jeff

Olympics: Medal Count by Country

2008-08-19T17:01:42.0027Z

Here's a query to see the 2008 Olympic medal count according to Freebase.

Edward Albee's The Goat or Who is Sylvia?: Albee hasn't lost an iota of vitality

2008-08-12T14:09:43.0005Z

Edward Albee is far and away the finest, most painfully penetrating playwright in America over the past century. And I wholeheartedly believe that his best work may well be ahead of us.

To the doubters, examine "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?"... examine the snappy prose, the absorbing plotline, and the earth-shattering thematics that challenge the most hardened, "educated" theatre-student mine.... examine those, and marvel that at the man's vitality, which packs the same disorienting punch that the "Zoo Story" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" provided so many moons ago.

Olympics: CC Images on Flickr

2008-08-12T04:57:31.0000Z

Well, scraping the list of images is pretty straight forward, I just figured there would be too many to add to one topic.

The real trick is how to link images to specific events. For the time being, I assumed it would have to be done manually. Is there something else you had in mind?

Olympics: CC Images on Flickr

2008-08-11T21:01:10.0020Z

Nice! Now we just need an easy way to slurp them in.

Olympics: CC Images on Flickr

2008-08-09T18:24:14.0005Z

Check out the Creative Commons licenced images of the 2008 Summer Olympics on Flickr.

It's especially fun if you have PicLens installed.

Olympics: Beijing Olympics 2008

2008-07-30T08:33:31.0000Z

Beijing 2008 Olympic Ticket Prices and Samples

2008 Olympic Ticket Prices (RMB)
Sport	Lowest	Highest	Date	Sport	Lowest	Highest	Date
Basketball	50	1,000	9-24 August	Volleyball	50	800	9-24 August
Football	40	800	6-23 August	Shooting	30	50	9-17 August
Athletics	50	800	15-24 August	Tennis	100	600	10-17 August
Diving	60	500	10-23 August	Weightlifting	30	200	9-19 August

Photo: Opening ceremony sample ticket of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Photo: Closing ceremony sample ticket of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Photo: Sports competition sample ticket of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Photo: Accredited personnel sample ticket of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

for more information about beijing 2008 olympics please visit http://english.51766.com/detail/news_detail.jsp?info_id=1101344922

