User talk:Linas/Archive2

Old stuff at User talk:Linas/Archive1

What's encyclopedic and what's not

You confuse what is important with what is notable. Sitcoms are indeed trivial, but there are few of them, and they are each seen by millions of people, and they are therefore notable; I say this as someone who doesn't even watch television. Schools, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen. Yes, schools are important. So are mothers and fathers, they're also "the machinery that turn children into adults." Would you suggest an article on every single mother and father in the world? "These children are going to be maintaining WP long after you and I are dead of old age; why dis them and the people who teach them?" Jayjg ^(talk) 20:21, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Are parents important? Is every single one of them notable? Should we have an encylopedia article on each one? Jayjg ^(talk) 20:45, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

And yet, Wikipedia has rules against articles on most individuals, unless they are notable in some way. In fact, articles on people who haven't done anything particularly unusual are considered "vanity". Jayjg ^(talk) 21:13, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

To be specific, from Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not:

• Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base, that is, it is not an indiscriminate collection of items of information. That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia.
• A memorial. It's always sad when people die, but Wikipedia is not the place to honor them. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must have a claim to fame besides being fondly remembered by their friends and relatives.
• A genealogy database or phonebook. Biography articles should only be for people with some sort of notoriety or achievement. One measure of achievement is whether someone has been featured in several external sources (on or off-line). Minor characters may be mentioned within other articles (e.g. Ronald Gay in Persecution of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered).

--Jayjg ^(talk) 21:23, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. I haven't threatened you, or talked about your user page. I was talking about what makes a Wikipedia article notable; Wikipedia does have standards regarding that. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:46, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Again, I have no idea what you are talking about. I haven't threatened your user page, or called it a vanity page. I haven't even talked about your user page. Please try re-reading my comments. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:50, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm assuming that he's completely misunderstanding the meaning of the term "vanity page". See Wikipedia:Vanity page for details, but it boils down to meaning ARTICLES about the non-notable/unencyclopedic subjects (usually individuals) written by the subjects themselves or by someone associated with the subject. Things like articles on garage bands with no albums or on little-visited websites, or or written by ambitious college students looking to promote themselves. "Vanity pages" has nothing to do with user pages. --Calton | Talk 01:01, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Please read what Calton has said above. A User page is not a vanity page, and User pages are not subject to VfDs. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:01, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

It would look better if you just admitted your error, apologized and moved on. I'm not interested in your games any more. Jayjg ^(talk) 11:57, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Low-grade arguments

You know, I haven't seen a VfD argument so childishly laughable since a fanatical Ashlee Simpson fan claimed that for her, deleting some minor Ashlee article would be the equivalent of cutting off a guy's penis. The argument's so bad, I have to wonder if it's not deliberate.

And why you picked Soviet Navy submarines as the focus of your absurd argument of non-notability I don't know, but I can refute it with two phrases: Cold War history, and Tom Clancy novels. No, that's not a developed argument, but, as I said, your argument was so pathetic I don't feel I need to expend any more energy on it.

What I really don't understand, though, is why the trivialists (a more accurate phrase than "inclusionist") are so fanatically intent on lowering the bar for information quality. The only hypothesis I've come up with -- and a very thin hypothesis it is, too -- is that it's an ego thing, that with the bar set low enough, the trivialists, too, can see their particular podunk school in a global encyclopedia and get some kind of validation. If so, I gotta say that none of my podunk schools (eight or nine of them) except my university deserves an article and if they appeared on Wikipedia I'd vote to delete them, too. --Calton | Talk 00:54, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I picked on soviet submarines simply because that is fairly clearly a topic that is not encyclopedic. Your argument isn't getting the least bit better with this clarification, since your statement is so manifestly untrue. When reading an argument that begins with an outright falsehood, it's best to stop reading and move on.

