User talk:Sbharris/archive12

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive #12 Messages from June 2, 2012 - end of 2012.

Gold

Hey. I didnt link it to nanoparticle gold because it is not colloidal gold. It is a thin film produced in an evaporator. It is for thickness tests in electronics — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwchalmers (talk • contribs) 00:56, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. All the links I made WERE to colloidial gold, so they should be fine. Jasper Deng undid your edit with the ostensible reason that we had an article on nanoparticle gold. If your use is different, then put it back in, as we apparently have no subarticle on it. However, the links I made should still be good. (Remember to keep it short, though, since this article is short of space. If you have a lot of mateiral, consider starting a stub or writing an article, and link from the gold article, with one line of description there.) SBHarris 01:01, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Gold

Hey.

I explained this to Jasper. Actually what you are looking at is NOT colloidal gold. It is a 30nm thin film produced in an evaporator in high vacuum. Gold nano-particles (colloidal gold), are produced chemically, usually in some type of suspension.

Also, in the case of a thin film, you get the same transmission spectra regardless of thickness (unless it becomes so thick that the film is opaque e.g. full attenuation). The transmission spectrum is essentially the INVERSE of the reflection specturm you get when you see bulk gold. It is a driect way of observing the color properties of bulk gold.

Thats why I took out the edits to colloidal gold. It is misleading because what is shown is absolutely not collodial gold (I made the film myself). The thin film has none of the cool properties that colloidal gold has. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwchalmers (talk • contribs) 01:17, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Would you please LOOK at the edits I made? [1] This is in reference to chemically-produced colloidal gold. As for the rest, talk to Jasper. He took out your stuff, not me. All I did was fix the capitalization problems. SBHarris 01:31, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Gold

Process guide is up for all to see. Different image up too (same peice) because of the comments of materialsci.

Mwchalmers (talk) 02:55, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

A Royal Golden Medal Barnstar for you!

	The Golden Medal of Science Barnstar
	Thank you for your many efforts to your many contributions about the life of knowledge and mystery for science and believing the many quantities and phases of possibilities and discovery for ongoing science seekers, including me, --GoShow (...............) 05:58, 5 June 2012

Why thank you for that. 30,000 edits over 6 years, more than half in the sciences. And, yet, this may be my first barnstar ever on WP. And it must be a sincere one, free of vaseline or lipbalm, since I have absolutely nothing to do with wikipolitics. Ghosh! SBHarris 06:56, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Higgs boson

I've reverted the too aggresive archive done by another editor. Unfortunately your edit got caught in the revert. Do you want to remake it? I apologize for the inconvenience. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 01:47, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll redo it. SBHarris 01:51, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

List of nuclides -- sorted by half-life

Hi

Just recently you added a reference for Xe-136 half-time detection. Unluckily it is the first to break the readability of the table. I would suggest add a further column generally to add references nuclide-specific. Many(!) data are disputable, even in physics review level.

But what is more important, I worry who added this nonsense (to be precise, off-topic and ill-defined) about short-living natural nuclides? Why are they mentioned in this article, at all? It is highly dubious, because any nuclide which can be created by cosmic rays will be produced sooner or later! It is only a question how long and with which effort you try to detect them. Thus, I think almost all sentences where "natural short-living" occured should be deleted in this article, IMHO. :-/

The first paragraph of this message triggered to write this message to you, but I always thought whether and when to expand this list further. I stopped when expanding the list up to half-life of 1 hour, because to my knowledge all nuclides with Z < 96 which will still be dedected will have half-lives < 1 h -- rather good models exist for years (good enough to get these limits). There will surely be further nuclides with Z >= 96 which half-lives > 1 h -- noone knows how many. Critical are the half-lifes of the unknown nuclides Pt-204, Hg-210 and Po-220 (the next are Pu-247, Pu-248, Cm-252) and this status now keeps since more than 10 years. :-( I wonder whether it makes sense to add a new batch of nuclides, all those up to ... X min half-life?

