Talk:Hilary Putnam/Archive1

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Contents 1 Brain-in-a-Vat 2 Literature about Putnam 3 Rewrite/Cleanup needed 4 This article mentioned in New Yorker 5 Well done 6 New Yorker reference 7 Hilary Putnam 8 Missing ref 9 Anti-Semitism 10 Halberstam 11 Scanning 12 Putnam unusal because philosophy is unusual 13 A priori 14 Ways to improve artcile 15 Question on PLP/Harvard 16 Picture 17 Too bad 18 Compare and contrast?? 19 To Outrigger

[edit] Brain-in-a-Vat

Anyone understand Putnam on this?

My view: Seems to me like he gets himself tangled in overly complicated language. "We are brains in a vat" is rendered false by the fact that he believes that the only vats we can refer to are those in the world that we appear to be in (he disregards the possibility that we can refer to anything outside the apparent world). Since we clearly are not in vats in the apparent world – we appear to have a more substantial body – the statement is indeed necessarily false. But it does not mean that we are not in real vats, even if we cannot refer to them. More to the point, he is wrong to assume that we are unable to refer to things external to the apparent world. The fact that we are discussing the possibility of vats at all in the way we are destroys Putnam’s argument. Alternatively, Putnam could be arguing that our ability to contemplate matters outside of our apparent world is what proves that we are not in a vat. However, it is extremely unclear why brains in a vat would have such a constraint on their conceptual abilities compared to us. --129.67.114.173 12:46, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

unsourced or poorly sourced negative material about living persons should not be posted to this article or its talk page(s)--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:17, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Literature about Putnam

The literature listings should be ones that are reputable, and likely to be found in a typical academic library. These are ones that will likely be of use to those looking for further information on Putnam. Obscure articles should not appear in the literature list. (This is not to say that they must be in English, but sources in English clearly are necessary.)

There once was a brain in a vat that Putnam said couldn't that that it is a brain in a vat The brain pondered this thought and frew so overewrought that it fell right out of its vat

There really ought to be a section on his Philosophy of Science. Specifically, his work on Quantum Mechanics, alternative Logics, etc. 66.108.4.183 07:14, 7 September 2006 (UTC) Allen Roth

I agree. Why don't you do it?? --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 14:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite/Cleanup needed

The article on Putnam needs some extensive work. In general, the article is not cohesive, but here are some specific points.

-- The section on philosophy of mind is alright, but could be more informative.

Actually it was a disgrace and terrifying idiotic. That has now been remedied. --Lacatosias 13:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

-- The section on philosophy of language is a mess. The discussion of the twin earth thought experiment is alright. But there is a dangling one-line paragraph about the causal theory of reference. The discussion about Putnam's refutation of skepticism does not belong in the philosophy of language. And to say that internalism is the view that meaning is "inherent in the word/concept" is downright ncoherent.

Yes, I have left the Twin Earth discussion mostly intact. I have expaned on the Putnam's theory of meaning. I have divided these things into subsections, etc. I took out the Brain in the Vat and put it in a new section "epistemology". What else? Oh,, I forgot to correct that nonsense aboout internalism and I'm not sure about the adequeacy if the explanation in general.

-- The philosophy of mathematics section is a string of random facts, not all of which obviously belong in an encyclopedia entry.

This is also true. I think I will leave the section discussing "quasi-empiricism" and add something on the Putnam-Quine indispensability thesis.

-- The metaphilosophy section contains no information that warrants inclusion.

Not so sure about this. As it currently stands, I would agree. But Putna's internal realism/pragmatism need to be discussed sonewhere. I will put in a stub template for the moment. I don't know much about this aspect of Putnam.--Lacatosias 13:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

--Rldoan 09:00, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

"The section on Putnam's political activities is currently of a disproportionate length to other sections. It really should be much shorter (if it should be there at all!)" -- I disagree. The section is fine as it is, the other sections need to be lengthened.--droptone 01:48, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if is should not be integerated into a general biorgaphy section at the beginning of the article though??--Lacatosias 13:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

There really ought to be a section on his Philosophy of Science. Specifically, his work on Quantum Mechanics, alternative Logics, etc. 66.108.4.183 07:14, 7 September 2006 (UTC) Allen

[edit] This article mentioned in New Yorker

Looks like Putnam likes the article! From here:

When I showed the Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam his entry, he was surprised to find it as good as the one in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He was flabbergasted when he learned how Wikipedia worked. "Obviously, this was the work of experts," he said.