from http://english.51766.com by lisa

Olympics: Beijing Olympics 2008

2008-07-30T08:31:14.0017Z

Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Competition Schedule

Date	Games	Medals
August 6&7	Football Preliminary
August 8	Opening Ceremony
August 9	Rowing, Badminton, Basketball, Boxing, Cycling (Road) Final, Fencing Final, Football, Gymnastics (Artistic), Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Judo Final, Aquatics (Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Shooting Final, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	11
August 10	Rowing, Badminton, Basketball, Boxing, Cycling (Road) Final, Fencing Final, Football, Gymnastics (Artistic), Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Judo Final, Aquatics (Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Tennis, Shooting Final, Archery, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	12
August 11	Rowing, Badminton, Basketball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak (Slalom), Fencing Final, Football, Gymnastics (Artistic) Final, Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Judo Final, Aquatics (Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Tennis, Shooting Final, Archery, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	12
August 12	Rowing, Badminton, Basketball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak (Slalom) Final, Equestrian (Eventing), Fencing Final, Football, Gymnastics (Artistic) Final, Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Judo Final, Wrestling (Greco-Roman) Final, Aquatics (Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Softball, Tennis, Shooting Final, Archery, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	16
August 13	Rowing, Badminton, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak (Slalom), Cycling (Road) Final, Equestrian (Eventing), Fencing Final, Football, Gymnastics (Artistic) Final, Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Judo Final, Wrestling (Greco-Roman) Final, Aquatics (Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Softball, Tennis, Shooting Final, Archery Final, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	17
August 14	Rowing, Badminton, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak (Slalom) Final, Cycling (Track) Final, Equestrian (Eventing), Fencing Final, Football, Gymnastics (Artistic) Final, Handball, Hockey, Judo Final, Wrestling (Greco-Roman) Final, Aquatics (Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Softball, Tennis, Table Tennis, Shooting Final, Archery Final, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	19
August 15	Athletics Final, Rowing, Badminton Final, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Cycling (Track) Final, Equestrian (Eventing) Final, Fencing Final, Football, Gymnastics (Trampoline) Final, Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Judo Final, Aquatics (Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Softball, Tennis, Table Tennis, Shooting Final, Archery Final, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	20
August 16	Athletics Final, Rowing Final, Badminton Final, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Cycling (Track) Final, Fencing Final, Gymnastics (Trampoline) Final, Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Wrestling (Freestyle) Final, Aquatics (Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Softball, Tennis Final, Table Tennis, Shooting Final, Archery Final, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	27
August 17	Athletics Final, Rowing Final, Badminton Final, Basketball, Boxing, Cycling (Track) Final, Equestrian (Dressage), Fencing Final, Football, Gymnastics (Artistic) Final, Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Wrestling (Freestyle) Final, Aquatics (Synchronized Swimming), Aquatics (Diving) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Softball, Tennis Final, Table Tennis, Shooting Final, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	28
August 18	Athletics Final, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak (Flat water), Cycling (Track), Equestrian (Dressage) Final, Football, Gymnastics (Artistic) Final, Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Aquatics (Synchronized Swimming), Aquatics (Diving) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Softball, Table Tennis, Triathlon Final, Sailing Final, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach)	25
August 19	Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak (Flat water), Cycling (Track), Equestrian (Jumping), Football, Weightlifting Final, Handball, Hockey, Wrestling (Freestyle), Aquatics (Synchronized Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Diving) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Table Tennis, Triathlon Final, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach) Final	10
August 20	Athletics Final, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak (Flat water), Cycling (Mountain bike), Equestrian (Dressage), Gymnastics (Rhythmic), Handball, Hockey, Wrestling (Freestyle), Aquatics (Diving) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo) Final, Softball, Taekwondo Final, Table Tennis Final, Sailing, Volleyball, Volleyball (Beach) Final	14
August 21	Athletics Final, Basketball, Canoe/Kayak (Flat water), Cycling (Mountain bike) Final, Equestrian (Jumping) Final, Football, Gymnastics (Rhythmic), Handball, Hockey, Wrestling (Freestyle), Aquatics (Synchronized Swimming), Aquatics (Diving) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo), Modern Pentathlon Final, Softball Final, Taekwondo Final, Table Tennis Final, Sailing Final, Volleyball	24
August 22	Athletics Final, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak (Flat water) Final, Cycling (BMX) Final, Equestrian (Dressage) Final, Football Final, Gymnastics (Rhythmic) Final, Handball, Hockey Final, Aquatics (Synchronized Swimming) Final, Aquatics (Diving) Final, Modern Pentathlon Final, Taekwondo Final, Table Tennis Final, Volleyball	23
August 23	Athletics Final, Baseball Final, Basketball Final, Boxing Final, Canoe/Kayak (Flat water) Final, Cycling (BMX) Final, Football, Gymnastics (Rhythmic) Final, Handball Final, Hockey Final, Aquatics (Diving) Final, Aquatics (Water Polo) Final, Taekwondo Final, Table Tennis Final, Volleyball Final	32
August 24	Closing Ceremony, Athletics Final, Basketball Final, Boxing Final, Equestrian (Jumping) Final, Football Final, Handball Final, Aquatics (Diving) Final, Volleyball Final	13

for more information about beijing 2008 olympic games please visit http://english.51766.com/channel/event.jsp?tree_id=478287&pageNo=1

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Written Work: Subjects

2008-07-08T18:59:15.0012Z

"Subjects" is pretty much wide open; do what you will.

Written Work: Subjects

2008-07-08T01:11:25.0005Z

Are the "subjects" of a written work restricted to subjects that are addressed in a non-fictional manner, or can e.g. Octavia Butler's biology-focused SF works have a "subject" of biology?

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-11T05:48:28.0009Z

That might help but I doubt it will ever be as intuitive or as used as author, publication date, publisher, editor, etc. Written work is a very basic type that is almost always co-typed. Adding a such a non-essential property to it just seems wrong to me.

