Meditation

A bullfrog near Saint Joseph, Missouri, USA. Photo: Austin Santaniello, 2017-07-03.

Fifty years ago, back in the 1970s, I practiced a form of transcendental meditation. This weblog post provides some basic information about it, along with lists of mantras. I am referring to this content as open-source meditation. It comes without any guarantees. While there are undoubtedly differences of opinion, I do not think most people need a guru, or any form of instructor in order to meditate. People who disagree about this, or other matters, are encouraged to provide enlightenment, by writing a comment.

Among the books I am currently, but reluctantly, reading is Johann Hari (1979 – ) Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again (2022). Hari has had a history of ethical issues, including plagiarism, related to journalism, and like much of his work, this book has also received criticism. The topic of the book is important, and there is no harm in reading this book, as long as one is aware of its limitations.

While reading this book with respect to the challenges of multi-tasking, as well as sleep deprivation, I began wondering if other animals also suffered from these problems. Crows, I recently learned, are capable of using probability. This is why a photo of a bullfrog appears. Is it a secret meditator? I also wondered if some form of meditation could be useful, for aging humans, such as myself.

Claimed benefits of Meditation

Physical

  • Improved cardiovascular health: Studies have shown that TM can help reduce blood pressure, improve circulation and increase oxygen flow to the heart.
  • Reduced response to pain
  • Reduced insomnia and improvement in sleep: TM has been linked to an increase in the production of melatonin – a hormone thought to be responsible for promoting good sleep.

Mental Health

  • Reduced stress and anxiety.
  • Reduced symptoms of depression.

Cognitive

  • Increased focus and concentration.
  • Increased productivity and creativity.
  • Improved short-term and long-term memory.

Emotional

  • Improved emotional regulation and resilience.
  • Improved self-awareness
  • Improved self-confidence
  • Improved emotional well-being and happiness

Preliminaries

Choose a mantra. Mantras help the mind enter a state of inner stillness and peace, preventing active thinking. Select one that resonates with you. A number of mantras are listed below. Choose a location for meditation. It should be a place where you won’t be disturbed. Twenty-first century reminder: switch off that hand-held device that accompanies you, or put it on silent mode.

Meditating. First, sit comfortably. The spine should be upright but not rigid. The back can be supported. Second, close eyes. Third, silently repeat a mantra. Some forms of meditation use mantras that are religious words, typically with origins in Sanskrit. Others use sounds without any meaning. The advantage of a meaningless mantra is that it is easier to switch off thoughts. Meditators often claim that they enter a state of deep relaxation. Fourth, continue for twenty minutes.

Conclusion (once the 20 minutes are up). First, slowly open your eyes. Second, bring your attention back to your surroundings. Third, take some deep breaths and slowly stand up. Fourth, the real world awaits you. Return to whatever needs to be done. Fifth, remember to meditate twice a day.

Sleep Meditation

Meditating to help a person to sleep requires modifications to be made to the standard procedures. Instead of sitting, continue to lie down on your bed. Allow your body to sleep if and when this is possible.

Walking Meditation

Some people are not particularly good at sitting still. They may prefer a walking meditation, where they can develop an awareness of their surroundings and, in so doing, calm the mind and relax the body.

  • Find a safe place to walk.
  • Start to walk slowly.
  • Pay close attention to the physical sensations of walking: the way your feet feel when they touch the ground; the way your muscles contract and release as you move; and the rhythm of your breath.
  • Possibilities: Notice the air on your face and hands. Notice how the humidity and heat feel on your body.
  • When your mind wanders, gently bring attention back to your body and to the physical sensations of walking.

1969 Transcendental Meditation mantras

AgeMantra
0-15Ing
15-30Aing
30-45Shiring
45+Shiam
0-15Im
15-30Aim
30-45Shirim
45+Shiama

1972 Transcendental Meditation mantras

AgeMantra
10-11Ing
12-13Im
14-15Inga
16-7Ima
18-19Aying
20-21Ayim
22-23Ayinga
24-25Ayima
25+Shring

1976 Transcendental Meditation mantras

AgeMantra
3-10Eng
10-12Em
12-14Enga
14-16Ema
16-18Aeng
18-20Aem
20-22Aenga
22-24Aema
24-30Shiring
30-35Shirim
35-40Hiring
40-45Hirim
45-50Kiring
50-55Kirim
55-60Shiam
60+Shiama

