User talk:Wetman/archive3Mar2004

I log in as Wetman because that's my handle at various aquarium bulletin boards. I maintain a website, The Skeptical Aquarist at http://www.skepticalaquarist.com but my interests are wide-ranging: neo-Darwinism and glaciations and Minoan culture and Greek mythology, the history of design and New York City (born and bred in that briarpatch, Br'er Bear). The transmission of Classical culture and English country houses and archaeology... The history of daily life interests me more than battles, folklore more than religion, cult history more than philosophy; Popes as European princes and patrons are more interesting to me than minutiae of theology. I'm a secularist, a humanist, a realist, a third-generation Stoic Epicurean. I avoid fiction but love Tolkien... I read Marcus Aurelius from time to time, or Urn Buriall... I tend to read Apocrypha more than straight Bible books, paleontology more than either. I subscribe to Natural History and Scientific American ...they send me Harvard Magazine...

I tend to write on small topics, because the big topics are too hard to grasp in wikiform, it seems to me. But I got a little carried away with Orion (mythology) eh.

Wetman.

Thanks for your work on Accademia dei Lincei--I don't speak Italian and would probably have been reduced to trying to make sense of a Google translation based on my knowledge of Spanish.Vicki Rosenzweig

Just a note to say that I appreciate --- and enjoyed reading --- your additions to Seven Sleepers -- Smerdis of Tlön

Paul de Lamerie Daniel Marot

Hey-- great work on New York, New York. Just the right touch. JDG 02:44, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Born and bred in this Briarpatch, B'rer JDG!

Hey, Wetman, when you add comments to the Talk: pages, could you kindly add your name at the name so people have an identity to go with the opinion? (Adding three or four tildes -- the character that looks like this ~ -- will do the trick.) Like you, I'm puzzling over the article Sea Peoples, & when I read your opinions in the Talk: section (which I agree with for the most part), your anonymity weakened your argument. -- llywrch 01:34, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

(Thank you Llywrch, I'm still a newbie here. ```  my tildes are just tildes)
User:Wetman

Hello Wetman,

I don't quite get your statement at Talk:List of islands of the Republic of China. You can sign your name with ~~~~. Cheers! --Jiang 00:12, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Golly gosh thank U Wetman for T.B. Lib.(i.e. Thomas Browne's Library, perhaps the most influential collection of texts in the English 17th century ed. Wetman) commentNorwikian 11:22, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Very witty comment Wetman on Goodness. :) Won't you tell us even a little bit about yourself on your own page? TonyClarke 22:20, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Of course, since there's already an article on Good as opposed to Evil, then... ed. Wetman

Hey, Wetman: Cute comment on Dispute over the name Sea of Japan. The issue may seem trivial or even ridiculous to you, but it is a highly emotional and divisive issue right now among many Koreans and Japanese. The debate has spilled over into English because English is the lingua franca of the modern world. Don't trivialize something for others simply because you personally don't care about it. --Sewing 17:46, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

(How much 'spillover' has there been, if the President of the United States would not be able to identify this body of water with his finger if you handed him a globe! My deadpan comments were perfectly NPOV, which gave them an ironic tone within this highly-charged context. The competing Korean-language names for this sea are not even mentioned in the entry-- significantly.) Wetman.

The Korean-language names were not mentioned, but nor was the Japanese-language name. I have since added the Japanese- and Korean-language names. Anyhow, I didn't say your comments were POV (at least, not from a Japanese or Korean perspective): my reply to you said it's a divisive issue among Koreans and Japanese, and it is.

