Misplaced Pages

User talk:Orangemarlin: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 20:17, 10 August 2007 editMemestream (talk | contribs)1,213 edits Evolution← Previous edit Revision as of 20:24, 10 August 2007 edit undoOrangemarlin (talk | contribs)30,771 edits →Evolution: Reply to a troll.Next edit →
Line 169: Line 169:


You left the above under the heading 'edit war', which I resent, as I am involved in a very civil discussion at ] since making one edit and one reversion of its reversion (with reasons). Please note that I consider myself an experienced editor having edited for many years. You should not assume that a contributor has only edited since registering, or with a given name (name change is perfectly permissible, but not of course sockpuppets) but even then, I have done a considerable amount of editing under this name. I am very familiar indeed with WP:NPV etc etc, and would point out that the rules require balance on controversial topics, where NPV becomes a not very useful terms and several points of view exist 'out there' non of them 'extreme minority'. I can go through the fine detail point by point if you wish, but I'd rather move on. Rest assured, I will not edit-war or revert-war. --] 20:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC) You left the above under the heading 'edit war', which I resent, as I am involved in a very civil discussion at ] since making one edit and one reversion of its reversion (with reasons). Please note that I consider myself an experienced editor having edited for many years. You should not assume that a contributor has only edited since registering, or with a given name (name change is perfectly permissible, but not of course sockpuppets) but even then, I have done a considerable amount of editing under this name. I am very familiar indeed with WP:NPV etc etc, and would point out that the rules require balance on controversial topics, where NPV becomes a not very useful terms and several points of view exist 'out there' non of them 'extreme minority'. I can go through the fine detail point by point if you wish, but I'd rather move on. Rest assured, I will not edit-war or revert-war. --] 20:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

:Facts indicate otherwise, but whatever. ] <small><sup>] ]</sup></small> 20:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Revision as of 20:24, 10 August 2007

* Click here to leave me a new message
Getting Started
Getting Help
Policies and Guidelines
The Community
Things to do
Miscellaneous

Archives

Barnstars and related

On the Hoyle-Boeing-thing-going

Hi Orange, I will try to get back when I have an identity on WP, planning to do so. Until now I've left comments here and there signing with IP. I saw you had a bad day checking for the original Hoyle quotation. This was from some archived discussion group, objections - evolution, or something. I don't have a firm reference at hand. Here's what I think, what I remember (I'm a physicist). Hoyle might have written it in a book, rather than an article. The book was coauthred, but I don't remember the name of the other author (Indian sounding). Whether or not the quote is there in that book, I think I know what he was referring to. Hoyle (almost certainly) firmly believed in evolution through natural selection, he understood that mechanism, he never questioned it, or he was just uninterested in it. What he was actually concerned about was the origin of life. He thought that life must have emerged somewhere in the universe, not on Earth specifically. Wherever it originated, it has travelled everywhere through comets and the likes. His motivation for coming up with this hypothesis was that life is very improbable, too improbable to arise in many planets independently at (more or less) the same time. But the Universe is very vast. So, by extending the "pool" for life to begin to the entire universe, such probability might become sensible. In summary, he argued, life has originated only once somewhere sometime in a vast universe (he probably still believed vaster than most do), and then was spread all around. This is also known as panspermia. Hoyle is using a kind of entropic principle he had used before for an outstanding discovery in Physics regarding how carbon atoms arose in stars. To paraphrase, he thought that a functional boeing can actually come around by chance if tornadoes are happening all over a vast universe at the same time. To conclude, his boeing argument was an argument in favor of panspermia, in relation to the origin of life, and had absolutely nothing to do with evolution, nor evolution by means of natural selection. It goes without saying that recent findings that suggest life exists in meteorites, compatibly with Hoyle, are dismissed as false by creationists, who cite Hoyle's objections out of conetxt, but then refuse to embrace his authority in regard to the origin of life (and the related findings possibly confirming one prediction of his). In other words, Hoyle passes from being a total genius in their view when he proposes the boeing argument, to a pure idiot just a few lines later when he advocates panspermia. --209.150.240.231 04:33, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