1987 – Present Transcendental Meditation mantras

AgeMantra
0-11Eng
12-13Em
14-15Enga
16-17Ema
18-19Aing
20-21Aim
22-23Ainga
25-25Aima
26-29Shiring
30-34Shirim
35-39Hiring
40-44Hirim
45-49Kiring
50-54Kirim
55-59Sham
60+Shama

Other mantras are words or sentences in Sanskrit. These include: 1) Om (or Aum) is the prime symbol of Hinduism and one of the most important spiritual sounds. It is the sonic representation of the divine in Indic traditions. It is often chanted during spiritual recitation or used as a mantra during meditation in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. 2) Sat Nam is a combination of two ancient Sikh words, “Sat” meaning “truth” and “Nam” meaning “name” – essentially it means “I am truth”. 3) Om Mani Padme Hum is a Buddhist mantra to invoke the blessings of Avalokiteshvara – the bodhisattva of compassion. It’s commonly translated from Sanskrit as, “The jewel is in the lotus.” 4) Ra Ma Da Sa is a Kundalini yoga that combines four sounds to create a positive vibration that helps release stress and tension as well as to bring balance to the body and the mind: “Ra” represents the sun and the masculine energy; “Ma” represents the moon and the feminine energy; “Da” represents the Earth and the healing energy; “Sa” represents infinity and the enlightenment energy. 5) Aad Guray Nameh is a Sikh meditation mantra meaning, “I bow to the primal wisdom”: Aad Guray Nameh = I bow to the Primal Wisdom, Jugaad Guray Nameh = I bow to the Wisdom of all the ages, Sat Guray Nameh = I bow to the True Wisdom, Siri Guroo Dayvay Nameh = I bow to the Great Invisible Wisdom.

Note: No weblog post will be published on 2023-09-23. The next one will be published on 2023-09-26.

Elizebeth Friedman (1892-1980)

One hundred and thirty years before the publication of this weblog post, Elizebeth Friedman née Smith (1892–08-26 – 1980-10-31) was born. She was known in later life for her expertise in cryptanalysis.

Cryptanalysis, popularly called code breaking, is actually an important branch of computer science. All practitioners are expected to have some basic understanding of it, at both practical and conceptual levels. It is actually a broader topic than many realize. It involves the analysis of information systems to understand what lies hidden. As expected, Wikipedia has an article on the topic. People often describe some (often their own) cryptanalytic efforts as reverse engineering. Other people may actually think they know what this term implies, but it is vague, often deliberately used to cover up the specific techniques involved in ferreting out system information.

American Cryptanalysis begins at Riverside, Illinois, where a number of documents on the subject were published, some of which are available for download. This was mainly the work of one woman, Elizebeth Friedman (1892-1980), sometimes assisted by her husband, William (1891-1961), who was working at Riverside, starting in 1915, then went on to lead the research division of the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1930s, and some follow-on services into the 1950s. William’s one major contribution was inventing the term cryptanalysis!

Unfortunately for the world, some scientific practices are shameful. It is not so much the individual facts that are either stumbled upon or ignored that constitute a major problem, but rather how some practitioners (typically male) take credit for work performed by others (typically female). In addition, large numbers of women have been actively discouraged in pursuing scientific careers, simply on the basis of their gender. In the twentieth century, when they were permitted to participate, they were shunted into inferior positions/ roles, and their activities were depreciated. Hopefully, in the twenty-first century, this will come to an end.

Elizebeth Friedman was the foremost cryptanalyst in USA, exceeding in ability, the talents of her husband. This is mentioned because, while they worked together, only William Friedman’s name appears on published documents, although many knew that they were sometimes written jointly, but often by Elizebeth alone. It is difficult (if not impossible) for me, a male, born more than half a century after her, to understand her situation, let alone her motivation for allowing her husband to receive full credit.

Yet, the most outrageous appropriation of her work did not involve her husband, but another American man who should have been regarded as Public Enemy #1, John Edgar Hoover (1895 – 1972). who took credit for much of Elizebeth’s cryptanalysis. As Wikipedia states, “Later in life and after his death, Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He was found to have exceeded the jurisdiction of the FBI, and to have used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others, including multiple sitting presidents of the United States.”

