User talk:Sbharris/archive9

Archive #9 All messages from year 2010.

Alpha particle
You added lines to explain that there is a distinction between alpha particles and helium nuclei. I always thought the two were interchangeable; do you have a source for this information? — SkyLined (talk) 08:42, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * They're interchanagble once they've stopped, but not before. You get various answers from encyclopedias of science, but a typical one is this: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/alphapart.html. It's essentially idential to WP now, mentioning alpha decay and the odd other usage in stars, but the term is usually NOT used for randomly accelerated He nuclei. The reason being that all the generalizations about alpha penetration of the body and danger as ionizing radiation, are completely wrong if alphas are allowed to be generated at any arbitrary energy (which they are not, in normal radioactive decay). 1 Gev helium nuclei from a synchrotron will go all the way through a human body, just as fast protons will. They usually are not refered to as alphas, any more than high energy photons from linacs are refered to as "gammas", because they don't have the other characteristics of alphas, and they aren't produced by the same process. Perhaps the intro needs to be worked on some more; cosmic ray workers are sloppy and sometimes refer to fast He nuclei (10-12% of cosmic rays) as "alphas." But these cosmics will go through your body also, so it's really not the best idea to conflate them with the radioactive-decay particles that are stopped by your skin. I'll add some more about the confusion issue and the cosmic ray connection if you like, or you can. Suffice to say that using the term "alpha" carries a connotation that "helium nucleus" doesn't.  S  B Harris 12:53, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! — SkyLined (talk) 19:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Ernest Hemingway
Hi! Sorry about the revert last night to your good faith edit. It was late and I intended to fix today. Anyway, Mellow has the hotel name as Ambos only, which I though strange, but Meyers has the full name so that's fine. In fact Hemingway only spent a month in the hotel, and as was his habit, he worked on the manuscript in various places. He spent a fair amount of time in Sun Valley, at the Sun Valley Lodge finishing the rough draft. In my view, this is all too much info for the biography article, but would be very good in the separate article about the novel. I submitted the article for peer review a few days ago, and am awaiting comments as far as splitting up the sections. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:36, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, and thanks for the polite note! Hemingway stayed in the Ambos-Mundos whenever he stayed alone in Havana, which he frequently did on fishing trips, starting in 1932. It wasn't just for a month in 1939. When he was visiting town with Pauline (while the family lived in Key West) he stayed at the Hotel Sevilla-Biltmore, but when alone and wanting to do nothing more than drink and write and sleep after fishing, it was the Ambos-Mundos. Where exactly he stayed with Martha/"Marty" in Havana when having their affair while still married to Pauline, and before renting Vinca Figia (which he clearly did for the two of them), I don't know. I don't know where Mellow or Myers or whoever got the idea that Hemingway only spent a month at the Ambos-Mundos, but obviously he's never been to the place, which has far more Hemmingway stuff than a months' stay would produce. One of the problems with Wikipedia: people writing like they were trapped in the basement of a library, without any experience of the world, and screaming WP:NOR to those who've been outside. I'm been to the Hotel Ambos-Mundos and walked down Calle Obispo to El Floridita. What about Myers and Mellow and yourself? S  B Harris 19:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * replied Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:35, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Nice job on writing that article on the hotel. I've made a few modifications. Incidentally, I also have Ernest Hemingway on my watchlist, and I've seen lots of improvements to the article! :-) Mr. Harris, tomorrow I'm going to try to add some verifiable references to the article and try to nominate it for a DYK, of which you would be credited for initially starting the page. It's a bit past the nomination due date (within 5 days of creation), but we might be able to squeeze it in. Just needs some reference work. Killiondude (talk) 09:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but most of the credit is due to the writer of the Spanish article on the Hotel on wiki.es, which I simply ran trough babelfish (using my own poor Spanish to clean up further), and then touched up with a few added details from own visit to it (which visit basically only served to give me confidence to do the job). I have some tourist photos of my own of the place, which I should eventually be able to add in a few days, when I locate them. Ditto for the outside of El Floridita. BTW, if you have Hemingway on you list, would you mind adding your opinions to the great The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber debate (see the TALK page) S  B Harris 20:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the Macomber situation, but need to log off now! Have a look at the edit history to see what happened. I have the sources to verify your points. In my view your version is the better written one and should be reinstated and then sources added, and properly formatted to comply with wikipedia lit. formatting rules. Why this has to be done in seconds I don't understand, but I have other things to do at the moment, so am handing off back to you! Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:05, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I need your help
We had some debates and I find you a bit stubborn but also reasonable and knowledgeable. I think all three properties will be needed now.

First of all, have a look at the article Nuclide. Without deleting anything you wrote last time, I have added a 4th paragraph starting with “No matter how the IUPAC...”. Now I find the content of the article both correct and informative.

If you agree with me, then look at the article Isotope. It is a real mess! I was thinking about changing it, but nobody knows me in Wikiland and I think that the radical changes that should be made would upset people because they would think, someone had vandalized the page. The introductory part is just awful.

There are structural problems too. Most of the odd-even question should be best discussed in the Nuclide article (carefully rephrased). Also the chart of nuclides belongs there.

Maybe you can do something about that article. If you want to contact me, you'll find my e-mail address on my homepage at http://nagys.eu --TheBFG (talk) 20:00, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for reacting so quickly. I think what you propose is reasonable. “Nuclide” should be the main article. But I am not sure about redirecting. I think a short article should be left with a generalized definition that would declare an “isotope” as a kind of atomic/nuclear species (see the idea in the next point). Would you do the initiative steps? (This basically means restructuring the two articles and deleting the stupid parts from Isotope. A comment with your signature may help to accept the changes that you are implementing.) One of the reasons I am asking this is explained in my first message above. The second is that I am a novice and I may mess up these things. When you are ready, leave me a message and I will start working on the details.
 * I also need your opinion regarding the following question. I teach nuclear chemistry for chemistry majors. When I explain these things to my students, I tell them that in my opinion the terms “isotope”, “isobar”, “isotone” and “isomer” can also be used for nuclei. IUPAC cannot have anything against the longer terms “isotopic nuclei”, “isobaric nuclei”, etc., which could be abbreviated as “isotopes”, “isobars”, etc. just like the terms “isotopic nuclides”, “isobaric nuclides”, etc. This type of “legal generalization” of these terms is very useful in all cases which probably made you unhappy with the definition of “nuclide” — like plasmas, nucleosynthesis and artificial synthesis of new elements, when it is not clear (or not important from certain point of view) what you are dealing with (atoms, ions or nuclei). What do you think if I made this generalization explicit in the article? I think, nuclear physicists would be happy with it. It would also make it clear that the term nuclide was introduced not for the sake of (nuclear) physicists but for the sake of (nuclear) chemists — even if it was suggested by a physicist (see the 1947 entry mentioning T. P. Kohman in the time line I have compiled at http://www.chem.elte.hu/Sandor.Nagy/loadable/nuke-times.htm).--TheBFG (talk) 09:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Serotonin
Hi, nice to see the information you have added to the article. Maybe I'm jumping the gun on something that you're actively editing, but can I suggest that the current form of the lead overweights the gastrointestinal functions? The brain functions get far more attention in the literature, but the lead as written would give a naive reader the idea that the brain functions are a minor footnote to something whose most important role is in the gut. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 16:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

(PS, can I also suggest that you archive your talk page? Looie496 (talk) 16:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC))


 * Sorry about the talk page. It is getting long and I'll have to decide where to break it soon. It's hard to say how much of the LEAD should talk about the gut vs. CNS. I suppose it should reflect the article. Or, you could argue that since most of the serotonin neurons are in the gut, most of the article should be about non-CNS things. ;) The CNS gets lots of attention elsewhere, such as the SSRI articles, but where are the corresponding non-CNS things?  They're almost all left to be swept up here, sort of like extra-CNS serotonin itself! Subconsciously, I was trying to get in some of the lesser known effects, like a serotonin DYK, and so on. But feel free to be BOLD and re-balance; I won't be offended. It truly is a matter of taste. All I'm sure of is that the LEDE/LEAD needs to be longer than it WAS.  S  B Harris 16:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Ernest Hemingway in Cuba
Hi!

I was in the process of writing you a message to ask to check the Cuba section but didn't want to be presumptious. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your additions! I am very ready to be done with this article, but the improvement is noticeable. When I have time, later in the week, will tackle the writing style section. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:43, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi. It's always hard to know what to put in leave out in these things. I'm a little sorry to see some of the things go-- H's experience collecting body parts after the ammo manufacturing plant explosian obviously affected him deeply (see A Natural History of Death), and his description of the Greeks breaking the front legs of their pack animals and then leaving them to drown in shallow water at Smyrna almost deserves to be quoted. A scene that calls for a Goya indeed! He used that scene in two places. One notices all kinds of stylistic quirks, and I don't know how many have been properly "noticed" by critics. One thing is that H. doesn't always pay attention to proper paragraph breaking, and the effect is sometimes a little like whiplash, as he suddently changes course in the middle of a paragraph and you come out the other side with a totally different direction. His sentences are models of journalism, but his paragraphs not. I don't think anybody has really said this. I think he did some of it deliberately. Another is that Hemingway's people always show their character on their faces. His evil people are almost always ugly (at least the men are). The sexually predatory Wilson and the officer in A Simple Enquiry are both badly and chronically sunburned. What does this mean? Can't be coincidence. S  B Harris 02:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Price of Potassium in China
Dr Harris:

You make a good point about the constant change in prices. However price information gives the reader a ballpark feeling for the item involved. An accuracy of 50% where available is vastly better than no idea at all on price.Trojancowboy (talk) 01:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * But you can't honestly say you're even doing that. How pure is the potassium you're talking about? And what made you chose that purity? As a long-time buyer of elements, I know very well that there is no even approximate answer to these question. But let's start with potassium. Exactly how pure is ACS reagent potassium metal? Do you know? Is it even known? Reagent grades usually defined by their impurities, not their purity. And the $700/kg stuff from GalliumSource you quote is for 98.5%, which is certainly not reagent, but an industrial grade. http://www.mcssl.com/store/gallium-source/potassium-metal/0085---potassium-metal-1-kilogram If you want 99.5% potassium from Aldrich, in 20 g cubes you'll pay $2 a gram for it, which is $2000/kg. The 99.995% in ampules is $492 for 25 g which is about $20,000 a kg. See the problem? S  B Harris 02:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Frank Stilwell
I have nominated Frank Stilwell, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Articles for deletion/Frank Stilwell. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Niteshift36 (talk) 23:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate that you authored the Stilwell article and are protective of it. I do not appreciate that you want to start making me the issue by questioning my motives for the nom or by your sarcasm. Please keep it about the issue. If you want to complain about me, put it on my talk page. Niteshift36 (talk) 22:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Your last comment in the AfD was totally off topic and nothing but sarcasm. I guess if you like sarcasm, you'll appreciate my comment that if you'd written the article better and sourced it appropriately, it would have never been nominated in the first place. Niteshift36 (talk) 07:40, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Schieffelin2.JPG
Please, could You place the picture of "File:Schieffelin2.JPG" to Commons? Thank You! --StromBer (talk) 16:51, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Re: your comments/questions on my talk page
Please find my point-by-point replies below:


 * You have reverted several of my changes, saying that parenthetical statements are discouraged. Please provide a citation from the MoS. All I see is this, so .

