User:DirkvdM

Main Contents
My contributions (well, some of them)
Why everyone should adopt the SI system
Alternative to the Big Bang theory
Mendeleyevian Mechanics
Countries I have visited

My name is Dirk van der Made and I live in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, to be precise). I have studied management and philosophy and my fields of interest are just about anything new (which is why Wikipedia is especially addictive to me), but specifically science, music and travelling.

I discovered Wikipedia in March 2005 and was instantly hooked. In the sense that it really has become an addiction. However, in november 2007 I stopped contributing because of the way some editors make life impossible for others. See further down.

From the Babel fish article:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

And here's another gem, linked to at the ref desk by Edison:

Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs and in front they have fore legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity. Therefore horses have an infinite number of legs.

The following starts with my Wikipedia-contributions, but if you're into physics, don't miss the physics section.

Chestbeating

This editor is a Veteran Editor II, and is entitled to display this Bronze Editor Star.

Some of the work I've done during my more than two year long addiction. This list is far from complete because I don't always think of putting a link here when I've written something. At the moment (31 October 2007 - the day I left) I've done 12530 edits on 2245 pages ([2]).

Photographs

For some beautiful photography of Cuba and Costa Rica Zleitzen 08:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

A replica of the Prins Willem at SAIL Amsterdam 2005

Wikipedia:Babel

nlDeze gebruiker heeft het Nederlands als moedertaal.

liDizze gebroeker haet Limburgs as modertaal.

en-4This user can contribute with a near-native level of English.

de-3Dieser Benutzer hat sehr gute Deutschkenntnisse.

es-2Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel intermedio de español.

fr-2Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau intermédiaire en français.

af-2Hierdie gebruiker het 'n gemiddelde begrip van Afrikaans.

id-1Pengguna ini mampu bersumbangsih dengan bahasa Indonesia tingkat dasar.

fy-1It Frysk fan dizze brûker is minimaal.

HTML-2This user is an intermediate HTML user.

sw-0Mtumiaji huyu hasemi Kiswahili.

Search user languages

Aaaaaaargh, that's me!
Yes, I admit, I voted VVD once upon a time. I've grown up since, though.

Photography has become a bit of a hobby of mine in the last few years, so I thought I'd upload some nice ones. I started this here at the English Wikipedia, on a subpage of my user page, but I restarted that on Wikimedia commons to make them directly accessible from any Wiki project. That is also a better selection and presentation. In the process I've created an online portfolio. Not necessarily of the best ones, just the better ones that I thought relevant for Wikipedia.

I've also created some stubs just to place my photos, such as National Park De Groote Peel.

I received several offers for my photographs, which I grouped together at User:DirkvdM/Photo-sales.

For more beautiful photos by others see two of the links under the Quite Interesting section below.

Major article contributions

British Isles (terminology)

An article I started to clarifies terms like (Great) Britain, the British Isles, the UK and England (and whether Ireland has anything to do with any of these), because that will be a mystery to many people and there is no comprehensive explanation in a single (obvious!) place. There have been several structural and other changes, but still about half the text is originally mine. Alas the simple explanation in the introduction is gone because it isn't entirely correct, so now it's still not made clear in an easy way for those who are confused.

Schunck and Glaspaleis

An article I started on the warehouse that my greatgrandfather founded in Heerlen and the monumental 'Glass Palace' my grandfather built to house it. Originally one article, but someone split it, which made sense. Actually, the two articles have grown so much now that they could almost do with another split (each).
On 16 December 2006, 15 months after I started the articles, the Glaspaleis article got a rating of B class with high importance. I suppose the verifiablility of data will hamper a rise on the scale because my sources were largely in print, not from the web. At that moment it was still almost exclusively written by me, but that will probably change if others get to scrutinise it now that it's been tagged 'important'.

Valkenburg resistance

An article I started because my uncle was part of it and because it's a good example of how the resistance operated in the Netherlands during WWII. It's largely based on a story in Dutch on a site about my family (mother's side).

Template:List of cabinets of the Netherlands

A sudden interest in politics in 2006 led me to make this overview of the composition of cabinets in the Netherlands.

Corcovado National Park

This was a mere stub. I transformed it into a complete article because this magnificent park deserves it. I know what I'm talking about - I do a lot of 'tramping' (as Kiwis call it) and no other park comes anywhere near this one when it comes to watching spectacular wildlife.

Stranger in the forest

An article I started on an excellent travel book. Never mind novels. This is real and a more thrilling story than any novelist could come up with. And if he did, people would think he wasn't being realistic. If you like it, then also read Adrift, another great 'travel' book (although in this case it was not intended as such).

SAIL Amsterdam

There was already a stub, but I changed that during the 2005 event, also putting in some photos like the one to the right here.

This event (and my general interest in sailing) inspired me to write more about (tall) ships. I created stubs on several ships (such as the Stad Amsterdam) and added to some existing articles, such as Batavia (ship).

Ship replica

An article I started after digging into the subject when writing the SAIL Amsterdam article (above).

Onedin Line

One of the best series I've ever seen on tv. Again something to do with sailing ships, one of my passions. But also realistic portrayal of business practices (an emerging business, not the rich daddy shit called 'Dallas'), historical accuracy, good acting and social drama kept to a minimum. I wrote the episode section and the Onedin Line episode list. Alas, the rerun on Dutch tv I based this on stopped after the first season.

Peace One Day

Another stub I made into a full article.

Black Tulip

An article I started, on an operation in the aftermath of the Second World War in the Netherlands.

Reference desk FAQ

By popular demand, a faq list for the reference desk. I encountered many questions that had been asked before there, so I already came up with the idea in the first half of 2006. When other people started requesting it too, I decided to give it a go. This might just turn into the biggest thing I started on Wikipedia. Half a year later it's not entirely dead, but not quite bustling with activity either.

Hiking equipment

An article I started. Basically a list. I plan to do more editing on the subjects of hiking and travelling.

Seven Ages of Rock

An article I started and largely wrote myself. Music plays a important role in my life and this is largely about the music I grew op with.

Misrepresentation of the People Act

Not such a big article, but it's a very interesting subject.

Other article contributions

The links are to articles I worked on. Don't expect too much - most of my work is spread over loads of articles - a bit here, a bit there. More than anything, this is an introduction to me, an overview of my interest.

Being from Amsterdam I've worked on articles relating to that city and the Netherlands, including History of the Netherlands and Maastricht, the city in which I grew up.
And also related to the Netherlands are Curaçao (where I was born) and Indonesia (the country I've spent most time in during my travels), which in turn led me to the Dayaks (of whom I've made a bit of a study in the early 1990's while panning a crossing of Borneo).
I created the stubs on the Peel, a region in the Netherlands and the National Park Groote Peel (both just to have somewhere to put some nice photographs :) ).
The Dutch (and original!) version of Santa Claus is Sinterklaas, so I made a point of pointing that out.
Being from Amsterdam of course I couldn't help having my say about cannabis and related subjects.
After reading some very interesting stuff about Dutch history (we were close to a revolution!) I've added that info to Pieter Jelles Troelstra. I am now finding out that there were several similar (communist/anarchist) rebellions in Europe at the time, something I'd like to dig into further.

