User talk:Opabinia regalis

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[edit] Beta barrel

Hi there, Opabinia. If you have time, I'd like to ask you for two favors: I've just added this image to the beta barrel article, which was conspicuously lacking illustrations. I'm now wondering as to whether it's appropriate—TIM barrels are a tertiary structure "in their own right", aren't they? I thought I'd ask our resident protein maven for some feedback :) If you think there could be a better image to illustrate this article, would you mind making a suggestion? There are plenty of beta barrel-containing proteins, and I'd like the article to have a nicely "textbook" example. I couldn't find a single side view diagram of a porin, which was the first to come to my mind. Perhaps we should have one? ;) Thanks in advance and sorry for the bother, Fvasconcellos 22:37, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem - I remember intending to make a porin image last time I looked at that article and apparently forgot ;) Beta barrel is now decorated with a porin and an RBP. Yeah, TIM barrels are usually separate from beta-barrels, partly because they're necessarily alpha/beta and partly because a lot of people define beta-barrels as being necessarily antiparallel.

Now a question for you - I put the image you used into the triose phosphate isomerase article, because the structure it had was a side view, which is obviously suboptimal. I rarely use the protbox template (obviously I should, if I'm a maven and all ;) and I don't know how to force the sizing of the image in the protbox. Right now it looks really large compared to most protboxes. Am I template-impaired? Opabinia regalis 02:50, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, that's exactly what I had in mind! I have got to get that PyMol :( As for the protboxes, I have the same problem, both with {{Protbox}} and {{Protein}}—see amylase, to which I recently added images which apparently default to 220 or 250px and cannot get any smaller. I'd ping Boris or Arcadian, who, if memory serves, were the main "coders" of Protbox and Infobox Protein respectively. Thanks again for your help, Fvasconcellos 14:15, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi again! Sorry, but I think I may have misled you—I've just checked the {{Protbox}} history, and apparently User:GAThrawn22 was its creator and main editor. I don't know where I got Boris from—I'm sure I've seen his name in related discussions. Either way, I thought you might like to know, and sorry for the brain-freeze. Fvasconcellos 01:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Well sure, after I already left Boris a message... Thanks, I guess I must trust you since I didn't think to look ;) Question posted to the correct user this time. Opabinia regalis 01:40, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Argh. Bad timing, sorry... I hope I'm right this time ;), at least you can be sure you're not template-impaired...Fvasconcellos 01:48, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

That's good. It's embarrassing to have five eyes and still miss things like template parameters ;) Opabinia regalis 02:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

LOL. OK, I'm leaving now, while I still have an... what's the SI unit for self-confidence again? :) Fvasconcellos 03:04, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that would be the egowatt ;) Anyway, now I see amylase at normal size, TIM still at slightly-larger-than-average size, and neprilysin at ginormous size. Has the appearance of these templates changed for you, or should I just give up and blame my browser? Opabinia regalis 00:53, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

(dedenting) Ah yes, the egowatt—I wonder what its lowest submultiple would be :) The amylase page history tells me Arcadian fixed the width parameter—apparently, all it took was removing the "px" appended to the desired width. I've set it to 240 px in neprilysin; does that look good to you? By the way, this issue is also present in {{Drugbox}}: if you leave the | width = parameter blank, it defaults to the image's actual width! I have no idea as to what's going on in {{protbox}}—I never use it, and I don't even know if there is a size parameter. Have you gotten a response from GAThrawn22? You could always ask on the template Talk page. I'd have a look at the code myself, but template syntax is usually over my head. Fvasconcellos 02:00, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Smallest unit? I like the sound of the picoegowatt. Any smaller and you vanish in a puff of self-deprecation ;) Neprilysin now appears at a sane size to me - I was afraid that huge protease was going to eat my head. And I think I've fixed the protbox - by dumbly copying and pasting the width code from {{protein}} - anyway, that looks right now too. I can't figure out what's up with the drugbox, though; it looks like it already should do the default-width thing? It's embarrassing, since I'm supposed to be a computational biologist and all, but I am template-impaired. Javascript-impaired too, as I found out recently. Uh-oh, ego shrinking... Opabinia regalis 05:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

