User talk:Milton Beychok

I just archived the last batch of postings.
That is why this page looks so empty and desolate at the moment. Milton Beychok 01:41, 6 October 2008 (CDT)

changes
All these changes (move tab gone too) relate to a software update, as far as i can tell. I assume they will be restored with time. Another difference I noticed was that in the special pages link the different opions are now categorised rather than being in alphabetical order. Chris Day 20:15, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Could I get your thoughts on Incident Command System
Especially the Related Articles. My feeling, increasingly, is that Disaster Management, not that we have a category for it, is more Engineering than anything else, but with dashes of Health Sciences and Politics, and, for specific kinds of disasters, Physics and such.

What I'd hope to get from you, even if it were just as stub R-templates, would be some categories for toxic accidents. Plume analysis is probably too detailed here. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:56, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Howard, I added 5 links to your Related Links subpage. Three were to non-existing article as yet and one was to an existing article. If you think that Engineering, Politics and Health Science are involved, then you should add links to them in the "Parent topics" section of that subpage. Hope this helps, Milton Beychok 07:14, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks; you gave me some of what I needed. One of the problems in the field is that so many catastrophic events that could be terrorism are described only in those terms. For chemical accidents, there's a good deal about spill confinement, but much less on pure industrial toxic releases.


 * Duplicate posts aren't a bad thing in this contact. For large disasters, it's a fine idea to have a backup command post. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:35, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Piquet
So basically you're saying the article proper may be complete enough, it's just subpages needed? Peter Jackson 17:45, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Peter, as I said, I don't know enough about the game to comment upon whether or not the main article content needs work. But the subpages should definitely be created as I noted. Regards, Milton Beychok 17:50, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Will check approval with Matt/Chris
I started out signing ToA and setting the approval code to 0, which is what I thought the instructions said to do. The template started giving me error messages. What I suspect happened is that there is a change or bug; I set ToA and 0 before and it worked. The code, I suspect, is assuming that only the Approval editor sets to 0, but it's got an internal conflict.

Anyway, I have a message in to Chris.

Other idea
You did give me another idea. Would it be useful to have log and ln as articles, so you can link them whenever needed rather than explain?Howard C. Berkowitz 19:56, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, you've lost me. I don't understand what you are asking. Milton Beychok 19:59, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I noticed that you explained the natural log function in your text. Would it be useful to have an ln and a log article, which you could just embed it the text (i.e., ln(x)), and anyone wanting the function definition could just click on it? Howard C. Berkowitz 20:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Yup, that would be a good idea. Such an article is needed. Wikipedia has one that could serve as a start or as a guide. That is just one of the many, many "infrastructure" articles that are still needed. That is why I wrote Pressure, Bar, U.S. customary units, Specific heat ratio, Parts-per notation, Vapor pressure, Heat of combustion, Meteorology and some others. So if you, or one of our mathematics authors, could write an article about log and ln, it would be most useful. Milton Beychok 21:37, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * First, the article looks great. Congratulations.


 * Now, I pause for hysterics, looking to the presumed heavens for my algebra I teacher and guidance counselor, who advised me against chemistry, and to stay in pure biology, because I could never handle the math. So, I would up in computer science (OK, one of my best friends in high school is now an IEEE Fellow in Digital Signal Processing), but I would up much more quantitative than anyone expected. High school mathematics teaching and I just didn't get along. Still, the thought of myself as a mathematics editor does cause giggles. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:56, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I suggest to continue this discussion at Talk:Mathematics. --Daniel Mietchen 10:32, 24 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I feel like an idiot ... because I just found that we already have an article on Logarithms. It has a section on notational variants that I will revise somewhat and expand to make it clearer (in my opinion). Milton Beychok 15:24, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Meteorology
I am not an expert there either but I would suggest to ask some of these people because they have indicated relevant interests on their user pages. --Daniel Mietchen 08:31, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Started article on autoclave
The need came to me when I was adding to some material on biological decontamination, and then it occurred to me I should generalize it. I've done a lot of microbiological work, but also home canning, on which I'll start an article.

Thought I'd let you know about it in case you wanted to add anything about chemical process engineering use. There's no metadata on it as I need to find out if there is or is not a food sciences workgroup, or if cooking-related things go elsewhere. It probably will fall under Engineering, Health Sciences, something for cooking, Biology at least. It certainly could go under Chemical Engineering if you want it. I've just never worked with a chemical process one -- room-size hospital sterilizers yes. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:45, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

US units
Hi Milton, I looked at the US units article. It seems OK to me except for one thing. You don't make quite clear how the US base units are defined. I happen to know that the inch is defined as 2.54 cm and perhaps there are similar definitions for fluid ounce, etc.? It would be nice to have that in the article.--Paul Wormer 10:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Paul, I don't understand what you mean. The Length table in the article shows that 1 inch is equivalent to 2.54 cm. The Liquid Volume table shows that 1 fluid ounce is equivalent to 29.574 ml.


 * I only intended the article to provide the equivalences between U.S. units and metric units. Researching the history of all the U.S. units and how they were originally defined would entail a lot of work that I don't believe is warranted. Is that what you meant? Milton Beychok 19:47, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * There are some legal definitions of the U.S. units; I can look up some of that. I also have, in the past, looked up some of the history of those definitions (the inch used to be 1/39.37 m, and the change has made for some interesting problems in surveying). Sometime in my copious free time I can look up those references again, and either edit the article directly, or dump them on the talk page. Anthony Argyriou 20:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Anthony. I really don't believe any history is needed ... but if you wish to write a history section, please feel free to do so. Milton Beychok 23:47, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Your testimony?
Please let us have it! --Larry Sanger

Henry's law
I got Henry's law for you! Keep them coming ;-) D. Matt Innis 02:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Cleaning up
Hi Milton, I read on the forum that you're going round cleaning up articles. I sometimes look back at my own stuff and see odd formulations (usually due to my lack of command of the English). Whenever you see some strange phrases in my articles you would do me a favor by correcting them. You don't offend me by that, au contraire as the Cajuns (Arcadians) say. --Paul Wormer 09:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)