Talk:Isaac Asimov/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions about Isaac Asimov. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

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On religious beliefs

He did not oppose genuine religious conviction in others, but vocally opposed superstitious or unfounded beliefs.

Err... this line implies that religion is neither superstition nor an unfounded belief, which is plain false. --Taraborn 20:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

'Tis now rephrased. Anville 01:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

OK. Now it's much better. --Taraborn 12:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Major problems in criticism section

All criticisms need to be sourced to notable commentators. It is not permitted for wikipedia editors to add there own criticisms of Asimov's work. Editors need to find sources for the Criticisms to avoid them getting chopped out. Ashmoo 02:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I've tried to cut the worst of it out. What's left is pretty unremarkable, except for that one block quotation from that book reviewer who didn't like Robots and Empire (a quotation I found on Lexis-Nexis way back when). Actually, I think that review is most remarkable for how thoroughly wrong it is, but I shouldn't say anything more about that here. Anville 20:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The Unmensan

So tell me, is it true that IA turned down an honorary membership in Mensa? Did he ever dare to take the test? If so, did he pass and become a legitimate member?69.19.14.37 20:42, 26 January 2007 (UTC)MosesEzreal

According to American Mensa, he was a member. According to the IMDB bio page on Isaac Asimov, he decided to leave Mensa due to the attitudes of some members. I am a member of American Mensa, and I will say that we occasionally have a Isaac Asimov Memorial Wet T-Shirt Contest at our annual gatherings (the last contest was held in New Orleans in July 2005).--66.134.227.18 07:43, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Asimov was drafted into the US Army in late 1945 and took the Army General Classification Test. His IQ was 160 (In Memory Yet Green, chapter 38) and that qualified him for Mensa with room to spare. --208.76.104.133 00:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

profanity in the quotes

How can I delete the "cock taste really good" type of quotes at the end of the quotes section?

One Particular Story

(I know Wikipedia isn't an FAQ, but I've looked in a lot of places and can't figure it out...) When I was a kid, I read this short story by Issac Asimov. In it, a boy grows up, and his best friend is a robotic teddy bear. The toy was programmed by the boy's father. Anytime the boy did something bad, like lie or steal, the boy was scolded by the toy bear. Except, the bear was programmed not to stem any homicidal urges the boy might have. The boy grows up, and (I think) he was the only human alive who was still able to perform murder. Anyway the boy gets very angry that his father via the toy has brainwashed him this way, and kills both the father and the teddy bear (as well as a third character I remember nothing about).

Does this story sound familiar? Do you know the name, or in what compilation it might be found? JimmmyThePiep 23:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The only thing I can tell you about that story is that it isn't by Asimov. --Darkday 17:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: I think I found it; "I always do what teddy says" by Harry Harrison. I think what I had was a collection of short stories from various authors, but I only remembered Isaac Asimov out of the 10 or so authors. A short description mentioned 'conditioning children', which sounds like it. JimmmyThePiep 08:32, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Science humour

I just wrote the page Science humour. The final section is "Humour in science fiction". I mentioned Asimov, as well as a few other authors/works. Could you please head over, and help develop the article? Cheers, samwaltz 18:37, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Date of birth

Isaac Asimov WAS Born on January 1, 1920. This is confirmed in his memoir, "I, Asimov"

Someone please change/edit it!

I don't own I, Asimov, but I have In Memory Yet Green, in which Asimov writes

   The date of my birth, as I celebrate it, was January 2, 1920. It 
could not have been later than that. It might, however, have been 
earlier. Allowing for the uncertainties of the times, of the lack of 
records, of the Jewish and Julian calendars, it might have been as 
early as October 4, 1919. There is, however, no way of finding out. 
My parents were always uncertain and it really doesn't matter.
   I celebrate January 2, 1920, so let it be.

Can someone please quote what's written in I, Asimov? --Darkday 18:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

In "I, Asimov", it states: "I was born in Russia on January 1, 1920, but my parents emigrated to the United States, arriving on February 23, 1923. That means I have been an American by surroundings (and, five years later, in September 1928, by citizenship) since I was three years old."

