User:Lou Sander
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[edit] About Me
I'm retired from a career in several medically-related high-tech industries. Along the way, I worked for Microsoft and for the pioneering computer hardware company DEC. In retirement I teach logic, critical thinking, management, marketing, mathematics, and practical computer subjects at the college level. I also teach Wikipedia 101, a short course for beginners in using and editing Wikipedia. Other than that, I do pretty much as I please, subject to financial limitations.
One of my basic editing activities is posting new articles, on subjects I either know about or can quickly research; I've posted well over a hundred of them. Another is reworking weak articles that I happen to encounter and take an interest in. I also add information where it's needed and where I can help, and I fix errors wherever I encounter them. I used to watch a handful of controversial articles, mostly to help make them better, but also to see how well/poorly the editors deal with them. It wasn't a pretty sight, so I stopped.
I've posted many new articles about U.S. Navy ships. Ship articles are fairly easy to create, even if you've never seen a rowboat, and doing them is a good way to build your article total. If you'd like to do some ship articles yourself, I'll be glad to show you how. There are hundreds of ships still to be posted, and the basic information for their articles is readily available online. Once you've done a ship or two, you can do an article like USS Ottawa in less than an hour. It's pretty rewarding, but you know that if you've already posted new articles (it's also kind of cool to watch other people improve your articles). If you want to know more, send email.
I tweet at USSRankin and, much less often, at LouSander. Come on over and look.
WARNING: The paragraphs below plainly state the qualifications and accomplishments of an experienced person. If you consider such material immodest, you probably shouldn't read further. In any event, remember: If it's true, it isn't bragging.
[edit] I think I'm a pretty good editor because...
- I've done a lot of reading, especially in encyclopedias. I've been reading since I was three years old; when I was in second grade, the teacher told my parents I was reading at a seventh grade level. I've been reading encyclopedias since I those ancient times, and reading them extensively since the 1970's. I've spent countless hours reading the World Book and various editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I own a copy of the 1911 Eleventh Edition, and have spent many hours perusing it. IMHO, the guys who wrote it really knew how to write an encyclopedia. Very little of what they wrote was later shown to be wrong.
- I've learned at the feet of high masters. I got straight A's in high school (back when that was harder to do), and I earned degrees in rigorous subjects from Duke University (electrical engineering, with advanced placement in freshman English) and the University of Chicago (MBA/economics). I was far from earning straight A's at either place, but I got my share of them, plus a few D's, in a time when A's were much harder to get, and D's much easier). More recently, I've spent quality learning time at the feet of Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, and Thomas L. Saaty.
- Many have seen fit to publish my writings. That includes about 500 articles, columns, programs and reviews for dozens of publications, including local newspapers and computer magazines with worldwide circulation. During my "computer period" in the 1980's I was a prolific and well-known writer on Commodore subjects. I wrote dozens of articles, two books (one of them translated into Italian) and several very popular columns, most notably the Magic column in RUN magazine. (You can see the names and full text of some of the computer articles HERE). My work was reprinted in six other books that I know of. Though my computer writing spanned all the computers of the day, it stopped when Commodore faded from the scene. Since then, most of my writing has been for newsletters, web sites, corporate research reports, etc., though I occasionally do an article for a magazine. When writing for publication, I'm usually known as Louis F. Sander. In the not-formally-published-by-others category, I've written or compiled almost 300 online obituaries, about a hundred poems, and over 125 new articles in Wikipedia. I'm the creator and proprietor of two large web sites, for The USS Rankin Association HERE and a pre-Facebook personal site HERE. I also publish an eight-page, 1,300-copy quarterly newsletter for my Navy ship reunion group. We think it's one of the very best newsletters of its type. You can see it, including back copies, HERE. Nice, huh?
- Et cetera. I spent twelve years as chairman of the board of a regionally important public library. In connection with that work, I spent thousands of hours in dozens of different libraries, where I learned a lot about information and how it's created, processed, and disseminated. Also, as stated up above, I teach logic and critical thinking.
The bottom line is that I've spent over half a century cultivating the art of being right. The most important part of that art is that when you aren't right, you admit it and learn from your mistake. Whatever my abilities in the lesser areas of the art, I claim absolute mastery of that one.
