User talk:Linas/Archive3

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WikiProject Physics ctd.

Hi again, Linas. I hope you don't feel your work has gone unnoticed. I remember how Category:Physics looked 2 months ago, and I do think you did a great job in clearing it up. As to the WikiProject, the categorizing incentive is a starting point for it (I hope), so I encourage you to add your ideas to the scope and to anything else, because for sure it's not my project just because I created it :D Cheers! Karol 14:33, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

How nice of you to invite me into the physics project. I already contributed a spelling correction (Porject->Project) and then found another on the KAM page (quisi-quasi). I am honored, and I do love physics and astrophysics, but I am about to move to Colorado, so I'll be pretty inactive except at odd hours or when very bored. Also at 70 yrs, I need to try to fix up a few physics/astrophysics ideas I've piddled with for 2 decades as I did spacecraft engineering. Finally, I am very disappointed with the way the creationists/"intelligent design" crowd is taking over so much of those topics, as well as religion itself, and more and more peripheral things. For example, in my opinion the article on "liquefaction" was written originally (or largely written) by a person Ungtss, who is an implacable follower of creationism, in order to cross link it to some other places and bring in biblical disasters (and maybe better miracles). Thus Ungtss, being countered by a couple of seemingly capable geophysicists, finally retreated turtle-like by reworking his home page (user page) to look less fanatical, but if you go to its history and an earlier version, you will see the true Ungtss. I picked it up as a random link and noticed it omitted gas liquefaction, slighting a bit Olzwski, Wroblewski, Faraday (liquified Chlorine) and poor old Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. When I edited to put in gas liquefaction, a storm arose (not over my making) to some link to fundamentalist items, and eventually the article was split. I think it is important to fight fundamentalist anti-scientific propaganda but I have a feeling that the better parts of Wikipedia are attracting intelligent viewers, some of whom (especially the younger ones) will fall into traps set by the creationists, much as Bilbo went, willy-nilly, down gullies to the Withywindle. I feel it is almost hopeless to fight the battle within Wikipedia, as sensible people (e.g. Joshuaschroeder, Aaarrrgghh, and so on) (and I) are so badly outnumbered. Letters to the editor, press releases, presentations to state, county and congressional committees may offer more hope. I have written to the entire Kansas school board and got 3 favorable responses, about this problem with teaching "intelligent design", but they say they are badly outnumbered. I believe that the way I got into this unending set of communications with Cleon_Teunissen was originally due to a creationist item on a page such as Big Bang or General Relativity, but I don't remember. Teunissen seems to be a reasonable chap and it was not his work that put in creationism, of course. I just checked out some links and ran into a citation to a badly bloated on-line "tutorial" by Kevin Brown, which started the dialogue. In view of my limited time, my age, my fear that the better the physics gets in the Wikipedia, the more it tends to legitimize the absurdities of the creationists (much as the AAAS let in parapsychology), I am trying to resist the temptation to put much time into it. Thanks again. Pdn

By the way, I am surprised that planetary orbits are always chaotic. I would suppose that for very small masses, with a massive central object, they would be stable. Or did you mean for the real solar system? Or is it always true but one has a small Lyapunov exponent when the central object dominates by a huge factor? Pdn 14:41, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for reply, but I looked at your pages and saw:". But note also that the "true" system is invariably chaotic: for example, the "true" planetary orbits, " so that's why I was concerned. But I forgot the tendency to come near old orbits - recurrance or whatever.Pdn 17:09, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I thought I edited this (talk) page but you say I edited your user page - obviously another Wiki gremlin - perhaps Loki - at work (I edited him, too). So far as the fundamentalists go, their name is legion, and ours is at most cohort, perhaps maniple. They seldom lie much; they twist truth to their ends. How it could be that most critters have haemoglobin (a few haemocyanin) etc. by divine decree rather than by evolution they do not explain. And why would God place the sexual and excretory organs in such proximity - inducing Lord knows how many kinds of aberrations. If we could persuade all the fundamentalists to attack Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintoists, Zoroastrians, Bahá'i s, drug dealers, and Communists, and leave scientists alone, it might be better, though they are already at the Muslims tooth and nail. Back to chaos: seems to me that there are two considerations for the practical scientist about this problem with planets: (a) effects that do not occur in a few billion years are not of much interest. (b) there is a swarm of minor bodies (asteroids, comets, mini-asteroids we haven't seen yet) that act more or less like a random scattering background. There effect is a drag and a Brownian type scatter. Neither is big enough to make the planets fall into the Sun in 4.6 billion years, but they may foul idealistic mathematical analyses of stability, basins of attraction, Lyapunov exponents or whatever.Pdn 00:30, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your remarks of 17 Jun 2005

