User talk:Pedant/2006-09-01

=Fresh Page= If you need to reference a previous discussion see the section above. My talk page was getting cluttered again. Pedant 19:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Please look at KFA edit history
And observe how his/her edits are also being removed by other editors on similar grounds. In each case the edits include material from the website that you assume on good faith is not an org KFA is involved with and using wiki to promote. I'm just saying... Zeusnoos 16:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I've read all of Knowledge for All's contributions. To be precise, I am not 'assuming on good faith', I am abiding by the policy assume good faith, which is a requirement as it is an official wikipedia policy.  I also trust that other editors are capable of deleting anything which needs to be deleted.  Since I've discussed the relevant policies with User:Knowledge for All, I'm confident that the user understands and will be more accepting of other users' removal of anything inappropriate.  If an actual problem arises, and someone asks for my help, I certainly will wade in, but otherwise, I'll let it ride for now. Thanks though, and thanks for having been open to discussion in that recent matter.User:Pedant 22:52, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I've recommended that the user stop, and emphasized the relevant policies on their tak page. Failing that, I'd be willing to certify the dispute should anyone request comments. I've also advised that this linkspam will not help the site in question but harm it by producing hits on pages where the site's lack of credibility and lack of investigative/experimental rigor is discussed.User:Pedant 00:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for compliment, more "Hippie" edits
Thanks, Pedant, for your kind comments about the "Hippie" edits.

Please let me compliment you as well, both for the original reorganization of the "Characteristics" section and for your recent additions to the lead.

Regarding the lead, at first I didn't quite understand what you were doing, since you copied a sentence and moved it to an earlier position, yet left that sentence in place, creating a redundancy. Now I realize that this must have been inadvertent.

The new position of the sentence, and your addition of "Many people who embraced the hippie lifestyle..." looks great. Good qualification and much more logical progression of ideas.

I was less than enthusiastic about your addition of "especially" to the clause about war being inhumane. Probably true, but perhaps it detracts from the encyclopedic tone?

Went ahead and deleted the "especially" and moved some other stuff around. Please let me know what you think. Founders4 19:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Too much, too fast
Hi Pedant. Comments on "Hippie" talk page.

Reply re Hippie... Inaccurate assessment
I wrote about the beliefs themselves, the beliefs created the hippies, not the other way around. It was the shared beliefs that brought people together in the streets, and only then did they become labeled by the industrial/corporate press as hippies. Opposition to the war was the number one core belief shared by those that later began to be labelled as hippies.

As for the 'government is corrupt' section... it is a historical fact that the government of that time was corrupt, this article is about hippies, hippies did not 'feel the government was corrupt, and that corporate industry was souless and greedy'... corporations are by definition soulless, and it is not industry per se but greed which causes industrial interests to fund and supply both sides to war...

Hippies originated in the time shortly after Eisenhauer warned the nation about the military industrial complex (farewell speech 1961) so it was a fresh concept and widely discussed... and hippies were a phenomenon of the wider antiwar movement, and yes, maybe "everyone believes in ' peace and love but these were fundamental to the hippie ethos... far more than putting a guitar strap on one's head as a headband, growing long hair (many, perhaps a majority of the earliest hippies did not have long hair) and 'dressing like a hippie' at a rainbow festival nearly half a century later.  I really think this sentence, more than any other change I made to the article is a masterpiece of summation of hippie thought:

"They believed that corrupt government and corporate industrial greed had combined to form a souless and inhumane military-industrial complex, and that traditional morals had gone askew."

"They thought war was inumane" ... everybody thinks that, as you might put it. And it wasn't that traditional morals were askew, rather, that they had recently become askew. As you aptly state 'everyone believes in peace and love'. Peace and love IS a traditional moral belief.

I think my sentence shows a 'reaction by people to the current history' of the era, which actually created or caused people to become (what were reffered to by media as) hippies... rather than 'suddenly the hippies arose and believed this or that' and wore long hair and played guitars. (stereotypes of hippies were created without regard to the reality of hippies and soon 'became' the reality -- showing the power of the corporate press to co-opt what was essentially, literally the essence of the hippie, the antiwar part.)

The beliefs in response to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the dawn of the supercorporation, the recognition that corporate industry and the military combined with the corrupt government had created a new thing, the military industrial complex, which Ike had warned us about at the very dawn of the 60's... this makes the article more descriptive of the beliefs that actually spawned the hippies rather than vague watered-down expressions of 'what hippies believe', and basing it on media representations of hippies  "Many people who embraced the hippie lifestyle" presupposes a lifestyle, implies people joining the hippie movement -- Many of the original hippies shared a firmly held belief" shows more clearly that we are talking about the causative, formative influences that created the hippies.

"Hippie lifestyle" is something that arose subsequent to the binding force of shared belief.

Also I think "Another proposed source of the word "hippie" is the Wolof language of Africa where hipi or hepi means to open one's eyes and be aware." has gotta go, (or at least be prefaced with the word 'dubious' or similar wording) as it's plainly historical revisionism, like saying that "Grateful Dead" 'may have come from a theatrical expression of 'one who sees the show for free' from the practice of giving away tickets to fill seats in the theater'. Clearly "hippie" did not originate in the relatively obscure-at-the-time Wolof language. More helpful would be a citation of the first time hippie appeared in print, and a quote from that source.

And I don't think 'neo-hippies needs so much detail in this article, I merged all the neohippie material preparatory to breaking it out to a main article of its own. As for the 'small sections' problem, small sections can help organise the material and encourage contributions on the sections when editors notice the paucity of material on the relevant subtopic. Not to be argumentative, I really don't think we need an edit war over this article, but I think my edit was pretty worthwhile or I wouldn't have made it. If you don't like my contrib, edit it away as you have done. Eventually the article will be better. I'll work on something else for a while. Maybe you will join me in allowing the article to progress by abstaining from contributions to it for a few days, then it may not feel like too much too fast, or that you are trying to own the article Comments? User:Pedant 15:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Pedant. Just stopped in to leave you a note, since I answered on the "Hippie" Discussion page before looking here.  Noticed the following sentence, which doesn't appear on the other page:


 * Maybe you will join me in allowing the article to progress by abstaining from contributions to it for a few days, then it may not feel like too much too fast, or that you are trying to own the article


 * You are right, of course; I am probably too involved. The trouble is that the past few days have seen two radical edits of the page after a considerable period of dormancy.  I think some of the stuff is great (e.g. we were in accord with respect to yesterday's earlier edits), though, as you know, I have not been able to applaud your last edit.  Yeah, I don't own it; I just care a lot. Founders4 05:30, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

1960s Photos
Hi Pedant. I've found some really excellent photos from the '60's by Robert Altman (not the film director, an independent photographer). Here's a link:

http://www.altmanphoto.com/Page7.MrSixties.html

Many of his photos capture the remarkable spirit of that time. In "The Sixties--Part 3" there is one photo called "How Do!" which impressed me. For me it conveys the remarkable generosity of spirit that prevailed, along with the tendency towards outlandish, good-natured dress and the inclusion of children. I tried to e-mail him to see if he might grant permission to use one, or more, of his photos, many of which are quite beautiful--so far no response. Please let me know what you think. Thanks. Founders4 06:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * What I think is that 5 out of 10 of those photos at least are war protest photos.


