Linas

Revision as of 02:58, 21 June 2005

Revision as of 14:34, 21 June 2005

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* [[Literal pool]]

* [[Meteor]]

== 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. [[User:Pdn|Pdn]]