appointment for Tuesday, September 18 at 1:00 p.m

Thank you setting this up -- yes I can make that time if it is still a
possibility. Sorry I missed your earlier email.

Please let me know what procedure I need to do to participate in the
phone call. If it is just a matter of someone calling me, my phone
number is 612-333-1251.

Thanks!

things/plans

I do have a lot going on, but it doesn't all always "go"
simultaneously. Some of the stuff, if it goes at all, that's a
pleasant surprise -- other stuff seems like it will inevitably be a
success if I put in enough time.

Anyway, I like having a few different things to work on in case any of
the items get stuck -- e.g. I was relying on help from a Media Lab guy
who practically disappeared when school got going. I may have to go
track him down in person to get any more help from him before next
summer (and going to visit him is a good excuse to visit the media
lab). The other locale I want to get to is Bloomington, Indiana, to
visit the Editors of a relatively new book "Understanding Knowledge as
a Commons".

Florida seems like a not-unrealistic possibility for sometime this
year -- I get together a few times a year with Aaron Krowne who lives
in Atlanta. Next time I talk to him I'll see what his schedule is
looking like. (My main career goal at present is to shake myself
loose of my local side-job so I can travel way more...)

FYI, my sister is currently on staff for a program called Philosophy
Talk, out of San Fransisco -- this Sunday at 10 AM Pacific the show is
on "Mathematics and the Mind". Will be streamed here:

http://www.kalw.org/listen.html

pee-wee

In fact, you are not the first person to say as much. I used to be
worried about that -- but this time around I think I presented "Peewee
Herman" as the end goal for my stylist... Das vidania...

Re: getting together

My schedule is pretty much open from here to eternity... only thing
that might get onto it is: my dad wants me to talk to a career
counselor. Not a bad idea all things considered -- but that would
probably take place during normal business hours. So let me know some
evening. Other info: I sometimes go to "experimental music night" on
Tuesdays at Acadia. Same work schedule on the weekends. Hope you're
well. Will give you some litrature next time we meet up.

Re: talk monday afternoon?

Oh -- I was mistakenly under the impression that you were completely
out of that system already. But anyway, yes, evenings are good.

Re: The Onion, Business Edition

Yeah, those snippets are just about the right length alright. These
Onion people are very on the ball, have all the right ideas. I'm
currently trying to write some "speculative fiction" and it is hard
work! Maybe I should practice with some one-liners...

Re: tuesday

OK -- I already made a copy for Jake, can easily make another.

talk monday afternoon?

I will probably be around most of the afternoon on Monday. Do you
have time to talk then?

speaking of "speaking science 2.0"

I saw your billing for the Sept. 28 Bell event. I wonder if we could
chat about this topic in advance -- it is a topic of considerable
interest to me. See for example this draft paper in which I am
pushing for enterprise-wide free/open publishing in mathematics:

http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/pmhdm-paper.pdf

I would be interested in getting your opinions on this idea and
thoughts on how to finish the paper off in a convincing style.

acadia show up

Here is the whole thing as an OGG file:

http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/acadia.ogg

MP3 version will follow -- but it takes a little while to copy from
the CD to my hard drive. After I listen to it, I'll put segmented
versions in the usual place.

fan mail plus repair question

Hi - I am a fan of "Dreamland Faces" (I've only seen a couple shows,
one at the Viking, one at the Jager). I also play accordion, or at
least, I do when my accordion works. Currently one of the chording
buttons on the left side is stuck and although I opened up the case I
couldn't see what's wrong with it. Could I bring it by your shop?
The accordion only cost $40 (at an estate sale) and I've already sunk
in $40 for a preliminary repair at the "White Castle"; since I really
want to learn how to play chromatic, I'm not sure how much more I want
to invest into this machine, however it does seem a shame to let it
languish.

roma di luna

I was only able to stay for the first three songs -- they definitely
made an impression on me. Will stay tuned for future engagements.

(It occurs to me that a double billing featuring them and Dreamland
Faces would be quite something...)

cedar tonight

That would certainly be convenient. If it is easier for you to call,
feel free, I'm at 612-333-1251.

unhappy juice

I did invent (but have never consumed) something that could perhaps
pass as "unhappy juice":

1 bottle of Czech beer
1 long-pulled shot of Italian espresso
1 snifter cheap British gin
1 glass French white wine (alternatively: 1 glass Spanish red)
1 shot Kirschwasser (German cherry liqueur)

Shake first four ingredients gently with ice and pour into a large
beaker. Float the liqueur over the top. Serve a slice of orange or
lime. Drink through a straw.

The actual title of this drink is the "V for Vendetta". Its primary
purpose is to give whoever consumes it a whopping headache. It also
lowers psychic barriers, so that while under the influence, the
imbiber should be subjected to a reconditioning program, e.g. to fight
fascism in all its forms. May raise or lower IQ via an undisclosed
formula involving a 20-sided die and data on the choice of orange or
lime slice.

"Happy juice" would be a very different recipe... Melon juice,
cucumber juice, lychee juice, coconut milk, nuts... these things all
tend to make me feel pretty happy. I'd happily try a beverage with
those ingredients, anyway!

Some place in the middle: recently I made green tea ice cream again,
and tried making a green tea ice cream/sake float. Tasty, if
intoxicating!

Re: Howdy Joe

Hello Auntie "M" --

I had a good time at the reunion -- only now I am sad that I don't
regularly spend more time hanging out with the family!

Now that summer is winding up (hot even so) I've done some assessment
of whot I did...

http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-i-spent-my-summer-vacation.html

The main point being that I haven't found a new job, but I have
clarified at least three possible arenas to explore for careerish
opportunities. The 3 aren't exactly mutually exclusive (yet, anyway);
but the most likely one is probably to "keep pursuing this nonprofit
stuff" using some of the new contacts I made. However, making the
nonprofit work is definitely going to be a team effort and I'm not
quite sure what state the team is in at present. The other
exploratory possibilities are looking more like grad school (or at
least something scholarly), the primary challenge there being
monetary.

However - it is easy to get stalled out thinking about various
"options" for the future; and since I've been home largely I've been
thinking about other things. Perhaps that's due somewhat to the heat.

In particular: I did some more music and writing -- had my third ever
performance last night -- here are some photos of me and the group
taken by an hombre by name of Dave Stagner during the show:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1327411504&context=set-72157601874720725&size=l
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1327392398&context=set-72157601874720725&size=l
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1326507205&context=set-72157601874720725&size=l
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1327424616&context=set-72157601874720725&size=l

When the sound files are available (I forgot my recorder and another
audience member captured the sound and will mail me a cd!) I'll upload
it as "Session B" to:

http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/everything/novel/

(I don't remember whether I sent you that link before or not.)

Actually despite the common wisdom that it is hard to publish things,
I am considering the possibility of trying to raise funds by getting
this work or something based on it published (for money). Seeing as
how I've been spending a lot of time writing over the last couple of
years that doesn't seem quite as unrealistic as it might be if I just
said "oh, I know, I'll write a book and have it published and make
thousands of dollars..." -- although admittedly my situation isn't all
that dissimilar.

I don't know if there is a ton of other newness around here. I've
noticed myself feeling a little jaded as I look at the random college
students who've just showed up (confessedly, ogle might be a better
word) and think about how little I feel I have in common with them.

On the other hand, my friendships with my neighbors are as good as
ever if not better, and I have been cooking and sharing a lot of
tastyl food lately, emphasizing things from the garden. Today I
bought the other ingredients to combine with mounds of basil that we
got out of our garden, to make a year's supply of pesto.

Anyway I do hope I can figure out a good way to come spend some more
time visiting you all down in Santa Fe this fall. Some of the things
I've been hoping to see develop oughta start developing soon. Will
probably be able to think more clearly about all that when this latest
heat wave goes away.

Love,
Joe

PS. Hi to Greg -- I'm glad I met him. Hope to have more time to visit
soon!

Re: the penmaster's apprentice Acadia Tuesday Sept 4

Address: 421 Cedar Ave. #17, Minneapolis MN 55454

Wav format would be good. Thanks again & hope to see you around.

the penmaster's apprentice Acadia Tuesday Sept 4

Hello! -- you recorded our show and said I should contact you by email
to arrange a data transfer. Thank you very much, and I look forward
to hearing the recordings.

the penmaster's apprentice Acadia Tuesday Sept 4

Hello! -- you recorded our show and said I should contact you by email
to arrange a data transfer. Here's the email -- thank you very much,
and I look forward to hearing the recordings.

sentences

Here is the latest entry submitted to PlanetMath as of this moment.

http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/UniversalNetsInCompactSpacesAreConvergent.html

Anaphora seems to comes up a lot in math. This is in the usual
"textual" way --

E.g. in this definition, ($(x_\alpha)_{\in \alpha \mathcal{A}}$
refers to the same thing whereever it appears, and also sets
notation like \alpha or \mathcal{A} which will be used seperately
later.

and also in a "hypertextual" way

What the heck is a "universal net" anyway, and what are its
properties? -- properties of these and other defined terms will be
needed by a reader who wants to follow this theorem and proof.

On PlanetMath, hypertextual ultra-long-range references are dealt with
in interface by hyperlinks to entries that define or discuss the terms
being linked. In typical mathematics writing, these links aren't
hard-coded but are "implied" (i.e. the reader is expected to be able
to find or just know the definition on their own).