Take a bow, editors. Ziggurat 00:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWW!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to Professor Putnam for the compliment and to the others, beside my modest self (;, who also contributed to the article. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:36, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Only one thing though. He doesn't have an entry in the SEP yet. ??? Well, anyway. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:43, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I just read the article too. Congratulations to all the contributors. Ori.livneh 18:47, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

So why hasn't this been listed as a feature article? Banno 23:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking of self-nominating this one later on. But after the initial reception I got with Fodor, I suspect it wil be attacked for being too technical, too many commas, no picture, thin on biography... What can I tell ya??? --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 14:36, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright!!! now this is getting REALLLLYY interersting!! Let's try this experiment then.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 18:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Well done

I thought this article was of a very high standard, and one of the best philosophy pages in WP. If not the best.

It proves that good philosophy is possible in WP (I left the project in disgust some time ago, on the assumption that philosophy as such was impossible in WP). I wonder if it's worth another try? Dbuckner 09:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I just read the New Yorker article. Very accurate. "the vast majority of Wikipedia edits consist of deletions and additions rather than of attempts to reorder paragraphs or to shape an entry as a whole".

"The facts may be sturdy, but the connective tissue is either anemic or absent".

On the other hand, there are some remarkably good articles in the philosophy section. All of them by those who did not make random hacks to sentences, but thought carefully about how an article is crafted, and about the dependences between the different parts.

I gave up on the last philosophy project, as I said. That largely consisted of people forming lists, an obsession with pictures and maps and pointers, and other trivia. The skill of actually writing the basic material was not highly regarded. Yet this article proves me wrong. So, is there anyone else out there, apart from our good friend Franco, who can actually write articles like this? Dbuckner 09:50, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Click on "Leave comments" at the top.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:02, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Francesco, I started a copy edit and took the clean-up tag off, because that's reserved for the very worst of our pages. If you don't like what I'm doing for whatever reason, or if I introduce errors, please tell me to stop, and feel free to revert. I won't be offended. :-) I've done the intro, and the first para of the second section, and I'll do some more as and when time permits. I find that the refs make copy editing for flow a very slow job, so I'll be doing a little bit at a time. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:31, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I understand. The stupid in-line refs are a pain in the butt for everything. If you want to fix a ref, you have to click on the arrow at the bottom which takes you to the appropiate ref in the body of the text. Then, you have to go into that specific section

and find the damned thing, which is hopelessly entangled wih other refs and the text!! That took me about 4 hours yesterday. As User:Jon Awbrey once put it: "when the bots take over, I'm leaving." The bots have taken over, it seems. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:07, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Yorker reference

In The New Yorker's Issue of 2006-07-31 article Know It All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? by Stacy Schiff, this artile is referred to with:

What can be said for an encyclopedia that is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes illiterate? When I showed the Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam his entry, he was surprised to find it as good as the one in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He was flabbergasted when he learned how Wikipedia worked. “Obviously, this was the work of experts,” he said. In the nineteen-sixties, William F. Buckley, Jr., said that he would sooner “live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” On Wikipedia, he might finally have his wish. How was his page? Essentially on target, he said. All the same, Buckley added, he would prefer that those anonymous two thousand souls govern, and leave the encyclopedia writing to the experts.

Buckley's point is already interesting. Of course, it would mean the end of Wikipedia. But we should always remember that the "experts" here are self-appointed, not hired or promoted based on some set of criteria or other.

[edit] Hilary Putnam

Here is a bot-automated peer review: often, some of the points are not accurate, but it may be worth a double check just to finish polishing the aricle. This (compared to other bot reviews I've seen) looks pretty good. Sandy 13:29, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and may or may not be accurate for the article in question.

• Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOSDATE, months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.

• If this article is about a person, please add {{persondata}} along with the required parameters to the article - see Wikipedia:Persondata for more information.

Done this.

--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

• Per WP:MOSNUM, there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 18mm, use 18 mm, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 18 mm.^[1]

• Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:BTW, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link January 15, 2006, but do not link January 2006.^[2]

• Please alphabetize the interlanguage links.^[3]

Done this.

