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Talk:Idol worship/Archive 1

All right, this article is taking a very biased pot shot at Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy by equating idolatry with veneration. I'm steamed, so I'm not going to start making changes right now. I'm going to give cooler heads a chance to do that, preferably the original authors and editors of this piece. I suggest the article distinguish between Protestants and Christians.

If the current text stays, I'm very tempted to insert a rebuttal paragraph or two indicating how the Protestant stance defining idolatry as it does, also effectively denies the doctrine of the Incarnation, just as John of Damascus said it was wont to do back in the eighth century. Wesley 22:40 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

This is not remotely NPOV. Michael Hardy 23:10 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

The middle to bottom needs work, no doubt, but what do you mean /NPOV?- &#35918&#30505

NPOV = "neutral point of view". See the discussion of this in the introductory pages. Michael Hardy 23:12 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

--

 * Idolatry is worse than carnage -- The Koran
 * -- Tarquin 23:21 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC) (it's quoted in Consider Phlebas)

Nice... Sign your name with three ~'s next time...-- &#35918&#30505 23:19 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC) Sue?

Sorry Susan... didnt see you editing... - &#35918&#30505

It appears there is an edit disagreement.

 * stating "idolatry is a sin" is POV. Stating that all religions oppose idolatry is incorrect. Susan Mason

Ah youre actually talking things over now... how honored we are that you talks to ussss. - &#35918&#30505

yesh Susan Mason

I agree the sin word is best avoided. So is fetishim, for that matter, which is really the phiosophizing of the habitual and indulgent... related, and worty of aheader, but not pg 1 materiale.. - &#35918&#30505

 * Idolatry is the name of a sin; it's the only way the concept has meaning.  Some religions revere images, but they don't claim to be idolators, even if  they are in fact; they redefine idolatry so it only applies to something somebody else does.  Religions that don't have a tenet that forbids idolatry don't need the concept; they don't worry about it.  -- IHCOYC 23:39 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

 * Idolatry is the name of something which some people believe is a sin, that alone does not make it a sin. Susan Mason

 * The concept of idolatry, then, refers only to what people believe is a sin. Whether it is in fact a sin or not is beside the point: those who speak of idolatry are talking about sin.  -- IHCOYC 23:46 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

 * Or so they believe... Susan Mason

the fetishism page reads like it is something we would want to mention: Susan Mason
 * Fetishism most generally refers to the belief that natural objects have supernatural powers, or that something created by people has power over people.

I understand your fetish for fetishim here but its POV, and way down the list as far as idolatric concepts go... think bigger. much bigger... I have to take a ... - &#35918&#30505

So... article contends that Hinduism is not idolatry because it merely uses idols as a representation of a divine being, like Christians use the cross, statues of Jesus or Mary, etc. But is this latter practice not also considered idolatry by some? For example, Jehovah's Witnesses? Or am I mistaken? Graft

You are correct. Susan Mason

 * Some Protestant Christians, especially evangelicals, use the word "idolatry" as an ad homenim attack; most haven't the slighest clue as to the technical definition of this term. Many use it to slander or attack the beliefs of any religion that differs from their own, even Catholicism. Hinduism is commonly called idolatry by many people. Whether it fits the technical definition of that term, however, is another issue. Judaism traditionally has had little contact with Hinduism, and as such has little track record on this topic. Many Jewish people who know a little about Hinduism regard it as idolatry, but then again, some rabbis whihave studied the religion in more depth have written the opposite point of view. RK

Whether something is idolatry or not is purely POV. Susan Mason

RK is introducing POV material. Christianity does not demand worship of God via a cross anymore than Judaism demands woship of God via a dradle or kosher kitchen. Also he is denying a Christo-Islamic-Judeo tradition. Susan Mason

 * Susan, there is a huge difference between disputes about facts, and about points of view. This is a fact issue, not a POV issue. Further, you are just plain wrong. You seem to know very little about real-life Christianity. It is an indisputable fact that large numbers of Christians are taught that they must kneel before a cross, sometimes before a figure of Jesus on the cross. This is a mainstream way of how a huge number of Christians pray to God. You may not approve of this, but exists nonetheless. You can't wish away facts bcause it offends your personal beliefs. And your comparison with Judaism was totally ignorant. Keeping a kosher kitchen, or playing children's games with a dreidl, has nothing to do with prayer to God. That's just ignorant and wrong. RK

Susan wrotes "christianity does not demand idolization of a cross". Huh? Susan, stop attacking statements that no one has made. What I said was that many Christians pray to God via the cross or crucifix, and many venerate saints through statues. Please do not write about topics which you are clearly ignorant of.

Please do not be hostile, arrogant, rude, condenscending, and the like. Susan Mason

RK-The fact that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so closely related that one could consider them three sects of the same religion is a viewpoint held by many people. There is a Christo-Islamic-Judeo tradition, and it goes back many years. I am familiar with many Jews who pray before eating, and do so much more than Christians, yet I am not saying that they they idolize their food. Many Christians do not kneel before a cross, with or without a picture of Jesus. Susan Mason

 * That's garbage. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have very different views of this subject. Stop substituing your wishes for reality.

-

Hello. Is it not possible that each religion has different views of what exactly constitutes idolatry so that, for example, the Christian view is different from the Islamic view is different from the Jewish view.

 * Yes, this is what I have been trying to say! But Susan and Stevertigo deny this, and pretend that there is some kind of unified Christian-Muslim-Jewish point of view. That's ridiculous. RK

I know that in some areas of the the Middle East, for example, Muslims are very strict about prohibiting any images of humans, animals, plants, or stars as decorative motifs in mosques because this can be interpreted as idolatry, whereas Christians are more lenient with the use of icons, crucifixes, etc. (The Jewish tradition seems to depend largely on the dominant culture of the region). In other words, defining idolatry, which is largely a social construct), would depend on the religious background of the person creating the definition. In other words, a single definition cannot be POV. Danny

 * I totally agree.

RK is deleting a link to Christo-Islamic-Judeo tradition for who knows what reason. Susan Mason

 * Robert, continue in your conduct, and I will bring it to the community that you be removed. Period. Your insulting tone, and excessive alarmism have met an ill mood in me today, and I suggest you moderate your tone. I wont ask again. - &#35918&#30505 And thank you Danny, for being objective and articulate.- But that it cant be nailed down, because its subjective to religious tradition, is besides the point isnt it? We deal with the general issue... the most broad concept - the one expressed in the ten commandments comes close. It has virtually nothing to do with statues, although statue-worship no doubt provided inspiration for the commandment... the holding of things to interfere with God, is what idolatry is, and this is practically universal. Then come the particulars.- &#35918&#30505

I believe it is inappropriate for RK to be accusing Stevertigo of anti-Zionist rants when he hasn't doing anything of the sort during this discussion, or ever as far as I am aware. Susan Mason

 * Susan, that's totally false. He just wrote anti-Zionist attacks, a few minutes go, multiple times, and I deleted them because it was a violation of Wikipedia protocol. Check the History of this article. Please do not accuse me of lying. The only problem is that you failed to follow this article closely. RK

There is some kind of unified Christian-Muslim-Jewish POV in regards to idolatry. My wiccan friends all think that idolatry is good, they idolize the earth and the plants in particular. They speak to rocks and believe divine beings are to be found within inert matter. Susan Mason

 * No, Susan, there isn't. Stop making up fantasy, and then writing about it as fact. That is not acceptable behavior in a peer-reviewed encyclopedia. RK

Susan, I would not characterize your Wiccan friends religion as "idolatry" in the denegrating sense that others might - in accord with their particular views of Wicca, in general. Rather, what Wiccans worship is the manifestation of the "holy spirit" in all things. Its not incompatible with the Judeo-Christo-Islamic concepts, rather its related - while also containing some of the Eastern religious foundations of deism, where deities represent only manefestations of the divine spirit and not the spirit itself, which is the unapproachable mystery. - &#35918&#30505

'''Its rude people, as if you didnt know, to chop up a talk page by making insterted entries, and to leave entries unsigned. - &#35918&#30505'''

I think the solution is to use message boards and chatrooms. Right now we could be chatting in Real-Time with RK, Danny, each other, and others, and Im sure we'd accomplish much more. Susan Mason

I would not go to the Ten Commandments because they are based on a Judeo-Christian text, but to the best of my knowledge they do not appear as such in the Koran (been a while--I could be wrong here.) And besides, look at Exodus 20:4-5--it certainly does have to do with "graven images or any likeness of any thing that is in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow unto them or serve them..." That is certainly talking about statues. Also, this whole discussion is pretty ethnocentric. What do the Bahai or the Sikhs have to say about idolatry? I am sure that they have specific opinions too. What about Buddhism? Maybe the term itself is incongruous with our contemporary understanding of religions. Danny

 * Uhm? Danny? you do know that the Quran is the most recent of "holy texts" in Islam? And yes its a Westerocentric discussion.
 * "It is an essential part of a Muslim's belief that if anyone professes belief only in the divine origin of the Quran, and refuses to acknowledge the divine origin of other books, such as the Old Testament and the New Testament etc., his profession of Islam would be invalidated." - &#35918&#30505

 * And yet, Muslims also believe that the other books were corrupted. For that reason they study the Koran and not the Bible. Danny

The world and all its religious people are full of contradictions, Danny. - &#35918&#30505

Not all Muslims study only the Koran... Susan Mason

 * Yes - The characterization of the entire Muslim religion as 'hostile toward "non-believers"' is quite a common one these days, and as I undersand it and human nature, is an entirely xenophobic matter - a propensity for quoting angry rhetoric and minimlalising the substance...

