User talk:Heron/2004H2

Drawings

Thanks! Almost all of them are done in Adobe Illustrator. The "3D" ones like the prisms are not real 3D, I use a set of macros that can skew flat drawings into isometric or other projections. I enjoy doing them, so if you need a similar illustration for an article let me know. -- DrBob 17:28, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Great. I certainly shan't be spending 500 quid on Adobe Illustrator in the near future, so thanks for your offer! -- Heron 18:04, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sound

Thanks for correcting the formula on the speed of sound. The formula I was thinking of was 1 ft/s, but I got sucked in by the metric units and combined them. Good thing I wasn't sending a probe to Mars!  :) kmccoy 17:55, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

LOL! Yes, I thought you meant feet, but I didn't want to encourage you, as the rest of the article seemed to be metric. I shouldn't laugh, as we Brits have also had problems getting to Mars recently (or to be precise, stopping once we get there), and our space programme is 100% metric. -- Heron 18:34, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

YUV

I would like to know why you reverted the change to the formula I made in the YUV article. I know there is many formulas on the web, and most of them differs, but I've found this formula more accurate than the one in the article. Here are the 2 sources I took the formula from, as well as my company source (though the formula is clearly not Copyrighted stuff). Please do not take in consideration rounding errors.

1. http://www.fourcc.org/fccyvrgb.php This site contains some formulas and a discussion going on this particular topic. The latest formulas are the one used in my modification.
2. The Official FXScript reference. The formula used under the header Manual Color Conversion is the same with some rounding errors. Note that it was taken from http://www.cse.msu.edu/~cbowen/docs/yuvtorgb.html.

I could find other sources if desired. Thank you.

Poltras 20:17, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)

Your numbers are the Y,Cb,Cr coefficients, as used in the CCIR 601 standard. This is not the same as YUV (defined in ITU-R BT.470, I think), although our article wrongly says that it is. Incidentally, the first web page you quote mentions this difference, and then goes on to ignore it! This web page (briefly) explains the difference. I also dispute the addition of 0.5 to U and V in our article, as that should be done only to Cb and Cr. U and V can be negative. Cb and Cr are only allowed to be positive, because they are meant to be digitized.

If you agree, I think we should change the article to make it clear that YUV is not the same as Y,Cb,Cr. -- Heron 21:11, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Makes sense. Thank you for your explanation.

Poltras 15:02, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)

Glad to be of service. At least our little discussion led me to discover that the articles on YUV and other colour spaces were badly mixed up. I have done my best to fix them, but there is probably more work to do. For example, there is stuff in "YUV" that really belongs to a general article on colour television. -- Heron 15:30, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Moving stuff or deleting?

When you, for example, remove the "valves and what have you" from the transistor article, are you just removing it or are you moving it to a vacuum tube article somewhere? I don't think it belongs in the transistor article either, but I hope it isn't being deleted forever. - Omegatron 21:54, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)

I just deleted it. It seemed to me that all the stuff I was deleting was mentioned elsewhere, but I wouldn't stake my life on it. Just to show good faith (as Tony Blair would say), I'll go through my changes and check that I didn't miss anything. Here goes: -

Deleted " The bipolar transistor actually operates based upon subtle quantum-mechanical principles." I thought this was too vague to be useful. Everything works on quantum-mechanical principles if you look closely enough.

Moved "Bipolar transistors can be fabricated ... compute analog logarithms as well. " to another place in the same article.

Deleted "Thermionic devices (valves, or vacuum tubes) are even more electronically robust and scalable, which is why they are still used in high-powered radio transmitters. There is no opportunity to (directly) achieve complementary symmetry with valves, however. Transformers can be used to work around this, at least in the usual narrow-band case." The point about size and robustness is covered in the vacuum tube article. The point about complementarity does not seem to be mentioned anywhere else, so I just reinstated it.

Deleted "Before man had either of these devices at his disposal, he utilized saturable reactors for audio amplification, cleverly exploiting a non-linear property of a certain class of transformer cores." We mentioned this on a talk page somewhere, but it hasn't found its way into an article yet, so I just created a new stub for it: magnetic amplifier.

Deleted "TWT tubes make the 'conduction channel' into a (transmission line) waveguide, making them competitive in broadband RF application. Some tubes, like magnetrons and reflex klystrons, combind magnetics and tubes. These are efficient (usually narrow-band) RF producers and still find use in RADARs and microwave ovens." I just created a new stub for the TWT. We already have articles on the klystron and the magnetron, but I added links to them from the vacuum tube article.

