User talk:Samsara/Archive00

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 00:07, Sep 19, 2003 (UTC)

Hello. When creating a new page, could you highight the title word or title phrase at its first appearance, like this? That is conventional on Wikipedia. Michael Hardy 00:03, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks. (Sorry for late reply. Have been absent from wikipedia for a while...) - Samsara 22:09, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Evolution#Ecological niche

Thanks for the heads up, I responded and welcome aboard! - Roy Boy ⁸⁰⁰ 21:45, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

3.2 Mechanisms of evolution

Maybe the whole section "3.3 Speciation and extinction" should be under section 3.2, because speciation is also a mechanism of evolution. What do you think? Lakinekaki 20:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

oxford template

Hi, I see you've added yourself to the Oxon graduates category. I have begun to create templates for each individual college so that users can put them on their user pages - see Wikipedia:Userboxes/Education/United Kingdom/University of Oxford for details. If you would like another college made fast, just let me know! File:Anglo-indian.jpg Deano (Talk) 19:05, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much

When I think of all of us who worked together so hard for so long, I think of the line from Henry V We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...

It was a fun ride, wasn't it? So thanks you guys, that meant a lot to me.

Who did the Thelonious with a mop artwork? Brilliant! FeloniousMonk 08:23, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Phylogeography

As a volunteer myself, I usually deal with the other volunteers on Wikipedia quite politely. If I seemed rude, then I apologise, but cleaning out speedy deletes is a thankless task, and I'd rather not be accused of running around being deletion happy, especially when I'm actually being quite conservative and nominating articles for deletion (instead of the original speedy deletion) if I have the slighest doubt that they shouldn't be speedy deleted. Just to clarify, of the articles I've put up for deletion, they either came from here, where articles are nominated for speedy deletion, or where linked to other articles that were actually speedy deleted.

Actually, you know what? I was more than a little curt. I apologise for that. Hopefully we can continue to work together on this great project. Thanks, D e ath phoenix 02:15, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Albert Einstein

I've responded to the comment you left on my talk page re: Albert Einstein. Also, I noticed that you used the "Leave a message..." template on my page but you didn't modify it for yourself! I was terribly confused when I clicked to leave you a message but it ended up on my talk page instead! I've fixed the problem for you. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 16:38, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the repair work. I'd modified it originally, but rather than uncommenting my old version, I stole it again, this time forgetting to modify it. Silly. I posted this reply here because it's probably not essential that you read it... - Samsara 16:50, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Frog

I will probably merge much of that information, thanks. The idea with the frog adaptations article, is to have it as a sub-article from frog (like History of Australia when you go into the Australia article). Do you have any good references I could use for expanding my article? --liquidGhoul 06:27, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Group selection

Welcome. I look at other's sentences more closely than my own ! Anyway, I was quite shocked to see Phylogeography on death row... I am unable to see where I can put a keep vote. Shyamal 05:36, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Williams revolution

Hi, Samsara. You're on the right track with Williams Revolution-- don't give up!. Someone being sure they saw it somewhere doesn't cut it as verifiable-- the burden of proof is on those who say it exists as a term. Even if it is found somewhere, it's absence from the literature of evolutionary biology suggests it's not worthy of inclusion. I like your blog on the subject-- and checking the Web of Science was a very good idea.I think articles for deletion are voted on by interested editors, but I'm not sure of exactly how it's done. There is an alternative method called speedy deletion, but I don't know how it works, or if Williams revolution qualifies for it. If no one comes up with a non-Wiki source for the term, it should be moved into the queue for deletion. Cheers-- MayerG 06:11, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've checked the WP rules: Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Neologisms are considered original research, and are candidates for deletion, sometimes even speedy deletion. On the other hand, "minor" subjects are to be merged and redirected, with their content preserved by the merger. The "Williams Revolution" seems to fall somehwere in between-- a neologistic, and, IMO, inappropriate term, but nonetheless referring to actual events. I think your solution-- merger and redirect-- was absolutely correct in the circumstances. I've requested by ILL the book in which Mikkerpikker said he saw the term. If it's not there, I'm going to put up a redirect notice on "Williams Revolution", with "Gene-centered view of evolution" as the destination page. I'll marshal all the evidence on the Williams Revolution talk page, and put notes on the talk pages of Williams, Dawkins and Evolution. (BTW, I think an article on "Units of selection" would be preferable to the gene-centered article, but I'm not going to try that myself.) MayerG 07:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Samsara, I looked up 'Williams revolution' both in the evpsych books I've read recently and on google print & found nothing - I was therefore mistaken about having seen it in print. Mikkerpikker 12:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've begun removing the references to the "Williams revolution" in articles where it appears, and adding in references to gene-centric view of evolution. The first results are in George Williams, where I also added some detail and the rest of his books. Since you had at one point changed all of them, feel free to join in, or send me the names of articles that need changing. MayerG 06:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There were a few more beyond Vicar of Bray and W. D. Hamilton (because "Williams Revolution" gives a different "What links" result than "Williams revolution"), and I had to do a bit of tidying and editing on some, but they're all done now. Thanks very much for your help! Cheers, MayerG 17:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Podcast on C.H. Waddington

