User talk:Nishidani/Archive 10

Archive 5

←

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

Archive 11

Archive 12

→

Archive 15

On the fraudulence or illiteracy of those who propose an alternative candidature for Shakespeare's works. A note for Wikipedians unfamiliar with the facts.

Each of the following historical notices, which, taken together, according to the core principles of historiography suffice abundantly to confirm, if ever doubted, the traditional attribution of Shakespeare's works to Shakespeare, must be finangled, talked round, cast under suspicion, subject to the hermeneutics of conspiratorial blindsiding, denied or ignored by those who propose the fringe lunatic proposition that someone else, unknown to Shakespeare or his contemporaries, wrote the works contained in the First Folio. Uniquely, Shakespeare's evidentiary record is subject to a radical Pyrrhic scepticism that would deny the face value of the empirical documentary record. The challenge which the various and variegated proponents of the Shakespeare Authorship Question pose is not to Shakespeare's identity, which is secure, but to the fundamental principles of historical analysis, to historical writing itself. Were one to generalize the implicit working methods of these sceptics to the general field of documentary analysis, the discipline of history itself would be erased as an impossible undertaking, except as the quest for latent codes and ingenious signing ciphers, which however would subordinate the aesthetic thrust of great writing to an overriding neurotic tic of toying endlessly with cryptograms, just in case the author feared readers would believe, or disbelieve as the case may be, the evidence of the name on the frontispiece. One seminal reason for the fact that their amateurish fumblings are ignored by mainstream scholarship is that they refuse to recognize (and thereby underwrite their incompetence as reliable commentators) how all history is written. No other writer or historical figure of distinction before modern times could survive the same pseudo-tests that have been devised by those enchanted by the afflatus of alternative candidature to attempt to undermine what the solid facts of the Elizabethan and Jacobean records attest. That the madness of methodless method is attached uniquely to him betrays one of the residual collateral consequences of the old cult of bardolatry, an inquisitive obsession with the identity and life of a poet about whom, as with most early writers and poets, little is known. To leaven out the bare record, therefore, one seizes on a better known contemporary and retrofits his biography to the works universally attributed to the otherwise little-known bard of Stratford, and by this antic ruse one fudges an impression that finally we know more about the author than the skimping austeries of history otherwise permit us to know. The result is farce, as with the Oxfordian candidate Edward de Vere, whose most recent biographer tells us that, among other things, this aristocrat, otherwise known for some stray scraps of limp to middling verse, (which, as thorough computerized testing has proven, shares nothing with Shakespeare's style) was an 'egotist, thug, sodomite, atheist, vulture, traitor, murderer, rapist, pederast, adulterer, libeler, fop, playboy, truant, tax evader, drunkard, snob, spendthrift, deadbeat, cheat, blackmailer, malcontent, hypocrite, conspirator, and ingrate,' all undoubtedly indispensable traits required to write the world otherwise written by the industrious middle-class gentleman, Shakespeare of Stratford, whom all of his contemporaries spoke of as endowed with an amiably sweet temper, natural wit and with a gift for rapid, fluent, mellifluous composition. Attachment to these theories belongs to the type of hysterical popular delusion surveyed by Charles Mackay in his path-finding essay Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds(1841), which by chance happened, with premonitory intelligence, to have been published just 4 years before Delia Bacon started off the hare of the first hypothesis of alternative authorship.

Witnesses to Shakespeare:

‘intelligent and knowledgeable bibliophiles contemporary with both the historical William Shakespeare and the historical 17th earl of Oxford (as well as the historical Christopher Marlowe and the historical Sir Francis Bacon), consistently attributed the canonical Shakespeare plays and poems to William Shakespeare, never to Oxford (or Marlowe or Bacon), even in the privacy of their personal libraries and notebooks.’

Group A.

• (1) Gabriel Harvey(1550? - 1631) in his copy of Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer's Works, penned the following note (dated usually 1598- 1601)

(a)’The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus, & Adonis: but his Lucrece, & his tragedie of Hamlet', Prince of Denmarke, haue it in them, to please the wiser sort. ...

Harvey also refers to Shakespeare in a second note which runs:-

"Sir Edward Dier ... His Amaryllis, & Sir Walter Raleighs Cynthia," followed by Spenser, Constable, France, Watson, Daniel, Warner, Chapman, Silvester, Shakespeare, & the rest of owr florishing metricians.'

• (2) Sir George Buc’s (1560-1622) hand seems to be responsible for the following entry on the title page of a surviving copy of the anonymous Ist quarto of Henry V (1600)

(a)’much ye same w{i}th y{a}t in Shakespeare.’

Alan Nelson comments:

Possibly it is indeed Buc's, and comparison is being made with Henry IV Part 2 (1600), which Henry V much resembles, particularly in its title-page, except that Henry IV Part 2 carries an attribution to William Shakespeare.

(b) In Buc’s personal copy of George a Greene (1599) we read an annotation dated sometime between 1599 and 1605, where the future Master of the Revels shows he inquired of two men of the theatre about the identity of the author, writing on the title page:

Written by ... a minister, who acted

the piners part in it himself. Teste W. Shakespeare (as W.Shakespeare has born witness (to me))

Ed. Juby saith that this play was made by Ro. Greene

In Alan Nelson’s words, the annotation proves that Buc consulted William Shakespeare, together with Edward Juby (of the Admiral’s Men) as reliable witnesses concerning theatrical events dating back to the Christmas season of 1593-94

• (3) John Harington(?1561-1612), the Queen’s nephew and godson, in two lists of quarto plays in his possession in 1609 refers to

K. Leir of Shakspear.

King Leyr. W. Sh.

distinguishing it from the anonymous King Leire (1605), which he called "King Leire.: old." Furthermore, Nelson argues, that:’ Sir John Harington, in the privacy of his personal notebook (the Arundel-Harington manuscript), had no hesitation in naming Oxford as an author - but only of such poems as have been ascribed to him by Professor Steven May.’

• (4) Edward Alleyn, (1566-1626), Shakespeare’s fellow action, wrote in a list of books his own, that he possessed, ‘a book shaksper sonnetts 5d’

• (5) Humphrey Dyson(d. 1633), a notary with pervasive connections to people in the theatrical world of his day, was a book collector, and in his catalogue 6 quartos are listed, one being "Troilus and Cressida" whose title-page, after ‘Written by William Shakespeare’ he annotated in the following way

& printed amongest his workes.

Meaning he considered both Troilus and Cressida and the Folio to be Shakespeare’s works.

• (6) William Drummond (alias Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649) makes three entries regarding his collection and reading of Shakespeare’s works:

(a) regarding his London reading of Shakespeare’s plays in 1606 he registers that

'His recorded reading of Shakespeare is confined to 1606 (consisting in) Romeo and Iulieta Tragedie; loues labors lost comedie; the passionat pilgrime; The rape of lucrece, A midsommers nights Dreame comedie.’

(b) Drummond compiled a list of the books in his library, attributing both

"Venus & Adon." and "the rap of Lucrece" to Schaksp in 1611

(c) Books from his library preservd at Edinburgh University include two Shakespeare quartos: Love's Labors Lost (1598) and Romeo and Juliet (1599) , the latter of which, since the title page is anonymous, is annotated by Drummond as Shakespeare’s work.

Wil. Sha.

• (7) Robert Burton(1577-1640), who aside from being the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, was an Oxford academic playwright, owned Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece (1600) and Venus and Adonis (1602), the latter of which, on the title-page, carries an ascription in a contemporary hand: "by Wil. Shakespeare."

• (8) John Rous (1574-1652), in a note on books given to the Library by Robert Burton in his Last Will and testament" contains the following two confirmatory annotations

Venus and Adonis by Wm Shakespear Lond. 1602

The rape of Lucrece by Wm Shakespear Imp{er}fet.’

As Alan Nelson comments, ‘Rous's entries testify to his acceptance of the received attribution of these separately-published poems’

Group B. Fellow writers, historians and poets, contemporary to him, who mention Shakespeare.

• (9) Robert Greene, 1592, or as 'posthumously ventriloquised' by Chettle (Katherine Duncan-Jones: see 10), alludes to Shakespeare, 'Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is, in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey.'
• (10) Henry Chettle, 1592, in the epistle, 'To those Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance', appears to use Greene (above 9) to attack Shakespeare. Very quickly then, Chettle apologized for his remarks, in a second text.
• (11) [[Richard Field|Richard Field (1561-1624), Shakespeare's fellow Stratfordian, now London printer, to whom he sold the rights of Venus and Adonis in 1593. It is to Barnfield that we owe the innovative spelling William Shakeʃpeare, for his fellow-Stratfordian's monicker, Richard Stonley (1621-, Teller of the Exchequer under Queen Elizabeth who purchased a copy that year on June 12, entered the author's name in his diary as Shakspere. Unlike modern sceptics, this clerkish Shakespeare contemporary could see no existential difference between Shakeʃpeare and Shakspere.
• (12)Richard Barnfield (1574-1620), a poet and Oxford graduate in the 1598 appendix of Poems in divers Humors to his The Encomium of Lady Pecunia (printeed by G.S. for John Jaggard) is to be found the earliest praise of Shakespeare.

And Shakespeare thou, whose hony-flowing Vaine,

(Pleasing the World) thy praises doth obtaine.

Whose Venus and whose Lucrece (sweete, and chaste)

Thy name in fames immortall Booke haue plac't.

Live euer you, at least in Fame liue euer:

Well may the Bodye dye, but Fame dies neuer.

The last two lines, with the repeated Live euer probably account for the otherwise enigmatic dedication to Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609). Certain poems by Barnfield in the 1598 volume were attributed to Shakespeare in the 1599 edition of The Passionate Pilgrim by William Jaggard.</ref>

• (13) The poet Thomas Edwards, in (1593?) 1595 alludes top Shakespeare in referring to Adon.
• (14) William Covell, 1595
• (15) the author of Willobie his Avisa,1594
• (16) Francis Meres (1665-1647), distinguished between Shakespeare and the Earl of Oxford in 1598 in his Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury. Being the Second party of Wits Commonwealth.<Park Honan, ibid.pp.263</ref>
• (17) John Weever, 1599
• (18) the Cambridge author(s) of the Parnassus plays,1599,1601, in the third (The Second Part of the Return from Parnassus), Shakespeare's fellow actor William Kempe is made to say (a):

'Few of the university [men] pen plays well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, aye and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.'

and (b)

'Let this duncified world esteem of Spencer and Chaucer . .I'll worship sweet Mr.Shakspeare, and to honour him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillow,'

• (19) Robert Chester's Loves Martyr (1601) appears, along with some other, short, poems by several theatrical poets, such as Ben Jonson, George Chapman and John Marston. Among these there is one signed by 'William Shakespeare.' The untitled poem is known known as The Phoenix and the Turtle. The volume was printed by Shakespeare's fellow Stratfordian, Richard Field.
• (20)John Manningham, a student at the Middle Temple, and a 'a friend of William Shakespeare's friend and "cousin" Thomas Greene, who was then finishing up his studies at the Middle Temple and would move to Stratford the following year,' wrote down in his diary in March 1602, either having heard it from his room-matye Edward Curle, or from the Inner Temple gossip, William Towse, the anecdote on howthe anecdote on how Shakespeare intercepted Richard Burbage's assignation with a lady, so that William the Conqueror preceded Richard 111, the role Burbage was acting.
• (10) Henry Chettle, who had criticized and apologized for doing so, Shakespeare in 1592 published his England's Mourning Garment in 1603 once more critical of Shakespeare for failing to mourn the Queen's death in verse.
• (21) Anthony Scoloker, in the Epistle to the Reader of his Daiphantus, or the Passions of Loue, 1604, writes that 'It should be . .like Friendly Shakespeare's tragedies . . it should please all, like Prince Hamlet'.'
• (22)John Poulett in a letter to his uncle Sir Francis Vincent from Paris, October 10, 1605, wrote:

'The danger in these sports makes them seem good, men seeme in them as actors in a Tragedye, and my thinkes I could play Shackesbeare in relating."

• (23) William Camden, the leading historian of his day, 1605, refers to Shakespeare as one of the most 'pregnant wits' of his day.
• (24) John Davies the poet in his The Scourge of Folly, called Shakespeare “our English Terence, . . making Shakespeare out to be a playwright, in 1610.
• (25)An expanded version of The Passionate Pilgrim, with Shakespeare’s name on the title-page, was published in 1612. However it contained pirated poems by Thomas Heywood , who quickly protested in his Apology for Actors (1612). There he said he was not worthy of such patronage, and that the author was offended by the attribution. Shakespeare’s name was the removed from unsold copies. Since the name on the title page is 'Shakespere', even though Heywood doesn't explicitly name himit is implied that the offended author was Shakespeare and that he was very much alive at the time..
• (26) John Webster in his The White Devil, mentions ‘the right happy and copious industry of Master Shake-speare in 1612.
• (27) Leonard Digges, raised 'in a village on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1590s'[30]refers familiarly to Will Shakespeare as England’s Lope de Vega, in sonnet-writing,1613.
• (28)Thomas Freeman wrote an 'epigram' in praise of Shakespeare, 1614.
• (29) Francis Beaumont in a letter to Ben Jonson, 1615 ca.
• (30) Edmund Howes (fl. 1602–1631) in an amended edition of John Stow (ca.1525-1605's Annales (1580), in 1615, published a list of 'Our moderne, and present excellent Poets', where poets are listed 'according to their priorities as neere I could,' Shakespeare figures 13th among the 27 listed "M. Willi. Shakespeare gentleman." Priorities here means 'social rank'.
• (31) William Basse, poem on Shakespeare 1616-1623
• (32) John Taylor, mentions Shakespeare who ‘did in art excell’, in his The Praise of Hemp-seed, 1620
• (33) Ben Jonson (a)gossiped about him to William Drummond in 1619, (b)wrote a long eulogy of him as the 'Soul of the Age' and 'Swan of Avon', 1623, and (c)mentions him as someone he loved and honoured ‘this side Idolatry’ in his posthumous notes 1641
• (34) Hugh Holland wrote a laudatory poem in the First Folio,1623
• (27) Leonard Digges, stepson of Shakespeare’s Stratford friend Thomas Russell, and a poet, scholar and translator wrote a poem in his honour for the First Folio 1623, and (b) mentions him in a text of 1640.
• (35) James Mabbe, poet and scholar wrote a poem to his memory in the First Folio 1623
• (36) Michael Drayton, Shakespeare’s fellow poet and native of Warwickshire, mentions Shakespeare in his elegy to Henery Reynolds,1627
• (37)An anonymous hand wrote the following verses in the 1620s into a copy of the First Folio, and also transcribed there verses from the Stratford monument, meaning he visited and checked them.