 * And one the remaining 5 is of a hippie farmer (babbs) who became a hippie after serving in vietnam. He said this
 * "When we quit killing people saying it is protecting us and when we quit invading and occupying countries thousands of miles away and quit using our military to provide a training ground for bombers and when we instead spend over three hundred billion dollars for more teachers, a renewable energy policy (try biodiesel, wind power, solar panels), more cops on the streets, free access to Cuba, health care for all, jobs for everyone and many other ways to make this country the bastion of freedom and education and wholesome happy existence it is in our power to do, then I will quite speaking out aganst the policies of the greed head idiots who are so sadly denigrating the word: American."
 * I really think it's true that the hippies began as an antiwar movement. I'd be interested in references that show otherwise.  And any pics would be great, but I think some real pics of real hippies would be better than the pic we have now, which belongs in the rainbow gathering section or neohippies or something.  Don't you have any pics you want to share? (with all those folk you hung out with...)  I only took the photo of that one because I was at the Peterson museum trying to get Art car photos, and none of them really came out except that one.  But he's a real hippie (for 30 years) with real quotes, from the L.A. Times and its a public domain pic... You said it's out of scale but it's the exact same size as the guitarist one.  You said 'it's hard to tell what he's wearing', which I don't get, and 'androgynous' which I don't see, or see why that would be a problem.  In short, I think it's about equal or better than the russian rainbow kid. I don't see it is going to be a problem to get pictures of hippies, but first we have to agree on what is a hippie.  Then what do we want pics of hippies doing? User:Pedant 07:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

We don't get to decide what a hippie is or who was a hippie; that is pretty well established. I agree that five out of ten are war protest photos. I am not advocating the elimination of the anti-war issue from the "Hippie" article, and there should be a good war protest photo.

But what about the other five? You seem to want to dismiss the other currents of what the people called "hippies" became. All I am saying is that these currents developed pretty much simultaneously, and they all had relevance. The "How Do!" photo appealed to me because it was so human.

Hey, how come I can be inclusive of your viewpoint, but you want to dismiss mine?! Pedantic indeed.

BTW, THERE CAN BE MORE THAN ONE PHOTO! It's not what "we want pics of hippies doing." It's "Let's show pics of what hippies were doing." Here's what Allen Cohen (founder of the San Francisco Oracle, and certainly a prime mover) wrote:

A New Look at the Summer of Love

by Allen Cohen

Yes, it is 35 years ago since San Francisco's biggest concern was how many of America's youth, now known as baby boomers, would descend upon the Haight Ashbury in search of the holy grail of sex, drugs and rock and roll. In the spring of '67 one of the members of the Board of Supervisors considering whether to allow the expected hoards to sleep in Golden Gate Park said, "Would you let thousands of whores waiting on the other side of the Bay Bridge into San Francisco."

Of course, in the Haight Ashbury we referred to this holy grail as free love, expanded consciousness and the ecstatic experience. We looked upon that summer as the beginning of a children's crusade that would save America and the world from the ravages of war, and the inner anger that brings it forth, and materialism. We had already identified our lives with the world as a political and social entity, and the planet as a unified environment, an earth household. Love, we believed, would replace fear and small communal groups would replace the patriarchal family and mass alienation. '''There were two aspects to the experience of the 60s: the resistance to the war, and the psychedelic experience, personified as political activists and hippies. For the most part these two vectors overlapped in the same individuals, so that many of those who actively resisted the Vietnam war had used LSD and smoked marijuana. As a society we have tried to understand the sixties mostly as political resistance to the war, but have mostly ignored and denied the changes in values and culture brought about by psychedelic experiences'''.

It is difficult to estimate how many people used LSD between 1965 and 1975 when the war finally ended. One chemist, who wasn't as productive as some, told me he produced and sold seven million doses. My off the cuff estimate would be that from 10 to 30 million people took LSD on the average of six times.

"Tripping" was common in every area of society from the wealthy and politically powerful to the arts, sciences and media. LSD was trendy, exotic, ecstatic, messianic and dangerous. It promised psychological healing and spiritual transcendence and often delivered. It should be acknowledged that it could also cause pain ("bad trips") and psychotic breaks, and even suicides, and in the case of the Manson Family, it was an accomplice to murder. There was an aura of living dangerously on a psychological frontier that was part of its mystique. But given the amount of its use, I would say it was the one of our least destructive national obsessions.

Why did so many people take this dangerous voyage? What have been its effects? To understand this we have to reconsider the Haight Ashbury, the Hippies and the Summer of Love. The predominant feeling among the Hippies from about 1965 through the summer of '67 was that they were 'agents and witnesses of a dawning of a new age. An age in which the warrior spirit, that had vaulted western man to the domination and potential destruction of creation, would be dissolved in the spiritual transcendence of the saint. Ghandi and Martin Luther King were our heroes and we had turned to the rich heritage of Asian mysticism and metaphysics for our inspiration and our practice. We leaped across oceans and through time to pre-Christian mythologies like the American Indian, the Egyptian and the occult and pagan philosophies of Europe. We studied with Buddhists and Indian gurus, native shamans, witches and yogis. We turned from Aristotelian and Christian dualism to the four pronged logic of Vedanta philosophy. We studied the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, Alan Watt's books on Zen Buddhism, Black Elk’s visions and Hermann Hesse's novels, especially Siddhartha. We wouldn't leave the house without consulting the I Ching, or our Tarot cards or our astrological charts.

Were we being naive or superstitious? No, I think this was the most important and long lasting aspect of the 60s despite the backlash of the 80s.and 90s. It was the beginning of a renaissance in thought and culture similar to the Renaissance that brought Greek and Roman images and ideas back to Europe in the middle ages. Ideas that eventually led to the end of the domination of the Catholic Church, the rise of the nation state, the rebirth of democracy and the development of science.

'''We were becoming world citizens. Peace and love weren't just slogans but states of mind and experiences that we were living and bearing witness to. Living in harmony with the earth was an ideal that we felt and perceived as real experience'''. We were bringing forth a second Renaissance that would change human culture.

'''In the face of the Cold War and nuclear weapons these changes in philosophical and spiritual orientation would slowly displace the Warrior Spirit and bring us to a new stage of evolution. The transformation of the inner warrior has had its outer effect in the end of the Cold War'''. Gorbachev said to an American reporter, "I'm going to do a terrible thing to you. I'm going to take your enemy from you."

The Summer of Love was the peak of the Haight Ashbury experience. Over 100,000 youth came to the Haight. Hoards of reporters, movie makers, FBI agents, undercover police, drug addicts, provocateurs, Mafioso and about 100,000 more tourists to watch them all followed in their wake. It was chaotic and wonderful and "heavy" as we used to say, and the experience was shared and spread throughout the world. The police and Tac Squad raided the street every weekend gradually driving most of the originators to all parts of the world to plant the seeds of change.

