Difference between revisions of "User talk:SamHB"

Revision as of 06:16, July 13, 2016

1 MVCalc Course Structure
2 image uploaded
3 course structure and existence proofs
- 3.1 riemann sums.gif
4 More about course structure
5 my recent edits
6 great work!
7 Wow!
8 some help?
9 glad to see you're on
10 3.3
11 New Musical Examples up at Mannheim
12 My MV Material - heads up
13 College Math
14 Good to see you again!
15 Stay off the grass signs
16 More thoughts on math
17 Both sides of the Ada Lovelace story
18 Federal Debt Limit
19 Why is it
20 Sorry!
21 Daily Beast evolution article
22 Spammer
23 "Troll" Editing by User:SamHB of Numerous articles I am Working on / Editing / Contributing
- 23.1 Bibliography for my Citations
24 The Liberals smear campaign Won -- I now retire from editing Conservapedia
25 Kind Advice from Conservative and Karajou and my Response - No more Survivalism-Guns-AltMed-Permaculture-HamRadio, just Indian Philosophy articles from me now
26 Material moved from the Community Portal
27 re: idiom articles
28 Upload Rights
29 Deja vu
30 In which Cons tells us a bit about Ken Ammi
31 In which Cons tells us about CMI and AIG's Christian outreach efforts
32 In which Cons tells us about the future of liberalism and economics in the United States and Europe
33 In which Cons shares a charming clip from a Western movie
34 In which SamHB attempts to reply to all this
35 In which Cons tells us about the general tone of his contributions
36 In which Cons tells us about the connection between Darwinism and atheism
37 In which Cons invites me to contact Ken Ammi (presumably the "real" one) if I have any questions for him
38 re: The person most hated at RW :-)
- 38.1 SamHB weighs in
39 Music
40 Maxwell's Equations
41 Re: your article idea
42 regarding content creation
43 E=MC2
44 Another atheism article is coming out probably in July 0f 2015 and then another one in August
45 "declared concerning"
46 re: the portion of your above criticism which was ranting
47 Apology
- 47.1 My response (from Cons, things sometimes get confusing)
48 Cons likes a little fun, such as being "pugnacious" with other users
49 Oh, Cons. You're such a comedian!
50 re: footnoting
51 Please don't vape (oversight) things, part 1
52 Please don't vape (oversight) things, part 2
53 Temporarily unlocked article as per your request
54 Math works
55 Sabbatical
56 Talk Edits for the past week
57 Glad that you are around!
58 A Kinder, Gentler Cons
59 Much to the dismay of TARs most ardent detractors at another wiki....
60 Why?
61 A tool for you
62 So, yanking my chain is one of the fun things you do here...
63 Re: a userbox on your user page
64 Upload (for Cons)
65 I hope I'm not causing you to get insufficient sleep
66 Another atheism article that does not begin with "Atheism and"
67 Message from QuantumDude
68 Law of Mass Conservation
- 68.1 A simple solution to begin mastering simplification
69 small request
70 request for administrative action -- telephone for Cons (or anyone else)
71 Cons pastes an excerpt from one of his articles for me, with a heading of "You are mistaken that the world is like a franchise"
72 You know what's interesting...
73 footnote did not support your contention
74 re: your proposed TAR related Conservapedia space web page
75 Re: A bit of advice
76 Conservapedia's web traffic is up
77 References
78 re: More impactful endeavors
79 re: RobS
80 Re: Aburke
81 Quick note
82 Article "Two"
83 re: "Atheism and rocking chairs" article idea you had
84 Autoconfirmed users
85 re: Bible scientific foreknowledge

MVCalc Course Structure

I was thinking of working on lecture 3 tonight and I noticed some oddities in the order of topics. For example, I had planned to cover tangent planes in a lecture or two after the gradient and extrema? I don't know what I was thinking, but I just wanted to say, if you find you would like to refer in a lecture piece to info not yet presented, or if you think one topic naturally flows into another which is for some reason in a different lecture or something, please, feel free to switch up the course order. It may well be necessary, actually! Just remember to change the order both on the pages and on the outline given in lecture 1. JacobB 01:07, 7 January 2010 (EST)

PS: have you considered archiving your talk page? just a suggestion JacobB 01:08, 7 January 2010 (EST)

Earlier you asked about arching your page. I do it just by cutting and pasting everything to User talk:SamHB/Archive 1, and then putting at the top of my talk page For older discussions, see the archives:<1>. JacobB 18:20, 7 January 2010 (EST)

Done. Great minds think alike. I had believed there was some complicated procedure involving renaming files, that one had to do in order to get the history correct. But I looked around at how existing sysops do it, and they don't bother with any of that. Good enough for me. SamHB 19:55, 7 January 2010 (EST)

A rambling philosophical comment: While reading your wave equation stuff, I was appalled at the way you were approaching it, fiddling around (get it?) with the physics, in advance of doing the mathematics. Then I had an epiphany: You and I have very different ways of approaching these problems. We are each very good at what we do. You approach it in terms of "What is the pedagogically right way to present the material in a sequence of lectures, in a fixed order, with quizzes and exercises and such?" I approach it in terms of "What is the pedagogically right way to present the material in terms of separate pages, that the student can follow in whatever order they want, by clicking whatever hyperlinks interest them?" I recently sort of messed up one of your lectures by moving around the concepts of "vector functions" vs. "vector fields". Feel free to move it back. I will put explanation of these concepts in the separate pages, and defer to you on the order in the lectures. Meanwhile, I need to improve the wave equation page, explaining what sorts of mathematical functions satisfy the equation, and then showing how it arises in a large number of physical problems.

About your specific questions about lecture 3, I need to look more closely at your overall order. You seem to have a more "geometric" approach rather than a "pure math" approach. For example, I would be inclined to cover local maxima/minima in arbitrary dimensions early on, just after talking about partial derivatives, so that all that remains in "extrema" problems is the issue of checking the boundaries. What is the correct order of gradients, directional derivatives, and parametric surfaces? Hard to say. I'd have to write up a draft of these topics first. Maybe I'll do that, but not now. I'm too psyched about the wave equation at the moment.

I hope at least some of this makes sense. SamHB 22:59, 7 January 2010 (EST)

I think you're absolutely right about our styles, and I don't want you to defer to me, at all! I think we can create a blend of styles which will yield the best of both worlds. I like what you did with the vector functions/fields, no need to change it back! I'm going to peruse our articles for a bit now, and I'll get back to you in a bit.

BTW, wave equation wasn't done by a long shot. I hadn't talked about boundary conditions, damping effects, etc., let alone solutions. Feel free to add; just know that my version wasn't what I considered a finished product. JacobB 00:19, 8 January 2010 (EST)

Jacob:

As usual, I've put my foot in my mouth. There is nothing wrong with your wave equation section. It just had a style different from mine, that led to the insight of why our styles are different. I didn't even read it all the way through. I just looked at the first few sentences and extrapolated the trajectory from the initial velocity vector. Of course we will check each other's work very carefully when the time is right.

I've gone through the recent email from you and Andy, and noticed that Andy unblocked me largely for the purpose of assisting with the "calc 3" class. Therefore it would be kind of unsociable for me to run off and only write whatever individual pages strike my fancy at any given instant. So here's my first serious comment, based on your outline. But it's on another page. It seems to me that discussing this stuff here, rather than on the actual course talk page seems a little cabal-like and antisocial. So, having gotten personal stuff out of the way, I'm going to continue on the other page.

SamHB 22:11, 8 January 2010 (EST)

image uploaded

the image you emailed me is available here. JacobB 17:59, 9 January 2010 (EST)

course structure and existence proofs

As promised, I'm doing a whole bunch of math material tonight, but I wanted your thoughts on something, and there's also a favor I'd like to ask.

First up, as part of the restructuring we discussed to cover more PDE material, I'm thinking of combining all the integral definitions and calculations into a single lecture, and then the integral changes under coordinate transforms + applications into another lecture. That'll free up one lecture for some more PDE stuff. What do you think of this? I may or may not have done it by the end of tonight, so you can check it out on the lecture 1 page and see what you think.

Second, I'm just going to state the conditions under which the integrals exist, and that they can be evaluated as iterations of single integrals yadda yadda yadda. Would you like to make some existence proofs and link to them from the lectures? JacobB 23:26, 12 January 2010 (EST)

I reorganized the course a little bit, freeing up lectures 7&8. I'm also thinking of deleting lecture 4 and moving a discussion of velocity and acceleration earlier in the course, and skipping completely or downsizing the intended coverage of Frenet frame and curvature.

So, as of right now, that's two lectures freed up, and possibly another, which is tons of space for the extra PDE stuff you wanted to add (which I think is a great idea!). The course structure STILL needs work - any further idea you have would be welcome. JacobB 04:27, 13 January 2010 (EST)

Well, I seem to be falling farther and farther behind your ambitious pace of writing. I really don't have a lot of time to devote to this, so I need to make the most of my time. I haven't even had time to do more than a cursory reading of the CLEP website that you gave.

My particular areas of interest are integration in its various forms, and curvilinear coordinate systems. That means, for example, the various forms of Stokes' theorem, and line integrals / surface integrals, etc. All this stuff is hard to cover properly; my bookshelves are filled (exaggeration) with books that do it badly, and don't really explain what a "differential form" is, or what it means to integrate it. Doing this really right (e.g. Spivack Calculus on Manifolds) requires some mathematical machinery (exterior forms, or, if you like, alternating covariant tensor fields) that goes well beyond what is appropriate here. But I'd like to give it an intuitive but not mathematically rigorous treatment.

The starting point should be the change of variable theorem. Students already know the basics of that from Calc 1 and Calc 2, of course. But we can take it to the next step, showing how it ties together the material on parametric curves/surfaces, and integrals over same. How? You change to the coordinate system of the parameter(s), so that the integral becomes a standard (Cartesian) Riemann integral. Of course we know that, but we need to make it central to the presentation.

About theorems and "rigor": Of course I like my math rigorous, but there's one area of math (well, maybe more than one, but humor me) where the "Oh, I see how that's true" insight is very useful in advance of all the rigorous "Let S be an open subset of a smooth submanifold of ..." theorems. And that area just happens to be the area we are in. So, for example, the geometric insight of the 2-dimensional Stokes' theorem is useful, and the rigorous proof is just unnecessary tedium. (They'll see it again if they major in math.)

So I'd like to see:

Review of integration, change-of-variable theorem.
Integration over 2-dimensional regions to find, for example, areas. Of course, plain 1-dimensional integration can find the area of a region bounded by a function, the x-axis, and 2 vertical lines, but we want to break out of that.
- Use of the change-of-variable theorem to deal with such integrals.
Path integration, with the change-of-variable theorem changing to a coordinate system for which this is natural, and the connection with parametric curves and surfaces. (A parametric curve of surface is just a coordinate change that makes the curve or surface trivial.)
Continue to higher dimensions.
Easy proof of Stokes' theorem (well, not easy, and maybe not a rigorous proof) by choosing a coordinate system that "flattens whatever the curvy surface was.
Similarly for divergence and Green's theorem; show that Green's theorem is just a trivial case of Stokes' theorem, and the change of coordinate system converts the latter into the former.

I find that the pages on this stuff (not your lectures, the article pages) are scattered all over the place, with Iterated integral, and Double integral, and Line integral and Surface integral and Vector integration. They would benefit from being consolidated into a smaller number of more comprehensive pages.

Other subjects I'm interested in are Laplace's equation, the physical significance, and simple applications of separation of variables (Fourier series over a circular membrane) to solve it. This is probably way too ambitious. Please stop me from doing it. :-)

About your question about proofs, what do you have in mind for existence proofs? Do mean prove Fubini's theorem? And the conditions under which a multiple integral, in which the individual slices all converge, doesn't converge? That theorem, if I recall correctly, is very hairy. And those conditions are mostly of interest to upperclass topology and analysis majors. Do I misremember? If you say that I do, and you really want those proofs, I will read up on them. On the other hand, a sort of intuitive "hand-wavey" not-really rigorous presentation is something I'm all in favor of.

SamHB 20:57, 13 January 2010 (EST)

I'd like a proof of some basic conditions under which a Riemann integral is defined. We don't need to cover all cases in which it is defined, and we don't need to explore more advanced forms of integration, but right now we have nothing.

While I'm all in favor of a brief discussion of Laplace's equation, using Fourier series at this level is probably too advanced.

Working on the various special cases of Stokes theorem is great, and I encourage you to. We have some unassigned lectures, so feel free to explore those areas in those open lectures. JacobB 17:05, 14 January 2010 (EST)

OK, that's much easier than Fubini's theorem. I believe the official statement is that is is defined if the set of discontinuities has measure zero and the integral is finite. Or we could dispense with the finiteness and say "Yeah, it's defined, but it's defined to be infinite." That's better than saying "I have no idea." In Lebesgue integration theory, I believe that it is considered to be nonintegrable if the integral is infinite; I've never liked that. But never mind. I'll look up stuff and try (for once) not to re-invent the wheel this time. Anyway, more to the point, for our purposes we can use a weaker condition: the set of discontinuities is finite. Getting the students involved in Lebesgue measure is probably not what we want to do. And, of course, we are doing the Riemann integral, not the Lebesgue integral. This stuff (showing that the limit exists) will belong on the Riemann integral page. It will be necessary to get that unlocked. SamHB 23:04, 14 January 2010 (EST)

We also need some material on coordinate transforms, which isn't accounted for at all in the current course structure. Care to help me with that? Also, Riemann Integral has been unlocked by TK. JacobB 20:52, 16 January 2010 (EST)

riemann sums.gif

Gifs often don't work very well when we try to resize them, I'm not sure why. I've uploaded a jpg version of the file here. JacobB 10:46, 19 January 2010 (EST)

More about course structure

A few thoughts -- I don't think we should try to do exterior derivatives; that's just too advanced. That is, I can't picture having one course go all the way from talking about polar coordinates up to doing exterior derivatives. Of course, we need it for the general Stokes' theorem, so we may need to do some hand-waving. I'll look at the Stokes' article.

Should we be keeping any of the exercises/problems secret for use in a final exam? I thought of a very doable but interesting (read: diabolical if you haven't followed the lecture!) problem for integration of parametric surfaces.

I've moved the stuff earlier. Lecture 2 is now bloated, while some others are emaciated.

SamHB 22:22, 22 January 2010 (EST)

my recent edits

See your email - my removal of this content was not a commentary on the quality of your contributions at all, but just trying to keep Conservapedia on-mission. JacobB 21:45, 24 January 2010 (EST)

great work!

nice stuff on coordinate changes JacobB 23:36, 3 February 2010 (EST)

Wow!

Wow, terrific effort!--Andy Schlafly 23:19, 7 February 2010 (EST)

some help?

I'm trying to formulate a parametrization of one side of a hyperbola $\text{[math]}$ so that $\text{[math]}$ for a constant $\text{[math]}$ . I've been doing all kinds of research on hyperbolic trajectories, but can't find what I'm looking for. JacobB 03:31, 10 February 2010 (EST)

You haven't been shooting alpha particles at gold foil lately, have you? :-)

It looks as though you want the actual trajectory, parameterized by time, of a particle in an inverse square repulsive field. That is, x(t) and y(t) in closed form. You may be out of luck on that, though I can't say for sure.

This is, of course the famous Kepler problem, which has the famous and elegant conic section solution for r in terms of theta. Let $\text{[math]}$ be the attractive/repulsive acceleration, so that

$\text{[math]}$ in the gravitational case, or $\text{[math]}$ in the electrostatic case. And L is the angular momentum divided by the mass. ( $\text{[math]}$ is part of the problem statement; L and e are constants of the integration.)

For the attractive case,

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

which is the neat and elegant conic that we know and love. But it doesn't track the actual passage of time.

For the repulsive case, I'm still going to have $\text{[math]}$ , so the solution is

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

How to get the time dependence? Warning: I haven't checked this stuff personally yet.

According to wikipedia, we can set

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

Now introduce a new parameter E (why the heck did they call it that?) in place of t, and we can get x and y in closed form:

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

\text{[math]}

The first two of those equations get x and y in closed form as functions of E, so we need E as a function of t. The last equation gives t as a function of E. But I don't think that can be inverted in closed form!

SamHB 21:16, 10 February 2010 (EST)

glad to see you're on

can you see Calc3.10? i think i wrote this WAY too advanced, but i also feel like fourier analysis is really the only way to understand what's happening there. any thoughts? JacobB 23:15, 17 February 2010 (EST)

Yeah. I saw what you wrote a couple of days ago (how's that for a dangling participle? :-) Too advanced. I'm not familiar with this particular technique, and will have to brush up on it. But: Delta? Is that the Dirac delta function? Or some representation of a kernel? They won't follow it. And the subscript *. Fourier transform? I'm not familiar with that notation.

The way I would present it, and Laplace's equation too, is to show some simple examples of solutions. You and I know that as the first few eigenfunctions. The student can't learn how to solve PDE's until they have seen some examples of solutions. PDE's are way too hard otherwise. (It's like teaching integral calculus. We start by showing some lucky guesses -- "Hey, the sine function has the derivative that we want, let's talk about it for a bit." -- and then we get down to techniques for solving them for real.

This gets into the method of separation of variables. It's simplest form is with Laplace's equation on a disk. (I know much more about Laplace than the heat equation, so maybe what I'm saying doesn't apply to the heat equation.) We work out the standard solutions by guessing. They are of the form r^k cos (2\pi\k (\theta +M)) or something like that. We show that those work. And that any linear combination works. We're almost there! If the problem is to find the equilibrium temperature everywhere, given the temperature at the periphery, we just have to figure out how to represent that as sines and cosines. I'll be darned! Fourier series will do it!

Then we show how separation of variables works in general -- "We look for solutions of the form X(x) Y(y), such that they are each subject to their own differential equation.

But it's probably still too complicated.

SamHB 00:10, 18 February 2010 (EST)

Agreed. We may need to consider not including this material in the course at all. On a seperate note, I was hoping you might be able to add some exercises for your Jacobian stuff in Lec. 2? JacobB 22:09, 25 February 2010 (EST)

Yes. I'm working on putting together the presentation of vectors in curvilinear coordinates. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm using a somewhat nontraditional definition of basis vectors -- they aren't normalized. The formulas for dot, cross, div, and curl are more natural, and they can handle any coordinate system, not just orthogonal ones. Still needs more work. A lot more. And I can't put in as much time on this as I would like. I will work out exercises for them.

By the way, I thought of a really cool problem. "You are designing a universe. You want Maxwell's equations to be true, because they are so elegant. You want the electric field around a point charge to be a radial vector, proportional to the radius raised to some power. What does that power have to be, so that the divergence will be zero?" The answer is, of course, -2. And, when things are expressed in spherical coordinates and the correct divergence formula is used, it is very easy.

SamHB 23:53, 25 February 2010 (EST)

3.3

Can you take your line/surface integral stuff from lec 3.3 and merge it with the material on these topics presented in 3.5? JacobB 17:00, 27 February 2010 (EST)

OK. But not right now. I finally put together the divergence/curl stuff, so a huge delivery is about to happen. It may be that, in addition to your request, the div/curl stuff will need to move to a later section. SamHB 23:07, 27 February 2010 (EST)

Done. It's all in a pretty messed-up state, but at least it's in one place. And the right place--lecture 5. There's nothing about integration in earlier lectures. Well, a little bit--the arc length discussion requires an integral, but it's a completely vanilla integral. Lecture 5 is where the fancy-shmancy integrals on manifolds occur.

In fact, a thing to think about is the relationship between the lecture 4 material--tangents, binormals, torsion, etc. (that is, the stuff that you are interested in :-) and the generalized coordinate/manifold stuff (the stuff I'm interested in :-). They are both part of multivariable calculus, but sort of at opposite poles of the subject. Maybe we could think about switching lecture 3 and lecture 4. Not saying we should; I haven't thought about in any detail. But it's a possibility.

Forget that. I've looked again. The lectures are in the right order. SamHB 22:54, 1 March 2010 (EST)

Hope this makes at least some sense.

SamHB 22:51, 1 March 2010 (EST)

New Musical Examples up at Mannheim

Enjoy! JDWpianist 15:02, 5 March 2010 (EST)

My MV Material - heads up

To JacobB or anyone else who works on the MV course. (Or anyone interested in the topic.)

The material that I wrote, mostly in lecture 3.2, used a somewhat radical approach to vector components. I used somewhat unorthodox definitions of generalized coordinate systems -- "natural" coordinates rather than "orthonormal coordinates + Lamé coefficients". The latter are more common, but natural coordinates are, in my opinion, actually simpler and, well, more natural. Here is the difference: What I call "natural" coordinates allows for arbitrary coordinate systems; not just the orthogonal ones that are in common use. All the common coordinate systems (polar or confocal in 2D, cylindrical, spherical, etc. in 3D) are orthogonal, in the sense that the coordinate lines, curved though they may be, are always orthogonal to each other at any point. I used "natural" coordinates, such as are used in tensor calculus, that don't require orthogonality. It's true that I made heavy use of the common simplification for common coordinate systems, but I used a very general treatment in the early stages.

The most important difference is that, in the "natural" formulation, basis vectors are not unit vectors. That is, I used a different formulation of what the components of a vector mean. The components of any given vector, in common orthonormalized coordinates, is bigger than the natural components of the same vector, by a factor of H_i, the i^th Lamé coefficient.

In an orthonomalized system, the metric tensor is diagonal. For example, in spherical coordinates, the metric is

\text{[math]}

The Lamé coefficients are the square roots of those diagonal entries. (The metric is positive-definite, no?) So we have

\text{[math]}

In an orthonomalized system, those are the only things you need to know, but the formulas are very hard to explain and motivate. In my treatment of, for example, the cross product, you can see them lurking in disguise, in the form of the various square roots of g_ii.

Important point: The basis vectors (that is, vectors with components like (0, 1, 0)) are not unit vectors in the sense of having a real, physical length of 1. In an orthonomalized system, their physical length is 1—the formula for the length of a vector is always the square root of the sum of the squares of the components, although the meaning of those components is actually very complicated. In a "natural" system, the inner product is given by $\text{[math]}$ . Which of course simplifies somewhat when the system is in fact orthogonal and the metric is diagonal.

My guess is that you aren't really inclined to do things with "natural" coordinates in the MV lectures. (In fact, it's possible that you are banging your head against your desk right now as you read this :-) So you will probably want to rewrite some of my material. The part about thinking of a coordinate system in terms of its J matrix to any Cartesian system, and then using J^tJ as the metric matrix is still probably useful. (I intended to have the proof that g is independent of which Cartesian system you use (though J itself is not) be an exercise. It involves showing that the transformation between any two Cartesian systems is an orthogonal matrix, and, when you insert such a matrix into the J^tJ computation, the transpose turns into an inverse and they cancel.)

But my definitions of the dot product and cross product involve the metric, whereas, in the traditional formulation, the formulas are the same as in Cartesian coordinates. Because all the vectors are calibrated with respect to a locally orthonormal system, and that's all that matters for dot and cross products.

Curl and divergence are another matter. The formulas for these are way hairy no matter how you do it. (Though, if you use the "natural" formulation and do tensor operations, they are trivial cases of the covariant gradient. But you probably don't want to do that.) I have the polished formulas written down on paper somewhere; never got around to typing them in. Let me know if you want them. Otherwise, use the traditional formulas, from whatever textbook you like.

Good luck!

Incidentally, the page math.arizona.edu/~vpiercey/Lame.pdf, which I wasn't aware of when I started with MV Calc, has an excellent treatment of how the Lamé coefficients are used in practice. It's interesting reading, and might have useful pedagogical ideas.

SamHB 22:20, 30 June 2010 (EDT)

Great. Let's teach beginning differential geometry to engineering students. Oh, is that a sig sauer over there? Hand it to me? Great, thanks. *blows brains out*. In all seriousness, thanks for your contributions, but let's keep the most advanced material for the most advanced courses, alright? This is multivariable calculus, not rocket sci... errr, you get the idea.

On another note, I have been away for a long time (a month? Has it been that long? ugh...) so our Calc I and II courses aren't built up at all. Feel free to help out there. JacobB_{Shout out!} 21:04, 21 July 2010 (EDT)

College Math

As I've always said, our purpose should be to introduce math to our core readership - not to display one's erudition or to publish the most obscure, jargon-ridden and unreadable articles possible.