You mean Hoyle, the confusing guy? I swear everytime I read something of his, he's saying something different. Do I know you? Orangemarlin 05:30, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
It is not likely we know each other. Not from WP though, I still have to open a user account. I make just comments to talk pages, usually suggestions for articles, anonimously.
Re: Hoyle. I am certain he proposed panspermia. I'm almost certain (99.9%) that's were he used the Boeing 747 example, which was not meant to be literal, of course it wasn't. He couldn't see an easy mechanism for the origin of life, so he kind of went for an argument from ignorance (I cannot see it so it must be very very improbable). But in essence he was just trying to increase the probability for life, still from the point of view of a pure naturalist/scientist, by enlarging the stage for life's first step (from Earth alone to space). One could accuse him of not being expert in that field, but he was not totally crazy, just bizarre (none other than Crick is another proponent of panspermia). His version also had kind of constant injection of biological "stuff" from space. But predisposition to bizarre theories is what has made the day for many scientists. Holye not being awarded the Nobel prize in Physics with Fowler was an injustice, but the intuition he started from was kind of bizarre, but absolutely correct. He was opposed, maybe, for his character. But to my knowledge, he never took any stance on Darwin. --209.150.240.231 05:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Dunno if this helps, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/chance/chance.html attributes the Boeing quote to Hoyle F Evolution from Space JM Dent 1981, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html#nonchris refers panspermia to Hoyle, Fred & Chandra Wickramsinghe, Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism (Simon & Schuster, NY, 1981). At Kitzmiller, Behe testified that "n the year 1973, a man named Francis Crick, the eminent Nobel laureate who discovered the double helicle shape of DNA with James Watson, he published, with a co-author named Leslie Orgle, he published a paper entitled Directed Panspermia, which appeared in the science journal Icarus.", while Buell testified "Dr. Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe published together an article in the journal, a technical journal called Icarus. The title of the article was Directed Panspermia. ... and then Dr. Hoyle... wrote a book entitled the Intelligent Universe." Make what you will of that lot. .. dave souza, talk 11:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Hoyle also presented a paper on panspermia at a Royal Astronomical Society meeting in 85/86 (can't quite remember but can look it up if necessary) which was not well received (got very heated to say the least). Chandra Wickramasinghe was also lecturing at the time as we invited him to talk to our Astrosoc and from what I remember he was analysing cyclical patterns in disease outbreaks - the biologists in the audience complained that all he had done was prove that people got colds in the winter! Neither mentioned boeings in relation to these as far as I recall - they were just trying to get a serious debate started on whether life could have "seeded" in the same way other elements that make up the earth have come from other parts of the universe. Hoyle was a really nice man and it's sad that his legacy is so warped by the fixations of the time. This "life in comets" could prove him right yet. Sophia 22:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, probably Hoyle had an issue with natural selection too. Anyway, the 747 mystery might have no solution. Maybe it's not even in print anywhere. One hypothesis is that he mentioned it during a radio program. Now, that'd be interesting, as he had also invented the term Big Bang during a radio program (to mock it, actually). Anyway, Dawkins mentions it in The Blind Watchmaker. He's quite reliable, therefore I assume the quote is correctly attributed, wherever he learned about it. --209.150.240.231 06:13, 7 July 2007 (UTC) That was me! Now I exist as a wikipedian. --Gibbzmann 16:26, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Scary articles

Below are articles articles, mostly medical but some in the sciences, that promote ideas or POV's that might endanger human life. Feel free to add your own, but I'm watching and cleaning up these articles. Please sign if you add something.

Re: another Mac question

Hi there! Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but I've been on a knitting bender, making socks for Christmas gifts, then the archiving bot took your post to my talk page archive before I saw it.

Anyway, if there's a program to help lose weight, I haven't found it, but I'm optimistic. When I had my first child, I lost 24 pounds in six days, so I've done it once and can do it again. That was expensive, though. And I had to take a baby boy home with me too. ;-) You could always turn to the myriad 'supplements,' like the ones that use chitin to bind cholesterol or some other such nonsense. (If that really worked, why not just eat lobster shells with a nice sauce and a lot of liquor and be done with it?)

