User talk:Lethe/archive2

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Gstaad

I'm just answering your Gstaad question here in case you don't see it on the Talk:Gstaad page. You pronounce it as "Shtaad." I used to live in Gstaad, actually, and that's how everyone is supposed to say it. -—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.164.6.99 (talk • contribs)

TFD: Linkimage

Hi there, you voted to provide the image Image:Autofellatio 2.jpg at autofellatio inline rather than link to it. The template used to make the link is now up for deletion, please see Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Linkimage... Mikkerpikker 15:32, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Admin?

Hi Lethe. You've been around for more than two years, have 3897 edits, started a new project, Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics, are an involved participant on the math wikiproject, active on votes for deletion, are an all-around nice guy, and on top of it all are from Wisconsin! What more do we need? How about candidating for admin? I would be more than happy to nomiate you. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:29, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Oleg. Sure, I'd like to be an admin, although the popularity contest that is RfA sounds a little scary. But you made it through unscathed, right? -lethe ^talk 05:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Great! See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Lethe. You should formally accept the nomination, answer the questions, and post it at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. Also fix there the ending time to be one week since you post the nomination. Good luck! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:51, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

RE:My RFA

Can't support someone who's self-nominated twice in a week. -lethe talk 09:05, 24 January 2006 (UTC) Should of mentioned I stopped the firest RFA and it was my 15th day aprox of making edits I was new I should not of been running for adminship but you should try to look at how I have improved and read Please do not bite the newcomers Also it was not twice in a week) --Adam1213 Talk + 09:45, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

It is a good thing that I did not this may let you vote support! I was new to wikipedia and stuffed up and wikipedia policy Please do not bite the newcomers should contribute to a reason not to hold those two RFAs against me --Adam1213 Talk + 09:49, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

More admin questions

See them at the bottom of your nomination. In case you did not notice them, might be a good idea to answer them sometime later. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:03, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

So...

I asked about this particular space on the reference desk and you came with Image:3d_square_root.jpg this plotting, which is exactly what I meant. What's the name of this space? And also, where and how did you plot this? ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 00:30, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

This space probably doesn't have a name, because it's not very commonly used. Usually, people consider real-valued functions of a real variable (whose graphs live in R²), or complex-valued functions of a complex variable (whose graphs live in C²). Since C² is 4 dimensional, you can't graph those so easily.

But what you want to consider is complex-valued functions of a real variable. Anyway, the graph of any map f: A → B always lives in A×B, so you can just call the space R×C if you want. Uncommon, but not really any different from the more usual cases. I graphed it by entering the parametric equation

${\begin{bmatrix}x\\y\\z\end{bmatrix}}={\begin{bmatrix}t\\\Re [f(t)]\\\Im [f(t)]\end{bmatrix}}$

so that the real part of f was graphed on the y-axis and the imaginary part of f went along the z-axis. The program I used is called Grapher for Mac OS X. A very nice program, easy to use, but for some reason, it gave me some very ugly colors for that graph, especially after the JPEG conversion. I should have changed them.

I see, makes sense. Unfortunetly I don't use a mac so I can't use that program, but that parametric should work anywhere else. :) ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 02:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

By the way, you're the guy who once asked about doing Fourier series with square waves, right? I had once intended to follow up with you about that, because I thought it was an interesting question. But I think I inadvertently closed the browser with my reply on your talk page before I finished it. I did try the calculation at some point, but it didn't work for me. I had some thoughts, I wonder if I still remember what they are. -lethe ^talk 01:18, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that was me. In the end a simple lowpass filter gave me an excellent approximation, but I still wonder if t would be possible to approximate the sine with different methods. ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 02:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's a graph of f(t) = e^it

-lethe ^talk 01:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

That's very interesting. This is why I wanted to plot this space, it seemed really interesting. ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 02:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

sig?

Soo .. why are you running around, changing your sig? I don't get it .. linas 16:34, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I asked the same question earlier, the answer should be buried in Lethe's talk archive somewhere. I believe Lethe is doing that to avoid working on more serious things, like writing some good math article. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:08, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Succesful RfA!