I haven't seen any evidence that the undergrad and post-grad math hackers have the slightest inclination to make mathematics accessible to our readers. If this changes, I'm happy to help them, but refusal to write articles on high school algebra with variables like x isn't very convincing. --Ed Poor ^Talk 16:32, 26 September 2010 (EDT)

Good to see you again!

Good to see you again! More math learning is always welcome ....-- Schlafly 00:18, 13 November 2010 (EST)

It starts with the compass and straightedge article. I'm serious. Can you just restore it, please? If there's some deeper reason why you don't want to, could you email me? Please? SamHB 00:35, 13 November 2010 (EST)

I didn't delete it. Aren't there other entries you could improve as the person who did delete it can reconsider?--Andy Schlafly 00:49, 13 November 2010 (EST)

We should take this off line. I will send mail to you and Ed. But there is one thing that needs to be said at the outset. You may wonder why I am being so single-mindedly obsessive about "Compass and Straightedge", to the exclusion of all else. It's this: That article was contributed to by many people, in the true spirit of a wiki and of the "best of the public". Aside from the parody sentence, it was a decent article, and was about a topic that (IMHO) is important as supplemental material for math students at the high-school and junior-high level. It is something that is often not covered in regular curricula because it's off the beaten track. It's a prime example of good "enrichment" material. And it's interesting. The article was deleted because of one act of vandalism. You ask "Aren't there other entries you could improve ..."? Yes, but why should I put effort into things if they are in danger of being destroyed due to the actions of one jerk? I am one of Conservapedia's most prolific math/science/engineering/technology contributors. That deletion calls into question any contributions I might make.

[Note for anyone mystified by the order in which things happened: The preceding was intended to be posted before the email, and hence before the restoration actually occurred. It got sent along with the email. The restoration then occurred. Thanks! But I still think the explanation is important.]

SamHB 15:50, 13 November 2010 (EST)

Stay off the grass signs

Ed's talk page isn't locked...even though it says so. New users and those not registered cannot edit it....but it will allow you to save to it, regardless of what it says. At least that is what I have been told, I've never created another user account! --ṬK_/Admin^/Talk 22:01, 28 November 2010 (EST)

Right you are. I didn't even notice the open edit box just below the sign. I guess I confused the green color of the sign with the grass itself :-) SamHB 22:21, 28 November 2010 (EST)

More thoughts on math

In a recent note to Ed Poor, I picked out 4 articles that I thought would be useful to write (or improve), and timely, based on various earlier discussions.

Compass and straightedge—Well, I've rewritten most of that, along the lines that I had told Ed I would do. But it still needs a decision about how much to say about the connection with Mr. Galois.

Elementary Algebra—This was the subject of the mail alluded to above [on Ed's talk page]. What do you [Ed] think of the changes that I made? Is the next step to talk about quadratic equations? Or perhaps polynomial factoring? Or something else? Would you like me to do it, or do you want to work on this yourself?

Peano axioms—There is at present no article on this subject. I think it would be very interesting and fascinating for our readers. And it can be done in an accessible way. It's really not esoteric. Anyone old enough to appreciate what "theorems" are, and that you "prove" them (as opposed to taking your teacher's word for them), can appreciate this. People probably cross this threshold around 9th grade or so, usually in the context of elementary plane geometry. (I can't believe that you never took plane geometry! But I'm sure you developed an appreciation of proofs in whatever classes you were taking at the time.) Now most people have been doing ordinary arithmetic for a long time before learning about theorems, and they think they know that addition is commutative. So you go to these people and ask "So how do you know that addition is commutative? Can you give me a proof? Aha! That is what the Peano axioms are about.

Center—This has been a disaster for a long time. I really don't know how to write the "headline" sentence for this; that is, what's the first thing you say about what the "center" of a geometrical shape is? Do you have any ideas? I'd really like to see your take on this article; I really don't know how to begin.

I would really like to hear what people think about doing the Peano axioms. They are awesome. And I believe they are neglected in "traditional" ("brick and mortar") math education.

Ed made a suggestion of doing propositional calculus. I don't agree. Plain logic (if x implies y then not y implies not x) is of course very important, and is always covered. Or should be covered. But the actual topic of propositional calculus goes beyond that in ways that will not be useful to teenagers, and will, frankly, bore them. I did not appreciate what this material really meant until I was a college upperclassman. Of course, I didn't like the game of "Wff'n proof" either. Anyone who liked that game as a child (Hi, Ed!) very well might find it invigorating to write an article on propositional calculus. But leave me out of it.

SamHB 00:23, 6 December 2010 (EST)

I don't understand your objections to making math and logic accessible to underclassmen, high school students, and the layman in general. In particular, your statement that propositional calculus goes way beyond teenagers and will bore them does not explain why you refuse to help describe the parts that they can understand and enjoy. --Ed Poor ^Talk 10:42, 12 April 2011 (EDT)

As I believe I have emphasized to you again and again and again, I do want to make math and science articles accessible. I believe that everything I have written (well, not MVCalc; that was JacobB and me going overboard) is accessible. If you find exceptions to this, please let me know, accept my apologies, and let me fix it.

Please don't take my reluctance to write on a given topic as "refuse to help describe ..." The are many articles I haven't contributed to. Click "random page" to see them. My inaction on propositional calculus is that it is not particularly interesting to me personally. I'm much more interested in the areas of math that would be considered "pre-calculus". Now I know that you are interested in logic. (Was I right about "Wff-N-Proof"? Dark blue vinyl case, pink foam rubber, wooden cubes with logic symbols on them? It's been a long time. I no longer have my set. I think it went the way of so many of my childhood things.)

I admit that my statement that prop calc will "bore" teenagers may have been a bit of projection on my part. You're most welcome to disagree. So, by all means, write about it!!!!! Don't read too much into my reluctance. If you write well, you may even convert me to liking logic. Maybe I'll even buy a copy of Wff-N-Proof on Ebay. Who knows? Go for it!

SamHB 23:43, 14 April 2011 (EDT)

I think my dad's WFF n' Proof set had blue or bluish-gray foam rubber, but yes, that was my introduction to PC. I still use the "Polish notation" when doing proofs, as I prefer it to infix notation. C-w-Klb (where w = write well, l = like logic, b = buy a copy ;-) --Ed Poor ^Talk 00:02, 15 April 2011 (EDT)

Goodness gracious, has it really been 2 years? How did I ever forget you as a potential collaborator? --Ed Poor ^Talk 22:13, 1 June 2013 (EDT)

Both sides of the Ada Lovelace story

I'm just going to overwrite you for now, see talk. Sorry.

No problem, good faith, and all that. --Ed Poor ^Talk 00:40, 15 April 2011 (EDT)

Federal Debt Limit

User:RobSmith suggested I get approval from other committee members on featuring this on Friday. Thanks.--JamesWilson 23:40, 27 July 2011 (EDT)

I'm sorry; I didn't get to it on time. I see it's featured anyway.

In any case, I stay away from politically sensitive articles. (Maybe I shouldn't be on the committee.) I have a number of issues with the article—it seems to be just a "hatchet job", as political issues tend to be. To pick just one example of many questionable statements:

In fact, it is almost unheard of for a credit card company to give a credit line increase to someone who's maxed out on his credit card.

This is true, but it is in the context of saying why the debt limit should not be increased. Now maybe it shouldn't be increased in this case, but that isn't a convincing argument. The debt limit has been increased many many times in our history. If the comparison were apt, that would be equivalent to a credit card company increasing the limit, many times, on a maxed-out account. Which no credit card company would do. But the fact that the debt limit has been increased many time shows that the comparison can't be a good one. The federal debt is not a credit card account. SamHB 12:47, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

You may remove yourself from the committee if you wish. As for your edit to the Elvis article, I added a cite for the nervousness. Thanks.--JamesWilson 21:40, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

OK, that really surprised me. I had assumed that Elvis's gyration came about "naturally", that is, he just "felt" the music. The article you cited was certainly eye-opening. It seems that his musical career had a rather difficult start, complete with ridicule from other people. I'm glad he overcame it. SamHB 12:46, 31 July 2011 (EDT)

Why is it

that you are leaving?--SeanS 23:27, 18 August 2011 (EDT)

Sorry!

Hey Sam - I appreciate your note on my talk page! I reverted you on the main page talk and immediately came here to discuss it, but then I was locked out of the site somehow! So sorry this is two days late; I reverted you on main page talk because that's really not the place to go for article problems or requests to sysops, but as to you're issue - you're an editor of this site! You're totally free to revert someone - and if they edit war with you you can always go to an administrator or someone with blocking rights - like me! - to get some help. I'll take a look at the page you were talking about and we'll see what we can do.--I Duan 16:19, 20 December 2013 (EST)

No problem. I was disappointed by your action and then failure to post the promised talk item, but you have my sympathy over the network problem. It's happened to me a number of times.

I wasn't happy about your reverting my stuff in main talk, because I believe you aren't supposed to delete talk-page material unless it is libelous or seriously bad. But the rules may be different for main page talk.

In any case, I've reviewed AK's comments, and I'm not nearly so upset with what he's doing than I was. I no longer think it is, by its nature, a "crackpot" page needing to be put into essay space. It's just that he read George Simon's books (I haven't read them, but the Amazon reviews are quite good) and took Simon's definition of "disturbed character" too literally and too generally. People invent terms all the time when they are writing self-help books. The problem isn't that it needs to go into essay space, it's that the article needs to be renamed. It should be titled "George Simon", and should be about his writings in those two books. There's a lot of good material that AK put in there. But it isn't about "disturbed personalities" in general, that's just a term that Mr. Simon uses in his books.

Anyway, I need to do a lot more thinking about this, and post a long message on the D-P talk page, rather than your talk page. But no time for that just now. I'll be back, and, hopefully, make peace with AK.

But the spontaneous generation/Pasteur/Clenceau/Lamarck/Darwin stuff has to go, unless Simon's book actually discusses those topics. If AK feels strongly about those topics, there are plenty of other pages for that, not a page about a "pop-psych" self-help book. And, of course, I take back all my stuff about listing mass murderers. If these are self-help books about toxic personality types that one runs into in one's everyday life, I doubt Mr. Simon wrote about etiquette when dealing with mass murderers at social gatherings. :-)

Thanks for your help in all this. SamHB 23:51, 20 December 2013 (EST)

No problem! I'm confident you and him can find a compromise. As to talk page edits - user talk pages are generally your own - you sort of have control over what is put here; other talk pages should stay on the subject of the main page - or specifically on the subject of the article. We don't especially like if, say, everyone starts a huge random debate on Barack Obama on the Barack Obama talk page - that's for debate pages - we want the talk pages to be used to discuss how to improve the article. Main page talk can be more iffy - because often it's used as reactions to MPR - but still a comment as random as "move this random page" can be reverted - because that has nothing to do with the main page.

You're a great editor - I hope all this isn't frustrating you too much.--I Duan 23:58, 20 December 2013 (EST)

Daily Beast evolution article

The following material was lost in a database glitch^[1] early on 25 January 2014. I was not able to recover the last few sentences, but it's mostly here. I doubt that anyone wants to continue the discussion; it had pretty much run its course. But if you do want to continue, feel free. After all, this is a talk page. SamHB 01:24, 26 January 2014 (EST)

It would take very selective skimming indeed of the Daily Beast article to come to the conclusion that the article is about "evolution having a bad year". The point of the article is very clearly that deniers of evolution continue to become more and more extreme, fringe and marginalized, and that "Truth, alas, seems to resemble a commodity...to be purchased by the highest bidder or the most powerful political leader". CescF 14:28, 22 January 2014 (EST)

CescF, which Daily Beast article are you referring to? Could you please give us the title of the article? Conservative 19:59, 23 January 2014 (EST)

It was a Mainpageright item,, added by you, at 08:24, 5 January 2014, here. It said:

The pro-evolution news website The Daily Beast declares "2013 Was a Terrible Year for Evolution". Meanwhile, global evangelicalism is growing![1]

The cited blogspot item said:

On January 2, 2013, a leading news website The Daily Beast, which is a liberal leaning pro-evolution website, declared that:

2013 Was a Terrible Year for Evolution

Never mind the increasing evidence .....

The cited dailybeast article said, in part:

"The trajectory [of general public acceptance of evolution] is not encouraging, especially as it runs in parallel with a steady increase in the evidence for evolution—evidence now piled so high that not even one evolutionary biologist at any of America's research universities rejects the theory. Evolution is as widely accepted in biology departments as gravity is in physics departments."
"We were hopeful that these evangelical students would become leaders of their faith communities and gradually persuade their fellow evangelicals that evolution was not a lie from hell—which was what many of them had been taught in Sunday school. But instead scientifically informed young evangelicals became so alienated from their home churches that they walked away, taking their enlightenment with them."
"An alarming study by the Barna group looked at the mass exodus of 20-somethings from evangelicalism and discovered that one of the major sources of discontent was the perception that 'Christianity was antagonistic to science.'"

That is, the behavior of intellectually backward evangelicals has caused many evangelicals to leave their church. They are not "questioning evolution" so much as "questioning their religion". This can't be what the evolution-deniers want. Since the writer is himself an instructor at an evangelical college, he found that trend disturbing.

"Many of my most talented former students no longer attend any church, and some have completely abandoned their faith traditions."

I hope this helps. SamHB 00:20, 24 January 2014 (EST)

SamHB, this helps show that liberals have a penchant of engaging in liberal wordiness. Which Daily Beast article in question is this? What is the title of the article? Until Darwinists are willing to face reality and give the name of the article, I am afraid it will be quite apparent that they are generally a proud lot who like to stay inside in their self-made Darwinism cocoons.

Second, global evangelicalism is exploding in adherents while global atheism and agnosticism have had a longstanding trend of decline since 2000 A.D.[2] In an age of globalization (immigration, travel, etc), this does not portend well for Darwinism, since its most vocal adherents since World War II, have historically been atheists/agnostics. See: Evolution and Global Christianity and Global atheism. Conservative 09:12, 24 January 2014 (EST)

By the way SamHB, what religion/worldview do you hold to? Are you an atheist? Do you subscribe to liberal Christianity which has had a long period of contraction in adherents and whose adherents are more likely to engage in marital infidelity? See: Liberal Christianity and marital infidelity. Conservative 09:22, 24 January 2014 (EST)

Oh for Heaven's sake, Conservative, since you want to be a pedant, it's the article referenced by you on your blog. You knew this, of course. Now, we await your response, which will be "What evidence do you have that the article linked to is written by me?" CescF 19:09, 24 January 2014 (EST)

Some of you are missing the point. User:Conservative was merely dictating that you cite the title of the article, "2013 Was a Terrible Year for Evolution," in your questioning that the article claims that 2013 was a terrible year for evolution. As you recognize the title was ironic, it might not have occurred to you that doing that would end this debate with a win for Conservative. MelH 19:18, 24 January 2014 (EST)

From a scientific perspective, the 3 weakest links of Darwinism are: the origin of life, the fossil record - especially the Cambrian Explosion and dearth of credible transitional fossils, and the information/complexity issue. And Meyer's had brisk sales of his book on the Cambrian Explosion and the Darwinists had no credible rebuttal of his book and his book did appear to change some notable scientists minds to some degree. Furthermore, the evolutionist Nick Matzke thoroughly embarrassed himself by quickly giving a review of Meyer's book when it was obvious that he didn't read it and wrote his review ahead of time before reading the book. Matzke showed himself to be a clown and not an intellectual.

Plus, global evangelicalism/creationism saw significant growth in 2013.

It was a terrible year for Darwinism. There is no point in denying this fact.

In addition, besides mentioning the brisk sales of Meyer's book, the author of the Daily Beast article mentions a significant recent Gallup poll relating to the USA which was unfavorable to Darwinism. The title of the article was not ironic. Conservative 22:23, 24 January 2014 (EST)

Well, it was not my intention to help show that liberals have a penchant for engaging in liberalwordiness, and in fact I don't see how one could draw any conclusion about liberals from what I wrote. In any case, I was only giving a few short excerpts from a much longer web page that Conservative, directly or indirectly, linked to. Also, she is, for example, essentially the only contributor, through over 4000 edits, to the Atheism article, which for a while was over 200 kilobytes.

As far as the question of what article it was, I thought I made that clear, in excrucuating detail, with the web links that I gave. To repeat, the article is here. In plain text, that URL is http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/02/2013-was-a-terrible-year-for-evolution.html, but you should be able to get to it by clicking on the link. If you look at it, you will see the title. It is "2013 Was a Terrible Year for Evolution". I don't know whether Darwinists in general are unwilling to give the title of the article, but I have no problem doing so.

Second, you might be interested in this article. Its title, by the way, is "'Red' States Have Higher Divorce Rates Than 'Blue' States, And Here's Why".

As far as the personal questions, I didn't say what my religion/worldview is, nor did I say whether I am an atheist. Those considerations are not germane to the topic. As far as the question "Do you subscribe to liberal Christianity which has had a long period of contraction in adherents and whose adherents are more likely to engage in marital infidelity?", the absence of a comma after "Christianity" shows that you were were using a "restrictive" subordinate clause. That is, you were effectively asking whether I belong to any subgroup of liberal Christianity that is experiencing a high rate of marital infidelity. I can assure you that I do not belong to any such subgroup. See the "red state / blue state" article cited above for why this is not surprising.

I hope this helps clear up the question of what the title of the article whose title is "2013 Was a Terrible Year for Evolution" is. SamHB 23:34, 24 January 2014 (EST)

A few more sentences, by User Conservative, were lost at this point. I recall that one of them was her assertion that I am not a Christian. If I were more thin-skinned, I would accuse her of libel. However, being a Christian, I won't. I would simply advise Cons to judge not, lest she be judged. And to try to be more compassionate and gentle with people. SamHB 23:55, 27 January 2014 (EST)

Thanks for un-memory-holing the thread, SamHB. As former Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart said, "Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself". CescF 01:28, 28 January 2014 (EST)

Was all that stuff oversighted? They used to do that to me on Wikipedia. PeterKa 22:11, 28 January 2014 (EST)

Spammer

I don't have blocking powers. VargasMilan 00:21, 28 September 2014 (EDT)

Ummmm, I believe you do. SamHB 01:32, 28 September 2014 (EDT)

Vargas, I should have congratulated you when I promoted your account to blocking rights. Thanks for your contributions to the site.--Andy Schlafly 00:37, 29 September 2014 (EDT)

You're welcome, Andy. Thank you for the privilege of editing here. And thank you for the kind words as well, Sam. VargasMilan 01:05, 29 September 2014 (EDT)

"Troll" Editing by User:SamHB of Numerous articles I am Working on / Editing / Contributing

User:SamHB, First you accuse me of plagiarizing, then you delete my citation correcting your speedy deletion template notice. Are you "Trolling" perhaps ("users who purposely make disruptive edits are considered trolls") like your friends User:PhilH and this other friend of yours who made the comment on Talk:Free_state?

User:SamHB, Please follow these Guidelines rather than making disruptive edits to further your agenda: Conservapedia:Guidelines#90.2F10_Rule

User:SamHB, Looking at your contribution here: http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=SamHB

User:SamHB, I see that the last time you actually contributed any kind new article other than a Talk Page was here 2 years and 6 months ago: 18:54, 1 June 2013 (diff | hist) New! Propositional Calculus ‎ (A start. Ed, it's time for you to step up to the plate (See? I do know a few metaphores, though I'm not a TopDog!) and fill out this article.)

Looking at your logs, a large amount of your recent edits in the last 30 days have been reverting my edits.

http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Tinospora_cordifolia&action=history: 08:11, 4 January 2015 SamHB (Talk | contribs | block) (7,439 bytes) (Do not "spam" links to extrenal commercial websites. People are routinely banned for that.) (undo)

17:07, 2 January 2015 SamHB (Talk | contribs | block) (6,798 bytes) (If you really think blatantly plagiarized material should stay, please post a note to the community portal explaining this.) (undo)

User:SamHB, It seems you are not listening to my previous Talk page on these articles. This is the second time I am telling you this. Please kindly listen this time and stop troll editing.

User:SamHB, these links you deleted are 'not' Spam links to external sites. It is a temporary citation for a quote I made to start the rough draft of the article -- the "ref" is to a respected and authoritative source of information on this herb; just as IBM would be an authoritative and respected cite regarding IBM Mainframe computers. Once I type in quotes and/or paraphrase summaries from some of my numerous Ayurvedic herb books listed below I will cite them as well to flesh out the article.

Formerly you were here on this very article accusing me of plagiarizing by not citing my 1 paragraph quote and nominated the article for deletion. Again, SamHB, please respect as I said before on my user talk page (perhaps you can read it) that I will be completing these articles in the next five days and let me do the editing on my article that I started, otherwise it slows me down to have to constantly go back and check the history of the pager to see if someone is "helping out".

While you can perhaps please consider contributing some new actual articles of your own in your own area of expertise rather than editing one I am in the middle of working on. Thank you for your understanding. TheAmericanRedoubt 10:41, 4 January 2015 (EST)

Like I said on my talk page User_talk:TheAmericanRedoubt#100_Ayurvedic_Herbal_Medicine_Articles_for_1st_Week_of_January_2015, User:SamHB. I am editing it today. Please refrain from editing rough draft articles of mine on herbs and instead perhaps contribute some new articles of your own. I am in the middle of writing those herb articles (including the one you mark for speedy deletion) and was using some of the Banyan Botanicals website material to start the article and and fleshing it out with citations and references from the books below which I own in my library of more than 500 books on the subject of complementary medicine, which I have practiced since 1996. Banyan's material which I was came from from the following books, especially Yoga of Herbs. BanyanBotanicals.com is the largest supplier of Ayurvedic herbs in the United States.

Bibliography for my Citations

Lad, Vasant, Dr., B.A.M.S., M.A.Sc., Textbook of Ayurveda Volume Three: General Principles of Management and Treatment. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Ayurvedic Institute Ayurvedic Press, 2012. 668 Pages, ISBN-10: 1883725143, ISBN-13: 978-1883725143 (800-863-7721 or 505-291-9698) Available from Ayurvedic Press, Available from Amazon.com

Lad, Vasant, Dr., Ayurvedic Perspectives on Selected Pathologies. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Ayurvedic Institute Ayurvedic Press, 2012. Amazon.com

Lad, Vasant, Dr., The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies. New York: Harmony, 1999. Amazon.com

Lad, Usha and Dr. Lad, Vasant, Ayurvedic Cooking for Self-Healing. Second Edition. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Ayurvedic Institute Ayurvedic Press, 1997. Amazon.com

Dass. Vishnu, Ayurvedic Herbology East & West: An Ayurvedic Approach to Medicinal Herbs. New Mexico: Lotus Press, 2013. Amazon.com

Frawley, David and Dr. Lad, Vasant, The Yoga of Herbs: An Ayurvedic Guide to Herbal Medicine. New Mexico, Lotus Press, 1986. Amazon.com

Pole, Sebastian, Ayurvedic Medicine: The Principles of Traditional Practice. England, Singing Dragon Press, 2012. Amazon.com

Tierra, Michael, L.Ac., Planetary Herbology: An Integration of Western Herbs into the Traditional Chinese Medicine|Traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic Systems. New Mexico, Lotus Press, 1992. Amazon.com

Tillotson, Alan Keith, and Tillotson, Nai-shing Hu, O.M.D. The One Earth Herbal Sourcebook: Everything You Need to Know About Chinese, Western, and Ayurvedic Herbal Treatments. New York: Kensington, 2001. Amazon.com

Zopa, Dorjay, Ph.D, Ayurvedic Distance Learning Handbook, Oregon: Vipashina Healing Center - Ayurveda Healing Arts Institute, 2015

TheAmericanRedoubt 10:41, 4 January 2015 (EST)

I'm glad to see that you are "doing your homework" and looking over my past activities. I do the same for many other people, including you, of course.

I had forgotten about the "Top Dog" inside joke with Ed Poor. He and I go back a long ways, and worked on a huge amount of math/science stuff back in the day. He didn't trust me at first, and I believe he blocked me a couple of times before we got to respect each other. More inside jokes about "Wff'N'Proof". He's a decent person.

There's no one left who wants to do math and science. Everyone is gone. Including JacobB, with whom a collaborated for a long time on multivariable calculus. And Foxtrot, LemonPeel, Fanstasia, WilliamBeason, BRichtigen, DiEb, etc. etc. Those were the days.