:) I'm glad it worked out then. Yes, drugbox already does the default-width thing, as long as the width parameter is implicit (?), i.e., not in the wiki text. What ungodly resolution are you using? Neprilysin was completely obscuring my screen—even the WP sidebar was gone! And don't get me started on Javascript. I'm completely code-illiterate. On a side note, dop you think this could be used to illustrate ankyrin repeat? Fvasconcellos 12:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep, everything seems to be sorted out now. My monitor is a glorious 1920x1200, the highest I could find last time I bought a new computer. It's sad, really; I have an old monitor from the early(ish) days of LCDs at 1024x768 and it's awful to look at now ;) That image looks very nice for ankyrin repeat (amazing all these articles that never got their pictures!), but what's that extra disconnected red line? Opabinia regalis 02:03, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

It is a fragment of the spectrin-binding domain, apparently included in the model to improve solubility (that's what a quick reading of the paper tells me). Should I GIMP it out? I thought of uploading a surface rendering as well, but I'm not sure whether it would be useful to the article. Fvasconcellos 22:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, ok. I'd usually just render it without the extra fragment - definitely take it out to calculate the surface - but it's fine as is if you explain what it is. Actually, showing it with its sidechains might show something about the binding mode. Or maybe that's too specific; whatever you like ;) I think surfaces are nice. Hm, maybe that article needs more content to balance out all these pictures and infoboxes... Opabinia regalis 02:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I'll leave it as is then, and amend the caption? I did create a fragment-free version, but haven't uploaded it yet; maybe it won't be necessary. As for the surface, I rendered this yesterday (before reading your comment :) Surfaces aren't my specialty, so I could use some guidance on whether this looks good or not—orientation, style, color (or lack thereof)... What do you think? I don't remember seeing many surface images on WP—one on FKBP if memory serves. And yes, these articles could certainly use some more balance (hint, hint). Fvasconcellos 15:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, all right ;) In retrospect, the colors on the FKBP image are really garishly ugly, aren't they? I think just clarifying in the caption for the cartoon image is a good idea - for the surface, actually, maybe render both as surfaces, in two different colors? Or, different shades, I suppose; I really like the look of the current one. That would be nice to see how the two surfaces interact. Make a pretty picture in the next five days or so (I think that's the rule these days) and you can probably get it on the front page on DYK. Opabinia regalis 02:43, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! So FKBP is yours, eh? I don't think it looks garish FWIW. I'll clarify the caption on ankyrin. Do you mean rendering both the repeats and the spectrin-binding domain as surfaces, each in a different shade? My powers of reasoning are slowing down :) Say, DYK would be nice. You seem to be a frequent contributor... Fvasconcellos 03:12, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant about the surfaces, sorry. The FKBP images were the pre-Pymol days - I remember creating that just after reading The Billion Dollar Molecule (hm, redlink... it's a book about the early days of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, when they were trying to develop a 'better' FKBP binder than FK506. Kind of overwritten, but interesting.). Anyway, I don't really do the DYK thing unless I have a pretty picture, but it's nice to try to get more science people to use it; it's one of the few domains of wikipedia that seems to have more historical stuff than anything else. Opabinia regalis 03:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Will do. I'll submit them for your consideration when I'm done :) Fvasconcellos 15:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Just in case you still remember me, I haven't forgotten, ya know :) I've just been very busy, and creating a nice, appropriate image is somewhat more time consuming than just tagging Talk pages and formatting refs. I guess DYK will have to wait until the next one... Fvasconcellos 14:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I understand... btw, I stole your 'busy in meatspace' notice yesterday. Just keep it in mind for your next cool article ;) Opabinia regalis 04:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FA FAQ

