Sapience

There are quite a few more interconnections at intermediate levels, but these still don't have the level of detail that would make the site really useful and interesting. There is still too much outline and not enough content.
The development scheme I was talking about consists of going through each page on the site, and having each one "vote" for the topic most needed to develop that subject. When a subject gets more than three votes, if it has already been developed, I take the page that votes for that subject and discuss the expanded links. If it has not been developed, I create a page for it.

In practice, this means that some subjects have waves of popularity, when I decide that many pages need to be linked to some particular subject. Pages that vote for popular topics get developed a lot more rapidly than those that vote for less popular ones. Also, there is a lot more catching up on internal links that have been partly explored than development of new subjects. It also means that the priorities, or "voting" of the site is not necessarily what I personally find most interesting. It's too easy for me to decide that some popular subject needs to be developed even when it's not really the most necessary connection for a given page.
So, in order to track the actual progress of the site, it's important to know which sections are being selected, by which. Briefly, I am likely to add a cities list, to take a closer look at human geography and ecology, and otherwise continue to fill in connections to areas that are partly developed.

I was able to do some work on the development version. I've added pages on Mexico, Asiatic Religion, Philosophy, and the Earth-moon system. Most of what I was able to do involved adding more links to the peoples and nations pages to institutions, especially religion, to culture, and to anthropology. This isn't particularly exciting stuff, but it's necessary.
On the science end, major topics in Earth science are being better connected to chemistry.

My web site is back up! It is now possible to go to it and see what I am talking about. when I discuss new developments. There are quite a few more pages than there were when it went down at the end of January.
Unfortunately, the intermittent power-on problems with the computer I use for site development are getting worse, so when I will be able to make progress and add to the site is unpredictable.

I thought I had my web site reactivated, but for some reason I can't upload yet.
New pages are necessary for the base to progress, but they aren't useful at first, until they are better connected to other areas.
I've added a new page for the late-middle 20th century (1961-80). There still isn't enough content to it yet, since its connections have to be developed, first, but some of the more recent additions of individuals are connected to this period.
There is also a new page for southeast Asia, which gives me a place to connect such nations as Indonesia, the philippines, and Vietnam. I don't know if I've mentioned that my knowledge of Asian history is quite weak. This will be fairly closely connected to European history, which at present is rather weak on details for recent periods.

There is now a page for education, which is something I have been wanting to add to the site for a while. It will probably take a while to connect this in order to make it useful.

At the Science end, I now have a page for the planets, or planetary systems, of the Solar system. This is being directed toward development of the earth-moon system, which will connect back to earth science, and then start to branch out to other sciences.

In order for the priority balancing to work, I need to be careful with assigning the priorities. I found a bug in how I was applying it, and got that part worked out. In order to report on its progress, I need to keep track of which areas have been developed, which this scheme doesn't do well.
Overall, I have begun to make progress in my studies of current events. Treatment of peoples of the world is relying heavily on particular nations, which have finally moved beyond bare stubs. There hasn't been as much progress in the middle sections of the site. On the science end, I am looking at the connection of earth science to studies of the solar system, which will be motivating further studies in this section. The intermittent power-up problems with my computer have slowed things down considerably.

I tried out this organizing, or call it a priority-balancing system, on a paper version of the site that I keep, and on the working version of my site. It seems to be working fairly well. I haven't been too happy with the way my choice of biographies as a starting point was leading my development priorities: I like the results I'm starting to get with this technique.
I get to jump around among subjects the way I prefer to, I have a balance of making connections and creating new material, and I have a sense that subjects are making progress in the areas that are most important to their development.

One of the obstacles to my various attempts to organize my site is that it inevitably grows too big to do everything at once, so I have to break it into pieces, and since the number of possible connections between subjects goes up much faster than the number of subjects, it is not possible to have everything connected to everything.

Each particular subject has its own pattern of other subjects it is connected to: For instance, a page containing history needs different emphases than one that contains classical mechanics, so I can't apply the same priorities to every page. However, there are overlaps. Biology, or my list of nations, for instance, may be useful for the development of several pages, while the development of classical mechanics, while it is interesting, is not a bottleneck for several other subjects. So, the question arises of how to develop the list of high priority subjects and keep a disciplined pattern of development. I've tried several schemes for this, and they tended to become cumbersome. I've come up with another one that looks promising, so I'll give it a try.

I've been skipping around in the web site development process, didn't get as much done yesterday as in several days during the past week. Physics is going reasonably well. The structure of matter section gives leads and some incentive for the rest of physics. Chemistry needs more work on chemical changes and compounds, and I've only begun describing the elements. Astronomy is going to get more attention to the solar system; the sun and the planets. There are a couple of critical sections in earth science yet to do, atmospheric science and physical geography. Biology is so widely connected that there are about three important sections.

What I have still don't provide a strong enough basis for the personal studies section or for what I call the anthropology section, either, but there are only so many hours in a day.

I haven't commented on the Madrid bombing, but it underscores the fact that terrorism is still a serious threat, not only to the United States, but to any organized government that has a foreign policy touching the Middle East. Given the interconnected state of the world, that's any organized government.

I thought it was a bit early for allergy season...and it is, still. I got hit with a nasty beast of a head cold. Still no joy on a web host, but I'm going to work on it harder next week. I've reached a point where in every area on the site, the next step involves some rather tedious detail, but I need this in order to make the site actually useful.

