Formally truthful

Ah, what a mouthful. Meaning what?

From CACM article,
Formally Verified Mathematics

The CACM, April 2014, had an article about formal approaches to mathematical proofs. It was titled Formally Verified Mathematics and is readable on-line (image is from the article). Now, this article struck me, for several reasons, motivating this post.

The context? The proliferation of apps (see thoughts on algorithms) ought to be a concern. The auto industry seems to live more with recalls than not (many times, "computer" and "software" appear in the explanation). We just had a bad financial failing from which only the manipulators recovered (and they're at it still, yes HFTers - riggers by any other name, are riggers). The litany is depressing to behold.

Now, the authors (Jeremy Avigad and John Harrison) provide a nice overview of the issues. They actually mention the work of many (who's who) who have looked at the issues. To be brief, we have several things leading to the fact that proofs are difficult and not possible computationally without human assistance (we really need to discuss man-in-the-loop imperatives, in this case).

But, how does one get such human assistance? As, with the growing awareness of singularity (big S - actually, there are many singularities - Remarks, 05/19/2013), we get to where the computer does things that are not understandable by humans. In short, take code, do you know what it does without running it through some parse/execution device? If you do, it would have to be some trivial stuff (let me generate something very effective using rewites, etc., and then look at the code - all sorts of other methods can be proposed).

So, yes, mathematicians have interactive approaches, with supporting tools. This means that we get to a state where the computer is essential (we actually got there a long while ago - how could such an important thing devolve into a game'd affair?). In one example, they talk of a proof that was 255 pages (journal style) in the '60s for a theorem. Of course, such proving took a lot of time to state; too, it took much effort to verify.

Now, the computer can help in the verify step being faster than us in lots of way. Smarter? No way. We'll get to that (again and again). It's a "being" issue, folks.

Now, that 255 pages can be done with 150K lines of code (talking fairly terse stuff here). But, even then, a lot of stuff is not expressed but it implied with rules. Definitions, and such, would be mostly explicit.  

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Where are we going with this? You see, mathematics does involve rigor. Formal systems are a part of mathematics, in certain senses. Computational systems are formal (yes, they are, even if it's ignored at the level of the user). Yet, we have people spawing off system willy-nilly; even the big folks do this (tsk, tsk) as the end user can be the tester.

Now, this whole thing is not to argue for being more formal and slow. Rather, we really need to get a handle on the operational aspects (beyond agility, young ones, okay?) such that we have a better handle on risks. Anyone care? Yes, those who get hurt by these types of failures. Those who are dependent upon such or who care for such.

How ought this be done? Very good question. But, my put is to propose that such techniques would very much intersect with the issues of truth engineering. So, there is one little bit about motivation for all of this stuff in this blog.

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In that same issue of the CACM were some interesting (and related) articles. I've listed some of them by title (some may not be publicly readable on-line - requiring an account).

• Unifying Functional and Object-Oriented Programming with Scala - the surprise was use by several web vendors (those who provide something cloud-wise). For example, LinkedIn switched to the approach. 
• Security and Privacy for Augmented Reality Systems - timely, yes, and, of note, especially in regard to looking forward to issues rather than trying to cope after the fact. Perhaps, as the web user mature, and get away from the frills and titillation, we can get to more looking at more reliable types of things. 
• Re:Search - Here are two blogs by Ken MacLeod (The Early Days of a Better Nation, Ken MacLeod Writing). The former resonates, as, in another context, I'm looking at the early days of this nation (that in which I sit writing). 

Remarks:   Modified: 01/23/2015

05/30/2014 -- The May CACM (Vol. 57, No. 5) had an interesting article title "Understanding the Empirical Hardness of NP-Complete Problems" in which the authors talk about helping resolve hardness, somewhat (taming the beast), via statistical means (in terms of things, like SAT-solvers). Makes one almost thing that these issues are of no concern going forward (throw computational power at the problem). But, it cannot be as easy as that (to wit, at the end of the 18th century, the Illuminati was claiming that everything was known about physics - so everyone go home and twiddle your thumbs). As the authors say, has to do with whether you can get solutions and whether you can do so in a reasonable time. Yet, there is more (still to be characterized). If the spaces quake, solutions become more difficult. Say what? Yes, we'll be getting back to this.

