Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:06, 8 August 2007

Greetings

Hi all!

I'll answer all messages left on this page here, so that a possible discussion is kept in context. Watch this if you are waiting for an answer.

--Stephan Schulz

Useful links (courtesy Angela 02:29, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC))

• How to edit a page
• How to write a great article
• Naming conventions
• Manual of Style
• help pages
• village pump
• my (Angela's) talk page.

Identity on Commons: commons:User:Stephan Schulz

I'm also Stephan Schulz on the Wikimedia Commons. --Stephan Schulz 15:52, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Creation Science

You did right on the "Flood Geology" page. While there are some intelligent, articulate "Creation Scientists", most of them are of the "Dr Dino" school of junk science and how everything in the Bible is literal (which would mean, I suppose, that Jesus of Nazareth thought that Herod Antipas was canid since he referred to him as "that fox"). Lots of things which is true "are said" don't belong in an article. Some Purdue students have been known to refer to Notre Dame students as "fish eaters", "bead stringers", and the "Pope's Pupils", but that certainly doesn't belong in an article about either school in an encyclopedia.

Thanks for attempting to bring a viewpoint from the mainstream scientific commuity to the "Flood Geology" page. For Wikipeida to remain credible, it has to reflect mainsteam scientific values. While I have no problem with people who have their "alternative theories," I do have problems with people who see their minority viewpoint as one that must gain instant credibility or be totally accepted by others, or even resent it ever being characterised as a minority, non-mainsteam viewpoint even though that is what it is. Rlquall 18:40, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I can, in fact, tolerate vast variety of beliefs. What I cannot stand are intellectual dishonesty and sheer stupidity. --Stephan Schulz 19:23, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for fighting to keep the scientific opinions on flood geology fairly represented. I never have the patience for that kind of thing. --Laura Scudder | Talk 21:45, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

flood geology.

i understand, but i don't understand what relevence deep time has for the flood. the days of creation may have been millenia ... but the flood was still the flood. also, regarding the above, may i suggest that it is far more persuasive to provide evidence than to perpetually insult and malign? Ungtss 22:03, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maori language

I take your point. However, it is counter-intutive to sail a canoe, even if it is technically correct. Arrived doesn't change the sense. I'm reverting again. Smoddy (t) (e) 16:45, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC) (see also User talk:Ping

Hi Smoddy, no problem. I actually was triggered more by your comment than by the actual edit. Canoes do sail. Canoe sailing used to be an olympic discipline (I think it still is). Polynesian sailing canoes helped spread humans over 1/3rd of the world (by surface area, if not by dry land). Yes, the well-known American Indian canoes were paddled. But you can even buy sailing rigs as an add-on for many of the modern fiberglass/aluminium imitations...--Stephan Schulz 17:00, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Poinmt well taken. Just seemed counter-intuitive. I understand now (that's my something learned for today!) Smoddy (t) (e) 19:14, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Voting Warschau/Warsaw

Hi. Since you have edited on pages with disputes about the names of German/polish locations, I would invite you to vote on Warsaw/Vote to settle the multi-year dozends-of-pages dispute about the naming of Warschau/Warsaw and other locations.--Schlesier 08:47, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

png format

Can you convert the Germany map to this format? I don't believe that I have the facility to do so. Others have raised objections to the .gif format. I only use it because it is a bit crisper than .jpg. Kelisi 18:19, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done. See .

Both PNG and GIF are lossless formats, and nearly any graphics program will support both (typically you choose "Export" and then the format). PNG has been developed as a response to the Unisys patent on some parts of GIF (now expired) and has a number of advantages. JPEG is lossy, and not very good for hand-drawn and similar pictures - it is optimized for photographic images. --Stephan Schulz 10:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Global warming

"Do not archive ongoing discussion." - I'd hoped that anybody objecting to any specific section being archived would just move it back individually from the new archive (Talk:Global warming/Archive 3). If you disagree with the Talk:Global warming/General discussion subpage, please say so. A total revert of a quite time-consuming bit of tidying up, with the intention of focussing on the actual purpose of a Talk page (improving the article) is rather disappointing. Rd232 22:06, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Humm, I just noticed that you also removed all the active sections (and indeed, nearly everything). Talk:Global warming/General discussion now looks fine (was I supposed to find it? Your link here was the first I found), but the version I reverted was very different and very nearly empty. I think it's better to archive stale parts than to archive (nearly) everything and then ractivate parts - that breaks versioning. But maybe the system went berzerk? --Stephan Schulz 22:16, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what you saw, but the revised Talk:Global warming had the General discussion link at the top of the page, above the TOC, and the archive was added in the Archive section. I s'pose I should have made a new section "Hey I've moved stuff". As for versioning of active discussion - we don't need strict versioning of talk pages as we do of articles - as long as the content is all there and access to it is clear, that's enough. I would have thought moving any discussions considered active from the Archive to the main Talk or to General discussion would fix this perfectly well, and people involved are perfectly capable of doing this. I'm quite annoyed at losing my tidying up work, so please help fix it. Gruesse, Rd232 06:54, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I was away/busy for a few days. I did not understand your idea of General Discussion - sorry. I took it for an alternative version of talk, not for an extra page. I think it's a very bad idea, moving the active parts to a new page. I don't want to do without versioning for talk pages. And the "general discussion" does indeed help improving the page. It helps build consensus and uncovers a lot of sources. So my approach to archiving would be to just take completely stale subsections and move them out, but not to do anything else. --Stephan Schulz 00:03, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but the dispute is over the word Small as derogatory to the opposing views, and thus is being labelled as POV. I believe that the removal of the word -small- will end the edit war by getting both points herd. Let the reader determine if the lsit is small or not, right?!?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eisenmond (talk • contribs).

Why is "small" derogatory? It is factual, though. "A number of scientists" gives the wrong impression of significant opposition. Even counting generously, the group is miniscule, and their scientific (as opposed to popular) output is negligible. --Stephan Schulz 21:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Automated theorem proving page

Wow, you've really improved that page recently. It is starting to look more like an encyclopeda entry, and less like a few random facts. Nahaj 23:13:10, 2005-09-08 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm mostly sticking to incremental changes, as I don't have the time to really make it into what it could be.--Stephan Schulz 12:19, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I caught your comments about the recent edits to the page. I thought I'd come here and add some somewhat off topic comments. The phantom anonymous editor would lead you to believe that the only exhastive search of the proof space is breadth-first search. (A "fact" he needed for the argument he made in his second edit.) There are (very limited) areas of research when an attempt at an exhastive search over a (know small) section of the proof tree is an aid. Even in those cases, breadth first search is *STILL* not anybody's method of choice. My stuff for D-complete systems, for example, uses the rather simple minded "shortest first except for special patterns" algorithm, and can do dramaticly better than any breadth first search. My point (such as it is) is that I believe his statements to be wrong as well as not meeting any need. Nahaj 00:46:09, 2005-09-13 (UTC)

GW (again...)

Thanks for your help on GW. You may want to take a look at the history of Attribution of recent climate change too. Regards, William M. Connolley 22:12, 15 September 2005 (UTC).

Hi William. Thanks, I may take a look. But my time is limited - I mostly react when I find something weird on my watchlist.--Stephan Schulz 22:35, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

SS, don't be a mindless sycophant, become informed on the issues.--Silverback 22:22, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Silverback, thanks for the "compliment". I've been called some things, but this one is new. I do try to keep up with the science. I am a working scientist (although in automated theorem proving, not climatology), and I understand how the scientific community works. I also know how hard it is to read and understand scientific papers even in my own field. That's why I'm sceptical about your weird interpretations of recent papers. On your user page, you write "judge my posts on the merits, not credentials". I'm trying to, but I see little merit at least in your contributions to GW. --Stephan Schulz 22:35, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Automated theorem proving is a long way from replacing the Supreme Court, but maybe we will get there someday. On GW, I don't see how you can find WMCs OD statement, which is pretty much the same as what our solar section says, supportable. Qualifying the TAR statement which doesn't mention the solar activity is a minor issue, although I persue it as a matter of principle. I don't think we should worship the consensus and that page of the TAR is out of date, even if the statement extracted from the page did not go far enough to be wrong. Apologies about the "compliment", but you evidently did revert the page before you read the paper.--Silverback 22:57, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, I don't quite see the conenction between ATP (which is about undeniable conclusions reached from unambiguous axioms in a well-defined logic) and the supreme court (which is mostly about weighting opinions based on a nice-but-unclear 200 year old piece of paper that was cobbled together as a compromise by a gang of querulous back-forrest revolutionaries - now why does that remind me of the GW discussion?). Back to GW: You say the consensus has moved. I think it has not moved significantly - it has been refined. We have a better understanding of many things now. But that does not change the basics. At the level of abstraction in an encyclopedic article, the difference between the TAR and the current state of the art is negligible. Oh, BTW, I did not revert before reading, I just could not get my edit to talk into the system because of permanent edit conflicts. --Stephan Schulz 23:11, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Legal reasoning may be far more intractable than theorem proving. I do think that some legal precedents spread like computer viruses and can be quite erosive. For instance, the right to a jury trial has been lost when the possible sentence is less than 6 months, and the reason is "efficiency of the courts". If that can excuse can overcome the supermajority requirements for amending the constitution and erode the constitution, it can erode anything. As for GW "consensus", I used that term because it seemed to be one that WMC understood. I really think the state of the science is represented by the latest peer reviewed literature, at least in the highly visible journals, i.e., as long as it hasn't tried to escape scrutiny in some backwater publication. For GW, given the multi-discipinary nature, there are probably a couple dozen journals, where if a significant result that moves from the IPCC summaries has been published, and it specifically discussed its work in perspective relative to those previous results and it hasn't been challenged within a couple years, then that is the state of the science. Part of that "better understanding of many things now", is how solar activity after 1950 that was not thought to be greater than that before 1950, is different enough when amplified by GHGs to account for a significant minority of the post 1950s warming. The Meehl paper investigates the contribution of the solar activity in improving the data fit over runs which only include the GHG increases. Stott goes further and actually puts numbers on the solar contribution. Frankly, you can't defend the statement that this doesn't make a difference at the level of abstraction (and I assume "generality") of this encyclopedic article, since the solar section makes statements similar to those that WMC made in the OD article that are just patently wrong. If the article can have incorrect statements on a subject, then correct ones on the same subject must also be relevant.--Silverback 03:53, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

printf vs. puts

It doesn't matter much, but if you don't think that puts is simplier than printf just compare the length of the resp. man pages. You should never use a function before reading it's documentation. ;-) -- Hokanomono 15:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, people have to learn printf() for any non-trivial program anyways. printf() + puts() is definitely more complex than puts()  ;-) Also see my reply on talk: C programming language --Stephan Schulz 16:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Admiral Hornblower's seniority

If we are going to extrapolate when fictional Hornblower would have raised his flag as an Admiral by looking at when real Captains raised their flags we need to bear in that promotion came more quickly during war time. The main reason was the needs of war required the promotion of lots of the more senior Captains in order to raise the most able to flag rank. Dozens of Captains more senior to Nelson were promoted, and yellowed, in order to raise Nelson. It is a minor point. Most readers wouldn't care. I tried to think of a real officer who was promoted to Captain around the same time as real Hornblower. I thought of a few, but they didn't live long enough to become an Admiral. -- Geo Swan 19:09, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Right. But the effect of yellowing, dying, resigning, and so on is limited - it can speed up promotion of a candidate, but it can never lead to someone with less seniority being promoted to admiral before someone with more seniority. For that, it needs something like a suspension from the list, or maybe an act of king or parliament. If they did not do this for Nelson, it's unlikely (but not impossible) that they did it for Hornblower. Very likely Forrester just messed it up ;-) --Stephan Schulz 19:23, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

William Connolley

No; British English adds a full stop when the abbreviation abbreviates by cutting of the word, not otherwise. Thus "Street" become "St.", but "Saint" becomes "St"; the same goes for "Mr", "Mrs", "Dr", etc. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:18, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, that surprises me. I'm certain that I learned Mr. and Mrs. from my (Scotish) English teacher. I was not certain about Dr., though. Thanks for pointing the rule out!--Stephan Schulz 22:42, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I didn't know either! Thanks Mel. William M. Connolley 08:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC).

It also seems to be a British English thing - Strunk and White has Jr. (even on the title page), Ph.D., etc., and Webster lists as rules (noting inconsistent usage):

• A period follows most abbreviations that are formed by all but the first letters of a word (your rule)
• A period follows most abbreviations that are formed by omitting letters from the middle of a word (which would cover Mr., Dr., etc.)
• Normaly, no period for acronyms (NASA, EU,...)

Webster also lists Dr. explicitely (I've got the 1996 New Encyclopedic Dictionary). --Stephan Schulz 09:18, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

RFA etc

Thanks for your comment over at the RFA. I'm not quite sure whats up with the arbcomm at the moment - probably overload - but they don't seem to be very talkative. William M. Connolley 22:09, 18 November 2005 (UTC).

Climate change Arbitration re-opening request

There is a request, of which you are a party, to re-open the climate-change Arbitration case here. I thought that you might be interested to comment, or at least observe.

Yours sincerely,

James F. (talk) 02:16, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi James, thanks for letting me know (and thanks for the move to where it might do more good). --Stephan Schulz 11:51, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Tenth Crusade

Regarding restoring the controversy bit, yes good call.

I'm not going to touch it now, but there are really a lot of issues there that should be covered:

1. Does Bush think of it as a crusade? (Some evidence he does.)
2. Do the Muslims think of it as a crusade? (Pretty clearly, many do.)
3. Regardless of the above two questions, is it actually useful to look at it in terms of a crusade? Are there more similarities than differences? Does it fit the model of a crusade? If it does, does that help us understand any of it any better?

A lot of work needed, probably something that can't really be done objectively for about 10 years, once we have a bit of distance from it, or perhaps 30 or 40, when the archives open on this stuff.

But interesting.

Regards, Ben Aveling 11:51, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ben, that's why we settled for a description only approach in the previous rounds of discussion, and cut out all the evaluation and the "some say this, some say that" pseudo-NPOVing. I think this is the right thing to do in this case. --Stephan Schulz 12:06, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration re-opened

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2 has been re-opened. Please place evidence at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2/Evidence. Proposals and comments may be placed on Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2/Workshop. Fred Bauder 01:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

WP:V citations

You may be interested in Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability#Citation format poll: Format of citations and WP:V examples, and WP:FN. (SEWilco 08:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC))

Hi SEWilco, thanks for the notification. I've seen the poll and think it is somewhat flawed (for example, it presents wrong dichtonomies). I'm also not certain if another global policy is a good thing for Misplaced Pages - even if it in theory improves articles, it might affect the community negatively. If I find enough time to think about this, I'll enter my comments on the poll (don't count on it - I'm in the process of moving, so I have two flats and a new job at the moment). --Stephan Schulz 08:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Final decision

The arbitration committee has reached a final decision in the Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2 case. Raul654 18:08, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to thank you (SS) for getting this case re-opened. I was a bit dubious (privately) as to whether this was the best thing to do, but it seems to have worked out. William M. Connolley 22:29, 23 December 2005 (UTC).

Thanks to all involved. Actually, when I started this I did not expect it into a full-blown case. But anyways, I'm reasonably happy with the outcome. William, congrats to your 3 extra days of free reverts ;-). Merry whatever you celebrate and a good new period of however you measure longish periods of time! --Stephan Schulz 23:24, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

"broken bot"

His bot isn't broken, he is broken. See the comment I left on his talk page, just above yours. He went through blindly reverting all of my disambiguation link fixes from yesterday. I'm in the process of fixing them, as well as getting outside observers. Search4Lancer 19:37, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

It sure looks like that. I think that bots run by anonymous users are problematic anyways...--Stephan Schulz 20:56, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

SEW

Hi. Just wanted to say that DF pointed out to me the latest SEW stuff: User_talk:William_M._Connolley#SEWilco_2. See my comments there... the bottom line is that Im not going to comment "officially" unless I really have to. William M. Connolley 18:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC).

Hi William! Probably a wise decision. --Stephan Schulz 23:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

SEWilco's RfAr

Guten Abend, Stephan. Wie geht es Ihnen?

Bad, if I'm addressed in third person singular. I'm not that old... ;-)

On SEWilco's RfAr, you said "See WP:ANI, where the discussion seems to take place." You're quite right, and it occurs to me that our discussion is probably out of place there. I'm replacing all that text with a pointer to the objections, but I don't want to step on your toes here. If you think it's a bad idea, that's fine; I'm just trying to tidy things up a bit.

Tschuss, – Quadell 01:21, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Quite ok with me. Thanks for informing me.--Stephan Schulz 01:54, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

My RFA

Hi Stephan. Thanks for your vote in the RFA, and also for your support during the voting. William M. Connolley 20:48, 15 January 2006 (UTC).

