User talk:Wobble/archive6

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In this edition

Lots of stuff, too much to list here.

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Thulean & Veritas
Hi, Alun. Just read your comment. It was the first time I logged on for months, so I was kind of disconnected and in fact thinking that I was definitively leaving the Wiki (I logged on basically to write my goodbye statement).

I am really glad that Thulean/Lukas has been finally disciplined. I really hope he is never back again: he's been such a drain!

Regarding Veritas (LSLM), I feel kind of sad though I admit he pushed all red lines (he even attacked me personally once). Nevertheless, to be just, I think that Wikipedia should be somehow thankful to him because he was in the end the trigger that caused Thulean to be kicked off.

My suspicion is that he will be back with a different username and that he feels proud of his "sacrifice" (I really don't know, just an intuition). Hope nevertheless he's learned something about civility in the process.

Well, in any case, I'm glad that this element has finally been disciplined and so severely. Regards, --Sugaar 11:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello!
Hey there, sorry to come to you ONLY when I need help, but I need help :) Do you know how to go about requesting assistance when facing a troublesome user? I want to report Mais Oui! and cannot work through the advice on the site about how to do it. Enzedbrit 21:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm taking a long break. This person never ceases, reverting everything for the sake of reverting what I change.  I'm just glad that I'm the only person that reads the articles in question anyway. Enzedbrit 21:56, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

No personal attacks
Our WP:NPA policy is crystal clear on this issue. It says: "... some types of comments are never acceptable:
 * Racial, sexual, homophobic, ageist, religious, political, or ethnic epithets directed against another contributor. Disagreement over what constitutes a religion, race, sexual preference, or ethnicity is not a legitimate excuse.
 * Using someone's affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views -- regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream or extreme."

(I added the bolding)

Now, you referral to "his nationalistic sensibilities", referring to my good self, is in clear breach of our policy. Whether or not I am a nationalist or a unionist, or could-not-care-less, is utterly irrelevant and quite frankly none of your business. How on earth do you come to that conclusion anyway? As I said, it is irrelevant, but I will tell you one thing, I am an Anglophile, which I do take some pride in (however silly that may seem to others).

You also use the term "the Wikipedian POV-pusher", which in the absence of extremely solid evidence, I would also avoid like the plague - you are simply asking for trouble there.

Finally, I would like you to note that your sentiment "petty nationalism is more to be pittied than despised" cuts both ways: many, many people consider Russian nationalism, Iranian nationalism, British nationalism and many other "nationalisms" perpetrated by centralisers to be just as, or even more, repulsive than the nationalism of nations currently lacking a sovereign state. The actions of Enzedbrit could extremely easily be portrayed as "petty British nationalist", but I have desisted, because I have read WP:NPA, which I strongly advise both you and him to do.

I will not waste my time on your numerous other points, but suffice to say that I, and many other Wikipedians, do not see these issues from the same perspective as you. --Mais oui! 07:45, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you
For your part in getting those two disruptive users banned. The Behnam 17:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

