User talk:Oldspammer/Archive 1

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[edit] The Causes of the Technology Meltdown of 2000-2002

I worked for a technology company during the tech-meltdown.

There were multiple causes for this economic downturn.

1. The necessities of life are food, shelter, HVAC, freedom, healthcare, etc. Technology is nice, but not a necessity--you can usually make due with what technology you already have, or pay only to maintain and repair it.

2. Central banks in North America were tightening the money supply (raising interest rates). The effect that this has on world economic activity is that necessities are maintained, but the frills are cut back or eliminated. Monetary liquidity is a threshold item and when investors are unable to cheaply borrow risk capital for new ventures, the price of stocks drops due to reduced money inflows, and more out-flows probably instead into real-estate or the bond market, and staff of new venture firms are slashed. All non-essential job positions are laid-off, thereby lowering labor wage demands, and hopefully this lowers demand for everything, thereby supplies increase, and this triggers price reductions to clear inventories, etc--thereby lowering inflation. Central banks usually work in large part for the appointing government bodies who appoint the chairmen. When the unemployment rate gets too high, this hurts tax revenues. Things are compounded if welfare rolls get too high from too many people with no income.

3. Normally Internet web page banner ads were either changed randomly per page view, or were targeted to the given web cookie profile, and reasonably good revenues were being generated by this activity--several dollars per thousand views of a served ad. But in early 2000 some old-school advertising firms in NYC began to pooh-pooh the idea of any web advertising at all. They stated that the banner ads rarely caused a web visitor to do a click-through of the banner ad--They said , "So why pay any money for such garbage ads?" Of course the old media, old-school ad execs wanted a return to TV, radio, and newspaper ads with which they had vested interests in redirected (away from the web) advertising budgets. (Note that the same can be said about a TV car ad--all viewers don't immediately get hypnotized into buying the given car?) Web banner ad prices fell one hundred fold within a two month period. Web site budgets and staff had to be cut. Lay-offs happened gradually. Many sites started to run negative cash flows. All new orders for software, consulting, or computer servers were cancelled. Existing server equipment was auctioned off at fire sale prices. Stock prices of all web companies fell. Web companies and Internet networking and telecom equipment manufacturers supplying network infrastructure and networking equipment manufacturers started to lose money, go out of business, and had to lay-off millions of employees world wide. The NASDAQ stock markets crashed several hundred points per day for several months (from a high of 5000+ down to eventually a low of about 1200). New technology ventures could not get funding because they were seen as too risky. Excellent consumer electronics manufacturers also went out of business because a lot of their customers were tech people or were also afraid for their jobs. Corporate takeovers that used web company stock as collateral stopped forth-with. Many small stock market investors were reluctant to pull their money out of technology stocks because of some tech-specialty stock market analysts leading cheerleader-like crys that in a week or a month, the market would rebound. We can see that these tech cheerleaders only served to increase the severity of the losses sustained by the small investors who even partially listened to them. Leveraged / debt tech stock purchases of previously ever climbing companies now had to be repaid to lenders.

4. The consortium known as OPEC raised oil prices by a large chunk of money per barrel and even when the economic downturn was underway, they did not lower the price appreciably. In about the same period of time bad weather caused damage to a number of the southern USA oil refineries that caused them to shut down unexpectedly for repairs. The repairs took weeks or months before some refineries went back online. This caused the USA to have to tap into its reserves to prevent short term shortages in the supply of refined crude, and this also caused oil and gasoline prices to rise.

5. Short selling futures and stock traders made millions of dollars as stock prices of many companies having technology exposure went way down.

6. September 11, 2001 terror attacks happened.

7. Travel and lodging industries were hurt by fear of air traveling public to get back into the air, and by severe security alert measures put into place, not to mention the stock market downturn and massive layoffs of their potential traveling business and private customers. More airlines went bankrupt. The rise in fuel prices caused by OPEC and shortages did not help airline companies either.

8. Anthrax terror happened through the mail system. Everything was a suspicious package. Now the borders were delayed with shipment security inspections.

9. When the North American central banks began to lower interest rates in reaction to the severe economic downturn, they acted too slowly, and too late in the game to have any moderating factors in saving the pension and retirement savings that were lost due to the tech meltdown.

10. The severe crash in some technology and telecom and "managed energy/network" companies lead to investigations and audits that revealed corporate malfeasance of Enron, WorldCom, and other companies. Investor confidence was given a severe beating by these guys who made all matters worse by corrupting an already sick economy.

11. Existing bond market investors like Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan saw the price of their bonds rise in price as bank interest rates fell after the meltdown had taken hold. The irony of this is that he controlled the very interest rates that made his own bond investments rise in price. Does this not represents a conflict of interest of a key government official? Oldspammer 09:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

12. In Canada, Prime Minister Jean Chretien's (Liberal Party) government reduces unemployment insurance (UIC) benefits, and the extent of the period that the benefits be paid. This increases the pain and damage suffered by laid-off technology workers in Canada.

13. In Canada, Statistics Canada computes unemployment statistics based not on the number of unemployed people, but on the now reduced number of UIC recipients. No means of determining the actual unemployment figures in Canada exist for this protracted economic downturn so that negatively affected laid-off Nortel Networks, Newbridge/Alcatel, JDS Uniphase, etc employees are further depressed particularly in the Ottawa area. Without proper information the various levels of government are unable to effect positive policy changes that would foster improvements to the sad situation. Oldspammer 10:18, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Oldspammer 09:48, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World Population pressures standard of living & jobs

In the events described above about the Technology Meltdown of 2000-2002, the only items on the up-swing were real-estate, distributed foods, and various forms of taxation. The cost of living index is computed based on a basket of goods and services used in every day life. It is used by some economists to signal if inflation is rising too rapidly so that the central banks should raise their interest rates to combat the inflation.

Well, the negative result has been that the employment rate for highly educated technology workers in North America have dropped. Married couples in this sad, reduced income environment have put off having children. As a result, for example, the Canadian birthrate has gone down.

Some technology jobs are now being out-sourced from China and India, countries with high populations, low wages, and slowly increasing standards of living.