Thanks for the link to your podcast. As a grad student, I took a course on canalization with the Anglo-Australian geneticist James Rendel (see this), and thus was particularly interested in your comments on C.H. Waddington. Cheers-- MayerG 21:40, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

thanks man, please take a look at the kin selection thing. i suspect there is a quantitative inaccuracy. Marcosantezana 16:51, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

i saw what you wrote on the elephant stuff. right on about the sample size of one. but i actually had meant the real article and in particular the requirement for agressive behavior to "succeed". seems to me that the initial invasion requires much less "non-relatedness" indeed that what really matters is not generic "non-relatedness" but rather what the invading allele finds as it increases in frequency (allele that does not need to go to fixation, btw) . prairie dogs kill each other's progeny although thay are certainly all very related. but i may be wrong. Marcosantezana 15:04, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you!

Thanks for supporting me on my Rfa, Samsara! I appreciate your trust, and your kind words about my doing good work. The puppy is now an Admin (final tally 58/7/2) Please let me know if there is anything I can ever do to assist you. KillerChihuahua^?!? 17:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hybrid

Thanks for clarifying the genetic thoughts of a dabbler (me). I usually stick to polymer chemistry (my real field) and its derivatives, but I like to branch out once in a while. This was brought on by the fact that I keep running into people who have backcrossed a hybrid wild and domestic cat for 10 generations and then represent the resulting animal as F. s. catus when it is not. Do you think I'm being overly picky? Anyway, your edits are sexy! Pschemp 03:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you close your eyes??

How is it that you can so immediately respond to my questions at Talk:Human evolution? Today and yesterday we must have been up and about at the same time, even though I'm in Japan and you're in...Scotland? I do think that Origin belief is too general a page to which to redirect, but don't you think it's better to step back a bit than plunge directly into the specificity of evolution? Isn't it ultimately better for the searcher to indicate the level on which myth and science meet? One thing I like about Wikipedia is that it's given me the chance to make connections that I wouldn't have otherwise made, e.g. Franz Ferdinand's "Michael" and Caravaggio's "Head of Medusa". Unsigned by Turlington 00:52, 24 January 2006

Ethologists

I did this item on your todo list:

Put ethologists listed on Ethology#List_of_ethologists into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethologists

(sorry, I was bored with my usual) and the link to William Thorpe on Ethology#List_of_ethologists is supposedly a different William Thorpe. I suspect you may know the answer, so could you please take a look at this and help decide if this is correct? You can see the issue discussed on both talk pages, Talk:Ethology#List_of_ethologists and Talk:William Thorpe. Any help is appreciated! Pschemp | Talk 04:29, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for fixing this. You are great help! Pschemp | Talk 05:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

2004 study

Found, as per your request. Guettarda 21:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As a Trini evolutionary biologist (ok, I'm in ecologist, but the word EB is in my degree) I feel obligated to keep up with this stuff, so your question spurred me to figure out (plus I have met some of the guppy people, so I was curious which group it was that published this study). Guettarda 21:55, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two items I'm looking for

If you can help with either of these:

There's a board game in triagonal and hexagonal versions, somewhat similar to Go (board game). What is the name?
There exists a mythological character who has been punished with knowing everything, but being met with disbelief everywhere. What is the name?

-- Samsara _contrib ^talk 03:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Number one is derivatives of Hex (board game). Any takers for the second one? - Samsara _contrib ^talk 00:49, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nature versus nurture

Hey Samsara, LotLE & I are trying to come up with a nice intuitive explanation for heritability and gene-environment interaction effects to put in nature versus nurture. I thought you might have some helpful input to make (see lower down on talk:nature versus nurture. Pete.Hurd 08:56, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

History of Science

Samsara, please consider joining the History of Science WikiProject; we need more people focused on biology. Since you have an interest in Haeckel, I also want to point out to you this lovely image that is up for featured article election. May the Wiki be with you--ragesoss 07:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lamarckism

Thanks for the changes -- they look good. If you've any other comments on the page or tips to make linkages clearer they'd be greatly appreciated (I'm kind of new to Wikipedia and trying to get the hang of everything). "Death knell" was a good bit to remove! (sorry! not sure how that got in there!!). :-)

It strikes me that since you know a lot more about this than I do you may want to rework the entire section on "Lamarckism and single celled organisms" on the Lamarckism page. I knew very little about the subject except that the initial assertion that the original description of the theory as "disproven" seemed unnecessarily harsh.

