Wobbly Universe

I have been a member of BAUT (Bad Astronomy and Universe Today) forum for some time. At times the relationship has been a little stormy because they have a very rigid policy (as commented by many members) on what you can say and where. It means that you cannot have an open debate on problems with the big bang for instance, because the big bang is mainstream and if you want to criticise it then that is ATM or "Against The Mainstream" so you can only post in that section and your thread will be closed permanently after 30 days. I have posted a number of ideas in the ATM thread, because it is easier to do it there than anywhere else, as nearly all my ideas are considered ATM by them. Here is a list of the threads I started which I assume are still there but cannot verify because I am unable to even read articles in BAUT now. Perhaps someone will be kind enough to leave a comment telling me if these links still work.

Quantized Redshifts Revisited

Harmonics Theory

How to Make a Universe

Galaxy Quasar Associations - Test of Alternative Cosmology

Explaining Planetary Alignments Relationship to Sunspot Cycle

Yesterday I discovered that a certain Chris Hillman was posting messages in BAUT forum. I had previously had experience of this individual in wikipedia where he made a concerted effort to delete all material that I contributed to wikipedia. He was quite happy to tell lies when doing this, and the post that I found by him in BAUT forum was also full of lies. So I made a post in reply to that telling of some of the lies that Hillman tells. I then tried to find how to contact an admin of the group to alert them to the fact that I had done this as I really wanted Hillman to be prevented from repeating what he had done in wikipedia - namely after each lie was pointed out he posted many more so that there was no way to keep up with them all. I could not find information in the BAUT FAQ on how to contact an admin, so I posted a message asking an admin to read it and then remove it and please take up the case. The result was that today I found myself banned forever from BAUT forum. Last time I got banned only for 7 days, so I must have been really bad this time. The message says:

You have been banned for the following reason:
Legal threat

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

What was my legal threat? I actually asked the forum organisers if they could please keep any information that they had on the whereabouts of Chris Hillman so that should I decide to to take legal action they could supply that information if required to do so.

Since I think that my post in reply to Hillman has been removed, I am posting here a part of what Hillman said that I objected to, and my reply to it. He made three posts with long lists of articles that he was proud to help get deleted (or try to get deleted) and a small part of that list is:

a large cluster of articles on harmonics theory [sic]:

* Harmonics Theory, plus six other articles (Harmonics Theory Calculations, Harmonics Theory Music, Harmonics Theory common cycles, Harmonics Theory Non-linearity, Harmonics Theory Redshift Periodicity, Harmonics Theory Particle)
* Harmonics Theory (2nd)
* Edward R. Dewey
* Cycle synchrony
* Cycle theory plus two other articles (Unified Theory of Cycles, Cycles Research Institute)
* The Foundation for the Study of Cycles
* Category:Cycles

Here is my reply:

Now this is classic Chris Hillman. He did indeed play a large role in getting the articles mentioned deleted. However let us look at the lies that he tells here and that he told in wikipedia in doing so:

1. Edward R Dewey article was not on Harmonics Theory. Edward R Dewey never heard of Harmonics Theory as he died in 1979 and the theory was first put forward publicly in 1989.

2. The Foundation for the Study of Cycles (FSC) was not about Harmonics Theory. It was about an organisation that came into existence in about 1941.

3. In wikipedia Hillman lied when he stated that the FSC was an internet only organisation created by me. Well, I was born in 1947, 6 years after FSC was created. Also, FSC predates the internet by just a wee bit.

4. Category Cycles was a category aimed at allowing people who study cycles to find article relating to them. It had nothing to do with harmonics theory except that if there was a harmonics theory article it would be in that category.

5. None of the mentioned articles were about harmonics theory except the one so named. Cycle synchrony was a discovery of Edward Dewey in about the 1960s.

6. Hillman was also responsible for removal of material about Dewey's finding of harmonically related cycles (e.g 8.88 years, 4.44 years, 2.22 years) under the claim that this is numerology. He clearly does not know what numerology is. In the last decade or so there have been numerous similar reports in peer reviewed journals of harmonically related cycles in solar cycles (154, 77, 26 days), and climate.