I've translated some articles from other languages (especially Dutch), such as the ones on Sociocracy and Nuna (the latter of which was really a matter of national pride, something of which you'll otherwise always hear me deny having any :) ).

I travel a lot, which of course causes a specific interest in countries I've been to. Especially those of my last trip, to Cuba, Costa Rica and Panamá. For example, I have somewhat expanded Monteverde and Baracoa, which were still stubs.
Alas the articles concerning Cuba sometimes gave me a headache due to the controversies. An exceptionally long one is at Talk:Cult of personality about whether, and, if so, how, Fidel Castro should be mentioned. This automatically led me to articles on Communism, such as Communist state (and whether that term is an oxymoron). I have for now moved largely away from those articles, effectively letting the 'other side' 'win' by default. The effect on my total output was considerable - now that I am no longer confronted with those edit wars, I find time to really add info, without seeing it reverted within a day.
One Cuba-related article I started is Vieja Trova Santiaguera, which is sufficiently uncontroversial not to have led to any reverts (actually, there haven't been any other edits at all). It also reflects my interrest in music, a field in which I'd like to contribute more.

Travelling has also inspired a more general interest in geography. That combined with a tendency to address things structurally and historically/etymologically correct has led me to do a somewhat controversial rewrite of the Western Hemisphere article.

Related to the above is my rather cocky attitude towards the meaning of America/the Americas and Football ('soccer' is of course one of the ugliest words in the English language :) ).

Wasting way too much time watching movies, I wrote stubs on some that I saw, like Der Tunnel, Hiroshima (film) and Fidel (film). I expanded the stubs on Sir! No Sir! and Balseros and out of a nostalgic interest also the one on Floris (TV series) (the first acting job of Rutger Hauer).

Being a categorisation-freak I can't leave disambiguation pages alone.

I somehow got caught up in the God article (God knows how). Luckily I managed to break away from that. Religious discussions must be the least productive type of discussion imaginable (and I've studied philosophy, so I've heard some bullshit in my lifetime :) ).

And then there are of course loads of other minor contributions, of which I will just mention 911 as an oddity because of the asserted numerological assumption that the fact that some attack took place 912 days after some other attacks is in some way worth mentioning because the first attacks took place on 11-9 (little endian). Which it isn't. But then those who think it is turned out to be more adamant than me.

Talk:Dollar voting shows an attempt at setting up a theory on Dollar voting (that article is just a stub at the moment). I had put a link in the article to the talk page, but someone removed that. So now nothing links to it. Except for this - as if anyone's going to notice :( . Ah well, that taught me not to put time into original research.

Two more of the many stubs I've created:
Kees Boeke
User:DirkvdM/World politics overview This is a project I started to give an overview of world politics (coalitions and such). Nothing much yet, but I have big plans. Then again, I have many big plans and only one life. :)

The last decade or so, I've started to realise more and more how indoctrinated I have been by my upbringing. My travels have a lot to do with that, but it struck me most when I saw a list of firsts in space and noticed that during the first decade, the USA achieved next to nothing compared to the USSR. Yet, I grew up believing the lie that the US had won the space race by putting a man on the Moon. And this despite the fact that I was very interrested in astronomy and the like when I was a kid and have always had a very critical look at things. Knowing that, I now realise why most people (even intelligent ones) are so close-minded and ready to go to war against other cultures, simply because they are different. Anyway, I decided to counter the bias at the space exploration article, starting with the list of firsts, which lacked about half the achievements of the USSR space programme.

Talk pages - best of

Some of the better discussions I had on talk pages. Just one for now, the one that made me start this section.

• Free market - Democracy?

Reference Desk

This user is a member of Wikipedians against censorship.

For your extraordinary contributions to Wikipedia reference desks, I award you this E=MC² Barnstar. Keep up the good work! deeptrivia (talk) 16:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

For helping me pass my GI subspecialist exams [1], I award DirkvdM this barnstar. Thanks for your Ref Desk assistance! Samir धर्म 06:45, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

		The Special Barnstar
		For going the extra mile in your contributions to the Reference Desks lately. Your answers are consistently detailed and informative. --S.dedalus 01:18, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

In September 2005 I discovered the fun of the Science Reference Desk, which meant I really didn't have time for anything else anymore (though with some effort I still managed to eat and sleep :) ). But it paid off, as the three barnstars show (I even helped someone pass an exam and I got applauded in this thread). I suppose I need to spend more time in one place in stead of jumping from article to article, to get more of these. :)

However ....

Alas, in november 2006 someone started deleting posts he didn't like and even got support from admins who didn't know what they were talking about, while the opponents couldn't get their act (protest) together. Since then, the ref desk isn't fun anymore because everyone is scared their post might be deleted if it contains humour. I WILL NOT BE GAGGED. So I left the ref desk. (Effectively gagging myself.) So ... I have stopped contributing to Wikipedia because of the way it is run, more specifically deletionism and most notably on the reference desk. After a slight return in mid 2007, troubles started again, with people deleting all sorts of posts, applying some 'rules' but not others and often ignoring them, mostly out of ignorance. Wikipedia is supposed to be by and for the people. Guidelines make sense, but some have made 'rules' that many disagree with and started applying them to a part of Wikipedia they know nothing about. I no longer wish to participate in something that works like that.

.... so I decided to indefinitely stop contributing to Wikipedia as of 31 October 2007.
If the deletion 'rules' change, please tell me, so I can participate again.

ps. Two days later, I discovered how much I edit Wikipedia. I still look things up, and when I see a typo or a clumsy wording or an unordered list, I can't help but hit the edit button. It has become a reflex, a habit, and I'm experiencing serious cold turkey now. But I will persevere (Je maintiendrai, as we say in Dutch :) ).

To give an idea of the sort of thing that would disappear, here's a fine example of what kept me coming back to the ref desk, from a question about whether it is safe to swallow a pen (the things people ask :) ):

WORST JOKE: A boy swallowed a counterfeit coin. After a few days he died. Reason? He couldn't pass it. Edison 19:08, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

BETTER JOKE: A boy swallowed a silver dollar and was sent to the hospital for observation. When his parents inquired as to his condition, the doctor responded "no change yet". StuRat 23:09, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

BETTERER JOKE: A boy took a medical exam. To the last question he wrote "no change yet." He couldn't pass it, and died. — [Mac Davis] (talk)

Or what about this one:

Q: Which is more durable? Metal or non-metal?

