Talk:Earth

U. S. Customary units

I don't know what Conservapedia's policy on units and dimensions is, but taking the lead from the "American" spelling policy, I have used U. S. Customary units rather than SI ("metric system") units throughout this article.

But please discuss, as SI units are more appropriate for scientific articles. Dpbsmith 19:54, 28 February 2007 (EST)

To be blunt, using miles to describe distances in space is almost painful. However, it might make sense if the audience is mainly American to use both, maybe with a slash, or put the English unit in parentheses or brackets. JoshuaZ 20:41, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Why is measuring space in the paces of a Roman soldier any more painful that measuring it in terms of two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar at Bureau Internationale de Poids et Mesures? (Yesyesyes I know it's really the distance light travels in 1/299142857.142857 seconds...)

If inches, slugs, and poundals are good enough for the NASA Mars Climate Orbiter, they're good enough for me! Dpbsmith 22:06, 28 February 2007 (EST)

(Note for people who don't get my nerdy joke... either because it's obscure or because it's not actually funny... slugs and poundals are now-very-rarely-used English-based units of mass and force that were once taught to, maybe even used by engineers. The NASA Mars Climate Orbiter was an expensive space probe that crashed on Mars because some of the computer subsystems in it used U. S. Customary units and others used metric units and the software didn't convert properly... or something like that... Dpbsmith 05:50, 1 March 2007 (EST))

Well, it creates cognitivie dissonance when one talks about science using other units. It is somewhat similar to using SI to talk about halachah rather than using things like the Ke'Zayit (ok, maybe not the best analogy, since everyone agrees on the conversion from SI to English). As for the Mars Climate Orbiter, you do know that that was just the FNORD Illuminati coverup for what really happened to it FNORD ? Joking aside, giving it in English units only just makes headaches for citation issues and forces people to make more conversions when trying to actually use the data. JoshuaZ 22:19, 28 February 2007 (EST)

I've started a discussion of the metric and "English" question...

...one the Conservapedia Commandments talk page.

I'd like to know how people want to handle units and dimensions in scientific articles. Dpbsmith 05:46, 1 March 2007 (EST)

Explanation of the "trivia"

I don't object to removing the trivia about "mostly harmless." That was the previous prank content. (I never would have inserted it in a general article about the Earth that I was writing from scratch). I want to explain why I left it in.

• I like to "moderate, not obliterate." If someone is trying to make a point that I disagree with, but that is valid in the sense of being a widely held point of view, I may tone down overstatement or remove clearly inaccurate factual material or label it as opinion, but I try not to remove it entirely and I try to be sure that a reader will still understand what point was being made. In this case, I was trying to transmute prank content into valid content, rather than remove it.
• For the benefit of lurking pranksters, I wanted to show that Conservapedia was aware of what they were up to. Dpbsmith 06:51, 1 March 2007 (EST)

Protection

I am going to similarly object to the protection of this article. Furthermore, you've added in what seems to be an unnecessary point. Since the original article didn't discuss formation issues, it seems to me that you added it in just so you could put the quote in. JoshuaZ 14:48, 1 March 2007 (EST)

I do not think protection was necessary here. The article was not vandalised. Joshua simply edited out what he felt was an irrelevant sentence. I am unblocking this article, but before you edit it further, please discuss the changes you plan to make here. ~ SharonS 15:11, 1 March 2007 (EST)

Protection against evolutionist suppression of material - namely JoshuaZ

I protected this page. User:JoshuaZ, who I believe is a vociferous evolutionist who supresses young Earth creationist material, edited out my material which stated the following: In addition, most scientists also believe believe that the earth formed by natural processes instead of being supernaturally created. However, as one scientist recently noted, “... most every prediction by theorists about planetary formation has been wrong.” [1] I believe this material was reasonable to include and only an unreasonable person would delete it. Conservative 15:00, 1 March 2007 (EST)conservative