After many hours of discussions with friends from all over the world and an astonishing range of backgrounds, I have come to regard "democracy" as an expression of a fundamental ethical or moral idea. Above all, a "democracy" should be perceived and felt as fair . I have noted elsewhere that our "representative" democracies " are a blunt instrument at best but is important that we see that they are attempting to create a "fair" system. They are usually underpinned by constitutions (again blunt instruments) that try to protect citizens -- especially minorities -- from "mob rule." A much wider view is taken in " A Thousand Small Sanities ," which paints a picture of liberal democracy . This is a fond portrait of a society, not a "system." The focus is on the innumerable institutions that work together to make a country more free, fair, and generally comfortable. Whatever the voting system may be, if a large segmen...

Looking for images associated with "truth",  this guy shows up a lot for some reason These are notes from a BIGSCREEN virtual talk on the subject. "Truth" is obviously a word and part of language as a whole. The word is used very differently in a religious context than in ordinary life. For example, when I say that it's true that I am 75 years old, I am using the word differently when (as it happened) somebody says that everything in the Bible is "true". This is a distinction hotly denied by people of "faith" but calmly accepted by everyone else. Religious "truths" are intelligible (but may still be debated) within a religious community. For example, at one point, the difference between Catholics and Protestants was whether the "host" (the crackers) in communion are "really" the body of Christ. Another issue that came up was the difference between opinion facts. We have seen that graduates of American High School...

OneNote seems to be the solution to sharing information cross-platform. Associated OneDrive seems to be a candidate for sharing outside of OneNote, should that be really needed. ------------ I stumbled onto this when checking out reviews of Scapple. The reviewer was disappointed that everything he needed was already in OneNote, so Scapple was a waste of his precious pennies. Actually, OneNote does look interesting for the larger task of organizing my massive collection of bookmarks, making simple sketches, and sharing Scapple sheets. This is a perfect example of finding something you really need but didn't know it. OneNote seems to be part of Office365, which may need a subscription update. It is cross-platform and can share links to Scrapple sheets as well as others (I note an OOP design from the Dalhousie project - 2014 Access also on iPad, and iPhone  including long-sought support for apple pencil !!! TO Save and Restore a Scrapple Sheet: Drag to a page in OneNote, tell it to sa...

Scrapple is a good alternative to Corkulus, especially for my goal of organizing written pieces for Medium and the task of organizing ideas in the first place. There is no iPad version of Scapple but there is a Windows version Scapple has a lighting-fast, responsive "feel" to it. Corkulous tends to be a bit clunky. There is a lot of depth to Scrapple, under a simple-seeming surface. It seems to be very well thought out, whereas...  Corkulous has a slapped-together feel, including a few things that look like bugs. For example, the Corkulous sidebar is cluttered with shapes borrowed from VISIO. Scapple sidebar is 100% relevant to what is selected. A Sample Sheet (First effort - perhaps 2 hrs) Interesting features: Pictures can be dragged directly onto the sheet from a web page Basic skill level in a few hours - similar to learning any UI tool Displays have a clean, professional look with deep and powerful options to enhance things like consistency, alignment, etc Problems No e...

Corkulous (as I use it) is a "Mind Mapping" tool. The idea is to visually map concepts and the connections between them with the aim of pulling some kind of coherent structure out of a pile of related ideas. In this case, I have over 400 posts that, if printed, would be over 1,000 pages. While creating each post has helped my clarify my thoughts of the moment, the result is a pile of essays that are not accessible in any practical way to interested users. A small mind map is shown here. A typical blog entry tends to touch on several related issues, each of which is likely to require some clarification. The index tries to do this, but it is not realistic to expect a reader to explore the index and the dozens of essays whose connection to the topic may be obscure. In any case, this results in a geometrically expanding demand on the reader.  The Mind Map project aims to isolate a few key ideas, such as "Mind" and create a single essay or a small number of linked essays...

Arising out of a discussion with Kerri, I talk about how we pretty much agree on what is happening in the physical world but disagree on what is to be done. On the other hand, Liberal Democracy assumes that some general agreement should exist on what can and should be done , including freedom of choice, association, and speech. I mention the connection between Islam and the European enlightenment. Religion is constantly changing, even though it claims to be somehow continuous and "eternal", which boils down to accepting the culture they were born into as their idea of what should be done. Shouldn't religions agree on a wide range of issues? In theory, shouldn't we agree on what is virtue? Isn't it true that most practical disagreement is based on philosophical differences? How is it that some see skin color as a threat? This would seem to be totally cultural  - a first-class example of how our "enhanced" experience of reality differs. --- I mention the ...

Thinking about how our "normal" experience is deeply analogous (isomorphic) with virtual reality. We all have a different idea of what is going on "beneath the surface" but much of this depends on language. The "Matrix" idea is not as interesting as people think. In that fantasy people still have a real brain. Whether or not we actually do have a real brain or just an illusion of one seems to be hardly worth discussing. What is worth discussing is how interaction with the real world (or something!!) turns into the rich "gold standard" VR of everyday life.