User talk:Sbharris/archive7

Archive #7 All messages from Dec 27, 2008 though the end of June 2009.

Adminship
Hello! My name is Gopal81 and I would like to nominate you for adminship. According to your edit history, it seems you are already not an admin. Oh, and before I forget:  Gopal81 would like to nominate you to become an administrator. Please visit Requests for adminship to see what this process entails, and then contact Gopal81 to accept or decline the nomination. A page for your nomination at Requests for adminship/Sbharris. If you accept the nomination, you must state and sign your acceptance. You may also choose to make a statement and/or answer the optional questions to supplement the information your nominator has given. Once you are satisfied with the page, you may post your nomination for discussion, or request that your nominator do so. If, however, you wish to just be an editor, you can leave me a message! Gopal81 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 01:52, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the offer of nomination, but adminship consists mostly of dealing with messes that should not exist in the first place, were it not for the "non-negociable policies" of our beloved God-king. "Anybody can edit" means you get to fix school IP library computer vandalisms. If you need a metaphor, it is a job cleaning up babyshit off the floor because Jimbo has outlawed diapers. And then, there's the culture that has produced this. Which of course is the comments on this this, which finally degenerated to this:  "A concerning RfC" in ANI archive 180. Which needs to be enshrined in WP:LAME. Pure abusive by a power-elite who cannot stand being criticized even mildly, as a group. And you want me to join this club? I have too much self-respect. Let me get back to the work, please, working to improve the quality of articles which will later be scrapped by other sites, and are thus independent of the largely rotten culture of the organization which makes them possible (but does not do the actual work). Meanwhile, the WMF CEO Sue Gardner can continue to vet new board-of-trustees members of the Foudation, which means she picks her own bosses, and thus has no real accountability. Sweet. But you can have it.  S  B Harris 11:43, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

g-force article
Hi, sorry to bother you, but help!!! I know you're good at physics, could you look at my edit here:, the source can be viewed in google books:.

It's being multiply reverted, including removing the references to a reliable source, and I need somebody who understands physics to say yes or no that what I wrote is backed up by that source. There's a whole mess on the talk page about it as well, but you should know from the edit one way or another.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 07:59, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I also quoted an email from Henry Spencer on the talk page, that says that same thing I think.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 07:59, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There's now a pretty long summary on the g-force talk page. Bottom line is that accelerometers indeed do not feel gravitational acceleration. They only feel electromagnetic resistance to it. That tends to "feel like" a sum of gravitational acceration plus horizontal ones, if your up-down accleration from thrust or just dirt balances the g-field. But don't mistake the two-- they aren't the same thing just because they are the same in magnitude. S  B Harris 11:53, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think pretty much ignoring Greg_L is the key to this, but not completely, he's probably never going to understand it, unfortunately, so reasoning with him is largely a waste of time; he's been ranting like this for quite a while, and he's never going to stop. There's a strong case for an RFC on him, his behaviour is really bad, but the wikipedia has relatively weak enforcement on this kind of thing, and they usually expect you to stop editing the article while you 'discuss it'. It's the others that we need to get to understand. I just wish there were more clear, correct sources we could refer to, everything is so vague, and most people find the textbooks unreadable. The other thing is relativity, everyone is misquoting Einstein and it's not helping. We need separate the two arguments completely in the article. One or other but not both at the same time.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:33, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I value your input there. You might want to consider avoiding comments like "Ah, at last, some thinking" in the interest of effective collaboration. I think a lot of thinking has been and continues to be implemented; whether you agree with others there or not, I humbly request you to make it all light and less or no heat. Hackles have already been raised and I think a very calm and factual approach will be more productive. Best wishes, --John (talk) 03:36, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Point taken. S  B Harris 03:50, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * By the way, very many thanks indeed for your help on that article. Sometimes I just can't believe the kind of bizarro stuff that goes down here.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Grawp sock
Before you go and accuse me of being "clueless," the idiot's first couple of edits were garden-variety vandalism, not the typical "HAGGER" and "HERMIE" garbage. I did go back later to see what the guy had been up to, saw the page moves, went to block the account along with the talk page and discovered he'd already been blocked. That kind of asinine behavior on the part of those snot-nosed little brats is what prompted me to ask for my admin tools back, so please don't jump down my throat. I once got a death threat from one of the little bastards, so believe me when I tell you that Grawp is at the top of my list. I do a lot of patrolling for the Grawp wannabes and I shut them down on sight, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. We're supposed to be on the same team, here. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 15:37, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, bro. You're a class act.  I can't tell you how many times I've been a direct target for those little you-know-whats who hang around that revolting Encyclopedia Dramatica.  I only wish I'd been the admin to clobber that last one!  Thanks again for the kind words.  Much obliged.  :)  --PMDrive1061 (talk) 23:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Fiat Currency references
Some of the references *i think* you left on Fiat_currency are broken. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Campoftheamericas (talk • contribs) 20:02, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