Thank you for your support during my RfA! The community has decided to make me an administrator, and there's work to be done. I look forward to seeing you around the project in the future, and if you see me do anything dumb, let me know right away! Regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 23:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

second order ZF

Hi Randall-

I was on Trovatore's talk page for some other questions, and your conversation with him about whether Morse-Kelley set theory was a second order language or not caught my eye. I noticed you mentioning second order ZF, and I am curious about what that is. Through your comments, I gather it's a second order logic with sets and classes, or something like that? I looked for it under Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, but of course there's no mention. And about languages versus logics, second order logical language redirects to second order logic. The article doesn't talk about any distinction. hmm... -lethe ^talk 09:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This is ZF with logic of second order instead of first: this means that there is a second sort of variable representing general collections of objects of the base sort (collections of sets, i.e. classes) or alternatively predicates of sets (amounting effectively to the same thing). The schemes of separation and replacement are then replaced by single axioms in the obvious way. The resulting theory is formally similar to Morse-Kelley set theory but its semantics are different because of the different way that semantics of second-order logic are treated (a model of second-order ZF must have its universe of classes equal to the true power set of its universe of sets; this will not be true of all models of the first-order MK theory. This may all be as clear as mud, of course... Randall Holmes 13:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

hey

hey lethe... just wanted to say i'm glad you're active. call me sometime. -lmd —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 147.226.204.11 (talk • contribs) ., —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 147.226.206.104 (talk • contribs) ., —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 147.226.204.182 (talk • contribs) .

Congratulations!

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia 08:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Congrats! It would appear you made through the "popularity contest" unscathed :) -- Fropuff 15:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Congratulations!

What is that message below by the way? If that's a joke, I did not get it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I think some renegade admin was going on a blocking spree last night :-) -lethe ^{talk +} 23:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

good stuff mate Dmharvey 07:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Dmharvey, I don't get your comment either. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:54, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Oops, must stop speaking Strine among foreigners.... I meant "congratulations" Dmharvey 16:37, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

yup! Paul August ☎ 17:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I blocked you

because you're a jerk —The preceding silly unsigned comment was added by drunk lethe (talk • contribs) .

Force TeX (was:feeble wikipedia style)

I don't understand what's going on with this diff. Is the \quad there to force PNG rendering? I have rendering always on, so I don't notice that, but isn't the standard way of doing that to use \,? doesn't \quad put in a lot of whitespace that makes the PNG bigger than it needs to be? -lethe ^{talk +} 22:47, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The whitespace at the end is automatically trimmed so it doesn't really matter, but the "house style" has been to use \, to force PNG rather than \quad. But either works. -- Fropuff 23:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I suppose you're right. But it seems strange to have some formulas rendered and others not. So I have the habit of always forcing TeX by putting something like \quad. Maybe it does put in more whitespace at the end.

BTW what's the previous remark all about? --CSTAR 23:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree about having some formulas render PNG but not other. Or at least I would agree if I didn't have my preferences set to "always render". It's just that I didn't recognize that's what the modification was for since the summary wasn't clear, and the normal way of accomplishing this is \,. Anyway, whatever.

The previous comment was made by some newly-elected jerk admin who was trying out the block feature. You have to be careful with that, even after you unblock yourself, your IP gets autoblocked! -lethe ^{talk +} 23:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Heh, give the guy a gun and he shoots his eye out :) -- Fropuff 23:36, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The "house style" I use adds no space, because "\,\!" forces PNG with equal positive and negative space cancelling. It is suggested on the Help:Formula page. --KSmrq^T 00:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Zzzz

Thanks to you, I can catch some sleep. This afternoon, I made a note to fix matrix calculus, and when I finally got around it late at night, I couldn't see quite what I wanted to change. A look at the history made it clear what happened. Thank you! -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 23:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

PS: Congrats with surviving the tar pit. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 23:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, after sleeping over it, I'm having some concerns about the article, as explained on Talk:Matrix calculus. Don't get me wrong, I am still very grateful for your work on it, but now I see it more as work in progress than as finished product. I trust that you won't mind and I'm confident that you agree that correctness is more important than protecting your ego :) See you, Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Sig

What's up with that? Just curious ---CH 05:53, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

CH, congratulations! You are the fourth person to ask the same thing! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

My RFA

Hi Lethe/archive2, thanks for participating in my RfA discussion. Unfortunately, my fellow Wikipedians have decided at this time that I am not suitable to take on this additional responsibility, as the RfA failed with a result of 66/27/5 (71.0% support). If you voted in support of my request, thank you! If you decided to oppose me at this time, then I hope that if I do choose to reapply in the future, the effort I will make in the meantime to improve and expand my contributions to Wikipedia may persuade you to reconsider your position. All the best, Proto t c 15:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Your comments on Hilbert space

I enthusiastically agree with your comments in the Talk:Hilbert space page. For me it is discouraging to see technically accurate material being replaced with meaningless verbiage in the guise of accessibility. Accessibility is definitely one of the two main goals of articles, the other being of course accuracy. Specific comments about why something fails to be comprehensible, or at least what segments require improvement, are very helpful. However, putting in more words doesn't necessarilly make articles better. As examples, please look at some edits in Heisenberg uncertainty principle (User:ScienceApologist made a valiant effort at undoing these horrible edits, see his comments on talk page but didn't go far enough) or wavefunction.

