Julian's Polymath Explorations

[Updated Mar. 2022] Interactomics today bears a certain resemblance to genomics in the  1990s...  Big gaps in knowledge, but an explosively-growing field of great promise. If you're unfamiliar with the terms, genomics is about deciphering the gene sequence of an organism, while interactomics is about describing all the relevant bio-molecules and their web of interactions. A Detective Story Think of a good police-detective story; typically there is a multitude of characters, and an impossible-to-remember number of relationships: A hates B, who loves C, who had a crush on D, who always steers clear of E, who was best friends with A until D arrived... Yes, just like those detective stories, things get very complex with our biological story!  Examples of webs of interactions, familiar to many who took intro biology, are the Krebs cycle for metabolism or the Calvin cycle to fix carbon into sugars in plant photosynthesis. Now, imagine vastly expanding those cycles of rea

 (Updated Nov. 2022) Wouldn't it be fantastic to have a "butler" to help us as we constantly face drowning in information? That need was crushingly pressing for me , as a polymath with a thirst for knowledge in several fields, not to mention numerous very technical jobs over the years, several complex research projects, old notes from college and grad school, an endless stream of online courses I take , a tech startup I founded and used to run, the many conferences I attend, life in general, and even hobbies that tend to generate abundant information (such as flying airplanes and studying multiple foreign languages!)   I was immensely eager for some sort of powerful assistance, something so helpful that I could poetically describe as an " annex " to my brain.. In this blog entry, I'll describe how deep frustration with existing software tools led to the start of the open-source BrainAnnex.org project, a web-based knowledge representation and manageme

Informative, fascinating class and a VERY entertaining professor, with a delightful understated humor and clear explanations, motivations and examples. I was expecting a class entirely about Mathematical Logic... so I was surprised (a good surprise, it turned out) when I discovered that this class roams much more broadly into the Philosophy of Logic.  I was satisfied that enough chapters were about Mathematical Logic - and actually I found the broader context interesting.  For example, I had long heard about Aristotle's syllogisms , but had never looked into them. While there are no Math prerequisites for this class, you'll probably find your head spin by the middle of the course, unless you have a "mathematical predisposition."  (I have a Master's in Math, so for me it was a fun and light "feasting on proofs"...  but a lot of people might feel differently!)  Nonetheless, this great course is quite worthwhile to at least START...