User talk:Kalki/2014

This is an archive of discussions on my talk page in 2014.

Hopes for Happy New Years ahead…

Happy New Year! This is a bit late in the day for the statement, but I have been busy and just got in from an excursion a short while ago, and have many other things to take care of before attending to much here. Just thought I would post a couple links here to a few YouTube videos I founds inspiring a bit earlier, to help start off what I expect to be a year of interesting times.

• Flash mob performances from Les Miserables (my favorite musical)
• Ode to Joy - Flash Mob Started by One Little Girl (an immortal classic)

Another Moon-circuit to this Chinese Year of the Serpent, and then, the year of the Horse! So it goes… ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:24, 1 January 2014 (UTC)+ tweak

Enjoy while Youtube still isn't on WQ's "spam" list. (Happy New Year.) DanielTom (talk) 00:13, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, there are always chances for more forms of stupidity to manifest themselves among human beings — but they rarely have the final word, or the greatest forms of laughter or joy. Many are the barriers that can arise amidst ignorance and confusion which yet must fall when time and patience bring to bear eternal truths in ways which cannot be silenced or ignored. I anticipate a very interesting period in the years ahead, as awareness and appreciation of many aspects of the truth and beauty of the essence of the ALL within all grows. I confess this sums up much of my optimistically optimizing attitude towards many things since I was a young child — but I have grown to have many reasons for confidence in great and good faith and hopes amidst many doubts, denials and tragedies, even as many divisive hatreds persist or flare. I know that there are yet greater things which ever abide and ever triumph, in ever greater ways. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:52, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

Your work on the main page is amazing. --Pine (talk) 02:14, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the appreciation. I try to do what I can with what I know of as available among the suggestions for QOTD and the images at the commons. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:56, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I am likely to have at least two months of increased activity here...

I expect to be far more active here than I recently have been, in coming weeks and probably the next couple of months, but I remain busy with many other things, and will probably only work intermittently here, up to several hours a day, but sometimes much less than that, as I attend to many other activities throughout the days and nights. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)+ tweak

Happy to see...

...Wikiquote celebrating Tolkien's birthday on the main page. ~ DanielTom (talk) 18:28, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

well thats all good and fine but...

I am just doing my job. Wat do u mean use the talk page if I am taking off unreferenced, sprucious content? We as editors are obligated to do so, no?! The Dragon Emperor (talk)

Kingdom of Heaven

Kalki, very nice page for Kingdom of God to which this redirects. One question: we also have a page for the 2005 Ridley Scott-directed film of the same name. Do you feel it would be better to have Kingdom of Heaven become a disambig page, or would you rather add a note to the top of the Kingdom of God page directing those interested in the film to its page? Thanks. ~ UDScott (talk) 20:39, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the appreciation. I believe a note just after the intro section such as I have added to some pages in the past would probably be best, and I will add one now. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 10:45, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Ur not an admin. anymore?!

well I for one am glad! Now u cant stop me, CAN YA?!! —This unsigned comment is by Spare me the sob story! (talk • contribs) .

Just prior to the blocking of this twerp by UDScott, I posted an appropriate response to his talk page:

You truly reveal how utterly PATHETIC a twerp you are, when you vandalize a wiki. ALMOST as pathetic a twerp as those who think it impressive to anyone but cowards to vandalize a person's reputation. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 20:40, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Mantra

Thanks. In this article I have faced a formatting problem. I have failed to insert the audio versions of the mantras as you can see the template error under section on Gayatri Mantra. Another problem is adding the IAST version of the mantras. Can you pl suggest a solution?--Nvvchar (talk) 09:58, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, the issue has been resolved.--Nvvchar (talk) 13:58, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

QOTD

Hi Kalki. What do you think of using Template:Rquote for the quote of the day? ~ DanielTom (talk) 16:08, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I tend to avoid some of the complications and constraints of templates when I can. The current set of templates available here seem adequate to me for now, and I don't see much need in using those for QOTD; and they might get overused by some in other ways. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 16:15, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your help cleaning up recent link spam.

Much appreciated,

-- Cirt (talk) 00:01, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

protection

I already left this message before. Can you or another admin please protect my talk page. It is being met with vandalism again and I don't want to consistently revert the gibberish. - Zarbon (talk) 18:58, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I have not been an admin for some years now — or I certainly would have already blocked the current vandal. So it goes... ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I think you should run for adminship. You'd get two oppose votes, but most likely still pass. It's a serious problem that we have to endure such vandalism for lack of admins. DanielTom (talk) 19:15, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

You may nominate me if you wish. I would accept. I have grown so disgusted with many of the situations that have developed on this wiki in the last few years that even I have not attended to it with anything near the regularity I once did. If I did regain adminship, I certainly would feel obligated to be a far more regular presence here once again. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:29, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I would be quite honored to nominate you, thanks, but I fear that my doing so could seriously hinder your chances. DanielTom (talk) 22:14, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

That might be the case, I am aware. Which brings up something I have been meaning to indicate to you for some time. I believe you yourself are a bit too belligerent and over-confident at times, and a bit too needlessly or detrimentally harsh on others — even when it can seem just and proper because you and dispassionate observers might be aware they are being unjustly harsh on you, in ways that are not necessarily so obvious — and that certainly works against you. I will consider nominating myself, but I must be leaving soon, and whether I do that or not any time soon, I do want to open up dialogues on many issues in the coming months. For now, I would recommend NOT accepting such labels as actual trolls might wish to stick upon you — and remove the sarcastic statement that you are an "internet troll" from your page — if you wish to be self deprecating, declare yourself an "idiot" or a "fool", such as I have long been willing to do. I can do that with honesty and sincerity — even though I might not be so ridiculous and vile an idiot or fool as some extremely ridiculous and vile idiots and fools would like to make me seem. Presently, I plan to create a new page, and then leave, as I am once again a bit late taking care of some things.… So it goes… ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:29, 11 January 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Thanks for the warning, and for considering self nomination. As for "troll", I subconsciously took inspiration from a person I was (and am) very fond of, whom I quote on my userpage, and who as a retiree said (I quote from memory, this was back in 2008) "I am developing a new career as [an Internet] troll to occupy my declining years." I rather like that sort of humor. DanielTom (talk) 22:46, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I liked working alongside Kalki a few years ago. But I myself am an administrator on numerous wiki projects. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't mind nominating him for administrative rights, but I myself am a very proper administrator on other projects so I believe I would be deserving of the same rights. I believe that in the past, the only problematic situations I had with him were the choosing of the qotd for the main page. I seem to prefer realistic, more life-driven quotes whilst Kalki seems to want to establish a positive train of thought. But I am open-minded, I just feel I'd work better as an administrator than as a base user. Also, I am forwarding the message to block and protect all the articles that have been met with vandalism of recent, I seriously hate having to do that because it would be much easier to pass protection myself. - Zarbon (talk) 19:39, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Note

I have notified a global sysop about this, he should be blocked soon. --Goldenburg111 (talk) 19:50, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Bad News

Notify a sysop to block https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/176.24.42.55. He is YODO. Barras did not block him from using his IP. --Goldenburg111 (talk) 20:33, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

It's probably not him. Wikiquote has more than 1 vandal a day, unfortunately. DanielTom (talk) 20:40, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Sufism

Thanks for the editing and rearranging of quotes. Regarding the deleted text will this reference [1] be acceptable for restoring it.--Nvvchar (talk) 09:05, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I have now removed the commented out statement that was poorly sourced and added a similar relevant passage from the encyclopedic work you linked to. I have also added that passage to the Ali page. Thanks for your continuing efforts to add to our project. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 09:49, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

IT & IT v IT & IT

Imaginative Transformations and Idealistic Temporality are Increasing Testaments against Idiotic Tyranny and Insane Terrorism.

I have played with acronyms since I was barely out of infancy, as a passing or enduring amusement amidst the burdens of witnessing many of the false and foul assumptions many people are prone to make. "IT" and MANY other acronyms mean MANY things to me and others who like to repudiate many of the presumptions of the shallow, and play with vivacious absurdist perspectives, amidst the ignorant and absurdly stupid absolutism many people indulge in and promote. In this case I used "IT" in several ways, to abbreviate the heading I have chosen to deliver this message of my will to increasingly testify of what I slightly earlier imagined I would specify as "Intelligent Transcendence and Involved Temperament against Idiotic Tyranny and Insane Terrorism."

I believe that the ability to adapt one's perspectives to have clear focus and yet broad awareness of many circumstances is a necessary and vital one, and to be able to retain clear and yet diversely expressed objectives against the many false and foul assessments and assertions one encounters in life always provides many advantages over those who do not.

In coming weeks and months, there are a few points I wish to make increasingly clear to my allies and friends, as well as any adversaries and foes which might persist in their will to deride or denigrate me or such people or things as I love and am willing and able to defend, often with far more means than I have usually made obvious.

Without any cowardly equivocations, I can state that I consider hatred of human beings and the desire to needlessly or unjustly punish or harm any living beings a sign of ignorance, weakness and genuine ill-health or extreme sickness, such as I have always found unfortunate, ugly, repulsive, pathetic and often contemptible, no matter how charitably I might generally feel to human beings or groups of them who indulge such impulses, or humanity in general. A person cognizant of the vital needs of most human beings and ultimate necessities of ALL, can and must hate and despise some forms of attitudes, inclinations and aims of the ignorant and confused, but the strongest themselves form no ill will against the eventual happiness of even many of the most corrupted and foul.

I myself will not claim to be totally immune to such weaknesses as can prompt at least moments of such hatred, nor that any human person can be, under sufficient stresses, but I will state that I learned VERY early in my life to reject, transcend and repudiate the paths of hatred of individual humans, and throughout all my life such moments have been very rare and brief, and rarely been accompanied by further action, beyond an immediate rejection and repudiation of my own impulses. In my lifelong views EVERY human is worthy of respect as a human being, no matter how undeveloped they remain or corrupt they have become, but it is important to emphasize and re-emphasize that, especially among people who seem to treat such magnanimity as an alien concept, or one impossible to practice, so weak and ignorant about many things have they remained.

Though the wisest and strongest of people easily forgive many of others errors and transgressions against themselves or others, they do not easily forget them — and at times they are quite willing and able to fiercely fight them, if they truly believe that those who are most guilty of callous or malicious practices and policies need to be resisted or even come to harm, to protect those of more charitable and just disposition, and they are not hesitant to be as harsh to them as they believe truly necessary.

I am well aware that the cowardly and villainous will often claim to operate upon such motives and by such logic, and to some extent they can even be sincere in making such claims — but the magnitudes of distinctions which exist between what the truly wise and just are willing to bear for the sake of others, and what the cowardly and villainous are willing to force even the most innocent and charitable to bear, if they themselves believe they can escape distress or punishment or harm, bear eternal witness to the character and worth of those with strong development of ethical virtues, and those lacking in them.

So long as so many people remain so ignorant and confused as to hate and envy and resent the happiness and health and healthy good will of others, there will always be people who will seek ways to denigrate and deride even the noblest of efforts and the noblest of people. I have fought and shall fight against such ignorance and confusion, hatreds and delusions as impel many to seek to do their fellow human beings and their proper social rights as human beings any grievous harm, or to let them come to needless harm, merely because it seems convenient to them in their limited personal and selfish perspectives.

I know that my own exposition styles can often be tedious, because I am usually so intent on being as precisely honest and accurate as I can be, within the limits of human vocabulary and human awareness of the wondrous splendors and truths which ever remain beyond the reach of all human language.

Narratives and stories often make many truths clearer to most than straightforward essays can, because no matter how intelligent the listener, precise exposition can and does often become burdensome and miscommunicates much in increasingly erroneous ways, UNLESS human imaginative capacities are augmented by anecdotes of actual or imaginary events, by which abstracted principles are memorably Illustrated.

I have quite a few significant experiences I intend to eventually recount to others, but I prefer to do so in stories where fictional characters are free to play and differ from actualities in at least relatively minor ways, and not be burdened with too much needless details which can be distractive, or even dangerous to reveal. I have long been preparing and developing characters to use in stories and other forms of exposition of truth, and I intend to make increasing use of them elsewhere in the coming years, but for now, at least, in my work here, I will probably restrain myself to direct declarations, which I know can often be a bit "verbose" — but speaking as myself, in relation to my own beliefs, ideas and knowledge I see no other way to be adequately honest. Were I freer to express many of them through other persona, I could vary my style a bit more freely, and amusingly, but that currently is not permitted.

I fully trust that as more truth becomes apparent in coming years, it will become increasingly clear to most, how little fiction has been involved in most of the fictional tales I wish to tell, and how much the tales of some characters correspond to actual events in my own life, or the lives of others I have known, and how much effort and risks I and others have been willing to take to help others, so much as we perceived it was proper and permissible to do so, within the whole gamut of circumstances of which we were aware. So IT goes… ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:17, 17 January 2014 (UTC) + tweaks…

The above has been reviewed and amended and tweaked sufficiently, I believe. I plan to do much archiving and updating of my user pages in coming days, but I am still busy with many other things, and taking into account my likely activities here and elsewhere in coming weeks, I might add more to my comments later — but have to get busy with other things for now... So it goes... ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:42, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I still might occasionally revise and tweak it for clarity, if I notice any deficiencies or undesirable ambiguities upon scanning through it, as I just have. That is one of the advantages of a wiki — one can change things as one believes appropriate, without erasing records of past expressions entirely, for those interested in better understanding some forms of various human thought and expression processes. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 13:23, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

did you know

That your use of dashes is incorrect? It should either be like—this, or like – this. I only learnt how to properly use them recently myself, and perhaps you already know it, but I thought I'd mention it. See here. ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:13, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware that in printed typography they are technically wrong — but I believe I am not in a minority in preferring spaces between the dashes on the electronic screen, for aesthetic and practical reasons. Years ago I was using joined dashes, but I had noticed some sites using them with spaces, and decided they definitely looked better to me, and were more convenient for doing a lot of mass editing of dashes — so I have preferred them this way for many years now. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:23, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I also prefer spaces between dashes, so I use en – not em – dashes. ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:25, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I simply think the slightly longer ones generally look better — but I don't usually consider it much of an issue. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:38, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Joseph Addison

What an excellent article. I sometimes read his commentaries in the Spectator when looking for ancient quotes on Google Books, whenever the subject I come across by accident interests me. I was just thinking about creating an article for him, with one or two quotes, but now I discover he already has a gigantic page here, much thanks to you. Another page I've been meaning to thank you for is that of Richard Francis Burton. Some time ago, I had an interesting prize for taking second place in a silly poetry contest, which was a tour to the restricted section of Porto's Faculty of Letters library, where I could see and touch really rare items, such as a limited Vatican edition of Fanshawe's translation of the Lusiads (a miniature book bound in gold), as well as the original print of Burton's translation of said epic; I have since then been interested in his writings (though I never did finish reading his rendering of the first book, let alone the others). I remember at the time being convinced that he was a very good poet, but now I no longer think so. Still, the man had a most extraordinary life. Cheers, and thanks again, DanielTom (talk) 00:31, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I encountered Burton in various peculiar ways, and was increasingly impressed by quite a few things about him. Though he wasn't a great poet overall, he did have a few great lines, and definitely an interesting and amazing life. If you like thought provoking science fiction, he is also used as a major character in the Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer, along with Mark Twain and Cyrano de Bergerac and other notables. It was a series I enjoyed reading many years ago, and found very insightful and metaphoric in various ways. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:43, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into it. ~ DanielTom (talk) 00:50, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Endurance

Kalki, Thanks. I was not sure of the format. Next article will have the right format. --Nvvchar (talk) 11:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Semiotics, infancy and maturity.

I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. ~ Ernest Gellner

Earlier, beginning yesterday, and before a brief trip and after it, I created a few pages for some major concepts in Semiotics, created the Category:Semiotics, and tagged many pages with that category tag. I have now just arisen from a brief nap, and though I expect to also be busy with MANY OTHER things in coming weeks, I expect to be working on many of those pages in that category and probably creating a few more as well, in order to lay a better foundation of expressions on which to draw upon as I tackle the task of trying to make a few things very clear to many, or at least some, which I know have long been clear and well understood only to a very few. I know the task will not be an easy one, but I actually expect a great deal of success, eventually — but not necessarily immediately.

I was recognized as having an extraordinary range of profound insights in this field and many others, while yet but a very young child. I have been holding back even indicating to others many of these, but increasingly in the coming year, I expect to hold back less and less. I expect to make quite a few revelations which will be easily verifiable to many, as well as some which I know will not be, but I expect to increasingly provide strong evidence and support for my reasons for extraordinary levels of lifelong honesty, and lifelong reticence and reluctance to state many things, in such ways as many have long held somewhat "quaint" and others have held to be somewhat "tedious" or "suspicious" and troubling to their rather limited intellectual capacities. I truly hope to be amusing and entertaining to most, as I go about doing so, and that at least some forms of my generally good humor will be better appreciated by others — but whether it is or not, I do plan to have a very active year, here and elsewhere, and am simply now making a waking note of some waking thoughts, before I get on with other matters. So it goes... ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 10:58, 26 January 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Re: Thanks

Grazie a te. Ciao :-) --Spinoziano (talk) 16:59, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

take heart

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

~ Albert Einstein ~

Something to keep in mind. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

This was actually one of my favorite quotes of his since I was a young child, and Einstein has always been a profoundly important guide to me, among many others who appreciate the vital need for diversity and liberty — but I meant to be out of here well over an hour ago, and must be leaving now, for at least an hour or two. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:31, 26 January 2014 (UTC) + tweak

Anathema

Kalki, thanks for the kind words. I enjoy writing on themes. I hope you have not taken it amiss in my adding to many of the subjects on themes which you have posted recently. I am yet to cover many more important legendary luminaries of India.--Nvvchar (talk) 14:52, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I certainly do not take it amiss! I welcome diversity of opinions — ONLY thus can the means of clearer resolutions of the wide diversity of problems which arise in human endeavors eventually be discerned, and some appreciation of the ultimate Unity of all, and the truths of the All that is ever beyond all problems and apparent or real divisions come to be more beautifully and wisely appreciated, and ever greater forms of genuine harmony arrived at. Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:08, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Hand injury

It's nothing too serious, I believe, but I injured my right hand in some recent activities, and though I expect to be doing a few things here, it is a bit too swollen and painful for me to do much typing. Thus, I expect to not do much here, and to be focusing on doing things other than those which require much typing for at least a day or two. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 10:15, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to know about your injury. Hope you will be OK to resume your incredible work here. I have a small issue. I have started an article on Advise but in Wikipedia there is an article on Advice only. As Advise is a verb and Advice is a noun, both can be independent articles. How do I link Advise to Wikipedia? Advise is presently red linked on the Mainpage. Thanks.--Nvvchar (talk) 12:27, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I just now got back online and noticed your comment. I would advise merging "Advise" with "Advice" as Ninguable has already suggested, with perhaps only a slight tweaking of the "Advice" intro. Such noun and verb distinctions are usually not substantial enough to warrant separate articles, though sometimes they might. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 14:47, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

[2] Very appropriate picture! (Get well soon.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 17:41, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I am very sorry for your hand injury :( I hope it gets better. --~~Golden_burg111 19:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I thank everyone for their expressions of concern, but I only mentioned it in way of explanation, for what I expect will be somewhat less activity here for a day or two. It is already somewhat better, and not as swollen, but still very stiff and sore. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:09, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

That's good. I am happy you are slowly recovering. May I suggest, if you would like to participate in Wikiquote:WikiProject Weekly Cleanup? --~~Golden_burg111 19:13, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I usually do not join in "programmed endeavors" if I can avoid it, but as I usually try to do what I can, I suppose that I can commit to at least one page a week of cleanup. I have just added my name to the list, and I thank you for your enthusiasm in starting this effort. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:26, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Your Welcome, and thank you for joining. --~~Golden_burg111 19:27, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Further comment as I archive this section on 2014·03·20 the day of the Equinox: I recognized I had injured the ligaments of my right hand and wrist very severely at the time, but though I never lost use of my hand entirely, it was painful to put any pressure at all on my thumb for weeks afterward, and I assumed that the impact which had caused it had involved a severe twisting of my thumb backward, though it had happened far to swiftly to register that fact, and though my hand was swollen it seemed at first all was in proper place. It had only recently healed enough that I had begun to use my thumb regularly, though with limited motion, and realized it had probably not "set" right. Ironically a couple days ago I had an incident VERY similar to the first one, but much slower in speed and forces involved, and I actually felt my thumb bending backward severely during it. I initially thought I did NOT need that and that it would set back the healing even more, but ironically within a few minutes I realized though it was painful, I had more proper mobility in my thumb, and the impact had apparently "snapped" things into more of a proper alignment. It does remain somewhat sore, but seems to be healing well now. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 16:45, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hi Kalki/2014, and Welcome to the WikiProject Weekly Cleanup! We are so happy you joined and I hope you make a difference here! If you would like to make a suggestion, comment, or ask a question, feel free to do so at the talk page! Again, Welcome!