 * What I do understand of Islam, just as many here are keen to point to me about Judaism, is that its invalid to generalize the beliefs of millions of people...
 * Islam sees itself very differently than Jews or Christians see it, and the hostility by the two towards Islam strikes me as similar to the inter-sect fighting between Catholics and Protestants... Protestants and Mormons.. etc...
 * the newer always thinks its concepts superior by virtue of modernity, even when its ideas are long since antiquated. And the older thinks its been aging like wine the whole time, when in fact its been only changing like people. Christian hostility towards Islam is no doubt equivalent to Jewish hostility to Christians, although the scales are different... nevertheless, as i understand it, in my own secular way, that each of these religions is highly secular in principle.. that is, underneath its symbols and rhetoric each understands the universality of worship - (all fundamentalist make themselves irrelevant). The fundamental conditions for a religion are met in each, and each serves equivalently to inspire men to God. Any inter-faith hostilities arise either from the basic rancor the old has for the younger ( "The old only grow more wicked" - Frank Herbert ) or the fractures that arise from insincere and disingenuous misinterpretation of religious symbolism in accordance with a value judgement about that religion. Its fubar obfusco all over again. - &#35918&#30505

Returning to Wesley's points at the top of this page, I have to agree that the discussion of idolatry is decidedly Protestant, even when it tries to frame the discussion in the language of cultural anthropology and comparative religions. Although I've tried to skew the discussion of Christian practices back to NPOV, I am still disconcerted by the definition of idolatry. I need to research the question further in standard scholarship on comparative religion. Basil Fritts 06:32 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

"Shintoism is a religion which worships images." No, Shintoism is a religion which worships kami.

Might it not do to divide this article in two? One article, Idolatry, would deal with the theological concept used in Abrahamic religion, and thus touch on subjects such as iconoclasm and the Islamic view of images. In that article, it would be appropriate to deal with the idea of idolatry as sin, and the various things that different Abrahamic religions subsume under "idolatry", because that article would be describing the Abrahamic concept of idolatry. The other article, Idol, would deal with the religious artifacts used in certain Hindu sects, various animisms, and other such religions. It would deal with the various sorts of idols that have been used in worship, the ways in which idols are used, archaeological finds of idols, and so forth. It would be dealing not with the Abrahamic idea of "idolatry" but with the practices of those non-Abrahamic religions which actually use idols. --FOo

 * That may not be a bad idea in theory. Like I've tried to say here, "idolatry" is the name of a sin in the Abrahamic religions.  Those who don't believe that the worship of idols is forbidden either have no need of the concept, or they alter it so they can convince themselves what they're doing isn't actually idolatry.  Not sure that a separate article at "idol" is the right place for it, though; after all, "idol" gets all its meaning from "idolatry."  The article at fetishism wanders away into odd Marxist-Leninist and sex stuff, and perhaps it needs to be expanded with descriptions of actual fetishism.  Other faiths probably have sufficiently developed ideas, so that perhaps idol could just direct people to more substantial discussions of specific varieties of image worship at, say, Shinto, or veneration, or Hinduism, or icon. -- IHCOYC 12:44 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

 * Do cultural anthropologists call these items "idols"? Wesley

- Wow. What a storm of editing. Guess I'm not the only to feel strongly about this. Thanks everyone, I think this article is starting to look decent. Looks like no one has touched on its relationship to the Incarnation yet, so I'll be adding that bit here shortly. Wesley 15:49 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

idolatry, n. 1 : the worship of a physical object as a god 2 : immoderate attachment or devotion to something

I would rather not have the title of this article suggest that the practice it describes is "immoderate", as this implies disapproval. I think disapproval isn't neutral.

I therefore propose to move the idolatry article to idol worship, which means the same thing but carries less "disapproving" baggage.

The article should still mention that some religions slap the idolatry label on idol worship and even condemn idol worship as pagan or heathen abomination! When I bought my new Macintosh in 1987, my friend in the UC berated me for idolizing it and called Mac worship a cult. She said, half-jokingly, "You should only belong to one cult at a time." --Uncle Ed 15:53 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

I don't see any NPOV difference between idolatry and ideol worship. In any event, I deleted this paragraph:
 * Idol worship is the exaltation of of objects, static concepts, or otherwise finite things, primarily icons, images, places, relics, idols, sculptures, etc. Some religions require or approve of idol worship, while many other religions regard it as the sin of idolatry, in particular the figured representation of a deity and emphasise that a reverence or attachment to material things is forbidden.

because any religion that require or approves of "idol worship" is not going to call what they worship idols. There are three different points of view this article would have to consider: the point of view of doi dissant idol worshipers (and I am shocked that there is no reference to Kaufman's work); the POV of religions that condemn idolatry (like Judaism, Christianity, Islam), and the point of view of secular scholars of comparative religion -- which in its early stages was somewhat Christian-centric. This article seems to be written from a religious point of view; the above paragraph is certainly not NPOV. Slrubenstein

 * I disagree, I have idols which I worship. What idolatrous religions are u thinking of which are adamant that they are not worshipping idols? The Bible speaks of false idols, one might take this as evidence that some idols are not false. Susan Mason

 * Susan, once again you ignore Wikipedia's NPOV policy. This article is not about your point of view.  I refered to Kaufman, please tell me what scholarly works you are referring to when you assert that religions that worship idols think of their objects of worship as idols? Slrubenstein

 * I don't see where you referred to Kaufman, except that you have mentioned his name twice. I do not feel it is appropriate for you to demand authoritative proof and evidence from me, when you yourself refuse to provide the same.

 * I do see where you have found it appropriate to resort to personal attacks and insults.

 * Where does Kaufman say, "The Azxgi Waon of the Indus Valley tend to castrate those individuals who mistakenly refer to the idol of the god WWARAWWAR WARWAH as an "idol", the Azxgi Waon are adamant that their idol is no mere idol, but, in fact, is a statue in which WWARAWWAR WARWAH lives, it is no mere idol, but rather, a POWER ROCK!" Should you find such a quote, I will consider moving the page to something which is not offensive to the Azxgi Waon, perhaps God in a rock worship? Susan Mason

 * On the other hand, is there a religion that explicitly endorses or promotes idol worship? You said that you worship idols; to what religion do you adhere, and is that part of that religion's teaching and/or practice? Wesley

I am part of a secret society of which you will find no information. I believe there are numerous religions which clearly have idols of some sort, however, the definition of what is, or isn't, an idol, is certainly going to remain in dispute until we agree upon a definition. I am of the opinion that if there is inanimate object which is considered to have not merely religious significance, but religious power innate to itself, then that object is an idol. Susan Mason

 * Idol worship is the exaltation of of objects, static concepts, or otherwise finite things, primarily icons, images, places, relics, sculptures, etc.

 * No, Susan, nothing at all depends on whether "we agree upon a definition" because Wikipedia is not about "our" point of view. The issue is, how have different people -- scholars and religious practicioners -- defined and used the term "idol," and how has this changed?  Slrubenstein

 * From Talk:idol worship...

The Torah is a Jewish Text I am surprised that no Jewish person intervened earlier to correct some of the mistakes in this thread. The Ten Commandments are first mentioned in a Jewish text, the Torah. Several Christians, notably King James, took issues with some of the text and made changes to the Christian adaptation, which they call the Old Testament. As Muslims also believe in the Torah as the first book, it is incorrect to refer to the Torah as a Judeo-Christian text. It is a Jewish text, which many peoples and religions later chose to modify for their own uses, including newer religions like the Bahai. All use of "Judeo-Christian" and similar terms on this page are indicators of lack of comprehension regarding these two very different faiths.

Some Christian Sects and Idol Worship Jews, do, in fact, generally consider statues of Christ and Mary to constitute idol worship, yet we do not believe that non-Jews are bound by the commandments or the rules of the Torah, and we don't believe it is for us to judge, therefore we wouldn't condemn Christians with Mary statues as idol worshipers who are violating G-d's commandments. On the other hand, some Christians understand the Hebrew Bible's straightforward edicts regarding idol worship, and therefore disallow statues in their churches.

Hindus and Idol Worship Jews also, generally consider Hindus to be idol worshipers, and there is an interesting book about a group of rabbis visiting the Dalai Lama (although I'm not sure it addresses this), which addresses Jewish views on Buddhism, called The Jew in the Lotus. Again, Hindus are not bound by Jewish law, so we don't hold it against them.

I think most of the participants here do not understand how the Torah defines idol worship, though ironically, this is the original prohibition that stirs all this controversy. It's usually best to go straight to the source - and for many religious controversies, that source is Torah. (but you may call it the Old Testament or what have you, if it makes you feel more comfortable, though as I mentioned, King James is NOT the source) For more information on how knowledgeable, religious Jews view idol worship, check out Ask Moses:

--88.154.53.228 21:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)Michelle in Jerusalem