Deleted "In a vacuum tube (British: valve) ... they might have been called "transconductors." " The operation of vacuum tubes is described in that article. The next paragraph contains all you need to know about why transistors are so called.

I can now honestly claim that no unique information has been lost, but I promise to be more careful next time!. -- Heron 08:43, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Refers to

Heron, I can see you are trying to clarify by simplifying when you change "refers to" into "is"; but I'm not sure that is what you are accomplishing. For example, the resulting statement (from plant) "..a plant is usually a living organism in Kingdom Plantae" does not really make sense. Is it sometimes not living? or sometimes not an organism? or sometimes not in the Plantae? (last is the original intent) I'm not sure the original sentence made all that much more sense, although "...usually refers to.." does put the uncertainty on the term ("plant") and not the predicate. I guess it could be rewritten to "A plant usually is..." I would point out that while constructions using the verb "to be" are simple and generally straight-forward, they really should be avoided as much as possible in writing because they can be over-simplistic and boring. I try always to use any other verb but "is", although I usually fail in that attempt (hard to come up with good verbs 8^). Still, if we had that many (as you are finding) "refers to", that verb is probably overworked here too - Marshman 21:24, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hi Marshman. I agree with your first criticism. "A plant is usually..." is not one of my best creations, and I shall try not to write any more statements like that. We seem to agree, though, that there are too many instances of refers to. I have found hundreds in my latest search, and many of them are literally incorrect. Often, refers to is used in Wikipedia as verbal duct tape, to join any part of speech to any other part of speech without having to construct a proper sentence. As for is, I would say that it should be treated like any other word, and used in moderation. I may have inserted too many ises recently, but I think they are an improvement on what went before.

You will be pleased to know that I have finished my present refers to patrol, having exhausted the results from the Wiki search engine (I gave up when it got to Z and then went back to A again), but I will keep looking out for obvious mis-wordings.

It occurred to me that perhaps the Wiki syntax is to blame for the rash of refers tos. The headword in each article is, by convention, printed in bold, which is done by enclosing it in three pairs of apostrophes. In the source text, these look a bit like quotation marks, and might mislead some contributors into thinking that the headword is a reference to a word, not just a word. I can't think of a way to stop this tendency. -- Heron 10:23, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think you are exactly right. "refers to" follows because the article title word is, at that point, being looked at as word or term to be defined as opposed to a "thing" to be written about. I would argue that with proper construction, "refers to" is not always an erroneous way to start, especially for some technical terms; however, it is way over-used and may be improperly used in most cases. I got concerned because my first notice that you were changing these things was on the plant page where the change did not help (I think that intro looks pretty good now). I would suggest you write a paragraph about the tendency and how to avoid it in the help pages on Wiki style or the like. Not everyone reads those before digging in, but the presence there gives editors a place to point to when changing someone's work. It does take a minute to see how the "refers to" and "is" constructions are saying something different, and a Wikipedians first reaction is likely to be "No, that is not what I meant". Let me know if you decide to write something and I will be glad to help out - Marshman 17:22, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I would have written a note on the subject, but then I remembered that we already have one: see "refers to". It covers everything we have said, except my "apostrophes" theory. -- Heron 18:29, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

License ?

Hi, what is the license of fr:Image:Vir.png ? Thanks in advance. Tipiac 11:21, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The licence is GFDL. I have added a comment to Image:Vir.png to make this explicit. -- Heron 13:42, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Antenna (electronics)

This getting too long, hope you don't mind if I just butcher the whole section. 8-> History is useful if you care. I care little for attributions, hope you don't mind, (at least I know who I'm talking to). I've re-read chapter 19 in the ARRL handbook a couple of times, and I think I see the errors between us now. I've rewritten the impedance section to hopefully be more correct.

The key here to me is that in the antenna article, the numbers are king, as that is what is most relevant to someone measuring and building an antenna. The words were wrong, so you tried to change the numbers, which annoyed me.  :) I've rewritten the impedance section to hopefully gloss over the theory without getting it wrong. The rest of the theory really belongs under SWR where you've already put it.

Sorry about that. I thought that by "return power" it meant "reflected power".

There is in reality no difference between the two. The point of SWR is that the reflected power is not just reflected once, but infinitely until it is attenuated or otherwise escapes, forming a standing wave in the line. Ideally, the power comes from the source and is absorbed by the load. Realistically, it bounces back and forth a few times in between, increasing the power seen in the transmission line, increasing both current and voltage along with the losses caused by high current/voltage.