• There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view. For example,
  • is considered
  • are considered
  • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).^[4]

I think I've taken care of every single one of these. I will pass throuhg one more time and then I need to take a break. PLEAAAAAAAAASE!!!

• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a. ^[5]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Sandy 13:29, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Francesco, none of this is urgent stuff. As bot peer review goes, this is minor stuff. There is no time pressure; it's only some ideas for fine tuning. Sandy 15:09, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing ref

Francesco, there's a missing ref at the top of Criticism (named ref CA). I tried to find it, but had no luck. You're just about done ! Sandy 04:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Got it, Sandy. Thanks.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-Semitism

"…the pervasive atmosphere of anti-Semitism of the time…"? In mid-1960s Boston? This strikes me as a bit odd. Admittedly, Harvard, like several other elite universities, was at that time at the tail end of the period in which it had a quota severely limiting the number of Jewish students, but this is precisely the era in which that sort of thing was falling away. What exactly is this referring to? - Jmabel | Talk 04:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

First of all, thanks for responding to my note. Admittedely, I wrote that sentence, so I will try to explain. It now strikes me as very odd, in fact. In one of the sources I was using for the bio, it says approximately "We felt like we were defying Hilter and the anti-semites". I was trying (but failing) to get the idea across that they were rebelling against a sense of anti-semitism derived from their past. I need to say "rebelling against the anti-semitism of their past experiecne" (past lives? (bit this doesn't sound right to my ears??) How about "against the anti-semitism of their youth"!!....Ok, I'll fix it that way.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes. In the 1950s-1960s there was still tons of antiSemitism in cities like NY and Boston. The "street-type" of AS. I experienced plenty of it as a kid in NYC. 66.108.4.183 07:08, 7 September 2006 (UTC) Allen Roth

Well, let's keep that discussion to another page like [[anti-semitism in Boston], please. This is mainly a philosophy article. I simply changed it to past anti-semitism to avoid controversy.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:17, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Halberstam

Could someone elaborate on the comment about outrage at Halberstam? Halberstam (author of The Best and the Brightest) is generally thought of as a critic of the conduct of the war. According to our article on Halberstam, his NY Times reporting on Vietnam "caused U.S. president John F. Kennedy to request he be transferred to another bureau." That is to say, Halberstam was raising dissenting issues no later than November 1963, when the anti-war movement barely existed. So if we are going to go into this at all, the nature of his criticisms of Halberstam should be spelled out. - Jmabel | Talk 04:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

My source (listed and linked in the references) is very vague on this. I will give the exact quote here in a bit and then you can see what you can make of it (or elimiate, etc..). But it IS sourced.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:46, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Here'es the (only) passage on the topic:

In the midst of this prodigious output of philosophical activity, Putnam was thrown into the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War. In 1963, while he was teaching at MIT, he organized one of the first faculty and student committees against the war. He was particularly outraged by David Halberstam's reporting, especially the claim that the U. S. was "defending" the peasants of South Vietnam from the Viet Cong by poisoning their rice crop. As the war continued... from footnote #12. Hickey, Hilary Puntam, etc... Keep in mind that Putam was very radical at the time and may well have taken something that Halberstan wrote out of context, misimterpretd it, or was being misled, etc...--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:57, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I will search some more on this.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scanning

I'm scanning through the recent edits to make sure that content, arguments, and so on are not compromised. Also, to ensure that some "bad" edits,like those made by SlimVirgin yesterday, do not inadvertently creep in. Absolutely nothing personal Slim. Now I know how Tony1 feels in a certain sense. In any case, there are two things that popped out. One is just a question: why footnotes and refercnes separately. The footnotes are the references in the srrict sense that word. Tony1 asked "AmEng or BrEng?" I'm using American English, but British forms may have crept in from elsewhere or even from myself mistakenly. I'll try to answer other in-line questions about facts and so forth.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm also interested in the question about separate references: I've never advocated for separately listing all the references. I tend to look for a separate listing of only the most important references. But, if I'm reading it correctly elsewhere, I think SV has a good point. If you separately list References, when an inline citation goes dead because another (subsequent) editor juggles text around or makes deletions, you can locate the citation in the References section. If that is her reasoning, I do see the point now. Sandy 12:34, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