title: Talk:Idol worship/Archive 1


text:
Talk:Reiki

USE OF TECHNICAL TERMS AS BUZZWORDS
The terms "scientific" and related forms, and "metaphysical" and related forms are used in ways that have little accuracy. This article should be rewritten to use such terms more carefully, or to avoid them altogether. As it stands this article is just twaddle. 100.4.205.238 (talk) 05:35, 26 May 2024 (UTC) Hug others by adding {{subst:Hug}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
 * ways that have little accuracy What ways are those?
 * use such terms more carefully How?
 * Your contribution is not helpful the way it is put. If you are that vague, we cannot tell what you want. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:04, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with OP′s criticism. The first sentence in the article alone is showing bias by terming Reiki “pseudoscientific form of...”, which is not what Wikipedia is (or should be) about. It would already suffice to have “energy healing” link to the appropriate article where the efficacy of such healing methods are called into question.
 * In the first two paragraphs of the article, Reiki is again called a pseudoscience (though I am not aware of direct scientific claims made by Reiki practitioners), as well as “quackery”. This is, in my opinion, a serious breach of neutrality and objectivity, which is one of the fundamental principles guiding Wikipedia.
 * On a side note, the claim of clinical research not showing “reiki to be effective as a treatment for any medical condition” is, with the exception of Reference [6], seriously outdated, with support for the final conclusion that studies reporting positive effects having had methodological flaws being 15 years out of date, which is a very long time as seen from the lens of ever-evolving medical research. Indeed, there are a few results of clinical trials out there which suggest at least some benefit of reiki in managing pain and anxiety (e.g. doi:10.1093/eurjcn/zvae051, or doi:10.3389/fpysg.2022.897312), but I am not in the medical field and while I enjoy reading medical research, I cannot with certainty judge whether those trials/reviews have methodological flaws that would render the articles unreliable.
 * Going back to the topic at hand, the Wikipedia article goes on (Section: Conceptual Basis) to use loaded words such as “claim”, which the Manual of Style warns against, and reiterates the view of Reiki being “thus [a] pseudoscientific practice based on metaphysical concepts”. We again have a third (fourth?) mention of Reiki being a pseudoscientific practice, which is seriously and unduly influencing readers of this article by now, if it has not already happened in the first few paragraphs.
 * To be clear, I am not advocating for complete removal of all scepticism or reference to the questionability of Reiki from this article, but I am seriously calling out the assigned value, lacking impartiality and imbalance of its tone. --Konanen (talk) 08:39, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You need to read WP:YESBIAS and WP:FRINGE. No, we will not hide the fact that reiki is bullshit behind the energy medicine link. WP:CLAIM says To say that someone asserted or claimed something can call their statement's credibility into question. It does not say that this is always a bad thing. Here, it is not. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:40, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I am going to ask you to retract the “bullshit” wording, and I am going to ask it only once. If you do not, I consider you as not acting in good faith or with neutrality, and will escalate this issue. Thank you. Konanen (talk) 14:34, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "Bullshit" is just a short summary of what reliable sources say: magic handwaving is not effective against any afflictions. Pointing that out is not a violation of WP:NPOV and not a reason to violate WP:AGF. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:11, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * We try to avoid using terms like pseudoscientific unless they are used correctly. That is, we want to use this term when it's "strictly speaking, it's a type of pseudoscience" rather than "I like to call things pseudoscience when they don't work – let me tell you about the pile of pseudoscientific garbage I had to have hauled back to the car dealer's repair shop last week...".
 * If Reiki puts itself forward as a scientific practice, then it's pseudoscience. If it puts itself forward as a non-science (e.g., if Reiki were to claim to be a type of fine art, or a new religion), then it's not.
 * ("Magic handwaving" can do wonders for people whose needs are primarily emotional. Human touch is important to human health.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Human touch is important to human health Yep.
 * Wedding hugs.jpg-- Dustfreeworld (talk) has hugged you! Hugs promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better (and hopefully wasn't meant as an invasion of personal space). Spread the WikiLove by hugging at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy editing! This hug is not quackery, not pseudoscience.

-- Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:09, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You state that "I am not aware of direct scientific claims made by Reiki practitioners" but the fundamental claim of Reiki is that it can "heal" people. It is often called the "Reiki system of natural healing." This is the scientific claim that Reiki is a form of medical treatment, which is defined as "the management and care of a patient to combat disease or disorder."
 * At its core, what makes Reiki a pseudoscience is that it relies on faith, not the scientific method. This is due to its claim that its healing powers come from the practitioner's control of a "life-force energy" when there is no empirical evidence that such an energy exists or can be controlled even if it does exist. Presently, any belief in a "life-force energy" is based on faith which is the opposite of belief based on science. MoralMoney (talk) 13:50, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's correct. I don't think that Reiki relies on faith, and even if it did, faith isn't pseudoscience.
 * Religion/faith is a Non-science. There's a popular slogan that "non-science is nonsense", but like most slogans, it will lead you astray.  Being non-science doesn't mean "wrong" or "pseudoscience".  History, languages, and fine art are all non-science, but they're not nonsense and they're not pseudoscience.  Non-sciene doesn't even mean unimportant; human values are non-science, and they're important.
 * I think the argument for Reiki being a pseudoscience is that it claims that a thing (qi) exists in the material world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Let's lay it out. The wiki article states that "Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method." The scientific method requires two main things: 1) a testable hypotheses, and 2) empirical data to test the hypothesis.
 * Reiki makes the claim that practitioners can use qi to "heal" people. This is not a testable hypothesis because we can't get data to support it. The reason is because this "life-force energy," or "qi" is not observable and cannot be shown to exist. Because Reiki formulates a hypothesis that is neither testable nor measurable or observable, it is the prototypical example of a pseudoscience.
 * To wit, if practitioners claimed that waving their hands around, concentrating and relaxing helps treat anxiety and perceptions of pain, then okay. We're being scientific. We can measure the gestures, we can measure perceptions of pain and anxiety and see if they relate. But as soon as you attribute the effects to "life force energy," something that cannot be observed, then it's a pseudoscience. It claims to be scientific and factual (with a cause and effect) but is incompatible with the scientific method because "qi" is unobservable an immeasurable. MoralMoney (talk) 15:50, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * MoralMoney, you said above that what makes Reiki a pseudoscience is that it relies on faith. I disagree with this statement.  Your analysis here disagrees with that statement.  The definition of pseudoscience disagrees with this statement.  Reiki is IMO pseudoscientific, but not because it relies on faith. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * WhatamIdoing, do you not know what a non-testable hypothesis or a testable hypothesis is? Testable hypotheses are the foundation of science. A scientific hypothesis must be testable and falsifiable. Reiki posits a non-testable hypothesis because its causal variable is unobservable and requires a practitioner's faith for them to believe they are providing actual medical treatment. So, yes, it is most certainly their faith, as opposed to actual observation of a life-force energy, that makes their assertions untestable and therefore pseudoscience.
 * To elaborate, because I'm at a loss as to why you don't get this, a hypothesis may be impossible to test either 1) because it is logically impossible to falsify, or 2) one or more of the variables are unobservable. The statement that "alien lifeforms exist" is not testable because we cannot currently observe enough of the universe to prove this to be false. It requires faith to believe they exist. Honestly, I'm spelling this out like 1+1=2 here so please don't come back saying 1+1=3 anymore. MoralMoney (talk) 16:50, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Reiki makes the claim that practitioners can heal people. Whether people get healed is a testable hypothesis. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * WhatamIdoing, what are you doing? Anyone reading this will understand that Reiki practitioners don't just claim they are healing people. They claim they are healing people by using some kind of "life-force energy." Please see above to understand how and why that is pseudoscience. You should probably stop now. MoralMoney (talk) 02:56, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Some of them do. Consider what this source says:  "none of these mechanisms make sense scientifically. Some believe trauma is stored in our cells and therapeutic touch can restore communication between cells (a claim cell biologists would definitely frown upon). Others say the iron in our blood creates an electromagnetic field as it circulates, and this aura can be manipulated. Finally, Reiki traditionalists simply claim to channel their god’s divine energy."
 * That last is strictly religious, and therefore not pseudoscience. Detecting the existence of and any changes in an electromagnetic field, on the other hand, should be easily testable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:40, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Given that both parties agree that Reiki is in fact a pseudoscience, that it purports to make scientific claims, and that said claims are not in fact science, and thus no change in relation to this point is currently required for this article, might I suggest that discussion on the finer points of what may or may not constitute a pseudoscience and which specific claims are pseudoscientific be relegated to a different forum? Alpha3031 (t • c) 06:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Konanen, ...pseudoscience ... “quackery” ... in my opinion, a serious breach of neutrality and objectivity...
 * Reference ... seriously outdated ... 15 years out of date, which is a very long time as seen from the lens of ever-evolving medical research.
 * Agree. -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:00, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 15 years is nothing, since if one proves that Reiki works as intended they get a Nobel Prize in Medicine, and a Nobel Prize in Physics. WP:ECREE. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:27, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * While I agree that the intro does lean heavily into the "quackery" side of the facts which revolve around reiki, the use of the term "scientific" and "pseudoscience" is accurate. In referring to science, we are referencing the scientific method, which at its base involves making testable statements (hypotheses) and testing the validity of the statement with evidence. What is unscientific about reiki is it's claim that the healing effects are due to qi, or some universal energy. On its face this may sound like a testable hypothesis, but in practice it relies solely on faith. Faith and science are logical opposites, in that faith relies on belief without evidence while science requires evidence for the belief. While faith, in any form, may be beneficial to a healing process, it should not be confused with actual scientific-based medicine which can cure disease and treat injury.
 * The other problems with reiki come from the evidence used to support the more peripheral testable assertions. For example, if we set aside the faith-based aspects of reiki (i.e. the belief in qi) and focus on the claims of "healing," there is little support. I think what can be said is that reiki may relieve some specific subjective symptoms, such as perceptions of pain and levels of stress or anxiety, the claims that reiki can "heal" in any conventional sense of the term, are shown to be unsupported by evidence. So the claims that reiki can "heal" along with the lack of evidence for the claim, make reiki a pseudoscience.
 * Maintaining the statements regarding science are important to this article and to the people who inform themselves with the article. For example, if a parent believes that reiki has proven healing powers they may forgo conventional medical treatment for their child when the child faces a real illness which requires actual medical treatment. MoralMoney (talk) 13:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @100.4.205.238 I agree with you. It was once a good article in 2012:
 *
 * -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:53, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * See also . tgeorgescu (talk) 00:08, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I’ve read that already. See also . -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 01:28, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It seems to be a pattern that you are tag-bombing alt-med articles. Even assuming that you're basically right: why so many tags? tgeorgescu (talk) 01:47, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ”…assuming that you're basically right” Thanks. Perhaps the more appropriate question that we should ask would be: why our article has so many problems that need tagging/fixing? May be because those who would have fixed the problem were scared away already? -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 03:13, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * We all have to operate under these constraints (WP:PSCI, WP:MEDRS, WP:ARBPS, WP:ARBCAM, and so on). tgeorgescu (talk) 03:52, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure. And we probably don’t need uppercase-bombing to know that. -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 05:02, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Going back to my initial point, saying that Reiki is a pseudoscientific form of energy healing implies that there is an actual scientific form of energy healing. I propose to strike that word without replacement from the sentence, since reference to pseudoscience is made elsewhere in the lead, so that the first sentence of the lede reads as follows: "Reiki (/ˈreɪki/ RAY-kee; Japanese: 霊気) is a form of energy healing, a type of alternative medicine originating in Japan." Furthermore, I propose to remove the subclause referring to quackery from the first sentence of the second paragraph in the lead, for running afoul of WP:SOAPBOX, and because WP:YESBIAS does not allow editorial bias, which the inclusion of this word clearly is, since it serves no other purpose than to push a specific WP:POV unwarrantedly. In fact, the first reference does not even use the word in question at all. All that the referred-to page 20 of the book has to say about reiki is: "These pseudoscientific theories may be based upon authority rather than empirical observation (e.g. old-school psychoanalysis, New Age psychotherapies, Thought Field Therapy), concern the unobservable (e.g. orgone energy, chi), confuse metaphysical with empirical claims (e.g. acupuncture, cellular memory, reiki (emphasis added), therapeutic touch, Ayurvedic medicine), or even maintain views that contradict known scientific laws (e.g. homeopathy)." The other reference tagged to the word quackery, however, does attribute said word to Reiki. Yet that source amounts to nothing more than a WP:QUESTIONABLE rant opinion piece whose inclusion in the lead definitely skews the balance of the article unduly. Thus, I propose the first sentence of the second paragraph to be modified as follows: "Reiki is a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery." I welcome suggestions for additional changes or modifications of that last proposal, and I will be adding the POV template to the page immediately. Thank you for your consideration! –Konanen (talk) 16:42, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

