User talk:Taam

Welcome!

Hello, Taam, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

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ϢereSpielChequers 22:10, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Columbus Day

Do not add statements to the articles which are not directly supported by a citation. If you continue to do so, you may be blocked from editing. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 16:50, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you are mixining me up with your fellow administrator User:Cuchullain, all the material I have sumitted to the article has been referenced. Taam (talk) 18:32, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Oops, my bad. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 18:37, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

RCC FAC

Because the RCC FAC has grown lengthy and difficult to edit, with many signatures separated from the original commentary, I have pulled your original commentary out to the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Roman Catholic Church#Taam to hopefully make it easier for you to update the status of your concerns. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:38, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, it was getting very difficult to follow. Taam (talk) 18:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Taam, could you please strike out your comments that I have satisfactorily answered or place a resolved note next to each comment on the page Sandy just created? I have answered a lot of your comments with quite a lot of words added to the article. NancyHeise ^talk 16:32, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

For your vote at Roman Catholic Church. I am sorry to inform you that we failed FAC but will again be at peer review in a few weeks to sort things out. Hopefully we will make it through next time. We will be contacting all supporters and opposers of the article when we open the next peer review to hopefully get all issues addressed and hashed out before the next FAC try. Thanks again for your time and attention to this important article. NancyHeise ^talk 01:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Jake Wartenberg^talk has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend, Go on smile! Cheers, and Happy editing!=)
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

License tagging for File:Maat3.jpg

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Horus

Seeing your edits on Hathor, I wonder if you could take a look at Horus sometime, where a ridiculous slow edit war goes about Horus's mother(s), with editors changing names. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 19:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

And thanks again, good work. Dougweller (talk) 05:06, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks so much for your comment on my work on Ursula Franklin. I've been away from Wikipedia for awhile working on another project and wasn't aware that the Ursula Franklin article had been a featured article of the day. So, your comment was very welcome. Thanks again. Bwark (talk) 02:04, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Mit Brennender Sorge

Would you mind taking a look at this article which has a bit of a WP:OWN problem. Like a number of previous editors, I read the article and went to the official English version of the text to look for the denunciation of Hitler as an "insane prophet" described there, and found nothing of the sort. I discussed it at WP:Reliable Sources and it turned out that the German version could arguably be interpreted in this way, so I edited the text to say "some scholars interpret this as a reference to Hitler". This was reverted. I saw that you had raised some similar concerns in an FA discussion, so I thought I would ask you to take a look.JQ (talk) 11:04, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Dear John, You will gather from my user page that I, like most people on Wikipedia, value precepts such as those contained in Maat. Before I engage in any discussion as you suggest there is the requirement from my point of view that the participants have a similar working ethos, and therefore I decline your request to become involved. Anyone who values intellectual honesty, and this is something I had always associated with Catholic scholars before encountering the kind of material that now troubles you, can check the original sources and come to their own conclusions. It is likely that if you pursue such matters you will be drowned out by a "democratic" vote of like minded people. Sorry but I would much rather be engaged with all the other unsung fine contributors I encounter on Wikipedia. Could I also request that my talk page be kept clear of apologists who wish to debate this matter further Taam (talk) 11:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, and probably a wise choice.JQ (talk) 23:50, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I should add I still think very highly of Catholic scholars - it was purely an issue with the editors of the FA candidate and how I thought they were misusing sources to spin the article by refusing to accept any contrary opinion, no matter how well cited, that sought to tone down the very colorful presentation in key sections. I have just taken a quick look at the opening paragraph of this article and it's appalling how it misrepresents what the encyclical says, but for the reasons given above.... Taam (talk) 00:22, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

You have mail.

Taam,

Please check your email for a message about Amenemope.

Harmakheru (talk) 16:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Catholicism and Freemasonry

I've left a message on Talk:Catholicism and Freemasonry. Although it's not an attempt to shoe horn a Masonic POV in, it seems to imply that the Catholic Church has rowed back on its condemnation of Freemasonry for the perceived wish to get religion out of the public square. Neither of these quotes says that.

JASpencer (talk) 10:44, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I was drawn to the article through the section titled "Separation of church and state". This, along with another article on Wikipedia, was the first time I had encountered a text that aims towards the "scholarly" omitting the key passage from the Second Vatican Council dealing with this precise theme so I added it along with a recent quotation from Pope Benedict who seems to feel it was a particular achievement of the Church. As you will note I didn't add any commentary to the text nor did I delete passages that I think misrepresented the Church -- take for example the issue of cremation in the same section. I suspect you may be be concerned about context in that "Gaudium et spes" doesn't deal specifically with Freemasons as such but by the same token could that charge not be applied to other material in the article? In my opinion the "Gaudium et spes" text is such a key document on the issue of Church-State relations that it's omission in any article dealing with the subject is likely to leave the average reader with a very unbalanced understanding of what the Church teaches. Will think about getting involved in the rest of the article once I get a chance to read the talk archives next week but I think it's unlikely after a quick scan of the article.Taam (talk) 18:51, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Infanticide

