User talk:David Finn

European eyes on Libyan article

Your assessment of the constantly changing article, Operation ODYSSEY DAWN, would be very welcome. Yes, several people have commented that they thought Odyssey Dawn was a stripper in the seventies.

One area where you might have insight is on Samantha Power, the presidential special adviser on human rights, who is reported to have been one of the key drivers for the intervention. She's a naturalized US citizen from Ireland, but I believe she was involved in human rights there. I set up a lemma, but she probably warrants a full article. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:45, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I had already come across that article but with events moving so fast I decided to leave it alone for now, but I will certainly take a look through it again. The Sam Power article sounds like something I could work on. She is an interesting, if at times controversial, figure. Cheers for the suggestion. David Finn 08:37, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

That could be a very useful approach. In the main article, I note that I make considerable inference based on my knowledge of weapons and systems, inferences that often are confirmed by later reports (e.g., the bombs that the B-2 almost had to be using).

If you have any thoughts on PD images of European leaders, I would welcome them (e.g., Juppe, Sarkozy, Ashton). Howard C. Berkowitz 09:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll have a think about the PD images. Would you mind taking a look at the Ohio-class article, at the new Catalogs page? I intend to add all 18 ships to that list so if you have any stylistic comments I would like to hear them - it is going to be a fair bit of work and I'd rather get it right first time! David Finn 09:19, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Yacht

To support your more specific articles, I started a stubby article on yachts. Thinking about it, there are two distinct meanings, one the racing vessel and the other a luxury vessel -- for that matter, there were a few WWII conversions to patrol yachts, which even had the US Navy designation of PY.

I know there are classes and types of racing yachts. As far as luxury yachts, I have the impression there are are different definitions. When I asked my commercial fisherman housemate, he said there was no specific size, and he knew of 24' luxury sailboats. It's my recollection, however, that the US Power Squadron does have a minimum length. Somewhere, I may have heard that one has at least one professional crewman. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:44, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I noticed the yacht article, and that you added the sailing category to some existing articles, so thanks for that. You are right about the two classes and often luxury motor vessels have the prefix MY for motor-yacht. The minimum length is something that is often debated over and I think that various groups have their own standards, but that will make a useful section of the article. I don't know about the crew requirement - these days many yachts, even quite substantial ones, are retrofitted with systems to enable singlehanded sailing, so it is possible to have a yacht without additional crew even if that is rare. I'll look into it.

In fact it is about six years since I heard of the first superyacht, a luxury sailing catamaran of over 100 foot in length, being outfitted for remote control via the internet. They are all power winches and automatic sail furling these days, so it is even technically possible to have a yacht with no live beings on board, let alone a professional crew. David Finn 16:21, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Silly question, but what would be the fun in an unmanned yacht? Some super-superyachts seem to be approaching helicopter-equipped destroyer size. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, maybe if you have taken your superyacht to Monaco to party with the elite and then need to take a plane to some power-meeting in some financial centre you might like to sail the yacht on to meet you? I really don't know. You'd have to be pretty rich to want a 75 million dollar radio-controlled toy.

Some superyachts are converted hulls; not usually military hulls but often specialist vessels that have all the hallmarks, such as coastguard ships and research vessels. They have internal storage for fishing boats and commercial submarines, and are usually rated to take a helicopter up to Super Puma size. 777. built in 2007, is around 68 meters long - the same length as an Avenger-class mine contermeasure ship. David Finn 17:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)