SamHB 15:26, 4 January 2015 (EST)

Dear SamHB, as a relatively new, yet energetic editor, I do appreciate your long standing history of contributions in the important math-science-tech arena. I have of course scanned through your past contributions. I do that for ANYONE who reverts one of my edits. Although I prefer that you were to go to the article Talk Page first as is protocol on Wikis since I am obviously not a troll, nor a parodist. Nor are you, despite me teasing you with such epithets. I would be more open to your suggestions if you were learn some politeness tips from Wschact. That would be appreciated. Good day. :-) TheAmericanRedoubt 12:24, 5 January 2015 (EST)

Dear User:SamHB many thanks for monitoring some copyright concerns. I have continued this discussion on User talk:TheAmericanRedoubt and he has promised to write original material rather than derivative works. Best wishes for 2015. Wschact 14:27, 4 January 2015 (EST)

I really appreciate your concerns as well SamHB. Please talk them to talk pages first before just reverting with only an explanation in the Revert comments field "Rubbish!" and "Hideous!". Now, I have been forced to bookmark your http://www.conservapedia.com/Special:Contributions/SamHB on my browser toolbar to scan through before I begin an editing session. That is frustrating. Any thoughts I on how to solve this? Sincerely, JeffersonF. TheAmericanRedoubt 12:24, 5 January 2015 (EST)

Greetings. I few things:

There is no need to single me out as one whose contributions you patrol. Remember, I promised that I would revert your things only once, and I mean it. I reverted your edit stating that my home state of Massachusetts, as well as the home states of Andy and Cons (New Jersey and New York), and, in fact, about 37% of the population of this country, are "treasonous" and "unconstitutional". But just once. I'm leaving it in. So it is not necessary to put my contributions on your toolbar. I consider your edits so hideous (more about that later) that I will not interfere with you. BTW, what I have on my toolbar is Recent Changes. I don't single anyone out.
However, there are plenty of other people you should be watching. Just about everyone else on the site, in fact. When you hijack a web site, you can expect a lot of opposition. I would suggest the metaphor of growing eyes on the back of your head, but that's not the appropriate metaphor. What you should do is patrol Recent Changes, looking at everyone's edits. You do that, don't you? I've been doing that for years, looking for any edits that seem interesting, or by people that I deem interesting. (Ed Poor got spooked by my apparent "stalking" once, but we became friends.) You ask "Any thoughts I on how to solve this?" Given that you dominate Recent Changes, what you need is a quick way to filter out your own edits. I just a few minutes ago noticed that Recent Changes has a button titled "Hide my edits". I've never used it, of course, because my editing has always been very sparse. But, if it does what it says, it might be just the right thing for you.
Now, about my intemperate language -- "rubbish" and "hideous". Someone, I think it was Wschact, suggested somewhere, perhaps on the Community Portal, that I was doing that because I was frustrated that no one was listening to me. Children of course shout loudly when they perceive that. Not so in my case. I'm getting plenty of attention! More than I need, actually. The whole "This site is being hijacked" section was started by me, and it's gotten quite a bit of traffic. In fact, the whole modern use of the Community Portal was started by me, as an offshoot of Talk:Main_Page. It used to be that that latter page was just an enormous hodgepodge of random discussions, and the Community Portal was just a block trap. So, yes, I am well known and generally well respected, and my opinions are well known. The reason for my language is that, given that I edit only once, I want to be sure that my objections are loud and clear in the edit history. I want people to sit up and take notice when I revert and edit that says that much of the country is treasonous. If, when reverting me, you had said in your edit comment "This guy is a flaming moron", that would have been fine also. I want edit histories to be an interesting chronicle of what is going on.
About math/science ("STEM"): Yes, I wrote a huge amount in that area. Much more if you count my former socks. (Andy and I discussed this privately, and I promised not to do it any more; in retrospect it was really stupid. His part of the bargain is not to block me except for serious misbehavior.) In particular, relating to electrical engineering, I believe I wrote up some good stuff about capacitors, inductors, transformers, Maxwell's equations, Biot-Savart law, Ohm's law. What these components really do. You know, derivative of voltage = current / capacitance, or whatever. I submitted much of that to another wiki (Wikiversity) while I was blocked. When I came back, it didn't look as though anyone was going to read the stuff, or collaborate with me on adding to it, so I stopped. Getting back to the famous transformer page (I never intended to turn that page into a lightning rod; you see, people really do listen to me!) the page had a very short "stub" sentence that didn't say what a transformer is or anything about how it works or why you would want to use one! Your fix to the "what the heck does this have to do with survivalism" question was to add 4 big paragraphs about EMP, Newt Gingrich, Alex Jones, etc., still not saying what a transformer really is. So we could solve the EMP problem by just getting rid of transformers, right? Or am I missing something? By the way, the 2001 Radio Amateurs Handbook has 8 pages on transformers, starting at page 6.42.

That's enough. SamHB 00:59, 7 January 2015 (EST)

The Liberals smear campaign Won -- I now retire from editing Conservapedia

I must say that the liberal smear campaign and relentless edits/deletions from 5 very loud CP liberal trolls / RINOs (besides the vociferous User:Wschact, you know who you are and will be happy to know you have won) has been no fun. I am sad to say, it is much worse edit wars and liberal reverts than anything I contributed over the years to Wikipedia. Sorry User:Aschlafly, User:Conservative, User:Karajou and User:Jpatt, but I have lost the enthusiasm to continue contributing to CP in the face of this much liberal opposition. Thank you 4 for what you do for the conservative movement. I strongly suspect that the frequent sock puppet hacker-vandalist accounts were User:Wschact or one his friends using a VPN since all the vandals edits were directed to things he was revert warring with me over. God bless.

Sadly, I no longer have the enthusiasm to contribute in the face of such 'strong' opposition from 5 very vociferous liberal/RINO editors. It's more of an uphill battle than it was on Wikipedia, I am very disappointed to say. Godspeed in all you do.

TheAmericanRedoubt 02:26, 9 January 2015 (EST)

Kind Advice from Conservative and Karajou and my Response - No more Survivalism-Guns-AltMed-Permaculture-HamRadio, just Indian Philosophy articles from me now

If Wschact acts unreasonably in order to protect liberal sacred cows or acts in a petty way due to you adding conservative content that he does not like, please contact User: Karajou and/or User: JPatt. On the other hand, please be judicious about this matter. If Wschact offers useful input, please take it.

I did solve the SamHB issue for you though. Should SamHB return, I suspect he will be far less truculent due to it being pointed out that masses of people are leaving his unfree state of Massachusetts each year. Obviously, people leave a sinking unfree ship of state and not a successful freedom loving flagship state. Conservative 03:20, 11 January 2015 (EST)

By the way, don't ever get frustrated and quit. Stand your ground and if necessary call in the cavalry of Karajou and Jpatt. :) Conservative 03:26, 11 January 2015 (EST)

I reopened my user talk page mailbox. However, please please contact Karajou/Jpatt first as they may be more active than me at CP in the foreseeable future. I did make some promises to people to assist them with off wiki projects so Karajou/JPatt may act more quickly for you. Conservative 03:36, 11 January 2015 (EST)

Sorry fellow Conservatives, but Wschact (and all the really vociferous "libs"/RINOS here) finally won with their bullying. Washact and the five others, but especially Washact, have tired me out, calling me a parodist, a hijacker, etc, etc. The 'only' thing Wshact didn't immediately edit are my Buddhist and Indian philosophy article contributions Category:Indian Philosophy and Category:Buddhism. It's simply too much of an uphill battle here with these loud-mouthed five, especially wshact. It's just too demoralizing even for an energetic contributor like me. As long as he is hounding me on 'every' edit and template, it's just not worth it to me.

I can contribute my time and high energy elsewhere for the Conservative cause, where there is a slightly longer "pérennité" (as the French say) / durability to my contributions. I am sad to say my similar veined edits actually stayed visible on Wikipedia much longer before the vultures swooped in than they did here. At least over at Wikipedia I can contribute complementary medicine/herbology material without having it immediately deleted/reverted. Numerous items I contributed at Wikipedia lasted sometimes for weeks at a time, not just a few minutes or hours before deletion/reverting. And they usually put up a top of the page Admin template flag on it first for a couple days to weeks rather than just remove/revert it instantly like weshact is doing.

I think I will return back to the Conservative/Preparedness Forums from which I came. From now on you will only see on CP the occasional Buddhist, Hindu, Indian philosophy article I may perhaps continue to contribute since Comparative Religions/Philosophy was one of my past formal study areas in college.

I sent you Karajou and User:Conservative a private e-mail about it.

Be strong. Be of good courage. God bless America. Long live the Republic.

TheAmericanRedoubt 05:50, 11 January 2015 (EST)

This template Template:Second Amendment topics and it's Backup User:TheAmericanRedoubt/Second Amendment topics is my last contribution for the Second Amendment-RKBA-Firearms-Survivalism-Prepping. It says it all. TheAmericanRedoubt 06:17, 11 January 2015 (EST) User:TheAmericanRedoubt/Second Amendment topics

Material moved from the Community Portal

The following material, not being of interest to the Conservapedia community as a whole, has been moved here from the Conservapedia:Community_Portal.

SamHB, ever since you wanted to debate me about a quote I cited from a leading statistics website, I have never been able to take you seriously. I was like "what is there to debate?". Your evolutionist pride was obviously injured by the evolution article which thoroughly debunks evolutionism and you desperately wanted revenge. It is so sad.

I don't recall wanting to debate you on any such topic. Have I forgotten something? Please refresh my memory on this stated desire. The only topics I recall ever offering to debate you on were mathematics (specifically the "generalized linear model" or some such) and physical fitness (it was going to be a contest, not a debate, but the details were never worked out.)
My pride could not have been injured by the evolution article; I never read it. I don't want revenge.

SamHB 16:37, 10 January 2015 (EST)

Secondly, it is undeniable that your home state is not a free state and that you live in an unfree state. You are living in denial. I cite: "...41 percent of Massachusetts residents say they would leave the state if they could, according to a new Gallup poll. The poll, which was conducted between June and December 2013, found that Massachusetts ranked eighth, in terms of residents who’d like to leave."[3] People want to flee a sinking unfree ship, not a freedom loving flagship. When are you going to stop living in denial? Conservative 15:37, 10 January 2015 (EST)

That same poll gives the same number (41%) to your home state of New York.
Wanting to leave a state is not the same as that state being treasonous.

Please restore my user and talk pages. SamHB 16:37, 10 January 2015 (EST)

SamHB, your "argument" that Massachusetts is not constitution breaking is "that's my home state and I won't stand for it being called constitution breaking." A typical liberal argument from outrage. In short, "I'm offended", which is no argument at all. Meanwhile, people continue to vote with their feet and pour out of your unfree and constitution breaking state.

I wasn't arguing the issue of whether Massachusetts is or is not "constitution breaking"—that notion is too preposterous to discuss. I was saying that I am offended by that accusation. I believe it is a perfectly logical position to take that I am offended because I say I am offended. No objective evaluation is required, or even possible.

While I don't have hard and irrefutable data, I doubt that significant numbers of the people that move out of Massachusetts, or any other state, do so because they believe that state is treasonous. Certainly no one of my acquaintance has expressed such a view. Essentially all of my acquaintances think Massachusetts is a nice place. And, by the way, we are proud of the fact that the American Revolution started in our state.

Second, the mysterious User: Conservative editors have differing birth places and you don't know where those birth places are and if these editors have subsequently moved to free regions. Furthermore, the editors of the User: Conservative account are merely Christian sojourners passing through this earth on their way to the ultimate freedom loving kingdom!

The poll about percentages of people desiring to move out of their state was keyed to the states in which they currently reside, not the states of their birth. I do not know, or care, where you were born. And, by the way, I was not born in Massachusetts. Though I was born in a "blue" state, one that has a fairly high score on the "percentage of people who want to leave" survey.

Third, the User: Conservative accounted repeatedly pointed out that the 15 questions for evolutionists continue to stump evolutionists which no doubt perturbed you. There must be some reason why you would propose such a silly debate,

Huh???? Evolutionists? What???? Are you confusing me with someone else? The only series of questions that I know about (other than those on an exam, of course) are the questions asked at a Passover Seder. And (a) I believe the number is 4, and (b) I'm not Jewish. In any case, whatever questions you might be referring to could not possibly have perturbed me, because I haven't read them.

I stand by my statement that the only topics on which I ever suggested, or consented to, a debate, are the two that I have listed above. If my memory is faulty, please provide a difflink.

Fourth, after you behaved badly and indicated that you have left, there is certainly no reason to restore your former user page. Create a significant amount of original new content if you want those pages restored. In short, apologize to TheAmericanRedoubt and show fruits of your repentance. Conservative 17:25, 10 January 2015 (EST)

Well, thank you for restoring the pages, however much you may not have wanted to. As far as new content, I created an enormous amount of content back when I believed that this site was aimed at high-school-level home-schoolers, as you well know. All I do now is maintain the pro-relativity material, along with AugustO. Please allow us to continue to do that. I might go back to creating technical content at some time in the future, but this is clearly not the time. That said, I have worked out a really nice, simple intuitive explanation of Lenz's law, better than what's on Wikipedia or Wikiversity.

One final note: Your writing skill has improved significantly over the last year or so. Your use of "second", "third", and "fourth", above, is an example of that. You hardly ever begin a sentence with "Plus" these days. It was actually a sort of endearing trait.

SamHB 01:20, 18 January 2015 (EST)

User:Conservative, are you taking the revisions of User:SamHB and User talk:SamHB hostage?

AugustO, SamHB has not given me a compelling reason to restore his page. So the status quo remains. Conservative 23:07, 10 January 2015 (EST)

Wrong. SamHB hasn't given you a compelling reason to delete his page(s) in the first place! Remember your words: " A talk page is a user's castle!"! --AugustO 23:16, 10 January 2015 (EST)

I see you just restored the pages. I suppose that we won't see an apology from your account's member responsible for the deletion! He/she should be blocked for (~~untrimming Andy's~~ deleting SamHB's talk page. A talk page is a user's castle!)

The lack of coordination between the various members of your account appears to the outer world as double standards!

--AugustO 23:34, 10 January 2015 (EST)

AugustO, User: SamHB said he will no longer edit Conservapedia. So he is no longer a user. Your logic is badly flawed here.

Nevertheless, it occurred to me that an upcoming project to generally delete the user pages and user talk pages of inactive users who have not edited Conservapedia in a considerable amount of time set the threshold of 3 years of inactivity (which may be changed to 4 years). So I restored the page despite his recent declaration and despite his unreasonable behavior towards TheAmericanRedoubt. Being often more ruled by emotion rather than logic, liberals are notoriously fickle so SamHB may change his mind about editing Conservapedia.

Also, as more and more productive people leave his unfree state of Massachusetts, the various unsustainable liberal programs within his state may cease to exist (or be significantly altered) and cause him to become disillusioned. For example, in socialist France, more and more entrepreneurs, the wealthy and young opportunity seekers are leaving France.[4][5]. And if David Horowitz can become an ex-liberal, certainly there is hope for SamHB. :) Conservative 00:12, 11 January 2015 (EST)

Being often more ruled by emotion rather than logic, liberals are notoriously fickle so SamHB may change his mind about editing Conservapedia. *LOL* As did User:TheAmericanRedoubt - whose pages you didn't delete. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AugustO (talk)--06:01, 11 January 2015 (EST)

AugustO, the cunning User: Conservative could have deleted SamHB's user page and user talk page partly as a form of reverse psychology. "User: Conservative deleted my user page!!! I'll show that User: Conservative who is boss!! I am going to keep editing Conservapedia! I'll show him!".

From the movie Miracle: Jimmy Craig with finger pointing at the coach after winning game after being pulled the previous game: "I showed you didn't I! I should you didn't I!" Coach Herb Brooks: "Yep. You sure did Jimmy." Conservative 04:32, 13 January 2015 (EST)

Sorry, couldn't find "reverse psychology" as a valid reason for acts of vandalism in Conservapedia:Commandments or Conservapedia:Guidelines. --AugustO 04:40, 13 January 2015 (EST)

Not vandalism. The ex-user SamHB does not own the web pages in question. He also deserved a comeuppance.Conservative 06:50, 13 January 2015 (EST)

Vandalism. Pure and simple:

User:TheAmericanRedoubt proclaimed his leave in a definite manner, while User:SamHB just said "I leave". You are the one who wants to read this as "I leave for good".
Its a lie to call User:SamHB an "ex-user", as he is still editing. He should be the lord of his castle, shouldn't he?
If you really think that he deserves a comeuppance, such a comeuppance should be within the rules and guidelines of Conservapedia. Otherwise it is just bullying.

--AugustO 07:02, 13 January 2015 (EST)

It looks like the reverse psychology worked. I knew it would! :) Conservative 08:04, 13 January 2015 (EST)

Perhaps sometimes someone will explain you the difference between "being funny" and "looking silly". --AugustO 10:56, 13 January 2015 (EST)

Cons and August: What a pleasure it is to see you two! And in my house, no less, rather than those very noisy places like the Community Portal and Main talk. Those places are too noisy to think clearly, and remind me of a shopping mall just before Christmas.

You two are among the most fascinating people at CP.

So come on in, let me take your coats. Sit on the sofa, or anywhere you like. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Leftover Christmas fruitcake? Nix on the fruitcake? That's too bad; I've been trying to get rid of it for 3 years.

AugustO: You've done really good work on relativity. I don't think relativity denial will be back here any time soon. Though I did get a nibble on the relativity page. I think I may have scared him off with my rather stern reply. I guess I do that to people.

Cons: I'm intrigued by your reference to "reverse psychology", though I'm having a hard time figuring out who was using it on whom. Maybe we were both using it. My understanding is that, in its simplest form, it means asking for the opposite of what you want, so that the (presumed hostile) other party will give you the opposite of what you asked for, out of hostility. Which is, in fact, what you really did ask for. The most famous example in literature is the "Please don't throw me in the briar patch" line, spoken by "Brer Rabbit" in the Uncle Remus stories. Of course, Brer Bear and Brer Fox (these were corruptions of "brother") then throw him in the briar patch, wrongly believing that he will hate it.

Then there's "reverse reverse psychology", in which you are onto the "reverse psychology" of the other party, so you ask for what you do want, so that the other party will see through your "reverse psychology" and give you what you in fact want. And it can go back and forth endlessly.

So I don't know what you meant. This:

"User: Conservative deleted my user page!!! I'll show that User: Conservative who is boss!! I am going to keep editing Conservapedia! I'll show him!".

wasn't meant to show anyone who is boss. (I know you are, of course.)

From the movie Miracle: Jimmy Craig with finger pointing at the coach after winning game after being pulled the previous game: "I showed you didn't I! I showed you didn't I!" Coach Herb Brooks: "Yep. You sure did Jimmy."

Haven't seen it (I don't watch very many movies), but I consider the Uncle Remus story a much better example of what I think "reverse psychology" is. The movie line you are quoting seems more like a case of personal vindication with a bit of gloating. Also very common and very understandable. But I wasn't doing that either. I wasn't showing you who is boss. The only thing I could possibly have been showing is that I was aware of the well-known fact that users without user or talk pages can edit.

What I said, in context, was "I believe that CP's presentation on relativity is in good condition, so no further editing on my part will be necessary. I will leave now." I didn't say I would never come back. You knew I'd come back, didn't you? How could I stay away? And in any case, that guy from Hungary came along with his "theoretical argument against relativity". How could I possibly resist that?

I see that my home state is still described as "treasonous", and that I promised TAR that I wouldn't revert that. So we're going to have to continue meeting here in my "house".

Come back soon!

SamHB 00:18, 15 January 2015 (EST)

Thanks for the nice welcome. "I don't think relativity denial will be back here any time soon." Has it ever left? --AugustO 07:01, 18 January 2015 (EST)

Well, in some sense it is still around, of course. That is, the section of the relativity page that lists the experiments that prove relativity will always be titled "Experiments that Fail to Prove Relativity". But that's just amusing theater. The "counterexamples" page has 2 million views, and 98% of the internet links to it are contemptuous, so it is a source of amusement to many people. And we wouldn't want to change that. But the work you and I have done (Cockcroft-Walton experiment, Pound-Rebka experiment, Mercury precession vs. Hall-Newcomb theory, and atomic weights on charts hanging in every science classroom) have effectively put a stop to any serious denial. It's widely recognized as a joke, and we should leave it at that.

I hope CP's stance on relativity doesn't actually bother you. SamHB 23:55, 18 January 2015 (EST)

You are right - and CP's stance shouldn't bother me. But, alas, I'm always riled by the "la-la-la I cannot hear you"-approach to science. --AugustO 02:04, 19 January 2015 (EST)

re: idiom articles

If you are going to create idiom articles, please make them encyclopedic and not in dictionary form. For example, compare your fit as a fiddle entry to this article: http://www.knowyourphrase.com/phrase-meanings/Fit-as-a-Fiddle.html

Thank you for making a start on the idiom articles. In the future, please make them encyclopedic. Conservative 22:18, 1 February 2015 (EST)

You didn't even format the external link. If you are going to be lazy and create ill-formatted, stub articles, please don't bother doing so. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Conservative 23:19, 1 February 2015 (EST)

By the way, it was the atheists who largely demanded more proof and evidence as far as the Atheism and obesity article. And I certainly granted their requests! Conservative 23:22, 1 February 2015 (EST)

1550 requests? You know a lot more atheists than I do! :-) SamHB 23:53, 1 February 2015 (EST)

OK, I plead guilty to not having looked around, and found the connection between the phrase and violins. And you're right—when putting in the link, I briefly thought about putting in the explanatory text, and was lazy. Many people just use the "lazy" form, and I was lazy too, and I apologize. But I think your version was still too terse. Just saying "fit as a fiddle"? That's just the name of the page! And people can see what the URL is by hovering the mouse. So I think what I put in there is reasonably "user friendly"—a very brief description of what they will get when they click the link.

But I don't agree with your comments above about "ill-formatted, stub articles". The reference to ill-formatted was presumably about the laziness I have admitted to above. But "stub", along with your comment about making it "encyclopedic" seems to miss the point that some articles simply have no need to be huge. (And I was, of course, holding up your "atheism and obesity" article as an example of the extreme other end of the spectrum.) You do the articles in the idiom category (there are many that are just as short) an injustice when you say that they are stubs. "Stub", in wiki parlance, means a placeholder waiting for someone—the original author or someone else—to come along and flesh it out to its proper form later. That is not the intention of the articles in the idioms category. I consider the "fit as a fiddle", as well as "spur of the moment", "bite the bullet", and several others, to be fine just as they are. Even though they are very short. Of course, if you believe they should be fleshed out more, by all means do so. I put in a larger amount of detail for some of them, like "tar baby", because I believe they merited a fuller explanation. But not all idioms require a lot of explanation. My guide in all this is the question "What would it be useful for home-schoolers to know about this?" I think it is good to know what the tar baby was really all about. I still remember the Little Golden Book of Uncle Remus stories I had as a kid, and the illustration of Br'er Rabbit all covered with tar.

SamHB 23:51, 1 February 2015 (EST)

Obviously, an idiom article is going to be shorter than an article about a worldview; a major political/culture war issue; or a major societal/global problem (like obesity).

At the same time, the article in the external link section was much better than your article (accuracy, informative, etc.). Also, you could work with people who who have picture upload rights and put relevant pictures in your articles. Please set your standards higher.

"Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win." - The Apostle PaulConservative 00:13, 2 February 2015 (EST)

OK, I'm a little bit miffed (but only a little bit—I have a fairly thick skin) by your suggestion "If you are going to be lazy and create ill-formatted, stub articles, please don't bother doing so." that my work is of such low quality that I shouldn't bother contributing. Yes, the "fit as a fiddle" article is not as good as the "professional" one at the referenced web site. That is, my articles are not the best in the world on a given topic. You can usually find a more encyclopedic article than what I've written. But I thought conciseness was one of the sought-after principles of CP.

What kind of pictures do you think would be appropriate for my "idiom" articles? The page from the Little Golden Book? (copyvio!) A fiddle? A woodshed? A pot and a kettle? I don't think I need any of those. Now I have put in pictures on occasion—see my meticulous diagrams at blah, blah, something about gravity exponents. They were uploaded for me by JacobB.

I think I have set my standards just right. If I need pictures uploaded, I'll mail them to you, OK?

I'm really confused by your apparent Bible quote. Can you give a book/chapter/verse citation? I Corinthians 9:24. Thank you, Google. In any case, I don't see its relevance at all. I'm not expecting to win any competition with my writing at CP. Are you?