I think I'm a pretty good editor, Q.E.D..
[edit] You might also like to know (but probably not)...
- Born 1939, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. BSEE, Duke, 1961. MBA, Chicago, 1967. Vietnam era veteran (Naval officer) with three grown children (one deceased) and six grandchildren. ENTP.
- I played basketball at Duke University, but I did not play lacrosse. The basketball was in gym class. (That's the last of the jokes until you see my SSN.)
- When I was seven years old, I was shot at by a group of nonwhites who didn't like the names I was calling them. The (expletive deleted) missed. The same year, I stood alone on a sidewalk, about two feet from a rabid dog. I knew what rabies was, and I knew he had it. (As you might imagine, that stuff builds a kid's self-confidence; read on.) As an adult, I've had a root canal treatment without anesthesia, and I've watched a total stranger die. I've walked, alone, unarmed and unafraid, down foreign streets where a revolution was in progress and the intersections were guarded by stressed-out teenagers with machine guns.
- After college, I spent time as an officer aboard a warship. I was at the Cuban Missile Crisis, and my ship played a big part in ending it; Lyndon B. Johnson commended us for our work. My ship and I were present at the inauguration of the first elected president of the Dominican Republic, and at the independence of Jamaica. We also spent time at Guantanamo Bay. It's not just a job, it's an adventure.
- Later I served in a then-Top-Secret Navy Special Forces unit, where I learned to kill and went through the then-current version of survival school. I never came close to needing or using those skills, but I suppose they're still in there somewhere. Wherever they are, they should stay there—don't (expletive deleted) with me.
- Nobody I know died in Vietnam, but my neighbor Jorge Arteaga and his friend were the first two Americans to die in Desert Storm. I've drunk pisco with Jorge's father, a Bolivian geologist. I am an expert rifle and pistol shot, and I carry. As a naval officer, I owned and wore a sword.
- I can swear like a sailor, and from time to time I exercise that skill. Some of my friends and students are criminals or victims of crime: my friend and coauthor Joseph R. Charnetski spent ten years in prison for killing his wife with a hammer; my student Angelique Enty was shot dead by a no-good boyfriend, who then committed suicide; another student's son was shot to death by one of his gangsta associates. Others of my friends and former students work in law enforcement, some of them in sophisticated cybercrime units. They can and do find people who vandalize pages on the Internet. Be careful.
- I've been both plaintiff and defendant in lawsuits for meaningful amounts of money, and I've been a key witness for a plaintiff in Federal District Court (my guy won). The IRS once confiscated my car, and kept it for over a year. In the end, I beat them. I've run for public office, and I've attended a session of a state supreme court. I've had regionally powerful political enemies. As a community organizer, I have affected the outcome of local elections. I know a lot about voting machines and voter fraud. (Republicans are newcomers, and amateurs; the other guys are, or at least they were in their heyday, highly trained professionals.) I have collected money on a real estate title insurance policy, and there's land I can acquire by adverse possession, (but the legal fees would be more than the land is worth).
- I know a lot of geography, and I've been to 38 states and 18 foreign countries/U.S. possessions. I can name the capitals of all the 50 states, and I've known 48 of them since I was two or three years old. (My mother says it was two, but I find that hard to believe. Sorry, Mom.) I've lived in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and aboard at least six ships, including destroyers, a cruiser and an aircraft carrier. (The ships were USS Canberra, USS York County, USS Conway, USS Rankin, USS Waller, and USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.)
- I have sailed and/or swum in the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Mediterranean Sea, and I've sunned myself on the French Riviera. I've spent a lot of time at sea in the Bermuda Triangle, and I've visited over 30 of one author's 501 Must-Visit Destinations. I've been to a bullfight in Spain; it differs a LOT from the fantasy role playing games so familiar to many Wikipedians. I've experienced an earthquake strong enough to knock things off shelves in my house, and a hurricane once blew over two big trees in my yard. I haven't yet been to India, but I'm fond of all things Indian. Elsewhere in the Commonwealth, I've never seen Mrs. Slocombe's pussy, but I've fantasized about her doing a silly walk. Here at home, I deeply distrust the New York Times, especially since Jayson Blair came out. CBS, too, especially since Dan. I greatly admire Fred on Everything, for both his thinking and his writing.