BTW my motto about exposition has always been "Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno". I learned that from my spanish Jesuit mentors in secondary school. The first thing I did of course, was cut out God from all my explanations.--CSTAR 17:42, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Here are my views on the issue. First and foremost, the article has to be correct. Even if an article is badly written, badly organized, incomplete, totally inaccessible, NPOV and without sources, if the formulas are correct, then it serves a useful purpose. And conversely, no matter how well-wrttten it is, if the information is incorrect, it's not only not useful, it's damaging. Probably everyone will agree with that. It's how to order the rest of the necessary features where people disagree. I personally like to see complete and general coverage. We're an encyclopedia, so our main job is to present all the information we can get our hands on, not to replace textbooks and college educations (for which, see wikibooks and wikiuniversity). Nevertheless, accessibility is desirable, so my motto is: every article should be made as accessible as possible, but not more so. So for example, Calabi-Yau space can't be made into a useful article to the a high school student and still be a useful encyclopedia article. I think most of the math people here feel the same way, at least to some extent (I know some people place accessibility higher than I do, but we all admit it has limitations).

For another fun example of what happens when nontechnical users decide to reduce the level of an article, you might peruse the history of Boolean algebra, and the arguments on the talk page which stretch back into the archive. It seems that well-meaning editors can at best make an article sprawling and rambling in an attempt to give layman's explanations of every prerequisite concept, and at worst make an article incorrect. The folks responsible for the decline of that article started a wikipedia project to coordinate efforts to increase the accessibility of technical articles. I briefly toyed with the idea of starting a counter-project, Wikipedia:WikiProject Technical Audience or something, but that would probably be pretty useless or even counterproductive. While theirs is a noble goal, I find many of their efforts to be misguided. Some people like to just air vague complaints on the talk page, some people like to re-write the article with 4 sentences for every prereq, some like to just slap a Template:technical on there without any regard to how appropriate it is, how accessible the ideal article on that topic could actually be. But as far as I can tell, the best way to attack the problem is for the non-technical reader to post detailed explanations of where and how the article lost them (this is sometimes hard for the expert to gauge), and engage in a constructive conversation with the experts who can see the bigger picture on how to phrase things. I consider my recent interaction at talk:sigma algebra a good example of how that should work.

I could ramble on all day about this topic. Let me just say that when it gets frustrating, remember that you're the expert, so be assertive. Remember that there are other people who want to fight the word diarrhea. And remember my motto "as accessible as possible, but not more so", and yours (I had Spanish in high school, I think it says "the good, if short, is twice as good" Conciseness is also a virtue!) And thanks for the encouragement! I didn't think the article Hilbert space really needed improvement, but I made an attempt anyway. For obvious reasons, Hilbert space attracts a lot more attention from nonexperts than, say, Fréchet space, so it's probably good for the former to have an easier introduction (though it wouldn't bother me if it didn't, but I capitulate to the masses when necessary). Cheers! -lethe ^{talk +} 20:24, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Better translation I think: The good, if brief, twice good. Supposedly due to Baltasar Gracian, (1601-1658) himself a jesuit, although I have never seen a specific reference.--CSTAR 20:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

See also Talk:Many-worlds interpretation.--CSTAR 20:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

See my quickie at talk:Calabi-Yau manifold. An example of just slapping on a technical tag without a word, without any effort or thought as to whether an article can be improved or how to do so. -lethe ^{talk +} 02:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Well someone is making strange claims about what my points were in Talk:Many-worlds interpretation, for example suggesting I was implicitly advocating removal from Wikipedia of claims that Biological entities such DNA or cells are real, going so far as to relate this to the Jesuits, in reference I suppose to the current conversation, where the fact I went to a Jesuit high school is mentioned. One way of looking at MWI is as a disintegration of a completely positive map, representing it as a path integral (mentioned in some way in the article). Making any claim that this requires asserting the constructs are real is mystifying and unnecessary in a physics article. That was my whole point. The intro is now a mess, unfortunately. --CSTAR 03:35, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I definitely agree that the intro needs work. Let's see if we can't do something about it! -lethe ^{talk +} 08:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

RfA

Hey, don't be sorry for doing what you think is right! We should always be able to voice dissent in a civil way without personalising, and it would be hard for me to deny I'm controversial. No harm, no foul.
brenneman^(t)(c) 06:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I have answered your questions at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Guanaco4. —Guanaco 04:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Don't

throw away your calculations on the parallel transport in a space with Schwarzschild metric. I havn't forgotten or lost interest, I just need more time. Thanks again. The Infidel 21:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

MWI

I think some more work on MWI is needed. First, I don't like to use the phrase "rejects wavefunction collapse". That's minor.

