User talk:Keenan Pepper/Archive 1

Note: If I have started a conversation on your talk page, please reply there instead of here, to keep the discussion in one place. It will be on my watchlist.

DYK

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Cellular Automata vs. Cellular Automaton

No offense taken but, how much research do you conduct on cellular automata? While there may be acceptability in the use of the word *automata* regarding plurality, the Cellular Automaton page has error with regard to the difference between a systems of cellular automata (a set of cells, each of which can assume a state from a set of states) and the pattern of such states (a cellular automaton) which may be exhibited within that cellular automata. This is the problem that I am trying to correct, and which you seem to have missed. The rule-set and state-set define a system of cellular automata, and every such set is a different system of cellular automata. They are not systems of cellular automaton. Notice the plurality problem in the previous sentence.

So, perhaps the revert you made is not all wrong but, it does serve to retain error in the article, by failing to exhibit the difference between patterns of cell states (automatons) and the system of cells (automata).

I invite your email, to the address given on my personal page. William R. Buckley 22:25, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I read through Cellular automaton and I don't think it ever refers to patterns of cells within the systems as automata. Automaton and automata are both used only to refer to the system as a whole, so I don't see the problem. In fact I don't think I've ever read a publication in which automaton was used to refer to the individual patterns of cells; they're always called patterns, objects, or structures as Wolfram calls them. Could you give me an example of your proposed usage? —Keenan Pepper 00:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Keenan - If you look at the book by Michael A. Arbib Theories of Abstract Automata 1969 Prentice Hall, you will find in chapter 10 the line:

"Turing's result that there exists a universal computing machine suggested to von Neumann that there might be a universal construction machine A, that is, an automaton which when furnished with the description..."

I could have turned to von Neumann's 1966 text, or Arthur W. Burks 1970 text, or E. F. Codd's 1968 text, to have made reference to a statement expressing the same distinction. Wolfram is not a good source for technical exposition regarding cellular automata. If you think that the 1D systems he wrote about in his book are significant, then you ought to review the work of Angelo Mingarelli. Angelo is a professor of mathematics at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Angelo has done some work that casts very strong doubt on Wolfram's assertions regarding the complexity of his 1D systems. I know Wolfram, personnally (having spent time with him at ALife conferences, and at a Hacker's Conference, or two - the ones that grew out of Steven Levy's book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution).

So, you see, the individual pattern of cells (properly called a configuration, not a pattern, object, or structure) is the automaton, and that the underlying collection of cells is not the automaton. The underlying collection of cells is a system of automata, and when they are grouped together in a cellular structure (a lattice network), they constitute a cellular automata. There are many different kinds of automata, and many different kinds of cellular automata, and many cellular automata that are based upon a rectilinear grid of cells. Von Neumann cellular automata, and Conway cellular automata (the Game of Life), and Codd cellular automata, and Langton cellular automata are all systems of cellular automata that employ a rectilinear grouping of cells. There are systems based upon a grid of hexagonal cells, and pentagonal cells, etc.

Incidentally, the individual cells of a cellular automata are themselves unitary cellular automatons. In this one sense it is correct to argue that plurality is expressed by altering the word from automaton to automata; when one is speaking (or writing) of a system of such cells.

Now, I will ask one more time, send me email to my regular email address, as listed at the bottom of my personal page. I do not like having to go to wiki pages to conduct discussions, as it is much easier for me to correspond by email. I would appreciate such correspondence with you.

William R. Buckley 01:51, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Units of measures redirects

What's with the spree of changing redirects from the prefixed units of measure to orders of magnitude, rather than to the base units? Has this been discussed anywhere? There were discussions before the time the articles under micrometre and the like were changed to redirects, and part of the deal was that the base units articles would also include prefix information. I don't think your changes are acceptable. Various discussions have been collected at Talk:Units of measurement/Format of articles about units. Gene Nygaard 02:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales

>>Would you be interested in joining my proposed WikiProject, WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales? —Keenan Pepper 18:32, 19 November 2005 (UTC)<<