ROSALIND FRANKLIN
SEE: http://media-newswire.com/release_1047359.html

90.240.197.195 17:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

English
Alun, I see you dont agree with Oppenheimer and Sykes then. Have a look at revleft.com - theres a lot of leftists there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.247.233.30 (talk • contribs)
 * I neither agree nor disagre with them. Having an origin from Iberia, which I think most Western europeans probably do, does not make the ethnic groups to which they belong "related". We all, as humans have origins from Africa, this does not make all African ethnic groups related to all non-African ethnic groups. A biological connection is not the same as a cultural one. To claim it is is to misunderstand the concept of ethnicity. This is little more than taking the same line as people like Lukas19, who sees ethnicity as identical to descent or race. Besides which, you have been banned for a year haven't you? It would be easy to check you're LSLM, but I don't think I need to, the immediate ad hominem attack when I do something you don't like indicates it's you. You need to understand the difference between ethnicity and "race". Just as Lukas and Epf refuse to accept that Oppenheimer and Sykes might have a point (because it contradicts their personal belief system rather than any scientific reality) you refuse to accept that even if Sykes and Oppenheimer are right, it does not mean that the modern ethnic groups of these regions are related. The people of these regions may share recent ancestors, but they do not share a common social or cultural tradition, and so are not ethnically related. Ethnicity is not race, you seem to have a great problem understanding this. Alun 17:55, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you're mistaking me for someone else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.247.233.30 (talk • contribs)
 * I don't really care. You seem to be based in the UK, so maybe you are not LSLM. You are probably the same user who was on the English people talk page earlier, you have the same location, Anyway I don't want to play silly games. Please sign your posts and get an account. I can't be bothered playing silly buggers with you. Ethnicity is not the same as biological origin, this means that one can both agree with Oppenheimer and Sykes and still not accept that Spanish people are ethnically related to English people. It's not rocket science. Alun 18:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Britons
The issue is an old one, I've seen it before, when working on that page - as I think you have also - but just with a new spin. On the Irish people article (a page I avoid), it can at least be got around with the idea of an Irish diaspora. From what I see, British identity also shared with people from outside of the British Isles. That needs to be acknowledged in the article. The problem, as I see it, is that sometimes there are two starkly contrasting ideas of what these kind of shared identities means, especially when there one is the "original." I've seen this in real-life with Irish vs. Irish-American and Scottish vs. Scottish-American. The American would see himself as Irish/Scottish, the Irish/Scottish would see an American. The American would have a firmly held idea of what being Irish/Scottish is about, the Irish/Scottish would be appalled by them..

My issue on that page before was people counting ALL those who could be identified as of English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh/etc. ancestry as British. Which is a tenuous, in my opinion. A.J.C. seems to be of the other extreme - that if you cannot identify your ancestry as uniquely English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh/etc. then you are British. This is a fair perspective. I can see where someone would get it from. Only its from the other side of the world, so of course it sounds upside down to us.

We need a definition of what the Briton page is about. Maybe draw A.J. into that.

(I could be all wrong about this, tho.) --sony-youth talk 09:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for replacing your image. Also, I uploaded the official Senate image: Image:ObamaBarack.jpg. Looks like a mug shot, but it's free-use. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 12:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Revised Introduction to Rosalind Franklin
Now reads:

"Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English physical chemist and crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine structures of DNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray Diffraction images of DNA which formed a basis of Watson and Crick's hypothesis of the double helical structure of DNA in their 1953 publication,[1] and when published constituted critical evidence of the hypothesis.[2] In the years following, she led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses. She died in 1958 of bronchopneumonia, secondary carcinomatosis, and carcinoma of the ovary; her death certificate read (quote) "A Research Scientist, Spinster, Daughter of Ellis Arthur Franklin, a Banker."

But I do have have serious doubts about "Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray Diffraction images of DNA which formed a basis of Watson and Crick's hypothesis of the double helical structure of DNA in their 1953 publication,[1] and when published constituted critical evidence of the hypothesis.[2]" as all this does is open up the age old, rather tired debate over attribution. No mention is made of the contribution made by Maurice ["The Forgotten Man of DNA")Wilkins of course - for which he was awarded his share of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The vandalism in the next paragraph ("born in Asia") has been repaired.

84.66.200.104 20:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rosalind_Franklin"

Re: English people
"It is very disingeneous to make massive edits to a relatively stable article, especially to remove information without giving a reason on the talk page. It is doubly insulting to other editors of the article to then complain that a revert of your edit was done without giving any reason. Where exactly did you give your reasons? I see no evidence of a talk page discussion or even an edit summary. If you demand explanations then I suggest you be prepared to offer explanations of your own. Wikipedia works by consensus, if you have good reasons for wanting to remove information then you need to present those reasons on the talk page and discuss the changes first. This is how we achieve consensus. These articles are not a free for all. Please refrain for making big edits without discussing on the talk page first. Alun 12:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)"


 * Okay fair enough. I've created a discussion about it on the talk page. (89.241.239.89 13:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC))

history of biology
Alun, you might be interested to know that history of biology is a featured article candidate: Featured article candidates/History of biology.--ragesoss 20:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Your comment on "race"
Hi, Alun,