Trying to think in AC hurts my head and bends my DC intiutions which will lead me astray every time.

So, we care about SWR because:

1. SWR increases power in the line beyond the actual transmitted power, which increases losses in general.
2. Matched impedances give ideal power transfer; mismatched impedances give high SWR.
3. Higher power in the transmission line also leaks back into the radio, which causes it to heat up. (This is a big concern for solid state radios, but the high voltages could cause tube radios to arc as well.)

I think the rest of this is moot, but perhaps it bears discussion anyway.

My only point of disagreement with you, it seems to me, is that I think that there are some situations, like my floating waveguide, where you can measure SWR in terms of power flow without being able to put your finger on a current or a voltage.

I don't think so. Without current or voltage, you are measuring something other than SWR. Sure, you can calculate it from power, but that's not what you are measuring.

you can define SWR as the ratio of electric field strengths, rather than of voltages

I'll conceed that field strength and voltage may be interchangable.

P.S. I expanded the SWR article. Please have a look and check that it makes sense to you. I wrote my extra bits from your voltage-ratio viewpoint, which is how the original article did it, but added a note at the end about the E field definition. -- Heron 13:23, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You did a great job on SWR. I'll have to re-read that again and see what other holes need plugging. For instance, I doubt 100% reflection is possible except in theory, due to line losses, which are exacerbated by high SWR. Also, you made no mention of complex reflection coefficent. There might be room also to mention that phase differences (caused by the complex reactance) can be used to measure line length. Also, I'm not 100% sure if min/max refers to minimum/maximum voltage or min/max magnitude of voltage.

Also, as most of the article is now not from the sources listed, I changed it to a references section. It might be nice to also add links to the references section like the one I deleted above that is still in history. ;-P

Anyway, it's been fun, and we're improving articles, so all is good. --ssd 06:46, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree with all the above. You raise some good practical points about losses, which should find their way into the 'pedia somewhere. We could waffle on about this for ever, but as you say, this is getting a bit long, so ... bye for now :-) -- Heron 08:21, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ok, if you wanna discuss it more, let me know. --ssd 03:02, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In SWR, I just expanded the references section and copied/expanded the practical swr points listed above. I think the SWR article would now be perfect except for the following missing points. I'm not sure how to add them (yet). --ssd 11:55, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

1. ρ is complex -- it has a phase angle associated with it. I don't know if conjugate impedance matching should be mentioned along with this or not.
   1. Yes, I remember your earlier comment that ρ could be complex, but I didn't put it in the article because I didn't understand its implications. We need to mention this in the SWR article only if it is relevant to the calculation of SWR. Otherwise, it should go somewhere else: in "transmission line" or "impedance matching", for example.

      I'm not gonna argue placement--anywhere ρ is mentioned is fine. However, it not just could be complex, it always is...just sometimes (and this is very rare), the imaginary part is 0. Non-zero imaginary part implies the antenna is reactive or capacitive. This has a huge effect on SWR. The extra reactance means the voltage and current are out of phase with each other, and the SWR will vary depending on where you measure it. Or at least, the complex swr varies. I'm not sure if the magnitude varies or not. I have an MFJ-269 antenna analyzer; it measures complex impedance and calculates SWR from it, I think. At least, it displays both. --ssd

2. The equations for diaelectric and resistive (i^2 R) losses should probably be listed somewhere.
   1. Again, these might be better discussed in "transmission line", unless they actually affect the SWR (and I don't know whether this is the case).

      They affect swr, mostly by reducing it through loss. More to the point, high swr increases these losses. Seems like a good place to mention it, but I'll look at transmission line too. --ssd

Shall we continue this discussion, if necessary, on the Talk: pages of the relevant articles, just so that other contributors can see what's going on? I am watching those articles, so you need not copy your comments here. -- Heron 13:09, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

ugh. You're right. Too late, already put 'em here. Feel free to copy relevant parts where they go. I'd do it, but I'm on a slow connection tonight, it's painful enough to do this little bit of editing. --ssd 04:26, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Poets Laureate

I think it's rather a bad idea to suggest (as I think having a "successor box" on Chaucer does) that "Poet Laureate" was established as a successible office (rather than just something the king's versifiers might occasionally be called) in Chaucer's time. I think you should reconsider, and start these boxes only after the office had clearly been established as such (say after Charles I). - Nunh-huh 21:48, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I take your point. I was aware that the office was intermittent at that time, but I thought it might be nice to have links anyway. Perhaps I will do what you say, and before a certain cutoff date just have textual links to "W, the poet laurate under earlier monarch X", and "Y, the poet laureate under the later monarch Z". -- Heron 07:57, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have moved this discussion to Talk: Poet Laureate. Please leave any replies on that page. -- Heron

