Um.. have you been following the news lately? As we speak (or read), there are anti-french riots in the Ivory Coast because France is still acting like an Imperial power in Africa. The French are actually engaged in a shooting war with Ivory Coast nationalists who want the French to stop interfering in their country's internal affairs. Throughout its "former" colonies in Africa, France does not hesitate to intervene and play kingmaker.
Wrong ; we're there on the behalf of the UN. With a mandate. We've been brutally attacked, and we shot back and made sure Ivory army had no more helicopetrs to do that again. Full stop.
How about Corsica and the resistance to French colonialism there? The Corsican resistance periodically explodes bombs to try to drive the French out.
Trouble is the so-called corsican nationalists top at 9% in the democratic elections. I understand you're suggesting to let that fanatical minority have control over the 91% who feel they're as French as I am ? Or perhaps we should send the army down there to settle democracy the US way ? Same apply in New Caledonia btw. And to finish the picture, you should know there's no poll made public recently as to know wether mainland french wish to keep Corsica. For what I hear, I'm damn sure that most of us are ready to dump Corsica and give money to anybody willing to get them. But that would really be injust to the majority of perfectly normal citizens who happen to have a bunch of murderers for neighbours in their island.
France's opposition to the US war in Iraq had *nothing* to do with priciple and everything to do with
* French national interests in Saddam's Oil industry - The French were willing to let a brutal dictator continue to make mass graves as long as the oil contracts flowed to french companies - blood for oil;
USA got more than half the total money flow made through this program. Go wash your hands.
You know, HighOrbit, we've got a saying down there : "the day when idiots will fly, there will be an endless night". Hopefully, you're showing that they'll actually fly much to high to hide the sun.
Clearly Mr McHenry has a view on what an encyclopedia should be that doesn't fit the wiki model ; like many scholars, I bet he's a kind of "if it isn't printed, it doesn't exist" guy. But being printed is not a mark of accuracy either.
In fact, the whole debate is biased (I believe), because he clearly seeks the TRUTH, but in the real world, save mathematics and "hard" sciences, there is no such thing as truth. I've long studied law sciences, and while it's relying on formal logic, for instance, law science seeks more RIGHT than TRUTH, and I think that in many fields of knowledge, there is an equivalent gap between truth and state-of-the-art knowledge.
I'll stick with law science as a good example of how this gap can be bridged. At a certain level (international courts, for instance), while the decision is the poduct of a consensus, dissident opinions are reported as well. So what the majority feels is JUST in in plain sight, but the seeds of further evolution are not discarded.
My feeling is that wikipedia due to its very nature should provide the same kind of tool ; a mainstream article, and possibly the contradiction, clearly labeled as such. Currently, through the revision process, there is a kind of "fight" among editors, anybody's opinion having the same value as other's (which is not bad, but confusing). Having a possibilty to "take side" would be a great plus.
... it just smells that way ; but hey, why don't HP take it out of its coffin, Intels starts printing 'Alphanium inside' labels, and here we go again !!!
Every time a strange idea makes its way toward the light, "real" scientists jump on their feet to reject those ideas as un-scientifical.
Much in the same way catholic priests frowned at Copernicus, laughed at Kepler, & jailed Galilei. Because rotation of earth around the sun "just didn't fit" the well admited theory.
Then came Newton ; and modern science was born, a very religion on its own, spreading its dogma on the world.
Trouble is : nobody yet knows what "gravitation" is. Sure, anybody can now calculate its effect, but as to why it exists in the first place... the very nature of it remains to be discovered.
So why not leave a room to dreams ? Hey, they can even turn into something useful someday. And reread the last book of Kepler, the celestial messenger [certainly a poor translation of the title]. Before Newton, in that book, Kepler forsaw a travel from earth to the moon, and said that bodies would appear weightless in the ether. Pretty accurate, no ?
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Um.. have you been following the news lately? As we speak (or read), there are anti-french riots in the Ivory Coast because France is still acting like an Imperial power in Africa. The French are actually engaged in a shooting war with Ivory Coast nationalists who want the French to stop interfering in their country's internal affairs. Throughout its "former" colonies in Africa, France does not hesitate to intervene and play kingmaker.
Wrong ; we're there on the behalf of the UN. With a mandate. We've been brutally attacked, and we shot back and made sure Ivory army had no more helicopetrs to do that again. Full stop.
How about Corsica and the resistance to French colonialism there? The Corsican resistance periodically explodes bombs to try to drive the French out.
Trouble is the so-called corsican nationalists top at 9% in the democratic elections. I understand you're suggesting to let that fanatical minority have control over the 91% who feel they're as French as I am ? Or perhaps we should send the army down there to settle democracy the US way ? Same apply in New Caledonia btw. And to finish the picture, you should know there's no poll made public recently as to know wether mainland french wish to keep Corsica. For what I hear, I'm damn sure that most of us are ready to dump Corsica and give money to anybody willing to get them. But that would really be injust to the majority of perfectly normal citizens who happen to have a bunch of murderers for neighbours in their island.
France's opposition to the US war in Iraq had *nothing* to do with priciple and everything to do with * French national interests in Saddam's Oil industry - The French were willing to let a brutal dictator continue to make mass graves as long as the oil contracts flowed to french companies - blood for oil ;
USA got more than half the total money flow made through this program. Go wash your hands.
You know, HighOrbit, we've got a saying down there : "the day when idiots will fly, there will be an endless night". Hopefully, you're showing that they'll actually fly much to high to hide the sun.
Call me flamebait.
Clearly Mr McHenry has a view on what an encyclopedia should be that doesn't fit the wiki model ; like many scholars, I bet he's a kind of "if it isn't printed, it doesn't exist" guy. But being printed is not a mark of accuracy either. In fact, the whole debate is biased (I believe), because he clearly seeks the TRUTH, but in the real world, save mathematics and "hard" sciences, there is no such thing as truth. I've long studied law sciences, and while it's relying on formal logic, for instance, law science seeks more RIGHT than TRUTH, and I think that in many fields of knowledge, there is an equivalent gap between truth and state-of-the-art knowledge. I'll stick with law science as a good example of how this gap can be bridged. At a certain level (international courts, for instance), while the decision is the poduct of a consensus, dissident opinions are reported as well. So what the majority feels is JUST in in plain sight, but the seeds of further evolution are not discarded. My feeling is that wikipedia due to its very nature should provide the same kind of tool ; a mainstream article, and possibly the contradiction, clearly labeled as such. Currently, through the revision process, there is a kind of "fight" among editors, anybody's opinion having the same value as other's (which is not bad, but confusing). Having a possibilty to "take side" would be a great plus.
... it just smells that way ; but hey, why don't HP take it out of its coffin, Intels starts printing 'Alphanium inside' labels, and here we go again !!!
Every time a strange idea makes its way toward the light, "real" scientists jump on their feet to reject those ideas as un-scientifical. Much in the same way catholic priests frowned at Copernicus, laughed at Kepler, & jailed Galilei. Because rotation of earth around the sun "just didn't fit" the well admited theory. Then came Newton ; and modern science was born, a very religion on its own, spreading its dogma on the world. Trouble is : nobody yet knows what "gravitation" is. Sure, anybody can now calculate its effect, but as to why it exists in the first place... the very nature of it remains to be discovered. So why not leave a room to dreams ? Hey, they can even turn into something useful someday. And reread the last book of Kepler, the celestial messenger [certainly a poor translation of the title]. Before Newton, in that book, Kepler forsaw a travel from earth to the moon, and said that bodies would appear weightless in the ether. Pretty accurate, no ?