Wikipedia:Wikipedia NEWS/June 20 25 2001

Archived news entries from June 20-25, 2001.

The Summer Olympics

Posted June 25th

A brief history of the Olympic movement, and then equally brief precis of the major events, sporting and otherwise, in 100+ years of competition. Its too Anglo-US biased, and stresses track and field to the exclusion of most others, so if you actually enjoy dressage or gymnastics or archery or sailing, come and tell us about your sports Olympic heroes.

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Open Source $25,000 Award

Posted June 26

This is completely off topic and has nothing to do with Wikipedia articles, so 1,000,000 apologies if it is inappropriate here, but is probably of interest to y'all... My company (The Open Source Development Lab osdlab.org) is going to give an award to a free software / open source development project, and is accepting nominations starting today. The 2001 OSDL Enterprise Achievement Award is a cash prize of $25,000.00, which will be granted to a group or developer that has made a significant contribution to Linux for the enterprise in the last two years. Each nomination will be reviewed and a winner selected by a panel of judges based on the contribution's originality, level of innovation and level of broad-based applicability to the enterprise. Entries are accepted until August 10. If you know of or are a participant of a project you think is deserving, this could be a good way to get the group some war funds. ;-)

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Open source

Posted June 26

Stephen Gilbert adds more information on Open source and Bruce Perens (for whom more elaboration has been requested by Larry). This is an important topic for us, and one unlikely to be found in mainstream commercial encyclopedias. Perhaps there are essays on relevant topics out there covered under the Free Documentation License that we could rightfully incorporate?

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Gravity

Posted June 24

Wikipedia's Gravity article has grown considerably, and discusses not only the academic stuff we all learned in high school, but even outlines some of the experiments going on today to help us learn more about this important force of nature. ...The next step will be to detect the graviton, the theorized quantum particle that carries the gravitational wave (much like the photon carries the electromagnetic wave).

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Abscess

Posted June 24

Anyone who has searched for medical information on the web can attest that sometimes what you really need - a plain old encyclopedic definition - is hard to find (as opposed to diagnosis and treatments). User:ErdemTuzun provides an excellent synopsis of a common kind of infection most of us have probably had at one time or another. But thank God Wikipedia doesn't support photos! ;-) Other new medical articles by Erdem and others worth checking out include Blue tongue disease, Biological virus, and Stendhal syndrome. Those of you wishing to contribute to this body of knowledge might want to check out the Infectious diseases page; who knows, maybe the medical information we compile will help some future doctor get through school easier and help us in turn when we're all old and suffering!

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Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Posted June 23

Hiram provides a synopsis of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who explored subjectivity and human perception of reality and things in it. By a pre-conscious act of `original faith' we immediately place this phenomenal thing in the world, where it blends in with other things and behaves like any `figure' against a certain background.

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Dave Brubeck

Posted June 22

Koyaanis Qatsi brings another excellent article, this time on Dave Brubeck, an experimental jazz pianist. In college Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read sheet music. Several of his professors came forward arguing for his ability with counterpoint and harmony, but the school was still afraid that it would cause a scandal, and only agreed to let Brubeck graduate once Brubeck promised never to teach piano.

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Caves

Posted June 22

Caves of one sort or another are widely scattered across the planet. Caves can form in sandstone, loess, ice, granite, lava, marble, gypsum and limestone. Limestone caves are the most prevalent, but gypsum and lava caves may be locally very significant. Ice caves occur under glaciers. Caves in other types of rocks present more of an engineering hazard than an exploration challenge. Caves *rock*.

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John Lee Hooker

Posted June 22

John Lee Hooker, one of the greats of blues music, died yesterday. Rhythmically, his music was very free, a property which had been common with early acoustic Delta blues musicians.

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Mathematics

Posted June 22

The mathematics page has received a bit of a makeover. Its topics are organized in a manner not unlike the homepage. It's interesting to note that a number of high level pages have been receiving this sort of refactoring/organizational attention, and many different schemes are being investigated.

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Philosophy

Posted June 21

The Philosophy main page has been updated, with new content and a new organizational scheme. Larry Sanger is immodestly proud of this work, or so he says, and thinks that it shows how other top-level pages could be rendered into a prose format. Biology is another top-level example that uses prose sentences intermixed with link lists to both introduce biology and to point the reader to specialized topics within the subject of biology.

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Halting Problem'

Posted June 21

User:TedDunning adds a page on a concept similar in nature to the Incompleteness Theorem, called the Halting Problem. the function that solves the halting problem can't be written down and the computing system can't be implemented.

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Catullus

Posted June 21

User:Xiemaisi biographies Caius Valerius Catullus, a famous Roman poet who greatly influenced later poets such as Ovid, Horace, and Virgil with a shockingly explicit writing style. ...despite his seemingly frivolous lifestyle Catullus measured himself and his friends by quite ambitious standards.

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Joseph Schumpeter

Posted June 21

User:Robert Vienneau writes: Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950) was one of the greatest 20th century economists... Schumpeter's characterizes capitalism by the phrase "creative destruction," in which old ways of doing things are endogenously destroyed and replaced by the new. Schumpeter thinks that the success of capitalism will lead to a form of corporations and a fostering of values, especially among intellectuals, of hostility to capitalism. The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism and it will be succeeded by socialism of some form or another.

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Joseph Conrad

Posted June 20

User:Sjc writes an informative bio of the author of the classic, "Heart of Darkness". Ironically, English was not Joseph Conrad's native tongue. ...it is altogether remarkable that Conrad should write so fluently and effectively in what was his third language.

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Cantonese

Posted June 20

What we think of as "Chinese" is actually several fairly distinct dialects. One of these dialects is Cantonese, spoken by over 100 million people worldwide. User:Xiemaisi introduces us to this important language, offering an insightful comparison of it with Mandarin, another of China's dialects. (By the way, the Chinese history page has been fleshed out a good deal over the past few days, and is worth checking out again. It's even been added to the brilliant prose page!)

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The Writing's on the Wall

Posted June 20

It is telling that Language is an area that Wikipedians appear to be fascinated by. Recent new articles under the Language theme include Slang (which needs expounding on) and Runic. Wikipedia also has an Artificial language section, with pointers to pages on several languages that were deliberately created -- we need someone to write up articles on Klingon and Volapuk to get this page filled in. 74 new additions have been made to the [English proverbs] list by User:Kpjas

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Take England, Please!

Posted June 20

Okay, Wikipedia is nothing if not FLUSH with World War II articles. The past few days has seen particular activity on topics of England in WWII. None of these articles are quite large enough -- we need your help to fill in the details. Royal Air Force is a brief synopsis of the glorious defenders of the island, who combated the Luftwaffe (both of these need a lot of expounding on!) Operation Sea Lion, a never-realized plan by the Germans to land an invasion force, has been added. Exeter, Dartmoor, and Devon are entered into the tome. User:TimShell adds mention on the page about Jews that Prior to World War II the world population of Jews was around 17 million. The Holocaust reduced this number to around 11 million.

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