Thailand

Hello Heron I just saw this comment of your on the Chao Phraya river page:My Thai tutor . Do you also life in Thailand?? Waerth 13:46, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Waerth. No, I live in the UK, but I have Thai friends here, one of whom teaches me a little bit of Thai now and then. I wasn't referring to an official, paid tutor. The last time I went to Thailand, I enjoyed a very fast speedboat trip across the Chao Phraya to visit the island of Koh Kred, and I stayed with friends who live on the river bank further north. I'm planning to go again soon. This will be my first visit since buying a digital camera, so I hope I will be able to provide Wikipedia with some pictures. :-) Thailand is such a fascinating place, and I feel that we should do our best to learn about its culture before the place becomes too Westernised and Chinesified.

How much do you know about the country? How good is your Thai? -- Heron 14:22, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Travelling wave tube

You apparently moved Travelling wave tube to TWTA. I'm a bit surprised you didn't do the reverse, but more to the point, TWT already was a redirect to the longer name, and moving the longer name to the acronym made TWT a double redirect...which needed to be fixed... (now fixed). Lemme know if you change your mind and want to swap the redirects around. --ssd 01:39, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that. I seem to remember that I was merging two articles, so I wasn't paying much attention to the existence of redirects. I normally expect the main article to have the long name, and the abbreviations to be redirects, but I must have got it wrong that time. We now have:

TWTA (main article)

TWT (redirect to TWTA)

travelling wave tube (redirect to TWTA)

but I agree with you that the following would be better:

travelling wave tube or travelling wave tube amplifier (main article)

TWTA (redirect to travelling wave tube)

TWT (redirect to travelling wave tube)

Would you like to fix it or shall I? -- Heron 08:21, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'd fix it now except the timing is bad. Why not go ahead and fix it yourself--probably the best thing to do is to move to travelling wave tube amplifier and then fix the double redirects. --ssd 12:43, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It is done. I hope I got it right this time. :-) -- Heron 20:57, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

geographical information system

Hi Heron! Can you please proofread meta:GALILEO_Masters_2004/Questionaire and try to formulate some of the answers in a better way? The answer for question "Other industrial sectors?" is also missing. Thanks a lot! -- Nichtich 12:54, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I shall do what I can, Nichtich, although I may not be able to fill in the missing section as my technical knowledge is limited. -- Heron 13:04, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK. I have done a first copyediting pass, just to make it flow a bit more smoothly. I didn't make any major structural changes, again because of my lack of knowledge, but I expanded a few points. -- Heron 14:01, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC) GEO 52.04.17:-0.04.57

Mon update

Sorry about that, it appears that I was editing Mon (ethnic group) sources together, got a little tired, and just hit submit. Mon National Day is claimed to have been intended to celebrate the founding of the ancient Mon kingdom, Hongsawatoi. Realistically, it's probably a device for increasing ethnic-identity invented to combat the Mons' marginalisation... prat 18:08, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for that information, and for fixing the article. I don't know how we could express your last point in a neutral way, so I think you were wise to leave it out of the article. :-) -- Heron 20:49, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

IS HERON ANTI-SEMITIC?

Heron left a message for me in my page, where he writes: "Oi, Ghitis, stop your ramblings..." The expression "oi" is typically Jewish; when published by a non-Jew, it has an anti-Semitic intention. Is Heron Jew? If not, I am accusing him of overstepping his authority. He must delete his offending lines, or I will persecute him before he infects others. I am a reputable scientist who has contributed to Humanity. Look at WHO IS WHO in many fields. I will continue contributing to WIKIPEDIA, which I consider as a most valuable project. I see it as more than an ENCYCLOPEDIA, and I am looking for ways to make it more than a source of information. See my reverted contribution on WISDOM.