And as for Pokemon: 1) There are 150 of them, not 400-500, as opposed to hundreds of thousands of elementary & middle schools in North America alone. 2) They are part of a global phenomenon -- market-driven, yes, but still inescapable: cards, toys, TV series, clothing, feature films, prepackaged curries, 747s, etc, as opposed to the (at best) regional significance of the average podunk middle school. 3) Ultimately, I don't give a rat's ass about Pokemon and its disappearance from Wikipedia wouldn't bother me in the slightest. --Calton | Talk 01:37, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Linas, you overreacted in all this. Besides, the place to argue these issues is a public place, like the Votes for deletion. Otherwise it looks too much like a personal attack. Oleg Alexandrov 05:52, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the kudos. I have a new mac powerbook, so I am currently a little derailed. To write my screensaver, I will have to get on top of Objective-C which is what Cocoa uses as its internal language.

A "loxodrome", of course (of course!) is a line that you follow if you sail a ship on a constant bearing (eg: Nor' Nor' West).

"loxodrome" - [Greek loxos, slanting + Greek dromos, course.]

(Like "hippodrome" is a racetrack (from "hippo" = "horse") and "aerodrome" is basically an airport.)

You wind up travelling in a logarithmic spiral around the north pole but never reaching it. On the Mercator map projection, this is modelled by the fact that the map extends infinitely to the north and south - the pole is infinitely far away. Yeah, it took me a while to work out what they were talking about, too. Of course, the fixed points of a loxodromic transform aren't nessesarily at the north and south poles, but they can be made to be so without disturbing the underlying geometry.

"pencil" seems to be one of those generic terms for bundles of related curves. I imagine that the family of parabolae that have a given focus point form a "pencil". The word comes from a word meaning "artist's brush", so you can see how the same word could come to mean a writing implement and a bundle of lines. The thing that's of mathematical interest is that pencils of curves in a space can form groups under certain transformations.

Pmurray bigpond.com 04:08, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Linas, thanks for the warm welcome. I've just finished a first course in representation theory so I figured it would be good to write it down while it's still "hot off the presses". Let me know if you have suggestions as I go along! --Michael Stone 01:22, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Charge

Linas: on your user page you refer to the "charge" of a simple Lie algebra. It would be great if someone like yourself could give a definition over at the colour charge article that mathematicians can understand. From what I gather a charge is some sort of representation, but beyond this the term is mysterious to me. - Gauge 04:02, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

covariant, contravariant, covariant transformation

I'm not sure I agree with your mergewith tags on the above articles. Personally, I think covariant and contravariant are poorly named articles that as adjective preclude any specific covariant _____ articles. A covariant vector is a distinct object from a covariant transformation, although the way I was taught, a covariant vector is recognized from how it transforms. I'd like to see covariant vector (currently redirect to covariant), covariant transformation, etc. There are others unhappy with the current merge proposals (see Talk:Covariant) so I think we should hash this out and decide what should be done. --Laura Scudder | Talk 06:51, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

VfD

So you saw through the math mumbojumbo in W-field and friends, articles that had survived for half a year. Good to have you on board. Now all you need is qualified voters. Have you by any chance checked User:Rudchenko's other contributions (to existing articles)? Rl 20:20, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Standard model and qcd

linas: PDG on SM should satisfy you that QCD is part of SM. I think both CP violations (no article!) and quark matter deserve to be subcategories in particle physics and standard model in view of their current importance. + talk:flavour (particle physics) Bambaiah 09:54, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

manifold

Hi Linas,

I would like to know what you really think about what I did to manifold recently. From what Oleg says at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Revert_to_an_old_version_of_manifold I can only conclude that he has not really compared the new version with the old, but rather with some idealized imagined version. Blaming the new for faults retained from the old and ignoring all improvement. I know what a bother it is to meticulously compare two versions of some article, but if you vote in favour of the "deletion" of someone's work than don't you think you should take a look at what you're judging? I know I have not given you much confidence in my edits with my ruthless first edit to Laplace operator but I have learned from that mistake and I think I have always been reasonable. After I put back some of the old stuff I think it became clear to you how much the article was still lacking and therefore you "had to step in", as you put it. I know that in this case also Oleg thought that somehow the version before I touched it was in some way nice and finished, but it wasn't. What I did with manifold is completely different. I didn't throw out anything to make it more difficult or anything. I just rearranged and rewrote some for more clarity and better structure. I won't justify my edits further, but I am happy to discuss any and all of them when you have taken the time to really take a look at them and I hope you will. I hate to rant like this, but going for a complete revert is a really discouraging way of cooperating, so I really hope you will take another look. --MarSch 10:58, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I did a partial revert on manifold as I had planned. You can take a look at the diff, and tell MarSch which way you like it more. Oleg Alexandrov 21:51, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I will take a look, please be patient, it may take me a day or two to feel relaxed and clear-headed enough to do this justice. Its quite striking how hard it is to find a good balance for an article, and, the more popular and all-encompassing the article, the harder it is to get that balance right. linas 23:26, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