I don't have a citation, just what I have learned through my years here at WP. As a general rule, parentheses *are* discouraged - but I don't think it's a "rule" per se. There are certainly other ways of writing what needs to be included without using parentheses - and I still believe they are to be avoided in WP. Of course, if you really don't agree that parentheses should be avoided, you could always ask a seasoned editor or administrator and get their opinion.


 * Speaking of which, if you see something that needs a citation, put in a tag, don't remove the info.

Well...I think it's really personal preference. Some editors are real strict about unreferenced statements being left in an article. I personally prefer putting a in place and will usually do so in order for time to be allowed to get a ref in place. In all honesty, I was probably having a bad day and rather than do what I should have (placing a cite needed tag), I just removed the statement.


 * Behan's grave is in fact lost, according to Boyer.

(a) Boyer has a questionable reputation as a historian who isn't exactly known as a reliable source regarding Arizona and Earp history (I know that from having lived in Arizona for quite a while and having spoken with a number of state history experts), and (b) where's this reference from Boyer? Have you included it in the article previously? Or is this all original research?


 * Find-a-grave says this also (there is a memorial placque, but not at the gravesite). .

Find-a-grave isn't considered a reliable source for WP articles.


 * The article now states he contracted syphilis while in Tombstone, but that is an inference from the "30 years" date on the death certificate

Yes, it is. Since the only reference found for Behan's syphillis is his online death certificate, that's all we have to go on and refer to. Anything else would be original research.


 * and should be stated as such.

I guess.


 * These things are rarely accurate,

According to whom? A death certificate is an official record.


 * and info here was provided by his son Albert, who would not expected to know exactly when and where his father contracted syphilis. Albert is also off by a year on his father's entrance into Arizona, by comparison with records. Furthermore, Albert possibly got his father's year of birth wrong and his age wrong (they also are off by a year from other records).

And without another reliable reference available, it's all speculation that means nothing in the scheme of editing the article.


 * Lastly, although I cannot give you reference now, the term "arterial sclerosis" did not mean in 1912 what it does today. What it probably meant in 1912 was the Behan was demented, a condition then thought due to "hardening of the arteries."

More speculation (and seemingly, original research) that, without another reliable reference, means nothing in the scheme of editing the article. Of course, if you are able to come up with reliable references that meet WPs referencing guidelines, you're welcome to include any (or all) of it. --SkagitRiverQueen (talk) 03:08, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Vitamin C
I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. You are being notified as you have made a number of contributions to the article. I have found some concerns which you can see at Talk:Vitamin C/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 23:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Final discussion for Requests for comment/Biographies of living people
Hello, I note that you have commented on the first phase of Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

As this RFC closes, there are two proposals being considered:
 * 1) Proposal to Close This RfC
 * 2) Alternate proposal to close this RFC: we don't need a whole new layer of bureaucracy

Your opinion on this is welcome. Okip  03:28, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

lol —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.122.83.98 (talk) 12:14, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Problems with User:Kbrose
It looks like User:Kbrose is rapidly heading towards WP:3RR.Glider87 (talk) 03:26, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Yep. S B Harris 03:29, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Pentacene AFM image
File:IBM Zurich Press Release AFM Image Penacene Aug 2009.jpg is great, but is "all rights reserved" at flickr. Thus we may only use it as fair use, preferably for pentacene article, unless IBM releases the image with a "better" license. Materialscientist (talk) 05:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I already reverted your additions (with a sigh) and replied at talk:Molecule. "Fair use" only allows pictures which illustrate the object of the article, in case free images are not available at all. One picture can be used for max. one article, and in this case, the only justification is for pentacene. Copyright is a hassle in general, but we've got to comply - it is a hard-core WP policy. Materialscientist (talk) 05:46, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

DU Trolling?
Um, I am actually actually interested in use of heavier-than-lead ammunition, for the ballistic properties. There is a wide community on the Internet that has similar interests. I've seen tungston ammunition sold, but I haven't see any discussion about DU ammo for the public. Is it cost prohibitive? Is it banned under anti-armor-piercing rules? Is it banned under anti-incendiary rules? Is it banned under health restrictions? If it is not banned, is it sold to the public? And if the military uses it, why would the public also not get to use it? Since I don't have the answers to these questions, I posted on the "discussion" page. I don't see how bringing up these questions, which I honestly hold, and should be addressed in a complete article on the topic, is "trolling."72.207.247.50 (talk) 20:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your response. I responded to it on my talk page.72.207.247.50 (talk) 22:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Selenium
Can you address this recent comment? We know Venturi is pushing his views, the issue is to actually fix that - WP element articles are quite visible. (Or maybe that anon just doesn't like Venturi) :-) Materialscientist (talk) 03:55, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Energy
Hi SB! On 27 March you edited Energy and added some new text to the article lead. Your new text included the following:


 * As such, it remains unavailable for transformation unless a way can be found to transform some of it while increasing the amount of entropy (a measure of disorder and energy dispersion) in the universe, such as may happen when a part of the heat is passed to a colder object, or a gas is allowed to expand.

I don't doubt that your new text is entirely accurate, but I doubt the article lead is the place for information of this complexity. WP articles should begin at a simple level, and progress towards a more complex level. Make technical articles accessible is highly relevant on this matter.

Using the concept of entropy in the explanation of energy suggests that to understand energy one must also understand entropy. I would disagree with such a suggestion. Most people first learn about energy in their early teens, or earlier. The majority of people never learn about entropy, but if they do it is in their late teens, or later.

I would like to suggest that you return to Energy and re-work the article lead so that its information is accessible to young people and others who have no knowledge of entropy. It would be good for the article to retain the information about entropy, but for it to be moved further down the article where more complex ideas are properly located. Happy editing! Dolphin51 (talk) 04:42, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * You're probably right. But the idea that some part of heat energy is unavailable for transformation should be mentioned, if not why. I'll see if I can fix it. S  B Harris 04:46, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * It may be sufficient to indicate that when one form of energy is being transformed to another, there is always some residual energy that fails to complete the transformation. The transformation never goes to completion.  For example, when chemical energy is being transformed to electrical energy there is some residual chemical energy in the waste products. Dolphin51 (talk) 04:55, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * You can see my latest attempt. The problem for me is that the failure to transform chemical to electrical energy is another entropy-related thing which depends on large numbers. In theory, it could go at 100% efficiency for just one atom, and indeed any chemical reaction that sends a single electron through an external circuit, does transform the "chemical" energy (potential) to electrical energy with 100% efficiency (where else would the energy go?). That's at the one-atom level. Failure of the "reaction" (many particles) to go to "completion" (with every single atom) is not a failure in the transformation efficiency, but a failure of the reaction efficiency that would happen even if no electricity were involved. Entropy is of course involved in the failure of every reaction to go to completion but stop at an equilibrium state, but it's no longer the entropy associated with heat, but rather with large numbers of particles on both sides of the "reaction" and the ways energy can be distributed within them. Again, a statistical thing. Many kinds of energy are transformed to others at 100% for single particle events, as for example when a gravitational or electrical field potentials are converted to the kinetic energy of single particles. Again, there's no other place for the energy to go. Only when collections of particles are involved, do you get entropic concerns which allow/require some energy to "stay behind." So this is not a blanket statement you can make about all transformations, in a lede. S  B Harris 05:11, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I think your re-work of the lede is an improvement.  The quality of a lede can be gauged by whether it works for a twelve year-old with a genuine interest in finding out about the subject, in this case energy.  Your information about entropy and non-availability of energy is very sound.  It would be good if you could weave that into the article further down, even if it is only as a pointer to the article Entropy or some similar article. Dolphin51 (talk) 05:28, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Pages
wow good job delete my thing but write and show trash all ovr ur page! what evs! :p —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.52.18.70 (talk) 02:18, 30 March 2010 (UTC)  meanie :p 68.52.18.70 (talk) 02:19, 30 March 2010 (UTC)


 * You can put a wider range of whatever you want to express yourself on your userpage. S  B Harris 02:21, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Vitamin D