A: Skin. In the bible it states that Moses tied his ass to a tree and walked for a day and a night. Gzuckier 14:44, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

There is also more useful stuff there too, though, such as the following remark:

"In countries where people are not rich, the valued thing is the ability for you and your children to survive, not freedom. [...] Almost every country where democracy works the people are all already living in acceptable condiditions when the democracy is installed." (by Philc)

I've also made a selection of The Best Of The Ref Desk, but that was growing a bit large, so I put it on a separate page. The following are the 'best of the best' (that's biased POV OR and all that, but hey, this is my page :) ):

• Free markets - pro or con: my ideal economic politics in a nutshell.
• Need help urgently: Contains a little rant by me about the uselessness of manned space exploration (the second half).
• Football(soccer): Football ... and while I'm at it ... America.
• Time dimensions: does 'time squared' imply a second temporal dimension?
• USA success - some food for thought on international division of wealth, especially the first half.
• The square root of France: An exquisite bit of nonsense.
• Daily Death rates of US soldiers: The only interesting thing here is my last observation, comparing the relative death tolls of WWII (3.17%), US in Vietnam (5-10%), the US in Iraq (2.3% and counting) and the Dutch politionele acties (0.15%). Shame-wise, I'd rather be Dutch than USian.
• Terrorists : A educative analysis by Marco Polo of the Middle East and Al Qaeda, which inspired me to make some astute obsevations too. After that the thread degenerated to bickering, but that can be interesting too at times.
• Spacetime: An interesting view of spacetime, with motion and time being interchangeable.
• Turkey Pop Out: The odd naming of turkeys in different languages. This answer (by me) was used in the christmas 2006 edition of QI, a quiz that appears to make ample use of the ref desk because topics there happen to pop up in the quiz a bit later surprisingly often.
• Science - living forever - Can we live forever after our mind is transferred to a computer? Especially read SteveBaker's long post - he thinks like me. And of course my post. (And ignore the very first spin-off because that missed the point.) But first read the two consecutive threads downloading something to a persons brain and Communicating with animals ??, where I also proposed an implementation.
• Humanities - What is the all-time biggest massacre? - after the first actual answers a discussion about the legality of war and an alternative in the form of an unarmed army (is that a contradiction in terms?)
• Science - Runaway Global Warming - firstly, SteveBaker's list of runaway climate effects, but also my comments, especially the second one, where I link to the KNMI, which I consider rather illuminating - fairly detailed, yet concise (I have my moments).

Mid 2007 I made a slight return to the ref desk, hoping it will not (again) start consuming half my time (that's counting sleeping time :) ).
But then the deletionism started again, and this time I wasn't willing to put up a fight anymore, so I left again in late October.

An alternative that is not as squeamish about the sort of questions asked is the Wikiversity help desk. Nowhere near as busy as the ref desk, but maybe I need a bit of a quiet corner right now. And of course it will only grow if more people participate, so that's a perfectly good reason.

Some thoughts on Wikipedia

Userboxes

inclThis user is an inclusionist.

Wikipedia has a huge advantage over paper encyclopedias - it doesn't have to fit on a shelf. So it can grow without limits (in text size the English Wikipedia is already about 10 times bigger than a major 20-volume paper encyclopedia). Ultimately, it could hold all human information. Imagine a modern day Library of Alexandria with all the information organised in one big system in which everything links to everything! Alas, there are some old fashioned folk around who delete anything they don't consider important enough. My criteria are

• is it true?
• is it relevant?

If it's true it should be in Wikipedia. If it's not relevant for a certain article then it should go elsewhere (in stead of being bluntly deleted). This is also how Wikipedia grows - info is added to an article until it becomes too big, and then things have to be moved to more in-depth articles. Which in turn can grow and spawn even more in-depth articles. Etc, etc.
The amount of detail an encyclopedia can give is limited by its size. Since there is no reason to set a limit to the size of Wikipedia, it can harbour any amount of detail.
For example, why not have an article on, say, the design of the power button on the Samsung CB-5051A tv set? If someone finds it interesting enough to write an article about it, chances are someone else somewhere someday will want to read about it. And the easiest way to find info is when it is organised the way it is in Wikipedia. If that is done well, such detail should be less than 10 links away and found in 10 minutes, quite a difference from the messy way info is organised on the Internet as a whole. And it's also a lot more reliable than 'some other site' on the Internet because mistakes are likely to get corrected eventually. For those who are not interested in the subject - well, they can just ignore it, can't they? It certainly won't get in the way if all the info is placed and linked to logically.
Ultimately, Wikipedia could even become a newspaper with Wikinews as the front page, from which the relevant background info in the encyclopedia is linked to. I often miss that when reading a newspaper.

I'm also a bit of a Don Quijote when it comes to pov and bias in articles. Such as the use of a word like 'regime' for some governments but not for others. I suggest dropping the word altogether in all articles to solve this. But the discussion at talk:Regime didn't get very far (or rather it got bogged down in details).

An other idea would be a fact sheet for each article, in which the basic facts to be presented in the article could be placed, not in the form of prose (as in the article) but as a simple listing. This could then also contain information that has not yet entered the article or has been removed from it, with a link to any discussions about it (the term fact sheet might not be quite right in this light, though). The article could then have just the undisputed text, maybe with a new type of link (eg in green) to the fact sheet where applicable.
All that is disputed could then be removed from the article, but still be accessible in a 'simple' overview without having to search through the talk page (or even the archives and the article history).
The reason for this idea is that some articles (eg Cuba) suffer from constant reverts. Many editors there are very opinionated and will add any 'info' (or twisted interpretation of it) that suits them. Which in turn inspires others who disagree to take a stronger opposing view. The result is that editors overload an article with so much info it can't all be checked, so they start reverting anything that looks suspicious. This will put off neutral editors, so they'll invest their energy elsewhere, leaving the article to the pitbulls.
A further step could be the use of moderators who are the only ones who can change the article, based on what happens on the talk page and the fact sheet. These would have to be people who have proven to be politically neutral (which is a tough one) and willing to put enough time into the article. An incentive for them would be that what they do will not run the risk of getting instantly reverted and they'll make more of a difference compared to the alternative situation.
A variation on this, that still needs to get off the ground, is http://www.citizendium.org/. Alas, this focuses on tech stuff, the very sort of article that is the most reliable bit of Wikipedia, so I don't really see the point.
Also worth a read in this respect is this posting by Jimbo Wales about rating Wikipedians, as well as these 'articles' (follow the link to the German article in the first one) and this New Scientist article.

Private Wiki

I want to set up a personal Wiki, but still need to look into that. In the mean time, here's a ref desk question that might help: Mediawiki-style personal wiki. Tiddlywiki looks interesting.

Miscellaneous

Fuck political correctness    Free your mouth ...    ... and your mind will follow

Family

In the second half of 2006 I started digging into my family history. Going ever further back in time (13 generations), my ancestors (mother's side) are:

Schunck, Cloot, Prickaerts, Küppers

Democracy vs. Science:    "They've got the truth,     but we've got the numbers."

