I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such a-squared cos 2(thi)!
                -- Stanislaw Lem

    Inhuman Henry
           or
    Cruelty to Fabulous Animals

Oh would you know why Henry sleeps,
And why his mourning Mother weeps,
And why his weeping Mother mourns?
He was unkind to unicorns.

No unicorn, with Henry's leave,
Could dance upon the lawn at eve,
Or gore the gardener's boy in spring
Or do the very slightest thing.

No unicorn could safely roar,
And dash its nose against the door,
Nor sit in peace upon the mat
To eat the dog, or drink the cat.

Henry would never in the least
Encourage the heraldic beast:
If there were unicorns about
He went and let the lion out.

The lion, leaping from its chain
And glaring through its tangled mane,
Would stand on end and bark and bound
And bite what unicorns it found.

And when the lion bit a lot
Was Henry sorry? He was not.
What did his jumps betoken? Joy.
He was a bloody-minded boy.

The Unicorn is not a Goose,
And when they saw the lion loose
They grew increasingly aware
That they had better not be there.

And oh, the unicorn is fleet
And spurns the earth with all its feet.
The lion had to snap and snatch
At tips of tails it could not catch.

Returning home in temper bad,
It met the sanguinary lad,
And clasping Henry with its claws
It took his legs between its jaws.

'Down, lion, down!' said Henry, 'cease!
My legs immediately release.'
His formidable feline pet
Made no reply, but only ate.

The last words that were ever said
By Henry's disappearing head,
In accents of indignant scorn,
Were 'I am not a unicorn'.

And now you know why Henry sleeps,
And why his Mother mourns and weeps,
And why she also weeps and mourns;
So now be kind to unicorns.

A. E. Housman

No, I'm not searching for a chess genius or a religious artifact. What I'd like is a thinking/knowledge management/organizational memory tool.

If it requires too much effort to capture a thought, chances are it won't be.
If it requires too much effort to access recorded thoughts, they might as well be lost.
--Me

When you have a thought that needs developed, what do you do?

I grab a pen and a piece of scrap paper. I jot a few things down. My notes are seldom complete, because the time and effort required to write them longhand are prohibitive. If what I put down is important enough, I transcribe it into the computer. Otherwise, the scrap of paper is tossed or lost under a pile.

If I transcribe it, I'm faced with the question of where to put it: In a text file or a Word document in a directory named doc? How about in a subdirectory under doc, organized by topic? In order to share my thoughts, I need to save them on a network drive or check them into a version control system. Perhaps I should place the note in "InfoCenter" in GoldMine, properly categorized in its One True Place. Either way I will need to make my co-workers aware of the gem I just created.

"Hey! I had a thought!" High fives all around.

As if the process were not already a grand enough production, I'm faced with the fact that thought is seldom a linear entity. It is a semi-structured, multi-dimensional beast. We need outlines and hyperlinks (and other tools as well) to bring order to the chaos that is thought and life.

If you're thinking HTML sounds like a logical solution, you're only partly right. Creating a decent HTML document can be a much bigger production than a simple text document. I have yet to find an HTML editor that does multi-level outlines without a lot of pain. It's easier to create them by hand, but typing all those tags can be tiresome.

Don't forget that this gem needs to be searchable at some later date when a question is asked and the memory fails. I'll need a full-time librarian to categorize and assign Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal numbers and create Title and Auther and Subject cards.

The first step in the Scientific Method is "Define the Problem." So there, I've done it--at least partly. I don't have the solution, but maybe I have the "outline" of one.

The place to put it is NOW.

A character in a Tom Clancy novel, a compulsive notetaker, had the motto, "If you don't write it down, it never happened." So, the answer to "Where do I put it?" is "Yes!" What is needed is a default place. The logical default place is in a "Journal of Original Entry," ordered by date and time. It can be indexed and categorized later.

Creativity should not be constrained by structure. Rather, structure should emerge naturally from the chaos. When I was in school, my teachers tried to teach us to take notes in outline form. The problem was, the teachers were uncooperative in their presentations. If the presentation did not follow a clear outline, if the teacher visited related subjects, it was impossible to create a clean outline on the first attempt. I learned to just take down the information using bullet points. Later it was much easier to see the structure and organize the information.

Many things one might add to a journal over the course of a day will never be assigned a place in a great hierarchy. That is just as well. They should still be searchable using a brute-force text search and each one should still be a unique target for a hyperlink. They will be accessible using a convenient calendar mechanism whereby a reader can select a day in history and see the journal entries for that day. If an entry is uncomplimentary toward a certain large software company in the northwestern United States, it hints at the frame of mind of the author and suggests difficulties encountered on that day and is therefore information.

Other entries should at some point be categorized in a hierarchical "Tree of Knowledge" or added to a "To Do" list. Other authors should be able to comment on an entry and have their comments associated with it. A mechanism might be provided to allow the original author to come back and integrate a comment into the original entry so that it will display together instead of on another screen.

No program is complete until it does e-mail, so here is my list of e-mail functions I would like to see:

E-mail functions

1. Subscriptions--one might express an interest in periodically receiving new and/or modified entries by a team member.
2. Notifications--one might like to be notified of items added to a team member's "To Do" list and/or when the items are completed. Alternatively, one might express an interest in a particular item in a team member's "To Do" list and wish to be notified when its status changes.
3. A node or a subtree from the "Tree of Knowledge" should be e-mailed on request to an arbitrary e-mail address, complete with any attachments.