The process of cultural liberation began in the seventies with the conscious drive for Women's' Liberation and Gay Liberation and the Black Liberation movement, so brutally feared and attacked by the CIA and FBI. Yes, political reaction set in, but that didn't stop the new ideas from spreading. We have seen the rise of psychological insight, alternative medicine, and spiritual values and practices in the New Age Movement. The tremendous interest in ecology and whole planet thinking began then, and the continuing call to the young to rebellion and awakening, through the liberating effect of rock and roll music in all its permutations emanated from the Sixties. The beginnings of the computer revolution also has its roots firmly in the sixties Many of the founders of the desktop computer had their minds altered by the use of psychedelic drugs. Their revolt against the elitism of the mainframe paralleled the “distrust authority” attitude of the hippies and the anti-war movement. Their minds had been moved by the “language of light.” In the eighties the new ideas and values spread to Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and even China. '''The deeper meanings of Peace, Love and Community spread through the universality of the music, and the ideas of the pilgrims that had experienced or been influenced by the cauldron of the Sixties. In Prague, Chekoslovakia during the peaceful revolution there, John Lennon's "Imagine" was sung by 200,000 people as they sung the Communist dictatorship down. Esalen Institute had been doing exchanges and training in the former Soviet Union since the Seventies. In Tianamen Square the Chinese students played Beatles' and Rolling Stones' music over loud speakers. Most recently the students marching in the streets of Belgrade against the Milosevic dictatorship were giving flowers to the soldiers standing in their path, as we had done at the Pentagon in 1967.''' As we approach the millennium, the wave of peace, this eternal yearning of the soul, continues to sweep over the world. Age old rivalries and hatreds and injustices are dissolving. Sometimes the pain heightens before the medicine of mediation and peace can be applied. But things definitely are a-changin' between the Palestinians and Jews, the Muslims and Croats and Serbs, the many colored people of South Africa, and even the British and Irish.

As we had predicted, the Sixties generation has entered the White House but with so many forces pulling at its skirts that too much has been compromised to the attacks and resistance of the right wing and reaction has set in like a fog bank. In the rottenness and corruption of the political system and its control by corporate interests and Christian fundamentalism there seems to be a return to the 19th century. But it can only be a brief reflex reaction to the tremendous forces of change that are beginning to transform the world. A new generation of youth are trance dancing in floating laser illuminated warehouse dances called Raves in San Francisco and Acid House and Acid Jazz in England. '''There is a mood of change that again threatens to overturn the reactionary and puritanical grip on American culture perpetrated by corporate power and religious fundamentalism. The gap between the rich and the poor increases and Corporate arrogance loots the middle class.''' But the Era of Compassion born in the Sixties, and repressed in the Eighties and crucified in the 90s may be ready to be reborn into the forefront of American culture. Open the door the future is coming through!

copyright 1995 Allen Cohen

Just reviewed Altman's photos, Pedant. Not that it's particularly important, but when you said that "5 out of 10 of those photos at least are war protest photos" it gave me pause. Counting Altman's photos (Parts 1-4, of the 28 pics, 5 are war protest photos. (Didn't include "Crocketts" because that would have skewed it more.) Not that this proves anything, mind you.  Founders4 08:04, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

(I highlighted some of the text above, please look it over. It seems to agree with my proposed sentence re: military-industrial complex and antiwar as genesis for hippie movement) I'll leave that text there for a short time, but it's a copyvio and could be speedily deleted on sight at any editor's whim, since it's on my talk page I probably should be the one to do it. Let me know when you are done with re-reading it


 * User:Pedant: I was only looking at the photos on the page you linked to. No, I don't want to 'exclude viewpoints' I just think hippies did not begin as a lifestyle, it began as a rebellion.  Not just a rebellion against the war, but against the combination of things that can be summed up as the military-industrial complex.  If there was ONE thing that was at the core of the rebellion, that was it. It's not my opinion, it shows up everywhere you talk about hippies.

LSD isn't it. Thousands of hippies took LSD prior to it being banned in 67, but there were millions of hippies by then. I won't deny that drugs were used, for fun and for consciousness expansion both, but they were not what engendered the hippies, merely tools and toys they used. Some say that the use of LSD was actually a result of the CIA trying to dilute the power of what was originally a political movement... I don't make that claim but would not exclude anything from reliable reference material.

It wasn't free love, and sex that movement began decades prior to the hippie movemement, and the Summer of Love took until 1967 to kick off... and when you think about the slogans involved, do you think "why don't we do it in the road" or "make love not war" ? Which hand gesture do you recognise as iconic of that era, the one using a single finger or the one using two? Or the Clenched fist ?

No, I don't want to exclude ideas, or really care what pictures are included, but I think it is certain that the origins of the hippie movement (which is that one sentence you object to)

"They believed that corrupt government and corporate industrial greed had combined to form a souless and inhumane military-industrial complex, and that traditional morals had gone askew."

were absolutely and primarily rooted in a backlash/rebellion against corporate greed combined with corrupted government which spawned, as it has continued to spawn, wars for profit against people who do not threaten the US.

I really honestly think that the sentence you deleted says that succinctly and accurately. You and I were both there, we both know how it was in those days, but our memories and experiences are original research and rather than arguing, we should find reference materials for citations.

I feel that the reference sources will support the assertion that the movement began as a rebellion against the military industrial complex, which was most strongly expressed as against war in genreal and the vietnam war in particular. I'm stuck on that unless I'm shown references to contradict it.

Any photos could be added, but since there were so many hippies, one can find photos of hippies doing anything. So I suggest that we look for public domain pics of hippies doing representative hippie things. Just because we are talking about the idea of "Hippie". A relatively low percentage of hippies played guitars, but almost universally hippies enjoyed music and dancing for instance, so I think photos of guitarists are not preferable to photos of dancing hippies. Relatively few hippies at the beginning took LSD, but many sought avenues of raising their consciousness and spiritual awareness. So for instance a cluster of photos of hippies enjoying music, or in activities related to consciousness-raising would be useful... but hippies protesting war would be vital. I think if one has a stack of hippie photos, and throws out the war protest photos, one would see that the discard pile becomes huge. While I do agree that articles are better with pictures, what makes an article even better than having pictures is having the article be accurately written, well sourced and verifiably referenced.

ps:I like the pic at the top of the article with the groovin hippies, but it's got an attribution clause so we can do better I think. I think it is pretty good for a more modern image, but we can find earlier and better ones I think. User:Pedant 18:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Go ahead and delete Cohen's piece any time you want.


 * Yeah, the "Groovin Hippies" photo is pretty good. Some of Altman's period photos of dancing hippies are extraordinary, and I'd love to see them posted.  His collection is the best I've seen.  Still haven't heard back.


 * Interesting that I would interpret even your highlighting of the Cohen piece as supportive of my more inclusive viewpoint. I think he was saying what I am trying to express, that the various currents--disenchantment with Cold War realities that might become Hot War nightmares at any time, consciousness expansion through various means, the desire to emphasize love over materialism, the yearning for Peace, disenchantment with corporatism in general (including Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex"),  joyful celebration--developed pretty much simultaneously.  Whether we date the "beginning" of Hippie consciousness from the time of Christ, from the time of the German back-to-nature movement, from mid-50's dismay at the deepening Cold War, from Ginsburg's writing and publication of "Howl," from Eisenhower's warning about the "military-industrial complex" in his farewell speech, from Leary's early '60's experimentation with LSD, from Kesey's Prankster happenings--I don't think identifying a "beginning" is important.  I do think that whatever is written should accurately describe the main currents of what happened under the "Hippie" label.