--~~Goldenburg111 19:23, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Erratic internet connections

For several days I have had increasingly erratic abilities to connect to the internet. It was a minor nuisance for most of that time, with relatively short problem times, but has become a major one in the last day. Several times I tried to use the internet, and could not connect at all, or only briefly do so; so I am not sure how long this current connection period might last. I had tried abut 20 minutes ago, and occasionally for several hours prior to that, and had not been able to connect at all. I have a few other things to take care of today, but while I am presently connected, I will probably try to do a few things here, for a while. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:24, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Einstein/Humanism

Hi Kalki, please can you take a look at the Einstein talk page. :) HPotato (talk) 14:01, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

I have just now responded to your comments on that page, and once again assert that Einstein's outlook, whatever his theological views, dispositions or attitudes may have been at various times, was consistently Humanistic. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:35, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Quote of the day February 21, 2014

Just saw you added a quote from Ellen Page's moving Coming Out speech as Ouote of the Day. Thank you very much for the addition of this powerful and wonderful quote. May YOU be blessed with health, peace and love! --P3Y229 (talk) 01:05, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the appreciation, and thanks for creating the Ellen Page page — I had found many of her statements quoteworthy for some time and had intended to eventually create one, but simply hadn't gotten around to it. I might actually have some quotes I had meant to add from interviews floating around on some hard drives, and might add a bit more to her page in coming weeks. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 01:14, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

+1, the QOTD you created for tomorrow looks very good, I commend you, but note that the two pictures you selected are of the "author", so they would be according to guidelines that I consider ideal, and I don't think anyone would object to them (pictures). Please see, though, the comments I left at Village Pump: I would be interested if you could address namely 1) the Freedom argument, and 2) concerns for viewership [perhaps I was too harsh, of course it is unfair to blame the QOTD for less views, when there are much more important content and navigational problems. It is not my intention to blame you for it, in fact, I believe you did more than any other contributor to make WQ more visible, popular, & better, and I'll clarify that there.]. I also made a suggestion for today's QOTD, which you made with 2 more "mystical" pictures, for it to be with a simple author's picture instead. Would that "solution" be that bad, do you think? ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:03, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Though I am usually considerate and often acceptive of many forms of advice, I generally have a strong antipathy to any attempts to needlessly develop mandates toward prescribed forms, or to deride associations and relevance of images that are not immediately apparent to all. I have not had time to thoroughly examine and respond to all the recent comments, suggestions and derisions that have occurred here or at the Village pump since yesterday, but I will attempt to do so later today, and in coming days. I have been busy elsewhere recently, and might have a few relatively free days coming up. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 14:47, 21 February 2014 (UTC) + tweak

I have spent much of the day occupied elsewhere, and have a few more places to go before I can rest from some tasks and perhaps do some further work here. I certainly won't have an opportunity to make extensive responses for at least a few hours, and perhaps after I have slept a bit as well. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:23, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Kalki, I cannot point to the obvious abuse that is editing protected pages against consensus (there is no consensus that 4 pictures, including the two small ones you normally place at the top and bottom of the quote, should be removed or are too many), which I believe is being done maliciously, and just to bully you, because I would run the risk of being blocked (and then, by proxy, banned). But since the admins here pretend not to notice this, it would seem worthier of your time to try to address the issue, rather than posting the sort of (frankly) personal attacks that do not really advance your cause nor rebut any presented argument. Given that I am almost forced to not join in this battle against bullying, and you appear to be alone in this, I would really like to see you playing your cards more wisely. (P.S. You remind me of José Agostinho de Macedo, and if I didn't know any better I would believe you to be a reincarnation of his, though that is a talking point for another evening...) ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:44, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I just happen to be back from a brief excursion and noticed your comments. I am generally cautious in what I declare, and ever strive to constrain myself to honesty, justice and fairness, even among those who regularly favor many forms and formalities of dishonesty, injustice and foulness, if they believe they will be personally advantageous to them and their aims. I am far more aware of much of the nature and actually limited strengths and far more significant weaknesses of those who most delight in malicious attitudes and actions than I am inclined to specify at this point — and I actually temper many of my potential actions and reactions far more than can immediately be apparent to others. I actually expect to be very busy elsewhere for at least a few more days now, but plan to do at least a few actually necessary things here, in what time I have, and look forward to addressing many issues in a gradually more extensive manner. I believe it will become gradually far more evident that I am actually an extraordinarily patient person, and know the need for keeping many aspects of one's awareness of many things private, especially among those who are plainly malicious in various subtle or overt ways. Whatever the particular constraints on your personal interactions here, I recommend you abide by them vigorously, and I assure you, I am far more prone to laugh at people's efforts to intimidate or bully me, and forgive their foolishness, than actually greatly fear them, or even greatly anger at them, for many reasons that I believe will gradually become more clear to many people in this coming year. I might soon explain some reasons for my attitudes, which actually favor many forms of tolerance and forgiveness even of the most asinine and belligerent, in some examples I can provide from past experiences. I actually am presently in no particular hurry to dispel some of the mysteries of which I am aware and appreciative, and know that some of the help I am able to provide to others involves me remaining patient and tolerant, and willing to bear both relatively mild and severe frustrations, in ways that some people plainly cannot easily understand or appreciate. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Image Use Practices and Policies

In response to the increasingly vigorous and coordinated efforts of others, against long standing options and practices here, I am currently drafting this message. I might wait a few days before I begin using it or some revision of it elsewhere, on the user pages of such people as have indicated approval of the use of images by me and others; comments on how it might be improved or supported, or even significant objections to it are welcome here. I am well aware that some will seek to isolate some particular issue disputes from larger issues of general principles involved, because where many vitally important principles are ignored or denied any relevance, in sufficiently vigorous ways, those who have little regard for them can have marked advantages over those who do. I have actually constrained and might reduce some mention of these, but I also might expand on them, if I believe there is a legitimate need to do so, for the purposes of clarity.
P.S. 2014·02·26 : I have just realized, I could actually post a much smaller message to people's user pages, directing them to read this message here, or on some other user page, thus not posting a large message on their talk page. I might decide to do that.
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ ∞ ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
Even on the day I first posted this, I realized it might be better to delay a while, and consolidate other matters of greater significance into any notices which I send out to others, and I believe I will do that, but that might take some weeks, rather than days to complete, and so this might remain here without any links to it for some time yet. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 18:18, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

This message is a relatively formal one which I intend to address to many editors who have in the past indicated approval or even enthusiasm for how images have long been used on this site. Though there clearly are exceptions and varieties of opinions on what images are best or most appropriate in different ways, I am making an appeal to you to become more involved in influencing policy decisions, even if you are not much interested in actively developing them, as I believe very few people usually are, including myself. Wikis were devised from the start by Ward Cunningham, and used by Jimmy Wales and others to maximize participation of all interested people in worthy projects and to minimize needless and detrimental controls over individuals. EVERY legitimately contributive editor on this Wiki project has entirely as much right as ANY administrator or official to make their opinions and preferences known and to influence policy decisions by reasonable arguments, observations, and occasionally official votes in determining consensus options. I have indicated many times, in many ways that I am an advocate of ever greater awareness, appreciation and respect for the principles of Justice, Unity, Liberty and many vitally important virtues, including, most prominently, Humility, Courage, Honesty and Compassion.

For MANY years here, I have been delighted to add much valuable material to this project, and to be able to help others, especially those of general good will, in whatever ways I could. As a contributor I have created well over a thousand pages, and worked significantly on well over a thousand more, many of which are specifically tallied at User:Kalki/index. For many years as an admin, and an official bureaucrat who could grant admin privileges to others, I EMPHASIZED on my User page: "I am one of the administrators here, which doesn't give me any special authority… only a bit more ability to keep others from misusing the privileges provided."

I believe that over the years that a very few people have been increasingly inclined to misuse their status or privileges in such ways as have been detrimental to all, and sought to increase the "official" controls of a few over most, and diminish the perceived or actual rights of all. In 2009, I was actually beginning to make rather strong statements against such developments, and considering resigning as a bureaucrat as a significant protest, when even my status as a long admired admin was suddenly challenged, and I lost that in some controversies and concerns which followed, because of my extensive use of alternate accounts, in ways I did not explain to the satisfaction of others, and which a few people have since implied were malicious or clearly against policies, which I assert they definitely were NOT. For the most part they were created as a means of sparking interest in various ideas I find admirable, though they have since been defaced in such forms of active suppression and distortions of facts in ways I definitely find contemptible.

Currently, a very few people, with sometimes quite diverse motives, some with quite legitimate concerns, and one particular individual I sincerely believe is motivated primarily by the will to harass me, have in past months increasingly consolidated their will and ability to work as an effective bloc seeking to diminish the use of images here in various ways, and to impose more rigorous and absolute constraints on how they can be used by any editors. I am aware you may not wish to become active at all in these oftentimes contentious and sometimes quite passionate discussions, but I request you to at least examine these discussions at times, and occasionally make whatever comments you might believe could be helpful against the development of overly rigorous constraints on editor options, by those most motivated to find ways to reduce or eliminate many of these.

Whatever your opinions might be, for or against some of my own, with Great Hope and Sincerity, to the fullest extent I presently can, I offer you: Blessings ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:29, 26 February 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

why we laugh

Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified. ~ G. K. Chesterton

We laugh when we feel superior to someone. (Consider why we laugh when we see, for example, someone slipping on a banana peel.) I am yet to find an exception to this rule. ~ DanielTom (talk) 12:22, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually I can think of several types of exceptions to this rule, which you propose, but explaining them would involve indicating many mystical and rational concepts or types of experiences which would probably, at least initially, be unfamiliar to you (I recognize that this statement itself might be used to support your assertion, so far as it goes). One way I might generally summarize some of what I mean, is to state that much laughter is possible when one enters into various states of Kenosis such as many forms of mysticism can bring human minds to conceive and perceive in various diverse ways. WE all are involved in various states of transcendence of many facts which might often be perceived as fictions, and such fictions as are perceived as facts, and the more people become aware of such things, through various paths of discipline and dignity — the more laughter we are capable of. One quote I was just adding to more articles when I noted your comments is one by G. K. Chesterton, which I just added in the image here. I have been pleased with Chesterton and many of his splendid observations in The Man Who Was Thursday since I was 5 or 6 years old, which represents a time when there was an explosion of my awareness of MANY significant thinkers, including G. B. Shaw, with whom he often debated, and laughed. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:40, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

You seem to be suggesting that we laugh when we are superior (divine). ~ DanielTom (talk) 13:04, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I am indicating we laugh when we are within states of superiority to many situations or circumstances — NOT necessarily to any particular persons or people. I have been laughing, because of many mystical and rational discernments, and sometimes, but not always, at the often disturbing lack of them in others, since I was an infant. Since that time, I have had many very transient and eternal senses of many things, including Identity, Self, and many complications of Absurdist and Semiotic complexities in perceiving MANY diverse forms of Signs of the Times of our Lives. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 13:11, 3 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

I just reviewed my earlier comment, and revised it slightly, for clarity and accuracy. I would state that the lack of mystical, ethical and rational discernments in others, and which often produce so many other problems and tragedies, are such things as I am actually least inclined to often laugh at, and only briefly when I do, but the ability to laugh at them, and my own sorrows and frustrations, and transcend them with various forms of awareness of many diverse beauties and truths of reality, is what leads me on to various forms of serenity, and enduring joy and appreciation, including those to be found in the greatest forms of laughter, delight, joy and happiness, in which there is much vitality, much compassion, as well as passion, and little or no needless callousness, and no malice at all. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Sibyl

Hi Kalki. I replaced the image at right with this in the Virgil article, but only now do I realize that that is actually the entrance to her cave! I think it was you who added it, so I thought you should know; in my view they are both good pictures. ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

In this case , I definitely much prefer the actual cave image, to the imaginative painting. The image brings back many memories to me, and the place was very dear to me. The whole Cumaean peninsula, with what ruins remain upon the hillsides was one of my favorite places to be, and that cave and a few others around there were especially significant to me, when I lived in Italy, just a few miles north of the site. Though I actually "dreamed up" the name "Kalki" as a very young child, no older than 3 or 4, and had not yet learned of the significant lore around it, it was there, as a teenager, in a visit to Cumae, I had an interesting experience and definitely and determinedly decided to use Kalki (or a few variants I have used from time to time) as my primary "name", though I continue to use others as well (though I no longer edit with any other accounts here, some of which have names I do use elsewhere). ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 21:29, 6 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

I see, if it means that much to you, I am happy to accommodate. ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:37, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Even if it wasn't personally dear to me, I believe the cave image is the better choice, but I am always willing to recognize others can have different preferences for various reasons. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 21:42, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I had thought I had probably used that image elsewhere, at least once, and I had last year, on this QOTD layout for Wikiquote:Quote of the day/October 17, 2013:

The job is to ask questions — it always was — and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility. ~ Arthur Miller ~

This gives a broader range of views of the site, but there are definitely better angles and perspectives to be found at many places on the hillsides. I know others cannot be as fond of its intricacies as I am, but I do not exaggerate when I say it is one of my favorite places in the world, where ancient essences remain remarkably strong. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 21:59, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I've been to Italy before, but I was not even aware this place existed. It looks very picturesque, and definitely worth a visit. Who knows, maybe I too will be fortunate enough to see it some day, with my own eyes. (In a way, I and many other blessed human beings have already seen it, from afar, thanks to this phenomenon we call the Internet.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:16, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

By the way, though this is "officially" designated by most as the cave of the Cumaean Sibyl, there actually remains some dispute on the matter, and some arguments against it, for various reasons, and other caves that exist or might have once existed around the area are also sometimes considered possibilities. This first settlement by the Greeks on mainland Italy was also the place where the Euboean version of the Greek alphabet was spread to the Etruscans which the Romans adapted into the Latin alphabet. Though there are many more visually impressive sites all around Italy, there are actually many things of peculiar significance to that site which makes it historically significant, as a very odd cultural transformation point. The very significant Christian work The Shepherd of Hermas was declared by its author to have been inspired by visions he had on the way to Cumae. I have been meaning to do a page for it here for years — with fond memories refreshed, I might actually get around to it within a few weeks now. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:47, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

What is the process

1. Kalki, I would like to learn more about the Wikiquote Main Page Quote of the Day process.
2. I'm more familiar with the process at English Wikipedia, where articles of course must first become Featured Article quality, and then they are discussed at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests.
3. How does a quote get from for example the voting process at March 6 --> to eventually be selected as a quote for the Main Page --> and then how is the formatting and layout decided upon?

Thank you for your time,

-- Cirt (talk) 01:55, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I certainly do not mind reasonable requests from anyone, and am happy to give you a review of some of the processes and a reminder of some of the ways in which they developed. Here, of course, there is no requirement that the articles represented become exemplary, ONLY that the quotes be among those ranked among the highest, through the ranking system displayed on each individual date page, such as the March 6 one you mention.