It's a pleasure! Congrats! --Stephan Schulz 21:29, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Aetherolombotomry or whatever it is

I've blocked our friend whatsisname TTsomething for violating 3RR and personal attacks. There's no point weasling about whether a peer-reviewed journal is "mainstream" or not; it is implied in peer-review. NPOV does not mean compromising between a rational position and a stupid one. — Dunc|☺ 18:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I can see the problem that "peer-reviewed" has a well-defined meaning in scientific circles, but is open to misinterpretation. Anyways, I'm happy enough with your version. --Stephan Schulz 18:38, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Gdansk vote redux

I recall that you were one of the architects of the Gdansk vote. Please comment on the interpretation of the vote expounded by Space Cadet on Talk:Simon Dach. Thanks for your time, Ghirla | talk 14:11, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ghirla, I think you misrecall. I voted there, and maybe left a comment or two, but I had nothing to do with the setup or format of the vote. Anyways, I'll take a look. --Stephan Schulz 15:29, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Signing, Account

Hallo, besten Dank, but actually I don't want to edit - Misplaced Pages is just filled with too much oneside POV. MG — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.23.39.36 (talk • contribs)

Well, you do anyways. No reason to deprive you of useful tools.--Stephan Schulz 21:00, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

2003 invasion of Iraq

Hi there, when trying to go over the discussion at 2003 invasion of Iraq I saw it has become a big mess. If I see it correctly there was a conflict between an anon and others and now the page has been blocked. I think the anon had a point that an encyclopedia article about any military conflict should not be written exclusively by three members of one the conflicting parties, in this case Pookster11, Swatjester, and Dawgknot who according to this comment all belong to the US military. I therefore suggest to get more people into the boat, that should take the wind out of the sails of bias allegations. As I saw you also edited on that page, would you be willing to help out? Get-back-world-respect 22:31, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, it's been a long time since I wrote on that article. I agree with your sentiment in principle, but I don't know if this solicitation is the right way to do it. I may take a look, but I don't have the time to be a regular contributor in a topic I don't have first-hand knowledge or very much expertise.--Stephan Schulz 22:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

German grammar question....

Hi, this is an Einstein/Licorne question..... debate distatsteful enough that you don't want to get involved.... Licorne's been quoting the phrase "meiner theorie" as if it was proof that Hilbert claimed ownership to General Relativity. I'm a de-1 speaker, so what bothered me wasn't completely obvious... The sentence he's quoting from is "Einstein kehrt schließlich in seinen letzten Publikationen geradewegs zu den Gleichungen meiner Theorie zurück.", and he picks on "meiner theorie" as if it reads "my theory". However, my weak grammar sense of German says that "meiner" is a grammatical form (of which I've forgotten the name) that is used when talking about a property of the thing, not the entire thing - that Licorne's abbreviated quote, "Einstein kehrt schließlich in seinen letzten Publikationen geradewegs zu meiner Theorie zurück.", is not only wrong, but ungrammatical. Care to help pase? --Alvestrand 06:57, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

In this particular case, I cannot help you. "Meiner" in "meiner Theorie" is the female Genetiv of "meine" and indeed translates into "my theory". Of course Licorne's permanent repetition of the quote should, by normal usage rules, be converted to Nominativ if required in the quoting sentence ("meine Theorie"). But as a literal quote, it is at least factually correct. However, as usual, Licorne ignores the context. The full journal edition is online at (then click to the paper). Hilbert writes in full: "Indes sowohl Weyl gibt späthin seinem Entwicklungsgange eine solche Wendung, daß er auf die von mir aufgestellten Gleichungen ebenfalls gelangt, und andererseits auch Einstein, obwohl wiederholt von abweichenden und unter sich verschiedenen Ansätzen ausgehend, keht schließlich in seinen letzten Publikationen geradewegs zu den Gleichungen meiner Theorie zurück." This could be interpreted as a priority claim (which would still be only Hilbert's, and not a truth). However, if you look two only two sentences up, you will find: "Die gewaltigen Problemstellungen und Gedankenbildungen der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie von Einstein finden nun, wie ich in meiner ersten Mitteilung aufgeführt habe, auf dem von Mie betretenem Wege ihren einfachsten und natürlichsten Ausdruck, und zugleich in formaler Hinsicht eine systematische Ergänzung und Abrundung." (emphasis by me). The emphasized part translates to Einstein's general Theory of Relativity, and is unambiguously assigning the theory to Einstein. Hilbert does not claim priority. He may or may not claim priority on the final form of the field equations ("meine Theorie" could also mean "the theorie I am presenting here" or something similar), but he recognizes them as only the final, inevitable step, while Einstein did the important conceptual work. But, as I wrote: Who cares about Hilbert's opinion. He is only a dead German...--Stephan Schulz 08:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Knowing that I can't make that argument is also a great help! (Online version added to the references section of the "disputes" article) --Alvestrand 09:22, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Licorne

I moved the comment per your suggestion. I do mean what I wrote, though, as a form of the most fundamental "testimony" of all -- I'm testifying with my feet: I'm leaving as a writer and editor until he's gone. Plus I think that Licorne may be dangerous (whatever "Licorne" may be -- we are assuming "he" is one person with no "organization" behind "him", just a "free lance" or "loose cannon", as it were) . I've been around long enough to know bad when I see it.

This is reflecting bad on Misplaced Pages: Misplaced Pages has to grow some cajones and do something soonest to remove Licorne's vileness. I cannot believe that Misplaced Pages has tolerated this sort of menace as long as they have. wvbaileyWvbailey 22:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, Misplaced Pages has millions of users. Of course there will be some assholes among them. We also assume good faith as a policy, so they can often run wild for a while. But Licorne is banned, and I do expect this ban to become permanent. Also, that page I linked to as evidence is not visible for a casual browser anymore. So the mechanisms are working, if slowly. I don't think this reflects badly on Misplaced Pages at all. Any large collection of people will experience similar situations. If people start cheering him on, then is the time to walk out. --Stephan Schulz 22:28, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Typo

HA! Thanks! ;-) Netscott 00:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

My pleasure! ;-) --Stephan Schulz 00:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, did you actually follow any of the links for that user page? And if you did... any comments? That's a new move on my User page... and I'm curious to know what others think. Thanks again! ;-) Netscott 00:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I did, but I did only glance at the linked text. I'm a computer scientist, so I split hairs for a living. I don't need to watch others split them on Misplaced Pages ;-). --Stephan Schulz 08:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Paternoster

Please see Talk:Paternoster. All the best, <KF> 23:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Knuth-Bendix completion algorithm

Nice example on the talk page. And nice that you were willing to spend the time to answer his question that well. Nahaj 01:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I had hoped to improve that page for a long time, but a) have no time and b) was reluctant to throw away all that was there. Maybe now we'll get someting better...--Stephan Schulz 06:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Werner Herzog

Good Job!--Staple 02:38, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I hope so...there is still the father, though. Let's see what happens. --Stephan Schulz 06:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The strange thing is, I think he's probably telling the truth. A Salvatore Basile does have a smallish part and assistant director credits in Cobra Verde--and a fairly long acting and producing career, mostly in South American cinema and television. Its hard to believe that someone would just pretend to be some obscure actor (although he might not be so obscure in colombia...)just to argue over herzog's ethnicity....but then again, its hard to imagine a professional actor and director caring enough to come back and change the info every day.--Staple 19:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Germans did not really distinguish between all the different people in (former) Yugoslavia. We had a lot of "Yugoslav" restaurants, went to "Yugoslavia" for holidays, drank "Yugoslavian" wine, and so on. I still find this conflict hard to understand and totally pointless - as far as I can tell, it took them half a year just to figure out who belonged to which team. Anyways, I'd be happy with just documenting the lack of hard sources ("father from Yugoslavia"). I'm certain Herzog wouldn't mind. I'm far less certain that Herzog actually knows the Ethnicity of his father... --Stephan Schulz 19:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. But communist unification was just a blip on the historical radar of this conflict. It's been going on so long I doubt we'll convice anyone to change their minds. It's interesting how global animosities bleed over into the world of Misplaced Pages. I bet if you look at the webpage for any troubled area, you'll find an edit war. Maybe in the future rival factions will just revert each other's information instead of spraying each other with Kalashnikovs.--Staple 20:23, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

But there had been a unified Yugoslav state since 1918, and a "Yugoslavia" (albeit with serious internal strain) since 1929. I suspect that what caused a lot of the present animosity was the Nazi occupation and the Nazi strategy of playing different groups against each other. Anyways, we probably cannot immediately change the situation, so let's make the best of it.--Stephan Schulz 20:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Colours & albedos

Stephan, Following you recent comment on albedo/colours (Pluto) I wondered if you could comment / give me some advice how to improve the renderings on my different diagrams. I’ve struggled how to render the diverse albedos and colour indices on different diagrams trying to balance the visibility and ‘credibility’ of colours. As example, as you know the broad spectrum colour indices do not translate into a unique RGB. Also, translating linearly albedo into brightness makes dim objects almost invisible, given the range of albedos, so after some tests, I’ve settled on a logarithmic function. In addition, some data are missing or not directly comparable, and of course, my software has still bugs. While the modest ambition of these diagrams (e.g. TNO.colours, centaurs.colours) is to ‘give a rough idea’, they are a bit more that an artist’s vision, as they are based on the best data I could find. I would be very grateful if you could comment in more details or could give me some technical advice. Thank you. Eurocommuter 10:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on imaging as all. I had the impression that the second image was more technical (saturation corresponding to albedo), while the first series looked inded a bit like (processed) photos or artists impression scaled only for size. I like both, byt the way, and think they are quite effective in the article.--Stephan Schulz 11:25, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that’s right. The first is just built from NASA pictures I’ve put into the same frame to go with (somebody else’s) text in the article enumerating the moons bigger than Pluto. The second is really ‘mine,’ entirely based on the data from different sources for albedo, colour indices and size on and my n-th attempt to model them without offending the common sense. The first time I went for a ‘simple’ model and received (very rightly) no, it sure cannot be such a hellish hue comments. The biggest problem is Pluto; people got used to NASA’s cheerfully yellow ‘natural’ colour. No reader seems to think about such details like the amount of Sun light available at this distance or the size in pixels of the original HST image given the camera resolution! After that, try to image Pluto as a dark, dim brown. Of course, if New Horizons probe sends sun-flower images I promise to eat my source code. Thanks for your note. Eurocommuter 12:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: WP:POINT on Germany

Sorry about that. The German Wikipedians are innocent. I shouldn't mess up the article about their country. :-) - Alan 22:12, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. But the argument essentially holds for all (or at least very nearly all) the other articles, as well. --Stephan Schulz 22:24, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Svalbard image

Thank you for notifying me; I've already updated the image --TBC☆ 02:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, very good! --Stephan Schulz 21:55, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Admin?

Why aren't you an admin, anyway? Then you could smite the ungodly yourself. Do you want nominating? William M. Connolley 21:11, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I've been thinking about it, but I'm not in a hurry. My edit count is about to hit 1500, which seemed like a reasonable number to go up for admin. Notice, however, that I'm not particularly strong on smiting...I think its generally overrated ;-) --Stephan Schulz 22:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, a few more edits would be good. And a desire to smite :-))) William M. Connolley 19:23, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Na...smiting is fine for Cusaders. I'm more a mixture of Judge and Rebel. I dissect them with my superior intellect, all for the cause of good ;-). BTW, this is number 1496. You might enjoy 1495. --Stephan Schulz 19:55, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

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Your note

Hi Stephan, thanks for your note. I didn't have you in mind when I said a couple of people appeared to want to start trouble. My point was simply that it's a straw poll designed to guage what the parameters are. There's no need for oppose "votes," negative comments, hysteria, aggression. No need at all. But we always see reactions like this from one or two around these proposals; some people enjoy trying to turning things into a circus. SlimVirgin 12:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

No problem. I think we found a nice compromise now, too (indenting "oppose"s so they don't mess up the automatic numbering, but are still around). I have to say I got into this discussion at all primarily because I was a bit unhappy with a full-blown poll at what for me looked like the very start of the discussion. Have a great weekend! --Stephan Schulz 12:23, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Grüezi

Thanks for the advice. The trouble is with personal case studies is that they become, well, personal. However, I am still sorting out my approach. It takes a while to "learn all the rules". Wallie 20:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Stay around a bit, and you will come to value the Wiki approach. It's no perfect (what is?), but look at what it has achieved up to now...--Stephan Schulz 20:34, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I am a pretty tough bird. I am just trying to help improve it further, as should we all. This is the sort of thing I was refering to. Wallie 20:47, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

EWS23's RfA

Hello Stephan! Thank you very much for your support of my request for adminship. I hope that the new tools will make me as effective as you thought I could be, and that I will continue to remain "level-headed" now that I have the mop. Thanks again, and if you ever see something that I could be doing better, feel free to leave me a message. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 02:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

User Page Revert

Heh, it was no problem. Thanks for keeping Guillen in line, at that =) - Saaber 17:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Is Saaber your preferred form of address? --Stephan Schulz 17:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Global Warming

You took out the reference to The Hype about Hydrogen, but that book argues, among other things, that Hydrogen is not feasiblie as a technology useful in slowing global warming. So I think it is relevant to the entry? Since you deleted it, I'll leave the matter to you, but it seems relevant to me. --Ssilvers 23:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ssilvers! The global warming page deals primarily with the science of global warming. Hydrogen has no connection to that. Using Hydrogen as a portable replacement for fossil fuel may help reducing CO2 emissions if it is generated without fossil fuel use. But that connection is at least two steps removed from the issue of this article. We have a seperate article on mitigation of global warming. Your source might be a better fit there. --Stephan Schulz 00:00, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks, Stephan. --Ssilvers 00:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back

Errr... welcome! William M. Connolley 20:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Tanned, increased muscle mass, minimally decreased waistline (still plenty to go ;-) - beach volleyball and swimming are good for you! --Stephan Schulz 20:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Smile

E-Bod has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Smile to others by adding {{subst:smile}}, {{subst:smile2}} or {{subst:smile3}} to their talk page with a friendly message. Happy editing!

I Just Love your Edit Summary (The universe is a tad older than 13.7 years ;-))

You just made my day. Congradulations.--E-Bod 01:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It improves my day ;-). --Stephan Schulz 19:50, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Summary for policymakers

Just a request for you look look at recent edits to Summary for policymakers William M. Connolley 19:38, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, I find the article to be a) misnamed (there are more than just IPCC reports that are sumarized) and b) superfluous (whatever needs saying should go into IPCC). --Stephan Schulz 19:50, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... could be. As originally created it was just a stub so I could type SPM in... maybe merge/redirect? William M. Connolley 22:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

nitpick

on Talk:Global warming, did you mean "it criticizes", rather than "I criticizes"?  :-) bikeable (talk) 18:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it should have been "He criticizes" (and is, now). --Stephan Schulz 19:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

global warming

Many thanks for your message. Unfortunately I saw it too late, but actually the quote (as properly quoted, not as originally misquoted) is quite informative, and this is what I've picked up on. You'll see my edit to the article, and my followup comment on talk. I'll leave others to do with it as they see best. Feel free to change anything I wrote that doesn't fit in well with the article. Arbitrary username 22:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Hockey Stick - neutrality

Dear Stephan,

I am not sure whether you understand that the blog RealClimate.ORG was established by Michael Mann et al. with the primary goal to promote their work on the climate, especially Michael Mann's work on the temperature reconstructions. The recent NAS panel's report rejected a significant portion of their statements and confirmed all criticisms originally made by McIntyre and McKitrick I can think of.

It would be a striking clash of interests if an interpretation by an "expert" from RealClimate.ORG were taken as a starting point for (mis)interpretations of the NAS report. Is the report so unclear that you need a third party anyway? Why don't you look at the summary and/or listen to the press conference?

All the best, Lubos --Lumidek 21:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

I appreciate the kind words. I just want to see the article improved. RonCram 21:26, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Blinded

Thanks for helping me find some balance. I can distinguish bias from neutrality when I read it; that doesn't mean I can always write in an unbiased way. Think of me as an art critic who can't paint, or a sports commentator who can't do figure skating. :-) --Wing Nut 13:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a pleasure. In time, I can find some more balance for you ;-) --Stephan Schulz 14:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

...for all your good contributions to Global warming, and for the phrase "I sometimes even travel to the big room with the blue roof." which is priceless. Keep up your good work. --Guinnog 15:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I wish I could claim that phrase as my own, but I probably stole it off the net. Anyways, thanks for your good opinion! --Stephan Schulz 15:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Page Global Warming Controversy

Questions about my adding *The Real 'Inconvenient Truth' at JunkScience.com to the list of Science References; 1. Have you read that page at the link? 2. Do you think the information on that page at the link has value as part of the Global Warming Controversy? 3. If it's worthwile as a link on the Global Warming Controversy page, where should it go? 4. If not there, is there someplace elses you believe it could be appropriate? Sln3412 17:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

JunkScience is not a useful source for any information. The page you linked to is less obvious than most, but has enough misinformation and spin to make it useless. We do have a large number of excellent real sources, from primary research papers to the integration reports by the IPCC, the US NAS, and other organizations. So we do not have to rely on any sources from a well-known spinhouse. --Stephan Schulz 20:33, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, okay. I happen to agree with a lot on that particular page, and a lot of the graphs from NCDC or IPCC data, regardless of who's paying for the site, and/or if the rest of the site is junk or not. But if you think it's biased too much, or not needed, it's cool. Thanks Sln3412 23:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Link to The National Academies

Question: Where if anywhere would you believe a link to The National Academies National Research Council's "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years" publication should go? I did not see one anywhere on the Global Warming-related pages. *Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the last 2,000 Years Sln3412 17:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

That actually is a useful report with some weight. I would suggest to put it at temperature record, as this is only a minor topic on global warming, which is countinously overload anyways. --Stephan Schulz 20:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Will do, thanks!