Hi Opabinia. (Is there an appropriate diminutive for Opabinia regalis?) I was wondering if you had any further feedback on the suggested FAQ? There's a talk discussion started here. I've seen that we probably agree about "likely to be challenged" but I've wondered if I may have gone to far in the other direction on the FAQ—I absolutely don't want to suggest to general readers that they can't challenge an assertion. I think this could be a useful page, but we need to be very careful how we phrase things. Marskell 19:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Test of semi-automated generation of taxonomy pages

Hi Opabinia,

How are you? My time with my sister and old friends was wonderful; it's really ego-flattering to be the focus of such affection from their various children. :D I hope I was helpful, too, in taking care of the baby, who was remarkably good-natured and susceptible to waltzes. ;)

As I wrote to Tim, I'm auditioning that nightingale Daisy, who claims to be able to make Wikipedia stubs for arbitrary sets of taxonomy pages. Could you also make suggestions on her output? Here are the first three pages that Daisy made all by herself:

• Methanomicrobia
• Thermococci
• Methanobacteria

She started with the missing classes of the Archaea, but Daisy is very versatile. :) Once these drafts are perfected, she can craft the missing orders, families, etc. of any branch of the tree of life. Of course, I uploaded the pages for her; I don't think passerines are allowed to have user accounts on Wikipedia, are they? I'm rather daunted by the pywikipedia thing, although I suppose I could try. Thanks muchly for your help, Willow 23:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Now that I look at the pages myself, I see that Daisy forgot to add the stub template. :( Even nightingales skip a note now and then.

Hey, glad you had a good trip and good to see you back! Now, if leftovers from the Cambrian era can have accounts, I don't see why birds shouldn't.. :) The stubs look nice; I just hope people will find and expand them over time. I noticed that these are all in a redlinked category; is that because the tree of life category system doesn't contain any taxa that we don't currently have articles for, or because the category exists under a different name?

I like Tim's suggestion of importing the references - good way to point people in the right direction for adding more content. Other than that I think the current content looks good. I don't think I have any intelligent suggestions about setting up the pywikipedia framework, since I've only used it once, but presumably you don't want to upload thousands upon thousands of articles ;) If I get a chance I'll download the current version and have a look. Opabinia regalis 01:17, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much! :) I asked a couple of questions on my Talk page and would love to hear your ideas. I'll do the categories tomorrow, and thanks for looking into the scary py-thing. ;) Sweet dreams to me and you, Willow 04:45, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi O,

I know you're busy in "meatspace" ("seafood-space"?) but, if you can spare a moment, I could use some help proofreading the taxonomic journal references, as described on my Talk page — thanks muchly, and good luck to you, Willow 22:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Trying to catch up on natural selection tonight - maybe in the next couple of days if you guys don't run out ;) BTW, since one of the suggestions at the peer review is to reduce the history section, maybe some of your older stuff should be exported to history of evolutionary thought instead?

To answer the below question, there's always http://www.python.org/doc/, which is actually quite good, if a little disorganized. O'Reilly's Learning Python is pretty good, or so I hear, though I guess it's very basic; Programming Python might be a better choice for someone who already knows the simplest stuff. But I do this stuff the disorganized way ;) Opabinia regalis 04:22, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hi; and thanks

Hi O, I just wanted to say "thank you" for writing that Python script; I don't think that I could've done it. I have the feeling that this is going to be good, don't you? The pieces are coming together nicely, thanks to all of our efforts. :) I love feeling part of a well-meaning and wonderfully smart community of editors.

Hunting for another cool card to wiki-send you, Willow 23:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Oh, could you look over that wickedness again and make any suggestions that occur to you? I'd appreciate your insights. It's getting close to April 1st!