Combining these two features, the author feels free to introduce terms
like \alpha_0 which have not been explicitly defined anywhere.
Understanding what this sort of conglomerate symbol is supposed to
mean requires some "domain knowledge". Really, this goes for what
happens when any locally scoped definition is made (as in "for every
$x\in X$ we would find neighborhoods $U_x$" -- the reader is assumed
to know what a "neighborhood $U_x$" has to do with an element $x$).

These are probably the main linguistic issues. Math text is written
in a "compressed form" and can't be understood without background
information.

Finally, after texts like this are translated into a computer-readable
form, knowledge management-style inference will become possible and
important. This can feed back into the linguistics level, e.g. for
example some author might use the property that "a universal net in a
compact space is convergent" without explicitly stating that they used
this property! The reader would have to infer that this theorem was
applied.

This reminds me of one more feature. Generally, words (like
"convergent") mean different things in different parts of mathematics.
We can have convergent sequences, series, sets, and now (apparently),
nets. Also graphs, etc. -- but you'll see that PlanetMath's
autolinking software linked the term "convergent" in this theorem to
the page "convergent series" via an alias Converges Absolutely. Point
being: there is no mention on this page of what it means for a
"universal net" to converge. An autolinking program that was enhanced
with more semantic (domain) knowledge would perhaps indicate this gap.

Certainly, if semantics matter for understanding math (e.g. we want to
know what it means for a universal net to converge, so we either have
to be told, or we have to figure it out from whatever we've been
given), an ongoing process of identifying and filling gaps in the
knowledge base will be necessary. The extent to which this process
can be bootstrapped remains to be seen. (Are easier mathematical
texts any easier to translate into a nice computer-ready form? I'm
not sure.)

disappearing performance

I just read and greatly appreciated your article on Baudrillard's
photography. I am interested in following up with more of your work.

I am currently on a quest to find people who are pushing the legacy of
Baudrillard, Burroughs, and others of this ilk, in a substantial way.

Often scholarly articles on these folks tend to lack a backbone -- by
contrast yours reads nice and crisp. But you're a practicing artist,
not just a theoretician. Like I said, I'll look for more of your work!

In exchange :) -- here's a link to some of my stuff, a creative
writing, recording, and performance project that is in progress:

http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/everything/novel/

Correspondence is welcome.

disappearance

http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/vol3_2/haladyn.htm

Re: back

That's certainly a change in schedule. Glad you're back!

I visited Marnita and Carl today -- they say that Clarke is back in
town.

You might want to change your sig file. TTYS.

food already gone

It went like hotcakes, I was surprised. FYI we usually bring this
sort of stuff (and sometimes other even better stuff) to Sabathani
Community Center on Mondays.

more information

Your questions ask for specificity on points that I kind of wanted to
remain flexibly general on! I am interested in this as a "general
semantic model" -- a tool for building and talking about "arbitrary"
semantic networks. At this point, I want to learn about applications
for which my proposed model will be insufficient or awkward to apply,
so I can decide whether I want to go forward with this model or use
something different.

*

That said: one of the things I am most interested in at present is
developing an interactive website (i.e. this application doesn't have
a whole lot to do with language, at least in the usual sense) Here is
a sketch:

Right now PlanetMath is mainly a "mathematics reference work". I
envision it in the future being useful as a full-fledged math learning
environment. In other words, if I want to learn Abstract Algebra or
some other math topic, I should be able to log into PlanetMath and
reach some desired level of proficiency using resources I find there.

In order for this to work, the system will need to know which types of
problems I've solved, which topic-areas I seem to have mastered, which
things I need work on. All of this information can be stored as
triples, and some logic related to these assertions can guide the
user's interaction: "if Joe knows the First Isomorphism Theorem and
the Sylow theorems, then he should be able to solve problem A1287g."
If I can't solve the problem, the system needs some recourse: perhaps
it gives me an easier problem or a hint on how to solve the problem I
was given.

*

A linguistics goal (this has been on the back burner for a while) is
to build a semantic parser for mathematical language -- and use this
to translate standard mathematical writing into a form that the
computer can do useful things with. For example, this parser might be
used to automatically fit new problems into the network of problems
and other information described above.

A third possible application is to use the network to implement (or to
help implement) solution heuristics, to get the computer solving the
"human style" math problems. This is very far on the horizon.

*

The implementation I'm working on will run Lisp with persistent
storage via the Elephant package to Berkeley DB. Some changes to
Elephant will be needed before this will work. A "toy version" that
uses an SQL backend seems like it shouldn't be hard to finish; I may
do this today with a friend; however, Elephant plays very nice with
the Lisp object system, so I want to use that in the long run.

toil takes its toll

I seem to have suddenly become 3/4ths-nocturnal; I am somewhat
anxious. I had had the notion that by the end of the summer I would
have some sense of what I was doing next. It turned out that what I
had was a sense of what I had begun but not finished; those three
papers I told you about do an OK job representing this "potential".

Part of the game plan now is to work on them -- I have had some
worthwhile exchanges with Ian Eslick and others towards making Arxana
actually work the way I want it to. The "metacommons" paper seems
more mysterious to me the more I think about it -- in particular, the
notion of a "commons" seems fishy to me; I think instead we could use
a different frame for analysis and get results that were at least as
good. The other paper may not yet be convincing vis a vis FAIF
publishing, but I don't see any reason not to start some Gonzo style
dialogs about the topics it discusses with the powers that be.

Accordingly, I'd like to set up an interview with Joseph Gallian.
When you get basic PM sponsorship data to me -- I'll initiate the
rendezvous. I'm also of course quite willing to meet that other local
guy you've mentioned to me when he becomes available.

I'd really like to figure out a way to get some income, since at least
two of my three possible plans involve costly extended stays away from
home (in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Bloomington, Indiana).

The idea of going back to grad school seems to me to be a bit of an
improbability, but nevertheless worth exploring; and these two places
seem to represent two different possible but improbable paths, in CS
and social science respectively. The third path is to make PlanetMath
into a viable career option. There is no real reason that there
couldn't be some overlap between these three things -- like on a
simplex, the three can be blended.

Thinking about it, two "exogenous" options present themselves to me.
(1) To sell some writing, which is another improbable thing, but given
that I've been producing some quantities of it, not impossible; (2) to
check out of the Free-o-sphere for a while and get some sort of paying
job that uses my waking energy. Of course, it can't all be expended
when everyone else is asleep or that won't work out very well.

(Maybe I'll take up actually studying math during my wakeful hours;
that would be a bit of a change of pace for me, and somewhat
productive -- I talked to a local professor here about his
mathematical logic course, which is some stuff I should really know
well, but don't at present; he loaned me a copy of the text book and
said I should visit again.)

*

On a rather different note, here is a neat example I sent to Ian
indicating why I think the scholium system is "cool":

Example: Building, maintaining, and interacting with learning
resources.

Right now PlanetMath is mainly a "reference work". I envision it in
the future being useful as a full-fledged learning resource. In other
words, if I want to learn Abstract Algebra or some other math topic, I
should be able to log into PlanetMath and reach some desired level of
proficiency using resources I find there.

In order for this to work, the system will need to know which types of
problems I've solved, which things I have "mastered", which things I
need work on. Obviously all of this can be stored as triples. The
assertions about assertions come in with things like: "if Joe knows
the First Isomorphism Theorem and the Sylow theorems, then he should
be able to solve problem A1287g." So they throw me this problem and I
can't solve it, and a new fact is added to the database: Joe bombed
another problem. The system needs some recourse: perhaps give me an
easier problem or give me a hint on how to solve the problem I was
given.)

*killer app* ;)

monday

I should be free any time after 4PM -- does that work for you? If not
I think I'll also have some time in the late morning (like 10:30 to
12:45).

Re: [elephant-devel] a job for the query system?

OK, in response to your message: I certainly must abandon some
assumptions about OIDs! I do need persistent unique handles for
Things so I can consistently refer to them in my Triples and Theories.

Keeping things unique by the data itself is an interesting
minimalistic proposal... apparently even if OIDs are changing,
compound objects like Triples are stored will still be stored
"safely"? E.g. if I store the triple

[ThingA, ThingB, ThingC]

this will always be (de)serialized so that it points at the right
Things (even if the OID of ThingC, say, happens to change)?

If this works, that would be neat. (If not, I could easily enough
maintain some persistent index and use it to create handles for
Things.)

Your statement of what I hope to accomplish in filtering-by-theory is
correct. Having Theories just be subsets of Things would be fine for
a prototype. Eventually it could be nice to be able to label the
elements of a subset and store such labelings; Pseudo-SQL-wise,
presumably all that amounts to is another column that is ignored
before the "member" function is applied a la your example.

Re: what makes Arxana special?

Here's what I said to Ian:

http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2007/09/re-semantic-hypertext.html

By doing some research after phrasing my questions, I learned more
about what was going on... and if you read that link, you'll see, you
and I seem to agree on just about every point...!

I do kind of wonder why I was so clueless about relative ubiquity of
meta-statements. Perhaps because these really are not a big part of
the standard "semantic network" theories one learns about in school?