Please read the whole article; I think it's too long and too wordy, though I contributed most of the mathematical stuff on CP maps. That can stay, I think. But some of th etext may be redundnant. Als the section on Axiomatics, contributed by someone else (no mention) is basically correct but is somewhat misleading also, since it should say that it refers to particular axiomatic formulations of QM. We can talk more about later.

Also missing is what sometimes is refered to as the "basis problem": selecting some factorization UNIVERSE = SUBSYSTEM \otimes ENVIRONMENT, since this is not canonical. --CSTAR 03:36, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

Hello Lethe, thank you for you support in my RfA. I was promoted with a final count of 48/1/0! If you see me making any mistakes, let me know ASAP. -- WB 02:32, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Help needed

on the article metric tensor. Unfortunately, the minkowsi "metric" is mentioned in the section of examples. I had added a badly worded warning that distances could be negative (I was thinking of a metric as with d(x,y) := x^* A y ) and now people there apply the formula for the length of a curve literally and unmodified to state the length could be imaginary. I know that's nonsense, but I don't know how a length really is defined for a "metric" which is not positive semidefinite. (That's horrible in any way I can think of it.) Please have a look. Thanks. The Infidel 19:14, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Formal calculation, differential equations

Hi lethe,

I've replied to your comment about formal calculation. Also, since you have mysteriously vanished off the face of the RefDesk, I'd be grateful if you take a look at a question I have posted there. Thanks. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 09:30, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... I seem to have not only mysteriously disappeared from RD, but from the entire face of the internet altogether! Don't worry though, I'll be back soon. -lethe ^{talk +} 01:18, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

your question about limits

Hi lethe,

A while back I saw a question on your user page: "Is there a way that you can interpret the limit of a sequence in a topological space as a limit of some appropriate functor between some categories?" and I thought to myself now there's a question that I wish I had asked. A few times I've sat down to think about it. Tonight I sat down and thought much harder about it, and I've decided there's something really wrong with the question, and I'm not sure how to fix it, but I'd really love to know what the question should be.

The problem is that there are really stupid solutions. Here's an example. Given a (hausdorff!) topological space X, and a sequence $\{x_{i}\}_{i}\,$. Let S be the set of limit points of the sequence. (So the sequence has a limit iff S contains precisely one point.) I'm going to define a poset structure on X. I'll say that x => y if either x = y, or if x ≠ y and x is in S and y is not in S. In other words, points in S totally beat points not in S, but distinct points in S are incomparable. Then observe that: S contains a unique point <=> this poset contains a maximal element <=> the corresponding poset category C has a final (initial?) object <=> the functor F : J -> C, where J is the empty category, has a limit.

Now I don't think is what you had in mind. I mean, it's pretty close to just "cooking up" a category and functor based on what we know the answer should be. Part of the problem is that this construction allows the category C to depend on the sequence chosen (although the functor doesn't depend on the sequence, in a certain sense).

How can this be resolved? Presumably we would want that the neither the category nor the functor depends on the sequence chosen. But then how do we feed the data of the sequence into the machinery? Dmharvey 01:48, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I thought this question was solved by Cartan eons ago by the introduction of filters. The categories are just inclusion categories between filters; moreover, to each point asociate the neighborhood filter. The category is the folloiwng pretty trivial one: there is a map F --> F' iff F is a subfilter of F'. Not quite the same question, but I think the only reasonable answer. Filters are too Bourbakiish--CSTAR 02:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

hi CSTAR, it's nice to see you're back, after the recent, ahem, conflagration. I'm not totally sure I understand your response. I've now read a bit about filters (I was familiar with nets before, which apparently are equivalent, but wasn't familiar with filters), but I can't quite see what the functor should be that Lethe wants to take the limit of. Is the neighbourhood filter of the candidate limit point supposed to be a terminal object or something? Dmharvey 03:13, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Is the neighbourhood filter of the candidate limit point supposed to be a terminal object Exactly. --CSTAR 03:44, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