In Canada beef producing farmers saw their cattle at auction pricing fall dramatically when the first Mad Cow tests confirmed an isolated case. Mysteriously, however, the lower cost beef prices were not passed on to Canadian consumers by the slaughter houses, meat packing plants, meat distributors, and grocery stores.

Canadian politicians instead of fostering a stable economic environment for raising families by enacting policies that assist their existing citizens, they want to increase the immigration rate into Canada. This in turn increases the inflation rate on necessities such as food, shelter, water, HVAC, etc, since more agricultural land is being converted to housing developments to house the new immigrant population. Scarce jobs grow more so. Existing 1960s built water and sewer systems are extended rather than new structures being put in place. The water pressure is now 30% of what it once was. Electrical power systems are in a similar sad state of affairs. A foolish, unmandated scheme done by the Premier Mike Harris (Conservative Party of Ontario) provincial government in the late 1990s sold off all the latest power stations, a bleeding-edge toll highway & technology system, water quality monitoring laboratory work to private corporations for pennies on the dollar, while at the same time the same government promised that new power generation facilities would soon be built. Nearly a decade after this, no new electrical power generating facilities have been or are being built or plan to be built, and each year the Ontario electrical power system has become more and more fragile with more rolling blackouts and catastrophic shortages and failures happening each year. In addition, the privatization of the electrical power system has seen its CEO get millions of dollars increase in salary and benefits without any performance benefit to merit this increase. The town of Walkerton Ontario suffered a contaminated drinking water crisis where several people died and several handfuls became ill. Millions of dollars were spent on a public inquiry into the e.coli bacteria water quality testing mishap that caused the Walkerton, Ontario crisis. It seems that no proper planning for the transitional shift to using private water quality testing labs was established. The primary two people involved with falsifying water quality records were convicted and sent to jail.

New immigrants who arrive in Canada find to their dismay that the employment situation is grim. Professionals such as doctors, engineers, etc, end up having to drive taxis or wait on tables in restaurants. If an immigrant engineer employed already by a Canadian firm arrives during the high point of an economic cycle, they can quickly find themselves unemployed as the cycle starts to swing downwards again. By this time they have moved into a large new home and have a big mortgage payment to maintain. There are only so many taxi and waiter jobs available.

The main important consideration is world population reduction to reclaim precious agricultural land scheduled for housing development, and to reduce the burden of the water, sewer and electrical power generation system. An additional consideration is that the over populated countries from which some of these immigrants come are relieved by their emmagrants in a way that permits a higher birth rate to be sustained there even longer than it should be before an environmental equilibrium is established.

In large part the world's economic problems are based on the incorporation act. The entities of corporations build their wealth based often on the premise of ever growing commerce due to larger and larger population growth of the world and of its economy. A multi-national corporation can close and open factories where ever its corporate operating officer thinks might be more efficient to conduct the work. This thinking does not take into account that their domestic customer-base are their domestic employees. When their domestic employees lose their jobs, then there are going to eventually be no more domestic customers for their products. A low wage person cannot afford a year's salary to buy a tech widget or service. The counter argument is that if our competitor does this cost reduction move, then they will lose business until they can lower their production costs to keep pace. This argument makes sense when Wal*Mart sales are so high. However, eventually when all business operations have moved abroad, then not even Wal*Mart can afford to hand out goods for free to the masses of now unemployed former development and production staff of closed plants. Nor will Wal*Mart be able to employ all of these people as sales associates, department managers, and night time restockers.

Unfortunately, the solution lies in the hands of your next door neighbor. They have to shop smart by refusing low quality, poorly designed foreign made goods. Unfortunately, many rich people purchase Japanese, German and Italian goods even over North American made products.

This ends us with over paid government officials, poor quality government services, expensive pay per use services that used to be freely available like garbage collection.

Over regulation of private individuals so that taxation in the form of tickets and fines can be levied against minor infractions while more dangerous or serious crime remains more problematic for our poorly trained, poorly paid and under educated police force, government inspectors, and investigators. This is a systemic force for corruption whereby it is easier to convict the innocent than to investigate properly to insure that the guilty are punished.

For example, a Left turning driver is automatically guilty of causing any accident at an intersection. No witnesses need be gathered by police. No accident scene investigation need be or can afford to be, or can technically be conducted by the inept police who arrive at the scene of the accident. A red light could be run (which is a higher level fine), but the left turning driver is at fault because it can be proven easily that they were making their turn. In order to prove that the guilty person who ran the red light is at fault, a closed circuit intersection camera would have to be present, or an independent reliable witness would have to come forward and be willing to testify in court that the red light was run, or that speeding, or that a cell phone, or that drinking was involved. Inept, poorly paid, poorly educated police are most likely to shorten their involvement by ticketing the left turning driver for failure to make a safe left turn / failure to afford right of way to the on coming vehicle than properly investigate the accident.

There is a law in Pickering Ontario that a yard fireplace cannot be used to burn anything but charcoal (as in a BBQ) else a ticketed fine of $25k or 1 year in prison or both can be charged against an individual.

Often a police officer's gut feeling about reading a person's "body language signals" starts the focus of an investigation down the wrong path where no other alternate scenarios are pursued. By the time it is determined that the innocent person has been wrongly harassed by police and the court system, the guilty person is long gone and the evidence trail is cold.

After a number of years in such a corrupt system, an experienced police officer is likely to become him or herself a crook. Often cash found at a crime scene or on the person of a burglar is gathered as evidence, but often half is returned to the criminal in exchange the other half is kept by the arresting officer when the conviction does not succeed or the charges dropped. I was a victim. I swore out in a statement what my cash denominations were prior to police saying what was recovered. In fact, all my money was recovered but half was returned to the thief (or corrupt policeman) because the police officer said he believed the criminal and not the victim. I don't know if the criminal was ever put in jail. Oldspammer 17:44, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


Welcome!