400Kyr talk

I am unsure what I started, Image_talk:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png but might you look into that? I don't know if I should mark that NPOV or not, or if I should drop it and let the others come to some conclusion. Sln3412 17:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite clear about what you ask me. DF has give a rather good description of the situation as far as I can tell. --Stephan Schulz

I think it's a little lopsided to claim "Since the Industrial Revolution, circa 1800, the burning of fossil fuels has caused a dramatic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere" or at least to point it out in a graph/caption. Plus I'm not sure anything's showing that burning fossil fuels has specifically caused this rise in CO2. I'm not aware of any data proving cause/effect. It also looks to me like around half that rise in CO2 has only been since the 1950s, and that warming's only spiked since 1900ish. Although I might be interpreting that data incorrectly. Historically, I'm also under the impression that we're looking at the Industrial Revolution as running from either 1780-1840 or 1760-1830, that's a rather wide "circa". Or are we talking about the Second Industrial Revolution, from 1870-1915 or a combination of both? Sln3412 23:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

We know very well that the dramatic increase in CO2 is from the burning of fossil fuels. Not only is the order of magnitude correct, what is much more significant is that the isotope ratio of the carbon in atmospheric CO2 has changed in a way that is entirely compatible with the burning of fossil fuels (fossil carbon has much less C14 than carbon from the biosphere, and, if I remember correctly, the C12/C13 ratio is also different). I don't think this fact is disputed by anybody, not even JunkScience or Crichton. The industrial revolution is what started the wide-scale use of fossil fuel, and that is where the massive anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 started as well. Yes, this is not an overnight process, so having an imprecise date is fine.

Secondly, CO2 and warming are two different things. For one, warming lags any imbalance created, because Earth and especially the oceans have a very high termal intertia. If you put a kettle on the stove, the water will not boil right away. For another thing, other effects also affect the climate. A biggy here are the sulphate aerosols (the stuff that caused acid rain). We put out a lot of them during the middle of the 20th century. They have a strong cooling influence on the climate and have masked the warming effect for a while. But a) we've cleaned them up and b) we've continued adding CO2 to the atmosphere (CO2 essentially accumulates over long times, while suphates have a rather short atmospheric lifetime). --Stephan Schulz 23:46, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

If we start using hydrogen fuel cells as a power source, and the exhaust is pure water, will that increase humidity levels so much we create a positive feedback loop that raises the sea levels 20 feet in the next hundred years?

No, because water vapour is in a dynamic equilibrum in the atmosphere (thanks in no small part to all these open oceans covering 70% of the planet).

How about the increase in population being the primary reason for higher CO2 levels? More Sun? Less Sun? Earth's angle or wobble? God? Computers? My point is that there's too much conjecture, with models that right now are lacking.

Actually, you are confusing your lack of knowledge with the state of the science. See above for the isotope ratio that is one very strong piece of evidence that tells us where the extra CO2 is coming from.

And that we can spend the money in better ways regardless of the answers.

And that is a total non-sequitur. Are you trying to say "If we understand the science better, we might make worse decisions (because the public is stupid or something?), so we should obscure the science to make better decisions?". That's a morally bankrupt position in my eyes.

Be that as it may, thus is not some closed-loop system where we can directly attribute cause a to effect b. I don't disagree that humans affect the Earth, nor do I disagree that burning fossil fuels adds to polution and to CO2. And I don't disagree that temperatures have risen as an average, as we're measuring them directly now. A graph that states directly this causes that is not exactly balance, not given this subject!

The graph states that the industrial revolution with its reliance on fossil energy has led to increased CO2 levels. That is a fact, and undisputed by anybody with a rudimentary understanding of the issue.

I just don't see any long-term overwhelming scientific evidence that humans adding to CO2 by breathing is any better or worse than plants adding to O by breathing, or that we can measure anything directly and compare it to proxy readings either.

I don't understand what you are trying to say here. CO2 is CO2. But CO2 from breathing contains carbon that has recently been fixed by photosynthesis. All the carbon we breathe out (and give off when we decompose) as CO2 has been extracted from the atmosphere by plants a short time ago (for breathing, that will typically be a few months). It does not change the overall balance of gases in the atmosphere.

We simply can't tell right now because the time periods are far too short, and the variables far too many. It really doesn't matter; neither you nor I are going to majorly affect the debate on any of the levels needed to solve this particular problem or non-problem. --Sln3412 05:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Again, you confuse your understanding with the state of the art. And I will do my best to affect the debate, wether in the small or in the large. The more people understand science and how to distinguish science from pseudo-science and propaganda masking as science), the more satsified I will be.--Stephan Schulz 10:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I still think the fact that the CO2 we've produced is in the atmosphere (I agree, of course it is) can't be equated to answering why the Earth is keeping it in these quantities. All the other noise just, to me, complicates the issue. A seemingly political and policy issue more than anything. And I'm not saying we shouldn't spend the money or obfuscate anything (or even wait for more research or more falsifying of theories). I'm saying that given limited budgets, and a lack of cooperation on many levels, the money is best spent on things that will have some sort of large, measurable, immediate effect on the problems and possible problems that face us as humans, of which global warming is one. Is it wrong correlate the data to give global warming less weight as a pressing issue, or to doubt much can be done about it, or to think this is more of a political and policy issue? I just don't draw the same conclusions you do. But I don't attribute it to some conspiracy or anything. Just that this subject is so emotional in so many ways, and that the discussion mixes too many subjects into one big mess. Thanks. --Sln3412 19:37, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Earth is keeping it because it has no way to go ;-). Earth is keeping it in the atmosphere (for the time being) because the geological processes that can sequester it work on really long time scales. Read carbon cycle (and understand that carbon is neither created nor destroyed in these processes - it just moves between different reservoirs). The biosphere is a carbon reservoir, CO2 (and methane) the atmosphere is one, carbonic rock is a major one, fossil fuels are one, and the oceans are one. To remove CO2 from the atmosphere, the carbon needs to go somewhere else. The oceans take up some (and get more acidic from carbonic acid, i.e. CO2 in solution), but only until a balance between acidity an atmospheric CO2 is reached. The biosphere cannot grow significantly, as it depends on sunlight and other nutrients. And the creation of fossil fuels and other carbon-containing geological formations takes geological time periods (i.e. really long ;-). We do know a lot of stuff about these processes. --Stephan Schulz 20:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

(Indent fix.) We do indeed know a lot about the processes, and that's in a way my point on it all, this all happens on such a long timeline that it's difficult to see "the forest for the trees" as to exactly what's happening right now in this short timeline. CO2 does need to go someplace, but I don't think anyone would say we totally understand all the climate mechanisms in the first place much less how they interact. This is a lot of variables. While it might be a good probability that we are producing CO2 too rapidly for the Earth to be able to adjust to it all, which might lead to warming, and while there might be a way to prove it, I can't see us proving so in a few years or decades or centuries.

Earth is adjusting fine. It's way of doing so is increasing atmospheric TCO2 and as a consequence heating up. This causes problems for is, of course. As far as "proving" is concerned: There is no strict proof outside of mathematics. Science does not offer "proofs", only in models and explanations. But as far as the common sense notion of "proof beyond reasonable doubt" is concerned, yes, we have proven that anthropgenic CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere.

I don't deny it's accumulating and that we caused what's accumulating. There seems to be a step missing. And a few other problems. I think we've already been disagreeing on most of those.

If we assume that reducing CO2 production will reduce atmospheric (or oceanic) levels, that's fine, it's not unreasonable. Nor is attributing 'production = levels' unreasonable.

Actually, it is. Since CO2 has a long atmospheric life time, it accumulates over time. So the level is a function of previous emisssions. Reducing emissions helps us to decrease the speed by which CO2 accumulates. To actually reduce CO2 levels, we would need very drastic reductions in emissions (and it would still only decrease slowly, with probably many 10000 years to return to pre-industrial levels).

I hope I live another 50 years so I can see what everything actually does. After that, it won't matter to me any more!  ;)

But not unreasonable doesn't mean true. I'm just saying we can't really prove it by experiment, and the only way of proving that reducing production will cause lower levels is to do it, which we haven't.

You cannot prove anything by experiment. It's always possible that the aliens that control the simulation we take for the universe change a parameter. Or that God or the Pink Unicorn decide to fudge the experiment or to change a law of nature. Experiments help us to form hypotheses and to validate theories, not to "prove" them.

I'm more fond of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. But anyway, the best experiments control as many variables as possible, no? Depends on what kind of proof you're looking for. If I put water where it's 30F it freezes, that's my kinda proof. And it makes beer good, too.

I'm not sure we even can, given the social, political, economic, emotional and organizational involvement in it all.

That's quite possible. But it does not affect the validity of the science. There are two totally different questions here: "What is going on?" and "What should we do about it?". While the second depends on the answers to the first, the first one is totally independent from the second.--Stephan Schulz 11:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree. My answers are different than yours on that though: The first is "the average temperature of the Earth is increasing". The second is "nothing". But I totally agree with that statement you made. Well, except maybe a question in between the two, what CAN we do about it. --Sln3412 22:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Please don't think I'm going to deny that the Earth is getting warmer on average, nor that we aren't affecting it. I'd hope others wouldn't deny there are a lot of factors going on here; that we don't totally understand all the patterns in the now.

"Total understanding" is not in the realm of science. Try meditation or LSD. Science offers us good models. And our models of the climate are plenty good enough to understand that adding CO2 to the atmosphere leads to an increase in temperature.

Ah, I should rephrase. I don't think we understand the paterns well enough yet to make the claim, but that we will understand them better in the future to be able to do so, whenever that future is. Obviously, you don't agree with me on what "well enough" is. Fair enough.

Just because I or anyone draws different conclusions from the data (or offer up ideas that are marginal, just as ideas) doesn't mean that we don't understand the basic process. Just sometimes the conclusions drawn from them, or how we can affect them positivly are not understood (by anyone at times). This isn't a matter of science, per se. Me, I'm not on anyone's side. My interpretation of the data is just mine, and I think this is too large to be some sort of odd non-falsifiable conspiracy. It mainly looks like big organizations fighting a mostly PR battle. Clearly, though, we are impacting the environment all the time. It certainly seems there is a correlation between burning fuels and more CO2 in the air.

It not only seems so so, it is so (for fossil carbon-based fuels, of course). No discussion.

I disagree with the cause/effect analysis. Nothing to discuss, yes.

It does look like there are ways of removing (letting go, neutralizing, absorbing) it that may not be good. As in, getting rid of nuclear waste. Perhaps technology will make it better. Perhaps technology will destroy us all.

I don't get this part.

Nuclear power has a bad result of producing nuclear waste we have to get rid of. Some of the ways we can remove CO2 might not be good either.

I agree on that. That's why it's a good idea to not produce to much CO2 in the first place.

While looking at ice cores is good, it's rather different than directly measuring things; in time, in region, in matter, in method. I don't think we can take the two and directly compare them, which is part of the problem I believe.

We don't measure anything directly. To measure temperature with a plain old thermometer we rely on a model of fluid expansion under heat, measure a distance (using a theory about light and optics to read the scale) and convert that to a temperature. And of course we need the laws of thermodynamic to believe that the thermometer will actually assume the temperature of its environment.

Watching mercury expand or contract in real time to temperature is as direct as you can get, just as is grabbing CO2 out of the air. Getting it from ice cores is a second step, and thus less direct.

Back to my point; just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean one causes the other, nor does it not mean one causes the other.

Absolutely. They can be unrelated and just coincide by chance, or they can be caused by a common cause. But for anthropogenic global warming, we actually do understand the mechanism to a good degree. Svante Arrhenius has predicted the effect in 1896, long before it could actually be measured with any reliability. What we are now doing is, in a way, a giant experiment validating his theory. Wo do not rely on coincidence. The same holds for CO2 in the atmosphere. We release a lot, it increases a lot. That should be enough to convince most people. But we also have the isotope ratios to directly measure the relationship.

Nicely said! Makes sense.

I just think we need more data to make absolute statements that A causes K without going through the steps first. But maybe we don't. No matter how crazy or bad my ideas, I try to look at all the points, and I try not to deal in absolutes. Just because we can't make absolute statements doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do something about it just in case. That's another topic though. --Sln3412 03:03, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

As I said above, science never does absolutes. Try religion. But we do have a much stronger case about anthropogenic global warming than is needed to convict somebody to death, to go to war, or to allow a new kind of medicine. --Stephan Schulz 11:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

There are plenty of absolutes. The temperature water boils at, the chemical reaction from mixing base and acid, etc. The synodic period on Mars is 779.96 days. Hydrogen has 1 electron. Whatever. Regardless, I don't agree we have that strong a case, but you do, okay. I don't think we'll be on the same wavelength on this subject any time soon!  :) --Sln3412 22:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

To not extend this infinitely, but: The temperature water boils at depends at least on solvents, pressure, and physical impurities (you can e.g. have superheated water even under otherwise normal conditions). The chemical reaction of an acid and a base depend on temperature, concentration, and again a lot of other factors. --Stephan Schulz 22:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

That's fine. I'm controlling my variables by using bottled drinking water from the store and putting it in a pan on my stove. Something like that. I mean, sure, we can say, well, we're on mars or the water is 98% salt and 1% gasoline, etc. Still, I don't like the text in the box on that graph. I'm in the minority, oh well. Thanks again! --Sln3412 22:25, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Research money

Hi, Stephen. I am puzzled by what you meant by this:

• Scientists don't receive "research dollars" for publishing papers.

I'm not making a point about the article here, just trying to clarify your language.

When you say receive research dollars are you referring to wages, i.e., money for personal use? Like, "I got a $500,000 grant so I can quit my job and go study the polar ice caps for the next 6 years." (Oh, and maybe hire a grad student or two to assist me.)

I'm personally a little unclear about where research money goes. Is it just used to fund the non-salary expenses of a project? Like, the scientist gets $45,000 a year from his university (personal income). If he's awarded a $250,000 grant, his personal income doesn't go up in the slightest. He can just buy things and hire people? --Uncle Ed 16:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's about it. Typically, the grant holder does not even see any of the money. It goes to the university (or other institution), which deducts its overhead (from 20 to 50% - that covers not just administration, but also things like buildings, energy, lab space, generic infrastructure, and so on). The grant holder can then charge project expenses (RA's, specialized equipment, travel money, and so on) to this account as long as some balance remains. Some kinds of grants in the US allow the grant holder to "buy" himself out of certain teaching obligations (i.e. he does more research, less teaching) by hiring a substitute lecturer. But none of the money goes into his own pockets. There may be some indirect effect, however: Having grants is seen as a good thing, and may help you to renegotiate your base salary with the university (mostly in the US), or when applying to other universities. --Stephan Schulz 16:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's almost enough for a small article of its own! :-) --Uncle Ed 16:20, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

One could argue that if I know I can expense my costs, get published, get out of obligations, become known, and/or get a raise because I brought in a grant, and then I go get a grant... However indirect, it is a money benefit to me.

Yes, one could argue that. It would be rather inane, but that probably wouldn't stop Crichton and Seitz.

Not everyone does things others deem sensible, and not everyone is in something for direct benefits.