Here Shakespeare lies whom none but Death could Shake,

And here shall lie till judgement all awake,

When the last trumpet doth unclose his eyes,

The wittiest poet in the world shall rise.

• (38) John Milton wrote a sonnet on the 'admirable dramatick poet W.Shakespeare', 1630
• (39) In the The Banquet of Jests, in 1630, a work attributed by some to Archibald Armstrong there is a jest (Jest no. 259) entitled Stratford upon Avon which runs: "One travelling through Stratford upon Avon, a Towne most remarkeable for the birth of famous William Shakespeare, and walking in the Church to doe his devotion, espyed a thing there worthy observation ...."
• (40) (a)A Lieutenant Hammond on tour from Norwich, in his diary 1634 made the following entry after a visit to "Stratford Towne":

‘In that dayes trauell we came by Stratford vpon Auon, where in the Church in that Towne there are some Monuments ... Those worth obseruing and which wee tooke notice of were these...A neat Monument of that famous English Poet, Mr. William Shakespeere; who was borne heere.’

• (41) Thomas Heywood, the most prolific dramatist, in his Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, 1635 mentions Shakespeare
• (33) Ben Jonson in his Timber or Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter, ('1641 but written before August 1637) wrote of Shakespeare's defects.
• (42) William D’Avenant’s ode entitled "In Remembrance of Master William Shakespeare," appeared in 1638 in his Madagascar.

• (38) John Milton, in his L'Allegro (1632-1638) writes of: 'Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child.'
• (43) James Mervyn writes of 'Beaumont, Fletcher, Shakespeare, and a train of glorious poets'
• (44) Thomas Bancroft’s two poems mention Shakespeare, 1639
• (45)Benson's re-edition of the Poems, in 1640 contains an anonymous "An Elegie on the death of that famous Writer and Actor, M. William Shakespeare."
• (46))Benson's 1640 edition also contains a poem by John Warren on 'lofty Shakespeare'
• (27)Benson's edition also contains a longer poem on Shakespeare by Leonard Digges,'"Upon Master William Shakespeare, the Deceased Authour, and his Poems", dated to between 1630 and 1634.
• (47)Richard Hunt, a Stratford district vicar who identified the Stratford man with the great London actor William Shakespeare.
• (48)Sir John Suckling,(1609-1642) in his posthumous Fragmenta Aurea (1646) completed some lines of a draft he found of Lucrece, perhaps coming into his hands from his friend William Davenant, 1606-1668, Shakespeare's godson, completed them, and attributed them to Shakespeare, as is clear from the title 'A Supplement of an imperfect Copy of Verses of Mr.Wil.Shakespeare'
• (49) Sir Richard Baker in his Chronicle of the Kings of England, in 1643 under ‘“The Raign of Queen Elizabeth,” refers to Shakespeare in a concluding of “Men of note in her time”,
• (50)John Hales,(1584 - 1656) before 1656 is reported by John Dryden to have said,'that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better treated of in Shakespeare'

Group C. Fellow actors

• (4) Edward Alleyn, (1566-1626), Shakespeare’s fellow action, wrote in a list of books his own, that he possessed, ‘a book shaksper sonnetts 5d’
• (51) Henry Condell (1576?-1627)
• (52) John Heminges (1556-1630)
• (53) Augustine Phillips in his will, executed 5 May 1605, bequeathed, "to my Fellowe William Shakespeare a thirty shillings peece in gould,' as well as similar sums to other actors in the King's Men.

Group D. Fellow Stratfordians who knew him in London

• (11) Richard Field, London printer and Shakespeare's fellow Stratfordian. Shakespeare makes a patent allusion to him in Cymbeline, Act IV.Sc.2,l.375, in the name Richard du Champ.
• (54) Middle Temple attorney and Shakespeare's 'cousin',Thomas Greene, Shakespeare's Stratford houseguest for at least a year, wrote in his diary of having visited Shakespeare and his son-in-law John Hall (himself a Queens' College, Cambridge graduate in medicine), after the latter two had riddene down to the city, a day after himself, on 16th of Nov.1614. Stratford Shakespeare, against, is the London Shakespeare, and did not retire to the idiocy of rural life permanently, but kept travelling there.

Group E. Noblemen.('Licensed players who enjoyed royal or noble patronage were categorised as high-ranking household servants'

• (55) Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton was addressed by Shakespeare in two prefatory letters in the dedications appended to his two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece to 1593,1594. In the second volume, Lucrece, Shakespeare writes of 'the warrant of your honourable disposition' which has been interpreted as suggesting payment.
• (56)Queen Elizabeth 1 'rewarded' Shakespeare, along with his fellow actors, all servants of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, with a payment of £13.6s.8p and £6.13s.4d from the Exchequer from the Royal Chamber Accounts for performing before her in 1594,, at Greenwich Palace on the 26th and 28 Dec. of that year, payment being made on March 15, 1595..
• (58)Francis Manners, the 6th. Earl of Rutland, and a former friend of Southampton's, hired Shakespeare to devise for the royal tournament at Belvoir an impresa (emblem with motto), along with Richard Burbage to paint it, in 1613. Shakespeare would not have been engaged to write the motto unless his abilities as a creative writer were acknowledged by such men of the nobility.
• (59/60)William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and his brother Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke were hailed as patrons in the preface to the First Folio (1623). In the preface to the 1647 folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's works, reference is made to the Pembroke brothers as 'patrons to the flowing compositions of the then expired sweet swan of Avon, Shakespeare'.

sandbox refs

Is there a particular reason you are combining multiple references into one on that page? nableezy - 20:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd prefer the format you suggested, and indeed am in your debt for creating it. It makes a neat distinction aesthetically between source and commentary that appeals to me, but it doubles up footnoting. This last point is problematical because we are under constraints to keep the article within reasonable limits. The text is relatively short, the templates have leavened it out to 120k, the division of end and footnotes adds to the appearance of padding and finally, I thought it the proper move to prepare before my co-editor, Tom Reedy, who apparently would like the notes to follow the source citation, starts his review (in the Elizabethan sense of that word). His argument is, I imagine, that those who eventually will examine this version, and compare it to the other, will appreciate the sources quoted in extenso directly in the footnote they click onto, rather than having to double click to see the source in the footnote, and then the content of that source in the endnote.

Of course I did this in deference to the other editor's needs to have an integrated text before him, and ease the process of editorial review. When we have both completed a final revision, this important distinction can be reconsidered for re-inclusion. Thanks however for the templates, which are on the record if it is decided to split the text into footnotes and endnotes (technically of course, endnotes should contain only material that elaborates on what is unclear in the text, whereas footnotes should just provide the material backing the text as it is.) I'm glad you're keeping those lynx-eyes out on our activities. We need'em.Nishidani (talk) 09:38, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Im talking about you having some refs that look like <ref>{{harvnb|blah|1990|p=12}}:{{harvn|bblah2|2000|p=210}}</ref> instead of <ref>{{harvnb|blah|1990|p=12}}</ref><ref>{{harvn|bblah2|2000|p=210}}</ref> There a particular reason for that? nableezy - 16:31, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

There was a pretext for that, and pretexts are not good reasons. Basically. I put refs saying more or less the same thing in the same line space, to ratchet down the escalating ref ladder at page bottom. A fucking dopey lurk I admit to create a false impression that we're thinking light rather than weighed down by referential ballast. It's a hang over from the academic pleistocene or plasticene, i.e. mean them days back in the 60s when one page bottom reference gave several sources in succession. I'll see what Tom reedy does, but it should be raised at the end of his review. I imagine he'll go to this in Johnny Weissmuller fashion, with machete hacking away at the huggermugger jungle of bloats and quotes and notes. Nishidani (talk) 17:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Nothing wrong, old boy, with combining refs like that - I hate seeing a long string of ref superscripts, which apart from its ugliness, screams out that someone is trying to justify a highly dubious point. There is good precedent on Wikipedia for doing this - just take a look at some of the articles Avi specializes in, and you'll see plenty of examples of refs being consolidated. --NSH001 (talk) 21:23, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

P.S. now back from my silent protest at outrageous lying. (It would be just too much of a dereliction of duty to neglect Chrissie, who as well as a few more world titles, is, I'm sure, eventually going to get her own Featured Article on Wikipedia's front page.) --NSH001 (talk) 21:23, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Well if Avi does it, that relieves me somewhat since it furnishes a good precedent. But, in my book, Nab is the master of the aesthetic template. Look at that wonderful way he pulled the Franz Baermann Steiner into exquisite formal shape, with endnotes and footnotes neatly separated, from the rudis et indigestaque moles I lumbered it up as. It works wonders for short pages: perhaps the longer article requires a different format. But personally I like the blue-runged ladder effect - it reminds me of Wittgenstein's advice.

Yep. It's depressing. One looks forward to the World Athletic championship kermesse coming up with rather less anticipative brio, when one is reminded of what is going on, unreported or spun to giddy mendacity, in that nook of disgrace we all worry about. I only hope Erdogan has the sense to break the gulag's grip by a personal visit. Nishidani (talk) 07:35, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Ebionites

You had previously contributed to discussion regarding this subject. There is currently a concern, primarily on my part, whether this article takes a stand which seems to indicate that the name was used to refer to a single, specific group, which I believe the evidence of sources does not support. You appear to be rather knowledgable in the field, and I believe any input you might have on the article talk page could be very valuable. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 19:21, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh dear, other Price-war (Diana Price wrote an absurd book on the only subject I feel obliged to finish off before retiring)!

At a glance, the article needs to be edited by someone who understands English. I'll keep an eye on it, John. In brief though, I agree that, given the thin, circumstantial evidence, the idea that the Ebionim were a single discrete sect strikes me as necessarily hypothetical. As in the earlier discussion some years ago, I think the problem is with pop-professors drum-beating a personal fantasy which, as in the Shakespeare Authorship Question, has no ground in evidence, but a huge ballast of argument in conjecture. It is always tedious having to deal with editors who cannot distinguish wishful thinking from the austerities of scholarship.Nishidani (talk) 19:58, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Understood. In this case, I think there is a very strong possibility of bias toward neo-Ebionitism, which, not having won itself a separate article, has had its proponents try to add the perspectives of same to this article. But thanks for the added attention. John Carter (talk) 20:05, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Wiki quote of the day

'At a young age, Dobson's family moved from North Carolina to Germany; his father had spent the latter part of World War II in a POW camp and had grown adjusted to German hospitality.' Michael Dobson Nishidani (talk) 16:44, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

List of pages created by deVereans or where they are active in promoting their fringe beliefs

Assistance would be appreciated in helping me keep track of the metastases.

• Shakespeare authorship doubters
• Shakespeare Fellowship
• De Vere Society
• Derek Jacobi
• The Ashbourne portrait
• Anonymous (film)
• Roland Emmerich
• Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship
• Chronology of Shakespeare's plays – Oxfordian
• Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
• List of Oxfordian theory supporters
• Shakespeare authorship question
• Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft
• Talk:Shakspeare authorship question/sandbox 3

Ashbourne

I didn't upload the original image, so the original uploader created the title. I assume he/she copied the image from the Oxfordian 'shakespeare fellowship' website. I changed the image to the cleaned version, a process that retains the original image-file name. There's really no doubt that it's Hamersley. But Oxfordian editor Softlavender kept trying to add the wholly discredited claims of Bissel. There is an article written by an amateur in the Oxfordian newsletter Shakespeare Matters. Softlavender used it as a source. It attempts to prove that the painting must date from before 1612. To my horror, when I raised the matter on reliable sources noticeboard this newsletter [1] was deemed reliable, mainly because of the usual smokescreen created by Smatprt, who asserted that various notable scholars are on the editorial board. The author knows nothing about the history of art. At that point I gave up in disgust. Paul B (talk) 21:54, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I think if you want to change the image title you have to re-upoad it under the new title. Paul B (talk) 22:00, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we can ask for Sir Les Patterson to be brought in to adjudicate. Paul B (talk) 22:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I asked Les and, pissed as a Pantagruelian fart as he was, he said he was always happy as as pig in excrement to assist the Yartz, and slurped an email my way saying that the Folger page image on their US page is in the public domain, according to what one can deduce from the details here.

This image is in the public domain because under United States copyright law, originality of expression is necessary for copyright protection, and a mere photograph of an out-of-copyright two-dimensional work may not be protected under American copyright law.

So I'll cast around, fishing eventually in Cairene waters outside Saul Bellow's town for technical assistance to get it re-uploaded according to the neutral Folger description (The Ashbourne portrait of Shakespeare/Sir Hugh Hamersley:1612) when I get round to sorting this out. Thanks in the meantime.Nishidani (talk) 13:04, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad Sir Les was so helpful. I'll slip him a case of four-X and one of the fag-butts that fall regularly from Jackson Pollock's paintings. Jackson's mastery of the long slow dribble was rivalled only by the power of his fag-butt flip, which produced those necessary moments of repose in his works: subtle muted tones amid the vivid slashes of pigment.

However, despite my gratitude to Sir Les, I take the view that the title of the file doesn't matter much. Even File:OXFORDWASSHAKESPEAREREALLYIMNOTKIDDING.jpg would not distress me too much. After all its not normally visible to the reader. Paul B (talk) 13:52, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I gave the antipodean lair a tingle on the blower to convey that, and all I caught was an emphysemic wheeze and something that sounded like Yabby Warberk before the line cut. It took me donkey's ages to figure out that must be how they pronounce downunder (or is that, downchunder?) the name of the bloke who stored all them books in that library in Woe-burn Square, the chap who always harped on about Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail, as Carlo Ginsburg reminds us in his study of Giovanni Morelli, reading which got Umberto Eco to write Il Nome della Rosa and which in turn means that I take it you are alluding to the suggestion to return to the beginning (as T.S. Eliot told us in Little Gidding), namely le point de dépardew, which is Shakespeare, i.e., 'a rose, or a jpg, by any other name would smell as sweet'. Which, deconstructed, means I suppose, that the subtext is 'let sleeping dawgs lie' through their teeth and not unleash, by the skittish provocations of truth-sleuthing, the hounds of wikiwarring.