One idea for a somewhat complicated application is in the note above
("Building, maintaining, and interacting with learning resources");
something simpler and immediately fun would definitely be cool.

The business of coding things up for Arxana is still a matter of
figuring out what backend to use to store the triples. Maybe tomorrow
we'll work out some SQL backend -- my favorite is still the Elephant
front-end to Berkeley DB for Lisp, but some details in the interface
are still missing.

Re: semantic hypertext

Well, one thing I've learned: the system I am talking about is just
about what you'd see in RDF if each of RDF triple was "reified", as
described here:

http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-primer/#reification

(Although, based on this primer, I can note that while reification is
not "quoting", my set-up for triples in Arxana is quoting; so the two
systems are not identical. Some further critique of RDF focusing on
its lack of quoting are here: [1]. Must say, I haven't quite grokked
the details of the critique.)

Anyway, lack of originality doesn't necessarily mean make an idea any
worse! However, it does seem to mean that if Arxana is to wins in
anything, it would probably be in applications, not in terms of basic
theory, because the basic is apparently all developed (whether or not
there is a viable implementation).

All that said: in plain language, everyone agrees that the "reified
triple model" will be valuable whenever it is valuable to make
assertions about assertions. (The example in the RDF primer talks
mainly about recording the "provenance" of assertions. I'll just
mention that of course there are other things one might want to say
about assertions.)

(Note: One place where some additional theory may to be needed is in
describing "side-effects" of making an assertion or taking other
actions. It is one thing to be able to talk about an assertion once
it exists -- but it is certainly also good to be able to make
assertions about ACTIONS. I don't know if RDF talks or "thinks" about
actions at all -- but since they are already "semantic" in the sense
of having a "physical meaning" I think it would be very helpful to be
able to modify semantics; e.g. notify me if the price of this stock
falls or rises more than 3 points.)

Application-wise, just because a model exists for RDF does not mean
that there is necessarily any good way to compute using that model at
present...

Here are some other perhaps more interesting examples, again related
to PlanetMath.

Example 1: Evolution of metadata as basic objects evolve.

Currently, objects are owned by one person. (E.g. the object "Group"
is owned by user Drini.[2])

This is very different from the model used by Wikipedia, where anyone
can edit any object and the changes are applied directly to the object
in question.

I've been considering the idea of allowing anyone to edit an object on
PlanetMath, but splitting these versions off as "variants" until they
are either approved by the original owner (in which case they
supercede the original object) or adopted by a new owner. A third
party might choose between different objects that define or discuss
the same term based on metadata like:

"Group" hasEducationalLevel "Undergraduate"
"Group" hasLevelofDetail "Low"

Suppose that these metadata carry over to new variants and suppose
that someone comes up with a much more detailed and advanced
definition. (Such definitions can exist; cf. the Encyclopedic
Dictionary of Mathematics.) The triples above are no longer accurate,
but the metadata is owned by the new owner of the object. So, it
would be good for a third party to be able to annotate the bogus
metadata. (Currently, such annotations would just go into text
fields: "dear owner please change your 'level of detail' metadata
field, its wrong!!", but more specific/directed commentary would
probably be helpful for everyone involved.)

The details here may be a bit complex -- but the basic principle is:
when objects change, their metadata may sometimes change too; so, we
need some language for talking about changing metadata.

Example 2: Building, maintaining, and interacting with learning
resources.

Right now PlanetMath is mainly a "reference work". I envision it in
the future being useful as a full-fledged learning resource. In other
words, if I want to learn Abstract Algebra or some other math topic, I
should be able to log into PlanetMath and reach some desired level of
proficiency using resources I find there.

In order for this to work, the system will need to know which types of
problems I've solved, which things I have "mastered", which things I
need work on. Obviously all of this can be stored as triples. The
assertions about assertions come in with things like: "if Joe knows
the First Isomorphism Theorem and the Sylow theorems, then he should
be able to solve problem A1287g." So they throw me this problem and I
can't solve it, and a new fact is added to the database: Joe bombed
another problem. The system needs some recourse: perhaps give me an
easier problem or give me a hint on how to solve the problem I was
given.)

*killer app* ;)

Some User Interface Considerations

Well, I have thought about this some, maybe not in much depth.

Rendering as hypertext is what I was focusing on in an earlier
prototype -- links that attach to certain pieces of text are of course
overlayed on top of the text itself; markup with different attributes
may appear with different colors; overlapping links (the most basic
case being multiple targets for the same words) could be switched out
either by switching the whole rendering (e.g. by using a scroll wheel)
or by choosing between multiple targets after "right-clicking". My
prototype stuff has been in Emacs.

For an AI-style view, you could have a node rendered with slot
relationshps running down the screen, links to known entities provided
where suitable, annotations lined up in a second column --

JoeCorneli
[ResidesAt]: [421 Cedar Avenue] (became true in Feb 2004)

Again for "hypertext": Note that typesetters have been dealing with
"scholia" for centuries. Marginalia, inline annotations, different
fonts... all kinds of great ideas can be found in historical
manuscripts. So, for textual views, a LaTeX renderer that could pull
of some of these old-fashioned tricks would be great.

The simplest "graphical" systems would just be adaptations of typical
link-node semantic net frontends. 3D and color would be cool of
course.

Finally, in some of my best day-dreams, I imagine a graphical system
that specifically deals with partitions of space. Why? Because
categorizing assertions move objects from partition to partition.
(Generally there are many different ways to partition up a space.)
This is where my old interests in Riemann geometry start to come back
to light... but I haven't worked out (m)any details.

[1]: http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme/Proceedings/html/2004/Stickler01/EML2004Stickler01.html
[2]: http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/Group.html

what makes Arxana special?

Gents,

I've been talking with Elephant's developer Ian Eslick about "what
makes Arxana special?" -- or, as he put it, "what makes it kick ass
over existing approaches?".

The one thing I have been able to come up with is that in Arxana you
can make assertions about assertions. I don't know of other systems
that let you do this. (OK, there are systems like this in Logic, but
I am talking about hypertext systems.)

Suppose I say:

a lizard is a mammal

In Arxana, this would get saved as

assertion_alpha = (a lizard, is a, mammal)

or something like that.

You can come along and say:

assertion_beta = (assertion_alpha, has truth value, false)

Now it is your word against mine. (Which could be taken to imply:
when triples are created, certain data about the creator will be
uploaded automatically. If I am the proverbial zit-faced
thirteen-year-old and you are the proverbial Nobel Prize Winning
biologist, then most people will take your side. Some people may
still be interested in knowing that I made a bunk assertion and trying
to understand why or what they can do about it.)

I am specifically thinking about this system opposed to the systems
developed for the Semantic Web. I am pretty sure that while the
Semantic Web allows you to make all kinds of frame-like systems:

JoeCorneli isa Human
JoeCorneli hasGender Male
JoeCorneli isWearingGarment Kilt

etc., it does not let you make assertions about specific filled slots.

The fact that I can make assertions not just about the statement

JoeCorneli isWearingGarment Kilt

*in the abstract* but the unique "assertion_gamma" that represents
"is" this assertion seems like a special and very useful feature of
the Arxana system.

I could be wrong -- this may not be a special feature -- it may not be
an exceptionally useful feature. But in any event, it seems to be the
feature that sets Arxana apart from other semantic network style
systems that I know of.

As for how assertions about assertions could be a kick-ass feature, my
guess is that one way is that it can be used to override leaky
abstractions. If someone makes a frame with slots like:

A: a car has four wheels
B: a car runs on gasoline

I can go in and rip this to shreds with commentary.

Comments? (Please!)

END NOTE

In Arxana we can (and do) make assertion about assertions in the
abstract, but perhaps such statements are only "evaluatable" with
respect to Theories. For example: perhaps the assertion

JoeCorneli isWearingGarment Kilt

is true in the theory I'll call "Joe's Day Today". It may be false in
the theory "Joe's Day Tomorrow". In any event, the words are the
same; but we may want to take the two versions as "different
statements" when they appear in different Theories.

micro review of "Crooked Little Vein" by Warren Ellis

Reads a lot like Fell. There are some Burroughs/MIB/Thompson
references. It gets better towards the end, when the "luckless"
detective starts to see some action. I recommend Chapter 45.

files up

http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/novel/sessionA/

http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/music/session-A-rap.ogg
http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/music/sessionA-jam1.ogg
http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/music/sessionA-jam2.ogg
http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/music/sessionA-jam3.ogg
http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/music/sessionA-jam4.ogg
http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/music/sessionA-jam5.ogg

talk about semantic models?

I was referred to you by Wayne Richter of the U of MN's math
department. I had addressed some questions to him that I felt were
related to logic, but he (rightly) pointed out that they have at least
as much to do with theoretical linguistics, and suggested that I
contact you. Do you have any time to meet with me in upcoming days?

Specifically, I'm considering sets of Things, some of which may be
Triples (A, B, C) where A, B, and C are Things.

I'm interested in applying these systems to build semantic models
e.g. with triples like (cat, is a, mammal), (cat, eats, mice).