I will now be preparing a more extensive response, for your benefit, but I might be doing other things here and elsewhere — I tend to be a "multi-tasking" person in many ways. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ … Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:21, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I have made some progress, but I am also busy with several other things, and I must be leaving soon, for probably a couple hours. I will probably resume work on that then. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 20:13, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

So what happens next after the example of the March 6 voting process? What is the next step in the process? -- Cirt (talk) 21:03, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Within the last few minutes I just came back after taking a bit more time on my excursion than I had thought I would. Amidst many other activities and concerns, I actually had some thoughts on how to finish up tomorrow's QOTD layout as I was out on some daily travels. I will likely get a little bit more done on a response to your query soon, but I am nearly simultaneously attending to MANY other things as well, and probably will be leaving again within an hour or so, and actually am not sure when I will have time to finish, but it should be within the next half-day or so. Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:40, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't mean the particular upcoming next QOTD layout for tomorrow. I meant what is the next step in the choosing of the QOTD and the layout process, in general, after the example at March 6? -- Cirt (talk) 02:45, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I understood your query, and have begun to address it in what I believe will be a sufficient and appropriate manner, — but there were other things with far greater priority for me to attend to, and I have to leave again in a few minutes, so was using what time I had to get a few relatively small things done here, before leaving. As I said, I might be able to get back to it within about 12 hrs or so — but even that isn't a commitment — just an expectation. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 02:54, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Understood, please keep me posted as to your progress, I'll revisit later. Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 04:36, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

As I have indicated at times, I have been developing responses to your enquiry, and actually came up with an array of them, with varying aspects, which I have considered developing in various ways, for your benefit, and the benefit of others, but undecided as to which might be best to use for the greatest benefit for all, and I just within the last few minutes awoke from a brief nap, with MUCH more clarity and resolve about how to proceed with MANY things I am involved with, including that — but I believe, even you will be able to soon clearly perceive, that many of the OTHER things I believe I actually MUST attend to right now, and in coming days are MUCH more important than giving an immediate and thorough response to you, right now. I know this might frustrate you, at present, but I truly believe that within a day or so, I might be able to give you a very clear indication as to many things relevant to your enquiry, and many other things, and that perhaps even within a week or so, I probably will be able to have provided enough information here and elsewhere, that even you, who have long been something of an irritant to me, in your rather extensive defamations of me, my character and my earnest efforts, will likely be able to perceive that MANY of the other things I have been involved with, and AM involved with, truly have been far more important than immediately responding extensively and directly, to this particular request — or many other demands which have been made upon me in my life, by some FAR more irritating or dangerous to my welfare or the welfare of others, than you have ever been, or could actually ever be. I would say that I myself have entered into new and important stages of awareness and activity just recently — and that presently — I truly am ready to take off like a rocket, to use a quite apt figure of speech... but I have not time to indicate all that I mean by those words, but provide them to give some indications of my earnestness, as I sincerely assert to you: may you soon come into the ways of ever greater Blessings. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 06:14, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Alright, sounds good, please do keep me posted, -- Cirt (talk) 06:40, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I obviously have not gotten around to such actively assertive responses in regard to the inquiries as I had initially intended, but I have been MUCH busier with MANY recent developments than I had initially anticipated within the last week. I just awoke within the last hour from perhaps 3 or 4 hours sleep with definite ideas of how to further respond here, as well as to finish up on many other things of somewhat greater urgency and importance in coming days. I make no firm commitments to when I will be finished with any of these, because there are actually many complications which require MUCH consideration and extensive time, but I certainly expect to have devoted considerable effort to this and many other things within the next few days, and might actually have a sufficient response posted here soon. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 13:44, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the update, please keep me posted, -- Cirt (talk) 15:05, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, it's been over one (1) week, with no answer to my original question. -- Cirt (talk) 18:35, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

and the ANSWER is: Thought and respectful consideration — I fear that might seem a bit alien to you… but so it goes...

 Everything is preordained. Even my responses.

~ Alan Moore ~ in ~ Watchmen ~

PUBLIC SERVICE WARNING! VERBOSITY ALERT! Proceed to complex thought at one's own risk!
Nifty banner, eh? I think I might make a few variants somewhere in my user pages to interject a bit of humor into things from time to time.

I have great faith in Humanity and for every human being's capacity for good will, but frankly, because of past experiences with you, and others with similar observable personality traits, I am NOT actually inclined to trust you to have any great level of good will, nor likely to soon attain any strong and reliable forms of such. In recent days I genuinely have been very busy with many other things, and yet also given a great deal of thought to various potential responses. I rejected some of my harshest impulses, and might have tempered some of these thoughts more, and added a bit more levity and emphasis on forgiveness of error, which I believe time will prove to be a genuine sentiment with me, had I more time, but I perceive that you are impatient for a response, and clearly feigning ignorance and some forms of incompetence, and I too wish to be done with this also, for now, and deliver this summation of the relatively simple and not hard to understand processes with an extensive review of how they developed, and what prompts me to make this sort of response, before leaving once again. In reviewing some of my work on this issue in the past week, I confess that I generally prefer gentle levity to harsh severity, when possible, but I know that it is not always appropriate, nor even remotely possible in all cases, and that no matter how much levity one might inject into matters, there remains a need for some harshness.

I will concede that I would probably have responded with MUCH more swiftness, had I actually believed I was conversing with anyone remotely resembling an honorably honest and forthright human being, but with a confidence based on long experience with your cross-wiki harassments and defamation of myself, your subtle or overt trolling of others, and what I take to be a deep rooted duplicity about many things, I must confess that I honestly believed this was NOT the case. I had actually already observed the failure of your similar inquiry, which, despite your objections and denials, I believe Ningauble quite correctly and accurately dismissed as merely "baiting" on his talk page. Even so, I actually did initially consider being far more magnanimous in my response than you even remotely deserved, and over a few hours of my time, amidst other tasks, I intermittently developed statements on how the QOTD selection processes had developed, some of which I present below. Yet I soon realized that even taking on the appearance that I had any naïve faith in your will to take whatever information might be provided to you as anything more than a means to further finesse your rather obsessive harassment of me and my contributions, and knowing I had FAR more important things to attend to, recalled the general admonition "DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!" and Scott Adams' sound advice: "Always Postpone Meetings with Time-wasting Morons" and put considerations of ways to further respond to your current maneuvers on a "back-burner" while addressing many other issues of MUCH greater importance.

I did spend at least a little time on it every day since, but despite some irritations, this consumption of my time has usually been more of an amusement to me, than a genuine consternation, but I will spare you a presentation of many of the details of why this was so, for now… but reflection upon it and related issues did prompt many ideas on how to deal with many aspects of many problems in the near future. There were actually many observations that I wrote about but have trimmed out for the sake of relative brevity.

I have long had what I believe to be a quite healthy contempt for the arrogant attitudes and actions of those not involved in processes believing they are the best people to find ways to dictate how others should do them. This is often because they are confident they have the support of people with similar disposition to constrain and control the constructive contributions of others, rather than make many themselves, beyond active support of often tedious proposals to further increase constraints and controls on those who do most of the actual work, to do it to such specifications as these self-appointed masters of others would like. Recognizing something along these lines is more likely your actual aim, as a further way to harass and limit me, personally, rather than any sincere interest in long term commitment to engaging respectfully and thoughtfully in the often extensive process of selection and presentation itself, as I have done for many years now, I yet present a brief summary of the ways in which selections of the QOTD have thus far been done, since 2003.

God is an Iron.

~ Spider Robinson ~

As you are probably aware, as one of the very few people regularly involved in the project for the first few years, I had begun making selections for the QOTD, on November 1 2003 with the above quote of Spider Robinson. I actually chose that under the pseudonym "MOBY" for many rather ironic reasons I will not presently elaborate upon, but the next one, and all those after, I chose as Kalki, and for a couple of years it was simply my own generally well-regarded and respected selections which were the QOTDs, though I began providing various means for others to make suggestions and proposals, which gradually evolved and developed, until most of the present system of ranking the suggestions available on the date pages, which anyone who wishes to do so can participate in, by either suggesting or ranking them, or preferably both, was well established in the 2005 - 2006 period.

After many years of very few contestations of my selections, I am still making the final choices from among the most highly ranked suggestions, and to the extent which I can find the time, I usually I try to look ahead at the suggestion pages and to study the options for at least about a week in advance, sometimes more. With what knowledge I have of images at the commons, or can likely find there, I begin to consider and develop concepts for how various quotes that are among the highest ranked might be presented in ways which might help make the quote more interesting and intriguing to the casual visitor, as well as those well informed in various fields of interest, with such imagery as is relevant to the themes or subject of the quote. Usually I aim for clearly obvious relevance, but sometimes there are relatively obscure but still very relevant references I know that others might not immediately understand, such as those used in relation to Arthur Miller's quote in the previous section on this page — which depicts a place where it was the task of courageous heroes to ask questions of the Cumaean Sibyl, who would provide often ambigous indications of their destiny.

The particular date you chose for me to explain, March 6 has these QOTDs which have been selected in the past:

2004

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. ~ John Milton

• selected by Kalki — these were in the days where there were few workers and fewer assumption that people had the rights or duty to rigorously constrain and control individual efforts, and it was simply chosen as a good quote which seemed worthy of note, by myself, who worked without much dispute or contention for MANY years in making what others generally acclaimed as good choices.

2005

Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: but only he who sees, takes off his shoes, the rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, and daub their natural faces unaware... ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning (born 6 March 1806)

• selected by Kalki — this too was still a time where relatively low participation left me with the selection process — though this is the year where much of the current "0 - 4 ranking" procedures began to be developed into their current state.

2006

Give thought to life and liberty. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac (born 6 March 1619)

• proposed by Kalki — selected as a top ranked quote

2007

For all eternity has God not occupied His intellect with the cabbage's birth as well as yours? It also seems that He has necessarily provided more for the birth of the vegetable than for the thinking being... Will anyone say that we are born in the image of the Sovereign Being, while cabbages are not? ~ Cyrano de Bergerac

• proposed by Kalki — selected as a top ranked quote

2008

You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand ... someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac

• proposed by Kalki — again this was simply selected as a top ranked quote, but this year I began to add relatively small images to the quote, which at this point also were augmented with sound files, in a rather short lived experiment, initially begun at the prompting of others.

2009

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the Watchmen? ~ Juvenal ~

• proposed by Kalki, for the release date of the Watchmen film — selected as a top ranked quote (the original image has been deleted — and I might replace that with the one I use here, or some other) . From many of my unique perspectives on many things, the Ultimate Serendipity and Universal Synchronicity involved in ALL "things", within the monistic Eternity of the All, makes this ever and always, and especially NOW, and for EVER, a very apt quote. FAR MORE is referred to here than I have TIME to tell — and so it goes… ꇎ

In this particular year of 2009, there were actually EXTENSIVE objections to this quote by Zarbon (talk · contributions), who at one point sought to rank it with a "0" as "unacceptable", against my ranking it a 4, but his preferences were eventually outvoted, by others who became involved, giving this quote a very unusually strong ranking of four 4's in its favor, and he eventually moderated his vote to a 2, which was a relatively high mark from him, as he often had a very strong antipathy towards quotes most others ranked highly.
[sigh] This was also the last year where there was a general solidarity of many of those who worked here, relatively harmoniously, even with quite diverse views, before assertions that my peculiarly principled penchant for working without obvious credit as Kalki, in ways and for reasons others could not generally understand or appreciate made me SEEM "untrustworthy" to further serve as an admin, in the estimation of sufficient numbers of others. I have always operated with what I believe to be general good will and clear discernment of such anarchistic ethical imperatives beyond and against many common and popular tendencies towards groupthink conformity as have often been engendered and manifest by various assertions of people I frankly viewed as poorly informed and improperly presumptive. Even with what little information they had to assess things, others plainly viewed me as improperly presumptive or perhaps worse than that, and perhaps in some way malicious or scornful of any ACTUAL policies or GENUINELY ETHICAL PRINCIPLES, rather than simply someone strongly disinclined to bow down abjectly to various forms of all-too-common and popular forms of prejudices and presumptions about many forms of human diversity and generally genial absurdist artistry, and such humanistic impulses and idealistic inclinations as I have ever been inclined to embrace and honor in rather subtle and obscure ways, against what I perceive to be the often quite poor logic, and irrational assumptions and unjust dictatorial tendencies (✷ I could use far harsher terms ✷) of others. I had observed since infancy that many people were rather distressed at others being rather extraordinarily complicated in their mental processes, and thus sometimes prone to unwelcome "verbosity" when they attempt to explicate many things they believe or KNOW to be beyond all words, and definitely beyond such casual and often deficient, flawed and incorrect notions as many people often embrace as "convenient" and "simple" and easy to "understand" — when in fact they simply make it easy to embrace many forms of lack of understanding, with ease, and such comforting perceptions of having knowledge or "proof" of absolute "correctness" in such ways as are NOT actually there.

2010

A man contains all that is needed to make up a tree; likewise, a tree contains all that is needed to make up a man. Thus, finally, all things meet in all things, but we need a Prometheus to distill it. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac ~

• proposed by Kalki — again this was simply selected as a top ranked quote, with added images portraying the author and of one of the characters mentioned in the quote.

2011

Most men judge only by their senses and let themselves be persuaded by what they see... On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages. … Do people really think that because the sun gives us light every day and year, it was made only to keep us from bumping into walls? No, no, this visible god gives light to man by accident, as a king's torch accidentally shines upon a working man or burglar passing in the street. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac ~

• proposed by Kalki — again this was simply selected as a top ranked quote, with added images relating to the theme of the quote.

In early 2012, you entered another stage of harassing me, removing the layout I had chosen for the 3rd of February, and stanzas on The Day the Music Died by Don McLean. I was too busy with other things to contend about the matter at that time, and further developments here left me so disgusted at the growth of dictatorial efforts to constrain the contributions of others, in clear betrayal of fundamental wiki-principles, that the last image layout I did for 2012 was the one for Groundhog Day:

I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile and cunning. ~ James Joyce ~

Thus the quote by the master artist Michelangelo, which might have been accompanied by at least a few of his most notable works had no imagery at all:

2012

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all. ~ Michelangelo

• proposed by Zarbon

After a long hiatus, where because of your acts of aggressive suppression, with no actual consensus to do so, and others apathy about it, I had simply in profound disgust at was going on, dropped the efforts to enhance the QOTD with images, I yet incidentally had begun using images again at the start of March 2013, but had not yet got into the habit of engaging in the time consuming thought processes of doing so daily, until later in the month, so the quotes for this date in 2013 do not have images either.

2013

A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now."

~ Gabriel García Márquez ~

• proposed by InvisibleSun

Later in the month, I finally did resume using images on a daily basis, with the quote for the 26th of March:

The very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. … Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. ~ Joseph Campbell ~

The rest of that year proceeded with general appreciation of my work, despite a few committed critics or adversaries of it persisting, such as yourself, from time to time, and after failure to gain much traction to constrain the presentations last month by chiming in on the 4th of February at the village pump, and then initiating another round of discourse on the 15th of February and many aspects of our past contentions being discussed at "Image discussion (aka Cirt vs. Kalki)" at the Admins noticeboard. You then pestered Ningauble, as noted earlier above, on the 6th of March, and being rebuked there, attempted to bait me here, in a similar way, with an ostensibly more respectful demeanor towards me, as is often the case, despite what I gauge to be a generally cynical disposition to be insincere in many of your assertions.

2014

Who are you and who am I To say we know the reason why Some are born, some men die, Beneath one infinite sky? There'll be war, there'll be peace, But everything one day will cease, All the iron turned to rust, All the proud men turned to dust, And so all things time will mend, So this song will end. ~ David Gilmour ~

• proposed by Kalki, after a suggestion by bystander for something by David Gilmour. This quote for this year I illustrated with a couple of the available photos of Gilmour — a fairly good recent one (which not only I, but others as well, found favorable, it being the lead image in his Wikipedia article), and one is his younger years, in a similar pose. The imagery selected had to do with his work throughout his years in Pink Floyd and some of the themes of the particular song quoted.

In general, in making suggestions, considering all of them, and thinking of ways to present them, I work a lot, and think a lot about what options of indicating significant truths are available through various means. I know doing so without being deferential or submissive to those few more interested in "ruling" over others within any possible situations, can create resentments among those who generally DO wish to do so.

I genuinely seek to inform, and properly influence others in gently inspirational rather than commanding and dictatorial ways, and I certainly do not often seek to control and constrain others, nor assist others in doing so, beyond the very limited degrees which are actually socially and ethically necessary to prevent grievous harm to human liberties and their proper rights in any environments. I have to laugh sometimes when people are prone to cry "Wolf!" and seek to cause a stampede of panic or create mobs with fear, resentment and hatreds towards others — but that wears thin after a while and especially when the Big "Bad Wolf" often turns out not so bad after all, and a danger only to some of the powers born of deceit, of those who wish to dominate others through various distortions or outright lies.

Though I generally seek to harm or humiliate no one needlessly, against the ignorance, confusion and arrogance of such people I regularly fight, in what ways I can, and offer what forgiveness I can, because I am sincere in my devotion to forgiveness and acceptance that with such ignorance and confusion as exists in them they had little choice to be other than as they have been — but I am not inclined to grant much pardon from my suspicions and reserve in dealing with those whom I have good reason to believe remain insincere in many vitally important professions, and definitely retain a preference for those I trust to be honest, more those who can put on pretenses of of being civil and civic minded — in their efforts to constrain others.

I know that there is much more I would like to make clear, but do not feel I have the time to do so right now — and have to get busy once again attending to other things. I will close with a quote from one of my favorite masters of levity and wit:

I sometimes tackle ideas and notions that are relatively complex, and it is very difficult to be sure that I am conveying them in the best way. Anyone who goes beyond cliche phrases and cliche ideas will have this trouble.

~ R. A. Lafferty ~

So it goes…
⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:44, 18 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

You know Kalki, I have observed that Cirt has chilled out quite a bit over the past few months. You might want to give him the benefit of the doubt on that. His questions and comments to you in this exchange have been professional, so I see no reason for you to conduct yourself otherwise. BD2412 T 03:34, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

I am always ready to give most people the benefit of MANY sorts of doubts about my own assessments of evidence and situations — even when they have a long history of not doing so to others — including myself, but giving others the benefit of a doubt is not actually the same as putting a great deal of confidence in any trust in their statements. Cirt, like a few other people I have had far more direct contact with in my life, has often exhibited great skill at presenting adept shows of "professional courtesy" and professions of good will, even while exhibiting directly contrary testimony and indications to others.

I am NOT closing the door to further dialogue, on many matters, even though in the past he has done all he can to ABSOLUTELY exclude me from any consideration on MANY occasions, but I am not going to pretend I perceive a strong reason to trust his general good will at this point. I am quite aware people can change their disposition, sometimes rapidly — but I do not pretend to have great confidence in them doing so, especially with some forms of attitudes clearly evident.

If you actually would examine a few of his statements regarding me to Ninguable, just prior to these more "polite" and reserved statements to me here, I think you might have a clearer idea of what I believe to be his general disposition and intentions at this point. I am never opposed to more people getting involved in processes for the sincere benefit of others, but I am generally opposed to people who haven't been involved, clearly aiming to set rules that constrain and limit the ways other people who have been involved in doing things that have been generally acceptable, appreciated or acclaimed, can or cannot proceed in doing them, because a few of those most actively hostile can ally to suppress long existing options.

I know that with a bit more time, I could have done a better job at trimming away some harshness and adding more levity, but believe that mixing a bit of humor in with some of my harsher observations helps to exhibit I am not entirely bitter — and willing to joke a bit about my own limitations as well as those of others — and to indicate that I am always wiling to forgive — but though my willingness to forgive is nearly universal and my criterion for pardoning others from needless punishments is quite low, my criterion for pardoning them from suspicions is often quite high, and I am not prone to trust many people all that easily, even when I wish them well.