7. Hillman lied in most of the cases where he achieved a deletion of material just as he is lying here now. For example in one case where he propsed deletion, the vote was lost (i.e the article should have been retained). He claimed that all the votes against deletion were made by one person using sock puppets. As I had voted against it he was accusing me of making all the votes. I know for a fact that the majority of the people were all different individuals who study cycles - but Hillman denies that such an area of study exists. I made a formal complaint to wikipedia about Hillman, but he left before the complaint could be dealt with. Expect a similar result here.

Hillman, I say to you again "stop telling lies" or you find yourself in a court of law.

After Hillman left wikipedia I asked for and was assigned a person who knows the systems there and he worked with me for some time in an effort to reinstate deleted articles where the process was faulty. He said that I acted at all times in a proper manner and yet I was subjected again to similar behaviour to Hillman's and even wrongfully (in other people's opinions not mine) stopped from posting for a period. That person was very like Hillman, happy to make dismissive judgments in seconds about decades of work by people far more intelligent than them. The person helping me in the end decided to leave wikipedia also. He said that he could no longer handle the politics of it.

Here is a part of the logs from one of the things removed by CH and his friends:

Category:Cycles

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Delete. ∞Who?¿? 01:58, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

All due respect to interdisciplinary approaches, but this is just silly. No useful categorization scheme. --Pjacobi 23:21, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

* Delete. No argument. siafu 23:22, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

* Keep. User:RayTomes The study of cycles is a discipline in its own right and contributes considerably to human knowledge. There are several organisations devoted to cycles research in the uSA, Europe and Russia and those working in the field will find this Category very useful. You put forward no argument for why it is silly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RayTomes (talk • contribs) 21:27, 20 September 2005
o What is the name of this discipline in its own right? Why is this a good way to categorize these articles? siafu 23:32, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
+ It is called Cycle studies. There are organisations called Foundation for the Study of Cycles and Cycles Research Institute amoung others.
# See also Cycle synchrony, Edward R Dewey, List of cycles, Harmonics Theory/Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Harmonics Theory. IMHO already a lot of articles for a non-mainstram idea. Anyway, at least stop the catefory. --Pjacobi 12:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

* Keep. User: Leslie Botha-Williams Cyles are the foundation of life. Their applications are worth studying - and are the foundation for human and planetary survival. Cycles are mentioned throughout history,religion, music, art,science, literature, politics and biology (to name a few). Just because this study does not resonate with you does not negate its importance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.228.33.14 (talk • contribs) 21:53, 20 September 2005

Vote by 4.228.33.14 (talk · contribs), signature is forged, there is no User:Leslie Botha-Williams. --Pjacobi 12:59, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

*
o This is a category, not an article. siafu 23:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
* Comment: How about renaming it Category:Cycle studies? --G Rutter 07:19, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

IMHO the name isn'the problem. The category lumps articles together, which have no sufficent cohesion, to fulfill categories' two main purpose

1. Navigation aid for the reader
2. Systematic division of article space

Take for example Astrology, Atomic clock, Bipolar disorder, and Joseph Schumpeter.
Pjacobi 08:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

The cohesion depends on the perspective of the individual using the encyclopedia for resarch. To a cycles researcher the 4 topics listed do have some cohesion. There are many ways of looking at the world and an encyclopedia should cope with as many of them as possible. That is why astrology has a place, even though many of us may think it bunkum. Someone studying global warming might look up milankovitch cycles and finding the caegory ctcles be lead to discover a host of other climate cycles and also social cycles that might be relevant to their study. User:RayTomes Ray Tomes 00:43, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I direct you to Wikipedia:Categorization, specifically where it states: "If you go to the article from the category, will it be obvious why it's there? Is the category subject prominently discussed in the article?" Does this apply to bipolar disorder? Joseph Schumpeter? Astrology? Human timescales? This is not more useful than a category like Category:Things that happened more than once, and none of the arguments presented so far address the specific issue of categorization. siafu 03:40, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