What seems different about this model from typical semantic network
models is that Triples can appear inside other triples:

((cat, eats, mice), suggests, (cat, is a, carnivore))

So, I'd be interested in anything you might say that would illuminate
theoretical aspects of this system, or related systems (including
anything in current use). My background is in math, so don't assume I
know much about the linguistics aspects of this project -- but I am
very interested in linguistics... would love to get your views on
these broader interests too.

new york local expensive hot date night?

The annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and banquet is now set
for the evening of Friday, October 26th, at the Princeton Club in New
York City. Leonard Shlain, MD, surgeon and author of recent books such
as The Alphabet vs. the Goddess, Art and Physics, and Sex, Time, and
Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, will present the
55th lecture in this series that began in 1952. Cost for the banquet
and lecture will be $90.00 for members and guests, $110 for
non-members. Cost to attend the lecture only will be $25.00. Make your
reservations now.
-- http://www.generalsemantics.org/news.htm

people

From an earlier topic of discussion:

"people tend to like talking with other people about topics of mutual
concern"

"the most fun part of working on a project is talking about it with
enthusiastic coconspirators"

We never figured out why -- maybe just aired the assumption that since
humans are social creatures, they need to do things in a social
context, which usually means talking to other people.

This reminds me of a quote from William Burroughs, which goes
something along the lines of -- "People ask if I get lonely. No; I
rarely suffer from the feeling people call loneliness, because of my
characters; they are very real to me, and generally are more
interesting than other people." (The actual quote would be found in
the book "The Job".)

Perhaps there is something about simulated interaction that stimulates
the same parts of the brain as real interaction. Hence: books, both
read and written, games -- and even "virtual" exchanges, like email.

Sometimes on a solipsistic bent I have imagined all my exchanges via
the computer to be with one entity, say, "the group mind". Of course,
if there was "one entity" out there (which on some level is certainly
true), then it is not homogeneous, and different people correspond to
nice blobular components of this thing. And brains are adapted to
think in terms of these sorts of blobs.

Indeed we may have precisely: a brain blob (or neural attractor)
corresponding to each person we know. If some person we like
"approves" of something we do, then the corresponding blob delivers
happy juice to the rest of the brain, whereas if this person
"disapproves" of something we do, unhappy juice is delivered instead.
(This paraphrases Marvin Minsky from "The Emotion Machine".)

It won't do to be swimming in happy juice all the time or one would
step in front a bus by accident and when gazing at a butterfly or a
flower garden. The brain's critical power runs mainly on unhappy
juice. Of course, a more common understanding is that swimming in
unhappy juice is also bad; under those circumstances you get people
stepping in front of busses not on accident.

How best to cope? E.g., how to ride the waves of motivation to reach
a suitable campsite?

Option A: Just accept things the way they are.

Option B: Try to manipulate the collection of brain blobs, by adding
new ones, feeding them garbled information, or renetworking them.

Option C: Try to study how Option B relates to relationships in the
"real world".

Example: I sent the email archived at

http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2007/08/absolutely-fake-burroughs.html

to an ex-girlfriend. She has not written back to anything I have sent
to her in a long time. I don't really have any reason to think that
she will write back to this particular email. I assume that she
generally disapproves of me and what I am doing. Still, I want to get
a modicum of happy juice flowing to the brain centers that were
associated with her, or maybe I mean, to ones that were one order
removed from those centers. So, I post the text on the internet and
send a link to you to see if perhaps you will enjoy it. If you don't
care for it, then I guess I write it off as a social loss and settle
for my own intrinsic enjoyment together with this post-hoc use/value.

Indeed, the text itself illustrates another point that I found
sympathy for in Burroughs, which is: to see what happens when you take
some textual structure, break it into little pieces, and look at
relationships that form between these pieces. I was first doing this
with my card game.

There are some problems with that approach, or at least, challenges.
First of all, often times no one large structure easily emerges from a
collection of snippets. This is probably OK if you are willing to
allow a subjective or aesthetic interpretation. However, if you want
to generate some particular "rhetorical" structure out of the
snippets, there will be organizing work to do.

Actually, "analysis" really means "taking things apart into little
pieces", so it may be that this approach is a very generally useful
one -- and any alleged "problems" are actually just "challenges".
(Although: one should assume that sometimes an "analytical" approach
may not be the right one to take.)

In any event: using cards or literary characters to "simulate" or
"stage" interactions only goes so far. (Note: the brain is itself
"simulational", at least in the Minsky-style formulation above, but
the human organism needs real inputs to be able to function.) I think
that we should study how and when simulation (and simulacra) fails.

Which can serve here as set up for the observation that Burroughs and
Baudrillard are both inspired by Korzybski. Korzybski also wrote a
large book that is sitting on my coffee table. (I've paged through it
at the library earlier.) I do not know exactly what his current
standing or status is in contemporary culture. But I can try to find
out.

absolutely fake burroughs

said by a man of great faith a man who represented the human race
your minds are a capacious invaginated imagining of the time
the space into outer space the place was turned into sleep
the wheel was asleep the captain was under the sea the deck
comes grinding to a halt the world is asleep everyone is asleep
in faith the human race is asleep at the wheel the textures
textures of thought make you asleep at the wheel the folds of
nothing you said reminded me of anything i heard from any man
his eyes closed he was asleep at the wheel the rig was fixed
the great faith of a man of great sleep a faith in the wheel the
outer space the outer planets was a disgrace to man an ejection
the opening of the dawn was rent into a new space from outer
eight track pieces of eight sleep a track at the wheel a feeling
of light is running into space the man from the wheel is turning
asleep at the wheel i am asleep at the wheel i am asleep
prayer of turning into a man from outer space i am asleep at
asleep at the wheel the wheel was set to turn in a certain way
asleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel
at the wheel everyone was asleep the place was rigged everything
at the wheel the man is a picture of human race the wheel
the same for henry sugar asleep at the wheel he could win with
the wheel i am a man of great faith i am a man from outer space
the time of the wheel is turning the wheel is a space the man of
space was remembered the opening was dawn the snake was from
a sleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel i am asleep at the wheel
i am from the garden of eden and into human time the space was
the world a great wheel turning asleep at the wheel the
complete anonymity of a deck the deck is shuffled on the wheel
ship took off at dawn head for another planet from outer space
something you reminded me of i once heard from a man from space
asleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel
was asleep at the wheel there's so much time to sleep they
wheeled past the shuffleboard placed at their feet they
walked the deck onto the next racket the game was rigged over
turning me to sleep on the wheel the picture of the human race
asleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel
at the wheel the captain could not be found he was under the
planets the dawn was tread underfoot into a snake a snake from
something you said reminded me of something i once heard
under the roulette table rigged every probability came up
i am a man from outer space i am a man of great faith i am
the place in outer space the captain of this place is turning
on deck he was under the sea he had been keel-hauled for being
of thought removed from the picture the human race is asleep
black sheep of the family i am written in invisible ink
something you said reminded me of something i once heard
asleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel asleep at the wheel
the textures of these thoughts remove me from every picture
quote from this rhyme and everything fell into space and time
something you said reminded me of something i once heard
asleep at the wheel the crash is sudden and final the earth
was asleep the deck was playing playback on the tape deck
from outer space the space of the race the space of the pace

there's so much time

late at night last night
i had the thought:
there's so much time!

so much time alone at night
so much time to do whatever you want
so much time to sit and wait

late at night last night
i had the thought:
there's so much time

so much time for nothing to happen
so much time for anything to happen

so much time -- if only it could be used well

Re: in a moment of greater awakeness

Ouch! I don't know if I knew about the "stomach thing" -- sounds bad.
Do feel better! Yes, I do have normal (and super-normal) free time on
Monday.

prototype

From the latest version of my paper (or, alternatively, your cell
phone camera):

There are three fundamental types of objects in the system: Things,
Triples, and Theories. A Thing is any Lisp object Elephant can
store. They are stored with the format [id|data]. A Triple
indicates three Things, by id. These are interpreted as
relationships or semantic links; so a Triple (C, A, B) says that A is
related to B by C. A Theory indexes an arbitrary collection of
Things, possibly giving each element a new ``local'' name.
Basically, however, a Theory is just a subset of the collection of
all Things (and so, a subnetwork, viewed under the relations defined
by Triples).

I'd like to modify this slightly and actually put together a
prototype. (Looks like it will be a bit of a wait for Elephant.)
Specifically, let's say the data components of Things were just
strings.

Suppose we can do this within a week in SQL? I'd like to give it a
try; if you can help with the database implementation that would be
super.

Re: getting in touch/visiting again

Well, an impeccable transcript is one thing I don't have, and
quantities of cash on hand is another. However, I certainly have
plenty of interest, and can probably find a way to fund a completely
informal visit; this could have a number of benefits.

semantic hypertext

I don't know if I've made a great exposition of these ideas before, so
if this works it will be helpful for me, too!

The emphasis is on links, to enable annotation by third parties --
including annotation of links. In "typical" semantic network systems
(e.g. RDF, OMCSNet, or the first prototype of Arxana I got working)
edges are not first-class objects, and annotating them seems like it
would be hard to do.

If I was working on a semantic network with a group of other people,
and someone asserted:

a lizard is a mammal

I'd like to be able to say this is wrong.

Suppose I write a piece of text and several people want to mark it up.
An annotation model allows this, <joe-emph>if</joe-emph> everyone's
comments <ian-asserts-possible>can get integrated into one source
repository</ian-asserts-possible>. In an annotation-only model, there
isn't any particularly good way to annotate existing annotation, for
example, if I want to voice agreement with your assertion.

