User talk:Tommysun/Archive 3

Here ... have a mind beer
Mind-beer ... on me ... User:QTJ/Wikipedia_Humor

Sometimes it helps to see the humor behind everything?

--QTJ 06:19, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Crop Circles
I have reverted your edits to Crop Circles, as they give the false appearance of reputable science promoting crop circles as something other than pranks. Any future additions of this material, even in part, should be given consensus on the article's talk page and cited to death. Another suggestion: this talk page is for people to leave you messages. It is not a place for you to catalog all of your edits. That is done automatically (the contributions tab). Michaelbusch 02:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know who you are but you never talked on the discussion page before so I wonder if you are aware of what you are talking about. We have been working toward consensus, and your revertal of my efforts is mistaken. It is only your opinion that the scientists involved are not reputable, but I don't see any mention of your qualifications to determine when and if a scientist is a scientist or not. I charge you with POV pushing a pseudoscientific view that the knowledgeable scientists involved are not reputable scientists. I am taking this as an evidence in the ARBCOMTommy Mandel 04:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
 * You do not have consensus yet. You do not have citations in the material.  That and the content are the reasons for reversion.  One needs no special qualifications to determine the validity of science, but that is not relevant here.  The problem is that the 'scientists' you present have failed in the court of public opinion, where the public is everyone with knowledge of physics and astronomy.  Those I have knowledge of to some extent (see my user page).  I'd suggest you learn some yourself.  Teaching physics via wiki is difficult at best, so I will not attempt to educate you.
 * Check the page histories. I've been watching the talk page, and have made small contributions before.  I've tried to stay out of the long wikishouting matches.  I have work to do. Michaelbusch 07:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

This is what I placed into the article.

[edit] Scientific investigations of crop circles A number of practicing scientists have investigated the crop cicle phenomenon including Gerald Hawkins, an astronomer who investigated Stonehedge reported on the geometrical formations; William Levengood, a biophysicist and University professor studied the plant structure, E, Haselhoff, an experimental and theoretical physicist studied the patterns of crop bending. The organization BLT research, utilized the scientific method to analyize soil structure. These investigations involved what has been observed in the field.

The BLT Research Team is a group which states as its objective "the discovery, scientific documentation and evaluation of physical changes induced in plants, soils and other materials at crop circle sites by the energy (or energy system) responsible for creating them and to determine, if possible, from these data the specific nature and source of these energies", The BLT group has claimed that anomalous changes in the soil underlying crop circles have been found that could not be explained by conventional theory.[6]

Dr. Eltjo Hasellhof, a practicing physicist, has rigorously investigated the crop circle phenomenon. His findings are published in his book: "Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles:"

Crop circles have become highly controversial, especially after it was revealed that some of the circles were man-made. "Unfortunately, much of the public information is not very accurate or even is completely wrong, as a result of ignorance, lack of accuracy or objectivity. or simply evil intent. " Haselhoff has investigated the crop circle phenomenon and concluded, "some relativly simple observations seem to defy any trivial explanation. Biophysical anomalies, in terms of node leghtening and germination anomalies, The lack of any indication of human presence or mechanical flattening, The awesome complexity and particularily the hidden geometry in many pictograms at least indicate that this cannot be the result of a simple joke,"

Words and Language

ZEN

Do not mistake the pointing finger for the moon

WILLIAM JAMES

"Out of what is in itselt an indistinguishable, swarming continuum, devoid of distinction (sunyata), or emphasis, our senses make for us, by attending to this motion and ignoring that, a world full of contrasts, of sharp accents, of abrupt changes, of picturesque light and shade. Helmholtz says that we notice only those sensations which are signs to us of things. But what are things? Nothing, as we shall abundantly see, but special groups of sensible qualities, which happen practically or aesthetically to interest us, to which we therefore give substantive names, and which we exalt to this exclusive status of independence and dignity."

ALDOUS HUXLEY

"Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things." [TDOP Huxley 23]

DAVID BOHM

"Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, (i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes."

KEN WILBER

Bergson was also aware of the spurios reality of "things" because, - as he himself pointed out - thought creates things by slicing up reality into small bits that it can easily grasp. Thus when you are think-ing you are thing-ing. Thought does not report things, it distorts reality to create things, and, as Bergson noted, "In so doing it allows what is the very essence of the real to escape." Thus to the extent we actually imagine a world of discrete and separate things, conceptions have become perceptions, and we have in this manner populated our universe with nothing but ghosts. Therefore the Madhyamika declares that Reality, besides being void of conceptual elaboration, is likewise Void of separate things.The doctrine of mutual interpenetration and mutual identification of the Dharmadhatu represents man's highest attempt to put into words that non-dual experience of Reality which itself remains wordless, ineffable, unspeakable, that nameless nothingness. The Dharmadhatu is not entirely foreign to Western thought, for something very similar to it is seen emerging in modern Systems Theory, in Gestalt psychology, and in the organismic philosophy of Whitehead. As a matter of fact, Western science as a whole is moving very rapidly towards a Dharmadhatu view of the cosmos, as biophysicist Ludwig von Bertalanffy states: "We may state as a characteristic of modern sciece that the scheme of isolable units acting in one-way-causality has proved to be insufficient. Hence the appearence, in all fields of science, of notions like wholeness, holistic, organismic, gestalt, etc, which signify that in the last resort, we must think in terms of systems of elements in mutual interaction."

