User talk:Fishal

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[edit] Internet history

I replied to your request - not sure I have an easy answer. Noel 02:52, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Now that I think about it (and I have no idea why I didn't think of this before!) I definitely would recommend Katie Hafner's book. It's written for the ordinary reader, but has all the technical details rigs. Of course, it's also book-length! Noel (talk) 15:08, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Noel, thanks for your concern over this! I wish there was some way I could help here. There just has to be a way to communicate the BASIC technical know-how to the wider world; that is what Wikipedia is for. -Fishal

Sure; if ordinary people can't understand it, we have work to do, is my feeling. I have an idea: I translated the sentence you were gagging on (on Talk: History of the Internet). If you wander around that set of pages, and post similar questions on Talk: pages, I can answer them. In return, once you have asked enough questions to really understand things, if you would then help future readers by inserting appropriate explanations, etc that would really make it worthwhile.

PS: Wikipedia style is that people generally reply on the User_Talk: page of the person who wrote a message to them (that way, someone doesn't have to monitor a whole long list of User_Talk: pages - one for each person whom they are having a "conversation" with), so please leave any messages for me on my talk page (although I do monitor the article talk pages for most articles, so replying there for non-personal inquiries works fine. Noel (talk) 18:07, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

PPS: I'd be interested to see what you think of Packet and Internet Protocol, where I have already done a little work to make them a little more intelligible to non-technical people. (Not that they are perfect, by any means, but they do include paragraphs intended to be intelligible to all and sundry.) Most of the others, e.g. Transmission Control Protocol are pretty horrendous... Noel (talk) 18:16, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, I don't know about "soon", but we are working on it! Noel (talk) 23:41, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Internet pages improval

Hi, I just re-wrote the intro section of Transmission Control Protocol to be hopefully more comprehensible to non-geeks. (The old version was a perfect example of the kind of "assumes the reader already understands all this stuff" problem you pointed out.) I'd be interested in any feedback you had about whether the new version is more accessible. Noel (talk) 14:42, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Attention to Time

Hi, I notice you've flagged up the time article as needing attention, but you didn't give any more details. I came to it from the (apparently) fairly inactive Time project page. I am interested in working on calendar dates and historical time but could also consider more general issues, so maybe I'll give Time a look over too. If you've got any specific things you think need to be covered I'll try to include them, or work together. --FrankP 11:50, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

See reply on CTSWyneken to your LCMS points

--CTSWyneken 02:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Gravity hill

My family owns a cabin on Lake Michigan near Leland. Some time ago, we started exploring some of the local oddities. Gravity Hill in Arcadia was among them. It's good to have someone else helping with the Michigan articles. I've been thinking of doing a new article for the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore page--it's kind of lacking. Have you been there?

Also, I'm not too familiar with receiving and sending messages on Wikipedia. Do I have to make a new message on your User talk page to reply to you, or can I simply add a reply on my own User talk page? Thanks! Gsgeorge 22:14, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] DYK update

[[User:Neutrality|Neutrality/^talk]] 04:15, Dec 12, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio here, but what the hell

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Limited Sunday Times (London)

September 4, 2005, Sunday

SECTION: Features; Culture; 46

LENGTH: 1184 words

HEADLINE: The clash of great civilisations

BYLINE: Mary Beard

BODY: PERSIAN FIRE:The First World Empire and the Battle for the West. By Tom Holland. Little, Brown £20 pp448

In an uncharacteristically sentimental moment, the novelist William Golding once reflected on the impact of the Greek victory against the huge Persian invasion of 480BC: "A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free." Golding was referring, in particular, to the Spartan king Leonidas who, with 300 compatriots, defended the narrow pass at Thermopylae: although defeat was inevitable, they managed to hold up the Persian advance under the "Great King" Xerxes for a few, perhaps crucial days.

Some cynics have regarded this as one of the most futile, self- destructive pieces of military strategy until the Charge of the Light Brigade. But history has, by and large, judged it kindly, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when the plucky Greeks were seen as a convenient symbol for western liberty, the Persians a no-less-apt model of lumbering, Soviet-style tyranny. In 1955, a vast and frankly vulgar monument to Leonidas and his men was erected by the road that now runs near Thermopylae, financed by American money. The 1962 film, The 300 Spartans, is full of cold-war pieties and noble speeches about fighting for freedom.