Fake Science and its consequences

Originally, this post ended with the previous paragraph. Then, on 2022-07-22, some allegations emerged that part of a key 2006 study of Alzheimer’s disease may have been fabricated. Matthew Schrag (1971 – )found serious problems with underlying research led by Sylvain Lesné (1974 – ) on a specific protein. Science has now issued a statement about it. Images accompanying and supporting the research, seem to have been altered.

One problem with fake research is that it often results in fakers getting undeserved research grants. More importantly, real researchers get denied these grants, which can mean that medical breakthroughs get delayed. This can result in unnecessary suffering, or even premature death. The amount of money involved can reach hundreds of millions of dollars. The wrong papers get cited. In this particular case, one published in Nature, has been cited 2 300 times.

Schrag told Science, “You can cheat to get a paper. You can cheat to get a degree. You can cheat to get a grant. You can’t cheat to cure a disease.” This is the real essence of the problem. Fake research leads society down a cul-de-sac that leads nowhere.

Much of the world is already treating science with contempt. In particular, there are climate deniers, who use falsified science to justify their own claims. There are oil companies that have knowingly publicly denied the climatic impact of the carbon dioxide produced from the combustion of petroleum products, despite knowing about its consequences for about six decades. This is having a negative impact on billions of people, while some few others are provided an unwarranted life of luxury.

The world needs to prevent the publication of falsified reports, such as those by Lesné. Currently, the peer review system lacks a mechanism to prevent the publication of doubtful works. I remember my wife, Trish’s cousin, Terry Heaps (1941 – 2017), discussing a paper he had peer reviewed as a resource economist. He had rejected it, because it contained some bad data that produced incorrect conclusions. He had been alerted to this situation by an illustration. He notified the publication of this fact. The publication then notified the author. Despite this, the paper showed up in another publication, complete with the bad data and incorrect conclusions, but minus the illustration.

In addition to developing a system to prevent inappropriate works from being published, science needs to ensure that people who make valuable contributions, such as Elizebeth Friedman, are fully acknowledged.

Addendum

Once again, this post ended with the previous paragraph. Then, on 2022-08-21, X-ray evidence emerged that Wyndham Lewis (1882 – 1957) had deliberately destroyed Helen Saunder’s (1885 – 1963) missing artwork, Atlantic City (ca. 1915), by painting Praxitella (1921) on top of it. Students Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn, used X-ray and other imaging technology to investigate Praxitella, because of its “uneven texture and glimpses of bright red through cracks in the surface paint.”

Vorticism was an artistic movement, heavily influenced by cubism and futurism, whose artworks typically used bold colours, harsh lines and sharp angles. It originated with the Rebel Art Centre, started in 1914 by Wyndham Lewis and Kate Lechmere (1887 – 1976), who financed it. Helen Saunders and Jessica Dismorr (1885 – 1939) were associated with the movement as practicing painters. The movement also had literary supporters that included Ford Madox Ford (1873 – 1939), Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972), T S Eliot (1888 – 1965) and Rebecca West (1892 – 1983).

The Courtauld Gallery is an art museum in central London, established in 1932. It houses the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art, a self-governing college of the University of London, specializing in art history. Barnaby Wright, deputy head of the Courtauld Gallery and a 20th-century art specialist, is quoted several times in the Guardian article.

“Saunders was a really interesting figure, but she was largely overshadowed by her male contemporaries. She and Jessica Dismorr were the backbone of the group,”

“In the prewar years, [Saunders] was one of the most radical painters and draughtspeople around. There were only a handful of people in Europe producing that type of hard-edged abstract painting and drawing.”

Atlantic City depicts a fragmented modern metropolis, almost certainly in the vibrant colours associated with the Vorticists. A black and white image of the painting appeared in Blast, the avant garde Vorticist journal.

Starting on 2022-10-14, Courtauld Gallery will open Helen Saunders: Modernist Rebel, an exhibition of 18 of Saunders’ drawings and watercolours, tracing her artistic development. It will also show Praxitella, loaned from Leeds Art Gallery, alongside the X-ray and partial colour reconstruction of Atlantic City.