PS -- Not that this is useful for much, in my opinion.--CSTAR 03:46, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Alternatively, maybe consider the "identity sheaf" on a topological space I:V \rigtarrow V.. Points in the toplogical space can be considered as inverse limit objects (this sounds a little vague, but it can be made precise).--CSTAR 03:55, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Still confused. Suppose I hand you a space X and a sequence (or net) {x_i}. Is the category supposed to be the category whose objects are neighbourhood filters of points in the sequence/net, or are the objects supposed to be neighbourhood filters of every point in X? In the first case I don't see where the limit point comes from; in the second case I don't see how the information about the sequence/net is encoded. Or am I missing the point entirely? (And no, it's not useful for much --- my interest is essentially in understanding the etymology of "limit (category theory)" a bit better.) Dmharvey 04:14, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I did say Not quite the same question, but I think the only reasonable answer. That is, my response doesn't answer that question of yours, but a dfifferent, related question. My suggestion was, that the question answered by my answer, might be the only reasonable one to ask. --CSTAR 04:37, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough! Dmharvey 12:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Here are my thoughts on the matter: given a subset of any poset, the supremum of that subset is the limit of the inclusion functor (the inclusion map viewed as a functor between poset categories). Every sequence (or net) determines a filter base of sets like {x_a|a≥b}. A filter is a poset under reverse inclusion, whose supremum is the (set containing the) limit of the sequence (a singleton if the space is Hausdorff). So the limit of a filter can be the limit of the inclusion functor into, say, the powerset of the space, or maybe the topology (as posets under inclusion) of the space would be more natural. But how do we view the net as a category? Maybe identify the net with its index directed set? -lethe ^{talk +} 21:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Abstract nonsense

Hi Lethe! Thanks for your note, I really do appreciate the follow up. I'm trying to do some cursory searching on my own about the nine lemma too. In your mathematical travels, if you do come across applications of it, do let me know :-) --HappyCamper 12:54, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Will do. -lethe ^{talk +} 19:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Caroline Thompson

I noticed you tagged Caroline Thompson as dead. Is this indeed true? Эйрон Кинни (t) 03:45, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's true. Was she a friend of yours? -lethe ^{talk +} 05:24, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Gosh, was she so old? Where do you get that kind of information anyway? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:04, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Sure, she was old. In her 60s, if I recall. I have the impression that a lot of anti-relativity and anti-quantum mechanics crusaders are of an older generation. Certainly all the ones I have met have been senior citizens. I wonder why that is. Anyway, if you (and Kinneyboy) would like to know where I got my information or verify, it shouldn't be too hard to find. Start with the userpage. -lethe ^{talk +} 06:52, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

She was in her 70's if I remember correctly. I read her own lifestory, on one of her blogs. It is worth reading again I suppose. --CSTAR 14:12, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Correction: She was 63. See [1].--CSTAR 18:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Etymology of "scalar"

You wrote in scalar (mathematics): "This action [i.e., scalar multiplication] scales the vector, stretching it out or shrinking it down, whence the name scalar." (diff). However, this seems to be in contradiction with the explanation offered under Scalar (mathematics)#Etymology. Could you please clarify? Thanks, Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any contradiction between the explanations: scalars are things that scale. The action of a scalar is to scale. But we don't need it in two places, I didn't realize it had its own section, so I've removed the comment. -lethe ^{talk +} 00:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

My problem was whether the word "scalar" comes from the noun "scale" (a range of numbers) or the verb "scale" (to make bigger or smaller). But I now think this is a bit silly, as the noun and the verb are certainly related. Anyway, the issue is resolved. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we should dig up Sir W. R. Hamilton and ask him what he meant. He was adept with languages, not just mathematics and physics, and gave us "quaternion", "vector", and "scalar" with essentially their modern meanings. A quaternion is, of course, just a foursome. A vector is related to the idea of translation, ferrying from one place to another. And a scalar is a linear continuum, a ladder, in etymology. In English we can speak of "scaling" a wall, meaning climb up it, and this is the sense of scaling originally invoked. At least, that's my reading of the history (and of the Oxford English Dictionary, a highly reliable source for etymology). --KSmrq^T 03:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Something for you

For your extraordinary contributions to Wikipedia reference desks, I award you this E=MC² Barnstar. Keep up the good work! deeptrivia (talk) 05:25, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Help page

