Sunday, March 17, 2024

Boston first

TL;DR -- The 17th of March is associated with St. Patrick with green rivers, too much food, and parades. That same day in 1776 was when the Brits left Boston. The story is that they believed that the colonials had brought in firepower sufficient to be effective. We mention something that happened a few years later in Russia. Why? What's to believe? 

---

The Nutfield Genealogy blog noted that this day of St. Patrick's was when the British were run out of Boston: March 17th in Boston ~ Evacuation Day or Saint Patrick's Day? Hence, it is featured yearly. 

The post reports that a fake fort had been assembled on a hill overlooking the town. That motivated the evacuation. The departure of the British forces occurred on 17 March 1776. 

For us, we like to point to the series on the Siege of Boston that Dr. Frank published in The Massachusetts Magazine

Now, a historic follow on? The Russian field marshal, Grigory Potemkin, was to show a region to Catherine the Great. This was in an area with which we have become more familiar of late. The tale told is that fake villages were set up along the route that she was to be taken. "Potemkin village" came to be. How much of this is fictional has been researched. 

But, Catherine's journey to the Crimea was in 1787. So, the fakery of the colonials preceeded that of the Russians. 

The topic? Now, we have witnessed several years of another type of fakery (AIn't's output). This deals with technology and its perils which we will be discussing further. 

Now, taking another view of things here. What we are dealing with is computational systems using sophisiticated mathematics in new ways with unexpected results. None of this is magical in origins. Rather, some choices were made with immature minds that impacted all of us. Major tsk on that. In the meantime, we can control the situations involved to some extent. Human nature, on the other hand, fortunately is not merely endless St. Pat's Day frolicking. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/17/2024

03/17/2024 --  

Friday, March 15, 2024

Questions and such

TL;DR -- Bridging across 400+ years will continue to be of importance. So, our quest will be an ongoing process. Technology? The next two years will provide more of a view to the issues. Right now, we can only intimate. In reality, hype abounds. AIn't adopters will be in for a reckoning. 

-- 

It was a year ago, when we found out about the new information about Thomas and Margaret that was available via digitization of records in Sherbourne, Dorset, UK from 400 years ago. WikiTree used the opportunity to split out their Profile of Thomas into two people: one was at Cape Ann who is unknown, essentially; the other is the one who married Margaret Frier. 

The work and discussion had been done while I was distracted by what became to be known at GenAI. There are several blogs on this. But, we're at the stage to move on and do it right. Not that what had been done before was done wrongly. So, tsk, guy, at WikiTree who passes judgment. We'll take it from here with respect to these two gentlemen or one (our choice - until we really know).

On the first (AIn't), look at the series here under my name: True State of AI Tools, 2024. We started this last year after assessing what OpenAI's toy/tool brought. The jury is still out: those who don't know, let's discuss rationally; those who are on the bandwagon, just be aware of the faults that shake the foundation (oh yes, let's to go Einstein's introduction of the mathematics of Relativity to do this, General, that is - and then come forward to the current nonsense).

On the second (Cape Ann, &c - btw, that's what was used in the time of Levi-Civita), how will the research and change proceed? Well, we got started in 2009 but formalized the effort in 2010. By 2012, it was obvious that there were all sorts of opinions, worthy of note (okay?, we'll discuss - we do not like the top-down dominance that seems to appear - more later). So, this happened. 

  • What we know - notice, November of 2012. What took so long? Well, search in this blog on Content and Configuration. I was dealing with new content related to history and people. This was after transitioning my brain from technology, especially advanced computing. And, configuration? I used CMS; later, I pointed to GitHub (with Co-Pilot, is even better of a foild for discussion) as an example. Two hats? Okay. One person's content might be another's configuration. And, so forth. Science and engineering are full of examples. 
So, switching to the 1st, a monolith of knowledge? Nope. The whole framework is idiotic. We'll show this, eventually, if we live long enough. Too, GenAI? Purty pictures. Read about the difficulty of doing something real, as I show with the knowledge-based engineering work that actually bumpled up against the world successfully by meeting constraints intelligently. And, the word salad? Oh yes, perfect grammar, perhaps. But. meaningless. Anyone finding meaning is demonstrating what the Gesalt view was about. 

Going on. Later, we figured that we had enough and started the following using a different format at Google's Blogger. Posts are meant to be conversational through time. Pages (see our Page map) are static. We did this page. Both the post and the page have been annotated with respect to the current topic of needed changes. 
  • Frequently asked questions - notice, later. We did not know a lot, even then. But, we thought that we ought to organize this into questions. These might be reworked to have a good set of questions. However, they'll each be updated. 
So, we have started the work. One thing was to add an opinion category, OpEd. One thing that we noticed over the past decade plus. When we started, the internet was still somewhat open which allowed satisfying queries to be made and tweaked to obtain some semblance of an answer. Now It's been trashed. So, that will slow things down. 

Before now, we also saw lots of site with reseach done earlier. Lots of that disappeared. We had collected lots of links over the years and need to prune these out. But, for some, trying to see what happened will be of use As, that was not work to be wasted. If the stuff is available elsewhere, we want to be cognizant of the work. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/15/2024

03/15/2024 --  


Saturday, March 9, 2024

Women's History Month, 2024

TL;DR -- March is the month to look at the women's history in all of its aspects. 

