> For the benefits of all, would you kindly give us
> a self-introduction?

Dear Yong Peng;

I noticed that you are an electrical engineer. I studied this subject as a
graduate student at Stanford University in the US and worked as a
research assistant and computer programmer in the EE department.
Later I worked for seven years as a computer consultant around the US
and also at an AI firm in Palo Alto, so that's how I know about AI stuff
like CYC.

(I have a feeling that some of the logic of the Abhidharma Pitaka,
namely the Yamaka, might have some things that resemble
knowledgebase logic in AI, that was used to condensing ideas in list
form in the Tipitaka.)

Recently, I've taught at universities in South Korea and Thailand and
now work at a newspaper, my boss and I run the only blog at the
Bangkok Post, which is fun because you get to write a lot and you get to
work with software (Movable Type plus traffic monitoring software). I
taught myself Burmese and have translated U Kala's Maha-yaza-win-gyi
chronicle. I've published several papers on military history at SOAS in
London (warfare is not very Buddhist I guess, but that is what Burmese
history books are largely about, anyway I'm anti-war, war is just
another form of human samsara, perhaps the most horrible form)

Recently I've taken to investigating in greater depth the intellectual
history of chronicles and chronicle writing and this leads inevitably back
to Pali literature in the 14th-15th century in Burma, particularly
interested in the interface of Buddhism and politics, which is law and
warfare for pre-modern history. During my vacation last month I
discovered Steven Collins "Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities" chapter
six of which completely transformed the way I think about Burmese
historical chronicles.

I saw your page of software projects. There are things in Chinese
language pedagogy that might be borrowed for Pali, like a well-defined
vocabulary list based on word frequency combined with online
flashcards and diagnostic testing that tells roughly how many words
you've mastered, or grammatical points you have to work on. The
Chinese text readers that gloss Chinese characters when you sweep the
cursor over them would be more difficult for Pali because you have to
parse the words down the component morphological pieces first, but
someone must have done the first steps.

One of my friend's at work is a former monk and he amazes me with
the conceptual depth of his vocabulary that he got from his Pali studies,
so I have a little bit of an eccentric idea perhaps, that Pali might be
useful for teaching English., so much of the Thai and Burmese
languages seem to come from it.

Looking forward to sharing Pali learning experiences with you.

Sincerely,
Jon Fernquest

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Ong Yong Peng" <pali.smith@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Jon,
>
> I am truly impressed by the technical contents of the messages you
> wrote to the group. For the benefits of all, would you kindly give us
> a self-introduction? Thank you.
>
> metta,
> Yong Peng.
>
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Jon Fernquest wrote:
>
> Have any Pali scholars ever heard of a Pali list of different kinds of
> languages or words. Here is a list from a preface of a Burmese
> historical work.
>