Current time: Saturday, July 6, 2024, 16:32 (UTC)
(archived @ User:Sam_Spade/Quotes)
User:Sam Spade/Art and artists
The grey-crowned babbler (Pomatostomus temporalis) is a species of bird in the family Pomatostomidae, the Australo-Papuan babblers. It is found in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Its habitats include subtropical, tropical dry and tropical moist lowland forests and shrublands as well as savanna. This photograph shows a group of grey-crowned babblers in Binya, New South Wales, Australia.Photograph credit: John Harrison
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Hello! You were listed on the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Germany page as living in or being associated with Germany. As part of the Wikipedia:User categorisation project, these lists are being replaced with user categories. If you would like to add yourself to the category that is replacing the page, or one of the Bundesland-based subcategories, please visit Category:Wikipedians in Germany for instructions. --Angr (tɔk) 15:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! Thank you for your welcome note and link collection. I liked them so much I started using similar ones in fi.wiki. I hope that's ok, --[boxed] 19:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Sam. I have compiled a petition to send to Mr. Wales with respect to my views on bullying on Wikipedia, which I think is a very grave problem on Wikipedia that Mr. Wales needs to address: User:Benapgar/Bullying. Please sign it if you agree, and if you can think of other people who might agree please let them know about it too. --Ben 02:02, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My email is acting up so... Why does 2+2=4? Well, I'm personally am a Skeptic (philosophical skeptic, don't confuse it with the everyday meaning of the word), who is anti-Foundationalist. The reason that 2+2=4 is that the whole of mathematics is founded on certain axioms that remain unproven - they have no known truth-value one way or the other. As a Skeptic, I believe that it is impossible to know the truth value of those axioms. I believe that the only thing we can know for sure, beyond a shadow of any doubt, is that we exist. (See Descartes' proof of this.) Everything else is just probabilities.
Well, there's a little more we can know - you can take a set of axioms and demonstrate that they are in logical contradiction. That way, you can prove that the reality that that set of axioms describe is false - that it is DNE (Does Not Exist). But there is no way of doing a truly positive proof - the most you can say is that given these axioms, this ought to be true. If reality disagrees, it's time to re-examine those axioms.
At any rate, "2+2=4" is not one of those foundational axioms of mathematics, but is a result of them. I'm not enough of a mathematician to tell you what the foundational axioms are, but I do know that much. (That is, to the extent that I know anything :-) ) So, I would say that the answer to the question "Why does 2+2=4?" is basically a combination of: 1) Because we said so, and 2) Are you sure that 2+2 really does equal 4?
Hope that the above proved entertaining enought to be worth reading! crazyeddie 06:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
<<but that seems very unlikely, and would involve some rather extreme violations of ockhams razor>>
Ockham's razor deals with probabilities. Such probabilities are the foundation of science - it could be said that the current theory of the day is the simplest theory that has yet to be falsified. It is the most likely theory to be true, given what we "know" about reality. But I am speaking as a philosopher, not a scientist, so it is my job to be concerned about certainties, not probabilities. For example, what is true even if an omniscient, omnipotent demon is attempting to confuse us regarding many important particulars.
<<2+2 might not = 4>>
Given my admittedly limited understanding of the mathematics of it all, I think that if you have the number two, then 2+2=4 is true by necessity - 2+2=4 is embedded in the very concept of twoness. But what if the very concept of twoness is false? Consider: "two" is an abstract concept - you will never see a free-range two in the World of the Senses. "Two" is only applied to objects, it is not an object itself.
But what monumental arrogance it is to say that there are "two humans"! To say that there are two humans says that those two humans are interchangable, that they can both be put in some cosmic parts-bin labelled "humans". Yet it is clear that those two humans are different. Even identical twins are not completely alike. Even if you did have two humans that were completely alike, they are still different because they occupy different locations in space-time (otherwise, you'd have one human!). Even the "same" person, at two different points in their life, is not the same person, not interchangable.
Logic, mathematics, language - these are all attempts to reduce reality down to something understandable. They are useful, but, by necessity, they are not true.
<<On the other hand God is as obvious as can be, depending on how you define him.>>
I define God as a person of unlimited power and unlimited knowledge. Or, failing that, then a person of the greatest possible power and knowledge that is within the limits of logical coherence. God is a benevolent version of Laplace's Demon. (And how likely is that :-)?) I picture Him as being somewhat like Kilgore Trout. Because God is a person, he is complicated. If you are self-aware (which is the definition of personhood, at least according to my private dictionary), then it seems to me that you already have the concept of two - you have the "I", and you have the "Not-I". And we have already discussed why the concept of two is absurd.
God is an easy answer. But He is not a simple one.
<<who am I?>>
You are you.
<<why are we here?>>
A cypress tree grows in the courtyard.