 * Perhaps instead of "a form of energy healing," it should be something like "a form of energy healing. Energy healing is the pseudoscientific or magical belief that people can manipulate spiritual energy." WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Hob Gadling @WhatamIdoing Pinging to point out that I forgot to mention here that I have brought the issues to the WP:NPOV/N. Your input and acknowledgement is appreciated. –Konanen (talk) 08:59, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that the word “quackery” is inappropriate. It strikes a slangy, unencyclopedic tone, and carries connotations of fraud that would need much stronger sourcing. For the practice to be genuinely fraudulent, practitioners would have to know that it’s nonsense, rather than merely having religious or spiritual beliefs about it. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:01, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ...the word “quackery” is inappropriate. It strikes a slangy, unencyclopedic tone, and carries connotations of fraud that would need much stronger sourcing.
 * Agree. -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:17, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "Quackery" is the standard terminology for medical pseudoscience, harsh though it may be on the ears. Definitions of "quackery" (such as those cited in our article on the term) do not require that quacks be frauds - sometimes they are just ignorant of proper medicine. MrOllie (talk) 19:42, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that it's standard (the article is linked in 2,000 articles; we have more articles about medical pseudoscience than that), and I'm not sure that it's necessary. The implications of the word are different from "just wrong" (like a doctor recommending ineffective, though mainstream, cough syrup to someone with the common cold) or "pseudoscience" (like someone claiming that Haloperidol prevents psychotic breaks through quantum effects in the neural network).
 * I don't think we should use quackery unless we were equally willing to use charlatanry or snake oil (words given in Quackery as part of the definition). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:55, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Does anyone have the Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry source to hand to verify what exactly is said with respect to quackery? The only other source we have is essentially polemical. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 21:13, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It says "These pseudoscientific theories may...confuse metaphysical with empirical claims (e.g., acupuncture, cellular memory, reiki, therapeutic touch, Ayurvedic medicine....". The word quackery is not used anywhere in the book, and this is the only sentence in the book that mentions reiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Just because that source doesn't mention quackery doesn't mean we can't use the word. I don't understand why some people are allergic to it. It's a good description of "over promotion of dubious methods". That's what quacks do, and is the working definition at Quackwatch, the world's foremost mainstream authorities on quackery. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 22:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * But it does mean that we can't cite that particular source in support of the claim. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:06, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Of course. Good catch. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 16:56, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

BTW, Reiki does not have to "puts itself forward as a scientific practice" for the word "pseudoscience" to apply. Quacks and charlatans never use pejoratives about themselves. What they "put themselves out to be" has no influence on the matter. Reiki makes falsifiable claims that go beyond the realm of religion and metaphysics. The moment a practice makes falsifiable claims, it enters the scientific arena where legitimate criticism applies. That's where many religions get in trouble. Their metaphysical claims are not pseudoscience, but their falsifiable claims are. That's where Christian Science and Creation science get in trouble. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 22:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

 * I'm not here to argue against using the word pseudoscience. That seems fine. Quackery, on the other hand, is not an appropriate term, since it has connotations of wrongdoing (fraudulence). I'm not swayed by the argument that quackery can also mean mere ignorance, because (a) dictionaries aren't aligned on this: e.g. a Google search for "quackery" (arguably the first port of call for most readers) returns a definition from Oxford Languages of dishonest practices and claims to have special knowledge and skill in some field, typically medicine., and (b) even where dishonesty is given as just one possible aspect of quackery, that still grants a connotative quality to the word that makes it imply wrongdoing.
 * We know that some practitioners of reiki are sincere, or at least we cannot prove that they are not, and so a charge of dishonesty would be wrong. It's not a lot different to intercessory prayer: just because it's nonsense (scientifically speaking) doesn't mean the people doing it are liars. (OK, perhaps some of them are, but all of them? Or even a majority?).
 * I don't see what quackery adds over pseudoscientific besides an implicit false generalisation. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:55, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think editors should take our working/practical definition of quackery from Quackwatch alone.
 * Also, I don't think that "over promotion of dubious methods" is a particularly useful definition, or one that really aligns with Quackwatch's contents (or with their page defining it, which settles on "the promotion of unsubstantiated methods that lack a scientifically plausible rationale" as the definition).  Arthroscopic knee surgery is dubious, and it has been overpromoted, but it's not mentioned on their website.  Aducanumab is dubious and has been overpromoted, but it's also not mentioned at Quackwatch.
 * Quackwatch also says that Most people think of quackery as promoted by charlatans who deliberately exploit their victims. Because of this fact, I think it's important to avoid this term when it doesn't appear to be a case of deliberate exploitation.  We don't want to accidentally mislead readers by using an uncommon definition.  (Compare myth, which we avoid unless both the common and technical meaning are both true.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:41, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Although I do not agree, I have removed the mention of Gorski and quackery from the lead. The coverage in the body may be enough. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 16:25, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Lead again
I see it's been rewritten since I looked yesterday. Now, in general my view is that having the names of modern scholars/whatevers in the lead of an article like this should mostly be avoided, though a summary of their views is often WP:LEAD-appropriate. Also, none of the names included have very much coverage in this article, so repeating them in the lead is not "appropriate weight". That's my 2 qi. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

 * Yes, the situation seems to going from bad to worse. I do not see how any of these names are important to the topic of Reiki. This seems like POV pushing, something which I have been accused of to no end concerning this article (and I have edited the article all but twice to add a POV tag).
 * I have at least tallied the current consensus on the very bottom of the appropriate section of WP:NPOV/N, but I think it is discourteous to be significantly editing the article while it is being debated without notifying the appropriate discussion venues. -Konanen (talk) 11:19, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I understand the complications it causes, when we end up debating a moving target. But we don't really want editing to stop just because a discussion is going on.
 * @Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I agree with you. We needed to do a little more WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY work here.  I think we are making progress on that point.  We could consider whether it should be shortened (e.g., "rejected by scientists as pseudoscience and by the Catholic Church as a superstition"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It's nice to see this discussed here, rather than where many watchers of this page may not be watching. WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY is exactly what I'm doing by adding a few quotes to the lead. Due weight requires the lead, like the body, give prominence to mainstream RS. That means both amount and prominence of mention. Fringe views get a little bit of explanation. That's all. Therefore I disagree with "should be shortened". Unlike homeopathy, Reiki is so fringe it does not get nearly as much mention in scientific or scholarly sources as does homeopathy, an old, well-established, quackery. Parity of sources applies here, so the quotes and mainstream authors deserve prominent mention and deserve the biggest piece of the pie.
 * I have no doubt that it can be done more elegantly, so keep the suggestions coming. Note that these discussions have an effect. Even though I disagree with most of the objections, quackery is now gone from the lead! -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 17:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Can I ask who Jann Bellamy is, and why they are mentioned? I could do a simple search, but I am trying to take as little outside knowledge as I can while I am trying to judge the article from the point of view of a naïve user. I can kind of see why Stephen Barrett is mentioned (though, is there a way to attribute the characterisation to the NCAHF directly, which might be more topic-relevant?) , but the other person makes no sense without context. –Konanen (talk) 18:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It's in the body, "a lawyer and critic of alternative medicine". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Konanen, she is a prominent anti-quackery activist, author, lawyer, and involved in many aspects of the legal, legislative, ethical, and other aspects of the medical/alternative/pseudoscience consumer protection world. She has warned of the dangers of chiropractic neck manipulations and other problems. I have known of her, her many writings, and her work for a couple decades. You should check her out. She's pretty famous in her own right. Barrett is the most prominent authority on quackery and medical pseudoscience. We don't mention much about them because the article is about reiki, not them. Feel free to add more context. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 19:04, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think that naming and quoting individuals is necessary for LEADFOLLOWSBODY. It should be enough to say "rejected by many groups", instead of "Alice used this word and Bob said that". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I normally wouldn't do that in a lead, except out of an abundance of caution, per my long-time motto here: "When in doubt, use attribution." I could just say it and only use the citations as the attribution. Let me give that a try. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 02:02, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 02:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that this article could benefit from taking a leaf out of our article on The Force (Star Wars). That is, a lot more coverage of what reiki actually is, in-universe. Currently the article is almost completely focused on debunking the concept. That's fine, it's pseudoscience, it needs a good debunking - but there's so much more this article could be. Imagine if our The Force article spent 90% of its length explaining and re-explaining that it's fictional, that it was made up by George Lucas in order to make money, that it doesn't actually work in real life, that light sabers aren't real... Great, we get that, but we'd quite like to read something fun about midichlorians, and I think we can manage that without making people think they are real. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 18:41, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

 * You'd have to deal with WP:MEDRS and WP:BALANCE. Still, some expansion of Conceptual basis, Technique, Training, certification and adoption and History is not by default unreasonable. History may be a little easier. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:51, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually, looking at The Force, the in-universe Depiction section seems to be a not glaringly awful part of the whole. At a glance, most of the article is out-of-universe. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I definitely don’t mean to write the reiki article from an in-universe perspective, just that we could stand to include a lot more information about what reiki practitioners do and believe, and why, and what all those hand movements are supposed to mean, and how it relates to other “energy” beliefs and traditions, and so forth. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:12, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * may have something useful for that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:41, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Barnards.tar.gz, that makes sense. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 19:07, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Opinionated article
This article seems opinionated to me. There are several documented scientific findings to support this. 69.170.237.186 (talk) 20:28, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

 * I don't think so. Reiki is preposterous on its face. Researching its effectiveness is a waste of funds, and it might be breaching medical ethics. tgeorgescu (talk) 21:28, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Reiki


text:
Placer deposit

In geology, a placer deposit or placer is an accumulation of valuable minerals formed by gravity separation from a specific source rock during sedimentary processes. The name is from the Spanish word placer, meaning "alluvial sand". Placer mining is an important source of gold, and was the main technique used in the early years of many gold rushes, including the California Gold Rush. Types of placer deposits include alluvium, eluvium, beach placers, aeolian placers and paleo-placers.