Eh, if you can do C, you can do python. Especially if you do string stuff in C ;) Though I have to say the pywikipedia documentation, such as it is, is not good. I'll take a look at the other stuff 0 it's a bad sign when you run out of time to read the satire, isn't it? Opabinia regalis 05:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you know a good book or website where I could learn some more Python? It does seem C-like, so I might be able to learn it, although I'd have to get used to dropping the extra-smiley semicolons. ;)

BTW, I spruced up the historical section of Natural selection a little, but please revert whatever you don't like. The Empedocles quote was actually from Lucretius, who gives an OK summary of the natural selection idea, albeit rather poetically; Lucretius was inspired by Empedocles, but far more sensible. E's theory was wild, even dreamlike; he describes an era when the various organs were only partially assembled (arms without shoulders, eyeballs with no forehead) and went wandering, mating up in random ways, of which only the most successful combinations survived and reproduced. (The literary precedent for "wandering eyes", as it were. ;) Aristotle lampoons Empedocles for the idea of "man-faced oxen" and rejects the notion that Nature can be acausal. Talk to you soon, Willow 15:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] userbox issue

Regarding your statement about the relevance of the userbox issue on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/RevRagnarok, you may want to take a look at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Froth. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 02:40, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Why? Unless you're obliquely making a point about relevance... Opabinia regalis 02:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I just meant to say that almost all oppose votes in Froth's RfA are based on his answer to Q1, which is "just about the weakest and least convincing opposition meme I've ever seen gain traction in an RfA". Much weaker and less convincing, I feel, than the "userbox issue" on RevRagnarok's RfA. Although I have to admit that I feel somewhat personally insulted by that anti-EU userbox, as I also told RevRagnarok on his user page. He doesn't trust the union of states I'm living and believing in (however flawed it may be, compared to the flawless USA), so I feel I cannot trust him with the admin tools. At any rate, I'm not going to support him. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 14:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, poorly thought-out reasoning for Wikipedia activities vs not trusting a political entity. (Is trusting a political entity ever a good idea?) Glad we've got our priorities straight. Opabinia regalis 05:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] page deleted?

Hi, I'm trying to find out why you (and another admin.) deleted the Nigel Bradbury page. I started it, and it looks asif someone continued after that. We had a lot to say about Nigel, but are new to Wiki and wanted to verify/ check permission before adding much more. Did I do something wrong? As far as I remember, pretty much all I put was that he was the inventor of the Mutator (made by Mutronics : http://www.mutronics.co.uk/). This is FACT, and I am a little worried in case you thought this was not so. I didn't put a link to Mutronic's website in the wiki because I wasn't sure about the rules and stuff. He used to be M.D. but no longer has any contact with them (for about 10yrs). He's done a fair bit of stuff in his lifetime, it was a legitimate link from another page (OOOD), and I would have thought that inventing something like that was wiki-worthy. It is a popular bit of kit in professional recording studios, and has been used by the likes of Madonna. If you complain about verifiability I shall scream and tear my hair out. There has been publicity saying someone else is responsible for the Mutator, but it's not true, and apparently someone (not I) recently added to Mutronics' web site putting the record straight. If I had seen it, I would give you the link. I may look for it later. I see content all the time on wikipedia which is marked as 'source needed' or something. I saw him make the thing, and witnessed all of the early days of setting up the company. How much more reliable does it get? I'm sorry if this was the wrong way to go about asking, but it took me ages to even get this far. -edit: I can't find the stuff I was told was on the website, but I did find a load of BS from Mark Lusadi claiming to be the 'co-creator'. Actually, the thing was already built and he just put money in afterwards. It makes those of us who know the truth very angry when we see these claims- many in printed media- and I did hope to get the gods-honest truth up on wikipedia. HELP!!! Any advice would be welcome. Monalisaa 17:50, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The entire content of that article was a single unsourced sentence. Please see the speedy deletion criteria, specifically criterion A7, for the minimum content a new article should contain to avoid speedy deletion. It doesn't help that the speedy tag was placed by a user who is a strong defender of new content.