<<where did we come from>>
We have always been here. crazyeddie 17:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sam Spade 11:44, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sam, thank you for your welcome, two years ago! Best MarkDilley 05:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Gone, gone with 2 votes only, both delete. Can we retrieve the sourced info? I wrote to babajou who deleted it, but I am frankly re-amazed. There's a red link from german businessmen on Hitler. I start to wonder why people like you bother . Bye EffK 09:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
this picture http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/Races_all.JPG contains persons of all racial divisions, Australoid, Capoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:RaceMugshots.jpg This image does not have a Bushman or an Australian which are of the Australoid and Capoid race.
They don't describe them properly either, white should be European and black should be African and Asian would more specifically be East Asian.
And why does it have hispanic? Those "Hispanics" would better be described as Amerindian/Mestizos - as Hispanic is more a linguistic and cultural category.
Anyone would agree that my picture is an better improvement over the FBI mugshots.
all right, give me one good reason why that FBI mugshots is better than my picture?
Than what? Sam Spade 02:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sam ~
Agreed. My feeling is their are lusting for false power in their desire for the co-ordinator position. if they wanted to get something done, they should do something. It would help if you were more involved tho. Maybe you could help us appoint ourselves to the various tasks needing done? Sam Spade 16:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What pisses me off is how hard wikipedians try to take away from any respect I might have for the work I do here. I had just gotten my first article to feautured article status when people started to demand its removal. Then I was thinking of asking for adminship when they decided to take me to arbcom on insane charges, resulting a censure. Now their telling (2 now former arbiters thus far) us that all the work ever done by the AMA was for naught. I am very sick of these people. If this was a job, I would have loudly quit long ago. As is... I love encyclopedias, and there are alot of good people here, yourself included. I just don't know what the hell to do to make this a better place...
Sam Spade 21:14, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Howdy Sam! What an amazing set of user and talk pages you have. I especially love the animation today.
I bopped into Combatives and reverted the redirect to Close combat with no change whatsoever at Close combat, so that this can be done more in accordance with the Wikipedia:Merge guidelines. While I appreciate the various arguments on both sides (and the understandable pride the USMC has in having maintained the discipline admirably for decades, I think there are some pretty good points to be made for both terms while maintaining clarity of language and distinctions. There was a similar proposal made over at CQB to merge that into MOUT which is a redirect to Urban warfare, currently under discussion (for similar reasons). See you around, I am sure! Cheers. - Rorybowman 14:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You have done a good job of explaining your paradigm, and the premises from which your have arrived at it. I will attempt to do likewise. I am interested in hand to hand combat, and have been scouring the wiki trying to find a decent page on it. The combatives page was well done, a good read, altho all too short. Another problem is that it is an odd term, one I had never heard before, and one which a search of google clarifies as being quite obscure. I was lucky to have ever stubled across the link to it at all (from mixed martial arts).
So... my goal is to help readers like me who want to know more about military style hand to hand combat. I don't feel there is enough distinct material on the marine corps or army (or US military for that matter) variations to warrant separate articles at this time. IMO the best way for readers to find the info they desire in this situation is to merge all relevant stubs into one hub article, from which smaller articles can be split off and linked from when it grows too large in size and scope. The end result i would like to achieve is a reader typing an obvious term (like "hand to hand combat") into our search bar and finding an extensive, high quality article on the subject. Sam Spade 16:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've been after it, have a look. You may want to use my contributions to help you see what all I did, as it was all pretty complicated.
Feel free to let me know if you have any concerns, and please lend a hand at Hand to hand combat, which can certainly stand improvements. I do think close combat and combatives should both link to hand to hand combat, but I will not press the matter if you disagree.
You can also feel free to reverting my merger of CQB and disambiguation of Close combat if you disagree, I simply did what seemed best to me. I deleted no content, btw. Sam Spade 17:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Next time you redirect CQB you might want to discuss it on the talk page first. I reverted it. Swatjester 19:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have a curious problem where I am involved in editing an article (Cartesian materialism) with one other user and we have got involved in an edit war. We have both tried to involve other users but cannot get any third party input. Where can we go from here? Should we just log in and revert the other party's work whenever we turn on the computer?
History:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cartesian_materialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Cartesian_materialism
I thought of you because of your evident interest in psychology and Wikipedia experience. loxley 10:59, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It was a comment made in a particular and light-hearted social situation at the wikimeet. Phil Sandifer 13:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please see responses on my talk page. Thanks...KHM03 18:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Essjay hasn't acted inappropriately at all. I think your tone was (and remains) troubling. As one of the finest administrators on Wikipedia, he takes this kind of thing quite seriously (and he should). I'm happy to forget about all this and move on; just please watch your tone in the future...and it wouldn't hurt to review WP:CIV. Thanks...KHM03 18:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sam, you constantly interject your biased views into this article. Your remarks also demonstrate a lack of knowledge on the issue.