Snoeck, Damoiseaux, Kroppenberg

de Hessele, Keybetz, Schiffers, Stassen, Thissen

Handels, Pluymaekers, Ramekers, Scheepers, Schins

Meens van Musschenbroek, Quadvlieg, Schönen, Latten, Bosch, Hameckers

Reuters, Schepers, Sinsteden, Rutzerveld, Biessels, Coninx

The oldest ancestor being Macarius Priccardus, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand-father, who must have been born around 1500.
If any of the those names appear in your family, let me know - we might be related. :)

I looked up those names and found a few interresting articles about people who might just be somehow related to me:

• Anacharsis Cloots: with an 's', as one of my ancestors indeed spelled it. And he is a Prussian of Dutch descent, so that fits. And what's more, he was nicknamed "orator of mankind", "citoyen de l’humanité" and "a personal enemy of God". I can relate to that. :)
• Snoeck appears in the List of Dutch noble families. My great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Snoeck was said to be the richest girl in Limburg. Whether she was of nobility I don't know. One doesn't speak of that sort of thing, you know. :)
• Snoecks was originally called Snoeck's, so there might be a link.
• Emanuel Schiffers was Russian chess champion for 10 years.
• Claudia Schiffer. Without the 's', but those get dropped occasionally, so still a possibility there.
• M.J. de Hesselle was mayor of Heerlen, which is also where 'my' de Hessele is from so he was probably family.
• Bosch: of course the painter, the beer and the power drills, but also a Nobel laureate, a terrorist with a strikingly un-Cuban name, and many more.
• Pieter van Musschenbroek, the inventor of the capacitor (battery).
• 12491 Musschenbroek, an asteroid
• Musschenbroek's Spiny Rat - this is starting to get silly ....
• Neopsittacus musschenbroekii, a lorikeet
• Stijn Coninx, director of Daens, one of the best films ever.
• Reuters: no introduction needed. But note that the name of the founder is 'Reuter'. I can't find anything on the name 'Reuters'.

Some less interresting ones:

• Maurice Damoiseaux, former governor of the Belgian province Hainaut.
• Paul Thissen, a US politician with "a reputation as someone who could work across party lines". Something I can relate to.
• Tof Thissen, a member of the Dutch House of Lords for GroenLinks, the party I vote for (for lack of a non-left-wing party that takes climate change serious enough).
• Willem Bastiaensz Schepers, a Dutch naval hero. Fitting, with a name that litterally means 'shippers'.

And an odd use of 'Thissen': In moments of extreme anger Ossett Fish-puddlers have been known to resent "thou" and reply "Don't thee thou me thee thou thissen and see how tha likes thee thouing" but this is rare.

Interresting possibility: Emanuel Schiffers was an Ashkenazy Jew. My great-great-great grandmother along maternal lines was called Schiffer. So if she was also Jewish, then by Jewish tradition so am I. Then again, her first name was Maria, so that makes that less likely (even though the best known Mary was presumably also Jewish).

This user is a world citizen.

Politics

I managed to almost completely break away from Wikipedia in May 2006, to start up a political party (in Dutch). But then the Dutch cabinet fell, and elections came too early for the party to participate, so I made a 'slight return', until the next project (see above) presented itself.

'Established facts'

All the people can fool themselves all the time,

If people really want something to be true they will start to convince each other and any lie can become an 'established fact'. Especially if the major media go along with it, but then they will, because if they don't, they will soon, through lack of popular demand, cease to be major media. Any free thinkers will be easily ignored or else terrorised away by calling them 'unpatriotic' or something of the sort.
For example, anyone who looks at the major achievements in space exploration with an unbiased view will have to conclude that the USSR won the space race in the 50s and 60s (first object in space, first satellite, first human in space, first to reach Earth escape velocity, first photographs of the other side of the Moon, first moonlanding, first landing on another planet, first samples brought back from the Moon, first lunar rover and first space station, to name but a few). Only after that did the US start to catch up with and even surpass the USSR, with the Mariner program, the Pioneer program and especially the Voyager program and the Hubble space telescope, but Kennedy had already fed people the lie that the first manned moonlanding was the main goal, so people didn't sufficiently appreciate the value of these missions, ironically lacking admiration for achievements that really deserve it. And irritatingly, this focus on manned missions has led to a lot of money wasted that could have been much better utilised for a multitude of unmanned missions (which cost only a fraction per flight).

Cars

Main article: User:DirkvdM/Cars

Cars kill. Over 1 million deaths per year, resulting so far in some 30 million dead (and counting). On top of that, they consume somewhere between 10% and 20% of our energy (depending on what you take into the equation). I've got a lot of thoughts on this, which I intend to write down here some day - I've already made a start in a separate 'main article' - follow the link above). The basic thought revolve around an automated highway system. See also Electronic Stability Control. And I wrote the SmILE article. Since I consider climate change by far the biggest problem mankind faces, I should put more effort into researching that. I've made a start with this article on a showcase car demonstrating how a simple redesign of just one product, the car, could knock about 10% off the greenhouse gas emissions.

EE vs AE

Some notes on consistency of English English and American English.

• "I say rather, you say rether, I say father, you say fether?" A variation on the better known (from an AE pov) "I say tomayto, you say tomahto, I say potayto, you say potahto."
• Aunt and ant: In EE these would sound the same, so EE breaks its own rules by pronouncing 'ant' as in AE. So AE would have made more sense here, were it not that it pronounces 'aunt' like 'ant', thus missing a potential advantage.
• Other inconsistencies in the pronunciation of the 'a' in AE: want (not 'went') and 'palm'. And any 'a' that is followed by an 'r', it seems: are, large, car, bar, dart, bard. And, yes, 'fart'. But in 'quart' it's different again, in both EE and AE.
• And inconsistency in the pronuciation of the 'a' in EE: accident, batter, man (mansion, romance). And 'potato'? That's not really an inconsistency, just a variation on the pronunciation of the 'a', as in 'bathe' or 'trade', just like any natural language has different pronunciations for letters.
• Comprise: ah, no discrepancy here, but that's only confusing since AE should, if consistent, spell that as 'comprize'. Same for 'enterprise'. Even more confusing is 'merchandise', which is sometimes spelled as 'merchandize' in AE, but only as a verb, not as a noun. Also note that concerning interlingual consistency, AE is the odd one out, because (afaik) all languages with a Latin alphabet spell such words with an 's'.
• Similarly: Hypothesis - hypothesize? And analysis/analyst - analyze. Btw, a more general curiosity in the English language is the three-some price-prize-prise.
• Pretence is in AE spelled as 'pretense', but 'presence' is not spelled as 'presense', which doesn't make sence sense.
• In AE: Center makes more sense phonetically, but so does 'battel' in stead of 'battle'. Or angel in stead of angle, rather more confusingly. So here AE is sometimes more logical, but not consistentently so. Not sure which is worse; consistently illogical or inconsistently logical.
• In EE: Centre - disaster? Why not disastre? Which leads me to:
• Disaster - disastrous? An inconsistency in AE, but in a way even more so in EE since it could have been more logical if it had more consistently spelled the noun as 'disastre'.
• In AE, a 't' in the middle of a word is often pronounced as a 'd', especially when surrounded by vowels. So a waiter becomes a wader. And the fact that the Netherlands is a nation of traders is something that could easily be misinterpreted in AE. :)

I used to think American English was more consistent than English English, but when someone (from the US) told me he thought it was the other way around I started paying more attention to it. There is no consistency in English article, but I didn't look any further, to see how many inconsistencies I could find by myself. With the results so far I'd say both EE and AE are an equal mess. :) Maybe I should also make a list for the Dutch language and maybe compare it to Flemish. Or, for a more similar comparison, Afrikaans.