- In another realm, I'm starting to think of biology as the "Dan Rather of sciences," since I've seen the questionable nature of some of its most respected achievements: the Galapagos finches, the peppered moth, Piltdown man, Archaeoraptor, Haeckel's drawings, the Miller-Urey experiment, and the meticulously peer-reviewed work of superstar biologist Hwang Woo-suk. (And speaking of Famous Men of Science, I have something in common with Euler: my Erdős number is unknown but probably infinite. I have a friend with Erdős number 2, and there's an outside chance that he and I could coauthor some sort of paper. If that happens—and I'm encouraging it—my Erdős number will be known, and will be 3.)
- My own published writing has been read in dozens of countries large and small (e.g., Papua New Guinea), and one of my books was translated into Italian. I was heard on local radio before I was in high school. For several years I was a featured personality on AOL's predecessor Quantum Link, and I've twice had 15 minutes of fame on local TV. The first was coverage of my Computer Kindergarten classes in the early 1980s. The second was in my role as an expert on pornography in public libraries (I'm against it). A major TV station sent a crew to my home to interview me as I called up naughty bits on my laptop. Fun, that.
- I've participated in about 300 board meetings of non-trivial organizations, and I've presided at about a third of them. One result is that my name is cast into a bronze plaque at Northland Public Library. I've left an enduring mark as the leader of eight different organizations: a university's hobby club, two units of the U.S. Navy, two manufacturing businesses, an important suburban public library, and two nonprofit membership organizations. (See HERE and HERE). I'm working on another one, and it's going to be big (see HERE).
- My first real job in industry (1965) was with Motorola, where one of the big guys in engineering was Marty Cooper, who later invented the cell phone. I was a minor person in the marketing department, but I carried a pager and used a Xerox 914 copy machine. Motorola was a pretty progressive company.
- I've worked in the marketing and product management end of some reasonably exciting areas of medicine, most of them in their early days of commercialization: hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, heart-lung machines for open heart surgery, artificial heart valves, organ preservation systems, laboratory information systems, computerized radiation therapy planning, computerized nuclear medicine, computerized interpretation of electrocardiograms, cardiac catheterization, CAT scanning, mammography, medical ultrasound, patient monitoring systems, and TENS, to mention the most prominent ones. In all cases, my knowledge is that of a marketing person, rather than that of a scientist or clinical practitioner. I've worked with many of those folks, though, particularly in radiology, radiation physics, cardiology, cardiac surgery, and pathology. My acquaintances in those areas included Robert Cade and Dana Shires, the inventors of Gatorade, and heart surgery pioneers Denton Cooley and Michael E. DeBakey. I'm sure that all of them forgot me very quickly. When I was a product manager at the Artificial Organs division of Baxter Healthcare, I wrote label copy for medical devices. It was quite a challenge to get it approved by the FDA.
- My career in the medical world allowed me to attend the annual meetings of many medically-related professional societies. Among them were the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs, the National Kidney Foundation, and The International College of Surgeons. Others included the Radiological Society of North America, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the American Roentgen Ray Society, the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP), the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, and the Society of Nuclear Medicine.
- I had other interesting experiences, too. One time I was working on a large sale to a hospital in Ohio. They had committed to buy my product, so I took my sales manager with for the final contract signing for the biggest sale in my life. When we got there, the customer told us he had changed his mind and was going with a competitor. Heartbreak hotel, and what an embarrassment! One week later, their town was leveled by a tornado. Once again, don't (expletive deleted) with me. ;-)
- When I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 1970s, I sold 8KB of 8-bit computer memory for $10,000. At those prices today, a 1GB flash drive would cost $1.3 billion. Do the math.
- I was at Digital when I sold the previously mentioned laboratory information systems. Today, such things are in just about every lab in the industrialized world, but back then, they were new and mysterious articles. At one time, I had sold more of them than any other person in the world: two.