Hello, Oldspammer/Archive 1, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --Shanel ยง 19:15, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good faith

You've been around Wikipedia long enough to realize that assuming good faith is important here. I bring this up in light of your comments here. My concerns are based on the fact that the article miserably fails Wikipedia's notability guidelines for biographies and academics. The way to fix this is by adding reliable sources, not by adding more Google search result pages. Accusing me, or anyone, of acting in the interests of "Big Pharma" to cover up this supposed cure both undercuts your credibility and violates some important tenets of how things are done here, including good faith and comment on content, not the contributor. MastCell Talk 18:42, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I would underline the excellent advice of MastCell there. I would be perfectly happy to block you for a few hours if needed. I trust that won't be necessary. --John 20:37, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Robert C. Beck DSc. Article Deletion

I truly apologize for anything that may have offended anyone's genteel sensibilities.

No "talk page" discussion information at all existed for the Robert C. Beck article making any specific suggestions or anything. All of a sudden, the article was under critical review, and attack of deletion.

I wrote the article, so "I am a contributor." If it is under attack, then I start to feel defensive.

It would be nice if someone would help me out in making my contributions more professional looking and up to WP standards. Instead, someone (a contributor?) has come along and wants the article removed (without helping out to put it into shape). If all of wikipedia were contributed by only removals, where would be now?

A person, such as Robert C. Beck, can be of interest to people and not yet be written up in the history hall of fame. This Robert C. Beck person seemed to me like a true seeker of truth. Some of his statements in his videos are wacky about the cartels and Mafia, but the rest of them seem quite sane.

As an advocate of alternative medicine, he would not be the recipient of a lot of supporting praise or acknowledgement in the medical scholarly literature. If this literature is what you want cited, then you will be out of luck having anyone find mention of him in any such place(s). But maybe you would not realize this?

By labeling something as unsourced does not make the thing untrue. For example, the section that I added today was very recently so marked (unsourced).

The section that I added is supposed to illustrate that some sort of balanced approach between conventional medical research and other valid scientific (engineering-physics) medical research should exist. However, this balance is not currently present. Why is this? On the one hand it seems like the alternative medical treatment people must show detailed theories and reasons why their treatment works, while the pharma medicine people can support one another, and voila--the treatment is approved. These same medical people will not confirm any working treatments that seem to involve any engineering-physics applications being scientifically applied to medical treatment of diseases. My added section provides the reader insight into why this might be so by citing the Flexner Report wiki article. If you keep in mind that science involves experimentation, why would a 1910 report have any influence on what avenues of science are used or not? The answer might be that an arbitrary doctrine was established long ago that purposefully steered medical research people away from that area of investigation by closing entire medical schools if they mentioned the topic in any positive fashion. A doctrine is arbitrary if it is not reasoned. A truly scientific approach would let experimental results demonstrate one way or the other whether or not a treatment is effective and safe. Some internet sources say that modern medical practice itself is the source of much death and suffering since misdiagnosis, poor hospital administration record keeping (lost records), accidental wrong dosages, and other such things result in a substantial number of hospital deaths each year. My dad had incompetent medical attention given him. In 2001, I did as well. Had the mistakes not been corrected within a reasonable time, my dad would never walk again, and I would have lost my kidneys.

In 1999 I was prescribed a Lipid lowering cholesterol drug by the name of "Lipidil Supra" (fenofibrate microcoated formulation--Lipid metabolism regulator--Fournier Pharma Inc.--Drug developed in France). The drug information sheets that accompanied this prescription at the time accurately stated that the drug acted upon the liver, the liver altered its regulatory balance of lipid production, and that the exact nature of action upon the liver was not known. I would trust more the original information sheet than any sites that claim otherwise. This is your source of some of the information.

In the Robert C. Beck article the unsourced label is put on a section that is several paragraphs long. It is difficult without any discussion of the matter to determine what part of it the "contributor" is critical. Oldspammer 23:28, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

The relevant Wikipedia policies are verifiability, no original research, and reliable sources (a guideline). Basically, Wikipedia articles must be based on independent, reliable sources (as defined in those policies). Wikipedia is not a forum for advocacy, nor for disseminating original research, synthesis, or thought. Basically, it's a repository of information that has been published somewhere else (somewhere reliable) before. Wikipedia is not meant to replace Google as s search tool for people interested in a topic.
If reliable, independent sources exist regarding Beck, then an encyclopedic article can be written. If not, then the article needs to be deleted. If sources become available later, the article can be recreated - but in any case, it needs to be based on those reliable sources and not on primary sources affiliated with Beck, or Google videos. Finally, I'm sorry to hear of your bad experiences; however, Wikipedia is not the place to publish a long, unsourced critique of Western medicine (or anything, really). There are other venues available for disseminating your views on the topic. MastCell Talk 22:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Why Dr. Bob Beck should stay

Let's look at the other Robert Beck articles. None of these other articles are marked for deletion. How reliable are their sources? Do these Robert Beck articles have everything referenced?


Why is Robert C. Beck significant for selective deletion and not the others?


I want to know more about this person. I want to know more about things he said and wrote. I have downloaded the Google video and one that is not available there. It seems to me that this man's "latest message" was researched from the good work of other scientists. In each of his videos he definitely had some goofy things to say, but he also quoted accurately from research papers that can be found via Google search. In the videos he said that when he went to locate some journal published study presentation material from numerous libraries that he found that it was removed and no longer available. He said that he had to locate one or more of the attendees of the conferences in order to locate the presentation hand outs and so on. In alternative medicine circles this has been known to happen to information that identifies a successful application of physics and engineering to the treatment of diseases. (I say it is known to happen because there are repeated stories of not just this particular guy but a few others that I have come across.)


A Google Search can demonstrate that this man has tens of thousands of web pages making mention of his name, whereas the other Robert Beck persons may not be so lucky. That this man is referenced so often is a clear indication that some coverage is warranted by wikipedia?


If other web users learn about Dr. Bob Beck, they will probably want to know: Did he cure himself and his family? What ultimately happened to this guy? Why don't we hear any more/new about this guy?