irony
I am not a purist, and I completely agree that the article on irony should reflect modern usage. However, I don't think your revision accurately captured the modern usage, while another section of the article already covers it. You said something along the lines of "irony is used to mean sharp, unexpected turn of events." But I do not believe the word is commonly used this way. On the other hand, there is another section of the article that says situational irony can be defined as "coincidence, when enlivened by 'perverse appropriateness." When people refer to something that is "merely coincidental" as irony, there is almost universally an element that someone considers to be perversely appropriate. The number of people using it when something is only a coincidence without this added dimension is small enough, I believe, that we can regard them as being in error, and that use is not indicative of a common usage.

--Dr.queso (talk) 01:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

RE: My talkpage (Chemicals)
Thanks, I'll follow the discussion, but haven't really formed an opinion yet. Cheers SpitfireTally-ho! 05:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Protection on chemical elements pages
Not sure why you think I am involved. I don't have any strong views one way or the other on this matter, and don't have anything to contribute to the discussion. Ehrenkater (talk) 17:43, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

GRAWP attacks
Yes, thank you. I do know about Grawp. I am totally willing to block him ASAP and as permanently as is possible. As we know, IP permanent blocks are not really approved of; is there any way of being sure that the author of these attacks, which always come in the same form, are not from dynamic IPs? Always willing to learn; seriously. --Anthony.bradbury"talk" 20:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Cyanide
I saw your edits on cyanide. Fine. My continuing issue is that Wikipedia editors recognize that Wikipedia not become an account of "how things are in the U.S."--Smokefoot (talk) 13:54, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I'm for adding the info anywhere they're still gassing people with HCN. It's just that I don't know of anyplace else. North Korea is a rumor, as you see. Even in the US, it's now secondary, and we may have seen the last of it. Still of historical interest, though. They used the cyanide for 70 years and never did try the nitrogen. Go figure. S  B Harris 05:26, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Edit war on Mass–energy equivalence
Hi Steven: Apparently User:Likebox insists on writing Mass–energy equivalence to suit themselves, and repeatedly deletes cited material. They already have a reputation for such activity. How can it be prevented or ameliorated? Brews ohare (talk) 04:22, 13 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello--- there is no edit war, the text keeps changing. I put all the sources that this editor insert on the talk page, and start a discussion, but I don't always get feedback. The reason I keep changing the text is because Brews ohare inserts slightly inaccurate stuff. It's mostly OK, but there are annoyances--- for example, the citation he gave for the mass of the photon includes a book which claims that the evidence supports a small nonzero mass for the photon. It's not a good source. The text he inserts for QCD is both too technical for the section (in my opinion) and reflects an unsupported view that the lattice calculations are less accurate than they are.


 * I would have no objection to inserting sourced material, but the sources that Brews ohare provides are usually very technical, and sometimes they have very little to do with what he is claiming. For example, in the discussion on the talk page, there is a source which claims to discuss the Maiani Testa theorem, which he is using to claim that the lattice results are no good. The theorem is very technical, and would scare off a non-physicist. The theorem has no relevance to mass calculations, as the authors say right in the original paper, but he did not link to this paper. I had to find it and link to it after a search.


 * The dispute here has not been over a single factual statement, but it seems to be a meaningless haggle over wording. I don't see why we cannot come to compromise.Likebox (talk) 15:47, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * There are QCD, lattice QCD, and photon articles where this stuff goes better. I agree that it's shoehorned in, here. I've said as much on the article's TALK page. It's not that the info is uninteresting, it's just badly placed. S  B Harris 07:37, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Be, B, Li
Hello. I will slow down.. And see if I can find some references for some of the unreference stuff..

I'm sure I haven't actually removed any content - I did remove some stuff that was repeated in the "Applications" sections since is was duplicated.