So be it. Back to the vegie patch, with Voltaire, mumbling those lines about 'dahlias sleeping in the empty silence'. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 15:04, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

(I think by the way, that the offer of 4-x might get up Sir Les's conker. His taste in suds use to run strictly to Fosters, as you can see here which, as he once burped, was the only Lager that keep a self-respecting Aussie POW anchored on enemy turf.Nishidani (talk) 15:18, 21 June 2010 (UTC) )

Shame on us all

Strange that should have been your sentence I altered. I arrived that the page by way of the P.N. Oak article, which is on my watchlist. IPs regularly pop up to promote the fantasies of the utterly shameless Oak. I noticed that the most recent 'contributor' had also altered the Wendy Doniger article, so I had a look at it.

While I appreciate that shame cultures do differ significantly, I think the phrase "Hindu shame" may be confusing, especially when used in the phrase "Hinduism was being demonized to create Hindu shame amongst Indian youth". This might be read to imply that "Hindu shame" was also created in non-Hindu Indians. If we can meaningfully use the concept of "shame" for both Hindus and non-Hindus, then I'd suggest that it is unnecessary to speak of specifically "Hindu shame". We might find soon find ourselves writing of "French shame". Paul B (talk) 16:43, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Antisemitism in the New Testament

Hi Nishidani,

As I've mentioned before, I'd very much appreciate it if you wouldn't follow me to articles to oppose my edits there. I'm sure you understand. Thanks! Jayjg ^(talk) 16:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't follow you to articles, and if you repeat this ridiculous furphy again, I'll get really pissed off. I have a 4 decades long scholarly interest in the origins of Christianity and in Judaism, as anyone can see from the Ebonism page work I did, and know the literature well. You just don't figure on my radar of interest. I have had that bookmarked for I don't know how long, have often been tempted to actually write the page because it is just a piece of polemical trash trashing another religion, but haven't the time. You know almost nothing of the subject, I gather, otherwise you would actually pull that page out of the slough of meretricious polemical and fatuous despond in which it languishes.

If you do want to rid the page of its absurd caricatures of Judeo-Christianity, then lay off the internet and googling and read the following books:-

• (1) Douglas R. A. Hare The Theme of Jewish Persecution of Christians in the Gospel According to St Matthew, Cambridge University Press, (1967) 2005
• (2) Marvin R. Wilson Our father Abraham: Jewish roots of the Christian faith, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1989
• (3) Miriam S. Taylor Anti-Judaism and early Christian identity: a critique of the scholarly consensus, BRILL 1995
• (4) Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: a Christian defense of Jews and Judaism, Doubleday, 2008
• (5)Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, Uni of Chicago Press 1994,

instead of just sitting on articles that cry shame on whoever wrote them or monitors them without touching the cancerous disinformation they are seeded with. Take your complaint elsewhere, and stop annoying this page.Nishidani (talk) 17:20, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

It does at least appear odd, though, that you've never edited the article at all, until I'd made my recent edits. It's the kind of thing that even someone assuming the best of faith would have trouble explaining, given our history. If you regularly followed me to articles to support me, or even to sometimes support and sometimes oppose, then I suppose I wouldn't feel quite so harassed by it; but our history has been one of your almost exclusively opposing me whenever you interact with me. Also, your comment on the Talk: page of the article, "Well here we go again, wikilawyering to a purpose, i.e. to keep the prejudices of the page intact.", is a comment about contributors, not content, and thus violates policy. If you really wanted to show good faith, would it not make sense for you to remove or strike that? Cheers! Jayjg ^(talk) 17:53, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

You love policy, I love content that reflects quality, I don't need to show good faith, I don't practice psychoanalysis professionally, as opposed to informally, and therefore I will politely overlook your confession that you feel harassed by the fact we have crossed paths twice in a year, and ignore the regal implications of your admitting that you think there is something improper in another editor 'opposing you' and, fourthly, civil editing is as much about being neutral to the topic, as it is about being courteous to one's peers. You have a long history of using the rules to maintain badly sourced smear material on pages, such as this and Shahak. So in turn I suggest you grow up, and remove your original remarks from this page. The effect of your original innuendo is that, whereas you may edit any page dealing with Christianity and Judaism, I mustn't, because you happen to be there. A patent absurdity, apart from the sense of exclusive privilege it breathes.Nishidani (talk) 18:19, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

::::Nishidani, I think it would be helpful if you would review the straw man article. I have neither "confessed" that I "feel harassed by the fact we have crossed paths twice in a year", nor did I "admit" that I "think there is something improper in another editor 'opposing you'". Please review my previous comments for their actual meaning; it's both unfair and rather rude to deliberately misrepresent what I've written. The issue here is not that an editor opposes me on any particular matter, but that specific editors only oppose me, and show up at pages they've never edited before, just after I've edited them, for that express purpose. These are quite different, and it's pretty disingenuous to pretend otherwise. There are 3 million pages on Wikipedia; please don't regularly edit ones that I've just edited a few minutes earlier, and that you've never edited before, solely for the purpose of opposing me. In addition, Wikipedia has content rules for a reason; more specifically, to restrain editors from using Wikipedia to promote their personal POV. It would be better for Wikipedia if you respected and abided by those rules, rather than insisting that they are only there for the purpose of "Wikilawyering". Original research really isn't allowed, even if you insist it's in a good cause. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:24, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I've just penciled out your remarks, for the simple reason that you repeat, as you have over the years, silly charges based on baseless suspicions. I regard the explicit accusations that I am soapboxing, promoting my POV on wiki, and engaging (most laughable of all) in violations of WP:NOR, as what the thin-skinned in here call 'personal attacks', esp. since all I did was provide a needed source for a statement on a page you have edited for the last 6 months, but have never challenged, never even put in a marker, though the sentence has been there for a year. What's your problem, son. Do you dislike the fact that I provide scholarly references for pages that lack them?

'Promoting my POV on wiki'. Sure. Great laugh, wry thoughts of the pot calling the kettle black etc. In any case, the Argentinian-Mexico game has just finished and I must follow the analysis of the game here. I'll revert your wikilawyering abuse of the page tomorrow. In the meantime, could you study the subject? What you call 'Original Search' is a commonplace of Biblical criticism. It's like asking for a source for the statement 'A is followed by B' in the alphabet.'Nishidani (talk) 20:48, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Anti-Semitism in the New Testament

Wow. That conversation is worthy of the Twilight Zone. — goethean ॐ 13:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

And you wuz thinken them hindutva ethnonationalists were some tuff cookies! In these areas, the wiki machinery breaks down completely. Lobbies, muscle and pettifogging win the day by a war of attrition, till one gasps hopeless in one's death throes, with your namesake 'Mehr Licht!", only to get Hobbes' black light'. Unfortunately, That article is there purely as a screed for taking cheap pot shots. Don't waste your time even reading any more. A decision has been made, and it will be enforced. I really don't give a fuck either way, since I don't unlike many editors rely on wikipedia as my sauce of information. Gott gibt die Nüsse, aber er knackt sie nicht auf. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Question for administrator

{{adminhelp}} So far I can get no technical clarification about what seems to be to be a new interpretation being applied to WP:NOR.

The subject type is where two themes are dealt with Antisemitism in the New Testament (A (Antisemitism)+B (the New Testament)

I have summed up that interpretation in propositional form.

A+B articles must have every edit sourced to A+B RS, and every edit of the type A must be taken from a page in the vicinity of one also mentioning B, or vice-versa.

The discussion is taking place on the WP:NOR page here, recapitulating an earlier conflict on a related issue here and here. Everything has been discussed there but this. Informed input on this specific interpretation would be appreciated. Nishidani (talk) 08:02, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Interesting idea (and seems to make sense to me). However, I think you may get better response to placing an {{rfctag|policy}} tag on the NOR noticeboard page where you are discussing it. I would suggest you add a section break to the current discussion and clearly state your proposed policy change and add the rfc tag. After all, you don't just want admin help - you want to establish consensus. Admin shouldn't have any stronger voice in establishing consensus than any other user, and admin certainly shouldn't be the only ones involved. I'll leave your adminhelp template active here so you get at least another pair of eyes in case I am missing something.  7  08:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I see that the Request for Comment has begun, so I'll cancel out the {{adminhelp}} - I agree with 7 that RFC is a good way to proceed with this discussion. And please do note that We need outside input from neutral admins is not correct; you need input from any and all Wikipedians; admins have no special authority in forming a consensus. Chzz  ►  12:26, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I am talking about present policy, where consensus already exists. I ask for informed administrative input for a simple reason. Administrators know policy, and this is not about forming a new policy by consensus, but simply of clarifying what policy is. But thanks.Nishidani (talk) 12:35, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

The case was closed as ‘Resolved’ by Professor marginalia.

The case wasn’t resolved, since the question, as formulated here has yet to be answered.

So my technical request is, where does one go from here? A new WP:NOR policy has been developed, in my view, and serious administrative oversight should review that policy.Nishidani (talk) 21:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Re. Thanks

Hiya.

In reply to your kind message of thanks; please remember that there is no deadline. I see that discussions are ongoing, and I advise keeping calm. Tea helps.

It's clear that this is not resolved, but eventually it will be. Administrators, however, cannot magically solve it; the only answer in the long-term comes from discussion, and reaching consensus. If the 'request for comment' does not resolve things, there are other options, such as the mediation cabal - but please do allow a reasonable time (at the very least, a week) for the RfC to attract further comments.

After all, it's only a wiki; it's not a matter of life and death :-)

I hope you were supporting Holland?

Best of luck with it all,  Chzz  ►  01:53, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of source in Ebionites

Please see Talk:Ebionites#Misrepresentation of Tabor regarding the use of Tabor's book in that article, and offer whatever opinions you would like. Of course, I would also more than welcome your actually checking the book itself to verify that my assertions are accurate. John Carter (talk) 19:05, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Etymological fun....

Working on Betelgeuse...the etymology is quite fun. Any comments or input would be just fine :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:30, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

thanks

And are you done with Elkana? The interesting bits await, though I did not want to add anything that may make it off-limits prior to you finishing any work on it. nableezy - 18:36, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Pointless really, though I'd hardly really begun on it. After the recent travesty of interpretation of WP:NOR regarding Antisemitism in the New Testament, which passed unnoticed, it means technically that anything I, or anyone else a group of editors thinks unwelcome on this encyclopedia, edits in can potentially be challenged as a violation of the new WP:SYNTH protocol established there. Increasingly, mustering the numbers is trouncing serious content editing, and there seems to be no way this can be reversed. Sorry. I will limit myself to janitorial work, reverting what I consider to be vexatious, on one or two pages. On yours too, if you don't mind, since it is one of the few pages I still read, since it seems to attract an extraordinary number of similar minds intent of querying your presence here. By all means revert me if my judgement errs. Nishidani (talk) 19:23, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I figure if most of those people dont want me banned I aint doing what I should be. It has long been a rule of mine not to revert you, so no worries there. nableezy - 19:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

July 2010

You have not been blocked from editing for being civil at User talk:Nableezy. Once the non-block has expired, you are welcome to make constructive contributions. Don't bother appealing the block, because it's a joke. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 16:45, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

This ranks as the nicest thing that's happened on this page for a long time, perhaps since its inception. I hope Nableezy is not watching, or he'll forumshop me to another less rahmanic admin for using the word 'nice'! Nishidani (talk) 17:03, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

That should be "an admin with less rahma". nableezy - 17:11, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Rahmah
Good grief, lad! What d’ya mean by ‘rahma’?
Correct my adjectival neologism by all means sir.
But your suggestion adds to this wiki-drama:
For, not transcribing that final-h, you err.

For Rahma only makes your reader think
Along the lines a heretic would ponder
It rhymes with Brahma, (just follow this wiki link),
And makes the Arabic start to wander

Further east, by Marvell ’s Ganges, where
ramā-āśrayaḥ to the native ear
Means ‘Personality of Godhead’ in prayer.
I’m sure this ain’t what you yourself would hear.

Or perhaps, again, it’s just I who err. East and West,
Faiths differ, but the faithful, everywhere,are blessed.

Felafel

I did feel there was something peculiar about it as you may have seen from my first talk page edit. And my mouton and mutton chops analogy did indicate that I thought the whole thing was overcooked. I'll have a think about what if anything I want to do. At least ther aren't also the Turkish v Greek edit wars along too as happens at hummus.--Peter cohen (talk) 12:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Hebron

I don't know why the sea is boiling hot, but Hebron has a new footnote. Thank you.

Also, please try not to dance so close to the edge of your topic ban. Thanks. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 14:27, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I was referring to your request. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 14:34, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know whether the ancient history of some of the most contentious real estate in the world falls under the ban. I just want to avoid any problems from those who seem to thrive on creating Wikidrama. In any event, I was happy to clear a long-standing "citation needed" tag. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 14:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

On the subject of Christianity without Christ

Hi Nishidani, I wonder if you can enlighten me as I kindly requested on AN/I earlier this morning, on the Christianity variants that do not require to recognize a real Christ. I report my comment here, in case you didn't see it.

“ Well, here for example it seems that the views of Jesus are indeed very different, to the point of considering it a mere human example (and I knew that, I know about unitarianism for example). I knew already that there is a vast variety of views on anything, and even non-dogmatic ones. But no Christian view I can find is agnostic (or accepts agnostic views) on the existence of Jesus. Nishidani says that I am wrong in this respect, referring to Anglicanism. Well, the article on Anglicanism says that for example a key point is apostolic succession, and I can't think of a way to combine belief in apostolic succession with the possibility agnosticism on Jesus. It doesn't strike me as "fundamentalist" the notion that Christians, whatever their interpretation, believe in the existence of a person nicknamed Christ -it seems a mere matter of definition. A definition of Christianity that doesn't include Christ seems self-contradictory, and I haven't seen it supported anywhere (I can think of some movement following the Gospel teachings and being agnostic on Christ, but this would be more "Gospelism" than Christianism - Unitarian universalism could fit the definition, but in fact it is not considered a Christian denomination).

Now, it is of course possible that the articles above, and me, are simply wrong -if so, I would sincerely enjoy being educated on the existence of these "Jesus-agnostic" variants of Christianity. And if so, I would happily accept sources from scholars following these variants as if they were secular, in the respect of the point we're debating here. But first we should check that they come from these particular variants.