In a way, it's like spending your remaining budget before the end of a quarter so your funding doesn't get reduced. --Sln3412 03:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how that relates at all... --Stephan Schulz 09:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Getting a raise later from getting funding earlier is rather like the unintended consequence of budgets causing people to waste money earlier so as to keep the same levels later. --Sln3412 22:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

wikipedia in school

Re your harry potter argument that seems to have been deleted with the other content. I understand that the US schools can be quite draconina with their censorship, which is why i suggested the US schools, since they seem likely to be the ones censoring. Somewhere they have a standard. i am sure i would not agree with that standard, but at least we could allow the thousands of really great articles that do not offend. Think of all the good stuff related to math, physics, chemistry and biology alone that is lost due to a few 'offensive' pages. for me the things we lose are worth the things that become available. Sure, the censors win, but they already have won, meaning zero access to wikipedia. Who's laughing, them or us? David D. (Talk) 21:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

i also agree with your comment re; are the schools really censoring wikipedia. I still have not seen strong evidence for this. This may well be a case of WP:BEANS, if we ask the schools if they are censoring wikipedia they will turn around and say "why do you you think we should be?" maybe we should just keep mum for a while. :) David D. (Talk) 21:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

As others have pointed out: There is nothing to stop schools from censoring just parts of Misplaced Pages. There is nothing that stops people from forking a safe (and even static) version for schools. And there is nothing that stops you, me, or an AOL IP address, from inserting a picture of Paris Hilton blowing some guy into a Misplaced Pages article on Arithmetic. Censorship and openness are diametral opposites. Misplaced Pages's very model is openness. Therefore we cannot censor (and should not try it). --Stephan Schulz 21:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Landis

I disagree that the policy of WP:Not refers only to articles - It states for example: Furthermore, the Talk pages associated with an article are for talking about the article, not for conducting the business of the topic of the article See also Help:Talk page which states Wikipedians generally oppose the use of talk pages just for the purpose of partisan talk about the main subject. Misplaced Pages is not a soapbox; it's an encyclopedia. In other words, talk about the article, not about the subject. It's only the habits we encourage that keep Misplaced Pages from turning into a slanging match. and also Misplaced Pages:Talk_page_guidelines#How_to_use_article_talk_pages--A Y Arktos\ 22:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. Misusing talk pages is discouraged. But so is deleting material from them. Posting a reminder to keep on topic (as you now did) is much better than deleting others comments, appropriate or not. --Stephan Schulz 22:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

• While I do understand your point, it is in fact allowable to remove content from talk pages - see Misplaced Pages:Refactoring talk pages: Content to remove ... Superfluous - Content that is entirely and unmistakably irrelevant. and even more specifically under Prune: Following Misplaced Pages's talk page guidelines, an editor is encouraged to remove any content that is not appropriate. See Talk page guidelines#Behavior that is unacceptable on Misplaced Pages for what is content that is not appropriate on a talk page. My edit summary was quite clear, and following your prompt, I have indeed addded a message to the talk page to state I have done so and am also declaring my intention to do so again unless concensus on the Landis talk page disagrees.--A Y Arktos\ 22:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Email

FYI, I've sent you an email. JoshuaZ 00:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Got it, and will reply via email. --Stephan Schulz 10:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Specific headers in SPM

Thank you. This is much better than my bland initial attempt. :-) --Uncle Ed 09:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I still doubt the article is useful, but I'll try to make it as good as possible...--Stephan Schulz 11:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Christendom as a Political Polity

It was initially sourced to the Catholic Encyclopedia, it has a whole section in the wikipedia article on Christendom, and it referred to the political role of the pope and the papacy in that early medeival time. A polity can also refer to a collection of entities with a common theme making up a political unit, plus it didn't say that one existed, just that there was a strong ground for it and was part of the reason took the cross to show their allegiance to the church. This concept of Christendom being peculiar between the 10th to 15th century is well attested to, christendom has since changed in meaning which is why the footnote was placed to clarify what is being referred to by the term, leaving the detailed distinction to the main wiki article. I'll pass on the holy war footnote its not really that important, but why did you revert the link to the religious war as well?--Tigeroo 05:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Tigeroo! I didn't (this time). I did it in the earlier cases for three reasons. The first one is grammatical. You more or leass each time added something equivalent to "the crusades were a series os religeous wars". No, they weren't. They typically were campaigns in a war. The second reason is that not all crusades were primarily religeous. They all had a religieous component, but the motivations of the crusaders are varied and complex. The third reason is that I don't see that this link really adds a lot to the article. It just suggests that a simple term explains a complex situation. --Stephan Schulz 06:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Thats fine, I will kill the holy war thing, the distinct difference here was that everything was couched in terms of religion lending it a flavor, even if it wasonly used to justify or excuse the war. I will amend accordingly, and lower the emphasis, but removing it would be wrong.--Tigeroo 08:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree but I'm not sure how your last RV causes changes that correspond with the Edit Summary! I'll do further editing to correspond as mentioned.--Tigeroo 18:59, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't notice your other half sentence. The thing you labelled as was, of course, not one, so I took it out. --Stephan Schulz 19:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Crusades

Hey, S. Schulz, amigo, stop screwing around with legitimate edits. I put "thus" and "CE" in the Crusades piece and you called it "vadalism." How is that. If you object to use of "CE" then suggest "AD," but it seems to me that any piece that deals with events in the "9th" century should tell readers if you are talking AD or BC. (And I don't know who put word "Jason" in the article, but if your point in editing that was to refer to "vandalism" make very sure you don't overreach and call everything you take out as "vandalism." You paint too wide a path when you do that and it's a misnomer. So stop screwing around and get with the script. Rossp 04:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)rossp

Hi Ross. Sorry about that - I was referring to the edit by anonymous User:24.88.254.19 ("jason") just before yours. Just unlucky timing, I wasn't aiming four you. --Stephan Schulz 06:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Hockey stick (graph)

I didn't want to get into an extended discussion about this on the ArbCom talk board. But if you go to the search box on the left and enter "Hockey stick (graph)" and click the Go button, or click on the link in the title above … you'll find that that is an alternative name for the article.  TheSeven 23:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Seven! I know that that term redirects to temperature record of the past 1000 years. But that does not imply that it is an alternative name for the page, just that the topic is discussed in this article. I think there was a suggestion of having a seperate page just on the Hockey Stick. --Stephan Schulz 23:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Germany transport

Thank you very much for pointing that out! I was very sad to see such a well-written section go but I felt that the copyright of the site had been violated. I will be sure to be more careful in the future. TSO1D 00:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem! Nowadays, its rather frequent for other sites to borrow from Misplaced Pages (that they credit us is rarer). Good luck! --Stephan Schulz 00:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

<p> tags_tags-2006-12-08T22:51:00.000Z">

Thanks Stephan. For some reason, the user had a space in there and it still came up jumbled with Guettarda's submission above it. Maybe a quirk on that person's browser design or settings, and/or a little glitch in the WP code. I also like to use the <p> to create a little space between paragraphs, something the WP code seems to respect. Thanks for the message. ... Kenosis 22:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)_tags"> _tags">

Shattered Consensus Mediation

You have been listed as a party in this mediation. As mediator, I would welcome your input. Thanks! --nkayesmith 09:13, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Replied to at Talk:Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming#My opinion. I'll be only online very sporadically during the next days, so expect delays if you try to communicate with me.--Stephan Schulz 00:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Great Comment

you comment at this request for comment which in part reads:

But this is an international project, with a lot of non-native speakers, and people from many different cultures. If there is any substantial difference between a "fuck process" and a "screw process" attitude, it's to subtle for me. Using this not-even-misquote as an excuse to dismiss the complaint appears unproductive to me.

was extremely pertinent and well worded. Hopefully, the user will appreciate it too Lost Kiwi 02:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

patents

Hi Stephan,

Why do you still have patent stuff on your homepage? I sit on the UK committee which at least in theory helps formulate the UK gov position but I thought this had been knocked off the radar screen for years now? --BozMo talk 13:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi BozMo! Well, it's not off my screen. It is an ongoing discourse. The EU parliament decision rejecting software patents was only a few months ago, and apparently another attempt to overturn it is being made. As a computer scientists, I've seen thousands of bad patents as opposed to maybe 3 or 4 acceptable ones (Lempel-Ziff-Compression (although mis-handled, the patent itself valid) and Public-Key cryptography (Diffie-Hellman and RSA) are the ones that come to mind). In nearly all cases, the difficulty is not coming up with the idea, but with an implementation. This is adequately protected by copyright. Protecting trivial ideas hinders progress and works against small developers without large resources and portfolios. --Stephan Schulz 14:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

It was the second rejection and the majority was rather big... Actually I am strongly opposed to patents on software. But I only raise it when I see a clear and present danger. At present it is back hiding in the hills I think ? --BozMo talk 14:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Still weasely... ?

I hope you don't mean me! I appreciate that the POV I think I saw on the Global Cooling page was pro-warming not anti - but if you think I'm tilting the article the other way, tell me and I'll fix it. I just think we have to write as though to people who haven't followed the debate (Thermohaline currents, Limbaugh's use of the issue et al), and we have to be careful not to assume that there is just one side to this debate. But please, if my comments irritate you - let me know. You guys seem to do a pretty good job on these pages. - and it was a good edit too --Dilaudid 20:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not referring to you, but I'm unhappy with It has been asserted, notably in Anthony Giddens's 1999 Reith Lecture on risk, that ", orthodox scientific opinion was that the world was in a phase of global cooling" . It has been suggested.... For the first "it has been asserted" we have a concrete source. It would be nice to have a similar one for the second. As for the rest: I've seen a couple of analyses of the scientific literature, and essentially no-one advocated cooling as certain or likely in the 1970s. Even those few scientists who considered it possible usually were well aware of the fact that any short-term noticable cooling it was caused by short-lived emissions and usually qualified their findings with a statement that any cooling effect would have to overcome the increased greenhouse effect. Time magazine and the popular press wrote some misleading articles confusing short-term aerosol cooling and the Milancovic Cycles, but this was outside the scientific discussion. Our article should reflect this. And thanks for the thumbs up! --Stephan Schulz 20:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I always say it has been suggested - otherwise it personalises (if you say "opponents have suggested" then it almost seems to suggest that "they" have an agenda) - I just changed the point that was being made, without attribution. I think you're right that it does sound weasely - but I'm pretty sure that's what Limbaugh et al are getting at. A source would be nice, to put it in context. I'm going to take a break from this anyhow. I tried to get further into the MBH and M&M debate and it is totally - totally - over my head. It's also pretty acrimonious, which is tiring. Maybe see you in the New Year --Dilaudid 18:02, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Agnes

In response to your allegations of my allterations to the 'crusades' article being very 'point of view' rather than factual, then I ask you to revise 'your previous knowledge about crusader history, taking into account fact and legend, and accounts from both sides, and avoiding bias, and then it will dawn to you that what I have done is not 'POV' but rather an elimination of the bias, drama, fiction and innaccuracies, and inserting solid facts that have been unjustly missed out to make out that the crusaders were angellic saviours, and hiding their grim legacy. And as for the 'spelling mistakes' I am sure you wil find that they are typing errors (which i found in the previous version-which you seem to favour, perhaps not in the same abundance, but still there) and you could have simply just corrected them as you read. And be open minded, just because you dont like what you read, it doesnt mean that it isnt true: after all, it was the crusadors who were the agressors.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Agnes Nitt (talk • contribs).

I suggest you check out my edits on this and related topic. I have no glorified view of the crusading heroes beating back the Empire of Evil. I do care about NPOV, sources, and encyclopedic language. From your edit:

• "The Children's Crusade was not a military campaign, but a mixture of fact and fiction (mostly fiction though) of a popular uprising in France and/or Germany, with the intention of reaching the Holy Land in order to convert Muslims there to Christianity.": No, the Children's Cruade was not a mixture of fact and fiction. It either was a real event or not. Reports about it may be a mixture of fact and fiction. The colloquial use of "though" is inappropriate in an encyclopedia.
• "...the Moors, who had successfully conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula, after a plea from Jews and Unitarian Christians who were suffering badly under the previous Christian rule.": There is no source given for this statement, and it is there without any context (did this influence the conquest? Was it even relevant? Did the Jews and Unitarian (? shouldn't that be Arian?) Christians come together in an assembly and vote to ask for help, or did some Emir bribe a few nobodies to have a pretense? Or was it something altogether different?
• "This was further strengthened by religious propaganda, advocating war in order to reoccupy the Holy Land, ...": Reoccupy? When had it been occupied for the first part? There never, to my knowledge, was a Christian occupation of the Holy Land before the Conquest. Yes, it was part of the Roman and later Byzantine empire, but Christianity spread from there, it was not brought by force. And the Western Crusaders were in no way comparable to a Roman or Byzantine administration...
• "However, the Muslim armies' successes were putting strong pressure on the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire, especially the conquest of Spain...": Why did the Arab/Berber conquest of Spain put pressure on the Byzantine Empire (which was at the other end of the Mediterranean and mostly in conflict with Turkish people?
• What happened to the whole section on "Immediate cause"?
• "On a popular level, the first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious Christian fury, but instead led to the massacre and rape of Muslim and Jewish civilians that accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe,...": What massacre of Muslim civilians accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe? There were no significant Muslim communities in Europe outside Spain at that time.
• "The Crusades had profound and lasting historical impacts, mostly negative, but with some minor positives.": Do you have a time machine and have re-run the experiment a few times? "Negative" and "positive" to whom? If you want such a statement in, find a proper source and attribute it.
• ("Nonetheless, there have certainly been many vocal critics of the Crusades in Western Europe since the renaissance, due to widespread killing, rape and plunder of the innocent and helpless.)": Actually, the Crusades have been criticised in Europe for any number of reasons.

...and so on. It is quite possible that there is something salvagable in your edits. However, there is so much wrong with them, that it is much less work going forward from the old, reasonably good version than to fix your deeply flawed edits. If you want to avoid blanket reversion, edit individual sections individually. Also, discuss your edits on the talk page first.--Stephan Schulz 17:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

1. with regards to the ommitted section, i don't think it was me, and if it was, then it would have been an accident, because I would have rather edited it.

Well, it was you. Check the edit history of the page.

with regards to the ommitted section, i don't think it was me, AND IF IT WAS, THEN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN ACCIDENT, because I would have rather edited it. I never said it wasnt me at all, all I said was I didn't know I had done that, now that you point it out, I realise that it ws me.

2. if you have an issue with the language, then alter it yourself and keep the content the same.

I have, in fact, issues with both language and content. And sloppy language does not inspire trust in the content, either.

Yes I know you have an issue wih the content (you like the pro crusade version, rather than the version that was more fair, and gave accounts of what happened in coonstantinople and the occupied teritories) and what you are referring to as 'sloppy language' is in fact regular words such as massacre, rape, pillage and loot. I did not use adjectives such as great, glorious etc, which is what the older version contained, using too many negative adjectives to describe the saracens, and too many 'sloppy' adjectives and phrases to sweeten the name of the crusaders(such as...personally felt pious Christian fury... - and that isnt sloppy?? I didnt say anything like that, all I did was say the crusaders slaughtered and raped, and thats more factual)

3. The childrens crusade IS a mixture of fact and fiction because even in the 'historical' account nobody is sure of weather it was triggered by a dream, or if it was really just a pack of lies. (and if you didnt like the part where it said 'mostly fiction' then you could have ommitted it, but you obviously have more concerns with the story: you probably dont like it because its not as dramatic when the truth is revealed.

No, the Children's Crusade is not a mixture of fact and fiction. What we know about it is. There is a difference between an event and its description. This is an example of sloppy use of language.

well if what we know of it is a mixture of fact and fiction, then we can't write the fact can we, because its not what we know. What we can do, is write the most accurate version of it even if it isn't 100% fact. You obviously had no issue with the previous (and now current ) version of the childrens crusade. And no, don't tell me that was a fact.

4. And no, the mentioning of the reason behind the Moorish presence in Spain is important, as it is background knowledge relevant to the theme of the mixing of west and east, of which the crusades was a part of. And no, the Jews and UNITARIAN christians (I used to be one myself, thank you very much) weren't bribed by an 'emir; (they werent even reffered to by that) but were instead suffering genuine persecution, expultion, and intimidation, and were being killed off. I know it probably doesnt please you to know this, but history will be history.

If you want this in, bring some context and a source. At the time of the Moorish conquest, Spain had an Ibero-Roman subtrate population mostly following Trinitarian Catholicism and a Visigothic ruling caste following Arianism (which is a specific form of Unitarianism that holds that Jesus is a creation of God the Father, and not co-equal with him). Do you have any source for your claims that "Unitarians" were persecuted?

Yes I know about Unitarian christians, I used to be one myself thanks, and as I mentioned previously, yes they were persecuted, alongside the jews. And as I previously mentioned, I did my research way back, but if you would like me to give you a name of a book, then i'll try and rumage through my old stuff and find you something.

And besides, if it werent for Islamic Spain, The west wouldnt be what it is now (thanks to science and technology) and this might be hard for you to absorb aswell.

While this is true, it is also off-topic. And the importance of Al-Andalus for knowledge exchange and a flowering of science and the arts in the aftermath cannot be used as a justification for the conquest in the first place.

And I would cite a reference had I done my research yesterday, but I reasearched this all way back before my acceptance of Islam.

Please read WP:V. Unsourced and controversial statements will be deleted very fast and in accordance with Misplaced Pages policy.

Now now, keep your hair on, as I explained before, it is relevant to a certain degree, and in the case of unsourced, this is a discussion page on your personal profile, and therefore I am doing no one any harm by un-sourcing my conversation. I cant see you sourcing your side of the conversation. And bythe way, it was hardly 'exchange of knowledge' because the west had no knowledge to begin with lol.

5. In regards to your disdain at my usage of the term 're-occupy', well I'll have you know that in the older version it said 'retake', which indicates that it belonged to them before. So I changed it to Re-Occupy, to show that it was occupied in the first place. And it seems to me you need a dosage of Christian history (unbiased); Roman Cathlocism is remenant of the old pagan Roman religeon, and all the previously -occupied-by-Romans- territory became christian territory, where trinitarian christians persecuted the Jews and Unitarian Christians. (the Trinity is remenent of the three main roman gods)the land there WAS occuppied by them before. (dont forget that the christianity we have today is heavily altered teachings of jesus christ, and mostly pagan religeon; the cross and fish signs are from pagan Roman-the romans took the fish off the pagan egyptians)-Ihope thats cleared some things for you. And so technically the crusaders were remenant of Roman and Byzantine administration...

Well, let's just say I'm confused. Which three main Roman gods? There were a lot more in the classical Greco-Roman pantheon, and at the time of Christianization there also were other competing religions, in particular the sun cult of Sol Invictus. That Christianity has changed a lot over time, and has incorporated various elements of other cults is nothing new to anybody with a reasonable historical knowledge. But there is no continuity between the Byzantine administration driven out by the Muslim conquest (just after they had driven out the Sassanids...) and the western Crusaders.