- The first car I remember riding in was my father's 1941 Chevrolet. The first one I owned was a 1953 Chevrolet. Since then, I've owned a lot of them, notably a white Firebird convertible, two other Firebirds, and a Grand Prix that a female British radiologist called "the most beautiful motorcar I've ever seen." Most of the others have been GM or foreign. I buy them new or used, and I sell them when they no longer pass State Inspection. You save a lot of money that way. Currently I have an age-appropriate blue Buick Lesabre and a red Mazda Protegé 5 Zoom-Zoom.
- I've ridden in or on more than my share of cars, trucks, ships, boats, airplanes, etc., including some slightly unusual ones: hot air balloon, sailplane, Piper Cub, seaplane, flying boat*, military and civilian helicopters, ship-to-ship highline, motorcycle*, 30' motor home*, 8' sailboat*, 47' sailboat, London taxi, passenger train, cable car, ski lift, aerial tramway, funicular railway, lots of Navy ships including destroyers*, LSTs, an aircraft carrier, and an attack cargo ship*, various landing craft and amphibious vehicles, and even, once, a donkey*, (an asterisk means I drove it).
- I've seen five planets and the Galilean moons of Jupiter through my own telescope, and fallopian tubes through a surgeon's laparoscope. I've seen the curvature of the earth, both directly at sea and projected in many eclipses. I've stood at the brink of Niagara Falls and the Arizona Meteor Crater, and I've been inside a very large underground cave. None of this compares to the times I've seen the heavens on a warm, clear night, from the flying bridge of a large and totally darkened ship, hundreds of miles from land, with absolutely no light except for that from the stars. It takes your breath away.
- I've designed many electronic circuits, a 400 square foot outdoor deck, and college-level computer programming courses, most of which I later built or taught. I've built about a dozen Heathkits, including a DX-100 transmitter and a GR-295 color TV set. I've had an FCC license and known morse code since 1955. (W3BOA, DXCC, QCWA); I've been DX, and I've operated Maritime Mobile, but I haven't been on the air since the 1960s. I first carried a pager in 1965, which was also the first year I used a copy machine.
- I'm an exceptionally creative amateur programmer, mostly in various forms of BASIC. I wrote my first computer program, in FORTRAN, in 1966. Since then, I've spent over 30,000 hours at the keyboard. I've owned at least twenty different computers, and my laser printer is bigger and faster than yours. So, probably, are my three 13x19 inch inkjets.
- I fly the American flag, 24 hours a day, and illuminated at night, but I'm not some kind of a nut about it. As a teacher, I practice the soft bigotry of low expectations. My students definitely appreciate it.
- I've only been on one organized athletic team, a short-lived junior high school track team, but I've been involved in athletics as a participant and spectator. I was a decent club-level tennis player (3.0-3.5) into my 50s, and I was once a fairly good recreational volleyball player. I am of the Steeler nation, and I'm totally capable of using a Terrible Towel to snap a welt on your Cleveland- or Baltimore-loving ass.
- I was in a Shadyside bar when I saw Christian Laettner make "the shot" against the Kentucky Wildcats. (I was at a party and wasn't even watching the game; I saw it on the way to the men's room.) I once met Coach K and his wife at the Charlotte airport; they didn't recognize me. As a Duke freshman on January 27, 1958, I saw the unranked Duke Blue Devils basketball team beat the #1-ranked West Virginia Mountaineers with Jerry West and Mary Lou Retton's future father Ronnie, 72-68. Wow! The next Thanksgiving, on national TV, I saw the nationally-ranked Duke football team get crushed 50-0 by their pathetically weak arch-rival North Carolina Tar Heels. Win some, lose some, I guess. Also at Duke I briefly met David Sime, who at that time was the "world's fastest man."
- I've seen Roscoe Tanner play tennis; Roberto Clemente play baseball; and Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, and the Steel Curtain play football. I've been to many Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Spirit games, plus a few Steelers games and two World Series games between the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers. I also saw a Grapefruit League game, but I don't remember the teams. I've attended a number of professional wrestling matches, and I live fairly close to Bruno Sammartino (if you like having an unswollen face, don't try telling him it's fake). Once I was so close to Renée Richards, I could have touched her on the Adam's apple. But none of the above was as exciting as seeing Ricky and Danny Seemiller demonstrate world-class table tennis skills at Monroeville Mall.