 * Hello S  B Harris. I've just looked at your contribs and see that you are exceedingly busy but... I have to absent myself from the information superhighway for a few days and was wondering if you have some time to offer Overagainst some guidance in conforming Vitamin D to WP:MEDRS, WP:SYN and WP:OR. He/she is holding off editing for the moment and has proposed some reworked passages on the talk page. Your advice would be very welcome, if you can fit it in. Anthony (talk) 06:53, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Overagainst (talk) 14:01, 6 April 2010 (UTC) 'You're that mouse with high vitamin D activity, how's that working out for you' from . I'll leave there - although there is a lot more I could say on the subject - I think what you're doing with D supplementation is harming you. How sure am I? Pretty sure. Overagainst (talk) 18:26, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm pretty sure it isn't. The photo in the study you reference above is from a mouse with NO vitamin D (actually it's a receptor knockout mouse, so it's the same as if it wasn't getting any). It has nothing to do with high vitamin D. Chyu's study of lifeguards in 1971 found levels of 64 ng/mL on average. I don't think they were harming themselves, except as skin cancer risks. 20 min of tropical sun will give you 5000 IU. Levels of vitamin D at in my range were seen in sun exposed people in Hawaii, including some supplemented at 6400 IU. My urine calcium/creatinine ratio is normal. So what is it you think's going going to go wrong with me? S  B Harris 23:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You're right, but - a photo of a mouse with high vitamin D activity would look the same as that. "In several studies, we have described that a complete or partial lack of vitamin D action (VDR-/- mice and CYP27B1-/-) show almost similar phenotype as FGF23-/- or Klotho-/- mice. VDR mutant mice have growth retardation, osteoporosis, kyphosis, skin thickening and wrinkling, alopecia, ectopic calcification, progressive loss of hearing and balance as well as short lifespan. CYP27B1-/- mice do not show alopecia nor balance deficit, which might be apoVDR-dependent or calcidiol-dependent. The features are typical to premature aging. The phenotype is resistant to a normalization of the mineral homeostasis by a rescue diet containing high calcium and phosphate. Taken together, aging shows a U-shaped dependency on hormonal forms of vitamin D suggesting that there is an optimal concentration of vitamin D in delaying aging phenomena." Overagainst (talk) 18:28, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If you want to prove that a hypervitaminosis D mouse looks like that, you have to show it. And what's the dose? And has it been given as calcitriol to bypass the normal enzymes that guard against effective overdose? These things make a difference. The article you quoted is mostly about low vitamin D. The stuff about high vitamin D and aging really has little evidence to support a very thin hypothesis. Children with too much D suffere "rapid aging"? What does THAT mean?  They mature faster, or they get progeria? We're not told, and I'm skeptical. Prove it. Being a gerontologist, I've seen a lot of papers claiming "rapid aging" which was really toxicity at shamelessly high doses of something. There's a U-shaped curve for natural D level and later risk of prostate cancer? Okay, but it's one study which has never been repeated. Furthermore, there are lots of other cancers where the evidence is the more the better, so which effect wins out? It makes a difference. I'm most interested in a putative U-shaped correlation between D and total mortality, but that paper is not even on medline. Why isn't it in a peer reviewed journal? All in all, you leave me very little.  S  B Harris 19:01, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Even if one accepts the rationale for attaining the 25(OH)D level of an extremely sun exposed person by supplemetation (more is better, oral intake = skin synthesis). I don't understand why anyone would choose to go so much higher than the average of lifeguards. The world record individual 25(OH)D concentration is 90ng/mL, a farmer in Puerto Rico. You think natural selection is trying to cheat us out of higher D levels? Overagainst (talk) 21:23, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * No, but that's only an argument for not going above 90 ng/mL. As for not going above the average for lifeguards (64 ng/mL I think), why not? Are you really that afraid of having your vitamin levels in the upper ranges of normal, rather than simply average? As for "natural selection" and lower levels, remember that natural selection is working with severe constraints of trying to balance rickets (and perhaps other kinds of minor ill health from decreased immunity and later cancer and osteoporosis incidence) with freezing to death. Since the latter happens immediately and soon, and the other things happen later, or are more severe) I can well believe that nature might have shorted D to the mimimum while lightening skin to the max for the Nords and Irish as soon as they switched to aggriculture and didn't get D from their diets. That must have happened very recently (10,000 years or less) since aggriculture is a fairly recent invention. It's not an argument for letting your D levels fall as low as those populations do, under severe selective pressures from climate and diet. S  B Harris 21:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Freezing to death vs getting a more D for long term disease prevention would be the trade off for an individual ( assuming that there is sufficient UVB about when it is cold, in N. Europe the months without UVB strong enough to synthesize D are in winter so in practice the cold months would not have that trade off I think see map p.68). But if that scenario did exist as you describe, the more clothes that had to be worn the more intense would be selection for vitamin D synthesis on the skin that was left exposed. Over generations the people who left most descendants would be those who made the most vitamin D on the parts of skin that were exposed as selection for increased vitamin D synthesis on the small amount of skin would be intense. So why do whites with full body exposure to strong sunlight switch off synthesis of vitamin D once a certain amount (10 - 20,000IU) is made just like tropically evolved people, Africans may take longer to make it but they don't get any less.


 * Compared to other humans white people do not maximize vitamin D, take the lifeguards they have D levels an average of 2 1/2 times that of average Americans but they must get at least 20 or 30 times more sun than the average. Now why is that - coincidence? Or, could it be that the 10,000 IU limit on synthesis continued to work fine because actual UVB and hence potential vitamin D levels were still excessive in northern Europe over a year(even though vitamin D had to be stored for the UVB-less period). It is true that a female lifeguard with 80ng/ml has been reported (probably from Hawaii where Binkley was conducting research  )


 * "When he examined the young lifeguard, he saw that almost every square inch of her body was well tanned. She had been wearing practically nothing when she worked at the beach. Neil Binkley, M.D., told me about his patient because she had the highest physiologic level of vitamin D in her system of anyone he ever saw. Her level was 80 ng/ml."


 * I have to wonder if that level of sun exposure at the latitude of Hawaii, ( where D can be synthesized all year round) should be regarded as what it was was normal for a European to get in the stone age at much higher latitude. Even if it is, hardly any one with it has 25(OH)D as high as 80ng/ml. It's more that the high end of normal with a lifeguards exposure, it's the absolute limit which is attained by a few freaks of nature.


 * Here is a bit about the mice and lessons for humans - "Interestingly, the calcifying arteriopathy of TIF1α-null mutant mice shares features with the human age-related Mönckeberg's disease and, overall, the TIF1α-null mutant pathological phenotype supports the hypothesis that aging is promoted by increased activity of the vitamin D signaling pathway." Naked Mole Rats seem to do better than OK in longevity and vascular health with no vitamin D. What does that prove?; nothing except that natural selection overcomes problems and improves functioning. Hence there are excellent evolutionary reasons to believe that if vitamin D is so very good for you at the higher levels, any problem caused by low serum levels would have been taken care of by now


 * A U shaped curve would entail that once a certain level is reached UVB exposure would begin not to be be reflected in concomitantly higher vitamin D levels. 'Two studies showed that in response to a given set of ultraviolet light treatment sessions, the absolute rise in serum 25(OH)D concentration was inversely related to the basal 25(OH)D concentration. In the study by Mawer et al (34), the increase in 25(OH)D in subjects with initial 25(OH)D concentrations <25 nmol/L was double the increase seen in subjects with initial concentrations >50 nmol/L. Snell et al (27) showed that in subjects with initial 25(OH)D concentrations <10 nmol/L, ultraviolet treatments increased 25(OH)D by 30 nmol/L, but in those with initial 25(OH)D concentrations approaching 50 nmol/L, the increase was negligible". Vieth99  It's a UVB lamp not the sun admittedly but still in line with what we see in lifeguards who do not increase their 25(OH)D in proportion to their skin exposure to UVB, they'd have 25(OH)D 20 times that of the average person if they did. Vieth 99  also refers to the system of vitamin D in humans (all humans) as  "no way to correct for deficiency", "a system better designed to cope with an abundance of supply, not a lack of it", and "remarkably inefficient." Vieth99


 * As to supplements "The assembled data from many vitamin D supplementation studies reveal a curve for vitamin D dose versus serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] response that is surprisingly flat up to 250 μg (10000 IU) vitamin D/d. To ensure that serum 25(OH)D concentrations exceed 100 nmol/L, a total vitamin D supply of 100 μg (4000 IU)/d is required Vieth99 You obviously get quite a bit of sun with outdoor recreation and would probably have genuinely high - normal levels without any supplementation, say 30- 40 ng/ml, that's a good place to be - Note that your actual level is off the chart at the moment, long term I don't think that's going to be benefical, oral intake is said to be implicated in vascular calcification. Do you think Vieth (grad student in 74) looks good for his age?  Overagainst (talk) 16:03, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I actually don't get much sun, and what I do, I get with sunblock. My high level may be an anomaly and definitely needs a retest. My oral dose of 4000 IU is well within the limit of what skin naturally synthesizes in sun and thus it seems very unlikely to me that it's toxic. If you wanted to argue that perhaps daily doses over 10,000 to 20,000 might be toxic you'd have a better argument, but the fact that skin production shuts down at that point (due to precursor all being used) only really suggests that the body has all it needs and more is NO BENEFIT, not that it's toxic. It's a little like the kidneys dumping vitamin C over concentrations of 1.5 mg/dL-- that doesn't imply that levels higher than that are necessarily bad for you, just that they are unlikely to be better for you. Yes, I'm sure that if you feed rats enough vitamin D you can calcify their arteries, but how much does it take, and what are their blood levels of the vitamin like? I'd be more impressed with epidemiology of human vitamin users or sun worshipers with calcified arteries. In this study: dialysis patients with low D levels (and metabolites also) had MORE arterial calcification. I presume this is because their secondary hyperparathyroidism osteopenia overrode the D-supplementation they were getting, but who knows? BTW, the median arteriosclerosis of the type caused by too much vitamin D doesn't look at all like the most common artery changes in aging, which in involve large arteries and are are also associated with atherosclerosis. Calcification of smaller arteries is surprisingly benign and it is NOT a good aging marker. Incidence rises with age, but it is rare. Can you even find me a paper associating it with sun exposure or D levels in humans, so that this is in any way relevant to the doses we're discussing? If the system is designed to cope well with an "abundance of supply" then I'm not likely to be in trouble. eh? Naked mole rats are interesting, but so different from humans I have no idea what they mean. They must have mutations which allow them to get along without much D (though they still have the enzymes to use it if you give it to them). Their longevity is almost certainly due to their far lower body temperature and slowed metabolism (they're halfway to being reptiles metabolically!). Their D status is likely to be totally incidental. S B Harris 16:14, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * In practice sunsceen does not affect vitamin D much, even totally avoiding direct sunlight has less effect than you might think


 * NMRs show that natural selection improves functioning, that's pertinent to Vieth's expaination for Europeans having the same full body exposure skin synthesis limit as Africans, ie the Europeans' system of vitamin d synthesis control is supposed to be still at the African setting where it's been stuck for 100,000 years. NMRs show that is clouded thinking. And you are right, it's no surprise that excess synthesized D is disposed of by people who are adapted to deal with an 365 days of the year excess. But why would north European whites still have that same adaptation 20,000 years after entering northern Europe where they have to go months to half the year without any synthesis.  Lightening of skin is not evidence of selection for maximizing vitamin D in Europeans; within Caucasian UK females fair skin types have lower levels of 25(OH)D compared to darker skin types   Moreover increase in 25(OH)D level after UVB exposure has been negatively correlated with baseline 25(OH)D level (P<0.001) and positively correlated with baseline total cholesterol level (P=0.005), but no significant correlations were found with constitutive or facultative skin pigmentation.


 * "Can you even find me a paper associating it with sun exposure or D levels in humans, so that this is in any way relevant to the doses we're discussing?" This is the best I can do for now - "a positive relationship between calcified plaque in large arteries and circulating vitamin D levels".  Here is the leader of the study talking about it. Tropical peoples have low 25(OH)D whatever their sun exposure. For example South Indian agricultural workers who started their day at 0800 and worked until 1700 with their face, chest, back, legs, arms, and forearms exposed to sunlight had vitamin D levels tested, values below 20ng/ng (50 nmol/L) were found in 44% of the men and 70% of the women.  (Harinarayan et al., 2007 ). A review of vitamin D status in India reported populations studies uniformly point to low 25(OH)D levels in that country despite abundant sunshine. (Harinarayan 2009 ) Although there may be an ethnicity confound for associations between disease and high levels of 25(OH)D, I very much doubt Europeans escape long term harm if they sustain levels higher than Hawaiian lifeguards average. (Hawaiian lifeguards get much more sun than any European ever did)


 * Oral D goes by a different route and it causes a spike in plasma 25-hydroxycholecalciferol. The richest food source of vitamin D — wild salmon — would require 16-35 ounces a day to provide 5,000IU. nobody ever got that 365 days a year, salmon runs are a sometimes thing. May mean nothing but vitamin D binding protein is present in very-low-density lipoprotein.  As for a analogy with megadose vitamin C we don't know know how dangerous it would be to have a very high blood level of C 24/7 because the kidneys work hard to get rid of it (so hard that a few grams of C will raise the basal metabolism 7% if I remember rightly) There are enzymes like L-ascorbate oxidase that also counteract a high level. Sounds to me like  mechanisms to prevent a high oral intake of vitamin C pushing up the blood levels of ascorbate are there for a reason.  Skin synthesis of Vitamin D can't achieve serum 25(OH)D levels of >90nm/ml in healthy people but evolutionarily unprecedented oral intake can - that sounds like large quantities of vitamin D have not been encountered before so  defences against excess vitamin D by oral intake are underdeveloped.