I like to hear your opinion to all 3 points -- I'm afraid there are much too less experts on wikipedia, that it would make sense to add all literature references for the data. Thanks, Achim1999 (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. To address all 3 questions: 1) The reference for Xe-136 was not intended to be a general reference, but because the disagreement came up in the context of "which radisotope has the longest measured half life" as discussed on the TALK:isotope page. It seems that the Japanese have claimed to see double beta decay in Xe-136 at 10^26 sec, but a large liquid xenon detector has ruled this out to better than 10^32 seconds, which means Xe-136 is stable as far as we can tell (we know its stability to as high a number as most of the "stable" nuclides in its mass range). So this disagreement in measurement of more than a 6 logs (1 million) is rather violent. It moves Xe-136 from observational radioactive to observationally stable, which is a big jump. I tought it was worth a note. It changes all the numbers in the other tables as well-- for example if Xe-136 is stable then there are 256 stable nuclides, not 255 (though the number of primordials at 288 doesn't change, as you just get a radioactive primordial nuclide moving to the stable class, so there are 32 of these not 33). Yes, I know this number is changing all the time, but we attempt to keep track-- it's more worthwhile than the other counting issues you mention.

Well, I always try to get the things more objective. Your main reasons seems to be that this is a rare event -- I would not call it rare :) -- and more that it is 6 logs in magnitude. I like to reply it is either 1 magnitude (base 1 million) or 20 magnitude (base 2) -- only to point you to your subjectivity. :-/ General those measurements at the end of 0/1 events have errors reaching into the 100 % - range. :-( Anyway, this running number, yeah it is in a certain sense very important, would only be changed by 1 for say 100 nuclides (I'm too lazy to look for the exact number). And this is a small change compared to the table as a total. Anyway, you opened the box of Pandora if making references directly into the measured values in the table. Why not make an own last column? :)

A last column with a reference if needed is fine with me. I'm just not great with column markup language. Remember this is not "my article". I did some counting for it, but a lot of it needs fixing. The half lives have far too many sig digits for example and that's surely wrong. But I haven't the time to fix it.

The objective vs. subjective part comes the sorities paradox where a mere qualitative change becomes a qualitative change. Usually this is because of physiology-- at some temperature a thing goes from warm to HOT! and you get pain where you didn't before. In other cases you exceed a threshhold in human observation power like ability to measure a half live longer than x, and nuclides with longer half lives than that, we call "stable". Of the 255 of these, there are only 90 that are energetically stable. You can see that everything about Nb-41 can fission-- we just haven't seen it. The 6 log disagreement about Xe-136 moves it from a qualitative class to another-- it's not "just" a number thing. When Bi-209 was found radioactive, that was a big thing. It does no good at all you say that Pb-208 is probably radioactive also. We must go by what we have measured, to some extent, in case our theories are wrong.

Then firstly you should remove this "proton-decay" speculation-remark (which is HIGHLY questionable for bounded (inside nuclides) protons), which worried me also. People so often measure with two different scale here. :-( Achim1999 (talk)

2) Some short-lived (non-primordial) naturally-occuring nuclides are very important-- atmospheric cosmogenic nuclide Be-7, C-14, Cl-36, I-129 and radiogenic nuclides like radon and radium. You will notice that I didn't put them in a table or even list them, but we probably should somewhere (not by half life, but by abundance or activity in the environment). The total number 339 comes from this source: [2] but it's not set in stone, as these include the classic decay chain radiogenics from thorium, U-235 and U-238, and the most well-known cosmogenics like Be-7 and C-14. You're probably right that everything that can be made cosmogenically will be made in atmosphere and upper crust, but there's a HUGE gap between the longest lived primordial Pu-244 and the longest lived purely upper soil cosmogenics like Al-26, Ca-41, etc. Somebody should add up the cosmogenics easily found, along with decay chain radiogenics easily found (perhaps with half lives over 1000 years?) and put them in a table. I really want common radiogenics + cosmogenics. It will always be expanding, but most tables in Wikipedia are expanding. These are important because they are useful, notable, and have been known for a long time.