At the very least, someone should make a note of the exacr date being unknown, even to Asimov.

I own both "I, Asimov" and "In Memory Yet Green". Asimov gave 2 January 1920 as his birthday. He was in perfect command of all his faculties when he wrote IMYG but he was not all there when he wrote IA, which was published posthumously anyway, so of the two IMYG is the better source. Also at the end of IA, we find a Garfield cartoon making a joke of Isaac Asimov's birthday being on the 2nd. It was a palliative to Garfield post holiday blues. (Of course, Asimov-not-all-there is a better writer than most of us any day...) Vincent 06:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I notice it being changed to red linked 1-2 format :s - having read this post I've put the quote from IMYG and doubled the cite point, as I wouldn't look for a date of birth in the infobox first, but I don't usually navigate that way round..., and having the words may help make it a non-issue for readers looking to 'correct it against their reference'. This way of viewing the d.o.b. covers the other instances, but the others won't cover this, which, as it is given by the subject of the article himself, seems eminently more preferable against (non-birth record) references.--Alf ^melmac 19:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

The date in the original hardcover printing of I, Asimov is a typographical error. It was corrected in the soft cover printing. Also see http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_FAQ.html Isaac Lin 02:31, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

In his two-volume autobiography, Asimov relates how his parents exploited the uncertainty of his birth date to revise it backwards to September of 1919 so that he could begin to attend school rather than waiting an additional year. At a later age, he got the record changed back to January 2, 1920. He also tells us that if he'd left the earlier birth date on the record, he'd have been too old to have been drafted into the Army! WHPratt (talk) 14:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Links to the Years

Are links to the every single individual year really necessary? Mr. Assimov's life is interesting enough that almost every third word is a link somewhere do we really need to have links to generic years as well?Padillah 15:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I for one don't see the harm. Surely there are more constructive things to do with ones time than to do any of those links.--Epeefleche 18:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The harm of overlinking is that important terms and concepts become less obvious. That's why single years are almost never linked, and why generic concepts shouldn't belinked either. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links). ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:06, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

That's one "are they necessary", one who-would-bother-to-follow-them-all and one overlinking-is-bad. No comments in support. So I've removed all year links. -- Sean Martin 07:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Quotes

I removed these en bloc from the article. Only one is sourced; many of them are at wikiquote, and some are sourced there. Some of them (particularly "the last resource of the incompetent") should be integrated into the article.

"I don't fear computers, I fear the lack of them"
"When asked what I would do if my doctor told me I had only six months to live, I answered, 'I'll just type faster.'"
"Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers."
"Night was a wonderful time in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Air conditioning was unknown except in movie houses, and so was television. There was nothing to keep one in the house. Furthermore, few people owned automobiles, so there was nothing to carry one away. That left the streets and the stoops. The very fullness served as an inhibition to crime."
"What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for," September 20, 1973, Yours, Isaac Asimov, page 329.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." as Salvor Hardin.
"Never let your sense of morals stop you from doing what is right" as Salvor Hardin.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' - but 'That's funny...'"
"In a good cause there are no failures, only delayed successes".
"There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere"

Asimov said he had met only two people who were just plain smarter than Asimov himself. The first was astronomer Carl Sagan. The other was computer scientist and expert on artificial intelligence Marvin Minsky.

DominicConnor (talk) 14:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)Is there a justification for a list of representative quotes, properly referenced of course ?

I don't think so. What is your source going to be that the ones chosen are representative? Tb (talk) 23:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Nope; that's why we have Wikiquote: for just this kind of thing. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:05, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Removal of my points

Asimov's dislike of religion is on record, and his disdain for farmers is very manifest in much of what he wrote. I object to the removal of my points about him, since they can easily be ascertained from his own writings.