That is what I was trying to tell you, some emperor of constantine or some other roman place (i cant remeber his name)found that proper christianity was increasing despite their efforts to quell it, so they changed the state religeon and merged the two together, and therefore the entire byzantinium empire was officially 'christian'-however this wasn't te true christianity. All this was in order to keep control over everyone. So the christians are the romans. I hope you get it now ( perhaps I should have explained that before- sorry)

6.No1 the problem was with MUSLIMS; they didnt like how it was spreading quickly (via trade and normal everyday dealings between muslims and other faiths, and especially the fact that many early sects of unitarian christians (who were persecuted by the romans and later- the romans under the name of catholicism-which is virtually roman religeon with some christian teachings and holyfather ghost and son, instead of the three main roman gods) were accepting Islam (due to prophecies in their gospel of the coming of a last prophet, which was during the time of Mohammad, and all the potents were hinting it was Mohammad. And therefore the problem was with Islam, and not the turks. And because muslims, unlike their christian counterparts, were united at the beggining when they were 'proper' and if you were fighting turks, then it was with other muslims aswell. Dont get confused with more recent events were the problem was with the turks. In this case it wasnt. And it makes no difference how far away apart they were, Muslims are brothers and sisters no matter what. And by the way, i only altered the original version by putting in the part about spain, the previous writer put the bit about conquests in it.

I don't believe this. Muslims were united? What about the Sunni/Shia conflict that started less than 30 years after the death of Muhammed? What about the Umayyad/Abbasid conflict (with the Umayyads ending up in control of Spain, the Abbasids in control of the Holy Land)? And the Seljuk Turks that pressed Byzantium had little in common with the Abbsids again, much less with the Umayyads in faraway Spain. Islam is no less inhomgenous than Christianity. And political cooperation has often enough ignored religion, too.

In terms of justification, Spain was being ruled by a tyrant and was treating members of other creeds badly to the extent that they called for help. No christians were expelled there propert was not confiscated and the country became better for all, now that is what i call 'for the common good' of the world-if only all rulers were like that. And I totally agree with you that there were conflicts (not as many as christinaity, but you are right, there were. But that doesn't dismiss that Muslims were united (i mean the people, not neccesssarily the rulers) and Im talking about the majority mainstream Sunni muslims of the time, so if any muslim suffered on the other side of the world, they would also feel that suffering. Therefore muslims as individuals would come to each others aid, and yes the problem was with Islam, not turks.

7.About the massacre of muslims in europe, I was mistaken; i didnt realise it said Europe, I thought it was talking about the overall aftermath, of which most of the damage was on the Muslims side, not the indvidual incidences that happened as a result in Europe (because that would make more sense, mentioning the big incident, not the sub. but then again I think it just shows how biasd and anti-Islamic the previous one was- making out that Muslims didnt suffer at all; literally dismissing their casualties. plagerism of Historical facts if you ask me)

Please be more careful. And use a dictionary if you are uncertain about the meaning of words. Assuming "plagerism" should be "plagiarism", the sentence makes no sense.

Fair comment, I cant say anything less than I agree with you

8. No I do not have a time machine, but I guess one would do you fine so that you can perhaps get involved and perhaps sympathise with the victims, not the agressors, and perhaps help bring justice to the victims by de-demonising them-the poor souls. and in regards to positive and negative effects, well you tell me: how much exactly have you read on this topic? judging by your coments, not alot, in if you have read 1 or 2 things, then they must have been wholly one-sided texts that are anti-Islamic, and pro-crusaders and violence. I have read pro crusade and neutral texts. I have never read anything pro-saracen, because havent found any such thing yet. and my article was Neutral, i didnt add any drama or sobbing or anything, just solid, but shocking facts that people have been trying to keep in the shadows for years.

I have read several relevant books. I even own a couple, including Runciman's "History of the Crusades" (German edition, "Geschichte der Kreuzzüge") and "The Fall of Constantinople", Norwich's "History of Byzantium", Ostrogorsky's "Byzantinische Geschichte" and Maalouf's "The Crusade Through Arab Eyes", a book I very much recommend if you want to get a different perspective. In my opinion, your "facts" were to a large part not facts, but opinions, and unsourced ones at that. "Positive" and "negative" are not absolute. What is good for me can be bad for you and vice versa. The Crusades intensified contact between the East and the West, something that was definitly good for the West. They eventually lead to the unification of much of the Muslim world under Saladin - is that good or bad? Would the Mongol invasion of the Middle East have had a more or a less devastating effect without the Crusades?

You talk about crusaders 'intensifying' contact wiht the middle east as if it were something they should be thankd for; all it is, is that the west relised that there was another world outside their wooden huts. Oh, I know that the crusades trigered the Muslim nation to unite, but when it comes to positive and negative, the Killing and loss of civillian life in that conflict makes it have an overall negative outcome, and just because the west benefetid from th carnage, it doesnt justify it, or make it seem ok. and as for the mongol hoards, who like hitler, wanted to conquer the world, well if it wasnt for the Muslims, the west would have been a massacred. The muslims took the brunt of that battle, and faught the world threat till they were victorious. But still the crusades were BAD and barbarious, you cant argue against that. And no, you need to read more, not me, I have read pro crusade texts aswell and I fully understand their point of view, however I do not agree with it, because it DOES make the crusades look angellic overall and the muslims as cruel people who were aggressors, and is extremelt POV.

9. yes there have been, but more 'human' natured people will agree that the humanitarian crisis and mass abuses, by far beat the condemnation related to a waste of money or a loss of soldiers lives due to attacking other peoples properties. The reason why there arent as many critics of the crusades in the west, as there ar glorifiers, id because people try to gang up on them like in my case, and the lack of clean, unflawed unbiased education. In no way is what Im saying biasd. I have a mixed christian and Islamic hertiage, and I havent just left christianity for nothing (and no-i wasnt paid or bribed by some emir, in fact I lost out on a lot of worldy gains as a result, but have grown spiritually)

I suggest you read some real academic texts. The scientific community has a very differentiated view of history. The years since 9/11 have brought a crop of loud-mouthed pop-hist/propaganda writers that cater to the lowest common denominator. But they are not typical for the academic debate at all.

Thank you very much for the insult. Much appreciated. But I did my research way before 9/11, and have been to lectures by muslims and non muslims, and have read books by muslims and non muslims and pro crusaders (and usually you find the pro crusaders verry aggressive and angry when you get into a debate with them, whereas neutral and muslims are generally more friendly and passive). So i think the propaganda part has been playing around in Europe for centuries now. On the Muslim side, They continue till this day to suffer in silence, as usual eing accused of cruelty that is not in them. Why dont you try to find out what happens to muslims in gujjurat, or cashmere or in china etc.? perhaps you might find that Muslims arent as horrible as you think.

10. I think we have a lot of acceptance to make of the wests previous errors, and we should shed away this proud and haughty skin we have on us at the moment. You should try and feel empathy towards those who were abused and suffered during that time, especially from the Muslim side, as you have to agree, they are pretty much ignored. And thanks for answering :)

But empathy with the abused should not come into conflict with the historical truth. Barbarism of the Crusaders does not excuse the Muslim conquest of Spain. Neither is it the other way round (it does explain part of it, but explanation and excude are different things).

Spain was ruled by a genuine tyrant who persecuted the Jews and the unitarians. The Muslims never expelled christians from their lands and many of them as well as jews became 'top brass' and occupied jobs such as wizirs advisors etc. The crusades however had a bad effect, kiling and looting. They didnt help the regeon in anyway. Whereas Muslims did, and they lasted 800 years there filled with knowledge art and peace. Now that is historical truth, Just because you dont know it, doesnt mean its not true (sigh-i;ve lost count of how many times I've had to tell you this). my advise is: Just read more.

Agnes Agnes Nitt 18:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

--Stephan Schulz 19:46, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Agnes Nitt 21:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but whatever you say cannot change the fact that Muslim civilians were attacked raped and massacred during the oppressive crusades, which were an attack on the homeland of an indigenous people. And Unitarian christians were persecuted by trinitarian christians . full stop. If you dont know that it doesnt mean its not true. you dont seem to understand that. the edition of that article which you prefer is POV no matter what you say, I have read more about this topic than you and know a great deal more about christianity and its history than you so dont doubt what I say about Unitarians being persecuted.It is the same denial that you are expresing when doubting the massacre of Muslims and calling it POV. Wake up from your dreams of ideal western crusaders loved by all, when they are only bias, ultra patriotic to the extent they would justify anything if theydid it, heartless arrogant people. I would argue back against every single uneducated comment you made, but I dont have the time. But believe you me: hopefully I will take your advise and research from the begining the crusades and completely change this article one day, citing every single reference i used. And i'd like to hear your excuses then ( I know you will make some petty excuses, such as you didn't understand "plagiarism" because i missed out an I, and other petty rubbish like that) and yes, you are probably a Roman catholic, and dont want to know that what you are following is in essence a pagan Roman religeon, and stop pretending you dont know.I've made it quite clear, if you truly love jesus christ then find the truth in him and seek him. Because he would never in anyway justify this war as you did Agnes Nitt 21:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't think this is going anywhere. I also think people who read this will be able to form an opinion. --Stephan Schulz 00:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you, and yes people will be able to form an opinion. I know you are trying to hint that everyone who reads this will agree wih you, but thats not entirely true because there's always different types of people: those who are ready to accept history they don't like, as it is and unabridged, and those who battle on to deny it, so as you say: people who read this will be able to form an opinion. And no matter what I say and no matter what evidence I bring to you, you will not acknowledge the truth. And to be honest I'm happy leaving it at that. Agnes Nitt 15:44, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Guess=39 is young (compared to me)

--BozMo talk 16:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Good guess. You mean people can get even older than that? --Stephan Schulz 16:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Whether I am still "person" rather than "fossil" I would rather not say. --BozMo talk 16:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Robert Hue image

Duh. This image is the official one from the french senate, and is normally for free use. Or maybe something escapes me. :( Max Thayer 07:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Something escapes you. Even if it is released under a "free for use license" - which I see no reason to believe - you cannot relicense it under the very specific CC-Attribution/Sharealike. And as far as I know, France, unlike e.g. the US, does have copyrights on official gouvernment-produced images. --Stephan Schulz 07:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a case of misunderstanding the english terms. There, I added a self-made image. The quality is alas extremely poor, but I guess I know understand the logic behind wikipedia images.Max Thayer 08:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Saddam Hussein image

Here is the source : http://www.wpclipart.com/famous/political/ The site normally states that the images are "public domain". Max Thayer 07:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I'm not very certain about that source, but at least the owner forcefully states that the images are PD. But again, in that case the correct license tag is the public domain tag, and not a CC license. --Stephan Schulz 07:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I got it wrong as english is not my first language.Max Thayer 08:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment

Beware getting sucked into endless "debates" by people who only want to waste your time. I've encountered such people in a number of venues, and have found that they love to keep you going on a string. Apologies if my remark is out of line, since of course it's your decision to do whatever you want. Raymond Arritt 16:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Raymond, thanks for the warning. I've made use of your experience here already. But I normally like to stay in a debate unless even an uninformed, but unbiased observer can evaluate the positions. As we are now strictly in black helicopter land, I doubt I'll go on much longer. --Stephan Schulz 16:28, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Tim Ball and geology

Hi. Do any references show that Ball was in fact a professor of geology at the University of Winnipeg, and not climatology as he claims? All I've found are citations for Ball as a prof. of climatology, such as this one. Shawn in Montreal 16:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Shawn, see here. Ball's own professional website has been down for some time. Ball himself has made rather misleading (and often plain wrong) statements about his career and qualifications. It's not that he did not hold serious academic degrees and positions, but neither his numbers nor his claims add quite up. --Stephan Schulz 18:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. And I think notable. See what you think of my latest edit to his article, addressing his contested claim to be a climatologist. Shawn in Montreal 18:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Fine with me... --Stephan Schulz 19:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

thought you would be intrested to ask him a few questions

Interview with Art Robinson, Prof of Chemestry of the Oregon Petition Sunday 1-3pm CST on Race to the right. click here to listen online. Feel free to call in at the number listed at the website for the phone number.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zeeboid (talk • contribs).

Thanks for the note. But as I wrote here, I'm not really interested. What's more, your show seems to require a Windows-only media player, and I'm in a very different time zone.--Stephan Schulz 01:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Greetings!

Thanks for stopping by my page and leaving kind words, and thanks for your own contributions and efforts to preserve common sense, science and encyclopedic content. Mishlai 17:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Glad to have you here! --Stephan Schulz 17:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for note on your training

It is good to know you are into computer science. I thought the degree was strictly for life sciences. Have you ever visited McIntyre's blog? They have some of the climate computer modelers stop in from time to time and I think you might be interested in some of the discussion. Pro-AGWers are welcome at ClimateAudit and your posts (if you decide to join the discussion) will not be censored. No doubt you are familiar with some of the text books written by some of the regular posters there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RonCram (talk • contribs) 23:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC).

RFC?

Given the level of recent nonsense, which seems to be escalating into allegations of Nazism, do you think its time for an RFC to clear the air? William M. Connolley 20:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I've thought about that. (I'm tiring of CE's little games in particular.) Apparently stuff like this erupts from time to time on GW related articles, so I've just been trying to stick it out, but at some point it gets in the way of the articles. Raymond Arritt 20:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I think there are two issues here. While I agree that User:Childhoodsend mostly seems to be there to waste our time, his behaviour is (barely) within accepted limits. On the other hand, the general Jihad by User:Mnyakko (now apparently departed) and User:UBeR with their "evidence" pages, and the histrionics by User:Rameses and his various incarnations are much harder to stomach. If we do not get a community solution soon, an RfC might indeed be in order.--Stephan Schulz 22:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

OK. It seems Tony has gotten enough material for his radio show and moved on. I don't know what an RfC would entail, or even what its purpose would be, since there's a steady stream of people who are willing to take their place. Maybe someone more experienced could fill in the details for me. Raymond Arritt 22:26, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Progress, then. I'm sure I can remember the how-to, if needed. This is the start point William M. Connolley 22:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I find this coalition quite interesting.... --Childhood's End 18:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I find this remark rather boring. --Stephan Schulz 18:17, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh no -- our cover has been blown! Quick, call in the black helicopters so we can make our escape! Raymond Arritt 20:33, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, you have that mixed up. Orbital satellites: mind control rays. Black helicopters: covert surveillance and kidnapping. Escape is via the phone system. --Stephan Schulz 20:38, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Uber seems to have backed down from the WMC harassment since the AN thread; the thread also flushed out the Rameses/Brittania sockpuppetings. All in all, I'd say things have improved. If they don't stay that way, I suggest you forgo the the RFC (since - speaking as an arbitrator - I consider RFC is totally meaningless) and go straight to arbitration. I don't think they committee will look kindly on Uber's behavior. Raul654 21:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

We have a series of very similar edits recently at Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, which to me are unsupported POV: Zeeboid , Rameses , Rameses , Brittainia , Brittainia , 76.64.57.201 . At what point, if any, does this become an actionable problem? --Nethgirb 07:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Are you actually saying removing the opinionated (i.e. subjective) word "small" in place of nothing is a POV? That's laughable. For more, however, if you are serious, I suggest you check out WP:AWW, WP:NPOV, and WP:A. ~ UBeR 17:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Nethgirb, I have blocked both Rameses and Britannia for 3rr violation (being established sockpuppets, their edits are accumulated together). I'm seriously tempted to block 2 of those 3 accounts (counting the third one I discovered) permanently.

As for when it become actionable, I'd say it becomes actionable whenever you can provide clear and compelling evidence that they are pushing a particular POV - and that shouldn't be too hard. Raul654 19:06, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

User:Zeeboid is definitely not a sock of Rameses/Brittainia. Raymond Arritt 13:03, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I have to say, this is hilarious from my perspective. I haven't been accused of being WMR's sockpuppet since I created this account over a year ago, with Pgio and the Aetherometry AfD, and this whole accusation went through without me even hearing about the accusations, even though I had been checking my watchlist daily. --Philosophus 10:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The big room with the blue roof

This phrase appears on your userpage. Is it toilet humour? Or a metaphor for WP?

The instant improvability of WP is almost irresistible - I agree - but some Open source people see WP as a perversion of the software development idea, because it's not conducted amongst people who can spot the worth of any single contribution.

Not sure where I'm going with this. But your mother tongue seems to be German, and I notice that a lot of the best contributions to English WP technology articles come from German speakers. So, what's the German take on WP, on the hit-and-miss nature of the project?