Also, if these variants exist, we should document them in Christianity and Jesus in Christianity articles, that lack these important points of view. So, educate me, sounds interesting. --Cyclopia^talk 13:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

”

I am sincerely curious of knowing examples of Christian denominations who are actually agnostic on Jesus existence. Can you help me provide examples and sources? As above, if this is true, this would make a great addition to Christianity articles, possibly worth an article in itself. --Cyclopia^talk 21:32, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this, as I do so much, as I don't follow wikipedia much these days. It's late here. I was thinking, apart from many religious people I've met, in theory of Thomas Altizer, Paul Tillich (an acquaintence of a friend of his once told me he was a great reader of pornography!, not that that means anything), and several others. If I'm awake tomorrow, I'll see what I can do fossicking among old books and files. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 21:45, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, would be much appreciated. --Cyclopia^talk 14:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It was, on memory, that great man, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose posthumous writings were to galvanize discussion of Christianity without religion. He lived and died a Christian life, and died a 'Christian' death at the hands of the Nazis, while doubting the whole traditional communitarian and doctrinal aspects of faith - an imitation of Christ independent of belief in the historicity of Christ. When I was a relatively young man, in the 60s, people like Thomas Altizer and his colleague William Hamilton, and England's John Robinson made waves, more the latter if that metaphor is to be used, because Altizer and Hamilton's negative theology with its Hegelian sophistication, was not pitched to a congregation and only made waves in theological faculties. God was dead, Altizer esp. argued and had effetively 'died on the cross', the crucifixion being interpretation as a 'kenosis' or emptying of transcendence, and by implication the idea of a subsequent 'resurrection' was a primitive or superstitious attempt to hold in check this radical 'event'. A vast literature followed. Robinson's 'Honest to God' really made a splash among congregations via newspaper accounts. How it affected them I don't know. I don't follow these things much if at all, but just rely on memories of reading 4 decades ago. You asked for denominations or congregations of atheistic Christians, and I can't help out really. I do know from frequent encounters, discussions and experience that many individual thinkers associated with Christianity, one thinks of poets like W.H. Auden and TS Eliot wouldn't think that they needed to believe in God or an historic Christ to be Christians. One gets the same impression reading John Updike's many novels. It was a matter of affirming one's deep identity with the tradition from which they emerged. I do recall John Robinson arguing that theism was a major threat to the survival of Christianity, but both my copies of his and Altizer's work have been, as I often discovered been lost in transit, or pilfered by lodgers. Don't take the Catholic quip I remembered, about Anglicans, too seriously. It's a caricature. Sorry I can't be more helpful. But if you google, as I just did now, 'Christian atheism' on Google Books you will find a substantial number of leads. Regards Nishidani (talk) 15:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, very enlightening, but there is a small misunderstanding. I didn't ask for Christian atheism -I know it somehow exists. I asked for Christianity disjoined from an historical Jesus, which is a different matter (you can be an atheist but thinking of following a real person's advice). That's why I was puzzled by Altizer, who, if I understand correctly (I admit I am ignorant on these authors) didn't deny the existence of Jesus. Nevertheless, nice refreshing of perspective, albeit I doubt an Anglican priest, for example, would really be happy of denying the existence of Jesus (at least on average). --Cyclopia^talk 15:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

An Aside on Herod's temple

I disagree with your representation of why Herod's temple is not given its own nomenclature in Jewish tradition, but ANI is not the place for it and the RfC is for discussing what to do, not what not to do. If anything, in Jewish tradition, Herod's temple was considered grand. As the talmud says "He who did not see Herod's building did not see a beautiful building in his entire life" meaning that Herod's work was the epitome of beauty. The reason why it is considered part of the second temple is that there was no destruction/exile/break; it was a re-doing of the existing temple as opposed to the Babylonian destruction of Temple 1 and the exile that predated Temple 2, and the Roman destruction of Herod's temple (which existed coniguosly for 420 years in various architectural forms) and the now current 1941 year exile. That is why it is not counted as a new temple in Jewish tradition, nothing to do with how Herod is viewed. The Hasmoneans also rededicated the temple, it wasnot considered new then either, and the Hasmoneans are held in higher regard than Herod. -- Avi (talk) 20:05, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I just realized you were quoting someone else (comes from reading too quickly), sorry. So, I disagree with that scholar's interpretation :) -- Avi (talk) 20:08, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Avi, I've been trying most of my life to growth out of the natural cultural restrictions of my own aleatory origins. I've always thought Herod, and many others, got a bad press from the Christocentric scholarship dominating my milieu. You know, my wife's colleague, a teacher in primary school, used to occasionally open the school day in Catholic Italy by asking her charges to pray 'Now kids, today, let's say a prayer for Saint Herod' (i.e., the mythical slaughterer of children), meaning don't make teaching you today as exasperating as it was yesterday. :)Nishidani (talk) 20:15, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Christ myth theory

I was wondering whether this would be something you'd have an interest in? Very troubled article questioning the existence of Jesus, arguably a POV fork of Historicity of Jesus to keep pesky radical questioning on another page. Hard to write an accurate summary of the issues in less than 100,000 words, but in outline several editors with vested interests trying to make the theory sound more nutty than it often was. It did have its nutty aspects, and it also had less extreme versions, where sensible thinkers simply questioned the strength of the evidence that he existed. I've been trying to get it in shape, but I'm hampered by lack of knowledge (always irritating!), so I'm trying to do the reading, but it's a slow job. I thought it might be up your street. If you have no interest, as always feel free to ignore. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 01:51, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! That's very helpful already. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 16:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Odd we have no page on

Hans Keilson, one of the most brilliant authors on the Holocaust. Tenders to undertake the work would be welcomed.Nishidani (talk) 16:24, 7 August 2010 (UTC) (Stub now created by Kdammers, 8th Aug 2010)

• Murray Sayle (fixed by User:Cbl62)

Other distinguished figures for whom biographies are conspicuously missing from the Englishwikipedia

• Schuyler Jones
• Ioan Myrddin Lewis
• Gillo Dorfles
• Frank W. Wadsworth
• Jean Samuel

Thanks

Thanks for the message. Here is the link to the sockpuppet in question [[2]]. No doubt whatsoever this is Barry, again. Smatprt (talk) 22:04, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Interesting

I would not dream of racking YOUR style, I find it quite endearing. :) RewlandUmmer (talk) 13:59, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, as they say by Marvell's Ganges, le style, c'est l'ओं मणिपद्मे हूं Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Case closed. Once more the Bonkers Street Irregulars have nailed the artless Moriarty of SAQ sockpuppetry. Nishidani (talk) 13:36, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

On a closing note. Aristophanes did not enter the Acharnians into a dramatic competition using the pseudonym Detalis. The word 'Detalis' is the usual secondary source corruption, of the kind you find on every other page in SAQ pseudo-scholarship. It represents the Greek Daitaleis, which refers to a play written by Aristophanes, not to a person. The play translates as 'The Banqueters', and was produced by Kallistratos. And now to bed.Nishidani (talk) 21:58, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Good work Pleasure watching you deliver the final coup de grace (hope I got that right ... my Italian isn't too bright) to that serial sockpuppeteer RuelandHummer. He's not the fattest pig in the poke, as you rightly observe ... about as concealed as a builder's bottom. You stood up for law and enforcement when your Wiki needed you and even got the chance to rub his snout in the mud. Good work! FranceIsHog (talk) 11:20, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

They that thrive well take counsel of their friends

When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble. .

Tusk, tusk, is it Rewland?. You're piggybacking a razorback, you know. You set up a poor scene for wiki, and Barry might sue it, for socks whine. But I won't bore you with a further barrow-load, so . . Nishidani (talk) 11:28, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

One could say, it's not him that's being hung out to dry, only his socks - and no doubt he has plenty more in his closet! Wonbrainsell (talk) 17:08, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that in the well-earned permanent vacation off wiki you have worked so hard to secure, when next in Oxford, you go to the Bodleian and check out whether hogs wear socks. Perhaps your browsing might lead you to Jeffrey Henderson's The Maculate Muse Yale UP, 1975 p.8, line 1 words two and three. Old Anon would have had the last word.

There was a young pig from Racine

Whose botanical interests were keen.

He planted two socks

In a bright window box,

Where one blossomed and sprouted a bean.

Goodbye Mr Bean.Nishidani (talk) 17:22, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, so like Moses, you spend your time reading stone tablets. How about coming down from the mountain and challenging your prejudices. The tempestous Chapter 5 of the book you commented on will demonstrate why your man Shakey is a has-Bean! Check the given references for yourself. Knowledge is not set in stone but continuously evolving. People who think otherwise are the greatest obstacle to its progress. Often they are too frightened to think otherwise. Wonbrainsell (talk) 10:44, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

On wikipedia I spend most of my time reading brittle flints from tabloids, culled by stoned editors as though these shards were magic pills to depetrify the fossilized prejudices of the public mind. I get stoned for challenging the dreck. Wish to chip away at the monuments of scholarship? To be effective you have to master the stonemasonry of historical reconstruction, otherwise all you will end up doing is chisel out dust, and get stoney blight, whose symptoms are already visible in the book, which I read.

Moses came down from the mountain to challenge the prejudices of his people. It will no doubt turn out to be a mystery of unending fascination to the crypto-logical hermeneut that Deuteronomy has him come down from a mountain (הֹר: hor) in order to assail those who were 'whoring after strange gods'. I deplore the apotheosis of Shakespeare, but find attempts to deify Bacon even rasher.Nishidani (talk) 11:17, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Ooh I've been naughty

If you look at the bottom of my talk page, you'll see that I have been following reprobates such as yourself for too long.--Peter cohen (talk) 11:02, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Dear me, Peter. Everyone so twitchy about guaranteeing the rights of newbies, socks and assorted gimcrack dickheads, that they rush to trample on proven editors. Even to remonstrate about disconcerting and public announcements, after extenuating discussions, leads to the honest reporter being accused of bad faith, and the stirrer vindicated as a decent chap, as we see from another recent case. But, yes, lad, I'll put your name down on the agenda for possible inclusion into the wikireprobates' club. You can keep tuned to deliberations on our discussions, as no doubt they will be intercepted and reported, as antisemiotic outrages, by the D.A. of the FIDJetters, as Lord the most Eggsilent Bacon might have put it. Sorry I can't help, being on the wrong ban-wave. I suggest in the meantime you steel yourself with Wagner's Ring while chanting apotropaically the words of Giselher to Wolfhart: owê, daz ich sô grimmen vîent ie gewan!(O weh, daß ich so grimmen Feind je gewann!). Nibelungenlied, l.2409. Nishidani (talk) 12:28, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Well there is a motion to site ban him at AN/I now. BTW I notice that there are some red links to his real name. The real fun could start if that article is ever created. The possibility would no doubt lead to persecution fantasies where he imagines that he will not only follow Lev Davidovich Bronstein by being purged from Wikipedia but might also lead to his having a similar fate. His friends at HRCARI at least have the guts to use their real names.--Peter cohen (talk) 13:29, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't say anything on this. I just find that my personal registry of newbies jumping into a controversial area shows a huge blip for the last month, and when one fingers just one or two, massive threads develop and wikilawyer the evident problem out of existence. I don't think this place is serious about creating equitable conditions for intelligent editing. If anything, people who trouble themselves to call attention to the rot end up with suspicions thrown their way, as the usual suspects, and their recruited allies, settle in to making editing a misery.Nishidani (talk) 15:59, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Nish, Are you willing to contact me offline?--Peter cohen (talk) 17:20, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

By all means feel free to drop me a note, Peter Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Request for mediation accepted

The request for mediation concerning Shakespeare authorship question, to which you were are a party, has been accepted. Please watchlist the case page (which is where the mediation will take place). For guidance on accepted cases, refer to this resource. A mediator should be assigned to this dispute within two weeks. If you have any queries, please contact a Committee member or the mediation mailing list.

For the Mediation Committee, AGK 14:55, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Message delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.

ID

There's a very controversial article about Intelligent design, a featured article but not up to current standards, staunchly guarded, and arguably just an attack page. Efforts to fix it are reverted, including adding any opposing view to the lead (e.g. from Nagle: academic, atheist, not involved). Not sure whether it's something you'd be interested in. It's an article that really makes me not even want to be a Wikipedian anymore: not just because of the content, but because of the defence of it. Anyway, I probably foolishly opened a discussion about its issues as I see them, which you can see here if you have any interest in commenting. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 16:37, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are not intelligently designed. This is another example of the old problem of systemic bias, as with (. . . you know what), and recently the Christ-myth pages and now this. (The Shakespeare Authorship Question could be included. It is an American obsession, basically). In all four cases, the political reflexes of an idea that has a wide, 'fascinated' claim to attention in American political society and culture broadly speaking reverberate beyond the Atlantic to be met with incomprehension by outsiders.

There's much to object to there. Who wrote that piece about 'to be consistent a scientific hypothesis' has to be (a) parsimonious (b) useful (c) empirically testable and falsifiable (d) based on multiple observations (e)correctable and dynamic (f) progressive (refines previous theories!!!) (g)provisional or tentative?

This WP:OR (or is it a selective summary) ignores large disputes within the philosophy of science, on most of those terms. Nagel put it well when, in the article you cite, just above the piece you quoted, he wrote: 'A scientific hypothesis can be false and unsupported by the evidence'.