I think there are probably some grammatical glitches remaining in what I posted earlier, as I trimmed away much and threw this online before leaving — but I am a bit tired now, and might not do much here for a while, and sleep before I get around to attending to other things, and perhaps return here within a few hours of awakening. I really DO hope Cirt does prove capable of becoming far more genuinely civil and sincere than he seems to me, and that we can perhaps eventually find more things to cooperate on than contend about — but I do not claim to already trust that he is trustworthy in all of his professions. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:44, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Implicit in "the answer" lies the following somewhat more succinct answer to Cirt's question:  Kalki decides and, notwithstanding some objections to certain aspects of decisions made, there is a long history of letting Kalki decide.

I think this addresses the purport of Cirt's question, which was evidently not about Kalki's internal thought processes, since Cirt also asked me essentially the same thing and I could hardly be expected to answer for how Kalki thinks, but was about a putative wiki community process.

However, since Cirt already knew this answer, it was evidently a rhetorical question. Regarding BD2412's point about the professionalism of this line of questioning, it might be more so if the point this rhetorical device is driving at were addressed more directly. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:57, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Ningauble, you say you don't presume to read Kalki's mind, please don't assume you know what I am or am not thinking. Don't apply a double standard and treat Kalki better one way and not me, please, thank you. I did not already know the answer. I know there is a voting process or something, but I wasn't sure on the process of how quotes get to the Main Page on this website. I thank BD2412 for acknowledging that my comments here on Kalki's user talk page have been professional, and I would ask others to conduct themselves in the same manner. I would hope we could foster a more collaborative community process together, something similar to what happens at w:WP:TFAR. -- Cirt (talk) 14:24, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

I do actually welcome your more cordial and respectful behavior on many things, despite many of my quite natural suspicions in regard to your actual attitudes. I have been away from the computer much of the day, and must again soon be leaving, but I did notice your proposal at the village pump, came up with a relatively brief 4 paragraph reply outlining some agreements and disagreements, but just saw someone else had posted an even briefer response, and might simply let that stand without further comment from myself, at this point. I genuinely do wish you well, even though I cannot pretend to agree with you on many significant matters, or to have a great deal of respect for all your endeavors, but I do genuinely hope good understandings can develop between us in the year ahead. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 16:21, 20 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Thank you, I also wish the same for you, and us. -- Cirt (talk) 16:52, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

@Cirt – Perhaps you forgot about the many discussions you participated in, where Kalki's unilateral handling of the presentation has been remarked by yourself and others. Anyway, your idea for a WP:TFAR-like process is well worth discussing, and I am pleased to see that you have directly raised the issue at the Village Pump. Perhaps there will be some progress on the real question:  How can the process be improved? ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Karma

Kalki, thank you very much for the appreciation of my articles, and in particular the article on Karma. I am now going slow now because of a frozen shoulder problem. I have a suggestion that the main page quotes should also include themes.--Nvvchar (talk) 02:20, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Whatever rest you need is wise to take. You have certainly provided a great deal of worthy contributions to this worthy project lately, and I, personally am very grateful for them. I hope to get around to adding more to some of them in the weeks and months ahead. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 02:26, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

picture choice

He follows his father, but not with equal steps.

He follows his father, but not with equal steps.

Which picture do you prefer (left or right)? ~ DanielTom (talk) 14:22, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

They both have a similar range of color choices, and similar poses of key figures, though arranged differently, to significantly different effect. Enlarged, I would say there is much in the quality of expressions in the faces on those in the Barocci on the right to strongly recommend it, but much more clear drama of overall composition in the Batoni, on the left, as well as less anachronistic detail. For layout purposes, on a normal page, and IF only one could be used, I would probably recommend the Batoni, but not insist upon it. I pass the baton of liberty of choices to be made to you. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:44, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

They wouldn't make a bad sequence, if the Barocci were followed by the Batoni. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:47, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I have just awoken in the last half hour, from a much needed sleep, despite having some rest earlier, when I checked in here and saw your message. As I had mentioned to someone else within the last few days, my days have been busy lately. I have had far more of some forms of activity in the last 5 days than I had anticipated clearly. I expected to be busy with MANY things this year, but did not actually expect to be quite so busy with quite so many of fairly important significance quite so soon. I expect that my presence here will nearly always be a daily one, and sometimes for several hours at a time, but I also expect it to often be more sporadic, with much briefer visits, as I attend to other matters on the internet, or more directly with matters in the material world.

As someone long inspired with MANY forms of mythology and legends, and ART, and with many particular affinities to the tale of Aeneas, and many elements of it, as well as the more famous ones of Odysseus, it is delightful to be reminded of them. Your query prompted me to check the WP pages of the artists, and I saw Barocci's Annunciation which I definitely LOVE the overall composition of, and will probably use somewhere in the months ahead. Now I will have to get attending to other matters, I once again anticipate a VERY busy day. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:55, 8 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

I prefer the left picture, Barocci's. ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:25, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

To each his own choice, on all matters — and you are the one actually doing the work upon the page. Blessings ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 20:42, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Indeed—suum cuique. I change my mind easily, and might replace the picture, eventually. (I don't consider it work!) ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:04, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I like both, so I changed the picture; it's a minor issue really. The first six books all contain wonderful episodes. The woman in the picture is Aeneas' wife, whom he loses, but later sees as a ghost. It is a moving passage, where Aeneas three times tries to hold her in vain, before she disappears. Conington translates it like so: She melted into night: / Thrice I essayed her neck to clasp: / Thrice the vain semblance mocked my grasp, / As wind or slumber light. Comparing translations of the last line of this second book, Conington clearly borrowed Dryden's "I yield to Fate, unwillingly retire, / And, loaded, up the hill convey my sire", rendering it: "I yield to fate, take up my sire, / And to the mountain's shade retire." There is a connection, between the endings of the second, and the eighth, books, but that again is the subject for another evening. Cheers, DanielTom (talk) 21:43, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

In fact, I just did some research, and it was easy to find again. Conington translates the last line of Book VIII (attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum) thus: "And high upon his shoulders rears, / The fame and fates of unborn years." So, comparing the two, there is a clear contrast of past (II) and future (VIII). (Perhaps I should be studying Classics, rather than economics?, but one can always read...) ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:55, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

On the images: I simply believe Batoni's work works better in the small format; as I indicated initially, I am more impressed with some of the faces on Barocci's at larger sizes. I actually might use his Annunciation somewhere soon, but I am still considering many options on many minor and major presentations I am working on, for here and elsewhere. I too am trying to finish up a few of these before leaving again, and I don't think it likely that I will complete some of these today. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:02, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Highly active period…

I have been away from home more than I had thought I would be much of the last week, and expect to continue to be very busy elsewhere for much of the rest of the month, so my activity here might be more limited than I had assumed at the start of the month. But I still should be a daily presence or nearly so. I am rather tired right now, and believe I will sleep for a while. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 06:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

As is typical for me, especially in such highly active periods as I am now in, I did not sleep long. I awoke, arose, and set down this message, already filled with new ideas on how to proceed today and in coming days. I have much to do now — but only a portion are such things as I do here; thus my contributions today, and for at least several days yet, might only be sporadic. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 07:44, 11 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaksal

Ethical movement and Yoga

I did expect this observation from you on my additions to your article on Ethical movement/Ethical culture, a very erudite presentation, and your elaboration on this aspect in my talk page is very educative for me. As the first quote by Einstein dealt initially with ethics, I added some more quotes on ethics. I agree that my additions would go well with the article on Ethics and you are most welcome to shift it to that article. Yoga is a difficult subject to cover and I am trying to add mostly on the Asanas. You are welcome to add more as you deem fit. Thanks for the appreciation.--Nvvchar (talk) 09:52, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Happy π Day!

He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity... ~ Kate Bush

I meant to do something on these lines earlier in the day, but I have been VERY busy, and had some meetings to attend, and have been out twice already on excursions through several local towns, and have a couple more to do before the day is over, a bit closer to home. One short one I will take care of after I do a few things here, and one longer one, but one that might permit me to do a few more things here before I leave on it. In a "chance meeting" on my way home I discovered that it was the birthday of someone I've known for a few years, and now I am sure I won't forget their birthday.

I had expected to be VERY busy this year from the start, but NOT quite so busy with quite so many things quite so soon, but I am quite pleased that I am, and looking forward to progress on MANY diverse projects in the year ahead, despite the persistence of some obstacles and dangers. This is a day I celebrate as a day of new openings of new opportunities. I actually celebrate all days that way — but a few of them especially so — and this is certainly one of them. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:17, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

π day is long over, but the fun and pleasure and funniness of working with π remains. Amen. OM. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 03:58, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Giordano Bruno

Diff – that, my friend, is absurd. ~ DanielTom (talk) 17:30, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

By the way, shouldn't the category be 17th century deaths, rather than 16th? ~ DanielTom (talk) 17:47, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Though many celebrations over the centuries have defied the technically accurate tabulations, he died early in 1600 which actually was the last year of the 16th century, and thus I reverted that change. As to absurdism, I accept your removal of that, at present, as I concede that I am inclined to apply the term a bit more broadly than most, but he clearly was a brilliant satirist who often ingeniously and ingenuously as well as sincerely and passionately played with the absurd uses and misuse of words, and I believe those who deal with open minds to paradoxes that play on the incapacity of those with closed minds to recognize various forms of truth, as Bruno valiantly did, actually deserve quite honorable designations as absurdists — those who know and accept that human beings must always deal with many forms of absurd stupidity which pass for wisdom, and try to do their best to reveal various forms of stupidity and wisdom for what they are; often employing parables and paradoxes about human societies and their relationships to the cosmos, and to each other. Somewhat similarly in this regard the early humanists and many modern humanists never called themselves humanists, the early Gnostics never called themselves Gnostics — and even the earliest Christians did not call themselves Christians. Many more incidents of modern terminology being applied to ancient practices and styles of thought abound, but as I stated, I am not contending on that matter at this point. I have to be leaving again soon, and just noticed your comments as I was preparing to take off again. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 18:34, 15 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

I see you reverted my change with all the final authority of a Wikipedia cite: "The 17th century was the century that lasted from January 1, 1600, to December 31, 1699, in the Gregorian calendar." I will use another that just touches on this recurring dispute, from another Wikipedia article: "Astronomical year numbering, used by astronomers, includes a year zero (0). Consequently, the 1st century in these calendars may designate the years 0 to 99 as the 1st century, years 100 to 199 as the second etc. However, in order to regard 2000 as the first year of the 21st century according to the astronomical year numbering, the astronomical year 0 has to correspond to the Gregorian year 1 BC." I really don't give that much of a damn about the issue now, but technically, despite increasingly common popular usage, the 21st century did not begin until 2001. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 18:42, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I reverted and gave the rationale there just before noticing that you had posted an explanation here. Feel free to revert back. I need time to consider what you wrote, and do some further research. (Exchanging rationales through edit summaries, rather than talk pages, was also not good, so I apologize for that as well.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 18:46, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Did you notice the peak of visitors to the page in the past few days? It is the effect of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the first episode, which featured Giordano Bruno. I was happy to see this new version, even as a fan of Carl Sagan's original Cosmos, but I did cringe at their mischaracterizations of Bruno. I have to disaprove of introducing deliberate historical misrepresentations/distortions just to make a point. In any case, I look forward to the next episode. (Apparently, this new show has already become quite a hit amongst American teenagers, which is also good news.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:14, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I haven't paid much attention to the page statistics in quite a while, but am glad that people are more interested in Bruno for whatever reasons spark their interest. Many errors that arise tend to fade away with time, and important truths remain. The quote you just added was one of the earliest statements of his which I was familiar with, and there are many others I have meant to add to his page but haven't gotten around to.

Right now I am just trying to do a few things I had thought of while out on my last excursion, before leaving again. I had initially planned to have finished up traveling today, by now, but a few things have come up, and I will probably end up taking at least one more. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:23, 15 March 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Veda Vyasa

I tried to fit this Template:Infobox image Veda Vyasa, based on the template of images in the wikipedia article Dharma. Can you suggest a way out. I am in the process of developing this article.Thanks--Nvvchar (talk) 16:18, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I thank you for your continuing work here, in creating such pages. It appears that Wikiquote templates corresponding to Wikipedia "Template:Infobox image" and "Template:Image array" don't exist here, and I am not sure how to set them up, as I haven't dealt with such things in a long time. I am also not sure whether it is generally desirable to set up arrays on standard pages. I would recommend selecting some of the desired images out of the array and using them in a more standard fashion along the side of the page, for now. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 18:53, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Archiving your talkpage

Can you please do so? The sheer number of bytes is staggering, and places a lot of burden on our poor browsers and machines. It's also making it very difficult, nigh impossible to communicate with you if we were to have any concerns or private discussions. I'd also be happy to assist you in setting up archive talkpages if you just ask me. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 07:31, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

I will probably archive some material today, and perhaps work on reducing my quote presentations further. There are probably a few other things I will attend to here first though.… ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 10:10, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Pandeism

I see that you've taken an interest in Panentheism, and I would truly be quite gratified if you'd take a bit of an interest in Pandeism as well, as I have tried to add some of the Chinese quotes from Wiki's page there as well (right at the end), and it isn't showing up right. When you have the time it will take.... Blessings!! DeistCosmos (talk) 03:24, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Pardon my delay in a response. I was just about to make one when I got called away from the computer, and am just getting back to it now, at least briefly. My personal perceptions, conceptions and general experiences incline me towards peculiarly complex forms of mystical monism allied to pragmatic assessments of the practical limits of any forms of individual awareness or appreciation of aspects of Ultimate Reality or Cosmos. Between mortal minds and their multi-dimensional perceptions and conceptions of things, it is most important that there be ethical relationships tolerant of a wide variety of inclinations and needs; that being the case, there are actually many cosmological and theologic conceptions quite acceptable to me, even though many might contain deficiencies or flaws from my personal perspectives. The most important thing among human beings is always an openness to sincere and honest dialogue towards greater awareness and appreciation of truths and beauty of ALL Awareness, Life and Love in all. Unfortunately there are many barriers and impediments to this, and like many mystics and pragmatists I have a very cautious attitude towards nearly any uses of words and labels, recognizing how malleable their meanings can be, though I recognize the practical need for such.

As to your attempts to add to the Pandeism page, there is no "Template:Qualifier" here, and I might make an attempt at restructuring the quotes into a more standard format here later. I still am attending to a few other things now. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 09:09, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

I have now formatted your additions to display properly, and also did some further editing and captioning to the images that were on that page. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 11:01, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, my brother!! It is remarkably improved, and I have provided additional quotations as well. Blessings!! DeistCosmos (talk) 01:35, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

for I have lived today

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Thanks for adding this quote, and picture, to the John Dryden page so early on. I think learning English is worthwhile, just for reading Dryden's translations. When he takes poetic license, which is often, he surpasses even Virgil (although he doesn't admit this).

Alexander Pope is another translator who surprises me. Reading Portuguese translations (Couto's and Odorico Mendes') of the Iliad had a devastating effect on my estimation of Homer, but Pope somehow makes him readable to me again. I don't know Greek, but from what I can tell, Pope's version is a thousand times superior to the original. Having true poets translating the classics is a blessing few countries have, a treasure of the English-speaking world, and I imagine should be a great source of pride to England.

You were correct, technically, that 1600 is the last year of the 16th century. I reverted my change accordingly. Peace. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:21, 20 March 2014 (UTC) P.S. I'll learn Greek so I can evaluate Homer. ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:56, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I am quite often technically correct in disputes, but don't always press that advantage, because I can often see valid arguments in opposition to my stances, and know that sometimes one can be technically right in many ways, and yet also generally and profoundly wrong in many ways, and this is something many have yet to learn clearly.

As to Virgil and Dryden, I have long admired many of Dryden's observations in many regards, and his translation of the Aeneid was the one I happened to use after informing other people that Virgil was a favorite of some in acts of Bibliomancy, and having said that, the passage I opened to was this rather significant one in Book III, where Aeneas is receiving counsel to consult the Sibyl of Cumae, with the passage my eyes first fell upon in bold:

The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,
Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd.
She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits,
The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits.
What she commits to leafs, in order laid,
Before the cavern's entrance are display'd:
Unmov'd they lie; but, if a blast of wind
Without, or vapors issue from behind,
The leafs are borne aloft in liquid air,
And she resumes no more her museful care,
Nor gathers from the rocks her scatter'd verse,
Nor sets in order what the winds disperse.
Thus, many not succeeding, most upbraid
The madness of the visionary maid,
And with loud curses leave the mystic shade.

Think it not loss of time a while to stay,
Tho' thy companions chide thy long delay;
Tho' summon'd to the seas, tho' pleasing gales
Invite thy course, and stretch thy swelling sails:
But beg the sacred priestess to relate
With willing words, and not to write thy fate.
The fierce Italian people she will show,
And all thy wars, and all thy future woe,
And what thou may'st avoid, and what must undergo.
She shall direct thy course, instruct thy mind,
And teach thee how the happy shores to find.
This is what Heav'n allows me to relate:
Now part in peace; pursue thy better fate,
And raise, by strength of arms, the Trojan state.

Of Dryden's own works the last line of this passage has been one of my favorites since I was 5 or 6, and the rest is pretty good elaboration on the theme:

• Oh that my Pow'r to Saving were confin’d:
  Why am I forc’d, like Heav’n, against my mind,
  To make Examples of another Kind?
  Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
  Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
  How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
  Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.
  • Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Pt. I line 999 - 1005

And now on this evening of the first day of Spring, I have to attend to a few other things… but hope to do a bit more here later… So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:59, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

@ Kalki: Sorry for the interuption, but I must express my gratitude for the above quotes. While the line Beware the Fury of a Patient Man. reminds me of a life motto of mine (Slowly, but steadily!), it was the Aeneid translation that caught my eye. The Aeneid has become a favourite of mine. Since I like it so much due to the beauty of the words and the images thus created by them I have to thank you from the bottom from my heart for the bold passage. So: Thank you very much. May You live long and in peace! --P3Y229 (talk) 01:17, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I am always pleased to provide inspiring influences of the soul of All, in whatever ways I can. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 01:23, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Eve

We are told, that Adam and Eve had two children: Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, (Saramago has a wonderful book on this,) but then he marries and has children of his own. The question is, whom did he marry? (His mother, Eve?) Actually, there was another child, Seth, and Genesis 5:4 tells us that Adam had "other sons and daughters", but, in any case, incest appears to have been inevitable. One is reminded of Noah's children, who also pretty much had to practice incest. (They didn't really think these stories through, it seems to me.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:58, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Yajna

Thanks. I will be adding more on this theme. Is your article Eve specific to quotes from scriptural writings only or can I add sayings by others on the subject?--Nvvchar (talk) 10:31, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The article is not "mine", but the project's — and of course you can add anything related to the subject — I just started the article as one of many that have long been neglected, and I hope to develop in the months ahead. You have made major contributions in the short time you have worked here, and they are very informative. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 10:35, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Burton

Atheist, I could understand, but "Anglican"? Why? ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:28, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

I believe he reportedly declared himself "nominally" an Anglican in the same statement in which he indicated some form of "atheism." Again with an awareness and appreciation so complex as that of Burton, he could actually be signifying quite a range of things by such statements. I believe he always adhered to a Sufi transcendence of labels and words and notions as well, and probably saw no innate contradiction in respecting many of the rites and ceremonies and beliefs of diverse traditions to a great degree, knowing they "all are right" and "all are wrong" — to varying degrees about various things. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 21:35, 4 April 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

By that logic, I suppose Richard Dawkins is an Anglican too, not an atheist. Burton's words are the classic, "I am an atheist, but...", which is common even today, though clearly what is relevant in his sentence is the first part, not the apology that comes after the comma. ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:53, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

As I have stated, I take the whole account with a grain of salt — the account is testimony of a testimony, and there might be all manner of unstated or unperceived elements that were involved in the exchange, as there usually are in accounts of any events — especially those dealing with the innately complex concepts of various formal or informal theologies and philosophies. I dare say most people have not a clue about much of what I am talking about most of the time, but that isn't all that rare a human condition for anyone, despite the assumptions of many that they understand things "perfectly well" and are even well informed enough to make absolute judgements on matters which they actually know very little about, or have been extremely misinformed about.