It's a broad question, seeking specific answers - my apologies.--Shtove 01:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The big room with the blue roof is hacker humor. Notice that the roof is black at night and normally gray when it rains. As for your other question: Germans seem to take Misplaced Pages more seriously (or maybe even life - I hope that's curable ;-). Comparing the English and the German Misplaced Pages, there is a lot less cruft on the German, and for non-culture-specific topics, I often find the average article on the German Misplaced Pages better. I don't know about the quality of contributions by German speakers, but there are two things to keep in mind: There are a lot of German speakers - about 100 million native speakers, and most are in modern, highly developed countries with compulsory education and a tradition of excellence in education and technology (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). And on the English Misplaced Pages, you will naturally only find people who are fluent and comfortable in English, hence mostly academic types, the cream of the crop. Secondly, German society has other hot issues than (in particular) US society. So on some issues we can appear neutral and aloof ;-). --Stephan Schulz 07:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the note

Stephan, I never know whether to answer notes on your Talk page or mine. The substantive answer is on my page.RonCram 19:20, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, keep it on the page of the initial contribution. I keep pages I've contributed to on my watchlist for a long time. --Stephan Schulz 19:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I have added another note on my Talk page. Just thought I would give you a heads up.RonCram 03:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Award

Thanks a lot! I'll proudly display it. --Stephan Schulz 23:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Home Page

Seems to be not working. Sln3412 18:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I have been informed that the servers at our research group at TU Munich will have scheduled downtime today. Mail is working again, but I suspect they still operate on the Web server. Try again tomorrow. --Stephan Schulz 18:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Global warming debate

Hello. IntelligenceSquared held an interesting debate on Global Warming. Based on the votes of the audience, those who said it was not a crisis won the debate. I thought you might be interesting in reading about it. RonCram 17:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ron. In that case, as you like to point out, science is not decided by voting. And of course, debates with a 8 minute time slice are always favouring the oversimplifying side with the witty remarks. But seriously, just looking at the introduction: Rosenkranz, supposedly neutral, starts by presenting it as a political topic (mentioning Gore and Boxer, but not a single scientist). He himself clearly takes a sceptical position ("I'm cynical enough..."), he repeats plain lies (the alleged global cooling "consensus") and errors (climate prediction is different from weather prediction). Also, of course, the question is not if GW happens, or how it happens, but if it is a "crisis", a rather badly defined term. Anyways, thanks for the interesting link. --Stephan Schulz 22:07, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Science is not decided by consensus either. :) ~ UBeR 22:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. But the prevailing scientific opinion is, and that is our best way to gauge the science itself. While most science is eventually refined (and sometimes, though rarely, even overturned), most people disagreeing with the prevailing scientific opinion are plain wrong. This is not "A is right in all details" vs. "A is wrong in at least one detail", it is "A is a better explanation than B". If A has wide support in the scientific community, while B has extremely scattered support, I'd bet on A anytime. --Stephan Schulz 22:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Gilisa

I predict that Gilisa's answer to your latest question is to the effect that yes, one can have more than one ethnicity: If your parents are Italian and Swedish, but you grow up in France, your ethnicity is Italian and Swedish and not French. --teb728 08:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC) Well, you dont have to be a profit for this- i allready gave you several exampels..(can be deleted of course) --Gilisa 16:08, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been following this discussion but not participating, but I had to laugh when I read your comment, Stephan. Great to see people keeping cool under attack. Best regards, Icemuon 10:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I try, and I train a lot at global warming and related articles ;-). --Stephan Schulz 16:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Dear Stephan Schulz, i revise my comment to you so you could read it easily.and i also want to reply to Icemuon here (if you have no objection, otherwise you can delete it) Yes, it is very funny Icemuonand of course that Im very happy to hear that you enjoyd the disscussion and have fun to read it with good spirit and good feelings-you really warm my hurt.--Gilisa 15:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Gilisa, the Nazi "Aryan" concept was athletic build, blue eyes, fair hair, elongated cranium - the idealized "nordic type". See e.g. Reinhard Heydrich for an example. But most Germans are, in fact, short, stocky, brown-haired and have a rounded cranium - what used to be called the "alpine" type. This is particularly true for the southern parts and Austria. Just look at the Nazi leaders themself. Hitler himself was brown-haired and rather small, Joseph Goebbels was of slight build and had dark hair, even Nazi-Superman Otto Skorzeny was not blond. While "Aryan" was indeed the ideal, "white, non-jewish" was the norm for being an accepted German citizen under the Nazis. Sometimes "Aryan" was used coloquially to mean "non-jewish", but that is, of course, nonsense. Most Japanese or Bantu are certainly neither. So neither was (Nazi-lingo) "Aryanness" a prerequisite for being German, nor, as you pointed out, were all (Nazi-lngo) "Aryans" German. Nazi racial theory was, of course, neither consistent nor logical - today the term "Aryans" is used for the hypothetical speakers of early Indo-Aryan languages, and it still is debated whether their spread was a due to conquest, intermingling, or culture export. They certainly had nothing to do with the Nazi ideal. --Stephan Schulz 22:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Computers

Hi Gilisi! In theory, yes. In practice, all I can do it to suggest a) a good firewall and b) a decent operating system (OpenBSD is excellent, most Linux distributions are good, MacOS-X is the best of the mass-market systems). If you must run Windows (try not to), run a seperate hardware firewall, don't use an admin account for normal work, keep up with the latest patches, and keep a good virus scanner. Good luck in that case, anyways... --Stephan Schulz 17:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

)

Your signature

Please fix your signature. It doesn't provide your user name. (at least it didn;t at my page.) --Steve, Sm8900 00:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I use the standard signature, and just mistyped it as 3 tildas instead of 4. It's fixed. --Stephan Schulz 00:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

global warming

Sorry, I totally disagree with your approach. Exactly where did you get the idea that Misplaced Pages is not ableor meant to chronicle continuing historical developments? I'm sure you are aware that there are many Misplaced Pages articles which chronicle current or recent history. So why do you feel that it is not possible to include that, or that it is necessary to delete others efforts to do so. --Steve, Sm8900 00:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

I'm not saying it's not possible, although I certainly doubt it's always useful. Much of what we chronicle today will be non-notable cruft tomorrow. However, the major problem I have with your recent edits at Effects of global warming is not that it is current, but rather that it does not fit into the article. The 2007 SPM is already mentioned at various other places, among others global warming and, in particular, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. It also is not an effect of global warming. Likewise, Schwarzenegger's politics is not an effect of global warming, and neither is the WMO resolution (except in an extemely useless sense that would allow us to put everything about global warming into the article). I also don't understand your editoralizing about the IPCC report departing from the WMO resolution. It is in full agreement. --Stephan Schulz 01:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Accusations

Sorry to bother you, but I follow many of your edits and appreciate what you do here. I've been accused of being a sock puppet on multiple pages here, here, and god knows where else. I've responded on David's talk page here. I'm not sure what to do. I don't spend a lot of time here and have never wanted to get into any trouble, I just like contributing now and then. I don't like this accusation hanging over my (admittedly made-up) name. What can I do? R. Baley 07:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. I can't honestly say that I've noticed you before, or that I even know who Glenn Greenwald is (I suppose that is the source of all the trouble?). So I have no useful opinion on the issue. To put it positively, I'm completely unbiased ;-). Unfounded allegations of sock-puppetry violate a number of Misplaced Pages policies, including, of course, WP:AGF. You could try to bring the matter up at WP:ANI, although the more correct way of doing things would be to open an RFC as a first step in dispute resolution. You could also try to file a WP:RFCU against yourself and your alleged sock-master, but I dislike that option, as it should not be up to you to disprove the allegations. Good luck! --Stephan Schulz 08:08, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, no reason you should have noticed me I guess, I don't edit a whole lot (sometimes on Michael J. Fox and Charles Swift; other places infrequently). I made a report on the administrator's noticeboard. I guess if there's no satisfaction there, I will go to RFCU. I'll try not to bother again, from what I've seen you have your hands full here. Thanks again R. Baley 08:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Intro to controversy

Thanks for your clarifying edit. I like your wording better than mine! :-) --Uncle Ed 12:37, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Be careful! That is the second time we agree today! If this goes on, they might mistake you for a member of the global warming conspiracy. ;-) --Stephan Schulz 12:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Re: Bitte, die trolls nicht fuettern. (Is this correct? -- practicing for my trip...) Raymond Arritt 20:01, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Close. The comma is wrong in German, all nouns are calitalized, and "Troll" has a German plural (Trolle). So the correct version is "Bitte die Trolle nicht füttern!" --Stephan Schulz 21:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminders! High school German was *ahem*cough* years ago... Raymond Arritt 21:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I find it fairly hard to talk in English about German - apparently my brain keeps them rather well seperated. --Stephan Schulz 21:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, yes. Languages learned as a teenager or adult are stored in different areas of the brain. A practical consequence is that multilingual patients recovering from strokes will regain use of different languages at different times. (On the other hand young children tend to store languages in the same area of the brain and thus tend to be more truly bilingual.) Raymond Arritt 21:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Question

Stephan, I am Deborah Byrd, producer of the Earth & Sky radio series, and I'm looking for a reference for this statement of yours on the discussion page of the article about scientists who oppose the mainstream view of global warming (http://en.wikipedia.org/Scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming) "We are not talking 51% or 60% or 75%, but rather 95%+ (or "near unanimity in the peer reviewed published literature and in official statements by professional scientific organisations"). --Stephan Schulz 08:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)" How did you determine that there is 95% agreement in the peer reviewed published literature and in official statements by professional scientific organizations? Earthsky 15:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

For peer-reviewed literature, this study by Naomi Oreskes is a good reference, and the best survey I am aware of. Benny Peiser has tried to criticise it, but has, in my eyes, mostly been refuted. For professional organizations, see the list of statements at scientific opinion on climate change. To my knowledge, only the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has taken a contrarian stand. This lack of opposition is confirmed in EOS . On the other hand, 20 National Science Academies (including all the major ones) have explicitely supported the IPCC position in two statements (from 2001 and 2005), and a large number of other scientific organizations have similar statements of support. --Stephan Schulz 15:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly what I needed. We touched base with Oreskes just yesterday, but her office did not provide this precise reference. I also appreciate the Misplaced Pages link to scientific opinion on climate change. Many thanks for your help. Earthsky 16:04, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

No worries. --Stephan Schulz 16:22, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Peiser indeed found only 2% of the reviewed literature by Oreskes explicitly endorsed the IPCC's statements. Of course, he still found none refuting it. ~ UBeR 20:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

But did Peiser, as a social anthropologist, even know what he was looking at when reviewing literature in the physical sciences? His list of articles that supposedly refuted the consensus was an embarassment -- many of those articles had nothing at all to do with global warming, much less refuting the consensus. Conversely, it's quite possible that there were articles supporting the consensus that he failed to recognize. Raymond Arritt 20:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change

It seems obvious to me that Z on Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change is simply trolling. Thats why I removed it. Could you not do the same? William M. Connolley 07:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm wondering whether a better strategy might be to simply ignore such behavior, rather than responding to it in any way (including by removing the text). --Nethgirb 08:32, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Ignore or remove; not reply. But I don't see why we should let the talk pages be taken over by trolls William M. Connolley 08:41, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think deleting is the best way. Ignoring is better, but sometimes I cannot resist. He usually achives a muable level fairly soon. --Stephan Schulz 09:30, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Ignoring is best by far. Acknowledging them in any way (whether by replying or deleting) only encourages such people. Note that the same goes for CE. It's a little more of a challenge in the latter case, as CE is a smart guy (he self-identifies as an attorney) and can appear reasonable when it is in his interest to do so. Raymond Arritt 14:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your note on my Talk page

I do not agree with deleting text on Talk pages except on User Talk pages. Deleting text on article Talk pages is just another example of censorship. However, a User Talk page is different. Whenever I find a worthless post or insult on my page, it is a standing policy to delete it. I have found that most users have the same policy about their own Talk pages. After reminding William that he needs to abide by the WP:COI policy, Durova had asked that we shake hands and go back to writing an encyclopedia. I agreed to do that. Your post was not in the spirit of Durova's request, so I deleted it. I have behaved honorably (as I understood the rules at the time) throughout this entire episode. Regarding your request, my opinion is my own. It may or may not be accurate, but I cannot change it or apologize for it. I can, however, treat William with proper respect. I hope you and he are able to do the same to me. RonCram 00:26, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ron! Your opinon certainly is your own. I was hoping that facts might change it, though. A sudden influx of unknown voters may well appear suspicious to you, and you may form an opinion about what caused it. However, if this influx turns out to be completely common and innocent, it should lead you to reconsider your opinion. One form of showing respect is to retract unwarranted accusations. --Stephan Schulz 00:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

" may or may not be accurate, but I cannot change it" With all due respect, this seems like a counterproductive (and unscientific) strategy for everyone involved, regardless of the particular situation. --Nethgirb 00:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Stephan, I did not make unwarranted accusations. I merely responded in accordance with my suspicions. After I learned I had broken the rules, I explained my behavior to Durova. RonCram 01:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Ron, "Connelly has obviously invited many editors to vote on his nomination to delete the article" is not a statement of opinion, but a claim of fact. Similarly, "... made it obviously clear to me that you were contacting people to get them to vote your way..." is claiming recognition of a fact. "I am only stating the facts as I see them" - fine. But, as it turns out, they are not facts, but wrong. Acknowledging this would be the right thing to do. Not jumping to conclusions too fast would be a useful lesson learned. --Stephan Schulz 01:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I was not trying to get William penalized for the conclusions I drew from my observations, therefore I was not making an accusation. The only accusation I made was that William scoffed at WP:COI and Durova agreed with me. Regarding any other accusation, we will have to agree to disagree. RonCram 07:11, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we are speaking different languages now. I'm trying to use English. Since when does an accusation require a desire for formal penalties? And if you did not try to get William penalized - whether formaly or informally -, why did you make those observations in the first place? To make this more productive: Do you still maintain that William canvassed delete votes for Scientific data withholding? Or have you given up this claim? --Stephan Schulz 07:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

None of the statements you have made have given me cause to change my opinion. I will not argue the observations I made supporting my opinion as that is contrary to Durova's request. I hope that we can now drop this subject and go back to writing an encyclopedia. RonCram 08:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

About you voting at Einstein tallk page

Einstein was a "classical" German? I didn't know this- nor did he consider himself for being German and nor did many Germans knew he was a German , at least not from the ethnic view point (or it was only the Nazis-which according to you had ,back then , no relation to the German culture or to the most of the German people (which many of them whether having anti-semic views or not, don't consider the Jews to be from the same ethnic group, present speaking).until he came out with the theory of relativity. And its strange how you put Jews into categories (German-Jews). I think its only right to put this sentence :"German-born into a family of Jewish ancestry" in the introduction paragraph- instead of making a special clause for ethnicity-but you probably oppose it , even though "ethnicity" can sound racial , so if we want to have a compromise -it should based on this principle (i.e -mentioning this sentence in the open paragraph as some users suggested already) if you agree and can live with that-I would be happy to delete the "ethnicity". I cant see way would you oppose it when there are already 3 entries in the info box which related Einstein to Germany (and if so, why you even need to include German in the ethnic entry) .--Gilisa 07:23, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

He was a "classical German researcher" - please don't quote out of context. He was part of the German scientific establishement, with a state-sponsored plum position as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (how much more German can it become?) and a professor position without teaching obligations. The fact that National Socialism destroyed much science and culture in Germay does not erase this earlier state. And I have no problem with categorizing Jews or others - I do it all the time. Red-haired Jews, stupid Americans, nice chocolate.Much of my live is spend categorizing things. Why do you find this significant? --Stephan Schulz 07:38, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Look Stephan-If there is something that I don't like to do-is to quote out of the Context-so it wasn't on purpose , and I have no problem to apologize for it (just for your being sure-I do).

Thanks, it's appreciated!

any way-how his being a "classical German researcher" have to do with his ethnicity ?(now you see why I get it wrong?) .By the way , in the time of Einstein 40% of the professors at the German institutions were Jews-so it was a collaboration -rather then a totally German science (If there is such a thing as an ethnic science). And please don't categorize me as a red hair Jew, Just as a Jew (in your case , even though you might didn't like it-you probably have to refer me as Jewish of German-Jewish ancestry).--Gilisa 07:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Here is the crux. In contrast to you, I think people can be of mixed ethnicity, and that the major factor in determining ethnicity is upbringing and culture, not birth. If you look at Einstein's entry in the birth register, he is not listed as a Jew, and neither are his parents (they are described as "israelitischer Religion", i.e. the issue is reduced to religion). Most of the 40% of professors would be both Jews and Germans, and have no difficulty in accepting this dual description. And neither would Einstein, I believe, in particular, as he didn't consider ethnicity an important measure of people (neither do I, by the way).

I don't know the colour of your hair, and while I know you are a Jew, that is not a category I use a lot. I'd rather think of you as human.

Stephan....Actually I'm a red-hair (you could seen it on my user page...:)) Jew ...Any way , I can agree that an ethnic entry could seems complex to you , but for me it mostly regarding to ones historical origins (not necessary race- i.e. German and Swiss are many times from the same race but from different ethnic groups (even if sharing a lot of common aspects)- I assume/hope that you can agree with that that's what most of the people think of when they are reading it. As far as I know about the German civil registry - the race never mentioned in it until the Nazis came to power-but even now days it categorize ethnic groups (as it in almost any other country -for statistical reasons, tax calculations and etc-but today its not simply based on religion; open any Atlas you have and you will find a division for ethnic groups with in any given country), and saying that some-one is from Jewish religion was enough to categories him as "different" even if he later convert (did you heard about the term Christian-Jews?) or declared himself as an atheistic. soon after the Jews get there emancipation at 1870 the term "Anti-Semite" were coined in Germany to make the separation between Jews and Germans clear. Any way , I can totally agree with you the ethnicity said nothing about the person (Actually I know many truly German-Jews, there is Avery famous (at least for Israelis) village of ethnic Germans which many of them convert to Judaism near my living place) but it do have importance when it come to historical figures -I'm sure that you can understand it , and as it regards to Einstein he truly didn't consider ethnicity for much but still he saw himself as a son for the Jewish people .We can endlessly debate but if you would answer my question it will be easier : you wrote that you are willing to delete the ethnic clause -but what about the other part of the question- are you willing to put the sentence "German (scientist/born) (born into/into) a family of Jewish ancestry (or just Jewish family)" in the opening paragraph?-its really don't much and it is the most precise description (if you have your own suggestion or your own formulation for the intro paragraph-please let me know). --Gilisa 08:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

"German scientist born to a Jewish family" would be fine with me (and, I think, proper English). Does this acknowledge his jewishness enough for you? --Stephan Schulz 09:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Let me think on it for a while (I will answer it shortly -for now I have positive opinion about it but I want to be sure).Best Wishes--Gilisa 09:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

After I discussed your proposal, which at first I consider to be good ,and was actually one of the solutions that I asked you about , I get to a conclusion that it wouldn’t be better than the recent status quo for both sides and especially not for the people which use Misplaced Pages for knowing more about Einstein. This, for the following reasons:

Describing Einstein as a German scientist would be at least incomplete:

1.He had the lion's share of his education at the Swiss polytechnic , from the first degree to the PhD. (and , any way, the physics and mathematics he learned there was universal and not only or mostly German made).

