User talk:AxelBoldt/Archive December 2004 - December 2006

Please add new comments at the bottom. I will reply on this page. If I wrote something on your talk page, please reply there. The idea is to make quoting easy and keep conversations in their logical order.

Older talk can be found in User_talk:AxelBoldt/Archive.

Dear Axel,

I think your revisions of the hyperventilation article have improved it generally. Thank you. I do have one reservation though. I would like to somehow restore the information that breathing is the primary pH regulation mechanism both because it gives some perspective on how hyperventilation can get pH out of whack, and because this important fact is not easy to find. What do you think?

--AJim 01:26, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh yes certainly, I didn't really mean to cut that. Please restore. (Perhaps one could also mention this function of breathing in the respiration article.) Maybe you have also something to say regarding my question on Talk:Hyperventilation. Cheers, AxelBoldt 18:57, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Barnstar

Hello Axel. I don't know what you think about the barnstars that are often awarded for outstanding contributions to Wikipedia, but I have taken the liberty of placing one on your user page after being amazed that there weren't a whole string of them there already. Feel free to move it to a more convenient location, change the caption, or remove it altogether as you wish. And keep up the good work! — Trilobite (Talk) 03:13, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, I'm flattered! AxelBoldt 06:54, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Santorum

You deleted useful information about the neologism usage, replacing it with a wikilink to a nonexistent article. Are you creating or planning to create such an article? If not, the Santorum page should go back to its previous state. JamesMLane 06:56, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the information was useful, but it was a duplication of the material at Savage Love. Since duplication is bad and disambiguation pages aren't supposed to contain much information anyway, I directed the reader to that article. Then I realized that an article santorum (word) already exists which currently redirects to Savage Love. So pointing to santorum (word) seemed the most logical: if we ever decide to take the material out of Savage Love and place it in its own article (which I'm currently not planning to do), then the disambiguation page at santorum will still point to the right place. Cheers, AxelBoldt 07:10, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think duplication is bad if it makes the information more accessible to the reader. (If it creates too much clutter, of course, then duplication makes the information less accessible.) In this instance, I think the setup that's most useful to readers is that someone who enters "Santorum" in the search box gets a listing of the different meanings and can find elaboration on either without getting bogged down in the Savage Love stuff, which may well be irrelevant to this reader. That could be done with a separate article at Santorum (word), but, like you, I'm not planning to create it. It's borderline whether it merits a separate article. Absent such an article, I think giving the information in the dab page is the way to go.

Meanwhile, I see that someone else reverted, unaware of the discussion here. I guess I should have put my comment on the article talk page instead of here, but I thought you might be doing a separate article, so I wanted to be sure you saw my question. JamesMLane 17:20, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I continued on Talk:Santorum. AxelBoldt 19:19, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Gyrocompass

Hi Axel,

I came across your article on the gyrocompass.
I'm curious: do you agree that the physics involved in how a gyrocompass works corroborates a hardly known aspect of general relativity? Many books on general relativity, especially books that popularize science, claim that all acceleration is as relative as the relativity between inertial velocities. If that would be true, the gyrocompass would violate general relativity. So a proper interpretation of general relativity must contain that angular velocity can be measured locally, without reference to other local matter.
An observer can measure an anisotropy in the Cosmic Background Radiation, presumebly that is the closest he can come to measuring his velocity with respect to the part of the universe visible to him. But it appears to me that a gyrocompass measures its own rotation with respect to the universe by comparing itself with local space-time.
I noticed the link to Reflections on Relativity, at mathpages.com, that's where I get most of my information on relativity. Cleon Teunissen 19:27, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it appears to me that one can locally determine angular velocity with a gyroscope, and I don't think that contradicts any statements of general relativity (except maybe the simplified accounts you mention). However, I shouldn't be trusted on any of this; it has been too long that I studied GR. Cheers, AxelBoldt 18:47, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah, you know, I think this is very ironical. I get the impression that some people take personal pride the idea that they have absorbed the highly counter-intuitive idea that all reference frames are indistinguishable, including rotating reference frames. Lately I have been involved in discussions with someone about these matters, and I wonder whether he may decide to take the stance that gyroscopes contradict general relativity. Cheers, Cleon Teunissen 19:49, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Copyright violation?

I've discovered that a number of sites use the precise wording found at Prostitution in Nevada, which the history says you wrote. I've put up the copyvio template for now, but please come to the talk page and state that you wrote the page yourself. I think that will be sufficient evidence for now, unless I can find a page using the wording dated before December 23, 2002. I'm personally inclined to believe that you wrote it yourself, since I can see no motive for putting it up in multiple sections if you were just lifting it wholesale from another site. —Simetrical (talk) 00:33, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)