SamHB 01:18, 5 February 2015 (EST)

@User:Conservative: you give valuable advice - perhaps you can add some pictures to User:TheAmericanRedoubt's creations, as you seem to be already working with him? An article like preparedness could be improved by something like this... --AugustO 03:11, 5 February 2015 (EST)

Upload Rights

As far as I know and have read, file upload rights are limited to a select few on this site. It seems to be admins for the most part. Thanks for trying though. ScottH35 16:45, 9 February 2015 (EST)

That's right. What I was mistaken about was whether you could link to an off-wiki image that hadn't been uploaded to be local at CP. Now I know why upload rights are so coveted.

The usual procedure is to leave a request, with a specific URL of the item to be uploaded, someplace where higher-ups can see it. Andy's talk page is, of course, an excellent choice.

In other words, you're back where you started before I stepped in and made a fool of myself. SamHB 17:00, 9 February 2015 (EST)

Haha. You're fine. This site seems to take those things rather seriously. It would be pretty cool if a place to submit new pictures for upload were made. ScottH35 17:04, 9 February 2015 (EST)

Deja vu

Today's perusing of Special:Random gave me an acute feeling of déjà-vu: I hit Matthew 1-9 (Translated) and the infamous E=mc². Something for your collection of idioms: déjà-vu --AugustO 16:24, 20 February 2015 (EST)

Ah, yes. Though you realize that my idiom articles typically have the purpose of good-natured sparring with Cons. Hmmm. I can see the connection now. I recently looked at his "heavy, [sic] intellectual artillery" article, and saw the picture of the bear, and then saw the list of 13 of his articles that have that picture, and glanced at a couple of those. And guess what? I had a feeling of déjà-vu. Maybe I can write an article, using that as an example.

By the way, it's really annoying, when I want to grab a mouse click to Cons's contributions by looking at recent changes, to have to hit the "scroll" button 7 times before I find something by him. He no longer dominates RC. I clocked TAR at 5 per minute at one point. Cons, are you going to let him get away with this? SamHB 10:38, 21 February 2015 (EST)

In which Cons tells us a bit about Ken Ammi

Ken Ammi will be contributing on a regular schedule to CP's atheism articles through creating new articles. <signed by Cons, as part of his edit below.>

In which Cons tells us about CMI and AIG's Christian outreach efforts

Both Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis have ambitious outreach efforts and I am guessing other creationist organizations around the globe will spring up due to global Christianity growing. <signed by Cons, as part of his edit below.>

In which Cons tells us about the future of liberalism and economics in the United States and Europe

And liberalism will probably dry up once budgetary problems worsen in the USA/Europe. These two prodigal budgetary sons can only spend and tax so long before austerity measures are taken. In addition, these regions will have to shape up to match the Eastern World's growing economic competition. <signed by Cons, as part of his edit below.>

In which Cons shares a charming clip from a Western movie

I think this time has largely arrived. Conservative 11:00, 21 February 2015 (EST)

Thanks. Here's one for you. SamHB 19:21, 21 February 2015 (EST)

In which SamHB attempts to reply to all this

Whatever. I actually don't care who he is, whether he has anything to do with CMI or AIG, or whether his possible "imposterhood" is a relevant question. I just wanted to welcome him. By the way, your paragraph above doesn't say whether Ken Ammi has any actual connection with CMI or AIG. Was this a total non-sequitur (one of the charming characteristics of your writing)? SamHB 11:08, 21 February 2015 (EST)

Apparently it was. SamHB 19:21, 21 February 2015 (EST)

In which Cons tells us about the general tone of his contributions

The User: Conservative account's content was heavily skewed towards atheism related articles. <signed by Cons, as part of his edit below.>

In which Cons tells us about the connection between Darwinism and atheism

(Darwinism is a primary ideological root of the atheism ideology tree). <signed by Cons, as part of his edit below.>

Actually, atheism has been around since long before Darwin was born. SamHB 22:09, 21 February 2015 (EST)

In which Cons invites me to contact Ken Ammi (presumably the "real" one) if I have any questions for him

Feel free to ask Ken Ammi any residual questions you may have. Conservative 11:34, 21 February 2015 (EST)

No, thanks. I really don't care who he is. But, now that you have pointed me to the "True Free Thinker" page, I see why there is a "real" Ken Ammi, so that the question of whether (in your eyes at least) the Ken Ammi who created an account here is an "imposter" is a meaningful question. Thanks for explaining all that. SamHB 19:21, 21 February 2015 (EST)

re: The person most hated at RW :-)

You wrote: "the person most hated at RW :-)"

I apologize for that. I generally try not to let emotions interfere with my judgment, but I'm not always successful at that. I was angry over the fact that this guy had gotten blocked (not by you) for a bogus reason.

I've done a little looking around at what's been going on at RW over the last few years, and "hate" isn't the right word. You are probably the most ridiculed person. It seems that every few months they decide to stop mentioning you, because someone thinks that you do weird things (20 hour editing sprees, for example) just to get them to notice you, and that they are therefore "enabling" bad behavior. So they agree to stop mentioning you, until someone just can't stand it any more. And so the cycle repeats. But they don't hate you. And I can assure you that I don't hate you. I think of you as a friend. A weird one that occasionally needs to be reprimanded, but a friend. SamHB 16:49, 4 March 2015 (EST)

Setting aside the fact that more than one person has edited using the User: Conservative account,

Yes, do set it aside. Please. No one believes you, as you well know. You do not need to carry on this silly fantasy. People will accept you for who you are. As Fred Rogers used to say, "I like you just the way you are." SamHB 16:49, 4 March 2015 (EST)

an explanation on why leftist, militant atheists are so angry: Various types of atheists/non-believers and anger.

If only they were less arrogant, less militant, and farther towards the libertarian/conservative end of the political spectrum like S.E. Cupp, then they would feel less hatred towards teavangelicals![6]

I don't follow the details of your extensive research on the topics that interest you so much, and I don't know or care who S.E. Cupp is. But, from looking at the referenced web page, I notice that your research is so thorough that you examine newspaper articles that are over 4 years old. That is really impressive! Professional news organizations would do well to have someone that thorough and diligent on their research staff. SamHB 16:49, 4 March 2015 (EST)

By the way, just between you and me,

"just between you and me"?? Uhh, you are aware that this is a public wiki? Sorry, I couldn't resist that little zinger :-) SamHB 16:49, 4 March 2015 (EST)

I recently did something nice for an atheist/agnostic lady and she wrote to me: "I am so very grateful for your help". So you see, not all atheists/agnostics hate everyone associated with User: Conservativedom. :) Conservative 14:13, 4 March 2015 (EST)

I have no doubt that you do nice things for people of all political and religious persuasions all the time. Many people like and respect you. SamHB 16:49, 4 March 2015 (EST)

Effing lying C*nt, only one person edits the User: Conservative account. I very much doubt you have carried out a selfless act in your life, and you support the racist, "lets throw battery acid in women's faces" Vox Day. Twat.--RicardoL 14:45, 4 March 2015 (EST)

But apparently not this guy. Still not blocked after two hours? If I had blocking powers, he'd be gone by now. SamHB 16:49, 4 March 2015 (EST)

Thanks for tip. I blocked him. It seems like a pretty obvious case. I wonder how he got by Karajou and Aschlafly. If something like this happens again, by all means let me know. PeterKa 19:13, 4 March 2015 (EST)

RicardoL, first using the C word in a derogatory tells me that you don't have the purest thoughts when it comes to gender relations (see: Atheism and women). It also tells me that you have an anger management problem (See: Various types of atheists/non-believers and anger).

Second, please explain why the footnoting style and content/writing style is different in the homosexuality/evolution/atheism articles (before the footnotes were reformatted by User: Vargasmilan) vs. the Atheist actions against homosexuals (formerly called Atheist persecution of homosexuals) article. The User: Conservative account editor base is made up of more than one editor! Given your angry and crass post above which contained vulgarity (see: Atheism and profanity), your adamant insistence that the User: Conservative account is made up of one editor is not troubling to me (nor is it troubling to us!).

Third, I don't support feminism and I don't the men's rights movement/"Manosphere" (which Beale tends to fall on in terms of gender relations). I am a complementarian. I realize that the left commonly engages in groupthink, strict ideological purity tests and aggressive punitive actions against political dissenters, but I think not citing authors due to not agreeing with all of their views or summarily discounting everything they say is committing the genetic fallacy and is a cheap method of disqualifying opponents rather than addressing legitimate arguments that they may make. Beale wrote the excellent book The Irrational Atheist and his book is even cited at Wikipedia in their criticism of atheism article (Wikipedia is a wiki founded by an atheist and an agnostic).[7] . Furthermore, a fairly positive review of his book The Irrational Atheist was done by a woman.[8] The book is also a good seller and the publisher will not make a deal with Beale to buy its publisher rights.

As far as me helping the atheist/agnostic woman and your insistence that it never happened, as Ripley said, "Believe it or not!". I will sleep very well tonight knowing that a crass and angry atheist angrily denies an event happened when I know for certain that it did! Conservative 20:02, 4 March 2015 (EST)

Your points: Firstly I would never call a female a c*nt, an exclusively male insult where I come from. Secondly Hitler built excellent roads and had an excellent animal rights record but he was still an evil SOB. Thirdly, of all the 100s of inane and insane articles you have written you ALWAYS point to the one article with slightly different style, a conscious effort of deceit by you, it did not work. Any expert in linguistics/writing/whatever would know with 100% certainly that all your articles, all of them are written by the same person, that is all. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by GregorG (talk)

Your defense of your crass denigration of women was not impressive (why do atheists so often try to dodge responsibility for their actions). Second, I find it sad that you engaged in a Godwin! Third, feel free to run the respective articles through writing style analysis software or have a writing style expert examine the matter. I/we am/are confident that vindication will be mine/ours! Next, I have my doubts that hundreds of wiki articles were written through the User: Conservative account (liberal exaggeration? Never trust a leftist, militant atheist! Do not trust. Verify! Always, assume they are lying until proven otherwise as Mr. Beale says! :)[9] ). Lastly, feel free to engage in last wordism. Conservative 20:28, 4 March 2015 (EST)

SamHB weighs in

@RicardoL: Nothing to say. He's a loser, and has been blocked.

@Cons: There is no need to reply to this guy. He's a loser.

"you don't have the purest thoughts when it comes to gender relations" Uhh, right.
"please explain why the footnoting style ...." Huh? What's that got to do with anything?

Oh, I get it. You are using variations in your footnoting style to defend yourself against the accusation that you are just one person. There is no need to do that. First, RicardoL is a loser. Second, everyone knows that you are one person. I have read and enormous amount of your writing, and it is completely obvious that your writings are done by one person. There is no need to try to convince anyone that you are multiple people. It does not benefit you in any way at all. People don't get paid by the man-hour here.

"Given your angry and crass post ..." Aside from his being a loser, there is no need to psychoanalyze him.
"is not troubling to me" As well it shouldn't be.
"I don't support feminism and I don't support the men's rights movement ..." Fine.
"I think not citing authors due to not agreeing with all of their views" Fine. But I don't see what it has to do with anything RicardoL was saying. Rather than responding to him, why don't you write up your thoughts in a well-structured freestanding article? It would probably be quite interesting.
"Beale" Who??? All too often you write as though to some small group of your friends who know all sorts of inside jokes and expressions. We don't. Please keep your audience in mind when you write.
"As far as me helping the atheist/agnostic woman and your insistence that it never happened, as Ripley said, 'Believe it or not!'". I don't doubt for an instant that you helped this person the way you say. Ignore RicardoL.

@GregorG: "Firstly I would never call a female a c*nt, an exclusively male insult where I come from." What are you talking about? And why? In any case, it's good to know that you refrain from sexist insults.

Hitler: What???
Roads: What???
Animal rights: What???

@myself: I'm taking it too seriously. The guy's a loser. I guess I take offense when people vomit all over my talk page.

@everyone: The discussion above is revolting. A couple of months ago I presented a sort of fanciful notion ("Material moved from the Community Portal", above) that Cons, AugustO, and EJamesW are visiting my "house" for a friendly chat. But the place is a mess. I'm going to have to have the carpeting steam-cleaned to remove the smell of vomit. SamHB 00:12, 5 March 2015 (EST)

@PeterKa: I see you've blocked GregorG or whoever he was. I suspected that he was just a sock, but I had no way of knowing. SamHB 00:21, 5 March 2015 (EST)

My response

1. There is nothing about myself that would lead one to believe I would

A) Write an article entitled "Atheist persecution of homosexuals" (I retitled the article Atheist actions against homosexuals). That is because I did not write it. It was a total surprise to me that a person sharing my account would write that

B) Have the aforementioned article use the term LGBTQ (A term which definitely lacks machismo!).

C) Would use a different footnoting style.

Yet, the User: Conservative account was used to write that article

2. As far as the User: Conservative account: Not all the edits to the atheism article were mine. Is the same true as far as the evolution/homosexuality articles? 微乎微乎，至于无形；神乎神乎，至于无声；故能为敌之司命。 Conservative 02:55, 5 March 2015 (EST)

SamHB's response to that

Please be serious. I know I joke around with you on many occasions, but I'm serious about this.

"There is nothing about myself that would lead one to believe I would write an article entitled 'Atheist persecution of homosexuals'". On the contrary, there is everything to lead one to believe that. While it doesn't have the parrot-on-tricycle / bear / black cat / dog-gnawing-on-bone / person-rubbing-his-eyes-in-apparent-frustration / flying-kitty / pony pictures that your evolution-related articles typically do, it has all the hallmarks of your style: long revision history of apparently-manic tiny edits (23 in just over 3 hours) all by you, a long list of "references", and a long list of "see also"'s pointing to your other articles. Furthermore, there are a huge number of articles on CP that intertwine homosexuality, atheism, and evolution. Most of them refer to each other in one giant constellation, with similar intense editing patterns. They are obviously written by you. Claiming that the articles on these subjects are written by different people because of variations in footnoting style is ludicrous.
I realize that LGBTQ is not an abbreviation that I associate with you, but the rest of the evidence is overwhelming.

"It was a total surprise to me that a person sharing my account would write that." Total surprise? Really? You have other people edit from your account (using uncanny uniformity of style and subject matter) and you don't even know about it? You really need to change your password, don't you think?

"Is the same true as far as the evolution/homosexuality articles?" Why are you posting rhetorical questions like that? Why don't you just tell us, since you know the answer. We sometimes get tired of your guessing games.

<bunch of characters not in the ANSI/ISO/Latin-1 character set> Everyone else seems to be able to communicate in the usual character set for English-speaking people. (OK, I sometimes cut and paste an umlaut for a German word, but nothing like this. And all American browsers can handle that.) You ought to try to communicate in an alphabet that most English-speaking people have access to.

SamHB 14:36, 5 March 2015 (EST)

My second response

I looked a the article Atheist actions against homosexuals article and here is my reburral:

1. The quote box styles are different in the Atheist actions against homosexuals from other User: Conservative articles. I use the better looking quotation style coding.

2. The article uses the dependent clause "as such". I have never used this dependent clause in my writings.

3. The term LGBTQ was never used in the CP's main homosexuality article. What is with the use of the letter Q in the term LGBTQ? It is redundant. Conservative 17:53, 5 March 2015 (EST)

SamHB again

OK, I'll make a deal:

I'll take you at your word that you didn't write the 'Atheist persecution of homosexuals' or 'Atheist actions against homosexuals' or 'Atheism and the persecution of homosexuals' article, or whatever its past incarnations may have been. I know you are an honorable person.
I will suspend my claim that it is completely obvious that you wrote all of the articles that are under your account.
You will change your password, and not communicate the new password to anyone else.
You will take full personal responsibility for everything written under the "User:Conservative" account in the future.
You will not make any edits to the 'Atheist persecution of homosexuals' (or whatever) article, since it is not yours. If you think some changes are called for, you will leave a note on the talk page.
Whoever this stranger is who, unknown to you, wrote it, if they wish to continue, they will make their own Conservapedia account.
I will suspend my incredulity that, though you didn't write the article, you took such a deep interest in it that you carefully compared its author's footnoting style with your own. And that you renamed it and did some work with redirects.

OK? SamHB 13:46, 6 March 2015 (EST)

Cons

I see no reason to rescind privileges as far as the User: Conservatism since there has been no malfeasance and additional quality content has been created for Conservapedia under this arrangement.

In addition, when opponents of the User:Conservative account attempt to launch ad hominem attacks, I like to point out that more than one editor uses the account. :) They resort to these type of attack due to their inability to find a single factual error in the Conservapedia atheism, evolution and homosexuality articles. Additionally, the rogues who launch these type of attacks have issues (see: Atheism and morality and Atheism and emotional intelligence and Atheism and social intelligence).

I have a good relationship with the rest of User: Conservativeism. I have been helped in the past by the rest of User: Conservatism outside of this wiki. Therefore, I do not wish to revoke access to the account to the rest of User: Conservateism. In fact, the number of editors under User: Conservateism may increase! Conservative 20:06, 8 March 2015 (EDT)

SamHB

You wrote this at 14:52, 6 Mar, later reverted in the name of being more cordial:

Did you read the front page stories about creationism spreading quickly in Europe - it's stronghold? You are in no position to dictate terms! - signed, the lion and not the gazelle!

In answer to your first question, no. I don't have time to follow everything at CP, especially those things that are not germane to the topic at hand. In reply to the second point, I am not trying to "dictate terms" to you. I would never attempt to dictate terms to someone with block and oversight authority. I'm simply trying to help you convince people that you are telling the truth, by presenting a course of action that would accomplish this. Think of it not as a "surrender document" but as an informal and friendly agreement whereby you clear the air.

I assume you know that many people are "Cons-watchers", with me, AugustO, and EJamesW among the better known ones. (My apologies to anyone I left out.) Many eyes are focused on this discussion right here, and on the similar discussions on other talk pages^[2]. Many people are quite convinced that you are lying when you say that your CP account is used by many people. You of course exacerbate that by all your claims of mystery ("No one knows my gender" or words to that effect.) You have an opportunity, right here on this page, to put an end to the perception that you are an habitual^[3] liar. I'm trying to help you do that, by pointing out what aspects of what you write lead to that perception, and how you can correct that.

The issue at hand is your claim that you, the person engaged in the discussion here on this page, wrote many of the articles that appear to be attributed to you, but specifically not the 'Atheist persecution of homosexuals' or 'Atheist actions against homosexuals' or 'Atheism and the persecution of homosexuals' article, or whatever its past incarnations may have been. I want to believe you, but you are making it difficult, for me and for all the other people involved in this controversy.

The reasons for this perception that you are lying include:

You wrote above "I did not write [that article]. It was a total surprise to me that a person sharing my account would write that." A total surprise? Really? Your password is known by people that you don't know, and who log in to your account to write articles without your knowledge? And you reject my suggestion that you change your password? If what you say is true, your password might be shared by hundreds of people, making edits in your name. Doesn't that bother you?
The evidence, based on writing style, that the edits in your name come from the same person is utterly overwhelming. You can't possibly convince people otherwise.

"I see no reason to rescind privileges as far as the User: Conservatism". There's no reason for you to do that—I just want you to change your password. I assume you mean the other people in your "collective". You mention a user named "Conservatism" and one named "Conservativeism". There are no such users.

"I have a good relationship with the rest of User: Conservativeism. I have been helped in the past by the rest of User: Conservatism outside of this wiki."

Even the unknown imposter? The person, unknown to you, who wrote the "Atheism and the persecution of homosexuals" article? All 32 revisions of it? Without your being aware of it? Other than renaming it, changing its protection, making wikilinks related to it, and putting it in the "Nb Atheism" template at 16:42, 26 April 2014?

"In fact, the number of editors under User: Conservateism may increase!"

Well, yes. It might be in the hundreds by now. If you show these people how to create their own accounts, they will still be your friends and will still be helpful.

If I found someone impersonating me with unknown edits to my account, I would change my password immediately. (I'm confident that no one is doing that; I've never shared my password with anyone, and my CP password is completely unrelated to any of my other passwords.)

You also write about "opponents of the User:Conservative account attempt[ing] to launch ad hominem attacks", and that you defend yourself by "point[ing] out that more than one editor uses the account", followed by a smiley-face^[4] Uhhhh, no. Claiming that multiple people use your account, especially when that claim is utterly ludicrous, is not a good defense against these attacks. A better way would be to change your password, indicate that you have done so, and say that you will take full responsibility for what goes on in your name. (By the way, I hope you are not including me in the set of people making ad-hominem attacks. That is certainly not my intent.)

You also write that "They resort to these type of attack due to their inability to find a single factual error in ...." and that they have "issues", perhaps relating to morality, emotional intelligence, or social intelligence. You might do well not to second-guess the motives or possible mental problems of your detractors. They might simply be attacking you because your claims of being multiple people are ludicrous.

Music

Cons, I occasionally look at your music subpages, and enjoy listening to the things you suggest. You might consider getting these two Mozart piano collections. They're favorites of mine:

Piano Concertos with Geza Anda, DG 469-510-2
Piano Sonatas with Alicia DeLarrocha, DG 82876-55705-2

I would put this on your talk page, but it is locked, and, in any case, you burn it down frequently. It would be nice if you could arrange for a way for people to have conversations with you; you often seem to be trying to reach out to people.

SamHB 18:11, 19 March 2015 (EDT)

Aha! This isn't locked. Cool. SamHB 18:28, 19 March 2015 (EDT)

Thanks. These are beautiful pieces. I added them. Conservative 18:33, 19 March 2015 (EDT)

Maxwell's Equations

I meant to click on "diff", not "revert". I've corrected the unintended reversion.--Andy Schlafly 15:44, 21 May 2015 (EDT)

Huh? Oh, I see. Yes, I do a lot of looking around and diffing too. But I don't have a "revert" button; just "diff". :-( And I hope you understand that my praise for the vandal was, ummm, ironical. SamHB 15:48, 21 May 2015 (EDT)

Re: your article idea

You wrote: "Create more articles. There doesn't seem to be an article on "atheism and maple syrup" yet."

Have you seen THIS? :) Conservative 07:55, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

Absolutely astonishing! The internet is an amazing place, CP is an amazing website, and you (all 1 of you) are an amazing person! I had no idea, when I made up that silly bit about atheism and maple syrup, that you would bring your formidable and legendary powers to bear on the subject, and actually find a discussion of the theological implications of maple syrup. You see, I was just joking. You might even say I was making fun of you.

I feel a little bit guilty about having led you to waste your time on that, and I'm not sure I ought to issue another equally outlandish challenge. But I can't help noticing that there is no article on atheism and rocking chairs. :-)

When I was a little girl (or whatever; it's been a long time), I remember that the usual maple syrup that one could buy in the grocery store (Log Cabin brand) was 15% real. Then it went down to 2%, and now it's hard (but not impossible) to find anything that isn't zero. Do you think this would be a good example to add to the Counterexamples to an Old Earth article? It's right up there with the premature graying of Anderson Cooper's and Cal Ripken's hair. You see, the percentage of real maple syrup in the Cretaceous era would have to have been about 100,000,000%. Interesting. And don't get me started on the Devonian.

SamHB 21:48, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

You wrote: " But I can't help noticing that there is no article on atheism and rocking chairs."

The atheist population has a sub-replacement level fertility rate. Secular Europe is expected to shrink in terms of its percentage of the world's population and it has an aging population. In addition, it has a lot of economic stagnation and sovereign debt. As a result of these demographic/economic issues, Europe is expected to go though a period of decline (See: An Aging Europe in Decline). Therefore, a Secular Europe and rocking chairs article could be written. :) Conservative 22:06, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

regarding content creation

I opened up my email box and saw another complaint about you. If you continue on your present path and don't create substantially more content, I think someone is going to block you.

I thought I would tell you because I will be checking the recent changes far less often. So I might not find out about you being blocked until much later. It is also much harder to defend someone who creates little content.

I don't have anything further to say about this matter. I don't want to get into a protracted discussion about this matter given my present commitments. Conservative 01:53, 11 June 2015 (EDT)

Thank you for

suggesting that, if someone improperly blocked me, you would undo it, unless your other committements keep you away from CP. I do appreciate that we sometimes have other committements. And I do appreciate your willingness to stick up for me, even though I sometimes playfully give you a hard time.
giving me a heads-up about this threat. Now I realize that you don't want to get involved in this (I don't either, but it looks as though I have to), but I wonder if you could tell me

how many complaints there have been? You said "another complaint".
for how long have people been complaining?
are the complaints all from the same person?
how much "substantially more content" is called for? I really think I'm currently one of the more active contributors here. My own count says that, since late March, I made contributions to nearly 90 different non-talk non-Community-Portal pages.

