User talk:Tim Shuba

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Portal:Thailand

Thanks for adding more item. I think the Hem article is interesting. Too bad there's no image we can use for the portal. It's such a pain that those deletionists don't consider portals worthy of fair-use! --Melanochromis 17:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Day of rest / Sabbath

Some definitions of Sabbath are examples of a Day of rest, but they are not one and the same. The definition of Day of rest is linked from several other articles where a link to Sabbath (in lieu of Day of rest) would not properly define the term. As the definition stands on its own, as no content was merged into the Sabbath article, and as it would not make logical sense to place it in the Sabbath article, the changes have been reverted. Alansohn 20:02, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kievan Rus

You are in danger of violating the three-revert rule on Kievan Rus'. Please cease further reverts or you may be blocked from editing. --133.41.84.206 08:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Herbert Dingle

I've never run across you editing to the best of my recollection, but you seem a reasonable sort. Perhaps you could take initiative on an RFC or something? At this point I'm going to guess that nobody there sees me as a neutral good faith party (I think I've managed to somehow be on the opposite "side" of everyone there)... otherwise I would do it. Consensus should not be all that hard to achieve with some influx of outside opinions.--Isotope23 ^talk 14:14, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've thought about this, and I'm going to refrain from starting an RfC, though it's probably the best way forward. I'd rather see how others handle it, especially as I'm intending to mostly ignore wikipedia for quite a while due to other projects. Tim Shuba 04:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough!--Isotope23 ^talk 13:53, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Proposed_clarification

FYI. This RFC is based on, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses which you participated in. If you already have commented at the RFC, my apologies for contacting you. Ikip (talk) 00:18, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Uh-oh!

Hello Tim Shuba, Paradoctor (talk) has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Go on, smile! Cheers, and happy editing!
I'll try to behave from now on. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 16:55, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Correcting the format is no big deal; you provided the cites, which is the important thing. I try to avoid concepts like wikiLove, which sounds unseemly and may be illegal in certain jurisdictions. Actually, none of the wikiThis and wikiThat is my cup of tea, though I suppose the wikiCup could be useful in the event of getting hit in the wikiGonads. Nonetheless, thanks for the thought.

The multilingual facets of the project are great, and deserve more attention than they receive. I recently looked through other language versions of the twin paradox article. Only one contained complete crap, and none contained sections of obvious neo-Dinglist blather. Of interest was the Spanish version, featured on that project. That version (google translate does a fine job of rendering the prose in English) does essentially the same thing as in the English wikipedia section "Difference in elapsed time as a result of differences in twins' spacetime paths", but then goes on give an example of coordinate transformations in flat spacetime to show that the results will be the same. I understand how it works conceptually, but I don't intend to slog through it. Proper time is defined to be frame-independent, a fact best seen by using abstact index notation. So I find the English wikipedia version superior to the Spanish version in explaining that resolution of the paradox, which I also consider to be the strongest from the point of view of performing calculations. The primary drawback to it is the requirement of a level of mathematical sophistication that many general readers don't have. Parts of the current article are weak at providing explainations for the general reader, starting with the initial paragraph. Happily, the current version of the "history" section is okay in that regard. Tim Shuba (talk) 17:52, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"wikiGonads", I like it! ;) As regards multilinguality, I agree fully. Regrettably, interlanguage transfer is very slow. Thankfully, there is no deadline. I'm afraid I'm not as happy as you are with the history section. It does a decent job for the first few years, but my own research in the area has turned up tons of material that will have to be included before the history of the twin paradox can be considered covered. The most glaring omissions are the second Dingle controversy and the closed universe variants. The bibliographies by Benton and Arzelies and the book by Marder are nowhere to be found. These are bare essentials, there is a whole lot more to the story, and that seems to be about the only thing about which at least many reputable sources agree. Lots of work ahead of us. Paradoctor (talk) 19:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your comments on the Tom Van Flandern discussion page

I just wanted to post a note saying that I am willing to work with any editor, but that your consistent personal attacks you have recently entered on the TVF discussion page are hard for me to get around. The use of name calling such as "crank", "crackpot", and "nutjob" are not useful descriptions of persons. I would also like to caution you that your candor and use of these personal attacks calls into question your NPOV for editing this article. Again, if we can take the hostility down a notch, I am happy to work with you on the article. Akuvar (talk) 21:59, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have any problem referring to someone publicly denounced as "hostile, uncharitable, and un-Christian" and who "believes that physics and the Bible prove that the sun and all the planets orbit the Earth and that the Earth does not rotate" as a nutjob. I would in fact be ashamed to mince words about this kind of obvious idiot. Same goes for the incompetent, dishonest crank Tom Van Flandern. My primary interest in Van Flandern and the development of the article is personal amusement. Tim Shuba (talk) 16:01, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tim, if your personal interest is the development of the article about my father is "personal amusement" I'm kindly asking you to desist. You are maligning an honest, decent, hardworking man with a solid resume and credentials. I understand you don't like some of his theories, but there's no need for ad hominems. Please remember, you are talking about a real person. Thanks -Mike Van FlandernMikevf (talk) 04:18, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tom Van Flandern was unquestionably an extreme relativity crank. The utter tripe about special relativity found at the junk site metaresearch.org is pathetic. Tom Van Flandern was seething with intellectual dishonesty regarding the subject of relativity. Of course these are my opinions, but they are in line with the experts quoted in the Salon/Cosmos article, which does accurately represent the mainstream view. Will this be properly discussed in the article? Or will the article remain an Akuvar-owned hagiography? Many other fun questions wait to be answered, and I can see several possible directions, each of which promises to provide some level of amusement.