2. He also had his famous "Annus Mirabilis" due his working at Swiss patents office.

3.Its true, how ever, that he published his works in a German Jouranl which was, back then , worlds physics No1 journal- but surely it have nothing to do with is being or not being a German scientist since it was , off course, an international journal, i.e –like Nature,The Royal Society Proccedings ,Science and many others.

4. The uniqeness of Einstein works, which actually made a new physics , cant be attributed to Germany nor to Swiss.Its a valid fact that without a stimulating enviroment Einstein revolution could been never happened , but still , no body can tell it for sure.And , any ways , any well devlepoed country back then could probably supplyed einstein with the right tools for being a famous physicst .

5. The "Annus Mirabilis" took place while Einstein had only Swiss citizenship- the German was already renounced at 1896.He returned to Germany (which he left when he was 16) and stayed there trhough 1914 to 1932 (18 years) , after he allready was a world known scientist.Later he left Germany and settle at USA , where he lived untill his death at 1955 (23 years) and had major contributions , like the EPR paradox.

Taking into account all the mentiond above , Einstein could probably best described as : "A German born Jewish and a(opetionaly American and) Swiss scientist ", and this is just too awkward formulation. Considering that the discussion about Einstein origins is allready last too long and have new participants , making new changes now will only gain with new problems . So, in second thought , its better to live the status quo as it is for now , even if not ideal. --Gilisa 08:54, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Dear Stephan, can you answer my suggestion-i.e. -mentioning Einstein as a "German (or even German scientist) -born ( into a family of Jewish ancestry" in the opening paragraph (and deleting the ethnic entry)?It would be very accurate and less controversial .And by the way , thanks for your last comment-but still, I realy do have a long way with my English (If you can even call it English rather than organize Gibberish).Best--Gilisa 07:54, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with having no ethnicity entry at all, especially for a person with such a complex biography as Einstein. But if we have one, it should be as accurate as possible.--Stephan Schulz 08:12, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• Deleting my comments:Ok ,Schulz -I delete it only because they have bad spelling and gramer (like most of my comments-as I said to one user:I have to take an english class) and because I dont think that they made the right messege I wanted to make-any way I also changed my last comment to you.--Gilisa 07:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I prefer "Stephan". Anyways, nobody objects to minor typographical or grammar changes. If they become relevant, it's customary to use strikeout (achieved via <s>strikeout</s> for corrections. --Stephan Schulz 07:38, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Einstein's uniqueness

This comment have nothing to do with the answer that I owe you (and will soon come). It comes to my knowledge that to define Einstein as a "classic German researcher" is inaccurate since he was a complete revolutionist not only with his own ideas about motion and space , but also in the way in which he came to this amazing insights .By the traditional European (especially German) establishment Einstein methods for proving the theories he made were considered as very unconventional ( i.e. Gedankenexperiments ) , he was later , at the late 20' and the early 30',accused by his German fellows for making a "Jewish physics " (which Einstein is considered, by them, to be the father of), and this claims came from some of the most prominent German scientists (see: Deutsche Physik ) .To assume that the Jews were only get influences but didn't influenced on the way of science making in Germany ,back then-is just don’t fit with the common sense. Even the Austrian philosopher (not a scientist) Ludwig Wittgenstein, which wasn’t a Jewish according to the Jewish religionus law and any ways came from a completle assimilated family , said that he was probably get influenced by the Jewish Talmud when some similarity between the logical structure of his works and the logical structure of the Talmud came to his knowledge.( see: The Jewish Heritage of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Its Influence on His Life and Work .Abramovitch and Prince ,Transcult(ure) Psychiatry .2006; 43: 533-553) So, saying that the Jews came to the world of science without having already their own way of thinking which was affected by their own culture ,to some extent , even if was neglected by at least some of them, is Just not true.

• For further reading about the German establishment reactions to Einstein's works you might enjoy the Einstein auto biography "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson.--Gilisa 17:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

"Jewish physics" was, essentually, a Nazi concept. "Deutsche Physik" was likewise, and it had little support among respected scientists (of course, many had left Germany by then, or had been removed from their positions). There is no question that there was a fruitful mixing between Jewish and other ideas wherever Jews were accepted in a society. This is particularly true of pre-Nazi Germany. But in my view this mixing became a property of German society, it was not a permanent outside influence. And you might want to rethink the auto part of the Einstein biography by Isaacson ;-).

Check out Gedankenexperiment. The term comes from Danish Hans Christian Ørsted and was refined by Austrian Ernst Mach. Of course Einstein was famous for the extensive use of thought experiments. But as far as I can make out, that was particular to Einstein, not to Jews. Einstein was very much an individual enigma. I don't think it is useful to assign his various traits to different isolated ethnic influences.--Stephan Schulz 17:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, this discussion is only for discussion (I can bring the coffee if you like).As I already admit countless times-my English isn't perfect :).Any ways , Jews were and still are prominent scientist, artists and etc in many different places and different periods , for my opinion, from the days of the first and second temple trough the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula and to this very days, and people like Gersonides (which is contribution is not well reviewed by Misplaced Pages) influenced the European thought long before Einstein. I'm very well aware for the "Deutsche Physik" was a nationalist concept-but still it can tell something about the extent of which the Jews affected the German way of thought (and vise versa) , even though , I do agree that among scientists racist views were significantly less prevalent (i.e. Max Planck,David Hilbert, Erwin Schrodinger and etc might be because of their mutual relations but not only).It might been , off course , that Einstein wasn’t the first one to use his mind for making experiments (we are all do) but the magnitude of thus experiments that been done by Einstein – have no equivalence (and if you are saying that Einstein is an enigma which have nothing to do with cultural influences –so how does the German history of him have something to do with his works apart from his high school formal education? do you think that it's all about his genes?). I don't understood way do you think that the Jewish achievements are the property of the German society-its sounds like you are saying that without the German culture they wouldn't take place and I don’t think so , in the same way that I don’t think that for Gauss (i.e not Jewish scientist) it would made any different if he were born at French for example -so, please explain me.--Gilisa 18:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I'm not claiming that "Jewish achievements are the property of the German society". I'm claiming that Jewish influences have become part of the German society (and vice versa - is Jiddish German property?). And I think that both Einstein and Gauss have been heavily influenced by their surroundings. Different cultural influences would have made them very different (and quite possibly unremarkable) people. But conversely, putting an arbitrary person (wether German, Jewish, neither or both) into Einstein's place would not have given us general relativity. And I usually prefer tea, please ;-) --Stephan Schulz 18:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Ummm...well , I can agree that had you put Einstein at a 4 world country (and there are such countries...) than we both would probably never heard about him.And as I'm now reading Marcus du Sautoy "The Music of the Primes: Searching to Solve the Greatest Mystery in Mathematics" I can also agree that Germany do had the right environment and was the right place for great minds-but not allways with big difference from other progressive countries of that time (mainly French and Brittan back then) and there are few astonishing examples , like this of Ramanujan which had no normal formal education and which lived until age of 26 (he died when he was 33) at a poor region of India .About Yiddish , well about 2 years ago I met a German student then study in Israel due a students exchange program , when she first heard this language she was amazed because she understand very much of it (but the accent and etc was strange for her) .For my understanding -Yiddish is not a property of the Germans , since it don't serve them nor do they want it to serve them. But evidently , Yiddish is mostly made of the German language -so , if one would tell me that this is a German property I would have hard time to claim against it. By the way , most of the Israeli higher education institutes were built upon the "German Model " at the Technion the lectures were originally given in German (you are a computer scientist , I assume that you know , at least by name, some counterparts in Israel).And regarding the tea , considering my bad English-lets compromise on a can of beer :)

Foiled again. My Germanicness has been diluted to a degree that I normally prefer wine, especially to canned beer. But Karlsruhe has a number of microbreweries for which I make the occasional exception. If you ever come here, I'll take you for a real beer ;-). --Stephan Schulz 09:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Largely

Misplaced Pages is not "largely an American undertaking". Even the English Misplaced Pages has significant non-American contributors.

For the most part; mainly; chiefly

I fail to see how pointing out a few non-American computer pioneers negates "largely". Perhaps you feel that Jimbo's project should not have any US leanings at all, that the English Misplaced Pages should not serve Anglo-American readers but must be (or is de facto) the International Misplaced Pages.

Indeed. At least that is the official position of Jimbo and the foundation. But you are mixing up a two things. Misplaced Pages is not "largely an American undertaking" because it has a very significant and valuable fraction of international contributors. Computers are not chiefly an American invention because many of the key inventions have been made in Europe. And "Anglo-American" is a red herring in this context, as the Anglos know just where Boston really is.

How many Americans don't know that Vienna is a European city? Must every article mentioning the politics or culture of Vienna be linked to Vienna, Italy? Are all non-Europeans so stupid not to recognize a major Italian city? (Just kidding, I knew it was in Switzerland all along. ;-) --Uncle Ed 15:06, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. That's why I said I agreed with the edit - Boston, Massachusetts is sufficient for all but the terminally stupid. But bad reasoning reaches a good conclusion only by accident, so it's worth pointing it out even in these rare cases. --Stephan Schulz 15:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Deutschland

I see you lived in Kaiserslautern a while. I used to live in Erfenbach. But I liked Schwäbisch Gmünd much more. --Blue Tie 01:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Were you there as part of the US armed forces? We used to get our burgers illegally from the on-base Burger King restaurant (which sported an extremely small sign that it was for US army members and dependents on the inside of the exit door - of course they liked the extra revenue ;-). --Stephan Schulz 06:48, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I had a job at Einsiedlerhoff and then later at Pirmasens. I had girlfriends at Ramstein and Landstuhl. I really liked Landstuhl -- there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken that sold beer -- something you never see here in the US and a little art shop that sold Dali paintings. Up on the hill in Landstuhl, out past the hospital and the housing area, there was this place in the woods that was amazing-- huge rocks, huge trees, in a huge valley. Little caves under the rocks. It was great -- like something out of a book. I used to hitchhike around. I remember often waiting for a ride out at Siegelbach and across the street there was a sort of hippie commune place. Well one day there was a police raid and bust. I remember watching the German cops picking these hippies up and throwing them on the ground, and then into the paddy wagon type van. Once the door got in the way and they threw a guy against that door. They just opened the door, picked him up and threw him in the truck. Merciless. --Blue Tie 07:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

RFCU

I didn't mean to start an argument with you. Sorry! I just made a comment on the RFCU but didn't know that it would start a debate.VK35 01:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem. As I read it, a "community ban" is one particular instance of a "community-based ban or block". Working around blocks is one of the most frequent sock uses, so I assume it has to have a recognizable category. --Stephan Schulz 07:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Kyoto Protocol

Moin, moin, Stephan. I didn't want to put this on the Kyoto talk page, since it might just add fuel to the fire. I find it sad (and harmful to Misplaced Pages) that some pages (including, apparently, all the pages that relate to global warming issues) have become, at least in part, blogsites where people with opposing agendas slug it out. I am quite reluctant to do any editing on those pages, since the desired end product, an informative NPOV article, is impossible. I am happy to edit pages on astronomy or theoretical computer science. Vegasprof 02:35, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You are right about the "slugging". Unfortunately, with the open model that is one of Misplaced Pages's strenght, this seems to be the only way to keep articles reasonably neutral.--Stephan Schulz 06:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I saw your post saying that all the POV complaints on the Kyoto page had been resolved. Thanks for checking this out. But, I still don't want to join that scuffle, at least not yet. It is clear to me that the primary motive of many of the people who edit there is to support their POV. This is especially clear when an editor removes material that has references but conflicts with his own POV. Since it is hopeless to expect this article to be written from NPOV, I believe that Misplaced Pages should tolerate having opposing POVs on the same page, clearly labeled as such if necessary. This would require that editors refrain from deleting material they don't like because it conflicts with their agenda. At present, that does not seem to be what's happening. BTW, the "global warming" related pages are not the only pages where this happens. It's a disease that can afflict any page where editors have conflicting viewpoints: typically, in politics, religion, and history. Vegasprof 10:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Request For Mediation

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On Global Warming and the Quat. Assn and 'few'

I have responded to your recent (generally excellent edit) here with one strong objection. I also would wordsmith your edit a slight bit, but otherwise I kinda liked your change. However, the word "few" I have a problem with. --Blue Tie 02:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for Mediation

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Saintrotter

Thanks for changing the offensive use of the nazi flag on User:Saintrotter's user page. I expect he will keep reverting edits, though. I'm keeping an eye on his pages and contributions. Parmesan 22:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I wouldn't usually edit other peoples user pages, but this is clear vandalism (if self-inflicted). --Stephan Schulz 22:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The Global Warmig Swindle on C4

I hope this is on the right place, I still haven't got the hange of talk-pages. When you said on my talk page about why not write "about" soemthing, I thought i'd be best to clarify. Our new GCSE Science form is 21st Century Science, which has come under alot of critiscism. Anyway, we have to look at the "ethics" of science and for the topic of the case study, we have to argue for and aganst a subject. I chose Abrupt climate change as it is a topic I know about. However, this is linked with Global Warming, with less ice melting, it wouldn't create it to happen. So, the end of my coursework is to question wether it is possible currently. There are arguments to say the ice is melting, thus slowing the thermohaline circulation, but if it isn't then it should go in. And that is the future of science! More like a RE/Moral issues class but there you go! Should you reply, please do so on on my talkpage. Thanks St91 16:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Answered at User talk:St91 as requested.--Stephan Schulz 16:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Citation auto-creater

Heya,

Just to let you know I've repaired the citation tool you were looking at yesterday!

Feel free to test drive it, and do let me know if you have any more problems with it!

Cheers, | Verisimilus T 12:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey, don't bite the newcomers!

Please! Assume good faith and let them be bold, and if they did some thing wrong, explain it to them. Cheers, ~ UBeR 19:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi UBeR. Thanks for the reminder, but what edit do you refer to? --Stephan Schulz 20:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

~ UBeR 21:24, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Global Warming Swindle

Excuse me, but I did not revert - Williams did. Twice. My next edit was an effort at compromise between the two - I even left his reference. And I see now that Williams reverted a second time. If I understand how 3RR works, if he does it again is HE in violation of 3RR?

Again, my second edit was nothing like my first and was an attempt at a compromise. I ask you to please look and see what I did. Williams seems to be steadfast against any changes to the paragraph. Is he against any compromise or is he really attached to his sentence? Because I feel that the passage exaggerates a minor point. And I don't appreciate his preemptive 3RR threat when I hadn't even made any changes - hell, I wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't made the notation on my Talk page. --Corwin8 20:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:3RR allows for three reverts within a 24 hour period, but no more. That doesn't mean, however, you should go around reverting three times day. When you find your material being reverted multiple times, it's best to bring the contentions to the talk page. ~ UBeR 21:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I did bring it to the talk page. Please see ]. Look at the differences between Williams' paragraph and mine. Exactly what is the problem? And *I* did not revert - Williams did, TWICE! --Corwin8 21:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

3RR is not a right, it's a hard upper limit. And your second edit is certainly a partial undoing of William's revert, i.e. a 3RR-revert. I've not had time to look these over in detail, but, indendend of this special case, please make sure you understand 3RR. Especially the global warming related articles are a bit of a minefield. --Stephan Schulz 22:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Three Revert Rule caution...

I've just blocked Rotten for 24 hours for violating the Three Revert Rule regarding his edits to the William Connolley article, but it's only fair that I point out that you are now at your three reverts as well; please be cautious.