In his excellent new book, Persian Fire, Tom Holland retells the story of the Persian wars against the background of a very different international order and clash of cultures. It is not just a story of battles -although he is accurately lurid in evoking the excrement, sweat and stench that we now realise is the hallmark of all mass hand-to-hand fighting. Starting from the distant roots of the Persian empire in the 7th century BC, he traces the tale through various Greek provocations of the "Great King" (they were not entirely innocent victims of the Persian super-power) and the Athenian victory against a first expeditionary force at the battle of Marathon, finishing with two surprisingly readable chapters on the tactics, treachery and battle formations that handed the Greeks victory over an invading force that some ancient writers reckoned (almost certainly wrongly) in millions. At key moments, he reminds us that some of these events were played out on territory that is one of our own arenas of conflict. The few Greek prisoners taken by the Persians as they scuttled back from their defeat at Marathon were eventually settled by the Great King just north of modern Basra -where (according to the Greek historian Herodotus) mysterious black oil bubbled up from the sands.

Holland is a cool-headed historian who writes here no less authoritatively and engagingly on classical Greece than he did on ancient Rome in his last book, Rubicon -although his target audience of general readers would be well advised to keep a close eye on his ample end-notes, where they will learn there are rather more holes in our understanding of this period than his seamless narrative tends to imply. Only rarely does he give in to the temptation of outright novelistic embroidering of the scant data. His story of the sacred prostitutes of Corinth inundating the goddess Aphrodite with prayers for a Greek victory and giving any Greek war hero who chose to visit "a particularly enthusiastic reception" has a picturesque charm -but is not borne out by a shred of ancient evidence that I know.

More to the point, and much to his credit, he handles the difficult question of the rights and wrongs of the conflict -the question, more generally, of which side we choose to take -with considerably greater finesse than his cold-war predecessors. He is clear enough that the Greek victory did matter, and indeed that their defeat of the Persians could plausibly count as the most significant military result in the history of western culture. If the Persians had won, would there now be any 5th-century Greek tragedy for us to read? Almost certainly not.

Would the traditions of history writing have developed in the way they have? Less clear -but again, probably no.

All the same, Holland has a soft spot for the Persians as well as an evident enthusiasm and respect for their extraordinary achievements and the surviving monuments of their empire. These include, in pride of place, the immense sculpture carved high into a cliff face at Bisitun in modern Iran, commemorating the violent rise to power of Xerxes's father, Darius, and accompanied by a self justificatory text in three languages. It was the study of this monument by the young Englishman, Henry Rawlinson, in the mid-19th century that led to the decipherment of Old Persian, a linguistic breakthrough that ranks with the decoding of the Rosetta Stone.

There is an even-handedness in Holland's treatment of both Greek and Persian cultural riches that is rare in popular accounts of these wars. Particularly poignant, though, are the final pages of Persian Fire where he reflects on the immediate upshot of the Greek victory, which he shows to be no less seedy and depressing than the outcome of most international conflicts. The Persian empire itself was humiliated but not significantly dented by defeat on its western margins. In many ways, worse was to befall Athens and some of the leading figures of the heroic Greek resistance. Themistocles, the most important Athenian tactician (memorably played by Ralph Richardson in The 300 Spartans) quickly fell from grace, was sent into exile and passed his final days in the pay of the Persians, advising them "how best to resist the encroachments of his own countrymen".

The Athenian state itself, after its starring role as freedom fighter, soon converted its free alliance of Greek states into an oppressive empire, imposed democratic governments through the Aegean with a drive that would now be admired by the Pentagon hawks and left many of its former partners wondering if Persian domination would have been quite so bad. It was only a century and a half later, outside the frame of Holland's book, that the rise of the state of Macedon under Philip and Alexander the Great put paid both to the Persian empire and to Athens's brief experiment with democratic "freedom".

Mary Beard is a professor of classics at Cambridge University and classics editor of the TLS. Persian Fire is available at the Books First price of Pounds 18 on 0870 165 8585 and www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy

LIKE FATHER...

Xerxes, shown left on a relief of 515BC at Persepolis in Iran, became king of Persia on the death of his father Darius in 486BC, inheriting the largest and most powerful empire the world had ever seen. He suppressed revolts in Egypt and Babylonia, then spent several years planning his invasion of Greece in 480BC.

After crossing the Hellespont on a bridge of boats, his army subdued northern Greece and following the battle of Thermopylae marched on Athens. Not until the great sea battle of Salamis did the Greeks gain the upper hand.

Read on...

websites:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Empire Robust, well-linked introduction

If you call them, I bet you can order an archived copy.

Lotsofissues 06:05, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lutheran Wikipedians Category

Dear Fishal:

It's been awhile! Did you ever think of joining: Category:Lutheran Wikipedians? 8-)

Bob --CTSWyneken 02:37, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Theology of Martin Luther

I've just created a new article under the above title to act as a main article for portions of the Martin Luther page. Since at the moment it is just an unceremonial dump of material from various places, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look and give it some attention, if you have time.--CTSWyneken^(talk) 21:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image tagging for Image:Major William Jackson.jpg

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[edit] DYK

On 26 September 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William Jackson (secretary), which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.