By the way, you made a comment that a certain piece by Tom Bethell ought to be included, apparently as a counter to the Salon story. First, I wouldn't be opposed to that, as it might inspire people do a little research and discover that Bethell, to put it bluntly, is a complete idiot as far as knowledge of relativity is concerned. See, for example, this blog and associated comments (to learn the credentials of the blogger, see here). Furthermore, the Bethell piece, to my recollection, doesn't contain any opinions about Tom Van Flandern other than those of the author, in contrast to the Salon story. There is much more I could say about personal dynamics involved, though most of it isn't directly related to Tom Van Flandern. It's revealing that the best secondary source you can find so far which presents a positive spin on Tom Van Flandern's views about relativity is a piece of such inferior quality. Tim Shuba (talk) 22:11, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tim, I appreciate your candor about your contempt for Tom Van Flandern though it does call into question how you can contribute to an NPOV article about him. Frankly a search of google scholar shows hundreds of papers in credible journals by Van Flandern, including Scientific American. I offered the Bethell piece as an opinion piece to contrast the Farell opinion because you insisted an opinion piece be attached to an encylopedia article (I don't recall seeing opinions from Salon or other editorials in Britanica). And as you note, Farrell's feud seems to have been with Bethell. Much more preferable would be to include links to Tom's relevant papers and awards from credible instituions like the Gravity Foundation. I of course have no objection to citing Scientific papers that are critical of Tom's work (for example Carlip's paper).

Tim, if you can dial it down you'll find I'm a reasonable person and despite what's passed thus far I'd be more than happy to have a conversation with you. But I'm going to insist that you stop using derogatory terms like crank and idiot, assume good faith and engage in an honest open minded dialog. Can you do that? Thanks -MikeMikevf (talk) 01:12, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My perception so far is that you are a reasonable person, and that is independent of whether I dial down anything or not. I will continue to use what I feel are appropriate terms in appropriate situations, as should you and everyone else. I would appreciate it if you would edit your previous entry here to get some proper names correct. I think I probably threw you off by incorrectly writing Bethell's name with just one 'l', and I apologize for that. Other correct spellings are Carlip and Farrell. I don't want to edit entries signed by others, so I hope you will make those changes.

Just to briefly address your first sentence, I haven't really contributed to the article at all. Each of my grand total of three edits was rapidly reverted by Akuvar. I am interested to hear in what way you think any of these edits may have violated neutrality. Here they are for easy reference. [1] [2] [3] ▻Tim Shuba (talk) 06:10, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Tim. I've made the corrections you requested in my prior post. No need to apologize for typos, but I appreciate the sentiment and offer my apologies as well for my carlessness in typing names.

I agree that your edits to Tom's article have all been reasonable and measured even though I don't entirely agree with the content changes. But some of your comments in the discussion are contributing to polarizing positions rather than building consensus. For example you wrote "The legacy of Van Flandern as far as relativity theory is concerned is some combination of incompetence, fraud, and self-delusion". I understand you disagree with Tom and do not respect him, but comments like this don't further the conversation. Fair? -MikeMikevf (talk) 16:17, 19 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for making those changes. I agree that typos are not a big deal, but it's nice to have them corrected.

Well, the context of my remark is that Akuvar was repeatedly attempting to suppress sourced information, while also attempting to add a link to an unreliable insane rant. I'm certainly not concerned with coming to consensus with someone like that. What I said is not wording I'm pushing to be included in that form, but it is nevertheless entirely accurate. For instance, there is an article by Tom Van Flandern called "21st Centurty Gravity" which presumably summarizes his latest model. There are many misstatements about relativity in it, and it shows everything I mentioned in that comment. Regardless of how the article eventually turns out, with which I am not even overly concerned, his writings regarding relativity stand zero chance of being taken seriously by anyone with the slightest amount of expertise in the subject. To what extent the article gets manipulated by friends, family, and pushers of fringe and crank physics remains to be seen. I think you'll find that if belligerents like Akuvar refrain from such attempted manipulation, the level of discourse may improve. Tim Shuba (talk) 01:12, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]