Atlant 15:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Atlant! Thanks, I was aware of this case. I try to avoid edit warring, and WP:3RR problems in particular. However, in this case I would have claimed the WP:BLP exception to WP:3RR, as explained in WP:3RR#Exceptions. I'd be interested in hearing opinions on this, of course. --Stephan Schulz 15:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

Atlant 16:05, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

I just wanted to say 'thanks' for all the work you do on global warming. It's very much appreciated. R. Baley 10:07, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. It's nice to get positive feedback. --Stephan Schulz 13:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Orr et al. and ocean acidification

You reverted my edit in which I removed the reference of Orr et al. from the claim that pH is expected drop by .3 to .5 units by 2100. After skimming through their paper I could not find evidence of this claim made by Orr et al. I am wondering in which page then, since you claim they support that conclusion, they claim future pH levels could drop up to .5 units by 2100. Thanks. ~ UBeR 21:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi UBeR. Right on the first page they write "By the end of the century, it will become another 0.3–0.4 units lower undert he IS92a scenario.". C&W have 0.3-0.5, and the RoyalSoc has 0.5. So all three are compatible with the range we gave. --Stephan Schulz 21:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but I removed Orr because, in their paper, they do not support the higher range of .5. It might seem like quibbling over a .1 unit, but since we already have two independent sources stating .5, it's borderline redundancy to cite three, especially considering they don't support the given range. ~ UBeR 21:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

But then the RoyalSoc does not support 0.3 (at least not in the introduction). Orr's range is qualified by the emission scenario, so it does not contradict 0.5 either. But I'm not fanatical about it... --Stephan Schulz 22:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Point taken. However, if you're looking for the lower range, the IPCC only suggests "between 0.14 and 0.35 units over the 21st century." I think we only need two references there (the high and the low), not three. ~ UBeR 23:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

And oh yeah, Caldeira and Wickett already suggest the .3 to .5 range, "simulated SRES pathways produce global surface pH reductions of ∼0.3–0.5 units by year 2100," making the other two refs superfluous. But I think I will add the WGI SPM low of .14 and keep it with Caldeira and Wickett to represent the .5 range. Does this sound fine? ~ UBeR 00:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Eradicate C++ completely!

Boy, I'm on your side! While there's no question that Bjarne Stroustrup started out on the right course, his language got hijacked somewhere along the way and turned into a rubish tip of everyone's crackpot suggestions about everything. A friend of mine was on the ANSI standards committee that standardized C++ and he used to tell the joke:

"C++" is to "C"

as

"lung cancer" is to "lung"

C++ gave a license to kill to a lot of programmers who would have been only mostly harmless in their native Visual Basic/VBA environment.

Atlant 16:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of languages, but I only liked C, Scheme, and Python enough to do major projects in. I have the subtle feeling that I might like Haskel or OCaml if I spend some time with them. C++ is to C what Perl is to AWK - bloated beyond control. --Stephan Schulz 20:49, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I can reccommend OCaml highly. I use it for most of my projects. It's clean, expressive, and has a good set of libraries. --Nethgirb 03:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought so. My main projects, both commercial and scientific, are in C. It's unlikely that they will move soon, as there is to much sunk into them now. But I'll check OCaml out in my copious free time. I had a go at Pre-O Caml before I properly understood functional programming, and still liked it. --Stephan Schulz 03:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Closure of UCfD on Category:Wikipedians who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming

Hi Jc37,

while I agree that "no consensus" is a reasonable result by numbers, I am concerned about your reasoning, in particular: A remaining main concern is that it's essentially unfair to single out one support/critic category, and not the rest. So I think at this point, the next step, if someone is still interested, would be to nominate all the subcategories of Category:Wikipedians by political issue in one or more group nominations. To me, this looks very much like WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. --Stephan Schulz 11:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

The thing to remember is that WP:AADD and it's subheadings are just essays, not guidelines. So while they're fine for expressing opinion during a discussion (for space saving reasons, among other things), they aren't better or worse than any other reason. Also note that many of the sub-headings are more intended for AfD, and don't work as well for CfD or UCFD. This is one of those occasions. Since categories are often created as part of a "scheme", individual categories are often related and singling one out is often counter-productive.

And we've had more than a few of these types of categories nominated, and the comments at this one were typical of the lot, hence my closing comment. I think at this point, to discern a "true" consensus, we should stop looking at individual trees, and decide about the forest. Hope this helps clarify : ) - jc37 11:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the clarification. --Stephan Schulz 11:22, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I must admit, Stephan, I was surprised to see you listed here. You had me fooled all along :-) --Nethgirb 03:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Damned! The secret is out ;-). But indeed, I am, and my sceptical analysis of the evidence and the literature has lead me to accept the mainstream consensus as the most likely explanation.... --Stephan Schulz 03:30, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup tag - Riverboat

(Answered on talk:Riverboat - please keep the discussion in one place. Thanks. --Stephan Schulz 21:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC))

simultaneous comments

I hope that you will understand my almost simultaneous comments at the AFd on Connolley and the MfD on the FAQ as indicating a desire to be objective in the face of extreme difficulty on a subject where I feel very deeply.DGG 04:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

No problem. These are, in essence, unrelated isssues (except for people with a certain grudge), so it's reasonable that people come to different opinions. Yours on the FAQ is wrong, of course ;-). --Stephan Schulz 06:50, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Magical me

Thanks for ; FWIW I took myself off my watchlist so didn't know what was going on; I think its better that way William M. Connolley 09:02, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's probably wise. At least it was fast and relatively painless this time. --Stephan Schulz 09:38, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I should never have got involved with it at all. Still I leanrt something William M. Connolley 09:39, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

User Page

Hi Steve, Thanks for trolling my user talk page. I enjoyed it very much. --Britcom 13:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, thanks for returning the favour. And while my first remark was the result of exasperation, the second one was intended to be genuinely helpful.--Stephan Schulz 13:15, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

ADS-B

Hi Steve, You edited the ADS-B article to indicate that Europe has selected 1090ES as the single physical layer for ADS-B. Could you provide a reference/citation?

I've been trying to document assertions made in the article, and it appears that Sweden, at least, is still using VDL Mode 4. This according to various web pages by LFV. --Aarky 06:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct about Sweden. I was thinking about the future, Europe-wide deployment. The CASCADE trial, which is supposed to lead the way, uses only 1090ES for ADS-B, and as far as I know, this is where things are moving to.--Stephan Schulz 07:09, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Decay of the Hockey Stick

Steve, I have not only read the post from von Storch, I created an entry in Hockey stick controversy quoting portions of his post on Nature's blog. I also responded with my own post on Nature's blog but it seems they are censoring comments. So I posted it on ClimateAudit, where they do not censor comments. See comment #13. Just in case von Storch and Zorita did not see my post, I also emailed it to von Storch to get his comments. I know Zorita reads CA but do not know if he has seen this thread. I may email him as well. RonCram 13:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I decided to email Zorita and asked him to comment on the ClimateAudit thread. RonCram 14:02, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. Of course, CA is not a particularly useful venue, so he may just ignore it. I fully agree with von Storch that M&M should (try to) publish their criticism in a serious peer-reviwed venue, so that the wheat (if any) can be seperated from the chaff. --Stephan Schulz 14:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Zorita does post on CA on occasion, but he chose to reply to me by email rather than post his reply. Unfortunately, he did not really deal with the issues much. He seems to only want to address himself to peer reviewed literature. And I am not sure he has read all that M&M have published. BTW, the gatekeepers are at work again. Nature even withdrew their offer to let McIntyre post on the blog. McIntyre says his last time he submitted an article, one reviewer said his facts were all wrong and it should not be published. The second reviewer said the facts were all previously published and well known and so it should not be published. Naturally, the journal decided not to publish. The biggest problem is that CA has more credibility than most of the journals these days and is better read. The advantage the journals have is that is it easy to access. RonCram 18:45, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

"He seems to only want to address himself to peer reviewed literature." My, my, what a horrible thing. Raymond Arritt 18:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Raymond, the great thing about CA is that it is completely open. The peer review happens right in front of you. That is why it gets more than 20,000 hits a day. RonCram 19:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

That's quite a stretch. ~ UBeR 20:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

UBeR, I'm talking about ClimateAudit (CA), not RealClimate (RC) which is a PR site that does not allow open debate. The number and quality of scientists on CA is far greater than RC and they come from all different disciplines, backgrounds and camps. RonCram 22:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Ron, you are living in cloud-cuckoo-land. There is no more polite way of telling you this. CA has roughly zero scientific credibility. --Stephan Schulz 23:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, that is quite a comical comment since I see so many top scientists post there regularly from all different camps. I do not think you have spent enough time there if you still have that opinion. BTW, the one issue Zorita did address in his email to me was his comment to M&M 05 in GRL. He says they published a response in the same journal. I did not know that. I went back to ClimateAudit and McIntyre does show a reply as "Von Storch and Zorita, 2005, Comment on MM05." Unfortunately, the link to the response does not work. I am sure I tried to read it in the past but never could. Somehow I got the impression they never replied. I am eager to read it. Zorita did not address why he says McIntyre may be right about the bristlecone pine series but that no one has looked at it. NRC looked at it (at the request of Congress) and agreed that the bristlecone pine series is not a temperature proxy. So I am very confused by Zorita's comment on that. RonCram 23:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide a detailed quote about the Bristlecone issue? I searched the NRC report, and while they spend some time discussing potential and alleged problems, they seem to come to the conclusion that there is some risk, but that they can indeed be used. --Stephan Schulz 23:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I too think that Ron is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. However, he has made a testable assertion: I see so many top scientists post there regularly from all different camps. Lets have the names of 5, and refs to 3 posts each William M. Connolley 08:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, it appears von Storch and Zorita have not published a rejoinder to M&M after all. Zorita sent me a link to his publications and I find this:

H. von Storch and E. Zorita. Comment on "Hockey sticks, principal components and spurious significance" by S . McIntyre and R. McKitrick. Geophys. Research Letters, 32 L20701 (2005).

See also the response by McIntyre and McKitrick here.

But I do not find a rejoinder to M&M's response. I am forced to conclude that the Artificial Hockey Stick does apply in the case of Mann et al. RonCram 17:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Aha! That explains a lot of things. Try to get away from whoever forces you, or maybe call 911 if he or she is distracted. Seriously, though, "Huh?" --Stephan Schulz 17:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Was it that poorly written? :) Comments, responses and rejoinders in a "he said/he said" situation can be confusing. Let me try again. M&M published their comment on MBH98/99. VS/Z published a comment saying M&M were right in that the method Mann used would create an Artifical Hockey Stick (created from trendless red noise) in principle but it did not matter in this particular case. M&M published a response in GRL saying why it does apply in the case of MBH98/99. Those are the publications. I thought Zorita was claiming to have published a rejoinder to M&M, but they evidently have not. I am forced to conclude M&M are correct as they have the last word on the issue. RonCram 17:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Your belief that "having the last word" equates to "correct" explains a lot. Thanks. Raymond Arritt 18:01, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, you beat me to it. OK, here we go: M&M are clearly wrong. So now thats true William M. Connolley 18:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't always think the last word is correct, but I do here. I may address this issue more at a later time.RonCram 04:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, in response to your request for an exact quote from the NAS report, I did a little re-reading. It appears the NAS is saying the "strip bark" form of the bristlecone pine series should not be used and care should be given on the "full bark" form. While “strip-bark” samples should be avoided for temperature reconstructions, attention should also be paid to the confounding effects of anthropogenic nitrogen deposition (Vitousek et al. 1997), since the nutrient conditions of the soil determine wood growth response to increased atmospheric CO2 (Kostiainen et al. 2004). (page 52). Support for a direct CO2 influence on tree ring records extracted from “full-bark” trees is less conclusive. (page 51) Thank you for making me re-read this. I will be more careful in my statements. RonCram 17:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, I am under the impression Mann used (and the rest of the Hockey Team continue to use) the strip bark form of the bristlecone pine series that the NAS panel condemned. RonCram 04:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you!

Hi Stephan,

The photo of the Thermopolis specimen of Archaeopteryx looks great! Thank you very much for uploading the photos. Best wishes and happy editing, Firsfron of Ronchester 23:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Glad you like it. --Stephan Schulz 23:31, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Problematic editor

There's a guy (gal?) Dkowalski who is continually inserting blatantly POV (and grammatically dire) material at TGGWS. I've fixed some of the material but am concerned about 3RR. Maybe best to let him have his fun for a while? Raymond Arritt 00:43, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Several others have reverted him as well. Most of the redlinks go away after a short while, so it might be most economical to just watch him for a day or two. There seems to be more-or-less consensus that his edits so far have not been helpful. --Stephan Schulz 07:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Mediation

A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Misplaced Pages:Requests for mediation/John Christy, and indicate whether you agree or refuse to mediate. If you are unfamiliar with mediation, please refer to Misplaced Pages:Mediation. There are only seven days for everyone to agree, so please check as soon as possible. --Zeeboid 23:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Just a courtesy note to let you know I moved your decline summary to the talk page, with a link there. If this is a problem, or you have any questions about my actions, please feel free to ask on my talk page. I also substituted the above message, whilst I was here leaving this. Cheers, Daniel 06:11, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, fine with me. --Stephan Schulz 06:30, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Request for Mediation

A Request for Mediation to which you are a party was not accepted and has been delisted. You can find more information on the mediation subpage, Misplaced Pages:Requests for mediation/John Christy. For the Mediation Committee, ^demon This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to perform case management. If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

Thanks

Just wanted to drop a note to say that I appreciated your taking the time and effort to give a 3rd opinion on Talk:Shakti mantras. TheRingess (talk) 20:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad to be useful ;-). --Stephan Schulz 20:06, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanx.

I didn't want to thank you for the Reference Wikification tool you mentioned, until I had actually tried it. Now that I have, it is a real help. -- thanx, --Africangenesis 12:45, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, the real kudos go to User:Verisimilus. I only pointed out some bugs and gave him some use cases.--Stephan Schulz 20:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

THANK YOU

Thank you for responding to my comment about pluto as a binary planet and my title question--Cbennett0811 22:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

As I wrote above: I'm glad to be useful! --Stephan Schulz 22:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

vandalism

Please refrain making threats on my user page. --Britcom 14:49, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't, as everybody can check. And I object to the implied claim that I did. --Stephan Schulz 15:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

It always amazes me when people can't take a dose of their own medicine. I suppose you think you were being "fair". I disagree, I think your comment came across as snippy and seeming to defend the trollish behavior of Prince William. --Britcom 15:45, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Do be aware that spurious accusations of vandalism and trolling are frowned upon. Just some friendly advice before things escalate in a way not necessarily to your advantage. Raymond Arritt 15:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Exactly my point. Thanks Raymond. --Britcom 07:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Do you claim I have made "spurious accusations of vandalism and trolling"? If yes, can you point out where? If no, why do you create all this hot air here on my talk page? --Stephan Schulz 07:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Where did I lose you? You accused me of vandalism and trolling after I --Britcom 21:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

No, I did not. I still assume you talk about this edit, but I'll gladly check if you can provide any other diff where you feel I have made either accusation against you. I've made only about 40 edits so far in this months, as I was offline the first two weeks of June. My edits are easy to check.--Stephan Schulz 22:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Planet defnintion discussion

Well said! McKay 22:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I liked your answer so well that I nearly refrained from adding my points, though. --Stephan Schulz 22:49, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Volcanoes

Your version is better. There must have been some edit conflict that it didn't warn me about, possibly due to the change of header size William M. Connolley 21:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I assumed something like that (I edited the section and changed the header, which may have confused the DB).--Stephan Schulz 21:42, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Overdue for a mop

Please consider accepting this nomination, answering the questions, and adding it to the top of the RFA page. Dragons flight 05:32, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I just did. --Stephan Schulz 09:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

What alcoholics refer to as...

... a moment of clarity. "Big room with the blue roof".. Took me a minute but I got there :) Good luck with the RfA.. Deiz talk 14:31, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It's more or less standard hacker humor, a bit like the OUTSIDE THE ASYLUM sign in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Thanks for the thumbs up. --Stephan Schulz 15:33, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

NH/SH

Its not just ocean inertia (I was surprised to learn too). There is quite a lot of land-is-dry-ocean-is-wet in there too (hence land can only cool by sensible not latent heat). See Rowan Sutton somewhere William M. Connolley 15:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Once you got your nose rubbed into it, it becomes blindingly obvious! Thanks for pointing it out. --Stephan Schulz 15:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Junk Science at Steven Milloy

Congratulations, your RfA was successful

Congratulations, your RfA was successful and you are now a sysop! Good luck. --Deskana (talk) 13:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a good day for Misplaced Pages! Congratulations. Raymond Arritt 14:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Nice going. Deiz talk 14:20, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Congrats, and btw: You may want to archive your talk page as there's probably going to be even more incoming traffic now that you're a sysop. —AldeBaer (c) 14:42, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to the mop club - enjoy. Vsmith 15:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot to all of you! My head feels bigger already! ;-) --Stephan Schulz 15:53, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

May I add my congrats to that above. At your age too... --BozMo talk 18:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

:-) Another sysop emerges from the global warming field of death. Dragons flight 20:31, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Congrats you are ready to procede Rktect 17:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yep, and amazingly quite it was! Thanks for the nomination! --Stephan Schulz 20:38, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Congratulations! — Slade (TheJoker) 21:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Environmental Record Task Force

Dear Stephan,
Thanks for your input on the climate change denial dispute. I hope you will consider signing up with a task force several editors have recently started.

You are being recruited by the Environmental Record Task Force, a collaborative project committed to accurately and consistently representing the environmental impact of policymakers, corporations, and institutions throughout the encyclopedia. Join us!

Warm regards, Cyrusc 01:53, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The Zen Garden Award

I hereby present you with The Zen Garden Award for Infinite Patience for discussing Holocaust denial in a calm, rational, civil and good-humoured manner in the face of severe provocation ;) EyeSerene 19:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)