The Arizona Diamondbacks overcame baseball's leading dynasty, the New York Yankees, to win the World Series and become Major League Baseball's 2001 World Champions. I'm not a huge sports fan, in part because it usually seems to have no plot, but this story could not have been scripted better by Tolkien or any other writer of epic fantasies.

The Diamondbacks' four-year journey to the National League Championship, so full of early promise but with mixed results, could serve as a prologue to the final battle, like "The Hobbit" to "The Lord of the Rings," or maybe as fertile material for an author to write a prequel to a best seller, but the heart of the story would have to be the World Series itself.

The underdog Diamondbacks began the series with two convincing wins, but game three was a disaster, filled with bloopers sure to put doubt in the hearts of the players and their manager. Showing their character, the team struggled valiantly through games four and five, each one filled with hope, only to have their hope dashed in the end and to lose in overtime. These setbacks only served to make the players hungrier for victory and this hunger fueled their run-away victory in game six. Sometimes victory can be a bigger test of character than defeat, but the Diamondbacks did not lose their focus. First tied, then up, then down, the team never lost its resolve. In the bottom of the ninth inning, the Diamondbacks came from behind to win a stunning victory.

Game results and scores are at best history--a story requires characters. This story is full of colorful and memorable characters. A "respecter of no man," I'm not normally one to lionize any human, but as long as I'm making analogies to epic fantasies I could draw plenty of parallels. Heros abound, from the dynamic pitching duo of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson to home run-hitting Luis "Gonzo" Gonzalez. Craig Counsell, the left-handed second baseman, can snag a ball out of the air like magic, and Steve Finley, Matt Williams and Tony Womack are always dangerous when they get up to bat.

These "heros" are more than positions and skillsets. They have definite personalities that don't take long to come to the fore. There's the cheerfully cocky Curt Schilling--ever confident of winning if they'll just give him the ball, the sober Randy Johnson--respectful of his opponents and determined to see a game through to its conclusion, the emotional Tony Womack--playing for his late father, and the tragic young Byung-Hyun Kim--full of self-recrimination for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in both games four and five.

Since this is sports and not actually a battle between good and evil, there's no call to demonize the Yankees, but if "a man is measured by his enemies," the Diamondbacks measure up tall indeed for overcoming such formidable foes.

If you are a fan of epic fantasy, you can make your own analogies to swordsmen and sorcerers, elves, thieves and dwarves. If not, you probably wouldn't understand any I might make. But either way, if you missed this saga, you missed what may be the most memorable World Series in recent history.

We can't seem to figure out if trickle-down economics works or not, so we punt and decide on a case-by-case basis in favor of whatever soaks the taxpayer for the most money. So, those who work for a living get punished for any success they might enjoy, but those who play for a living are the beneficiaries of corporate welfare.

Yes, I'm talking about taxpayer-subsidized professional sports. I've just had the pleasure of watching the Arizona Diamondbacks trounce the New York Yankees for the second time in two days, but I did so from the cheap seats. No, not the ones so high up you get vertigo. I mean the really cheap seats: the ones in front of my TV. That wouldn't bother me--it's broadcast TV after all, so I'm only out the electricity--except I'm wondering if I even want to know how much I paid for the privilege of having a Major League Baseball team locate in my area.

When these things come up for a vote, my first question is, "When do they send me my tickets?" After all, I pay my property tax and my kid is entitled to a free education in the local school system. I pay for my license plates and I get to drive on publicly maintained roads. I pay my income tax and the government makes sure I don't have to learn Chinese if I don't want to. What? I'm not guaranteed tickets? Okay, the stadium only seats around 48,500, so 2.5 million Phoenicians can't all attend the same game, but my name is entered into a drawing for tickets then, right? A lottery of sorts? Now I'm almost as tired of hearing "no" as my two-year-old must be.

Okay. I'm smart enough to understand that some things have indirect rewards. While I didn't get paid directly for all those years of study, I now have a good job that puts bread on the table. So, having a Major League Baseball team in my state brings in tourists. That's nice. So does the Grand Canyon, but I didn't have to dig it. Eh? The tourists spend their money at restaurants and hotels? Great! When do I get my commission? Coupons? Free parking? A thank-you note? Nothing?

Well, there's always pride. Fortunately, I can point to Arizona Ballpark and say, "We built that. A regular modern wonder of the world it is, with a retractable roof and everything! Makes me proud to be an Arizonan!" Eh? Bank One Ballpark you call it? You've gotta be kidding me!

I've been listening to Ozzy's latest album, "Down To Earth," and I like it better each time I hear it. While Ozzy may personally be more "down to earth" these days than in the past, musically he remains true to himself -- introspective, yet open, socially conscious and irreverent. I wouldn't say the album breaks new ground musically, but neither does it feel formulaic or rehashed. It manages to be creative while remaining distinctively Ozzy, both in lyrics and in melody.

The album starts with a tribute to his fans, "Gets Me Through," and alternates between ballads and more aggressive fare. The subject matter is classical Ozzy--the environment, drugs, sanity--with the usual heavy dose of existentialism.

I haven't subjected the lyrics to the serious analysis I liked to do when I was in college, but in his tribute to his fans Ozzy makes reference to his controversial past, saying, "I'm not the Anti-Christ or the Iron Man." As usual, it would be a mistake to take Ozzy either too seriously or not seriously at all.

If you're more into the music than the words, guitarist Zakk Wylde, bassist Robert Trujillo, and drummer Mike Bordin do not disappoint, and Ozzy could teach a lot of singers a thing or two about articulation.

This album deserves equal place with any of Ozzy's solo albums.