Since the subject person is deceased, we cannot call the person on the phone to interview them, or check their web site for the latest updates (unless someone is paying is hosting bills). So there may be only secondary sources for information about him. Oldspammer 19:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Reason for Google links as References

I have been using the internet since 1992, before there was a world wide web. When I first became a webmaster and developed content, I found that many of my links would go stale. These nice links I had would cite all kinds of electronics and industrial machinery pages--and exactly the articles that I wanted. From the links going stale I learned that it might be a better idea perhaps to link Google searches to the images, phrases, videos involved since the same information might be found elsewhere (at times unforeseen initially). Also, Google is certainly a more used and trusted site than any arbitrary site that might be linked since there are still risks of numerous computer virus that could potentially be spread by merely visiting a malicious site. Oldspammer 19:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


The article's subject person is famous among alternative medicine circles. Many Internet sources cite the work of this Dr. Robert (Bob) C. Beck person as having gathered together the research efforts of other valid scientific medical researchers, and publicized non-patented versions of working medical treatment devices. "The Beck Protocol" is a topic of substantial interest to AIDS patients (among others). Anyone who learns about Dr. Bob Beck and his message wants to know more about him--as I still do. Beck never manufactured any devices for use by other people. He freely published his schematic diagrams and "Protocol."Oldspammer 19:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


That the article initially used links via Google is no reason to have it deleted. I am not fully versed in editing wiki articles in order to quickly bring the article(s) up to extremely high standards that some users prefer.


Unless you are from another planet, you would realize that web links go stale in a relatively short period of time. By linking articles via Google search for keywords, the web articles or quotations thereof can be easily be located, sometimes along with any disputed information. Oldspammer 19:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


Videos of the man telling his story are good enough to substantiate claims that he was a researcher, that he quoted scientific literature, and experimental results of others. The videos show that he preferred alternative medicine and was a vocal spokesperson for it. Many persons searching for AIDS treatments do view the same Google videos. This would inevitably lead them to this man's "The Beck Protocol" publication, and devices following his designs. Then the questions about him that I expressed somewhere above would surface: What happened to this guy?, etc. The wiki article answers these questions to a large extent. There are gaps where other historical things about the man are not provided. The editing is not flawlessly formatted and organized. The citations are "crude" Google searches.


There are articles on wiki content creation that encourage new users to contribute something / anything, and then perhaps other experienced wiki users could contribute by cleaning it up a bit, reorganizing it, beautifying it a bunch and so on. Oldspammer 19:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


No amount of references would qualify to satisfy someone who wants the information suppressed.


The quality of references given would always never be good enough for someone who wants the information suppressed.


Many people who want to suppress such information are serving what purposes?--You would certainly not be serving my purposes of investigating alternative medicine treatments if you successfully had this article deleted!


If you feel that you could better format and research this person, then feel free to do so without completely destroying the article.


Did you try to improve the article at all?


Did you try to find references suitable to your standards in order to keep the article and information within WP?


If not, then why not? Oldspammer 00:19, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Im with the poster on this one, we NEED to know more about Dr. Robert C. Beck and his Blood Electrification process. The only reason i can see that anyone would want this information deleted is because when the world finds out that his studies with blood electrification actually worked and he cured many diseases including Cancer, AIDs, Lupus, Heart Disease to name just a few, the BIG Pharma industry is going to lose billions, they obviously care more about their money than the human race, who does wikipedia care more about?

[edit] WP Bio Qualifications

The link for WP:BIO says that it is not strictly WP policy.

  1. "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in their specific field." "The Beck Protocol" is famous in the alternative medicine field.
  2. "Commercial endorsements of demonstrably notable products" As notice of his "The Beck Protocol" spreads, more and more of the interested public want to know what products he endorsed that qualify for use in his Protocol. Referenced pages indicate that Sota instruments of B.C. Canada produced a line of treatment devices that he endorsed. Unless you were ill with an incurable disease, you would probably not have known this, or tried to determine this information.
  3. "Creative professionals: scientists, academics, economists, professors, authors, editors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, architects, engineers, and other creative professionals." Robert C. Beck lectured about, and handed out literature that he wrote about Blood electrification treatments and associated information. This is contained in "The Beck Protocol" document that is about 90 pages long.
  4. "The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, which has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." Whereas other scientists patented work related to their findings on blood electrification, Dr. Bob Beck openly published his findings, schematics, and protocols to enable members of the interested public to examine the merits of the treatment methods. This represents a greater contribution in my mind than a scientist who patents a well kept secret idea that will rarely see the light of day in every day life.
  5. "The person's work either (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries, museums or internationally significant libraries." In the conventional medical field, he is probably hated. But to members of the public having many forms of incurable diseases, his work should become more well known and beneficial to the masses.


Many persons already treated by main stream medicine may have had it fail them. Are there incurable diseases? -- Yes. AIDS, Alzheimer's, etc. To me, in my researching alternatives to main stream medicine, several individuals strike me as fact-based, and seekers of true science, rather than suppressors thereof. Oldspammer 00:19, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Politically motivated people

Some people that I have encountered in my life have been dead wrong in firmly held beliefs that they had about software development with which I am fairly familiar. These individuals used tricky political means to have their view points succeed rather than demonstrating that their beliefs were true.Oldspammer 20:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


It should be clear to anyone that some source who is reliable to one group of people is quite the opposite to another.


For example, Quackwatch is an internet site that quotes cancer journals articles where "an expert" studies descriptions of a concept, but does not do a scientific experiment to prove or disprove the concept involved, nor do the article authors cite any scientifically proven principles to indicate why their conclusions were accurate. Some wiki articles have cited Quackwatch as a source. I think that Quackwatch has some reliable information, but it also has its fill of unreliable information as well. It is usually up to the judgement of the reader as to how to believe one way or the other. Oldspammer 19:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Evils?

I have never negatively characterized allopathic medicine. It is just that "the scientific method" involves experimentation, and a doctrine that seems to run through the allopathic medicine field seems to be to discredit anything that is not associated to pharmaceutical drug treatments, regardless of scientific experimental results one way or the other. And that this doctrine turns out to be self-serving comes with little surprise to people who are actually skeptical of everything--not just medicine that his not allopathic in nature. Oldspammer 19:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


[edit] No Critique of Medicine Written

"publish a long, unsourced critique of Western medicine"


Again, I have never negatively characterized western medicine. No where do I even say the word "Western." I think that if I was an M.D. and an experimental scientist, I would be conflicted between search for truth via scientific experimentation, treating patients with effective treatment methods, and keeping my license to practice medicine.