Physics

"Science is what we do when we don't know what we're doing."

SI system

Note that I use the comma as the decimal separator, as indicated by the SI system

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the SI system (also erroneously referred to as the metric system), so I decided to put my frequent explanation here for easy referral.

Why everyone should adopt the SI system.

One reason is standardisation. Using different units of measurement once crashed a spacecraft (the Mars Climate Orbiter). So it makes sense to all use the same units. Next question is who should adapt. Two arguments here.

Firstly, the SI system is much simpler

1. There is just one basic unit per quantity.
2. Other units for the same quantity can be formed in a way that is the same for all units (milli, kilo, and such).
3. All these prefixes are base 10, which is also the base for our decimal numbering system (decimal means base 10).
4. There are just seven basic units and all the other units are formed with just those seven.

Four very good reasons I'd say. The imperial system is a hotchpotch of units which don't seem to be related at all. Why have inches, thumbs, feet and miles (and different miles too, to complicate matters even further) if you just want to express one quantity, length? Some opponents in the UK use the argument that the imperial units are better for brain development because they are so complicated. :) And the imperial system can't even make up it's mind about which base to use. Sometimes it seems to be 6 or 12 base (1 foot is 12 inch), but not quite always and the ratio between some is just absurd (1 mile is 5280 feet - what kind of number is that?).

The other argument is that almost everyone except the US uses the SI system. Hell, even China has adopted it and the UK is trying, albeit a bit half-heartedly. New Zealand did it much better. They totally switched from one day to the next. A bit of a slap in the face, but because it is such a logical set of rules it made more sense to change them all at the same time. An SI unit is not just another unit. It's part of a whole.

Time

That said, there is one quantity that is a pain in the bottom. Time. The SI unit is the second. But in everyday life we also need the units 'day' and year' because they are entities we can't ignore. Fair enough, but it does complicate matters. That there are 365,24 days in a year is something that can't be helped. But 86.400 seconds in one day? In contrast to the day and the year we define the second. So why not make it 1/100.000 of a day? That would make it slightly shorter. So what? We could then have, say, 100 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour and 10 hours in one day. That would already be a major improvement (which would also get rid of the 24 vs 2x12 hour per day confusion). But why not follow the SI logic through, here? Take the unavoidable day, make that the SI unit and take it from there. You'd then get millidays (about 86 seconds, roughly a minute) and microdays and such. There would be nothing like the second (there is no prefix for 1/100.000) but is that really so bad? The only disavantage is that the microday is a bit short (about 1/10 second) for human usage.

But if all that weren't bad enough, these units are sometimes mixed in the same unit. Something like kWh/yr sends shivers down my spine. A Watt is J/s. So first you divide by seconds, then multiply by hours and then divide by years again. Aaaarghhhh! And for some mysterious reason Wh is always used in thousands (kWh). For conversion purposes:

• 1 Wh = 3600 J

so 1 kWh = 3,6 · 10⁶ J (= 3600 kJ = 3,6 MJ)

• 1 Wh/yr = 0,000114 W

so 1 kWh/yr = 0,114 W

What's wrong with plain Watts? I bet some economist came up with the idea of the kWh/yr. (Economists don't seem to understand real science.)

Then there's the issue of how the year is carved up. Why 7 days in a week? (Religious discrimination is no argument.) And months take it one step further by not all being the same length, oh horror. Following the SI logic, we'd get something like kilodays (just under 3 years), but that won't work. A decaday (10 days for the SI illiterates among you - nothing decadent about it :) ) could replace the week. We could then have 7 workdays with a 3-day weekend (2/7 is 0,28, so 28% of the week is weekend and here it's 30%, so that's about the same). And 36 decadays (6x6, not too bad) with 5 days off at the start or end of the year (or 6 days during a leap year, which is also unavoidable). Months are out the window, but who cares? They're annoyingly close, but not equal, to the lunar cycle, so good riddance. And of course the year should start on a more logical day, like an equinox or solistice. Just my 2 bit. Not ideal, but a whole lot better. And also better than the French Republican Calendar, which was invented by an obvious nutcase.

Until we get rid of months, there will remain the issue of how to write a date. The little endian dd-mm-yyyy makes more sense than the middle endian mm-dd-yyyy because it consistently goes from small to big. But our numbering system is big endian. For example, the year 1985 really means '2 milennia (kiloyears), 9 centuries (hectoyears), 8 decades (decayears) and 5 years'. So it makes most sense to continue adding ever smaller units to the right, so YYYY-MM-DD.
Of course, it would be much simpler to drop the months and write YYYY-DDD. The first 'D' would then stand for the hectodays, the second one for the decadays and the third one for the days.
An alternative that takes the SI logic with the year as a basis would be to just add a decimal comma after the year and then the deciyears, centiyears, milliyears, etc. But that would mean a mix-up with the unavoidable unit 'day' - one centiyear would be 3,6524 days - and that would just be confusing.

Oh, and then there's the issue of there not being a year zero, which is also pretty stupid, but at least that hardly ever poses a problem. Then again, while we're at it, we might as well resolve that too. And if we have to use some year as year zero it might as well be the alledged birthyear of Jesus, because there is no absolute year zero (except maybe for the Big Bang, but see below) and most people will be used to it. And then follow that through logically. The year before that would be -1. To make clear this is a year it could be called y-1 (the way y2k stands for the year 2000). This year could then be y+2006, but the plus sign might as well be dropped, so it would be y2006.

Note that this 'y' stands before the number, not after it, as is common with units. But this is not the unit of time, but a time-reference (or what should I call that?). It is also pronounced as 'the year 2006'. Then again, there is one unit (or a bunch of them really - another mess) that is usually placed before the number, money. Yet, it is pronounced the other way around - € 42 is pronounced correctly as '42 euro', just written the wrong way around. Why? We're dealing with economists again, here. :(

Finally, many would pronounce 42 € as '42 euros', but that does not make sense. 42 euros are 42 euro-coins. The quantity of money is abstract and should not have a plural. Same with, say, metres. 42 m is a distance, not a colection of things called a metre, so it should be pronounced as '42 metre'.

And of course, the defined unit of mass should be prefixed (kilogram). Or in the other SI system (CGS), the defined unit of length should be prefixed (centimeter). Just an old rant. And don't get me started on the absence of the standardized Neper, standardized binary prefixes (draft, not adopted), the wild hodgepodge of radiation-related units (Gray, Becquerel, et al.), and so on. Beyond that, SI is almost useful. -- Fuzzyeric 23:23, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

No, no. A basic unit should not be prefixed, because else it wouldn't be a basic unit. At the same time, the basic units should be 'human', and kg and m are just fine in that respect. But then there should be a non-prefixed unit of mass. But do I get your point? DirkvdM 06:08, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Alternative to the Big Bang theory

On 24 September 2005 I placed the following on the science reference desk. I should get into the subject a bit more to support the theory, but this is a start. Normally I reserve this page for my use only, but if you want to comment on this feel free to do so below.
(For the original thread view source.)