From your post here, it sounds like you should also read our attribution policy if you haven't already, because Wikipedia is not a place for promoting what you believe to be a correction to a misunderstanding. You absolutely will need reliable sources stating that Nigel was the inventor (where reliable requires independence from Nigel himself). Your personal experiences, unless they have been published in a reliable source, are not adequate basis on which to make a claim in an encyclopedia article (otherwise we'd have all sorts of nonsense about UFO abductions and images of Jesus in people's croissants and whatever else). I recommend writing a draft article in your userspace, for example at User:Monalisaa/Nigel Bradbury, and only moving it to the mainspace when you're sure it meets notability and verifiability requirements. Opabinia regalis 18:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

ok thanks for the advice and the speedy reply- I was worried that it was a) too short and b) had no references. I may be able to locate sources but not in the near future (stuff published 10yrs ago). As a general point, and not specifically about wiki, I am now quite alarmed about the phenomenon of 'history being written by the winners'. There's not much to be done about this- but if lies are propogated enough, it seems they eventually become 'fact'. Shades of Orwell. I didn't want to get into any 'corrections of misunderstandings', just state simple fact- sorry. But it does make me wonder just how much of what we take as history is pure fabrication...hmmm Monalisaa 19:23, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review on cholangiocarcinoma

Thanks much for your considered comments at Wikipedia:Peer review/Cholangiocarcinoma. Your feedback was very useful. I've gone ahead and tried to address the points you raised. If you have a chance, take another look at the article and see what you think of the changes. I'm likely going to nominate it for featured article status. Thanks again. MastCell ^Talk 19:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Government/Norte Chico

Thanks again for the comments on the Norte Chico civilization FAC (still unfortunately under-reviewed). I've added a small note to the Ruth Shady article and replaced "Maritime dietary component" with "seafood." I post here because I thought another set of *'s would be a mess, and because of the government issue, which needs some explanation.

I don't quite know what to do. I am mimicing the source (1491), which specifically notes Mesoamerica separately but does not explain the caveat. There's no intimation in the sources that gov't migrated from Peru to Mexico (and it's not commonsensical); I'd like to point that out but it would actually be OR. At the same time, it would be wrong to note 3 emergences of gov't rather than 2 + maybe 1, because the source doesn't do so... So I'm sort of just stuck repeating an unsatisfactory point.

As a last point, I really love Proud product of the Cambrian explosion :). Marskell 19:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, in a sense, we're all products of the Cambrian explosion, right? ;)

That is so strange that the sources don't describe what's going on with Mesoamerica - in the 'traditional' formulation, before Norte Chico was discovered, did people typically say that government arose twice, in Sumer and Mesoamerica? (Also, I could've sworn that China was a separate instance, but that's foggy half-remembered guessing.) I don't know, I just find the if Mesoamerica is included separately very unsatisfying; it sounds like there's more of a story there than I guess there is. But the article's excellent anyway, and I had no idea that this had even been discovered until I read it. Incidentally, what's up with the low number of reviews lately? It's weird to have some nominations with ten obvious objections, and then others that are actually good get no useful response. Opabinia regalis 00:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Another proud product of the Cambrian explosion

Sure, we're all products of the Cambrian explosion. That's why I liked your note—humble and grand at once (Gould-like, let's say :). My Wiki wanderings often take me to ET pages; some theorists argue that the critical event on this planet was not the emergence of life, which has almost certainly occurred elsewhere, but the Cambrian explosion, which may be unique. (The third candidate for top event in this case is the appearance of Homo sapiens.) The ROM has a little slice of the Burgess Shale I looked at when last home. Fantastic creatures.

On the gov question, I can find sources describing Mesoamerica, but if I try to answer the question of one, two, or three it'll be OR. What did people typically say before? This amateur would have to go into sources of sources for a decent answer. The six cradles (Sumer, Indus, Egypt, China, Peru, Mesoamerica) are canonical, but I'm not sure about "emergences of government." I think the problem in this case is one of "me too." Everybody knows Eurasia/Africa must have at least one emergence of government. Necessarily, so must the Americas (unless you have some kooky idea about Egyptians sailing to Mexico), but because the Americas are often tacked on as an afterthought to Civ discussions the point isn't made properly.