Hello Linas,

You wrote that my math edits came very close to violating the rules of prohibiting original research. In fact, my editing does not refer to original research but rather gives links to some pages of the website EqWorld appropriate for the particular pages in Wikipedia. The information presented at EqWorld is 99% not original research -- the corresponding pages contain references to where the information was published. Note that my handbooks on differential and integral equations present much more information than that presented on the website EqWorld.

Best regards, Andrei Polyanin

Geons

Hello Linas,

I promised more specific information regarding the book "Geons Black Holes & Quantum Foam". The significant information is presented in Chapter 10. A quote from page 236 follows; "Perhaps as some students and I speculated much more recently, they (meaning geons) provide an intermediate stage in the creation of black holes". Of course he is correct, just as your spontaneous reaction to this concept was correct. Chapter 10 would be a reference for Black hole electron. It is essential that you see the Chapter 10 information. After seeing Chapter 10, see User Talk:DonJStevens. Information has been added.

DonJStevens

Erdös-Borwein constant

I've changed the name because of the upgrade of the MediaWiki software. Most (if not all) pages involving Erdős had a note that the article was missing diacritics or using the wrong one. As the talk page of Paul Erdős indicates the double acute accent is not to be confused with the diaresis or umlaut (which would give Erdös). Therefore, it seems to me that using his proper name is the most appropriate, although it might give some problems with non supporting fonts, but I thought that (most of) the web core fonts support the Unicode code-range (Extended A) in which the ő is defined. I myself however would prefer a correct name instead of a correct one with a (slightly) larger font support. (I'm using Linux and it displays fine both in X11 and console).

hi!

Hi Linas-

I feel like I came down hard on some of your edits once or twice, so I wanted to say welcome to wikipedia, and say that I do appreciate your hard work, even if I sometimes come off as critical. Mathspace on wikipedia needs a lot of work, and you deserve my encouragement. -Lethe | Talk July 2, 2005 07:28 (UTC)

John Baez has been discussing modular functions lately

Hi, Linas, thanks for your welcome message. I followed your suggestion and added myself to the math and physics projects, although I currently have my work cut out for me getting the gtr pages into shape.

A few weeks ago, I happened to read a bit about your speculations involving modular functions and the KAM theorem. I haven't had a chance to follow the This Week postings of John Baez lately, alas, but am vaguely aware that he has been discussing modular functions for several weeks with a bunch of current and former graduate students. So you might want to check out [1] and see if anything rings a bell.---CH (talk) 3 July 2005 05:22 (UTC)

wave function collapse

Hello, You just said, "(maybe? geodesics of some (symplectic?) manifold?) " in reference to wave function collapse. I think that when this happens it is due to a measurement, and most measurements involve "tweaking" the object (usually a particle or wave) whose wave function collapses. True, in a polarimeter we just remove one mode, so maybe you could say the other followed a geodesic. But in the Stern-Gerlach experiment, an inhomogeneous magnetic field splits the two polarizations, and the collapse occurs (for each mode) either then or on striking the target, I believe. Maybe your manifold is more general, however - I was just including 4-spacetime but perhaps there's a way to adjoin dimensions for polarization, excited states, etc. Pdn 3 July 2005 14:33 (UTC)

interim reply

That page on the spherical decay experiment is very interesting. I do not have any books on topics like wave function collapse - I just read occasional papers. I will forward your query to a friend who is a real expert. I never heard of this one before. Offhand, it seems one of those puzzling items that is actually OK (I fixed some spelling, however). There is an odd point: you do not know when the atom decayed until you detect the decay product, but the article assumes you do. Of course, if the half-life of the state is short and you know when that state was created, you pretty well know the time of decay (and thus the time when the decay product missed the inner hemisphere). There are also fringing effects for wave functions, so two disjoint hemispheres may not be equivalent to a sphere, but this seems like a small point. Anyway, my friend Boris may know a reference such as you seek. By the way, I looked at your own website and, as usual, I can't make any comment of merit but I found a syntax error, I believe. You write: "the Mainframes is the most powerful and advanced CPU architecture on the planet," but it would have to be Mainframes are or Mainframe is. Pdn 4 July 2005 03:17 (UTC)

