User talk:Todd Coles

Todd Coles

Current talk page

1

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start, and see Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any user or the editors for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! --Larry Sanger 00:57, 22 July 2007 (CDT)

Welcome back!

Hi Todd,

Where ya been?

Hope you'll be as productive and all-round useful as you used to be! Hayford Peirce 02:21, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Hayford! The combination of a new job and a slight lack of motivation kept me at bay for awhile, but I've had a little bit more time lately so I thought I'd pop back in and see what's going on. I'll try to live up to the high standards which you hold me to..:) --Todd Coles 02:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

THAT I hold ya to, illiterate! Hayford Peirce 03:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I'm just a small town Okie barely able to read and write. So sometimes I just have to make stuff up. --Todd Coles 03:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Makin' stuff up? Welcome to the club! Hayford Peirce 04:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Comments welcome on Cooking Utensils

I've just started cooking utensils...and don't know if I have the courage to take on knives, much less some of my stranger gadgets. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure I can add some insightful information such as "knives are sharp." Let me have a read and I'll comment over there.. Todd Coles 03:09, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Greetings. There's a nascent Food science workgroup which might be the best primary home for Anise?Gareth Leng 17:31, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we could cover it under Healing Arts if the herbal side is developed; PMID 18957177; PMID 18852037; PMID 18266149 and othersGareth Leng 19:42, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Phytotherapy, and a more general issue for thought about article titles

Paraphrasing one of the all-time best funny science fiction stories, Arthur C. Clarke's The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch, Arthur C. Clarke observed that defenestration is not quite one's everyday word. We have a persistent and non-trivial issue with words and titles here, and this is a good example. One key misconception is that the title will determine whether things will be found in search engines only if they have the "most likely" title — but redirects, and even strings in the body of an article, still will be found.

There are lots and lots of forms of herbal medicine, some "[adjective] herbal therapy", some less obvious such as Bach flower therapy, and blurring into nutritional medicine. The choice I took, as I think many do in health sciences, is to name the primary article after the indexing term used by the authoritative Medical Subject Headings of the National Library of Medicine, and then have lots of redirects (and links from related articles). Use all the redirects to it you can imagine, and, when a redirect could be ambiguous, consider creative use of Related Articles pages.

As I understand, there's a long-running and somewhat bitter argument in Biology, where the biologists tend to want to use scientific names for organisms of all types with redirects for the common names, while others want "most likely". I understand some biologist have left the Project over the issue.

It keeps coming up. I'm having some bitter disputes in things generally Military, in which people have variously created articles based on how some politician or talking head referred to a topic, often only one aspect of a topic, and resisting renaming (with redirects) to the formal name, or, in some cases, accepting the popular-named topic really belongs as a subtopic of a more general article. Some particularly extensive patterns have me thinking of writing no more content if the popular view will override the editor (even if there's only one active editor, but there are wise people to do "plausibility checks"). If Editors can't make these calls, or at least if qualified authors can't thoroughly support the title choice, how are we different, in accuracy, than Wikipedi? Howard C. Berkowitz 16:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Howard, I understand your pain. Before I went on hiatus for awhile there was large debate over how to title history articles (History of vs. , history). I personally find it tiresome and counterproductive, because I believe with the redirect system, once people come to CZ they will be able to find whatever it is they are looking for. And once CZ can build an article base with numerous approved articles (I of course understand that we need more qualified editors here, which is another issue) people will come to CZ in search of accurate articles instead of relying on WP as much, regardless of where things line up on the Google search.

It also seems to me like very few issues are ever resolved here. This article naming thing has been going on for more than a year. --Todd Coles 17:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

cumin, cumin (in French), anis, anise, carvi, caraway, anisette, etc. etc.

This is a plate of spaghetti, at least in French -- there are 3 or 4 overlapping names and mis-names. I've just been looking at the French WP, which has extensive articles (and pictures) of most of the above, with warnings not to confuse one with the other(s) but I'm afraid that I'll probably never get it clear. In Alsace, for instance, they call the caraway seeds they put on bread "cumin", but sometimes "anise". And in Southern France, those are different things. Is a puzzlement! that I'll let you scratch your head over....

I used to drink a lot of Pernod -- now I put a 1/4 teaspoon of it into some of my "Polynesian" rum drinks for subtle flavoring... Cheers! Hayford Peirce 17:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Black caraway (nigella, I think) is South Asian, looks quite different from European caraway, and is immensely better in rye bread than European caraway. (For that matter, mixing dill seeds and caraway seeds, and maybe dill weed [leaf]) in rye bread is even better).

Star anise (Chinese) and anise (Mediterranean) look completely different, I'm sure are biologically different, and have different but sometimes overlapping culinary uses.

I think of European cumin, caraway and anise as three completely different seeds (dark small disks, larger brownish comma-shaped, often greenish ovals). Black cumin (South asian) is quite different, as is black caraway. Fresh chervil arguably gives what I'll call an anise flavor. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, looks as if you've mastered the intricacies, Howard! Good for you! I *do* have star anise in my cupboard (dingle, as we old New Englanders call it) and use it in Chinese cooking. Used to put in a couple of drops of Pernod if I didn't have the stars. A number of old Bearnaise recipes call for fresh chervil but I was never able to find it when I *wanted* to try it, and now that I can find it in specialty markets I don't bother. I'm sure that the late, sainted Waverley Root in his magisterial Food, probably has straightened out the cumin problem also. I suppose that I ought to go take a look.... Hayford Peirce 17:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Air-dried chervil is useless; some freeze-dried work. Nevertheless, chervil isn't that hard to grow, even indoors. In a cool climate — the plants go to seed very quickly — if you like it (or do it indoors), you can get good quality by harvesting the leaves, mixing with a little water, pureeing in a blender, pouring into an ice cube tray, and popping an herb cube into the cookpot. Note that I didn't say dry-frozen (as opposed to freeze-dried) herbs but frozen in a puree -- that seems to conserve the delicate tastes. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm personally not a huge fan of anise or anise flavoring. I'm a fan of Jagermeister, which led me to try Sambuca which I couldn't stand. Of course I was drinking it straight so that could have been a problem... I have been using Gary Allen's The Herbalist in the Kitchen for some reference in all of this and he has numerous names for it used around the world. I don't know if dumping said plate of spaghetti into the article will really bring any value to it - perhaps this is something that could be added on a catalog subpage, various names for the same thing. --Todd Coles 18:24, 1 March 2009 (UTC)