As an absurdist, and one who has been one somewhat intuitively since the earliest years of my life, I know that there are always limits on what can be said and communicated — and those things which do often get indicated between people cannot always provide opportunities for the most clear or proper assessments. There are a number of ways I know I could demonstrate this, over weeks or months or years of exposition, where adhering rigorously to truth, or at least so much as ever can be provided by words, I could proceed to give numerous diverse impressions about actual events by simply adding a bit more information over time, so that others impressions of the facts would change radically — and yet never get around to revealing the most significant facts of certain matters, until I chose to do so, because I thought it an appropriate and helpful time to do so. I much prefer to be helpful to the welfare and vitality of others, whenever possible, rather than detrimental to it, but I know that often the most helpful of options can be to remain silent about many options or actualities. I am still juggling ideas of how to present many diverse ideas here, and what ideas I should refrain from presenting, and might never get around to presenting here in any clear manner, even though they might be helpful to at least a few. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:17, 4 April 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Hello & Thanks

I was rechecking some work I had done, and saw that you had edited one of the pages I had worked on earlier. I've been away for a number of months due to my health & other problems, including a death in my family. Just want to say, it's nice to see that you are still contributing here. Thank you for the assistance you gave me in the past ... CononOfSamos (talk)

I happen to have awoken, and began checking things here a few minutes ago, and though I am sorrowed that such afflictions have occurred with you, am glad to see that you are editing here, and hope that what you encounter in the future can be more encouraging, and helpful towards happiness. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 11:11, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Very courious

Who is avoiding the discussion? Who is opening a pubblic discussion on Wikipedia in english or who is deleting the prod on Wikimedia? I believe it is the second one... I find your tone offensive and I am open to discuss about the quotes referred to Augusto de Luca and not about any success of deleting any page. You sound quite irritated, and, frankly speaking I do not understand the reason why. You used only personal attacks against me without spending a single word explaining the reason why these quotes must stay on Wikimedia. If you will use the appropriate tones and the appropriate arguments, I will be very open to discuss about it. If not there is not need you write me again, not here not in any other project. I already had enough of your insults. --Hypergio (talk) 17:02, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

I realize that you are not using your native language, and despite some lack of clarity in your expressions, will accept the gist of your comments as being for various reasons critical of my actions and statements, and what you can perceive of my attitudes. My apologies to you, also, at this point, if some things I have said or will say are not clear to you, for I concede that I tend to be "verbose" at times, and often try to indicate too many complex thoughts and ideas in words which cannot hold up to the demands of many of them well. I will state this much, quite bluntly, I am indeed sometimes quite irritated with the fact that many people feel increasingly comfortable using comments like "I find your tone offensive" and "You used only personal attacks against me" as they go about implicitly attacking the integrity of others, and not expecting to be rebuked for it as exhibiting perhaps more than a little hypocrisy. I accept and assert that you should be as free as you wish in criticizing me, my actions and apparent attitudes in whatever ways you wish, for whatever reasons you can find or imagine, however, I also assert that it should be my right and everyone's right to to criticize your actions and apparent attitudes, as freely as possible as well — and I find it appalling that many people have grown so timid and cowardly that they are not comfortable with such forms of freedom of expression, and are often subtly or openly hostile to it, often because they have become confident that there are enough people similarly intimidated by honesty and information as to be willing to join them in suppressing it in various ways.

Getting on to the issues of the images and the articles you seem intent on removing throughout the Wikimedia projects, in what I believe are a rather excessive and detrimental ways. The successful effort to eradicate the article at the English Wikipedia involved only a very few other people who took note of it at all, and who seem to have taken your rather strongly hostile assessment of it as if it were entirely valid. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Augusto De Luca you even conceded he perhaps was a prominent photographer, worth having an article on:

"The photographer (maybe) can have its own importance but this article was created together with other articles on other Wikis and other projects such as Wikiquote as part of a global promotional campaign on Wikipedia. The article was existing on 557 different projects and, on some of them, it is under deletion or it is already deleted."

You made this remark, which I believe was somewhat misleading as the article had existed on the Wikipedia for several years, and yet seem to have succeeded by having two more people take note of the matter enough to vote to delete it.

The photographer clearly has been a notable and prominent photographer in Italy for some decades now, and though I myself might not have great admiration for many forms of attracting public attention, I have far less for forms of seeking to absolutely eliminate or exclude avenues of public attention to many people and the issues or arts and works and free play at life which they are involved in.

I now see that you have today also succeeded in having the article in the Italian Wikipedia deleted, despite their being some voices there who spoke up for what I consider to have been a far more moderate and proper stance of simply toning down what were considered to be the promotional aspects of the piece.

In what time I had earlier today, I scanned through most of the many images you tagged for deletion at the commons, and despite my irritation at your apparent zeal for making De Luca into an Unperson to the extent you can, I am not strongly inclined to go about defending every image you have thus far tagged. I will concede that most of those are probably of relatively little usefulness for the Wikimedia projects, as I was relieved to find you have not, at least as yet, had the audacity to tag for deletion some of the finer photographs of this artist available there, and seem to have thus far tagged mostly those which contained images of this person you seem to have become strongly resentful towards. Yet even some of these are clearly of good quality and worth, and useful in any articles about the photographer (which you seem intent on eradicating), or perhaps on photography or perhaps some aspects of Italian culture. As I stated, I can understand and accept some of your hostility to some aspects of the articles, and the apparent promotional aspects of some actions by someone, but I genuinely do consider it FAR more than merely distasteful, and often dangerous, when people become enthused with their abilities to eliminate and destroy many traces of the creative work and contributions of others, with relatively little fear of sanctions against them — or even HONEST CRITICISM of their ACTION and apparent WILL. I yet am willing to forgive even these, as they often know not much of what they actually do, but that does not make me less prone to actively oppose many of their efforts. Later, I probably will tag at least a few more images with such comments as I posted at my talk page at the Commons, but I must be leaving now. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:58, 12 April 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Your point is clear and fair. My concerns are the following: if I believe that something has not the right to exist on Wikipedia italian or on any other project for the best of that project I will try to find the discussion and not to do anything sneaky; I do not think it is my fault if nobody was interested in the deletion of the page on Wikipedia in English. It is under deletion in Dutch and in Spanish as well but I did not do anything. On more of 230 pictures I proposed the deletion of 51 only on Commons. If I really had something personal against de Luca, wouldn't you think that I would put a bigger effort. I just think that Wikipedia and all related projects received a massive promotional attack and my only goal it was to make a boundary on what should be pubblished and what shouldn't be. Concerning the insults, please, read what you wrote: WTF? — this is part of a goddamned ridiculous campaign of petty-minded idiots, IMO. — Bring it to Vfd if you wish — as the Deletion at WP seems to have occur there with only 2 hostile votes and very little attention in the last week and tell me how do you find this sentence. Cheers --Hypergio (talk) 08:56, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I find it an honest expression of irritation and contempt towards what I do consider to have been needless and detrimental actions, and it appears others at the Wikimedia Commons agree with some aspects of such assessments. I genuinely believe if people were less timid about being honest, and less prone to find ways to slyly or naively punish or suppress various forms of honesty, because there are many of these which do not necessarily flatter them or many of their expectations or pretensions, there are many situations of needless confusion and error which could easily be avoided. Though I had stated I wasn't going to challenge all the nominations of images for deletion which you began, I am yet relieved that these have now been closed, because of more detached and broader perspectives exhibited by responsible individuals and admins at the commons. I will probably review a few more things soon, but I have been very busy today, and I have many other tasks to take care of, but I probably will be back to editing here within a few hours. Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 01:38, 14 April 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Busy again…

In the last few days I have been a bit busier with other things than I anticipated, and I am likely to remain far more busy with "offline activities" for at least a few more weeks. I will still be checking in here on a nearly daily basis — but I probably won't have quite as much time to do things here as I have recently had, and might often be here for only a few minutes at a time. This is just a note in regard to that, as I am uncertain of how much time I will have to do things here today, and might be leaving soon. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 11:42, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Easter

Kalki, here is wishing you happy Easter. I am watching Pope delivering his address on Easter. Today, I thought I would create an article on Easter Sunday but realized late that BDD had already done it titled as Easter. So I added all the quotes I gathered with references to the article. May like to see.--Nvvchar (talk) 15:58, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all the additions, and a Happy Easter to you as well. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 16:40, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

¡¡¡ HAPPY EASTER !!!

From Harvey and me…

I had actually meant to upload these Easter Egg Images to the commons earlier in the day, but was too busy with too many other things. They are of the egg-shaped blue stone I call Harvey, my "pocket Pooka", and my US spoon Caduceus. There is mild and pleasing humor related to these, and I might make use of them on a few pages in the months ahead.

Events here and elsewhere have prompted me to thoughts and decisions, a few of which I might indicate or declare here later in the month. I have many other things to begin to attend to right now, including some activities and preparations for "offline" activities and other online activities which I will probably begin having at other prominent or obscure sites, today and in coming weeks and months. I have indicated in the past that I expect this to be a very busy year for me — and my expectations are being fulfilled in many ways, and exceeded in many ways. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:29, 20 April 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

John Howe (artist)

I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article John Howe (artist), suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but it may not satisfy Wikiquote's criteria for inclusion, for the reasons given in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikiquote is not" and Wikiquote's deletion policy).

You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Votes for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. ~ UDScott (talk) 16:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I will probably attempt some sourcing on the page within a few days. Thanks for the notice. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:37, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Pleased to meet you

We've been dumped in the same basket, so we might as well get to know each other. I just reviewed your last RfA. I'm reminded of JWSchmidt on en.wikiversity. He ran straight into the wikiwall, and never recovered from the shock and horror of it. I have off-wiki communication with him, and was about to suggest he put up an unblock template, because it might be acted on, but have concluded that the basic wiki problem has not been resolved, that the wikis are not safe places to work. They can seem safe for years, and then, well, my favorite expression to come out of my study of the Augusto De Luca situation is, "Nobody expects the Spamish Inquisition." Spam is just an example of how wiki opinion ("consensus") is formed. The real problem is lack of true consensus process, that understands the need for deliberation and niceties like evidence.

In the RfA, one of the criticisms of you was that you would not follow policy. It's truly hilarious, Kalki, most administrators don't actually follow policy, and often in discussions if policy is brought up, it is called "wikilawyering." There is generally little understanding that established policy represents long-term consensus, as distinct from the short-term consensus of each individual decision. So there is no protection against arbitrary decision, the kind of protection established by rule-of-law societies (which are generally misunderstood, w:WP:IAR is actually the common-law principle of public policy, it is not a denial of rules or their value.)

On Wikipedia, it is understood that most administrators would not be able to reach the high levels of consensus considered necessary for approval, because, at least allegedly, administrators must make enemies. That's not actually true, but, it is obvious: anyone that actually stands for the community itself rather than for the opinions of dominant factions, those who preferentially show up in discussions that concern them, will become unpopular. I found, on Wikipedia, that when I filed an RfC on an adminstrator who was using tools while involved, and it was an open and shut case, the evidence was crystal clear, and it was totally civil, matter of fact, this is what happened, 2/3 of those commenting were sreaming "Ban Abd," thus violating the guideline that RfCs were about the user in question, not others. That was a faction, and it frequently showed up to defend its members, and in order to move outside that took drastic action. That action worked, one of the admins was desysopped, it was all made too obvious, but ... I was marked, then, for elimination. And if there are two dozen editors who want you eliminated, there are only very rarely more than a handful who will pay sufficient attention to deal with the disruption created.

Recently, I've developed a kind of despair that the "wiki problem" can be solved. Wikiversity, because it naturally does not need to be contentious, it had developed traditions of deleting very little, and increasingly was learning how to organize educational materials, seemed like a safe place, and the Augusto De Luca incident showed me that it was not safe, at all. Users who had not edited for a long time, and users who had never edited, poured in to support the deletion of that page, which was clearly against policy. Evidence did not matter. The claim was made of "spambot," and that resulted, clearly, in some Delete votes. "Spambot" sounds really bad, right? It was not a bot, I consider the evidence conclusive, but it took me over three weeks of study to reach that conclusion, and show it.

And this is typical for wikis: we don't need no stinkin' evidence. Indeed, "verdict first, trial later." (People vote in deletion discussions before the evidence is available. That's a process that works when issues are simple. It obviously does not when issues are complex.)

Many people see social dysfunction and conclude that the problem is "bad people." If we can get rid of or exclude the bad people, then everything will be fine, right?

No, not right. The problems are structural, something is missing from the structure, the presence of which would make a difference. The Wikipedia principle of AGF was right on, and it is readily lost when the stories of "trolls" and "POV-pushers" and "spammers" take over.

"Trolling," i.e, actions that anger others, assumed to be deliberate, intended to do this, is a social problem. While some people do deliberately troll, others (many) have various social disabilities that prevent them from anticipating the likely social effect of their actions, and others are pursuing what they see as necessary; their goal is improvement, and they may feel that the anger is unavoidable. A sane social structure will regulate behavior, constructively. Tools like mentoring became deprecated because, allegedly, they didn't work. They didn't work because they were often involuntarily imposed, so a disruptive user had a "mentor" who was incompatible, who would not understand the goals of the disruptive user, and how to guide the user toward being effective at whatever was socially functional of those goals. And, of course, those in the community that wanted the user gone didn't want the mentoring to work, because the user would become effective!

"POV-pushing," is a difficult problem, most people don't even know how to recognize the difference between fact and their own opinions, and commonly assume that their opinions are facts. Even scientists, who should know better, often fall into this. What was missed, too often, was that people with a point of view, important to them, are excellent POV detectors for differing points of view. A sane structure, seeking consensus and neutrality, would want to fully take advantage of this. Instead, if people were seen as "POV-pushers," they were blocked and banned, thus guaranteeing a structural bias against unpopular views.

And "spam" is a word that brings up all we have learned to hate about the last 20 years on-line. Spam wastes our time, I get hundreds of spams every day. I remember the early days (I was a moderator on the W.E.L.L. in the 1980s) when it was said about "unsolicited commercial email," what's the problem? Just delete it! Service providers were very slow to recognize the problem. Spam is a huge problem for any wiki, I've had to shut wikis down because I couldn't afford the time to maintain them, against the constant flow of linkspam. Blatant, in-your-face, spam.

Spam is promotional, and "promotion" is a double-bad. That is "promotion" is like "point of view," in one sense, and it also brings up images of greedy sellers of shady products and other scams, and a whole mistrust of business, common among the Wiki-dwellers. However, we see small-scale promotion all the time, and think nothing of it. The Augusto De Luca images were readily seen as "promotional," but promoting only one thing that I can see: his work, itself, available for usage in the projects, released under free licenses. A user page is absolutely the least disruptive way that he could make those images, and himself, available. (We don't know what he would have actually done with the accounts, but COI was intrinsically disclosed. This is not what true "promoters" would do. File uploads on Commons are much more effective as promotion, and much more potentially disruptive. That is, if images are just junk, it will take time to clean out the junk, wasting time usable for better purposes.

One look at CentralAuth for Augusto De Luca was enough for most users to immediately think "spambot," and a number of facts conspired to create this impression, including CentralAuth behavior, which twice caused six wikis to be attached at the same time. (From my testing -- I actually do research -- I found that these bursts of account attachment happened without even looking at the wiki in question, for certain wikis.) Because usually accounts are registered on first log-in, and the user (with only one exception) only made one edit per wiki, and because the edit was simple and repetitive (simply changing the image periodically), users assumed that those six edits represented six edits per minute. In fact, those wikis were not actually edited until the next day, this was all blatant error.

Then a global sysop claimed that the user maintained "two edits a minute AVERAGE" for 13 hours. That argument had wings, it flew, but it was, of course, dead wrong, as anyone could see who actually looked at what it implied. We know, from what happened in this case, that most users do not actually pay attention to arguments and evidence, they just comment as they quickly decide. I pointed out the obvious problem, immediately, I didn't need to study the evidence: two edits per minute average for 13 hours was something like 1500 edits, when there were only 555.

Turns out there was almost certainly a language problem. He wasn't lying, he was simply reporting how the data looked to him, very casually interpreted. If one looks at the timing data, as I did in great detail, during the bursts of editing (which did not last for 13 hours, they lasted for at most about 45 minutes, one of the evidences that this was a human being, along with many short breaks that a bot would not take), one would see many minutes with two account attachments (not edits, strictly, but mostly caused by login as part of a page creation sequence), and some with 1. I haven't counted them, but there may indeed be more minutes with "two" rather than "one." He was using "average" to mean "sort of," or something vague. And he kept assuming I was refusing to look at the evidence, since it was obvious to him!

The global sysop was not using mathematical language, even though he emphasized the word with caps. The actual rate was, during bursts, about 1.5 attachments per minute. A user could easily do this manually, the hard part is actually logging in. A user interested in efficiency would not do it this way at all, and a true business user would be very interested in efficiency. They would first attach the accounts by logging in everywhere they were going to create a page. They could then manually create the pages at easily six pages per minute, sustained. 90 minutes to do the whole job. A bot could do it substantially faster. But for a job this simple, I would not bother writing a bot.