Finally, one has to ask why men deliberately destroy the work of women? From my perspective, social justice demands that the layers of paint constituting Praxitella must be removed, to allow Atlantic City to reemerge. Criminal actions cannot be allowed to triumph over legitimate actions.

Back to Elizebeth Friedman.

This post originally started at some forgotten point in 2020, It was based on one simple question. Why is Alan Turing (1912-1954) remembered as a cryptanalyst, but not Elizebeth Friedman? Of course, Elizebeth was not the first cryptanalyst. The first known recorded explanation of cryptanalysis was given over 1 100 years earlier by Al-Kindi (c. 801–873).

Other important women cryptanalysts include Aggie Mayer Driscoll (1889-1971) and Joan Clarke (1917-1996).

Mother of Biology

Maria Sibylla Merian, Metamorphosis of the silkworm, from Studienbuch (Book of Studies).

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-04-02 – 1717-01-13) was born in Frankfurt am Main, she is notable as an entomologist and scientific illustrator. She spent much of her life living in what is now Germany and the Netherlands, where she died, but also two years in the Dutch colony of Surinam, in South America. Today, it is 375 years since she was born.

After her father, Matthäus Merian der Ältere (1593 – 1650), a Swiss-born engraver/ publisher, died when she was three, her widowed mother, Johanna Sybilla Heim(ius), remarried Jabob Marrel (1613/4 – 1681), a still-life painter, in 1651. Merian received her artistic training from Marrel.

Many Dutch dissenters also moved to Frankfurt, seeking refuge from persecution in the Netherlands. They turned their attention to silkworm breeding and the silk trade towards the end of the 16th century. Maria Sibylla Merian’s earliest nature studies had their origins in this context. She started to collect insects as an adolescent. At 13, she raised silkworms.

In 1665, Merian married Johann Andreas Graff, an apprentice of Marrel. In 1668, her first child, Johanna, was born. The family moved to Nuremberg in 1670. In addition to painting and other artistic activities she gave drawing lessons to unmarried daughters of wealthy families, which helped her family financially, and gave her with access to private gardens, where she could collect and document insects.

She published her first book of natural illustrations in 1675. In 1678 a second daughter, Dorothea Maria, was born, and the family moved back to Frankfurt am Main. In 1679 she published the first volume of a two-volume series on caterpillars, opening with a presentation of the silkworm’s life-cycle.

Merian’s marriage was unhappy, and she moved in with her mother after her stepfather died in 1681. The second volume on caterpillars appearing in 1683. Each volume contained 50 plates that she engraved and etched. These documented the process of insect metamorphosis, and recorded the plant hosts of 186 European insect species. She also included descriptions of insect life cycles.

In 1683, Merian travelled to Gottorp, in Schleswig-Holstein, where she became attracted to the Labadist community, founded by Jean de Labadie (1610–1674). He originally came from the Bordeaux region of France. Later, the community moved to Walta Castle, at Wieuwerd in Friesland.

In 1685, Merian moved with her mother, husband, and children to Friesland. The Labadist community generated income from farming, milling and craftsmenship. Children were tutored communally. Women had traditional roles. A printing press was set up, to disseminate writings by Labadie and others, including Anna van Schurman, (1607 – 1678) painter/ engraver/ poet/ scholar and defender of female education. Another member, Hendrik van Deventer (1651 – 1724),[skilled in chemistry and medicine, set up a laboratory and was regarded as a pioneering obstetrician.

Here, Merian studied natural history and Latin, used as a scientific language. On Friesland’s moors she observed frog development, collecting and dissecting them. Merian’s mother died in 1690, and Merian moved, with her daughters, to Amsterdam in 1691. In 1692, her husband divorced her, and her daughter Johanna married Jakob Hendrik Herolt, a successful merchant in the Surinam trade.

In 1699, Merian and her younger daughter, Dorothea Maria Graff (1678–1743), travelled to Surinam to study and record the tropical insects native to the region. This was financed by selling 255 paintings. For two years she travelling throughout the colony, sketching local animals and plants, recording local/ native names and describing local uses.

Merian criticised the colonial merchants for their obsession with sugar. She took a broader interest in local agriculture, especially the vegetables and fruits that could be grown in Suriname, such as the pineapple. She also condemned their treatment of slaves. One such enslaved person assisted her in her research, and allowed her to interact with other Amerindian and African slaves.