But she has listed only the main ones,as you suggest. Not all of them. (?) --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Putnam unusal because philosophy is unusual

The problem with the philosophy "department" is that there are no philosophers (well...only two or three plus three or four serious graduate students and studiosi). Let me put it this way: the vast majority of the people who contribute to philosophy articles are either a) cranks, b) kids who think philosophy is just about "expressing one's opinions" or making up cool big words, c) functionally illiterate, d) fundamantalist religious fanatics or other people with an intense need to impose their POV, e) knowledgable edit-warriors who are dead set on ensuring that Ayn Rand or Daniel Denett (or whomever) will not have his views subjected to criticims. Even when they ARE knowledgable and capable folks, they do not know how to work together. I still think this is partly due to the nature of philosopy, where there are never any finished answers or final facts. The talk pages on major philosophy articles, e.g., truth, empiricism, philosophy, are infinitely longer than the pages themselves. Standards are therefore naturally very low at this point. Bad work pushed out the good the way bad money pushes out good money. You say the Putnam FAC was unusual. I came in unprepared.

(I dount that is so unusual, but if you look at my philosophy of mind FAC (sucess) and my Jerry Fodor FAC (fail), along with the latghe numnber of articles I have written almost wholly from scratch, you will see that it is unusal in another way: it is probably the onlt article I have ever written that did NOT include criticism and opposing views.

More importantly, it is unusual that that VERY unusual that a philosphy article meet the criteria that are now required. There are currenlty six Phi artciles that have achived FA. One I did myself. The other five almost certainlty do not meet the currenct criteria. The Hilary Putnam article is extraorindaily unsual now. (I'm sorry this has to be said somwhere). If it passes FAC, it will be one of the two or three FAs in all of philosphy that meet ALL of the current standards. That is part of why I took this thing so seriously. In addition, it is a biogarphy of a living philospher (there is very little material to go on) and deals mostly with his ideas . It is, in fact, one of a kind among all the FAs. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A priori

In the discussion of functional isomorphism: "This is sometimes referred to as an 'a priori argument'." The referent of "This" is unclear, as is the relevance of the statement. What exactly is being characterized as a priori? - Jmabel | Talk 06:30, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

'tis indeed ambiguous. Thanks for spotting that. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ways to improve artcile

• Get photograph.
• Find newly-published biography:

Ben-Menahem, Yenima. (2006) Hilary Putnam. Edited by Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Cambrige:Cambrige University Press. ISBN-13: 9780521012546. Not yet available in Italy.

• Images or photos of Brain-in-vat, Twin Earth, etc...

--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 18:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi FFaL,

Congratulations on successfully working through all that you have to get a successful FA (which I assume will happen at this point). I am going to make a couple of comments here so as not to further complicate an already complicated FAC page.

• When you say "According to one interpretation, Putnam's argument only shows that, although one is unable to be a brain in a vat, one is still able to be a "brain in a vat"" - the quotation marks around "brain in a vat" are obviously very important. If the quotation marks are intended to mean that the phrase should be taken as a whole, one concept... have you considered using "brain-in-a-vat"? It seems to me that the use of hyphens like that is what is often done in philosophy writing to emphasize the difference between words in a phrase, and the phrase as one entity. Note: this phrase in quotes appears in a few places.

Don't worry about that. That "argument" is not really an argument, as far as I am able to make it. I'm sure many people have been confused by it. I'm truly shocked that no philosophers or logicians seem to have even noticed it or, if so, attempted to clarify if so that to that it makes some sort of sense to ME, at the very least. I will find another, much more meaningful argument to replace that para. I aslo need to add something about Putnam's most recetn turn toward prgamatic Wittgenstianianism. But this latter will be somewhat diificult to put into layman's terms. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:39, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

It was part of the original text from way back in the days before I edited it-

• The image you uploaded from Flickr says "All rights reserved" at Flickr and is going to get your FAC in trouble. On the off chance the Flickr account is yours (being as the image just happened to be added on Flickr the same day you uploaded it here), you could change the licensing, otherwise I think the image should be removed from the article, and deleted.