Jacob Ghitis, M.D. Visiting Research Professor (among other titles)

Heron can certainly speak for himself (and I apologise to him for butting in; the all-caps edit summary caught my eye), but perhaps you (Ghitis) should look up the word before spouting off. The knee-jerk accusation of racism is bad enough, but please be advised of our policy on legal threats (i.e., don't make them or you'll be blocked from editing). As for your contributions, I haven't fully reviewed them, but I do not see how he has "overstepped his authority"; everyone has the same "authority" over articles here, so I would be careful when making such accusations. This is a wiki after all; you're advised not to submit your work if you do not want it (mercilessly) edited by others. So let's try to work together, eh? -- Hadal 07:29, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, Hadal. Ghitis has slightly misquoted me. I actually said, in an edit summary and not on his user page, "Oi, Ghitis, stop replacing our articles with your ramblings!" He conveniently left out the "replacing our articles" bit, which was the reason for my objection. Other than that, I shan't comment on his rant. Fellow Wikipedians can look at our contribution histories and judge for themselves. ;-) -- Heron 08:25, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Having read the article on Oi, I see that in some contexts it does have a racist connotation of which I was not aware. Where I come from, it is just an expression of indignation (as used by Harry Enfield, for example). If Ghitis took it any other way, then I apologise to him for causing offence. However, I stand by my criticism of his contributions. -- Heron 12:58, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Heron and Hadal are reacting instinctively. They know that I have been insulted by calling my contributions "ramblings." When "oi" is associated to the insult, it is anti-Semitic. The canard that I'm threatening with legal procedures is also typical: the victim is the culprit.

I admire Wikipedia, and will defend it against those who use their position of authority to create malignant atmosphere against people they despise instinctively. I believe that the present matter ought not to be discussed in this forum: it should be brought to a higher authority. A lesson might be learned. I do not get angry, I just love to educate, and have published on the subject. In the meantime, please read my contribution on WISDOM, in the History of that page. I did not replace other contributor's articles, nor have I edited them mercilessly. I just added educated ideas that took me a long time to develop. To call them "rants" is to add insult to insult. Not in the spirit of encyclopedists, I daresay. Ghitis, 13 Aug 2004 18:40 (Israel time).

agree

I'm agreeing; but I think it's symptomatic and the page could do with a bit more English and a bit less High-falutin' generally. I just am not sure which bits are bad language and which bits are cult keywords, so I'll wait and see if other's also agree.. Mozzerati 21:33, 2004 Aug 14 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I bristled slightly at your comment "speak English, boy", but now I realise what you meant. My first thought when I read Transhumanism was that it was too gee-whiz, not to mention gung-ho, but I hesitate to boldly edit while there is a debate going on between people who know more about the subject that I do. To be fair, a lot of the bias has been toned down since I last looked in. There are still some bits I certainly want to fix and, by Jove, maybe I shall. For example:

There exists an ethical imperative for humans to strive for progress and improvement, argues transhumanism (clumsy journalistic word order)

and

Many transhumanists strive for ... much less ... strife (strewth!)

etc., etc. I'm sure that together we'll make this article a better place. -- Heron 21:50, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To Mozzerati and Heron and actually to all the Wikipedia Friends: First of all, I take back all talk of anti-Semitism, and just wish to be constructive and Transhuman ;). In other words, I wish to be occupied with activities that agree with my present intellectual interests. What I'm proposing is to talk about the desired course for Wikipedia. I say, Encyclopedia, yes, but more than that. I just cannot understand so many articles, and when they interest me, and feel like it, I attempt to offer my own simplifications, which then help me understand. Perhaps the Talk at each article should be used for the purpose of making the given article understandable. I stop here. Jacob .Ghitis, 15 Aug 2004, 11:20 (GT)

Blimey! I didn't expect such a change in your attitude, but it is welcome, Ghitis. I am delighted that you have withdrawn your accusations, and I will be happy to work with you, if you wish, on our future contributions to Wikipedia. As for your plans for changing Wikipedia, you must understand that there are hundreds of people here who are quite happy with the status quo, so you are going to have an uphill struggle. Nevertheless, I'm sure they will be prepared to listen to your ideas. May peace be with you. -- Heron 12:24, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Forum = Reference Desk?

The idea, Heron, is that W would be not only an online encyclopedia in constant development, but also a Forum in which articles, basically on basic science and technology, are discussed when called for by a Wikipedian (Wikian). Let’s suppose the following situation:

On Electricity.- The current produced by the generator of a power station is alternating (AC); thus, it changes direction, yet the “live” wire is fixed. I’ve received no explanation from several people who ought to know, nor from encyclopedias. The Question.- Might W serve also as a source of education?

What is your point of view, and are other wikians interested in commenting?

Ghitis 15 Aug 2004, 23:25 GT.

A good place to start such discussions is the Wikipedia:Reference Desk page, where you can ask any factual question and expect a fairly detailed answer in a short time. In fact, many visitors get a much fuller answer than probably they needed, because we Wikipedians love showing off what we know. On the other hand, if the answer is to be found in one of our articles, you might just get directed to it. This page might be exactly the educational resource that you have been wishing for, and I can tell you that it works well. Give it a try! A piece of advice: give your enquiry a descriptive title, not just "Help" or "Question", so that it attracts attention from the right people.