Hey - I just did a history and you wrote the article. And you can't remember where you found the original discussion? Odd Pdn 4 July 2005 03:30 (UTC)

Just remembered that (*someplace*) I have a superb book on things like that. " "Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics" (Cambridge, 1987)" also see [2] but I can't vouch for that website - just the book. The field has gone a long way since 1987 with experiments by Alain Aspect et al, and theory, much of it from the Caltech group on entanglement. There is some stuff at [3] but most of the meatier stuff is in Physical Review and Physical Review Letters.Pdn 4 July 2005 05:10 (UTC) 4 July 2005 05:08 (UTC)

final reply

Linas - this is a kind of morass into which one can sink when clear thinking is befuddled by too long descriptions, and too many cooks of varying ability seasoning the broth. My friend Boris replied generally as I expected: "I did not read about it before, but I think I know the solution.

The point in this article was that if the decay product did not reach the inner hemisphere in time after the decay, you knew it went to the other hemisphere. But what does it mean to be "in time"? Obviously, it means to register at the shell soon after the atom in the center decayed. However, how did you know the atom decayed and emitted the ray? You cannot predict the time of radioactive decay (only the probability of it). If you can detect independently that the atom is no longer in the center, you interfere with it, performing a macroscopic experiment.

If you do not know, when the atom decays, you cannot decide that the product does not reach the inner shell. Any means to ascertain the decay will create a new macroscopic state, where the spherical wave function might be (naturally) collapsed.

-- Good luck

-Boris

Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. -- Jules Henri Poincaré (That's Boris' signoff - I like it!)(It is randomly generated)

I looked at the [4] page and it led me to [5], which concludes that the examples are all silliness. I agree, but I admit I rely to some extent on people whom I consider expert, such as J.S. Bell, my friend Boris, and this fellow Motl. Unfortunately it is, in my opinon, an attractive nuisance to engage in disproving special relativity (within its domain) or complementarity. There are second rate journals full of that - e.g. Physics Essays and Foundations of Physics (which has a mixture - much of it good science or history, much of it silliness). It seems you are truly expert in the mathematical aspects and I encourage you to do more there, perhaps less with "paradoxes." After all, it takes only a hour or two to create a "paradox" and then sensible people spend days going back and forth on it. Pretty much Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, Oppenheimer and that fellow with the wonderful book I recommended, John S. Bell (who died tragically, quite young, as I recall) settled 95% of it and the rest is being settled by folks like the Caltech group to which I referred you who work on entanglement. There is another group at NIST (Gaithersburg, MD) and others in Europe working on these kinds of things, and they are no fools, but they will not take the time, as Luboš Motl did, to unsnarl one after another of fanciful thought experiments that are light on though and absent of experiment. Sorry. Pdn 4 July 2005 20:08 (UTC)

I slipped a bit and failed, before, to ascribe "Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics" (Cambridge, 1987)" to John S. Bell. ISBN 0521368693 Pdn 4 July 2005 20:10 (UTC)

Also in cases I know about an S state cannot decay so as to emit one decay product, but has to emit two. Pdn 4 July 2005 20:14 (UTC)

This "paradox" is the same as the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky "paradox" of 1935, and is discussed in the book by Bell that I described. Better to return to the original Einstein, A.; Podolsky, B.; and Rosen, N. "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?" Phys. Rev. 47, 777-780, 1935. or to the book by Bell I have mentioned twice. Or see [6] Sorry I got lost in all the verbiage. Boris is a professor of physics and does his homework. Basically, it seems puzzling that when the wave function collapses remote "effects" occur, but it can be shown that information cannot be sent faster than light in such a way (see Bell, Aspect, ....) The original Aspect paper is Aspect, A.; Grangier, P.; and Roger, G. "Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell's Inequalities." Phys. Rev. Let. 49, 91-94, 1982. The "violation" is NOT a paradox or a problem, but is correct physics - Bell established some inequalities that must be violated to avoid faster-than-light sending of signals, and that is now verified. Actually, the "violation" is a nullification of all hidden-variable theories. Pdn 6 July 2005 09:37 (UTC)

