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Hello, everyone! Welcome to my talk page!

I want to thank you again for your kind an intelligent response to my posts. The main reason I am writing a note here, however, is to share with you that I found the experience of attempting to share ideas on the astrology topic extraordinarily disappointing. It is obvious from the statements of 2 editors that (a) there was an a priori assumption that anyone interested in testing astrology had minimal critical thinking skills, education, and technical competency, and ironically they talk about confirmation bias!!! (b) they clearly had little understanding of the topics which they were addressing and I doubt either one of them even knows what a structural equation model, support vector machine, etc. are, (c) many of the assumptions could be demonstrated to be incorrect. For example, one of the studies was conducted by the chair of the psych dept at a community college, data analyzed by me and paper written by me and overseenn and critiqued by the chair of the Research and Evaluation Methodology dept at UF and s published full-time professor of sociology at UF. These professors found the research to be extremely well designed and executed. To be insulted, denigrated, and evaluated by individuals who have far less competency in research methods than I do was shocking. I have corresponded with distinguished professors of physics and research methods and statistics and have received great appreciation and support for the work. However, I was treated with disrespect and extraordinary supercilious haughtiness. I do not wish to defend myself or argue these points. This is not a matter of my being overly sensitive or delusional. I am sharing this only in the hope that it will be helpful. I am not wealthy but one year I donated to wikipedia during the holiday seasons because I thought it was the most worthwhile service I could think of donating to. Never again. That one person is disappointed in wikipedia is not important. What is important is that people hiding behind aliases with no biographical information and hurling verbal missiles from their protected bunkers is childish, unethical, and damaging to the good intentions of wikipedia. Misplaced Pages is one of the most wonderful experiments in the dissemination of knowledge. As with any large enterprise, there are always some weak areas. I am pointing an extremely weak area in hopes that it may inspire some corrective measures. As for myself, I will not be participating in the future as an editor of wikipedia. Thre is no point in engaging in discussions with individuals of lesser technical expertise who ignorantly and maliciously attack and insult others who are more competent in the subject than they are. Some dogs should be caged and quarantined from humanity. DavidCochrane100 (talk) 12:25, 18 April 2014 (UTC) DavidCochrane100

PS, here is a link to a paper in one of the leading journals in SEM. I am 3rd author: http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ921797 To be told that I am using buzzwords, etc. is not true. I am just underscoring the point of how extreme the mistreatment of others in these discussions is. The issue here is not personal and I don't need apologies. The issue is that a few bad apples spoil the entire barrel and the wikipedia enterprise is seriously threatened by these bad apples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidCochrane100 (talk • contribs) 13:00, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) woof woof -Roxy the dog (resonate) 18:52, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Lift (force)

Hi Mr S. You may have missed this comment about the current state of our article on Lift. Dolphin (t) 08:08, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I did see it, but thought you adequately responded so I didn't feel I had much to add. I do think he has a point in that the article quickly transistions from "lift" to "lift on an airfoil" with little to say about bluff bodies or objects such as kites where the drag is much higher than the lift. But that's probably just a reflection of the ratio of published literature so I don't think it's misleading.

The bulk of the material could probably be moved from the lift article to the airfoil article with no real loss of logical organization. As a sailor, I might even prefer that since "litt" and "drag" are just constructs based on a choice of co-ordinate system; many technical books on sailing choose the coordinate system to be parallel and perpendicular to the boat instead of the wind and talk about "drive" and "heel" instead of "lift" and "drag". It's the same physics, but "lift" isn't the main object of study. I'm not going to advocate for such a move, but won't object if someone else does.

If he continues the discussion I'll probably chime in, but I'm happy to leave the discussion as it stands for now. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 11:49, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Lift (force)

Hello Mr Swordfish.

I would like to discuss with you about the following statement: "However, when an aircraft is climbing, descending, or banking in a turn the lift is tilted with respect to the vertical."

I guess that during climb or descent, lift still opposes the sole gravity force, therefore the lift doesn't change significantly its orientation with respect to the vertical. For sure climb/descent tilts the air coordinates system but not the orientation of the lift w.r.t. the vertical.

What do you think to reword in this way: "However, when an aircraft is banking in a turn the lift is tilted with respect to the vertical." --Piafheleco (talk) 18:53, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

The usual way to analyze aerodynamics problems is to use a co-ordinate system that is parallel and perpendicular to the oncoming air. Lift and drag are defined as the components of the total aerodynamic force in that coordinate system, so if the co-ordinate system is tilted (as it is whenever the plane is climbing or descending), the lift is tilted as well.

Really, this is just splitting hairs over definitions. The total aerodynamic force vector is still pretty much the same, we've just changed our frame of reference. There is still a vertical force, it's just that strictly speaking given the precise definition of lift, the lift is no longer vertical. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 20:04, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

General cleanup

Thank you for your post about The Volokh Conspiracy. I did not know that this is not a regular news blog. I'm sure that I am not the only one. I wonder if after the brew-ha-ha dies down, if we should check to see if this source is being used properly. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:36, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Frustrated

Please tell me how I could word the request at Misplaced Pages:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Weekly_Standard_redux better. I tried to make clear, more than once, that the question is about the status of TWS as an RS, not a discussion of the opinion piece. I mentioned the opinion piece, carefully called it a "side issue" and emphasized that the goal of this post was to ascertain community opinion on TWS as an RS. I don't want to address it another day, I want to address it today.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:26, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I struck out the side issue, as that may have led to a problem. I urge you to redact your discussion of the side issue, so subsequent readers will concentrate on the main issue.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:29, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

S Philbrick,

My understanding is that the RS notice board only deals with specific instances of source X being used in article Y to establish Z. Without a specific instance, there's no context so it's difficult to make a call. So I don't know that they will make an up or down ruling on the Weekly Standard's status in general. It's not what they do. At least that's my understanding.

I commented on the case at hand, because that's what I think we're supposed to do there.

Perhaps you could find an example of an article using a non-opinion piece from the Weekly Standard as a source and file a new request using that as an example. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:44, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. Many of the discussions in the past have made general conclusions about a source, not just a determination about a specific citation in a specific article. However, the instructions imply what you just said, so I guess all those other conclusion were ignoring the instructions.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:52, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Half Barnstar
	For your work with Dirtlawyer1 on loosing the Gordian Knot at the Federalist discussion. LHM 19:06, 14 October 2014 (UTC)