Bunker Hill and the Library

TL;DR -- Bunker Hill steps down to the Central Library. The most important building in a city? 

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In this season of political BBQ, we wanted to look at things more neutral, from an Independent viewpoint. Today, The Atlantic published an editorial with their endorsement. Many have done so. Some publications, such as the Washington Post, have stayed neutral. But, that's bucking the normal, of this time very four years, which has been to take a side. 

Let's see, sides? Well, the Dodgers won in New York and are 3-0. It'll be two more games before the World Serious goes back to LA in an area not far from Bunker Hill. So, the 250th of the Revolution is coming up, a little over a year. We were trying to ignore LA for a while but blame the Dodgers. 

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We cannot mention the Yankees and Dodgers without mentioning Reggie Jackson who played at three Series games between the two teams. He called the two teams as being part of the 'American fabric'. Yes, a few more might be mentioned such as the St. Louis Cardinals. Reggie was featured in an article in the USA Today. 

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Now, to the Central Libary. We have had other posts mentioning the Library: Past and Present (showing DTLA - several eras - from a point on Bunker Hill; Eighty eigth (about the year, 1888). Today, on FB/Meta, we saw a quote from Einstein:

"The only thing that you have to absolutely know is, the location of the library."

Now, that I can relate to. And, courtesy of the Los Angeles Converancy, we have a nice view of steps put in that lead from Bunker Hill to the Central Libray which was at the foot of the hill. The text mentioned a rise of five stories, but the Hill was a lot higher and was scraped into submission. 

Bunker Hill steps
Los Angeles Conversancy

Let's put another, to discuss later. 

Library tower, 
built using the Library's air rights
2nd largest building in LA, 
visible in lots of shots of DTLA

Remarks: Modified: 10/29/2024

10/29/2024 -- 

Semantic scholar

TL;DR -- Paul Allen and his work has led to a phenomenal advance in query support. We will go on about and further look at this application of machine learning. 

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Our focus, outside of those related to history and heritage, deals with technology. Of late, we have been looking at GenAI and the changes that we can see in the world since OpenAI let loose their premature "omniscient, omnipresent" whatever. ChatGPT was the name; it had 100s of millions users within a short period of time. That set the stage for several developments are were mostly reactionary. 

We, basically, analyzed the situation and the various cohorts of the new type of thing. And, found where things were wanting. On the other hand, GenAI made a hit in fiction and chicanery. Of the later, "fake" this and that. In our interchange with the things (several), we noted its superior attitude. Now it all, essentially. Telling humans what they ought to know. 

When, mind you, it could not do simple algebra or even arithmetic. There were other obvious failures. The industry (OpenAI and its cohorts) bragged of  80% success. Oh yes, of all of the flights in a day, how would you like to have 20% of those fail. Well, there are types of failures. So, the matter could be discussed usefully, in this case. But, for one maker of planes, the evaluation criterion was 99.999% success which was applied throughout all of the process. The effect was something that could regularly fly millions of miles with no incident. 

Then, things happened. Well, we'll see more of that at GenAI (and other types) get put into the world due to the lack of ways and means to contain the hype or to handle the proper analysis. But, we will get there. Have seen progress. Yesterday, in one quorum, ChatGPT said that it was a tool and that it wanted to help me, a human, with my research. Okay. More on that later. 

Now, let's look at one of the many ways that mature minds have applied this stuff. I spent the afternoon using Paul Allen's Semantic Scholar. Well, not his; rather, it is the work of the Allen Institute and the University of Washington and other contributors. The experience was encouraging with respect to getting a proper framework going for this type of technology. 

Here is their website: https://www.semanticscholar.org/ (we will look at this further). Based upon their query facility, it is a huge step forward. 

As mentioned, there are other examples. One of these is Wolfram's use of GenAI with his computational mathematics system.  

Remarks: Modified: 10/26/2024

10/26/2024 -- 

Alice, of the Nantucket bunch

TL;DR -- Alice of the show (Brady Bunch - not that of Carroll nor of the others that we will look at from time to time) gives us a serious New England family history to study. Hang on as we put technology to proper use guided by the "true" spirit of the American experience which we will look at (again and again). 

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Better late than never, one can say. With our technology focus, we have to look across the board, including the chain from marketing (those who would have us believe enough to spend money) down to fictional shows as we see on TV (those who would have us believe their story and spend money as led to the decision by the marketing folks). 

I have been slowly collecting descendants of Thomas and Margaret, as they become, more or less, proven, that is, their lineage. See Thomas and Margaret (Fryer) Gardner; Joseph Gardner (youngest son); Thomas Gardner II (eldest son); ... Notice, recent research (see Comment, this day) shows that Seeth was born here whereas the other children were born in Dorset, UK. 

Now, let's take one show that was heavy on the cultural horizon: Brady Bunch. Alice was a well-known figure due to her role. She was portrayed by Ann B. Davis (Wikipedia, Wikitree - to be researched). She passed on in 2014, as many may remember. Today, I saw that Famous Kin had a profile of her; here is Ann's link to Thomas Gardner through son, John who married Grafton. She has a serious New England background, including lots of families of Plymouth.  