01/23/2015 -- Software? Well, we are talking more than apps (latest craze). We are dealing with fundamental questions which, then, gives rise to normative issues in mathematics (and, by extension, to the computational).

Content and more

Content? Yes, would not all of us like to be such?

But, the web works against that blissful state, for various reasons, which will be a continuing theme for this blog (metaphors abound).

In the meantime, we have to consider the management of our information, called content, both on the web and not. Which of those is of a larger size? Some, no doubt, would argue for the former; such are the was of the e-literate.

However, in truth, non-web'd (where web encompasses a whole lot, including those "cloudish" things that are so appealing) is the larger; showing this is one of our tasks.

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Decisions made a couple of years ago resulted in a serious of learning experiences which helped the blogger update his world view. You see, he has been web-izing since its beginning (and, before). Too, he has watched the various newcomers appear, like waves in the ocean. At any point, some of these make a splash (make someone a bunch of money).

Yet, none have really been enough to bring contentment. Until now which we'll go into below. First, though, let's recap.

• The precipitating event as the need to move a website (associated with the TGS) because of Office Live going away. Several people had built processes upon this freebie offered by Microsoft. Having that basis jarred was interesting (several posts). 
• After casting about for some alternative, the site was moved to a hosting facility. However, it was done in a mode that is late 1990s in flavor. Why? Fall back position (important lesson learned long ago while dealing with large, complicated systems). There was some attention paid to tools (this old timer has all sorts of opinions on the matter). Yet, none were attractive (Sea Monkey's Composer felt good, for the time). 
• Later, I started to look at CMS approaches. That took several iterations to get the proper feel. 
• None really clicked. For one thing, databases are overused (we'll go on about that, folks, time and again - any young one listening?). Too, a lot of effort is put into the titillation requirements that seem to be implicit. So, I continued with my static approach. 
• Then, I gave CMS another chance and did a couple of examples. One of these has been used for a What's New for a few months. 
• Of late, I have gotten back to code, thanks to Codecademy (code is a right, rather than being a privilege - yes, I want to know what crap comes down to my browser). During the past sixty days, I have played with several environments. Python still looks good (albeit server related), but I'm not making a decision about the language, yet. Using several languages may be the necessity (due to contextual imperatives).

Today, I took another look at WordPress and was impressed (see showcase examples). So, within the next few days, I will try it again within the context of TGS content and will get back with the specifics. 

Remarks:   Modified: 01/21/2019

04/25/2014 -- Oh yes, Internet shock. The Office Live fallout pales in comparison but is analogous enough for us to use as an example.

08/02/2014 -- Bit the bullet and updated the site (looks, behavior) using HTML/CSS. Of course, things are still pending, such as membership functions, business, ... We'll get there.

05/31/2016 -- Continuation of the theme.

01/21/2019 -- If you look at Content Management or CMS at this blog and the one for the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. (CMS or Configuration), you will see lots of posts. We have a new site where we prove our work: TGSoc.org. Its role is portal but, for now, we introduce changes there, first. See the Discussion page with a link to our devlog. Based upon the direction I hear that Google is going, working this approach for our portal is right on. So, technical will be visible rather than not.

SAT Solvers

SAT? No, not the scholastic test. Rather, this deals with Boolean satisfiability which is a hard problem. A comment of Moshe of ACM Communications motivated this post. He was at a workshop this year that looked at a couple of things. One was whether were new theoretical insights from practice of late. The other was a sampling of techniques that solves these types of problems, albeit by rule of thumb.

We earlier mentioned algorithms as having a firmer basis than heuristics. There are a lot of SAT approaches. Let's pause here for a couple of pointers: Understanding SAT solvers, Flow Control Analysis for SAT Solvers. We could find a lot more.

From his observing the state of the art at the workshop, Moshe says that the methods are mostly heuristic. We might say that there are two issues to consider. One is that the hardness of a problem relates to the difficulty of finding its solution in an effective (time, resource, money) manner. The other is that solutions, if found, can be verified quite easily (compared to the search).

What does this mean for truth engineering? Firstly, assessing truth is a hard problem, computationally. We know this. But, truth is hard in general, too. Efforts at determining truth need to be reasonably constrained, if possible.