Sorry, you miss my point: the table and the article was intended for a sorted list by half-lifes -- absolutely neutral, nothing to do with humans (or biology) or the fact that our earth crust is made up by certain nuclides! :-( Thus, I call them "off-topic". Moreover what do you call HUGE? Considering half-lifes of known nuclides between 10^-23 sec and >> 10^23 sec then your mention gap is a really tiny gap. I feel a bid sad about such subjectivity among wikipedians. I know most are people from the street, many want-to-be scientists, no proven physists, but this doesn't comfort me. :-/

Again, even a table with totally objective numerical ordering has natural "gaps" in it, like Saturn's rings. One is very great gap between Pu-244 with the 81 million year half life which is found on Earth, dating from the beginning of the solar system (and the many supernovas that formed the debris our solar system condensed from), and the next nuclide with a 35 million year half-live, Nb-92, which has never been found naturally on Earth (some from artificial nuclear fission in weapons is known), and then to any nuclides with a shorter half life. No other shorter lived nuclides are known except decay products, cosmic ray products, or artificials. Please read primordial nuclide. There are only 32 or 33 of these detected primordials that are radioactive. That's not many. Are there more nuclides than that on Earth? Of course! In theory, every nuclide is present on Earth, if you could see every last atom, as natural nuclear fission happens, and it makes every possible nuclide, in quantities a few atoms at a time. But that's not very interesting. Pointing out that every nuclide you can think of is in your body and in seawater and so on, tells you very little. You are now looking at the world without filters. To point out that the Earth's atmosphere has no upper limit, and in theory extends throughout the solar system, is impossible to refute and indeed is doubtless true. But of what use is it to look at it that way.

3) I'm not adverse to a table with isotopes with half lives shorter than 1 hour, but we have about 1000 now and there are several thousand more known, so it's a big job. But surely cosmogenics and radiogenics in the environment with half lives of thousands or even hundreds of thousand years are more interesting? SBHarris 22:45, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Who told you to judge gaps to YOUR subjective feeling to be "great" ? Not to mention to start interpretated what these numbers/hlaf-lifes means on eart-development! :-( You also make no sections in other nuclide tables about certain isotop sets because you can justify subjective reasoned extrema/especialities. :-( To be specify: This "short-living natural nuclides" harms the structure of the arcticle. Achim1999 (talk) 10:42, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

You want an interesting article? Why not inserting many colored pictures? :-(

We do have many colored pictures to make interesting articles. Look at fluorine and oxygen. We're writing an encyclopedia and it does not contain all information, but a distillation of it, which means a summary, which means it's subjective. It contains the most important and interesting information, with sorting and subjectivity.

Sorry, I thought you would have noticed the irony in my above statement. I miss-judged. Achim1999 (talk) 10:42, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

That is interesting is SO subjective and depends on the interest of the actual reader -- as you know.

I DO know. But there's no getting away from the problem of turning what we know of the world into a subjectively sorted type of information, on the basis of some type of average human interest. Anything else is almost completely useless. A total sorting of "facts" by quantitation would be difficult, because the measures we pick to quantitate BY, are themselves often subjective. When we got done, the result would not be very useful, as there are many qualitative virtues that are necessary for life, that the universe is not interested in. We add those values by virtue of being biological organisms with needs.

I'm not afraid of this "big" -- I'm afraid that these running number will far more changing than now -- and people will jump in, change values according to different literature values, edit-wars will break out. Therefore there must be indeed for each nuclide a comment column, where an explicit reference to physical review (or similar high quality journal) must be given for each cited half-life and decay-mode! THIS is the real work to get a high quality table (which I'm really afraid of).

Fear not. Hang around WP a while more and you'll see everything. Please read WP:LAME carefully. Wikipedia represents a great deal of work, to be sure, but it's all volunteer, so if you think you'll open up a can of worms and make something that will force people to work hard here, think again! Nobody does anything but volunteer, here.