But the real problem with the annotation model is that documents are
tree-like and so their interpretation is relatively fixed. I want
instead to build a model in which documents are graph-like. A
marginal note on Text A can shift to be the central object of study
without the permission of the owner of Text A.

For me, that provides the "oh cool" response. For one thing, this
captures the essense of postmodern literary theory.

Applications, say, on PlanetMath, would include features like this:

Different users have different sets of incoming messages that they
want to read. Imagine messages being routed by a combination of a
subscription service and a syndication service. If I am the owner of
a given message feed, I may assert that these messages should get
syndicated to XYZ other feeds, so I open the valve to those feeds. In
the current management of email, a given user can turn off the
messages I send by routing them to the trash. In the model where
links can be annotated, other users could close the valve so that my
messages never get routed into their list in the first place.

Different users also have different kinds of objects that they think
are acceptable. Links enable users to categorize objects
independently of other users. But maintaining these links as
stand-alone objects makes it easier for categorizations to "inherit"
(e.g. if I trust user Ray to know whether some article is
mathematically correct).

A commonality between these applications is that they provide a way
for users to encode or modify side-effects (i.e. side-effects to the
action of making a link).

(I'm CCing a small mailing list where we've been talking about the
costs and benefits of using standard systems versus this
Thing/Triple/Theory based system. Maybe this will kick off some
further discussion.)

Re: every year

Wow, you do a good haiku, but the rules can be bent, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku#Contemporary_English-language_haiku

(Actually, except for the syllable count, my haiku was relatively
traditional.)

reaching me

421 Cedar Ave. #17, Minneapolis MN 55454

Thanks! I'll await your mail.

Re: every year

It's called a haiku, get used to it!

in a moment of greater awakeness

Care to get together again sometime?

Re: visit?

Some Parmesan cheese would be good. We can go in on a bottle of wine,
too, if you like.

Re: visit?

Tonight is indeed good for me -- let me know if you'd like to stop
over. Not sure about all the details of a menu, but I do have some
pretty good leftovers that can be a start.

Re: comic

Not unlike my experiences this morning. To paraphrase Rabalais: he
would spend forty minutes rolling around in bed after awakening.

Actually, after I had my tea, I did write at least a few of the ideas
down. (One of the "ideas" was a strong desire for tea, which made it
convenient. I am on to Earl Grey now, apres your mud-making
memories.)

I think it would be a good idea to make bedclothes out of some
enscribable fabric so that messages could be written directly on the
surfaces most conducive to slumber and dreams. Probably there are
fabric pens available that would make this a reality for commonplace
cotton sheets.

every year

every year
the migratory birds
leave and return

Re: getting in touch/visiting again

I'd really like to see the rest of the Things/Triples/Theories program
go live. This seems like a point of overlap in our current interests;
based on our conversations, I'm guessing it involves a fundamental
enhancement to Elephant, though I don't yet know of what scope. I'm
also guessing that there would be some very cool applications, at
least around PlanetMath, and that, if you'd like, we could co-author a
pretty nice paper about the results (see my draft of "Arxana" [1]).

Longer term: I can't think of any better place for me to study
computer science than MIT. If I could find a way to visit, say for a
month (or possibly a semester), think I'd be able to figure out
whether there is a chance of me being admitted, and if so, where I'd
fit in best. (By the way, looking at Henry Lieberman's webpage, I do
see numerous points of common interest. I also corresponded briefly
with Marvin Minsky about my projects several years ago; it would
certainly be interesting to talk again now that things are more
developed.)

I'm hoping these things can be attempted this year. There would, for
sure, be a variety of challenging arrangements to make on my end.

In the mean time I will patiently await Elephant-related mail from
you, and will attempt to revise my paper, thinking more about formal
aspects of the system and other systems with "triples".

[1]: http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/regression.pdf

session 9

is up now and sounds very good to my ear.

http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/everything/novel/session9/

(Here and there maybe a little bit like "Nirvana Unplugged"...)

Re: visit

10AM Friday should work for me.

The nature of the question: I have been thinking about a certain
mathematical system, and I am curious to know whether it has been
studied before and what might be said about it.

Specifically, I'm considering sets of Things, some of which may be
Triples (A, B, C) where A, B, and C are Things. You could think of
this is a specific family of directed labeled graphs (V, E) where e in
E implies e in V. However, it seems more geometrically intuitive to
think of Triples as triangles, but allow any triangle to have any
vertex be a triangle. Sort of like a simplicial complex, but with
recursion.

I'm interested in applying these systems to build semantic models
e.g. with triples like (cat, is a, mammal), (cat, eats, mice).
However, I want to be sure to understand the system thoroughly on
formal terms first. Including, how "expressive" is the system?

Other than than -- I'm interested in mathematical logic but haven't
studied it formally, so I thought I would ask you a few questions
about your course...

how I spent my summer vacation

Without going into all the details -- and specifically, NOT listing
everything I didn't quite manage to pull off -- I'm going to hone in
on an interesting fact that dawned on me recently: for the first time
in quite a while, I have three papers kicking around in draft form.
("PlanetMath.org and the Hyperreal Dictionary Project", "Arxana", and
"Surveying the Metacommons".)

This wouldn't have been so exciting if it was not for all the
interactions that went into getting things to this point. For that,
thanks go to you!

I don't know precisely what choices I am going to have to make to
finish any of these papers off (or all of them), but it seems a decent
time to make a status report as I consider what comes next.

It is not always a good sign to have too much going on at once -- but
when the different subprojects are structuring a whole or have
substantial and interesting relationships between them, perhaps it is
a good sign.

So, I thought to describe the separate ambitions behind and spell out
possible relationships between these papers.

TENTATIVE ABSTRACTS

1. PlanetMath.org and the Hyperreal Dictionary project

This is a policy advocacy paper. I want to challenge the conventional
views on non-"free as in freedom" publishing in mathematics, and win.
An important distinction is implicit in the title: on the one hand, we
have the "institutional" PlanetMath.org, and on other, the
"non-institutional" HDM project. Mathematics is also
non-institutional, but is not project-based -- I call it an
"enterprise". The paper will argue for cooperation on the
institutional level to create enterprise-level non-institutional
enhancements. The main challenge is to show that FAIF publishing is
such an enhancement. And, if possible, to illustrate how it can feed
into other enhancements.

2. Arxana

This is a theoretical paper about data and knowledge management, with
an applied component: an implementation of "the scholium system". The
theoretical motivation is to build a fairly general model for
knowledge-bearing artifacts and knowledge use. The applied motivation
is to build hackable semantic platforms. I had started out with the
notion that this might be useful as an AI platform -- but over the
years it began to look like it would be more useful as an AI-building
platform.

3. Surveying the Metacommons

This is a social science paper about resource management.
Specifically, it surveys contemporary approaches to cooperation and
sharing and to understanding these behaviors. When is it "better" to
share than to hoard? How should we design institutions and rules to
generate the most social benefit? How do we characterize "social
benefits" in the first place? The idea of a "commons" may or may not
be important in the ultimate answers to these questions, but it is a
place to start. Specifically, we will begin with the high-level
question: what are the approaches to answering/solving/resolving the
deep questions already mentioned? We guess that these approaches will
often be "commons-based".

CONNECTIONS

(1)=>(2). The scholium system lurks in the background as we talk
about ways to run disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge
management projects.

(1)=>(3). I thought it would be a good idea to split off everything
having to do specifically with PlanetMath into its own paper, and let
the abstract idea of a metacommons roam around freely, finding
suitable material on its own. (Hence (3) is a survey paper, and (1)
is a position paper.)

(3)=>(1). Any definitive or even authoritative answers we can
generate for the deep questions asked in (3) will inform the ultimate
developments in (1).

(3)=>(2). Arxana (and any technologies that it models) is a hands-on
toolkit for studying and doing resource management. Its featureset
should adapt to whatever we learn about resource management
techniques.

(2)=>(3). We should see if we can find socio-theoretical rationale
for different kinds of programmatic knowledge/rights management
techniques.

(2)=>(1). One of the specific applications of Arxana will be an
improved community-interaction platform. Community interaction is
advanced in (1) as the main "value" inherent to the PlanetMath.org
institution.

CONCLUSIONS

The three papers are indeed closely related. Working on any one of
them to the exclusion of the others would probably be a bad idea. On
the other hand, they probably do not need to be read as a coherent
whole -- they could be published separately when they are completed.

What is required to complete them? (1) seems close to being done now,
although there is some remaining background that needs to be worked
in, and a "shepherding process" of testing and discussion to ensure
that it is as convincing as possible. (2) mainly lacks a specific
technical detail -- most likely I will need to go "into the field" to
get help finishing this detail, or else I will need to get some help
and additional focus creating a different back-end that accomplishes
the needed task (even if in a limited way); on that note, a survey
describing relationships and differences with Semantic Web efforts and
other semantic systems should be given. (3) This is probably the
least far along -- but there is presumably an algorithm for writing a
survey paper that can be followed.