So, it is nice that we see motivation to define and explore the efficacy of a solution approach. However, we must, too, remember that maintaining the truthful state is not a given. In some cases, the trouble related to maintenance may be even worse than the original determination.

Catch-22? Somewhat. But, not.

Remarks:   Modified: 05/30/2014

04/24/2014 -- For a recent discussion on the other SAT, see Rick's post (he mentions big data and analytics, thereof).

05/30/2014 -- The May CACM (Vol. 57, No. 5) had an interesting article title "Understanding the Empirical Hardness of NP-Complete Problems" in which the authors talk about helping resolve hardness, somewhat (taming the beast), via statistical means. Makes one almost thing that these issues are of no concern going forward (throw computational power at the problem). But, it cannot be as easy as that (to wit, at the end of the 18th century, the Illuminati was claiming that everything was known about physics - so everyone go home and twiddle your thumbs). As the authors say, has to do with whether you can get solutions and whether you can do so in a reasonable time. Yet, there is more (still to be characterized). If the spaces quake, solutions become more difficult. Say what? Yes, we'll be getting back to this.

Codecademy, again

Context: See Tru'eng anew, focus going forward, mathematics.

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As we get technical, we'll have to look at coding, mathematics, and philosophy. For the first (coding), there is much to consider. The past week, I have looked at Codecademy's site, taken some of their lessons, and reacquainted myself with code (see first and second bullets, below). For the second (mathematics), I re-looked, yesterday, at a site dealing with mathematical physics. The site had posts about the authors recent finds (see third bullet, below).

For the last, see this Facebook (Philosophy matters) page, for now. I ran across this page while researching, after reading an article in Bloomsburg Businessweek about applying Heidegger to marketing of stuff. Well, truth will deal with business as much as with mathematics, science, and engineering. So, we will definitely be back to this.

- Coding - On this past Monday, I was looking at the read counts and saw that the Codecademy, at last post was in the most-read mix. Note that it had been written in September of 2012. Rather than post a comment on Facebook, I went to Linkedin and did several. Why Linkedin? My profile there talks about my experience with code over the past several decades. I have moved the comments from Linkedin to here; they follow: 02/24/2014 - I ran across codecademy.com in 2012. At the time, my interests were directed toward things other than code. If someone had asked me six years ago if that were possible (life without code - you see, I was buying into the code-based worldview - even though I knew that being was not subsumed therein), I would not have understood the question. Yes, one can live, nicely, without code, but ought we?. Then, today, I noticed that the post had been recently read, several times, so I looked again at the site. Hence this notice. 02/25/2014 - Started yesterday afternoon, off and on, going through Codecademy lessons. As of now, I have completed 48 of these. Which means coding up the example sufficiently to execute properly and to get by the watchdog that controls stepping to the next item. (see post Focus going forward)  02/26/2014 - Well, it isn't that the honeymoon is over, yet the glitter is gone. Sloughed through all sorts of errors, today, that the environment kept throwing at me (being long-time at this type of thing, was able to alter the situation properly in order to accomplish what I wanted). Ah, I miss the Lisp machine. While thinking of the Lisp machine fun, I recalled Prof Lucio Arteaga who worked with me on issues related to topology, category theory, and more. (see post Acknowledgements) As I was looking at Codecademy, I went through the process. The next bullet provides a snapshot of the activity.