Sorry, if I sounded too harsh. You did anyway a great job over the years on wikipedia. :) Achim1999 (talk) 23:33, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. But you need to learn to "let go." You've done more work on list of nuclides than any editor except me [3], but neither of us "owns" it. Don't be afraid of changes being made to your favorite article. The only cure for that is to pick out another article and work on that instead. You can't preserve anything on WP, and it's not good to care too much for anything here. This is not your family home or your kids or a book you wrote. It's a collective effort. Right under the "save page" button it says "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." And they mean it.

You only have about 1100 edits (about 3% of mine), and 20% of what you've done is distribed equally to just two articles-- Noble metal and List of nuclides. [4]. That's too much. You need to diversify and avoid that feeling of ownership. And read WP:OWN. It helps. SBHarris 00:25, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I already abondened my ownerships/feelings 3 years ago! I see only the ill-bending of the article which hurts me. (Giving the folk games, but not education, is the reason I had withdrawn to seriously support wikipedia with my mathematical expertise, and I'm not the only expert who decided so.)

Thus my point is total different in judgment. I would be happy if I only put/editing 5 articles in wikipedia each about 20% of my contribution. I like to see high quality articles, not many low level articles, like it is since years. And this is my point: Wikipedia suffers much of low-leveling articles which some were created and intended by experts to set and kept on a high level! This develeopment sucks and withdraw me and other experts from support wikimedia and other people having too much time but too less knowledge to be able to recognize this. Achim1999 (talk) 10:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Moreover, you seem also to unwilling to stay objective to the facts but like to judge subjectively about adding/deleting content to a strictly objective intended topic. Achim1999 (talk) 10:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I know that sometimes, when I edit, it can seem like every edit done to an article that you're working on is vandalism. When working on an article, it can be tempting to try to stop other people from editing the article, as it can change what you had planned. It's a natural feeling. However, in the long run, the contributions others provide are almost always good for the article, and even though you may have to change your plans for the article a bit, the added text is most often something you overlooked and would not have added otherwise, thus improving the article. Achim1999, ahthough every edit to an article you are working on can seem like vandalism, they most often help the article. StringTheory¹¹ 03:19, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Decompression (diving) nomination for A-class

Hi Sbharris, I think Decompression (diving) is up to A-class, Please take a look if you have the time and comment on article talk page. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:37, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Non-free rationale for File:ZaprudTV.JPG

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:ZaprudTV.JPG. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under non-free content criteria, but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia is acceptable. Please go to the file description page, and edit it to include a non-free rationale.

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified the non-free rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 19:35, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Please note discussion at WP:COIN

The activities of Sebastio Venturi are being discussed here. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:23, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

HCFCs are not banned

They are allowed until 2020 in the developed world and 2030 in the undeveloped. They are about 50% of the refrigerant market. The article's body is also clear that they have a partial ozone damaging effect (about one tenth as serious as CFCs). When you edited the lead to add the nuance about ozone damaging, you made a false statement about HCFCs being banned. I will straighten it out and attempt to appease you, although really it was fine before.TCO (talk) 04:54, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, they should and eventually will be banned, then, and are being phased out as rapidly as possible. Probably it's better not to mention them at all. SBHarris 04:57, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

agreed, I deleted the HCFC mention in lead, so we don't have to deal with that complication (in body there is room to get into the intricacy).TCO (talk) 05:03, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Oswald's Carcano

Hi -- I looked at the backyard photos again more closely, and it does appear that you are right! In CE133B and C, the rifle is always facing generally trigger-guard forward (which is more natural). So in fact the photos are consistent with the sling being attached to the left side as you are firing.Cdg1072 (talk) 05:05, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Yep. Another example of the conspiracy theorists not doing their homework. SBHarris 20:00, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

John J. Pershing

Unfortunately, changing staes without explanation is a common form of vandalism, so you're gong to need to provide a citation for your change in 1915 to 1916 in this article. As always, when I fact is disputed, it is incumbent on the person who wished to include the fact to provide a citation from a reliable source when challenged. I'd appreciate it if you'd so so. Thanks, Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Fat Man edit reverted

I have reverted your edit to Fat Man at least for the time being. You asserted (without reference) in putting that image and caption in that the Slotin assembly was the same size as the Fat Man core. I know of no sources that say that. The detailed writeups I saw indicated a clear understanding that the components involved, Be hemispheres and core, were sized for experimental purposes and not to match any Fat Man dimensions.