GUTs and BRANEs

Hi Linas, No harm done: it was a legit question. The SM page should be updated eventually to be a little less EW-centric. But maybe only after the CP violation page has been written.

About your question: all of the SM would be included into a GUT if that exists. Similarly into string theory if that is truly the ultimate theory of everything. So they are would-be supersets of the SM (awaiting experimental proof), not subsets. SUSY would then be a disjoint subset of either of these sets. It could be possible that SM is a subset of GUTs is a subset of string theory.

I might have the Feynman diagram you are looking for. Give me a few days. Bambaiah 09:57, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

Space mixing theory!

The page on space mixing theory seems to be a crank article. Since you are interested in weeding them out, I though I should tell you that I called for a vote for deletion. Bambaiah 10:40, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

Harmonics Theory

As far as I can tell, your comments on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Harmonics Theory (2nd nomination) are based on the content of the original article written by Mr. Tomes. Are you aware that this VfD concerns the rewritten version? Specific comments are on the VfD page. Short version is that your statements are completely inconsistent with the current content of harmonics theory, and so come across as puzzling to say the least. --Christopher Thomas 23:09, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean when you say "the statements are inconsistent". I read the article and the VfD discussions. I'm sorry my statements are puzzling. I tried to state the obvious as honestly and simply as I could. linas 23:15, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I explained the inconsistencies in detail on the VfD page. Can you cite (quote) examples of "wild-eyed assertions", statements that harmonics theory is to be taken seriously, or statements that you consider original research in the present version of the article? Check the N ray article to see what a well-written article describing a pseudoscience looks like, and explain how the current version of harmonics theory differs. --Christopher Thomas 23:31, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1) The N-ray fiasco is an infamous historical snafu that is frequently taught in college classes. Harmonics theory is not. They are in no way comparable. 2) Here's an absolutely wild-eyed assertion: Prediction of a particle with a mass of approximately 34.8 MeV. Particle physics is a lot more subtle than that. Ditto for "quantized redshift" or "Hubble constant": Its insane to make such predications while at the same time attempting to negate what modern physics is all about. 3) As to "original research": The tail end of the article itself states, in so many words, that its "original research": Harmonics theory has been embraced, to a small extent, by individuals and groups interested in non-mainstream, "alternative" science, but not enough for others to work on or extend it. If only one person is bothering with it, its original research.

Don't get me wrong, I love original research, and I beleve someday in the future, maybe 5 years from now, WP will be able to accomadate original research. However, before that day comes, there are a number of structural issues that need to be solved first. WP is not currently structured to admit articles like Harmonics theory and still maintain integrity and honesty of presentation. linas 23:51, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Detailed response on the VfD page. Executive summary:

1. Infamy is a notability concern. I've already stated that I consider notability-based objections valid. You're claiming other types of objection. Compare the _text_ and _tone_ of the articles. Both are encyclopedia articles about a pseudoscience. If the only difference is notability, I fail to see how your other objections hold water.
2. Comments on specific passages you quote are on the VfD page. Short version is that you chose to ignore all of the "but mainstream scientists do not consider these claims valid" caveats in the associated points. This continues to make me concerned about whether or not you actually read the article you're critiquing, vs. skimming for keywords.
3. Comment re. original research is addressed on the VfD discussion. Short version is that I think you're using a definition that isn't consistent with Wikipedia:no original research. If only one person is bothering with it, you can probably argue that it's not _notable_, but only two people seem to be bothering with redshift quantization, and it's mentioned in redshift.