* KEEP Jack Smith (tjs11) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjs11 (talk • contribs) 08:21, 21 September 2005

Vote by tjs11 (talk · contribs), 2nd contrib, 1st was at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Harmonics Theory. --Pjacobi 12:59, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Only 2 contribs listed above. ∞Who?¿? 01:58, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

* Delete - given the arguments above and on the various talk and AfD pages and the existence of list of cycles I do not see the need for a category for a theory which has very limited support. --G Rutter 15:45, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
o This has nothing to do with any theory. You are totally confused. The category cycles is not as wide as list of cycles, as it includes only articles which are predominantly about cycles where the list includes also minor cycles references. Cycle studies is a well established branch of knowledge, with many mathematical tools (FFT, MESA, indicators for markets) and spans many scientific, economic and social disciplines. I recommend reading [1] by Edward Dewey. This explains the advantages of interdisciplinary cycles study. What possible harm does it do anyone to have a cycles category? Hint ... answer is none. User:RayTomes Ray Tomes 01:19, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
+ I fail to see how, say sonoluminescence is in any way "predominantly about cycles." Siafu is right--this is a category only in the mind of someone who is predisposed to see it as such. It's reminiscent of [Borges' Chinese encyclopedia], with its arbitrary classification of animals. The Dewey article exhibits a similar cargo-cult approach to science, one decried by the very Feynman he cites. The "harm" is to the credibility of Wikipedia as a source of information. rodii 23:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
+ Hint: Excess categories clutter up category listings, make navigation more difficult, and increase server load. siafu 23:49, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
# If there is no theoretical underpining to the collection of articles in Category:Cycles then it should certainly be deleted. That lots of things have cyclic patterns is not disputed, but that there is a meta-explanation linking them all is. Can you provide independent references (preferably in peer-reviewed journals) that does link them? I'm afraid a paper with no references from 1967 which admits it doesn't have a theory to link the observations doesn't convince me of the need for this. --G Rutter 08:21, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
* Keep. User:Pjorgens I use this category in preference to other cycle categories. If you feel you must go around deleting things for the greater good or just because YOU find them silly or excessive then attack those other categories rather than this one. Template:01:56, 22 September 2005
o Pjorgens (talk · contribs). Second contribution, first was ten minutes prior. siafu 03:35, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
+ First edit, userpage, second edit vote. Last contrib since. ∞Who?¿? 01:58, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Keep - it is intersting and challenging to see the world from other vantage points than ones own. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Calmer (talk • contribs) 13:45, 22 September 2005

Unsigned edit by Calmer (talk · contribs) - first edit. siafu 18:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

And last edit. ∞Who?¿? 01:58, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

* Delete. More a hobby or pseudo-discipline that any real area of human knowledge. rodii 22:54, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
* Closing note. Discounted sock-puppet votes. 5 total, 4 del, 1 keep. ∞Who?¿? 01:58, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

Now if anyone wants to add up the votes they will see that there were 3 votes for deletion and 5 votes for keep. So the statement that "Discounted sock-puppet votes. 5 total, 4 del, 1 keep." is seriously in error. Firstly there are 3 votes to delete and not 4. The accusation of sock puppets means that a person logs in as several different people to make extra votes. As only 1 vote is allowed for keep then the accusation is that 1 person made all 5 votes. I know that I voted keep and so I am being accused of making all 5 votes illegally. I know a number of the other people who voted keep and I can assure you that they exist and did not access wikipedia even from the same country as me.

Yet CH continued to accuse me of using sock puppets in wikipedia, which is a seriously defamatory statement. I made a formal complaint about the above vote and CH accusing me of using sock puppets, but CH disappeared from wikipedia at about that time, and I got no satisfaction.

Now he has surfaced again in BAUT telling the same lies. Saying that the Foundation for Study of Cycles article, the Dewey article and the Cycle Synchrony article were all about Harmonics Theory which they were not. They never mentioned Harmonics Theory.

Worse still, the BAUT administrators have defended him by removing me from their forum. So he is now allowed to continue speaking lies and I am not even allowed to read what he says let alone reply. Shame on you BAUT admins.