If you have a source that the Slotin accident assembly was in fact Fat Man sized particularly, please provide it...

Thank you. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 07:52, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Let's see your sources. The Daghlian/Slotin "demon core" was used AS a core for an atom bomb test, so there's good reason to think it was standard issue. In fact the Daghlian incident took place such a short time after the end of WW II, when cores and Pu were in very short supply, that the best guess is it actually WAS the core that would have been used in Japan bomb #3, that was never dropped. That one would have been a Pu bomb like Fat Man, of course. That core was in San Francisco waiting to go, when the war ended. You can also see that core in the Daghlian article, and it's pretty clearly the same size core you see in halves in the Slotin photo.

So far as the rest, look at the Slotin recreation. Those are a bunch of not-very-clean crates and an empty coke bottle in 1946. (Drinking coke in a rad lab?!) Not a lot of money is being spent here. It's not a clean-lab with white coats-- it's the way things were in 1946. If you think people would have specially made replacement things to replace off-the shelf multiply-produced bomb components, you're dreaming. You can SEE the outer pieces are the same sizes, to within your ability to disciminate. And we know the core was the standard 6.2 kg Pu core. They didn't use a uranium tamper, since it wasn't needed for this experiment. So it was replaced by a Be reflector. But there was certainly no reason not to use everything else, just as it was in the bomb, and that includes the large outer aluminum sphere. What metal DO you think that's made of? Not beryllium.SBHarris 19:55, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Later. Okay, the declassified radiomedical report on the Slotin accident (then called the "Paharito accident" for the "Little Bird Plateau" where these experiments were carried out), states on page 23 that the hand controlled hemisphere was a "9 inch Be tamper". That's the hemisphere with the thumb-hole. Clearly it's not functioning as a tamper here, but as neutron reflector. However, it's essentially the same dimentions as the 8.75 inch (222 mm) natural uranium tamper sphere that DID have that place in the Fat Man bomb. That means these critical dimensions are the same, just as I had suspected. It also means that the hole in the larger hemisphere of metal (that holds this like a cup) also must be 9 inches in diameter. Do you have any doubt that this outer larger sphere with the 9 inch hole in it, is a standard aluminum pusher hemisphere from a Fat Man assembly?

Your intuition is starting to look very bad here. We've already established that it's the same Pu core, and that the "tamper shell" size is the same as in Fat Man (though the material is changed). And the smaller sphere we know is beryllium doesn't look like the same metal as the larger sphere, which looks very much like aluminum (what's in Fat Man). It has that same pure-white with no cast that very few metals other than Al are. Nickel is off-color as it's a bit yellow. Beryllium doesn't have that look. It's certainly not nickel-plated uranium, as a uranium hemisphere that size (something like 18 inches in diameter) would weigh at least several tons.

There's even a natural explanation for why the 8.75 U tamper is a quarter-inch thinner than the 9 inch Be reflector made to stand in its place for this experiment: the missing 1/4" is the thin boron plastic liner that was being omitted from Fat Man bombs by 1946. Probably the hole in the outer (largest) aluminum pusher was always exactly 9 inches in diameter. SBHarris 00:06, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Personal attacks at Talk:Evidence-based medicine

In this thread I have twice felt the need to raise civility concerns with you [5][6]. Nevertheless, your attacks and insinuations have continued unabated and have become increasingly personal [7]. I refuse to be bullied away from editing this page of high importance to WikiProject Medicine. —MistyMorn (talk) 10:42, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not bullying you, I'm cancelling your vote on this page and pointing out your deficiencies as an editor. You have about a sixth as much of my experience here on WP, you know next to nothing about your subject, and in this particular case, you're wrong on all counts. Also, if you're going to spend all your WP time kissing up on Wales' talk page, you could buy yourself something to keep your virtual lips from getting chapped. This stuff gets noticed. I'm sorry you don't like it. Too bad. SBHarris 21:36, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. —MistyMorn (talk) 23:20, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