The antispammers are not open to learning. What I've learned, studying this, is that the wikis are quite vulnerable to massive disruption, and they haven't figured it out, and I'm not going to explain what the spammers would do. At least not yet! The antispam contingent, some of them have been doing this for the better part of a decade, interpret criticism, such as mine, as hostile, though I explicitly, again and again, support almost everything they do. It's wiki thinking, black and white, friend or enemy, and that is highly dysfunctional, so the question I've been facing for some years is why I bother. Most of the time I don't. Most of the early wiki editors have left, tired of rolling the boulder back up the hill. It doesn't have to be that way, but changing it is something that may be impossible for any individual. Maybe even Jimbo could not change it. --Abd (talk) 18:50, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

You seem to have reflected responsibly on the distress and problems which could occur amidst many people habituated into many forms of ignorance, confusion, hypocrisy and dishonesty, were sufficient facts stated with sufficient vigor, which would reveal many of the deficiencies and flaws of their perceptions, reasoning and aims. I am well aware of such problems at MANY ranges and levels of human activities, and applaud your discretion. I strongly believe I actually have always adhered to official policies far more rigorously and fairly than any of my accusers and detractors, and most of my adversaries, in many ways which could be specified, were I presently inclined to do so. They, of course would be nearly united as a group in disputing such claims, but I believe I actually have the preponderance of facts on my side, and am willing and able to present them, eventually, here and elsewhere, whenever I feel it is appropriate. I am in no great hurry to do so, and there are many things of far greater importance on my agenda at present.

In regard to many disputes, what I actually have not done is followed a policy common among those steeped in groupthink mentalities and arrangements to do what is apparently most popular among some powerful factions at any given moment or period of time, without regard for what is actually and eternally just and right (such circumstances are far too common in human affairs throughout history). I believe my stances will eventually be recognized as having been worthy and just, despite much trouble they may have caused me and others at times, especially those most irritated by such baffling stances of integrity as are founded on principles beyond the relatively narrow scope of their concerns or interests. I really do not have time to expound on things more at present, because there are many things of greater urgency to me and others, which must be attended to, and I have had only a few minutes to do things here the past couple of days. I will probably have a bit more time in the next couple, but have many other priorities other than immediately attempting to confront what I can perceive of the lamentable and sometimes despicable deficiencies and flaws of many peoples stances on various issues. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Wry reflections

I have had much less time to work here in recent days, than I had in previous months, and that will likely remain the case for at least some weeks now. I was just checking in, and reverted some minor vandalism at The Catcher in the Rye, and this prompted a bit of reflection on many things, as many things often do. In passing, I simply wish to note that Wisdom involves awareness and appreciation of many things, from the subtle and obscure to the socially obvious. Knowing how to present various aspects of many forms of wisdom is never an entirely safe or easy task. At this point I will simply interject some wry humor from The Catcher in the Rye, before going on with other tasks:

It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

~ J. D. Salinger ~ in ~ The Catcher in the Rye ~

So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 05:27, 7 May 2014 (UTC)+ tweaks

Questions About Images

Kalki - I have recently had occasion to add an image to a new or existing Wikiquote page. Until this point, I have simply borrowed an image from an existing Wikipedia page by copying the embedded text. However, I now find myself in a situation where I cannot find an appropriate existing image to copy (specifically, I am looking for a small photo of Charles Krauthammer, the conservative political commentator). I confess my almost total ignorance of how to find such images, where they are stored, how to search for one, how new images are added, what parameters should be used to specify size etc. Since I cannot think of anyone else here on Wikiquote who has done anywhere near the volume of work with images that you have, I hoped that you might be willing to point me in the direction of some basic info on this topic. Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, CononOfSamos (talk) 22:45, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I just returned to my computer in the last few minutes, and saw your query. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any images of Charles Krauthammer yet available at the Wikimedia commons, and until someone provides or creates an appropriate public domain or Creative Commons licensed image for use there, we must do without one. I did a brief Google search, but most of the images available online seem to be from copyrighted televised sources, and the prospect of finding an image that could be uploaded to the commons might currently be slim. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:14, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Time

Tempus fugit. ("Time flies.")

Hi Kalki, what do you think of this picture as an illustration for the "Tempus fugit" quotation? (Can you think of a better one?) ~ DanielTom (talk) 09:54, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I believe it acceptable, and I can presently think of no better ones available. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 10:00, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay, thx ~ DanielTom (talk) 10:02, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Adi Shankara

Hi Kalki, thanks for adding back some of the quotes. I further updated the source info, which I explained here. -- Mdd (talk) 12:34, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Amy Pond

Amy Pond has been listed at Votes for deletion. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Amy Pond. Thank you. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:27, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Maya Angelou

It would be nice to have a quote by her on the main page today. Maybe this one:

People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.

(since it hasn't been used yet.) What do you think? ~ DanielTom (talk) 15:27, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I was slightly surprised that one hasn't been used as a QOTD yet, but swiftly scanning things, I realized that I could slightly alter a previous layout, and perhaps post it above the current QOTD layout on the Main page, which was still accessible to me, and decided to go ahead and do so as an experimental commemoration. Such actions might be appropriate in future in relation to the deaths of highly notable people. I previously altered my preferences for some days in favor of quotes of these — but such as these are exceptional cases where I would favor more than one QOTD, which is something which has been suggested in the past. I might do a very few more things here, but have much on my agenda, and have to be leaving soon. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 16:09, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

re:

[3] DanielTom (talk) 18:05, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

NOW … it & all goes on...

Love rules without rules.

I am just back from a relatively brief excursion, and am bustling with ideas on things to do here and elsewhere online in coming weeks & months — but now expect to be VERY busy with OFFLINE activities for at least a few days, and probably a week or more — so I also expect that this might be the last day of the present week in which I will likely be able to spend more than a very brief time online in one sitting. As I expect little time to simply browse and "play" freely, I will probably actually do some more focused "work" here and attempt to finish up on at least a few things I have long neglected in coming days, and expect to be online here and at a few other sites, off and on, for at least a few hours yet. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 02:09, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I must be leaving soon, but thought I would note that the "Knights who say Ni " have been on my mind a few times lately, in rather humorous ways, of course, but I am just noting this because suddenly on my last edit, I realized I might add Now and Idealism to my signature links — and might arrange it as ni — don't have time to bother with it all right now, as there are other things to take care of, but I just thought it so FITTING that I thought I would note it now, and then take care of a few things before taking off. ni! … So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:23, 6 June 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

100,000! edits down... on this account …

I am only briefly back, but a few minutes ago noticed that after dawdling around here today much more than I had intended to, I have at last broken 100,000 edits on my primary account here — I believe I am the first to hit the 10 myriad figure here, (though I had done over a myriad edits under other names before impelled to desist by those who cannot understand why anyone would be so ignorant and impolite as to want to do anything at all which they cannot understand). This impels me to celebrate the fact, but it will have to wait, as I have a few other things I must do, and I remain VERY busy with rather urgent matters that MUST be finished within the next couple days. I will update the page counts which I keep on some of my user pages, and already have in mind a few ideas of a humorous celebration page I might begin within the next day or so, including a few quirky graphics I might post in this section or elsewhere, or on such a page — I don't have time to work on them right now.

I am however prompted to quote a line from the work of Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite modern fantasists — from his Stardust novel: Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:44, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Though I would on the one hand commend your unquestionable sticktoitiveness I would on the other observe how the peculiar human preoccupation with surpassing numerals ending in large strings of zeroes is simply an artifact of our predilection for employing a base-ten-number system -- itself simply a reflection of the number of fingers (counting thumbs) evolutionarily availed to us. Blessings!! DeistCosmos (talk) 21:38, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Very impressive, congrats! ~ DanielTom (talk) 07:08, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

June 2014

Your recent edits to The Incredibles & Mary Poppins (film) were not constructive and have been reverted.

1. No over-emphasis on quotes.

2. No excessive and unnecessary wikilinks. Only words that are highly relevant to the article can be wikilinked. WikiLubber (talk) 20:17, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, nothing was wrong with these edits and your changes to them have instead been reverted. ~ UDScott (talk) 21:42, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, to settle this dispute, I edited the articles in a way that we both win. WikiLubber (talk) 23:55, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

The use of wiki links is a long-standing practice on the site that is used to promote the use of other pages and to spread ideas. Your decision that such is not supported and is excessive is not constructive. Please refrain from such edits in the future. [Apologies to Kalki for continuing this discussion on your Talk page, but usually this user deletes such discussions from his or her talk page.]. ~ UDScott (talk) 00:08, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the above reversions, and your rather mild responses. There are many aspects of some people's ranges of very false assumptions and assertions which I am growing far more inclined to confront harshly in coming months, but I am currently very busy with many offline activities, and do not wish to take up more of my time contending with some of the more clearly false and foul of them than I have to. There are numerous things I could yet say, about this and other incidents, but shall refrain from saying, at least for now — I prefer to not dwell too much on past errors, beyond the need of doing so, so as to help prevent future ones. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 13:11, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

William Golding

Hi Kalki, just to inform you, I commented on the recent edits at the William Golding at Talk:William Golding#Limits on quotations check - section Lord of the Flies. -- Mdd (talk) 10:48, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia question: watchlist

Hello there, I'll have to take the time to read all of the quotes on your page, some of them are really good. But what I wanted to ask was, if you put a page on your 'watchlist', will Wikipedia inform you if it gets edited? I thought that was the point, but I'm not sure if it works that way. Since you seem to know alot, I thought I'd ask you. Thanks. Knightofcups89 (talk) 23:22, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

If you put a page on your "watch list" it will show up in bold in the list of recent changes, and that is about it, but that usually is sufficient to make any recent changes to it show up well in the list. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:36, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Note to a friend...

Am making a brief note from my iPhone, as I don't expect to be at a desktop computer for a few hours yet. A short while ago I mentioned the Wikiquote:Quote of the day/June 2014 and Wikiquote:Quote of the day/June 21, 2014 pages to someone, but also meant to specifically mention the Wikiquote:Quote of the day/June 8, 2014 page also, as one with significantly humorous and meaningful links. Just thought I would note this before getting caught up in various tasks. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:55, 29 June 2014 (UTC) + tweak

Article protection

Hi Kalki, due to excessive vandalism this user talk page has been protected for a week. -- Mdd (talk) 21:36, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. It looks like this particular twerp is a long-term troll-vandal with a somewhat persistently aggressive demeanor who insists on SHOUTING ALWAYS about how ignorant and stupid others are. So it goes... ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 03:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Citation problems on quote of Brian Aldiss

Hello. In 2005 you found quote "When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell." It is no in "Billion / Trillion Year Spree", I checked e-books: no similar quote, no words "polite" or "politer" in 2 books, no "hell" in "Trillion ..." Can you remember where you found the quote? In multiverse.org 2 people talk about that and found source to "When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults." in bartleby.com (2000).--Philip J.1987qazwsx (talk) 07:26, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

The citation you provide seems a reliable one. I do not know offhand where I picked up that citation for the larger quote, as I do not possess that work myself, and the earliest occurrences I can currently locate of the statement are in Says Who?: A Guide To The Quotations Of The Century (1988) by Jonathon Green, p. 17 and The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1989), p. 45.

I will alter the citation to use that which you provide, and hope that eventually further confirmation can be provided. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:22, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I checked e-copies of this editions: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?204129 and http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?174171 .--Philip J.1987qazwsx (talk) 15:02, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks

Appreciate the greeting. Somebody went in and deleted the entire page I created, though, so I'm done with this project. Thanks anyway. —This unsigned comment is by TotesNeato (talk • contribs) 16:24, 6 July 2014.

None of this user's contributions have been deleted. Xavier: Renegade Angel might be improved by some judicious trimming, but nothing has been done other than tagging its talk page with a {{checkcopyright}} notice. ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:38, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I had been puzzled by the comment at first, on reading it, and then studying edits realized it was probably an exaggeration, and forgot to comment on the matter, in the rush of events I had to attend to yesterday. I am probably going to be leaving soon today, so don’t have time to attend to much more here right now. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:44, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Looking for a quote of the day

I am looking for a quote which goes somewhere on the line of this: "Adversity at least makes us think. And there is not much thinking in this world." It has been a "quote of the day" but I could not find it when I searched for it. Could you help me? Thanks in advance. --Spannerjam (talk) 15:16, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm just briefly checking in, and have a few other things to do before leaving, but scanning backwards by month, through the Quotes of the day, I came upon this one of Wikiquote:Quote of the day/November 14, 2013:

Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

~ Jawaharlal Nehru ~

There were a few others which I considered as possibilities, but this is the closest I have found which seemed to match the contrasting of such general ideas. I might be around for about an hour more, if it isn't what you were looking for, but I ended my search with this as a likely match. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 16:07, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

moon quote

Hi Kalki. This comparison might be of slight interest to you. (Or maybe not.) You seemed to like Pope's quote, who was imitating Homer (adding, as usual, his own flourishes); Mickle in turn imitated Pope. The analysis is written by a 19 year-old. My opinion is that both "translations" surpass the originals. Hope you're doing well, DanielTom (talk) 20:49, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

I usually am doing well enough to be happy and content at being active, yet rarely so active as to get all done which I would like, in the limited times available amidst the days. I scanned over the comparison, and found it slightly interesting, despite the archaic typography, but have to be attending to a few other things now, and must be leaving soon. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 21:18, 11 July 2014 (UTC) + tweak

Good to hear. Re typography, the long s (ſ) was quite wearisome, and needless work (no wonder it disappeared). This reminds me of a question I've had for a long time (and still have), which is how books (or magazines, like the one linked above) were printed at the time, exactly. I know that it was manual work, even with the printing press, but did they have to set it up letter by letter, in its exact place, on each page, to then print as many copies as needed? I read several encyclopedia articles on this, but still don't understand how it worked! ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:16, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Letter by letter type was still widely used into the twentieth century, and there probably are still some small archaic presses around which use it, but they are pretty rare. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:30, 11 July 2014 (UTC) + tweak

[4] ~ DanielTom (talk) 14:40, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

An amusing and informative little video — it might even be worth quoting a bit on the Gutenberg page. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 14:44, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Yakoub Islam

I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article you created on Yakoub Islam. If you disagree, you know the process. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:53, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Intuition

May like to see my additions for any changes and additions.--Nvvchar (talk) 14:26, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I have just returned to my computer within the last few minutes, after being involved with other matters of some importance for a while, including getting a bit of necessary rest, and your additions to that page, and contributions to many others are very welcome, and I thank you for them. I am presently too busy to do much here, right now, and am going to try to take care of a few relatively minor matters that have to be done soon, before leaving again. Just prior to reading your note here, I had just arisen from a rest where I had been contemplating MANY diverse matters, and my own bursts of intuition on MANY things, and how to properly deal with them — and I expect to have a VERY busy week and month ahead of me now, as I begin to attend to as MANY of these as I can, in my own peculiar ways. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 14:41, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I had been thinking of probably using one particularly large quote of Karl Popper for the Wikiquote:Quote of the day/July 28, 2014 for at least a few weeks now, and had a few ideas I might have liked to develop into layouts for it, but hadn't actually done any work on them. Your use of the Tiffany window at Yale for the Inspiration page reminded me of that excellent image, and provided me an idea for a rather quickly composed layout for the quote. Thanks for the inspiration, and I now have to be leaving again. Blessings! ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:42, 26 July 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think the "Disputed" section in Martin Luther King, Jr. would be better labeled "Attributed" (the second quote is also an attribution), but I'd like to know if you oppose this before changing it myself. ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:26, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Though I am not inclined to dispute the general accuracy of the first quote, there have long been others who have, and thus I believe it is best to keep it in the disputed section, where it actually has more relative prominence on such a large page. Though the other seems not to engender such dispute, its late attestation does make it dubious. Personally, I do not like breaking out "attributions" distinctly as MOST quotes are to varying degrees of reliability "attributions" and would probably prefer put both into the main article with such notes as they have, BUT I know that conditions being what they ARE, with the sensibilities of others, keeping both in the "Disputed" section is probably the best option, as of now. Your comments have prompted my thoughts on a number of issues which I might further address in coming days or weeks, but I have not much time today. It is my father's birthday today, and I must be leaving soon, and do not expect to be spending much time here until later. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 16:54, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

I have completely revised this article. A quote by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan on Flag of India posted by me for the front page display of 15 August on the occasion of Independence day of India may please be considered. --Nvvchar (talk) 08:46, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Your suggestion seems a good one, and certainly will be considered; I am presently leaning towards supporting it, but will probably wait a few days before making definite decisions. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:41, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for Today's QUOTD.--Nvvchar (talk) 01:34, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion, and I am sorry I did not post the QOTD sooner, but I still managed to form a layout not too long after midnight in India. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 13:12, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

• I very much appreciate your layout. It is wonderful.--Nvvchar (talk) 13:44, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

bolding

I'm going to write a book someday and the title will be I'm an Ass, You're an Ass. That's the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you're an ass. It's wonderful. When people tell me, "You're wrong" I say, "What can you expect of an ass?" ~ Anthony de Mello

is subjective. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:03, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, of course it is; I have never sought to deny that at all. But within the necessary ranges of subjectivity and especially pronounced subjective notions about objectivity, I believe it is fairest to emphasize a major economic factor which the author himself is emphasizing, rather than some expressed wish for somewhat sadistic vengeance on someone he perceives to be in error upon the matter. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:08, 5 August 2014 (UTC) + tweak

As I explained in the edit summary, the latter part is what makes the quote interesting. That markets need to be regulated is a superfluous point, much (and widely) repeated, and obviously not original to Paul Samuelson. His rivalry with Milton, and him having the last word by virtue of outliving him, is what makes the quote memorable, and is also the reason why I added it to the article in the first place. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:22, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

In your latest reversion you implied I was being an ass for reverting your change in emphasis to a quote you had earlier added. Accepting what you state about your motives as truth, I assert you are definitely being more foully asinine than I on this matter. None of us have any absolute "possession" of our additions here — and I disagreed with the change in emphasis as one I found de-emphasizing the MAJOR point the author was making, about economic policies, even IF not original to him, and somewhat emphasizing a rather petty personal mean-spiritedness, on his part, which can occur in even many of the most generally benevolent of people, to their own disgrace, and the disgrace of others who think such things should be emulated or emphasized. I agree that the quote definitely IS notable, in its entirety, but I do disagree on what is more generally beneficial to Humanity to emphasize — the VALID economic and political observations OR the pettiness which is added onto that observation, which I believe is not conducive to human progress, and the vitally necessary efforts to transcend the BLAME and SHAME games which have been going on for EONS, about MANY things, and which I do NOT expect to END, but which I do expect CAN be EXPOSED and diminished, gradually or rapidly by those of sufficient intelligence and integrity. I hope and actually believe that this will occur with increasing urgency in the years ahead. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:33, 5 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Yeah. I told you why the quote is notable. That you disapprove of it morally is of no concern to Wikiquote. (Neither is your assertion that Samuelson's observation on the economy is "VALID", btw. That is your judgment; others will—and do—disagree.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:46, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

