Chyren

Please don't revert the William James Sidis article anymore. Although I originally reverted your changes, you reverted it back and I made my edits one by one without reverting. I have reverted your recent revert. Wikipedia has a policy against making 3 reverts. I suggest you check the references before making edits as I have already removed numerous errors in the article over the past several weeks. I wrote the Chronology section but am trying to incorporate it all in the Biography. See the Talk page regarding errors in the media about W.J. Sidis. --Jagz 18:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I replied to your message on my Talk page. --Jagz 23:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Sarah Sidis' education

I'm going to change Sarah Sidis' education back to the way I had it. If you change it back again I will request mediation from Wikipedia. You are purposely making edits without commenting and basically not doing your homework. See the Talk page of the article for my comments on her education. --Jagz 16:22, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

nonplussed

I'm sorry that I didn't reply to you sooner; frankly, I didn't know that you'd posted anything to your talk page, nor do I see it now. How did you notify me? My email, as a note, is sj_cohn@yahoo.com.

To be sure, one had ought to cite one's references when altering any Wikipedia entry, and particularly a political or religious one, given the potentially incendiary nature of such edits. Biographical entries, however, can be changed in ways that are slanderous, so I appreciate your concern. However, I would note that my two edits were within minutes of each other, and that the change was a simple one... as I recall it, one that merely removed a solecism.

As for said changes, I can substantiate them with references. Would you like me to send these references to your personal email, or will you permit me to post them with the references and review them on the page. Regardless, I'd suggest that neither of us get bent out of shape over this. Sidis was a considerable figure in the annals of genius; assuming that neither of us are, let's not take this business to seriously.

And I say that with sincerity. For me, life is too short for me to get my stomach in a knot over the veracity of Wikipedia's material. Much of it is WAY farther from the mark than that which you and I have shared here.

The better part of my references were, at any rate, the following:

--The Animate and the Inanimate, by William James Sidis --A letter from Dr. Abraham Sperling to Helen Sidis which said, "I visited Mr. McDowell at Greenberg publisher's [sic.] on Friday and received the material from your brother's manuscripts.... Mr. McDowell's comments on the manuscripts were these. Both of them he thought were rather scholarly and thus would not lend themselves to publication for popular sale. He suggested that you have some one or more of the outstanding scholars in the fields of philology and anthropology respectively read both manuscripts for the purpose of passing on their mertis and suggesting possible agencies for publication." --I'll have to look for the source of the information on the material Sidis wrote on transportation systems. One web site, which is only a second-hand source, said that, in reference to these guides, it was said in Sidis' time that "Several volumes, including two for the Boston area and one for the District of Columbia, are now ready to go to the printer, and several more are almost ready."

I hope that you'll accept my apologies for omitting these sources; they are widely available in text and/or .pdf formats. As for the inferences I drew related to his state of mind and the genius that the breadth of his investigations represented... I stand by that assertion.

Also, I made no edit to Sarah Sidis' education. You'd do well to track that edit down to its origin, if you feel that the sources were either inaccurate or nonexistent.

76.193.116.241 23:14, 31 May 2007 (UTC)Steve

one further note

With due respect... I'm going to revert to my earlier version. I do this not to be antagonistic, but simply to offer more information on Bill Sidis' life. He was a brilliant man, though a quiet and simple one, and victim of a society that relishes social/intellectual experiments.

my apologies

I realized it was not you, but another user, who contested my last revised addition to the Sidis entry. I suppose you were satisfied with the primary sources I cited, and I appreciate that. Ignore my last addition to this "talk page".

I've also further pared down said addition to "From writings on astrophysics, to Native American studies, to a comprehensive and definitive taxonomy of vehicle transfers, an equally comprehensive study of civil engineering and vehicles, and several well-substantiated lost texts on anthropology, philology and transportation systems, Sidis' covered a broad range of subjects, many of them rather unusual. Some may have perceived this as a lack of focus and a sign of his meltdown." I believe that removes nearly all wiggle room for opinion, beyond what is inherent in any writing.