--

March is Women's History month in the U.S. and many other parts of the worlds. We have had a post for this the past two years. 

Each post links to other articles on the subject or on something related. 

The below is a list of current material from sites or periodicals which are becoming broader in scope. 

Next post, we will go back through our posts since 2010 and pull out those about a woman. An example would be our posts in 2022 on Emily Noether and on the Wartime Quartet. Or, our various posts on Elizabeth Gardners (several generations). 

Remarks: Modified: 03/15/2024

03/15/2024 --  Added photo of Pres. Carter signing a Proclamation in 1980. 

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Restructuring

TL;DR -- It's been over a year since the generative modes made their appearance. They look good. But, fail mostly. Some say, these are best for fictional situations. Not fact nor truth. Does not have to be that way. People are the clue. At the same time, technology brought a change to our worldview. We are now going into restruction. It will be multi-pronged and not done overnight. 

--

Last year, in February, I did my first evaluation of ChatGPT. Then, I did several sessions on various topics, including lower-level mathematics. Many of these dealt with the overarching issues that seem to get little attention. So, the generative age started. 

The first use of Bard was in June of last year: Getting technical. There were several reasons for preferring this system from Google. Now, it has morphed into Gemini which I have accessed a couple of times which was enough to get the difference. We will continue this analysis

Finally, I put together sufficient thoughts to begin a relook at the history of computing and AI from the perspective of someone in the trenches. The first article of a series was titled: AI, not solely ML. This was #1. So far, there have been #2 and #3. The fourth is in the works. The intent of the series was to set up the framework and the necessary subjects so as to discuss a patent and its use. 

The main factor to be discussed will be knowledge-based engineering.  

But, we have the whole of computing to consider within which is embedded things being artificially simulating. Our portal (TGSoc.org) was to serve as an exhibition for custom made as opposed to hugely automated. We will be looking at that, perhaps with CoPilot of GitHub. In any case, there will not be a total turnover to the artificial of responsibility. Though, we will watch others and comment. 

Of course, the motivation is not merely technical. Last year, we learned of new data (from Sherborne, Dorset) and will begin to incorporate this into the Gardner story plus our website's support Gardner Research

Remarks: Modified: 02/29/2024

02/29/2024 --  

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Foreign Policy Association (FPA)

TL;DR -- This post is about the FPA which is 100 years old and which has a mission fostering discussion about the U.S. and its foreign policies. Their purpose is to inform, engage, and inspire. Timely discussion about the upcoming election is one goal for 2024. 

--

Recently, we were reminded of the FPA and its offshoot discussion group. On reviewing their material, we had to write this post since it deals with U.S. policy, is over 100 years old, and has transitioned into the new age by having a web prescence. The reminder was via meetings held regularly at an educational institute. But, lots of organizations have sponsored meetings. As well, this is an open forum and relates to foreign policy of the U.S. 

The About FPA page of the Foreign Policy Association covers their mission plus it gives a brief history starting in the 1920s. The FPA was "founded in 1918 as the League of Free Nations Association" which was post WWI. Among the incorporators were John Foster Dulles and Eleanor Roosevelt. Both of these are of New England heritage. 

Before going further, let's stop and look at another group that was here and abroad: Lyceum Movement (post dated in May 2017). This started in the U.S. in New England and spread across the country. We read of small towns in the interior of the country being part of the movement. The focus was literature. Along that same line, there have been many attempts at magazines during the time of the U.S., some of which were literary in focus: Magazines and people

Getting back to the FPA, naturally, topics of interest have changed over the years. For 2023, the topics were quite contemporary. Some of these may have been in vogue longer than other. The image shows the topics being discussed in 2023. For all of the topics, there are resources which include recommended reading as well as a listing of discussion groups that might be near the reader. 

Over all of this time, the FPA has been doing "Opinion ballots" and reporting the results. We will do another post on these results. 

Let's close with the Mission Statement of the FPA: ... "serve as a catalyst for developing awareness, understanding, and informed opinion on U.S. foreign policy and global issues." 

So, their pseudo-motto might be: Inform; Engage; and Inspire.  

Remarks: Modified: 02/22/2024

02/22/2024 --  

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Alta California

TL;DR -- As our initial focus was New England, New France came into focus early. But, after the start of the U.S. and the beginnings of the movement to the west, New Spain became the theme of research. Our early looks at this were about Los Angeles and San Francisco around the start of the 20th century.  As we step back in time, Portola's efforts come into view with interesting history to consider. We can start by considering the 1776 beginning of the Mission San Francisco de Asis. 
 
---

We had mentioned Spain in earlier posts while discussing the times before the Cape Ann expedition. Several countries were fishing along the eastern seaboard. It was being more efficient in providing products from the yearly fishing efforts that precipiated the colony focus. 