By the way, how is the ball/ child model a logical fallacy?

Thanks for your message, as for your question, the logic you apply is analogous to saying because the first swan you come across is not black, there are no black swans. I think you can see why that's not a good assertion to make. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 15:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I'm with you -- you're asserting that the ball/ child model is a form of Popper's swan fallacy. Yes, I can see that if you clumsily assert that because ball catching is not passed on in a Lamarckian sense THEREFORE nothing is, is clearly a false premise. I hadn't realised that my piece was worded in that manner but I can see from the concern you raise that I worded myself badly.

Still, I think that perhaps the ball/ child example may have a role to play because someone without specialist knowledge might benefit from an example or two that show instances where Lamarckian evolution is demonstrated not to occur, such as ball catching or guitar playing or knowing how to drive a car from birth -- particularly since such examples then nicely set up the question in a non-specialist's mind of "well, how do you explain animal instinct, then?", which can lead into ontogenic evolution. (Speaking of which, you may want to look at that page because it could do with a specialist's touch).

Coricus 16:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

made a few changes - evolution of sex

I've made some changes in the intro of the article Evolution of sex as well bumping up the section sex creates variation among siblings to the beginning of the page. I was hoping to make the text a little clearer. Hope I didn't offend anyone. seb951

Good points samsara. I think the updates you've made to my earlier contributions makes for a much clearer intro and a better overall flow of the text. seb951.

I think the article needs to also talk about the origins of sex. reproduction. Either it could be put on same page or refer to the page 'sexual reproduction' which would then need the section 'origin of sex. reprod. reworked. seb951

Response to jan 30th comments

1)Thanks for fixing the title. I'm just figuring out how this works. Zygotes and gametes are valid for animal cells too, but we can remove them if you want, i don't care. I just used a plant text book cause that's what I had in my office.

2) confusing structure

Agreed. I think origin of sex should go as subsection under evolution of sex. Just didn't want to move the whole thing and create a diplomatic incident + didn't have time to completely think through everything.

3)I don't like the sentence A combination of origin of sex and clade selection mechanisms could, in theory, explain the abundance of sex; however, many cases are now known where sex is maintained by at least one of the mechanisms proposed by biologists including Bill Hamilton, Alexey Kondrashov, and George Williams. It is too complex for an intro, brings in too many different issues.

I would rather have The evolution of sex is a major puzzle in modern evolutionary biology. Many groups of organisms, notably the majority of animals and plants, reproduce sexually. The evolution of sex contains two related, yet distinct, themes: its origin and its maintenance. However, since the hypotheses for the origins of sex are difficult to test experimentally, most current work has been focused on the maintenance of sexual reproduction. Several explanations have been suggested by biologists including Bill Hamilton, Alexey Kondrashov, and George Williams to explain how sexual reproduction is maintained in a vast array of different living organisms.

That is it. seb951

Frog Stuff

Hey Samsara,

You can merge that if you want to. I think, at the moment, it would be best to create as large an article as possible, and then once we have finished (if that is possible) we can create subarticles on the sections which are too large. One thing I don't currently like, is the use of sub-headings. During the peer review of White's Tree Frog people told me to get rid of them, and I now understand why. When I was doing the gallery experimenting, the subheadings made it really hard! Anyway, thanks for all your help with my sanbox stuff. --liquidGhoul 03:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

References

Emerson, S.B. and Diehl, D. (1980). 'Toe pad morphology and mechanisms of sticking in frogs'. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 13(3): 199-216
Tyler, M.J. 1994. Australian Frogs A Natural History. Reed Books ISBN 0730104680
2004. Encyclopedia of Reptiles & Amphibians Second Edition. Fog City Press ISBN 1877019690

The top one is from Tyler's book, it is in the bibliography, but I think it should be included. The other two are the major sources I used. I did use others, and I will add them to the references as I find them. --liquidGhoul 22:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't write the poison section. I have left the poison part of my article there, because it will be harder to merge. --liquidGhoul 02:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:LiquidGhoul/Frog_gallery_experimenting

I have just had a play around with this, and it now works (although I haven't tested other resolutions). The "edit" buttons are in place. The way I did it, was if the photo was intercepting the seperation line of a section (e.g. at the bottom of "Call") then the photo code should go directly under the heading of the higher section it is touching (:==Call== in this exapmle). I think it should work for lower resolutions, but am not sure about higher resolutions.