 * Obesity remains a likely confound for associations between disease and 25(OH)D, digit ratio increases with latitude and that's a confound for all kinds of associations which use latitude as a proxy for vitamin D  and heart disease or cancer. Also impacting on research into latitudinal gradients of diseases is it may no longer be correct to assume vitamin D levels in populations follow signifcant latitude gradients for a large proportion of the year. MS was the the big one for a beneficial effect  now that's said to be independent of D,   Overagainst (talk) 18:21, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

A U-shaped relation between serum 25(OH)D and risk, the optimum range is centred at the US average and risk increases from the proposed new minimum level of 32ng/mL.


 * Maternal Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations Are Associated with Small-for-Gestational Age Births in White Women  "After confounder adjustment, there was a U-shaped relation between serum 25(OH)D and risk of SGA among white mothers, with the lowest risk from 60 to 80 nmol/L. (24 to 32ng/ml) Compared with serum 25(OH)D 37.5–75 nmol/L, SGA odds ratios (95% CI) for levels <37.5 and >75 nmol/L were 7.5 (1.8, 31.9) and 2.1 (1.2, 3.8), respectively" Overagainst (talk) 19:17, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

U-shaped correlation between D and total mortality
Plasma vitamin D and mortality in older men: a community-based prospective cohort study


 * "An approximately 50% higher total mortality rate was observed among men in the lowest 10% (<46 nmol/L) and the highest 5% (>98 nmol/L) of plasma 25(OH)D concentrations compared with intermediate concentrations.
 * CONCLUSIONS: Both high and low concentrations of plasma 25(OH)D are associated with elevated risks of overall and cancer mortality. {...}


 * The idea that high plasma vitamin D concentrations are related to overall cancer death can at ﬁrst seem counterintuitive, because vitamin D has potent antiproliferative, pro differentiative, and immunomodulatory functions in a variety of cell types (10). Nevertheless, experimental studies have reported that excessive vitamin D activity could promote cancer (8) and accelerate aging (11). Cancer development may be promoted by the direct stimulatory effects of vitamin D on the oncogenic enzyme CYP24 (13) and insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) production (32, 33). Interestingly, vitamin D excess has also been shown to exacerbate premature aging phenotypes in mouse models of aging (11). These mice, however, can be rescued and their life span extended by suppressing IGF-I activities (11), restricting dietary intake of vitamin D, or by ablating the 1a-hydroxylase gene that is essential for biosynthesis of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (32, 33). {...}


 * Greatly increased enterohepatic cancer death rates were ob- served with both low and high plasma vitamin D concentrations. This is a particularly intriguing ﬁnding, because in addition to its classical role in mineral homeostasis, the vitamin D receptor (VDR) is evolutionarily and functionally linked to a distinct group of nuclear receptors that are involved in the elimination of toxic substances absorbed by the gut (19, 22). Low concentrations of vitamin D could contribute to increased enterohepatic carci- nogenesis by reduced detoxiﬁcation of secondary toxic bile acids (19, 34). Activation of VDR by these bile acids or vitamin D induces expression in vivo of CYP3A, a cytochrome P450 en- zyme that detoxiﬁes secondary bile acids in the liver and intestine (37). Secondary bile acids are formed in the intestine but enter the bile after enterohepatic circulation (19, 34). In contrast, high concentrations of vitamin D suppress the farnesoid X receptor that detoxiﬁes carcinogenic bile acids (12, 20, 21), suggesting a mechanism for increased cancer risk with high vitamin D concentrations. In addition, vitamin D induces osteocalcin (26), which is expressed in pancreatic cancer cells and increases their growth, proliferation, and invasion (35). Also intriguing is the fact that the synthesis and excretion of bile acids were observed to be dramatically elevated in Klotho-deﬁcient mice (36) that ex- hibit altered mineral homeostasis due to high vitamin D activity (11).{...}


 * Major strengths of our study include the very precise and valid measurement technique used for 25(OH)D analysis (37, 38) and the detailed characterization of study participants regarding mortality risk factors in a prospective design with no loss to follow-up. Additional advantages are the setting in a single geographic area, the homogenous population, and the large number of deaths. Furthermore, the personal identity number provided to all Swedish citizens enables individual matching to registers, resulting in objective and complete information on mortality and morbidity (17). We could thus exclude men with prevalent cancers and cardiovascular diseases at baseline. The results were not explained by competing risks. Our results were also independent of a large number of mortality risk factors, including frailty indicators, lifestyle habits, and biomarkers re- lated to calcium homeostasis. Few participants reported use of vitamin D supplements, and these were not predominantly found among men with high vitamin D concentrations. Our results were also independent of the dietary intake of vitamin D. This is in agreement with previous studies in Sweden showing that vitamin D status in our population is only modestly determined by lyfestyle factors [...] A less detailed quantile analytic approach, such as an analysis of associations with 25(OH)D quartiles, has well-described shortcomings and would have obscured ﬁndings at the extremes of vitamin D status (40). Therefore, our analytic approach with the restricted cubic spline analysis together with the categori- zation of vitamin D by our percentiles and a contemporary method (27) is a further strength of our study (40)."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Overagainst (talk • contribs) 15:15, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Frank Garland, 1950-2010
"A UCSD professor whose studies shed light on the link between vitamin D and cancer. He died Aug. 17 in La Jolla after a year-long battle with an undisclosed illness." Overagainst (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:06, 29 August 2010 (UTC).

Have Gun
There are at least three versions of the Have Gun - Will Travel opening sequence. Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 19:52, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for EH edits
Thanks again for the edits to Ernest Hemingway! The edit summary made me laugh - indeed I do seem to have forgotten how to use punctuation lately, but worse was the tense problem. Burned out last night before I got to the later parts of the article, and sometimes when I'm adding, I don't really read what I've written until later so as to be able to fix better. Anyway, finally I think this work is almost done, and wanted to thank you, again, for the help. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:56, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I was talking about EH's punctuation, not yours. You had several semicolons that were entirely appropriate, except EH would never have used one there, but would have broken to two short sentences, forcing the reader to make the implied very close connection between. I don't think he ever used a semicolon in his life. So I thought the article was mimicing EH's style for the sake of illustration. Which was okay, except I needed a new phrase in one of the sentences that ruined the structure. I have found a few colons in EH, but he uses them to indicate a time lapse, perhaps in places where the prudish editor would have blue penciled a sex scene. There's one of these in The Sun Also Rises that may stand for an episode of oral sex (!) between the inpotent Jake and the nymphomaniacal Brett. Or so suggests K.S.Lynn. And he may be right as there is lots of interesting circumstantial evidence: Jake Barnes is named from two (count 'em) two clear lesbian references among EH's circle in Paris. Talk about a guy living the Tantalus myth. But he does it with grace. ;). I've been watching you work on the EH article and haven't done much as I've been waiting for you to "finish", but there are some other connections I'd like to add or change. For example, I notice that gone is fact that EH blew the entire top half of his head off. Which wouldn't be important, except that it's rather a suicide in the EH style: looking Death absolutely in the face and doing it with total abandon (who uses TWO shotgun cartriges at the same time??), and not some wimpy shoot-yourself-in-the-temple or the chest with a pistol thing. So it is characteristic. As also his not giving a damn what Mary would find. Hemingway in Spain two years before treated Mary with typical selfishness, so why should he change as he got crazy? EH could view women as objects, and he certain viewed bodies as objects. There's a reference to Alpine Idyll in the article, but the true "unnatural" part in that story is NOT the delay in getting the body out (that happens at about the right time) but the use of the dead wife as a lantern post in between. This all happens in one understated paragraph (compare Faulkner's A Rose For Emily). This may be one of EH's "why not?" stories, or it may be subliminal statement of his view on women, or it may simply be his comment on death, as in it turning the wife into "a statue" in A Farewell To Arms. The theme of death in EH is treated in two ways which underscore the anxiety and horror by simply never talking about them. In A Natural History of Death there is a deliberately taken lightly humorous tone. And in other stories, people facing death never talk of fear and the narator never mentions fear. Thus the unmentioned becomes the elephant in the room, and it's very effective. The iceberg style sometimes extends to omitting an emotion completely, so long as its clear that it must be there. This causes the reader to look harder for it. Like poor Barnes' feelings about his plight.  S  B Harris 18:26, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * My very first edit to the article was on the subject of the suicide. Somebody fairly recently took out the section about blowing off his head. It should be re-added, but I think I left it out for the time being with the assumption that there will always be those who try to sanitize this truth, and knowing it's a truth that cannot be sanitized. I will order a copy of Lynn's book from the library. At the moment I'm waiting for a book about his wives. I'll never "finish". But I might, hopefully soon, submit to FAC. BTW- I have your page watched.Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:39, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've readded the information about the suicide, although I don't think it will stay in for long. Also, regarding the thematic information you've posted above, I agree with much of it, but as you know it needs verification. At some point, when I have the time, I thought I'd create a separate article about Hemingway's themes because I think there's really too much to add to the main article. Certainly a separate article would allow for a full expansion. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:12, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Some of these things need illustrations to really be described: "He also uses other cinematic techniques of "cutting" quickly from one scene to the next; or of "splicing" a scene into another. Hemingway's polysyndetonic sentence...uses conjunctions to juxtapose startling visions and images."

Consider the opening sentence of Black Ass at the Cross Roads:

We had reached the cross roads before noon and had shot a French civilian by mistake.