As for discussing the future direction of Wikipedia, we have a page for that sort of thing too. It's called Wikipedia:Village Pump, and it's for any questions or musings about Wikipedia.

Incidentally, I'm sorry that I dealt with your early efforts so brusquely. We have a policy called "Don't bite the newcomers", and I think I was guilty of breaching it. I now realise that you were just lost on our huge web site, and didn't know the right place to put your comments. Unfortunately we get a lot of malicious or careless visitors, and I was in "shark" mode when you happened to show up. -- Heron 21:13, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you again, Heron, for your help. Succinctly: You’ve clarified all my questions. Please refer to [1]/ for a better information on me. In Library III, please see JUSTICE, to understand why I was not angry at you. And, of course, I accept your apologies: I have had the privilege of meeting a kindred "transhuman" :).

Jacob, Ghitis Aug 16 2004, 11:15 (GT)

I read your interesting essay on justice, and I think I understand your point. You are saying that you responded to my initial comment with dispassionate 'positive' justice rather than emotional 'natural' justice. I won't pursue the case any further, as I think we have moved on from that. There is an interesting debate to be had on the relative merits of the two types of justice, and how different societies apply them, and I don't know whether we have a full treatment of this on Wikipedia. Our justice article is only a stub, but some of the "see also" pages thereunder might have more information. If not, perhaps you would like to add to them. -- Heron 13:10, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Dialoguing with Heron:

Ghitis, I read your interesting essay on Justice, and I think I understand your point. You are saying that you responded to my initial comment with dispassionate 'positive' justice rather than emotional 'natural' justice. ...Our justice article is only a stub, but some of the "see also" pages thereunder might have more information. If not, perhaps you would like to add to them.

Heron, I think that you are meaning, “dispassionate ‘positive’ law, rather than ‘emotional’ law.” (i.e., you are writing, ‘Justice,' instead of writing, 'Law'.

-- It is interesting that your wording attaches to presumably "blind" justice an emotional attribute, so that it would not be just 'positive' (based on the Law), but 'natural' (based on feeling). I'd comment that in the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) God is depicted as very emotional, so that the type of justice dispensed is truly natural, not positive. The effect of such drastic distinction is perhaps at the heart of Hate amongst fanatics of the three monotheistic religions. ---- I'm adding my article' reference on Justice to those in "see also." ---END--- Ghitis Aug 17 2004 11:00 (GT).

Thank you. Yes, perhaps I should have left out the adjectives, as they injected an unnecessary emotional note into what was meant to be an objective statement. -- Heron 09:42, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

TWTA and LVDT diagrams

I'd be willing to give it a shot. Hand-drawn sketches would be great, but if you could point me to some good references online that would help too. The 3D program I use exclusively is Blender. Definitely worth checking out, if you have an interest in doing that sort of thing. -- Wapcaplet 18:35, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Great. Here's a diagram of a TWT (Figure 2). Here's another diagram that shows the focusing magnet, not shown in the first diagram, wrapped around the whole thing. This picture gives a rather psychedelic 3D view - I'm sure you can produce something easier on the eye than this!

The LVDT is easier. This page shows a cross-section of one. You are looking at three toroidal coils sliced in half, so the three empty rectangles at the top are the opposite sides of the three labelled coils at the bottom. Perhaps you could show a bunch of circles to represent the sliced-off ends of the wires in each coil. The striped areas are just nonmagnetic spacers. The bit marked "core" is a cylindrical lump of iron with a narrower shaft passing through it. The diagram doesn't show how the coils are interconnected, but this one does (fourth diagram down).

Thanks for recommending Blender. I have had a quick look at it, but at first sight I thought "Aaaargh!" and gave up. However, since you're the second person to recommend it to me (the first was DrBob), I might give it another try. --Heron 19:34, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The LVDT is done. Let me know what you think; I went for a merging of the 3D illustration and an electrical schematic. -- Wapcaplet 02:41, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wow. That's gorgeous! Just one thing - the voltage exciting the primary coil should be AC (symbol: one cycle of a sine wave inside a circle) rather than DC as you have drawn it. Otherwise it's perfect. --Heron 08:01, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I guess if I had thought about that for a minute, I would've realized AC doesn't have a "+" terminal... -- Wapcaplet 12:03, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

p.s. - I couldn't find a good reference for an AC symbol (Dia, which I used for the rest, doesn't have it) so I had to kind of fudge the sine wave (two cycles) to make it look OK. If you have a decent-quality graphic of it, let me know and I can replace it. -- Wapcaplet 14:18, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

TWTA is now done. I added labels, but you might want to check it and make sure it's labelled correctly. Let me know if it looks OK, or needs anything else. -- Wapcaplet 22:42, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fantastic. If there is room, you might add a "vacuum tube" label to the grey cylinder.