Allright, just for the sake of it I'll join your WikiProject. This would mean that would have to "get back into it", i.e. my mind back into the topic, since had abandoned it for some time while wondering into other subjects. Other users keep asking me to join projects and I seem to be reluctant to commit: not knowing what it entails. But there is strength in numbers, so will increase the number from three to four: that's a diatessaron for you. —AugPi 17:27, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Featured article for December 25th

I noticed you have listed yourself in Category:Atheist Wikipedians. That said, you will probably be interested in my suggested featured article for December 25th: Omnipotence paradox. The other suggestion being supported by others for that date is Christmas, although Raul654 has historically been against featuring articles on the same day as their anniversary/holiday. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-28 08:21

DYK

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Manticore

Good job with the pictures, thank you. ^_^ Jack Cain 03:45, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Polar bear

Hi Keenan! I wonder if you are aware that capitalization of terms like polar bear is controversial? "Whether the common names of species should start with a capital letter has been hotly debated in the past and has remained unresolved. As a matter of truce both styles are acceptable (except for proper names), but a redirect should be created from the alternative form." See WP:MOS. Earlier, the MOS advises "do not enforce American rules on pages about Commonwealth topics". Since polar bears live in both America (Alaska) and Canada (as well as other non-English countries), their nationality may be disputed.

The article was started in October 2001 with polar bear uncapitalized. [1] It was changed in March 2004. However, most of the edits have occurred since the latter date. It is possible that other changes occurred; my search was not exhaustive. I think the article history is sufficiently checkered that neither side can claim significant support from it. [2]

I have little interest in this argument since it affects the content not at all. Moreover, it seems to me to be one of the delights of editing Wikipedea to learn about this sort of thing. But, I thought some background on this matter might be helpful to you, in case you were unaware of it. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 06:26, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out Talk:Bear#Caps. That was a low intensity discussion! The second edit was almost two years after the first, and your edits were nine months after that. User:Funnyhat is still around. He has been editing U.S. topics, so it may be that he was just citing the American practice, rather than Wikipedea policy. I may leave him a note on his talk page tomorrow. Regarding the Canadian practice, I really can't say. But, I have worked with one English editor who said that they capitalize common names. I didn't find consistent (or even frequent) capitalization of common names at the Banff and Jasper National Parks websites. [3] [4] My impression is that Canadian English is intermediate between the U.K. and U.S., but that is only an impression. I'm pretty certain that they have retained much of the U.K. spelling of words, e.g., colour. Word pronounciation is much closer to the U.S. than to the U.K. I'm relieved that you didn't mind my comments. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 07:22, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Keenan Pepper! I was curious this morning to look into the current practice for capitalizing the common names of North American mammals. Among Grizzly Bear, American Black Bear, Gray Wolf, Moose, Wapiti (Elk), Bighorn Sheep, Mountain goat, Wolverine, Puma, and Pronghorn, lower case seems to be more common. For plants, the common names are mostly or all capitalized. See Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, Limber Pine, Lodgepole Pine, Rocky Mountains Juniper and Quaking Aspen. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Keenan - happened on your note at Walter's talk page, thought I'd add a bit for clarity. It isn't a US/Canadian or any other variant of English, it's more of a disambiguation and clarification thing, with capitalisation probably started by various field guide authors many years ago (e.g. Roger Tory Peterson capitalised names in his field guides; he may well be one of the first). There are various reasons for it, most importantly that a brown bear (a bear that happens to be brown in colour) is not necessarily the same as a Brown Bear (a particular species, Ursus arctos) - e.g. many Black Bears are actually brown. Also very useful is that it takes away the need to know the etymology of a species name, as to whether it is derived from a proper name or not, e.g. if using proper name rules, did you know that Brazilwood should not be capitalised (the country is named after the tree, not vice-versa), whereas Bishop Pine is (named after the CA town San Louis Obispo, not after the church rank) - and then there's names borrowed from other languages, e.g. should Pohutukawa be capitalised or not - do you know enough Maori language?!? I don't!! Another is that it gives uniformity of treatment in lists without "first-class, capitalised" species and "lesser, non-capitalised" species. Generally, most wildlife-interested people capitalise species common names (having picked the habit up from field guides), whereas most other people don't, but it isn't a hard-and-fast rule. If you want to dig further, there's been extensive discussion on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life page, take a look through the archives. There's been a small but consistent majority in favour of caps (with no discernible geographic bias of those for and against). Hope this helps! - MPF 00:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Keenan - I looked into this a bit more. I have field guides with capitalized common names and field guides with uncapitalized common names (I got into this controversy in the first place by referring to the latter). However, the more major ones, especially The Sibley Guide to Birds (a new American guide) and others use the capitalized convention. The WP:MOS asserts, American English and Commonwealth English differ in their inclination to use capitals. Commonwealth English uses capitals more widely than American English does. That is how I got the notion that this was a US/UK usage difference. But, the Times (London) uses uncapitalized common names. [5] So, I stand corrected. I'm convinced by Michael's arguments and support the use of capitalized (or capitalised) common names in Wikipedia articles on plants and animals. Thank you, Michael. BTW, do either of you object to putting a copy of this discussion on the Polar Bear talk page where it might be found more easily? Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 03:39, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Since you didn't object (and Michael approved), I placed a copy of this discussion on the Polar Bear talk page. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:05, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Lucy tuning