Bits I did remove include
 * Use of boron as a fuel additive in rockets and new fuel for cars - the first isn't really in use (as far as I know) mainly due to issues with the boron oxide produced clogging everything. The second is fairly easily shown to be fantasy.
 * The point about Boron being electron deficient is a common statement - but generally only applies to certain compounds such as BCl3 - which in reality - is not - it has the standard 8 electrons by dimer formation. B is electropositve, though again that only applies to a set of compounds - which have to be specially prepared - native boron compounds such as borax are definately not electron deficient. Even in BF3 the p orbitals are definately not empty.
 * From beryllium I did remove part from the lead section that claimed that beryllium toxicity might be an allergic reaction - given that people have died from berylliumm poisoning, and it is widely accepted that it's toxic - I'd call this claim contentious to say the least. It was also unreferenced.FengRail (talk) 21:11, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * ANSWER The term "vacant p-orbital" is not completely clear, but the point is that B often bonds via sp^2 hybridization, leaving a vacant p where carbon would have one with an electron in it. It is such a helpful didactic that if you google "boron vacant p" you'll get 25,000 hits from all sources (5000 in Google scholar), with the first hit being the article : π-Conjugated Organoboron Polymers via the Vacant p-Orbital of the Boron Atom. So, if you're going to go on a crusade to remove this thought, and this expression, from texts and professional journals, Wikipedia is not the place to begin. Start someplace else and work your way up, please. As for beryllium, at least one review (American Ceramic Society Bulletin,Vol. 68, no. 5, pp. 1034. 1989) states flatly  "Berylliosis is a disease of delayed immunological response, i.e. only people allergic to beryllium contract the disease. About 1% of people are allergic." Beryllium dermatitis is certainly allergic, and the lessions in other parts of the body are cell-mediated immune complexes with typical granumolas for allergic reactions. In fact, chronic berylliosis in man can be diagnosed via a skin allergy patch test called the Curtis test,and there is also a beryllium lymphocyte proliferation assay in which the victim's lymphocytes are tested to be sensitive to proliferation to beryllium as an antigen, in the same way as is done for any allergen. "Chronic beryllium disease (CBD) provides a model for study of the Ag [antigen]- stimulated, cell-mediated immune response that, over time, progresses to granulomatous lung disease."  The entire toxicity mechanism of Be hasn't been nailed down (is it for anything?), but I don't believe the beryllium article LEAD said that it had been: it merely said: "The toxicity of beryllium and its salts varies greatly from person to person, and has elements of its pathology that suggest an allergic-type component to the body's reaction to it." That's certainly fair, and if you google-schoolar "berylliosis allergic" you'll more than enough support if you need more. But you can't add the citations if the statement has been removed. That's what  tags are for. You're supposed to remove stuff only if it's plainly crazy and/or you can't find any evidence in a cursory search, not simply because you don't believe it or hadn't heard of it. How much scholarship did you do on the matter?   S  B Harris 03:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't insult me with ", if you're going to go on a crusade to remove this thought" and " Start someplace else and work your way up, please" - I find that insulting.
 * Also the info in the articles is supposed to be referenced - you clearly had the page on your watchlist, and were quick to respond when I changed it, and are capable of finding references, so why have you left the articles unreferenced ? Why should the casual reader believe statements in an article that give no justification or references.
 * Are you going to add this information that you have found?FengRail (talk) 14:31, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * BERYLIUM: Berylium allergy - the issue here is that it's known that chronic exposure can cause sensitisation (isn't it?) - thus the fact that people suffering from Be poisoning show an allergy after the event is not necessarily very useful - ie correlation does not imply causation. No it's not any sort of personal crusade - but claims such as "The toxicity of beryllium and its salts varies greatly from person to person" (as the article originally stated) are unproven as far as I know and not necessarily true.


 * So far as you know? In this argument only one person is posting references, and that's me. For an overview: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/296759-overview. The key things about berylliosis, the chronic syndrome (as opposed to the acute toxicity which is more of a corrosive effect) is that progression of berylliosis is extremely variable, with some people progressing inexorably to death long after exposure is removed, and others not. 97% of those affected have a particular HLA type (HLA-DPb1), against a background of 30% for normals, which is expected of a delayed-type hypersensitivity reaction, which this is accepted to be. The fact that the allergic hypersensitivity affects a small population (< 20%) of exposed people means self-evidently that "toxity varies greatly from person to person." This is the same with smoking and emphysema. Only a small fraction of smokers ever get emphysema, so even though there is a dose-response, there's is also a large variation in people with the same number of pack-years exposure. Thus, toxicity of smoking varies greatly from person to person. No, as I said above, the mechanistic studies, nature of the granulomas, animal model studies, etc., http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12464&page=165 all give a far stronger inductive picture for causation than mere post hoc correlation. Although as Hume pointed out long ago, we really have no other way to establish causation for anything other than various types of correlation, so if you're going to be the ultimate Humean skeptic, I cannot inductively prove any causal relationship to you whatever, still less one which is less than 100% and which cannot be experimentally proven in a human trial which would involve an ethically unacceptable challenge with inhaled beryllium. Nor can I prove to you for the same reason that smoking causes lung cancer or heart disease, or that HIV causes AIDS. All these have their skeptics. Nor that drinking causes fatal auto accidents. But I've been down the skeptic road with too many people to waste my time on somebody who resorts to this defense and won't post counter-references. I'll simply put this up on the beryllium TALK page and let others comment.