 * I don't actually disagree with your anti-war emphasis, Pedant. A bit more history.  Between 1983 and 1995 I participated in Citizen Diplomacy, initially through Esalen, then on my own initiative.  Learned Russian, drove through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with my wife and children, wrote a book and participated in Jim Garrison's State of the World Forum conferences in SF.  What inspired me to do all this was exactly what you are talking about--by 1983 the Cold War had gone on for thirty-five years and showed little sign of waning.  I was concerned about my children's long term welfare, as I realized that all my loving efforts at guiding their progress could become meaningless at any time given the reality of worldwide politics in the nuclear age.  The Citizen Diplomacy movement arose out of "distrust authority" '60's consciousness, and it was empowered by the "love conquers all" ethos that came to the fore during that era.


 * (Later my understanding of these issues morphed into an understanding that tyrannical Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist expressions of Marxism did need to be resisted. Eisenhower's warning aside, I do not believe that the corporate profit motive actually "spawns" wars, even though corporations do profit--I just don't think it's a primary factor. In fact I think that tyranny (on the right and on the left) is mostly to blame for war, and I have come to see "murder by government" as a much larger problem than war.  What is known as "The Democratic Peace" seems  more compelling to me these days as a way to end both war and murder by government. All governments are corrupt, but they do vary in their degree of corruption, and in the main I would have to conclude that the United States as a political entity,  despite the many faults of its government and its policies, has in general been a force for good in the world.)


 * We don't really disagree in a deep way, Pedant. The essential difference between what the article says now and what you want it to say is that you seem to want to narrow the focus.  I can't seem to locate what you originally wrote, but what you wrote above seems a bit different. Can you please write a current version of what you want the paragraph to look like and post it here.  Perhaps we can work out something that allows you to say what you want that I can also live with.


 * The edits that appeared today are discouraging to me. At some point one just gets tired.  I've written to the two contributors in hopes that they will clean up their work.  I'll make a couple of essential changes, but frankly I don't want to be the one to delete or revert. Founders4 20:30, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

new section 1
I agree, the new material is poorly written unsourced, POV on top of POV and ungrammatical as well as being difficult to parse. I also don't want to mess with the article until this latest wave of carefree editing stops. I take the encyclopedia very seriously, but I also know that the best way to consensus is not to have deeply-held beliefs. Since I have deeply-held beliefs, I often wait fro consensus to massage an article into a fairly suitable form, and then make minor edits to correct problems rather than major ones. Our conflict stems from a major edit, right? Alternatively, I will start at the beginning, continue until I come to the end and then stop (apologies to Lewis Carroll). Here I am at the beginning...

Please read all of this carefully with your open mind, I know it's long, but it's thorough.

Yes, I think we do substantially agree. My main stance, what we are in conflict over is that 1) we need a statement early in the piece about 'who it is we are talking about' as hippies are widely misunderstood. Even by hippies.

2)We need the hippie origin story, in every good article, the origin and evolution of whatever-the-article-is-about is defined or at least roughly alluded to

3)When talking about hippies, at least in the first part of the article, it needs to be the early hippies/original hippies/ whatever you want to call them... before the media confused America about who they were and what they stood for. Very early on, 'the hippie lifestyle -- or at least the media promoted version of it -- was adopted (and changed) by others, who were then called hippies, lifestyle hippies had different things that held them together...

4) and most important as I see it is that the original hippies all had at least one thing in common, a distrust of the Establishment, the Man, corporate media and an opposition to warfare in general, particularly the Vietnam War. Many of the original hippies were ex-soldiers, many were relatives...

The sentence I most object to is: "Many people who embraced the hippie lifestyle believed that the government was corrupt, that corporate industry was souless and greedy, that traditional morals were askew, and that war was inhumane. "

"Many" is a weasel word, I'd like to remove it from the encyclopedia entirely, with very few exceptions.

the "hippie lifestyle" is a nebulous concept, no prior description, hippie lifestyle is to a great extent a media fiction, an invention, the people who were originally described as hippies were a diverse group vis a vis 'lifestyle' and I think 'hippie belief' is a better handle on hippies than their lifestyle.

the subject is hippie -- should not be 'people who embraced the hippie lifestyle' as they do not define hippie, they merely 'joined a lifestyle' -- we can discuss later hippies later, but what a hippie was was defined by the first gatherings of people who were labelled as 'hippies'.

"the government" is POV and implies a specific government is being referred to, the US govt. but it was not merely the US govt. and not the govt. by itself in a vacuum ...

"government was corrupt" can imply that it was only then that they thought it was corrupt, rather it was that government institutions worldwide had become corrupted by corporate interests, lobbying and cronyism... pork barrel politics as they used to say

"that corporate industry was souless and greedy" separates the corporate influence from the govt. influence. Corporations are by legal definition soulless. By their nature and by design corporations are greedy, with very few rare exceptions. By saying that hippies believed this, it makes a trivial point, and misses that 'the establishment' is more than just corporate and government -- rather it is the combination of the two, sometimes referred to correctly but not as usefully as fascism. (this is what Ike warned us twice about: the military-industrial complex, or as he first wrote the phrase, "the military-industrial-prison complex") I wouldn't generalise it by saying "Hippies were antifascists." Though true, it doesn't lend to the understanding of the forces involved.

"traditional morals were askew" implies that it was only then that they were askew, and implies as well that hippies were amoral, which they were not, see how many hippies were Friends (quakers) as well.

My sentence, that I think is a better substitute for

"Many people who embraced the hippie lifestyle believed that the government was corrupt, that corporate industry was souless and greedy, that traditional morals were askew, and that war was inhumane. "

is

"They believed that corrupt government and corporate industrial greed had combined to form a souless and inhumane military-industrial complex, and that traditional morals had gone askew."

(sequitur to "Many of the original hippies..."

To repeat what I said before about this:

...the beliefs created the hippies, not the other way around. It was the shared beliefs that brought people together in the streets, and only then... (were they a group that was) ...labeled by the industrial/corporate press as hippies. Opposition to the war was the number one core belief shared by those that later began to be labelled as hippies.

I do not want to exclude all or any of what hippies were or still are. I just want to include what seems evident to me, and Allen Cohen, Ken Babbs, David Ginsberg, Wavy Gravy, Abbey Hoffman, Ken Kesey, Phil Lesh, Neil Young, Timothy Leary, Tenzin Gyatso, Noam Chomsky and virtually any reference which shows credible research -- that the people who were first called the hippies shared one core belief, which I describe as: They believed that corrupt government and corporate industrial greed had combined to form a souless and inhumane military-industrial complex... summary, hippies started as an antiwar movement as early as 1959, (precursed of course by many other antiwar/antifascist movements as well as 'renaissances' of art and social sciences, seekers of liberty etc..)

(even the ones who were not against the vietnam war per se shared the belief that government run by industry is unAmerican and undesirable.) I'm sure you understand this, since you support the 'Iraq war' but don't support corruption of government or fascism. As a fellow veteran, I'd bet you also don't support privatisation of traditional military roles either. User:Pedant 21:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

new section 2

 * Well, I started to make just some essential changes to the recent edits, then realized it couldn't be done. Without addressing the sourcing issue, I incorporated the main points into the existing article. The author did add some useful things, despite the poor grammar and POV problems.  Perhaps I got it to the point where others will further refine it.