Could you perhaps tell me who the person is / people are? I assume it has to be someone at CP with block powers. Could you forward the communications, suitably redacted to protect privacy, of course?

If you want to contact me privately, I'm at sam4557@gmail.com.

Thanks for the warning.

SamHB 02:14, 12 June 2015 (EDT)

Just create a decent amount of content and don't pick a lot of unnecessary fights. If AugustO can manage to keep editing for a prolonged period despite multiple disagreements with the owner of the website and if RobSmith is currently editing and did edit under OscarO for a lenghty period without problems, then you should be able to edit for a lengthy period also. I have disagreed with the owner of this website and continue to edit at this wiki. It's not rocket science.

Second, both Andy and I have unblocked people who were blocked by overzealous blocking. Conservative 14:33, 12 June 2015 (EDT)

OK, thanks. Will do. I believe my contributions in scientific areas have been very helpful, and I hope that the powers that be recognize that. It seems that I'm the only current contributor working in this area. SamHB 23:20, 12 June 2015 (EDT)

E=MC2

Hello. I was absent from the site during the E=MC2 stuff so I am reading it now and see you are active on these pages. Forgive me if I am wrong as physics isn't my thing but I thought E=MC2 was confirmed and is basically at the heart of a nuclear explosion or reactor? JohnSelway 22:25, 14 June 2015 (EDT)

Yes, it's been confirmed over and over again. You need to know that the relativity material on Conservapedia is a very special and unusual phenomenon. It's one of CP's flagship issues, and one of the pages has over 2 million web hits. So we (everyone other than Andy) leave it alone.

Occasionally well-intentioned people (not you) try to "fix" the relativity material, and I or someone else has to remind them--the relativity debate on Conservapedia is not for amateurs. So, yes, you are right; just leave it.

By the way, the idea that E=mc^2 is at the heart of a nuclear explosion or reactor is a common notion, but it sort of misses the point. What is at the heart of a nuclear explosion or reactor is the enormous power of the nuclear strong force. So strong that it displays E=mc^2 directly. But the equation itself is not what makes it work. SamHB 01:58, 4 July 2015 (EDT)

Another atheism article is coming out probably in July 0f 2015 and then another one in August

This is a continuation of a discussion that started on VargasMilan's talk page, moved here because it is not germane to the original subject. The footnotes are mine. --SamHB

Another atheism article is coming out probably in July 0f 2015. And then another one in August of 2015. It is going to be a TERRIBLE summer for atheism this year. Conservative 21:06, 28 June 2015 (EDT)

I look forward to seeing them. I hope they will be on more tasteful subjects than bestiality and of more far-reaching significance than something Richard Dawkins said in an elevator. Otherwise, I doubt that they will contribute to it being a terrible summer for atheism. I can't imagine someone accepting Christianity because of someone's crude remark in an elevator. You really can do better than that. SamHB 00:02, 29 June 2015 (EDT)

SamHB, it wouldn't surprise me if you were an atheist and if you edited another wiki whose editors are often obsessed with me.

The atheism and morality and Atheism and women issues and matters related to them, while embarrassing to atheists, are certainly matters that can be reasonably brought up and/or have articles written about them. Conservative 00:32, 29 June 2015 (EDT)

Well, it would surprise me, but heck, what would I know? :-)

I'm just trying to encourage you to witness for Christianity in a way that is more effective than talking about bestiality or something Dawkins once said in an elevator. The two subjects you mentioned just above (morality/women) are certainly more appropriate. I hope you can write about them in a way that conveys Jesus' message effectively. SamHB 00:46, 29 June 2015 (EDT)

For a supposed^[5] non-atheist, you certainly seem overly interested in my atheism related content^[6]. If memory serves^[7], and I think it does^[8], someone suspected^[9] you were someone who goes by the moniker "Nutty Roux"^[10]. Personally, I don't care either way, given that my interaction with you will be very limited for the foreseeable future. Conservative 02:03, 29 June 2015 (EDT)

A quick check of the Essay: An atheist nutter enslaved by Satan! page will show a good deal of research on your part into "Nutty Roux", whoever he is. I'm sure you will agree that the person you described there can't possibly be me. I do not write "vitriolic screed[s]" like that, on any subject. And I am not "one of the many atheist nutjobs on the internet!". I'm not an atheist, I'm not a nutjob, and, as I will explain below, I do not use the internet for any kind of proselytizing.

SamHB, you wrote: "I'm just trying to encourage you to witness for Christianity...". SamHB, since you claim ^[5] you are a Christian and not an atheist and you claim to want to encourage me, why don't you show me how it's done. Create a substantial article on this topic: Gospel. In the see also section of the article you can cite these resources: Resources on becoming a Christian and Resources for leaving atheism and becoming a Christian.Conservative 16:49, 29 June 2015 (EDT)

Now let's get down to business. I'm trying to encourage you to "witness for Christianity in a way that is more effective than talking about ...". And you want me to show you how it's done. This is where you and I part company. I believe in personal face-to-face interaction with people, not the writing of pages on a website.^[11] Interacting with people, and discussing issues of religion, morality, ethics, and so on is vastly more rewarding. Have you had personal discussions about Bree Newsome's recent action, for example? It's all over the internet; I'm sure you know about this. Were your friends impressed by the way she recited Biblical verses, including the 23^rd Psalm, as she was being led away in handcuffs? Were you impressed? I and my friends were impressed. That was witnessing! There's just no comparison between that and people who (literally or figuratively) sit in their basement making Youtube videos, or writing web pages, all day/night long. And I do not recognize "internet atheism" as a meaningful phrase. Not in the least.

Your edit history seems to suggest that you don't get outside and interact with people very much, except to go to church. You are missing a lot! You should get out more. I don't think your writing here at CP (especially the bestiality stuff) is really having a positive effect. I see no evidence on the internet of people taking positive notice of what you do.

So I do not intend to write a CP article about Gospel. I'm not really good at setting my thoughts on the subject down on paper. And I looked at the Resources on becoming a Christian page that you mentioned. The very first reference was to a creationist website, so I stopped right there. Sorry, but you need to do better than that.

So if you want to continue with the kind of proselytizing / witnessing that you have been doing, you will have to do it without my help. You will have to recruit help as best you can. VargasMilan seems willing to help somewhat, and perhaps even JoeyJ.

Peace, SamHB 01:48, 4 July 2015 (EDT)

Have you see THIS and THIS? "The trends that are happening worldwide inevitably in an age of globalization are going to affect us." - Eric Kaufmann, 2010[10] Conservative 05:45, 4 July 2015 (EDT)

I don't believe that deep philosophical or religious questions, like the existence of God, are answered by internet search engine statistics. I looked at those pages, and they are just a bunch of meaningless jagged lines.

It's a nice day. Why don't you turn off your computer and go outside. There are lots of outdoor activities today; you may have heard about the significance of July 4th. There will be concerts by the local Concert Band, and other bands, like George Scott, Joyce Wilson Nixon, and Matthew Facciolla, as well as a presentation by the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard. And, of course, fireworks. Meet people. Get their reaction to whatever it is that someone said in an elevator. Ask them whether that affects their likelihood of accepting Christianity. And don't forget the sunscreen. SamHB 11:45, 4 July 2015 (EDT)

SamHB, you don't know what countries the editors of the User: Conservative account reside in.

And for all you know, the User: Conservative account may think the American Revolution was a mistake and that a more amicable/peaceful solution to separation from Great Britain was warranted such as what happened in India, Canada and Australia.

Like it or not, User: Conservativedom remains an enigma to you! 微乎微乎，至于无形；神乎神乎，至于无声；故能为敌之司命。 Conservative 18:08, 4 July 2015 (EDT)

Well, I'm disappointed. Instead of going outside and enjoying the nice weather, you went on an 11-hour editing binge. Though it seems that you stopped in time to go out and see the fireworks. I hope you at least did that. I had a wonderful day outdoors. And I saw a good fireworks display. While it was going on, I wondered what John Adams would think of it.

Actually, I predicted that binge. You see, you are not an enigma at all. SamHB 01:34, 5 July 2015 (EDT)

"declared concerning"

Cons: I usually ignore your writing on all the subjects that you seems to like—atheism, bestiality, blasting people for not satisfying your criteria of "true Christian", etc. The reason for this is, obviously, that your writing on those subjects is utterly worthless, pointless, silly, vapid, and a waste of time for you to write or anyone to read. But I just glanced at this article and saw the usual "declared concerning" construction. That is an incredibly awkward construction, and makes you look like someone who does not have a good command of the English language. Now I know you do have a good command of the language, so I advise you to stop using that construction.

A search of CP reveals 91 instances. They all seem to be yours, though, obviously, I didn't look at them. A Google search for the same two words gets many hits, but almost always in a context in which that juxtaposition is reasonable. The exception was a book on Christian apologetics, apparently. (I didn't look at it.)

As I recall, you do a similar thing with "regarding" replacing "concerning", and/or "wrote" or "said" replacing "declared".

Please clean this up.

SamHB 02:31, 9 July 2015 (EDT)

I know you are upset about the barbarous behavior I have documented relative to atheists. You are also displeased about factual material I have reported on evolutionists and adherents of liberal Christianity. Yet, you have yet to show one factual error in this material. If you were a lawyer, you would be laughed out of court. And I get the distinct feeling that you are upset with this particular article because the atheist side of the aisle is not doing well in its battle against Christianity and this trend is expected to continue.

You would do well not to express judgments about other people's emotional state unless you know them well. Of course I disapprove of barbarous behavior, no matter who commits it. I have no opinion on your "factual material" about evolutionists or liberal Christians, because I have not read it. And I have not pointed out "factual errors" in this material for the same reason. I find it essentially impossible to glean "facts" from these articles. Your "distinct feeling" that I am upset with this is just wrong. SamHB 20:47, 13 July 2015 (EDT)

Second, I did revise a few articles based on some of your input above. I made them more concise. Thanks for this input which was of a more constructive variety.

Glad to help. Really. SamHB 20:47, 13 July 2015 (EDT)

If you would pare down your criticism so the whining is eliminated and the more constructive criticism remains, it would be appreciated.

By the way, you wrote above "pointless, worthless...vapid". That rant was a bit redundant was it not? My university English professor would have definitely pulled out the red pen and given you a low grade! Conservative 03:12, 9 July 2015 (EDT)

re: the portion of your above criticism which was ranting

I told you before that your content contribution to inflammatory talk page post ratio was poor and that you were needlessly aggravating some people. Yet, you persist. Fortunately, I have a thicker skin than most and I am impervious to your ranting.

Stop bringing up irrelevancies and have a less quarrelsome tone. This is your second warning.

For example, please stop your fixation with articles that I wrote which document various particularly barbarous/loathsome behaviors of atheists. Do not bring up them up on unrelated talk pages. The same applies to factual material I wrote related to liberal Christianity. This is not constructive behavior. Conservative 03:58, 9 July 2015 (EDT)

Apology

Cons, I apologize for my "pointless, worthless...vapid" comment above. It was not my intention to hurt your feelings. I had assumed that you were more thick-skinned than that because (1) you can really dish it out, as when you accuse people of being atheists, evolutionists, etc. when that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, and (2) you are a follower of Sun Tzu, who seems to have been quite unflappable.

Your statement "This is your second warning" is troublesome.^[12] It sounds like a threat to block me. I hope it isn't. I think you and I have gotten along reasonably well, and, while you technically have the power to block me, I've expected that you don't really intend to do so.

"Please stop your fixation with articles that I wrote ...." My "fixation" is only an interest in your writing style and effectiveness. I do not care about the subject matter. I never read your articles except to note stylistic shortcomings. After all, I consider them "pointless ....".

By the way, the fact that I don't read your articles except in microscopic doses explains why I ignore your frequent "can't find a single factual error in ..." challenges. If I were to look for factual errors, I would have to satisfy myself that they made factual statements. As far as I can tell, the closest they come to making factual statements is making statements that so-and-so wrote such-and-such on a blog/speech/opinion article somewhere.

"Do not bring up them up on unrelated talk pages." I assume that this refers to the "declared concerning" business, that I put on VargasMilan's talk page because I wanted you to see it. I would have put it on your own talk page, but it's (nearly) always locked. So I have to use other people's talk pages that I know you are watching because they contain a discussion thread that you are active in. In the future, I will put all messages for you on my talk page (that is, this page). You may watch my page or not, as you wish.

And, while I have your attention, I notice that you blocked User:Burke39 again. His only edits since coming out of his block (by VargasMilan) of 3 months ago were trivial stuff relating to hyphens before his signature. Whatever edit led to the 3-month block was 3 months ago. Are you going to block him for a week every week because he once wrote something that VM didn't like????

Peace,

SamHB 16:23, 12 July 2015 (EDT)

Your question assumes facts and motivations of which there is no evidence. Are you just going to write anything that comes into your head? VargasMilan 17:10, 12 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm going to assume that you are referring just to the last ("I notice that you blocked ....") paragraph, because the other stuff was specifically related to a discussion with Cons. OK? If you are referring to the whole section, please say so.

So let's go through the various "facts and motivations of which there is no evidence", of that 4-sentence paragraph, and the implication that I just write anything that comes into my head, rather than things based on facts:

And while I have your attention, I notice that you blocked User:Burke39 again.
This is a fact. It's true that it came into my head, but it did so because it is a fact. You can look it up in Burke39's block event here. It shows that Burke39 was blocked by Cons, at 13:23, 12 July 2015. Cons was the person I was directing my remarks to. A look at the full block log here will show what I meant by "again". He was blocked 3 times. The first two were by you. I hope you didn't infer that I was claiming, by "again", that Cons did all 3. I had actually thought about that possible ambiguity when writing it, but figured that Cons would know that I meant "he has been blocked again, and you did the most recent block".
His only edits since coming out of his block (by VargasMilan) of 3 months ago were trivial stuff relating to hyphens before his signature.
This is a fact. You can look at his contribution log. It shows, since his last block ended:
12:01, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) Talk:Alfred Kinsey ‎ (→Generally articles make statements rather than ask questions, at least that's what I thought: Removing two dashes from my signature) (top)

11:47, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) Talk:Thelarche ‎ (Removed dashes and abbreviated link, did not otherwise change content) (top)

11:46, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) Talk:Puberty ‎ (Shortening my link and removing dashes from my signature. I did not change any substantive content, this is only to make it easier for readers to read what I wrote here before.) (top)

11:44, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) Talk:Pedophilia ‎ (Removed the two dashes from my signature. Another user commented that way of signing was odd. I did not change any content here other than my signature.) (top)

03:14, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) User talk:VargasMilan ‎ (For some reason I missed the other 2 dashes I added to my other signatures here, caught them now, and now they're all abolished. My signature looks more normal this way.) (top)

03:12, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ‎ (→Deity of Christ: I'm removing the dashses because on another wiki I was told they looked peciliar. I never knew how to sign without adding the dashes until recently.) (top)

03:06, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) Talk:Freemasonry ‎ (I've been told the two dashes in my signature look peciliar, so I'm removing them. There's no reason for them.) (top)

03:03, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) User talk:VargasMilan ‎ (→Inserting false information: Removing my dashes,only because on website another user expressed her view that the dashes were odd.)

03:02, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) User talk:Burke39 ‎ (→Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff: Fixed formatting.) (top)

03:01, 12 July 2015 (diff | hist) User talk:Burke39 ‎ (There's no reason for the two dashes in my signature, I didn't know how to avoid them in the past, now I do.)

You can click on the "diff" part of those, which I did before my post above, and just did again to be absolutely sure. You can satisfy yourself that the changes were trivial. Almost all were hyphens in the signature (I don't know why he felt the need to do that) and a couple of brackets for references and colons for indentation.
Whatever edit led to the 3-month block was 3 months ago.
This is a fact. It is based on causality. When you blocked him 3 months ago, you must have known only information from 3 months (or more) ago.
Are you going to block him for a week every week because he once wrote something that VM didn't like????
This is a question, with an implicit fact. A question is just a question. It cannot be said to "assume facts and motivations of which there is no evidence". It's just a question.

Now it does contain an implicit fact, that his block of 02:29, 12 May 2015 was because he wrote something that you didn't like. This might not be true. But it doesn't "assume facts and motivations of which there is no evidence". The evidence might not be ironclad, but I thought the conclusion was justifiable. The evidence was the fact that he was blocked by you. The assumption that it was because you didn't like what he wrote, was, I believe, justifiable, based on the principle that sysops block users for writing objectionable things. Now it may be true that you have never had any problem with what he wrote here at Conservapedia. Perhaps you have exchanged email, and the content of the email led you to believe that he was "trolling" or "inserting false information". I made what I consider to be a reasonable inference, that "inserting false information" meant exactly that, and that you don't like people inserting false information. It was on that basis that I made the inference "he once wrote something that VM didn't like". If that inference is not correct, please accept my apology.

SamHB 19:42, 12 July 2015 (EDT)

If I were you, I would fire my fact-checker. Yours seems to have lost his marbles. VargasMilan 16:49, 14 July 2015 (EDT)

Oh. SamHB 11:27, 15 July 2015 (EDT)

My response (from Cons, things sometimes get confusing)

re: Unrelated matters and talk pages and "Do not bring up them up on unrelated talk pages." I am referring to the Scarlet B that atheism now has around its neck.

Huh???? I never edited that article, or its talk page. I never brought up any matters, related or unrelated. I hadn't even been aware of the page. But now that I've looked at it, it is—never mind. I don't want to be truculent or irritating. SamHB 16:52, 12 July 2015 (EDT)

It is block threat that is easy to avoid. Stop with the snide and truculent/pointless comments to Admins or others. It needlessly irritates some people. It's that simple. And it's not rocket science.

I would also suggest upping your main space content. Your irritation and pointlessly truculent to main space edit ratio has not been good lately.

I think I make some pretty decent contributions to scientific articles. In fact, I'm the only one who does. I'm not always as tactful in the edit comments as I should be. I will try to do better. But, just so you know where I'm coming from, I have watched what was once a very vibrant and active math/science community disappear. And it makes me sad. SamHB 16:52, 12 July 2015 (EDT)

Conservative 16:39, 12 July 2015 (EDT)

Cons likes a little fun, such as being "pugnacious" with other users

Cons, I used to be convinced that you are something of a "sourpuss", always being very serious about everything, and accusing me, in very serious ways that suggest you might be contemplating blocking me. You and I have had many discussions, here and elsewhere, that gave me that impression. For example, your comment above about my "snide and truculent" writing. And yet I see, here that you can be playfully pugnacious. This is good to know. SamHB 20:47, 13 July 2015 (EDT)

Oh, Cons. You're such a comedian!

Replying to my footnoting suggestion, at Talk:Essay: Christopher Hitchens was a bloodthirsty barbarian^[13], that you are going to use the "preview" button more. And that all of your multiple personalities are going to do the same. You of course know that your failure to use "preview" is a big joke, both here and, if memory serves, that other wiki.

It shows a certain degree of self-awareness that you admit that you don't use "preview". But failure to use "preview" is not the most important reason that you make hundreds of tiny edits to accomplish one actual editorial change. And it's true that this leads to an astonishing degree of clutter on Recent Changes. And that this clutter is widely ridiculed at ritionalwaki.

But that's not the real problem. The problem is that you spend hours upon hours scouring the internet for anything that might touch on the subject you are writing about, and you stuff it into the article, with no regard for the context or the effect on the flow of the writing. Then you look at it, change your mind about something, and rearrange the article. And you change your mind again and again and again and again. Then you search the internet some more, and the cycle starts again.

You would do well to organize your thoughts into an article that you keep in a file on your computer. (That's what I do, by the way.) Then look at it, printing it on paper if necessary. Asking yourselves (just kidding!—yourself) "Is this the right article? Is this what will convince people of the point the article is trying to make?" Then, once you are convinced that it looks right, upload it. You will be proud of your work, and won't be constantly tearing it apart. And other people will be more inclined to read it, because they will be convinced that you put a sufficient amount of thought into it.

SamHB 23:46, 19 July 2015 (EDT)

SamHB, the editors of the User: Conservative account don't merely TRY to make points in our articles, we successfully DO make points in our articles. :)

Second, revision is part of the writing process and new events sometimes cause an article to be altered. Conservative 00:07, 20 July 2015 (EDT)

Sorry; I didn't mean to imply that the editor of your account (all one of you!) don't make points. I just think a more disciplined approach to your writing would help you zero in on the point you are making.

And of course revision is part of the process on a wiki. That's what the "edit" button (which I just clicked on) is for. But there's a difference between clicking that button because of "new events" or a thoughtful reconsideration of the thrust of the article, and appearing to make haphazard edits. The latter simply diminish your readers' willingness to read the article; they could just wait 5 minutes and get the next version. SamHB 00:55, 20 July 2015 (EDT)

re: footnoting

I plan on figuring out how to footnote better on a wiki.

I also plan on using the preview button and/or reviewing my posts more before publishing them so less revision is necessary. Alternatively, I could use the oversight function to tidy up my editing of articles in relation to the recent changes log.

It is almost never necessary to "oversight" or "vape" anything. That just makes my job harder, and sometimes I miss things.

I can speak to the other editors of the User: Conservative account about these matters also. Conservative 19:13, 19 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm sure you already have.

Actually, considering that a while back you said that people unknown to you use your account (do you remember my telling you that you ought to change your password so that this wouldn't happen?) it's not possible for you to speak to those other users; you don't know who they are.

I'm going to work out the proper footnote for the "bloodthirsty barbarian" thing, and post it here, so you can just paste it in. This stuff is admittedly a bit tricky, and I put a lot of meticulous work into the "how to put footnotes ...." article. I'll post it here tomorrow. Well, later today; you know what I mean. But it's getting late. How about unlocking the article for me? SamHB 01:04, 20 July 2015 (EDT)

Please don't vape (oversight) things, part 1

You wrote above about "tidy[ing] up my editing of articles in relation to the recent changes log". This is a laudable goal. But you said you "could use the oversight function" for this. Please don't do that. When you vape an edit it appears in the RC log anyway!!! So you will accomplish nothing, except to make yourself look even less like a cooperative and collegial member of the CP community. The only real way to lessen your burden on the RC log is to do what I suggested earlier, and that you hinted at with the use of "preview": Think carefully about what you want to write before you write it.

Vaping just shows that you are embarrassed to have cluttered up RC. Not cluttering up RC in the first place is a better solution.

SamHB 01:58, 21 July 2015 (EDT)

Please don't vape (oversight) things, part 2

You vaped a comment that you wrote here on my talk page. Not only does such behavior offend me personally when it's on my talk page, but it leads me to question your motives. It also makes me have to check my journals more diligently. What you vaped was a reference to the "bloodthirsty barbarian" article being satirical. Perhaps you were trying to lessen the seriousness with which I and others take that article. You should not assume anyone will take it as satirical. It will be taken as completely serious. There is an article type for that (as in your "humor and satire about atheism" articles, or whatever they are called), and this is not one of those. People are going to take you at your word that you are serious and in earnest about Hitchens being bloodthirsty and all that. You frequently put your articles of this type (though I'm not aware that you have done it with the "bloodthirsty barbarian" article) on Main Page Left. These are flagship articles of Conservapedia!!! Your articles on atheism, bestiality, superstition, charity, and all those other delightful things are what people come to Conservapedia to see. If you don't want people to see that article, and take it seriously, there's only one thing to do: delete it. Though I'll be saddened to see my footnoting work go to waste.

SamHB 01:58, 21 July 2015 (EDT)

This is especially ironic given that User:Conservative is the main author of our article on Poe's law. GregG 10:37, 21 July 2015 (EDT)

Temporarily unlocked article as per your request

I unlocked my Essay: Christopher Hitchens was a bloodthirsty barbarian article and put it on my to do list to relock it on 7/25/2015. Please make your footnoting changes in the meantime. Conservative 13:51, 20 July 2015 (EDT)

Done. SamHB 01:59, 21 July 2015 (EDT)

Math works

Sam, the math works now. Thanks for mentioning the issue.--Andy Schlafly (talk) 11:39, 17 August 2015 (EDT)

Sabbatical

Sam, this is devastating news about your Sabbatical! Will you be able to make an exception if more evidence is published contrary to the Theory of Relativity? I hope so.