In 1705, she published Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Merian’s Metamorphosis has been credited with influencing a range of naturalist illustrators. In Metamorphosis, she writes: “I have been concerned with the study of insects since my youth. I started with silkworms in my native Frankfurt. Later I realized that other caterpillars developed into much more beautiful diurnal and nocturnal butterflies.”

Because of her documented observations of butterfly metamorphosis, she is often considered to be the founder, and a significant contributor, to the field of entomology. Through her studies, Merian discovered many facts about insect life, earning her the title of mother of biology.

Maria Sibylla Merian from 1679, possibly by Jacob Marrel

More information about the life and work of Merian can be found in an article by Tanya Latty.

Sci-Hub

The Sci-Hub logo.

When people feel that society is not working for them, they create their own solutions. Many become criminals. Some participate in guerrilla actions, ranging from one-off events to lifestyle transitions. A few found institutions, businesses and organizations to resolve these points of conflict. In this post, one will meet numerous people, and institutions that have arisen to gain free access to scientific information.

In the beginning, there was The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed 1990-07-10 by activist John Gilmore (1955 – ), poet, essayist and cattle rancher John Perry Barlow (1947 – 2018) and entrepreneur Mitch Kapor (1950 – ) to promote Internet civil liberties.

The EFF “provides funds for legal defense in court, presents amicus curiae briefs, defends individuals and new technologies from what it considers abusive legal threats, works to expose government malfeasance, provides guidance to the government and courts, organizes political action and mass mailings, supports some new technologies which it believes preserve personal freedoms and online civil liberties, maintains a database and web sites of related news and information, monitors and challenges potential legislation that it believes would infringe on personal liberties and fair use and solicits a list of what it considers abusive patents with intentions to defeat those that it considers without merit.”

The EFF had noted that more than half of all academic publishing is controlled by five publishers, using paywalls justified on the premise that they compensate publishers for their investment in editing, curating, and publishing. Yet, a large portion of that work involves uncompensated peer-reviews by scholars. In addition, much of the research behind these articles is publicly funded. Because of this, the EFF and many others argue that the results should be freely available.

On 2005-06-15, Reddit was born, a website with 1.) social news aggregation, 2.) web content rating, and 3.) discussion. It claims to be the front-page of the internet. It was founded by spez = Steve Huffman (1983 – ) and Alexis Ohanian (1983 – ), students at the University of Virginia. Later, Aaron Swartz (1986 – 2013) was given founder status for his work rewriting Reddit’s Lisp codebase using Python and web.py. Already in 2006-10, Reddit had been acquired.

According to Alexa Internet, Reddit ranks as the 18th-most-visited website in the world and 7th most-visited website in the USA. Somewhat less than half of its user base is from USA, and with users from the UK and Canada, Anglophiles dominate. Most of these are young. Some would even say that a large portion of the user base is eager to change the world. They are in part inspired by Swartz as computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist.

Reddit looks somewhat old fashioned with a bulletin board system that displays user-generated content (texts, photos, videos, links) and content discussions. Reddit is a play-on-words with read it. According to Reddit, there were approximately 430 million monthly users, or redditors (in 2019). Content is divided into 138 000 subreddits = categories/ communities. Redditor posts and comments result in a conversation. These can be voted upon using positive upvotes and negative downvotes. These votes determine a post’s site visibility. Redditors earn karma for their posts and comments. After six months, posts are automatically archived, prohibiting comments and votes.

Sci-Hub was founded by Kazakhstani computer programmer Alexandra Elbakyan (1988 – ) in 2011 in response to the high cost of research papers behind paywalls. The site is extensively used worldwide. One estimate is that it serves 400 000 requests per day to provides free access to an archive over 85 million research papers and books using 77 TB of data, without regard to copyright. It uses a variety of approaches to bypass publishers’ paywalls. Science journalist John Bohannon described Sci-Hub as “an awe-inspiring act of altruism or a massive criminal enterprise, depending on whom you ask.”