Anyhow, you appear to be working on the assumption that Wikipedia is for an exclusively American audience. Sure, from an American (or North American--I'm Canadian) point of view, the whole controversy probably seems like a joke. However, if you cared to look, you would discover that there a large number of contributors from around the world editing Wikipedia every day, and there are all sorts of obscure European (for example) political disputes that I personally could hardly care less about, but they are important to someone. I'm sorry, but the rest of the world does not filter reality through your personal cheeky perspective. --Sewing 18:53, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Mine is not an American POV-- I'm a New Yorker! My assumption is simply that Wikipedia is an English-language encyclopedia. I certainly did not mean to intrude wit into this entry. At any rate, to judge from the antique maps being brought out as evidence, we should be calling it The Gulf of Corea, but I shall keep my unwelcome spoon out of this teapot.Wetman

Sorry, third edit of the text below, but here's my final reply (finally):

Well, I'm sorry for my rather vehement reaction. And wit is always...er, normally...welcome. (I contributed the "Able was I ere I saw Elba" palindrome to the Napoleon and Elba pages, for example.) My nerves are raw because of a low-simmer coulda-sorta-be-an-edit war going on right now between myself and another editor. This morning's heavy-handed edits on the Dispute over the name Sea of Japan page were an attempt at keeping things straight...but that may only be my own POV, with which the other editor might quite likely disagree! If I could step back from the debate and ignore my own personal (pro-Korean) biases, I too would find the whole fiasco amusing. Anyhow, "Gulf of Corea" is fine with me. --Sewing 22:05, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hi. Please note that I've deleted your posting at Renaissance Fayres and listed it on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements. Wikipedia has a very strong policy on not copying information from other sites without those sites' owners' explicit approval to release the information to GFDL. Besides, the title is not correct by Wikipedia standards. At best, it could be at Renaissance Faire, although Renaissance Fair would probably be a better title. Don't use plural titles unless there is no alternative. RickK 03:34, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

(red face ed. Wetman)

List of famous operas

Hi Wetman,

Thanks very much for adding the information on Metastasio to Opera seria.

I have question for you: Last week, you added a link standard operatic repertoire to a stub I created for La Sonnambula. I thought this was an excellent idea and I did likewise in several other articles. However, I have one reservation, and that is that that list contains not only operas in the current repertoire but also several "historically signficant operas", such as Peri's Euridice which are not, and hence the link isn't entirely accurate.

Last week I left a comment on Talk:List_of_famous_operas about carefully refedining its inclusion criteria but there has been no response. Indeed, I take to heart your comment that "skirmishing about any accepted canon tends to be most intense around the periphery" and don't want to turn this into a long drawn-out debate.

If you would care to express an opinion there one way or another I'd be most interested. -- Viajero 10:33, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I didn't want to finetune the list myself, hoping people like you would move in, Viajero! I'd certainly drop Leoncavallo's La Boheme which was already on the list. What about Philip Glass? Hmm. I think the best question is, are there any classics of the repertory and opera history that aren't included? It's quite a focussed kind of list. I agree with you about lists in general. They must be either perfectly complete or highly condensed. Anything else is useless. Wetman

Poetry test was me rewriting the Poetry article away from the main article. Then copied and pasted back toPoetry Bmills 12:03, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I thought there was something I wasn't getting :)... Wetman

Angela has sorted me out now. Bmills 08:57, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Good additions on Roy Moore. Thanks. orthogonal 23:25, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

(details, dates and quotes. the more the mo' better, IMHO! ed. Wetman)

Hi. Are you a biologist yourself? The only reason I created a temp article was because this isn't my field and I can't be certain I'm not completely mistaken, but if a biologist agreed it was correct I would just make the change now... Evercat 23:51, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, Evercat, I just enjoy Mayr and Wilson and Gould and Scientific American and such. Wait for the biologists. But I know enough to see that you're basically correct at Chimera. Wetman.

I watch Wesley's user page, and noticed that you added to the bottom of that page instead of his Talk. Just a heads-up. Mkmcconn 03:44, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oop! As you can see from the heading, I still confuse User:Wetman with Talk:Wetman. Now that I see my mistake, i realize how nice it is to describe youself on a User: page and not have it all cluttered with Talk: Wetman 04:09, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

(I've just now learned how to sign with tildes....)