More seriously, many of your edits are appreciated. And thanks for you patience, too.--Andy Schlafly (talk) 23:32, 28 August 2015 (EDT)

Yes, I feel really conflicted about this. I thought things were going pretty well with me and Conservapedia in general, and that the place was becoming more welcoming to newcomers, and was a more pleasant place to be. (You saw one of my comments about the improving atmosphere in something that you or I recovered; there was another that I could have recovered but didn't, because it was in a somewhat combative context, and I thought we didn't need to open that up again. But I did comment on it a second time.)

And I do really appreciate the way you helped me recover my user page, and the way we all pulled together to repair the server crash.

I'm sure you can guess that the reason for my action is the blocking and "defrocking" of EJamesW. What started as a small misunderstanding degenerated into a sassy remark, and then spiraled out of control faster than anything I ever remember seeing. This just shouldn't have happened.

On a slightly lighter note, I meant it when I said "I am confident that ... my writing on [relativity] will hold up". Andy, my friend, I believe it will take you at least 3 months to dig yourself out of the hole I have left you in. It's been quite a challenge all these months, and you perhaps have no idea how much the experience has sharpened my thinking. But, by all means, prove me wrong! :-)

SamHB (talk) 23:59, 28 August 2015 (EDT)

Talk Edits for the past week

This is an encyclopedia. Substantive contributions are much preferred.--Andy Schlafly (talk) 00:32, 6 September 2015 (EDT)

Glad that you are around!

At least I am glad that you are around - though I understand your protest against the block of User:EJamesW and User:Joona: I don't know if it has any effects, but it is at least a honourable stand.

In the meantime: have you seen the abc conjecture? --AugustO (talk) 08:46, 1 November 2015 (EST)

A Kinder, Gentler Cons

Cons:

I came across the page Essay:We Love You Finland! while doing a "Random page" search, and was really struck by how much your writing style has changed over the last 7 years. Your style was much gentler then. This is a really nice article, even if the Alexa statistics have changed a lot since then, a possibility to which you did alert the reader.

There are a couple of very minor changes in the writing style that I'd like to make, but the page is locked. "the amount of population" should be just "the population", and "most highest percentage" should be just "highest percentage". There are also some places where the addition of a comma would help the flow of the sentence.

I'm offering to make these changes myself, if you will unlock the page. I know that essays are not supposed to be edited by anyone other than the original author, but we've discussed various grammatical issues in other pages many times, and I'm pretty sure you trust me.

By the way, is the neighboring country Norway?

SamHB 22:07, 15 July 2015 (EDT)

I unlocked the article.

Second, feedback about a kinder/gentler cons duly noted. :) Conservative (talk) 22:29, 6 January 2016 (EST)

OK. You have indeed unlocked it, and made the required changes. Actually, you have rewritten parts of it, so the problems that I noted are gone. And vaped 18 versions, which I think is a record for the number of consecutive vapes in one article. You might as well leave it unlocked. Even though, as an essay, no one else should be editing it, I doubt that it will be vandalized. And vandalism is really easy to revert, as I just told DavidB4. Unless someone vapes something, though I doubt anyone will do that. SamHB (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Much to the dismay of TARs most ardent detractors at another wiki....

Much to the dismay of TARs most ardent detractors at another wiki, he was a non-theistic Buddhist. Therefore, a fellow atheist/agnostic! :)

Remember this next time an atheist/agnostic claims that the User: Conservative account began a ruination of Conservapedia with the evolution article. :) Conservative (talk) 13:31, 7 January 2016 (EST)

I do not know, or care, about TAR's religion. And I don't know whether that causes dismay at that other wiki, which I assume is RitionalWaki. And I don't follow claims about just who or what started "Conservapedia's ruination", or what the religious stance of such people might be. I happen to believe that things about relativity and thermodynamics are actually more harmful. Things about bestiality just make people dismiss Conservapedia as borderline-porn site, so they don't look at it, which actually lessens the harm that the relativity and thermodynamics material does. That's probably not your goal. SamHB (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Why?

Why Are Biologists Lashing Out Against Empirically Verified Research Results? Why?

"If the human genome is indeed devoid of junk DNA as implied by the ENCODE project, then a long, undirected evolutionary process cannot explain the human genome. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, then all DNA, or as much as possible, is expected to exhibit function. If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong." - Atheist and University of Houston biologist Dan Graur[11]

OK, I admit that the "intelligent design" folks are getting more skillful at concealing their religious agenda. It took all of about 2 minutes (instead of the usual 30 seconds) to find a religious argument on the website (but not the cited article.) If this keeps up, the day may come when I actually have to read the stuff. SamHB (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2016 (EST)

And religious immigrants who are creationists and resistant to assimilation are flooding secular Europe: Multiculturism, assimilation and the desecularization of Europe.

Furthermore, liberal Protestantism is bleeding membership.

In recent years, evolutionism has slowly been ground into a fine pulp. Now the pace is quickening!

That's news to me. SamHB (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Long live global creationism which is exploding in adherents! Conservative (talk) 03:12, 6 January 2016 (EST)

Watch those commas! (See below.) SamHB (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2016 (EST)

A tool for you

SamHB,

I created a tool for you: Incidences of the word nannystate on web pages according to Google.

OK, I got it, and, just as you stated later, it's useless. The Conservapedia search function does exactly the right thing. The Google search mostly points to the same pages. But thanks for your efforts.

Second, let's try to lock horns less often. :) Conservative (talk) 22:18, 6 January 2016 (EST)

Ummm, OK. But, and I'm serious about this, yanking your chain is one of the fun things I do here. I've got a lot of work to do collaborating with DavidB4 on the computer stuff, but that's boring. I sometimes like to kick off my shoes and have fun.

I have a backlog of things (2 or 3 of them at this point) to prank you about, that I wrote during my 3 month "sabbatical". That I haven't gotten to yet. I have serious job committments and all that. So this is definitely a part-time hobby. One of my zingers was going to be on talk:mainpage and have an edit comment of "Oh, Cons, you're such a sweetie! You put in two pictures to illustrate what you knew I was going to write." I'm sure you can guess what I was going to say.

So (still serious here) do you want me to lay off? If so, I will do it, but I will expect you to stop showing up at my doorstep with some startling fact, unrelated to what is being discussed, about how atheism, evolution, or liberal protestantism is going to be ground to a pulp, or whatever. You see, I assume you derive some pleasure from your time here also. Let me know.

One final thing before I go. It's about those commas and restrictive/nonrestrictive subordinate clauses. A high school teacher gave us the mnemonic of "non-com". Meaning that a non-restrictive clause takes a comma. I guess he wanted us to think of noncommissioned officers or something. That doesn't do it for me. What does it is just asking myself whether the sentence makes sense when spoken aloud.

Where's that good example? Ah, yes. Here it is. From Talk:Main_Page: "Short-term and/or expedient political tactics/strategies are not a viable solution to Europe's ills which appear to be growing worse with time." Since there is no comma, it is restrictive. You are saying "Europe has many ills, some of which appear to be growing worse with time, and some of which do not. Short-term and/or expedient political tactics/strategies are not a viable solution to those in the former class, but may well be a viable solution to the others." I think you wanted a comma: after "ills". Then you would be saying "Europe has many ills, and they are all growing worse with time. Short-term and/or expedient political tactics/strategies are not a viable solution to them."

I don't often run into this problem, because my sentences are usually simpler. You writing style involves very complex sentences. I recommend that you use simpler sentences. For my subordinate clauses which are complex, I think about how they would sound if spoken with the comma or without it. Since the preceding sentence doesn't have a comma after "clauses", I only think about the sound of the complex ones. I don't worry about the simple ones.

SamHB (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Thanks for you feedback relative to grammar. And again, thank you for your "kinder and gentler" prodding above.

Also, when I do lock horns with you (or others), I generally endeavor to do it in a good-natured/fun way. Conservative (talk) 22:33, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I don't consider blocking a person to be good-natured or fun. SamHB (talk) 17:57, 20 April 2016 (EDT)

So, yanking my chain is one of the fun things you do here...

The Elevatorgate scandal and Richard Dawkins' commentary about Muslims has generated bad press and public relations problems for the high priest of evolutionism Richard Dawkins.

See also: Richard Dawkins' loss of influence

Put that in your evolutionism pipe and smoke it! :) Conservative (talk) 01:45, 9 January 2016 (EST)

I don't smoke. Though I really do like the "put that in your pipe and smoke it" line. My father used it frequently. But seriously, the correctness of evolution has nothing to do with what Richard Dawkins once said in an elevator, or about the traffic of his web site. SamHB (talk) 11:37, 8 February 2016 (EST)

Re: a userbox on your user page

One of your userboxes on your user page says that you know that the earth has been around for billions of years. How do you know? Where you there? :)

I wouldn't put a lot of confidence in the extrapolations of scientists which depend on multiple assumptions - especially when there are so many anomolies in their model.

William R. Corliss was a respected cataloger of scientific anomalies and the science magazine New Scientist had an article which focused on Mr. Corliss's career as a cataloger of scientific anomalies. Mr. Corliss cataloged scores of anomalies which challenge the old earth geology paradigm.

Relevant books by Corliss:

Anomalies in Geology: Physical, Chemical, Biological (A Catalog of Geological Anomalies), 1989. ISBN 915554-23-2
Neglected Geological Anomalies, 1990. ISBN 915554-24-0
Inner Earth: A Search for Anomalies (A Catalog of Geological Anomalies), 1991. ISBN 915554-25-9
Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, Submarine Canyons (A Catalog of Geological Anomalies), 1988. ISBN 915554-22-4

Addendum:

Corliss wrote 13 books for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a dozen educational booklets for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and a dozen articles for the National Science Foundation (NSF). According the the Baltimore Sun, "As a physicist, he was Director of Advanced Programs in the Nuclear Division at Martins in the 1960's. Later, he became a prolific writer, authoring 57 books on atomic energy, space propulsion, scientific satellites, teleoperators, wind tunnels, and scientific anomalies in all fields of science."Conservative (talk) 09:48, 22 January 2016 (EST)

Upload (for Cons)

Cons: I wonder if you could help me with picture uploads for the Potentially_unwanted_program article that I've been working on with DavidB4. The request is at the bottom of the Conservapedia:Image_upload_requests page. Things on that page usually get attended to fairly quickly, but this one is still pending.

You can even put a picture of PZ Meyers into the article, as an example of "bloatware", if you like. :-) (Just kidding; please don't.)

I will reply to your Corliss/creationism comments above when I get the time. (But I was not present at any event that any reasonable person might consider to be the creation of the universe. I'm pretty sure my 4th birthday doesn't qualify; it just seemed that way to me.)

SamHB (talk) 12:15, 23 January 2016 (EST)

Off wiki, I promised various people that I would give them my total commitment related to various matters. So I am afraid I will be able to honor your request or further requests for the foreseeable future.

There will continue to be content added by the User: Conservative account in 2016 and beyond related to atheism/religion/Christianity and it will be added by other members of the User: Conservative consortium. :) And I may tweak/update atheism/Christianity/religion/etc. articles down the pike. But right now I am focused on various matters that I have to attend to. Conservative (talk) 12:40, 23 January 2016 (EST)

" I am afraid I will be able to honor your request or further requests for the foreseeable future." Four edits, and still the "not" is missing. What a pity: I doubt that uploading a picture would have taken longer than hiding three revisions....
Best wishes for your "various matters"! Is learning Koine, learning the Bible by heart, or creating a booklet for the "Question Evolution!"-campaign on the list? I suppose I lost track...

--AugustO (talk) 15:14, 23 January 2016 (EST)

Well, I'm going to miss our little conversations. Seriously. I will try to address the issues about creationism and such. But I'm sure you know that I find replying to you on that subject to be quite boring.

About vaping: I've complained about this many times. Most recently at Talk:Main_Page#My_thoughts. (Look for the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't pictures.) And you explained that you were just vaping your own comments, not anyone else's.

You did a similar thing in the section higher on this page.

I believe you. You are telling the truth. Some time ago you used to vape other people's material, causing me much consternation. But recently you have only been vaping your own, as I can easily tell from your modus operandi. Sometimes I can catch the vaped material and sometimes I can't—my "forensic tools"^[14] aren't very sophisticated, and don't always catch stuff in time.

You seem to make an edit, and then think about the issue some more, decide you want to say a lot more, add it, think about it again, decide your later material shouldn't have been written, and vape same. The vaping suggests that you are extremely sensitive about people seeing possible inappropriate things that you added as an afterthought. If it isn't extremely embarrassing, you might as well just delete it without vaping. Or, better still, not write things that you will be ashamed of later.

Yet you are not embarrassed about, for example, making 1100 rough drafts of the Richard Dawkins article, of which you vaped only 13.

Perhaps one of your other personalities, or other members of your "consortium"^[14] will be able to continue on your behalf. I look forward to it.

SamHB (talk) 16:56, 23 January 2016 (EST)

User:Conservative, congratulations for resolving your "various matters" in such a short time - I see that your "total commitment" belongs to Conservapedia, again. --AugustO (talk) 09:16, 16 February 2016 (EST)

Actually, I woke up this morning and decided to change my focus back to my prior commitments. Did a bit of tidying up of an article, but that was largely it.

Lastly, more than one editor has used the User: Conservative account. Conservative (talk) 09:46, 16 February 2016 (EST)

And then you woke up again, and changed the focus back....

I hope I'm not causing you to get insufficient sleep

You often go on long and intense editing binges. A recent one involved making 152 versions of a page on atheism and the origin of the universe, or whatever it was. Most of those revisions were in an 11-hour binge starting about 4 hours after your William Corliss stuff on this page.

I can't help wondering whether your interaction with me on this page caused this binge, since the subject matter was related and the times were close. That makes me sad. I don't want to be responsible in any way for unhealthy behavior on your part. Especially for someone as interested as you in healthy eating, healthy living, and physical fitness, it bothers me that you would engage in unhealthy behavior like this.

If you were writing that for me, it was especially pointless because I didn't read it. As you no doubt know, I do not read articles about science that bring up religion as an argument, or that cite creationist web sites.

Please stop engaging in unhealthy behavior.

SamHB (talk) 20:28, 23 January 2016 (EST)

Another atheism article that does not begin with "Atheism and"

Another atheism related article that does not begin with "Atheism and": Sexual harassment at atheist conferences. Conservative (talk) 21:38, 4 February 2016 (EST)

While I have kidded you about the enormous number of "Atheism and ..." articles, I never claimed that they were the only atheism-related articles that you write.

From your comment above, and the comment that you placed on EJamesW's talk page, I get the idea that you are pining for a "sparring partner". I've been away for a while, largely because of some distressing things that have been going on here. But I want you to know that I have other interests outside of Conservapedia, and I have other friends. While I enjoy our conversations, they aren't my life.

And while I have your attention, something about your writing skill. I'm serious about this.^[15]. I have lately been utterly appalled at the misspellings, bad punctuation, and atrocious sentence construction of a lot of our newer editors. I occasionally remark on this. I want you to know that my remarks are not aimed at you. Your grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are above average among the Conservapedia authors that I read. Though you need to watch for commas and non-restrictive subordinate clauses. (Why don't the newer authors mess up their subordinate clauses? Because they rarely use them, or their sentences are so messed up that I can't tell whether they are using a subordinate clause or not.) Now you just need to write paragraphs with meaningful content.

SamHB (talk) 11:37, 8 February 2016 (EST)

I haven't been reading articles by new editors.

Second, the quality of public schooling seems to be dropping while modern work seems to be getting more challenging. I think this is the reason why there is high youth unemployment in many Western nations and other nations as well. I think school choice, vouchers and homeschooling will continue to increase. Conservative (talk) 12:39, 8 February 2016 (EST)

Message from QuantumDude

They don't really seem to understand that just because something is on the frontiers of physics doesn't mean it's "implausible", and black holes' EXISTENCE is unquestioned at this point, they have been observed (indirectly), just haven't got the finer points down like the information paradox. It's frustrating. Also, your email appears broken. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by QuantumDude (talk)

Are you saying that email sent to sam4557@gmail.com fails? I received mail at that account about 3 hours ago.

Remember that "they" in your previous paragraph (presumably Andy and Cons) aren't the people you are addressing when you write about science and other things. It's the two million people who read the stuff. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SamHB (talk)

First, something being unquestioned (the consensus argument is not a scientific argument as true science is based on sound evidence/experiments and not merely voting) does not make something true.

Second, from an astrophysicists' website from a 2015 article: "So the broad consensus is that black holes definitely exist. There are some astronomers who prefer to withhold judgment until we resolve the region around an event horizon." HERE is a bio of the astrophysicist.

So much for your "unquestioned" claim! :) I empirically showed your claim to be false. Put that in your frontiers of science pipe and smoke it! :)

The last thing I had in my "frontiers of science pipe" was something I'd rather not talk about. In any case, It's QuantumDude whose pipe you want him to smoke. He and I have both been lax in signing. We will try to do better. And no, you didn't show his claim to be false. Just saying that you have proven or refuted something doesn't mean that you actually did. SamHB (talk) 17:01, 8 February 2016 (EST)

Personally, I am not looked into in the finer points of black holes or black hole like objects. My background in astronomy is taking a college course on the subject (and receiving an above average grade) and a visit to a planetarium.

I do agree with this to a certain degree: "“‘Cosmology may look like a science, but it isn’t a science,’ says James Gunn of Princeton University, co-founder of the Sloan survey. ‘A basic tenet of science is that you can do repeatable experiments, and you can’t do that in cosmology.’” - Cho, Adrian, A singular conundrum: How odd is our universe? Science 317(5846):1848–1850, 2007."[12] Conservative (talk) 16:48, 8 February 2016 (EST)

Oh dear. More creationist web site citations in discussions of science. SamHB (talk) 17:05, 8 February 2016 (EST)

QuantumDude said that existence of black holes is now unquestioned. I cited an astronomer stating that there is a minority of professional astronomers who question their existence. See the above quote. So his claim was clearly false.

From an astrophysicists' website from a 2015 article: "So the broad consensus is that black holes definitely exist. There are some astronomers who prefer to withhold judgment until we resolve the region around an event horizon." Conservative (talk) 18:10, 8 February 2016 (EST)

Law of Mass Conservation

Re: Essay:Law of mass conservation

The Law of Mass Conservation is one of the most well attested scientific laws. User: Conservatism is standing on the empirical high ground on this matter. The creation of the universe was supernatural (see: Atheism and the origin of the universe).

It's good to know we agree on this. Who the heck is "User: Conservatism", complete with a blank after the colon? You've done this a number of times. If it's some kind of inside joke, I don't get it. Please explain. SamHB (talk) 15:48, 13 February 2016 (EST)

If anyone's unreasonable religious sensibilities is being ruffled it is yours. Liberal Christianity has an unreasonable penchant for anti-supernaturalism.

No, Liberal Christianity's penchant for anti-supernaturalism is just right. SamHB (talk) 15:48, 13 February 2016 (EST)

May I remind you that Christianity's very foundation is based on God incarnate rising from the dead. And it wasn't by natural means!

"There are strange things happening everyday". - Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Thank you! When I saw "Sister" my first reaction was that this was some kind of sermon by a nun. Which surprised me, because I don't think you are Roman Catholic. But I clicked on it. She wasn't that kind of sister. She's a "soul sister". I liked it. She's a very good singer. SamHB (talk) 15:48, 13 February 2016 (EST)

"Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." - John 14:12

"For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power." - 1 Corinthians 4:20

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

I hope this helps clarify things. :) Conservative (talk) 15:09, 13 February 2016 (EST)

Yes, your attempts to "clarify things", for me and others" are always charming. I envy your ability to see complex things with such clarity. SamHB (talk) 15:48, 13 February 2016 (EST)

For the most part, liberals frequently overcomplicate things.

"Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject." - Thomas Mann, Nobel laureate

And even a liberal prophetess admitted: "A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think." - Eleanor Roosevelt

“Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." - Jesus

Children don't overcomplicate things! Read the Bible and believe it. Don't overcomplicate things.

I hope this further clarifies things. :) Conservative (talk) 16:05, 13 February 2016 (EST)

The power of simplicity and the fundamentals:

"He took nothing for granted. He began a tradition of starting from scratch, assuming that the players were blank slates who carried over no knowledge from the year before… He began with the most elemental statement of all. “Gentlemen,” he said, holding a pigskin in his right hand, “this is a football.”

Vince Lombardi was coaching a group of three dozen professional athletes who, just months prior, had come within minutes of winning the biggest prize their sport could offer. And yet, he started from the very beginning.

Lombardi’s methodical coverage of the fundamentals continued throughout training camp. Each player reviewed how to block and tackle. They opened up the playbook and started from page one. At some point, Max McGee, the Packers’ Pro Bowl wide receiver, joked, “Uh, Coach, could you slow down a little? You’re going too fast for us.” Lombardi reportedly cracked a smile, but continued his obsession with the basics all the same. His team would become the best in the league at the tasks everyone else took for granted."[13]

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." - Genesis 1:1. Gentlemen, God is spirit (John 4:24). Gentlemen, this was a miracle. Right from the very beginning, miracles happened.

Master simplicity and the fundamentals. Conservative (talk) 16:17, 13 February 2016 (EST)

Cons, you are the most entertaining person that I know on the internet!! It's too bad that, as far as I know, you take yourself seriously. It gives people the impression that you are mentally disturbed. Maybe you are. I don't care. You're fun. SamHB (talk) 18:17, 13 February 2016 (EST)

A conservative friend of mine who is a university professor said he enjoyed my Conservapedia articles and said they were very informative. He also detected an underlying current of humor in them. As far as some of my articles, I found some pieces of relevant information on various issues that tend to infuriate liberals and cause conservatives to smile.

When it comes to armchair psychological analysis of the User: Conservative account, it has been soundly debunked by the fact that more than one editor has used the account. Most of the "analysis" has been done by a website which self-servingly calls itself rational. If you have to tell people you are rational, you probably are n_t. Fill in the blank! :) Conservative (talk) 00:31, 3 April 2016 (EDT)

A simple solution to begin mastering simplification

"As if this late April cold front wasn’t enough of a giveaway, 41 percent of Massachusetts residents say they would leave the state if they could, according to a new Gallup poll."[14]

We've been through that "41 percent say they want to leave" business before. I can't be bothered to look it up just now; I'm sure you remember it. I pointed out that the statistics were about the same for Andy's home state of New Jersey and your home state of New York. IIRC, I believe that's when you went into your "man of mystery / no one knows what country I live in" stuff. (In fact I know exactly where you live, or at least where you lived several years ago.) SamHB (talk) 18:17, 13 February 2016 (EST)

Free yourself of excess complexity. Leave your unfree state and find freedom from excess complexity in a free state.

Go to a state where a man is still a man and women like it. Go to a state where the students still respect the college deans. Go to a state where they still fly old glory in the courthouses. Go to a state where they don't their trips on LSD. Go to a state where they don't make a party out of lovin'.

"A large part of the problem has been the rise of of painkillers and heroin, especially in the Northeast."[15]. Notice how Massachusetts is a bright red state on the map. There you have it. Excess overcomplication paradoxically creates boredom. And people from Massachusetts uses heroin more frequently because they are desperate for euphoria/excitement. For some reason, people don't find filling out all the complicated tax forms in Massachusetts exciting. Conservative (talk) 17:01, 13 February 2016 (EST)

So what "free state" have you moved to? Idaho? Did you stock up on a lifetime supply of batteries for your ham radio? How are those batteries holding out? And last time I checked (I haven't done jury duty in a while) Old Glory still flies in the courthouses. I don't do drugs (notwithstanding my recent comment about what I put in my pipe), and Old Glory has nothing to do with it. And I and my friends have plenty of intellectual stimulation. Even more excitement, if you can believe it, than filling out tax forms. But thanks for reminding me.

The map that you cited shows serious problems in New Jersey and New York also. How's the euphoria/excitement in your neck of the woods? Is it keeping you off drugs? I suspect that it is. SamHB (talk) 18:17, 13 February 2016 (EST)

SamHB, even the in the least free states, you can move to the countryside or visit it frequently. Ah, the countryside - filled with simple, conservative and friendly country folk. And there are very few socially challenged atheists in America's countryside and small towns![16]

Country folk don't spend hours in dry and humdrum debates about complex scientific theories. They just plug their GPS devices into their 4 x 4 trucks, enjoy drives in the peaceful and beautiful countryside, while blissfully benefiting from the fruit of Einstein's labor. And if their GPS devices break down, they just buy a new one. No need to understand how complex GPS devices and complex scientific theories work!