Well, the EPR paradox involves spins, but your ostensible one does not - so it may be more of a "welcher weg" or which-way puzzle. You really need to research the literature (starting with Bell, I'd suggest) to cite existing puzzles before introducing one from memory. That's why I did not try to zap the Afshar_experiment - though it is silliness as described by Motl, it seems to be a topic of wide interest and it is cited elsewhere. Also see [7], [8], [9] etc. In other words there is a lot of literature on EPR and welcher weg, Schrödinger's cat and so on, and I suggest that to stick in one more "remembered" puzzle perhaps from books lost in a flood - it's removing the focus from issues of current interest. Pdn 6 July 2005 12:20 (UTC) Sorry for offensiveness. I must have been taking out a bit of frustration with Wikipedia's having so much distracting stuff on it, such as interminable debates on Creationism, too much (for my taste) on psychic phenomena, a lot of stuff on General Semantics (neither very general, nor semantics, and in fact mostly hot air), Objectivism (the article is not at all NPOV), and poor edits to articles in some of the hard sciences. I mean, on this psychic stuff, it could be fun, but no one asks why our senses of sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste, and proprioception are so good, yet this ESP, telepathy, and PK stuff come and go. If they were real we would have much better abilities by now (if you believe evolution). I was also frustrated by seeing a person of your obvious abilities introducing "one more" QM "paradox," because an encyclopedia needs focus. It is OK to put in, of course, unsettled issues, but I am beginning to feel that this Wikipedia may never have focus. Good luck Pdn 6 July 2005 20:30 (UTC)

Tex vs NoN TeX

I replied at Wikipedia talk:How to write a Wikipedia article on Mathematics. I believe we need to clarify this issue, as it is indeed rather important. Oleg Alexandrov 6 July 2005 03:30 (UTC)

I have also replied at Wikipedia_talk:How_to_write_a_Wikipedia_article_on_Mathematics. I agree that this is an important issue. Best, - Gauge 03:34, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Polylogarithm

With respect to your recent addition to the Polylogarithm article, I was wondering which Borwein reference you were using (there are two listed). Also is there an easy way to see how the two sums are equal? Thanks - PAR 8 July 2005 18:47 (UTC)

Reply on Talk:Polylogarithm linas 8 July 2005 19:36 (UTC)

Spherical decay

That's nicely rewritten. Would you consider changing the name of the article? Do believe me, no one seems to recognize the effect under the name that you have given. Bambaiah 08:40, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

I just saw the vfd page again, and I apologize for the "original research" question. I understand that it you take it badly. In my defence I can only argue that at that time it looked unrecognizable: to me and others. Anyway, I take it back. Bambaiah 08:59, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Areas of mathematics

Are you able to expand second half the Physical sciences section at all? It would be beneficial if the sub-headings were expanded in a similar way to the first half. Tompw 20:08, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I presume you mean 'write a few sentences on 78-85, so that they are dense with wikilinks'? I guess I could. I'm equally interested in going to the next level of detail, e.g. linking briefly to 81Txx quantum field theory as well, but it seems that that is not the current style of that page. linas 03:52, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I see your point... the trouble is because maths is such a vast subject, explaining each area in too much details would lead to the page being simply too big to be useful. I personally feel that all each heading needs is a brief explaination of what the area is about, with links to relevant pages. Tompw 15:14, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Lerch transcendant or Lerch transcendent

Hi Linas. I have a question. Which of the above two is correct? It seems that 50% of the time you use one of them, and 50% the other. You even created the redirect Lerch transcendant in addition to the existing Lerch transcendent.

So, are both versions are correct, or you just chose to consistently misspell that word? Just wondering. :) Oleg Alexandrov 01:53, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

The correct answer is that I am not very good at spelling. Google shows 516 hits for -ent and 56 for -ant but most of the latter seem to be my misspelling in various WP mirrors, and the rest are a mispelling in an article by M. Jackson linas 15:49, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Mais en Francais, on dirait "transcendant", je croix. Et "lerch", ca veut dire, "cher". linas 15:58, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Merci, monsieur. Oleg Alexandrov 16:18, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

My bot is rather good at spellchecking, but it (purposefully) avoids spellchecking the links. So you should be especially careful with those. Oleg Alexandrov 16:20, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Ask yourself whether you would say transcendantal or transcendental. Michael Hardy 19:26, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Good point. :) And it is good if you are also careful with people's names, I mostly avoid spell-checking those (for good reasons). Oleg Alexandrov 20:49, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Punctuation

I keep on bugging you, don't I? One more request. According to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive7#periods_at_the_end_of_formulas_--_request_for_comment and the Wikipedia:How to write a Wikipedia article on Mathematics, a formula which at the end of sentence should end with a period (which I would say better go before </math> and not afterward).