The last few diagrams on this page show the AC voltage source symbol. In our case there is no need to draw the + and - signs.

Thanks very much. --Heron 14:27, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for answering the CRT question

Thank you for your informative response on WP:RD, I really appreciate it. :-) • Benc • 11:11, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're welcome. Let me know if you need any help with incorporating this information into the articles, if you choose to do so. --Heron 11:25, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Brilliant

I thought your "Humans are beings that . . ." idea had just the right dash of artistry to express in words that a lot of people from lots of different angles were saying--something like 1) we are describing ourselves and 2) how do we describe ourselves while acknowledging that we are describing ourselves and can hardly be objective. I wanted to tell you right away that I thought it was brilliant, but I didn't want my voice to intrude any more than necessary on Talk:Human. Anyway, I am telling you here that I thought that was a brilliant idea and a brilliant move. It probably will not last long. :) But that does not detract from what in my opinion was brilliant. Have a good morning! ---Rednblu 11:03, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Rednblu. I appreciate your comment. As you say, it might not last long, but it temporarily gets us out of our present impasse. If Wikipedia can successfully define such a difficult concept, then it will be a credit to all of us. By the way, I'm still thinking about that "is culture biological?" question that we disputed earlier. :-) --Heron 12:39, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Probably we could recast the question sometime in terms that would resemble more faithfully the empirical data about "culture." For example, we could recast that discussion around summarizing the collection of essays by Wrangham et al, Chimpanzee Cultures. Chimpanzees seem to discover culture as in "invent ways to crack nuts which discoveries they pass on to their kids and to everyone else that watches and imitates"--and then forget culture as in "forget that there is something edible inside nuts even though they are starving." Perhaps the details of culture are invented or discovered, even though the ability to "invent and retain culture for generations" is biological, that is "inherited by DNA." ---Rednblu 15:21, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I'll go along with all that. It helps to classify the example I was puzzling over, which was the termite mound. By your classification, the ability of termites to build mounds and live socially is not culture, it is pure biology, because it arises solely from DNA-programmed behaviour. (I'm assuming that termites don't learn construction techniques from their parents, as most of them hatch after the mound has been built.) Their social behaviour is mediated partly by pheremones, which are a bit like language. How much like, I'm not sure.

On the other hand, a termite mound survives for many generations of termites. Is it like a book that records the construction decisions that past generations have taken? If so, then it's a kind of culture. Does this mean that termites are more than just their bodies, and are actually transcendent beings? --Heron 16:20, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

---

Interesting. Hmm. So the question, I guess, is whether the termite mound is culture.

Maybe it is. I would say that certainly the termite mound is capital as in "capital asset"!  :)) Thus, the termite mound would be "culture" in the sense of Le Louvre--a tremendous "capital asset"!

The part of culture that fascinated me most was the learned behaviors of culture--as you imply by the termites not learning construction techniques from their parents. That is, we learn to read and write. According to Pinker, we have such a strong genetic "hunger" to use grammar that a bunch of human kids that never saw an adult and had no other form of "training" would invent, I say invent, their own grammar. So the hunger to use grammar is biology. But the exact grammar that a human uses, I would say it Culture.

Wrangham et al make the interesting distinction between biology and culture among the chimpanzees by the following. It is biology to the extent that it is the same in all the chimpanzee communities in Africa. For example, it is biology that the female at puberty migrates to the neighboring community to live, while the young male stays with his dad, brothers, and uncles defending the territory of his birth until he dies--because that pattern is the same in all observed chimpanzee communities in Africa. On the other hand, cracking nuts is a cultural phenomenon, not biology, because the nut-cracking technology is different across communities, even non-existent in some chimpanzee communities, across Africa.

I would say that the pattern of the termite tunnels would indeed be "culture" if some young whipper-snapper of a termite would figure out how to "read" what the previous generation "wrote." But just running down the tunnel--using the capital asset, I would say, would not be "reading" what was "written."

Interesting puzzles you pose. It has been fun working through them. ---Rednblu 01:22, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fun for me too. And I was going to mention Pinker, but you got there first! --Heron 09:27, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"number system"

The way we write the number system we use today, where and when did it originate?

