Category Archives: SKB

Trip, trip, trip

Up and down the stairs. Metaphorical stairs…my heart doesn’t like the real thing, and I am thankfully living in a flat place where they are not a regular necessity,

At any rate, I was going through the connections of sociology to religions of the world and ran into some unfinished business: Namely, that I had not yet connected history. Ops. So I’ll put that on pause for now and connect history to religions.

The next step on the ladder is peoples of the world. As I it turns out, these are not yet connected to very many specific cities, At present, I am making these connections, and beginning with cities of the US. This will help in the next stage.

The next step is, particularly, Western Civilization. This also needs to be connected more directly to individual cities.

The next step is Western cities. With these, I am making connections to lower level areas such as psychology, the human body, and science.

The next step is Anglic peoples, those of North America, British isles, and Australia. I had been working on connecting these to institutions, but I have have partly diverted to connections to cities and other peoples.

The next few steps are Anglic cities, Anglo-American peoples and cities, United Stats and its cities, the Norteasthern US and its cities, down to New York state and New York City. Several of these steps need to be broadened, but I can at least get to it.

Oh dear

Was my last post in January!?!? No, my dear readers, if there are any of you out there, I am not dead. I have been in a bit of a funk. My efforts to review my programing fell off, and I took about a month to explore Evequest. (it,l once again got too clogged and complicated. I have been working on broadening my Knowledge Base.

In trying to bring history to life, I have a distinct preference to begin at the beginning, in prehistory, so I have been trying to broaden the connections of prehistory to other subjects. That’s finally done for now. I have connected history in general to all the nations of the world and connected Western Civilization, communities, nearly all of social mechanics, and religion to other major subjects. I’m still working on getting government well connected.

I believe I have reached a point where I have enough detail to be close to examining Africa. We shall see what develops.

Psychology

Two posts in one day!

I must confess that I do not have a natural love for the study of psychology. This is in part because the modern “scientific” approach is not really scientific at all. It’s not really possible. We can sort of detach ourselves from birds, bees, plants, and rocks, and it’s easier to get different observers to agree on what they are seeing. It’s much harder to study ourselves. There is also the fact that modern scientific study is so highly secular and has become detached from religious experience, which is an even bigger mistake. Nevertheless, it must be done. Some years back I had made a subdivision of social psychology, which I am going to keep for now. I have a somewhat bigger problem with studies of personality and mental illness. For personality, I’m just going to go with major theories and label them as theory, although I don’t fully agree with any of them. I don’t have a proper classification of mental disorders, I could look at the DS-M, but there are hundreds of them named, and I need better categories than that. Over the next few days I am going to come up with a few. This may be a rather rough and fluid approach, but it will be a start. I was going to skip over these and subdivide them later when I have more perspective, but at this point, that feels like an evasion.

Writing history

I have known for some time that studies of prehistory depend heavily on archaeology and earth science, which began to develop most seriously in the 19th century and 20th century. I had not begun to seriously develop those periods, but I am starting to go through them going through them as an aid to study of prehistory. Studies of prehistory also depend heavily on academic institutions and scholarly heritage in Western Civilization. I have been conducting a review of the history of Western Civilization, in hopes of filling in the details of academic and scholarly history. One of the things I accomplished in the last few months was the connection of biographical pages to Anglic history. It has long been one of my goals to use these biographical figures to fill in details of history. This allows me to get a picture of important developments. I don’t have many of these in antiquity or classical and medieval history, but modern history, starting with the 16th century and 17th century, is coming along nicely. I am also connecting biographies of Latin peoples with the intention of doing a similar review.

Growling

WordPress hates me. It tried to lock me out so I had to reset the password. I understand that it hates everybody, so at least I don’t need to be lonely.

Today’s work revealed a bunch of continuing wars and conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, which gives me something to look for in previous weeks and months. But then, I already know that. The goal is to get more specific detail. I have decided to move information about the 2020 presidential campaign to the next 5 years, since the election is beyond the 1-year horizon.