Would they form a nice coherent whole? I had the notion that they
might be several chapters in a thesis -- but I think that even though
they are related, the subjects and approaches seem too scattered to
make a good thesis. Perhaps either (2) or (3) with enough work and
additional details could itself become a master thesis -- or they
could stay short.

How do they relate to other things I am working on? (2) certainly
seems the most central for me, however it does not come near to
answering all of the theory questions that define the HDM project.
Perhaps it would be a chapter in book on the HDM project. It also
relates to my more "creative" writings -- but more work would be
required to really merge these two things. Since (3) is grounded in
social and economic theories, the relationship to creative writing
might be tenuous -- but actually a lot of the initial inspiration is
the same (e.g. Korzybskian ideas about how to think well are certainly
related to resource management).

Are there co-authorship possibilities? Maybe! In some cases I may
already have someone in mind. But there's almost always the
possibility for cooperation on further papers along these lines, or
about topics in gaps I haven't talked about in this email but have
potentially blabbed about at length elsewhere. But if you're
interested in working with me on finishing any of these things, please
let me know, and we'll see! Finishing these things seems like a
priority to me for further development for HDM (e.g. I'd probably want
to finish the basic database stuff for Arxana before going on to
provide additional Multi-User feature). If there are other papers or
projects that are related but not the same, maybe we can work together
in a small writing group.

REFERENCES

(1). http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/pmhdm-paper.pdf
(2). http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/regression.pdf
(3). http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/metacommons-survey.pdf

Re: mathematics and zen

This morning I think I found a way to connect several things we've
been talking about.

Heuristics: These are approximate ways to achieve an approximate goal.
For example, "to organize a presentation in a coherent fashion, use a
thesis statement and an outline."

You can also have heuristics for "mind/body activity" -- examples are
the two instructions you sent, on "doing nothing" and "being
receptive".

A heuristic is not an algorithm with specific definitive steps.
Different heuristics can be used whenever they seem suitable -- for
example, this heuristic could be combined with the one about
organizing a presentation: "If you notice your audience's attention
drifting, you might try drawing them back in with a concrete
application."

And of course, one is not obliged to put every heuristic into use --
although it is possible to examine a heuristic and decide whether or
not to use it. Thus, you can get chains of heuristics related to
choosing a good heuristic, and perhaps this way things get a bit
complicated.

Well, when I was waking up today, the phrase "if you are going to
think, just think!" occurred to me. It seems that I've spent a lot of
time thinking about and experimenting with "ways to think", that is,
heuristics for thinking, ways to regulate my behavior. No doubt this
can be helpful, but it can also make for trouble. A related zen adage
is: "do not cling to words" (for, the words usually encode a
heuristic, which goes equally well for this adage).

If every time you spoke you had to prepare an outline first (or if
every time you stated a mathematical proposition, you had to have a
proof in mind), that wouldn't work very well -- even though the
notions that you should understanding what you are talking about,
think before you speak, and speak to be understood are all quite
reasonable.

I believe that "if you are going to think, just think" is quite
similar to "Receive everything that comes to you without selecting and
without thinking about it." Especially if what "comes to you" is
"thoughts" -- although of course there are typically bodily feelings
or emotions or mental images that aren't thoughts per se. Still, when
a person experiences these things, there is probably some brain
activity, and maybe that could be called that a thought. Anyway,
whatever the relationship to these types of phenomena are, there will
almost certainly be some "thoughts".

Maybe "brain activity" is a good word to use, because it is general,
there is less chance for it to be confusing. (I feel like the lexicon
of "thinking", "noticing", "heuristics", etc., is getting a bit
overwhelming... I'd rather if it was simple.)

If one tries to manage brain activity (on a semantic level, say, to
justify or condemn; or on a mnemonic level, to organize thoughts for
later or relate them to other ideas; or on an experiential level, by
"returning your attention to your breath" or trying to assuage some
emotional discomfort) then certainly that can get in the way of at
least one of: thinking, experiencing, being receptive. Some of the
heuristics are designed for that purpose, so in that case it is no
surprise!

Of course, managing brain activity is a pretty popular and relatively
ubiquitous in our society. E.g. road signs do this; people are
expected to do certain things and to feel certain ways about it;
people go to school to learn skills and techniques, etc. Some
techniques for managing brain activity seem to make things simpler or
to make direct action more feasible; others seem to make things more
complicated, maybe delaying action until side-problems are sorted out.

Well, I don't suppose any of this could be said to be "wrong" or
"right", at least not without saying more about the applications and
effects. In any event, somewhere before I wrote all of this, there
was a moment of clarity. Writing is certainly a brain activity
regulating behavior -- one good effect is as a landmark for further
reference. I hope you don't mind me sharing this somewhat rambling
reflection. I have enjoyed your writing; perhaps this will elicit
further remarks, at your convenience.

Re: comic

I'll check it out. Given the time factor you mentioned and the fact
that books are available, maybe I'll put the books into by buying
queue.

guitar

Hope you're having fun overseas!

Here's a track (hopefully you can download it) featuring me playing
electric guitar (but not in a very usual way):

http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/novel/session8/wma/ws_30177.wma

last night

Gah! The things I miss when I don't watch TV...

The first episode of season 2 picks up one year after the firing of
the Annihilatrix. It is revealed that couplings melted and resulted in
the Annihilatrix pushing the Earth 3 feet further away from the sun
which effectively stops global warming. Killface is regarded as a hero
and decides to run for president. He easily wins the Democratic
nomination and names Taqu'il his running mate in order to take the
black vote. It is revealed, however, that Taqu'il will lose Killface
the Jewish vote due to rather anti-semitic artwork on the cover of one
of his albums, entitled "Ballocaust."

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisky_Dingo

Re: noirish

On my list, just talked about it with my cousin! How about "Crooked
Little Vein" as a follow up?

noirish

I was listening to the radio and local radio theater was on. It made
me think: something about the rhythm of the East Coast accent makes
things sound more "noir". Don't know what it is, though.

It's weird, because I've been contemplating a more "space-age"
perspective -- in which things don't sound like what they represent.
The first example was my grandfather. With no offense intended to
this respected ancestor, I imagined him from the perspective of an
alien being looking and sounding like a Vogon. Or the cute girl with
the dog who lives down the block. Who's to say she's really "cute"?
They say people take after their pets -- so, viewed through
totem-aware glasses, maybe she starts to look like a self-centered
bitch.

Or take PlanetMath. You probably thought you'd find it at
planetmath.org -- but after checking there nothing worthwhile turned
up. A word to the wise, kid: try planetmath.cc.vt.edu.

patience makes possible

I did just now get an email from the fellow I have been trying to
track down. Outlook is good. He said: "Just drop me a line if you
visit."

thanks

I sent a note to Wayne Richter. Sounds like he is right down the hall
from you -- maybe I'll pop by to draw some pictures for you when I'm
there.

visit?

I was referred to you by Vic Reiner -- I have a logic-related math
question. Do you have any time this week to meet for a brief Q&A?

hi, with math question

Vic: I have been living in Minneapolis for a few years but haven't
stopped by the math department to say hi. I would be happy to do so.
Anyway, I went to MathFest this summer and it rekindled my interest in
doing math research, as opposed to the weird computer science,
metamath, and culture of mathematics combo I've gotten into. As part
of that sort of work, I've encountered about a mathematical structure
I wanted to see if you could say anything about.

The basic structures are made of Things and Triples, where Triples are
ordered triples of Things, and are themselves Things. Triples
represent directed edges -- but unlike in standard graph theory, you
could have an edge or a node that is also Triple, so there is some
recursion.

Really, I think the model has something to do with logic; but I don't
know precisely who to talk to about it.

"what is good mathematics?"

http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/0702.5396

more planetmath-like than wikipedia

http://www.scholarpedia.org/

songlines of the noosphere?

http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/media/hyper/hychia.php

getting in touch/visiting again

I am assuming that you have entered the busy time of year that you
mentioned would be coming. I am still concerned about triples and
theories and Elephant. I wonder what to do! I had thought about
going out to the East Coast for another visit, this time perhaps in
Boston.

It seems like there is some other related stuff going on at MIT -- I
just learned about David Hanson's "Web-scale Environments for
Deduction Systems"

http://publications.csail.mit.edu/abstracts/abstracts07/cph2/cph2.html

and noted that in the last paragraph of his abstract he says "we
imagine using this to enhance our Lisp-based programming systems with
persistent storage".

I had thought about possibly trying to get into grad school at MIT;
presumably that would make it easier for us to be in communication.
If you were personally taking students, that would make it all the
more convenient for me!

Re: Semantic Web standards

The first time I looked at the Semantic Web standards documents, which
was a while ago, I didn't know of any APIs. (Probably there were some
that I just hadn't heard of!) With an intense mark-up language like
RDF-XML, the API is going to be pretty important.

As for the real benefits or costs of this approach, that's
complicated. I suppose the main benefit might be that using existing
tools will facilitate more rapid development. Since "inference" is
supported by OWL, I'd be curious to know what sorts of inferences you
might like to see computed.

Certainly the OWL data structures can be transformed into triple
structures like I talked about and vice versa. The actual mechanics
of further annotating an edge might be complicated in the OWL model
however; and if you build large complexes with successive annotations
attached to edges, it seems like addressing would get gnarly. Having
first-class edges makes annotation basically "first-order".