There is ALWAYS morality in INDICATING truth, as best one can, and I believe the author did this. I disagree with some aspects of the will exhibited in the observations, but certainly do NOT disapprove of it as "immoral." "VALIDITY" is ALWAYS a PROVISIONAL matter, as are MANY forms of "truth", and as with ALL things there are MANY subjective impressions about WHAT provisions should be most noted, among those involved in various levels of logical or illogical EXPOSITION of either. You provided me an assertion about WHAT you say you found most notable about the quote, and why YOU believe the quote to be notable to others. I find it MOST notable for the economic opinions which are VALID, and the emotional assertions ALSO notable but FAR less so, in many ways, and far less important to emphasize or even glorify. Most economic theories have MANY deficiencies and MANY have MANY flaws — Reality is always BEYOND all the provisions of ANY THEORY — capitalist or socialist, or theistic or atheistic for that matter. Among all ranges of possible interaction on ANY matters I find Humility, Courage, Honesty and Compassion to be VITAL VIRTUES — and it is those which I most regularly reflect upon, in assessing the values of ANY observations I encounter. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:00, 5 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

[5] [6] [7] ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:21, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The second link, showing the first revision you made was plainly one I can agree with, as it is aligned with such principles as I have indicated, and was the state I was inclined to restore. The last link you provide to a pathetically ranting paranoid fear and hate monger has relevance to the type of idiocy which I believe MUST diminish, if Humanity is to even survive, let alone progress and prosper, but I have no time to listen to or analyze specifics of his rants or moments of lucid observation now. Even the most obvious of the fearful and hateful bigots of the world, or the more sophisticated and discrete bigoted hate mongers who are less obviously pronounced in their promotion of fear and hate CAN conceivably be redeemed from paths of ignorance and confusion, but I have no delusion that such paths are always likely or practical, easy or entirely safe, in relation to more general concerns. I am just making this note in brief, because I must be leaving now. I will check on matters further after I have returned. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:40, 5 August 2014 (UTC) + tweak

I had only listened to the first few seconds of the rant at the 3rd link, but was in too much of a hurry to listen and realize that that was about all there was to the link. I have not much time now, because I must be leaving again. So it goes... ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:21, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

That you agree with the second link revision is only natural: after all, it was you who made the edit. ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:50, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, natural enough — when I had glanced quickly through the 3 links with no hint as to why they were in any way relevant, I was focusing on WHAT was done, rather than WHO was doing it, as is often the case with me, much to the shock of people who expect favoritism from someone who has long seen through many forms of hypocrisy. I certainly do NOT claim to fully know all that matters most to others, in ANY event, but I know enough to always be inclined to both sorrow and laugh when people behave as if they themselves actually do, or AS IF others automatically should. The last link to the rantings, was such as I am simply inclined to sorrow at, rather than laugh — I find such levels of paranoid fear and hate too intense to easily laugh at, as others do, especially when some regularly point to such extremes as to make little of their own bigotry and intolerance. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:59, 9 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Robin Williams

What do you think of changing tomorrow's (in 6 minutes) QOTD to one by Robin Williams (who's passed away) as a tribute to him? ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:54, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Offhand I have no quotes by him that I would place above the Erwin Schrödinger quote and layout, nor the Felix Adler one for the 13th. I considered placing some image of him in one of the current layouts, but in a quick search I haven't found any that would fit in well — perhaps something can be composed and added later today, as I did on the date of the announcement of Maya Angelou's death — but unfortunately, I have to be leaving now, and probably won't be back for at least a couple hours. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:04, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Your addition to his page of "Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma" is QUITE a good addition — and I will be thinking of ways to use that, while I am gone. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:07, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

 Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma. ~ Robin Williams ~

I've stuck around, and might put this in above the regular layout with Erwin Schrödinger's quote on Consciousness — a fitting mix of Awareness, Life and Love amidst the appearances of comings and goings of our experiences. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:15, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, looks good. ~ DanielTom (talk) 00:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Another option is the quote: Death is nature's way of saying, "Your table is ready." That's the best I could find, but the current one is also ok. Cheers ~ DanielTom (talk) 00:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I much prefer the first find. I found it so fitting that I delayed leaving even further, after already being a bit late at some excursions, and think the layout I threw together rather swiftly before I left was a fairly good one, and that it doesn't clash too much with the previously selected QOTD and its layout, and in some ways I believe that they go together well. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 06:27, 12 August 2014 (UTC) + tweak

(unrelated) [8] – see your protégés celebrating his death in the comments section. ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:16, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Your cheap and quite moronic insults are beginning to get a bit tiresome. By protégés "celebrating his death" I take it you mean to insult myself and other human beings far less tolerant of ignorance and confusion than myself, by shows of your own ignorance and bigotry in harping on other people's ignorance and bigotry. I believe that in this matter you are plainly a very confused person seeking to confuse others further. I am a long-time admirer of Robin Williams and his levels of frank honesty. I give sanction to no form of intolerant bigotry — even the kind which is often popular among MANY diverse factions of human beings, until the types of shallowness and depths of corruption involved in them are exposed for what they are. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

I agree with Kalki's characterization of tiresome insults above. There is no justification for this sort of trolling on Wikiquote. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but as Kalki said, I am very confused – what "tiresome insults" exactly are you referring to? ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:57, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

A very great and troubled genius of general good will and comedy, who I have long admired is dead — I do not expect all people to admire all aspects of his frank humor, nor to admire all aspects of mine, but I do sometimes feel anger at the sheer stupidity of those who celebrate tragedy and gloat at it — including those who gloat all they can at the very real tragedies of other people gloating at various tragedies. I saw through the PETTY shallowness of such STUPIDITY by the time I was 3 or 4 years old, and it still appalls me that there are so many people who reach adulthood with apparently so little ability to see through such things. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

What appalls me is seeing people cheering and celebrating someone's death, and subsequent eternal torment in hellfire, just because he doesn't buy into their religion—I did not, and do not, "gloat" about it. You are making an uneducated judgment/guess about what is going on inside my brain—something you have no way of knowing—and then attacking me for it. So, according to you, if I (say) sent you a link to pictures of beheaded Christian children, I would just be "gloating" at the perpetrators? No, my friend; the one who is confused here is you. I do apologize, however, for bursting the farcical bubble of delusion you're living in. You strike me as one of those people who only wake up when the knife is already at their throats. But I could be wrong—after all, (and unlike you,) I wouldn't want to be too judgmental about it. Cheers. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:47, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Your are a fairly intelligent person, and yet I am sometimes appalled by the sheer STUPIDITY with which you have sometimes misused that intelligence, and seem plainly QUITE ignorant and confused about a number of important things. To echo some your own words in regard to me, I will state that I have no time right now to spend on bursting the "farcical bubble of delusion you're living in" — if you for one instant believe you are entirely on the side of righteousness and good grace in this instance. Your casual comments, actions and insinuations about my character, and MY thought processes, ideas and intentions have been EXTREMELY contemptible in some regards, and I believe you probably have sense enough to at least BEGIN to perceive that, but you probably have little idea how profoundly and intensely I mean that, or the reasons why I am willing to state it. I will attend to some of the issues raised here further after I return. I must be leaving now. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:03, 14 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

second wind

I have returned. [undramatic pause, as I laugh a bit at myself and other aspects of the Eternities of which we are all a part, and invite you to do the same, to the extent you can] I have also rested since returning, sleeping for at least a couple hours, and probably a bit more — and I have now awoken and thought freshly upon a few things to say, and a few things NOT to say, at least not immediately.

I had typed a few things earlier, before I slept, which I have just briefly reviewed, and decided not to use at present, if at all. Some of the observations were VERY harsh, in ways that would probably surprise you and others, and which might long damage you or your prestige in ways I do not wish to do. I usually take MUCH consideration before doing such things to ANYONE.

I will note that this section began with your very helpful and informative comments and suggestions to do a memorial quote in regards to the death of Robin Williams. That was actually the first I had heard of his death, and was immediately saddened and somewhat surprised, and after I confirmed it to be the truth I was profoundly saddened by that news, though I might not have been inclined to let much of that show at the time.

What might have seemed to you a casual or bizarrely, even a "mild" and acceptable dig at myself and a few bigoted muslims who were indicating such generally stupid forms of intensely foul bigotry as are unpopular even among most muslims, and implying that they were in ANY way my "protégés" was EXTREMELY insulting to both me, and to a broad range of human faiths and beliefs which were being treated AS IF this were to be regarded as "typical" reactions of muslims, to such tragedies, and I was a "typical" naïve pacifist in my attitudes. I indicated I believed THEIR attitudes were tragically stupid, as were yours in presenting them AS IF they were typical of muslims, or in any way CONDONED or accepted by ME. I can FORGIVE many forms of human and sub-human STUPIDITY, including theirs and yours, but that does NOT mean that I condone it, or will not FIGHT against it vigorously. Similar forms of bigotry and stupidity are ALSO being manifest by the obnoxious Westboro Baptist Church, but that does NOT mean that such attitudes and stupidity are typical of most Baptists or most Christians, or most human beings, who have the DECENCY to avoid such sad forms of distressing assaults on others lives and dignity. The overly generalizing and and misplaced specificity of MANY forms of human bigotry are ALWAYS appalling, to the wise, and this particular incident of it struck me personal as profoundly repulsive. You are probably also aware that a few of the anonymous cowards who ABOUND on the internet, took to horrifically tormenting Williams daughter Zelda after his death, driving her, at least temporarily, off of Twitter. This certainly does NOT mean that all who act anonymously or pseudonymously on the internet are to always be assumed to be such pathetic and ignorant assholes.

One thing I do wish to make as clear as I can, that I am NOT at all losing my general sense of humor about things, in expressing some peculiar and honest forms of anger, at some apparent actions and attitudes which you have exhibited. I regularly get mildly angry and sometimes intensely angry at what I perceive to be various forms of generally detrimental error — but I have LONG had perspectives which PREVENT me from falling into what I consider the extremely profound error of HATING human beings, of ANY type, even some of the worst and most confused, and wishing them any form of humiliation or harm. ANOTHER thing I wish to make clear, is something I know is even harder for some to even understand, let alone believe or accept as proper: this does NOT mean that I am unwilling to BE or become relatively INDIFFERENT to many forms of their fate, or others fates — and as to whether they receive acclaim or disdain from others, APART from concerns for what influences they can or do have upon the destinies or dooms of general humanity, or others of great worth. I can and do OFTEN become interested and involved or indifferent towards MANY things for MANY reasons which I know others CANNOT easily understand, and which I do not often even attempt to explain — believing or KNOWING that such attempts at explanation would likely be tedious and confusing, and relatively futile and unproductive, within the circumstances in which I could provide them. Circumstances regarding MANY things are becoming FAR different NOW, and I am becoming more willing and able to INDICATE many aspects about SOME things, upon which I was previously inclined to be absolutely silent. Among them were incidents where I clearly perceived my own life or the lives of others were in extreme danger, and some of the events which occurred in those circumstances.

IF you wish to discuss some things at issue here with me in coming weeks, there are some ideas which I have rarely or never discussed with others, which I am VERY likely to eventually touch upon, and some subjects which I have discussed with others at times, but never, thus far, here, which are likely to eventually come up, but I will probably avoid them for at least a month or two. I believe that I will have to openly and honestly deal with MANY forms and aspects of "Awareness", "Life" and "Love" from perspectives which I know will seem strange and unfamiliar to many, and these will involve peculiar perspectives on "personal awareness" and "kenotic awareness" which I have long manifested, and considered ways to indicate to others who are not familiar with such notions as they permit and impel.

My aim in ANY discussions in which we might engage, is NOT to "win over" you, NOR to "win you" over to or away from some particular or peculiar perspectives or creeds — but to PROVIDE you, and any others who might eventually become interested at least some sense of perspectives that I believe are BROADER and DEEPER and generally more vitally EXPANSIVE than many you have known, which I HOPE can eventually or swiftly help you become more well-informed about many things, happy, content, and more truly secure and tolerant, amidst ALL necessary and proper forms of human diversity, which I believe are actually FAR broader than many are inclined to suppose.

I know that I have VERY peculiar perspectives upon MANY things, and that I often have very peculiar and indeed unique reasons for having them, and despite what might be the presumptions of some, I do NOT believe that it is my own or anyone else's genuine moral duty to help anyone believe in any particular notions or theories about Reality, such are OFTEN the aims of many partisans of political or religious creeds. I yet actually do believe it is my moral duty to often try to indicate such aspects of Reality as I truly believe can and will help them to DEVELOP ideas and notions which will be beneficial to themselves and others, APART from whatever political or religious affiliations they might be inclined to have or maintain, and I know that this can often be a more difficult and dangerous task than identifying myself with some particular "group" or "gang" amidst the MANY rival groups and gangs of social and anti-social economic and religious and political ideologies which exist.

BE forewarned, depending upon many largely unforeseen or unforeseeable circumstances, in the courses of time, I will probably eventually start to reveal some very odd and even BIZARRE forms of humor, which you might not easily appreciate — or even recognize as humor at all, let alone good humor. Brutally Punishing Puns, incredible inanities which might seem simply insane nonsense upon first glance, or even upon second or third or fourth — and so forth.… and yet might eventually reveal some method to much of my apparent madness, to those of sufficient patience, knowledge and intelligence, willing to put up with many forms of paradox and puzzlement. And I will also touch upon subjects which are generally not funny at all, but are quite tragic, and easily depressing.

For some time I have had a growing resolve that in this year, for the sake of others, I will at least begin to reveal more things about my personal EXPERIENCES and PERSPECTIVES upon them, than I have previously been inclined to do, and despite MUCH reluctance to do so, about some of them. One very prominent subject in the lives of myself and others lately, and from my earliest years of life, is the subject of suicide, and suicide prevention. Even prior to Robert Williams death, the subject was VERY prominent on my mind, as I was recently one of the first persons on the scene of a rather gruesome suicide, of someone who had deliberately stepped out in front of a train, and I eventually realized that it was someone I had just met and casually conversed with a few days before. He had seemed a generally cheerful and pleasant fellow, and though I sorrowed intensely thinking upon the tragedy of the act, and even though there was little I could have done to foresee or prevent the tragedy, I felt some sense of responsibility, for NOT having begun to discuss some of my own perspectives on such matters LONG ago, in such ways as might have been helpful to people in such confusion and distress. There is MUCH I could say about this incident, and will probably eventually reveal that I am NOT inclined to discuss here and now. Amidst regular contemplations of such things to say upon such matters, in the days and weeks ahead, the tragedy of Williams death occurred, leaving me even more intensely saddened, for he was someone I had long respected, admired, and considered in many ways a "kindred spirit" in generally genial good humor and disposition, despite some rather somber streaks and dark sides to both of our personalities, and someone similarly prone to have VERY complex and even inexplicable reflections upon many matters.

As you quite ignorantly and stupidly sought to mock me as someone naïve and overly "passive" to the threats of OTHER forms of bigotry than that I perceive you to manifest at times, by calling me someone who struck you as "one of those people who only wake up when the knife is already at their throats" and linking to a pacifist murdered by bigoted extremists, another matter I might bring up, in as humorous a way as I can, is where I literally had a switch-blade to my throat, and the consequences of that, in regard to myself, and those who were attempting to threaten and intimidate me. In a rather non-revelatory summary, I will say that in retrospect I consider the incident IMMENSELY funny, and THEY who were involved in the assault upon my dignity were quite shocked and surprised at my reactions, in ways that I still can laugh at, no one having been profoundly or permanently injured in the incident — as they easily could have been, had I not swiftly appraised the situation, and realized I and others were NOT in quite such danger as it for a brief while seemed, with a blade very menacingly at my throat, from someone who was attempting to assault me from behind. That was actually the last incident I can remember where I was so enraged with "righteous indignation" that I had an actual and I believe understandable desire to do severe physical injury to anyone, and was willing to indulge it. I actually have at times done injury to others, in ways which I know were QUITE surprising to them, when they seemed to stupidly believe that because I was generally passive or meek in my disposition, that I was unable or unwilling to fight if they assaulted me or my rights, or those of others which I held dear. I might eventually go into some of those incidents, and others where I or others were clearly in danger, but not now.

I am NOT a person to demand or expect apologies from others, for their errors, and I willingly forgive them, to the extent I can, whether they are remorseful or not. I do hope you will reflect more extensively on some of what I have indicated here. I honestly consider NO human being an absolute enemy, no matter how foully in error MANY of them often are about MANY things — and I have no hesitation in making it as clear as possible that MANY of the ways of MANY are ways I find intensely foul. That does NOT mean I am not willing to find some forms of fairness in most as well, and I believe that those who are MOST able and willing to see the fairness in all, as well as having realistic and not exaggerated views of the foulness, have the greatest opportunities and likelihood to remain fair as possible themselves. To such ends I do tend to emphasize the positive, but it certainly does NOT lead me to be naïve about the negative, nor entirely passive in regard to it. MORE is likely to be said by both of us, in the days ahead, I am sure, but I must begin to attend to other things now. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:44, 15 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

I will just say, that even if you were a martial arts master, and well-trained in self-defense, attempting to fight back unarmed against someone with a knife is always a very bad idea. [9] ~ DanielTom (talk) 13:45, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I totally agree. That was NOT actually my first reaction, but it became my strong inclination once it became strongly apparent to me I was probably dealing with a couple of people who were probably extremely deranged lunatics, out to kill me and others. I might go into further detail eventually, but there are MANY levels of false appearances that occurred, and which I do not wish to immediately give away. It might be months before I reveal many of the details of the situation, including some of those which I actually find most significant. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 13:53, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

demographics

Talk is fine, but the issue is one of demographics. Did you read the news yesterday?—"Muhammed Is Britain's Most Popular Boys Name"! I noticed many people getting angry at this, but of course, neither anger nor talk can beat demographics.

This is actually old news: it was true in 2013, but also in 2011, and as far back as 2009 (see "Mohammed has become the most popular name for newborn boys in Britain").

Tell me, what is your reaction when you hear this? ~ DanielTom (talk) 15:33, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually MANY things come to mind, but I have little time to present much about them now, as I must be leaving agains for at least a couple hours. Immediately this quote and a few others came to mind:

Think not the bigotry of another is any excuse for your own … let him have all the bigotry to himself. If he forbid you, do not you forbid him. Rather labour, and watch, and pray the more, to confirm your love toward him. If he speak all manner of evil of you, speak all manner of good (that is true) of him.