September 2012

Please do not attack other editors. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. Various attacks and incivility levelled at User:MistyMorn. See: [attacks by User:Sbharris] Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:22, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

EBM

It was an unfortunate situation, and I would also implicate MistyMom in the escalation on the Talk page. In any case, I've come across your contributions and comments in the past and have been quite impressed. I'm sorry to see you leave that article. I do hope you'll keep an eye on it, and if anything needs to be addressed in it, and if you don't feel comfortable getting involved there, perhaps leave a note on my Talk page or send me an email, and I will see if I can address whatever concern you have. TimidGuy (talk) 09:55, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Also, do realize that much of the RfA stuff involves brownnosing or at least wooing a certain electorate, so don't expect sympathy on ANI. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:04, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much but life is too short to try to manage an article about flying an airplane written by people who have never been in an airplane. I've spent years training with and practicing EBM as a physician, and have had the unfortunate experience of being a very ill patient IN the hospital bed while EBM options were debated, also. All of that should have warned me to just stay away from the topic on Wikipedia. Don't edit any subject here you know, at least not unless you're an administrator who can pull out the admin pistol and stop debate. I repent. It makes for funny articles on WP, but expert plain vanilla users should never edit on their professional topics if they want to stay here long.

As to the editors who came out of the woodwork in behalf of this one on AN/I, ye gods. As you suggest, I seem indeed to have hit some interlocking clique of some sort. For example I don't think I would ever agree to having my photo taken by Shankbone Miller [8] (see the Israeli ambassador hanging with the porn king?) but tastes clearly vary (although the ambassador did redact himself later). So I'm just going to stay as far away from this fubar, as I possibly can. SBHarris 22:42, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Head louse

Re: [9]: Sorry, but I did. There's no mention of this idea anywhere else in the article. There is discussion of mutualism, but not about humans expressing "love by touching their hairy scalps together". The claim was made as a caption to a photo, without a citation to back it up. Thank you for providing a cite to back it up. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:24, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The article I cited is cited in TWO other places in the article. I was too lazy to properly cite it yet a third time for you in the photo. I have now done so. Again, try not to be so confident in yourself without a check. You've been wrong about this issue now twice. Do you want to try for three times? SBHarris 21:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

• It is not necessary for you to be so snarky. If you do a search in the article for the word 'love', even now there is but a single reference in the article prose/captions, and that is in the caption of the image. I read the Head_louse#Possible_mutualism_between_humans_and_headlice section where the image resides. There is no mention whatsoever of humans engaging in this behavior, only in the caption (which, as you note, was uncited). Maybe the article you cited is cited elsewhere in the article, but the phrasing of the caption made an assertion that was not supported by a citation, was not discussed in the prose, and was otherwise left unsupported. Thank you, --Hammersoft (talk) 23:11, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The reason you only see the article title once in a search while cited three times, is that two of these cites now (two before I put it into the photo caption) are the "short form" citation form that you use to save space when citing one source more than once, and these do not show anything but a one word reference inside the cite. I agree that the specific head-touching behavior isn't mentioned anywhere else in the article, but the idea that head lice might be beneficial is mentioned in the photo caption and also in the lede (referenced with this same article) and in the short section text next to the photo, the same idea that lice and humans might be in a mutualistic relationship is also mentioned (and referenced a second time with this same article). So it might have been a wise idea to do one click and see what this mutualism/beneficial idea article said, before deleting a photo that also claimed a "beneficial" relationship. Were I looking for a reference in the material, this cite would surely be the logical choice to look at. If you were giving a caption text the benefit of the doubt to see what motivated it. Nobody expects you to poke through every reference, but this one should have stood out as one to check. It's right there, two lines away from the photo in my browser. SBHarris 00:31, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, we're talking past each other. You're talking about checking references, I'm talking about checking prose. In any case, this discussion is moot. There's a reference to support the claim. That's all I cared about. Thanks, and have a good day. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:37, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