 * When we conclude our work, I probably will need to withdraw for a while as I am experiencing a classic symptom of addiction, i.e. the rest of my life is beginning to suffer.


 * I don't know if you saw the article "way back when," but the paragraph originally read "Hippies believed..." Then someone edited it to read "Many of those who embraced the hippie lifestyle believed..."  This edit seemed harmless to me, since hippies did believe different things and it seemed presumptious to speak for all hippies.  From your most recent discourse, I do understand why "Many of those who embraced the hippie lifestyle believed..." offends you.


 * I understand the corporate issue, and sometimes I think it was wrong for our legal structure to allow for the creation of such "artificial persons." People, because they have their freedom to worry about and, I believe, the fate of their immortal souls to consider, tend to act more responsibly.  Though I don't know any corporations that rise to comparable levels of evil and destruction as Stalin, Hitler and Mao.  As I have said, I think tyrannical government is the primary villain in the world.  It may be useful for someone to explore the similarity between "artificial persons" like corporations, and tyrannical governments (usually headed up by evil individuals) that become similarly amoral entities.


 * O.K. Here's the paragraph as it stands now:


 * Hippies did not create a cohesive political or social movement with well-defined leaders and manifestos. Rather the hippie ethos evolved as a social manifestation of 1960s zeitgeist in an interactive play between leaders and followers. Many people who embraced the hippie lifestyle believed that the government was corrupt, that corporate industry was souless and greedy, that traditional morals were askew, and that war was inhumane. Elements of Romanticism and Transcendentalist philosophy can be seen in their writings and artistic expressions. Hippies often referred to the structures and institutions they opposed as The Establishment, Big Brother or The Man.


 * And you want it to appear as follows:


 * Hippies did not create a cohesive political or social movement with well-defined leaders and manifestos. Rather the hippie ethos evolved as a social manifestation of 1960s zeitgeist in an interactive play between leaders and followers. They believed that corrupt government and corporate industrial greed had combined to form a souless and inhumane military-industrial complex, and that traditional morals had gone askew. Elements of Romanticism and Transcendentalist philosophy can be seen in their writings and artistic expressions. Hippies often referred to the structures and institutions they opposed as The Establishment, Big Brother or The Man.


 * My objections are not as strenuous as they once were, but I do see some problems. Let's start with "traditional morals."


 * I now understand your use of "traditional morals," and I have no problem with your use of this term as you mean it in this sentence. I now know exactly what you mean, and you mean that corporate industry had come to control government (through lobbying, political contributions, corrupt politicians, and so on) to the extent that government had become the servant of industry.  Government that serves industry, rather than the people, causes great harm because corporations are infinitely greedy and do not care about the people's welfare.  Legitimate government must serve people, not "artificial persons."


 * Here is the problem: "Traditional morals" is a very broad term that specifically includes traditional sexual morality.  For some "traditional morals" means PRIMARILY traditional sexual morality, while a general concern for other people is covered by the more secular term "ethics."  One very important thrust of Beat/hippie culture was a desire to rethink traditional sexual morality--specifically prohibitions against homosexuality and prohibitions against heterosexual expression outside the bounds of marriage.  So I think your use of "traditional morals" is likely to confuse many readers.  It confused me, because I thought you meant something other than what I now know you to mean.  I don't at present have a solution for this problem in language, but let's move on.


 * I agree with you that most of the original people who later came to be known as "hippies" were aware of, and took to heart, Ike's farewell admonition against "the military-industrial complex." I was very young at the time, but it resonated in my budding political consciousness and informed my opinions as well. (It is irrelevant that I have refined my opinions during the years since.)  By the way, the purest form of "military-industrial complex" was the Soviet Union, where there was no distinction between industry and the military, both of which served the wishes of the Party elite.  So I would agree that it was, and remains, a worldwide problem with government.   The United States may represent a relatively pure expression of Lincoln's ideal--"government of the people, by the people and for the people"--but no government that I am aware of fulfills this ideal.  Thus all earthly goverments are corrupt to varying degrees, and one can say that "government is corrupt."


 * Yet the problem is not just with corporate industry. Corporate media serves corporate industry.  ALL corporations ("artificial persons"), whether in industry or in the media, are soulless and their undue influence on goverment causes problems.  Only recently, with the advent of the Internet, has the corporate grip on information flow been loosened and the free speech promise of the First Amendment been fulfilled.


 * All of this has to do with the thirst, shared by all human beings, for liberty. (That is when we humans are not trying to hide from the personal responsibility that attends liberty!) Legitimate government operates in such a way that we are free to live our lives, make our decisions, and proceed with satisfying our desires, developing our intellects and pursuing our spiritual paths.  Corporations are dangerous to the task of creating, and preserving, the legitimacy of government.  Thus corporations are dangerous to our liberty:  some hippies understood this intellectually, while all true hippies understood it on an intuitive level.


 * Let me try something here. Bear with me, as this is experimental.


 * You wrote: "...the original hippies all had at least one thing in common, a distrust of the Establishment, the Man, corporate media and an opposition to warfare in general, particularly the Vietnam War."


 * Hippies did not create a cohesive political or social movement with well-defined leaders and manifestos. Rather the hippie ethos evolved as a social manifestation of 1960s zeitgeist in an interactive play between leaders and followers.


 * Hippies believed that infinitely greedy corporate industry, served by corporate media, had come to exert undue influence on government. They believed they could not trust government corrupted in this manner to safeguard their interests and behave ethically, especially when it came to involvement in foreign wars.  They took to heart Eisenhower's warning against the military-industrial complex, and saw saw the Vietnam War as a fulfillment of that warning.


 * Hippies loved liberty and sought freedom from governmental interference in their private lives, especially when it came to the legislation of sexual morality. They were highly ethical, and their outlook was essentially libertarian--they believed that individuals should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or their property, as long as they do not infringe on the same liberty of others. Elements of Romanticism and Transcendentalist philosophy can be seen in their writings and artistic expressions. Hippies often referred to the structures and institutions they opposed as The Establishment, Big Brother or The Man.


 * O.K....it's longer. But I don't know a better way to express what hippies stood for. Please let me know what you think.  Founders4 00:45, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. You referred to me as "a fellow veteran." Just to clarify, I have never served in the military. I do agree, though, that military roles should not be privatized. Founders4 00:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... I misunderstood something I read at one point, and thought you were a former marine. No matter, sorry I was mistaken. Are you aware that private corporations are building hardened military bases, right now, in Iraq... military bases for the permanent use of civilian contractors? If you aren't, and are interested, I can turn you on to some info... you might not end up supporting the Iraq war afterward though, so if it's a stance you cherish, I won't.

ok, on to your edit. It is long, and maybe we could shorten it without weakening it too much. Let's work on it together for a few evolutions and see what we can consense on by ourselves, and then offer it in its best form to the talk page on hippie.