 * BORON: As for boron's vacant p orbitals - yes some compounds are electron deficient - however all naturally occuring ores, and common chemicals are not - the electron deficiency is found in high energy boron compounds such as boranes. That's why I removed it from the general description of boron compounds - because most are not. However I will attempt to expand this section at some point, so I expect to be mentioning electron deficiency in the text at some point, along with the concept of a vacant p orbital - but not as a generalisation to 'all' boron compounds as it was before. Before it read "Chemically boron is electron-deficient, possessing a vacant p-orbital. It is an electrophile." - it's not clear if this refers to the element or compounds.FengRail (talk) 14:57, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * ANSWER :: Yes and no. Yes, not every boron in every compound is electron deficient, though you'll find some electron-deficient borons in all minerals (yes, borax among them). By vacant p-orbitals I mean sp2 hybrids where the bond plane is flat and trigonal and a pair of electrons can be accepted from something else, Lewis-acid-style, which means the compound is mildly acidic. Not every boron atom in naturally occuring ores are this way, but roughly half of them are, since the most common boron minerals are oxides and these tend to be mixes of sp3 and sp2 borons. Borax and kernite are both B4O5(OH)4= salts; in this anion the two negative charges and 4 borons means that 2 of the borons are sp3, giving them a formal negative charge (not electron deficient), and the others are sp2, making them neutral and electron deficient as sp2 with an empty p in the formal structure. These borons are NOT equivalent structurally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tetraborate-xtal-3D-balls.png. "native boron compounds such as borax are definately not electron deficient." Sorry, but the fact that some borons in borax are electron deficient can be seen directly when you add it to polyvinyl alcohol (I presume you've done this?) and you get something like slime. That's due to electron pairs from the poly-ol sticking into empty boron p-orbitals and forming Lewis adducts, just as with boric acid B(OH)3, which does the same thing for the same reason. The various boron oxides have various structures, but in them all, some borons have enough sp2-like character to be electron-deficient and acidic. Again this is directly useful and visible: in fact glassmakers rely on boron oxides to be acidic enough to form molten salt like structures with (basic) metal oxides; they could not do this if not electron-deficient. Obviously boron compounds where EVERY B has a formal negative charge (the superconductor MgB2 and the various BN compounds) are not electron deficient, but rather every B has a filled octet. However, contrary to your assertion I know of no B minerals in this category, and I've looked (name one-- I can't prove a negative). As for other B compounds not found in nature: boron halides at normal temp are sp2 trigonal and electron deficient-- they have vacant ENOUGH p's to be classic adduct formers. Some kind of dimerization of the halides may happen at low cryogenic temps, but why are we even discussing such stuff? "Even in BF3 the p orbitals are definately not empty." Who says? Citation needed. It's a trigonal compound, and classic adduct former. Finally, you can't generalize about the boranes:  "...the electron deficiency is found in high energy boron compounds such as boranes." High energy?? All chemical bonds require energy to break. The boranes are compounds in which can have sp3 hybrids yet no octet, due to the 3-center-2-electron bonds. Some have half-filled p's and others have atoms with empty p's. B2H4 has two "half vacant" p's, but is sp3, and in B4H10 all four B's are the same way. However in B5H9 and higher hydrides some of the B's are sp2 and trigonal so they have fully empty p orbitals. To sum up, I would say that electron replete negatively-charged boron is the rarity, and is not found in nature. It occurs most notably in man-made boron graphite structure polymers. All natural boron compounds (including all oxides) have some empty p's, are acidic, and form adducts with alcohols and hydroxides. As do boron halides. The higher boranes (B5 and higher) also have some empty p's. Finally, as to the citations, once again, since this not biography, the proper way to handle it is with  tags if you don't believe it, not removal. I've supplied most of the citation here, and all I have from you is disbelief and no research and no cites of your own. I take it you have degrees in medicine and chemistry, have seen a case of berylliosis, have handled elemental B, Be, Li and their compounds and adducts in the lab, and so forth? How did you manage the 20 K to give you dimeric (BF3)2? Liquid helium?  S  B Harris 12:19, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Your advice
Dear Steven, I'm seeking your advice on how to behave on wikipedia regarding edit wars. I haven't had problems with that until recently (just wrote to a person and easily reached consensus). I'm trying to be polite and careful and will ask a hypothetical question. What if someone does not care about his reputation and starts attacking you personally, with no limits, saying, e.g., that you rewrite his edits because you are bad and wrong, etc.. How would you react. I see my question is yet unshaped and will give possible answers: Editing wikipedia raises many psychological problems, and I guess there could be a sort of "help desk" for that. Sorry for asking you. Best regards.NIMSoffice (talk) 00:06, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Try to find a compromise or talk him out. Sure, but the person doesn't listen.
 * 2) Apply for "legal" protection against sockpuppets and personal attacks. That works, but the person may get clever enough not to give enough reasons for that.
 * 3) Fight back in discussions. Sure, I can, but unfortunately, being right does not make it easy to win the case, if the opponents is aggressive and has enough knowledge to seem reasonable. His goal is to win, no matter what, he might sink in mud, but put a dirty spot on you too, as any argument can be twisted either way, and many wiki people don't trust anyone (i.e. if there is a nasty battle, its for a reason - both parties should have been unclean). On the other hand, I'm working on dozens of topics, and ruining myself because of one doesn't seem worth it.
 * 4) Walk out, sacrificing that topic, saying "you can't get it all fixed".
 * See Wikipedia Mediation WP:M for how to file for a mediation. The step after that for the truly pathological is a request for arbitration WP:RFAR (sort of the supreme court for problems which fail mediation, often with penalties). I may be the wrong person to ask about this, since I am of the long opinion that Wikipedia is fundamentally flawed as long as the participants are anonymous and there is no way to compensate for academic authority or for gaming of the system by ballot box stuffing (very clever socks) and for the advances that accrue to fanatics who simply have more time to waste. Thus, I've simply left a lot of articles to dogs myself. There's always www.mywikibiz.com for when you can't stand it any more, and want your own article to say what you want it to say, with no nuts allowed. S  B Harris 00:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Helldorado Days
I contend that the one is Las Vegas is the primary use. If you wish to move it, it probably needs to be discussed on WP:RM. In the meantime, don't violate the GFDL by cut and paste moves. Also I might have understood what you were trying to do earlier if your edit comments explained your actions. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:50, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've left a message on your talk page. Learn some Western history, and please leave your Las Vegas boosterism at the door. S  B Harris 23:30, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Science lead
Sb, my sense is that the lead was getting close to a reasonable lead, even with the one-word parenthetical note about praxis. It seems to me the more specific discussion about the uses of the word "art" (technical or practical art as opposed to creative or fine art) almost certainly ought be in the "Etymology and usage" section, if anywhere. The existing section on usage is presently too lengthy IMO, and ought be made more concise and less like part of a paper somebody wrote, but there certainly is room there for the clarification about "art". IOW, while a proper observation, I think it's a bit too much of a contextual explanation for the opening paragraph. ... Kenosis (talk) 12:18, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * But how can you leave out the first meaning of the world "science" which was used for millennia, which means something you've reduced to a prescription so that anybody can follow it?As in "how do you you make those incredible violins, Stradivari?" "Well, I don't really know. I sort of do it by feel and tone and work my way along. You can make some with me, and see if you can pick up the knack." "You mean you haven't got violin-making reduced to a science?" "No" "Well, if it's not a science, what IS it?" "I suppose it's still partly an art." S  B Harris 00:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand the difficulties, but IMO the subtleties definitely don't belong in the first summary paragraph or even the article lead as a whole. The mere use of the word "prescriptive" says what you've said here, at least very basically and appropriately for the lead paragraph. Perhaps the subtleties of this should be mentioned instead in the "Etymology and usage" section which is presented immediately after the lead. Also, I intentionally included the basic relevant usages in the initial footnotes-- perhaps they can help to form what the summary of the issue might look like in the "Etymology and usage" section? ... Kenosis (talk) 04:05, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I can live with the way you've got it. Thanks! S  B Harris 01:40, 26 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Sb. I know you put some serious thought into this article... Kenosis (talk) 01:47, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Matter
Hi Steven:

It may be the moment for you to take another look at Matter. Please comment. Brews ohare (talk) 16:15, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Gamma boron discovery controversy
An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Gamma boron discovery controversy. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

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Speedy deletion nomination of File:SteinbeckStamp.JPG
A tag has been placed on File:SteinbeckStamp.JPG requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section I9 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the image appears to be a blatant copyright infringement. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted images or text borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted.

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Orphaned non-free image (File:SteinbeckStamp.JPG)
 Thanks for uploading File:SteinbeckStamp.JPG. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

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 * It is no longer orphaned. The stamp image (file:SteinbeckStamp.JPG) is now used to illustrate just one thing in the article: the fact that he was honored with a postage stamp. Fair enough? S  B Harris 06:20, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Centrifugal Force
Steve, I can now see that you are genuinely trying to understand this controversy. Your recent intervention began with you teaching me about the rotating frame transformation equations as they appear in the textbooks. I was already totally familiar with this topic as it appears in the textbooks, with its radial Coriolis force, and I have explained on a number of occasions where I think that it is totally wrong. If you do agree with this approach to centrifugal force, then we will have to agree to disagree. The argument on the talk page is no longer about that specific issue. Rotating frames transformations/fictitious forces is prolific in the textbooks, and under wikipedia rules it has to go into the article as such. I am not interferring with that. I am leaving that for those that are interested in writing about that topic.

