an intelligent discussion
about him if you aren't familiar with it.

Among the various things I would like to get around to is a discussion of biology and the history of life on earth. Again, more on this later.

Following the news can be depressing. With all the violence and unrest in the world, we sometimes need a reminder that only a few agitators get most of the media attention.

I expect that Saddam Hussein will be still be in the news for a while, as long as US troops remain in Iraq, but his capture should help unravel the network of supporters that are still causing trouble. Next, it seems likely that attention will turn to foreign agitators. Then again, it seems that Al-Qaeda is still alive and well and causing trouble. In Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey, there are still widespread reports of activity attributed to it.

Much of US news deals with the alleged crimes and misdemeanors of celebrities. Although I have no particular interest in this, I note that the media and the public, to some extent, are obsessed with the wealthy, famous, and sensational, and this seems to have a distorting effect on the judicial system. Since so much of attention is focused on the Middle East and events in it, I will give more attention to it.

In this connection, it is nearly impossible to fully comprehend the events in the Middle East without attention to Islam. It has been said often enough, but bears repeating, that the terrorists and extremists who grab media attention are not representative of Islam.

Confutus

I did a little digging into prehistory and got as far as the connection between Neandarthals and modern humans, but I'm setting this aside for now. Generally, I prefer to do research going the other direction, from the known to the unknown, so I hope to start with some historical perspective on current news. One of the quickest ways to keep up with current events is to follow something like USA Today. There may well be a better source: If so, I would like to hear about it.

A good deal of my focus will be on events in Western civilization, particularly in English-speaking peoples, and most particularly in the United States. This is not to deny that other peoples are important, because they certainly are, but because it's impossible to assimilate everything, so I have to choose a focus. Other areas will be brought in soon enough. The US entry in the World Factbook has enough information to get started on more detailed analysis.

Although most people seem to tend to focus on politics and government as being worthy of their attention, the mainstream media gives relatively little attention to religion. This is an oversight. Let me say here and now that I am an active and committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, for anyone who doesn't recognize this), and my opinions and the quest I refer to generally reflect this belief. More on this as it comes up.

I found a better source for information on Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVS) in general. Nice summary of breaking news. There's a lot more of it than there was a couple of years ago when I began following the subject.

News on the X-Prize front. Bert Rutan at Scaled Composites has another aviation first: His "Spaceship One" is the first private design to break the sound barrier. Congrats!!

Just to get it out of the way, I'm going to lay out the rest of the top level of my scheme for organizing knowledge. Then, I can dig into more details later.

According to sociologists, societies are characterized by five major social institutions: Religion, government, economics, education, and families. It seems that all these interact together and some are more important in a given society or culture than another. But this is another huge category, and rather too general for specific references.

Most of the areas of people's everyday concern are grouped under what I call culture for lack of a better word: Performing arts, sports and games, occupations, customs, philosophy, applied science, mathematics, literature, language, and material objects and artifacts such as machines, buildings, and edible foods.

The next level deals with groupings of people, without most of the trappings of culture and institutions. Particular groups, human ecology, demography, social behavior and social psychology, physical anthropology, and the like.

Next come people on an individual level; biographies, psychology, and things related to the human body.

Last on the list come the physical and natural sciences: biology, earth Science, astronomy, chemistry, and physics.

Like I said in the beginning, I mean to do a lot of meandering and skipping around, and one of the bees in my bonnet has to do with ancient history and human origins. A lot of the material that is available in archaeology is too scanty and disconnected, and inaccessible to non-specialists, to construct a reliable account. There are too many maybes and don't knows. I would really like to know more.

It occurs to me that I haven't provided any way to interact with anyone who might be reading this. When I had my own web site, the spambots managed to find my address, and I got the typical deluge. So far, they haven't yet found the one I provided for those interested in my work on three-valued logic

The next step down from the "big questions" is human history. Although I believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, we don't know anything about it with certainty, (although SETI@home is looking) or its history would also go in this category. In the meantime, Hyperhistory offers a good introduction that goes along the same lines as my own attempts at organizing history. It's a huge topic and needs to be broken down some, but I'll save that for later.