Everybody makes mistakes, and luckily for both my dad and myself, the medical treatment mistakes were caught in time to correct them.


In my written article I mention the Flexner Report in which the exclusion of engineering and physics (bioelectric) applications to medical treatment of diseases were the basis of entire medical schools being shut down. It seems that since that time, few, if any, medical doctors seem to involve themselves in experimental verification of electrotherapeutic treatment of disease. In the near future that is probably why Robert C. Beck will not be recognized in the medical journals, and scholarly literature for any public contribution to healthcare and treatment of diseases.


The practice of medicine seems to be governed largely by covering the legal bases of not being sued for medical malpractice. To cover the legal bases properly, a medical doctor must follow the treatment guidelines for a given diagnosed disease. Such guidelines are provided by an organization that is rightly self-interested in their own financial wellbeing and betterment, and not necessarily in the betterment of mankind as a whole. Maybe this will change in the future, and then I would not be conflicted if I were a M.D. and an experimental scientist. Oldspammer 00:09, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moved Pseudoscience Claims Here

There are a large number of pharmaceutical products whose exact mechanism of working are not even known by the pharmacological companies themselves. For example a certain chemical compound that acts upon the liver to lower serum lipids / LDL cholesterol concentrations "Mechanism of action" of Fenofibrate--its exact actions upon the liver are not known--just that it can in some cases have a damaging affect on the liver for which periodic blood testing must monitor. The pharmacological laboratory development of this drug must have involved some science, yet a complete understanding of the underlying mechanisms at play are deemed unnecessary to accept the drug into initially into tials, and eventually into widespread prescriptions by medical doctors, AMA, FTC, and FDA.

By labeling something as unsourced does not make the thing untrue. For example, the section that I added today was very recently so marked (unsourced).

The Flexner Report prepared in 1910 lays the foundation for the persecution of scientific medical investigations into such areas as the application of engineering and physics towards biological systems, and specifically the field of medical treatment of diseases. (Search the Flexner Report wiki article for the word bioelectric). To this day the concepts involved in electrotherapeutics have been indoctrinated by the accredited medical schools to their (medical) students as nothing more that quackery so much so that graduate medical doctors can lose their license to practice medicine should they involve themselves in scientifically positively verifying theories related to electrotherapeutic treatment of diseases. This persecution policy stems historically from the large number of quack herbal and electromagnetic remedies that were being dispensed by uneducated charlatan medical practitioners in the years leading up to the time of the Flexner Report. These historical quack treatments not only did not work, they were often dangerous. Consequently, the fees for these historical quack treatments amounted to fraud and medical malpractice. If the patients did not seek conventional medical treatment(s), their medical conditions invariably got worse, often causing death.

In my written article I mention the Flexner Report in which the exclusion of engineering and physics (bioelectric) applications to medical treatment of diseases were the basis of entire medical schools being shut down. It seems that since that time, few, if any, medical doctors seem to involve themselves in experimental verification of electrotherapeutic treatment of disease. In the near future that is probably why Robert C. Beck will not be recognized in the medical journals, and scholarly literature for any public contribution to healthcare and treatment of diseases. If ad-hoc medical-researchers (the public) conducted therapies for various diseases successfully over 5 years without large complaints being raised by families of unsuccessfully treated patients, this speaks favorably that there is some substantiation of the concepts.

This section is supposed to illustrate that some sort of balanced approach between conventional medical research and other valid scientific (engineering-physics) medical research should exist. However, this balance is not currently present. Why is this? On the one hand it seems like the alternative medical treatment people must show detailed theories and reasons why their treatment works, while the pharma medicine people can support one another, and voila--the treatment is approved. These same medical people will not confirm any working treatments that seem to involve any engineering-physics applications being scientifically applied to medical treatment of diseases. My added section provides the reader insight into why this might be so by citing the Flexner Report wiki article. If you keep in mind that science involves experimentation, why would a 1910 report have any influence on what avenues of science are used or not? The answer might be that an arbitrary doctrine was established long ago that purposefully steered medical research people away from that area of investigation by closing entire medical schools if they mentioned the topic in any positive fashion. A doctrine is arbitrary if it is not reasoned. A truly scientific approach would let experimental results demonstrate one way or the other whether or not a treatment is effective and safe. Some internet sources say that modern medical practice itself is the source of much death and suffering since misdiagnosis, poor hospital administration record keeping (lost records), accidental wrong dosages, and other such things result in a substantial number of hospital deaths each year. My dad had incompetent medical attention given him. In 2001, I did as well. Had the mistakes not been corrected within a reasonable time, my dad would never walk again, and I would have lost my kidneys.
As an advocate of alternative medicine, Robert C. Beck DSc would not be the recipient of a lot of supporting praise or acknowledgement in the medical scholarly literature. If this literature is what you want cited, then you will be out of luck having anyone find mention of him in any such place(s). But maybe you would not realize this?

The practice of medicine seems to be governed largely by covering the legal bases of not being sued for medical malpractice. To cover the legal bases properly, a medical doctor must follow the treatment guidelines for a given diagnosed disease. Such guidelines are provided by an organization that is rightly self-interested in their own financial wellbeing and betterment, and not necessarily in the betterment of mankind as a whole. Maybe this will change in the future, and then I would not be conflicted if I were a M.D. and an experimental scientist. Before becoming an accepted practice (Medical Treatment Approval Chelation) for general use by medical doctors a proposed medical treatment method must undergo experiments, clinical trials and results must be published and scrutinized by reasoned peer review. The reviewers are then obligated to demonstrate any uncertainties or flaws by way of repeatable, documented counter-examples or experiments.

This entry supports the article's claim that a new form of medical treatment must undergo many hurdles. The cited web page talks about chelation and how it as a newer treatment for conditions other than heavy metal blood poisoning would be met with substantial opposition by the political establishment within the American medical community / AMA.

If scientific peer review of select electrotherapeutic treatments of diseases were to become positive, large financial losses would result for parties who treat such diseases by other means (such as surgery, the prescribing of pharmaceutical drugs, diseased tissue destruction by means of exposure to suitable strength X-Ray / Gamma radiation, and chemotherapy). Patients treated by surgery or radiation invariably must be treated with pharmaceutical pain medications.

