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 ;

chat

OK, let's talk tomorrow evening, either around 5 my time, or 7 my
time. Ray, if you want to be in on this, please specify a suitable
call-in number and your preferred time; otherwise, Aaron, just let me
know what time you prefer and I'll call you.

open letter on open access

This letter is addressed to Pam Quick, Permissions Coordinator of The
MIT Press. A copy of this letter will appear on my blog at
http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com -- feel free to share it with any
interested parties.

I recently purchased "Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From
Theory to Practice" (MITP, 2006) and am thinking about buying
"Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing" (MITP, 2006).

Immediately when I bought the first of these titles, it struck me as
ironic that it was not available in an open access electronic format.

Upon further reflection, it seems somewhat strange to me that MITP is
not making an across-the-board effort to make its books available
online under terms permissive to use (open access), or perhaps novel
re-use (as would be permitted, for example, by a license like the "MIT
License" [1]).

MIT is famously already making a somewhat similar effort with course
materials [2]. It would be a great boon to low-income scholars and
readers around the world if MITP followed suit.

It would be easy to assert that this is impossible because of how much
revenue would be lost. I say: this is about access to knowledge, and
the moral issues here trump whatever issues adhere to publisher's
"bottom line".

Now, this does not mean I'd want to see you go out of business
implementing some kind of hare-brained scheme for open access!
Rather, I view "access to knowledge" as a policy problem -- one that I
hope the minds at MIT will take leadership to help solve.

[1]: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
[2]: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/terms-of-use.htm

Don Kishane!

Of course too bad it isn't available in parallel as a free download,
but even people who you might think would be more likely to offer such
downloads, don't. Maybe I should write in to MITP and complain at
that level. But at the same time -- it happens to be available and
not checked out at the University Library here as P98.5.S83 M36 1999
so I can go peruse it. Maybe it is finally time for me to offer up my
$80 for a non-student university library card.

Re: discussions

You're totally right about how you would use an RDBMS to do the
Theory/Triple/Thing thing! The reason for using Elephant is not to
get away from the RDBMS per se, but rather to work with a database
that is tightly coupled with a programming language. It shouldn't be
tricky to figure out how to do RDBMS-style computations with
Elephant... but at this point it still is (to me). Maybe somewhere
there is better documentation than what I've seen so far, comparing
the Berkeley Database system with RDBMSes. (I did read in the
Elephant docs that RDBMS systems use b-trees in their back end, which
is the same thing BDB uses... so, it isn't like these systems are all
that different...)

As for the MathFest-follow-up zine: no, I'm not suggesting that this
would in any way be an acceptable style for publication. Just that it
might be helpful for us as a pre-draft of a paper. The relevant PR
concern is whether anyone would want to publish an article on PM
and/or HDM.

As for MAA -- I haven't discussed any specifics with anyone. I just
indicated interest in talking; we'll have to come up with proposals.

The two particular contacts are Robert Anastasio, who is the director
of Marketing and Membership, and Joseph Gallian, current MAA
president.

As for what to say to these guys: I think your point about their
investment is right, but with one small modification: it isn't just
about them investing in us, but really them merging with us in some
suitable (obviously partial) way. (As you said, sharing
infrastructure.) So, they invest in online/free math -- we are
basically contractors.

I agree that if we could wave MAA badges at people our jobs would be
way easier ("Don't move, jerk. We're with the MAA. Now fork over the
grant funding and no one gets hurt."). On that note, combining an
"in" with Fedora and one with MAA would be superb.

The other non-MAA contacts I have are:

Anne Newcomb (AMS Publications)
Mike Breen (AMS Marketing)
Annete Emerson (AMS Public Awareness Office)
Chris Ruel (Wiley)
Jennifer Lonschein (Prentice Hall)
Joseph Rogove (Thomson Higher Education)
Ann Kostant (Springer Editorial Director for Math)
Mark Spencer (Springer Marketing)

and

Gengmun Eng (The Aerospace Corporation, who might give advice or
connect us with people who can give advice on how to run a really cool
"dot org")

Given that I spoke with at least some of these people in person, I
think the best approach for CONTACTING them would be (1) for us to
draft some email together; (2) for me to send the emails, CCing you;
and (3) then let you take over follow-up with them from there as
needed.

rirkrit tiravanija

caroline

carruda@ic.sunysb.edu

contact mic?