- ... The image shows my profile at the Codecademy site. One steps through lessons for a language. Right now, it shows that I have completed HTML & CSS, jQuery, PHP, and YouTube API courses (hence, the badges). The first two were reviewed to catch up with what has been going on. As people talked when they bragged of going from static to dynamic pages, there is a lot of flexibility. And, one sees many sites related to things like buttons and such. Codecademy profile as of 03/02/2014 To discuss: This is fine as it can be fun. However, as I knew then, and everyone ought to know now, re-write (and the logic thereof) is a difficult problem with open issues. How is it that we have allowed this type of mess to be cast upon the world at large? The YouTube API course was interesting. Again, a couple of years ago, when Microsoft pushed people off the OfficeLive site (people had actually built their processes upon that MS offering), I did not think that MS was offering anything worth my time. So, I went to another provider. After looking at the "free" web site builders, I didn't find one that I liked. So, I hacked HTML using my early 2000 framework. Then, last year, I looked at Joomla, Concrete5, and others (see the ajswtlk.com site, as we will be changing that as an exercise). What I am considering now will be to use CSS mainly (so, thanks Codecademy). Notice that I'm in the process of looking at Python (was my favorite language after Lisp), Ruby on Rails, and Web Projects (mainly to see what people have done). Perhaps, after that I might try to do a class myself. I have been taking notes along the way. Notice, above, that I said that the glitter had left. Well, it can be tedious. You see, the courses have a watchdog that is not as intelligently designed as it ought to be. I have snaps of tricks that I had to do to get the thing to parse correctly in order to let me go on when I had things right, but the watchdog (course controller) could not see it. To wit, I have been hung on Ruby for several days not (32%) since the thing will not parse properly. I'll keep trying. If I get to 100% on everything else, I might have to contact the Codecademy folks. I will list some of the problems that I saw: racing/hung condition when trying to parse, improper refresh of their data structure (to wit, list where you were supposed to enter the line number in a blank field - to get it to parse, I reversed a couple of the numbers), ..., not handling delimiters properly (to wit, introducing a space - not necessary, in this case - urged the parser along).

- Imperatives Everyone ought to code something or other. Otherwise, we have the situation where wizards do the work and get too much freedom in the process. That is, people abdicate their responsibility. Or, they get addicted to whatever the wizards provide (alluding to the recent gaming pull and more). But, to be serious, the last post (Logic ... Reflections ...) mentioned discussions dealing with issues to which truth engineering needs (has) to pay attention. The main thing concerns the "fact" that our supposedly deterministic ways are not so. Computing (especially, the cloud) makes the problem even more of concern. Now, even if everyone does not code, they ought to be concerned about maturity (and, by inverse, immaturity). This week I read about some of the software engineering practices of JPL. In this case, it was the Mars program. The test, in this case, was the one-time use during the mission. A whole lot of upfront analysis and testing was necessary. Where is there any time for this type of thing with agile playing around? On the other hand, things seem to push out to the web in various states of incompleteness. Perhaps, the ease of a back-off (not done if the errors are minor, and the user can adapt) is the driver. Or, is it that we do not want to know the real costs, or to pay, for better solutions that are necessary for sustainability (of more than stuffing big pockets)?

Remarks:   Modified: 01/15/2015

03/03/2014 -- We need to relook at several things. Yes, like, bringing memes (and more) to the fore in the discussion. Mathematicians have their "ancestors," know about them (and their contributions), and honor them. What other field does that? My mathematical pedigree: Galileo Galilei (1585), Vincenzo Viviana (1642) Isaac Barrow (1652), Isaac Newton (1668), Roger Cotes (1706), Robert Smith (1715), Walter Taylor (1723), Steven Whisson (1742), Thomas Postlethwaite (1756), Thomas Jones (1782), Adam Sedgwick (1811), William Hopkins (1830), Arthur Cayley (1864), Andrew Russell Forsyth (1881),  Edmund Taylor Whittaker (1895), G.H. Hardy (), Edward Charles Titchmarsh (), Andrew P. Guinand (), Lucio Arteaga (1964), the blogger (). I took it back to 1585 since that would be co-temporal with those who were involved with the Great Migration to New England. Too, note that the ancestor is an adviser or mentor or tutor. This brings to mind that a meme'tic look at descendancy would consider the influence of step-child-ness. I have found many of these relationships.

03/07/2014 -- Like a lot of things on the web, this site is free. Given that, some think that leaves no right to comment or criticize. But, along with the free (which really is a subtle way to entangle) comes a total one-sided deal where changes are pushed upon users without much (or no) notice. Conform to (watch out for) the big elephant turning over in the bed is adage. Of course, the whole notion of incompleteness as it applies to computing is not understood, or downright ignored, by those who know better. In fact. many of the new billionaires can exalt in proving that they're smarter by having more money (my counsel would be for them to not think their brilliance outshines some very poor people - truth engineering will deal with that subject). ... Now, finally, the beef deals with the watchdog (supposedly couched as training overseer) function is idiotic in some cases. One of note. The console shows a printout just like the lesson wants. However, the watchdog says that it looks like there was not output. This type of thing is hard to skirt around whereas parser types of things can be tweaked enough for them to be happy.  --- Late note, I found a way around the watchdog's errancy. Will report back on this later.