I have to, for the moment, devote what residual refractions of intelligent design remain in dry synapses to the close and meticulous examination of the way my palate and olfactory senses will rreact to a plate of pasta in an exquisitely confectioned, and certainly intelligently designed sugo. I'll keep an eye on things there, but can't promise to get involved. I'm tiring of arguing the obvious against editors who are so prepossessed by defence, that they attack eeverything, and show no interest in the free play of ideas or realities. Regards Nishidani (talk) 18:30, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I just did the same—with the palate and olfactory senses, and a few other body parts—to a (very small) bowl of warm strawberry-and-rhubarb pie with vanilla ice-cream. A much more productive use of my time! The free flow of ideas seems to have died on WP, but if it's not protected here, there is no point in volunteering any further for the project. I don't want to be involved in the production of a series of superficial attack pages. I realize they will always exist (in their millions), but when established editors start defending them it's time to go. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 18:52, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Greetings and a Question

Hi Nishidani, it's been a long time. Hope all is well with you. I have a question about the Three Nets of Belial. I am doing some research on the Three Nets of Belial (fornication, riches, and pollution of the Temple) in the Covenant of Damascus and how these parallel the pericopes in the Gospel of Mark on Divorce, the Rich Man, and the Cleansing of the Temple. There is also a parallel between the prohibition on Korban in the CD and the pericope on Korban in Mark. Do you recall seeing any research on the subject? There's nothing on it in Wiki. Do you know if Eisenman covers it in The New Testament Code? You are probably the only editor on Wiki who has read the whole book. Any references would be much appreciated. Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 03:10, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry, but I haven't yet read Eisenman's second volume. To judge by the experience of reading the first, it will take at least a full month to read properly. Since the 2nd volume merely expands on the 500 pages his publisher rejected from James, the brother of Jesus, you can still get a reasonable glimpse of his argument on these elements in that earlier volume pp.504-510, however. On qorban in Mark, and generally on these arguments, John Bowman's The Gospel of Mark: The new Christian Jewish Passover Haggadah, E.J. Brill 1965 is still worth close scrutiny. I'll probably get round to reading E's second volume in the first half of next year. If I come across any thickening of his argument there, I'll let you know.Nishidani (talk) 12:02, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Please refrain from attacks and trying to bait me on my page

Thank you. --DavidAppletree (talk) 19:09, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, that is a turn up for the books, as they used to say. I am asked to refrain from attacks and 'baiting' by someone who refuses to remove from his website a page dedicated to attacks, baiting and smearing. For Appletree a request that he recognize, and apologize for, his poor behaviour towards at least some decent wikipedians is in itself evidence of a bad attitude on my part, and of an 'attack' mode. Nishidani (talk) 19:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Apropos This

No attack. Just a reminder of your record for smearing decent people, which most people here, even administrators, while bending over backwards to give you re-entry here, appear not to know. It's quite simple. If you want in, erase mention of him and a few others, whose records as editors and administrators were grossly distorted and smeared. By all means feel free to keep the tripe up about myself and add to it. I enjoyed the caricature, since I read a lot of theatrical farces with undisguised pleasure in my spare time. Nishidani (talk) 19:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to censor my work just b/c you and some others don't like my POV on something. I'm not going to apologize for my POV when I feel I've done nothing wrong. If any of the people mentioned on my site have a problem with something, they are free to contact me directly about it and if they want me to make changes that I feel are reasonable, I'll consider them. End of story. And no, I don't think a guy who refuses to serve in the IDF is so "pro-Israel." And many people are in agreement on Morris. --DavidAppletree (talk) 19:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

What you do is not work in the normal acceptance of that word. Think rather of the idiom 'to work over'. Your default defence for your faults is, 'people can contact me if they want redress'. I.e. a man smears some innocent bystander, and then, when challenged by a third party, replies that the smeared person can always negotiate with him about terms and conditions for a possible reconsideration of the smear. It's one of the mind-games infantile people play, and no intelligent person would deign to recognize, in the Hegelian sense, the right of the malicious to dictate terms in a matter of civil redress. And now that you have come forth, checking your files, and saying you have information on my friend's personal life, (refusing to serve in the IDF) I think anyone who has taken your request to be allowed to edit here seriously, mull the implications. I.e. you have personally investigated the private lives of wikipedia editors, and use that private information against them. That last admission has just blown your alibi, and shown your double standards.* Case closed, pal. Nishidani (talk) 19:58, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

It's fairly obvious that you won't be allowed to edit here and continue to say things off-WP about editors which you wouldn't be allowed to say on-WP. Your choice (if you are given a choice) will be between censoring what you have published and editing here.     ←   ZScarpia   20:20, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

• 'My privacy and security are important to me. While I'm very open about my feelings on a variety of issues, I'm careful about personal details about myself being revealed. I would appreciate it if you, and the WP project as a whole, will respect these sensitives.' DavidAppletree

• (you. Appletree)'drove off one of the most historically informed openly pro-Zionist wikipedians, whom you painted as anti-Israel, from his collaboration with this encyclopedia, namely Ceedjee, who left out of fear and disgust. If he is anti-Israel...' Nishidani to Appletree

• 'I don't think a guy who refuses to serve in the IDF is so "pro-Israel".' Appletree in reply, the reference is clearly to Ceedjee.

So what are we to understand by this? Appletree is asking that his own privacy be strictly protected while, on another page, he comes forth and publishes with impunity details about the private life of another wikipedian. I know this place's administrative decisions are totally incoherent from case to case, but this is exceptionally bizarre.Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

In order to be absolutely correct on this, 'Appletree'. I received some minutes ago, coinciding (I compile lists of coincidences as a pivate hobby) temporally with broccolo's remarks below, your two emails. I did not open them, and binned them, but only on seeing from the heading that you intended to clarify that you were referring to Benny Morris not to Ceedjee. If that is the point, your loose syntax certainly gave a different impression. Since I have no wish to correspond with you, and yet you are banned from editing, and therefore, cannot make this point personally to challenge an inference I made, I've registered it here. But please refrain from emailing me further. If you think the point I made needs rectification, I'm sure administrators will accept any clarification. Nishidani (talk) 20:51, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Nishidani

I have reported you there. Broccoli (talk) 19:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, enjoy yourself. You may just earn a broccolo barnstar. I think you got one of the diffs wrong, so you'd better check. I won't of course participate. I hope friends here won't bother to speak up on my behalf either. These things are best left to chance eyes. I imagine what is going on, and don't feel the need to prove anything.Nishidani (talk) 20:02, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I responded to this baseless complaint before I saw your request above. I will remove my comment if you wish me to do so; I would prefer to leave it there. RolandR (talk) 20:05, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

No need to apologize Roland. I didn't note it, since I haven't even earmarked the page. I'll perhaps read it if and when I am notified of some presumed irregularity. I'm reading the Timaios as homework for the next few days, after being asked to glance at the Intelligent Design page, after 40 years, when I was guided through it over two months by an Anglican neo-Platonist of some considerable hermeneutic acumen, who keep relating it to Jacques Monod. After the lunacy of recent events, I feel I've come home to an intelligible world of discourse. Pity one has to seek it in the past. Best Nishidani (talk) 20:12, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Insert your own "irregularity" joke here, of course. Good luck with the Intelligent design stuff by the way. You no doubt already know it's a minefield, but you also are probably one of the better people I know to deal with such matters of philosophy. In the unlikely event I could ever be of service, or if I find a few websites or magazines which might prove useful, I'll try to let you know. John Carter (talk) 21:07, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I think some of us, SV and yourself included, walked into the wrong career, or careered on the wrong walk of life, and should have chosen to be sappers for the SAS, where dancing the light fantastic over minefields, (here it's mainly a mindfield) is more exciting than what one finds oneself doing here. The motto here seems to be: 'Who Dares Loses'. Nishidani (talk) 21:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

"I hope friends here won't bother to speak up on my behalf either." Is reverse-meatpuppetry a wiki-crime?     ←   ZScarpia   12:49, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the sanction is an obligation to make three reverts per day to a selected list of articles? RolandR (talk) 14:55, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I know that it's ungentlemanly to point out this kind of thing, but, then again, I don't have any pretensions to being a gentleman: Nishidani violated his topic ban, and it is not first time already. Please enforse the sunctions!     ←   ZScarpia   01:02, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it was meant to be s functions. Sean.hoyland - talk 10:07, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh mate. I know some blokes get turned on by these trivial brouhahas, but that's really overboard. When I read the 'incipit', namely, 'Many natural processes and complex system learning curves display a history dependent progression from small beginnings that accelerates and approaches a climax over time,' I thought there must be a misprint, and the reference is to the analogous sigmund function. I suppose the Gompertz curve refers to what, in brothel jargon, is called a banana-bend in the apposite male tissue. Curve is Hungarian, Southern Slavonic, Albanian and, in some dialects of yiddish, a word for a 'pro', whether because of the curvaceous nature of the people engaged in that profession, or because their job as streetwalkers requires idling on curves, I cannot tell. I suppose I've missed out on many opportunities in a long married life to sigh $P(t)={\frac {1}{1+e^{-t}}}.$ at the appropriate moment when endearment coincides with achievement. Bit too late to learn how to do that, I mean ejaculate with the proper intonation of that formula also, and I'd probably misstutter the equation and ruin the mood if I tried, a case of being tongue-tied with what Joyce called tribalbutience! Back to the Receptacle's demi(moorish)-urges.Nishidani (talk) 10:56, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

For you...

		The Beer Barnstar
		You beat me to it with your correction! RolandR (talk) 19:52, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. And I'll join you, though currently working my way through a bottle of South African Chenin Blanc. RolandR (talk) 21:29, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Nishidani

I have reported you there. Broccoli (talk) 19:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, enjoy yourself. You may just earn a broccolo barnstar. I think you got one of the diffs wrong, so you'd better check. I won't of course participate. I hope friends here won't bother to speak up on my behalf either. These things are best left to chance eyes. I imagine what is going on, and don't feel the need to prove anything.Nishidani (talk) 20:02, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

‘these educated their pupils in the spirit of Makarenko, conditioning them to believe that the best way to help a comrade was to inform the school authorities (and, in later life, ‘the proper quarters’) about any waverings, doubts or untoward actions. In 1938, when I suddenly became a school teacher myself, I saw how the older children, well disciplined, intelligent, earnest, and terrifyingly ignorant, watched each other like hawks . and me too – as they had been instructed. There was no concealment about this spying on me: the headmaster and director of studies were always repeating to my face something or other I had said in class, thus clearly giving me to understand that I was under constant surveillance. . If, for one single moment, I had started speaking in my own language instead of in prescribed official jargon, none of them would have hesitated to ensure that I spend the rest of my life felling timber.’ Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned, tr Max Hayward Penguin Books 1976 p.626

‘Denunciation . . . constituted a central component of the “internal constitution” of the Third Reich.’ David F. Crew, Nazism and German society, 1933-1945, Routledge, 1994 p.173

King Rat

Hello!

My version of King Rat is a Dell paperback, and page 345 has Marlowe talking to a doctor about why everyone stares at the prisoners like freaks in a side show. I couldn't see an allusion to the words in Hirohito's surrender speech. Can you tell me what other text is near the Hirohito allusion section.

Also - do you know who informed about the wireless? I don't know if the book actually said, but I suspected Father Donovan - but mainly because he seemed unlikely and it would make a better story that way.

Thanks! Uncle uncle uncle 16:22, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I'm late in reply. I've been outside sandpapering rust.

'The doctor lit a cigarette himself . ."I'll try to tell you," he said quietly. "You, all of you, have suffered the insufferable and endured the unendurable".' James Clavell, King Rat, (1962) Dell Books 1974 p.345

(Japanese text) 然レトモ朕ハ時運ノ趨ク所堪ヘ難キヲ堪ヘ忍ヒ難キヲ忍ヒ以テ萬世ノ爲ニ太平ヲ開カムト欲ス

(transcription)'Shikaredomo Chin wa jiun no omomuku tokoro, taegataki o tae, shinobigataki o shinobi, motte bansei no tame ni taihei o hirakan to hossu.

(Official postwar translation) 'However, it is according to the dictate of time and fate that We have resolved to pave the way for grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.'

Chin by the way is the personal pronoun 'I' reserved strictly for the Emperor's use. Hoi polloi have to sort out their status identity from more than a baker's dozen of other words for 'I'.

Clavell's book is full of allusions, starting from the Peter Marlowe, who gets his name from Joseph Conrad 's narrator in The Heart of Darkness (1902).

I'm afraid I can't remember who the informer was, It is 30 years since I read the book. I doubt it's Father Donovan though. Must start sandpapering my rusty memory. If you work it out, I'd be obliged, but I may just reread it. A very good novel.Nishidani (talk) 17:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the information! I had looked up the Hirohito surrender speech and had read page 345 of the book and still didn't see the allusion. I've never been much good at seeing allusions or subtext. Heck - I didn't even recognize the significance of the cages of rats until I thought about it more while driving to work today. I remember being disappointed that nothing ever came of all those rats - the men only sold a few or them and then the war ended - I expected someone to fall through the floor and be swarmed by them or a riot to occur when the men learned that they were being fed rats or some other big event involving rats. Yesterday I picked up a copy of Whirlwind and 2 volumes of Noble House in the local library free box Uncle uncle uncle 17:25, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Good you got that allusion to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in Winston's interview with O'Brien. To work out Clavell, King Rat is enough, though his film The Last Valley, a minor masterpiece, where the king rat figure is sanctified as Vogel, played by Omar Sharif, is also a help. He petered out in large books afterwards, though Shogun, which rings the changes on the same tune, is a good read. Nice to find someone in wikipedia who reads books in sequence.Nishidani (talk) 19:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

ZScarpia - derivation

On the Wikipedia registration form, long time ago, I adopted the surname Scarpia from the police chief baddy, Baron Scarpia, in Tosca, and the first name Zed from the "Zed is dead" character from Pulp Fiction. Talking, below, about Scapa Flow, have you ever visited Orkney or the Shetland Islands?     ←   ZScarpia   20:00, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep of course, though I missed the Pulp Fiction source. Since opera is also Peter's passion, I have more in mind, in the circs, I Pagliacci, esp.

So ben che diforme, contorto son io

Che desto soltanto lo scherno e l'orror!!

No never got that far. I would have, had my Swedish teacher, a beautiful woman, not died, still in her twenties, on a brief visit back home, in the dentist's chair. I changed language fields. I grew up listening to men who fought in various theatres through WW1, and most of those battles are, as it were, retained in a child's conjuring retina as though they were personal experiences. Cheers and thanks!Nishidani (talk) 20:25, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:AE compromise suggested

I've been looking into Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Nishidani to see how I would recommend it be closed. Though I believe that you overstepped the topic ban that was issued under Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/West Bank - Judea and Samaria, it is up to admins what should be done for enforcement. If there were any evidence that you might be willing to avoid overstepping the ban in the future, that might be enough to make a block unnecessary. What you've said in the AE request suggests that you see your intervention on behalf of User:Peter cohen as a sort of a personal duty.