Commonsensically, a migration of government across the isthmus seems unlikely, as government (unlike maize) can't be picked and carried thousands of kilometers. (Note also Jared Diamond's argument about the difficulty in diffusing ideas and tech across degrees of latitude, as opposed to longitude). Thus an argument for two emergences in the Americas is completely sensible. I'm thinking that if anything should be looked at its our page on government—the word "history" doesn't occur once. Marskell 09:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yikes! Good thing I'm a bit too small to make that dino a good lunch. I hope. I'll just sit down here in the mud for a bit...

Thanks for linking that article - I've vaguely heard of the book but am not really familiar with the theory. Seems a little farfetched, though, to think that axial tilt is a requirement for complex life. But a lot of these discussions seem to implicitly equate 'complex life' with 'Earthlike life', where I want people to think seriously about how to make self-replicating entities in gas giants, or out of what we call 'inorganic' materials. (IIRC someone proposed that the first self-replicating entities on earth were forms of crystalline structure in clay - living clay would be cool.) And it's damn depressing to turn on the TV, watch for five minutes, and think 'these people may just be representative examples of the most intelligent form of life in the galaxy, possibly the universe'.

About governments - I guess we just have to wait for the standard textbooks to catch up then. I'm afraid I don't remember enough of that one world history class I took to know just how under-billed civilization in the Americas really is.

Oh, by the way - while I have never been to the Royal Ontario Museum or seen a Burgess Shale fragment, I did feel compelled to get some of these not too long ago ;) Opabinia regalis 02:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Rare Earth is a polemic; they select only the evidence that emphasizes Earth's rarity and downplay or ignore that which doesn't. But polemics have their uses—it really stirred up the ET debate. Here is a website you might like to track. I do agree with one basic idea: the Cambrian Explosion is more important than the emergence of life because it took 3 billion years for it to occur. It's a sample of one, of course, but it suggests that complexity is in no way a given once the microbes have appeared. Thus, we may have a universe full of bacteria but no other lions and tigers and bears. As for "self-replicating entities in gas giants," Evolving the Alien has just such a thought experiment. I can dig it up and describe how they go about it, if you like. Finally, I should have also linked to my baby (I know, I know, we don't own them). It actually needs an overhaul—my ref formatting decisions were insane.

On the under-billing of the Americas, see this. It was my best book purchase of the last year.

Are the toys for your own idle moments ;)? Marskell 08:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The toys were intended for me, but my cat thinks the whole world exists for her entertainment, especially those portions of the world that are small and made of plastic. So I have to keep them on a tall shelf to keep her away. Strangely, she's recently developed a fascination with the destruction of a large biochemical pathways poster on the wall. (Why, yes, I do have a biochemical pathways poster on my wall.)

It seems like my reading list is in an inflationary phase lately, and you're not helping! ;) 1491 just may be next on the list. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing and maybe I'm just being properly skeptical, but drawing any conclusions other than 'complex life is possible' from our one measly little sample strikes me as fundamentally suspicious, even general conclusions about rates. (I feel compelled to compare to molecular dynamics simulations of protein structure formation - start multiple simulations from slightly different initial conditions and watch some finish in tens of nanoseconds, and some well into the hundreds.) Since much of what I'm familiar with in the thinking about extraterrestrial life is focused on 'intelligent' life, I've also wondered how we would recognize thought processes that occur on very different time scales than our own. If it were possible for something to topologically and functionally duplicate the human brain, except that signals were transmitted on a timescale of minutes to hours, we'd never see the forest for the trees; I doubt any meaningful communication would occur. I'd like to know what they came up with in Evolving the Alien; I suppose I'll have to put that one on the list too.