03/19/2014 -- Update, on Fedaerated.

05/27/2914 -- Codecademy has a nice Javascript glossary with examples.

06/23/2014 -- Example of true cost being ignored: Phone app in eight hours.

01/05/2015 -- Tru'eng, anew. This post is one of the most popular, of late, which raises some interesting questions. But, code as the focus? We have this from Tegmark: Consciousness as a state of matter.

01/15/2015 -- I will be getting back to their site, soon. Perhaps, I can use javascript to have some demos about this topic which is a series that will establish the basis and extensions for a fair and technical economic framework (motivation? sustainability). We are going to go back to some simple and come forward to the modern, complicated economy. Why? My long chain of ancestors (inherited via Prof. Lucio Arteaga) is one motivation.

Logic, Probability, Reflection, and more

The items in the subject of the post came from a meeting that was reported by John Baez. There are a couple of things to note, briefly.

Firstly, John Baez has reported his "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics" since the early 1990s. And, he kept his format consistent until a couple of years ago. His last post under the old site was on April 11, 2012. I was not a regular reader, but I did appreciate the site (used it as an example of how one could have deep content on the web without the frills) enough to visit it often.

The Week's Finds posts have been subsumed under a blog that was started in 2010, called Azimuth. If one reviews some of the posts, one can get the sense that graphics are a big help to good presentation. And, improvements in handling graphics are remarkable.

Secondly, as we see with the subject of the post, the meeting dealt with issues related artificial intelligence which has become (will continue to be) integral to advanced methods. John reports that the two main themes were Scientific Induction in Mathematics and Lob's Theorem (Cartoon Guide).

Of interest, too, is that the place of the meeting was called the Singularity Institute (see singularity). It now has the name of Machine Intelligence Research Institute. We have used the term in another context and will continue that discussion.

Remarks:   Modified: 03/23/2014

03/23/2014 -- SAT solvers as an example of large class of heuristics.

Professor Lucio Arteaga

For the pedigree, see below, Remarks for 03/03/2014.

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My efforts have mostly been singular in nature, following the mode of the autodidact. There are lots of reasons for this which do pertain to the origins of truth engineering. So, expect that theme (in a sense, mentor-less) to be addressed from time to time.

However, all along, I have run into people who were influential in the sense of penetrating the awareness because of their talents and, thereby, of making contributions. You see, the autodidact's role, and how that ought to work, is an open-ended issue.

Aside: Some seem to see money, and accumulations thereof, as a true measure of value and success. That little bit of reality was mentioned earlier in this blog (see, Richer is smarter). Of late, one might consider that there might be something there (to wit, the new m(b)illionaires, ala MS, Google, FB, etc.). Is there no end to how much some can rake in (well, note, please, that people are borrowing to leverage, again -- chimera is more than a mere fantasy/delusion)? ... The truth is that money does not own truth. We know that money means power (many times), so our task is to speak truth to money (power), always (how?, as the warped minds of money do not know how to listen or to think properly).

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So, back to acknowledgements. The first will be to recognize the influence of Professor Emeritus Lucio Arteaga with whom I worked at Boeing after he retired from the Mathematics Department of Wichita State University (Shockers). His influence was very much mathematical, in a peripatetic sense (to be explained). Our discussions occurred over several years and dealt with foundations, topology, and issues of advanced computing.

Lucio (Math Genealogy 14698) obtained his PhD at the University of Saskatchewan in 1964; the title of his dissertation was Theory of Functions and Integral Transformations. His advisor was Andrew P. Guinand (Math Genealogy 14696) who was a pupil of Edward Charles Titchmarsh who goes back through Hardy to Cayley. That is a nice pedigree.

Lucio's contribution, and counsel, was timely and much valued. He helped me to attain a more full appreciation for the breadth and depth of mathematics. I appreciate that I received books from his mathematical library.