A vivid sense of personal mission (like the one which you seem to express in the AE) is good for military leaders but not so good for Wikipedians who need to find consensus. Thousands of other people are standing by, including many admins, who are in a position to assist User:Peter cohen if it is needed, even if you are not able to speak up due to your restriction. If you would promise to avoid this kind of intervention in the future (for example, promise not to join any ANI discussions where any article is being discussed that is in the Category:Israeli–Palestinian conflict, such as Jewish Internet Defense Force), then that could be a reason for admins to close the AE request without a block. EdJohnston (talk) 16:14, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Ed, note that the JIDF article is included in categories other than the I-P and A_I ones: Jewish websites, Political websites, Antisemitism, Jewish political organizations, Zionist organizations, Internet activism, Blogs critical of Islam. Extracting a promise from Nishidani not to edit in articles in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict category would be forcing him to promise not to edit pages which his restriction doesn't cover. The categories that articles are added to can be very arbitrary. The one on Jimmy Carter could justifiably be added to the A-I or I-P conflict categories, yet I'm pretty certain that Nishidan's restriction, which was intended to force him to work elsewhere than the A-I or I-P conflict area of the Wikipedia project, wasn't intended to exclude him from there. Although the JIDF article is included in the two conflict categories, its scope clearly goes beyond those categories, meaning that Nishidani can participate in discussions involving that article without violating his restriction so long as he doesn't comment about the A-I conflict. Stopping him from doing so is extending the restriction further than it was intended to go. Obviously, it would also affect other editors subject to the same restriction, something worth considering.     ←   ZScarpia   17:27, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I propose Category:Israeli–Palestinian_conflict in order to have a clear boundary. I remind you that Arbcom (in WP:ARBPIA) said "The area of conflict in this case shall be considered to be the entire set of Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted." They said *articles*, not topics within articles. I see no on-wiki evidence that Arbcom intended to exempt particular edits within the set of excluded articles from a topic ban. Jimmy Carter is *not* in the conflict category. JIDF *is* in the conflict category, and for extremely good reason. EdJohnston (talk) 18:03, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

But, the Jimmy Carter article is an Arab-Israeli conflict-related article and I could go there now and justifiably add it to the one or both of the categories under discussion. You say that the JIDF article is in the conflict category for an extremely good reason. That's your personal opinion. Others might think differently. And, of course, Nishidani wasn't actually editing the JIDF page itself or its talk page. You're trying to impose a measure of whether articles are in the conflict area which wasn't laid down at the times the restrictions were imposed and which is fairly arbitrary in that whether articles are added to categories depends on the whims of editors. At the time the restrictions were imposed there were concerns about whether the restricted editors could be excluded from pages by other editors adding a line or two about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Your solution is open to the same kind of abuse. As far as finding out what the Arbcom intended, perhaps it would be a good idea to consult some of the people who presided over the case? You might be interested in this conversation which I had with Flo Night.     ←   ZScarpia   19:42, 3 September 2010 (UTC) (Nishidani, I hope I haven't been presuming too much by jumping into this conversation)

Not at all. I've been sanding down rust, and shifting furniture, and pruning for the winter woodpile, stuff that's useful to do when one has thinking to do. Your name and the mention of FloNight, makes me think of Scapa Flow, which I always heard as a child as Scarper Flow. The association must reflect some unconscious identification with Ludwig von Reuter!

A gentlemanly proposal, Ed, nicely phrased mostly and I sincerely appreciate the offer. I'll mull it over carefully for a day or two, if you don't object, but perhaps a word or two (excuse the WP:TLDR temptation) as to why I am rather reluctant to accept your courteous compromise for the moment. ‘A vivid sense of personal mission . .good for military leaders’ stopped me in my tracks. That can’t refer to me, there is nothing in my record that would justify such a conclusion. It suggests you think I and DavidApplefield and his numerous socks, mirror one another. The I/P area is still populated, even now, by many people who fit that profile better than I ever did, and if you check the long and gruelling cross-examinations or remonstrations I handed out to both User:PalestineRemembered, and User:Ashley kennedy3 (Avi will recall the former incident), I spent a good deal of my time here reining in, precisely, tendencies in ‘pro-Palestinian’ editors to bring ‘a vivid militant sense of personal mission’ to their work here. The gesture was never reciprocated by responsible editors on 'the other side'.

I accept Arbcom’s authority to make the decision it had. In my view I have stuck to the spirit of that ruling. I do not accept any characterization that suggests that I have been militant, on a mission, or that my behaviour over 4 years warrants the legend that my work here was or is stamped with a bellicose battlefield mentality.

Still, I’ll mull it over, if you are not pressed for immediate action, in the next few days. I don’t mean to be dilatory. It’s just that there is a point of honour at stake. I know honour is laughed at. I once gently suggested to an editor who had grossly offended a woman here to think of the honour code, and got a sneer in return.

In the meantime Ed, could you do me the courtesy of clarifying a point that arose while pondering my history on Wikipedia, I realised, examining the various ways the Arbcom ruling is being construed in my regard, that I may have violated the permaban, and been unreported for it at Franz Baermann Steiner, which I wrote, with Nableezy's technical assistance, expeditiously, some months after the Arbcom decision. I mention Israel once there. I also recall that while doing the article I realized I had to make a stub on Hugo Salus, and doing that, following academic sources, had to mention his attitude to Zionism. This because my area of expertise, besides classical languages, is intellectual and cultural history. The odd thing, in retrospect, is that I wasn't reported at that time, though I had the usual sockpuppet stalking me through those two articles. Nishidani (talk) 19:34, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that admins can perceive that Franz Baermann Steiner is a different kind of article than Jewish Internet Defense Force. I would not think that your edit at the Steiner article crosses the topic ban. I also suspect that regular editors would not choose to place the Steiner article in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict category. If people were to start playing with the category to get their opponents excluded from editing, the matter could be raised at ANI. If FloNight thinks the restriction should be worded differently, then she could request an official change. Admins have to enforce what we see in front of us. EdJohnston (talk) 19:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I dislike dragging these things out. All of this hectic warfare only obliges people to waste time defending themselves, and qui s'excuse s'accuse. The best thing to do is to just apply a sanction, and get on to more important things. I don't take these things personally, admins have a job to do, and make their calls according to what is written, and in any case it's about time I moved on. This place is suited to a younger generation. I was raised according to different codes, and will never be able to adapt my style of thinking and intuition to the velocities, rules and whatnot of internet users. Best. Nishidani (talk) 19:59, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I have to disilllusion you: Wikipedia is on the internet! EdJohnston (talk) 22:02, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

This has ruined my sunbdowner hour. I hope the time difference and the tediousness of my reply doesn't ruin yours. I'll divide it into two parts. For my reply just read the first and last paras, and your decision can be taken without the ennui of ploughing through the rest.

In direct reply to Ed. You ask me to

promise to avoid this kind of intervention in the future (for example, promise not to join any ANI discussions where any article is being discussed that is in the Category:Israeli–Palestinian conflict, such as Jewish Internet Defense Force)

I accept and undertake to abide by that, particularly since you are correct in stating something I ignored, namely ‘Thousands of other people are standing by, including many admins, who are in a position to assist User:Peter cohen if it is needed, even if you are not able to speak up due to your restriction.’ It was perhaps arrogant of me to think he was cornered or stranded. When I saw Mr Wales himself heave in, and no one else there, I showed impatience.

Three blips over 16 months are, I suppose, evidence of a bad attitude. I think it worth fighting to retain a right to be a wikipedia editor, even if I think it best I do retire, and as a retiree, run little risk of creating further brouhahas. I hope you will not indict me, however, for this one final remark which contextualizes why I have been rather dilatory and finicky in giving my assent.

It's a technical matter really, that I won't go into here theoretically, on the different evidence available to judges ruling by the book, and what witnesses or indeed lawyers for the defence know but which is excluded as 'irrelevant' by the procedural laws governing suits. Wiki is, and it is quite fascinating in terms of the sociology of knowledge, a new tribal system with an internal paradox - an open society based on democratic consensus, with rules that are similar to what Henri Bergson (1932) defined as a closed society, based on the systematic exclusion of informal knowledge in the assessment of how its 'actors' are behaving. Wikipedia has developed a variation, rather rigid, which makes this legal analogy, however, rather problematical, since, whereas a judge can weigh up the content issue, arbitrators cannot take it into consideration.

To illustrate this point will force me to touch on the banned area because that is the area I am said to have strayed back into, and thus the sanction threat, and is the last I will have to say about it. It is mixed in with a reply to Mbz1, so WP:TLDR is an option.

Mbz1. To reply, in conjunction with my reply to EdJohnson, to your note below.

You can have all of that past, riding like an incubus on one's shoulders, and yet come to diametrically opposed conclusions from those above, like Zeev Sternhell with precisely that background profile or a deeply committed Zionist, as a government policy analyst, like Zeev Maoz, and think differently, to name but two of thirty odd names that come to mind in this context.

(Okay, why did I think of Ze’evs. Because, we were talking about Pasternak, I had Dr Zhivago in my mind. Edmund Wilson reviewed the book when it first came out, and brought out the ‘life’ (жизнь) metaphor seeded throughout the roots of nouns and verbs in the Russian text (‘Ζει/zei in Greek, as in the Costas Gavras film, Z, where it stands for ‘he lives’, reflecting the same Indo-european stem), even though it means ‘wolf’ in Hebrew!) Politics is the last on the scale of values, if indeed it is a value at all, and that it should come between people who might share a world of similar interests, to disrupt intercourse, is odd. It’s like saying tabloids are superior to books as sources.

I am not on one side of a barricade. I found myself in a No man's land, caught up between two parties in a conflict, where I had extensive experience of one historical reality, Jewish history and Israel, and little of the other. My natural instinct was to walk to the side I know least about, not to espouse their values, but to understand their point-of-view. When I worked in Israel decades ago, a vibrantly rich experience, I took time off to hitchhike throughout the Gaza strip, whereas everyone told me I’d be killed. I was blocked from entering twice, by military guards who said as much, but let me through at my own risk finally.

I sat down and enjoyed the sounds, and sights, coffee and Turkish confectionaries, by the seaside there. I hitched rides north and south. Nothing I had read or been told, reflected on the simple hospitable everyday life I encountered there. I came to Wikipedia, some years ago, and found 2 people from the other side of your ‘barricade’ who were active, on articles where several dozen highly motivated editors from Israel also edited, some very neutral, since disenchanted, but not many. It was a huge imbalance, and it showed in most articles, which seemed intent on insinuating terrorism, when not painting a lugubrious picture of backwardness, incompetence, hostility and evil. Entering to try and balance things got me in all sorts of trouble.

I was essentially convicted because of an incident in which one person, posing as two through sockpuppetry, interrupted my work on an article I basically wrote Susya. Everything went swimmingly as I harvested a mass of academic material bearing on the synagogue Israeli archeologists had uncovered there. As soon as I ventured to mention the history of the indigenous Susya cave-dwellers, who happen to be Palestinians, four editors came in and starting challenging and reverting. It was if silence had to reign on that side over the folks in the other barricade. Emmanuel Levinas is justly famous for his philosophical hermeneutics of the concept of the 'Other’. Try and apply it to a concrete reality, editing that area of wiki, and you get overwhelmed by suspicion, innuendoes, and teeming/teaming manoevers. Many who do this do it individually, highly motivated by a sense of threat, because their indigenous political culture tends to play up (historically for good reasons) everything as a power game in which they are a hated minority and potential victim. But a large number are there, witness the sock-record, to play havoc and make editing difficult if not impossible.

Informal knowledge, as I say, informs the behaviour of editors, and their judgement of complex contexts. None of this is visible to the administrators who have the arduous and unhappy duty of riding herd on a huge and unwieldy drove as we graze over the vast panorama of articles. So, when an editor, like myself, builds an article and sees, from experience that two blow-ins, with a record for stalking him, come in to edit-war, editors he knows from past interactions to have no interest in content, but only in conflict, and censorship, he may call their bluff here and here, for example.

As I foresaw, two of the four (essentially socks of each other), were pressing me in a critical moment as Arbcom deliberated over behaviour, to provoke me. I wasn’t deterred and called a spade a spade, not I think in unfair language. What they were doing was objectively disruptive, since they were removing nuanced and well-sourced information. That evidence was then adduced by Arbcom as key evidence for the proposition I am given to ‘incivility, personal attacks, and assumptions of bad faith,’ leading to my permaban. It emerged however that both NoCal100 and Canadian Monkey were sockpuppets of the one intensively abusive editwarrior, who afterwards still kept reincarnating himself to play the same wargames.

In other words, I had read correctly, on the ground, with the tacit field knowledge of the games being played in these situations, what was going on. I think I read correctly what was going on in the present case as well. Time will tell. I see there are many astute editors and admins now focused on this, and I am very much small fry compared to their talents.

Arbcom couldn’t be expected to know, and indeed the operative rules of wikilaw do not allow one to take into evaluation (for good technical reasons) this implicit, intuitive knowledge. It is, as Michael Polanyi argued, not documentable. I made ‘no assumption of bad faith’, since it was everywhere over all the pages that sockpair edited over the previous months. No doubt the other two editors involved knew nothing of this. They are amenable to rational compromises. But objectively they should have been far more careful in lending the weight of their presence to what was a patent piece of editor-targeting. They should be more amenable to making a page like that fully comprehensive of the historical realities of that area as experienced, and well-documented, by the Other.

This is essentially what happened to Peter Cohen, and why I intervened to notify those who rapped his knuckles, that the context was far more problematical than what their call for impeccable wiki-etiquette under fire could imagine. My prior experience told me that arbitrators do not twig to seminal subtexts that a lot of experienced editors on the ground recognize immediately.