I thank you for your recent addition to the discussion on race. I have been trying to get people to see what your data shows since about my second edit on Wikipedia. Good luck on getting those who are in love with [race] to give up their perversions. :-) But I had difficulty in understanding the part that says: "their results are far less unequivocal." The multi-negative structure leaves me reeling.  Do you mean to say that there are people whose results are equivocal, meaning you could take them any way, and then people whose views are (relatively) unequivocal, meaning that they actually make some kind of a firm claim that could be evaluated either true or false when checked against objective evidence, and then finally there is a group that has produced statements/results that are not so very unequivocal, meaning they are rather more equivocal or "far more equivocal"? That would mean to me that their results are rather more mushy, i.e., harder to issue a flat "right" or "wrong" judgment on.  Maybe the problem is that you like results that are more highly nuanced and that are therefore harder to make simplistic judgments about? P0M 16:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I don't think the diagram + explanation makes it clear how the first three maps relate to the fourth. I think I know what the relationship should be, but I know I'm depending on my own information.

If I had the artistic/technical capacity, I'd like to use colored dots to represent traits such as curly hair, height, shovel-shaped incisors, epicanthal fold, etc., etc. and make a scatter-dot map. That way it would be clearer to people that some Chinese have curly hair, some Europeans have shovel-shaped incisors, etc. Then if you abstracted from the map by colors, you would see the same kind of picture that your diagrams present, with Europe heavily dotted with moderately curly hair dots, China sparsely dotted, etc.

Actually, I think it might work better to make a series of maps with off-set grids so that when a dot was put on the intersection of two lines on one map it would never cover the dot of a different color on a separate map. Then the maps could be viewed separately or combined in various ways to see, e.g., what "green race" would emerge from the superposition of a "yellow race" and a "blue race". P0M 21:47, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the article is at least much better than when I started with it, even though the politics is deadly. My first experience in Wikipedia editing was with somebody indentifying himself as JDG who insisted that race is real and that the fact had to be recognized. My first edit on the Race article was reverted with a curt "We don't need any help. This article has already been nominated as a 'Good Article.'" It turned out he was the one who had nominated it. SLR had also been involved, and I had (many) a long argument with him which was largely fruitless then and now. Then the guy who recently changed his name a couple times got involved with the Race article. At least he had gone to grad school on the issue, and he could be quite agreeable when contacted on an individual basis. But he has always been intractible when anything contradicts his own understanding.

What I cannot understand is why I can just see the way individual genetic identities are woven into a tapestry with threads going all over the place on the back side, and people who have presumably spent several years getting taught how to do genetics keep coming up with clusters that confirm age-old ideas of race.

I think the part you just added on my talk page about the actual ways of discovering these clusters (k=3, etc.) should be in an article. It is intrinsically interesting, it should be easy to document, and once that presentation in nailed down in one place it can be linked in to discussions on [race], etc.

The local spider expert doesn't think it is worth talking about spider subspecies even in terms of those relatively "home-body" organisms. I think his experience in the field is that too often you find some spider that fits between the definitions of two supposed subspecies. And if you read the discussions on subspecies of honey bees, you will find frequent mention of variations that are clearly clinal, with "mixed" bees in the middle, e.g. between Italians and Carniolans. There probably was a pretty clear margin around Cyprian bees 500-1000 years ago because they were pretty well insulated by the Mediterranean. Any chance that humans are less able to achieve reproductive success across wide geographical and cultural distances? I doubt it.

Please consider writing an article on how these clusters are constructed. P0M 06:15, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

LYNNE ELKIN
Alun/Wobble, with your passionate interest in the subject I feel sure you could contribute!

I have suggested to LOE that she should try to publish in time for the 50th anniversary of REF's death, but hopefully Bob Olby's biography of Crick will be out before then! (Trust you are well?)I only wish I could remember my password so I can sign in!