Your English teacher would surely have split it into two sentences and maybe two paragraphs. But splicing it into one sentence without any comma makes both phrases equal. Reaching the cross roads before noon is on par with shooting a French civilian by mistake. It's war and these things happen. In 16 words, not only has the writer established the tone of the story and set the scene, but also put in a hook which makes it completely impossible not to read the next sentence. It's all done as quickly as a jump into icewater. Not bad. S B Harris 05:05, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi! I was in the process of adding the FAC nominations when I saw your edits. Baker, Mellow, and Meyers all agree about the plane crashes. I believe Baker's description is best and he can be used instead of Meyers for the section. If you feel that the article is incomplete without Lynn, I'll put in an interlibrary loan request tomorrow, but honestly I may have little time for Wikipedia soon, and would like to get this relisted as FA status before my time runs out as I've been working on it for months. Lynn has little credibility in the community of Hemingway scholars, the reason I left him out. But perhaps his perspective is important. At any rate, I'll not nominate, and think about this. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:45, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I owe you a profuse apology! This version from a year ago (before I began editing the article) has the claim about the paralysis. None of the biographers mention paralysis, and in fact he couldn't have been fishing and fighting bushfires if he had been paralyzed. Thank you for correcting. No need to go to the trouble of formating a ref. I'll fix the section, and hopefully will submit to FAC tomorrow. This goes to show how easy it is to miss mistakes and how important to have more than one set of eyes on an article. Again, my apologies. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 03:45, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No apologies necessary, as we're all seekers. Found the explanation. Somewhere else in Lynn is a note about temporary "paralysis of the sphincter" after plane crash (the rectal? urinary?) and that's probably where that comes from. It didn't prevent EH from showing up at a news conference with a bunch of bananas and some gin, a day later. Also the burns in the plane crash are first-degree (i.e. the most minor-- just red skin, no blisters) and can probably be omitted in description, like the sprains. The major error I found was that EH's arm and hand in the brush fire were THIRD degree burns (deep tissue death leading to permanent scars without grafts) and that's a result of his falling on the arm and other hand when he fell. Also, the article made it sound as though the 2nd crash injuries were so bad that EH was reported dead-- nothing of the sort. He was missing after crash #1, because he was hiking and boating out from the site (he happened to take the same boat previously used to film the African Queen, to his delight). I'm a bit skeptical about the ruptured liver and kidney after Crash #2, but have no way to NOR fix it-- I can only report that this kind of thing would be damned hard to diagnose in the 1950's without surgery, and in the case of the liver would often be fatal-- certainly nothing you'd walk around with, and give press conferences with, if you wanted to live (you cannot suture liver; the fixes today are to surgically put it in surgical mesh basket, or superglue it). Lynn will eventually be a source later, as he has so much good material (though it's clear he does NOT like his subject). Example: Philip Hope Percival the white hunter deserves a redlink (I originally had one), as he'll probably get a wiki (I may have to do it myself). Not only did he guide TR in 1909, but BOTH Hemingway Africa expeditions, including the 1954 one! That's a long career, and he's very famous (but he wasn't the model for hunter in MacComber). Redlinks are no disgrace; they are the buds from which Wikipedia grows. Also, Nick Adams as author's alter ego in many stories needs some explaining. His first name is an Anglicized version of Nicanor (from Nicanor Villalta y Serris, a famous bullfighter). EH saw his first bullfight in early 1923, decided to worship this guy, and Bumby was born late in that year, and that's how Nicanor gets into HIS name. Nick Adams appears in stories only a short time later (The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife was written April, 1924 and is the first Nick Adams story I can find a submission date for. Some authors thinks the story Summer People, unpublished in author's lifetime, might be the first; obviously it is a bit too risque for the 1920's publication, and in any case was a somewhat thinnly disguised encounter or fantasy about Kate "Butstein" Smith, later Dos Pasos' wife.) Nick Adams' last name is an obvious reference to Genesis Adam, as Nick is perpetually eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and expulsion from Eden was always EH's metaphor for coming-of-age and manhood, dealing with death, finding out about sex, etc, etc. Indian Camp is just one of these stories. I think I mentioned The Last Good Country where Nick's older advisor tells him he likes Nick because Nick has "original sin." Nothing about this in the EH article at all, although many, many critics discuss it. None of this needs to be done before the article is FA'd. Just so it's clear that FA articles are not frozen forever, as WP is never finished. The major task before FA is to get the errors out, not to get all the good stuff IN. S  B Harris 19:20, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Have a look as it reads now. I copy/pasted from True at First Light.
 * If the leaking cerebral fluid sounds apocryphal I'm happy to edit it out and anything else. Also, the liver rupture can be deleted (I had wondered about that!). I do know of a an aged retired Idaho physician who treated H during the 50s, and I do know that Baker spoke with H's physicians.
 * Agree about Lynn.
 * Also agree about Philip Hope Percival. Deleted it yesterday because I expected to be asked to do so - but can redlink it again. He does very much deserve an article.
 * I did know about the Nicanor information. Maybe add to Indian Camp, written right after Bumby's birth? And to Nick Adams (character)?
 * Iceberg Theory is at DYK today. Have a look at the Discussion there, particularly the "importance" section. Interesting view of Hemingway.
 * Yes, FA is to get it clean and freeze it for a period of time - then allow more development. This article has been FA before, and I think/hope it's better now than last summer.
 * Last point - you added Berenson to the Nobel Prize section, though the source (and Time magazine) mentions Sandberg and Dinesen. I know he was corresponding a lot with Berenson at the time, but can't find an interview mentioning his name in that context. If it's in Lynn, then let's keep in Berenson and add Lynn as the source there. I can format the ref; all I'd need is a page number.
 * Thanks as always for your input. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:07, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Looks okay, though it still disagrees with Lynn, who puts the skull fracture and CSF leak at the time of the Crash#2 and the clearly worse concusion, and EH headbutted his way out of an aircraft window to get out. I somehow doubt EH would have enjoyed the boat trip out from the falls after that Crash with that bad a head injury. Hadn't seen the True at First Light Wiki. Its two sources also disagree with Lynn about the 3rd degree arm/hand burns, which makes complete sense after falling into a fire. I'm scratching my head about the diagnosis of kidney and liver rupture "months later" in Venice. How the hell would the doctors know? There were no CTs and they didn't operate. But that's from an era of ancient medicine where I'm perhaps as clueless as a layman. I can tell you that a CSF leak is far more likely to be non-fatal and to fix itself than a liver rupture, thus less likely to apocryphal or wrong. THAT is more possible, though again hard(er) to diagnose in 1954. These days any water coming out of the nose or head is simply put on a diabetic test strip, and if it shows glucose of 2/3rds blood normal it's CSF! Otherwise something else (mucus from the nose). More of a guess in 1954 (perhaps shear volume of clear fluid from a higher head wound).

The cite in Lynn on the Berenson mention in EH's Nobel prize announcement remarks are on page 574. No cite is given, but the press conference was at the Finca (of course). Perhaps different reports. Lynn adds explanation, by way of a droll letter of EH to Lanham in his Selected Letters:

"Between you and me I was thinking like this: Sandburg is an old man and he will appreciate it. Blickie's wife [Dineson] is a damn sight better writer than any Swede they ever gave it to and Blickie [Bror] is in Hell and he would be pleased if I spoke well of his wife. Berenson deserved it (no more than me) but I would have been happy to see him get it. Or any of the three."

Will look at the iceberg article. What I read in the EH article about that theory certainly seems a very good way to look at it to me. Another connection Lynn draws is EH writing in the way of certainly earlier "behavioralist" psych schools, in which the "scientific" view you already mention in the EH article is reduced to reporting exterior reactons, but not omnisciently reporting interior feelings of emotion. It's missed because EH often omniciently first-person reports his character's PHYSICAL feelings, like pain, swelling, etc. But the emotion still needs to be inferred, like watching your dog.

Lynn contains info on the writing of Bell Tolls, which happened between March 1, 1939 and July, 1940. It was started at Ambos-Mundos but soon moved to the Finca, as the somewhat fastidious Martha showed up and refused to have anything to do with stinky EH in his little hotel room. She soon found the Finca to rent and most of the novel was written there (they bought it only in Dec 1940.) EH did make a trip to the Sun Valley lodge in the fall of 1939, but how much work he did on BELL there is unclear. He was in the middle of leaving Pauline for Martha then, and Pauline actually walked out on him in Wyoming taking kids with, following which EH picked up Martha in Montana (she from St. Louis) and went to Sun Valley. They spent time together there before Martha left for Russia in Nov, and EH went alone back to Cuba (Jan, 1940) where Martha almost immediately arrived and they married. He finished the novel by the next July, working at the Finca. Some proofing the next month in Sun Valley again. I can't find evidence that ANY of it was written in Key West. Not only was Pauline there for some of this time (and EH was spending his time with Martha) but when he passed through Key West to pick up his Buick to drive Marth to St. Louis (and from there go himself to Wyoming), he only stopped long enough to do that, as Pauline was in Europe and EH hated to be alone (even when writing) anyway. S B Harris 21:03, 25 April 2010 (UTC) Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:02, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think we've already discussed writing Bell in Sun Valley. He wrote letters to Perkins, which is in Baker's Letters with progress reports during the fall into December. About half of the first draft was written there. I'll edit out the business about the ruptured spleen and liver. In my view, the head injuries were far more significant, as his letters tend to reflect. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:38, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay. Perhaps I was thinking of Wyoming (Norquist Ranch) which the article now cites as a place where Bell was written. It's there that the evidence is scant. We're left with 2 countries (Cuba and US) and three places (Ambos, Finca, Sun Valley). And yes, EH probably had more head injuries than any writer I know. And his fiction is full of head injuries-- to animals, too! Some preoccupation that probably began with his father's suicide and French bathroom accident, and continued on through many others, some alcohol-related (driving accidents driving the car with Mary in Cuba, a boat slip and fall), others not (airplane accidents, a London car accident just before D-day, a Jeep accident after D-day), a lot of boxing, and more I can't name offhand. There's enough here for List of Ernest Hemingway's head injuries. Not even counting the very last one. S  B Harris 22:15, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've added Lynn to the biography and will use in the Nobel Prize section. His description of the accident was readable and is almost word for word the same as Baker's, but Baker mentions the leaking CSF and the ruptured liver & spleen. I've reworded to show that Mary "reported" the injuries by using a direct quotation. If Lynn is critical of Hemingway's writing it would be helpful to add to the Reception section. In his Prelude, Lynn ends by admitting that the writing was some of the best in the 20th century, or words to that effect. The article does not another point of view if it exists. Btw, here's the markup for Lynn:

Thanks, I'll use it. BTW, the photo of H and Gary Cooper "at Sun Valley"-- do you know exactly where this was taken? The photo says "Silver River," which I assume is the North Payette near Ketchum or Sun Valley, but can you i.d. the exact location? BTW, Lynn mentions the CSF also, but calls it "brain fluid." And yes, Lynn says that, but has a fair amount of snarky stuff to say about each individual work, where it exists. And the EH who comes through this bio is not very heroic. In fact, more or less a typically unpleasant mess of an alcoholic. But as with EH himself, you have to read between the lines of what did DID, and why Lynn says he did what he did. Example: the reason Martha was so pissed at EH when she got to Londo was that he'd tried to block her every way he could. He signed on with her magazine, which could send only one reporter to the front. When she got around that, he took an airplane saying women were not being taken (Gellhorn later found an actress went on the flight). After a dangerous Atlantic crossing aboard an explosives laden ship, she'd more or less had it by the time she got to London. S B Harris 00:16, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I wondered where the Sun Valley photo had been taken but can't really tell. It's been years since I've been there and the mountains aren't clear enough to tell. It's a still river, or maybe even a lake. For some reason I thought they might be duck hunting. The baby picture is a problem: it doesn't have a PD tag and was originally in the article but commented out, so I don't think it can be used. The story about Martha is also in Kert's biography and can be added to the Martha article. If everything went into the main EH bio it would be too long to load, I think. Lynn does mention third degree burns, as does Baker - I wonder how derivative some of the biographies are? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:48, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

