User talk:Dbtfz

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Welcome!

Hello, Dbtfz, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  Tufflaw 04:43, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Converting html to TeX

Although TeX is usually better than other forms of mathematical notation when it is "displayed" rather than inline, I wonder if you're unjustifiably taking it to be axiomatic that it's better when inline? On my browser, all of this instances of inline TeX that you put into random variable and probability theory look comically gigantic -- maybe ten times the size of the letters preceeding and following them, whereas the html that was there before looks good. Michael Hardy 19:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Per the math style manual, one should not rush to convert html to TeX if html looks fine, per the reasons Michael wrote above. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:03, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I'll keep this in mind from now on. Dbtfz 20:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Collection

Thanks. I hate it when people say "collection," "group," "family" etc. when they mean "set." But that's probably just a quirky pet peeve of mine. Dbtfz 16:24, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Saying "set of sets" can be confusing to people. That's why they prefer to use a different word. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused

Hello. I didn't quite understand it - have you labeled my editing of the article Fearson's floating cigarette as vandalism, or marked it for deletion as a bad joke? Please explain your reasoning, because I sincerely believe that I have done a good job, compared to the original texts. Now, at least, it is in agreement with the industry standards within magic technical litterature - see Wikipedia:Proposed policy for magic methods. --TStone 03:22, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I did not label your editing as vandalism, nor did I flag the article for deletion. Indeed, the article is a fine piece of magic technical litterature. I just wanted to make sure it got preserved for posterity in its present state. Unfortunately, the only way I know of to do this is to save it on the "Bad Jokes and other Deleted Nonsense" page. Rest assured that I don't regard it as a bad joke, and certainly not as nonsense; I merely fear that it might be deleted or otherwise defaced by some thoughtless Wikipedia administrator with no appreciation for high quality magic technical litterature. If you don't like it being on the BJAODN page, you are welcome to remove it. Keep up the good work. Best wishes, Dbtfz 04:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, then I understand! Sorry. The title of this joke page was a bit intimidating, especially when I didn't know the purpose of that page. I've saved the original texts on the talk page of Wikipedia:Proposed policy for magic methods, if that is useful. Thanks for the explanation! :-) --TStone 13:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Catholic schools/education

Please stop reverting the redirect. At least explain (here, or on my talk page) why there should be separate articles for Catholic school and Catholic education ... I don’t see why, especially when the "Catholic schools" article you keep redirecting to seems to offer no sign that its content warrants a separate article. Daniel Case 02:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I really don't care about this incredibly trivial issue. Do whatever you want.  :) Dbtfz 02:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I guess I care a little bit. It seems like a no-brainer to redirect the newly created "Catholic schools" stub to the already existing and reasonably fleshed out article "Catholic school" (in which I have absolutely no vested interest). If you don't think the latter should exist, why not propose a merge? Anyway, that's really all I have to say about the subject. Dbtfz 04:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Friendly Reminder

Remember to always sign all of your posts on talk pages. Typing four tildes after your comment ( ~~~~ ) will insert a signature showing your username and a date/time stamp, which is very helpful. This reminder was sparked by your leaving your vote at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stout Spider unsigned. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 04:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I forgot that one little time. Thanks for the reminder. Dbtfz 05:00, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Airplanechart

I believe I will have to buy or rent an airplane to bring all my friends from Wikipedia in order to spend Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Imagine that: everybody having fun and a good time drinking caipirinhas (little country girls--a brazilian drink made with cachaça) and dancing samba and meeting beautifull women (or men-- I don´t care) and dancing until dawn... Please leave on the air the article about prof. Carlos Nemer, he is a great professional ! Carlos Vieira

Olá, Carlos! I was just in Brazil (Florianópolis) last year. I had a great time and enjoyed (too) many caipirinhas. I would love to visit again, but sorry, I won't retract my vote.  :) Dbtfz 04:18, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Gleeking and Shakespeare

The Shakespeare quotes are verifiable but they're not about gleeking in the sense of this article. See here. I'm not trying to vandalize the article, but I am trying to make it encyclopedic, which means it should make sense. The Shakespeare quotes are either a joke or just irrelevant. —rodii 22:23, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I can see how the Shakespeare reference could look like a joke. I have modified the article so as to better explain the relevance of the Shakespeare passages to the etymology of the term. Dbtfz (talk - contribs) 22:56, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

OK... I'm skeptical, but I'm no expert. I appreciate your putting work in on this. —rodii 23:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Paraconsistent logic and dialetheism

