Biomedical and Electrical Engineer with interests in information theory, evolution, genetics, abstract mathematics, microbiology, big history, IndieWeb, mnemonics, and the entertainment industry including: finance, distribution, representation
There's so much missing Indigenous context in this article. How can we better juxtapose and sort the cultural differences while trying to build a "Third Archive" to save Indigenous knowledge and languages?
https:/
@okikio_dev This is a good place to start: https:/
There are lots of implementations in many languages you can use as examples or borrow from. Ask in chat.indieweb.org/dev/ for pointers/advice/help to cut through documentation and jargon.
@realkimhansen @blaine @kevinmarks @dsearls @Padraig Keep in mind that many modern feed readers can consume microformats like h-feed which could make a simpler & more open standard than (or even in addition to) RSS. h-feed also has parser support in multiple languages as well.
This reminds me of some interesting related research if you're interested:
http:/
http:/
@palewire @Chronotope Here's some code in multiple languages that could do just that: https:/
@benwerd @chrisaldrich @realkimhansen Perhaps a mashup between https:/
At one point, for several years I had a particular destiny and singular focus, and things seemed great. It took several years after having and then losing(?)/moving on from that focus to figure out what to do next. I can currently relate to not only your general thoughts about wanting to do everything, but even specifically to many of them including math, physics, publishing, ancient languages, computer science, philosophy, etc. The tough part is that I always feel like the "job" I want to have hasn't been invented yet. It's taken a while, but it sure seems fun searching for it now that I've embraced the search. If you do ever figure things out and the "company" has another opening, do let me know...
@100daysindieweb Hooray for helping out the less Indie-capable!
From a UI perspective, some might not quite know what you mean by IndieNews URL, to put in the proper one. I suspect it's there to differentiate between the various languages, in which case perhaps a dropdown with the different language versions instead of a more ominous empty box might be better? Gen2+ are more likely to be confused.
Additionally, how many do you suppose will find/hit the endpoint this way? Perhaps updating news.Indieweb.org to have the submission box on the submissions page like the one you added on day 9 (https:/
I can't believe it's been 40 days already!!! Kudos again.
David Dylan Thomas asked, "When was the last time in human history when you could have possibly consumed every piece of culture than had ever been created?"
In a realistic sense, you'd have to name a "sphere" of culture to do this as the link between even the occidental and the oriental was not well established such that a western scholar, for example, may have possibly known about "all" culture until modern times - and then being able to consume it all would be nearly impossible.
Within the much smaller realm of mathematics, the last mathematician who was said to have known "all" of mathematics was David Hillbert around 1900-1910. No modern mathematician functions in all of the various branches the way he and many of his predecessors did.
Given that there are currently over 7,000 "distinct" languages on the planet and they're dying at an increasing rate, if we surmise that there were at most 2x this number at the peak number of languages (which is a laughable guess at best), just knowing all these languages fluently would be a massive hurdle at best, much less all the culture raining down from each of them.
This seems like an extension of Colin McNamara's post a while back, which Eric Waldstein is quietly referencing by copying the two of us: https:/
I'm also reminded of some of the simple examples that Warren Weaver and John Robinson Pierce presented shortly after the publication of Claude Shannnon's seminal work "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" which, because it underpins ALL of the modern day communications revolution (digital communication, computers, satellites, cell phones, etc.) since the 1940's, is often cited (along with religious texts like the Bible, the Koran, etc.) as one of humanity's most influential written works. [http:/
Shannon had previously taken George Boole's new "algebra" from the late 1800's (now known as Boolean Algebra, which underpins most of modern logic) and applied it to electronic circuits. Though somewhat technical most advanced high school algebra students should be able to read and understand most of Claude Shannon's MIT master's thesis, which itself is often cited as one of the most influential theses ever written. [http:/
In any case, Pierce in particular does some simple exercises relating to language in his book "An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise" [http:/
This also to some extent, underpins our ability to look at the following paragraph and understand what it says. All the letters have been jumbled (mixed). Only the first and last letter of ecah word is in the right place:
I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.
Pierce's book, while it does have some small amount of math, should be generally readable by most high school students. He also provides a simple model of language in his chapter "A Mathematical Model" which many may find interesting, or be able to pull some interesting examples out of. This particular book is also an excellent example of the intertwining of the ideas of physics, mathematics, engineering, psychology, thermodynamics as well as the ideas of emergence, convergence, and allows for the increased complexity and collective learning that underpins the philosophy of Big History.
This is a brilliant exercise!
I have to imagine that once the conceptualization of language and some basic grammar existed word generation was a much more common thing than it is now. It's only been since the time of Noah Webster that humans have been actively standardizing things like spelling. If we can use Papua New Guinea as a model of pre-agrarian society and consider that almost 12% of extant languages on the Earth are spoken in an area about the size of Texas (and with about 1/5th the population of Texas too), then modern societies are actually severely limiting language (creation, growth, diversity, creativity, etc.) [cross reference: http:/
Consider that the current extinction of languages is about one every 14 weeks, which puts us on a course to loose about half of the 7,100 languages on the planet right now before the end of the century. Collective learning has potentially been growing at the expense of a shrinking body of diverse language.
To help put this exercise into perspective, we can look at the corpus of extant written Latin (a technically dead language): It is a truly impressive fact that, simply by knowing that if one can memorize and master about 250 words in Latin, it will allow them to read and understand 50% of most written Latin. Further, knowledge of 1,500 Latin words will put one at the 80% level of vocabulary mastery for most texts. Mastering even a very small list of vocabulary allows one to read a large variety of texts very comfortably. These numbers become even smaller when considering ancient Greek texts. [cross reference: http:/
Another interesting measurement is the vocabulary of a modern 2 year old who typically has a 50-75 word vocabulary while a 4 year old has 250-500 words, which is about the level of the exercise.
As a contrast, consider the message in this TED Youth Talk from last year by Erin McKean, which students should be able to relate to: https:/
#bighistory #collectivelearning
While researching the links between mnemonics and shorthand, I just came across "A complete guide to the improvement of the memory or the science of memory simplified: with practical applications to languages, history, geography, music, prose, poetry, shorthand, etc." written by James Henry Bacon and published by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, London. https:/
Isaac Pitman, who published the book, was also the inventor of Pitman shorthand which was introduced in 1837 and is structurally similar to the Major System.
The book seems to be based on Bacon's prior work "The Science of Memory Simplified and Explained: Or, A Rational System for Improving the Memory, Etc" written in 1861.
Josh, if you feel it appropriate, you can also add the book above to http:/
#memory #shorthand
I'll turn this question around to suggest that instead of taking notes from your math/physics textbooks, that you're FAR better off PUTTING notes INTO them! Those margins are meant for writing down the parts of problems and examples that the author implicitly leaves out.
One typically wouldn't take notes from a Spanish, French, or Latin textbook would they? Like most languages, mathematics should be read and written to practice it (and maybe even spoken).
Knowing math or physics is best demonstrated by actually doing problems - and the majority of the time, this is what is going to be on the test too, so just pick up a pencil or pen and start working out the answers.
These subjects aren't like history, philosophy, or psychology with multiple choice or essay type questions that might benefit from note-taking, so just jump right in. Give the book a short read and start plugging away at problems.
If you have problems getting started, take a look at some of the examples provided by the author (or in other books), cover up the answer, and try to recreate the solution.
Drafting off of the Quora question "Why aren't math textbooks more straightforward?" (https:/