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-10T19:09:11.0000Z

Ed: upthread a bit, you mention that the property "school or movement" is not immediately intuitive. I think this may be the root of the problem. Coming from a literature background, it seems obvious to me. But it just occurred to me that from the standpoint of academic or scholarly writing "school" is a pretty ambiguous term. Maybe we should try to come up with a better name, and see how that looks.

Quotation: Quote as an alias for this type?

2008-06-10T18:31:41.0007Z

Good idea. Consider it done.

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-10T18:15:06.0007Z

I think you overestimate the utility of hiding unused values. In viewing one, you view all. Further, you don't get information for a property until you start to edit it. Further still, in terms of types, the relevance manager does a lot of the work by narrowing down types. For properties you need to look at and interpret them all. You could probably develop a "functionality" distribution curve based on the number of properties for any given type. How many is too many? There will be a too many. I'm thinking about usability too.

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-10T07:57:36.0007Z

The only reason for moving date and place of death to a new Deceased Person type was that, especially in the old UI, it was extremely creepy to look at an instance of a person with those values just sitting there… waiting… empty… hungry for a value… The semantic value of a separate type was a much more minor point.

Especially given that the new UI hides unused values unless one really wants to fill them in, and given the comparative difficulty of figuring out which type needs to be added to facilitate using a particular desired property, proliferating types is really not useful. Sure, it may be more purely semantically clean—and I’m quite the sucker for that argument—but the usability is paramount.

Further, in this specific case, every piece of writing can be said to be in a school or movement, even the driest of non-fiction. So go ahead and, as you say, load it up!

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-10T03:07:23.0000Z

Welcome to the party Faye! I take your point but I still don't agree.

The deceased person type approach seems like a good one to me, although I might have kept the death date on Person because all people die. I can certainly understand the case for a Deceased_person type with associated properties but I can't understand why that case is perceived differently than Work_of_literary_school. I think the case is stronger for that type to be a separate one and not Deceased person.

The TV_program example is the same in that I would use an end date on the program type and possibly a "Cancelled_program" property or type for the details. Programs, like people, all have end dates no matter how good they are (see The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.). The details of the ending are tangential.

I would probably add spin-offs as a property of TV_program because the property is so intuitive and simple, even though spin-offs are not as common/universal as children and siblings. Plus, the potential for siblings, children and spin-offs is always present even if through adoption and/or nostalgia.

A "None" value could be used for siblings, children and spin-offs without asking the user to look up what they mean. The same can't really be said for Literary school/movement.

If you still don't agree, maybe I should start looking for other possible but not always relevant properties of written work so we can really load it up!? ;)

Quotation: Quote as an alias for this type?

2008-06-10T01:47:25.0012Z

Seems like 'Quote' might be a good alias for the 'Quotation' type

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-10T01:05:13.0007Z

Grrr, my super-unsupported internal discussion RSS died last Wednesday, and I can't believe I missed this discussion (kicking myself)!

As the person who asked for the property "Poetic/Literary School or Movement", Ed, I have to say I agree with Jeff. It's just not possible to normalize types and properties in such a way that all instances of a type have values for all of its properties.

Now we do try to factor out the rather silly or morbid cases. For example, having a "Date of Death" property on type Person for people still alive just seemed wrong, so the Deceased Person type was, uhm, born. But this logic is applied on a case-by-case basis.

If you take a look at the TV Program type, you'll see that there's a "air date of final episode" property. We could've created a similar "Canceled TV Program" type for that and separate it from the TV Program type, but then why stop there? The type also has "Spin-offs" and "Spun off from" properties, but since most programs don't ever achieve the kind of requisite popularity to have or be a spin-off, why not spin off those properties to form new types that only the most successful programs get cotyped with?

And BTW, since I'm an only child, I reject the fact that Person has a "Siblings" property that I can never fill out. Why isn't it moved out to a more appropriate "People with Siblings" type? You see where I'm going with this. :)

(Off to find more discussions I missed last week, grrr...)