The show did a good job of presenting the U.S. from the viewpoint of a city on the west coast. Too, it aired from 1969 to 1974 which puts it right in the middle of lots of cultural transformations. 

It might not need saying, but we are seeing something similar now with AIn't and its manifestation through GenAI with all of its faults. The next two years will be fun. 

In the meantime, we'll be researching the scope of associations for descendants of Thomas and Margaret in order to tie technology and its pretenses with the phenomenal aspects of people and their long history on the planet. 

Generations and their dynamics? Lots to learn on this folks. Perhaps, the computer can help. It can serve as an ultimate objectifier, as we watch the wannabe try to attain some state which we do not even know how to describe yet. Whether we can or not (attain what AI seems to have accomplished, by the estimate of ts purveyors and supporters) is a basic question needing attention. 

Remarks: Modified: 10/21/2024

10/21/2024 -- Lewis Carroll was a logician, mathematician (influenced by Boole). 

Native Americans

TL;DR -- In the past, Columbus had a day where we celebrated one arrival event. Today, we are cognizant increasingly of the Native American culture that was here prior to the incursion of European influence. We have a lot to learn. 

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Today is a Holiday (Federal) for some, Earlier, Columbus was the main focus of the day. The view of the day has changed over the years to the current status of this being called The "Indigenious Peoples" Day. As such, the day can be used to learn more of the cultures and people here before we saw the "News" come to be (England, France, Spain, ...). 

This post at Facebook asks the question: Why isn't This Map in the History Books?. We liked the graphics which can be found in seveal places and will be looked at further. 

Native American Knowledge

There will be a lot to look at. For one thing, we can continue our work on the Awareness Months. 

Remarks: Modified: 10/14/2024

10/14/2024 -- 

Computational Chemistry

TL;DR -- Machine learning and its use of physics was the focus for the Nobel award. This was followed up with the chemistry award being given to protein research. This is a step forward for various reasons. Ultimate consequences are not really known at this time. Research deals with the future.  

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Yesterday, we noted that the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2024 was given for work in machine learning. ML which is usually known as AI (artificial intelligence) deals with the technology of a computer systems taking as input huge streams of data and reducing these through various techniques into information that people can understand and use. But, this information can feed back into the computer model itself. 

The emphasis is on modeling which is accomplished through computational techniques. "computational" goes along with "theoretic" which deals with analytic and quantitative means applied to a field of study in order to effect desirable effects such as design, prediction and continuing analysis, generally in support of scientific endeavors. If one surveys the STEM discplines, one sees a huge influence of computational modes. With respect to some of the harder problems such as life and intelligence, one could very well suggest that theoretical chemistry will play a huge role. So, this is a necessary step; but, we have huge problems yet to resolve. 

Along with that of Physics, the Prize for Chemistry in 2024 was given to researchers who used a variant of ML from Google (AlpaFold). This work portends to future benefits that have been elusive using other means. Needless to say, the success is heavily dependent upon the researchers who are working now as well as the continually developing frameworks of their disciplines. 

A technical paper explains some of the details: COMPUTATIONAL PROTEIN DESIGN AND PROTEIN STRUCTURE PREDICTION. The following is a quote from the paper:

In summary, the achievements of David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper in the

fields of computational protein design and protein structure prediction are truly profound. Their

work has opened up a new era of biochemical and biological research, where we can now predict

and design protein structures in ways that had not been possible before. Hence, a long-standing

goal has finally been met, and the impact of this will have far-reaching consequences. 

As it says, this is research and applies to the future. We will look at some recent applications of the techniques and discuss the matters that relate. 

The use of AI is somewhat unfortunate. The work is an example of applied mathematics, computational modeling of such, people who are in the position to exploit the facilities in their work, and long years of work captured various ways as science has been doing for the past 200 years or so. 

AI deals with intelligence which we know is mostly associated with living forms. Now, we can look more closely at modeling these by using improved protein analysis plus a whole lot of other information. Like with physics which is strongly using normals in order to reduce problems to a proper scope, we will see this with other scientific domains. 

At we see with GenAI, what are the costs of this research in comparison with other work that is necessary, in terms of the resources used (say power), or the potential for misuse given our proclivity to not know how to manage complexity? 

Congratulations to the Laureates. Looking forward to watching things unfold. 

Remarks: Modified: 10/09/2024

10/09/2024 --  

Machine learning

TL;DR -- Good old machine learning gets some respect. That is good news. 

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New directions pend. We have talked AIn't for a while. There's no critter in the buckets of bits. There may be patterns. Now, the Nobel Prize folks say that this is physics and a result of its mathematics. 

Okay, that's great. We argued anyway that the focus ought not be intelligence which goes with life, and its study - biology, as far as we know. We stressed the mathematical connectsions, but having physics now in the game improves the chance of lifting awareness to things that matter. 

So, this post goes with our technology focus which we are trying to define and foster.   

Remarks: Modified: 10/08/2024

10/08/2024 --