In summary, the notability objection - which you only stated when pressed - is the only objection I feel you've provided adequate support for.

--Christopher Thomas 01:01, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Quantization

Yes: a rewrite, with help is what I wanted. Thanks for volunteering. Geometric and deformation quantization are needed. I'll try to add bits on some of the others next week. Bambaiah 04:00, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

I've met amateur astronomers and naturalists before. I'm very glad to make the acquaintance of an amateur field theorist. As I said elsewhere, I'm a physicist between papers, and I'll probably leave when I start seriously on the next bit of work. So a six month lag time is perfectly ok with me. Bambaiah 13:23, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Chaos theory

Suggested wording regarding determinism and chaos. Vonkje 05:04, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree with Linas' observation that what is surprising is that determinism can be chaotic yet WhiteC's comments are worth it. Vonkje 13:26, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Math/Proof

I can't find the guideline which sugests that format. We discontinued support for / subpages in an earlier version of the software and decided that pages should have independent titles. Rmhermen 01:18, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

There is no discussion of /Proof naming on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs, perhaps it is somewhere else? Anyway the pages were already mass migrated -- back in 2001 when we changed from UseModWiki to the earliest form of MediaWiki. All the pages like Star Trek/Enterprise/Captain/James T. Kirk were moved because no one could remember how to link to them. The only use of / pages in the article namespace now that I know of is for temp articles that we don't want to appear as "final product". Rmhermen 13:04, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Mobius Transformation

The characteristic parallelogram is the parallelogram defined by two fixed points and the two poles. Its a parallelogram because the midpoint of the two fixed points is always the same as the midpoint of the poles.

My visual intuition at this point is that for a pure hyperbolic transform, the poles will lie along the same line as the two fixed points, and for a pure elliptical transform the line between the poles will be perpendicular (ie, you get a rhombus).

I'll see if I can resurrect the little java app I wrote to generate those pictures. Generally speaking, the poles are a long way out from the fixed points except in the case where the characteristic constant is extreme.

Pmurray bigpond.com 04:58, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Reversal of my edits on Geodesic

I do not know what you had in mind in reversing my edits to Geodesic, or maybe you just had a bad day. Just consider a mass bobbing up and down on a spring in a freshman lab - it's not on a geodesic! Neither is a particle in a linear accelerator, or on the rim of the wheel of a bicycle wheel (in rotation) nor an electron in a radio galaxy that is spiralling around a magnetic field. If the matter in the earth (or a neutron star) followed geodesics, these objects would both collapse to singularities.

My other material on spacelike geodesics gave meaning to them - all that was there was a stub saying that they are not the trajectories of material particles (agreed). But what do you think the instantaneous locus of points on a taut, light, tightly stretched fiber on the surface of a bust of The Thinker is? Ignoring Earth rotation (which is why I referred to the Killing vector enabling the definition of space sections), it's a spacelike geodesic. So we have meaning, instead of a practically useless dead end. I will fix these items back when I get time and if you remove them again I will report vandalism. Pdn 15:49, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers and sorry you had a bad day.

The stuff on spacelike geodesics was just an attempt to imbed the ordinary garden-variety concept of geodesic into GR, by limiting it to a space section. A space-section is a 3-space orthogonal to a timelike family of lines that are smooth and parallel-propagate along themselves - i.e. they are a Killing vector field. You kind of need them and the space section they define in order to speak of an "instantaneous snapshot" of the filament. A filament is just like a piece of silk or catgut that can be stretched between disjoint points as in any classical mechanics book of the old British school. In the approx. that it is of very low mass ->0 and pulled very tight, it takes up a space geodesic. But the problem is simultaneity. A tightly stretched 1-dimensional thread is really two-dimensional because of the time coordinate - it is a sheet. The space geodesic has to be a 1-dimensional cut out of that sheet. To be sure I was on solid ground, I demanded a unique way of setting up simultaneity to make that cut - sheet->collection of filaments. I guess the graph bit was excessive - it implies a parameterization along the filament, which is kind of unnecessary, although to solve geodesic equations one needs a parameterization. For a simple view of what I mean just take the Schwarzschild solution, and use a fixed world-time (say t=0) and calculate the geodesics 1-dimensional curves in 3 dimensions)! They are the paths that a tightly stretched filament (silk, wire, whatever) would take up. They will be bent less than the paths of light rays, I think. I will try to come up with a simpler explanation. Pdn 02:50, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Quantization page style