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-09T23:07:29.0000Z

Er, yeah, that's what I meant!

Agreed, no workable model will have 100% of properties applicable to all instances. However, this one just seems really particular to a sub-group, not the whole.

Using the spouse/partner example, that property is immediately intuitive and has potential to be applicable to any instance. I don't think either of those traits apply to literary school/movement.

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-09T22:09:47.0007Z

I don't think it's possible to create a workable model in which 100% of properties on a type would always be applicable to 100% of possible instances. I note, for example, think we're not having this conversation about the property "spouse (or domestic partner)" on the "person" type, even though that property is not applicable to people who have never been married. Is your argument that there are too many types of written works and authors for which the "literary movement" properties can't apply? (Scientific journal articles, textbooks, technical manuals, most reference books, most reviews, most newspaper reportage all spring to mind.)

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-09T19:09:43.0000Z

I respectfully disagree. If a property does not apply to all instances of the type then I don't think it should belong on the type. A new type should be created that is co-typed with the first one and includes the additional properties. Otherwise, the sticking point you mention will result in unnecessary and aggregative errors. There should be no need to define "many".

A "Written work of literary movement" type that is co-typed with "Written work" and adds the literary movement property makes a lot more sense to me than forcing users to figure out whether or not their topic(s) meets the requirements to be attributed by any given property of an otherwise appropriate type. It's tough enough trying to figure out which type to use! :)

Literary School Or Movement: Request: Remove links from Author and Written work

2008-06-09T17:46:07.0000Z

I moved this to "written work" and "author" from "poem" and "poet" because it was silly to constrain movements to poetic movements. And I was a bit hesitant to put them on written work and author because the types are so all-encompassing. But I do worry that creating "member of literary movement" and "work belonging to literary movement" types would be worse. It's pretty trivial to leave properties blank. It's rather more work to add a new type to get a property, since you have to know that you need to do so (although the publishing domain is chock full of these already, I admit).

Properties do not need to be applicable to all instances of a type to be on a type; they just need to be applicable to many of the topics (the definition of "many", of course, being the sticking point). And a significant number of poems, plays, fiction, essays, and certain types of prose non-fiction could be said to belong to a school or movement.

Award: Suggestion for new properties

2008-05-19T19:16:34.0007Z

I was looking at the Edgar Awards database, and the categories include "Ellery Queen Award", "Robert L. Fish Memorial Award", and "Mary Higgins Clark Award", three that clearly are not named after Poe.

Two properties would work for me.

Award: Suggestion for new properties

2008-05-19T17:55:43.0007Z

I want to say that "award" is the best place for it -- otherwise we'd have to enter a couple dozen "Joseph Pulitzer"s in the award categories. On the other hand, some awards do have categories with different namesakes -- the British Fantasy Awards have an August Derleth award, the Oscars have a couple special awards named after people, and there are surely more. Not sure what the best policy is. Two properties?

Award: Suggestion for new properties

2008-05-16T08:16:16.0007Z

Doh! I just saw that "Date Established" is already a property of Award Category, which is a better place for it also. May I request the Namesake property (rename as you wish) be added to the Award Category type as well?

Award: Suggestion for new properties

2008-05-16T08:10:03.0012Z

Look, first discussion on Award! Yay, what do I win? :)

I'd like to suggest adding a couple of new properties to the Award type:

- Year established

- Namesake (e.g. for the Edgar Award, this would be Edgar Allan Poe)

Consumer product: Trade Number

2008-05-15T21:24:20.0012Z

Are there any plans to add a property for Universal Product Codes or Global Trade Item Numbers? Seems like a useful property to have, and it could be applied to a lot of the topics on Freebase (computer games, comics, etc.)

Election campaign: Should this link to Political District

2008-05-06T03:09:49.0007Z

Ed, take a look at any of the California legislature or Congressional seats to see how this is modeled with the Primary Election type, for example, this year’s race for the 8th California Congressional District seat, currently held by Nancy Pelosi. There are three primary elections, as well as one write-in candidate who (assuming she collects enough signatures) goes directly to the main ballot.