Can't help you with the women, though. OTOH, it _is_ July, and you could always go over to a hospital near you and check out the brand new crop of wide-eyed interns. You know it's July when we have to dust off the "Ventilator Settings and IV Orders In The Real World" class and give it to them every damn morning until it sinks into their skulls. No software to teach them the difference between medical school and reality, and I'm _not_ optimistic about that. I guess I can't have everything.

Seriously, though, the apps/scripts I use most often, besides Butler, for Wiki-stuff (apologies if I've told you about these before):

  • My monobook.js file has Lupin's popups, Misza13's Status Switcher, and Twinkle.
  • TextExpander - a preference pane (accessed through System Preferences) allows me to type shortcuts - like "kk" for the four tildes, "citenews" to put in the {{cite news}} template, "oldafd" for {{Oldafdfull}}, and so on. It keeps track of how much time it saves you, and I'm at 2.86 hours of typing time saved. TextExpander was developed originally by the same guy who wrote Butler, Peter Maurer. He sold it to SmileOnMyMac last year sometime.
  • PTHPasteboard PRO - Butler allows custom pasteboards, which is good, but I've run into problems with instability if I ask it to save more than 50 pasteboards. PTHPasteboard is another preference pane that holds as many as I want and lets me do more things with them. I can name them, use hot keys for pasting each particular thing, and I can even publish and share pasteboards with other users (I haven't done that yet). There's a free version that I used for a long time, but I'm glad I paid the $20 for the pro version.
  • Sidenote - Sidenote is a tiny little memo app that hides on the side of your window and slides out when you need to jot something down. It's freeware, and you can create as many little notes as you like, format them with color, font, text size, and titles, name them, email them, export them, and more. It's very handy for numbers, phrases, instructions, quick reminders, grocery lists, and so on. For admin duties, I use it to hold blocks of text while editing, and for AFDs that I've relisted - each relisted AFD has to be manually removed from the old log and inserted into the new date, and I do that in batches of four or five, so I list their titles there so I can make sure I handle each one correctly.
  • browseback - another SmileOnMyMac app that runs in the background and saves my browser history. I used to use HistoryHound, but it didn't save the page as it's viewed, and browseback does. There have been some complaints about the app's CPU usage, but Camino uses more than browseback does, and I'm on a 15" PowerBook G4 with 1.5GB of RAM. If you use Application Enhancer, browseback has to be on its Master Exclude List because it crashes otherwise, but don't worry about it if you don't use anything that requires Application Enhancer to run.
  • Saft - I use Camino as my default browser, but when I do use Safari I use Saft. Saft is an input manager that lets me customize features of Safari. There's at least 50 different things it does, so go to VersionTracker if you want to check it out. The developer is a Chinese guy living in Sweden and his English isn't perfect, but he's really quick with support if you need it.

Okay, I'll shut up now. Email me if you have any questions, so I don't clutter up your talk page. It's time to eat some ice cream. See ya - KrakatoaKatie 22:52, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

FAC

Katie is getting ready to have her Bat mitzvah and become an adult. What do you think? I haven't gotten the peer-review that I wanted, but I did get a bot peer-review, and I made a number of changes. I also reviewed WP:MOS, and it appears to be there. I got rid of a lot of weasel words, cleaned up the language here and there, checked the references, and got her a new dress. OrangeMarlin 18:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey OM!
You've done a wonderful job, and I think it's ready for a FACing. Are you? ;) Firsfron of Ronchester 19:28, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
I'll drink some scotch. It should get me there!!!!! OrangeMarlin 21:33, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Based on the comments so far, I've requested the Cavalry's editing assistance. I'll try to check back tomorrow, but I'm on vacation out of state, so my internet access is sort of spotty. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
white line added to mark the transition.
The K–T boundary exposure in Trinidad Lake State Park shows an abrupt change from dark to light colored rock.