Try the article Natural number. --Heron 18:04, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If it's about "the way we write", then it's about numerals rather than numbers. The topic of natural numbers is not about "the way we write" numbers. Numeral system and Arabic numerals are more to the point. Michael Hardy 21:32, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You are right, thank you. I didn't read the question carefully enough. --Heron 08:44, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ground (electricity)

just wondering why you were editing a section that was commented out

If it's worth leaving in the article, it's worth editing. :-) --Heron 21:31, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Homo

Hi Heron – I know you had to correct my "homo" to "Homo" for the second time now. Only in this case, it was lowercase intentionally (i.e. "The Thinker" is (latin, not zoological) "homo sapiens", *thinking man*. It's a very minor point, though, no problem ;) dab 12:42, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oh, sorry about that. Perhaps you could call it homo cogitans, and then nit-pickers like me wouldn't be tempted to correct it. --Heron 14:05, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

wikimedal for janitorial services

I hereby award you a wikimedal for janitorial services. Wifki

Thanks. Just trying to boost my edit count. ;-) --Heron 14:41, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lorentzian function

I don't understand what "It is the probability function used in the Cauchy distribution." means. Can you please explain?

Sorry - that statement was not clear. I meant that the Cauchy distribution is a special case of the Lorentzian distribution. I have edited the Lorentzian function and Cauchy distribution articles to explain the link between the two concepts. Please ask if you need more explanation. --Heron 12:26, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, now I understand. Pdbailey 15:01, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)}[[]] 13:29, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not convinced, but I'm open to debate. I need to read more about this before I change anything. --Heron 09:32, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Multi-licensing is a major (and possibly permanent) decision and should not be taken lightly. Take as much time as you need. I will monitor this page and wait for your response. -- Ram-Man 14:23, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Mineral lists

Hi - you beat me to it :-)
I have been playing with the lists from Mindat.org and using a macro to semi-automate formatting for Wiki listing. Just uploaded my experimenting on my user page: User:Vsmith/experimental. Take a look and tell me what you think. We don't need to duplicate work.

Also have been thinking about dividing the lists into those with wiki articles vs those (most) that don't yet have articles. And, separating out the invalid, varieties, and synonyms - as I noted on the list talk page. -Vsmith 17:03, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I only went to that page to add "moolooite" but then I got carried away ;-) Your automated lists look fine to me, so I will happily let you finish the alphabet. I'm not so sure about dividing the lists as you say. I can see that there is an aesthetic reason to do it, but who is going to move the "nonexistent" entries into the "existing" list once they become live? In my browser, it's easy to see which links are live just by their colour. Anyway, I'll be happy whatever you choose. --Heron 20:38, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moiré pattern

Would you mind redrawing Image:Moire.png? I like it much better than Image:Moiré.png, but it's far too big vertically. Square sets of lines would be fine. JRM 15:00, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Done. Is that small enough? --Heron 20:25, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Eep. Yes, but now the moiré pattern is gone—on my screen, the slanted lines aren't lines anymore, just cut-up line segments, and they don't interfere with the vertical lines. I was actually thinking more along the lines of taking a square instead of the rectangle and overlaying that in a similar way, not resizing the entire image. I don't mean to be a bother, though... :-) JRM 20:37, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

It did that for me the first time I uploaded it. Then I hit "refresh" and the picture sorted itself out. Have you tried that? --Heron 20:53, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

First thing I tried. Whoopee, love those caching issues. Hold on, I'll first purge my browser cache... OK, that did the trick already. :-) Thanks for your efforts. JRM 21:16, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Image tag

Hi! Thanks for uploading the following image:

• Image:ESW-pre1974.png

I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status?

You can use {{gfdl}} if you wish to release your own work under the GNU Free Documentation License, {{PD-self}} if you wish to release your own work to the public domain, {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use of someone else's work, and so on. Click here for a list of the various tags.

If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know at my talk page and I'll tag it for you. Thanks so much. Denni☯ 03:47, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

P.S. You can help tag other images at Wikipedia:Untagged_Images. Thanks again.

OK. I made it GFDL. --Heron 03:50, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Parsec.png

Thanks for uploading Image:Parsec.png. I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GFDL, or {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Right now, I'll put it as unverified, but change it to what it's supposed to be when you get a chance. Thanks, Mattingly23 16:17, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have added a comment to the image comment page, but the latest version of the image is not mine to give away. You will need to ask User:Stw or User:PizzaPuzzle. --Heron 03:44, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)