Placer materials must be both dense and resistant to weathering processes. To accumulate in placers, mineral particles must have a specific gravity above 2.58.

Placer environments typically contain black sand, a conspicuous shiny black mixture of iron oxides, mostly magnetite with variable amounts of ilmenite and hematite. Valuable mineral components often occurring with black sands are monazite, rutile, zircon, chromite, wolframite, and cassiterite. Early mining operations were probably a result of placer deposits as they were easily accessible and potential size. The events known as gold/diamond rushes were caused by placer deposits and have proved to be plentiful.

Density
Placer minerals are defined as having a specific gravity above 2.58. The separation of the valuable minerals from the most common non-economic mineral, quartz, depends on the difference in specific gravity/density.The weathering process allows for the accumulation of placer minerals, while less dense material such as quartz are swept away.

Hardness
Hardness allows placer minerals to resist mechanical breakdown and loss of mass from abrasion during transport. A hardness greater than quartz is desired, however substances such as gold typically deform and create irregularly shaped nuggets when subject to mechanical stress.

Stability
Chemical stability is important for a placer mineral to resist chemical breakdown such as oxidation, Minerals lacking chemical stability will form less desirable alteration when subject to chemical breakdown.

Alluvial placers
Alluvial placers are those formed in river or stream sediments. Another name for alluvial placers are stream placers. Typical locations for alluvial gold placer deposits are on the inside bends of rivers and creeks; in natural hollows; at the break of slope on a stream; the base of an escarpment, waterfall or other barrier. Stream placers are the most economical and common types of placers and have provided many with riches in the past.

Alluvial placers are formed by the deposition of dense particles at a site where water velocity remains below that required to transport them further.

To form a placer deposit, the particles desired must show a marked density contrast with the gangue material, which is able to be transported away from the trap site. Only if the deposit is winnowed in this way can the minerals be concentrated to economic levels.

Beach placers
Beach placers are formed in sand and gravel deposited along the edge of large bodies of water and are typically found where streams or rivers flow into a large body of water. Materials collect as beach placers by continuous wave action and currents. Some important examples of beach placers include black sands of Oregon, gold deposits in Nome, Alaska, zircon sands in Brazil and Australia as well as diamond marine gravel in South Africa.

Gold bearing beach placers consist of large strips of black sands and are typically constantly changing as a result of storms or sporadic wave action. Typically beach placers are populated by ilmenite and magnetite, however gold, platinum and chromite are found in varying amounts. Some of the most productive beach placers are considered ancient beaches that are now far inland from the water, these placers no longer shift with storms and tidal action but with wind and rainfall.

Eluvial placers
Eluvial placers are deposits of metal formed on hillsides and slopes weathered by rainfall and wind. Lighter materials are carried away and weathered leaving concentrations of valuable metals.

Eluvial placers are typically not large enough to support large scale mining, however in one case in Nevada there has been large scale gold mining operations based on placer deposits at Round Mountain.

Aeolian placers
Aeolian placers are valuable minerals found in arid regions freed from their source rock by wind actions. Wind erosion leaves a cement like substance in which material like gold are found. Wind action blows sand and dirt away leaving the deposits close to the surface. Historically, aeolian placers have been mined by hand with simple tools by miners due to the proximity to the surface, and small concentration.

Aeolian placers are common in Australia, Western United states, where the climate is arid and the ground is relatively level leaving wind as the primary erosion force.

Paleo-placers
Paleo-placer deposits are deposits of minerals from all of the above placer types that occurred millions of years ago. These deposits are typically very far underground in ancient riverbeds, beaches, or slopes. The Witwatersrand Basin, South Africa is the largest gold deposit in the world and is considered a paleo-placer, it has produced over 1.5 billion ounces of gold. The Witwatersrand Basin is considered an ancient alluvial placer.

Substances mined
Substances commercially mined from placer deposits include:
 * Diamonds
 * Gold
 * Garnet
 * Iron, from ironsands containing high concentrations of magnetite
 * Platinum group metals
 * Rare earth elements, from the mineral monazite
 * Ruby
 * Sapphire
 * Thorium, from the mineral monazite
 * Tin, in the mineral cassiterite
 * Titanium, from the minerals ilmenite and rutile
 * Uranium, from Precambrian paleoplacers
 * Zirconium, from the mineral zircon

Diamonds
Kimberlites are a major source of diamonds. Kimberlites are long "pipes" of lava brought up from the mantle where diamonds form at high temperatures and pressures. These diamonds are then weathered from the source and swept away by alluvial processes (transported by water) to a source that becomes a diamond deposit. Alluvial diamond deposits are mined after removing overburden from the top of the rich, diamond-gravel layer. Roughly 10 percent of diamonds are mined from alluvial diamond placer mines. The Witwatersrand Basin in Africa mentioned above is a recognized alluvial diamond deposit.

title: Placer deposit


text:
Counting measure

In mathematics, specifically measure theory, the counting measure is an intuitive way to put a measure on any set – the "size" of a subset is taken to be the number of elements in the subset if the subset has finitely many elements, and infinity $\infty$ if the subset is infinite.

The counting measure can be defined on any measurable space (that is, any set $$X$$ along with a sigma-algebra) but is mostly used on countable sets.

In formal notation, we can turn any set $$X$$ into a measurable space by taking the power set of $$X$$ as the sigma-algebra $$\Sigma;$$ that is, all subsets of $$X$$ are measurable sets. Then the counting measure $$\mu$$ on this measurable space $$(X,\Sigma)$$ is the positive measure $$\Sigma \to [0,+\infty]$$ defined by $$ \mu(A) = \begin{cases} \vert A \vert & \text{if } A \text{ is finite}\\ +\infty & \text{if } A \text{ is infinite} \end{cases} $$ for all $$A\in\Sigma,$$ where $$\vert A\vert$$ denotes the cardinality of the set $$A.$$

The counting measure on $$(X,\Sigma)$$ is σ-finite if and only if the space $$X$$ is countable.

Integration on $$\mathbb{N}$$ with counting measure
Take the measure space $$(\mathbb{N}, 2^\mathbb{N}, \mu)$$, where $$2^\mathbb{N}$$ is the set of all subsets of the naturals and $$\mu$$ the counting measure. Take any measurable $$f : \mathbb{N} \to [0,\infty]$$. As it is defined on $$\mathbb{N}$$, $$f$$ can be represented pointwise as $$ f(x) = \sum_{n=1}^\infty f(n) 1_{\{n\}}(x) = \lim_{M \to \infty} \underbrace{ \ \sum_{n=1}^M f(n) 1_{\{n\}}(x) \ }_{ \phi_M (x) } = \lim_{M \to \infty} \phi_M (x)  $$

Each $$\phi_M$$ is measurable. Moreover $$\phi_{M+1}(x) = \phi_M (x) + f(M+1) \cdot 1_{ \{M+1\} }(x) \geq \phi_M (x) $$. Still further, as each $$\phi_M$$ is a simple function $$ \int_\mathbb{N} \phi_M d\mu = \int_\mathbb{N} \left( \sum_{n=1}^M f(n) 1_{\{n\}} (x) \right) d\mu = \sum_{n=1}^M f(n) \mu (\{n\}) = \sum_{n=1}^M f(n) \cdot 1 = \sum_{n=1}^M f(n) $$Hence by the monotone convergence theorem $$ \int_\mathbb{N} f d\mu = \lim_{M \to \infty} \int_\mathbb{N} \phi_M d\mu = \lim_{M \to \infty} \sum_{n=1}^M f(n) = \sum_{n=1}^\infty f(n) $$

Discussion
The counting measure is a special case of a more general construction. With the notation as above, any function $$f : X \to [0, \infty)$$ defines a measure $$\mu$$ on $$(X, \Sigma)$$ via $$\mu(A):=\sum_{a \in A} f(a)\quad \text{ for all } A \subseteq X,$$ where the possibly uncountable sum of real numbers is defined to be the supremum of the sums over all finite subsets, that is, $$\sum_{y\,\in\,Y\!\ \subseteq\,\mathbb R} y\ :=\ \sup_{F \subseteq Y,\, |F| < \infty} \left\{ \sum_{y \in F} y \right\}.$$ Taking $$f(x) = 1$$ for all $$x \in X$$ gives the counting measure.

title: Counting measure


text:
Algebra over a field

In mathematics, an algebra over a field (often simply called an algebra) is a vector space equipped with a bilinear product. Thus, an algebra is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with operations of multiplication and addition and scalar multiplication by elements of a field and satisfying the axioms implied by "vector space" and "bilinear".

The multiplication operation in an algebra may or may not be associative, leading to the notions of associative algebras and non-associative algebras. Given an integer n, the ring of real square matrices of order n is an example of an associative algebra over the field of real numbers under matrix addition and matrix multiplication since matrix multiplication is associative. Three-dimensional Euclidean space with multiplication given by the vector cross product is an example of a nonassociative algebra over the field of real numbers since the vector cross product is nonassociative, satisfying the Jacobi identity instead.

An algebra is unital or unitary if it has an identity element with respect to the multiplication. The ring of real square matrices of order n forms a unital algebra since the identity matrix of order n is the identity element with respect to matrix multiplication. It is an example of a unital associative algebra, a (unital) ring that is also a vector space.

Many authors use the term algebra to mean associative algebra, or unital associative algebra, or in some subjects such as algebraic geometry, unital associative commutative algebra.

Replacing the field of scalars by a commutative ring leads to the more general notion of an algebra over a ring. Algebras are not to be confused with vector spaces equipped with a bilinear form, like inner product spaces, as, for such a space, the result of a product is not in the space, but rather in the field of coefficients.