I noticed the box you placed on the Help Menu page. I've folded its contents into the Menu, as Asking Questions, and removed the box from the menu page. If you have any questions, please drop me a note. --Go for it! 20:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The help page now has a sentence right at the top above the menu directing users to the Where to ask questions section, which includes the Desks. The Where to ask questions page is also accessible from the Main Page and the browse bar (which is on hundreds of pages). There's a link at the bottom of the Help menu to the Wikipedia Directory, in which the Help Desk is at the top. Links to the Desks are also in the Getting Started section of the Help menu. And I've added the following section to the Community Portal:

Help departments

Help desk · Newcomers help page · Reference desk · Village pump

The Help Desk and Reference Desk are two of the most visible and well-linked-to departments on Wikipedia. I hope this addresses the issue to your satisfaction. --Go for it! 02:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Spin

I responded to your response on spin.

My RfA

Could you please explain your opposition to my RfA? Your comment of "censorship is a mortal sin" doesn't appear to apply to my candidacy, and is one that I agree with. --Carnildo 03:35, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

........and my freedom of speech - how was that protected? Giano | talk 11:15, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, Carnildo was fighting a lost cause, given Jimbo's stance on the issue, and furthermore, given that he acted in a unilateral manner, he could effect no change. But if Carnildo had been able to hold his stance, then you would have the right to say that you are a pedophile on wikipedia, a right you currently do not have. That's how your freedom of speech would have been protected. -lethe ^{talk +} 11:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Have you missed the whole point? I don't want that right. I do not want others to have it. It is ilegal. It is repugnant. No one has the right to break the law of not only most countries but also the natural laws of civilized society. Paedophilia has to be considered a lifestyle choice (eg. an urge that can be checked) otherwise no child can be considered safe anywhere. Therefore it is not something that can be proudly displayed as something acceptable, because it is not acceptable. Giano | talk 11:46, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I guess I did miss that point. Can you tell me who was arguing that point, and where I can see it? The only discussion on this matter that I've engaged in is whether censorship did take place, not whether everyone thinks censorship is good in this instance.

Anyway, whether you want the right or not, I believe that right should be protected, and I do mean the right to say you're a pedophile, not the right to practice pedophilia. I do believe that even forms of expression that I disagree with, even those that disgust me, should be protected. This isn't how everyone feels, it's just how I feel. -lethe ^{talk +} 11:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

• Read the statement here [2] then follow the links in the statement. You will see that free speech only works one way with Carnildo. Giano | talk 11:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

• Try this link [3] it seems to be the entore conversation which resulted in carnildo banning 3 editors. The conversation arose because somebody had made a user box proclaiming they were a P. This is the conversation that Carnildo did not like. Giano | talk 12:06, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I know what happened. It was my surmisal that you were oppressing freedom of speech, and therefore that Carnildo, by banning you, was protecting it. I don't agree with the ban. That was too harsh, and done without consensus. However, I want to lend my support to people who are protecting freedom of speech in the face of a difficult position (like pedophilia). I don't agree with your proposal to disallow editors who have illegal sexual orientations, nor with your opinion that even admitting their sexual orientation should be not only disallowed, but a bannable offense. -lethe ^{talk +} 12:17, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Shortcut rerouting, Help Desk advertising, etc.

I've created an area for discussion on Help talk:Contents covering the issue of the purpose of the help pages in relation to the help desks. There's also another on my reversion to your shortcut change. I also don't understand why you've set up a redundant questions page and have reverted that as well (but I've moved all your included references to the official Wikipedia:Questions page. Please come discuss the matters with me on Help talk:Contents. Thank you. --Go for it! 14:35, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi!

Hi Lethe, and thank you for taking time to vote on my RfA. I understand that my last 6000+ edits were not sufficient to convince everyone that edits like some of my early ones would never be repeated again. Of course, I'll continue working the way I've been since November, and hopefully would develop trust of more wikipedians in future Regards, and I appreciate very much your kind support. deeptrivia (talk) 03:31, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Jack Sarfatti

Hi Lethe, I am trying to mediate on this article and address *all* the following concerns (a challenge, no?):

1. improve the article to redeem the image of Wikipedia (as per my friend and his science colleagues)
2. Jimbo's concern about any disruption of the encylopedia writing task
3. Jack Sarfatti's legitimate concern about being unfairly negatively portrayed
4. critics like yourself who have academic concerns (though I resist all attempts to portray Jack Sarfatti negatively simply over personal clashes with him)
5. those feeling "harrassed" on both sides of the issue