And country folk don't have to understand the intracacies of physics in their simple pursuits. They just strike white billiard balls with a cue and throw their bowling balls down bowling lanes and God has taken care of the rest via his orderly universe.

Are you beginning to understand the power of simplicity?

Why frustrate yourself in debates that will go nowhere concerning a complex scientific theory? Get in your car. Enjoy the Massachusetts countryside. Meet friendly religious people. Breathe fresh air. And start enjoying the fruits of Einstein's labors via a GPS device. Conservative (talk) 18:53, 13 February 2016 (EST)

You spelled "breathe" (the verb) correctly! Very few people use it correctly, it seems. You see, I have a great many pet peeves about people's grammar and spelling; my peeves about you are a minority. So, congratulations. Just don't loose (just kidding; lose) your humility over this. SamHB (talk) 17:47, 3 April 2016 (EDT)

small request

An editor who may have been a vandal messed with the articles Gravity waves and Gravitational waves.

If you could make any necessary fixes, I would appreciate it.

I try to not get involved in physics disputes at this wiki as the disputes can be quite lengthy, time consuming and I don't think Aschlafly is going to change his mind on the relativity matter. Although I received an above grade in my physics class, it has been awhile since I took a physics class and THIS applies. :) Conservative (talk) 01:00, 14 February 2016 (EST)

OK. I saw that stuff, and considered just reverting it. (I do revert things when they are simple, but of course I can't do big vandalism sprees as efficiently as the admins.) But the guy made an interesting point about the distinction between "gravity waves" and "gravitational waves", and it's wort having CP get this right, even while reverting stuff that I know Andy will revert. So I figured I'd wait for you or Andy to do it, and then I'd repair the damage later. But, since you are my friend, and you asked, I will do it. But not right now. I'm way snowed under with other work.

Ah, for a simple life, where I can just go bowling, and drive around using my GPS. But who will design those devices?

SamHB (talk) 01:28, 14 February 2016 (EST)

request for administrative action -- telephone for Cons (or anyone else)

I don't mean to hassle you, and I don't intend to be crass, but can't be passive either, and I need to assert the need for your assistance. The need for this arose when I was enjoying some relatively nice weather, so the snow had melted and I was out enjoying the grass with my basset hound, drinking sassafras soda, and admiring the tassels on nearby corn plants.

The problem is that Conservapedia's "spam" filter seems not to accept "ass" in article titles, so I messed up my attempt to make an article "Rest mass", and wound up putting the actual title in actual quotes. It won't let me create the article without quotes. I also wanted to make Invariant mass and Relativistic mass be redirects to it. It accepts those pages--they've actually been around for a long time, but it won't let me make them redirects to Rest mass. So I made them be redlink redirects to "Rest massiveness".

As far as I know, these concepts are studied in high school science classes without any scandalous reaction. I wish I could say the same for the planet between Saturn and Neptune.

So, could you please use your administrative authority to fix this, and perhaps give the spam filter a good swift kick in the ... hindquarters? SamHB (talk) 18:06, 24 February 2016 (EST)

Made requested changes to redirects. Conservative (talk) 19:21, 24 February 2016 (EST)

Thanks, but I still can't create the actual page. I get

You do not have permission to create pages, for the following reason:

The title "Rest mass" has been banned from creation. It matches the following blacklist entry: .*(?i:ass) #

Could I make assumptions on your hospitality one more time, to make the actual page? The text is in "Rest mass". Maybe you can just rename it. Thanks. SamHB (talk) 19:38, 24 February 2016 (EST)

Done. Conservative (talk) 20:21, 24 February 2016 (EST)

Thanks. I wasn't looking forward to articles on "rest mdonkey" and "relativistic mdonkey". It would give the schoolchildren the impression that we're a wee bit prudish. SamHB (talk) 21:21, 24 February 2016 (EST)

Sorry, it didn't even occur to me, but with "edit" permission now, perhaps I could have done that for you. I guess I'll find out if the problem shows up again elsewhere. Anyway, Thanks for taking care of it, Conservative!--David B (talk) 20:37, 24 February 2016 (EST)

Thanks for wanting to help, but I believe "edit" just lets you do the things (create and edit pages), that I can do only in the daytime, at any time day or night. Your "block" rights give you much more power, but, unless I'm mistaken (which I may well be), you still can't do really powerful things like move, rename, or delete pages. That, and several other actions, requires an administrator—Andy, Conservative, JPatt, Karajou, or Ed Poor. SamHB (talk) 21:21, 24 February 2016 (EST)

You're probably right--it seemed like a little bit of a stretch, but I probably should have tried. Anyway, like you said--problem solved.

By the way, thanks for proof-reading what I write! I obviously make a lot of typos and other errors--I'll have to work on that.--David B (talk) 21:53, 24 February 2016 (EST)

So Cons. Can't stand the heat in the kitchen. Give me the same please Ken - woops - Cons. AlanE (talk) 01:45, 7 March 2016 (EST)

I am not going to put up with someone deleting perfectly good content for no good reason. He deleted the material simply because he dislikes it as it conflicts with his worldview (liberal theology like atheism is very naturalistic. That is why atheists/agnostics/liberal theology are often allies). Conservative (talk) 02:03, 7 March 2016 (EST)

Cons pastes an excerpt from one of his articles for me, with a heading of "You are mistaken that the world is like a franchise"

SamHB, you would guess the percentage of people who are lonely is about the same everywhere? So the world is about the same everywhere? Like a McDonald's franchise?

Below is an excerpt from the Atheism and loneliness article:

In 1993, Reuters reported:

“

Indian anthropologist Prakash Reddy has turned the tables on Western colleagues who put Third World cultures under the microscope.

Reddy, of Sri Venkateswara University at Tirupati in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, spent four months in the village of Hvilsager--population 104--on Denmark's Jutland peninsula.

His study, published in book form in English under the title "Danes are like that!" expresses dismay at the loneliness he found and the hope that India would not have to pay the same price for prosperity.

"The most fundamental question that should bother every social scientist in the East is: Is there no way of achieving development without sacrificing the human values and the way of life cherished by homo sapiens?" he asked....

Reddy said he found a neat and tidy, cozy little society, stiff, rigid and seemingly full of practical, down-to-earth but lonely people, isolated from each other and lacking much sense of religion.

Compared to the teeming villages of India, the Danish hamlet seemed deserted and closed. To an Indian, accustomed to constant close contact in an extended family and community, Danish life was cold if not nonexistent, Reddy said.

"Coming from an Indian village, I was used to seeing people in the streets . . . but here in Denmark not a single soul was sighted and, except for the sound of a passing automobile, absolute silence prevailed," Reddy wrote.^[16]

”

1.5 million elderly English men are expected to suffer from loneliness by 2030.^[17]

I hope this clarifies matters. Conservative (talk) 00:23, 7 March 2016 (EST)

Oh, yes. Ever so much. SamHB (talk) 09:42, 3 April 2016 (EDT)

You know what's interesting...

RationalWiki has a Global rank of 25,000 with 7,000 in the US. Conservapedia is 104,000 and 24,000 respectively. 9010violation (talk) 20:55, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

Yes, actually, I know that. In fact, it's quite well known. SamHB (talk) 21:06, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

Google Instant gives these first suggestions for the name of their website: R....I bias and R....I SJW. Not exactly a thought leadership website. :)

I knew the name of their website was a mistake. If you have to tell people you are rational, you probably ______" Fill in the blank! The name of their website sends up red flags. Yes, we are the rational ones. If you disagree with us, you probably are not rational. See: Atheism and arrogance. Is it an surprise the global atheism is shrinking in its degree of influence? Conservative (talk) 22:23, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

Sorry, you [Cons] might be talking to a wall. I banned him again, since he was a troll. He is/was a "sock" of <obscenity>, who I banned for trolling and vandalism and also added in the 90/10 rule violation, just for fun. Thus, his nick this time of "9010violation." --David B (talk) 23:01, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

Just one comment, David: Do not ever do anything "just for fun" when blocking people. Blocking is always serious business. SamHB (talk) 23:44, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

And one more thing, Cons: I'd appreciate it if people didn't use my talk page for arguments with third parties on topics like atheism or Google Instant. SamHB (talk) 23:44, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

I know that a ban is serious, SamHB--I was joking. The point was intended to be that the 90/10 rule was an unnecessary addition to the block reason... I guess I didn't do a good job at conveying that. I sometimes forget that tone/inflection is stripped from text. My apologies if I sounded too casual about this. --David B (talk) 01:30, 3 April 2016 (EDT)

footnote did not support your contention

Your footnote in the liberal style article did not support your contention. I did not remove material in a comment thread in order to win an argument.

Here is the material I deleted from your talk page:

"I got TAR blocked for you. It is not big deal to TAR since he is not coming back.

Anytime you want to thank me for getting TAR blocked, I will of course graciously accept the thanks. :)".

I did send an email to Andy about this matter and put a comment on his talk page which I think helped cause TAR to be blocked. Your efforts to get TAR blocked were ineffectual and I felt sorry for you.

Second, I have never lost an argument to a liberal at CP and it is not due to my debating prowess, but it is instead due to the utter weakness of liberalism.Conservative (talk) 16:05, 7 April 2016 (EDT)

"footnote did not support your contention" - that should have been your comment for this edit. Instead, you deleted SamHB's reference while adding something independently sections above. Take a look at it: that has the appearance of collusiveness
You are hiding and deleting so much stuff, people get the impression that you have something to hide!

--AugustO (talk) 17:17, 8 April 2016 (EDT)

re: your proposed TAR related Conservapedia space web page

Please see: see: User talk:User: SamHB/How to create and maintain high-quality articles. Conservative (talk) 01:22, 9 April 2016 (EDT)

Re: A bit of advice

Here's a bit of advice for you: Stick to what you know. Your "taste of our vision" (trying to turn Conservapedia into Liberalpedia) is not my idea (or most other members here) of improving this site. And incidentally, acting in a condescending manner and throwing around accusations of being "hysterical" (which I was not) only makes the accuser look foolish. Northwest (talk) 01:20, 14 April 2016 (EDT)

Conservapedia's web traffic is up

Conservapedia is one of the top 100,000 websites in the world as far as web traffic according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa,[17]

I know we have locked horns in the past. But I am mellowing as a I get older. :) In addition, I am diversifying my interests so I think we will probably lock horns less in the future. No hard feelings on my part and I hope we lock horns less in the future.

Thank you for all your contributions.

I recently heard a report that Conservapedia is receiving millions of page views per month.Conservative (talk) 18:09, 19 April 2016 (EDT)

References

↑ I use phrases like "lost in a database glitch" as a euphemism for "vaped by Cons". I assume everyone knows that.
↑ As an example of the notoriety, consider the talk page of user "ClintBarton". I have no idea who he was, but he appeared at 15:55, 6 Mar, made an insulting comment on main talk, and put this into his talk page, which you deleted at 1653: "By the way, which User: Conservative were you directing your comments at? SamHB is now convinced there is more than one editor who uses ...". I think his characterization of my beliefs was wrong (I think there's only one of you), but the fact is that he saw this page and chose to issue a drive-by insult.
↑ There are those that like to use this construction, and those that consider it to be an horrendously pretentious affectation. I like it. Andy does too.
↑ I'm not sure what to make of the smiley-face.
↑ ^5.0 ^5.1 I hope you're not falling into the "No True Christian" fallacy here. I'll assume you're just being playful.
↑ Says someone who has made nearly 3000 edits in the last month involving "atheism", "atheist", "Godless", "ungodliness", "Irreligion", "Elevatorgate", "Richard Dawkins", "Rebecca Watson", or "PZ Myers".
↑ It doesn't.
↑ No.
↑ Either they were lying or you misremember.
↑ No.
↑ OK, I discuss relativity on this site, but that's different, and I think you can see why.
↑ I don't know what the first was. Was it the anonymous email that you said someone sent to you? If so, could you forward it to me?
↑ The suggestion was "This probably ought to be named .... bloodthirsty .... With a t. You probably ought to combine footnotes 1, 2, and 3 into a single footnote. See How to put links and footnotes into your articles for a description of the procedure."
↑ ^14.0 ^14.1 high falutin term
↑ Why do I say "I'm serious" so often? Because we do so much kidding around!
↑ India Anthropologist Finds Denmark Wanting : Research: He laments the loneliness and lack of human values in remote village and asks if prosperity can be achieved without such sacrifices, LA Times archives, June 20, 1993|CHRISTOPHER FOLLETT | REUTERS
↑ [Number of severely lonely men over 50 set to rise to 1m in 15 years], The Guardian, Robert Booth,Sunday 12 October 2014 19.01 EDT

re: More impactful endeavors

I hate to break it to you, but the world isn't flocking to your user page. Don't you have better and more impactful things to do? I suggest you stop grinding your axes and engage in more productive activities. How about creating some articles that more people will actually read?

In addition, given that evolutionists declare that man came from animals and we are cousins to animals, it is not at all surprising that some of your fellow evolutionists get amorous with animals and become kissing cousins with them. Thank God I am a creationist! So I don't know why you keep ranting on about the news I reported on this matter which came from leading news organizations and other credible sources. Why are you so against the news? I realize that one news story proved to be errant, but are you denying all the other news stories were true? Yay or naaaaaaaaay? :) Deny that evolution loving Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands had a notable problem in this animal related area and lose all credibility!

Don't you care about animal welfare? God cares so much about sweet and gentle lambs that he told the Israelites 4 separate times in the Old Testament not to engage in a certain activity with animals. Instead of condemning the articles which sounded the alarm, you should be praising them. Conservapedia helped Germany, Sweden and Denmark see the errors of their ways and laws protecting animals were passed. France failed to dissuade Germans from acting in very inappropriate ways twice. Conservapedia isn't so easily defeated! Conservative (talk) 13:43, 25 April 2016 (EDT)

By the way, I just added THIS. It now in the pantheon of Bible scientific foreknowledge. Put that in your evolutionary pipe and smoke it!Conservative (talk) 14:24, 25 April 2016 (EDT)

re: RobS

This paragraph was moved from "Talk:High morale of Christendom". The "you" being referenced is User:Conservative.

But it might interest you [Cons] to know that, back at Ameriwiki (you remember Ameriwiki? No? It's just as well) Rob wrote a gigantic number of articles about Communism in the 30's and 40's, and senator McCarthy, and FDR, and Venona, etc. etc. A biographical page for every person involved in that subject, and Rob is a walking encyclopedia of that. I believe there were hundreds of such pages. They swamped the "random page" thing. That is, when you clicked on "random page", you had a high probability of getting one. It made Ameriwiki look like an encyclopedia of Communism during the FDR administration, while I was trying to make it look like an encyclopedia of Americana and American history. (And mathematics too, of course.) Rob had put an enormous amount of effort into writing those articles, and I put an equally enormous amount of effort into combining them into sections of one huge page. Or several huge pages. Whatever. Rob and I communicated during this, and he appreciated the work I was doing. I assume he has saved all that stuff somewhere.

SamHB (talk) 00:26, 29 April 2016 (EDT)

If RobS has backups of his Ameriwiki articles, see if he wants to put them onto Conservapedia.

I may have the stuff somewhere, though I suspect Rob has better things to do. SamHB (talk) 18:03, 8 May 2016 (EDT)

The middle/centrists appear to be dropping out of America politics somewhat and the far right/alt right and socialist wings appear to be growing. I am guessing there is some topical overlap between socialists and communists as there are anti-socialist communists, anti-communist socialists, etc. etc. etc.

In addition, communism articles and atheism articles at the same wiki is a great match. A good portion of people interested in atheism articles would also be interested in communism articles. The two areas are related as atheism was a central tenet of communism.

I do regret pushing for RobS to lose his admin status. Maybe he will decide to purse being an admin again. I know Andy liked his article contributions. Conservative (talk) 00:53, 29 April 2016 (EDT)

Re: Aburke

The Aburke account is a joint account with limited powers that a member of the User: Conservative account shares with another, and more individuals may be given access to the account as well.

The account was given page delete rights in order to delete extraneous web pages at Conservapedia. It also has SkipCaptcha rights.

That is all I wish to say about the account. I think I will be very busy soon. My apologies for not wishing to discuss this further. Just a time management issue. Aburke (talk) 14:18, 7 May 2016 (EDT)

I know.

By the way, I've put in a comma for you. Without it, the phrase "another and more" can lead to various difficult parsings. It's a compound sentence (each part has its own verb—"shares" and "be given"—so the parts need to be separated by a comma.

Please don't take offense. You know that I have high (and not always tactfully expressed) standards. I hold you to those high standards because I know you are trying to express yourself articulately, and you sometimes miss the mark. I consider many other people here to be hopeless (hence the "fire and brimstone"), so I don't bother. For example, I wouldn't know what to say to "AK" that could possible make his writing comprehensible. Except perhaps to sign up for a class in English as a second language. SamHB (talk) 17:56, 8 May 2016 (EDT)

Quick note

I misunderstood an edit of yours so you were blocked for a few minutes. I unblocked you.

Trying to get a new admin installed (RobSmith) so additional content is created, main page right is updated at a faster pace and maintenance issues are done more timely.

If I don't respond to messages you post to me, it is probably because I am attending to offline matters. Conservative (talk) 01:53, 27 May 2016 (EDT)

Article "Two"

Your "better idea" probably was, for the page "Two." I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, myself. For some reason, when I opened the page the "talk page" tab showed red, so I didn't open it. Only when Conservative deleted it did I realized there was something there. Sorry I missed whatever you said, but thanks! --David B (talk) 10:35, 14 June 2016 (EDT)

Yeah, I was mostly trying to fill you in on the history of that article and the controversy surrounding it. Unfortunately, I lost sight of the fact that, by writing on the talk page for the article itself, it would get vaped before you read it. Here is my reconstruction from memory of what I was saying.

Where would it end? There's no article for 3.
It's necessary to be aware of the distinction between the concept and the numeral or symbol that represents it. The now-deleted article was, quite properly, about the concept of two, stating that it is 1+1. But your proposed category was about the Arabic symbol "2". Being clear on the distinction is important for a web site that goes to great lengths to discuss arithmetical concepts vs. symbolic representations, and has, for example, articles about binary and hexadecimal.
I wanted to give you some background of the issue. (As you've noticed, I enjoy telling you about the history of math/science writing at Conservapedia.) Several years ago there was a wide-ranging debate about the level of math/science articles, with Ed Poor taking the a fairly extreme position that we needed a lot more material on the very elementary stuff before going on to things like algebra. He even said at one point that we should have an article on how to count to 10 before anyone could write about higher level stuff. Like algebra or calculus, which I'm sure you know we have many articles on. Well, someone took him up on that, and wrote an article on the numbers from 1 to 10. Complete with pronunciation guides! He was trolling, he got blocked, and the article was deleted. So user U.U had no idea he was innocently wandering into that territory. While I was appalled at Ed's position, I didn't jump into the "count to 10" debate. This was one of the very few debates with Ed that I did not participate in. I just watched from the sidelines. But writing about math and science was very difficult back when Ed was around, though we did eventually manage to become friends, as in the Augusta Ada material.
Anyone who doesn't know how to count to 10 (a) needs his diapers changed, and (b) shouldn't be reading a web site full of adult content.

SamHB (talk) 12:39, 14 June 2016 (EDT)

No problem--it was there for a while, anyway, and I should have seen it.

I wondered the same!
That's a good point, though one could argue that a page titled "two" should not have contained 1+1, but rather "one plus one." Anyway, that's doesn't matter now.
To some extent, it does seem like a good idea to have some basics along with specifics, but not necessarily before. However, basics in my book would be pre-algebra, not the A-B-C's and 1-2-3's.
Without starting the war over "adult" topics, I agree. We are here to educate, but there needs to be a certain level of knowledge expectation. CP was originally intended to be by and for home-preschoolers. True, organized schooling starts at what, four or five years of age? By then they should surely know how to count. In theory, however, this would be for older children who already have a knowledge base they are building on.

Anyway, I do find your tidbits of history interesting. Thanks! On a side note, do you know if Ed Poor is still active on CP? I see in his contributions log that in the past, he has been here for a day then gone for a while, usually two or three weeks. However, he's been away since March. As you may be aware, I was hoping to pick his brain regarding the setup of a wiki bot.--David B (talk) 14:07, 14 June 2016 (EDT)

Well, you know a lot more about wiki bots than I do; all I know is that CP rules prohibit them; I assume you know what you are doing.

Ed Poor has done some successful writing of scripts/templates/bots/whatever, and also had some failures. He wrote some template thing that (I believe) they still use at Wikipedia for ages and stuff. You put in a person's birthdate as an argument, and it automatically shows his age, correcting it as time goes by. I think this is also in use here, though I'm not sure.

But he also made a bot that didn't turn out well. This was the "guard dog" from several years ago. It would automatically throttle anyone who made too many edits in too short a time. As an observer/repairer of vandalism sprees, you can see that that is just what we need. Alas, it went berserk at one point, and started "biting" everyone, and needed to be "put down". I believe that what happened was that a new version of the wikimedia software was installed, and the guard dog didn't interact well with it. Ed couldn't fix it, so it's gone.

As you have noticed, Ed isn't around much any more. My guess is that he will not want to, or be able to, help with your project. But if you want to contact him, I have one or two old email addresses for him that may or may not still be active.

Believe it or not, your best bet for help with wiki coding might be "ritionalwaki" [sp]. I believe someone over there actually offered to help with the guard dog, and was turned down. But there are some obligatory safety warnings I must give you first:

Smoking is hazardous to your health, and may cause death from lung cancer, emphysema, or heart disease.
Please inform your server if anyone in your party has a food allergy.
Never put a child in a rear-facing child seat in the front of a car.
Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.
Creating an account on ritionalwaki is a bannable offense at Conservapedia.

That last one is the real one. The correct name of the website I am referring to can never be spoken--it is in the "spam filter". CP considers RW to be a mortal enemy; RW considers CP to be a source of humor. And people have been banned for allegations of having accounts there. (Though they generally use a different name, so the accusation is generally completely wrong.) I believe there is even a block reason in the blocking menu "Member of vandal site". You've seen the blocking menu; I haven't. Now this doesn't stop a number of admins or sysops from having accounts there. Including Cons, under the name "Newton". I don't think Andy has ever had an account at RW.

Good luck. SamHB (talk) 12:46, 17 June 2016 (EDT)

Actually, I probably don't know more about wiki bots than you--I know pretty much nothing, but with a little help, I think I could figure it out. However, I hadn't heard that CP prohibited wiki bots--are you sure you are talking about them, and not GUI spam bots?

I know that WP does have a birth-date template maintained by a bot. CP has a bot-free template which only states the number of years which have passed (Template:age).

I knew Ed Poor had used bots them, but wondered if they still existed--they haven't done anything for years, so your explanation makes sense. I might be interested in contacting him, but if he can't get his own to work, I suppose he might not be able to help me, either.

As far as RW goes, I honestly hadn't considered asking them. I am fairly certain that at least some of the ongoing attacks on CP come from RW, so I hesitate to ask them. On a side note, I don't see that ban reason you mentioned specifically, but there is always the trusty "other" category. Here's a screenshot, if you care. (You humor got a chuckle out of my, by the way.)

There are also other factors I don't have sufficient knowledge on, too. For example, is a non-admin allowed to create a wiki bot on here (or, from what you said, is anyone)? Also, what functions would be consistently helpful? I have been working towards spam detection (and control?) but ideally, the spam filter would make this unnecessary. However, with a simple set of rules, and OS-based program I've set up is able to parse new contributions and detect some spam which the filter misses. Using this I have been able to catch so people quickly, but it has limitations inherent to the design which a true bot could avoid. Also, batch processes might be doable, but I would want an easy interface for such jobs to be generated. Is this possible? Could it be made secure enough? *sigh*

Anyway, if you don't mind, I guess I would like the e-mail addresses for Ed Poor that you have. It might be worth a try, anyway.

As always, than you! --David B (talk) 13:11, 17 June 2016 (EDT)

My statement that bots are not allowed was from item 6 in Conservapedia:Commandments. That's all I know about it.

I've sent you an email with the contact info for Ed Poor.