I left some notes for you on Talk:Canonical quantization. Are we converging on something like

• use quantization (physics) for an overview of methods of quantization and their inter-relations (including problems with some which are solved by others). In this article refer to individual articles for details.
• detailed overview of technical matters into individual articles for each method. In these articles refer back to the article on quantization for an overview. Other details, caveats as in Talk:Canonical quantization.

Bambaiah 05:26, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Feynman diagram uploaded

Hi Linas, I uploaded and linked the Feynman diag you wanted into the Yukawa potential page. I'm saving your ascii art here in case you want it later. Bambaiah 13:26, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

 p1-k     p2+k
  \      /
   \____/
   /    \
  /      \
p1        p2

Black hole electron

Hi Linas, Thank you very much for creating the "Black hole electron" article. I would like to share some added information. In 1955 J. A. Wheeler published a paper describing a geon. The geon is a quantity of light moving in a circular path with the energy density needed to create gravitational space curvature, so that its energy is confined in a continuous loop. From a distance the geon would look like a point source of gravity though it would consist entirely of electromagnetic radiation. Wheeler knew that light responds to gravity and light creats gravity because all energy is a source of gravity.

Wheeler also considered the possibility that a miniature quantum geon, as small as a single elementary particle might exist. He determined that a geon could exist as an entity holding its energy together but it would not be stable. The slighest disturbance would cause it to collapse or to radiate away its energy.

It is the collapse of a miniature geon that may explain the electron. The collapse actually appears to result in two quantum black holes, each with angular momentum (h/4 pi). After collapse, the two black holes materialized from one quantum geon are probably caused by two separate high energy density regions that will be present when a photon is confined in a one wavelength circular path.

I Learned yesterday that the paper "Quantum Mechanical Black Holes: Towards a Unification of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity" by B.G.Sidharth, models electrons and other fermions as Kerr-Newman type black holes. This is shown as a source for "Micro black hole" and probably should be a source for "Black hole electron". DonJStevens 16 Jun 2005

I apologise for causing misunderstandings and bringing you into my speculative comments. See talk: Black black hole. DonJStevens 18 Jun 2005 The geon information is from the book "Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam" by J. Wheeler: release date 1998. I don't have a copy now. I will try to get a copy and be more specific. DonJStevens, 18 Jun 2005 I like a quote from the book Gravitation (Misner Thorne Wheeler) page 1215 "What else can a particle be but a fossil from the most violent event of all, gravitational collapse?". Just remembered another fact that may not be generally known. The muon has the same gyromagnetic ratio as the electron and the K-N black hole. DonJStevens 19 Jun 2005

At my "User:DonJStevens" location, I now show an energy equation that clearly explains units. I also added a referance. Let me know if you can find any problem with this. DonJStevens 20 Jun 2005

Removal of determinant formula from Vandermonde matrix

I removed a formula for the determinant of a Vandermonde matrix, for reasons that I explained on Talk:Vandermonde matrix. Afterwards, I discovered that you added this formula, so I thought that I should notify you in case you want to revert. Cheers, Jitse Niesen 04:02, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Re: vfd Neil Mallender

User:Supersaiyanplough vandalised this VfD page, and falsely signed someone elses (User:Big al kicks ass) signature to it. Are we supposed to report vandalism of this sort somewhere? linas 16:56, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Sorry, i wasnt vandalising this page, but removing vandalism from that other page. User:Big al kicks ass posted his comment that should have been on this page on the page Neil Mallender itself, instead of here, so i moved it and added his sig. Sorry if i offended you. Should I put it back? Supersaiyanplough|^(talk) 06:44, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Physics

Hi Linas. Thanks a bunch for joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics. I'm looking forward to fruitfull discussions :) and hope that the project will grow in time. Karol 08:52, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)