User:DirkvdM/BestOfTheRefDesk

.Some Reference Desk contributions are a shame to let disappear into the oblivion of the archives, so as of 2006 I've started to link to them here. This is a very limited selection, based on what I happen to have read and what I happen to find interesting. Feel free to make your own list and link to it at the bottom.

Ordering is chronological and in three sections, with the best at the top. Note that links to threads that have not been archived yet don't work yet. These appear in red.

These are also linked from my user page:

Humanities - free markets-pro or con: my ideal economic politics in a nutshell.
Humanities - Need help urgently: Contains a little rant by me about the uselessness of manned space exploration (the second half).
Miscellaneous - Football(soccer): Football ... and while I'm at it ... America.
Science - Time dimensions: does 'time squared' imply a second temporal dimension?
Miscellaneous - USA success - some food for thought on international division of wealth, especially the first half.
Miscellaneous - The square root of France: An exquisite bit of nonsense.
Miscellaneous - Daily Death rates of US soldiers: Not all that special, really just about my last observation, comparing the relative death tolls of WWII (3.17%), US in Vietnam (5-10%), the US in Iraq (2.3% and counting) and the Dutch politionele acties (0.15%). Shame-wise, I'd rather be Dutch than USian.
Miscellaneous - Terrorists: A educative analysis by Marco Polo of the Middle East and Al Qaeda, which inspired me to make some astute obsevations too. After that the thread degenerated to bickering, but that can be interesting too at times.
Science - Spacetime: An interesting view of spacetime, with motion and time being interchangeable.
Science - living forever - Can we live forever after our mind is transferred to a computer? Especially read SteveBaker's long post - he thinks like me. And of course my post. (And ignore the very first spin-off because that missed the point.) But first read the two consecutive threads downloading something to a persons brain and Communicating with animals ??, where I also proposed an implementation.
Science - Runaway Global Warming - firstly, SteveBaker's list of runaway climate effects, but also my comments, especially the second one, where I link to the KNMI, which I consider rather illuminating - fairly detailed, yet concise (I have my moments).

These aren't (but are quite interesting nevertheless):

Science - Light octaves: Could the eye perceive light octaves if only it could detect a wider range of colours? Half a year later, someone else asked the same question, with some different answers (the first of which went off in the wrong direction, but that is also educative).
Miscellaneous - Car stats 2005: Reasons for good public transportation in a nutshell. And some alternatives.
Science - China standards: Do the Chinese (one fifth of the world population) use the SI system? (Note: I said ISO, but meant SI.) Turns out they do to some extent, but use different names for the units.

A big gap in the chronology here, because I left the ref desk for half a year.

Science - lethal softdrinks
Science - Effect of Flat Circular Shapes Falling onto a Flat Surface: cd frisbee and bernoulli's law
Miscellaneous - How do Artic explorers go to the toilet?: A bit of nonsense about freezing your butt off - or worse
Science - erosion prediction: How fossils survive erosion
Humanities - Alternative outcomes from WW2: What if the US had not been pulled into WWII? A question historians are not suposed to ask, but fun to speculate on nevertheless.
Moral relativism and forcing democracy down other people's throats.
Dubai : About oil running out and consequences for climate, transportation and oil producing countries
Humanities - Nazi Germany military achievements : A question by me about the nazi conquests not being such an achievement as I used to think they were. With some adaptions, I wasn't too far off the mark.
Humanities - Communist China: Only the end - my view on USSR ecomomic development in two posts.
Science - Humans driving a ship: Just another wacko idea of mine, letting budget travellers row across oceans.
Science - Time Dilation Confusion: Really just about the long answer by Tardis at the end that explains the different meanings of 'acceleration' , with or without motion (Earth's acceleration).
Miscellaneous - The most famous photographs of all time: The title says it. The most famous photographs of all time. This should become an article.
Humanities - Bicycle only village/city/town: Again, the title says it (as indeed it should). Bicycle only village/city/town.
Humanities - Turkey popout : A turk(ey)ish confusion.
Science - How many fish are there in the sea? : Fish as a food source - not quite enough
Miscellaneous - User count : Will Wikipedia take over the Internet?
Science - Global warming man made? - another heated discussion about global warming (including a link to an even longer one)
Scince - Number of body cells : Bacteria appear to rule this world
Science - How fast is the earth warming? - yup, another one. A hot topic, as it should be.