Ojevindlang 22:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe it is felt that your "points" constituted Original Research. --Orange Mike 02:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. If "it is on record", then cite that record. As for his writings, what you really need is a secondary source to cite in which an established critic or some such does the synthesis. It's not that "we" think you are wrong, it's just the way one writes an encyclopedia. Rangek 02:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Either that or quote straight from the books. The episode were one of Asimov's rather too frequent benevolent and wise robots poisons the Earth to get rid of religion is in one of the later Foundation stories. Frankly, I can't rememeber offhand which one, though the episode made a deep (and unfavourable) impression on me. It's in one of those books where Asimov tried to integrate the Foundation trilogy, the robot stories and the stories about Elijah Baley into one unified whole and, in my opinion, failed dismally. The pieces simply don't fit together. As for Asimov attempting to establish a future history, of the kind to be found in the works of Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson, I think that is obvious. Actually, I will put back that mention because I really don't need to quote an established critic to mention the obvious.

Ojevindlang 15:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that it is your opinion, and that is not what Wikipedia is about. I edited your addition to remove your opinion. Is that acceptable? Rangek 17:26, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Deserts/desserts

Okay, Rangek, I bow to your citations on this one. I must note, however, that no one in the universe other than an academic would really use "deserts" in this instance. That said, Asimov was an academic, if perhaps not quite that much a stickler... BPK 14:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Huh? This is not a matter under dispute; "just desserts" is a classic error, found in all the guides to correct use of the English language. No competent copy editor is going to let that one slip through, any more than they would allow misuse of the apostrophe for plurals or other obvious but common mistakes. --Orange Mike 16:04, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

If it's a classic error, it's simply because the logic is all on the side of the error, not the correction. The system of apostrophe usage is an actual system that there is no excuse for not learning. The "deserts" issue is a singular anomoly that flies in the face of common sense. I have no doubt but than in a few more decades the guides will finally catch up to ordinary usage.

Ideally, the codification of language usage is descriptive, not prescriptive. My sense is that most "errors" like these in fact begin as errors of description, which hardens into prescription only because the users go right along doing what they've always done. Elites hate being ignored.

Anyway, isn't the only reason we're still debating this that our own egos are involved? I've already conceded the issue. That doesn't mean you're likely to convince me that the rule makes sense, any more than I'm likely to convince you that it's ridiculous. BPK 17:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I realize I'm late to this discussion. Very late and thus might be missing something. But why would it be "just desserts." Dessert is a sweat food, while desert has a meaning, besides a dry land, of deserving or reward or punishment or a just reward or punishment. So, just deserts follows from the meaning of the word desert. How then is "the logic all on the side of the error." If the error is to use "dessert" instead of "desert" than its quite logical to use desert given the definitions of the two words. See [1], [2], [3], --RossF18 (talk) 16:29, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

RossF18, you are actually, precisely, indubitably, undeniably right. But I still like "just desserts" better! **sluuurrrp** <g> (Sooo sorry--I'll try to do better...) --Paine (talk) 08:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

MST3K

I noted an absence of "References in popular culture" for IA. I think that's especially sad given a very funny satire of him done by Mystery Science Theatre 30000 :) . 169.237.44.111 00:30, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Letters and Postcards

The article said he had an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards (which would average to well over 3 per day every day of his entire life. This number seems an overestimate, and I found a source that says 9,000 (rather than 90,000) - so I changed it to 9,000 and cited the source (some museum). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blackberrylaw (talk • contribs) 00:20, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

90000 seems quite believable to me. There are examples of literary men with even more letters. Well the number is mentioned in the book of letters compiled by his brother. And even I got a postcard. And am very happy to have it.--Liedzeit (talk) 19:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Quote

I have removed the quote attribtued to Asimov from the article. This quote, "It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly" is a widely published misquote of a statement not from Asimov himself, but from the character Wienis, the Prince Regent of Anacreon in the novel Foundation, as found in Part III, The Mayors (ISBN 0553293354, Bantam, 2004, p.149). Please do not keep adding it to the article. —Viriditas | Talk 00:14, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

1956 or 1965

The article includes a picture of Asimov, allegedly from 1965. However, if you look at the corresponding Russian article [4], the same picture is dated 1956. Which is correct? --Oz1cz (talk) 08:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I see it's been changed now. :-) --Oz1cz (talk) 07:55, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Petrovichi, Russia

The article previously said that Asimov was born "in Petrovichi shtetl of Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia)". Early in 2007 someone changed the parenthetical note to read: "(now Mahilyow Province, Republic of Belarus)".