The article really needs to be more balanced, something like an updated version of the Disformation interview which was a fair portrayal. This article cannot just be a collection of beefs by critics. Nor should it be a puff piece. I also do not think this is a proper editorial attitude with which to approach the article. Nor is it proper to spin someone's comments to say something they do not say (Waldyr Rodrigues). I think my version on the WR comment was more balanced and representative. Also, the mathematical inaccuracies are alleged, he explicitly says it is his opinion. And there are others who disagree whether they are in fact inaccuracies anyway. Consider my words. Feel free to email me through my profile. Thank you. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 18:26, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Higgs boson consensus vote

There is currently a vote on the Higgs boson talk page over whether or not to merge the pop culture references article with the main article. I noticed you've previously contributed to the debate, so your vote would be helpful in establishing a consensus (or, perhaps, a vote of "no consensus", in which case the problem will be referred to AfD). Thanks! -DMurphy 21:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Help menu location

The help menu should stay on the help page. Please see discussion on Help talk:Contents. --Go for it! 18:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

rv of John C. Baez

You were right that I shouldn't have put rvv.. I hope you are happy with my most recent revert reason. Please remember as this goes on that I was the one reverted under false pretences first. You clearly take wikipedia seriously, so please don't be too quick to defend unsourceably describing someone as "influential" or using gratuitously florid language like "prince of mathematicians" for Gauss. Peace Zargulon 20:36, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

well

Well, my rationale is that it seems like wikipedia is like at the top of all the wiki projects, but that's not the case, wikimedia is. I'm just saying like there should be some institutions found in wikipedia that sould also have a version for wikimedia. As i mentioned in my most bottom comment, wiktionary doesn't have that either. For example, this Village Pump section, or set of pages, or Instition of Wikipedia should is not found in wiktionary or Wikimedia; There should be a Village pump institution in Wiktionary, & wikimedia, for disscusion that woulnd't apply just to wikipedia, but to all wikimedia (projects). For excaple, I had a post pertaining to accounts. Well, that would apply to all wikimedia projects woudln't that? thanks for the reply by the way.24.70.95.203 11:49, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Probably the closest thing to what you are looking for is meta:. However, the existence of things like Village Pump or the ArbCom or AfD or RfA is up to the local community. Just because en.wikipedia has some institutions does not mean that all wikimedia projects have them. -lethe ^{talk +} 14:49, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Warel RfC

While I do endorse the RfC summary, I think it would have been a very good thing to alert me that you were putting my name there. I strongly suggest you put a note on the talk pages of everyone whose name you have put down to verify that they endorse the RfC summary. JoshuaZ 00:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Good point. I, for one, endorse it. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:10, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm.. well, I filled in some people's names for "people who trying resolution", which I just listed off his talk page. I thought that the next section, the endorsement section, was for personal signatures, though I admit I'm still not clear on this. I guess I should remove the names and let people add their names themselves if they're interested. -lethe ^{talk +} 01:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, no harm done, you should probably still alert the various people. JoshuaZ 01:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Alright, sorry for the confusion. I've removed the people from the list who haven't edited it themselves, and put them in a comment at the top. I've also commented on each of their talk pages. -lethe ^{talk +} 01:18, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Basis for Dispute

I rved your sig back in since you are allowed to endorse your own dispute. To be blunt, RfCs are a very basic part of dispute resolution, and as an admin you should have a better understanding of how they work. JoshuaZ 01:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

That's probably true. I've bungled this up a bit. But what better way to learn, than to file one myself? -lethe ^{talk +} 01:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Current block of WAREL

Hi Lethe, I know you were justified in blocking WAREL for 3RR violations at Field (mathematics), but since he has started to use the talk page there I'd be in favor of unblocking him so we can continue the dialog there. What do you think? Paul August ☎ 18:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I did see that he used the talk page, but it appeared to me as if he used that as justifaction to have a carte blanche to revert as often as he wanted. 8 reversions today. It does not at all look to me like any constructive consensus is being reached there, but perhaps I've missed something (all the Japanese confuses me). If you feel that this is happening, then please unblock him. -lethe ^{talk +} 21:33, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I have unblocked him. -lethe ^{talk +} 21:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Sockblock

Why don't you simply indef block the sock, as suggested by Zscout370 [4]? Then the community has only one incarnation to deal with. Lambiam^Talk 18:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this won't help much. I'd rather wait a bit to see more evidence that WAREL is indeed heeding no arguments, then we could indef block both with one shot, together with any future sockpuppets. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Mathematics. Original research