 

Peering into the future

Prediction of the future is risky, but examination of what is planned is useful. Things such as the Olympic games and the Gordie Howe International bridge between Detroit and Windsor are planned years in advance. It is possible to categorize the next 5 years, next year, next quarter, and next month. These are moving targets, and I may move projections and predictions into the past as events overtake them. This will allow comparison between plans and forecasts and historical events. As I work back through weeks of the current year, and previous years, I expect to accumulate a greater variety of plans and predictions. I have a few predictions and plans for the next quarter I will be watching. For the next month, maneuvers of the Japanese Hayabusa 2 probe of asteroid 162173 Ryugu can be anticipated.

I now have reasonable summaries of India and Pakistan for the past year. Events of Northeast European peoples are being separated and distinguished from general Western civilization.

Sewing and Stitching

Although many events in the future are not predictable, a certain amount can be be determined from plans, and I am starting to being work on the near future, and next month, by noting planned and future events for each week.
Now that I have events for the past year sufficiently sliced, diced, and rearranged, I can go to work on establishing other connections. In order to construct an outline of history from a raw chronicle of events, I need continuity and connections. This means connecting events and periods to earlier ones, for background purposes, and to later ones, to help evaluate their importance and consequences.
So far, events of India are emerging. For the past quarter, I note that the Supreme Court of India has decriminalized homosexuality, and India is planning a manned space program. I will be watching this. Other nations should also start emerging.

Closing in

Examination of the future is still difficult, but I’m starting to make a little progress. I have just a few more weeks in April to analyze before I have my outline of events for the year 2018. I hope to get that done soon.

The work on design of liquid-fueled rocked engines is going slow, but I made a little bit of progress. I got through the fuel and oxidizer flow rates, which is where I gave up the last time I worked on this. Now I’m working on calculations for the combustion chamber and nozzle. Copying the necessary equations into a word processor is excessively tedious, but I need to do this to document my work before I run the numbers.

I paid out a while ago for GURPS Vehicle Builder, which was supposed to aid and simplify the design process. As a writer working with simulations, this gives me a reasonably plausible ballpark estimates for what might be practical to try to actually design. I can only apply it to the real world with great caution, but it is giving me some preliminary ballpark figures. After a couple of hours figuring out how to use it, I established that liquid rocket fueled engines with extreme low values of thrust (below 2 lbs) are probably impractical, even for hobbyists. I need a lot more information about radio control and instrumentation before I can write convincingly about the design program. A few years ago, I make inquiries about the local model rocketry club, which was going through some difficulties. With my revival of interest in the subject, I would like too attend the next launch.

Slicing, Dicing, and Rearranging

I don’t suppose it’s any great secret that I used the archived versions of Wikipedia’s current events as a first draft news source for major world events. I’m not entirely happy with it and would more in-depth discussion, but it is sufficient for my needs at present. I have a different organizing principle for events: I classify events by region or country first, and then by other criteria. International events, politics, armed conflicts and attacks, and law and crime would go under government; business and economy would go under economics, disasters and accidents and sports both go under culture, and science and technology may go under technology or science, depending on where the events fit.

For 2018, I started working in January 1, with decreasing depth of nations for each week, until sometime in April, then I took a break and worked with prehistory and antiquity. I took a lesson from that, and when I resumed current events around the 1st of September, I began focusing on recent events. What this means for the present is that for the first quarter, the events have sliced, diced, and rearranged and the coverage of nations is sufficient to distinguish India, Pakistan, and China. The second quarter does not have either the extent of nations or sufficient rearrangement of events. The third quarter has events rearranged, but not the extent of nations. I can mostly distinguish Anglic peoples; South Asian, Oriental, and Southeast Asian peoples; African peoples; and American Indian peoples, but not yet individual nations within these categories.

This is no great obstacle at present. I have a working pattern of development that is moving faster than events, but I expect it to be another week or so before I can begin summarizing the events of the past year and begin making informed commentary. I could possibly make some snarky generalized comments, but I prefer to have the details and solid information.

Back to the Future

I decided that I almost have enough background to resume exploring the future.
Except, not quite. Since I let almost six months go by without attending to current events, there is a lot of material to go through. Being able to sort events into “Western Civilization” and “Asiatic peoples” during the last month or so seems like only a small step forward, but this will be an accelerating process.