The story about Martha having to cross an ocean with subs still active, in a slow ship full of explosives, because EH refused her an aiplane seat? It's as much about EH as Martha. As also is his putting her photo in the toilet in the London hotel and blasting it many times with a gift German Luger, ruining much pumbing. The photo on commons is pre-1923, and DOES have a public domain tag (check it out). All US pre-1923 photos (published then or not) have fallen out of copyright and are thus PD, as you see in the guidelines, and this is certainly a photo taken in Oak Park. The baby pic is a matter of aesthetics. To me the article looks like EH sprang from the Earth full grown like Athena from Zeus. Even Adolf Hiter's wiki-bio has a baby pic. It's fairly traditional to have some photo of pre-adulthood. If I had one of EH as a child rather than infant I would prefer that, but don't. S  B Harris 13:12, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was getting tired last night - of course it's pre-1923 and so okay. The JFK library has photos of him as a kid - those ones where he's dressed as girl (which wasn't really that uncommon during that period). I can either uncomment the baby picture, or download a new one. I'm not crazy about the house picture (it's been in the article since I started working on it) so that could go. My worry is that the article is pushing the limit on load time. Yes, the story about Martha and explosives - he wanted to get to the war first. Very competitive. I don't mind if that gets added in, as it explains her anger. I do tend to over-summarize situations, and in the process leave out context. Sometimes I don't notice because in my mind I know why she was angry, but forget that needs to be in the article. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 13:34, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Baby H reinstated and house fits also. Added quick explanation of reason for Martha's ire when she arrived in London. Do you have page numbers for Pauline & kids in Wyoming, and for Geneva Convention charges? Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:21, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Pauline leaving him in Wyoming is p. 479 (this is the Harvard U Press paperback edition 1995 ISBN 0-674-38732-5). The Geneva Convention charges and his beating them are pp. 518-19.

The article doesn't mention Pauline's death, but that's grim and telling. Gregory is arrested on drug charges in LA in 1951, and Pauline, desperate to help him, phones EH at the Finca to ask for any help he can think of. Whatever he tells her, sends her into fits of anger and crying (probably it's to let Gregory stew in his own juice or even get written off, ala I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something). Two hours later Pauline has terrible abdominal pain and collapses. She dies on the operating table hours later. When Greg finally gets out of the slammer and visits EH, EH kindly tells him his arrest has killed his mother. Greg never visits him again and they never see each other again. Years later after he has beat his problems and gone to medical school, Gregory gets the autopsy report. Pauline has died from a bleed into a pheochromocytoma. Emotional stress has caused a blood pressure spike from the tumor which has burst the vessel, and when the tumor secretions quit, her pressure drops to zero and she dies. Greg calls EH: now each blame the other for this. Ouch.

Have been thinking about the iceberg theory article and it's very good, the essence of what's interesting in EH writing. In The Old Man and the Sea for example, the skeleton of the great fish is just a skeleton and a triumph of the old man's will and fight, but it's also an unholy trophy of Death itself. And it parallels the old man becoming skeletal before the voyage and even more so, after. He will also soon die, all this helps make clear.

A story similar to Hills Like White Elephants (which you mention) is the little gem ''Cat in the Rain. '' Just two pages. On the surface it's a couple staying in a hotel in Spain and the husband not paying attention to his wife's vague unhappiness. She sees a tortoiseshell cat hiding under a table in the rain, and decides she badly wants a cat. She goes to find it but it's gone. The old man hotel-keeper finally sends the cat up with a maid. That's the part above the surface. Silly. Below the surface is the fact that the old hotel padrone is the only person who actually sees the wife. And below THAT is the reason for the distress he senses. WHICH IS NEVER MENTIONED. Not even hinted at. But if you have much life-experience (you probably have to be middle-aged or over, like the hotel-keeper), it's fairly obvious. But the reader must supply it ALL. S B Harris 02:05, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel; errors section;original research
It's been a couple years already, how much faster do you think patience will work in the future? It seems likely to me that if citations are eventually found, it will because a fire was lit under the original researcher by deleting her or his contribution. But in fact, I'm dubious that any nonprimary sources can be found that point out the stated errors in Heinlein's book, whether or not they are errors. Best wishes, Rich (talk) 21:48, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the template
Hi, I noticed that you reverted several uses of the chem template recently, citing the reason as the super/subscripts not showing up in your reader. Maybe you'd like to raise the issue at Template talk:chem? I'm not sure what can be done... this template is widely used throughout the chemistry-related articles; it would be impractical to revert all of them to using &lt;sub&gt; and &lt;sup&gt; again. (Besides, it does make chemical formulae slightly more readable when editing.) Either we stop using the simultaneous super/subscript sub-template (which is what's causing your woes---since non-simultaneous super/subscripts are already rendered using &lt;sub&gt; and &lt;sup&gt; tags), or we find out how to make it work for your reader (and other browsers, for that matter). In any case, I think it would be more constructive to discuss this and figure out how to fix it, instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.&mdash;Tetracube (talk) 17:06, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Rififi
Hi! I've thought about it, and I've added a variation on the translation in the intro page. Take a look and tell me what you think. I think it will suit both our views on the topic. :) Andrzejbanas (talk) 14:43, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That is an improvement. I still think you should put that in the lede someplace in the English wiki (perhaps as a very last one-sentence paragraph?), but anything in the lede is better than nothing. S  B Harris 19:43, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Photokeratitis
Hi Steve, I've been following the discussions on Photokeratitis (arc eye, etc.) and the merger is now complete. I saw your original objections to the HOW TO Treatment section and have finished some copyediting on the merged article. If you have a minute to spare, please take a look at the current article and let me know if you still have any problems. Happy editing! --RexxS (talk) 21:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've made a few minor changes to include oral pain relief and changing the lede so it doesn't look like pain relief is primarily eyedrops. It really isn't, and this is a somewhat irritating thing. The patient will get total and instant pain relief in the E.D. from the anesthetic, but can't get the same stuff when the pain returns that night. If the doc hasn't written some good prescriptions for oral stuff, they find the same patient back in the emergency department or urgent care. It's happened to me more than once. Bad UV corneal burns usually feel better even by the next AM (though the eyes look terrible). But it's a LONG night. S  B Harris 23:51, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Albert Camus and irony
Thanks for your perceptive comments at talk:Irony. I'm not really sure one can reach a solid, crystal clear definition of irony - there are too many different shades of it and these days the word is used in a shorthand fashion that makes it even less precise - but I'm interested in it, both from a linguistic perspective and personally. And Albert Camus was no doubt a fan of irony too. He's one of the most bitingly understated of French writers. I put in a few more comments to explain my take on him. Strausszek (talk) 01:27, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Ernest Hemingway
I thought I'd let you know it's been nominated as a FAC. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:20, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, crap, I thought that was all done with. Feel free to temporarily revert anything factual I've put in that needs an additional cite. I have done a bit of copyedit which I think could stay, though (you can see it all if you do a diff through all my edits of today). All the facts are in Lynn, which I'd cite but don't have at hand right here. BTW, did you read my last answer to you, above? I did give the other cites. S  B Harris 02:24, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, got really busy with work and couldn't keep up here. I did add the Lynn pages you posted above and then bailed for about 10 days. Nominated the article today. It could take weeks for it to be approved, if it does get approved. Can't deal with fixing it again right now. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, if you're still around, do you mind removing the uncited pieces w/ an edit summary that they'll be replaced when you have the citations. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay. S  B Harris 02:55, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:05, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Macomber
Hi! I moved your information from Lynn to the Macomber talkpage so it isn't lost or archived. It's material worth adding to the article. Also, here's the discussion about Eeep Eeep at AN. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 13:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Near field and far field
You did a really good editing job on this article. Thanks for following up after my addition to the introduction. Your edits have made this a much improved article. I was not expecting these results when I "generalized" the introduction. Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 02:05, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you're happy with it. It does look good, though I'm still not sure I'm happy with what happens in the "non-reactive near-field" because I'm not sure I fully understand it myself (Jackson, which I've been consulting, is somewhat short on antenna theory). The problem is energy conservation. It's one thing to say that the energy trapped in the non-reactive near-field zone doesn't radiate, nor does it return to the antenna (being so far away as to be badly out of phase in the emfs it produces), but then where does it go? It has to go someplace. I would suggest it also goes back to the antenna, so that that no power is drawn by the antenna circuit at all. I have in a mind a pure inductor at low frequency which essentially has no far-field. So what do we have? The near-field is the changing induction field, and if it crosses no conductors, the net effect of it is to produce a nearly 180 degree out of phase reactance that acts as a huge impedance to the input signal. Currents and voltages are completely out of phase (and would be totally so in the limit of no resistance) and so no power is drawn by the circuit at all. So any power in the field there is completel returned, and that includes the supposedly non-reactive part of it also, no? S  B Harris 02:37, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer
Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. Karanacs (talk) 17:13, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

hyperthyroidism
can hyperthyroidism be caused by mercury or metals poisoning of some kind, or taking to many pain medications,no family history of this is known. tina. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Teklund1963 (talk • contribs) 22:29, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Nuclear force
Hi Sbharris. Thank you taking an interest in Nuclear force and working on a new Introduction. Any article on a scientific phenomenon needs to address both the what and the why. What is it, and why does it occur. With an article on a complex phenomenon like nuclear force I think it is sufficient for the Introduction to deal only with an explanation of what it is. Why it occurs is usually best left for later in the article.

Your new introduction mixes both what and why. The why is reliant on an understanding of quarks, mesons, gluons, nucleons and van der Waal’s forces. Your new introduction implies that someone wishing to obtain an elementary understanding of nuclear force must first obtain an understanding of quarks, mesons etc. I disagree with that implication because I believe nuclear force is more fundamental than quarks and mesons. Teenagers in basic chemistry class are introduced to nuclear force as a means of understanding the lost mass that is evident when noting that the isotopic mass of carbon-12 is exactly 12.0000 whereas the isotopic mass of all other elements and isotopes is not exactly the same as the number of constituent protons and neutrons. This is years, if not decades, before these teenagers need to comprehend quarks, mesons etc.