All this, not to call for an appeal against that decision, but to show why I am particularly sensitive to any further suggestions that my behaviour here, before or after, has been characterised as uncivil, militant, missionary or infected with an ideologically-fixated POV blind to all reason. The trivial episode now under scrutiny works to further blot an an otherwise fairly clean crimsheet, and make me look like, what? a “dokhodyaga’’ (Доходяга: I’m sure you have read Solzhenitsyn, and are familiar with the slang of the gulags, where it means a ‘goner’)

Cheers, Ed. Thanks for the courtesy, and I hope my undertaking above is adequate to your request. If it isn't, well, just make the sanction that is due. It would almost be a favour. The Arbcom ban improved my leisure for reading and pleasure no end, and perhaps the only way out of this self-punitive masochism is for a sensible guy to just kick me up the coit, and get me out of here!Nishidani (talk) 17:03, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I just checked the JIDF page which I never looked at further, after editing it intensively with Peter Cohen, John Nagle, Hans Adler, Malik Shabazz and a few others some years ago when it was under assault. I don't remember it wearing the CAT referring to the I/P conflict which one can see now at the bottom of the page. I rarely look at CATs, and assumed it was just an American-based one-man shoe-string operation with a stentorian decibal capacity for self-promotion, and never thought of it in terms of those categories. An acquaintence, a leading historian of Japanese constitutional law, once was subjected to a campaign of menacing threats from a 'patriuotic organization' in Tokyo. Phone calls to his home threatening to kill his daughter if he didn't desist from 'defaming the Japanese nation'. He'd written an article on proposals to modify that constitution's prohibition on war. Well, that group was actually a politicized wing of the local yakuza. Their broadcasts, activism, megaphone blaring through the suburbs, and smearing campaigns were all full of patriotic rhetoric, appeals to 'we Japanese' and traitors in our midst. No one took them at their word. No one took them seriously (except those subject to their intimidating, well-informed phonecalls.) No one thought their extremist activism had anything to do with the Japanese government, or Japan. That was more or less the way I took the JIDF (not as a yakuza-type organization, those guys there are really well-organized and physically threatening), i.e., as essentially a fringe outfit talking about something it was, in reality, little connected to. Ivan Morris wrote a brilliant book on these groupuscules, as they pullulated in post-war Japan, published back in 1960.

But again, such personal motivations, analogies, are immaterial to the case. The fact is ignorantia juris non excusat, and I see that I am culpable both of ignorance and negligance in that regard, and did infringe the ban, as Ed noted above.Nishidani (talk) 17:34, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi

At first I wanted to respond to you at AE, but then I realized it does not belong there. So here is my response:

Once again you amazed me with your incredible knowledge of languages and literature. I wish a person as you are were my friend, but I am afraid it is not possible because although my family is a victim of the Holocaust, and a victim of stalinism, I am pro-Israeli, I am a Zionist, which means I am for the right of Jewish people for freedom and self-determination in their own state, I am for two states solution, I am against the so called "right to return", because there's not going to be Israel as a Jewish state, if that "right to return", which I do not consider the right at all, is granted, so I guess your friendship is not for me, and you would not have defended me as you did Peter. We are on the different sides of the barricades.

I will not post to your AE anymore. Warm regards.--Mbz1 (talk) 13:28, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

No, feel free. Don't feel put off from exercising your natural liberties, there or anywhere else. I have replied above, because I'm too lazy to make separate edits. Nishidani (talk) 17:11, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

ps. I forgot to answer the most important point here. As to not defending someone under attack, because they might have a different perspective on the I/P issue, I don't have the diffs, but I've always done that irrespective of on what side of the barricade, to adopt reluctantly your metaphor, people stand. Ethics are not grounded in ethnic or political sympathy, as distinct from 'morals'. 'Justice', in a popular Greek saying Aristotle registered, 'is the good of the Other' (allótrion einaí phasin agathòn tên dikaiosúnên Nichomachean Ethics, Bk.V,vi,6), not looking after one's own. The position is not far from that of Hillel the Elder 's famous golden rule. In any case, given my permaban, I won't be able to involve myself in things like that, so for you my assurance can only remain hypothetical that I would apply the same principle were you attacked as Peter was. But, as our admin says, recent events and extensive discussions have made it absolutely clear that many eyes are now focused on the rights and proprieties of wikipedians, and one extra voice is not needed. Regards Nishidani (talk) 11:19, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I just went to check out Jewish Internet defense site, and found out they have lots of interesting info about you. So, I guess one could say that not only you defended anti Zionist Jews, but also yourself. I believe it should have been mention somewhere, as well the info that you had problems with the site dating back to 2008. Regards--Mbz1 (talk) 23:07, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I just saw the site as well, and noted that the information included is submitted by apparently unknown outsiders. On that basis, I'm far from convinced that the material it presents or the spin it applies is even remotely reliable. John Carter (talk) 23:10, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Outsiders? What do you mean? The site simply refers to Nishidani's talk page history like this one for example--Mbz1 (talk) 23:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I've just undertaken not to talk about anything to do with the JIDF. (If you are curious about my past interactions see this, this and, which probably clarifies what's going on now this, referring to a relentless stalking campaign that began 'coincidentally' after Einsteindonut was banned, and eventually got me banned. I think it wiser to actually read a book instead however). I suppose that's incentive enough for them to gear up the campaign, since I'm gagged. I don't mind. I saw this coming, since this kind of operation is thoroughly described in the relevant and vast academic literature on the mindsets of people and groups that engage in this kind of smear work. I described it in a monograph I wrote in 1996 on the effect of new media like the internet on public 'opinion' (public opinion, as Nietzsche said, is the lack of a private opinion'). Still, I checked, and can't find anything on their page regarding me except for the four links (one not operative) to edits that putatively show I am heavily biased against Israel. None of them stand up to scrutiny. The diff you give me alludes to one of the formative books of my youth, Sartre's deconstruction of the antisemitic mind, which operates in a pure vacuum, conjuring up a fictive menace in order to ginger up powerful negative affects, which then in turn are used to prop up an otherwise frail or effete sense of personal identity. To reformulate it in Cartesian terms, Odi ergo sum (I hate, therefore I am). That shadow-boxing with a self-imagined, jerry-rigged 'adversary' is exactly how a lot of people operate to make themselves feel alive, and if you allow yourself to get caught in spidery nets of their projective obsessionary world, and react, you end up like them. That's all I have to say. Still, if new trashing is coming in, I'd appreciate a link, though I won't comment. It's about breakfast time, and I like to start the day with a laugh.Nishidani (talk) 04:10, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, the link you requested is here. It is the only thing I found about Peter too.--Mbz1 (talk) 04:25, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

That's old stuff. It doesn't contain the link you gave me. So nothing's been updated. Who cares? Like much of what we do here, it's just a shred of canned rust in the vast junkheap of internet. Aristotle was read (probably no more) for 2500 years. What we write and read these days has a use-by date of a couple of hours at the max. The function of 'opinions' is to get some leverage in a powerplay, in some positonal game on the chessboard of the public mind. Have you ever compared the drift of an ANI thread to the structure of a Platonic dialogue? Do so, and you are shocked to realize that the quality of discursive interactions 2500 years ago was far sharper than it is today. The response inj the future to a query of the form: 'Have you read the Gorgias?' will be a tweet - WP:TLDR. Cheers, lugubriously.Nishidani (talk) 04:47, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

If you mean the link to your talk page discussion I provided above, I took it from here It is a screen shot I guess, and it is located on this very page I linked to above. I agree with you about the quality of AN/I discussions. I have not read Gorgias. In Soviet Union, where I am from, the books were really, really hard to get, and now my English is not so good to read such books I guess. Care to tell me more about your background?--Mbz1 (talk) 05:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Then you mustn't be from Leningrad. It classical lyceum, even under the soviet regime, was perhaps the best training ground for classical Greek in the world, and its libraries well-stocked. For all of its defects, the Soviet Union had one of the strongest reading publics in the world. A first printrun of even a minor but often fine poet like Yevgeny Yevtushenko could run into tens of thousands of copies, sold out within days. '(Greek) books were hard to find' reminds me of Simon Caplan, whom wiki has no biography of, disgracefully. He was Jewish-Russian, and after escaping the Revolution, went back briefly. Examining a cartload of books being flogged by a colporteur, he glimpsed a volume he desperately needed, but the price, in those inflationary times, was far too high. He tried to haggle, but the vendor, himself poor, wouldn't bargain. 'Take it or leave it,' was almost his last word. Caplan felt he had to decline. Very astutely, the hawker then said, 'you know, unless you buy it, this will end up as cigarette paper.' It taught Caplan the fragility of civilization. It reminds one of an anecdote about Mikhail Bakhtin who, when his publisher, during the German invasion, lost his only complete manuscript on the Bildungsroman genre, used his notes and drafts for that book for rolling paper for cigarettes. It's easy for the significant world to go up in smoke (that's been on my mind and why I thought of Vladimir Vysotsky's Так дымно when I noted another of his songs on your page). Wikipedia can either reflect the barbarity of tabloids in its sourcing, or books. The information in newspapers is manufactured overnight, rapidly, no doubt by experts, but proves, in the long term almost invariably partial, unreliable, factitious or merely opinion propped up by a wobbly set of factoid crutches. Almost nothing said in major newspapers on critical issues has any relation to the real dynamics of policy, so my advice is, don't let yourself be caught up in the 'web'. Books, if they are peer-reviewed, have to go through a severe process of deep research, and gestate over time, without the pressure of instant reportage or seduction of quick results. Editors here can avoid most of the conflicts if they agree on this. Only use net-sources, blogs, newspapers etc, which work the public mind strategically, at the very last resort. Stick to what the best published research offers, it's far less contentious, and far less liable to POV manipulation.

As to my background, there's nothing much there, and rather boring. I lived, studied, travelled a lot, and when I felt I'd had enough, settled down to read books, and, when thirsty for the real world, potter about in a garden outside, or hike up the hills.Nishidani (talk) 10:11, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Are you aware that in Soviet Union to get a new book, one should have collected 20 kilograms of old paper, to stay in line for a few hours to turn it in just to get a coupon for a book, and then run around the city with that coupon to find that book and to buy it because those coupons only provided a better possibility to buy the book and not get it for free.

Are you aware that Yevgeny Yevtushenko was sanctioned for his poem "Letter to Esenin", and his poem Babi Yar got published by an accident, but was never republished again before perestroika has began?

Are you aware that Boris Pasternak was kicked off from so called union of Soviet writers for his "Doctor Zhivago" ?

Are you aware that Vladimir Vysotsky had lots of problems with the government for his views and his songs? I was in a high school, when a friend told me that Vysotsky will come to our city to give a single concert. The concert was supposed to be held in an auditorium of one organization. We got there, and were told that the concert is not going to happen because it was prohibited for him to give public concerts. Then somebody whispered that the concert is going to be moved to a nearby school. People went there. The auditorium of the school was dark, and small, there were no nearly enough chairs for everybody to sit on. We waited in a complete silence. An hour or so has passed, and then he came. The microphone did not work, but he started to sing. I would never forget that concert. I was lucky to see him in a few plays in the ru:Театр на Таганке, but that concert has always been a very special for me.

Are you aware that in Soviet Union one could have been sent to a mental institution for such a small thing as like telling a political joke, for example?

Are you aware that in Soviet Union people, who worked with copy machines were searched before and after the work to make sure they did not copy anything prohibited by the government? Somehow some of the prohibited literature was still given from hands to hands usually for only one night. If that literature was found in somebody's home a person was arrested.

It has been always interesting for me to observe those Western communists, and Marxists, who supported Soviet regime without having a slightest idea what a monster they are supporting.

It is interesting that in Soviet Union there hardly were any anti-Zionist Jews, there were some Jews, who'd rather were Russians, but it was mostly because of the government antisemitism.--Mbz1 (talk) 15:25, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes I am aware of all that. I happen to have books specifically dealing with virtually everything you itemise, and when I read a book, I live what is being described, whether it be Grossman's Жизнь и судьба, or Zinoviev's Зияющие Высоты. You see. I spoke about books in Leningrad, and you read into this that I am a foreign Marxist monster defending a despotism. I won't enter into this argument, because this is not a blog. But just this. The average life savings of a Soviet pensioner in 1986 amounted to $6,000. By the time monetary reforms under Eltsin had been miltonized, within 8 years the exchange value of those rubles was 96 cents. You know what you are running from, but not what you're running into. More ethnicity is not a solution to the totalitarian 20th century. That was its seminal pathology. Regards Nishidani (talk) 15:53, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry, if I sounded as I believed you "a foreign Marxist monster defending a despotism" I did not mean it at all. I believe you are way too educated for being a Marxist. I lived in Leningrad for two years, when I was taken two first courses of my university. Although my major was engineering, I, as everybody else, was forced to study the history of Communist party, and Marxism - Leonism philosophy. What a horror those subjects were!

BTW looks like you are going to get off with no sanction Congratulation! and I do mean it. Although I am very much sure I would have been sanctioned hard in a very same situation, but what the heck, I do not feel myself better only because somebody feels bad. It was interesting talking to you. Regards.--Mbz1 (talk) 16:27, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

When taking us through Lermontov's Герой нашего времени, our lecturer gave us some Soviet articles of critical analysis, saying, you can ignore the first 2 and last 2 pages of these articles. All you will find there are scholars making ritual nods to Marxism for the censors' eyes. Censors are lazy, and only read the first and last pages. The meat of any article is where the jargon stops. Serious Marxists in the Soviet Union always laughed at Western leftist credulity, which mirrored that of the regime's spokesmen and hacks. There are very solid grounds for accepting Marx as one of the great thinkers in the Western sociological tradition, and a strong case for this was made by Ernest Gellner in his State & Society in Soviet Thought (1988). Gellner knew everything about what you complain of, was an enlightenment liberal and yet accepted offers to work at theoretical institutes in Moscow because he never confused a system of thought as a tool of analysis, with the political uses of that system as an orthodoxy of totalitarianism. One just observe systems, and concepts, and see how they gell or jar. The Russian 2oth century was deplorable, but, in dismantling the 'system', what happened? The collective assets of the state's 240 million people, were handed over to 50 oligarchs, of which just 10, to name the major ones off the top of one's head, Oleg Deripaska, Mikhail Prokhorov, Viktor Vekselberg, Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, Alexander Smolensky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Ivanishvili,Mikhail Fridman and Vitaly Malkin, won privatised control of 50-60% of what had been the common wealth of an entire nation. One ideology replaced another, a genteel thugocracy, which had some institutional obligations, was replaced by a kleptocracy that had none. The former justified itself in terms of Marxism, the latter in terms of freemarketism. Any analytical, as opposed to ideological, Marxist or conservative liberal sociologist could predict with great precision the result of the rapid transition. But, as you say, time to stop this bloggish interlude. I have one edit obligation to fulfil, and hope to close up here, one way or another.Nishidani (talk) 17:15, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

AE

I've closed the AE filing concerning you with no action. However, do take care to mind the boundaries of the ban this was borderline. --WGFinley (talk) 01:09, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Shakespeare authorship question mediation

Dear user,

This is a quick message to inform you that I have taken the Shakespeare authorship question request for mediation. I will be spending a day or so trying to get an understanding of the dispute and create a framework to take the discussion forward.

Please understand that mediation is not a quick process and that a fair amount of patience is required. If any of you have any question feel free to contact me by email through the wiki interface.