In 2019, a community of redditors downloaded and released 33TB of scientific papers and books from Library Genesis, a site similar to Sci-Hub. Now, the r/DataHoarder subreddit is involved in a new rescue mission for Open Science. It involves approximately 8 500 individuals torrenting papers in order to download the entire library. The goal is to make an open-source library that cannot be taken down.

Torrenting? Torrenting is a form of downloading where a torrent (aka tracker) will break up a file into smaller pieces, called packets. Some participants in the process (seeders) will have the entire file in their possession. Others, varyingly called peers or leechers, will only have some of the parts, but are in the process of acquiring them all. The torrent file being downloaded keeps track of who has which packet and alternate sources.

Harvard University warned in 2012 that subscription fees for scientific journals were becoming prohibitively expensive. The European Union, through European Commissioner covering the portfolio of Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas (1970 – ), announced 2016-05-28 that all publicly funded scientific papers published in Europe could be made free to access by 2020.

Guidelines were released in 2017, and in part state: “Modern research builds on extensive scientific dialogue and advances by improving earlier work. The Europe 2020 strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy underlines the central role of knowledge and innovation in generating growth. Broader access to scientific publications and data therefore helps to[:] build on previous research results (improved quality of results)[;] encourage collaboration and avoid duplication of effort (greater efficiency)[;] speed up innovation (faster progress to market means faster growth)[;] involve citizens and society (improved transparency of the scientific process)[.]” (p. 4)

Now, Redditors at the r/DataHoarder subreddit are trying to preserve the numerous papers available on Sci-Hub. In a post dated 2021-05-13, the moderators of r/DataHoarder, provided “… a clearer message about the fate of Sci-Hub and open science. We are the library, we do not get silenced, we do not shut down our computers, and we are many.” Redditors aim to release all of the downloaded data via a new uncensorable open-source website.

The Sci-Hub logo: An aside

In the next three paragraphs, Alexandra Elbakyan comments on the Sci-Hub logo, “The history of Sci-Hub logo is less intriguing than it appears to be. When Sci-Hub started in 2011, its first logo was a simple Soviet hammer and sickle, and when the mouse pointer hovered upon it, a text showed up stating: „Communism is … common ownership of the means of production with free access to articles of consumption.“

I took this communism definition from a Wikipedia page and it fitted Sci-Hub very neatly. I was lucky because that definition of communism in Wikipedia was only in 2011 – if you check earlier versions of Wiki article about communism or later versions, they do not contain anything about „free access to articles“.

In 2014 I created a group in a social network to bring together Sci-Hub users (vk.com/sci_hub). First I used the Mendeleev table as a logo, after that it was an alchemical serpent. Later I decided to look up some picture in Google with a key and books to use as a group logo, and found that Raven sitting on books, holding a key. I loved that picture and immediately put it up as a logo on Sci-Hub’s social network group. Later in 2015, I decided to re-design Sci-Hub website and create a modern design, and used the group raven logo as a website logo.”

Wikipedia 2018

Soon I should be receiving those irritating annual appeals to donate to Wikipedia. This year I won’t be giving! The main reason is this article appearing in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/03/donna-strickland-nobel-physics-prize-wikipedia-denied

This week Donna Strickland was awarded the Nobel prize in Physics. In March, she was deemed too insignificant to warrant a Wikipedia article.

Donna Strickland, one of three people who earned a Nobel prize in Physics in 2018.

Wikipedia is yet another male dominated organization that needs to be disrupted. What this world needs now is gender balance. I would like to know what Wikipedia is doing to ensure that more than 16% of the site’s volunteer editors are female? Is the Wikipedia working environment making life inviting enough to encourage more female editors? Indeed, I would like to know more about gender bias in the criteria for notability, and why only 17% of entries dedicated to notable people are for women?

I will end this post by offering my congratulations to Donna Strictland for earning her Nobel prize.

Update

An reader was concerned about today’s blog and suggested I ” should actually look into the matter before starting rogue boycott actions. If [I] feel there isn’t sufficient coverage of a topic on Wikipedia, don’t complain about others not writing articles, start writing them yourself.”

In a conversation with this reader, it was pointed out that the issue was not about Strictland’s notability, but verification of this notability that was lacking. Verifiability is especially important for living people, since incorrect information can have serious consequences, and be difficult to correct. This reader also pointed out that the number of notable men is larger than notable women.