Crop Circles
I have reverted your edits to Crop Circles, as they give the false appearance of reputable science promoting crop circles as something other than pranks. Any future additions of this material, even in part, should be given consensus on the article's talk page and cited to death. Another suggestion: this talk page is for people to leave you messages. It is not a place for you to catalog all of your edits. That is done automatically (the contributions tab). Michaelbusch 02:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Rules of the Wiki
I would like to give you some advice, which I think you have been given at least some of before and have ignored. If you chose to ignore it now, fine, but I will have at least tried. I am quite aware that I may be making myself a target. Also fine.

Your edits to Wikipedia show a very clear pattern: you are deeply opinionated about certain matters and unwilling to compromise on them. This is true, regardless of you regard yourself that way or not. You may see yourself as a champion of intellectual freedom against tyranny by whatever group. That is acceptable. But this is Wikipedia, not a forum for debating. We are here to make an encyclopedia, not argue about dubious evidence. At the moment, your edits are putting talk pages into uproars and accomplishing little else. This should change.

Concerning your interactions with other editors: you need to be more civil. I can roll with punches to a fair extent, but others are becoming angry. When I reverted your edits to Crop Circle, the indicated procedure was not to attack my qualifications and refer me to the admins, but to try to resolve the disputes on the talk page and get your citations in order and properly formatted. Similarly, the indicated response to my critique of your references was not to say I do not speak from a position of knowledge, but to actually address the critique. The examples above concern me, but there are other cases with other editors.

At the moment, there is a request for investigation on you, signed by at least three editors. I would prefer that you alter your editing style rather than having to go through the process. If you want, you can think of this as 'shape up or ship out'. This is not a threat or an insult to you. It is a request that you exercise some level of restraint.

As a final note, other editors will be far more likely to treat you with some respect if you follow the conventions of Wikipedia. Sign your posts, put your references in the proper format, avoid large quotes that distill down to simple statments, and remember that neutral point-of-view is not the same as presenting all points of view. Consult Help, esp. Style. Good luck. Michaelbusch 08:28, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I really want to leave, I don't belong here. I did leave, archived the whole ball of wax...but something caught my eye, something that mainstream science believed that all crop circles were hoaxed, so I came back. I am tired of srguing. My purpose is not here or at plasma, it's just that I am sick and tired of pseudoscience too. And then there are the children,,,Maybe after all this will look like Tommy's lost crusade. Whatever, I have a paper to write and now is the time to start it. So I am trying to close this door on this chapter of my life. Tommy Mandel 09:05, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

PS I have taken your suggestions to heart, but it would have been much better if you had become knowledgable of my side of the story too. You call me opinionated, do you mean I have confidence in what I think is happening? Consider that the other editors, probably those who have complained about me, have not read one book on the subject, have not researched the subject, and cannot make a reasoned determination of what is really happening.

I have read the scientists account, and almost across the board they acknowledge there are features that cannot be manually created, anomalous features such as the increased crystalization of clay, confirmed by one of the nations best authorities on soils. These are hard facts, and all the opinions in the world cannot erase that observation.

I have tried to present the scientitst's perspective in the article, finally did reach a truce of sorts with bob and bill, and it seemed like we could talk it over, then some Guy pops up and it starts all over. Without any real knowledge of what is going on, he declares that the case is settled, mainstream science has determined that all the circles are hoaxes. That is simply not true. How do you compromise with that?

And now, I should have stayed away, but they tried to insert the observation that mainstream science has concluded the dcircles are all hoaxed again, and then I decided I would simply try to edit boldly then you pop up. You had no right to remove my edits. I had sources, they are reputable, they are all we got, and I wasn't pushing a particular POV. But you reverted it, I didn't revert you. And tried to discuss it with you, obviously, your idea that the balls of lights are headlights of cars clearly shows that you do not have a working knowledge of the phenomenon. Nor do you have a working knowledge of the crop circle controversy.

Am I doing something wrong by pointing this out? How can you conclude anything if you do not know about what you are talking about? How can you say that Haselhoff is not well known enough to have authored an accurate account without even have read his beautifully constructed book? I have a list of fifteen scientists, are you going to find fault with every one of them? And then after excluding their research, say to all of us, "Look, there is no evidence presented by science, therefore the hearsay evidence of the hoaxers/deceivers must be true.

You know as well as I that there is no collective mainstream science view in science. When scientists use the term they refer to those who are actually involved in the research, they are not refering to all scientists, knowledgable or not. Am I right? So the mainstream scientific view of crop circles is the viewpoint of those scientists who have actually investigated the crop circles. And what they conclude in general is that they cannot explain some of the observed features in a trivial way. That is the NPOV of crop circles, a big question mark.

Perhaps you can tell me why this scientific research does not belong in the article? You tell me why the article can and does present the viewpoint that all crop circles were hoaxed. On what basis? The only basis there is, is the testimony of people who have deceived us purposely in that past. Isn't that pseudoscience?

I have not tried to edit out Doug and Dave, all I have tried to do is insert the scientific perspective. I have been called many names by Darfred and insulted almost daily by him. THe other editors did not say a aingle word about his comments of lunacy, mad, raving and all the other words he used. I never attacked him back but no one noticed that. What I did attck, once, was the pseudoscientists are stupid people who come up with stupid ideas about stupid things. And ever since I have been accused of personal attacks. If you are going to investigate me, ask addhoc, my advocate. I requested that he help me. I also requested an ArbCom resolution which was rejected.

I don't belong here. I don't want to be here. I am not a follower or conformist or part of the group. I find my fulfillment at the edges of scientific research. What DF called "mumbo Jumbo". I have learned enough to be able to tell if something is plausible or not.

But it really bothers me when I realize that our children are coming to depend on Wikipedia. I want you to know that I have mulled over all your comments. I wish that you would have looked at my side of the story. You are obviously very intelligent and very wise.

Tommy Mandel 00:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)