I am fairly sure this is a mistake and I'm going to revert it now.

First, in chapter 1 of In Memory Yet Green, Asimov says that the first time he learned the exact location of the place was when he looked it up in the 1967 Times Atlas, which puts it at "53.58° North Latitude and 32.10° East Longitude". Unfortunately, in British usage what looks like a decimal point can just be a separator. Positions in the Times Atlas are actually given in degrees and minutes separated by a dot. Asimov either chose to use the same, inadvertently misleading, notation or else he misinterpreted the dots he read as being decimal points. The correct interpretation is 53°58' N, 32°10' E.

This is confirmed by Google Maps, which, if you can read Cyrillic letters, covers the area in fine enough scale that you can see that the coordinates (as rounded to the nearest whole minute) are about a half-minute off.

It is also confirmed by text nearby in the chapter, which is based on his father's recollections from the 19th century. At one time in pre-revolutionary days, Jews were allowed to live in White Russia (alias Byelorussia and now Belarus) but not in Russia itself, but a number of were living just across the border in Russia as illegal immigrants. To avoid a crackdown against his Jewish tenants, a landowner took it on himself to move the sign marking the border, putting Petrovichi into White Russia (where it would indeed have been in Magilyov province, now spelled Mahilyow) -- and he got away with it. But after the revolution, Asimov says, the correct border was restored; so Petrovichi was indeed in Russia (RSFSR) when he was born.

In addition, Asimov mentions Khislavich as one of the nearby towns his father used to mention. You will find it in Google Maps, spelled Khislavichi, also in Russia and 20 km north of Petrovichi.

So Petrovichi was certainly in Russia when Asimov was born. But is it now? The passage I just decribed was written in about 1978, and the border could have changed since then.

But I haven't found any evidence that it has.

If someone has an up-to-date official source they can check regarding the border location today, that would be a good idea.

Now, what happens if you misread 53.58° N 32.10° E as being a position in degrees and decimal parts? Then you get a location about 20 km on the other side of the border, that's what-- in fact, it's in Mahilyow Province, Belarus. I think this misreading is the source of the error. Until recently that notation was used in Ed Seiler's Isaac Asimov FAQ page (he's fixed it now) and on Wikipedia's Petrovichi page (I've fixed that). Other people may well have made the same mistake, making this one of those facts where erroneous information is widely reproduced.

Further confusing things are three other facts. (1) For Belarus, Google Maps only shows major features and not villages the size of Petrovichi, so we can't tell from that source whether there actually is a place at 53.58° N 32.10° E (using degrees and decimal parts).

And (2) other Internet sources show that Belarus does have several places named Petrovichi or very similar spellings. The first one I found actually is in Mahilyow Province, but is at the other end of it, 300 km from the Russian border. At least one other is in that province as well.

And (3) the article in the Russian Wikipedia also appears to state that Petrovichi is now in Belarus. Not that I can read more than the occasional word of Russian, but I know the alphabet and the parenthetical notation looks as if it was copied from (or to) the English page. Further, it cites as source a Russian-language web page that also appears to have a similar parenthetical note. You would expect Russian-speakers to have a better idea of the Russian border -- but I can't tell if that page was edited by people who actually knew, or by, say, Russian-speaking Americans.

I feel the evidence of Asimov's book, and the absence of evidence that the border has moved, are sufficient to revert the change in the English-language Wikipedia, just saying "(now Russia)". But if it is wrong here, it's also wrong in the German and the Russian Wikipedia and I don't know how many other languages, and I hope someone will pursue finding them all and fixing them. Conversely, if it's me that's wrong and the border has moved, I hope someone will cite a definitive source and revert my reversion.

--208.76.104.133 01:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)