I guess the first question is: I am planning to put together a show
for the Acadia series in which one of the instruments will be a mic'ed
typewriter. Do you have any suggestions on how to do this? I saw
instructions for building a very cheap contact microphone out of radio
shack parts (which I'd have to order), or I could buy a contact mic
online at retail price. Thoughts on this? Or, is there a local store
to buy weird microphones from, or an electronics store that actually
has parts in stock that you know of?

Re: math!

If you haven't already, check out the book "Proofs Without Words:
Exercises in Visual Thinking".

There are other references to similar texts (including a sequel) on
this page:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ProofwithoutWords.html

I don't think these materials are anywhere near "comprehensive" in the
sense of teaching "Algebra Without Words". But if they work as
advertised they will certainly help tune up one's visual thinking
engine.

As for translating back to words, I don't *think* that is going to be
the hard part. (Assuming that a forward translation into pictures
really does exist.) However, there are ways I could be wrong. For
example: a kid can easily see that even added to odd is odd. A logic
student would prove "the same" result in a much more verbose and
probably less intuitive way; but really their goals are different.

I think your project is a great one to focus on and I hope I can help
with it! My more huge comics project might be a reference point to
keep on the mental horizon when thinking about the math project. (And
vice versa.)

Oh, and I'll look forward to meeting up a couple of Fridays hence.

Re: programmer's mind

Well, the thought about "acting normal" is the "deep zen" notion that:
enlightenment is just acting normal! So, act normal and forget about
all the other crap that people have been weighing you down with.

Me, I like it.

As for Crane, that is of course a splendid example and challenge. I
am certainly still very interested in it. But distance in space will
grind away proximity in interest unless something is done to keep
shared motivation alive. If we can understand how to do this, then
maybe we can also chip away at still greater mysteries.

As for wasting time: today I have the poetic notion that a fun way to
spend time is like folding an origami crane. (Maybe we should really
fold some to increase motivation.)

Fold this experience together with that experience; fold some more;
fold some more. Pull, then you have a nice result. This is
practically applied when pursuing different human relationships,
different projects, different ways of doing things (all practically
simultaneously). For each one of these, compensate over there with
some of those. I wouldn't call it "wasting time" if you're doing
something you enjoy or if you haven't got anything better to do.

Re: ATTN: MATHFEST

Ah-ah! I sent your notes but to the wrong address. A copy of that
email is now posted on the web at:

http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2007/08/notes.html

(I assumed you wouldn't mind me posting the notes, but I didn't put
your name on them either. Would you prefer that I did?)

bachman versus king

In my imagination, I read stuff by Richard Bachman before I knew that
he was just a Stephen King pseudonym.... but anyway for whatever
reason I thought I liked the stuff under that name better. Maybe I
liked "The Running Man" particularly because I had seen the movie at a
friend's house, and then when I read the book it was different and so
it seemed smarter. That sort of thing always makes me fond of the
author. I don't think I saw any other Stephen King movies in time to
make that sort of judgement call. Just read a ton of the books.
Which might explain or illustrate why I'm a little twisted at this
point in my life.

Re: programmer's mind

The next two paragraphs are primarily here as set-up for the third:

At risk of spoiling the effect: partly, I was hoping to indicate the
limitations of motivation by money and consuming things in general --
I don't have an alternative and "higher" good to point to directly --
although certainly sometimes creating things or otherwise changing the
world is reward enough.

On the other hand, it is also possible to view "experience" as "that
which is consumed"; and I don't particularly want to set up a fight
between these two (allegedly) different kinds of motivation. Really I
don't think dualism has much of a case here.

A more core point to the example is along the lines of: "the way that
can be stated is not the true way." Things are really complex, so any
one answer is bound to have some weak spots and these are bound to be
exposed at some point.

One of the things that I've recently gotten in my readings on zen is
the advice to "act normal". It is pretty good advice I think, and it
applies here. The programmer's mind probably isn't very different
from the mind of a person who does other things. Generally good
heuristics are by definition going to be good a lot of the time.

For example, your point about "incremental progress" is in accord with
the way I usually think. In most reasonable models, work is done by
"integrating the margins". Of course, when problems are
high-dimensional, there are a lot of margins to look at. (Just for
example, diminishing returns due to sleepiness tend to constrain the
amount of useful writing one can do late at night, even
incrementally.)