We're not talking past each other, since one cannot check prose without checking references, since there is no way otherwise to find out how much of the prose is covered by a given reference. It could be an entire paragraph or section. We cannot have a reference for every single sentence in WP, or even every statement. What a given reference covers is elastic, and there is no way to check that, without going to the references-- Wikipedia provides no clue, nor any mechanism to even have a clue, since references are supposed to come at the end of the material they cover, not in the middle of it (see WP:MoS on references). Your edit summary for the deletion said "What? back that up with a cite." It was backed up with a cite in the same section, inches away. It just wasn't backed up with a cite you wanted inside the caption, or for one very specific part of a two-part statement. Sorry, but your standards are impossible to attain without clutter, and most of WP isn't written that way. If you simply delete things on Wikipedia under this basis, you will suffer endless fighting and embarassment for yourself. Good luck. However, on those occasions that you're shocked by some statement that you don't believe, but you're really not sure, and you haven't bothered to check the nearby citations, there is a template that may be of use to you: {{citation needed}} It comes out . Neat, eh? It prevents many a problem like this one. SBHarris 00:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Blocking of IP vandals

I was very interested in your comments at Wikipedia talk:Civility#Incivility vs. IP vandalism, and I have made a response there to one of your points. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:32, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Just for fun

The laws of thermodynamics: Zeroth: You must play the game. First: You can't win. Second: You can't break even. Third: You can't quit the game. Cheers! :-D --186.32.17.47 (talk) 05:21, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't quite understand this interpretation of the zeroth law... Double sharp (talk) 03:11, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Nobody does . Which is why the extension to the 0th law is not a very good joke. In fact calling it the 0th law in the first place is only mildly amusing. I suppose the reference is to 0 kelvin. SBHarris 20:25, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

It is _not_ an interpretation: it is a _joke_. As an interpretion it would be completely flawed. The "zeroth law" is sometimes regarded as an "afterthought". "If A and C are each in thermal equilibrium with B, A is also in equilibrium with C." I have always thought that, since it defines a basic aspect of temperature in order to properly define thermal equilibrium it was dubbed "zeroth law" because there was already a first law, and because it is not a "physical law" but a required definition. I had never thought about a reference to 0K; it sounds "amusing", although it seems to me that the third law has more to do with "0K" than the zeroth. I've also seen it as "Zeroth: There is a game". --201.204.200.18 (talk) 23:15, 14 November 2012 (UTC) I did have this old account that I stopped using because I did not see the point. Me being the user that has being talking to you through IP addresses on thermodynamic systems. I'm usually not logged in when I browse the wiki and usually I forget or don't to sign in. I was surprised that the account still existed. I did extensive work on some martial arts systems that I am involved in and it was wiped out by some editors or something so I do not care to work for nothing. --Crio (talk) 16:16, 20 November 2012 (UTC) The article in question was on the Genbukan system. Since Shoto Tanemura Et.al. claim a connection of sorts to ancient Ninpo: an unsubstantiated claim (in as much as their connection lacks third party sources). But the system _does_ exist and is notable, even if Genbukan involves unsubstantiated claims. The article was being redone that way by different people here and it got wiped out, even though the unsubtantiated claims _were_ established as such and third party info on what Genbukan is and it being a world wide school or system of martial arts. i.e. the Bujinkan school does have it's won page and it's creator Masaaki Hatsumi does too: this is a competing school. But Genbukan and Shoto Tanemura are systematically wiped out from wiki. --Crio (talk) 16:23, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I would think that the validity of the third law would be questionable based on one of the laws of mechanics which says with reference to things like perpetual motion etc. that "things will always wear out". And I don't know of an exception.WFPM (talk) 18:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

...the only way of quitting is through dead? ... heat dead? .... LOL!--Crio (talk) 22:39, 20 November 2012 (UTC) (all in jolly good fun!).