- I've seen sporting events at Pitt Stadium, Forbes Field, Three Rivers Stadium, Heinz Field, and the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh. Elsewhere, I've seen them at Wrigley Field, Busch Stadium, Shea Stadium, Cameron Indoor Stadium, and Wallace Wade Stadium.
- I went to my twenty-fifth high school class reunion, and now I've gone to my fiftieth. Go Indians! Classmates remembered me as very smart and very funny, especially the latter. I told 'em if they wanted to know what I'd done since high school, they could see a lot of it right here. You should go to your own reunions—you'll find treasures there that you don't even know you have. You can even fall in love there. Believe it.
- I am a faithful husband, and I am safe around women and girls, even if they are stunningly attractive. That having been said, there is room in my heart, including at its very center, for hundreds and hundreds of people, including, possibly, you. I love little children, and I can make any baby or toddler smile. I hug my granddaughters (ages 8 and 5) at every opportunity, and if their mothers allow it, I also hug their little friends (one of them has adopted me as her grandfather). I tell my students I love them like my nieces and nephews; they believe it because I mean it. I'm pretty much fond of people from cultures other than my own; I generally like the Jews, Arabs and Parsis I've met, and considering my age and ethnicity, I'm pretty good friends with a remarkable number of Negroes. (Six of the latter are my informally adopted sons or daughters.) I have a rap that dozens of blacks have applauded, and I can speak in black dialect in a way that only offends dull-witted white folk. I eat, and like, collard greens and black-eyed peas; they are best if cooked with fatback and followed with sweet potato pie.
- When I was in college, some friends and I hitchhiked to some hick town to watch a KKK rally that had gotten some notorious publicity. The Klan was upset about something that the Lumbees were doing. The rally never materialized, but we did see a car full of people wearing white hoods. Otherwise, the place was crawling with cops. All in all, it was a pretty excellent adventure.
- I am a reasonably sophisticated amateur psychologist, especially with regard to the work and ideas of Carl Jung. I have expert knowledge of his theory of psychological types, including its popular manifestation in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I'm ENTP, the rational Inventor. They do things like making this crazy user page and living the life it depicts. (Jung said that people see ENTPs as "amoral adventurers." He was right. They are wrong about the "amoral," and right about the "adventurers.")
- I've met and talked with some notable people, including Bill Gates, Steve Case, George Shultz, and Nobel laureates Herbert Simon and Godfrey Hounsfield. (Of all those big-time guys, only Steve Case might remember me.) I never met Timothy McVeigh, but I edited his writing and got it published for him. It was his very first national exposure. I hope I wasn't responsible for lighting his passion for fame, but if I was, so be it. (I'm pretty sure he had big-time help with the bombing, and I'm absolutely sure he'd remember me, if he were still among the living.)
- I've had passing encounters, but no conversation, with O. J. Simpson, Arlen Specter, and Redd Foxx in hotel lobbies, and with Henry Cabot Lodge, John Heinz and Dick Groat on planes or at airport gates. Martha Stewart stopped by my table at a restaurant, and I've had lunch, one-on-one, with Heloise. Until I told her, she had no idea she had an entry in the World Almanac.
- In 1961, when my ship was being overhauled in a shipyard, my new wife and I lived in a cold water flat in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. We went to see some Broadway plays, including Fiorello!, with Tom Bosley and Howard da Silva; Irma La Douce, with Elizabeth Seal; and Purlie Victorious, with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Off Broadway, we saw George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance and Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore and Pirates of Penzance. It was pretty good stuff for a young kid. Over 40 years later, we saw a touring show of Fiorello!. It seemed like we had first seen it only last year.
- My favorite movies include The Blues Brothers and Men in Black, or any of their sequels. I also like The Sand Pebbles, the original of which I read in serial form in the Saturday Evening Post. The first movie I ever saw was Dumbo, and I remember seeing Fantasia as a very little kid. Today, I rarely see a film, but I sometimes watch Turner Classic Movies on TV. Neither my wife nor I watch dramatic programming on television. (We have never seen a minute of CSI, for example, and we probably never will.)