Thanks for your reply to my comment on the talk page, and thanks for your insightful and scholary contribution to the article. I'm no subject matter expert, but applying common sense, I find it implausible that the Egyptians did not commit infanticide. What did they do then, to children born to extremely poor parents, to children born in times of famine, to children born in unacceptable or intolerable circumstances such as out of wedlock, affairs, prostitutes etc. I understand that the Egyptians had a high moral standing. So did Europe in late renaisance and punishment for infanticide was harsh. Yet, in late 1700s, early 1800s, the solution to infancitide was the creation of orphanages, i.e. to create an institutionalized alternative to infanticide - because infanticide sure did take place. This also took place in Vienna, a city never accused of moral austerity. So I could imagine that you could find similar references concerning Austria, that infanticide was plainly unacceptable, punished harshly, frowned upon etc - yet it took place. (I came across the subject in my readings of Ignaz Semmelweis where women had to endure the most terrible hospital conditions, many with no other choice, precisely because the hospital offered to care for the infant - i.e. an alternative to infanticide). The book I referenced at the talk page also mentioned the Germans, this enormously cultivated people, who nevertheless committed massive atrocities in the Nazi extermination camps, including large-scale infanticide, not so long ago. The American pioneers committed infanticide to the Indians, and what happened in Rwanda just 10 years ago, and now in Sudan etc, etc. I guess my principal objection was the statement: "In Egypt there is no evidence of infanticide", this simply seems implausible, idealized or whatever. As I said above, I'm no expert matter, and I have no personal interest in the article, so I wont comment further. This is just a note in response to your absolutely defensible, referenced, sober, etc .. absolutely correct statements. Thanks again for your reply. Power.corrupts (talk) 17:32, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed and clear comments! First I should point out I'm no expert on this subject and there is no way do I see what is presently in the article being the last word -- it only reflects what I have been able to find out so far. Your analysis seems perfectly reasonable to me and I'm sure there must have been examples of it in Ancient Egypt. Indeed the article's ref to Diodorus saying it is a punishable offence indicates the idea was not unknown. He in fact says that the offender was made to hold the dead baby for three days. I didn't put that into the article because Adolf Erman, who I used as the source, thought Diodorus description of the punishment was being read through Greek tinted lenses.

Taking up another point you raise, I agree that a distinction has to be clearly made in the article between what is done by individuals and if they are in violation of the social norms or laws of the culture in question. Following your line of thought, nobody considers Uruguayans cannibals because of what people resorted to when Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed.

As mentioned on the talk page I have one positive lead to indicate an instance of infanticide from an non-egyptologist. I have a book written by an anthropologist who repeats the same thing using similar words that may be from a common source (Georges Gusdorf) who wasn't an Egyptologist either. I hesitate to use it without corroboration from an Egyptologist because I made edits to the Human Sacrifice article a while back that indicated that certain kinds of sacrifices (retainer mainly) may have happened very early in Egypt's dynastic history. This seemed reasonable to me because I assumed human sacrifice was present at some stage in all bronze age cultures but now I find out that this interpretation relating to archaeological finds is not to certain as it may appear after reading the opinions of other Egyptologists -- I have to do more research.

It is possible to read 19th century literature that says infanticide was practised in A.E but from what I have read it seems to be taking the Bible as literally true in the narrative account of the killing of the first born but is there any modern biblical scholar or egyptologist who now asserts this as historical fact?

A.E did seem to hold life itself as being a gift from God(s), there are many surviving prayers recording this and you find in the Instructions of Amenemope precepts that defend the physical or mentally disabled. In Tutankhamun's tomb was found two tiny mummies of his presumed children who never reached full gestation and they carry the name Osiris indicating a belief in resurrection even though they were not born alive. Their art is full of scenes with young boys and girls with the worship of the child Horus being very striking example of how they revered life in all it's stages, so their religious beliefs may account for the paucity of evidence. As soon as verifiable information comes to hand, unless a more knowledgeable editor appears first, I will put it in - I loath articles that only present a version of an ideal and not the reality.

As for the opening assertion that infanticide was not practised, this is from Egyptologists[1]. The only change I made was to take out the ref to females (the common victim in Greco-Roman cultures) so the general reader to the wiki article would not incorrectly assume that male infanticide was practised. Thanks again for taking the time to share your well thought out views. Taam (talk) 19:52, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I thank you for your exhaustive reply. Power.corrupts (talk) 21:11, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to illustrate the problems of reliable sources: I checked out the possible source mentioned on the talk page of the article for some kind of infanticide in A.E.

The author states in his book that "In Egypt for example, abandonment of infants was not very common during centuries of self rule" and he gives as a reference for this opinion Miriam Lichtheim translation of "The Admonitions of Ipuwer". ML was a highly respected egyptologist whose work is quoted extensively in scholarly works in and outside her own field of specialist interest. Her use as a reference in this work is appalling in my opinion because the author fails to mention that her analysis of the text as "hyperbole", written in times of peace in the form of a literary thematic genre centred on "national distress", "purely a literary creation", "the unhistorical character of the whole genre", "fixed cliches" and so on.

The author of the book is Dr. Larry S. Milner and the web site of the organization he founded states:

"SPI, a not-for-profit organization, was founded in 1994 by Dr. Larry S. Milner, a physician engaged in the private practice of internal medicine, hematology, and oncology. Dr. Milner began researching the topic of infanticide over ten years ago. As Dr. Milner pursued his research effort, the totality of this epidemic throughout history began to unfold. Dr. Milner was so moved by the information he was discovering, he felt compelled to write, Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide."

He has no relevant qualifications I can see that can justify his redaction of ML's work so I cannot use it, but I note it's used as a reference in several other parts of the article. When I can find a egyptologist who mentions infanticide then of course... Taam (talk) 21:02, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Deir el-Medina

Its a subject I know nothing about, so your page move request gave me a chance to have a read. Just wanted to say well done for your hard work in improving this article. Euryalus (talk) 12:14, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

And thanks again, it's much appreciated. Taam (talk) 12:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Hello

I'm very glad to be joining as well. Thanks to you for the greeting. I have edited on the Arabic wikipedia before and I am pleased that my English is finally good enough to join your beautiful community. -Setna- (talk) 16:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)