Should some select electrotherapeutic treatments of diseases become "proven" extremely effective, then there would be fewer patients requiring the attention of highly qualified medical practitioners. As such medical costs would go down. The demand for medical insurance would be reduced due to this lowered medical cost. However, diagnosis, as well as organ and tissue replacement would then have intensified attention given them. Typically medical training focuses on areas of study such as biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy. If electrotherapeutics gained ground, then medical study would have to include much more engineering, physics, scientific methods of hypothesis testing via clinical + lab experimentation, designing of experiments to test theories, machine shop work, and mathematics than has been done historically. The acceptance of certain forms of electrotherapeutic treatment would open wide the areas of scientific investigation into quantum medicine (the sub-microscopic levels of life), and into what has hitherto been considered the realm of science-fiction such as in-situ spontaneous tissue regeneration.

[edit] Cancer Journal cited by Quackwatch and American Cancer Society Flawed

I have read a cancer journal where the author(s) state that radio frequency devices such as Rife's 50 to 500 Watt beam ray setup had insufficient energy to inactivate or kill any microorganisms based solely on "examining descriptions" of Rife's machines, but not by trying them in any experiments.


Even if they were to experiment, it all comes back to the ability to actually witness the affect such a device has on live organisms.


Some videos are available on the internet do show paramecium swimming around, then start spinning around out of control, and then finally rupturing their guts out were supposedly subjected to square wave contact-based form of electrotherapy.

Other videos from John Bedini show paramecium virtually instantaneously get exploded by a Rife-Hoyland Beam Ray tube machine.


For me, this constitutes sufficient evidence that either method can result in destroyed microorganisms, and that one method is faster, but more selective than the other.


To see this happen on 'live viruses,' you would need something that supposedly duplicates the functionality of the Rife Universal Microscope; but that equipment now would cost about $1 to $2 million to build supposedly because of the quartz optics. Some estimates go as high as $11 million. Oldspammer 02:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)


Also, in the external links "Rife devices National Council Against Health Fraud" by William T. Jarvis, Ph.D. has virtually identical wording to the 1994 CA Cancer Journal for Clinicians, i.e., it does not provide any evidence to support its statement that RF energy is not powerful enough to destroy microbes. Yet, there are the John Bedini video clips of experiments using Rife-Hoyland Beam Ray tubes on Bedini's web site showing quite the opposite for even larger single celled microorgansims. The article also says that the Barry Lynes book "The Cancer Cure That Worked, Fifty Years of Suppression" would require an army of investigators to check--well, welcome to the Internet, dude! We're your army... The author also states "Rife is said to have claimed having a Ph.D. from Georgia tech," (no citation given!) but Google search reveals that mention of "Georga Tech" +"Royal Rife" appear only in articles critical of Rife, and no OCR'd web content seems to have Rife himself making these claims. I have not encountered video or audio files that have this supposed claim by Rife either.


American Cancer Society. Questionable methods of cancer management: Electronic devices. CA- - A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 44:115-127, 1994", is cited to support the quack claims against numerous alternative medicine researchers.


This CA document I found online in PDF form. The PDF contains some text as introductory information, but the bulk of the remainder was graphical images of text written by the document's authors. I then OCR converted the PDF from text + mostly graphics form into PDF form comprised more fully of text in order to search it to find, copy, and paste the following text snippet:


The Rife
Frequency Generator allegedly would
generate radio frequencies of precisely
the same vibratory rates as the offending
bacteria and destroy them in a manner
similar to an opera singer's voice breaking
a crystal glass. (Note: Although
sound waves can produce vibrations that
will break glass, radio waves cannot destroy
bacteria due to their low energy
level.) It is clear from descriptions of how
Rife's Frequency Generator supposedly
functioned that it was simply another
radionics device.


The phrase "radio waves cannot destroy bacteria due to their low energy level" seems NOT to be a fundamental truth of physics, chemistry, or biology, and so needs some kind of research data that supports this kind of statement. Oldspammer 13:15, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Robert C. Beck Controversy Section

Many of Beck's scientific assertions and discoveries have been disputed including his electromagnetic therapy devices which have never been scientifically proven effective in the treatment of disease. [1].


The cited reference above has the American Cancer Society article author misunderstanding or confusing the physics involved in the Rife microscope and the Beam Ray frequency equipment.


Practitioners claim the Rife machine, another electronic
device, can diagnose and eliminate diseases, including cancer,
by tuning into electrical impulses given off by diseased
tissue. The Rife machine then directs energy of the same
frequency back at the diseased tissue. Promoters claim that
the device kills microorganisms that cause disease.


The Rife microscopes were used to view specimens. It used a heterodyning UV principle to view microorganisms. The microscope used electricity to power its UV light source and the white light source used to heterodyne with the UV source. The microscope could not by itself eliminate diseases--so this statement by the web page authors is misleading. The microscope's heterodyning light mechanism was tuned for best viewing of the subject sample, but no electrical impulses were involved in the viewing process--only heterodyned monochromatic light.


Rife Machine
Also called frequency therapy, frequency generator, and
Rife frequency generator, this device is used to direct
electrical impulses at the feet to break up the supposed
accumulated deposits of toxins at nerve endings. During
treatment, the patient places his or her feet in a plastic
box attached to the Rife unit.


The machine described above is a contact pad / electrode device as used by John Francis Crane.


Rife-Crane devices were known to seldom treat diseases properly.


Rife's original Beam Ray device used an ionized partially vacuumed noble gas plasma tube that used both gated direct current and tuned radio frequency sine waves. Successive generations of Rife's Beam Ray frequency generators that drove the tubes added more and more compromises to achieve lower manufacturing cost, but achieved lower and lower efficacy. Rife-Hoyland equipment, for example, generated an unfiltered heterodyne of two or three signals. The resulting output only had harmonics close to the designated experimentally determined Rife radio frequency Mortal Oscillation Rate.