The presidential model is much messier, since strictly only the Electoral College elects the president, and in some states, the primary is binding on the delegates, while in other states it is advisory or supplemental. No one has taken on the task of modeling this hugely complicated structure yet. Consider also that in November, different sets of candidates will be on the ballot in different states; one would really need to model each state’s presidential election as a separate thing, which is just fantastically messy.

Got a compelling use case? (-:

Election campaign: Should this link to Political District

2008-05-06T02:23:55.0000Z

How about making this type nested, where sub-campaigns are linked to larger ones? For example, we are about to have our NC primaries. Some of the people are running for national seats. There is currently no way to link these state-wide election campaigns to the national ones.

Election campaign: Should this link to Political District

2008-01-30T01:36:14.0000Z

Okay - I suspect that the 3 entries under the campaign has come in through the campaign contributions and my incorrect setup. I'll make the corrections as you suggest and see how it looks.

I'm not finding it as intuitive as I'd like - thinking that others may struggle as well. To me an election is broader - such as BC General Election. A campaign would be the battles for individual seats or ridings that make up the general election boundary. In terms of your system the General Election is this fall, but campaigns would be waged for seats all across the country.

I'll keep at it though.

Ray

Election campaign: Should this link to Political District

2008-01-30T00:29:59.0000Z

The Election campaign links to an Election, which is linked to a district. I notice you have Kevin Falcon running for British Columbia general election 2005 (in three separate campaigns, no less!); instead, he should run for a particular seat. Surrey Cloverdale Riding 2005 should be an Election, not an Election campaign; Kevin Falcon for BC Parliament 2005 should be an Election campaign contesting that election. Does that make more sense?

Election campaign: Should this link to Political District

2008-01-29T21:09:24.0005Z

Can a property be added to this type that links to its Political District? What is the best process to ask for this type of thing?

Ray

jeff: Abstract Content

2007-08-14T15:33:11.0007Z

I'm trying to think through how these various types are related to each other.

My thinking is that there is an Article type (perhaps your Published Work type). An article would be a type related to Periodical/Magazine, and an Abstract would be part of an Article. The relationships would be something like:

Magazine > Article > Abstract

Of course, there would be other types included within these.

There clearly needs to be a linkage back and forth between these various types so that a user is able move from magazine to abstract to article. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with Freebase to say how this should be implemented.

jeff: Abstract Content

2007-08-13T18:24:13.0002Z

That looks pretty straightforward. The big question is, what type should it connect to? "Published Work" is the most general type for publishing, but since it includes books (of any type), stories, poems, essays, etc., as well as articles and non-fiction books, it seems a bit odd to put it there. On the other hand, I'm reluctant to add another type called "abstracted publication" (or something) that could be added as a co-type to any work that needed to have an abstract attached. Any thoughts?

jeff: Abstract Content

2007-08-07T16:43:53.0011Z

I think an abstract type should be fairly simple. The primary properties are:

1. A name or title (the same as the article being abstracted).
2. One to two paragraphs for text.

Of course, we also need to be able to move back and forth between the abstract and the article that it is abstracting.

The abstract structure from DocBook is probably the best example to use for properties in an abstract. That structure is documented at http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/abstract.html.

Some more descriptive information about what abstracts should be is at:

http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/abstracts.html
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/bizwrite/abstracts.html

Let me know if you have any additional questions.

jeff: Abstract Type?

2007-08-06T16:51:07.0000Z

I hadn't thought about it, but it seems like a possibility. I know that the publishing domain doesn't currently have good models for academic/scientific publications, although I have been talking to some people about that, and it seems like "abstract" might fit in with that conversation. What properties do you think should go on it?

jeff: Abstract Type?

2007-08-05T04:19:54.0011Z

Do you have any plans to put together an "Abstract" type for inclusion in the publishing domain? I'm currently putting together a series of types and need to include an "Abstract" as a property for a couple of them. If possible, I'd like to keep that type in the publishing domain rather than in the area that I'm working on.

jeff: ... and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

2007-05-04T18:20:49.0006Z

"Well who in the encyclopedia wants to know?" Sorry, couldn't resist.