Mostly I think it's correct, let's reference it thoroughly before we submit it, so we can back it to the hilt, ok? Meanwhile, and just off the top of my head, there's that "especially" again. can we substitute "such as" for "especially when it came to"? shorter and less emphasis, implies they wanted government out of the private parts of their lives...

and for "infinitely greedy corporate industry, served by corporate media" maybe we could use

"corporate industry, driven by greed and served by corporate media" to remove the superlative 'infinitely' which could be seen as POV pushing

also cherished instead of loved, shows unwillingness to part with their rights... subbed rights for liberty, liberty connotes a privelege given, rights are inherent...

hell, here's the whole thing as I would edit your paragraphs, I edited for crispness and brevity, and think an Eisenhauer quote might work well at the end. Also added 'emerging' to show that at that time the mil/ind/complex was a new concept, and not yet the thing it is today... and 'dawning' re Vietnam to show that these were beliefs held quite early in the history of hippies, and the date 1961 to place Ike's speech in histroical context, showing that this paragraph represents the period beginning 1959 (first americans dead in vietnam) through 1961 and shortly thereafter (when Ike's speech was in recent memory (without trying to narrow down when hippies started, and I think the next para. could well include the material about antecedents which occurs much too late in the article for me...

while I quite like your paragraphs, I think these are just a touch more what I think the article needs to get it started right. I think we could both be proud of this version:


 * Believing that corporate industry, driven by greed and served by corporate media cannot be trusted to safeguard their interests or to behave ethically, particularly as regards involvement in foreign wars, they took to heart Eisenhower's 1961 warnings of the emerging military-industrial complex, and saw in the dawning of the Vietnam War the (insert appropriate quote from Eisenhauer's speech here) of which they had been warned.


 * Hippies cherished personal liberty and sought freedom from governmental interference in their private lives, such as the legislation of sexual morality. Though their outlook was essentially libertarian, they were highly ethical -- beleiving that individuals have rights to do as they wish with their own persons and property, without infringing on the same rights of others. Elements of Romanticism and Transcendentalist philosophy are evident in hippie songs, prose and other artistic expressions. They felt that in combination, the structures which had the most power over their lives were in some sense a single monolithic entity, and often referred to the structures and institutions they opposed as The Establishment, Big Brother or The Man."

The last sentence changed to reflect the connection between the earlier concepts and the terminology of 'the establishment' etc..

It's late and I am probably offline until sunday night, but let's really polish this section to gemlike clarity, reference it and try to finish Monday-ish? Thanks for taking the time this article deserves to get it right. If it's really really right, it won't change so drastically, which I hate to see happen to a good article... Like I say at the bottom of my user page, I like things that are really true and not just almost true. Thanks for your patience and devotion to this deserving article. User:Pedant 06:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Just read Eisenhower's speech, which I'm sure I have never heard in its entirety. Here's a link in case you wish to review it:


 * http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html


 * It is quite good, surely the best of his political career. I suspect that he wrote much of it himself, perhaps with some aid from speechwriters--that would, in fact, be interesting to know.  Didn't readily see a quote we might pull.


 * Most of the substitutions you suggest are fine--"driven by greed" for "infinitely greedy," "cherished" for "loved." I like that you added "rights" as I'm a Ninth Amendment kind of guy ("The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.") who believes that our God-given rights are innumerable--very much connected to the concept of "liberty."


 * Will probably try to string things together a bit differently. The first paragraph is one sentence that seems a bit overworked, for example.


 * One significant point in the first paragraph--breaking it down you say that "corporate industry....cannot be trusted" without making a clear connection to Eisenhower's point that the alignment of corporate industry and the military was the new danger--the "unwarranted influence" (Ike's term) of this COMBINATION on governmental processes.  In fact Ike made a second point that I was previously unaware of; he underscored the danger "that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific/technological elite." I see McNamara as having been part of "a scientific/technological elite."


 * My first real Russian friend, Alexander Sakharov, once made an important point. He said, "You Americans talk a lot about 'trust' without understanding that your own Constitution is not based on trust.  What the U.S. Constitution does is set things up so that the branches of government will watchdog one another.  Knowing that government cannot be trusted, the Framers of your Constitution set things up so that the people wouldn't have to DEPEND on trust."


 * Or, as Washington once said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”


 * Having been sufficiently influenced by Esalen thought, especially Fritz Perles work, I am sensitized to the Gestalt issue of setting elements of thought in opposition to one another through the use of "though" or "but." My natural tendency is to do this often, which causes the reader to labor and discourages conclusive thinking.  Very often "and" can be substituted if one pays attention to appropriate wording; in the second paragraph "ethical" and "libertarian" are set in opposition, which I believe is unnecessary.


 * Anyway, just a preview of my thoughts. I'll be working on it.  Founders4 09:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

New section 3
Hi Pedant. Thought I'd post this in full so as not to lose it. I very much appreciate your willingness to engage in what has become a rather intense effort to write something that is "true, not just partly true." Our combined efforts have created something that, I believe, neither of us working alone could have accomplished. I think we may have arrived. More comments soon.Founders4 22:23, 27 August 2006 (UTC)



Hippie, occasionally spelled hippy, is a term commonly used to refer to some of the disaffected youth of the 1960s and early 1970s. Hippies were part of a countercultural movement that initially surfaced on United States college campuses, then moved beyond academic settings to most major cities in the United States, Canada, Britain, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. To a lesser extent hippie influence was felt worldwide, particularly in Eastern Europe, Mexico and Japan.

The word "hippie" was popularized by the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who is also credited as among the first to use the words "beatnik" and "yuppie". 

The roots of the hippie movement are variously dated to the back-to-nature movement that surfaced in Europe during the nineteenth century, to the naturalist movements of late eighteenth-century Europe, or even to the early Essenes who lived around the time of Christ. The cherished hippie notions of peace, love, compassion and human fellowship are values that Christ and many other visionaries lived by.

Hippies did not create a cohesive political or social movement with well-defined leaders and manifestos. Rather the hippie ethos evolved as a social manifestation of 1960s zeitgeist in an interactive play between leaders and followers.

In 1961, President Eisenhower had warned that the Cold War “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” had led to the formation of a “military-industrial complex” that might come to exert “unwarranted influence…in the councils of government.” Hippies took this warning to heart and believed that corporate industry, driven by greed and served by corporate media, had corrupted government. They saw the dawning of the Vietnam War as a fulfillment of Eisenhower’s warning, and they believed that government cannot be trusted.

Hippies also cherished personal liberty and sought freedom from governmental interference in their private lives—in particular the legislation of sexual morality and prohibitions against psychoactive drugs. They were ethical libertarians and believed that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution guarantee the rights of individual citizens to do as they wish with their own persons and property, as long as they do not infringe on the same rights of others. Elements of Romanticism and Transcendentalist philosophy are evident in hippie music, prose and other artistic expressions.

Hippies came to feel that in some sense a monolithic entity had emerged—composed of corporate industry, corporate media, the military and government—that exercised undue power over their lives. They often referred to this monolithic entity as The Establishment, Big Brother, or The Man.