On the other hand, I don't have any concrete evidence to indicate how
useful this feature is; just the nice clean statement that "everything
in Arxana is annotatable".

(Another thought: One thing that seems nice to have is "baseless
theories", i.e., sets of relationships among undisclosed, unspecified
objects. While I think any system will need to use place-holder
objects, it would be convenient to be able to swap these place-holder
objects out for other more interesting objects. It seems to me that
an object-centric theory would make this harder to do.)

I don't think I had heard of Chris Hanson's "Web-scale Environments"
project, but it sounds phenomenally interesting. Maybe it will
eventually subsume everything else we are doing here. (At least: if
you look in the last paragraph where he talks about enhancing
"Lisp-based programming systems with persistent storage that is better
matched to Lisp than relational databases or file systems", that is
what Elephant already does, although it does not currently do it in a
distributed way.)

another cut-up idea

A simple sound installation would give the listeners numerous
illuminated buttons on the walls or on some other interface with the
titles of the recordings on them.

Press: forgetting
Press: coherence

Hear: It is easier to change your a little more naive and to sticking
the things around the memories not that I'm any different the same
reference the narrative takes you into the heart of darkness; Tacitus
by any other referential under any conditions to be evaluated. To
make some spanning trees to the festival.

Press: it takes a big man
Press: 3 spirits

Hear: Brain function total assimilation into crack. These rather
flimsey fellows I thought of three years ago a balcony you'll like
that seems like such an awful braggart. Hard work to get to where he
is today the old Balthus situation falling into too much wine;
Constante, always trying to please prevaricating say something
anything falling down by back flopping I don't care about him all the
roses.

Of course this might not be anything particularly interesting or new
or worthwhile -- but it is one way to listen to the recordings.

My grandmother says she is more of a "visual person" and would like to
see the written version of the text. I could certainly transcribe the
marginal notes I've made, and excerpt the excerpts from the original
texts and print the thing up. This is another way to deal with the
material.

But what does the "public" want? Hmmmm...

Re: friday plans

For a specific location, say the north side of the ground floor, past
the fiction shelves. I have nearly black hair I usually wear in a
pony-tail; 5'10"; eurotrash genetics with olivey overtones. See you
there/then.

address

http://groups.google.com/group/scholia-ideas/browse_thread/thread/ea236c31058952f1?hl=en

Re: triples

I too have many emails, but I don't read them all. Can you send an
invite to this address?

triples

I think we met up at Google and talked about triples. I wanted to get
back in touch with you. I'm hoping this email address works for that.

Re: friday plans

These places kind of appeal to me: The Aster Cafe at St Anthony Main;
the downtown library; the Black Forest beer garden; the Walker.

Re: friday plans

The reunion was good. Many of the people I grew up around I now see
very infrequently. (It's been as long as 9 years in the case of my
cousins!) And I feel like my brain just got a tune-up, because it
adjusted itself to the different ways of thinking that my various
family members adhere to. Serious but fun; thoughtful and emotional
but direct; brilliant but silly; intense but inviting; etc. -- which
doesn't yet go into all the details of interesting speech-patterns or
any of the other nuances. I wish I could hang out with these folks
more, but that isn't how it is just now!

Here, I'm located in my small solo apartment, very near the corner of
Cedar and Riverside. I am relatively mobile by bike (assuming that
there isn't a torrential downpour just when I decide to leave).
Amenable to further voyages by truck...

PM/HDM paper draft

Guys: I am just back from a family reunion in Salt Lake City.

Before I left, I had mentioned wanting to write up the material I
presented in my MathFest talk for possible submission to a
high-profile math journal, probably the American Mathematical Monthly
or the AMS Notices.

I showed my latest existing "draft" (really just notes) to my dad, and
he had some helpful comments: (1) to be clear about the benefits of
doing things the way I am talking about doing them; (2) that the paper
I showed him really did concern the sort of "technological" ideas I
have been talking about; (3) that I should try to organize the points
thematically.

I have attempted to respond to these comments in the current draft:
given that sometimes these are difficult points to address
definitively, e.g. because they need research, this is only an
incremental improvement. Still, it is readable, and it would benefit
from your comments.

Note that despite the mention of "hyperreal dictionary" in the title,
and the adoption of its goals as the main motivations for the paper, I
have not talked about it by name explicitly in the body of the paper.
However, it should be somewhat clear that the current body of
technological ideas -- Arxana -- informs much of the paper. The
precise wording can change, and I welcome your suggestions.

*

PLANETMATH.ORG AND THE HYPERREAL DICTIONARY PROJECT

META-MOTIVATION

I would like to write an article that will really challenge people's
views on non-"free as in freeedom" publishing in math -- and win!

MOTIVATIONS

* To put mathematical knowledge on the computer as an aid for human
learners.

* To get the computer to help solve "human-style" math problems.

BENEFITS

* PlanetMath is already valuable as a "live" online mathematics
community, and can become increasingly so.

* Representing knowledge on the computer facilitates uses of that
knowledge that aren't there otherwise.

* The free/open model provides universal access to knowledge and
"process", which is as advantageous to producers/purveyors of
knowledge, as it is to learners.

* The free/open model can reduce costs borne by mathematical
societies, while helping math societies live their ideals.

* In addition to these direct benefits, if the the mathematics
community handles this effort well, it can become a societal leader
in the knowledge representation and commons development domains.

AN ONLINE MATH COMMUNITY

PlanetMath is not currently a whole lot finer-grained than the
standard ink-and-paper representations of the material it collects.
However, it seems to have done a pretty good job from the point of
view of "being a mathematical reference work". From the point of view
of sheer information content, it does more than most print
compilations -- although of course quantity is not a very useful
measure of quality. (Things like: internal organization, accuracy,
etc., are at least as important.)

As a result of its size, PlanetMath ends up appearing in a lot of web
searches for math terms, and is visited by tens of thousands of users
each day. This certainly indicates that PlanetMath is "useful".

However, this does not by itself indicate that PlanetMath is providing
a particularly valuable service. Anyone can download and re-host
PlanetMath's content; and, again, if size alone was taken as the
measure of quality, Wikipedia would be a better bet.

The primary service that PlanetMath delivers, which makes it more
valuable than a mere repository of data, is that it provides access to
a mathematical *community*. This community provides and grooms the
all of the content, asks and answers questions about mathematics, and
provides one point of organization for the future of online
mathematics.

Now, frankly I think that the community interactions on PlanetMath are
not anywhere near as useful (or as valuable for that matter) as they
would be after a significant "tuning up" of the PlanetMath
infrastructure PlanetMath. This project is "in the works".

MATHEMATICAL KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

Putting texts on the computer is not really the same as representing
knowledge on the computer. As to what "knowledge" is, that is a good
philosophical question [!], but in any event, text is such a coarse
representation that it would make more sense to call online texts
"information".

Representing *mathematical* knowledge on the computer seems like a
very good preliminary test-case for the general problem, because the
computer is already predisposed towards managing logically-organized
materials (this view has been shared by Turing, McCarthy, and other
computer scientists who think about math).

Note both parallels and differences with Google. ``Access'' to
knowledge should not mean that you merely obtain access to some block
of information that coarsely represents the knowledge in question.
Google definitely integrates "knowledge" into search results or the
maps that enable you to find the location and phone number of a
pizzeria in your neighborhood. But this is a long ways from helping
you find the answer to a specific math question.

ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE

PlanetMath, or something very much like it, will be needed if the
mathematics community as a whole is going to organize and provide
access to its knowledge in such a way as to go beyond the
techno-social status quo.

Yes, things are changing (thanks to tools like Google, ArXiv, blogs,
Wikipedia, etc.), but they are not changing in a particularly coherent
way. And I would argue that they are not yet changing enough.

[This would be a good place to provide some research results.] Access
to knowledge in many parts of the world is still pretty terrible,
despite increasing access to the internet. Within our own country,
compulsory education has overwhelmingly failed to instill significant
knowledge of mathematics in graduating students (much less in the
population of drop-outs).

The entire so-called STEM domain is shortly going to be given a kick
in the pants by Washington at significant cost -- but is this going to
be efficient? If it isn't efficient, is it going to be effective?

My tentative answer is "no". Pouring money into STEM will have
serious limits if STEM is not rooted in fertile soil. Fertility in
this case can be obtained in one way alone: switching over to a
free/open model. [I like the metaphor of "organic" or "bio-dynamic"
growing versus "intensive farming". I don't know how much work this
metaphor can be expected to do -- but the point is that the free/open
set-up is like a compost heap, digesting materials that are put into
it and making them useful. By contrast, just pouring money into
existing systems is the way to make "stove-piped" and relatively
barren results.]

It is vitally important that "access to knowledge" not be just
uni-directional. Even if people were putting papers and course
materials online (which some are and many are not), foregoing the
majority of the downstream user's additional efforts towards making
useful these materials useful is the proverbial "terrible waste".

ECONOMIC REALITIES AND PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALS

Bring up the idea of giving mathematical knowledge away to math
societies or publishers and they will typically tell you "no way!".
Income to these societies continues to derive largely from journal
revenues.

And yet, if you bring up the ideal that "mathematical knowledge should
be available to everyone", there will be wide agreement.

