Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2018 March 9

= March 9 =

Hydramethylnon
Does anyone get this? Our article on hydramethylnon doesn't suggest that it's terribly poisonous (the blue section of the NFPA label is just 1). The image that pops up if you hit the red button says "Did you order a book on how to poison redheads?" but again our article doesn't suggest anything very relevant.

A little searching suggests that hydramethylnon is used to control the meat ant, which seems to have a red head. Is that the joke? --Trovatore (talk) 10:44, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Its a "comic" webpage. Why do you expect them to be absolutely seriouse? No idea if they are joking or dont know better. They obviously offer no access to anyone and everyone willing to correct their mistakes like we here. --Kharon (talk) 16:17, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't expect them to be serious, obviously. I just don't get the joke.  Unless it's the bit about the redheaded ant, in which case I don't think it's as funny as Zack usually is. --Trovatore (talk) 19:53, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A little extra context: As regular readers of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal will recognize, the redhead in the frame is the cartoonist himself, Zach Weinersmith, and the woman is his real-life wife, whose name I can't remember but she may herself have a WP page as a biologist.  So it's a my-wife-is-trying-to-get-rid-of-me joke, which is not exactly novel, but if it were done in some clever way I wouldn't mind that.  In this case, if it is the thing about the meat ant, then I don't think it's that clever, just obscure.  Then the cartoon shoehorns in a completely different point about personalized AI recommendations.  Well, no one bats 1.000.  But if anyone can come up with a different explanation I'd be interested to hear it. --Trovatore (talk) 20:28, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I should also say, it's only because I think really pretty highly of the comic, in general, that this one made me scratch my head and go WTF. I think it's one of the best webcomics out there, maybe the best.  Try this one for example. --Trovatore (talk) 20:37, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Simón Bolívar and natural history
Natural history says the following:"The understanding of 'Nature' as 'an organism and not as a mechanism' can be traced to the writings of Alexander Humboldt (Prussia, 1769–1859). Humboldt's copious writings and research were seminal influences for Charles Darwin, Simone Bolivar, Henry David Thoreau, Ernst Haeckel, and John Muir."Darwin, Haekel, and Muir were biologists or naturalists, and Thoreau wrote a good deal about nature, but Bolívar? He was a soldier and politician. What did he do that would be influenced by such a perspective? Or should this be taken as an error of some sort? Simón Bolívar (disambiguation) lists nobody who would potentially be confused with him and who would be a likely candidate for appearing in this section, and Simone Bolivar doesn't exist. I'm inclined to distrust the statement: it comes from a book, very improperly cited, whose author is a popular writer, not a scholar, and the publisher does literature and other popular writings, not scholarly stuff on history, biology, or history of science or history and philosophy of science. And the poor quality of the citation (and apparent spelling error) make me question whether the person who added this statement were properly capable of interpreting what was in the source in the first place. Nyttend (talk) 12:34, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That sentence is false or obscure, for it would probably astonish Bolivar, Humboldt etc to be cited as origins of an idea as ancient as Hylozoism.John Z (talk) 19:05, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Bolivar is not being so cited. "Humboldt's copious writings and research were seminal influences for Charles Darwin, Simone Bolivar, Henry David Thoreau, Ernst Haeckel, and John Muir". DuncanHill (talk) 19:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My point is that any of those people would be astonished to see anyone who had lived so recently so cited. And the article is not on Bolivar, Humboldt or any of the others. It is a sillier anachronism than "The understanding of differential and integral calculus can be traced to Silvanus P. Thompson" At least that's the right millennium.John Z (talk) 01:01, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There's a review of the book in Geoscientist (Vol 26, No2, March 2016, page 22) which says, amongst other things, "His range of influences, from Goethe and Simon Bolívar to Darwin, Haeckel, Muir, Emerson and Thoreau, defies belief." The review is by Ted Nield. DuncanHill (talk) 12:43, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * See also Alexander von Humboldt and Simón Bolívar by J. Fred Rippy and E. R. Brann, The American Historical Review Vol. 52, No. 4 (Jul., 1947), pp. 697-703. DuncanHill (talk) 12:48, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A Google search for '"Simon Bolivar" Humboldt' returns many hits. They certainly met, and it seems they certainly discussed politics. DuncanHill (talk) 12:51, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And, if you had looked at our article Simón Bolívar you would have read "During this time in Europe, Bolívar met Alexander von Humboldt in Rome. Humboldt later wrote: "I was wrong back then, when I judged him a puerile man, incapable of realizing so grand an ambition." Leopold von Buch, a geologist with little or no interest in politics, came to know Bolívar through Humboldt disliking him immediately". DuncanHill (talk) 12:57, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to note that it is not unusual for people from wildly different fields or geographies to have long-distance friendships or to converse with one another. Bolivar was certainly active during the tail end of the Age of Enlightenment; maybe half a generation or so younger than other late enlightenment politicians such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom had a keen interest in science, and especially natural history.  Our article at Simón Bolívar notes that he met Humboldt and another scientist, Christian Leopold von Buch, while travelling in Europe to recover emotionally from the death of his wife.  It appears that their friendship was late in coming; apparently Humboldt initially disliked him, but later grew to admire him.  This source (in Spanish) notes that they traveled together in Italy, and hiked up Vesuvius together, and quotes some of the writings of both men to each other.  There's also a Pico Humboldt in Venezuela; one has to wonder if Bolivar had a direct influence on that.  -- Jayron 32 13:03, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * (ec)Nyttend, if you wonder what a soldier and politician might learn from Humboldt, you could try reading the articles on Bolivar and Humboldt, and on the Age of Enlightenment. You failed to do even the most basic of research before coming here to be snide about the editor who added the reference, an award winning book and its author, and a major publisher. You really should try harder next time. DuncanHill (talk) 13:10, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * We also have many other scientist-politicians (even if Bolivar wasn't much of a scientist actually, he did have an interest in it) such as Isaac Newton (who served in Parliament and also took his job as Master of the Mint quite seriously), scientist-solidiers such as Lazare Carnot (from a noted family that also produced many physicists and politicians), etc. The modern world has given us Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher (both chemists before entering politics), Grace Hopper (computer scientist and naval officer), etc.  The presumption that one could not have such interests in common does seem quite misplaced.  -- Jayron 32 13:21, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's not just an interest in Humboldt's science, we read in Alexander von Humboldt that "Other scholars counter that Humboldt dedicated large parts of his work to describing the conditions of slaves, indigenous peoples, mixed-race castas, and society in general. He often showed his disgust for the slavery and inhumane conditions in which indigenous peoples and others were treated and he often criticized Spanish colonial policies." The relevance of that for Bolivar hardly needs spelling out, does it? DuncanHill (talk) 13:38, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

32 14:52, 9 March 2018 (UTC)>
 * As seems to have no interest in this thread, might I suggest it is archived? DuncanHill (talk) 23:14, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not particularly interested in anything where I get attacked. I'm a real librarian, and I just spent a couple of hours doing online reference: I'd get fired if I gave the responses that I was given here.  Nyttend (talk) 02:23, 12 March 2018 (UTC)