I was hoping that advocates of Lucy tuning would tell me more about what they think the relevance of π is. After all, NPOV says we should report beliefs whether they are objectively true or not.... --Macrakis 20:29, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article doshpuluur, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Florida

I noticed from Category:Wikipedians in Florida that you are a floridian and I have created a state wikiproject, Wikipedia:WikiProject Florida. So far is it very small but it could be expanded later. Join it if you want and help set tasks etc. Thanks --Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bradenton Soccer Academy * Class

Please do not use __NOTOC__</wiki> on a VFD page, as it prevents the VFD for the day ([[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 December 20]]) from having a table of contents. --~~~~

Help me..

Hi, I updated my userpage.. Can you check it out and rate it or something? And feel free to edit anything you feel is not correct. And also can you help me with the copyrights to the picture? Or my pic is gonna be deleted in a week.

Thanks a lot.

Jayant, 17 Years, India (Talk) 16:43, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Where did "Ask a question" go?

Where did "Ask a question" go? Now how are people supposed to find the Reference Desk? —Keenan Pepper 07:35, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

It's the very first item listed in the FAQ (which is on the browsebar), and it's also on the main help page (there's a whole section on asking questions). Go for it! 08:39, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Is your name Keenan Pepper?

Ever heard of CoC, Pepper? -:)Ozzyslovechild 22:12, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Pangram

In WP:RD/M, you wrote:

No one ever found a Greek pangram for me. I'm still looking for one. —Keenan Pepper 14:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, The Iliad is a pangram in Ancient Greek. If you're looking for a single-sentence pangram, I can't help you. :) --Mareino 15:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Bohr bug

Why did you redirect Bohr bug to Unusual software bugs? From the article content, it is apparent that a Bohr bug is exactly your basic, normal, common-or-garden software bug. — JIP | Talk 23:09, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

hi!

I think it's really cool that u r only 19 and are already a physicist and have colaborated in the Mu Alpha Theta project, sorry, team... which I know nothing about cause I'm a psychologist...but I think it's really cool anyway :). can I talk to u about physics and ask you some questions so that I'm not such a physics illiterate? cheers. --Cosmic girl 13:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Developmental disability

Hi Keenan Pepper. I saw your comment on the above talk page. I agree, so I've proposed some changes to the articles on the topic of developmental disability at Talk:Mental retardation#Mental retardation. Please let me know what you think. Natgoo 14:32, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

"Infinity" cat

Hi Keenan,

So I think Category:Infinity might be a reasonable idea, but I don't agree with moving it down exclusively into Category:Philosophy of mathematics. Not everything done with infinity is philosophy; some of it is just plain mathematics. This is a general problem for the whole category scheme, especially when categories are viewed transitively—it would be nice to see philosophy mentioned, but we really shouldn't have Extended real number line winding up by heredity in Category:Philosophy. --Trovatore 17:17, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Reference desk formatting