The Rife machine (or Rife frequency generator) was
created by Royal Raymond Rife, an American who
asserted that cancer was caused by bacteria.
The machine supposedly emitted radio waves at
the same frequency as those discharged by
offending bacteria. According to Rife, the radio
waves created vibrations that "shattered" the bacteria.


Rife claimed that a Berkefeld-000 filterable forms of BX and BY viruses maintained a "toxins and radicals"-induced state of malignancy within a cancer suffering patient. BX was for carcinoma, and BY was for sarcoma. The toxins and radicals where demonstrated as being able to cause disease directly in a healthy subject without introduction of the BX or BY pathogens themselves.


The radio frequency signals emitted by the Beam Ray tube were said to 'devitalize' the pathogens. The radio frequency energy would cause constituent chemicals integral to the structure of the microorganisms to resonate. Once the constituent chemicals reached a level of energy required to release their chemical bonds with some of their neighboring molecules, the structure of the microbe would no longer be able to maintain integrity.


The process involved is similar to the vibrations induced and detected by means of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance analysis machines in use in today's laboratories. The NMR electromagnetic transducer is driven by either a continuous radio frequency signal or is driven by an extremely fast rise and fall-time impulse for suitable magnitude magnetic field strength, either stimulus induces a vibration within the chemical sample under analysis by having the chemical nuclei spin or orient themselves suddenly. This impulse causes a resonance vibration of the emission spectrum characteristic for the given chemical molecules. This echoed resonance can be detected in the transducer, enabling the chemical constituents of the sample to be determined via previously known measurements.


The term shatter seems only to be used in order to popularize the relatively well known phenomenon of a human singer shattering a fine crystal wine glass by sustaining a loud note or frequency that causes the glass to resonate and crack. The entire wine glass does not shatter, just the weakest part that was vibrating the most does so.


It could be the case that the microbe is rendered 'devitalized' by having its internal structure disrupted in which case the microbe would cease to be motile, and would halt all reproductive activities.


The Beam Ray tube-emitted frequency required to 'devitalize' the microbe needs only to be very near a harmonic of the maximum absorption frequency of the chemical constituent of a structurally vulnerable part of the microbe. When energy absorbed builds faster than energy emitted, then a critical structural failure is imminent. The radio wave emission spectrum (that given off) of the pathogen when resonating was of no interest. However, the maximum energy absorption frequency was key to supplying the pathogens with energy faster than they could radiate it. (Absorption and emission frequencies need not be the same).


The American Cancer Society web article addresses the low current, low Voltage Hulda Regehr Clark zapper contact pad / electrode device. This device typically operates from a direct current power supply of fewer than 15 Volts. The IC device used is typically a RCA (or similar) 4000 series CMOS digital logic hex-inverter chip that has a power supply range of between 3 Volts DC and an absolute maximum of 15 Volts DC. The drive current of these devices is minimal since interfacing these with 74LS00 low power Schottky series transistor-transistor logic ICs usually requires a pull-up resistor of 2 to 3 kOhms be used to supplement their low drive output stages.


The Hulda Regehr Clark zapper was criticized by Robert C. Beck as not adequate for the job due to weak drive Voltage and current capabilities, and that such a device is typically attached to hand-hold paddles to connect to the user, a connection method that does not insure Robert C. Beck's intended blood electrification goals. In addition, the polarity of the hand-hold paddle electrode contacts does not alternate since one contact is connected to the power supply's ground which is connected to the ground or substrate Voltage of the 4000 series CMOS digital logic IC.

It is stated by Rife investigator, author, Chiropractic Doctor, James E. Bare, that electrical contact pad / electrode devices suffer from numerous technical deficiencies including contact site "tissue accommodation," uncertain current flow path, level of power delivered, and depth of tissue penetration. Radio waves and power levels that Royal Rife was using were said to be able to treat a room full of people, although today's investigators have demonstrated that the Newton's Inverse Square Law is still in effect.

Robert C. Beck's suggested blood electrification devices use a LM358 dual operational amplifier (a bipolar transistor based high gain analog amplifier IC). Its operating supply and output Voltages are much higher. In addition, its current drive capabilities are significantly higher as well. Beck's suggested device uses both amplifiers at the same time. While one amplifier's output is positive, the other is negative. Running at the oscillation frequency of only 3.9 Hertz or so, the polarity of the two amplifiers completely reverses nearly 4 times per second. Beck's device can operate minimally from about 15 Volts to about 27 Volts nominal (32 Volts maximum) supply Voltage so that the nominal Voltage swings are about 2 x 25 Volts (50 Volts) peak-to-peak. Current output is limited both by the LM358 IC itself and the recommended series 820 Ohm fixed resistor. The user can operate a series 0 to 100 kOhms variable resistor to suit their comfort level. Because there is a complete polarity reversal running at an equal duty cycle during each oscillation, the electrodes that are placed above two key artery pulse measuring points on the wrist, the electrodes neither oxidize, nor reduce thereby eliminating any contact electrode ionization build up on the patient's skin surface.


Beck's intended current flow path is only within the arm of the wrist used for contact. Current flow is intended to go up from the wrist to a fork point in the arteries in the fore-arm just before the elbow. With such a short path, microcurrents are easily established with the given device's power levels.


The Beck Protocol has 4 stated recommendations:

  1. Blood electrification to kill blood-borne pathogens.
  2. Microsecond duration pulsed high intensity magnetic field treatments applied to the lymph system and other similar tissues to electrify deeper tissues where dormant pathogens routinely inhabit and where the blood circulatory system plays a lesser role.
  3. Drinking of colloidal silver water to flush the toxins and alien pathogens from the kidneys, spleen, and liver.
  4. Drinking of O3- (Ozone) ionized water to boost blood oxygenation to bolster the body's immune system, and energy levels.


None of these steps is to be applied beyond the recommended dosages otherwise specific ill-side effects shall result.


Thee American cancer society web documents do not address such a combination therapy.

Oldspammer 13:15, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

  1. ^ The American Cancer Society. Electromagnetic Therapy.

Hats off to Oldspammer fo the most informative info on this stuff ive ever seen! I've watched the "Suppressed Medical Information" lecture and numerous other documentaries about blood electrification, Hulda Clarke and Robert C. Beck and im convinced that the pharmaceutical industry REFUSE to aknowledge the unbelievably important information contained in all of this because of money money money. Blood electrification works, lets have more info on the subject please wikipedia!