As for the "dreaming sessions" -- as you stated these were valuable in
their own right. The precise strategies for further development may
be vastly different from the strategies considerd then. But maybe a
few curious details would be the same, e.g. putting together a working
environment and style that you get a kick out of working in.

On that note: one of the things most people tend to like is talking
with other people about topics of mutual concern. "How to find the
people, topics, and directions for the conversations to go" can be
challenging problems. We live in a world of working answers, but can
perhaps make some further improvements. (Presumably a lot of what
people do is try to improve things...)

Re: math!

Monday, no can do: just checked, I don't get back until next Tuesday
afternoon.

The closest thing I've found to the language project I have in mind so
far is: http://www.blissymbolics.org/downloads/bliss-rules.pdf (and
other Bliss material).

My thought is to make a somewhat similar pictoral language, but
updated for the computer age. Why use only simple line drawings when
nice pictures could be used? The goal would be to make the language
"readable" directly from immersion (and not much of that needed); a
language for writing "wordless comics", or some kind of super "icon
art". Sounds and moving images might eventually be included as well,
to facilitate amateur "Waking Life" type movies.

A math book in this language would be a tremendous start.

My direct background in linguistics isn't anything special, but my
interest runs deep. I have a lot of experience with computers, math,
and thinking about how to represent the semantics of math on
computers.

a job for the query system?

I want to work with some objects like this:

Things --
[key: OID | slots: name, data]

Triples (subclass of Thing) --
[slots: beginning, middle, end]

Theories (subclass of Thing) --
pset (?) of elements: [key: name | slot: OID of some Thing]

Ian Eslick has already helped me by putting together an implementation
covering Things and Triples in a very slick way.

http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/variant-4.lisp

In particular, the current implementation enables the user to find all
Triples which match on any particular data in the three slots. Note:
the schema is not precisely what I've listed above, which brings me to
my first question:

Question 1. What should I do to key a persistent class by its OID?

Theories have yet to be implemented. The schema is set up so that
Things to live in a Universe and Theories designate arbitrary subsets
of that Universe. The challenge that I want the data-matching
routines to work within a given Theory. This way, a Theory can be
viewed as a sub-network of the semantic net that the Universe as a
whole comprises.

I am pretty sure Ian indicated that this can be done using the up and
coming "query system". Which brings me to:

Question 2. Does this indeed look like something the query system can
handle?

Question 3. Does this look like a good set-up?

Question 3. How can I learn more about this query system and when is
it expected to be available?

Re: math!

Your concrete picture and abstract symbol idea is a lot like something
I have been thinking about. But oddly, I wasn't thinking of it as a
math project, rather, as a linguistics project. Would be good to talk
about these things.

My official work schedule (hopefully you can read it as a one-liner):

Thursday 10PM-9AM Friday 10PM-12PM Saturday 12AM-12PM Sunday

point being I have weekend afternoons and evenings off and the rest of
the time off too. I get to sleep at work (pretty cooshy group home
job for high-functioning developmentally disabled adults). Sometimes
they ask me to cover other nights.

Anyway, match your schedule as you see fit against my copious
quantities of free time. I don't mind meeting up for breakfast or
whatever; given our shared interests I can call it a research meeting.
(Which has no direct benefits except style.)

Re: surrender/control

I work a pretty weird schedule myself -- but it happens to be
completely open until Thursday night. However, this I'm going out of
town for a family reunion Friday through Monday.

As for PlanetMath, maybe http://planetmath.org is self-explanatory?
If not I'll explain it in detail later. Got to take a nap now!

Re: family reunion jam?

Zoe has an accordion -- she might be persuaded to bring it since
seeing as how it is a short she won't need that much other luggage.
(I have one too but sadly, it is currently out of order.) I think
Howard started playing guitar recently... don't know if he has one
that is transportable.

I can also play keys on my laptop -- maybe I'll bring that and my amp.
Going to be doing some fine-tuning of the sound of it for a Sept 4
performance; here is my latest demo:

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

You'll need to install an Ogg player to play this... see
http://www.vorbis.com/software/

Can of course put bring harmonicas too, they are easy to carry.

Re: surrender/control

I don't think the tense of the statements was that important -- maybe
all descriptions are somehow "past tense" or at least
"other-than-here-and-now tense". Anyway, I'm sure I could describe a
state of surrender or stream of consciousness in past tense too, like:
"I wrote down whatever came to mind", or "I put in whatever
ingredients seemed like they would taste good together", or "I don't
know how we ended up sleeping together, I guess it just happened."