Broadly, I'd be willing to bet on lots of bacteria-like extraterrestrial organisms, though there may be some latitude in what we're willing to call 'life'. I've always been sympathetic to the notion that intelligent life is not readily seen in the universe because it tends to blow itself up after acquiring a certain technological sophistication, and also to the somewhat related notion that any given planet can support many forms of complex life, but only one intelligent species. Your habitability article is interesting (and very nice, by the way ;) - I can't say I've given much thought to the potential problems of sustaining life in a binary star system, for example. (But it happens all the time in science fiction!) Still not really buying the axial tilt thing, though; given the range of what Earth life can do, I can imagine these problems being relatively surmountable - even the matter of temperatures that hit the boiling and freezing point of the solvent could be escaped. I'm thinking of a prolonged unicellular state that's much more hardy than the complex multicellular form - or even a slime mold-like life cycle. Opabinia regalis 07:00, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Others agree on axial tilt.

Fermi Paradox has some info on your other comments (another FAC of mine, but actually a sloppy page and given to cruft). It has (or at least had at one point) the suggestion about thought processes of differing timescales. Now, I don't know molecular dynamics simulations from a barndoor, but my commonsensical objection: in a universe where threats can appear in nanoseconds, how is a species going to come anywhere close to our sophistication if they process threats over minutes or hours? Surely "think fast" is a universal rule for intelligent life? Or maybe that's a dummy take on things...

thumb|right|150px|The two suns of Tatooine (tell me if I'm boring you.)

Sci-fi and binary stars. When Luke was mourning his uncle and aunt on Tatooine I recall two stars hanging limpidly in the background... Wait one second...ah yes, our wiki page on the subject notes "the two suns are named Tatoo I & Tatoo II." As a boy, I enjoyed two-thirds of Helliconia ("hard science fiction") but never found the third book in the trilogy...

I'll dig through Evolving the Alien and briefly describe their thought experiment...it had something to do with balloons... Also, Chemical synapse is sitting on FAR. Is it something you could help with? Cheers, Marskell 13:06, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah good, I'm not completely missing the point on the axial tilt - good to know! ;) The slow-thinker thing actually originated from a long... umm, armchair philosophizing session with people who, like me, probably have no particular insight into this problem, and had to fill some idle time... but the idea is surely just as applicable to a hypothetical species that transmits internal messages hundreds of times faster than a human would. Also, what threatens a human may not be a threat to these slow-thinking creatures (I imagined them very large, for whatever reason.)

Anyway, yep, Tatooine was the first one to come to mind - though I was unaware of the names of the stars. I'm very far behind in the Star Wars universe, though I enjoyed some of the books a bit more than they probably deserved... also, I love the word 'limpidly' ;) I noticed chemical synapse on FAR and wondered if I should do something about it, but a) if I don't deal with natural selection soon, it'll never happen; I've been talking about working on it since October, and b) I'm kind of tied up in the real world right now, and not being especially productive lately. So probably not, at least not in the near future, unfortunately. Opabinia regalis 04:53, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I was going to link you to "speed of thought," but it only goes to a film thriller... I very very vaguely recall a quote from Sagan about how everyone thinks thought moves nearly as fast as light but if you literally represented it, it's about as fast as a donkey walks...

After an hour looking through Evolving the Alien, I was reminded of how much of the book is over my head... Basically they imagine blimps in a Jovian type atmosphere. Molecular machinations at the phase boundary within the gas giant (that's about as competently as I can describe it) form chains which eventually form rings that they call "cyclozygotes"; a double-membrane is formed and "molecular machinery sucks hydrogen from the surrounding ocean [and eventually the ensuing creature] rises like a hot air balloon." Mature blimps drop trillions of tiny packages of genetic material back through the atmosphere to keep the cycle going... I dunno; if, as I'm guessing, you have chemistry or biology degrees, I'm sure you'll be much better able to appreciate it. But buy Rare Earth before Evolving the Alien; it's a call-and-response. If Rare Earth and life-must-be-like-us is too unimaginative, I do wonder about the converse—that because someone can imagine startling means of self-replication, we should assume startling means of self-replication occur elsewhere...