That has been corrected.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:39, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Regards, Outriggr 00:14, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question on PLP/Harvard

I find the description of the Harvard discliplinary proceedings and Putnam's role confusing in this write-up, and the linked article is incomplete and not completely supportive of the language on this page. From the Crimson article, it sounds like the administration was looking to pass some broad disciplinary guidelines without specificing who they were targeted at, and Putnam felt they were targeted at him, though it was not an explicit attck. It is unclear what the guidelines would have prohibited, and the language on the page references "procedures" without describing what they are. Could someone who knows the full story take a quick look at this part of the article and seek to clarify it? Thanks, Sam 15:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

Why there's no picture of the man? CG 17:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

See the extensive discussion of this issue at the comments for FAC nonimation site. Bmorton3 17:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

He mailed a marvelous portrait-photo to me just this morning. I have it all ready to upload. Unfortunately, I didn't explain to him that he must explicilty release the rights on the terms of the cccls, cq.ply, GFDC, ofcl, and other such siglas. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 19:05, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too bad

What's really unfortunate, as I've said repeatedly in other contexts,is that you can only get this kind of scrutiny and attention to an article of this nature by putting it into FAC. Look at the rest of the monstoristies that pass for philosphy articles or biographies of philosophers: Gottlob Frege, Saul Kripke, brain in a vat, folk psychology, physicalism, computational theory of mind, David Chalmers, ad infinitum.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

That is true of other subject areas too. Probably a consequence of a professional topic and a volunteer workforce.

I've asked about the part in "Functionalism" explaining what is a Turing machine. It doesn't seem to me to fit the flow of the article; I doubt it's anything you wrote. Could everything in "In non-technical terms, a Turning machine.... prints a 1 and remains in state three" be replaced by a one- or two-sentence definition? Gimmetrow 15:14, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, probably it could, (just take the first few sentences from the article Turing machine and pare them a little) but the danger is it might lose the point of distinguishing "machine-state functionalism" from other kinds of functionalism. You can always cut and simplify, the issue is what level of detail do you want in a page of this length on Putnam. Personally, I think that Pragmatists long before Putnam were functionalists in the broad sense, but where Putnam made innovative contributions here was to phrase this stuff in terms of Turing Machine states, rather than the far vaguer talk of earlier Pragmatists. Putnam was applying extremely rigourous formal math concepts, to philosophy of mind, and giving a small taste of the rigor, helps to convey the tone of Putnam's approach. Bmorton3 15:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Simple answer: No!! I did write it and I think it's fine as it is. I'm trying a very delicate (actually impossible) compromise here between the extroraindry depth and detail of an SEP article and a general-audience Wiki article. I'd like to leave in as much detail as possible wothout provoking objections of technicality, in other words. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

OK!! If you think it needs to be there, fine. Gimmetrow 16:21, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

(; --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:14, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Compare and contrast??

THIS is how this article was, and probably would have remained forever, before I touched it. Period. Fodor was even worse.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To Outrigger

Lacatosias, I've taken some liberties with the new image. Let me know if preferable; and others let me know what rules I may have broken.)

No, I think you've got it right actually. I had forgotten that fair-use images are suppose to be low-res (or low-quality, or something like that). Thanks for the adjustment.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 06:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure one can crop a book cover, change it to black and white, and still use the "book cover" usage tag. At any rate, my motivation for doing so was that the book cover you uploaded was actually smaller than the size of the image used by the Philosopher template, so the image was being "blown up" and didn't look that good. Outriggr 06:47, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Let's see what the others think about that. We can always go back to the image of the full book cover, with the title and so on, if necessary. Interestingly, I just realized that that photo (in black and white) is the same photo that Putnam sent me via email!!--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

My understanding (probably wrong) is that "fair use" generally does not allow changes to copyrighted works. However, if you scanned the book cover yourself (rather than grabbing a copyrighted file from the web) you might have more flexibility. Gimmetrow 12:08, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Infatti, as they say over here. If it's a book cover, it should be recognizable as a book cover. I'm reverting back to the previous version. I liked the color anyway.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:34, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

==He will not delete the objection!!== Watch this now!! The objection has been adrdress, he knows the objection has been addresedd, he knows that I know that the obkections has been adressed. I sent him a message, two notes on the page. No response. The obection remains like an inexpungable "damned spot". --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)