Definition
Let $K$ be a field, and let $A$ be a vector space over $K$ equipped with an additional binary operation from $A × A$ to $A$, denoted here by $·$ (that is, if $x$ and $y$ are any two elements of $A$, then $x · y$ is an element of $A$ that is called the product of $x$ and $y$). Then $A$ is an algebra over $K$ if the following identities hold for all elements $x, y, z$ in $A$, and all elements (often called scalars) $a$ and $b$ in $K$:
 * Right distributivity: $(x + y) · z = x · z + y · z$
 * Left distributivity: $z · (x + y) = z · x + z · y$
 * Compatibility with scalars: $(ax) · (by) = (ab) (x · y)$.

These three axioms are another way of saying that the binary operation is bilinear. An algebra over $K$ is sometimes also called a $K$-algebra, and $K$ is called the base field of $A$. The binary operation is often referred to as multiplication in $A$. The convention adopted in this article is that multiplication of elements of an algebra is not necessarily associative, although some authors use the term algebra to refer to an associative algebra.

When a binary operation on a vector space is commutative, left distributivity and right distributivity are equivalent, and, in this case, only one distributivity requires a proof. In general, for non-commutative operations left distributivity and right distributivity are not equivalent, and require separate proofs.

Algebra homomorphisms
Given $K$-algebras $A$ and $B$, a homomorphism of $K$-algebras or $K$-algebra homomorphism is a $K$-linear map $f: A → B$ such that $f(xy) = f(x) f(y)$ for all $x, y$ in $A$. If $A$ and $B$ are unital, then a homomorphism satisfying $f(1A) = 1B$ is said to be a unital homomorphism. The space of all $K$-algebra homomorphisms between $A$ and $B$ is frequently written as
 * $$\mathbf{Hom}_{K\text{-alg}} (A,B).$$

A $K$-algebra isomorphism is a bijective $K$-algebra homomorphism.

Subalgebras and ideals
A subalgebra of an algebra over a field K is a linear subspace that has the property that the product of any two of its elements is again in the subspace. In other words, a subalgebra of an algebra is a non-empty subset of elements that is closed under addition, multiplication, and scalar multiplication. In symbols, we say that a subset L of a K-algebra A is a subalgebra if for every x, y in L and c in K, we have that x · y, x + y, and cx are all in L.

In the above example of the complex numbers viewed as a two-dimensional algebra over the real numbers, the one-dimensional real line is a subalgebra.

A left ideal of a K-algebra is a linear subspace that has the property that any element of the subspace multiplied on the left by any element of the algebra produces an element of the subspace. In symbols, we say that a subset L of a K-algebra A is a left ideal if for every x and y in L, z in A and c in K, we have the following three statements.
 * 1) x + y is in L (L is closed under addition),
 * 2) cx is in L (L is closed under scalar multiplication),
 * 3) z · x is in L (L is closed under left multiplication by arbitrary elements).

If (3) were replaced with x · z is in L, then this would define a right ideal. A two-sided ideal is a subset that is both a left and a right ideal. The term ideal on its own is usually taken to mean a two-sided ideal. Of course when the algebra is commutative, then all of these notions of ideal are equivalent. Conditions (1) and (2) together are equivalent to L being a linear subspace of A. It follows from condition (3) that every left or right ideal is a subalgebra.

This definition is different from the definition of an ideal of a ring, in that here we require the condition (2). Of course if the algebra is unital, then condition (3) implies condition (2).

Extension of scalars
If we have a field extension F/K, which is to say a bigger field F that contains K, then there is a natural way to construct an algebra over F from any algebra over K. It is the same construction one uses to make a vector space over a bigger field, namely the tensor product $$ V_F:=V \otimes_K F $$. So if A is an algebra over K, then $$A_F$$ is an algebra over F.

Kinds of algebras and examples
Algebras over fields come in many different types. These types are specified by insisting on some further axioms, such as commutativity or associativity of the multiplication operation, which are not required in the broad definition of an algebra. The theories corresponding to the different types of algebras are often very different.

Unital algebra
An algebra is unital or unitary if it has a unit or identity element I with Ix = x = xI for all x in the algebra.

Zero algebra
An algebra is called a zero algebra if uv = 0 for all u, v in the algebra, not to be confused with the algebra with one element. It is inherently non-unital (except in the case of only one element), associative and commutative.

One may define a unital zero algebra by taking the direct sum of modules of a field (or more generally a ring) K and a K-vector space (or module) V, and defining the product of every pair of elements of V to be zero. That is, if λ, μ ∈ K and u, v ∈ V, then (λ + u) (μ + v) = λμ + (λv + μu). If e1, ... ed is a basis of V, the unital zero algebra is the quotient of the polynomial ring K[E1, ..., En] by the ideal generated by the EiEj for every pair (i, j).

An example of unital zero algebra is the algebra of dual numbers, the unital zero R-algebra built from a one dimensional real vector space.

These unital zero algebras may be more generally useful, as they allow to translate any general property of the algebras to properties of vector spaces or modules. For example, the theory of Gröbner bases was introduced by Bruno Buchberger for ideals in a polynomial ring R = K[x1, ..., xn] over a field. The construction of the unital zero algebra over a free R-module allows extending this theory as a Gröbner basis theory for submodules of a free module. This extension allows, for computing a Gröbner basis of a submodule, to use, without any modification, any algorithm and any software for computing Gröbner bases of ideals.

Associative algebra
Examples of associative algebras include
 * the algebra of all n-by-n matrices over a field (or commutative ring) K. Here the multiplication is ordinary matrix multiplication.
 * group algebras, where a group serves as a basis of the vector space and algebra multiplication extends group multiplication.
 * the commutative algebra K[x] of all polynomials over K (see polynomial ring).
 * algebras of functions, such as the R-algebra of all real-valued continuous functions defined on the interval [0,1], or the C-algebra of all holomorphic functions defined on some fixed open set in the complex plane. These are also commutative.
 * Incidence algebras are built on certain partially ordered sets.
 * algebras of linear operators, for example on a Hilbert space. Here the algebra multiplication is given by the composition of operators. These algebras also carry a topology; many of them are defined on an underlying Banach space, which turns them into Banach algebras. If an involution is given as well, we obtain B*-algebras and C*-algebras. These are studied in functional analysis.

Non-associative algebra
A non-associative algebra (or distributive algebra) over a field K is a K-vector space A equipped with a K-bilinear map $$A \times A \rightarrow A$$. The usage of "non-associative" here is meant to convey that associativity is not assumed, but it does not mean it is prohibited – that is, it means "not necessarily associative".

Examples detailed in the main article include:
 * Euclidean space R3 with multiplication given by the vector cross product
 * Octonions
 * Lie algebras
 * Jordan algebras
 * Alternative algebras
 * Flexible algebras
 * Power-associative algebras

Algebras and rings
The definition of an associative K-algebra with unit is also frequently given in an alternative way. In this case, an algebra over a field K is a ring A together with a ring homomorphism

 * $$\eta\colon K\to Z(A),$$

where Z(A) is the center of A. Since η is a ring homomorphism, then one must have either that A is the zero ring, or that η is injective. This definition is equivalent to that above, with scalar multiplication
 * $$K\times A \to A$$

given by
 * $$(k,a) \mapsto \eta(k) a.$$

Given two such associative unital K-algebras A and B, a unital K-algebra homomorphism f: A → B is a ring homomorphism that commutes with the scalar multiplication defined by η, which one may write as
 * $$f(ka)=kf(a)$$

for all $$k\in K$$ and $$a \in A$$. In other words, the following diagram commutes:
 * $$\begin{matrix}

&& K &&  \\ & \eta_A \swarrow & \, & \eta_B \searrow & \\ A && \begin{matrix} f \\ \longrightarrow \end{matrix}  && B \end{matrix}$$

Structure coefficients
For algebras over a field, the bilinear multiplication from A × A to A is completely determined by the multiplication of basis elements of A. Conversely, once a basis for A has been chosen, the products of basis elements can be set arbitrarily, and then extended in a unique way to a bilinear operator on A, i.e., so the resulting multiplication satisfies the algebra laws.

Thus, given the field K, any finite-dimensional algebra can be specified up to isomorphism by giving its dimension (say n), and specifying n3 structure coefficients ci,j,k, which are scalars. These structure coefficients determine the multiplication in A via the following rule:
 * $$\mathbf{e}_{i} \mathbf{e}_{j} = \sum_{k=1}^n c_{i,j,k} \mathbf{e}_{k}$$

where e1,...,en form a basis of A.

Note however that several different sets of structure coefficients can give rise to isomorphic algebras.

In mathematical physics, the structure coefficients are generally written with upper and lower indices, so as to distinguish their transformation properties under coordinate transformations. Specifically, lower indices are covariant indices, and transform via pullbacks, while upper indices are contravariant, transforming under pushforwards. Thus, the structure coefficients are often written ci,jk, and their defining rule is written using the Einstein notation as
 * eiej = ci,jkek.

If you apply this to vectors written in index notation, then this becomes
 * (xy)k = ci,jkxiyj.

If K is only a commutative ring and not a field, then the same process works if A is a free module over K. If it isn't, then the multiplication is still completely determined by its action on a set that spans A; however, the structure constants can't be specified arbitrarily in this case, and knowing only the structure constants does not specify the algebra up to isomorphism.

Classification of low-dimensional unital associative algebras over the complex numbers
Two-dimensional, three-dimensional and four-dimensional unital associative algebras over the field of complex numbers were completely classified up to isomorphism by Eduard Study.

There exist two such two-dimensional algebras. Each algebra consists of linear combinations (with complex coefficients) of two basis elements, 1 (the identity element) and a. According to the definition of an identity element,
 * $$\textstyle 1 \cdot 1 = 1 \,, \quad 1 \cdot a = a \, , \quad a \cdot 1 = a \, . $$

It remains to specify
 * $$\textstyle a a = 1 $$  for the first algebra,
 * $$\textstyle a a = 0 $$  for the second algebra.