As you will see in that discussion, the reason for proper punctuation is to follow the widely accepted practice in math books (as opposed to engineering books, which omit the dot). So, I hope you don't mind putting a period every now and then. :) Oleg Alexandrov 01:09, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't mind. I'll do that. linas 01:14, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Lorentz group

As you probably know, your discussion with Chris Hillman on the Lorentz group article left him rather distressed (see User talk:Hillman for some details; please don't be upset about the discussions involving you). I am not blaming you — as far as I can see, you have always been courteous — but I'd hate to see Chris leave as he knows a lot and write clearly. Anyway, he requested that you leave the article alone for a while, say till the end of the month, while he brings it in the form that he wants. I hope you will grant that request. I assume that you have plenty of other things to write about on Wikipedia.

Regarding the article itself, I find it very clear. I don't completely understand the hints you are dropping on the talk page, but I am not convinced changing the notation would be an improvement. Of course, I am a mathematician, not a physicist, but User:Mpatel seems to be more of a physicist and he agrees. On the other hand, making the connection with the index notation favoured by physicists could be a nice touch. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:11, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I was unaware that I'd upset Chris Hillman. He seemed bright, capable; he'd already written on a number of topics far more advanced than the Lorentz group. Since he was a newcomer to WP, I'd hoped only to help make him aware of possibly related articles on WP (which can be time-consuming to discover independently). The later comments, perhaps too-harshly titled "non-standard treatment", was meant to be a list in the sense of "oh by the way, more stuff that should be mentioned, but gosh aren't we all busy", rather than an attack/critique. Unfortunate, since I found CH to be fun and pleasent to be around, and a good fit to the WP community. (Something I can't say for certain others). Sigh. Extend my apologies to him; in the meanwhile I shall read his user page. linas 15:22, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Wow. I am reading User talk:Hillman and am rather shocked. I can only reiterate that my intent was to be friendly, helpful and suggestive; his angry response is unexpected, and I am scrambling to understand why. I have no ill-will to him, and am saddened to have caused him pain. linas 15:52, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I also don't know exactly what caused Chris' reaction, I just hope that it fades away in time. I put a short message at his talk page about your reaction. Sorry to insist, but could you please as a token of goodwill agree not to edit Lorentz group for a while? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:23, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I won't edit Lorentz group. You may note that the only edits I made to that article was to add a book reference, and to add a section that Chris explicitly asked me to add. linas 17:27, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Bell's theorem

I have a few (mostly minor) changes to your edits of Bell's theorem. The only thing I don't really like is your sentence about "psychological ...". If you are done editing, I will go ahead and make my changes.--21:31, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Good God, here we go again.. Talk:Bell's theorem .--CSTAR 17:25, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Quasiperfect numbers and integer sequences

I notice you recently recategorised quasiperfect number to 'integer sequences', but it seems odd to mark it as such given that no such numbers are known to exist. Do you see the categorisation as extending to any boolean property defined on integers (or maybe the naturals)? (I ask in all humility - it isn't clear to me whether the categorisation is appropriate or not.) Either way, it may also merit a clarification on Category::Integer_sequences. Hv 16:30, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi Hv, If you know of a better category, please recategorize as appropriate. I was attempting to do a broad cleanup; the articles I placed in Category:Integer sequences I had found scattered about Category:Numbers, Category:Integers, Category:Number theory, Category:Number sequences, a few in some odd corners, and a few without any cats at all. Rather than having them scattered all about, I thought I'd at least pull them into one place. There may be a better way of organizing these, but I don't know of one/can't think of one at this time. If you have ideas, let me know. At any rate, quasiperfect number seemed a better fit there than elsewhere. linas 16:44, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Hm, maybe Category:Divisor-related sequences, since there seems to be a dozen or so that can be loosely defined in this way, e.g. abundant number. linas 17:05, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

And then, there's Category:Totient-related sequences as well; is there a common name for these things? I am moving discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics linas 17:13, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I've followed it there. Hv 23:35, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Just totally curious