I suggest the Introduction to Nuclear force should address nothing more that what it is. Why it occurs should be left until later in the article. Could you do some more work on your Introduction to simplifly it in this way? Many thanks. Dolphin ( t ) 03:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Lead change
Sir,

While the lead is supposed to be a summary of the subject's life, it is not supposed to contain the complete biography of said subjects life. The lead exists to provide a brief overview of a person's life and achievements and his/her importance to history. If you will review the section in question you will see that the edited part contains a complete overly detailed history of Hemingway's life from birth to death which is more information than needed for a lead and less detailed than the information found in the biography section. It is merely a redundancy.

You are the ranking editor here and your decision will stand, but I would point out that no other article on an author has such a summary: see, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Neruda... for an example of this. Thank you for your time and correction.

-Cwill151 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cwill151 (talk • contribs) 02:02, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Manganese carbonate
Hi Sbharris,

Thanks for reminding me about File:Manganese(II)-carbonate-sample.jpg.

I'll find some fresh MnCO3 in the lab and replace the image.

Cheers,

Ben (talk) 23:31, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Your "monster COI" comment
I suspect you may be partly right. I've cautioned the editor concerned, who appears to be inserting content and citations from a string of publications from a single publisher, UBM Medica, into numerous medical articles. While somewhat noissome, I don't think it seriously compromises the content, which can easily be sourced elsewhere in articles indexed on PubMed. I'd like to take a wait-and-see approach with the editor, as it could simply be that he has a bundled group of e-magazine subscriptions and is making a good-faith contribution with the sources he has available. LeadSongDog come howl!  03:23, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I should have bothered to look up Lynnflint's contrib list as you did . It may be, as you suggest, merely somebody in the biomed IT business who is also altruistically putting into WP the press-releases and new info that comes across their desk. In which case it's not the worst thing in the world, but will necessarily suffer the same kinds of biases that all abstracts and press releases do (and even some peer reviewed stuff) which is that it tends to reflect the views of people with financial incentives. Agree that it merely requires keeping an eye on. Of course in the med profession and med research, we're all used to it. I suspect it also taints some physics research also, no? Though not as badly (since a larger percentage of that is gov-funded). S  B Harris 01:52, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

LHO lead
I know the topic is an interst of yours, so please lend your thoughts at Talk:Lee Harvey Oswald. I hope consensus can be reached without any chalkboard erasers being thrown. EEng (talk) 15:41, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Ernest Hemingway GA
On behalf of WP:CHICAGO, thanks --TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:07, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

user page comment/objection
hello,sir.please make sure to read the whole message.on the thing on your user page,about that people should contribute under their real name,i wish to respond.and as i do not,i would like to express that at the time,it seemed to be better to use a seperate username,but if i had my time back ant experience retained,i might add a relation to my real name.butwhat i would like to express to you is that while you actually give a good reason,i would like to politely point out that while it does not really bother me that much,the term "wikichicken" might offend some other,perhaps.i mean,"chicken" can be a bully term.not to say that this opinion should not be expressed,but it could be expressed more politely,and the red link does not provide a way for them to see that perhaps it is not so offensive.i am personally of the opinion that one can use any inoffensive username available,but if i completely agreed with you in the real name thing,and wished to express it on my user page,perhaps i might say the like of "i contribute under a real name and think others should do the same because..." or "...i strongly encourage others to do the same..." or something.well,cheers,Keserman (talk) 13:17, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Animation finished
I've finished the animation, except I need some input on some finishing tweaks. Could you please see my post here: Talk:Nuclear_force? Manish Earth Talk • Stalk 06:23, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Ribose
Sorry to say but the original article only says that sentence (which is not too clear, why an incomplete anagram and what happened to the "an" is not mentioned), the reference is an old scan full of other definitions. I trust the definition because it is an odd spelling: if it where Greek it would be "rh[y|i]bose", it definitely is not latin and I doubt it can be from a foreign language (like Shikimic acid) as the inventor is German. If you want the file for other definitions, I can email it. --Squidonius (talk) 06:56, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Boron
Please check this thread and amend your edits on B(IV) state in Boron. Thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 23:47, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Iodine
I am reworking iodine, spurred by a claim (maybe from me) that iodine is required for all life, probably only big critters though. There is also a semi-myth that ocean water contains a lot of this stuff, as a percentage. You might take a look after a while.--Smokefoot (talk) 16:06, 28 August 2010 (UTC) I also rewrote the section on chemical compounds of boron. It was pretty good already, but hopefully you find the changes acceptable. I de-emphasized statements about "artificial" compounds and to some extent oxidation states and bonding formalisms. Modern treatments downplay such classifications, although they are simplifying for those unfamiliar with the area. It's the old problem in Wikipedia for technical articles, editors can explain and oversimplify or be rigorous and opaque. One issue is that the article aims to discuss the behavior of "boron, but pure boron is exceedingly rare. So statements about boron being this or that are almost impossible to state.  If you have any ideas on how to handle this enigma, please comment here, and I will check back.--Smokefoot (talk) 17:55, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Nuclear structure
I have belatedly answered your comments of 27/Sept/09 in this talk section about the Nuclear structure which I appreciate and have been mulling over. I hope you will notice them at your earliest convenience and, if further interested give me an additional comment. I, like you am interested in this subject matter, and only wish that Dr Isaac Asimov were around to get his comments. I wrote him a letter about this before he died and, of course never heard anything back. But I would appreciate anything you have to comment about the matter.WFPM (talk) 15:29, 29 September 2010 (UTC) And after reading the discussions on Dr Harold Urey in Talk:Deuterium, I can see that you already have a can of discussion worms to think about in that area. And you might read about Dr. Asimov's discussion about his activities. Cheers!WFPM (talk) 21:56, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Concerning the structure of the 6C12 (Carbon) atom that we had in Nucleosynthesis I would like to add here that after I had finished building my models in 1984, I had occasion to read the article "Worlds within the Atom" in the National Geographic magazine (May 1985) which is a good and comprehensive subject matter discussion, but had what I considered a "Mickey Mouse" drawing of the nucleus of the carbon atom, such that I called up the editor of the article somewhere in down in Florida and asked him if that was the best he could do re the structure of the Carbon atom Nucleus. And his answer was that that was the best consensus that he could find! And since then a lot of water has run over the dam and scientific progress has been made, but as far as I can see, the consensus re the Carbon atom nucleus remains more or less the same, and in the meantime I have learned about the Janet Periodic Table and its lore and can't get away from its ability to display a logical scheme for a nucleon accumulation process with the same periods of accumulation of additional alpha particles plus connecting deuterons plus extra neutrons as per the series indications of the Janet table. And I imagine that you have maybe read the National Geographic article and wonder if you have developed a better concept of the Carbon atom nucleus. Because the picture has stuck with me, and I would be interested in any better understandable alternative. And thank you for your attention.WFPM (talk) 14:42, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Re the Nuclide Charts and the map of the nuclides proposed modifications, I note that the accumulation of properly organized and accurate data into these records is important to their purpose of creating and extrapolating correct concepts. If you get the charts right, and with the logsecond halflifetime periods posted, then it becomes possible to create a "individual element stability profile chart" which graphically shows the nuclear stability characteristics of each of the elements. And I have made a set of these, involving a page for each 2 elements, with the oddZ in the top half and the evenZ in the bottom. They show an interesting profile of the logsecond halflifetimes of each of the elements, a comparison of adjacent even/odd element profiles, and evidently some errors in reported data, which should be challenged for accuracy purposes. If you're interested, I might be able to send you some of this info.WFPM (talk) 12:13, 10 April 2011 (UTC) The charts also contain essentially the same data that femto put into his "isotopes of the elements", but in a graphics presentation manner such as to facilitate your minds ability to comprehend the implications of the information. I got my data from the CRC handbook.WFPM (talk) 22:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * No thanks. I have a CRC. I'd be happier if you would check the half lives in list of isotopes and fix any that don't seem to agree with CRC (looking them up in the S  B Harris 00:10, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to WikiProject Scuba
Welcome, Steve, although I could have sworn you were a founder member. I'm afraid our WikiProject is not terribly active, but maybe you can inject a bit of life into it. Let me know if you want to do any collaborations - it would be nice to see a few more scuba-related articles getting the attention they deserve! --RexxS (talk) 02:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Smokey Bear
I think that it is absolutely delightful that a physician has the spare time to show an interest in Smokey Bear. Though we are disagreeing on an image, I'm pleased you're involved. My concern is not "political correctness" but rather a sense that the particular image is a jarring departure from the main topic of the article. I would not object to its inclusion in a more general article about publicity campaigns against forest fires. In this article, I sincerely believe that it places undue wartime propaganda weight on a mascot who, in his first wartime appearance in 1944, is depicted pouring a bucket of water on a campfire, rather than reporting a Japanese saboteur. On another matter, I see you're a scuba enthusiast. I helped expand Henry Way Kendall who sadly died in a diving accident. Regards. . . Cullen328 (talk) 03:28, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