There exist five such three-dimensional algebras. Each algebra consists of linear combinations of three basis elements, 1 (the identity element), a and b. Taking into account the definition of an identity element, it is sufficient to specify
 * $$\textstyle a a = a \,, \quad b b = b \, , \quad a b = b a = 0 $$  for the first algebra,
 * $$\textstyle a a = a \,, \quad b b = 0 \, , \quad a b = b a = 0 $$  for the second algebra,
 * $$\textstyle a a = b \,, \quad b b = 0 \, , \quad a b = b a = 0 $$  for the third algebra,
 * $$\textstyle a a = 1 \,, \quad b b = 0 \, , \quad a b = - b a = b $$  for the fourth algebra,
 * $$\textstyle a a = 0 \,, \quad b b = 0 \, , \quad a b = b a = 0 $$  for the fifth algebra.

The fourth of these algebras is non-commutative, and the others are commutative.

Generalization: algebra over a ring
In some areas of mathematics, such as commutative algebra, it is common to consider the more general concept of an algebra over a ring, where a commutative ring R replaces the field K. The only part of the definition that changes is that A is assumed to be an R-module (instead of a K-vector space).

Associative algebras over rings
A ring A is always an associative algebra over its center, and over the integers. A classical example of an algebra over its center is the split-biquaternion algebra, which is isomorphic to $$\mathbb{H} \times \mathbb{H}$$, the direct product of two quaternion algebras. The center of that ring is $$\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{R}$$, and hence it has the structure of an algebra over its center, which is not a field. Note that the split-biquaternion algebra is also naturally an 8-dimensional $$\mathbb{R}$$-algebra.

In commutative algebra, if A is a commutative ring, then any unital ring homomorphism $$R \to A$$ defines an R-module structure on A, and this is what is known as the R-algebra structure. So a ring comes with a natural $$\mathbb{Z}$$-module structure, since one can take the unique homomorphism $$\mathbb{Z} \to A$$. On the other hand, not all rings can be given the structure of an algebra over a field (for example the integers). See Field with one element for a description of an attempt to give to every ring a structure that behaves like an algebra over a field.

title: Algebra over a field


text:
Talk:Appellation d'origine contrôlée

Wine
AOC is granted to wines too, isn't it?

Spelling
Changed title to correct spelling of appellation and add a circumflex to controlee. Wnissen 20:21 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Hello,

Actually, in French adjectives do not start with a capital letter if they follow a noun. Besides, technical phrases, such as the names of organisations, programmes, and so on, generally and conventionally take only one capital letter (i.e., the first one—but that is not a grammatical rule), such as the French AOC article has it. So, the right spelling is "Appellation d’origine contrôlée" and not "Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée".

I guess this should be corrected.

Peace -- Cln-id from the French-speaking Wikipédia, 00:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Hello, thank you for the correction, I see that is the way it's listed in . If no one objects, I'm going to move the page again. Wnissen 13:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I moved the page to the right spelling. Linnell 19:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

"The origins of AOC date back to the 15th century, when Roquefort was regulated by a parliamentary decree." general gripe with wiki. But "parliamentary decree" leads to a link about "Parliament of France" which unsurprisingly starts at 1791 -- French Constitution of 1791. When it really should if the C15th claim to the origins of the AOC is correct then a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlement ie for the Ancien Régime would more accurate although in regards to AOC not neccessarily useful. *shrug* Should I have just edited it straight, rather than moaning about it? Either reply or do it yourself, whatever.

parsing

 * Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC), which translates as "term of controlled origin"

I'd have guessed it was more like "controlled term of origin". Could someone whose grasp of French is better than mine comment? Michael Hardy 00:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree - it is not the origin that is being controlled, but rather the usage of its appellation. I'm going to change it. hellomannyb (talk) 22:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

AOP
Since the Appellation d'origine protegee is issued from the EU rather than France, it probably deserves its own article with a link to the AOC article. Right now it is just set up as a redirect from AOP to AOC. Thoughts? --mroconnell (talk) 10:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, there is an article on the general EU concept. The French language term Appellation d'origine protegee (AOP) corresponds to the English language term Protected Designation of Origin, which is covered together with a few similar terms in Protected Geographical Status. However, there will be a need to somehow cover the AOP term in French since France is currently preparing to change their terminology from AOC to AOP during 2010, although we will also continue to see bottles with AOC terminology on the market for quite some time. Tomas e (talk) 17:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Meil de Corse
Article reads There are eight certified varietals of Corsican honey: Printemps, Maquis de printemps, Miellats du maquis, Châtaigneraie, Maquis d'été, and Maquis d'automne. (Literally: spring, spring scrub, scrub honeydew, chestnut grove, summer scrub, autumn scrub... using spring as the season and scrub in the sense of Australian English bush, I'm struggling to find a good English word for it...) anyhow, point is that's only six... Miel lists the same six. Andrewa (talk) 12:03, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

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Comparison with German Qualitätswein
"Similarly, Germany's Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete is a wine classification system based on geographic region, but it differs from the AOC in important ways. Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete wines are commonly seen as less prestigious than Qualitätswein mit Prädikat, making it more similar to the Vin de Pays or Vin Délimité de Qualité Supérieure systems."

Following a reform of EU wine law in 2012, this category is now only called "Qualitätswein". Also, I'm not so sure if it is really still seen as less prestigious. Because the German wine classification system is a mess, Qualitätswein mit Prädikat is mostly used for sweet wines. Top-producers of dry wine will mostly rely on the classification of the VDP and not use a Prädikat, meaning that many of Germany's best and most well-known wines are labelled as Qualitätswein. 20useruser19 (talk) 15:35, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Appellation d'origine contrôlée


text:
Alucard

Alucard ("Dracula" spelled backwards) may refer to:

Characters

 * Alucard (Castlevania), a character in Castlevania media and the half-human/half-vampire son of Dracula
 * Alucard (Hellsing), the main character in Hellsing
 * Count Alucard (character), the title character in the 1943 film Son of Dracula and other works
 * Alucard, a character in the 1967 film Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors
 * Alucard, a playable character in the mobile MOBA game, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
 * Alucard, a villain in Ted Dekker's Lost Books series
 * Alucard van Heusen, a vampire in the series Wizards of Waverly Place
 * Alexander Lucard ("A. Lucard"), the alias used by Dracula in Dracula: The Series
 * Dr. Alucard, the alias used by Dracula in The Batman vs. Dracula
 * Johnny Alucard, a character in the film Dracula A.D. 1972
 * Johnny Alucard, a character in the Anno Dracula novel series by Kim Newman
 * Rachel Alucard, a playable character from the Blazblue series
 * The most powerful vampire in the manga Rosario + Vampire

Music

 * Alucard Music, a British music label
 * "Alucard", a song from the album Gentle Giant, by Gentle Giant
 * "Alucard", a song from the EP Seepage, by Tech N9ne
 * "Sevil Alucard", a song from the album The Dark Chapter, by Michael Romeo

Other

 * Alucard, a kernel variant and hotplug driver for Android devices

title: Alucard


text:
Kolmogorov's zero–one law

In probability theory, Kolmogorov's zero–one law, named in honor of Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov, specifies that a certain type of event, namely a tail event of independent σ-algebras, will either almost surely happen or almost surely not happen; that is, the probability of such an event occurring is zero or one.

Tail events are defined in terms of countably infinite families of σ-algebras. For illustrative purposes, we present here the special case in which each sigma algebra is generated by a random variable $$X_k$$ for $$k\in\mathbb N$$. Let $$\mathcal{F}$$ be the sigma-algebra generated jointly by all of the $$X_k$$. Then, a tail event $$F \in \mathcal{F}$$ is an event which is probabilistically independent of each finite subset of these random variables. (Note: $$F$$ belonging to $$\mathcal{F}$$ implies that membership in $$F$$ is uniquely determined by the values of the $$X_k$$, but the latter condition is strictly weaker and does not suffice to prove the zero-one law.) For example, the event that the sequence of the $$X_k$$ converges, and the event that its sum converges are both tail events. If the $$X_k$$ are, for example, all Bernoulli-distributed, then the event that there are infinitely many $$k\in\mathbb N$$ such that $$X_k=X_{k+1}=\dots=X_{k+100}=1$$ is a tail event. If each $$X_k$$ models the outcome of the $$k$$-th coin toss in a modeled, infinite sequence of coin tosses, this means that a sequence of 100 consecutive heads occurring infinitely many times is a tail event in this model.

Tail events are precisely those events whose occurrence can still be determined if an arbitrarily large but finite initial segment of the $$X_k$$ is removed.

In many situations, it can be easy to apply Kolmogorov's zero–one law to show that some event has probability 0 or 1, but surprisingly hard to determine which of these two extreme values is the correct one.

Formulation
A more general statement of Kolmogorov's zero–one law holds for sequences of independent σ-algebras. Let (Ω,F,P) be a probability space and let Fn be a sequence of σ-algebras contained in F. Let
 * $$G_n=\sigma\bigg(\bigcup_{k=n}^\infty F_k\bigg)$$

be the smallest σ-algebra containing Fn, Fn+1, .... The terminal σ-algebra of the Fn is defined as $$\mathcal T((F_n)_{n\in\mathbb N})=\bigcap_{n=1}^\infty G_n$$.

Kolmogorov's zero–one law asserts that, if the Fn are stochastically independent, then for any event $$E\in \mathcal T((F_n)_{n\in\mathbb N})$$, one has either P(E) = 0 or P(E)=1.

The statement of the law in terms of random variables is obtained from the latter by taking each Fn to be the σ-algebra generated by the random variable Xn. A tail event is then by definition an event which is measurable with respect to the σ-algebra generated by all Xn, but which is independent of any finite number of Xn. That is, a tail event is precisely an element of the terminal σ-algebra $$\textstyle{\bigcap_{n=1}^\infty G_n}$$.

Examples
An invertible measure-preserving transformation on a standard probability space that obeys the 0-1 law is called a Kolmogorov automorphism. All Bernoulli automorphisms are Kolmogorov automorphisms but not vice versa. The presence of an infinite cluster in the context of percolation theory also obeys the 0-1 law.