I got through a cycle of updates and have quite a few more pages now in the area of science. Physics has some more useful equations, and I am starting to get some quantitative information in chemistry. Astronomy needs more detail and stronger connections to physics and chemistry: I'm going to skip glactic astronomy and cosmology in favor of the nearer sciences. Earth science and Biology sections are still quite weak, and I need to have them better developed as a basis for higher level studies. I would make faster progress if my computer were working properly: It has a hard time waking up when I power on, but works OK once it fully wakes up.
Still no progress on getting the site back on the net: various delays have slowed this down.

I've been working on the site, trying to include information from the notes I've been taking. I've been moving a little beyond the science realm into what I call personal studies, including psychology and physiology, but these are connected to biology, which still needs Earth science, which still needs astronomy and chemistry, which needs more physics, and all I can manage to fit in is still very superficial, but it's better than it was.
I haven't seen Gibson's "Passion of Christ", but it's still controversial, so I might as well put in a couple of words. Yes, I believe that the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem c. AD 30 were primarily responsible for putting Jesus to death, and that they manipulated and pressured Pilate into ordering his crucifixion. (I saw a comment that the Romans intended crucifixion as a painful means of death, and didn't scourge a person half to death first. Ordinarily, that's correct, but this was an extraordinary case Pilate intended to release Jesus after the scourging, and was pressured into ordering his crucifixion instead.)
But even so, this does not justify anti-semitism or persecution of living Jews. If those responsible deserved to be punished, surely it has already been done, and long ago. When the Jews are ready to esteem the words of the prophets and accept the Messiah their fathers rejected, they will find more grace than those who profess Christianity but practice a mockery of it.

More notes on things I am studing more specifically. I need to take notes on stress and strain. This will be useful when I start working on solid materials in chemistry, and Bernoulli's equations for fluid dynamics, which are useful in the study of gases and liquids. I need to note my definitions for electric field and potential, and basic equations for electrical conductivity, and compute wavelenth and energy rages for frequency ranges in the electromagnetic spectrum. For thermodynamics, I need to note more of the basic thermodynamic quantities. In the structure of matter, I need notes on properties of molecules and computation of some properties of ideal gases.
For chemistry, much of what I need to work on is in the realm of nuclear and chemical reactions. For astronomy, I need more information on particular planets. There is an equation somewhere in my world-building materials that describes the approximate temperature of a planet based on its distance from the sun. for Earth science and biology, most of the information I am gathering is preliminary and not yet sufficiently quantitive. I have been avoiding and evading study of the human body and psychology for years, based on the fact that they are so closely related to the human body, which depends on biology, which depends on... etc. I need to sit down and do a summary of my psychology textbooks so I can get off the ground.
I've been keeping a summary of the notes I'm taking on my reviews of science texts, with the particular equations I expect to find useful and need. Since I hope to have my web site back up this week, I expect to start transferring some of these notes to web pages so I can get them on the site.

I've been reviewing some of the concepts I need in science, starting with my particular divisions of physics. There's not a great deal in mechanics that I need, but there is some that is useful, especially Newton's law of gravitation and Kepler's 3rd. I may need to come back to this later. I'm really weak on electromagnetism, but since so much energy is carried by radiation, the basics of optics are useful. Thermodynamics is more critical, and I am reviewing basic connections of thermal expansion (connected to mechanics) and heat capacity. The structure of matter is probably the most useful. Only the very basics of subatomic physics are needed. Atomic physics depends much too heavily on quantum mechanics for me to make much progress with it. For matter in bulk, a lot of work is connected to properties of ideal gases, so this has been going reasonably well.
I'm about to start more attention to chemistry. I've been collecting lists of elements in the order of cosmic (Really, solar system!) abundance, as a guide to which elements to study. Most chemistry is familiar from earth conditions, and finding appropriate data for other conditions is more difficult. I don't have proper data on chemical reactions, and I'm not entirely sure how I would use it: This depends more on making progress in astronomy, earth science, and biology, and the various chemical changes that are important there. I expect to be expanding my review of these subjects fairly quickly, and going back for reviews and more applications in physics. This time, I will be watching for subjects that are important in other areas but not well covered in elementary physics texts.

I've skipped this for too long, in case anyone is reading it. My intention is to write every day except Sunday if I can manage it. I've been involved in Simcountry, and the various flaws and difficulties with it have turned my attention back to world building and simulation. This time I'm going at it from the other end, from the science end. and I have several pages of notes on useful equations and concepts. At a certain point, I may add these to my web pages. I'm about to try to get the site back up, hopefully next week.

I like simulation games, so decided I'd check a few online simulations. I found one for national development: Simcountry, and one for the stock marcket, Global Stock Game.
I intended to do fictional stock investing with real corporations as somethings as an incentive to study them more, as if I really needed an incentive.

I watched the Academy Awards Sunday: Return of the King demonstrated the use of a broom. I still think the books were better.

I wonder whether the people who are charging British Prime Minister Blair with "War Crimes" have both oars in the water, or whether they have some other kind of affiliation. He helped rid Iraq of a brutal dictator, which is ultimately to the country's benefit, and the US and Iraqi military have conducted themselves and the war with remarkable restraint.
On the other hand, apparently the suicide bombers and the terrorists are attacking other Iraqis more than the Americans, while the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ite Moslems are so jealous and suspicious of one another that their conflicts may well destroy efforts to develop an interim government.