The edit war now is over the issue of whether or not the literature advocates a third way. The literature does indeed advocate that centrifugal force is an inertial force that becomes exposed when Newton's laws are expressed in polar coordinates.  In my opinion, this is the only universally correct way to approach the topic, and the edit war is because FyzixFighter and dicklyon want to suppress all references to this approach.

Dicklyon's strategy is to say that the third way is only a special case of the rotating frames approach as applied to co-rotation situations. The problem with that argument is that when we deal with rotating frames of reference, we are only doing so because we are focused on the apparent deflections that accour with non-co-rotation. So if we want to focus on co-rotation, why bother with rotating reference frames at all? And when the polar coordinates approach is adopted, rotating frames don't enter into it. The centrifugal force is an inertial force in the inertial frame.

The point is that the maths that is used for rotating frame transformations actually only applies to co-rotating situations. It doesn't apply to the apparent deflections that it is supposed to be applying to. There has been a huge cock up in modern applied maths over this issue. The apparent deflections are not accurately descsribed by the inertial force expressions. Indeed all that a rotating frame does is to superimpose an apparent circular motion on top of the inertial path.

So the edit war at the moment focuses on the introduction. FyzixFighter is insisting that we categorically declare that there are only two approaches to this topic. He is trying to suppress the third way even though references have been presented. It is a corrupt bureaucratic tactic. By having some modern reference in which some misinformed author has stated his belief that there are two approaches to centrifugal force, FyzixFighter is playing the wikipedia rules such as to disallow any references to a third approach. He is giving a primacy to these references as if they are divine wisdom, and he is getting away with it because he has fooled the adminsitrators into thinking that he is trying to improve the article. In actual fact, the evidence is clear that FyzixFighter only edits on physics articles that I edit on, and that his only purpose is to undermine what I am trying to do. David Tombe (talk) 13:04, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You say "The centrifugal force is an inertial force in the inertial frame." But I just got done going over that. There ARE no "inertial forces" in an inertial frame-- at least at the free-body diagram level. The reactive forces don't show up in the free-body diagram, and in any case are called properly reactive forces-- they are just the other end of a two-headed force vector, ala Newton's third law. Fictitious forces which arrise in accelerated frames are force arrows with only one head, and they don't follow Newton's third law. S B Harris 17:34, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The fictitious forces are not the same as the inertial forces. The two have got confused in the literature. The inertial forces are built into the inertial path. Fictitious forces are apparent deflections in an accelerated frame of reference. You need to learn about polar coordinates and then its appliaction to the Kepler problem. That deals with centrifugal force in a concise way without any involvement of rotating frames of reference. David Tombe (talk) 18:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * As I've tried to tell you, if d(theta)/dt ≠ 0 in polar coordinates, then you DO have a rotating frame and thus an accelerated frame of reference. And I think these "inertial forces" are something you just made up out of your head. If you can't connect them with any concept in physics texts, I'm going to assume that. S  B Harris 18:45, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Steve, the d(theta)/dt ≠ 0 is relative to the inertial frame. There is no rotating frame of reference involved. Just because we have rotation it doesn't mean that we have a rotating frame of reference. David Tombe (talk) 19:00, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, but you have to make sure you have no rotating frame of reference. So the rule for that in polar coordinates (as in rectilinear also) is that the coordinate axes must be pointed at the fixed stars, in such a way that they don't move. Straight line motion in such a system, if does not pass through the coordinate center, gives you many funny terms. However, they don't necessarily correspond with real forces, and in generally they do not if the straight line motion is of constant velocity. If you arrange your coordinate system so that motion passes through the center (or you affix it to the object in motion at least at one point in its path) then "real" forces show up straightforwardly as terms where d(theta)/dt ≠ 0 for the r vector point from origin to object, and also in terms where d^2(r)/dt^2 ≠ 0. S  B Harris 19:54, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Steve, I've quantified this discussion on the talk page of centrifugal force under the title 'The General Polar Coordinate Equation and the Four Inertial Forces'. I'd welcome your opinions there as to what the four terms mean. David Tombe (talk) 23:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Steinbeck stamp discussion
ww2censor (talk) 17:00, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Grave mistake
I moved List of links for information relating to Graves' disease to User:Sbharris/sandbox in accordance with my shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy. I now see that it is stuff hived off the parent article and that it had been discussed. But even so, I suggest you seek support at talk:Graves' disease before moving it back. Why not put it on your website? Or downgrade it to a sub-page of talk:Graves' disease? &mdash; RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 23:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of List of links for information relating to Graves' disease
A proposed deletion template has been added to the article List of links for information relating to Graves' disease, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process&#32; because of the following concern:
 * Per WP:NOTLINK