Martin

LYNNE ELKIN'S BIOGRAPHY OF ROSALIND FRANKLIN Anyone who can contribute to Lynne Elkin's forthcoming biography of Rosalind Franklin should contact her on: lynne.elkin@csueastbay.edu

Lynne Osman Elkin, Ph.D., Professor of biological sciences at California State University in Hayward, who has dedicated much of her studies to researching Rosalind Franklin's scientific contributions. See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/elkin.html

See: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-3/p42.html (also: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-3/p14c.html)

See also: http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/tip/2005/apr1/franklin.htm

81.77.243.66 17:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rosalind_Franklin"

Racial and Religius theories based in German Unification and UK participation
If you do not wish to remain partisan with the Nazi ideology, then "walk the walk". Don't support their historical revisionism, as it looks like David Irving's work to me. Why include non-British Isles peoples as related in the case of Protestant Nordics such as Dutch/German/Danish (per British policy) but not Catholic Mediterraneans like the Spaniards (per English policy)? You know that these (in either case) were governmental alliances and had nothing to do with the English people, their official propagandas notwithstanding. Of all the Continental peoples apart from Romans (general European), the French have distinction of relations to the English by actual geography in the sense which now only applies to the other Home Nations. This French factor and sectarian prejudices are like the pink elephant in the room that people refuse to get over by honest assessment. We have to acknowledge racism and religion as factors in the dispute, not pretend that they are nonexistant. Listen to the voices of the people in conflict--they sure believe in these factors, even if you don't personally. Objectivity is the hallmark of honest and disinterested parties, which is the best way to administer fairness. I would naturally pose the question for you to ask yourself: "Do I, Alun, approach this matter justly?  Do I, Alun, care about the divergent needs of these partisans and address them equally?" User:Neustriano 10:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Look here you. I am tired of the exclusion of the Spanish side. I know you support the Iberian elements. They are just as important as the Mediaeval migrations, which most current historians believe to be lighter elements in proportion to the whole body. After all, why do so many English women look dark and exotic in the West Country for example? My grandmother's side looks Basque or some Franco-Spaniard combination, but I swear she's completely English otherwise. However, it is not the biological nature that bothers me, nor is it what I am debating. The political bias is too much. All one needs to do is note in the article, that the English had an alliance with the Spanish and that the British had alliances with the Dutch, Germans and now apparently the Danish--on the false start of Prince George, Queen Anne's consort. These were not integrationist relationships, such as those with the Home Nations and the failure with France.

So it is obvious, that the English steer a middling course between the "Nordic" and the "Mediterranean". That is akin to the "via media" of Anglicanism. We are neither, yet both. We all agree to have an Atlantic constitution, but the centrepiece is the British Isles and France. This has been the constant course pursued by the mass of the people as well as the government, not simply the extreme ends. Might I remind you that emphasis on the "Nordic/Protestant" side brought our Island brothers an inordinate amount of suffering and suppression of their say in the settlement. This element was prominent in England too, but it was savagely put down in "pre-emptive strikes". The matter remains that both ends of the spectrum have indeed existed, in whichever quantity. I would not say that quality is the issue with these external ends, but quality remains rather instead with the UK-IE-FR connections.

User:Neustriano 10:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The odor of socks
Hi,

I had a look at "Karen's" stuff. I have no idea who it is, but it does seem that this user is an "old soul" who has visited this domain before. ;-) P0M 02:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Weekly Notification!
Hello. This is just a friendly notice that Wikipedia Weekly episode 19 has been released!


 * In this episode:
 * New Mission and Vision statements for the WMF
 * The Chaser springs Jimmy Wales
 * new uses for categories
 * vandalism studies
 * Unreferenced BLPs.

.mp3 and .ogg versions can be found at http://wikipediaweekly.com/2007/05/05/wikipedia-weekly-19/ and as always, you can download old episodes and more at http://wikipediaweekly.com/.

Please spread the word about Wikipedia Weekly, we're trying to spread the word so that people know about the project, we've got some cool guests lined up and it makes it much more fun if people tune in!

For Wikipedia Weekly —  W ODU P  20:56, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

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