One of my areas of interest is the relationships of the peoples of the world, not just the major civilizations, but the smaller groups and the lesser-known peoples. For instance in comparison to the peoples of Asia and Europe, those of Africa and the Americas are much less well known (because they haven't left as many written records). Nevertheless, for a starting point and a general outline, the CIA World Factbook is a place to start. This is a huge topic and also needs to be broken down, but again, this is a bit much for one day.

Confutus

If a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less until, in the limit, he knows everything there is to know about absolutely nothing at all, then a generalist must be someone who knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing at all about absolutely everything. How either one differs from someone who knows nothing about anything, I'm not sure.

But never mind that. I'm not content with reading SF: I like to see what happens in the real world. Never mind NASA and the space shuttle; We're talking a slow-moving government bureaucracy and it literally takes an Act of Congress to get money to build a replacement. I don't care to wait around for that. The various contestants for the X-prize have more new, experimental vehicles under development than NASA has actually started to build in the past 20. Never mind that these are all baby steps.. they're taking them and doing something.

I find that the exercise of World building is a fascinating way to unify different areas of knowledge. For similar reasons, I like the tools in Role Playing Games. It's not so much the play that interests me, it's the exercise in understanding how a society works, and since I prefer hard science to fantasy, I go with Traveller over Star Trek or Star Wars, or the D&D with its connections to fantasy.

I hope to include useful links of various kinds, connected to how I have organized my various interests. Someone who is interested in everything ought to have a map of some kind, or he is going to get lost. I don't much care for alphabetical order, so I Intend to start with a top-down approach to organizing knowledge.

At the top of the list are the most fundamental questions: Where did everything begin? Where will everything end? What are the limits of the universe? Is there a reality which goes beyond what everyone can see and measure? Is there a God, or even a supernatural? Was the earth created for a purpose, or did it come about by chance?
How would we know? These are the big questions. Although I have some answers that
satisfy me, I don't pretend to know all about them, and my beliefs are likely to conflict with those of other people. And I don't intend to dispute them. Discuss, given an opportunity, yes, but I have no power to compel others to believe as I do and no desire to anyway. I only mention that these questions come at the head of the list, but the ways people try to answer them I group elsewhere.

Confutus

Hello, World!

A pretty lame start, but it works for beginning computer programmers.

I'm going to blame C.J. Cherryh for getting me started on this. It was all her fault for putting a blog on her web site, and since I'm better at writing things in my journal than crafting SF stories, I thought. "why not?". Whether I have anything as interesting to say remains to be seen.

I'm actually quite good at organizing my various ideas, but somehow the process of doing so tends to stifle my creativity. My thoughts branch and meander, alternately dry up and overflow everything nearby, and otherwise behave in uncontrollable fashion. So, I'm going to try being creative, right out in public, and start with mentioning some of the things I am or have been interested in. Hopefully if anyone shares my interests, they can let me know what they think.

I'm also going to blame Orson Scott Card, for telling people "If you like to write, you're already a writer. Not necessarily a published author, but a writer nonetheless. I actually prefer his biweekly columns to a lot of his more recent fiction. For what it's worth, I think the Ender's Game movie that's in the works has the potential to be the best SF movie ever made. Card has theater experience, and a better than average chance of turning his novel successfully into a screenplay, and he's lined up a producer and director with some excellent work to their credit, and a major league studio. Of course, there are all kinds of things that can go wrong, but the bridge crew looks competent, and there appears to be steady progress.

Hear me now, O thou bleak and unbearable world,
Thou art base and debauched as can be!
And a knight, with his banners all bravely unfurled,
Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee!

So sings Don Quixote, in "Man of La Mancha". One could do worse in life than to adopt his insane nobility and try to make the world a little less bleak, a little more bearable, a little more chivalrous and a little less drunken.

Confutus