Re some of your points

Re your interaction with the MEDRS community, I am guessing that many editors there do not even know what the word "epistemology" means. You seem to be making at least one point that is the same as that in my own mind, that standards of WP:Verifiable and WP:Reliable are not sufficiently critically looked at, nor consistently applied, and therefore the inconsistency makes editing alternative medicine articles difficult, and makes a truly legitimate encyclopedia article on psychiatry and related articles difficult to write. I just wanted to let you know that if I am not commenting on good points you make in your posts over there, it is because I think that some lighter-weight thinking editors (who may have other cognitive skills you or I do not) view your comments without actually thinking about them, mainly based on their length. So my responding to your comments would only make the amount of reading they are already loathe to do more unlikely. ParkSehJik (talk) 19:54, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

WP cannot be concerned with what is "true" because it hasn't the expertise to do that job. It can be concerned only with a very limited kind of epistemology, which (if you really push them) comes down to the question of "What do the really well-informed experts in the subfield think about this question, if you polled them?" The problem with this (if they'd admit that that is all they can or should be concerned with) is that it's a peice of information very hard to come by! Usually it's not available in medicine. DSM doesn't represent it.

It's the old problem with dictionary definitions: are they meant to be reflective of usage by the population, or are the meant to be prescriptive, to be imposed top-down by language experts, upon the common man? And is DSM more like a dictionary for psychiatrists, or more like IUPAC or ISO that set standards for names for chemists and technologists? DSM has often been called the "bible of psychiatry" and far too often, that's exactly how it's used. The protestant minority being chronically subjected to some new inquisition, or even a Thirty Years' War every time a new one is produced. SBHarris 20:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Nice analysis, and good questions to both ponder and examine sources for. This is not helpful to say elsewhwere, but Wikipedia itself is a giant epistemology problem. My off Wiki joke is "for better or for worse, Wikipedia is the 21st century definition of 'knowledge'".

The "reality" of some of psychiatry's categories is somewhat related to mathematical realism's and Frege or Popper's "second world", with mathematical objects being in the third world, and the physical world being the first, borrowing our expression, "ISO reality". Further on these lines is that by defining categories mathematically, and at the same time looking for biological bases for the presumed to be real categories, epistemology and ontology of psychiatry becomes a festering sore on theories of abstract objects and of reality. That is related to a talk page section I started hereShould redirect for "Drittes Reich" and "Third Realm" be to Abstract object (per Frege), or to Nazi Germany (per Hitler), (or to a music band without a Wiki page per Google) ?, where each editor seemed to weigh in with a different position, leaving any possible consensus in the dust.

My measure of "nice" for analyses is that what you wrote seems almost obvious. I like the DSM as "dictionary" idea. I have been using "cookbook" for DSM off Wiki. It is essentially a flow chart to be followed like a recipe, without critical thought, without indication as to which recipes are well and which pooorly founded in scientific evidence, without indication as to whether anything ties the recipe to an actual "disease" or just to a somewhat measurable mental category and an arbitrary deviation from a norm called "disease", and with all the bad stuff and nonsense in it well-known by and zeroed in on by forensic psychiatrists, hired to find the nonsense parts for use in getting $500/hr by whichever side calls them in partisan legal disputes, and the cases being a near certainty for anyone who is unlucky enought to live to a ripe old age, and still retain their money and freedom. There is good RS for the evolution of witch trials into forensic psychiary trials, but I am not going to get into a war trying to put it in articles. What I was surprised not to have been able to find RS on, is the bifold problem of people viewing any criticism of psychiatry as a potential attack on their drug dealer, and the semi-religious reverence so many have, especially MDs, for psychiatry, with views that any pointing to problems is like an attack on their religion. The most highly critical people I know are all big shots in psychiatry, not outside it. I had never even heard of the "antipscyhiatry movement" until I read about it in the Wiki article last week. They would probably be best served by calling themselves "the pro-EBM-psychiatry movement", unless they are actually nutcases who really are antipsychiatry for some reason. ParkSehJik (talk) 21:12, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Rutherford scattering

I don't know if you're still watching this page, but I posted a question at Talk:Rutherford_scattering#Infinite_density_at_.CE.98.3D0.3F that I thought you might be able to help with. Thanks, Λυδαcιτγ 03:24, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

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