Speaking of "the moment" -- I'm planning to go to Acadia Cafe for the
latest installment of their Tuesday night improvisational music series.

http://tcmusic.net/musicianschedule1680.html

Care to join me?

(Note I'm also performing on Sept 4, although not just with
electronics... hm... I'll have to get that changed.)

Re: Fedora Commons Awarded $4.9m

Maybe we should talk to these Fedora people about it. If we could get
sub-contracted to do part of the overlap that would be super. Or
maybe they would want to collaborate on a supplemental grant.
Absolutely no reason to duplicate work.

programmer's mind

I am trying to cultivate a state of mind and way of life in which
programming "comes easy".

Rhetorical Questions: What do I mean, why do I care, and why am I
talking to you about this now?

Consider a much more low-tech activity: reading and writing. If you
are just reading, you sit there like a catatonic lump, your eyes
flickering over the text, ideas and associations coming to you as they
will, and mostly departing out the mind's back door too.

Now, suppose you start making marginal notes describing your ideas.
You no longer look so catatonic to the outside observer.
Unfortunately, other derangements may occur -- for example, suppose
some part of the text inspires you so much that you fill the whole
margin and have to leave off reading to grab a notebook and froth at
the mouth there for a while. You may never come back to finish
reading the book.

Life is full of action and opportunities for action. But for every
action that one takes, an apparent infinity of opportunities will be
passed by. Thus, life is full of "choices" -- but should we really
believe this? Or should we instead think about how life is
constructed out of causal, physical, arrangements of things, with
"free will" just an illusion?

I figure it doesn't matter that much, because in either case, the only
thing you can do about it is use the native abilities you have. This
includes memory and perception and preferences. Of course all of
these systems are changing over time, as you see new stuff, remember
different stuff, reevaluate your beliefs, and so on. The central
point is that these systems enable one to function as a computer.

Indeed, if you look at the world around you, it also has analogous
systems of persistence, data, and facility. So, it can function as a
computer too. Huzzah. Now the question is how to program and why?

I am pretty convinced that every program represents a transform from
state A to state B. We usually think in terms of sets of states:
e.g. insert an integer N, get out the integer N! but all this means is
that code in the usual sense is a schema for generating a suitable
transform. These are just piddling terminological details. The main
point is that a program trades A for B.

We could now go on into elaborate riffs talking about online
programing and so on, but I trust you can fill in these details if you
want. The point is that to program you need to know how to transform
things. I'm not talking about turning a sow's ear into a silk purse,
either. It is important to know which transformations are feasible.

In general, how can you turn your volitional drives into realized
states of being? If you want to turn 3 dollars into a cheeseburger,
you can go to McDonald's and smash up your cash and leave reasonably
well satisfied. If you want to turn a trend of sorrow and frustration
into a trend of accomplishment and joi de vivre, well, that's more
complicated. And besides that all of these transforms are interacting
with each other (we could call that blowback or externalities) so
there are limited returns to seeking happiness through cheeseburgers.

See, to program well, you need to know about these externalities. It
is not without reason that transforms are often called maps. You are
like a geographer; and if you are only good at identifying moutain
ranges and streams and you can't do cultural geography, your map might
provoke a civil war. And you don't want that; very dangerous. So it
is to your advantage as a programmer to make your system of maps
flexible, even extensible or modifiable in case of unexpected change.
Mainly, though, you just have to work really hard to understand what
all lies between A and B. It probably isn't a straight and narrow
road but a wide expanse, see. (And of course in many cases like my
surveyer friend Joseph K., you may find yourself only able to approach
B, but never to reach it.)

Once you are any good at programming, of course, you will want to
apply what you've learned. Your programs will not take place only at
the level of the possible or in the abstract, but instead will operate
directly at the level of the real. And if you try sometimes, you just
might find you get what you need.

So, that's why I care. Why am I burdening you with these thoughts?
Because between conceiving and doing is a lot of need for expression;
and it is extremely difficult to express things if you don't have
someone to express things to. Actually it seems like life is already
made up of "relationships" -- anyway, relationships are fundamental to
the model above. I need someone to talk to these ideas about -- but I
am also hoping that my words will be helpful to you in some way.
Perhaps if they are or are not you can let me know. In either event I
think this note has boosted my confidence about asking a programming
question has been burning a hole in my brain to some "pros".