I've long had an alternative to the Big Bang theory, which surfaced when I gave an answer to Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#A_Variable_Speed_of_Light hereabove. I'm very much a layman when it comes to this field, but I made a prediction that went against the accepted theories but turned out to be correct, which is a bit of a theoretician's wet dream :) . So I now venture to put this theory before you. Here goes.

As a kid I heard the expanding universe explained as a balloon with dots on it. On that everything moves away from everything else, which is exactly what we observe in the universe. But then I wondered, how do you know a balloon expands? My thought was that you know that because the only alternative is that the room you're in (and everything else) is getting smaller. Which would be silly. The simplest solution is held to be true, which is that the balloon expands. But for the universe there are (by definition) no surroundings to compare with. There is no reference frame, so one has to assume the size of of the universe is given. I couldn't think of a solution then.

Neen, Nee, Nay, No. We know the universe is expanding for the clear cut reason that we observe red shifting in the spectra of the light being emitted from distant objects. I.e. the ubiquitous Hydrogen emission/ absorption lines are observed to be shifted to lower energies (red) or higher energies (blue) depending on whether the object is moving towards us or receding away from us.

I think the problem you have here both above and below is that as with most people a proper understanding of Einstein's general theory of relativity is elusive, which then leads to misconceptions, questions and thence new theories to explain these misconceptions.

Heck I did a PhD in Physics and I still don't understand it. It all lies in our inherent inability to seperate our intuitive notions of space and time from the reality. Personally I don't think it is 'understandable' as such, it just 'appears' out of the mathematics, a bit like the case with quantum mechanics. Only when you have ground your way through, and understood the mathematics can you say that you have an inkling of the 'reality' of the subject, and even then only a vague understanding.

Finally, as for the rest of your page, fascinating and I am very much on your wavelenght;) just a pity you feel you can't contribute any more.1812ahill (talk) 18:01, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

But later I realised that you can also compare the sizes of the universe and everything in it. If the size of the universe is given then the stars and such must be getting smaller. Hmmm, stuck again.

Later still I imagined falling into a black hole. I was supposed to get stretched out. But that's seen from the framework of an outside observer. For me, I'm part of the spatial framework that gets expanded.

[Again, no, for you everything appears normal, you only appear weird to the observer in the other reference frame, just as he appears weird to you 1812ahill (talk) 18:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC).]

Also, time gets ever slower from the perspective of the outside observer, but, again, I live in that timeframe, so from my perspective it will take me forever to fall into the black hole

[So, as I said above you have it backward you see time ticking normally, and see him slowing down, just as he in his reference frame sees time ticking normally and sees you slowing down. As for communicating between the two of you the problem becomes one of agreeing om what is a simulataneous event. You will find that as you move into different refence frames (as you fall in) you are no longer able to do this. 1812ahill (talk) 18:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC) I hope I have shed some light on this. Sorry to mess up your page :)].

So for me nothing changes (right?). Except that I see everything around me moving away from me. Hold on, I thought, couldn't that explain the aforementioned phenomenon? What if we are caught in a collapsing (part of the) universe? But then I realised that as things are further away they will accelerate away ever faster. And acceleration is not what happened, right? Stuck again.

Until a few years ago someone (Riess or Perlmutter?) discovered that exactly that is the case. When I heard of this I jumped out of my chair. After the initial enthusiasm I didn't know how to present this idea. No-one would take me seriously. Now, finally, I've found a place where knowledgeable people might be bothered to hear me out. So. Any thoughts on this?

By the way, I don't necessarily suggest we're falling into a black hole. I suppose being attracted to anything sizeable enough will have a similar effect. And since everything is attracted to everything else there might not have to be anything special going on. Though if it's that simple I find it unlikely no-one will have thought of this before. Or have they?

Also, as for the other two bases for the Big Bang theory, I don't have an explanation for the background radiation. The abundance of light elements suggests a fairly 'young' universe, which would still be possible if we're in the middle of the Big Crunch. DirkvdM 09:26, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

There are two problems with the local attraction hypothesis for expansion. The first is that this would produce an asymmetry in the microwave background radiation. The dipole component would be huge.

The effect of nearby gravitational attraction doesn't produce recession in all directions. The classic description is the tidal deformation. Imagine a circle of test masses, with the circle's diameter on the line of attraction. The test masses "above" and "below" the center recede away. The test masses perpendicular move inward. (They have the same downward acceleration as a test mass at the center, but they have a small inward acceleration becuase they lie on different attraction rays -- and all the rays of attraction get close together, converging at the center of the attractor). Thus, the attraction hypothesis would show nearby objects receding on one axis and approaching on the perpendicular plane.

This is precisely what happens with the Earth's tides and is why there are two high tides and two low tides simultaneously (at different places). -- Fuzzyeric

See my reply (#22) in "Why didn't the Big Bang implode?": http://advancedphysics.org/forum/showthread.php?t=638. -lysdexia 14:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Mendeleyevian Mechanics

SI (derived) units using kg, m and s
mass	kg
length	m
time	s
area	m2
volume	m3
polar moment of inertia	m4
frequency	/s
speed	m/s
acceleration	m/s2
jerk	m/s3
snap	m/s4
kinematic viscosity	m2/s
specific energy	m2/s2
absorbed dose	m2/s3
volumetric flow rate	m3/s
surface tension	kg/s2
irradiance	kg/s3
momentum	kg.m/s
force	kg.m/s2
yank	kg.m/s3
angular momentum	kg.m2/s
energy	kg.m2/s2
power	kg.m2/s3
wavenumber	/m
density	kg/m2
dynamic viscosity	kg/ms
pressure	kg/m.s2
specific volume	m3/kg

This table shows the derived SI units that use the basic units kg, m and s, expressed in just those units and not other units like Newton, because I feel that that should give more insight in what these units mean (assuming kg, m and s are the 'real' basic units of mechanics).

I wonder what Mendeleyev would have made of this. There is a certain logic to the way it is built up, with usually the kg and m above the divisor and the s below it. Might momentum be the most basic unit of them all? But there are some missing, most notably kg/s. That should mean something, shouldn't it? And why are there just a few of the other combinations (below the grey line in the tbale). There should be either none or the entire spectrum. And s to a power is only used in combination with other units. And no derived unit uses m³ in conjuction with the other two.

I also wonder what a philosopher might make of this. Why is the table almost complete for mass and length above the divisor and time below it? What is so special about that? Do we maybe have an inverse view of time (whatever that means)? Would thinking in terms of frequency in stead of time give us a better insight into the Universe?

