A little leisure reading for those of you that may be a little rusty on the topic of propositional logic:

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/log/terms2.htm

Although lacking a specific example of its use, the article was well done.  It allowed me to dip my toe in the XML pool without drowning at the same time bringing back memories of coding in i8080A machine language, front panel switch input and LED output on my IMSAI 8080 (31 years old & still kickin')!

An understanding of low level topics such as logic, binary (octal & hex, too), discrete electronics, relational math, etc. has made life a great deal easier as a programmer and as a DBA.  Do not dismiss the basics!

...and yes, the Bowmar Brain was a wonderful tool but it would not have been nearly as valuable without the understanding of manual cypherin' (as Jethro Bodine would say).  Try your hand at a little long division, square roots or bit masking.  It will go a long way to improving your understanding of what those electrons are really doing in there!

Just my $0.02