I'm not even going to get into how seriously flawed your logic of "Well the Nazi's called themselves Socialists so they are Socialists" is.
Please...Do us a favor and stay out of that section.
Thank you.
Your assumptions are way off. Have a look at political compass. Thats a bit in the direction of how I envision things, not that it matters much. There are plenty of experts I can cite who have the views you insult. Try reading something by Ludwig von Mises, or better yet the road to serfdom by the nobel prize winning Friedrich Hayek. Heres a cartoon version. Sam Spade 12:06, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Other theories involve Hitler having escaped to the Antarctic, where he joined with a subterranean dinosauroid master race, with whom he now travels inside UFOs underground, generally beneath the South Pole or throughout the center of the hollow earth, but sometimes to a Nazi moon base as well. (See Miguel Serrano, below.)
Why does this have to be at the very beginning of the article? Just because there is a book about something doesn't mean that everything in that book is true. Nazi mysticism is paradigm-bending enough without stuff like this. In all honesty, I've trolled the web a lot and I've NEVER come across this. As you know, for every grain of truth there is a sand-dune of falsehood.
The place for this material, if any, is further down the article under "other," or perhaps in a separate article.
Hi, I'm the original poster. It's not that I can definitively "prove" that those claims are dubious. For all I know, they're all 100% true! I guess my concern is more along the lines of someone looking at the page, seeing the bits about dinosaurs and Antarctic bases, and then just writing the whole thing off; kind of like how people write off certain truths because of the fringe elements that associate with them . . . of course maybe the fringe elements are right. Peoples' minds need to be opened gradually. Nobody can disupte the fact that the Nazis were influenced by the occult . . . and yet the occult itself is a taboo topic, even when talked about in context with of the Nazis. If some ventures as far as to research the occult influences of the Nazis, they might first go to Wikipedia, and then be "shocked off" by the dinosaur / UFO thing. In any case, most "history" books contain elements of fabrication in them. It is amazing what people have gotten away with [i.e. Mencken regarding the inventor of the toilet; Weems and George Washington's cherry tree {examples from The Book of Lies <<sorry, I forgot the author>>}]; and regarding current and recent past events, still get away with. So I guess my argument boils down to arranging the article on a believability or credulity spectrum.
BTW - I had never even heard of Kate O'Bierne unti that book came out. Then, when I read her wiki profile, I became irked by the use of "liberal" and "counterpoint;" as though mainstream beliefs run counter to the delusions of the sociopathic hooligans who currently control the TV media. Peace Out.
I see your point, but I created nazi mysticism for this information! Its obviously not ment for the nazism page, or the mysticism page, and its quite well sourced. Miguel Serrano is not some lone nutcase calling in to art bell, nor is Savitri Devi. These people (along w dozens of lone nutcases, to be sure[1]) provide a great deal of outlandish informations. Anyone who is curious enough to read our nazi mysticism article is clearly desirous of extreme and edgy info, and I feel there is little danger of them being frightened off by descriptions of the more dubious data. Sam Spade 08:31, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have resigned from AMA, I'm going to go coordinate MedCab. Kim and I are talking about some other Cabal ideas, look me up when you get a chance. --Wgfinley 03:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please, when someone reverts something (which wasn't rejected by anyone for months) only because it does not fit with his/her POV and then someone else comes and reverts this sudden edit, do not revert back to this sudden POV only because you think you know. It is ridiculous when you doubt that I (or any other Jew) could have a cite for this statement ("Most Jews..."). The problem is not having one, the problem is to narrow it down to one which would reflect the opinion of most Jews. Of course, you knew that. hasofer 09:15, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please reread my statement. Fortunately the latest edits saved what you could not leave on that page. Concerning sources... again please reread my statement... hasofer 22:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi,
I'm just wondering why you changed the psychology section of the Human article (here) to focus on psychoanalysis, which is not mentioned once in the main Psychology article on wikipedia.
cheers dr.alf 05:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wow that article is a shocking mess... I made some improvements to the history section, but this is going to take alot of time and work from some expert editors. Care to lend a hand? The Psychology#Principles_of_psychology section is an absolute horror. Sam Spade 12:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A new feature has been created to help new users. It's ((helpme)), organised by Boot Camp. As the ((Welcome)) explains, it can helpful to new users and ideal on welcome messages. We would like you to include these intructions on your welcome templates User:Sam Spade/Resources/Welcome and User:Sam Spade/Welcome. Is that ok?--Commander Keane 21:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have created a template called Platonism. However, for reasons I don't understand, when I attempt to install it on a page, it spreads out to the entire width of the page, instead of behaving itself over to the side. Do you have the technical knowledge to explain to me my error? Or, can you refer me to someone who does?
How are things going otherwise? --HK 15:34, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]