<undent> I've been copyediting what seemed to me to be minor grammatical errors or wording which jarred a bit – it's still "ongoing" (aaargh!). Where it seemed a matter of taste or I wasn't sure what you meant, I've added hidden comments. On my wee 12" laptop at 1024 x 768 the Trinidad Lake boundary image is a bit confusing, as the white line shows at the expense of seeing the boundary and at first glance I wondered if there could actually be a horizontal white layer marking it! Here's a suggestion showing the original pic with the white line pic added as an explanatory marker. ..dave souza, talk 08:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Dave, go ahead with your grammatical suggestions and tweaks. Same for the picture. If you haven't done it by the morning (California time), I'll do it. SandyGeorgia has made a ton of suggestions, and I've probably gone through 10%. I can't believe I even nominated it--this is hard word!!! OrangeMarlin 08:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Have made the image change, hope that helps – by the way, my suggestion was made this morning and it's late morning here now. Have removed superfluous comments: under North American fossils I wasn't sure if "abundance of fossil records of dinosaur taxa prior to the K-T boundary, and the nearly complete absence of fossils immediately thereafter" meant an absense of dino fossils, or all fossils – am guessing the latter and have removed the suggestion of "such fossils". Yes, FAC is indeed a lot of work -– good luck with it. .. dave souza, talk 10:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I"m having a brain-freeze with regards to the first paragraph of the first section. I'm trying to get it right, so if you have a suggestion, go for it. The problem is that the global event (say a meteor) causes the extinction event. Yet the article is about the extinction event. An impact event by itself is kind of mundane. OrangeMarlin 00:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Cheer up

Mammoth effort (pun intended, though off by a 60 odd million years) - a few rearranging sections, a couple of critique paras here and there and it'll be over the line. Heck of a lot easier than a lot of poor prose... cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

You back?

Katie has become a pain in the butt. Need help :) OrangeMarlin 22:22, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey!
I am finally back. Many apologies for my vanishing act, right at this crucial time. Looking at all the objections, I think your recent comments may be right. We may want to break this off into two seperate articles: one on the boundary and one on the event. Sheep's comment about providing critiques might be helpful, too. I'm so sorry I haven't been around to help. I had limited internet access during my second week of vacation, and was really too busy to even reply to e-mails. I just got home, and plan to take a good scrub-brush to this article. Feel free to take a break for a while; you've worked very hard on this article. I promise to put some serious effort into this article tomorrow, but it is too late to do anything serious tonight. Firsfron of Ronchester 07:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

discourse

Hi OrangeMarlin—I notice that you seem to have had a disagreement with Macdonald-ross. I have taken some time to encourage his contributions, I think he makes very good contributions. I am unable to identify the major concern, can I ask you what it is? I found a thread, but the source of any disruption is not apparent to me. Excuse me, making this my business, but I want him to hang around. Regards, Fred ☻ 11:31, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I find it hard to believe we are talking about the same user! Are you referring to the discussion on his talk page? Please supply some diffs warranting your description, I am inclined to a different view otherwise. Fred ☻ 14:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but I don't care that much. OrangeMarlin 17:51, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Evolution

Welcome to Misplaced Pages, and thank you for your contributions. One of the core policies of Misplaced Pages is that articles should always be written from a neutral point of view. It appears you have not followed this policy at Evolution. Please always observe our core policies. Thank you. OrangeMarlin 18:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You left the above under the heading 'edit war', which I resent, as I am involved in a very civil discussion at Evolution since making one edit and one reversion of its reversion (with reasons). Please note that I consider myself an experienced editor having edited for many years. You should not assume that a contributor has only edited since registering, or with a given name (name change is perfectly permissible, but not of course sockpuppets) but even then, I have done a considerable amount of editing under this name. I am very familiar indeed with WP:NPV etc etc, and would point out that the rules require balance on controversial topics, where NPV becomes a not very useful terms and several points of view exist 'out there' non of them 'extreme minority'. I can go through the fine detail point by point if you wish, but I'd rather move on. Rest assured, I will not edit-war or revert-war. --Memestream 20:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Facts indicate otherwise, but whatever. OrangeMarlin 20:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)