Remarks:   Modified: 04/01/2017

02/25/2014 -- According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, Lucio has the following in his tree (not in any order), as ancestors: Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, George Howard Darwin (son of Charles). Some of his uncles and cousins are: James Clerk Maxwell, Alfred Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Saul Kripke, George Gabriel Stokes, Sir Francis Galton,

02/26/2014 -- Mentioning Lucio made me recall the circumstance of our first encounter. I had, right before that time, the good fortune of getting exposure to the Lisp machines. I was both developing on, and administering, several of these, of different ilks: Xerox, Symbolics, LMI. The domains were varied, from classic IT problems to applied mathematics and engineering. At the time, the interface was graphical (think later Windows, and pre-Mac - hence, the attitude toward the cute, little Mac - too, my first touch of C++ was in the mid-80s with it being compared to the Lisp machine environment); the framework was frame-based (early approach to objects); the technology appealed (if someone could afford the price). Some configurations (LMI) had dual processors where one had both Lisp and a Unix system (Motorola chip, if I remember correctly) on the same bus.Later, Texas Instruments provided both a Lisp machine and a LMI card that could be inserted into the later Macintosh. Software was abundant (we can list these). Many modern systems were prototyped in this environment (say, computational mathematics). In particular, I was using KEE (out of Stanford's E-MYCIN). One day, I had the opportunity to demonstrate what I was doing to Lucio who immediately saw the mathematical implications. Of course, Lisp came out of a paper by John McCarthy. In short, Lucio became involved; later, the techniques evolved such that they were still effective for a decade and a half (still are, given what I see embedded in advanced approaches). Too, his interest, and established qualifications, provided me a SOUNDing (pun intended) board (lots of things to discuss, in that regard). ... ToBeContinued.

03/03/2014 -- Mathematicians have ancestors, know about it, and honor them. What other field does that? My mathematical pedigree:

Galileo Galilei (1585),
Vincenzo Viviana (1642)
Isaac Barrow (1652),
Isaac Newton (1668),
Roger Cotes (1706),
Robert Smith (1715),
Walter Taylor (1723),
Steven Whisson (1742),
Thomas Postlethwaite (1756),
Thomas Jones (1782),
Adam Sedgwick (1811),
William Hopkins (1830),
Arthur Cayley (1864),
Andrew Russell Forsyth (1881),
Edmund Taylor Whittaker (1895),
G.H. Hardy (1903),
Edward Charles Titchmarsh (),
Andrew P. Guinand (),
Lucio Arteaga (1964),
the blogger ().

08/07/2014 (edited 04/01/2017) -- Georges Metanonski's autodidact start: My universities (formerly, two chapters, now off-line - My Universities 1, My Universities 2). The query of importance about the autodidact's role in society is this: does such learning bring into play insights that are not attainable under the regimen of the institutional environment?

01/15/2014 -- There are many models that are of concern to my work. Of these, an important one deals with things that manifest themselves in human affairs, say markets. Oh yes, if the tone of all of this sounds strange to you, or grates, then, please, note the normative stance. Know it all? Nope.

08/18/2015 -- Lucio, as an Encourager, on Quora.

03/06/2016 -- Dr. Lucio Arteaga died on May 22, 2015 in Lenexa, KS. This morning, while doing some work in Combinatorics, I was thinking of Lucio's strong conceptual foundation. We will have to get back to that theme.

Focus going forward

Context: See Tru'eng anew, focus going forward, mathematics.

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Truth is not an easy thing for us to process, yet it's at the core (several senses) of life which we see flow around us. Nature is the prime example, always there. And, it's a big subject.

We, from certain viewpoints, are in, and of, Nature (hint: I'm using big "N" just as we see capital "E" used for Evolution - the use of the big "E" says what?). And, we learn more about this all the time. Debatable extensions can be made to our knowledge (some say, it's the other way around) that address the us that is beyond Nature. Yet, as the operationalist view says, who cares?

That head-in-sand attitude is counter-productive which we intend to show. In essence, what we are heading toward is an explanation of how we need to switch our "limit" thinking in order to allow a more full experience and illumination. The following list points to focus areas.

- Incompleteness - This is, in part, the motivation for establishing, better, the basis for going forward. That is, we need to get back to looking at what "limits" abound (via undecidability, computablility, etc.). Alon Amit describes what is behind Kurt's theorems. In particular, note the four properties of interest: Effectiveness, Consistency, Completeness, Richness. He stresses that the theorems work without any meta-mathematical assistance. True; it's great to have his post as a source for further discussion. Yet, we will address a need for "meta" views as we consider t-issues. ... As an aside, Quora looks like it would be an interesting place to hang out.