[edit] Your message

Hello - I've replied to your message on my talk page, so as to keep things in one place. MastCell Talk 17:37, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Robert Beck article

The text of the article can be found here: User:Oldspammer/Robert C. Beck. Please let me know if you have trouble finding it or working with it. MastCell Talk 15:23, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Ahh! That's great. They did it for you. Now you can work on it. I have disabled the categories as they must not be active while in userspace. If and when the article becomes "public" again and gets placed in articlespace, they can be activated. Just ask if you need any help. -- Fyslee/talk 22:00, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
As others have probably said, an important starting point is to read thoroughly Wikipedia's policies and guidelines on what material is considered reliable, or even valid, as sources: particularly, Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Verifiability.
Google searches are completely out, as are Wikipedia pages or mirrors of Wikipedia. Sites breaking copyright are out (see WP:Copyright#Linking to copyrighted works. Articles with unknown credentials, and personal and/or partisan websites are generally suspect, unless talking about themselves - and even then it's preferred that statements be verified elsewhere. All this put together is the chief problem with the Robert C. Beck article; virtually none of the sources come up to reliabiity. 81.132.105.6 19:01, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reliable Sources for Alternative Medicine Investigators

Robert C. Beck article deletion discussion.


IP address person (81.132.105.6) Please get a wiki account so that, if nothing else, I can access a proper talk page for you.


If main stream medicine is fighting again against the application of engineering, and physics (EM RF) as it applies to biological systems at the nuclear, atomic, molecular, and chemical level, M.D.s are _NOT_ very authoritative across all these areas of discipline because, for one thing, their educational background pays no attention to much below the chemical interaction level of activity. Any literature from a M.D. perspective would probably be persecuted from within their own ranks should it happen to support EM RF engineering treatments for medical diseases even if just presenting experimental results just for analysis or scrutiny by others.


Because of this, support from, nor negative criticisms from M.D.s without backgrounds in these other areas would _NOT_ be considered authoritative when it appears without some plausible, step by step scientific discussion that could be further investigated and verified.


As I am not a MD., nor physicist, nor a scholar, nor an electrical engineer, I do not have full access to their scholarly paper / literature databases that search and retrieve pdf documents on related topics. As such I will always find it more difficult to find supporting information from these kind of sources. Many is a time where a Google search turns out hits from these databases, but when I try to retrieve the information, it is per paid membership or similar access only.


"Credible" alternative medicine people tend to be chemists, physicists, and engineers; as such their publication of medical scholarly literature is rejected because they are not M.D.s. and so have no medically authoritative weight in the eyes of that tight-knit, professional community. As such medical journals are highly unlikely to publish any such works. This situation leaves these people to have demonstration videos, photographs, and such results on-line where there are no restrictions placed upon them so that they can publicize their findings.


There is the catch-22 for alternative medicine advocates or even people just trying to chronicle their activities, like me.


But if you were a lawyer, or an M.D., you might not know these things and so would not appreciate this situation from their perspective? Oldspammer 20:01, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

You should be able to get free, searchable online access to MEDLINE via PubMed here - though as you may already know, only abstracts are generally available for free. However, many journals make the full text of older articles available online for free as well (PubMed will note this with a "free text" icon in the upper right). That may be helpful, though it doesn't address the issue of papers which are rejected by peer-review. MastCell Talk 02:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
This access is useful for other things.
Helping demo alt-med. claims or showing that their gurus were "notable-good" or "bad" guys is likely "forbidden" specifically in med. journals?
If Google search indexes these, and the searches seem to turn up nothing helpful then does it mean that no one or corporation wanted to fund confirming investigation(s)? Funding is key. Got any money on ya?  :^) Oldspammer 03:57, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't necessarily buy the funding argument. Most mainstream biomedical research is funded by the government, private charities, or pharmaceutical companies - usually some combination of the above. Alternative medicine is a multi-billion $$/year business. The makers of the most successful dietary supplements (e.g. Metabolife, before the truth about ephedra got out) rake in as much as Pfizer or Wyeth, and they have much less overhead thanks to a near-total lack of regulatory oversight (see epehdra again). Same for the most successful marketers of alt-med books and devices. They could, if they chose, reinvest some of that money in funding rigorous research to evaluate their products. But generally, they don't. Unlike pharmaceutical companies, they don't have to prove their products work to market them, and they have too much to lose if the trials don't turn out right. That's fine - I understand a business decision, but it makes me less sympathetic to their claims that if only they could get funded, they'd prove their product works. Again, though, this is just my personal opinion, so please take it as such. MastCell Talk 05:07, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
IP address person (81.132.105.6) Please get a wiki account so that, if nothing else, I can access a proper talk page for you
You can talk to me here. (To be purist, discussion of the development of the article at User:Oldspammer/Robert C. Beck would be even better located at User talk:Oldspammer/Robert C. Beck). This isn't a chat forum: I'm solely interested in discussion focused on getting this article in acceptable form. If you want it included, there's no option except modifying it according to how sourcing and other policies work here. 86.141.85.126 16:58, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Can i just say to the Wikipedia team regarding the Robert C. Beck info. His research is based on patent no. 3,753,886 applied for by Dr. Khaali and Wymann. Beck refined the technology with loads of succesful case studies. Surely this is a good enough source for inclusion of Beck on wikipedia? I think so...

[edit] Physics, RIfe and Fraud

Replied on my talk page. I do think that a working knowledge of physics and possibly optics would be a good starting point to an argument that there was anything to this man's work. The latter day electrical crap hung on his name is another matter, and the areas of study desirable there are wider. Our ancestors were not idiots, and should not be disregarded in their views on their contemporaries. Midgley 19:36, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk page

I noticed your talk page has some fairly extensive opinions on it under sections. May I inquire exactly what they are being used for? If they're being used for articles, you may want to look into subpages as the talk page is for between-user communication. If not, since Wikipedia is both not a publisher of original thought and not a soapbox or webpage/blog, they probably should be removed. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 15:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)