Outtake:

If you were to ask me about it, I might have to say that I tend to
think of life as a bit like reading a book or walking around in a
museum or one of those immersive plays that certain theater companies
put on, where the audience moves with the performers and there is no
stage. More flexible, of course -- maybe I'd say, more like
"live-action role-playing". Anyway I'm less concerned with the
theatrical analysis and more with the textual one.

surrender/control

Well, I agree with your statement, so maybe you don't completely
disagree with me after all. (Please feel free to disagree with what I
said -- as you've seen I'm quite willing to say things I don't agree
with.)

Maybe the attitude you call "surrender" lives at the crux between
control and passivity. What sort of sentences would be used to talk
about what happens with that attitude?

Describing passivity, a person might say "These things have happened
to me." Describing control, a person might say "I've made these
things happen." Describing surrender to my mind it seems more
complicated, because the person in this frame of mind is definitely
doing things, but these things are not chosen as carefully as they are
in the state of control, nor is the person completely in
pure-response mode as you might find in the state of passivity.

Actually, maybe things only really HAPPEN in this state you are
calling "surrender". That seems interesting. I think the term "stream
of consciousness" describes how this state works in writing or
speaking. But in some sense all writing is "stream of consciousness",
even if that consciousness is coming from contemplating an outline or
whatever.

Re: visit?

Sure, a little after 6 is fine.

Re: creating events

Looking at this one way, the basic thing to start with would be "event
planning", like for a party or a protest rally. But most of the time
these sorts of things are non-events: pretty much all the expected
things happen and indeed people would have hardly noticed if the whole
thing hadn't happened at all.

It is still possible to plan a good party, I think. But to make it a
"real event" I think it is better to practice with simpler things.

You mentioned windows in time. One of the simplest windows in time is
the opportunity for a juxtaposition or overlay. In other words:
simultaneity or approximate simultaneity. From there you can open
things out a bit and think about ordering and pacing.

People tend to worry right away about all of the things "outside of
their control" -- What about what everyone else is doing?

A possible remedy for this defeatist attitude is to stay aware of what
people are doing but never let them wreck your event with it, perhaps
by excluding them from the event completely. Make it "by invitation
only".

This is not to say that I recommend being or becoming a control freak.
In the same way you might create an artwork without knowing how people
will react, the upshot of an event may be unpredictable. But no
artist wants their artwork spoiled before it is created.

Really, this comes down to the following crux: between control and
passivity. Psychologically (or scientifically) it is impossible to
escape the fact that we are shaped by past events or circumstances.
Still, people can have an experience of being in control or being
active or creative -- and this seems to turn on some other axis from
the wheel of time. Creating events, you plow that creative energy
back in to what you're experiencing.

Re: visit?

OK, Thursday it is. I'm leaving on Friday for the weekend.

also interesting

http://www.google.org/googlers.html

bam?

http://www.google.org/development.html

Re: Project Gutenberg: A synopsis of elementary results of pure mathematics

I should be sorry to have taken so long, but in any event I did not do
any more than get the copyright cleared several years back. I'm
certainly not happy about this situation, but it may be be a cloud
with a silver lining... or at least some tinsel dangling off of it.

At a couple of different occasions, we at PlanetMath were offered some
help setting up scanning and OCR operations. Perhaps now would be a
good time to act on those connections. AFAIK, OCR for math is still
spotty, and with an old text like that, probably especially bad. But
probably also not impossible, assuming that someone is willing to do a
bit of by-hand entry for at least some formulas. Again, sorry not to
have more specific information.

My I ask, what exactly was the nature of the inquiry you had about
this work?

Re: mathematics and zen

Thank you for your reply and the concern you've taken with it.

Right now: I have my door open so I can have a cool breeze. Other
than that, I'm a bit tired from staying up late last night watching
TV, happy to getting some things squared away with my writing tonight,
and impressed by how difficult your simple zen question is to answer.

Well, inevitably things will be left out in my description -- even if
I was to sit here attempting to index all of the phenomena I'm
experiencing (which are of course changing as I write this). Mainly
though, I'm feeling well!

One of the things that occurred to me when reading your letter is that
many of the basic issues with mathematics take place when reading or
writing anything. Even if I don't write any of my thoughts down, they
appear in connection with reading a text. These are "creative
thoughts": not in the original text, rather, some synthesis of the
text and the rest of my environment, really the rest of my experience
as you've used that term.