- I've been to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Uffizi in Florence. I've twice seen the artistic wonders of Rome, and I've twice thrown coins into the Trevi Fountain. In my mind I carry unforgettable images of Rembrandt's Night Watch, Michaelangelo's David, and Bernini's St. Peter's baldachin. Great art does that to you.
- When I was younger, I played chess, Scrabble, acey-deucey, hearts, pinochle, and even Canasta. I was very good at Scrabble, and OK at the rest of them. In the early 1990s, my friend Laura Hopper and I were co-winners of one of Games Magazine's most difficult contests ever; we deserved it. Today, I play very few games. I do consistently win 60-65% of my medium difficulty tries at spider solitaire, though (my best run is 40 wins out of 50 games, or 80%). I also play the lottery, especially when the prizes are large. Some might mistakenly see me as a high roller, since I've often bought $1,000 worth of Powerball tickets at one fell swoop. (Actually, it's for a 65-player lottery pool that I run. We win money at every drawing, but we haven't won the big one yet.)
- When I was a little kid in the early 1940s, I owned a 78 rpm record player with an electric motor and mechanical sound reproduction. They don't make 'em like that any more. Records were scarce in those days, and I think I owned two of them. One was Schubert's Marche Militaire. In high school (class of 1957), I was an early and enthusiastic fan of the music now called rock and roll. It was then just starting to be played on AM radio stations. I sat in or near the front row at live performances by acts such as Bill Haley and the Comets, Red Prysock, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, and Bo Diddley. In later years I lost my enthusiasm for live music, but I've attended concerts by Gordon Lightfoot, Judy Collins, and Rusted Root, both on their own and as part of the H.O.R.D.E tour. I've seen one opera, a Pittsburgh Opera production of Madama Butterfly, where I learned that I don't much like opera. Today, I like classical music for its beauty and relaxing qualities, oldies because I heard them when they were new, and country music for its artistry and its honesty in depicting real life. I can easily get goose bumps over Lorrie Morgan's Something in Red, which isn't just about shopping. (If you follow the link, scroll down to read the lyrics. Be sure to allow the popup so you can hear the music, too.)
- Though my father, mother, father-in-law, and son-in-law are or were professional musicians, I don't make any music myself. (When the other kids in the neighborhood were taking swimming lessons, my parents signed me up for piano lessons. It pissed me off, and I didn't like the piano at all.) If I had ever learned to make music, I think I could have been a good songwriter. Download this 205KB PDF file and see if you agree.
- Not counting myself, my favorite poets are, in chronological order, Archilochus of Paros, Rumi, Robert Herrick, William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, and Countee Cullen. If it doesn't rhyme, I probably don't like it very much.
- Like The Daily Show and Rush Limbaugh, I know how to mix humor with truth, and I can pack lots of both into one paragraph. All facts but one in this and the prior paragraphs are absolutely, and usually verifiably, true. (The humor's in there, too, but it's also in the eye of the beholder. Some of it is also in the links.)
- Except for the identity-theft jokes, this stuff is also true: My ancestors were German and Swiss—I think some were Pennsylvania Dutch. My maternal grandfather was a successful and somewhat famous mechanical engineer whose forebears came to America in 1755, probably to escape religious persecution. He died before I was born, as the result of an industrial accident. My paternal grandfather came here from Germany in the 19th century, married another German immigrant, and became a grocer in Charleston, SC. His wife, my grandmother, died in the flu pandemic of 1918. All three of their sons graduated from college as electrical engineers. Their three daughters married and raised families. My father graduated from Clemson, and my maternal grandfather from Penn State, where he was a varsity football player. The girl who was to become his wife and my grandmother attended Keuka College. My mother attended Beaver College, but left before graduation. My wife is German and Hungarian. Both of us are orphans, but we don't think it gives us absolute moral authority. (You can think so if you'd like, and both of us will appreciate it.) We've bought and sold seven houses. Our current property is modest in size, and on a undesirably sloping lot, but it includes a forest and a garden. I like to go walking in both—they are home to an abundance of birds and wildlife (you can see a complete list HERE). I have three grown children: a wayward son (D. 10/11/08) whose life was totally ruined by alcohol (but I loved him anyway), a daughter who was a cheerleader and later married a rock star, and a son who was a pretty good college soccer player/track star and now runs a Manhattan real estate company. My grandchildren call me "Hubby." My family, neighbors, and long-time friends call me "Skip." My Social Security Number is 671-55-51212. My ZIP code is unlisted, and my password is * * * * * *. I do not answer emails from Nigeria, but that doesn't make me a racist. I more or less adhere to (esp. nos. 11-13) their Articles of Faith, but that doesn't make me a Mormon. (Though, like some 19th-century members of that church, I have two life partners.) I value beauty, truth, duty, honor and virtue, and I hope that you do, too. (If you don't, it's never too late to start.) I do not lie, cheat, or steal, but all of us are sinners, so occasionally I have done all three. I have never been divorced or arrested, or smoked a cigarette, and neither has my wife. (My wayward son was or did all three, and also spent time in jail and mental hospitals. We blame it all on alcohol.)