Many Thanks

Your Mediator - Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 01:15, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Tense

I was writing the history in the present tense. I gotta hit the sack now, though. It's 4 a.m. here. I'm trying to push this thing out the door this weekend. Tom Reedy (talk) 09:04, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Plomley

Sorry, I can't help you there.--Grahame (talk) 13:41, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Use of Slavonic Josephus in Ebionites

At Talk:Ebionites#Slavonic Josephus material, I ask whether material in the article which indicates the Slavonic Josephus material supports the contention that John the Baptist was a vegetarian is relevant to the article. You seem to be one of our better informed editors regarding this matter, and I would certainly welcome your opinion, whatever it might be. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 15:53, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, please see Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Ebiontes and indicate your willingness or unwillingness to take part in the formal mediation process. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 17:49, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Well I've all but forsaken wiki, which I find, in the areas that interest me on this encyclopedia, all but impossible to work at speed, and without harassment. A second problem is that I bowed out of the former mediation because I thought it inappropriate, since the mediator and I do not get on, and my presence might have been thought provocative. Has Jayjg withdrawn from mediation, and if so, could you supply me with a diff? Nishidani (talk) 18:52, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Formal mediation is being requested. Jayjg is not a formal mediator, so he could not function in that capacity in the formal mediation. John Carter (talk) 19:00, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Well John, that poses a ticklish question for me, I mean ethically. I don't like to go back on undertakings. If the informal mediation is still active, then I would feel it rather improper to put my name to a new proposal that, by leapfrogging it, would look like a collusive attempt to disinvalidate the former mediation. I'm prompted to help, because I know how troubled that page is, and how tendentious much editing to it has been. But even if I were to participate it would be in a desultory capacity, watching it, and occasionally making a remark or two. It is also problematical because I have to look at the Shakespeare Authorship Question mediation, as I undertook to do. I'm wary of new commitments that keep me here, when I'd prefer to be in my library, with the computer shut down. Nishidani (talk) 19:11, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The informal mediation has been inactive for some time. The only "activity" at all recently has been my reiterating my withdrawl from it, based on Ovadyah's previous accusation of Jayjg as libel. I had also indicated earlier my withdrawl from the mediation. As it is informal, and it can be suspended or ended at will, there is no real activity, and has been none for some time, just Ovadyah and Michael claiming there is. And, yes, I am requesting the formal mediation, in part, because it is the last step before Arbitration, and I believe there are several behavioral issues which need to be considered as well, particularly POV pushing, SOAPBOXing, and IDIDNTHEARTHAT and related matters, all of which are more legitimately in the range of ArbCom. And, yes, it is certainly a valid reason to suspend a mediation if one of the potential parties to it would have rejected the mediator chosen without his consent by someone prior to his notification of the attempted mediation. Good luck on the Shakespeare matter, by the way. I'm somewhat curious why that is even much of an issue, but conspiracy theories seem to never die, just wait for someone else to propose them again later. Particularly today, I get the impression some people will repeat any old chestnut if it gives them the chance to get on Coast to Coast AM and similar shows and sell a few books. John Carter (talk) 19:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

If you were to take part in the mediation, I would personally probably prefer it if you were to take a leading role in the mediation. I have attempted to gather together a number of encyclopedic and other sources, but acknowledge that my own prior knowledge of the subject is rather weak, and thus cannot myself comfortably make any statements about prior academic opinions other than to refer to the sources gathered. Also, given the at least borderline harassment I have experienced lately, I acknowledge that my toleration of the misconduct of at least one of the other parties involved is very nearly reaching its limit. I have expressed some opinions regarding what I think should be done on the article on its talk page. Although I very strongly suggest that some might try to misrepresent this statement, if you were to take part in the mediation, I would request that you not read any of those comments, or, for that matter, most of the comments which have been posted since you had left the article some time ago. I think I am probably best qualified to gather information regarding the subject from sources, rather than making interpretation of the material., and definitely feel more comfortable in that capacity. John Carter (talk) 17:21, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, if Ovadyah thinks formal mediation is fine, I'd follow his signature. However John, I really can't promise that much. I've been hanging round wiki like a bad smell, just keeping my hand in, until the other mediation on Shakespeare's done with, and don't really want to get re-involved with the encyclopedia. As you and I know, the other chap is impossible to talk to, violates every editing protocol, can't be trusted to cite anything exactly, etc., it's a behavioural problem really. As with my recent edit on locust/akris/engris in Epiphanius, and the classification of 'locusts' in the Mishnah as flesh, the guy just doesn't listen. All you get is snarky comments. What's the point of engaging in argument someone who doesn't listen? I think at this point the only real solution is to go back to the article when it got GA approval.

There's a technical reason as well. The old conflict was about reconstructing the Ebionites from two books, by Tabor and Eisenmann, that were, well fringe, though I have great respect for the ingenuity of the latter scholar, whose erudition is profound, but whose thesis can, by its very nature, not be proven. Few scholars deal with that, so secondary sources are lacking, and one is pushed to discussing or editing from a book that requires extreme delicacy by whoever harvests it. There's a voluminous literature now that touches on Ebionim in patristic literature, and it is quite, quite complex. No one is sure of anything. To face up to this is the primary duty of a serious editor, and the page should not discuss who the ebionim were (a generic term, or at least a term which, in the surviving sources, could refer to several groups that were later known by different names, and certainly had their infrasectarian differences) but (a) what the ancient testimonia say in chronological sequences (b) scholarly positions regarding each of the elements in ancient testimonia (c) general syntheses. etc. To do this would require radical reorganization, and a collaborative atmosphere, which I think Ovadyah would agree to, but not the joker in the pack. So it seems unworkable.

It's a general thing I have about wiki articles on classical antiquity, a field I was trained in, and mainly refuse to edit. They almost invariably simplify whereas contemporary scholarship is far more richly nuanced, far less comfortable with assured statements. One could edit them if more people understood that the main problem is admitting the difficulty of making any statement without qualification. Unfortunately, many don't. Life's short, and every page you get caught up in takes one's eye off a new book. Nishidani (talk) 17:40, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

For what it might be worth, I have a source which explicitly states that Eisenman's central theory regarding James as the Teacher of Righteousness has been, and I quote, "rejected by the academic community." That source is, if I remember rightly, an academic from Notre Dame who belongs to the DSS committee. Also, an investigative journalist has summarized the response to Eisenman's theories by other academics in a book of his, in remarkably less than laudatory language. The quote from that book I intend to add over the weekend. Those are, I think, sufficient to establish how the theory is unreliable. There is also the matter of Eisenman's almost laughable mistaken statements regarding the 4Q285 fragment, which he claimed proved beyond a doubt that the messianic figure was bleeding and dying. Just about everybody else thinks that the incomplete verb in fact means the messianic figure was making others bleed, in apparent agreement with something from Isaiah which I can't place right now. I would think those should be sufficient to basically bring into question Eisenman's theories. John Carter (talk) 18:40, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Well I look forward to seeing that. I'd say he's a fringe scholar that ought to be taken, not at a gulp, but seriously. The problem is, that his theory's assumptions are beyond standard methodological controls in historical scholarship. I've an open mind, however, on quite a lot of things he argues. There are a lot of odd things going on in the NT texts, and in the later traditions. Keen repression is everywhere. Everything, in NT scholarship, is 'theoretical' and to be bracketed. We need another hundred years of post-antisemitic Judeo-pagan-christian scholarship to reframe those documents in some mode of fresh reading that might allow us to analyse them, and hopefully enjoy or learn from them, detached from our own involved historical prejudices, and closer to the peculiar culture in which those texts arose. A community of faith is often uncomfortable with this. I find, to the contrary, that precisely this abundance of possible readings enriches my pleasure in them, which I only began to discover when I read them, with textual commentaries, in the original. Of course, Eisenman makes bloopers, strains evidence, has a Pynchonesque paranoid take on the period. But the central theory, that the Pauline renegade Jew essentially hijacked a nativist millenarian, pietistic, chiliastic, zealotic or enkratic (or all five factors) set of narratives and rewrote it in the service of Rome's political requirements for taming the ebullience of its Judaic periphery, is not far-fetched. Quite a lot of respectable scholars have said this, and in fact in this keynote theme, he is not original (Joel Carmichael said in in his 1962 book, building on Robert Eisler before him). It's a great study to look at the textual variants in the 1,000 manuscripts in 30 odd languages used in antiquity, and harvested to establish the modern text for the NT and its so-called apocryphal variants. Have you ever read the Armenian accounts of Jesus's childhood? They are astonishing for what they conserve of popular early beliefs which have been erased or expunged from the records, except in sections of Matthew and Luke. They are quite startling really, as are the pseudo-Clementines, and I don't trust those who approach these variants as 'marginalia' as opposed to the Christocentric orthodoxy. There are whole fields of unexplored possibility for hermeneutics that lie neglected because of a certain ivory tower acquiescence in consensus. Moses Hadas once argued for an impact of Plato's Laws on the formation of rabbinical thought. It doesn't seem to have got far, despite the substantial quantity of Greek loan words in rabbinical commentaries. Still, this is not apropos, except to note that the more I read, the more I lose the boredom of my early childhood's exposure to this literature, while remaining absolutely unattached to anything theological.Nishidani (talk) 19:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Greetings Nishidani. I noticed in your comments that you say you will consider participating in formal mediation if I do. In that case, I will have to give it serious thought. As you know, working on this article can be a thankless task. Nevertheless, I am very supportive of giving mediation a chance, as long as there is even a small chance of success. Unfortunately, from the very beginning of resuming work on the article, the editing environment has been deliberately turned into a poisoned well. I'll make a decision this weekend. Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 23:49, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Ovadyah. Look it's probably best for me to just write in the longterm, my own version of the Ebionism page offline over the next few months, rather than get involved in the kind of extensive argument the article tends to generate. I'll be footloose for some months, and in various libraries, but should probably come up with a version early next year. If I do, I'll post it for you all, and you can take it, take it to pieces, or leave it. I find actually editing articles tedious in the extreme, and need a break. In deference to John's request and your own courteous remarks, I feel that this would be the proper way to help out. In the meantime, I think you should all drop any intensive work on the article, and review the primary, then secondary sources, and rethink it thoroughly. Whatever, I'll keep an eye in there. Regards Nishidani (talk) 14:36, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt reply. In that case, I think it's pointless to consider yet another round of mediation between the remaining parties. I hope you will be able to improve the article over time by applying your considerable knowledge and expertise to this difficult subject. Meanwhile, we have to deal with what is in the here and now. Llywrch pointed out months ago on AN/I that the best course of action would be for all parties to the dispute to walk away from this article permanently and find something more productive to do. I agree. I pointed out at the time that the article badly needs the input of a new group of editors who know something about the subject, having actually read the books, and are competent to work on it. I will leave a comment on the RfM talk page and we can take it from there. Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 16:26, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

However pointless it might be, however, please note both Michael and Ovadyah have subsequently agreed to mediation, leaving the only party listed and not yet accepted you. Odd, isn't it, that after saying mediation is pointless, and you're indicating you wouldn't be likely to take part, that they would both agree to it, leaving me, in effect, a single party against two others, who could conceivably stonewall their way out of having anything accomplished, which I got the impression was why Michael opposed your entering into the first mediation? And, I regret to say, it wasn't the SSM member who said Eisenman was rejected. This quote is from of David Boulton's book Who on Earth was Jesus? p. 332, regarding Robert M. Price's review of the book James the Brother of Jesus. "As Robert M. Price, a sympathetic critic and fellow-scholar, puts it, 'James the Brother of Jesus often seems too circuitous and redundant, but this is the result of [Eisenman's] having to keep a number of balls in the air at once. He has to begin explaining something here, put it on hold, go to something else that you'll need to plug into the first explanation, then return to it, go on to another, and another, then come back to the earlier items, remind you of them, and then finally assemble the whole complex device. Eisenman is like the Renaissance artists who had to hand-craft all the intricate parts of a planned invention.' This is a generous way of saying what other scholars have said more astringently: that the arguments are often convoluted, the judgement imaginative, and the conclusions unconvincing. But Price, a Fellow of the Westar Institute and Jesus Seminar, which as a group stands far removed from Eisenman's methodology, ends his review with a positive appraisal: 'The book is an ocean of instructive insight and theory, a massive and profound achievement that should open up new lines of New Testament research." It was Stephen Hodge, in his book The Dead Sea Scrolls Rediscovered ISBN 1-56795-333-4, who said of Eisenman that his central theory regarding James as the Teacher of Righteousness as havving been "largely rejected within the academic community," on page 207. There are some references to 4Q285, the "Bleeding Messiah" text, on the web, but they don't seem to include Eisenman's rather dogmatic statement of how it proved the existing of a dying messiah. I'll have to check the books for that. John Carter (talk) 20:32, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I can, as in the past, work with yourself and Ovadyah. Not with Michael Price, who knows nothing of the requisite scholarship, and uses this page on wikipedia to play, in my view, what the Italians call a finto tonto game to exasperate editors. So my participation is categorically excluded.Nishidani (talk) 08:22, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Medation

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_mediation/Shakespeare_authorship_question. I have archived the rest of the page and this page will be the main page for this mediation Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 11:50, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Truffes

Le monde est fou, fou, fou, ... voyez-vous... (Paroles et musique). - Noisetier (talk) 06:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Seconded

This, I mean. A pox on all vexatious pettifoggery. -- Rrburke (talk) 21:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreement from a self-described kraut as well. John Carter (talk) 21:51, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks chaps. This joint's fast becoming a whinger's paradise, where any wimpish wanker can waddle off to to teacher to claim hurt for some 'slight'. Back in the paleolithic era of my youth, I toddled home from my first day at school slightly teary over some abuse, and all I got as consolation from my mother was a new metaphor as a gift, 'a storm in a teapot', and an allusion to Shakespeare (much ado about nothing) topped by a piece of wise doggeral I was told to memorize and repeat whenever caught in the crossfire of a slanging match:

'Sticks and stones may break my bones

But names will never hurt me.'Nishidani (talk) 07:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Request for mediation of Ebionites

A request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to Ebionites was recently filed. As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. The process of mediation is entirely voluntary and focuses exclusively on the content issues over which there is disagreement. Please review the request page and the guide to mediation requests and then indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you would agree to participate. Discussion relating to the mediation request welcome at the case talk page.

Thank you, AGK 23:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)