come on
I hope you know that I would never change a edit to the caesium article from you. But it took me a little by surprise that you wanted to give youtube videos as a prove. I simply had to do this bad wikihabit to cite some guidelines, I hope you did not go to mad about it. A text book is much better and I believe you that it reacts even with cold water. The statement that the reactivity of an element has to be considered by the point of view of the person writing the precautions section was the point I wanted to make to nergaal and smokefoot. And as a starting point I wanted to look at the fluorine and potassium article to get to a consolidated PSE wide way to call a element reactive, most reactive or non reactive.--Stone (talk) 19:49, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I read again what you wrote and I got the impression that you got veryyyy angry, so here: I ask you to forgive me. I did not want to drive you away. Sorry!--Stone (talk) 20:11, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I want to add my comments to Stone's. Your edits are (almost invariably) very valuable. Some of the more recalcitrant editors (e.g. me) are not quite as hard-headed as we seem sometimes.  So don't throw yourself into a pool of caesium or anything like that because of the likes of us.--Smokefoot (talk) 23:45, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I never get any positive feedback-- perhaps that's one problem. See my other comments on Stone's page. I'll be around as long as things are reasonable. I just have to remember to stay away anything to do with politics and religion. ;) Hmmm, come to think of it, you'd probably be okay briefly floating in a pool of cesium, to the extent your skin was really dry and you didn't get any in eyes, mouth or moist spots (then it would be horrible). Just don't throw me in the fluorine.  S  B Harris 01:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Today somebody threw away all his old chemicals and he handed me a tin can which is closed but should contain an ampoule with 1g of caesium. Sometimes reality is odd. Déjà vu was the thing which comes closest to what happened here.--Stone (talk) 11:42, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Bruhahahaha. Okay, now. Fool with some potassium in any way you like, then do the same with 0.1 g of cesium (you might as well plan several experiments, since once you open the stuff you'll have to use it all). I recommend reactions in ethanol (anhydrous = 200 proof, naturally), n-propanol, and n-butanol. Remember to pre-prepare the propanol and butanol with sodium so there is no water in them. Remember those goggles and a shield. Doing it out on the a large empty piece of asphalt of your lab parking lot where you can wash the entire site with a hose and spayer from a distance afterwards, is recommended. On cardboard in the middle of a lawn with lawn sprinklers also works well, as the alkali just soaks into the grass and is diluted away. S B Harris 04:14, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Robert A. Heinlein
Please do not add or change content without citing verifiable and reliable sources, as you did to Robert A. Heinlein. Before making any potentially controversial edits, it is recommended that you discuss them first on the article's talk page. Please review the guidelines at Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you. Yworo (talk) 02:05, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Scabies (references)
Medical articles on Wikipedia are written based on the best available evidence in a consistent format. A list of resources to help you edit can be found here. The diberri tool will aid formatting the references for us in articles. All one needs to do is cut and paste the results. The welcome page is another good place to learn about editing the encyclopedia. If you have any questions feel free to drop me a note. Cheers  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 20:25, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Uh, thanks, but you're talking to somebody who has been on wikipedia two years longer than you have, and has written just as much of it (edit reversion numbers don't count). So, if you have questions, feel free to drop me a note yourself! The references for the material on treatment in the scabies lede are found later in the article. A lede/lead can lack referencing if it summarizes information given later (otherwise ledes would be absolutely overloaded with cite tags, since they are summaries of summaries). I myself have added references on treatment of scabies to this article, though I cannot vouch that they are all in the same format. Wikipedia has no consistant reference format style, nor is one prescribed at MEDMOS. Rather it has many competing ones, and this is due to the nature of wikipedia, where the large number of editors has prevented any consensus (this is a pathology of wikipedia). As for the idea that medical articles must be in a "consistant format" (citing WP:MEDMOS) you forget that there is nothing in MEDMOS about ledes. There is no consensus even in MoS about how to write article ledes, save for some remarks about length and generality. Writing good ledes is an art. As a rule of thumb, we try to keep these things shorter than 5 paragraphs for long articles and 3 is considered good for a medium-length one. Most of the medical articles on WP have inadequate ledes, and I'm one of the people here trying to rectify that. So, why don't you watch me and learn? (said with a very civil AGF grin).  S  B Harris 20:53, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry no offense intended. This issue I had was this line here "Topical and oral steroids decrease symptoms, but also decrease the host's defenses against the parasite." made in this set of edits . The recommendation for oral steroids is a little controversial thus needs refs. Not sure if you just moved this around or added it. Cheers -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:15, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay. I'll add a cite for the 4 case-reports of Norwegian scabies induced by long term steroid use, in undiagnosed cases. There are others from systemic immunisuppression. Is the idea that steroids makes the symptoms but worsen the disease (if not being treated) controversial? As for deliberate use of steroids in treatment of diagnosed scabies, as a palliative, it's recommended in a lot of derm sites and books, but I cannot find a formal study. Are you really skeptical that it works as a symptom modifier? I did find one report of treatment of nodular scabies with combined intralesional hydrocortisone and prolonged crotamiton (it took 2 months of both!). That mirrors my own experience that any scabies case can be cured with long enough application of crotamiton-- you just keep after it. I'll add these refs and you tell me if you want to see more. I'll remove the part about oral steroids, since that applies to risk but I think few people would use it (even for the short term) for therapy.  S  B Harris 21:47, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Potassium Iodide Solution
Hey- You left a comment on my IP's talk page about the article on potassium iodide and SSKI. As far as the SSKI, I agree with everything you said, I never bothered to check what the actual density was. The one thing I think should be made clear in the article is that as opposed to making a solution of a set concentration (using a known weight of KI and volume of solvent), it is possible (especially in an emergency situation) to turn powdered KI into a solution of known concentration (depending on temp) simply by making sure you add more than enough KI to a certain amount of water. So I think there should be a distinction (regardless of concentration) between a pharmaceutically prepared solution of a certain concentration and a true saturated solution that can be made at home that has a pile of KI crystals sitting at the bottom of the container. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dimethylaziridine (talk • contribs) 01:01, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I think the article sort of makes that point, now. Do you think it should be emphasized more? S  B Harris 07:58, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Apollo 6
Hello, Dr. Harris. The edits you have just made, and are still making to Apollo 6 and Apollo program in re Apollo 6, have some incorrect information in them. This flight did not fly anywhere near the Moon (more than a two-day trip) and certainly not into lunar orbit, only into three Earth orbits, the last one very high to test the heat shield (the entire flight lasted less than 10 hours.) It also did not carry a real Lunar Module, only a "test article" for ballast (analogous to the "boilerplate" CSM), that still wasn't as heavy as the real thing. Also, Apollo 8's mission was not a repeat of it, and not in any way related to it (other than the next Saturn V flight could carry men.) Apollo 8's mission was invented as a result of a random, unrelated circumstance (the LM not being ready for a first manned Earth orbit practice mission, which the original Apollo 8 was intended to be.)

What sources are you using for your information? As a physician, I'm sure you appreciate the importance of making sure of one's facts when writing about technical subjects outside one's expertise. Thank you. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:58, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I put in my source, and in the process found my memory bad. They hadn't intended to send Apollo 6 into lunar orbit, only to the velocity of lunar orbit. It would go into translunar insertion, then immediately (after less than 5 min) decelerate with the SPS and come back, in less than 10 hours. The return velocity and angle would be exactly as in Apollo 8 (and all the manned lunar missions), as a test for this. However, due to failure of fuel lines the S-IVB never restarted, and they had to use the SM engine (SPS) to raise the CSM to a high Earth orbit and then bring it in from there (not even as good a test as Apollo 4). Had the thing worked perfectly, the mission would have lasted almost exactly the same amount of time. I never said they used a real LM. The Lunar Module Test Article (LMTA) was a dummy mass with a lot of shock and vibration telemetry, intended to simulate the LM mechanically, and record stress data, but no more. S  B Harris 05:42, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Bromine
I'm seeing this edit by an IP giving Bromine an atomic mass of 79.904. I have an old periodic table saying 79.909 +/-.002. Is that a serious difference? This IP also like to goof around so I don't mind reverting him if there's any doubt. Slightsmile (talk) 01:41, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, all sources agree 79.904(0), including my CRC handbook (to finally look at paper). S  B Harris 01:45, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Radioactive decay article question
I noticed that you have done a great number of contributions on this article.

However, I am not particularly confident that this line is true.

"In an example of this, a carbon-14 atom (the "parent") emits radiation (a beta particle, antineutrino, and a gamma ray) and transforms to a nitrogen-14 atom (the "daughter"). "

Carbon has a lower atomic mass than nitrogen. How is it possible that after the radioactive decay nitrogen is resultant from an element which is lower on the periodic table? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meseaworthy (talk • contribs) 17:47, 13 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Atomic masses are averages. The atomic mass for "carbon" reflects mostly carbon-12, since only 1% is C-13, and not enough C-14 exists to affect the mass at all. If you look at just the mass for the nuclides we're talking about, C-14 and N-14, you'll find that C-14 DOES have a larger mass. The C-14 isotope mass is 14.003241989 u (see the isotopes of carbon article). That's not larger than than the nitrogen average weight 14.0067 u but it IS larger than the N-14 isotope weight, which is 14.0030740048 (see isotopes of nitrogen). If you subtract 14.0030740048 (N-14) from 14.003241989 (C-14) you get a mass difference of + 0.000168 u. Multiply that by the conversion factor of 931.494 MeV/u and get a number for the decay energy of C-14, which is 0.1564 Mev, or 156.49 KeV. If you look at the carbon-14 page you see it's 156.476 KeV. If I'd been more careful with my significant digits, I've have hit it exactly. S  B Harris 20:07, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:NOR Noticeboard thread citing one of your edits
Hi. I've started this thread on the No Original Research Noticeboard. I imagine you may want to participate. Thanks. David in DC (talk) 19:55, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

"Travels With Charley" fact-checking issue--
SB--

I understand that a blog is not a credible citation, but I linked to "Travels Without Charley" mainly because it is not an ordinary blog (it's more like a web site) and because it contains a copy of my Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  newspaper article of Dec. 6  headlined  "The fabulism of 'Travels With Charley.' "

Perhaps I should have linked directly to the original newspaper piece? Here it is:

"The Fabulism of 'Travels With Charley':

That article is a 2,000-word summary of what I found out about Steinbeck's 1960 "Charley" trip by doing two things:

-- Doing a great deal of research (journalists call it reporting) of existing Steinbeck material to create a time-and-place line of Steinbeck's actual trip (by reading biographies, reading letters Steinbeck wrote from the road during the fall of 1960, reading newspaper articles written in 1960 and reading the original "Charley" manuscript, which scholars apparently have not done in 48 years).

-- Then making a 43-day, 11,000 mile "fact-checking" drive-by journalism trip this fall that retraced as carefully as possible Steinbeck's 1960 route; I did real journalism along the way, took photos of places mentioned in the book and places that Steinbeck went but did not write about;

Xpaperboy (talk) 03:15, 14 December 2010 (UTC)


 * That's good. I'm sure that if you had cited the newspaper article, it would have "stuck." Do you want me to add it, or do you want to wait till you become an "autoconfirmed nameuser"? For that, you need to make 10 edits after you first pick your username and wait 4 days. Your time is nearly up, but you need to make some more edits, even minor ones, to WP. You can edit any article that doesn't have the silver lock on it (called semiprotection). After you get to be autoconfirmed, you can edit sprotected articles, too. S  B Harris 03:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Essential fatty acids?
Are there really essential fatty acids or is this some sort of marketing ploy by health food vendors? I have been editing in that area and was surprised to read about them. I never ran into them in biochem classes. Thanks,--Smokefoot (talk) 23:49, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, they really exist. You need at least one w-3 (one FA from that class) and one w-6 (one from that class) and you can make the others from them (a few carnivores species need more). Essential fatty acid deficiency was first seen in people getting total intravenous nutrition, where, for obvious reasons they put in only amino acids, sugar, vitamins and minerals (fat emulsions were quite hard to develop as IV formulas). The reason for the problem is that the body can make fats from sugars, but cannot introduce unsaturation closer to the end than w-9, and you NEED w-6 and w-3 fatty acids to make lipids (the w-3 DHA is your most common neural tissue fat). I'll see what I can do to put in some general refs from academic nutrition books. There is some quackery out there (like pills that contain w-9 because olive oil is cheap) but most of the fish oil supplements are worth taking, actually, unless you eat cold water ocean fish regularly. BTW, there is some evidence that that bad reputation of saturated fats are from experiments in which animals were fed only hydrogenated coconut oil for their fat source. hydrogenation destroys all essential fatty acids because it destroys all PUFAs. On such a diet, even DOGS get severe atherosclerosis, and they are species highly resistant to it (their HDLs are higher than their LDLs). So all this is quite fascinating-- some of we thought was bad effects of tropical ssturated fats, was from studies that accidentally caused EFA deficiency. S  B Harris 23:58, 30 December 2010 (UTC)