I started on another cycle through classical and medieval history. There isn’t a great deal of recorded history for Thailand in late classical times, and I am not willing to rely heavily on archaeology at this point. I had more of an interesting time with France, and extended this back through Charlemagne. I studied this, once upon an ancient long time ago, in a course on the History of Western Civilization, so this was a refresher. I have taken Britain back to the 12th century, just before the Black Death, and Italy to the early mid 16th century, South Africa to just before Dutch colonization, and South Korea back to almost the Manchu invasions of the 17th century. It has taken much longer than I expected to get back into the late medieval history of Western Civilization, so this has been some welcome progress.

I hadn’t quite intended to do another review of how peoples of the world apply to history in general quite so soon, but I have made a little progress. The review of Asiatic peoples in modern history has been encouraging enough that I want to try it. I have also finished connecting cities to classical and medieval history, and have begun a review of Asiatic peoples. The work I have previously done on this period in Egypt and Persia is starting to appear in the summaries. For modern history, I have finished the review of Asian peoples and I am now beginning a review of African peoples.
I also hadn’t intended another review of the history of sociology so soon, since the last one was excessively tedious, but it seems appropriate. I have been connecting nations to cites and cities to nations; not much to comment on there. I have also finished connecting social mechanics to cities, which (according to my development scheme) will let me resume connecting to nations and peoples, which is something I very much want to get to.
For Institutions, I am connecting more nations in preparation for the next round of reviews of peoples. There isn’t a whole lot to comment about.

For quite some times, I have been noticing a need to add more biographical entries to the knowledge base. That need finally rose to the top, so I sat down and added stubs for about 50 individuals. Once these are better connected, I expect them to give more color and life to the various periods and topics they are associated with.

I have also been expanding the summaries of how nations and peoples apply to modern history. Today’s work has been mostly with Oriental peoples and Southeast Asia.

Every once in a while, an ordinary effort pays bigger than expected dividends. I’ve added late medieval history for France, the 16th century for the United Kingdom, most of the 17th century for Italy, and the 18th century for South Korea and part of it for South Africa.

I just published a major update to the SKB on Monday, which has all the actual content I’ve been rambling about for the past six months. I really need to do these more often.

Also, the semester started at BYU-Idaho. I’m taking two classes: An introductory orientation class, and a “Teachings of the Book of Mormon” class which is a requirement for graduation.
My transcripts have all been evaluated and credits assigned, and I’ve changed the major from an AS in General studies, to the Bachelor of Independent Studies, with a concentration in Family History Research, with clusters in Entrepreneurship and Web.

The combination of working back to earlier periods of history and broadening the connections of nations can easily get overwhelming, as I connect to periods that don’t have much content yet. If I sharpen my focus to events of the past week or two, India and Pakistan have been emerging. For India, the size and complexity suggests that I ought to consider divisions, but I still need to do more work in communities before I can expand these. For Pakistan, I note that reports of war in Northwest Pakistan have been ongoing for some time. I have not give much attention to its causes and progress, but I may need to.

Sometimes the sense of what I am trying to accomplish with the knowledge base can be rather elusive. So far, in reviewing major world events of the past week, there does not seem to be an obvious unity. I am barely able to distinguish Asiatic peoples from Western Civilization. Nevertheless, each time I go through a given page and add links, there is a little bit better focus, and so I persist.

For the last few months, I have not attempted to keep up with current events. I have decided to make another attempt. Getting the current year sufficiently broadly connected to other areas has been comparatively easy. The current quarter is just beginning, so most of the connections are overhead for future developments. More of the content will go in the first quarter. April is just beginning, so there will be some backtracking into March. I am just beginning to analyze the current week.