Another big gap in the chronology (I temporarily left because of the unobstructed actions of deletionists).

Miscellaneous - Marijuana vs tobacco - Some interesting info on the history of marijuana by RockPocket (and me).
Science - Silver plating - Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer.... :)
Science - Megapixel equivalent of the eye - Visual acuity of the human eye. See also Eye#Equivalent_resolution for a more direct answer.
Science - Colour question - ideal monitor resolution for the human eye.
Science - Camera emulating the human eye - and a third question on the subject, asked by me.
Science - Animal intelligence testing - especially SteveBaker's second, longer, post.
Humanities - Capitalism and Communism - a good comparison table for capitalism/communism terminology.
Computing - PDF files - why PDFs are such a pain and why html is so much better.
Humanities - What is the all-time biggest massacre? - after the first actual answers a discussion about the legality of war and an alternative in the form of an unarmed army (is that a contradiction in terms?), starting about half way down, where I mention the Valkenburg resistance.
Science - Carbon based fossil fuel - about oil running out and climate change
Science - Cosmological Redshift and the conservation of energy - Conservation of energy is not an absolute.
Science - Self sufficient communities - how much land does one need to be a self-sufficient farmer?
Humanities - Terrorism then and now-part II - 19th century England was apparently considered a rogue state (in present-day US terminology) in Europe. For reference, here's part I.
Miscellaneous - most articles per population... - The biggest Wikipedias per amount of native speakers. See also this graph, which I got from here, where there are more interesting links.
Humanities - A tale of two putsches - what do Hitler and Castro have in common?
Humanities - Conducting. Can an orchestra do without a conductor? An exercise in self-organisation (a fascinating subject) with even political connotations.
Science - Runaway Global Warming - The effects on mankind and how to counter this positive feedback with another positive feedback.
Science - race - You're an infrasubspecific entity! I bet you didn't know that.
Miscellaneous - Heroin/morphine question - What does a heroin trip feel like?
Humanities - The original Jews in Palestine and the proclamation of Israel - How did the original Jewish inhabitants (up until WWII) react to the proclamation of the state of Israel?
Science - String Theory - String Theory for dummies (or teachers).
Humanities - Race thoughts - eugenetics in the early 20th century. How opinions can change dramatically in just a few decades.
Science - Drop dead on the Moon - What happens to a corpse on the Moon? All sorts of interesting spin-offs. Very QI.
Miscellaneous - United States-Iran relations - some interesting takes on the alleged nuclear proliferation of Iran.

Not as interesting as the above, but worth keeping for various reasons.

A solution to rising sea levels? Not really, but interesting to see people struggle for an answer.
Energy consumption per country: A question by me. Why do northern countries use so much electricity? An unanswered mystery.
Science - The other side of the Big Bank: really about the fifth post, a good answer to my Big Bang theory.
Science - Big Bang / Black hole : possibly interesting links in relation to my Big Bang theory.
Humanities - Everybody hates America: On hatred of the USA. one of the longest discussions ever on the ref desk, not surprising, considering the subject. About halfway down my analysis of the BBC poll What the world thinks of America.
Question about the Holocaust: Important issue concerning the rise of the Nazis. Not that the question is really answered here, but StuRat and Marco Polo make good points, as does the second half of the thread.
( Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Miscellaneous_Questions: See question number 3 and follow the links to the other two threads for related posts. This link is no longer valid and I can't find the thread. )
Trying To Understand File Management In Linux : Still need to read this. LVM might be an idea.
humanities - Guantanamo Bay Naval Base - the illegality of the prison.
Miscellaneous - Bulk of articles on Volapük Wikipedia - why there are so many articles on US cities (and even puny villages).

See also