According to the SI derived unit article there are just a few units that have mass below the divisor, three in electricity, plus specific volume: m³/kg. And mass is never raised to a power. So kg² has no meaning? I can indeed not imagine what it would mean. Length to the powers 1, 2 and 3 are clear and used a lot (although the third power not in all possible combinations). And I 'know' what those mean. But what is time to the power 2 or 3? Once again (see above) time is the problematic one. Should I be able to grasp what these mean to get a true understanding of reality?

Still working on this .....

I asked a question about the meaning of time-exponents and dimensions at the science ref desk, which raised some issues, but didn't quite end with a satisfactory conclusion (for me). I assumed that m² indicated a second spatial dimension, but that was disputed. I further assumed that the same mathematical equation should always have the same meaning, so s² should indicate a second temporal dimension, but it was pointed out that the units are essentially different, ie one can not go back in time. Or, better put (I suppose), time is directional, while length isn't.

If you have any useful input, please add it here.

Well, the units of heat capacity are cal/g.K.

You missed "yank": m/s^4.

Yank is kg.m/s³, and m/s⁴ is snap, but thanks, I've added those now.

In almost every usage, s^x, x>1 come about by differentiation. Differentiation is about ratios of things, so multiple differentiation is about stacked ratios. Acceleration is m/s^2 when the fraction is simplified, but is found in the for (m/s)/s as d/dt(d/dt(position)). d/dt(position) is "change in position per change in time", which is delta-meters/delta-seconds and has units m/s. d/dt(d/dt(position)) is "change in velocity per change in time" which is delta-(delta-meters/delta-second)/delta-seconds and has units (m/s)/s. Taking the derivatives is not multiplicative, so simplifying the units to m/s^2 is technically erroneous, but is not confusing becuase time doesn't enter into the equations of mechanics in any way except differentiation.

I tend to point to the example of heat conduction, which is in units of W/m.K which is a completely unhelpful way to write (W/m^2)(1/(K/m)) which we can actually see is the power transferred through an area as a function of the thermal gradient. In this case, the meters in K/m are introduced by a derivative, so it is technically incorrect to cancel them with the m^2 which is a bona fide area (and doing so is confusing). There's also a hidden derivative in the Watts: d/dt(Joules) and a bunch of subsequent derivatives in the J = N.m, N = kg.d/dt(d/dt(displacement)).

In a very fundamental way, units introduced by differentiation are different from units introduced by extension (i.e., a measurement of a non-zero, non-limiting, non-infinite property of some real thing). -- Fuzzyeric 23:37, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Fuzzyeric: Why do you say "technically erroneous"? The units are constants, so ${\frac {\partial x}{\partial t}}={\frac {\partial (x_{\mathit {unitless}}\cdot m)}{\partial (t_{\mathit {unitless}}\cdot s)}}={\frac {\partial x_{\mathit {unitless}}}{\partial t_{\mathit {unitless}}}}\cdot m/s$ — Sebastian (talk) 09:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe Mendeleyev would have reduced this to 2 dimensions by setting a natural constant, such as the speed of light, to 1. Interestingly, when you do this with the gravitation constant, you get a numerator of kg² for the force between two bodies. — Sebastian (talk) 09:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

What you allude to at the start of the page is called Dimensional Analysis, a tool frequently used by engineers (and perhaps others:)) to verify that their proofs/ equations are correct. Also, Fuzzyeric, the Calorie is not an SI unit. Also, Dirk, you have left out a whole dimension of dimensionality (joke), namely Charge, Q. Throw a few of them in as numerators or denominators and a whole new world opens up! (I note above that you mention there are 7 fundamental units. As far as I know there are just 4. Mass, Length, Time and Q (Charge). Some people like to include the steradian, or solid angle aswell, but this just seems an extension of L to me. So I'm a bit confused).

A few years ago I had the idea of making some kind of 4 dimensional chart/ poster listing all named 'properties', units and their fundamental units, like Resistance, Ohm, R= V/I= (kg.m²/s².q)/(q/s) = kg.m²/s.q² [Which as u can quickly see is angular momentum per unit charge squared. Wow! Quite meaningless. Or is it?], with on all sides of it the equivalent with +1 and -1 powers of all fundamental units. That way you could cover all feasible properties/ units known to science, many of them un-named. But I quickly realised that it would get too complicated and gave up on the idea. 1812ahill (talk) 18:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I restricted myself to the basic units kg, m and s because they seem to form an almost complete list of combinations, but not quite complete, so I wanted to figure out why, so I made an overview. Maybe when I've figured this out I'll do the same with all of the SI derived units. And there are seven SI base units, including Ampere. But I must agree that Charge seems like something more basic. Ampere feels more 'derived', being flow of charge per second. DirkvdM (talk) 09:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Quite Interesting

You can't have everything    After all, where would you put it?

• Roger Bacon.
• Miguel Nicolelis: taught a monkey how to control a computer game purely through thought. A first step towards immortality. The second step would be letting information go the other way as well, ultimately leading to the mind spreading into the machine, so that when the wetware dies, the mind lives on (apart from a minor stroke). The idea that 'fairly soon' we might be able to achieve immortality is quite thrilling, to put it mildly. Imagine dying just before 'we have the technology'. Damn! Then again, if it works and religious believers are right, just imagine the fun they have sitting up there in heaven, looking down upon the idiots who condemned themselves to eternal life on Earth. Damned! (literally) There's no winning this, is there?
• Transhumanism: Related to the above. But the article refers to mind uploading and not a mind merger with a computer, as I envision (a bit more like Spock's trick). The problem with uploading your mind is that all you get is a copy of yourself and when the original dies, the copy may live on, but you are still dead. And where's the fun in that? Immortality through multiverse suffers from the same problem, unless in some weird way we are unwittingly aware (!) of our alter-egos. See also this thread at the science ref desk. And Blue Brain looks promising.
• DARPA Grand Challenge - cars that drive themselves. Even in built up areas, interacting with other road users. You have to see it to believe it.
• Plen, a robotic equilibrium artist.
• Pykrete appears to be quite amazing stuff. And it's simple to make they say, so I should give it a go.
• Mantis_shrimp#The_eyes: the best eyes in the animal kingdom.
• a nice aid for visualising 'the' fourth dimension, using a hypercube.
• http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Campaigns_Wikia : A Politics Wiki (alas with ads), where I operate under the name Dirk, the same name I use for my own political party, the Information Party (in Dutch), which has (information) technology and climate change as its main topics.
• Required reading for budding politicians
• User:Walter_Humala : How does he do all that? (censored, emperor.) Still need to check that out.
• what will flood when the sea level rises. Note that this doesn't take into account that humans will try to fight this. The Netherlands will, however, be more successful at it than Bangladesh.
• Persimfans was a USSR orchestra that played without a conductor. At the moment there are only a German and a Swedish article, neither of which very long.
• A beautiful photo of the movement of the Sun over a year. For a further explanation, see Analemma.
• A bunch of beautiful photos of moments frozen in time.
• Wikipedia:Don't-give-a-fuckism - no comment. :)

Wikipedia statistics and such

• Special:SiteMatrix: all projects in all languages.
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia records
• The number of articles on all the different language Wikipedias
• List of Wikipedias by speakers per article - but also see this ref desk thread (especially the bottom bit) for a further interpretation.
• http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm, which shows (second table) that half the edits are done by 0.3 % of the Wikipedians (including me).
• Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits
• Wikipedia:User survey - what sort of people edit Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Userboxes#Gallery - and another way to get an idea of that
• http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=DirkvdM&dbname=enwiki_p - my stats. Fill in your name for yours
• Earliest edits of Jimbo Wales, our founding father, giving insight in the early days of Wikipedia. Note he had only 23 edits in the whole of 2002 - wonder why that is. Magnus Manske is another early Wikipedian, who was more active.