I'm sorry about that...I was called for dinner while I was in the middle of doing that, and when I turned around to respond my hand moved and I clicked on Save Page. Yeltensic42.618 ambition makes you look pretty ugly 16:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Alligation

This article is turning out pretty well. I'd suggest putting it up on WP:DYK (by adding it to the list here), if you can think of a decent one-line statement. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2006-01-11 04:56

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Alligation, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Gurubrahma 22:20, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Reference Desk

Actually, the noquestion template isn't on that list (i don't think it is a template, even). I did get it from Cernen; i just copied and pasted it from where he had used it earlier. It probably should be a template, though. СПУТНИК^{ССС Р} 12:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Assyro-Babylonian mythology

Thanks for putting the request up to move the page back and notifying me right away. I am new to this, but what I read says that for a consensus to be reached, you have to put comments in at Talk:Assyro-Babylonian mythology. Castanea dentata 00:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Using the preview button -- Bob_Fink page

Okay -- will remember to do that more often -- it bothered me too, to be making so many long lists of little changes. But sometimes if I wait too long to make seveeral changes "take" at once, I lose them somehow and have to start over -- At 70 (3.684210526316 times your age), eyes not so sharp anymore.

I note I share many of your interests -- I wrote a book on the evolution of matter into humankind -- called "Continuum" based on physics, relativity, cosmology, et al -- and also on the emergence of a secular "collective mind" -- You might enjoy some of my URLs (...or not):

http://www.greenwych.ca/cm-ad.htm (Continuum book)
http://www.greenwych.ca/sb-ad.htm (Social Brain)
http://www.greenwych.ca/musicmid.htm (New MIDI, MP3 compositions in classical/trad'l styles -- counterpoint)
http://www.greenwych.ca/serend4.htm (Computer program I wrote will write melodies unaided -- Nominated by edit'l Board of Discover Magazine's 1997 awards competition)
http://www.greenwych.ca/moonillu.htm ("Moon illusion" debate with a friend)
http://www.greenwych.ca/test.htm ( Same, cont.
http://www.greenwych.ca/test2.htm ( Same, more.

65.255.225.37 04:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

isotope box

Why do stable isotpes have such a box with a "decay chain" link which is not related at all? And the un-initiated reader has no clue or way to find out how to find out where to glean some info about the meaning of the boxes within the template. Please clarify. Jclerman 12:18, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Divje Babe

Thanks. I've tried Cleanup and topic RFC already, but no takers. I feel like this about the damned bone by now, so I don't trust my objectivity on the topic enough to edit it myself (and besides, anything I did to tidy/trim it would be taken as hostile). See also Talk:Bob Fink, where the same users are arguing the toss about the Bob Fink bio. Eurgh. Tearlach 22:10, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Trigon, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Lattice vectors for diamond

Just wondering why you thought that the primitive lattice vectors for FCC were not useful on the diamond article? I put them there as there is no explicit statement of the FCC vectors on the crystal structure page.

Thanks, Lukehounsome

For your actions is not good

If you think I did something wrong then you don't need to critize me in public.

And you just say "I'm sorry"....I know that it's not "apologize". Don't think I don't know.

Or you want someone else in my school critizes you at the same ways? I maybe translate their words into English. You are too young and motioned. Improving will be OK.--HydrogenSu 22:37, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Our First Single.!!!!!

hi.... i mentioned on my user page that i wanted to be in a band....well........i have formed a band and we just recorded our first single....... we are 3 people in our band.... I play bass.... Danish sings and plays the rythm guitar.....SriChu plays the lead guitar.....and we are looking for a drummer.... this single was made without the drums and only bass , acoustic and a lead guitars...

anyways heres the link for our single.... Please download it if you can and rate it....

[[6]]

And you want more details about the band or the lyrics of the song please dont hesistate to ask me.... and if you like please feelfree to distribute the song over the internet....

thanks a lot....

Jayant, 17 Years, India|^(Talk) 04:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

P.S. by the way..we still haven't named our band yet... so any suggestions would be welcome....