All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because, even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Ridernyc (talk) 02:04, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Beryllium-8
IMO, unless the isotope is particularly notable (C-12, C-14, H-2, and so on), it would be better to expand the isotope of element article (in this case, Isotopes of beryllium) and create a section within that article (such as Isotopes of beryllium). Then if the section grows particularly unwield, then it would be expanded into its own article. Your opinion? Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:39, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * For most things I would agree, but this meanwhile leaves us with lots of redlinks for every nuclide we haven't written a separate Wiki on, like tantalum-180m, or else you have to go through the work to make every one a piped-link to the "isotopes of X" page, and then later undo them all, wherever you find them, when you spin off the new wiki. That's a lot of work. Is it better to have 10 or 100 redlinks or one stub? Since every one of the 250-odd stable nuclides and a fair number of the radioactive ones have enough published literature on them to merit a whole Wiki, they all really deserve to be linked, which means a lot of them will redlink. And if you don't want to stare at all those redlinks until the thing is written, the easiest way to fix it is with a stub. S  B Harris 22:37, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

File:SteinbeckStamp.JPG listed for deletion
An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:SteinbeckStamp.JPG, has been listed at Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. ww2censor (talk) 14:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Question on United States Notes
Hello! I have been dabbling on the United States Notes page and was wondering if you had any information on who the American economist S.G. Fisher was?--LondonYoung (talk) 09:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't. S  B Harris 20:58, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * tks, I am gonna take his quote out of the US Notes article since I can't find anything else on this economist--LondonYoung (talk) 09:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Consensus on WIkipedia
I was interested to read your commentary on consensus at Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not. I haven't got quite as jaded as you, but I haven't been around as long. My present view is that often it happens that a few editors get wound up on a topic and just pass beyond the point of listening, continually rephrase exactly the same arguments, and ignore any attempt at persuasion, be it logic, citations or rhetoric. If the topic is left alone for a while amazingly these editors lose all interest, and may not even make changes in the article: they just like debate. It's just modern life, people like drama more than results. Brews ohare (talk) 21:09, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Stick around. S  B Harris 21:12, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Cardiac Fibrosis
Hi SBHarris.

Thanks, yeah this page is definitely making progress and its always nice when wikipedia articles can approach a comparable standard to the peer-reviewed literature. Lots more stuff to say but relevant research is unfortunately somewhat lacking as the pharmaceutical industry has now pretty much dropped anything with even a hint of 5-HT2B agonist effects and ceased most research in the area....I guess if they expect to be sued by former patients then it seems sensible to avoid doing research that might help the opposition's case!

This lack of incentive to do further research is a problem though as some crucial issues remain unanswered, particularly as relates to the dose-response relationship and other risk factors. One point our article doesn't make clear that perhaps it should, is that 5-HT2B agonists merely increase the risk of developing cardiac valvopathies, and even in patients prescribed high doses for long periods of time of the worst offending drugs like fenfluramine or pergolide, the majority of patients did not develop clinically relevant valvopathies, even though the risk of developing the heart problem was undoubtedly far higher than in the general population. So there is clearly more to it than just 5-HT2B agonism, I'd speculate genetic factors will also be very important as this would explain why some patients develop the valvopathies even with only relatively limited exposure, while others can take fenfluramine for years with no apparent heart damage at all.

Also its all very well for the FDA to recommend that patients be switched to alternative drugs that don't act at 5-HT2B, but this only works where suitable alternatives are available. With recreational drugs like MDMA the risk of long-term cardiotoxicity is clearly not going to stop people from using the drug seeing as neurotoxicity and legal sanctions have so far failed to do so. Since treatment with a 5-HT2B antagonist blocks both the serotonin release and behavioural effects of MDMA it seems likely that central 5-HT2B activation may be required for producing the effects of "empathogens", and therefore it is doubtful whether other empathogens which are not 5-HT2B agonists could even be developed. This means that it is very important to determine things like what level of exposure is required to initiate abnormal heart valve tissue growth, and what other factors are responsible for the pronounced variability in individual response. Perhaps a peripherally selective 5-HT2B antagonist may prove to be the best prophylaxis in these cases, and drugs of this class are currently being developed for treatment of heart disease, so it will be interesting to see how well they do in clinical trials. Meodipt (talk) 02:44, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Steinbeck stamp postscript
I hear ya on the suckiness of getting images deleted - I've lost a bunch myself. I blame the movie buffs; when we were slack about fair use, they were uploading enough stills and segments to reproduce the entire movie... 1/2 :-) Years ago I did a bunch of cleanup in the general fair use image category, it was just amazing what people were trying to pass off as legitimate uses. So we end up with a byzantine system of criteria because common sense wasn't doing the job. These days I rarely bother with non-free images, they're not worth running the gauntlet (plus I have a 2-year backlog of my own photos to upload!) The cropping of the Steinbeck picture to filter out the cigarette could actually be spun into a good rationale, odds that there is an interview or article somewhere where the stamp designer comments on that. Stan (talk) 12:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Binding Energy
Yes, I sympathize. Unfortunately, the page is a bit of a mess--- it would require extensive rewriting. I don't know if I have time to do it.