~ John Wesley ~

Such demographic arguments on the peril of some unpopular groups are "old news" indeed: I am quite aware that similar arguments as these have in the past been used in regard to the threat of prolific Jews, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and various ethnic groups. It does not much disturb me that demographics change in various regions of the world, but it does disturb me that so much of humanity everywhere remains so ignorant and confused that the same old tired and quite corruptive arguments for "purity" continually arise, among various factions, and I certainly do not exclude ANY form of ethnic, political, religious, theist, atheist, or agnostic from those I consider inclined to various forms of bigotry, and appeals to often quite popular forms of bigotry.

You say "talk is fine" as if I were merely talking about something despicably shallow, rather than attempting to explicate and uphold profound ethical principles. You seem to be insisting that talking in such ways as do not abjectly approve your apparent dispositions towards bigotry towards islamic influences, which I acknowledge ALSO contain extremely bigoted and dangerous elements, VERY prominently, is merely dithering, against an immediate and overwhelming threat to MANY human freedoms such as you and I both seem to value. I yet go further in respect for Liberty, and seem to have far more confidence in embracing it than you. I consider the extreme fixation of MANY diverse sorts of people on the bigotries of others as quite generally attempts to justify and excuse their own, and find ways to fight those PEOPLE whom they fear or hate,rather than examine the broad ranges of circumstances involved in ALL human concerns sufficiently to fight against the true problems of bigotry in ANY and ALL people — including themselves. I have vigorously examined my own biases in many ways, as well as those of others, and I rarely am inclined to condemn them for them, even where I believe they dangerously err, as many of the most dangerously biased are — who I believe err the most dangerously.

Even by the time I was 4 or 5 I recognized there were forms of sexism, racism, ethnic, religious and political bigotries at work in the world, and had a profound sense that MUCH of the conflict was due to exaggerated focus on often quite superficial and relatively trivial things, and lack of awareness and appreciation of the most profoundly important and pervasive things, and had begun to contemplate various ways to fight these forms of ignorance and confusion, for the benefits of others, out of genuine social and spiritual concerns, as well as personal concerns related to these. Even at a very early age I clearly realized that I lived in a world where to do so could be dangerous, but have always believed it was more dangerous not to try to do what you believe can to help. Harping on the apparent faults of flaws of others is rarely all that helpful — finding the common forms of virtue and good that can eventually become stronger and more prominent than these in MOST people is what I believe to be most important. Towards such ends I strive.

Though I typed tidbits of other ideas I might take up later, I have to be leaving now. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:02, 17 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

You are living in dreamland. Don't get me wrong – it is precisely because I want you, and everyone else, to be able to speak of and defend principles of freedom, that we must oppose Islam. Do you remember Theo van Gogh's last words? He asked his killer: "Mercy, mercy! We can talk about it, can't we?", just before being shot dead and beheaded. Islam is the antithesis of freedom. It means submission – and if you do not submit, you are killed. Importing this culture to Europe means not just less freedom for all, but greater physical danger to women, gays, apostates, and Jews, and is thus a great betrayal to them, not to mention to all the oppressed women in the Muslim world, many of whom already gave their lives just for rejecting the burka. Your welcoming of Eurabia is absolutely disgusting to me. Needless to say, "Jews, Roman Catholics, Mormons" are not trying to take over the world. If you think Islam is just equal to other religions, and can not see the unique threat it poses to the West, and to freedom, you are under a very dangerous delusion, one that I fear will cost future generations dear. ~ DanielTom (talk) 01:34, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

As an absurdist universalist mystic I can accept that to some extent we are all living in dreamland, all the time, — some of us simply tend to have more optimistic and optimizing dreams of human potentials, and others more constrained and confining ones, which see little or no good hopes outside of such constraints and confinements as they find comfortable or believe necessary.

If you honestly don’t believe that there HAVE been and ARE rather absurdly ignorant bigots with VERY strong confident belief that most Jews, Roman Catholics, Mormons have been or ARE out to "take over the world" you are rather unaware of some of the most absurdly prominent and often quite ugly conspiracy theories of the last few centuries, which have been used to justify various persecutions. Especially prolific are those who resent such successes MANY prominent and wealthy members of such groups HAVE had, for various reasons. No matter how normal might be the common lot of MOST, whoever gains prominence in some ways will be taken as evidence of the disposition or privileges of most or all. I actually believe one could probably find more than a few deluded Muslims, Jews, Roman Catholics, Mormons and MANY others of various traditions who WOULD like to "take over the world" — but MOST people of all such traditions take no such fantasies all too seriously as aims to actively strive for, by the suppression or oppression of others, no matter what hopes or dispositions they might harbor.

That you address me AS IF I "think Islam is just equal to other religions" shows how extreme your blind bigotry can be. I observe such statements from MANY of those ignorant of some of the most advanced forms of Universalist Pluralism which I admire, such as those found among many Unitarian Universalists, and I am never actually very inclined to say anything quite so STUPID as anything like that. I am NOT some totally absurd and unlikely sort of naïve moron who thinks "ALL religions are entirely good" — or that some forms of them are entirely nothing but EVIL and tools for evil, with NO redeeming qualities at all. Like human individuals, ALL religions are unique, and have unique variations, despite MANY general tendencies and limits — BOTH good and BAD. I tend to have a preference for supporting the ethical in ANY and ALL, the rational or irrational in many, to the extent it does not improperly ignore or deny that which is ethical, and reject that which I find unethical in ANY, and REPUDIATE that which I find extremely unethical in some, no matter how popular or powerful such groups might be.

Even some of the worst fanatics of some factions of some traditions will accept the idea ALL people should have equal rights to choose according to their own consciences, not the consciences of others — the most incompetent are simply inclined to think all others are totally incompetent if they do not choose entirely as they do, regardless of their differing circumstances of awareness and situations of likely opportunity or lack them. Clearly, to most, the wisest individuals of all major factions of religious and philosophcal traditions generally seek to permit great liberty to all humans, and to NOT impel strict adherence to the desired norms of any narrow factions. Clearly there are currently MANY extremist bigots active among MANY of the factions of Islam, as well as Christianity, Judaism, and other sects and traditions trying to EXCLUDE and vilify those of moderate, liberal and mystical disposition. Some of those most persecuted by the current ISIL/ISIS fanatics are groups which emphasize mystical elements. It is in the mystical that MANY of the relatively minuscule and mendacious concerns of many "practical" prejudices are exposed for what they are, and more of the universal principles of unitive pluralism arise, often amidst various strains of some mystical universalist monism, which have always seemed absurdly nonsensical to the sensibilities of most people, though they have often praised the ethical integrity of many monists, such as Spinoza, or Bruno, and Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, Christian saints and sages, whether recognizing them as such or not.

I might be around a bit now, but have other things to do, and might sleep before I do much here, and might work on some page creations when I do get back to doing things here. Though I know there ARE and shall long be MANY problems for Humanity from MANY factions, I generally am optimistic about human potentials and inclinations. I have no delusions that most people are going to find any immense impression of "instant Karma" right away that will transform them all to devout saints or profoundly wise sages and philosophers — but I believe the best and most profound influences of MANY traditions continue to grow, gradually and often slowly, yet inexorably, even as the superficial and farcical delusions of many continue to contend and cause enmity and hostility among many, which flash and flare, but ultimately fizzle out, and fade away. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 03:12, 17 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.

~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

I am optimistic too, because Europe seems to be finally waking up to the Muslim invasion: all over Europe, anti-Islam parties are growing, and this very year UKIP and FN won the European Elections in Britain and France, respectively. What we need is a democratic solution to this problem; we don't want a civil war to break out in Europe in the next 30 years. We need to stop the mass immigration from Muslim countries now. ~ DanielTom (talk) 13:13, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I firmly believe what humanity most needs is NOT more "anti-[FILL IN THE BLANK]" parties, but more anti-bigotry sensibilities which rise above any and all partisan ideologies, of any religious or political creeds. I am NOT against the existence of political or religious creeds — I am against making ANY of them IDOLS to be either worshipped or demonized while the ESSENCE and SPIRIT of actual Truth and righteousness is OFTEN quite forgotten, even as NAMES of such ideals themselves become IDOLIZED, and assumed to be the exclusive "possession" of some "exalted group" of imbeciles and amoral or immoral morons who would dictate their own confused sense of morality to all others — whether they count themselves as Nazis, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, Agnostics or ANY other group that might be specified — including those who might call themselves or be called "anarchists" and yet who have little profound sense of genuine anarchist principles or philosophy, and how any and all forms of fascist ignorance and delusions and unjust oppressions MUST be fought without hatred of the ignorant and confused, to the extent they can be, wherever they occur, and how ever mild and popular they may often be, in the name of whatever "holy" or "practical" causes some might claim. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡

I was just reading about the rape epidemic in Sweden, which used to be a safe country, but that now has the second highest number of rapes in the world thanks to mass Muslim immigration; 1 in every 4 Swedish women is now expected to be raped. Needless to say, it wasn't the Swedish men who suddenly got violent: 5% Muslim Pop commit nearly 77.6% of all rape crimes. So could you descend from your lofty castle in the clouds, land on earth, and tell me if this is actually okay with you? Would you not do ANYTHING to limit the mass immigration from Muslim countries to Sweden? (Maybe you think Swedish women should be raped, just so you don't have to call yourself a "bigot"?) ~ DanielTom (talk) 11:25, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Love the sinner and hate the sin.

~ Augustine of Hippo ~

Even as a very young child I considered this statement of Augustine's one of the wisest of all the ages, and by the age of 7, having been someone who recognized MUCH of the worth and transcended much of the foolishness of MANY diverse philosophies and creeds by the time I was 5 or 6, I realized that this should be revised for a more general application that extended beyond all limited and partisan creeds, and their sometimes quite confused and contrary notions of "sin" or "error" and "evil" to formulations along the lines of "Hate the bigotries but not the bigots", or more elaborately "Hate the bigotries, but hate not ANY bigots — or you easily can fall into the foulest forms of bigotry oneself." This was something I had actually REALIZED to some extent years earlier, but began to mentally express with such words around the age of 7. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 13:44, 17 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

---

DT response

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities ... but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

~ Winston Churchill ~

I don't hate Muslims. I hate Islam.

~ Geert Wilders ~

You are attacking a straw man. ~ DanielTom (talk) 14:02, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

No, I am afraid you and they are making IDOLS out of words by which to camouflage a very real bigotry. Islam has had and does have many highly ethical practitioners throughout the ages, and though currently there are certainly abhorrent bigots who have become prominent among people calling themselves muslims, and thinking THEMSELVES pure and holy and those who differ from them polluted and vile, there certainly have been many of these in MANY traditions at many times, and yet the traditions as a whole are NOT primarily vile. By using the Geert Wilders quote you seem to be casually EQUATING Islam with Sin and Evil and even absolute sin and evil — and I know many theists and atheists who would agree with such nonsense, and all the while seek to obscure or deny the profundity of their own bigotries, in making such assertions. I would continue with a few more points, but have to be leaving soon, and will probably be gone at least a few hours. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 14:11, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

The God of the Qur'an is not all-loving, and does not love sinners:

"God loves not the unbelievers" (Sura 3:33)

"God loves not the impious and sinners" (Sura 2:277)

"God loves not evildoers" (Sura 3:58)

"God loves not the proud" (Sura 4:37)

"God loves not transgressors" (Sura 5:88)

"God loves not the prodigal" (Sura 6:142)

"God loves not the treacherous" (Sura 8:59)

"God is an enemy to unbelievers" (Sura 2:99)

This is obviously in stark contrast with the Christian view, that God's Love is Universal and Unconditional; in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds us—

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

~ Jesus, Matthew 5:43-48 (KJV) ~

The principle you embrace—that we should hate the sin, but love the sinner—is thus a Christian one, and not Islamic. ~ DanielTom (talk) 14:50, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

It is quite Islamic, in the ultimate sense of that word, and not the bigoted ways which some who call themselves muslim or anti-muslims are prone to use it. I am quite aware that there is a lot of bigoted VILENESS and advocacy of what I hold to be EVIL in many "holy sciptures" INCLUDING the Jewsish and Christian ones, which accept or advocate various forms of what we today would recognize as SLAVERY, MURDER and GENOCIDE. That does NOT make the whole ranges of Jewish and Christian tradition something to be SCORNED or vilified, because some have and still seek to use such passages to promote EVIL intolerance and oppression. I do get tired of witnessing SO MANY of the stupid bigotries which can abound nearly ANYwhere — especially from people out to convince me that the WORST bigotries in the whole world are in the ways THEY hate, and it is unreasonable bigotry to deny the TRUTH of such bigotry, or even to call it bigotry. I generally call things as I see them, or remain silent, because I recognize I am dealing with people with learning impediments of various innate or socially developed forms. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:06, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

No it isn't – you're going against the Qur'an, the perfect, unalterable, literal word of God. But that's okay, I don't blame you for it. I actually admire the mental efforts you make just to avoid facing reality. ~ DanielTom (talk) 15:27, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

The VERY SAME THING is said by many of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and MANY others — in ALL their minutia, deficiencies, faults and flaws. I am someone no more bound by the lunacies of people who believe THEY know the ONLY words of GOD as bound up in some book, any more than I am by those of people who believe such are bound up ONLY in their own brain. I have NEVER fallen for that sort of INSANITY. So I hope you can get eventually get over yourself, and your bigoted views that Islam harbors the most dangerous bigotries in the world, and eventually are able to laugh at the stupidity of some of them. That's about all I have time to note, as I must be leaving. I have tarried a bit more than I had intended to already. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:40, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

You're just being ignorant now. You can't compare the Bible, which is composed of stories and narratives, written by different men (even if "divinely inspired"), over the ages, with the Qur'an, which is believed by Muslims to be the direct, perfect, unalterable, final, and literal word of God. ~ DanielTom (talk) 15:45, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I actually had shut my browser off, and was leaving, when thinking upon my closing words, I realized I had in my haste probably used the term "tallied" when I had meant "tarried" — though "tallied" works in a way. I am an absurdist and I recognize MANY types of absurdity EVERYWHERE about which MOST people do not seem to have a clue, and I have been laughing inwardly and outwardly at such things since I was an infant. As a rational absurdist I am inclined to compare ANYTHING with ANYTHING else, for purposes of contrasting and discerning similarities and differences, and I often can perceive MANY aspects of things VERY swiftly that others cannot perceive in long periods of study. You are showing your ignorance if you are not aware that there ARE Christians and Jews who DO likewise believe that their scripture IS similarly "the direct, perfect, unalterable, final, literal word of God" — I have even talked to a few such persons at times, and found them generally decent folk, despite such delusions. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:57, 17 August 2014 (UTC) ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 15:57, 17 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

On demographics: Portugal today has the lowest birth rate in Europe, only 1.35 children per family (rather than the required 2.07 to maintain population levels). Financial incentives to increase fertility rates (like those tried in Germany) do not work – indeed, I'd say they only make the problem worse: As everyone knows, it is the poor who have the most children (ditto for the poorest countries). Giving people more money makes them have even fewer children. This is a universal problem, and it is the downside of prosperity.

Most people in the West recognize they need immigration, because they aren't having enough babies on their own. But, they say, we should be selective on what kind of people we let in: we should only allow qualified people in, such as doctors and nurses, you know, people with skills we lack. You might have noticed there is now a(n old) debate going on in the USA on what to do with "illegals", with many people calling for them to be deported. I'd actually like this to happen, for them (the "Christians" calling for deportations) to see how many factories would close down as a consequence. (These people don't seem to realize that, for the most part, what we really need is unqualified workers, because our own are already overqualified.) So, don't get me wrong: I know immigration is both necessary and inevitable – especially if we want to have enough people working to pay for the retirements and pensions of our ageing population.

What we face, the population crisis in Portugal (and most of Europe), is akin to a market failure: people by themselves are not having enough children to sustain the population, which suggests that government intervention is required. We need "children factories", so to speak, but even if the women whose job it would be to have the children we need were very well paid, it would nevertheless be a colossal (perhaps unsolvable) problem: let's image that most women would continue to have children as normal (1.35), but that a minority would be made to have more children. For there to be an average of 2.07 children per women, in Portugal, it would be necessary for 7% of Portuguese women to have 12 children each. That would mean forcing 350,000 women to have 12 children, which is, I'm afraid, impossible. The Portuguese population must thus inevitably fade away – and a similar fate expects most other European nations, and eventually America. I think socialism is somewhat to blame for this: when the State takes care of people "from cradle to grave", they lose a sense of personal responsibility, and don't even have to save for old age (let alone have children). ~ DanielTom (talk) 18:12, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

You address a number of sociological issues with some of the assumptions and assessments of current ideas and theories, but there are always factors involved which most theories, be they labeled or classified as political, religious, or scientific in various ways, tend to overlook, ignore, deny or remain oblivious to altogether. I do not mean to make light of real situations of distress and alarm and real problems which abound in this world, in regard to many things, but some of the many problems that abound include assumptions that there can be or MUST be only one solution or one cause to a whole host of diverse problems. And one of the most pervasive tendencies in all societies and all times, and most individuals within them, up to this era, has been to find some clearly identifiable individuals or groups to blame. This tendency is ONE of the MANY which I believe MANY of us have to get over and beyond, in coming years. I have to do a few more things here, aside from browsing for things to attend to, but will probably be leaving soon, and expect to remain VERY busy with other things for at least a couple of weeks, limiting much of my time here. So it goes. Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 18:38, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you. I was trying to show just that, that the "blame" or resentment many people feel towards immigrants is completely misplaced—if anything, we should be blaming ourselves for not having enough children on our own. (Maybe you are trying to tell me that blaming socialism, or feminism, is equally misplaced; that's a more complicated issue... of course there is room for disagreement.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:17, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

wikilinks record

New record(!?) for the most wikilinks in a quote: William Henry Channing. (I don't believe so many wikilinks look good, but I thought you might like it.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:54, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

It might be a new record, though I have done a few QOTDs with quite a few. I don’t think the blue links look too bad, but have always thought red links looked horrible, and that was one reason I did not use many links for many years, as the project wasn't developed enough to provide many blue ones. Thanks for creating the page, I might consider some quotes by him for QOTD now. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 02:11, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Nonviolence

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with non-violent and non-violence redirecting to pacifism.  While I advocate nonviolent civil disobedience—believing, as I do, that it is the most effective means by which to bring about meaningful change—I do not call myself a pacifist.  Perhaps this is a flawed outlook, but in my mind, pacifism is wrapped up in a moral opposition to ever fighting back against any sort of tyranny; in other words, the Christian notion of "turning the other cheek" taken to its radical conclusion, viz., that no one ought never