And of course the links in the title are also Quite Interesting, such as the first quote in the second link:

"But perhaps, you know, we should believe in Adam and Eve. Geneticists have established that every woman in the world shares a single female ancestor who lived a hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Scientists actually call her "Eve", and every man shares a single male ancestor called "Adam". It's also been established, however, that Adam was born eighty thousand years after Eve. So the world before him was one of heavy to industrial-strength lesbianism, one assumes."

Quite silly

I'm way above being arrogant.                                     Me

Chemical structure of 2-(2,5-bis(3,3-dimethylbut-1-ynyl)-4-(2-(3,5-di(pent-1-ynyl)phenyl)ethynyl)phenyl)-1,3-dioxolane. NanoKid for short.

• The Droste-effect taken to a new level
• Chick sexing - never mind the article itself, I put it here for the title. :)
• Or what about these url's (courtesy of QI)? expertsexchange.com, whorepresents.com, therapistfinder.com, penisland.net, speedofart.com, powergenitalia.com
• "The common theme in gibberish statements is a lack of literal sense, which can also be described as a presence of nonsense." - From the Gibberish article.
• Funny signs (ignore the comments) My favourties: 008, 023, 024, 038. 044, 049, 068, 078, 080, 085, 087, 091, 092 and 097. And 126, which is a nice example of why you should ignore the comments - he didn't get the joke. Some more silly roadsigns. And the Magic Roundabout (Swindon).
• Zablon Simintov has a separate article dedicated to himself based solely on the fact that he is the only Jew in Afghanistan. He is the caretaker of the synagogue. Well, he would be, wouldn't he?

Jokes

Well, just one so far, apart from the two at the top and the two in the reference desk section and the one at the the end of the Quite Interesting section.

This is supposedly a true story. The US navy claims it isn't, but then they would, wouldn't they. :)

ACTUAL transcript of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. This radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on 10-10-95.

Americans: "Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision."

Canadians: "Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision."

Americans: "This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course."

Canadians: "No, I say again, you divert YOUR course."

Americans: "THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH. THAT'S ONE-FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP."

Canadians: "This is a lighthouse. Your call."

Quite untrue

A list like this is likely to be either very long or very short. At the moment it is very short. :)

• U-571 (film)

References

Circle Circumference 2π r π d   Area π r2 1/4 π d2   Sphere Circumference 2π r π d   Area 4 π r2 π d2   Volume 4/3 π r3 1/6 π d3

SI base units kilogram metre second ampere kelvin mole candela

SI-prefixes kilo mega giga tera peta exa zetta yotta 10+/- 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 milli micro nano pico femto atto zepto yocto

The Planets (and the Sun and Pluto) (rounded figures)   To Sun (106 km) Mass (1021 kg) Radius (km) Year (earth days) Day (hours) Moons   Sun 0   2.000.000.000 700.000.000 - 25  -   Mercury 60 330 2.400 88 59  0   Venus 100 5.000 6.000 225 -243* 0   Earth 150 6.000 6.400 365 24  1   Mars 230 640 3.400 687 25  2   Jupiter 780 2.000.000   71.500 4.300 10  63   Saturn 1.500 600.000 60.000 11.000 10  60+ Uranus 3.000 90.000 26.000 31.000 17  27   Neptune 4.500 100.000 25.000 60.000 16  13   Pluto 6.000 13 1.200 90.000 150  3   *Venus rotates the 'wrong' way around

Some articles that are useful references (at least from my pov) and some stuff that I keep forgetting.

Hard sciences

• SI base units, SI derived units and SI prefixes
• Standard Model: Life, the universe and everything, the official version.
• Periodic table, plus the ones linked to below the table, and Isotope table (complete), which tells a whole lot more.
• Electromagnetic spectrum, more specifically Image:Electromagnetic-Spectrum.png
• List of states of matter

Biology

• Phylogenetic tree - note the relative insignificance of animals and plants - top right, next to the slime moulds. :)
• The classifications of taxonomy are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class,order, family,genus, and species.
  Or, for more precision, see Linnaean_taxonomy#Taxonomic_ranks
• Timeline of evolution

History

• List of time periods, especially the cosmological and geologic tables at the end.
• Dutch cabinets and their composition

The basic colour variations:

00ffff	0088ff	0000ff	8800ff	ff00ff	ff0088	ff0000	ff8800	ffff00	88ff00	00ff00	00ff88
88ffff	88bbff	8888ff	bb88ff	ff88ff	ff88bb	ff8888	ffbb88	ffff88	bbff88	88ff88	88ffbb
008888	004488	000088	440088	880088	880044	880000	884400	888800	448800	008800	008844

And lists of lists and links to links and what have you. This is the deep end of Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia:Contents
• Science category tree: a classification of the sciences through Wikipedia categories.

Links

• http://scholar.google.com/ A beta version of Google. Still have to try this, but sounds promising.

Countries I have visited

I've spent several years travelling, mostly on my own with a backpack and focussed on seeking out hiking trails, but also delving into the local cultures, which is a lot easier when you're on your own. Hanging around towns and meeting other backpackers happens effortlessly, even if that's not what you're after. So I completely focussed on hiking trails and smaller communities. Much more fun anyway. :)

Mostly in chronological order (based on the first visit).

Birthplace and residence
Loads of short trips in Europe with family and friends (usually a week or two per trip)
Organised trip through Africa in a truck (half a year)
Various solo-trips (for a total of 2.5 years)

Note that I merely passed through Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg, Wales, Northern Ireland and the USSR (in the USSR I never even left the airport :) ). I also intended to 'merely pass through' Australia, but that took me two months because the country is so bloody big!
The countries I visited most are Belgium (I grew up near the border), Denmark (more than 10 visits to the Roskilde festival) and Spain (several holidays).
The countries I spent most time in (apart from Curaçao and the Netherlands) are Indonesia and New Zealand (about three months each). Despite the distance, I visited New Zealand twice because it is one of the most beautiful countries on Earth. Other countries I want to re-visit are Indonesia (if only because I bothered to learn the language :) ), Cuba (because it is so completely different and for the music) and Costa Rica (another one of the most beautiful countries on Earth, although Panama is not that much different).
I still want to visit Southern Africa (including Madagascar) one day. And if I ever wanted to go to a really remote place, Pitcairn or North Sentinel Island might be a good option (but possibly a bad idea).