>>I probably don't know more about wiki bots than you--I know pretty much nothing.

Then we know exactly the same amount.

Thank you for not clicking on "block this user" when making the screenshot. :-)

By the way, I looked around a bit to see how the observatory vs. planetarium screwup occurred. It was created by JJacob. Aside from that incorrect edit, his edits were generally well-meaning and fully consistent with CP's mission. I don't know why he got blocked, but he did. By James "Jinx" McHugh, who was one of the brutish sysops that we had back then. Almost all of them have gone away, usually by themselves being banned after being unmasked as trolls, parodists, or just plain troublemakers. Note his block reason: "Wears Superman underwear". If you want to know why I strongly dislike flippant block reasons, that's why.

The right kind of bot to stop vandalism sprees is exactly the "guard dog" that Ed invented. It's too bad that it broke.

Based on my reading of what's going on over there, I think that very little of the contemporary vandalism sprees are from people who have RW accounts. In any case, vandalism doesn't "come from" RW. It might come from a person who also has an account at RW. But you can't tell, unless you have checkuser at both sites. In the very early days of RW, someone there admitted to vandalizing CP, and that made it into the Stephanie Simon article. But I think those days are long past. In any case, there's no reason why having an account at RW (or any left-wing web site) should be cause for banning at CP.

SamHB (talk) 21:05, 17 June 2016 (EDT)

I see what you mean on the commandments. It sounds like as long as I ask for and get approval, it's fine. You're welcome for not banning you, though are you sure you don't want to bring your ban counter up to 19? ;-)

I should have been more clear--you're right of course, RW is not as a whole working to attack us. However, there are some hints that on and off-site attacks have been made by people either from or in support of RW. For example, this phony Google profile links to RW as a source of information on Mr. Schlafly. Anyway, I still agree that membership of RW alone should not be a ban reason on CP.

Until next time, take care! --David B (talk) 01:07, 20 June 2016 (EDT)

Well, there's no denying that Conservapedia is ridiculed all over the internet, a situation that makes it difficult and discouraging to work here. A quick survey found 8000 hits for articles about CP's relativity presentation, 97% of which were mocking. See [[18]]. Many (but probably not most) of those people know about, or are somehow connected to, RW, including the authors of that Google profile. But that's not vandalism; it's external ridicule, and there's really no way to stop it.

re: "Atheism and rocking chairs" article idea you had

Re: "Atheism and rocking chairs" article idea you had.

Please see: Global atheism and aging populations

It looks like there is going to be a lot of atheists in rocking chairs. :)Conservative (talk) 18:43, 16 June 2016 (EDT)

Autoconfirmed users

I understand that one of the first permission groups members are placed in that of "Autoconfirmed users" I've never understood what they mean by autoconfirmed, but given your vast knowledge of CP, it occurred to me you might know. Are you aware of that qualifies someone to be "confirmend" in this manner? In other words, does it actually mean anything, or does it just mean that their account has been successfully created? I know I've seem some pages protected from users who are not autoconfiremd. Does this do anything substantive?
Thanks! --David B ^(TALK) 00:24, 21 June 2016 (EDT)

My understanding of what is going on in wikis in general is that "autoconfirmed" means "has passed a probationary period and can now be trusted to edit important things." I don't know whether this is a matter of having made X number of inconsequential "safe" edits or of X days having passed since account creation. I believe it's a matter of wiki policy. I believe that CP policy is set so that it just means that the user has created an account. Since no one can edit anonymously (only the IP address would show), this really has no effect. I think anonymous editing was allowed once, a long time ago.

Andy Schlafly's talk page is locked against any but autoconfirmed users, but I don't think that has any significance at present. I believe anyone who has created an account can edit. As a good scientist, I could conduct an experiment to test that by creating a fresh account, but (a) I'm not interested in the test, and (b) that would be socking! :-)

A properly implemented policy for autoconfirmed users could effectively do what the "guard dog" did, but it would require making most pages edit-on-autoconfirm, the way Andy's page is, so that only harmless pages could be edited by newbies. Or say that no editing may be done until some silent period has gone by, but that would be inconsistent with the goals of CP. There was a time a few years ago when, in an attempt to stop vandalism, account creation had to be done by email request. That was abandoned, probably because it was antithetical to the goals of CP.

It's a tough problem. The "guard dog" really is the right way to go about it.

SamHB (talk) 02:00, 21 June 2016 (EDT)

Alright, thank you! That would make sense from what I see, because new members always seem to have it. I was thinking that this system could be used more efficiently, but I haven't tried it, so it's very possible there are factors I'm not aware of. Anyway, I'll see if Ed Poor and I can get anywhere with the "woof-woof" then. --David B ^(TALK) 08:11, 21 June 2016 (EDT)

re: Bible scientific foreknowledge

I do believe in the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and I also believe the Bile has many cases of fulfilled prophecy. In addition, I also believe that there are cases of Bible scientific foreknowledge.

At the same time, I do some of the material in the Bible scientific foreknowledge article should not be in there. Conservative (talk) 02:16, 13 July 2016 (EDT)

[1] I use phrases like "lost in a database glitch" as a euphemism for "vaped by Cons". I assume everyone knows that.

[2] As an example of the notoriety, consider the talk page of user "ClintBarton". I have no idea who he was, but he appeared at 15:55, 6 Mar, made an insulting comment on main talk, and put this into his talk page, which you deleted at 1653: "By the way, which User: Conservative were you directing your comments at? SamHB is now convinced there is more than one editor who uses ...". I think his characterization of my beliefs was wrong (I think there's only one of you), but the fact is that he saw this page and chose to issue a drive-by insult.

[3] There are those that like to use this construction, and those that consider it to be an horrendously pretentious affectation. I like it. Andy does too.

[4] I'm not sure what to make of the smiley-face.

[scots-5] 5.0 ^5.1 I hope you're not falling into the "No True Christian" fallacy here. I'll assume you're just being playful.

[6] Says someone who has made nearly 3000 edits in the last month involving "atheism", "atheist", "Godless", "ungodliness", "Irreligion", "Elevatorgate", "Richard Dawkins", "Rebecca Watson", or "PZ Myers".

[7] It doesn't.

[8] No.

[9] Either they were lying or you misremember.

[10] No.

[11] OK, I discuss relativity on this site, but that's different, and I think you can see why.

[12] I don't know what the first was. Was it the anonymous email that you said someone sent to you? If so, could you forward it to me?

[13] The suggestion was "This probably ought to be named .... bloodthirsty .... With a t. You probably ought to combine footnotes 1, 2, and 3 into a single footnote. See How to put links and footnotes into your articles for a description of the procedure."

[falutin-14] 14.0 ^14.1 high falutin term

[15] Why do I say "I'm serious" so often? Because we do so much kidding around!

[16] India Anthropologist Finds Denmark Wanting : Research: He laments the loneliness and lack of human values in remote village and asks if prosperity can be achieved without such sacrifices, LA Times archives, June 20, 1993|CHRISTOPHER FOLLETT | REUTERS

[17] [Number of severely lonely men over 50 set to rise to 1m in 15 years], The Guardian, Robert Booth,Sunday 12 October 2014 19.01 EDT

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@@ Line 1,507: / Line 1,507: @@
 :By the way, I just added [http://www.conservapedia.com/Biblical_scientific_foreknowledge#Animal_welfare THIS]. It now in the pantheon of Bible scientific foreknowledge. Put that in your evolutionary pipe and smoke it![[User:Conservative|Conservative]] ([[User talk:Conservative|talk]]) 14:24, 25 April 2016 (EDT)
+== re: RobS ==
+::''This paragraph was moved from "[[Talk:High morale of Christendom]]".  The "you" being referenced is [[User:Conservative]].''
+:::But it might interest you [Cons] to know that, back at Ameriwiki (you remember Ameriwiki?  No?  It's just as well)  Rob wrote a gigantic number of articles about Communism in the 30's and 40's, and senator McCarthy, and FDR, and Venona, etc. etc.  A biographical page for every person involved in that subject, and Rob is a walking encyclopedia of that.  I believe there were hundreds of such pages.  They swamped the "random page" thing.  That is, when you clicked on "random page", you had a high probability of getting one.  It made Ameriwiki look like an encyclopedia of Communism during the FDR administration, while I was trying to make it look like an encyclopedia of Americana and American history.  (And mathematics too, of course.)  Rob had put an enormous amount of effort into writing those articles, and I put an equally enormous amount of effort into combining them into sections of one huge page.  Or several huge pages.  Whatever.  Rob and I communicated during this, and he appreciated the work I was doing.  I assume he has saved all that stuff somewhere.
+:::[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 00:26, 29 April 2016 (EDT)
+If RobS has backups of his Ameriwiki articles, see if he wants to put them onto Conservapedia.
+:::I may have the stuff somewhere, though I suspect Rob has better things to do.  [[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 18:03, 8 May 2016 (EDT)
+The middle/centrists appear to be dropping out of America politics somewhat and the far right/alt right and socialist wings appear to be growing.  I am guessing there is some topical overlap between socialists and communists as there are anti-socialist communists,  anti-communist socialists, etc. etc. etc.
+In addition, communism articles and atheism articles at the same wiki is a great match. A good portion of people interested in atheism articles would also be interested in communism articles. The two areas are related as atheism was a central tenet of communism.
+I do regret pushing for RobS to lose his admin status. Maybe he will decide to purse being an admin again. I know Andy liked his article contributions. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] ([[User talk:Conservative|talk]]) 00:53, 29 April 2016 (EDT)
+== Re: Aburke ==
+The Aburke account is a joint account with limited powers that a member of the User: Conservative account shares with another, and more individuals may be given access to the account as well.
+The account was given page delete rights in order to delete extraneous web pages at Conservapedia. It also has SkipCaptcha rights.
+That is all I wish to say about the account. I think I will be very busy soon. My apologies for not wishing to discuss this further. Just a time management issue. [[User:Aburke|Aburke]] ([[User talk:Aburke|talk]]) 14:18, 7 May 2016 (EDT)
+:I know.
+:By the way, I've put in a comma for you.  Without it, the phrase "another and more" can lead to various difficult parsings.  It's a compound sentence (each part has its own verb&mdash;"shares" and "be given"&mdash;so the parts need to be separated by a comma.
+:Please don't take offense.  You know that I have high (and not always tactfully expressed) standards.  I hold you to those high standards because I know you are trying to express yourself articulately, and you sometimes miss the mark.  I consider many other people here to be hopeless (hence the "fire and brimstone"), so I don't bother.  For example, I wouldn't know what to say to "AK" that could possible make his writing comprehensible.  Except perhaps to sign up for a class in English as a second language.  [[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 17:56, 8 May 2016 (EDT)
+== Quick note ==
+I misunderstood an edit of yours so you were blocked for a few minutes. I unblocked you.
+Trying to get a new admin installed (RobSmith) so additional content is created, main page right is updated at a faster pace and maintenance issues are done more timely.
+If I don't respond to messages you post to me, it is probably because I am attending to offline matters. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] ([[User talk:Conservative|talk]]) 01:53, 27 May 2016 (EDT)
+==Article "Two"==
+Your "better idea" probably was, for the page "Two."  I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, myself.  For some reason, when I opened the page the "talk page" tab showed red, so I didn't open it.  Only when Conservative deleted it did I realized there was something there.  Sorry I missed whatever you said, but thanks! --[[User:DavidB4|David B]] ([[User talk:DavidB4|talk]]) 10:35, 14 June 2016 (EDT)
+:Yeah, I was mostly trying to fill you in on the history of that article and the controversy surrounding it.  Unfortunately, I lost sight of the fact that, by writing on the talk page for the article itself, it would get vaped before you read it.  Here is my reconstruction from memory of what I was saying.
+:*Where would it end?  There's no article for 3.
+:*It's necessary to be aware of the distinction between the concept and the numeral or symbol that represents it.  The now-deleted article was, quite properly, about the concept of two, stating that it is 1+1.  But your proposed category was about the Arabic symbol "2".  Being clear on the distinction is important for a web site that goes to great lengths to discuss arithmetical concepts vs. symbolic representations, and has, for example, articles about binary and hexadecimal.
+:*I wanted to give you some background of the issue.  (As you've noticed, I enjoy telling you about the history of math/science writing at Conservapedia.)  Several years ago there was a wide-ranging debate about the level of math/science articles, with Ed Poor taking the a fairly extreme position that we needed a lot more material on the very elementary stuff before going on to things like algebra.  He even said at one point that we should have an article on how to count to 10 before anyone could write about higher level stuff.  Like algebra or calculus, which I'm sure you know we have many articles on.  Well, someone took him up on that, and wrote an article on the numbers from 1 to 10.  Complete with pronunciation guides!  He was trolling, he got blocked, and the article was deleted.  So user U.U had no idea he was innocently wandering into that territory.  While I was appalled at Ed's position, I didn't jump into the "count to 10" debate.  This was one of the very few debates with Ed that I did not participate in.  I just watched from the sidelines.  But writing about math and science was very difficult back when Ed was around, though we did eventually manage to become friends, as in the Augusta Ada material.
+:*Anyone who doesn't know how to count to 10 (a) needs his diapers changed, and (b) shouldn't be reading a web site full of adult content.
+:[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 12:39, 14 June 2016 (EDT)
+::No problem--it was there for a while, anyway, and I should have seen it.
+::#I wondered the same!
+::#That's a good point, though one could argue that a page titled "two" should not have contained 1+1, but rather "one plus one."  Anyway, that's doesn't matter now.
+::#To some extent, it does seem like a good idea to have some basics along with specifics, but not necessarily before.  However, basics in my book would be pre-algebra, not the A-B-C's and 1-2-3's.
+::#Without starting the war over "adult" topics, I agree.  We are here to educate, but there needs to be a certain level of knowledge expectation.  CP was originally intended to be by and for home-preschoolers.  True, organized schooling starts at what, four or five years of age?  By then they should surely know how to count.  In theory, however, this would be for older children who already have a knowledge base they are building on.
+::Anyway, I do find your tidbits of history interesting.  Thanks!  On a side note, do you know if Ed Poor is still active on CP?  I see in his [[Special:Contributions/Ed_Poor|contributions log]] that in the past, he has been here for a day then gone for a while, usually two or three weeks.  However, he's been away since March.  As you may be aware, I was hoping to pick his brain regarding the setup of a wiki bot.--[[User:DavidB4|David B]] ([[User talk:DavidB4|talk]]) 14:07, 14 June 2016 (EDT)
+:::Well, you know a lot more about wiki bots than I do; all I know is that CP rules prohibit them; I assume you know what you are doing.
+:::Ed Poor has done some successful writing of scripts/templates/bots/whatever, and also had some failures.  He wrote some template thing that (I believe) they still use at Wikipedia for ages and stuff.  You put in a person's birthdate as an argument, and it automatically shows his age, correcting it as time goes by.  I think this is also in use here, though I'm not sure.
+:::But he also made a bot that didn't turn out well.  This was the "guard dog" from several years ago.  It would automatically throttle anyone who made too many edits in too short a time.  As an observer/repairer of vandalism sprees, you can see that that is just what we need.  Alas, it went berserk at one point, and started "biting" everyone, and needed to be "put down".  I believe that what happened was that a new version of the wikimedia software was installed, and the guard dog didn't interact well with it.  Ed couldn't fix it, so it's gone.
+:::As you have noticed, Ed isn't around much any more.  My guess is that he will not want to, or be able to, help with your project.  But if you want to contact him, I have one or two old email addresses for him that may or may not still be active.
+:::Believe it or not, your best bet for help with wiki coding might be "ritionalwaki" [sp].  I believe someone over there actually offered to help with the guard dog, and was turned down.  But there are some obligatory safety warnings I must give you first:
+:::*Smoking is hazardous to your health, and may cause death from lung cancer, emphysema, or heart disease.
+:::*Please inform your server if anyone in your party has a food allergy.
+:::*Never put a child in a rear-facing child seat in the front of a car.
+:::*Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.
+:::*Creating an account on ritionalwaki is a bannable offense at Conservapedia.
+:::That last one is the real one.  The correct name of the website I am referring to can never be spoken--it is in the "spam filter".  CP considers RW to be a mortal enemy; RW considers CP to be a source of humor.  And people have been banned for allegations of having accounts there.  (Though they generally use a different name, so the accusation is generally completely wrong.)  I believe there is even a block reason in the blocking menu "Member of vandal site".  You've seen the blocking menu; I haven't.  Now this doesn't stop a number of admins or sysops from having accounts there.  Including Cons, under the name "Newton".  I don't think Andy has ever had an account at RW.
+:::Good luck.  [[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 12:46, 17 June 2016 (EDT)
+::::Actually, I probably don't know more about wiki bots than you--I know pretty much nothing, but with a little help, I think I could figure it out.  However, I hadn't heard that CP prohibited wiki bots--are you sure you are talking about them, and not GUI spam bots?
+::::I know that WP does have a birth-date template maintained by a bot.  CP has a bot-free template which only states the number of years which have passed ([[Template:age]]).
+::::I knew Ed Poor had used bots them, but wondered if they still existed--they haven't done anything for years, so your explanation makes sense.  I might be interested in contacting him, but if he can't get his own to work, I suppose he might not be able to help me, either.
+::::As far as RW goes, I honestly hadn't considered asking them.  I am fairly certain that at least some of the ongoing attacks on CP come from RW, so I hesitate to ask them.  On a side note, I don't see that ban reason you mentioned specifically, but there is always the trusty "other" category.  [http://community.archnet.us/conservapedia/CP%20block%20reasons.jpg Here's a screenshot], if you care.  (You humor got a chuckle out of my, by the way.)
+::::There are also other factors I don't have sufficient knowledge on, too.  For example, is a non-admin allowed to create a wiki bot on here (or, from what you said, is anyone)?  Also, what functions would be consistently helpful?  I have been working towards spam detection (and control?) but ideally, the spam filter would make this unnecessary. However, with a simple set of rules, and OS-based program I've set up is able to parse new contributions and detect some spam which the filter misses.  Using this I have been able to catch so people quickly, but it has limitations inherent to the design which a true bot could avoid.  Also, batch processes might be doable, but I would want an easy interface for such jobs to be generated.  Is this possible?  Could it be made secure enough?  *sigh*
+::::Anyway, if you don't mind, I guess I would like the e-mail addresses for Ed Poor that you have.  It might be worth a try, anyway.
+::::As always, than you! --[[User:DavidB4|David B]] ([[User talk:DavidB4|talk]]) 13:11, 17 June 2016 (EDT)
+:::My statement that bots are not allowed was from item 6 in [[Conservapedia:Commandments]].  That's all I know about it.
+:::I've sent you an email with the contact info for Ed Poor.
+:::>>I probably don't know more about wiki bots than you--I know pretty much nothing.
+::::Then we know exactly the same amount.
+:::Thank you for not clicking on "block this user" when making the screenshot.  :-)
+:::By the way, I looked around a bit to see how the observatory vs. planetarium screwup occurred.  It was created by JJacob.  Aside from that incorrect edit, his edits were generally well-meaning and fully consistent with CP's mission.  I don't know why he got blocked, but he did.  By James "Jinx" McHugh, who was one of the brutish sysops that we had back then.  Almost all of them have gone away, usually by themselves being banned after being unmasked as trolls, parodists, or just plain troublemakers.  Note his block reason: "Wears Superman underwear".  If you want to know why I strongly dislike flippant block reasons, that's why.
+:::The right kind of bot to stop vandalism sprees is exactly the "guard dog" that Ed invented.  It's too bad that it broke.
+:::Based on my reading of what's going on over there, I think that very little of the contemporary vandalism sprees are from people who have RW accounts.  In any case, vandalism doesn't "come from" RW.  It might come from a person who also has an account at RW.  But you can't tell, unless you have checkuser at both sites.  In the very early days of RW, someone there admitted to vandalizing CP, and that made it into the Stephanie Simon article.  But I think those days are long past.  In any case, there's no reason why having an account at RW (or any left-wing web site) should be cause for banning at CP.
+:::[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 21:05, 17 June 2016 (EDT)
+::::I see what you mean on the commandments.  It sounds like as long as I ask for and get approval, it's fine. You're welcome for not banning you, though are you sure you don't want to bring your ban counter up to 19? ;-)
+::::I should have been more clear--you're right of course, RW is not as a whole working to attack us.  However, there are some hints that on and off-site attacks have been made by people either from or in support of RW.  For example, this [https://profiles.google.com/schlafly.andrew/about phony Google profile] links to RW as a source of information on Mr. Schlafly.  Anyway, I still agree that membership of RW alone should not be a ban reason on CP.
+::::Until next time, take care! --[[User:DavidB4|David B]] ([[User talk:DavidB4|talk]]) 01:07, 20 June 2016 (EDT)
+:::Well, there's no denying that Conservapedia is ridiculed all over the internet, a situation that makes it difficult and discouraging to work here.  A quick survey found 8000 hits for articles about CP's relativity presentation, 97% of which were mocking.  See [[http://www.conservapedia.com/Community_Portal/Archive_1#Two_millionth_page_view_for_the_.22Counterexamples_to_Relativity.22_page]].  Many (but probably not most) of those people know about, or are somehow connected to, RW, including the authors of that Google profile.  But that's not vandalism; it's external ridicule, and there's really no way to stop it.
+== re: "Atheism and rocking chairs" article idea you had  ==
+Re: "Atheism and rocking chairs" article idea you had.
+Please see: [[Global atheism and aging populations]]
+It looks like there is going to be a lot of atheists in rocking chairs. :)[[User:Conservative|Conservative]] ([[User talk:Conservative|talk]]) 18:43, 16 June 2016 (EDT)
+==Autoconfirmed users==
+I understand that one of the first permission groups members are placed in that of "[[Conservapedia:Autoconfirmed_users|Autoconfirmed users]]" I've never understood what they mean by autoconfirmed, but given your vast knowledge of CP, it occurred to me you might know.  Are you aware of that qualifies someone to be "confirmend" in this manner? In other words, does it actually mean anything, or does it just mean that their account has been successfully created?  I know I've seem some pages protected from users who are not autoconfiremd.  Does this do anything substantive?<br />
+Thanks! --[[User:DavidB4|<font color="ForestGreen">David B</font>]] <sup><small>([[User talk:DavidB4|TALK]])</small></sup> 00:24, 21 June 2016 (EDT)
+:My understanding of what is going on in wikis in general is that "autoconfirmed" means "has passed a probationary period and can now be trusted to edit important things."  I don't know whether this is a matter of having made X number of inconsequential "safe" edits or of X days having passed since account creation.  I believe it's a matter of wiki policy.  I believe that CP policy is set so that it just means that the user has created an account.  Since no one can edit anonymously (only the IP address would show), this really has no effect.  I think anonymous editing was allowed once, a long time ago.
+:Andy Schlafly's talk page is locked against any but autoconfirmed users, but I don't think that has any significance at present.  I believe anyone who has created an account can edit.  As a good scientist, I could conduct an experiment to test that by creating a fresh account, but (a) I'm not interested in the test, and (b) that would be socking!  :-)
+:A properly implemented policy for autoconfirmed users could effectively do what the "guard dog" did, but it would require making most pages edit-on-autoconfirm, the way Andy's page is, so that only harmless pages could be edited by newbies.  Or say that no editing may be done until some silent period has gone by, but that would be inconsistent with the goals of CP.  There was a time a few years ago when, in an attempt to stop vandalism, account creation had to be done by email request.  That was abandoned, probably because it was antithetical to the goals of CP.
+:It's a tough problem.  The "guard dog" really is the right way to go about it.
+:[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 02:00, 21 June 2016 (EDT)
+::Alright, thank you!  That would make sense from what I see, because new members always seem to have it.  I was thinking that this system could be used more efficiently, but I haven't tried it, so it's very possible there are factors I'm not aware of. Anyway, I'll see if Ed Poor and I can get anywhere with the "woof-woof" then. --[[User:DavidB4|<font color="ForestGreen">David B</font>]] <sup><small>([[User talk:DavidB4|TALK]])</small></sup> 08:11, 21 June 2016 (EDT)
+== re: Bible scientific foreknowledge ==
+I do believe in the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and I also believe the Bile has many cases of fulfilled prophecy.  In addition, I also believe that there are cases of [[Bible scientific foreknowledge]].
+At the same time, I do some of the material in the Bible scientific foreknowledge article should not be in there. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] ([[User talk:Conservative|talk]]) 02:16, 13 July 2016 (EDT)