User talk:Yakushima

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Contents 1 Speedy deletion of Sara Mednick 2 Talk pages 3 ... and ongoing ... 4 Personal attacks 5 Hi Michael

[edit] Speedy deletion of Sara Mednick

A tag has been placed on Sara Mednick requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for biographies.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lindsey8417 (talk) 04:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Talk pages

Hi, Yakushima. I noticed your comments at Talk:Leonard Horowitz regarding Rentir's editing of the page. Please don't hesitate to inform me or another administrator if he continues editing without discussion. Some large articles don't even have talk pages, but if there's a disagreement, that's what talk pages are there for. Good work on the article, and best of luck with your continued efforts on Wikipedia. Cheers.--chaser (away) - talk 10:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ... and ongoing ...

Regarding this edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conspiracy_theory&diff=prev&oldid=214231271 I'm not going to get into an edit war with you, but I think you made the article less accurate.

If you have read the two referenced articles (enough times) you will have noticed expert opinions regarding MK Ultra:

Although the CIA insists that MK-ULTRA-type experiments have been abandoned, 14-year CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has stated in various nterviews that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continued. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti specifically called the CIA claim that MK-ULTRA was abandoned a 'cover story.'.[6][7]

and regarding Mockingbird:

In February 1976, George H. W. Bush, the recently appointed Director of the CIA announced a new policy: "Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station." However, he added that the CIA would continue to "welcome" the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.[21]

Your current edit suggests that the operations ended the year in which they were created. Both articles indicate that the activities went on for years -- and there is no indication that they ever ended. I liked

• ongoing, but
• continuing
• subsequent

or something else might be a better word. I'll leave it to you. We had the same thing with the protocols of the elders of zion. is there any indication that the Czar's people stopped it the year they started it? 76.95.108.78 (talk) 09:29, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out where I made an admittedly hasty edit. In fact, I'd known before deleting "(and ongoing)" that MK-ULTRA had been multi-year. I just didn't like "ongoing" because it strongly implied "...even now, as you read this," which you must admit is highly unlikely in the case of MK-ULTRA, a program whose records were reportedly destroyed in 1973.

One solution is simply to delete the starting year for each proven conspiracy. Another is to provide a (likely) span of years where a conspiracy was multi-year, perhaps with a question mark following if there was any doubt about how long it continued. (E.g., Iran-Contra might be considered a "1985-6" conspiracy.) It's somewhat procrustean either way. I guess I'd prefer the latter, so long as this section is deemed a legitimate part of the article. Yakushima (talk) 10:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've amended the relevant descriptions (included a rewording the "ongoing" for the Dreyfus affair). The changes do some violence to the parallelism of the list, but I'm not bothered by that.

(The parallelism is rhetorically deceptive. If I may paraphrase Tolstoy? "All persistent conspiracy theories persist unproven in the same ways; all proven conspiracies get proven in their own ways." ;-)

This section of the article makes the good point that, not only have real conspiracies existed, but that almost everybody believes in some conspiracy theory. My own conspiracy theory beliefs are pretty garden variety, I think -- I happen believe the Bush administration lied to get popular support for the invasion of Iraq, which puts me in the company of a majority of U.S. citizens, last I checked. However, the section overstates the point, and really ought to be cleaned up and substantiated a little more, from authoritative sources. Maybe it should even be its own section: "'Garden-variety Conspiracy Theories"? I might circle back around to it and do this cleanup, but I'm midway through a couple other articles right now.

[edit] Personal attacks

Your recent edits seem to contravene our personal attacks policy. I let your attack on myself in the AFD pass since I am, in fact, well-qualified in this area but the point is irrelevant. Now I notice that you are extending your ad hominem attacks upon Mr Burgin to our article on Super-recursive algorithm. I have reverted this as improper. Please focus upon the topic rather than attacking those associated with it. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:22, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with Colonel Warden about whether the article should be deleted, but he is right about your last changes to the article. Perhaps you could check that you are not getting too emotionally involved in getting rid of this crap. Your arguments are actually quite convincing (although I am not sure that's enough to bring about the desired result), but when they are proffered with too much zeal they can easily become ineffective for psychological reasons. You are undermining your credibility; this could be what happened in the case of DGG, although it's not clear because he also has a general bias against deletion. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:09, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't have to look at this is in detail, I am just assuming that you are right about the facts because they are 100% consistent with Multipundit's behaviour. The point is that there is no valid reason to put details about Burgin's career into the article. It's not in the scope of Wikipedia to expose non-notable idiots as idiots. There is no valid reason to put these things into the article. You have been in the project much longer than I, but you are acting as if you had never heard of WP:BLP, or as if it applied only to biography pages. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:02, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hi Michael

Hi Michael! Just a little message to say hello and let you know my handle. Vincent (talk) 09:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

By "computer" I meant HW and SW, it's all the same thing anyway, and f(c) would generate a unique answer since all computers are finite and deterministic. Unless you included random sources in your code like input from a geiger counter. Also the halting problem notwithstanding.

BTW, you wrote "smaller values of ∞". I always assumed Aleph null, the smallest value of ∞. But here's an idea: what if we had an uncountably parallel computer, each processor of which was also an uncountably parallel computer? You'd need a whole new way of thinking about solutions. You'd need... superDUPER-recursive algorithms! Vincent (talk) 14:40, 2 June 2008 (UTC)