User talk:Mercurius
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Hello!
Am researching and writing a paragraph or two to replace the simple allusion to critics pinning (ignorantly usually) the space opera label on work by Simmons. It is taking more time than I would have hoped so I am taking a 5 minute break on doing this to tell you I am working on it. Simmons does not write classic "hard science" science fiction like the old masters Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. Instead he writes a form of grandiose social SF which is sometimes related to the social SF or Soft science fiction tradition of Bradbury, Le Guin, Vance and others. I wanted to do fast justice to his continuation, in his own very particular style, of that tradition by making a rapid allusion to the fact that his literary approach is really not space opera. Well, yes that "justice" was too fast and I am correctng it! By the way it is customary to add messages at the _bottom_ of somebody's talk page, and not at the top like you did. The fact that it is at the bottom does not make it less visible. AlainV 18:36, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Hi,
Yeah, I wasn't aware that there was already a convention for the characters. I just saw an orphaned page for sax and decided to link it up. I probably should have read the history. I edited my changes out.
by the way, you might want to check out the Mars Society's conference in Chicago this summer if this kind of thing floats your boat. http://www.marssociety.org/convention/2004/index.asp Mark Zinthefer 22:02, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
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[edit] Perhentian
By all means go ahead and edit Perhentian Islands, that's what Wikipedia is for... and it sounds like a travel guide because I originally wrote it for E2. You can even find a third version in the Wikitravel guide! Jpatokal 09:52, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Churchill and Gandhi
Hey there... I appreciate the fullness of your response to my edits. It definitely helps with discussion. Well, here are my thoughts:
- We should keep these two quotations, or a couple along these lines, because they represent an extremely wide gamut (in that they are each on the extreme of the possible spectrum) of opinions held of Gandhi. Now, as we all know, most people deify him, but there is certainly, and to this day, a large group of Indians as well as people in general who don't hold as a high an opinion of him. In an article in an encyclopedia, it's often a colorful and very much done thing to include opinions of the subject by well known contemporaries to give a sense of context. Einstein's view is, in my opinion, pretty emblematic of most peoples' opinions, and Churchill even more so is very much representative of the British Imperialist ethos of the time.
- As for Churchill, I think it's quite important to mention is 'vassalship' to the Crown especially when one considers that his goals for the British Empire were directly conflicted with those of Gandhi for India. The prevailing viewpoint, unfortunately, of Britishers in the colonial era was extremely racist and condescending, and it gives powerful context to the situation. We can, of course, omit such possibly evident qualifiers as "derisive" or "admiringly," but at least Churchill's status as an British subject should be admitted in view of his antipathy towards Gandhi.
- Finally, while I do feel it makes for much more interesting and, frankly, informative reading to present some non-editorial views of Gandhi, I would not edit-battle you should you choose to excise both entries altogether. --LordSuryaofShropshire 17:27, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Boone
Actually, looking at the Vfd, I would say that User:Stormie is a keep, as am I, matched against User:Mksmith (whose objection I addressed), User:Orthogonal, and yourself (note that I'm including only people who have looked at the page since the rewrite).
Lord knows that reasonable people can disagree on this. I suppose the root of my case to keep is the philosophical objection that we have an (IMO) decent article on John Boone. More information is better than less (when it's conveniently organized, as I believe this to be), and I don't think there's any way to fit this level of detail into Red Mars. Therefore, it gets split off into its own page--much like History of the Beatles off of The Beatles. I see this less as its own page and more as almost a virtual subpage of Red Mars.
Again, by my count, there's no consensus to remove this information. Perhaps a request for comment? I'm not trying to stonewall, but I do think that more community involvement might help settle the issue (especially since policy in this area doesn't seem particularly clear). Best wishes, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 00:55, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Pedestrianised
This is coming a little late, but I assure you sir that pedestrianise is indeed a real word, at least according to the Australian Concise OED. But then, this dictionary also contains the word 'statutable', so I don't know if I should trust it. I kept your edit to Chinatown, Sydney, anyways. --Randwicked 15:24, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Japanese poetry
We are in the process of building up what was once an insubstantial stub as part of the Wikipedia:Japanese Collaboration of the Week. Out of curiosity, I decided to check "What links here" on that page today, and one of the places that led was to your User page. You are more than welcome to join in this project if you want. It is a large subject that still has plenty of holes and needs much more work. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 09:40, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Fashion Blogs
I looked over the article again and also took a quick look at Political blog, and reviewed the reasoning given in the AfD. This article looks like it doesn't have the same concerns, so I've removed the speedy deletion tag. -- Hawaiian717 20:29, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