I have trouble believing that we can violate the rule in mathematics. We violate it certainly when we make up notation, but we don't violate it when we draw a conclusion. That's what I think. --VKokielov 03:18, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to range (mathematics)? In general, I might agree with you to some extent, but in this case, I've been investigating that issue, and am going to have it all straightened out with sourced material soon. -lethe ^{talk +} 03:22, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I once read some comments on the OR talk page about the permissibility of a certain amount of trivial original research in mathematics. Was that you? -lethe ^{talk +} 03:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Administrator incidents

It doesn't matter if it's a list, it looks alot better and is alot more readable. Could you outline your objections? Thanks. --Mboverload 04:48, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your opinion about formatting conversations. -lethe ^{talk +} 04:50, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Layout. -lethe ^{talk +} 04:52, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I was writing up a request for comment but now I see I need not do that. Sorry if I've caused nuisance. --Mboverload 04:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Is that a joke? I don't get it. -lethe ^{talk +} 04:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I wanted to know if it would be ok to use *s with :s to better manage complex discussions. What? =( --Mboverload 05:03, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I assume that you weren't actually going to darft and submit an RfC against me for removing your formatting? I assume that was a joke (such an RfC would be laughed out of court), but if it was, I don't get it. Regarding using bullet points for conversations, feel free to use that for your own comments, but I find it displeasing, and since it's against policy, if you do it to my comments, I will revert. -lethe ^{talk +} 05:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Style_issues not against you or even mentioning you....I just wanted to know. Just forget it. --Mboverload 05:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Not an RfC like against a person, just an RfC about style and policy. I didn't know they had such things. -lethe ^{talk +} 05:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Funny how these things go. In UNIX world, a "request for comments" is most often a quasi-official standard, and is not really asking for comments at all. --Trovatore 23:42, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The IP block

Hi Lethe. Thanks for blocking User:64.213.188.94. But I think an indefinite block of an IP address is not so good, taking into account that that that IP address is used not only for vandalism, and that some vandalism from there is not WAREL style, like this. I would think 24 hours for 3RR would be better, and if WAREL continues to use it at some other day we could block him for longer. Wonder what you think. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:10, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty unsure about all this blocking, so sure, let's play it safe. I'll change the block now. -lethe ^{talk +} 00:20, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. We can always block him again later. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:26, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Arc length

The discussion pages Talk:Arc length and Talk:Length of an arc have not been merged; I don't know if that is an issue. Could you explain to me how Tosha's edit violates the GFDL? Lambiam^Talk 20:10, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, copying and pasting article text has two downsides: 1, you lose the history of the article. Doing so is a violation of the license, since the GFDL requires that author information always be available. This also happens when merging articles. The workaround for that is to link to the source article when you remove text from the target article. 2, you leave a redirect with a history. This means that you can't move another article into the place of the redirect unless you have administrator rights.

By this edit we see that Tosha didn't link to the source article after removing the text and making a redirect, which explains my comment. However, I've just gone through Tosha's contributions, and it seems that Tosha did not copy the text to anywhere, he just deleted it. So I was wrong to say that he violated the license. He didn't. My apologies to Tosha.

As for merging the talk pages, it's not necessary to do, but I guess it is probably tidier to do so, so now I've done it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. -lethe ^{talk +} 20:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

co-ordinate

Just thought it might be a typo since all other references are spelled "coordinate." therearenospoons 16:18, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

"edits whose sole purpose is to change spelling convention are frowned upon" I highly doubt it. Why not change the rest of them to co-ordinate? Consistency is key. therearenospoons 16:25, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Who said that? That's not true at all. --Mboverload 19:51, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

According to the MoS: If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another. If the change was for consistency, then my reversion was inappropriate. However, your edit summary Dehypenated 'coordinates' since there is no hypen in the word coordinate made it appear to me that you consider one variant an invalid spelling, and your edit was meant to "correct" the author's original choice of usage. The original usage is a valid convention, and treating other conventions as misspellings is contentious, so I reverted. -lethe ^{talk +} 22:42, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Who wins the argument?

Well, neither of us, as neither equation of ours is true for negative numbers. But I think I was closest, no? -Mystaker1 04:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Yours is correct for positive numbers, while the other isn't. So I might be inclined to lean that way, yes. -lethe ^{talk +} 04:32, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Vote #7: Removal of voters with only votes as contributions

There is currently a vote taking place to help set a limit on who can vote. You might want to voice your opinion on the matter. --Steven 22:28, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Check this out

You might want to join this discussion: [5] --Dijxtra 20:52, 17 April 2006 (UTC)