How can we get past this impasse between this reality and this
widely-held ideal? I think the only honest course is to work towards
our ideals.

In a simplistic model, we could imagine driving the costs borne by
mathematical societies continually down, while replacing many society
functions with free online equivalents. This process will surely have
its limits: but then, once we have found these limits, we could reset
membership fees to cover the newly "slimmed down" demands. Surely
this approach is too simple, but it should be the beginning of a
solution.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Understand the demand(s) for public-good-like resources coming out
of mathematics. Not just the demand for a stream of new knowledge,
but also increasingly accessible platforms for learning and
communication. Note that demand for public goods is not always
expressed by "willingness to pay". The constituencies who can be
helped with these resources are often the most destitute, least
educated, least organized groups that the mathematical community can
*imagine* serving. Sometimes demand from third parties
(e.g. philanthropists) will help cover the costs of serving these
groups.

2. Be prepared to do interdisciplinary work. Disparate groups working
in psychology, communication, education, linguistics, etc., won't do
as well on the problem of "how to make mathematical knowledge
accessible" as they would with as an organized team. Mathematicians
should often take a leadership role on this team, not least because
they will be the primary direct consumers of its product. (This is
not unlike other cases of building repositories of indigenous cultural
knowledge.)

3. Develop or use tools for managing growing, large-scale, and often
interdisciplinary knowledge stores. We shouldn't have to abandon old
or familiar ways of doing things (e.g. writing papers in LaTeX), but
rather, we should put together new organizational strategies that
overlay and combine old methods and results. Presumably these
("scholiumific" or "semantic") methods will be useful not just for
archiving or knowledge-assimilation purposes, but also for many live
aspects of communication and practice.

4. Take into account as many possible uses as possible! What sorts of
things might people want to try? Since it isn't possible to plan for
everything, plan especially for unexpected novel weirdness. Do not
just give permission for innovation (e.g. via suitable legal terms),
but actively support it wherever possible. At the same time, plan for
ways of evaluating different behaviors and integrating them, when
useful, into other activities.

5. Run this project in a "business-like" fashion. Some of the
relevant work will be volunteers. Other parts of the effort will
require further motivation, sometimes in the form of monetary payment.
Some parts of the effort will be carried out by largely-independent
groups (e.g. other disciplinary or interdisciplinary knowledge
representation or commons-development projects), who we will still
need to coordinate with. Be able to evaluate various possible
approaches and combinations of approaches.

CONCLUSION

Why are we talking about representing mathematical knowledge? Why not
just talk about representing general knowledge?

Indeed, many of the tools will be the same, although not all of them
will. As mentioned, in order to make a project like this work well,
significant *interdisciplinary* knowledge and *societal* knowledge
will have to be leveraged; so, this project necessitates the
development of more general tools.

As such, it begins to solve more general problems. How should we do
science in the information age? The solutions offered here hit the
main points -- science, at least academic science, should, like
mathematics, be as free and open as possible. [The economic issues
with "science" are even more tricky than they are in math, since so
much research is done by for-profit companies; and even research done
on university campuses often gets fed into the for-profit machine.]

But new questions are raised, for example: How to attribute `credit'
for the kind of incremental (small) improvement, change, or
contribution that free/open model, together with a suitable support
infrastructure, facilitates?

I hope that this paper will help launch a discussion of these and
other important questions for our time.

in case you hadn't heard

This reminds me of our conversations about the possibilities
for an "open source Google".

http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=213707,00.asp

friday plans

Wheneven it's convenient, please send details on your preferred
meeting place and time.

i'm back...

I'm not going to post what *you* wrote, only what I write!
Don't worry: no one but me could read your email or even
know who I am writing to right now.

I will keep my eyes glued to the mailbox awaiting your
postings. I just got back from Salt Lake City where I
was visiting with the whole extant paternal side of my
family tree. I think it evened out my brainwaves to
have all of those familiar (but now distant) patterns
all going nearby once again.

Arriving back home, I was worried that I would feel like
I was going to be re-inserting myself into a big mix of
obligations. Luckily I'd cleaned my room before I left,
so all I really had to do was take out the trash; there
are other minor things, but it doesn't feel like I am
being drowned by stuff-left-undone -- this is great,
since sometimes that's exactly what happened when
I returned from previous vacations.

I'm glad you liked my chair/window/room! I've
spent a lot of happy time typing in that spot -- and
may well be doing more of that soon when I see what
you send.

Re: session 6 files up

Cool ideas. I definitely like the idea of writing any text that we'll
read "live". The computer would definitely make that speedy. There
are quite a few combos to think about -- anyway, Tuesday we can try
some new variants (my plane gets in at 5:39, so I should be able to
make it back here by around 6:15).

I think visiting David Means is definitely a good idea. Oh, and by
the way, I listened to all the previous recordings since we started on
this book again today... while drifting in and out of a nap. I'm very
glad to be able to listen to it! Music-wise, this "non-canonical"
recording with layered tracks happened to sound especially good:

http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/everything/music/overdubs.ogg

what's happening

Congratulations on the new job appointment!

I'm taking it easy today -- for some reason (was it the coffee I got
as an excuse to visit Michelle, or some more emotional reason?) I
didn't want to sleep last night so did one of my "usual" exceptions to
the rules and stayed up very late watching cartoons. Not bad
cartoons, really.

Here is the link to the sound recordings I have been doing with
Anders lately:

http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/novel/

I listened to all of this again today while taking naps and enjoyed
it. Now I have to get ready to go to Salt Lake.

session 6 files up

I had really enjoyed the recording session last night. The files are
up at http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/novel/session6 -- I
converted the ogg files to "mono", but the wma files are still "left
channel".

http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/everything/music/ has the
"miscellaneous" tracks in it, converted to ogg format.

I don't know about getting together again tonight -- maybe, if you're
free -- on the other hand there's no rush, and it might be
advantageous to rest up and let this material go into
background-processing mode. I'll be back next Tuesday in any event.

Last night I was wondering about actually trying to sell this (or more
likely, some variant, extension, remix, or other related thing) as an
"art project". Maybe this is just another rough draft of something
else: but people do pay money for novels. It seems to have as much
"artistic validity" as Max Ernst's book; I don't know if it would have
anywhere near as much interest for anyone. One thought that occured
to me would be to send a demo to Laurie Anderson and ask for advice
from her. No rush on this either, but what do you think?

Re: typing

I got 85 WPM on average over four trials with different styles of
typing (straight prose, copying, cut-up, creative expression).

The samples are as follows (a few typos were corrected afterwards, I
suppose that might be considered cheating, but that's how I like to do
it):

how many words can I type in one minute, I guess that depends
on what sorts of words they are if you ask me for
supercalifragilistic that will certainly throw things
off a little bit but you wouldn't expect every word to be
short or anything either. Probably this should be done
with some standard list of words to type. Indeed, thinking
about what to type probably takes more time than reading
whatever it was on the screen.

well here I am typing because I'm applying for a library
job and I'm trying to find out how many words per minute I can type
because it asks that on the application. I didn't have any idea how
one would go about finding out such a thing until I found my aunt's tomato
timer sitting on top of the cinnamon can -- empty cinnamon can -- and
low and behold it works, so I found it up and here I am waiting for
the ding, still waiting, come on now, any

Well here I am typing because I'm applying for a library how many
words can I type in one minute, I guess that depends because it asks
that on the application. I didn't have any idea how off a little bit
but you wouldn't expect every word to be timer sitting on top of the
cinnamon can -- empty cinnamon can -- and with some standard list of
words to type. Indeed, thinking low and behold.

OK, one more sample this time I am going to describe my walk home.
I saw a tree and a house and the tree had a slice cut out of it
and that was in front of the house. I saw an old lady crossing the
road and a young man driving a car. They were friends and the
young man hit the old lady lightly with the bumper, just a love tap
really, but she splattered like a rotten tomato all over my utility
kilt! Gross! I am going.

transcript

In case it turns out to be at all interesting here are the
things I typed:

hi hi this is the beginning
this is the beginning of the song
something about it is too cluttered
but that just means it would be better
to go slow

is this going to sound good
this is going to sound like something
this is going to sound like something
berlioz wrote but that doesn't make it wrong
if you were to play faster that would make it more likely to sound
like something that people were used to.

But in this case they are going to just have to get used
to some new kind of "paradigm".

There are patterns
but these are hard to find
they are like looking for a
needle in a haystack.

this this this this is something this the this
is the hard part to fool follow around something hard
about it is that these letters are not

this this is just in the key of c

what you love
what you love
what you love
what you love
what you love
what you love
what you love
what you love
is what i love too

what you love
what you love
what you love
is what's good for you

some what you love
what you love
somewhat what you love
is good for you

Try a few other things
first and see what comes of it.

Something silky and sandy
something inky and just dandy

this is a very nice instrumental sound

something silky and sandy
something inky and just dandy

it doesn't have to rhyme

but when it sounds best

is when the music is never at rest

and it keeps moving

keeps moving

along

something that has a bit of an edge
a bit of an edge to bite
by the nape of your neck
or the edge of your teeth
the edge of your seat
is what keeps you from falling through the floor

and what's more

it keeps moving

keeps moving past the furthest start and straight on
to morning

morning

calling

making you want to sleep some more ;