The main issue is that there is a totally useless (but theoretically concievable) definition of binding energy tacked on there, which is the energy required to split a nucleus into electrons, neutrinos, and protons (zero mass neutrinos). To fight this nonstandard not so useful definition, you need to rewrite the whole thing more clearly, so that it isn't as long. If you have some particular paragraph you want removed, tell me, I'll do it.Likebox (talk) 00:17, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * If there's two of us vs. one of this guy, I'm just going to revert the page back to its previous form, and add some extra parts making it clear that maximal binding energy is not always the main motor of nuclear rections and decays, but simply minimal rest mass/conserved baryon number. The extra energy goes into heat/kinetic energy and thus increasing entropy, and that's that. If baryon number is NOT conservered, as in black hole evap, then the energy goes into making the maximal number of different particles of minimal mass, and entropy is increased that way. S  B Harris 00:44, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, do what you need to do, of course I agree.Likebox (talk)


 * It seems the other person left.Likebox (talk) 15:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Do I have to do anything? I don't want to start getting active on this page, because it would suck up all my free time.Likebox (talk) 17:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I want to suck up your free time! Since you know far more QM than I do, I want to know why people think they can get away with dividing up the angular and linear parts of the Dirac equation solution, label them spin and linear magnetic moment coupling, and then say "Lookie! Of course the spin magnetic moment is inversely proportional to mass and is thus "explained" without hand addition of the Bohr magneton, like Pauli had to do."  The problem for me is that all of this implicitly suggests that spin magnetic moment is a product of some physical extended object with charge and mass (the mass to determine its wavefunction "size" ala spin momentum), and yet after all this is done, people say: "Of course, nothing is really physically SPINNING...."  But you can't have it both ways. Why IS the muon magnetic moment really less than the electron's by VERY nearly the ratio of their masses? That can't be a coincidence, and yet QM refuses to assign any physical process to it. I think, simply because they get into speed of light spin velocity issues. But I think the number of problems we sweep under the run to explain non-composite particle magnetic moments, are even worse the way we've chosen to do it.  S  B Harris 22:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think that I am any better at answering this type of thing than anybody else, but I'll give it a shot. I think you are confusing the wavefunction size--- the spread of the electron in position which is responsible for orbital angular momentum--- with the different components of the Dirac spinor, the spin. The spin has nothing to do with the spatial spread of the electron's wavefunction, it's a new degree of freedom. The equations for the electron are two equations, one for the amplitude to be spin up, and the other for the amplitude to be spin down (and then two more for the antiparticle). I always hated the warnings "don't think of it as the electron spinning!" because the electron is spinning. All that warning means is that you shouldn't confuse the spin, which is a discrete variable with half-integer values, with spatial orbital angular momentum, which is an arbitrarily large integer, and comes from continuous motion. The spin part doesn't come from something smaller orbiting, if it did it would usually have to be an integer too (the exceptions are for skyrmions and dions).


 * The reason the magnetic moment comes out inversely proportional to the mass in the nonrelativistic limit is just due to the way in which a 4 component relativistic spinor decomposes into two component nonrelativistic spinors. It's in books--- you take the Dirac equation and split it up into slow and fast parts, the fast parts are the lower two components if you use a basis for gamma matrices which diagonalize gamma0, like Dirac did originally. Then you derive the equation for the slow parts from the fast parts, and you automatically get a magnetic moment that's correct (inversely proportional to the mass). You can change that by adding a Pauli term to the Dirac equation, but that's higher order, and so is considered unnatural. Hope that helps.Likebox (talk) 23:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Wavefunction
Steven: I've stashed some material I wanted to add to Wavelength at User:Brews ohare/Wavelength. This stuff has been repeatedly deleted by Srleffler in collaboration with Dicklyon, who make little attempt to suggest remedies, but love to tell me I am nuts. They deliberately removed from the article the stuff on General waveforms for which I made a RfC, without allowing time for anybody to respond. I thought that a bit high-handed. Perhaps you could offer a sanity check on this? Regards: Brews ohare (talk) 14:40, 21 June 2009 (UTC)