In math, this has something to do with standards for proof, for
example. A kid has no problem "seeing" that even added to odd is odd.
A logic student must present a rather different looking proof encoding
the "same" fact. And of course "newness" in either event is (at least
typically) relative only to the person coming up with or learning the
proof.

One of my questions about math is what the difference is between
"coming up with" and "learning". Obviously professional research
mathematicians have to "come up with" new stuff sometimes, but they
have to do a lot of learning too. A math student certainly has to do
some fancy footwork to balance learning existing facts against coming
up with solutions to given problems.

One of the parallels between math and zen that I've observed is
potential for use of "expedients" -- and I think that math could be
made much easier to learn if the existing facts were better organized.
This is the "project" I'm working on -- so I'm glad if I can leave Lin
Chi's words aside and work on it.

Certainly, on both large and small scales, this a very "zen-like"
activity -- one might draw parallels between sorting over and
connecting up preexisting pieces of knowledge and sorting and
preparing rice, for example. This is good enough as a basis; I don't
see why I would want (indeed I don't want) to "just sit in the temple
doing nothing".

Certainly, I do not want to dedicate myself to make zen my mode of
life it it just means sitting in temples doing nothing... however, if
the definition can accommodate working the project I've described,
then, yes, that is something I am trying to figure out how to do
professionally.

All in all, I am probably making it sound like Lin Chi has really
discomfited me. Actually I very much like what he said about "just
act normal", which was illustrated for example in his comment on the
use of tea by an "exceptional" monk. What I took away from that is
that "normal" may be quite subject-dependent!

There are so many zen parables and styles that I completely
misunderstood when I was younger, and I think I ran myself ragged on
account of things like "chop wood, carry water" or even "when you're
hungry, eat; when you're tired, sleep", since given my knowledge of
the "ironic" fact that zen monks will eat gruel and put in very long
hours, possibly getting whacked if they drift off in the meditation
hall, I pretty much turned that saying upside down (at least as
regards sleeping... I don't think I ever let it effect my diet!). Net
result was to work harder in my studies -- but of course, working
harder is not the same as working smarter.

I'm still not sure how to reconcile all of that "Then so-and-so became
enlightened..." stuff I read when I was younger with what seems to me
to be much closer to the real spirit of zen: "there is no
`enlightenment' to seek"? (E.g. Bodhidharma came pretty close to
saying this, although he actually said something far more interesting;
some contemporary writers seem take a completely literal view of the
statement.) Maybe I was just too impressionable as a youngster.

On a more pragmatic level: how to reconcile the current (and
long-standing... or should I say, long-sitting) special place of
za-zen with other kinds of zen practice? Now and again I will sit and
do nothing, but that's really only when I have nothing else worthwhile
to do! Yes, sitting down is relaxing, but it doesn't seem any more
important to me than how I wash the dishes or how I don't clear up the
papers on my countertop or how I write an email or anything else.

I'm sorry if these tangents are taxing. Really what I wanted to come
around to was a parallel between a notion of enlightenment as
"understanding the nature of mind", and the study of heuristics. Not
just formal heuristics, but human heuristics -- ideas of how to act,
and so on. Which I assume takes as one of its vital starting points
the way people do already think and act -- insofar as this is known --
but also, it seems to me, needs to account for what people wish. What
do you think? Is this far from the mark?

discussions

Several items I'm working on could potentially benefit from some
discussion.

(1) Further detail work in my code for the Elephant semantic-net
implementation. These are nitty-gritty details that I will presumably
either find in the documentation or discuss with Elephant developers,
however, it may be helpful to state the issue first for you (and if
you want to follow up you can). The main point is that I want to key
Things by Object Identifiers (OID). And yet at the same time, I want
to be able to scroll over all Things in a given Theory. Graphically,
the implementation I have in mind looks like this:

Things --
[key: OID | slots: name, data]

a Theory (is also a Thing) --
a b-tree containing elements [key: name | slot: OID of some Thing]

a Triple (is also a Thing) --
[slots: beginning, middle, end]

The current implementation (produced by Ian Eslick in response to my
in-person inquiries when I was last out east, around May Day) enables
the user to find all Triples which match on any particular data in the
three slots. This is how the bi-directed network "works".