Hippie opposition to The Establishment traveled worldwide through music and the other creative arts. Moving beyond unconventional attire, long hair for both genders, facial hair for men, and rebellion against long-established institutions, hippies sought to champion and implement change. They tended to express their desire for change by renouncing the Vietnam War, corporate influence, and consumerism; by criticizing Western middle class values; by embracing aspects of non-Judeo-Christian religious cultures (including much Eastern philosophy); and by adopting nomadic lifestyles. They also embraced the Civil Rights movement, the expansion of free speech, sexual liberation, interracial dating, intentional community, free love, recreational drug use, simple living, holistic health, environmental consciousness, and alternative technology.

The 21st century has brought with it a neo-hippie movement, with an ethos similar to that of the original hippies.


 * Thanks, Pedant, for your very kind comments regarding the edit. If you like it, what I would really prefer is just to post it on the "Hippie" page.  Frankly I don't think I have the energy to engage in what might become the immediate involvement of more "cooks" if we post it on "Hippie: Talk"!  There will, of course, be those who choose to edit our work:  that's fine, of course.  I have double checked all references. What do you think?Founders4 22:38, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Hwacha case (pending reopening)
Hi Pendant, as you probably know, another user is causing some trouble at Hwacha article by "missunderstanding on his favor" wikipedia policies about what is encyclopedic and what is not, and i am really aware if a voting process is valid on this case?, is it?. And, does the article needs to pass through the tedious process of a vote on whether delete or keep a section, all the time, over and over again?, i really would appreciate if you reopen the case, because i believe user:OrbitOne is exagerating things at all.

I agree with your position about Wikipedia is not paper and actually the section about games is just a paragraph (about three or four lines in a reduced size) and not a full listing of games such as in other articles.

As a matter of numbers (topic which i like very much because i am a science student), i've counted the number of words; Microsoft Word gave 1368 words on that document except for the image captions and notes at the bottom of the page and only 64 (words) to the section related to the games and gave about 4.68 % of the whole article only to references in games. Considered this information and the poor based OrbitOne arguments i think this vote is quite useless, do you think so?, I would appreciate very kindly your soon response, Cheers, --HappyApple 10:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Hwacha
I can accept you will act as HappyApple's advocate, but let me make things clear. I will not resort to mud slinging and I request you do the same. A statement you made was inappropriate and had little to do with policy regarding the section in question. Here is the section in question.


 * In any case, the previous vote was for keeping the material. User:OrbitOne is mischaracterising the consensus as being to delete, and wants to "add this vote to the previos vote", a process which I have never seen used and which is decidedly not supported by policy or guidelines. A vote here for deletion will have no effect on consensus, guidelines and policy, which is clear.

Although unorthadox, I wished to meet HappyApple in a middle ground, so he would not feel the previous vote was invalidated by any means. However, to claim I resorted to any underhanded or misleading tactics is edging uncivility. Please mind what you say in the future. We both wish to reach a fair end to this dispute. --  Orbit  One    [ Talk 23:01, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Moving this threat to Talk:Hwacha where it belongs.User:Pedant

Re this
Never become a politician. --David Mestel(Talk) 05:26, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

HappyApple's contact

 * First of all, i want to thank you Pendant for represent me on Hwacha's talk page, because as you know, english is not my mother language, and for me it is not always easy to express in a rightly way my point of view and i appreciate the comments you have left on my behalf.


 * Second, i am quite concerned about, what do i have to do in order to move into a formal process of resolving a dispute?, i would appreciate you can guide me on this because i am not familiar with it.


 * Third, my grammar it can be awfully bad sometimes and maybe my interpretation of "link exchange" is not been correctly understood. In my oppinion to mention a topic, such as Brownian motion and Tyndall effect (which are related) deserves to link to each other as the reader would understand how they are related. I think this article it is an example of this, because i associate link exchange in the sence of "helping reader to understand better a topic" and not just to make a directory as OrbitOne suggests.

In fact i believe the short four-to-five lines paragraph which i wrote it was intended to show casual readers, examples of where this machine has been used or showed.

Finally, i would appreciate (again) if you can explain me more about what i should do in order formally get this dispute settled down, thank again, Cheers, :-) HappyApple 18:08, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Zippie Picnic
Thanks very much for the advice Pedant. As you've probably guessed I'm a Wikipedia newbie. I hope I'm putting this comment in the right place. I have made the changes you suggested and all's now well. User:Wizardprank

Dehk
Ah - I came across this one while randompaging, and as it said it was a container of magic I just tagged it with magic. Thanks for the correction. --Firi e n § 09:44, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Zippie Picnic et al
Hi Pedant, and thanks for all the advice. I have two queries if you have time - Firstly, where do I put the Wizardprank 11:09, 28 August 2006 (UTC) signature when I'm editing? and secondly, can you help me sort out a problem on my Encyclopaedia Psychedelica entry. I just cannot get a space to appear before the word "Drop in" on the fifth line. Many thanks. Wizardprank 11:09, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Want to talk some more?
Hi Pedant. Now that we have engaged so intensely in an editing exercise, I am curious about who you are beyond this venue. I've talked a bit about myself; wonder if you might like to share some of your background.

I have an e-mail I use for this sort of correspondence: kensingtonguy4@yahoo.com.

Looking forward to hearing from you if you feel so inclined. Founders4 19:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Stuff
Hi again most valued mentor. Thanks for all the patient advice. I think I'm getting the hang of it. Feel free to link to my page if you wish. I don't have a digital copy of SHC but I could make one! I've digitised three of the others so why not. I warn you it looks rather dated cos we've all got used to seeing fractals now - but when it was new it was startling. When I've got an AVI or SVCD I'll be pleased to get you a copy as a thank you. Wizardprank 19:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

On references...
Hello there! I noticed your request on the To-Do list. The references tags only tell the software to accumulate the footnotes. They are actually displayed with the tag, which I've added here. Cheers and happy editing! :-) Misza 13 21:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Wizardprank
Hi. I saw your kindness and openness on Wizardprank's talk page. I would like to recognize you with this:

PS: I like what you did on your userpage. I actually checked my messages!!!--Edtalk c E  01:41, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * No problemo. Actually, I'm getting a lot better now. I'm meeting a lot of new people, making new friends, getting used to the homework, etc. Now that I think about it, high school is really fun!--Edtalk c E  23:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Wolof
I've looked around Pedant and don't see evidence of lack of acceptance with regard to the professor's work. There may be less SUPPORT than you would like to see, but I have found no evidence of actual OBJECTIONS to his conclusions. You do seem to kinda have it in for the guy and his Wolof stuff :-). To me it seems interesting, and pretty harmless. Founders4 04:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

(continued from User talk:Founders4: Not what is on the hippie page, what is in his lesson, the link in the footnote about Wolof language:


 * "Most Americans are not aware that many of the words they speak and write every day are derived from African words. Who would have thought that the word "doggies" in the cowboy lyric " ... get along little doggies, for Wyoming shall be your new home," stems from the African word kidogo, which means "a little something," or "something small."