Our first reference to New Spain was with our look at Jedediah Strong Smith's journey from the east coast through St. Louis, in the 1820s, out to the west coast. Our post on Jedediah covered his wanderings which are of note. Hence, he has been mentioned many times. With respect to Spain, Jedediah went south and west through the Mojave Desert, in summer. His appearance in the LA area was a surprise. Luckily, Jedediah was able to talk his way to freedom and continued up north and then back toward the east. He met his demise in the wesern area of Kansas. 

In the time of the pandemic and its isolation, we spent a lot of time researching the middle of the country. Okay. That was part of the Louisiana Purchase. Both France and Spain had been involved in the exploration of the area. We had looked at New France first, as it was the other side of the conflict before the Revolutionary War. Many use the French-Indian Affair. The friction was between France and its Native Indian allies and England via New England; as well, there was conflict in Europe and at sea.  

As we start to look at folks who had ventured all the way to the west coast, we realized that we needed to look at New Spain more closely. For instance, Coronado was close to where I am in 1541. In Texas and in the southwest, New Spain was the principal colonizer. California sites have been given lots of attention in the blog of late. There are several reasons for this. We're looking at the long reach of New England. And, John went to school and worked in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. 

Of late, he has been look at Bunker Hill West which is part of the downtown LA area where we can see changes over several periods, such as the early arrival, the mansion period, commercial focus, and the modern status of high-rise island in a sea of sprawl. The web is offering lots of incentive to research by allowing systematic publication of photos across time. As well, the social media spaces (such as Facebook) are providing means for like minds to compare findings. 

We will continue with the themes of California as it allowed the start of the series and will expand into all of the regions where New England families settled over the past 250 years. Part of this effort is looking at the rivers and waterways that supported the development of areas. 

Now, today's theme ventures back up north. Last year, we did several posts on San Francisco, some of which dealt with the impact of the major quake from the early 1900s. We actually looked at the region in our early days due to tracking the history of a barque Bostonian that had been built and used by a Gardiner for whom a town is named in Oregon. We learned a lot from that exercise which generated more questions than answers. 

Along that line, the Bostonian was in San Franciso at least two times. But, that brought up other visitors to the area, such as Judge Thompson who helped establish Montana as a State. He was there around the time of the Civil War. Later, we see the railroad coming into play with faster and more reliable transportation across the wide expanse of the country. 

But, let's step back, again. As we can look at the establishment of the San Francisco region by New Spain. Facebook has a group with the title, Alta California, which follows Portola's expedition up the coast.  Portola's group built missions and forts. Of the later, we have the Presidio of San Francisco which we have mentioned several times. 

Of the former, this photo is of the Mission San Francisco (St. Francis) de Asis. A mass was celebrated on 9 Oct 1776 for the laying of the cornerstone for this mission. 
 
Mission, St. Francis, Assisi
in San Francisco, CA

This post is cursory as it skims over a lot of history with regard to Spain's explorations and colonizations. We will begin a series with a closer look at California's start

Remarks: Modified: 02/20/2024

02/20/2024 --  


Monday, February 19, 2024

US, examples, LA

TL;DR -- Los Angeles is interesting in so many ways. This post pulls some thoughts about what is known as Bunker Hill West which is in the heart of the downtown area that many do not remember. 

--

This is another of the posts about Bunker Hill west which included a few, such as New England, in LA. As mentioned earlier, the first of these was motivated by looking at Butterfield and his relationship with the Mirror Company. The Los Angeles Times was a product of a later version of this company. Their building was emptied when the LA Times ran up north to be valley people. Now, its fate is being discussed. 

Luckily, the LA City Hall and some of the associated buildings are still there. We show a photo comparing to eras below. First though, near where the City Hall is now there was a Cathedral (St Vibiana) which was moved. As a reference, there was a post (Lost Angeles, again) that contained this real early photo of the area.  

St. Vibiana, 1885 

The area of the old cathedral and the city hall might be considered as at the eastern foot of Bunker Hill (west). US 101 runs right by there. Too, the whole area was rearranged a few decades ago. One result was the Dodger Stadium was built. Skid row was move several blocks over to the east toward the railroad. Fortunately, the old LA Train Station was spared. 

The story is well documented. What we have coming to fore are photos from people that can help us preserve the history. Case in point, the following image shows two photo from about the same location. One is from the 1950s and shows the LA City Hall in all of its glory. 

Two views of 
Bunker Hill West from 
the northwest

The later, bottom view is more recent. Some of the buildings are the same. But, the City Hall is now obstructed in the view, except for its tip. The low, flat building in the foreground? That is where the St. Viviana Cathedral was moved to. We will get back to the architecture and positioning. But, it is right at the corner of US101 and I110. Pan around to the right, and one will see the Cathedral of the Lady of the Angels. Too, the high rises of Bunker Hill will come into view. 

A prior post had this photo, which includes the LA City Hall, taken from the southeast. 


Those building are an island of high-rise in a sea of extended development that turned into the sprawl of LA. We have this photo for that, too, that bears some discussion. LA's downtown and Bunker Hill West is visible on the upper right.  


This view shows I110 pacing through the sprawl from its interchange with I105. 

Remarks: Modified: 02/19/2024

02/19/2024 --