My objection to your edits was really (i) that your text suggested that relevance logic was not paraconsistent and (ii) two minor quibbles with your edit: "the" is the right determiner to relate Graham priest to proposer of dialetheism, but, by now, not proponent of dialethism, and it's as wrong to talk of relevance logics as to talk of classical logics). I'm pleased to see you tackling the article, though. Do take a look at Dean Buckner's proposed changes. --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 05:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your point about Priest and "the", and that it should not be suggested that relevance logics (sic) are not paraconsistent. I don't agree, however, that it's wrong to speak of "relevance logics" (plural). After all, there are many different logics that satisfy the relevance condition, and each of these is referred to as a "relevance" (or "relevant") logic in the literature. The most famous system is Anderson and Belnap's R, but many other relevance logics exist. I don't even agree that it is wrong to speak of "classical logics" (plural). Consider propositional classical logic, first order classical logic without identity, first order classical logic with identity, second order classical logic, various classically-based modal logics, etc. Each of these different logics is a classical logic. At least, that's how I (and many others) regard and speak of them. On the other hand, I think it is perfectly acceptable in many cases to use "relevance logic," "classical logic," etc. as mass nouns, referring in a vague way to whole families of logics. Anyway, thanks for your civility, and maybe I'll try to edit the "relevant" parts of the logic article in a way that we can both agree on. Best, Dbtfz (talk - contribs) 05:26, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I talked of classical logic precisely because of this variety, but I don't say each is a classical logic, rather I talk of the systems of classical logic. The benefit of this is that the core concept of logic is not identified with the particular grammar . There is the issue with relevantism that the informal philosophical theses can lead to genuinely conflicting axiomatisations (in a way one pretty much does not get with classical logic), but I would say that the systems compatible with the best justified account win the title of relevance logic: we can call the others relevantist logics, I suppose.

All of these conventions are disputable, and I'm happy to bash out these issues. There is an issue of consistency, however: I've applied the above scheme in the logic article and in some other articles, and I would rather not have the status quo changed unless there is a clear reason to.

Okay, that makes sense. Deciding on a consistent way of using the term "logic" is precisely one of the things that the logic wikiproject would be good for. Dbtfz (talk - contribs) 15:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

You can sign up for the wikiproject on the prelaunch list User talk:Chalst/WikiProject Logic proposal#Folk who have expressed an interest in this project. I'm going to launch the project soon, hopefully I will find time this week. --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 05:57, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I signed up. Dbtfz (talk - contribs) 15:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Kudos

For staring the Dov Gabbay article, which I had been meaning to do. And the Quasi-quotation article, which I'm surprised we didn't have already. --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 06:05, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I too was surprised that the quasi-quotation article didn't already exist. I was even more surprised that there was no article for logical consequence until I created it. Dbtfz (talk - contribs) 15:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Note to self

I have done some editing as 207.207.8.145. Dbtfz (talk - contribs) 20:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Chris Eichenseer

I changed the tag to an AfD. I checked him out and it's possible that he could be deserving of an article. Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chris Eichenseer. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 06:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Already did!  : ) Dbtfz (talk - contribs) 06:59, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Death by 1000 cuts

Unfortunately, the death by 1,000 cuts is being mirrored against wikipedia's rules of mirroring, and, more importantly, supercedes wikipedia on a google search. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.210.112.76 (talk • contribs)

Jared Samuels thing

Sorry, was having some fun. Peace. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Robbed (talk • contribs) .

No worries, mate. Just don't let it happen again. Or if you do, try to make it funnier. : ) dbtfz^talk 07:05, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it would only be funny to two or three people. Sort of an inside joke. Later! Robbed 07:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Tao Te Ching

Hi, the user (A bird in the hand) has been identified as a sockpuppet of a banned user (Zephram Stark). I am going to remove his contributions to this talk page. I will probably go ahead and delete the entire section. If you have any major objection to this, let me know. I didn't want you to be suprised to find your posts deleted. --JW1805 (Talk) 21:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection. dbtfz^talk 21:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

for reassuring me that I haven't entered the Twilight Zone here. Cheers, Melchoir 03:46, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Economists

Yeah, by last name. I'll do it. And I'll look in on micro. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radeksz (talk • contribs)

Ugh. Microeconomics is a mess. This one will take some serious re-writing. radek 08:30, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Three forms of mathematical induction

This article was intended to be comprehensible to all mathematicians.

It was not intended to teach mathematical induction. It was not intended to explain what mathematical induction is, nor how to use it.

What I see is (mostly) a bunch of non-mathematicians looking at the stub form in which the article appeared when it was nominated from deletion, and seeing that

• It was not comprehensible to ordinary non-mathematicians who know what mathematical induction is, and

• The article titled mathematical induction is comprehensible to ordinary non-mathematicians, even those who know --- say --- secondary-school algebra, but have never heard of mathematical induction.

And so I have now expanded the article far beyond the stub stage, including

• Substantial expansion and organization of the introductory section.

• Two examples of part of the article that is probably hardest to understand to those who haven't seen these ideas.

• An prefatory statement right at the top, saying that this article is NOT the appropriate place to try to learn what mathematical induction is or how to use it, with a link to the appropriate article for that. It explains that you need to know mathematical induction before you can read this article.

Therefore, I invite those who voted to delete before I did these recent de-stubbing edits, to reconsider their votes in light of the current form of the article.

(Nothing like nomination for deletion to get you to work on a long-neglected stub article!) Michael Hardy 23:29, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

As in the article "World Wide Fellowship" sure is cozy; where is the proof of that? I hardly think a bunch of force DUIIs, forced treatment program participant, and predatory sex offenders qualify as a fellowship. Anyways you're an idiot as represented by your "home page" on Wiki... You need to quit vandalizing the article and go do some step work!