Let $$\{X_n\}_n$$ be a sequence of independent random variables, then the event $$\left\{\lim _{n \rightarrow \infty} \sum_{k=1}^n X_k \text { exists }\right\}$$ is a tail event. Thus by Kolmogorov 0-1 law, it has either probability 0 or 1 to happen. Note that independence is required for the tail event condition to hold. Without independence we can consider a sequence that's either $$(0,0,0,\dots)$$ or $$(1,1,1,\dots)$$ with probability $$\frac{1}{2}$$ each. In this case the sum converges with probability $$\frac{1}{2}$$.

title: Kolmogorov's zero–one law


text:
Wilhelm Eduard Weber

Wilhelm Eduard Weber (24 October 1804 – 23 June 1891) was a German physicist and, together with Carl Friedrich Gauss, inventor of the first electromagnetic telegraph.

Early years
Weber was born in Schlossstrasse in Wittenberg, where his father, Michael Weber, was professor of theology. The building had previously been the home of Abraham Vater.

Wilhelm was the second of three brothers, all of whom were distinguished by an aptitude for science. After the dissolution of the University of Wittenberg his father was transferred to Halle in 1815. Wilhelm had received his first lessons from his father, but was now sent to the Orphan Asylum and Grammar School at Halle. After that he entered the University, and devoted himself to natural philosophy. He distinguished himself so much in his classes, and by original work, that after taking his degree of Doctor and becoming a Privatdozent he was appointed Professor Extraordinary of natural philosophy at Halle.

Career
In 1831, on the recommendation of Carl Friedrich Gauss, he was hired by the University of Göttingen as professor of physics, at the age of twenty-seven. His lectures were interesting, instructive, and suggestive. Weber thought that, in order to thoroughly understand physics and apply it to daily life, mere lectures, though illustrated by experiments, were insufficient, and he encouraged his students to experiment themselves, free of charge, in the college laboratory. As a student of twenty years he, with his brother, Ernst Heinrich Weber, Professor of Anatomy at Leipzig, had written a book on the Wave Theory and Fluidity, which brought its authors a considerable reputation. Acoustics was a favourite science of his, and he published numerous papers upon it in Poggendorffs Annalen, Schweigger's Jahrbücher für Chemie und Physik, and the musical journal Carcilia. The 'mechanism of walking in mankind' was another study, undertaken in conjunction with his younger brother, Eduard Weber. These important investigations were published between the years 1825 and 1838. Gauss and Weber constructed the first electromagnetic telegraph in 1833, which connected the observatory with the institute for physics in Göttingen.

In December 1837, the Hanoverian government dismissed Weber, one of the Göttingen Seven, from his post at the university for political reasons. Weber then travelled for a time, visiting England, among other countries, and became professor of physics in Leipzig from 1843 to 1849, when he was reinstated at Göttingen. One of his most important works, co-authored with Carl Friedrich Gauss and Carl Wolfgang Benjamin Goldschmidt, was Atlas des Erdmagnetismus: nach den Elementen der Theorie entworfen (Atlas of Geomagnetism: Designed according to the elements of the theory), a series of magnetic maps, and it was chiefly through his efforts that magnetic observatories were instituted. He studied magnetism with Gauss, and during 1864 published his Electrodynamic Proportional Measures containing a system of absolute measurements for electric currents, which forms the basis of those in use. Weber died in Göttingen, where he is buried in the same cemetery as Max Planck and Max Born.

He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1855.

In 1855 with Rudolf Kohlrausch (1809–1858) he demonstrated that the ratio of electrostatic to electromagnetic units produced a number that matched the speed of light. This finding led to Maxwell's conjecture that light is an electromagnetic wave. This also led to Weber's development of his theory of electrodynamics. Also, the first usage of the letter "c" to denote the speed of light was in an 1856 paper by Kohlrausch and Weber.

International recognition
The SI unit of magnetic flux, the weber (symbol: Wb) is named after him.

Works

 * Elektrodynamische Maaßbestimmungen : insbesondere Zurückführung der Stromintensitäts-Messungen auf mechanisches Maass (with Wilhelm Weber) 1857. "Electrodynamic Measurements, Especially Attributing Mechanical Units to Measures of Current Intensity". German text. English translation

title: Wilhelm Eduard Weber


text:
HMS Carnarvon

HMS Carnarvon was one of six Devonshire-class cruiser (1903) armoured cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. She was assigned to the 3rd Cruiser Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet upon completion in 1905 and was transferred to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet in 1907. She was assigned to the reserve Third Fleet in 1909 and became flagship of the 5th Cruiser Squadron of the reserve Second Fleet in 1912.

When World War I began in August 1914, she was assigned to the Cape Verde Station to search for German commerce raiders while protecting British shipping. Carnarvon was transferred to the South Atlantic two months later and assigned to the squadron that destroyed the German East Asia Squadron at the Battle of the Falklands. She was assigned to the North America and West Indies Station in 1915 and continued to patrol against German raiders and escort convoys to the end of the war. In 1919, she became a training ship and was then sold for scrap in 1921.

Design and description
Carnarvon was designed to displace 10850 LT. The ship had an overall length of 473 ft, a beam of 68 ft and a deep draught of 24 ft. She was powered by two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, which produced a total of 21000 ihp and gave a maximum speed of 22 kn. The engines were powered by seventeen Niclausse and six cylindrical boilers. She carried a maximum of 1033 LT of coal and her complement consisted of 610 officers and ratings.

Her main armament consisted of four breech-loading (BL) 7.5-inch Mk I guns mounted in four single-gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure and one on each side. The guns fired their 200 lb shells to a range of about 13800 yd. Her secondary armament of six BL 6-inch Mk VII guns was arranged in casemates amidships. Four of these were mounted on the main deck and were only usable in calm weather. They had a maximum range of approximately 12200 yd with their 100 lb shells. Carnarvon also carried eighteen quick-firing (QF) 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns and two submerged 18-inch torpedo tubes. Her two 12-pounder 8 cwt guns could be dismounted for service ashore.

At some point in the war, the main deck six-inch guns of the Devonshire-class ships were moved to the upper deck and given gun shields. Their casemates were plated over to improve seakeeping and the four 3-pounder guns displaced by the transfer were landed.

The ship's waterline armour belt ranged from 2 to 6 in in thickness and was closed off by 5 in transverse bulkheads. The armour of the gun turrets was also five inches thick whilst that of their barbettes was six inches thick. The protective deck armour ranged in thickness from .75 - 2 in and the conning tower was protected by 12 in of armour.

Construction and service

Carnarvon, named to commemorate the Welsh county, was laid down by William Beardmore & Company at their Dalmuir shipyard on 1 October 1902 and launched on 7 October 1903. She was completed on 29 May 1905 and was initially assigned to the 3rd Cruiser Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet. She was transferred to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet in June 1907 and was then assigned to the reserve Third Fleet at Devonport in April 1909. The ship was transferred to the Second Fleet at Devonport in March 1912 and subsequently became the flagship of the 5th Cruiser Squadron until the start of World War I. She participated in the fleet manoeuvres in July–August 1913 as well as those in July 1914. On 31 July, a few days before war was declared on Germany, she encountered the German light cruiser SMS Strassburg in the English Channel returning home and the two ships saluted each other.

When news of the outbreak of hostilities was received on 5 August, Carnarvon, now the flagship of Rear Admiral Archibald Stoddart, was at sea, making for the Canary Islands from Gibraltar. She was quickly sent to Cape Verde and captured the German merchant ship SS Professor Woermann on 23 August 1914. She escorted her prize to Freetown, Sierra Leone for disposal and resumed patrolling. She moved to the Brazilian coast in October and then proceeded to the Falkland Islands with the squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee.

Battle of the Falklands
Upon arrival at Port Stanley on 7 December, Sturdee informed his captains that he planned to recoal the entire squadron the following day from the two available colliers and to begin the search for the East Asia Squadron, believed to be running for home around the tip of South America, the day after. Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee, commander of the German squadron, had other plans and intended to destroy the radio station at Port Stanley on the morning of 8 December. The appearance of two German ships at 07:30 caught Sturdee's ships by surprise, but the Germans were driven off by 12 in shells fired by the predreadnought battleship HMS Canopus (1897) when they came within range around 09:20. Carnarvon completed recoaling at 08:00 and the squadron cleared the harbour by 10:30. Sturdee ordered "general chase" at that time, but Carnarvon could only manage 18 kn and fell behind the other British ships. His two battlecruisers were the fastest ships present and inexorably began to close on the German cruisers, opening fire at 12:55 that straddled the light cruiser SMS Leipzig (1905), the rear ship in the German formation. It was clear to Spee that his ships could not outrun the battlecruisers and that the only hope for any of his ships to survive was to scatter. So he turned his two armoured cruisers around to buy time by engaging the battlecruisers and ordered his three light cruisers to disperse at 13:20. Carnarvon, now 10 nmi behind, had no hope of catching the scattering German ships and continued to trail the battlecruisers.

Carnarvon finally came within range of the German armoured cruisers and opened fire shortly before SMS Scharnhorst rolled over and capsized at 16:17. She then engaged SMS Gneisenau until Sturdee ordered "cease fire" at 17:50. The German captain had started to scuttle his ship 10 minutes earlier when it was clear that the situation was hopeless and his ship sank at 18:00. Carnarvon rescued 20 survivors from Gneisenau, but only wreckage was visible when she later steamed through the area where Scharnhorst had sunk.

After the battle she participated in the hunt for the light cruiser SMS Dresden (1907) that had escaped during the battle and investigated anchorages in Argentina, Chile and the island of South Georgia before proceeding north to Brazil in February. She struck a coral reef off the Abrolhos Archipelago on 22 February 1915 and had to be beached to avoid sinking. The ship received temporary repairs at Rio de Janeiro the following month. Carnarvon received permanent repairs in Montreal, Canada, from May to July after which she escorted several British H-class submarines from Halifax to the United Kingdom en route to Devonport. She then returned to Halifax where she was based for the rest of the year. Now assigned to the North America and West Indies Station, with its main base at the Royal Naval Dockyard in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, she resumed her duties protecting British shipping for the rest of the war. After the United States Navy destroyer USS Stewart grounded at Bermuda on 16 August 1917, a cricket team from Carnarvon played a match against one from Stewart at the Bermuda dockyard. In 1919, she began serving as a cadet training ship, remaining in that role until she was listed for sale in March 1921. Carnarvon was sold for scrap on 8 November 1921 and subsequently broken up in Germany.

title: HMS Carnarvon