The current difficulty comes in now that I want to be able to "import"
Things (including Triples) into a Theory. I do not simply want the
Things to *reside* in a given Theory, or I could just tack on an
additional slot naming the home theory. Rather, I want Things to live
in a Universe and Theories only to designate arbitrary subsets of that
Universe.

But at the same time, I want the data-matching routines to work within
a given Theory, so that a Theory can also be viewed as a network. I
am pretty sure this can be done using the UPCOMING tools in Elephant
(a "query system" that would enable me to focus on all of the Things
that have an OID named in a given Theory, and subsequently tool on
this subset with the data-matching code).

Epilogue 1: Now, these are, like I said, nitty-gritty details. It may
be advantageous for you to think instead about more theoretical (or, I
suppose it is "meta-theoretical" aspects of this model). Are these
types of systems "enough", assuming they can be made to work? Etc.

(2) In response to a possibility for rewriting and submitting a
variant of the Metacommons Manifesto that Aaron mentioned to me, I
prepared these notes:

http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/metacommons-survey.pdf

I'm not sure that the possibility he mentioned is still viable,
however, I do think that this rewrite project is -- even if it must
become a big project. As the title of the paper indicates, I am
looking at it as a "survey article" which might be, say, 30 pages
long. The current outline (at this link) is only about 10 pages long,
and might be viewed as a rough-draft of a prospectus for this larger
paper.

Epilogue 2: I have not even printed this draft off to read it and mark
it up, although I did look over it yesterday, and at that point in
time it still looked pretty good. However, it lacks many important
details. My guess is that finishing it might require additional
person-hours equal to twice the final page-length. Does anyone have
any statistical data that could back this claim up (or challenge it)?
In any event, if anyone is going to work on this, it will need time
and a decent work schedule and realistic publication goals and
information-gathering strategies (none of which have we had yet for
this particular paper).

(3) My notes from Mathfest might also be worth turning into a paper.
In addition to the ~15 minute recording of the actual talk (which I
already indicated and which I know Aaron has heard, but once again it
is

http://planetmath.org/~jcorneli/joe-mathfest2007.wma

Please let me know if you need another format, Ray), I have about 40
notecards with my thoughts, pseudo-definitional snippets, and
recordings of events from Mathfest written down on them. I imagine
that these could be used as the raw ingredients for another paper,
this time about PlanetMath and HDM (instead of about the Metacommons).

Epilogue 3: I could relatively easily make photocopies of these
notecards into a "zine" for you guys. Do you want me to do that? Do
you like the idea of writing a paper like this to submit to some
popular math journal? Can we get the approval of any editor in
advance (e.g. since I was just at an MAA conference, the Math Monthly
or Journal of Online Mathematics)? IMO, preparing such a document
ties right in to item 4...

(4) Promoting PlanetMath by following up with people I was introduced
to at MathFest.

In addition to several potential sponsors -- I should send you the
list at least of companies; I have email addresses and could at least
follow up with these, although I'd expect as a prerequisite to have
some COPY to work from, and I think this is something you guys have
been talking about preparing! -- it looks to me that MAA itself may
likely to want to enter into some relationship with PlanetMath
assuming we can hash out the RIGHT relationship. Aaron said something
along the lines of: working with PlanetMath might really "revitalize"
MAA for this century.

But there are some serious problems to be worked out with that, for
sure. I think given the state that PlanetMath is in currently, it too
needs some revitalization. Perhaps this is a real case of a possible
"synergy". Just for example: many of the "governance" things we have
talked about have not been resolved (from licensing concerns, which
was what I first brought to the table here, to the latest editorial
and etiquette concerns embodied in the content committee proposals);
and of course, as another example, none of our "capacity" is supported
(yet) in an ongoing or stable way, and this includes the whole
technology side of things. This isn't just a matter of a single
stalemate; I see it more as a whole quagmire of "foggy" disagreements
found within a long and still growing series of discussions. I hope
that the particular installments in this series that I am proposing do
not further muddy the waters.

Epilogue 4: I have specific people in MAA I want to talk to about
these matters -- again, I think it would be good to have some copy
fleshing out the points I have brought up here (and other relevant
points), even if just (or mainly) to serve as a starting point for
conversations.

Meta-epilogue: I think I have started four conversations going in one
thread. That is probably OK for the time being since the things
inherit from each other in various ways (sometimes subtly). I also
think it would be good to discuss them in (at least) one phone
conversation, or further by email. Can we schedule a chat for
Wednesday or Thursday of this week?