If you care to know more, just Google my name and you'll find it. I'm not the famous baby doctor, and I'm definitely not the orchid or the tragically murdered cop.
[edit] What I ignore
NOTE TO READERS: Please don't take this material in a negative way—it is intended to be helpful.
Life has taught me to suffer fools, but not to suffer them gladly or for a protracted period of time. It has also taught me about their relatives the assholes and the pissants. Wikipedia has taught me about their other relatives, the dicks.
When Wikipedia material seems to be coming from one of the four, I give it the benefit of the doubt. Then I give it a second chance, and usually a third. After that, I just ignore it. And in spite of constant temptations, I try hard not to give voice lessons. (Robert A. Heinlein was right—you spend your time and energy, and they just snout their keyboards and grunt.)
Wiki-life has taught me that editors whose words I end up ignoring have certain characteristic behaviors:
- They have the attitude that because THEY think it, or believe it, or feel strongly about it, it must be right, regardless of the absence of any justification, and frequently in the presence of contrary evidence.
- They use the words "clearly" and "obviously" a lot, especially about things that aren't clear or obvious.
- They repeat their arguments, often with an indication that another editor doesn't understand them. "You obviously miss the point of what I said up above. Here, I will say it again for you." And again, and again, and again.
- They suggest that other editors review some sort of Wikipedia policy or guideline. "I suggest you read WP:RS," for example.
- When they assert "NPOV!," or "Undue Weight!", they can't or won't explain the grounds on which they are asserting it.
- They conjure up reasons why reliable sources that they disagree with are really not reliable.
- They sometimes claim academic credentials that their edits don't reflect—they write and think at the level of much less-educated people, and they aren't as smooth as Essjay.
"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes." – Proverbs 12:15
[edit] Articles started
I like to do articles that relate to my short career as a Naval officer, which was spent aboard USS Rankin and as a Beach Jumper. That has led to doing an article for every Navy ship built where the Rankin was. (Other people did one or two of them, but I did the rest.) Recently I created or significantly edited articles for all the Navy's 117 attack cargo ships. This wasn't as hard as it might seem, since the basic facts are available at DANFS. But there was a lot of copy editing, heavy-duty Wikification, fact checking and research. I've also created or meddled with other articles that interest me, or were red links somewhere, etc., and of course I expand, fix errors, etc. in articles that I come across that need it.
Click here to see the 100+ U.S. Navy ship articles I've started
[edit] Other Articles of Interest
I've made extensive and/or important contributions to:
- Acey-deucey
- Amphibious cargo ship
- Analytic hierarchy process (I VERY extensively rewrote it.)
- Ann Coulter (A pretty contentious article.)
- Baking powder
- Bannock (food)
- Caterpillar Club (A cool subject that needed work.)
- Datura and these related articles:
- Ice Capades
- Minimum wage
- Scone (bread)
- The Wirral (My son and I were there once, and the locals couldn't explain what it was.)
- Some articles in the Arabic Wikipedia that I helped to post, in spite of not even knowing the Arabic alphabet. You can see them here (English version written by me) and here] (English version substantially revised by me).
[edit] Edit counter
Create an entire article = one edit
Delete a comma = one edit
There are a couple of naughty words in the details of my edit count. That's because I monitor a few controversial articles, and occasionally I contribute to them. Please don't think less of me for that (and besides, I told you I can swear like a sailor).