I just tested the resolutions, and it works up until 1360x1024, where the smallest section stuffs up. This will be fixable once the article is finished and there is much more writing, and no small sections.

I didn't realise the conflict with the gallery at 1024x768, and didn't know what you were talking about earlier. The tag you used really stuffed it up at my resolution (1280x960), so I turned it off. For the life cycle, something like the drug chart at Psychoactive drug would work, where we have the four images in a circle, with curved arrows to each stage. Like it is usually seen in a book. However, again, we would have to wait for the article to be expanded some. I might work on creating this in another sandbox later. --liquidGhoul 02:00, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

Aw gee... I like the star polygon! But, Sparkling prose??
Thanks! Vsmith 02:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Giggles

I am awarding you a luscious bar o' chocolate because that is just so sweet of you to feature silly old me.psch e mp | talk 17:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hah. Tried to sign it didn't you? *grin* psch e mp | talk 17:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most wanted link count

Hi Beland, Dmcdevit recommended I talk to you about the fact that, to pick an example, the entry for Homerton College Boat Club on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_wanted_articles says it has 44 links to it, when the number of pages actually linking to it according to "what links here" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Homerton_College_Boat_Club) is only 15. I marvelled how two different statistics could be given for this, when (assuming a parsimonious software design) both should be drawing on the same data source. - Samsara 04:58, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Both statistics are accurate. One is reporting the number of pages that link to a given target, and the other is reporting the number of links. They are different in this case because some of the pages have multiple links to this target. I have added a clarification to the intro of Most Wanted. -- Beland 17:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So it is as I thought. I think the number of linking pages should be the relevant count, not the number of links. As you can see in the example I gave, that number may be highly variable depending on subject. It seems that sports articles particularly tend to have multiple links in the same document, whereas in science articles, I've very rarely seen it. Hence some kinds of articles would be created at a higher rate than others, resulting in an asymmetric growth of wikipedia. I think this is a bad thing (TM). - Samsara 17:42, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I added your suggestion to the list on the page itself. Next time I revise the code (and it needs it) I will see what I can do. -- Beland 00:13, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cystic fibrosis on WP:MCOTW

Cystic fibrosis, which you voted for, has been selected as the Medicine Collaboration of the Week. You are invited to help improve it! — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:51, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the awards

Thanks for the "small" awards. It's greatly appreciated! --liquidGhoul 06:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

primacy

you solved that very finely, darwin's impact did not suffer a bit. i've always said the thing was in the air at that time but he did lots of work to nail it, not a genious but rather a hard worker/thinker Marcosantezana 18:40, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Frog won!

Thank you for your support of the Article Improvement Drive.
This week Frog was selected to be improved to featured article status.
Hope you can help…

Dijxtra 21:18, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know about Nutrition

...as the SCOTW. I did the previously-one-sentence History section but I got to 1936 and just felt overwhelmed. I want to contribute to some more interesting parts, but I need to read the voluminious talk page first, and probably won't get to any more this week. Thanks again. --James S. 19:50, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just letting you know... I respect the hard work you do at the Science article nomination. I hope the project picks up some steam, and I'll try to lend a hand and vote as I can.

"Samsara is Nirvana, Nirvana is Samsara." - John Daido Loori

I guess that makes you Nirvana as well ??! --DanielCD 22:16, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks man. :) - Samsara _contrib 22:20, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yellow strip

In the food pyramid you just added to nutrition, there is no indication of what the yellow strip/bar in the graph depicts - any ideas?

I'm guessing it's junk food -- candy, pop, &c. But if you drill down into the picture there's a link to a govm't PDF file. It might explain in there. *shrug* :) — RJH 22:35, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Get well

Aye, the flu sucks, get well, cheers. Pete.Hurd 15:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Water_drop_animation

"Yes, I think we can make this better before we give it FP status." I thought so too. Please check out the page, you may wish to reconsider your vote now. Feel free to remove this note once you've seen it. --Gmaxwell 23:45, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please

don't lose faith. although I think that COTW really should be more like COT month to get it right. Is there something particular bothering you? psch e mp | talk 05:25, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

translation

Sweet! I'm glad it caught your fancy. My German is good enough to hack through a translation myself given enough time, but not good enough to fix subtle things in another. So keep up (what I assume is) the good work.--ragesoss 17:48, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

logic

the logic comment was not meant for you, man, but for that moron, axel. i apologize. Marcosantezana 23:51, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your question about the mythological character on your user page

Probably you mean Cassandra...

Regards, Kaarel 11:38, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Templates

I had a look over them, and they look great. I might get some ideas later, bit these seem to be covering the things they need to cover.... --KimvdLinde 03:58, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]