I saw your page, but it did not answer the question: what connections do you have with Lithuania? I understand that is a very personal question, but I just wonder if you are born there. And on a side note, very impressive list of articles created (and all that in about 7 months!). Renata3 18:15, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, born in Chicago, IL, of Lithuanian parents. Guessing you were too.. perchance we were in the same "Lituanistine mokykla" together? I note you're into accounting; GnuCash has been one of my other projects. linas 20:58, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I am born in Lithuania. I moved to NYC just a year ago to study accounting :) I think you might have guessed so because I don't contribute about Lithuania. But I have guessed that you were not born in Lt, because your English is not Lithuanian :) But it is so nice to see that somebody preserves Lithuanian traditions and culture... and is so into math :D Renata3 21:49, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

No need to thank, 'cause you are worth it. And not only because we share the same roots :) As soon as I saw your contribution list I knew you deserve an award, just I did not have time at that moment to go through the award giving procedure and image tutorial. Enjoy! :) Renata3 20:24, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

PlanetMath - fixing category

Hi,

I've found out that when one writes: {{planetmath | id=4021|title=Apéry's constant}} instead of: {{planetmath|id=4021|title=Apéry's constant}}

(without space) the problem vanishes. I don't have time, so could You repair rest of the articles? They can be reached when you click on PlanetMath and then "What links here" in toolbox. I hope somebody will correct it.

Best regards --Googlpl 20:45, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

See how I corrected Random variable. --Googlpl 20:51, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Belated thanks; I copied this over to Category talk:PlanetMath sourced articles. linas 00:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

FWIW

= "for what it's worth"? Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 00:24, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Admin?

It occurs to me that WikiProject:Physics could use its own in-house admin, so we can deal with crap faster. You look like the most qualified--if you're interested, I'd support you. -- SCZenz 21:38, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. Common sense says that I should not refuse the offer. Honesty compels me to state that I capricious in my interests and thus in my execution of duties. linas 22:46, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Plus you seem to imply that there are some people who'd be in opposition.. ;) I guess it's up to you. I just think someone who pays attention to physics ought to be--once I accumulate another couple months' edits, if there's nobody else I might look into doing it myself. -- SCZenz 00:18, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

No, I hope no one is opposed. I don't pick fights, try to be fair, don't tell people off, although I still managed to accidentally rub one person the wrong way recently. I have many things going on, and am reticent about over-commiting and then disapointing expectations. linas 00:29, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Double-indent -- please don't

Hi, I notice you double-indented several formulas in several articles. Please don't, it violates the current style guidelines Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics) (against which more than several thousand math articles are written). To change the guidelines, please discuss at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Don't be surprised if the double-colon usage is reverted to single-colon over time. linas 00:44, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

No problem. Please rewrite or otherwise improve any of those articles (some sorely need it). However for future reference the style guide currently says:

When displaying formulas on their own line, one should indent the line with one or more colons (:);

Rich Farmbrough 11:01, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Re: categories

Hi, -- Re categories; mostly I try to organize categories so that they have 150 or fewer articles in them. I don't mind if articles are in multiple categories, as long as they don't also appear in the parent category. Since "number theory" is potentially a huge category, I'd prefer to use it for articles that "don't fit anywhere else" or are "so important, they should be headliners". linas 00:01, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, once I figured out your logic, it made sense to me too. Thanks! Owen× ☎ 00:04, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that...I deleted my original comment within 5 minutes of posting it here, but of course couldn't erase the history. Anyway, All's Well etc. Owen× ☎ 00:28, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

More on spelling

Hi Linas. I know, I know, you are spelling-blind. May I ask though that you do not type people's name by hand but rather cut and paste from somewhere? Otherwise this leads to the dubious distinction that the only page in the world (as per google) containing the text "Euler-Mascheoni" is something of your authorship. I am spell-checking math articles on Wikipedia, so I am more than happy to fix your spelling errors, but note that mistakes in people's names are very hard to track, due to the huge variation in names to start with. So I would like to ask you to pay attention at that. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 02:20, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Gosh, I'm sorry. Actually, I've been trying pretty hard to spell correctly. I actually hate seeing the spelling mistakes of others. But "blind" is actually a good way of describing it.

You know, its the strangest thing. My browser has this spell checker, it highlights typos in red ... and when it does that, I fix the typos. But what's strange is that it doesn't always work. Somedays, it just doesn't spell check. I don't know why. Right now, at this instant, its working. This morning it wasn't. I know that sounds crazy ... as I get older, my computer is becoming less deterministic. linas 02:38, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

That your spellchecker does not highlight typos is not the worst that can happen. When you get even older, your spellchecker will start highlight in red words which are correctly spelled. Then I would start to really worry. :) Oleg Alexandrov 03:11, 30 August 2005 (UTC)