NathanielThurston

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I'm a mathematical artist.

To paraphrase Frank Zappa and Ian Underwood:

: "Hello, my name is Nathaniel Thurston and I would like to join your community"
: "What can you do that's fantastic"
: "I say I can learn and I can think"
: "And he said"
: "All right, whip it out...."

Career

: Managing Director, [Þingið ehf.]
: Co-author, http://thething.is/book.pdf
: Founder, TeaTime

Interests

: learning to teach
: understanding beauty
: teaching truth
: sparring with FridemarPache and the rest of the Meatball community about the things that matter to us most.

Why I'm here

I find the process of interaction that takes place here to be beautiful to behold.

Current Events

[13:01, 5 May 2010] I have a week's worth of time to spend while I wait for a second interview at Google. Planning to spend some of it here working on the pages I care most about.
[??:??, 18 September 2009] beginning work in earnest on the exposition of my [Ph.D. thesis in mathematics]. The central topic is a conjecture about the best method for finding and improving an [AbductiveProof].
[16:08, 29 May 2009] GoogleWave seems extremely interesting. I've just finished watching the video of the keynote address, and am starting to wonder if TeaTime is now obsolete.
[09:43, 12 March 2008] Making my image here more welcoming.
[12:36, 11 March 2008] The CommunityOnline is open to anyone who wants to help out.
[16:37, 10 March 2008] I've begun the process of bringing together my face-to-face community at Café Hljómalind, with a corresponding CommunityOnline. The beginning seems magical, and I can only hope that it will continue in a similar fashion.

Messages

Nathaniel, welcome at Meatball. mb has been a bit like a sleeping princess recently. Maybe you and others can kiss and awaken her. -- HelmutLeitner

Hello Nathaniel, you might be interested in Hatta, a wiki engine based on an RCS. It's Mercurial, not Git, but it works as expected -- can be easily cloned and merged, I even use that for resolving edit conflicts. -- RadomirDopieralski

Hello Nathaniel, a hearty welcome to Meatball, the community of communities. From your http://thething.is/book.pdf I learned, that you are in the process of building a very attractive community for friendly and constructive people: a community that integrates art, music, science, prospering and spirituality. What do you think of the ideas of ExtremeOpenBusiness, FreeEscrow, SocialDomaining, StocksAtHome ... -- FridemarPache

Fridemar, K.I.S.S.

I don't think StocksAtHome is practical just yet. I've been in this business professionally, and hope to return someday.

Pursuing these ideas (fridemar's and mine) may have already increased the level of passion in our community. I'm planning to take some time off to enjoy the BigBlueRoom, focus on short-term tasks, and generally get a whole lot more boring in the hope of facilitating a wider collaboration. --NathanielThurston

Since another one of my favorite wiki dropped offline this week, I'm looking for people to help me build a high-availability wiki. More information: [SoftwareBazaar: distributed wiki]. Is this something you would be interested in helping? -- DavidCary

: Yes. I think the simplest way to do this is to have a collection of identical peer wikis. At any given time, all edits would take place on one of the peers, while reads would be distributed among the peers. One page of the wiki would hold a list of all of the peers, and in the event of an outage, people could use the Google cache to find a live peer, until the DNS record gets switched. For the mechanics of keeping peers up-to-date, I favor git. As for the actual implementation, I'll work on it if and when I need it, but really I hope to leave some of the details to others. --NathanielThurston

Hello Nathaniel, the ideas presented in your book and passion to bring it from idea to practice is very interesting and admirable. I work with FridemarPache on the embryonic OpenBusiness concepts he has mentioned here. I am excited to see where this project goes. -- AaronPoeze

You asked me to discuss my impressions of TeaTime. It has taken a while to sift this and I'm only at a low level of understanding. Various questions and comments pop into mind. Warning: I am a list addict. -- AaronPoeze

: Thanks! I've moved them to the TeaTime page. -- NathanielThurston

Nathaniel, because of your references to aboutus.org and the strong presence of Scientology there, I would like to know whether you have a relationship to Scientology. -- HelmutLeitner

Helmut, no. I had a relationship with DahnHak?, but I left them years ago. This would have helped: http://www.freedomofmind.com/ My current affiliation is to a religion I've invented for myself, "adaptive zen quaker". Quaker for equality and friendship; zen for the art of zen archery with words as my weapons of choice; and adaptive to better empathize with those with whom I'm interacting.

What I've hinted at, but haven't yet stated explicitly, is that I have bipolar disorder, and that I am engaged in a personal struggle to keep my mind calm. I think I've figured out the theory, but I sure could use some help defending myself against my own mind. -- njt

FridemarPache: I am also practising Yoga. We all share bipolar disorder, as long as we are not enlightened. Only the most sensitive, intelligent and creative people become aware of it and have the courage to express it.

NathanielThurston: Fridemar, thank you for the tip. It's been a long struggle, but I find myself launched on the path to enlightenment. It is useful for me to express some of my excess energy here, where I hope it can be put to constructive use. My wife also reminds me that enlightenment is a journey, not a destination, at least until one dies.

Helmut, I have visited AboutUs offices several times, and know several people influential at AboutUs, including RayKing, BrandonCsSanders, TedErnst, and, like you, CTO WardCunningham. I never saw anything about Scientology. -- LionKimbro

I imagine Helmut is referring to the massive online campaign the Scientology folks have launched, and in Europe and the Middle East (as far as we know) their video ad is on many pages. We are contemplating how to deal with this. Thanks to Helmut for alerting us. -- MarkDilley

Hello Nathaniel, thanks for reverting all those spammed pages -- MarkusLude

Hello,

once again thanks for reverting those spam. Unfortunately this is not the "usual" hand-edited spam on a few pages. Hopefully I find some time to hack on more effective spam measures -- MarkusLude

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Discussion

SamRose -- Sat Sep 19 18:07:57 2009

Hey, great to meet you, Nathaniel. Look forward to reading your contributions here

(An interesting note from Helmut about scientology on aboutus.org, aboutus is interesting because of how it is driven by community and somewhat automated dynamics. It would be an interesting study for people who care about patterns in online communities)