As a last point, I've only been posting these long responses as a healthy diversion from policy debates which are driving me mad. Also because I like talking about aliens. (An interest in ancient civilizations seems to naturally converge with an interest in aliens, as far as I'm concerned...) Marskell 21:42, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, these hot-air-balloon creatures sound interesting... dammit, now I'll have to actually read these books, instead of just saying I will ;) It's fun to think about things that are bigger and more speculative than 'what rotamer state is this amino acid in'. (Yes, my background is in biochemistry, but I really do computational biology. So none of the mess and fuss of an actual lab.)

Long posts about aliens are always welcome here (or, for that matter, ancient civilizations), and are much preferable to 'why did you delete my perfectly good article about my left buttock?!' You have more patience than I for getting involved in the whole ATT mess (yes, I rather like it over here with my head in the sand). In the end, it doesn't really matter all that much; you could write Wikipedia:How to fall off a log (god, I hope that's red) and someone would still find a way to do it wrong. Opabinia regalis 06:34, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned EB site?

Hi O,

Could you look at Encyclopædia Britannica Online and tell me if it should be deleted? I don't know that much about Wikipedia's policies on commercial links and such. I'd appreciate your opinion in any case; thanks! :) Willow 23:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Meh, the current state of that article is crap and I don't see a good reason to have it separate, so I just redirected it to EB. If it does merit its own article, it would've needed to be completely rewritten anyway. Opabinia regalis 02:30, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your decisive action on that, which makes a lot of sense. I've now nominated Encyclopædia Britannica for FAC; if you had any time to look it over, it'd be much appreciated! :)

I love the way Spring is returning. I spent a beautiful weekend preparing my garden, cleaning it, removing dead stalks, pruning, turning the soil and working in the compost, etc. Several berry bushes have already broken bud! :) Hoping that seafood-space is treating you well, Willow 01:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks; glad that worked out. I'll take a look at the main article when I get a chance. I saw some crocuses and whatnot (er, that'd be the technical term, right? ;) flowering today. I'm so glad winter's ending; I hate snow - I'd say 'with the fire of a thousand suns', but evidently not, since that would solve the problem altogether. Opabinia regalis 04:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thank you for support in my unsuccessful RfA. I appreciate the support, and am disappointed on being judged by what in most opinions seem to be the wrong things. Until next time, edit on! And thanks for the wonderful quote! :) — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 03:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cholangiocarcinoma

Thanks for your comments and suggestions regarding the featured-article nomination of cholangiocarcinoma. I've tried to address them as best I can; when you have a chance, take another look and see what you think. MastCell ^Talk 17:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page deleted

Hi there,

Sorry if it isn't the proper way to reach you, but I haven't found any other. I just wanted to know why you deleted the Degree_(project) page? Is "long ad" the reason? If yes, what does it mean (sorry, I'm no native english speaker) ? As I saw the EGEE and Nordugrid project (which are closely related to the Degree project) were there, I thought it would be nice if Degree was there as well, so I'm not sure what I did wrong...

Cheers, Mathieu.

The article was deleted because it read like an advertisement or publicity promotion for the project, without specifying why they were notable or encyclopedic. The speedy deletion criteria - specifically A7 and G11 - apply here. Related articles probably weren't deleted because no one noticed and tagged them, or because their writing is less promotional; I haven't looked at them and don't know if they merit deletion. If you want to work on the degree article to make it appropriate for inclusion in the article space, I can put the text back in your userspace for further work, though removing the promotional tone won't guarantee that it's notable enough. Opabinia regalis 04:55, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Chromosome mutation images and genetic linkage illustration

Re your message on my talk page.

Sure, ill give it a go! Genetic linkage wont be the easiest thing to demonstrate, being a probabilistic event, but should be possible...

lol, forgot to sign - Zephyris _Talk 14:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Metabolism FAC

Hi, O. regalis. Thanks for your help with this. TimVickers 15:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Equipartition theorem

On another really random whim (well, I was getting bored with proofreading the taxonomic files), I started working on the Equipartition theorem. I wasn't going to bother you when you're so busy, but then I remembered your flying ice cube, and thought maybe that you would enjoy reading this. If you have time, any suggestions would be very welcome. Thanks muchly as always, yours friendly, Willow 16:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)