 * "How did this African word become part of the American language? Part of the explanation is that one in every five American cowboys was black in the 1880s, and much of what we think of as "cowboy culture" is rooted in African cattle herding. For example, some historians believe that the trail-driving practices of American cowboys (such as the open grazing of cattle) were based on the ways Fulani cattle herders in Western Africa had tended their animals for centuries. So, we should not be surprised to find African words as part of our cowboy culture. The word bronco (probably of Efik/Ibibio and Spanish origins) was used by the Spanish and by enslaved Africans to indicate the horses rode in herding cattle. Buckra, comes from mbakara, the Efik/Ibibio word for "white man," and buckaroo, also coming from mbakara. These words described a class of whites who worked as "broncobusters." "

Well, being born in Texas, cowboy lingo used to be a hobby of mine. I can say right off the tip of my boot that it is not 'doggies' but 'dogies' that he is referring to (one serious error for a linguist but not fatal), a dogie is a stray, or orphan calf. As I recall, the widest acceptance of the origin is that dogie is a shortening of 'dough gut' for the swollen belly a calf would get, when it started grazing too early, its digestive system would be unprepared for grass, having lost its mother before it was time to stop drinking milk... belly would swell like rising sourdough. This professor however states as a fact that it comes from the Wolof "kidogo" for something small. (second error, an assertion as fact of something unsupported by apparently any other linguist in the world, maybe it's true, but no evidence, a linguist should be more careful with how he states such an assertion, third, assuming as given that kidogo is the origin of dogie, why would it not mean any calf rather than just orphan calves?)

Then there's buckaroo, which he asserts comes from mbakara, for white man, and no mention that the generally accepted etymology is: vaca (cow) + ero (roughly tranlateable as 'doer' or 'person associated with' or 'worker with') = vaquero (cowboy) > buckaroo. Any cowboy, not just white ones. In the same way la riata (the rope) became lariat, and fandango became fandango without any change at all. A whole lot of words jumped the border with Texas cowboys, since Tejas was originally Mexican, and lots and lots of cowboys were Mexican, and the border wasn't all that well defined. In my book, the Wolof origin of at least dogie and buckaroo is pretty much nailed to the counter, but I'm willing to have an open mind, and I haven't tagged it as nonfactual or anything yet.

It's true though, that I pretty much don't accept the reference as authoritative, because right in the referenced text are at least those two highly questionable if not outright false assertions.

However, all I did was move the text warning (not generally accepted by linguists) to above the section rather than below it, in the same way a spoiler warning goes before the spoiler. I'm willing to leave the text in the article pending a good refutation, but I pretty much insist that it not be put out there as if it were a 'generally accepted known fact'.

Additionally, about half of those terms seem to me to have very little to do with the subject "hippie" and so aren't really relevant. I'm in favor of trimming the list, but what I'd prefer is to move most of it to a separate article, with or without a summary paragraph at Hippie.

But I am not going to do that until I find some more info... it goes altogether, it stays altogether, a sterner and more specific warning is added, the existing warning is removed, it gets its own article, it gets trimmed... something needs to be done there, as it sticks out like an infected elbow. The professor (who may or may not exist) Joseph E. Holloway, according to that website, works at Cal. State, Northridge (again, according to that article)... and as it stands, I simply do not accept his credentials or research, or degree, or the 'fact' that he works at CSUN, at face value, based on the content of one web page.

I don't have it in for him, I just want to fact-check it some before I am willing to put it to bed. Since CSUN is an easy bike ride from here, first chance I get, I'll ask some fellow professors about him, assuming he exists, and try to get a few moments of his time to nail down his sources, and get his response on what to me seems to be the accepted etymology of dogie and buckaroo...

Bottom line is, I'm working on the article, if I stop working on it, and leave that there, and it turns out to be untrue, my reputation as a good editor suffers, and I don't think the article stands a chance of becoming featured artcle quality without a better reference than one that seems to have blatant errors in it. Needs more support, as it's not widely known, or it needs removal as nonfactual, or it needs a warning that it's not a widely held opinion among language experts...

Do you get what I'm aiming for? Please don't bang on me for just moving the 'not widely held opinion warning' to before the questionable text... I didn't write it, I just moved it. uhhh... unless I did write it, which I don't recall, and I'd hate to have to run down who did, because it doesn't really matter who wrote either the questionable text or the warning.

I'll see if I can get a few minutes with Dr. Holloway, and see what he has to say. Maybe he can point me at an additional reference and we can cite that, if it's true I have no problem, or even if it's seriously considered by academia as being true, that would be swell. As it stands I'm dubious of the text and it's single reference. dang, I went and wrote a book, when a short note would do. Please forgive me. User:Pedant 07:28, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * No problem on length of commentary, Pedant. As you know, I do the same. I see your points, and I trust your knowledge of the cowboy lingo.  Most of the slang the professor lists seems relevant to me.  I did forward his credentials, his other works and so on--double checked their existence, so I'm pretty sure he exists.  He has also co-authored at least one book--a good sign.  Might be good to visit one of his published texts, just to get the tenor of things.  I didn't realize you just moved the "not widely held opinion" warning--thought you authored it and just wanted to know if you knew more than I did about objections or discounting by other scholars.  I don't know much about this field myself. Founders4 08:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

re:Barnstar
''I don't give out barnstars left and right as some do, so I hope that you value this as a genuine appreciation of your genuinely excellent and valuable work in recent weeks, including your efforts to keep on top of things during a busy period in your 'real life'. Thank you very much.User:Pedant 21:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)''


 * Thanks Pedant! I really appreciate your kind gesture! :-) אמר Steve Caruso  ( desk / AMA )  00:58, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to Esperanza!
Welcome, Pedant, to Esperanza! As you might know, all the Esperanzians share one important goal: the success of this encyclopedia. Within that, we then attempt to strengthen the community bonds, and be the "approachable" side of the project. All of our ideals are held in the Charter, the governing document of the association.

Now that you are a member you should read the guide to what to do now or you may be interested in some of our programs. A quite important program is Stressbusters, which seeks to support editors who have encountered any stress from their Wikipedia events, and are seeking to leave the project. So far, Esperanza can be credited with the support and retention of several users. We will send you newsletters to keep you up to date. Also, we have a calendar of special events, member birthdays, and other holidays that you can add to and follow.

In addition to these projects, several more missions of Esperanza are in development, and are currently being created at Esperanza/Proposals.

If you have any other questions, concerns, comments, or general ideas, Esperanzian or otherwise, know that you can always contact Natalya by email or talk page. Consider introducing yourself at the Esperanza talk page! Alternatively, you could communicate with fellow users via our IRC channel, #wikipedia-esperanza (which is also good for a fun chat or two :). If you're new to IRC, you may find help at an IRC tutorial. I thank you for joining Esperanza, and look forward to working with you in making Wikipedia a better place to work!

&mdash; riana_dzasta wreak havoc''' 06:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi Pedant! Sorry this reply is late, I haven't logged in for a while. Anyhow, the only way I know of looking at old newsletters is to sift through the page history. This seems to be the May edition and this appears to be the April edition. However, they're dated the same, so I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps you should ask another Esperanzian just to clarify that. Either way, it'd be useful to check out the current programs page to gain the best idea of what Esperanzians are aiming to help with right now.
 * Sorry I couldn't be more specific :( But I do think that the current programs page is very helpful. The proposed programs page is also quite useful.
 * I hope that helped a tiny bit! Best wishes, &mdash; riana_dzasta wreak havoc''' 06:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Done
See User:Pedant/hereyago. Oh, and if you move it to a better name, let me know and I'll delete the user page. Steve block Talk 23:30, 31 August 2006 (UTC)