- Codecademy - This site will be used to explore "code" and its existential meanings within the context of the emerging overlays (cloud, etc.). Plus, there will be other focal points related to our interchanges with our artificial partners. However, codecadmy will always be known as the first one that I encountered. ... Not interested in collecting points or showing prowess (so, ignore those, in my case, as I play around on the site).

- The sites of ajswtlk and ThomasGardnerSociety are content sites. In one thing, we'll take the content  management thing a little further. Too, though, we will use the ajswtlk site for matters specific to truth engineering and code. TGS, on the other hand, can serve as an example of the broader picture (persistent information and its maintenance - too, historic genealogy as study of our progress - memes, et al.).

- Blogging: see Ajswtlk. Too, redo the survey of progress in this area by others. For instance, Klout's approach makes me think of how there might be a "truth" assessment (to be discussed).

- ...

In terms of computing, most are users. We tried early to get end-user computing. Some, now, call this domain-specific, yet, there is the larger picture. JS (thanks, Sun) brought forth one enabling bit; the whole thing has mushroomed (many different approaches about - just read on Node).

As I look at the long history of computing, things keep getting re-wrote, time and time again. Everyone thinks that their stuff is better (human nature). At some point, though, we will need to have the notion of "proven" brought to bear. And, strength will deal with truth more than not (for a long time, Made-off seemed strong).

Disclosure: We like that apps have grown, without bounds, it seems. But, the larger pictures comes into play here, to boot.

Remarks:   Modified: 01/05/2015

02/25/2014 -- Starting on 02/23/2014, in the evening, I have spent some time (now and then, as I could spend some uninterrupted minutes) doing lessons at Codecademy. As of now, I have completed 48 of these (HTML, jQuery, APIs). What completion means is coding up the example sufficiently to run and to get by the evaluation that allows the next step.

Let's say this. It has been a nice review session. Too, getting back to code, a truism comes to fore (some say that there are two intelligent types - detailed and intuitive -- ignoring Gardner's seven, for now). Detailed is what we see with engineers, programmers, and such. In fact, handling details in that manner deals a lot with deep stuff (far beyond what we see with Watson). Intuitive? Management (a big bucket, for now - but, it deals with things that only humans know, for now - it is arguable that this will continue to be of the essence).

Actually, we need to exercise both. However, I did mention tedium before. Sometimes, interfacing with the machine is rewarding. Most of the time, it stinks (but, doing code is a good opportunity to practice patience, focus, carefulness, ...). Now, can the machine ever match intuition (not talking in the Turing sense, rather int he sense where we need to look at being)? ... Anyway, playing with the lessons was real nice in that things interpreted immediately, once expressed properly. ... There are other things that I want to peek into, but Ruby on Rails is next.

02/26/2014 -- Acknowledgements for Lucio Arteaga.

02/28/2014 -- Edited bullet on blogging. Added in reference to Klout, seen in Bloomberg's Businessweek.

03/03/2014 -- We need to relook at several things. Yes, like, bringing memes (and more) to the fore in the discussion. Mathematicians have their "ancestors," know about them (and their contributions), and honor them. What other field does that? My mathematical pedigree: Galileo Galilei (1585), Vincenzo Viviana (1642) Isaac Barrow (1652), Isaac Newton (1668), Roger Cotes (1706), Robert Smith (1715), Walter Taylor (1723), Steven Whisson (1742), Thomas Postlethwaite (1756), Thomas Jones (1782), Adam Sedgwick (1811), William Hopkins (1830), Arthur Cayley (1864), Andrew Russell Forsyth (1881),  Edmund Taylor Whittaker (1895), G.H. Hardy (), Edward Charles Titchmarsh (), Andrew P. Guinand (), Lucio Arteaga (1964), the blogger (). I took it back to 1585 since that would be co-temporal with those who were involved with the Great Migration to New England. Too, note that the ancestor is an adviser or mentor or tutor. This brings to mind that a meme'tic look at descendancy would consider the influence of step-child-ness. I have found many of these relationships.

01/05/2015 -- Renewal, see Context line.