User:SlimVirgin
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Wiki-Awards
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The Purple Barnstar | |
| Thank you very much for your kind support at the RfC/U. You recently came under tremendous pressure for standing up for the integrity of this project. You ended up writing a well-balanced version of an article you had no interest in to begin with, and received a lot of undeserved flak for it. Your efforts are much appreciated. DracoE 16:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC) |
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All Around Amazing Barnstar | |
| Awarded to SlimVirgin, for this wonderful rewrite – and everything else. JN466 17:05, 21 June 2011 (UTC) |
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All Around Amazing Barnstar | |
| to SV with long overdue appreciation, admiration, gratitude and respect for all that you do here...Modernist (talk) 22:50, 16 June 2011 (UTC) |
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The Featured Article Medal | |
| SlimVirgin, given the number of featured articles that you have authored, this appears to be overdue. Keep up the good work! MrMedal (talk) 15:20, 14 May 2011 (UTC) |
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The Oddball Barnstar | |
| Finding a Barnstar which SV has not already received or deserves is difficult, but here is one for her work on Bradley Manning. I've been a part of the group of editors who has done something with that particular oddball subject and I am proud to be able to offer SlimVirgin a Barnstar which seems appropriate for her (and him). With hopes that the New Year brings SV many more (Barnstars, not oddballs), and with thanks, here you are. S. Rich (talk) 01:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC) |
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The Good Heart Barnstar | |
| Thanks ever so much for responding to my blunder in such a patient and courteous manner. Your friendly, non-confrontational note genuinely eased my anxiety. It's nice to know that cynical accusations haven't completely replaced constructive criticism at Wikipedia. —David Levy 05:30, 12 December 2010 (UTC) |
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The BLP Barnstar | |
| SlimVirgin, I hereby award this barnstar in recognition of your vigilance, effort and professionalism improving the Gillian McKeith article. You've done an excellent job! All the best, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 01:37, 11 December 2010 (UTC) |
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The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar | |
| For protecting the Riverview, New Brunswick article from presistant vandalism, I award you this barnstar Zonafan39 (talk) 01:36, 9 July 2010 (UTC) |
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The Admin's Barnstar | |
| For regular work at RPP, meaning I don't come in to a huge backlog like I used to! GedUK 07:14, 8 July 2010 (UTC) |
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The Barnstar of Liberty | |
| In recognition of your courage, wisdom and diligence in defending the fragile, flickering flame of freedom from blowhards and bullies. Freedom Fan, 25 May 2010 |
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The Admin's Barnstar | |
| Your hard work and even hand on the Catholic Church RfC were instrumental in its success. It was a pleasure working with you. Sunray (talk) 03:33, 14 April 2010 (UTC) |
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The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |
| I, George, hereby award SlimVirgin The Tireless Contributor Barnstar for her exemplary work getting the Muhammad al-Durrah article promoted to featured article status. You single-handedly improved this article from a poorly balanced, atrociously written pile of words into one of the best works on Wikipedia, under a constant barrage of criticism, bias, and multiple edit wars. My hat's off to you for your tireless efforts, and your ability to keep a cool head under fire. Wikipedia is a better place because you're here. ← George talk 03:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC) |
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| For creative design reorganization of Frelinghuysen Arboretum--Tomwsulcer (talk) 03:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC) |
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The Writer's Barnstar | |
| For your outstanding contribution to David Icke. Sir Richardson (talk) 06:01, 19 January 2010 (UTC) |
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The Rescue Barnstar | |
| This barnstar is awarded to SlimVigin for working to make stubs threatened for deletion better articles. Not only does this make Wikipedia a better site, it helps retain new editors. For all of those new editors who you have helped, and they just didn't know how to say thank you properly, thank you. Ikip (talk) 03:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC) |
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The Biography Barnstar | |
| Tmol42 expresses his grateful appreciation to SlimVirgin for taking him under her wing, for improving The Rosehip Queen and championing the cause of her notability. Tmol42 (talk) 01:47, 3 September 2009 (UTC) |
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Defender of the Wiki | |
| For starting the RfC on the advisory council. Good call. Durova275 23:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC) |
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The Biography Barnstar | |
| You already have the home-made barnstar which is probably more apt, but this seems just as good! Many thanks for your astonishing efforts with the Ian Stevenson page. Cheers, Blippy (talk) 04:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC) |
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The WikiProject Palestine Featured Article Medal | |
| Awarded for bringing this WikiProject Palestine article to Featured Article status: For your amazing efforts in turning Abu Nidal into a comprehensive and highly readable account of a difficult and controversial subject.
this WikiAward was given to SlimVirgin by Ian Pitchford (talk) on 21:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC) |
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Home-Made Barnstar | |
| No comment needed - just see her work on the articles around the '48 events in Israel/Palestine. Ceedjee (talk) 17:03, 13 June 2009 (UTC) |
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User:SlimVirgin has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, Peace, A record of your Day will always be kept here. |
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The Excellent Userpage Award | |
| SV, your user page is amazing! Johnfos (talk) 20:42, 24 January 2009 (UTC) |
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On September 7, 2008, User:SlimVirgin was inducted into This portrait of David Mamet was dedicated in her honor. David Shankbone |
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Defender of the Wiki | |
| I, Alex Bakharev (talk), award you with this barnstar for your great efforts to make Wikipedia a cleaner place for everybody Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:27, 1 December 2008 (UTC) |
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| Hard to imagine that this website hasn't been greatly enhanced due to your contributions.--MONGO 06:46, 28 November 2008 (UTC) |
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| I think I saw someone mention Diogenes with his lamp looking for an honest person for you awhile back. It seems appropriate now. You are strong, I know you will get through this. Many people stand by you and you can count me as one. |
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| Wikipedia has been diminished. Jayjg (talk) 02:11, 28 November 2008 (UTC) |
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Wikipedia Monarch Award | |
| For fearlessly and selflessly, and often singlehandedly, fighting corruption, injustice and abuse wherever you see it.
For giving WP a solid foundation by helping formulate its content and BLP policies. For making WP a better place for everyone, and helping realize the dream of having the knowledge of mankind available to all, despite the obstacles. Crum375 (talk) 20:34, 27 November 2008 (UTC) |
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| Awarded for fighting the good fight Sticky Parkin 00:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC) |
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| Since there is no anti-corruption barnstar with an image of Diogenes of Sinope with his lamp - and I lack the technical skill to make such a desperately needed barnstar - this seems like the closest one to suit your recent situation. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC) |
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The Red Barnstar | Well deserved. Face it: you rock, SV! This is for standing tall in the face of adversity, for all you do for this project that goes unrecognized, and for just being a cool chick. David Shankbone 02:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC) |
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The Fauna Barnstar | |
| For your work on animal rights and the Brown dog affair David Shankbone 21:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC) |
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Brown Dog Award | |
| To SV, for your hard work in bringing me back to life and onto the Main Page. Perhaps we've made someone uncomfortable. TBD 01:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC) |
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Home-Made Barnstar | |
| No comment needed - just see her work on the articles around the '48 events in Israel/Palestine. Ceedjee (talk) 17:03, 13 June 2009 (UTC) |
| The Ultraviolet Ray of Sunshine Award | ||
| Thanks for being a highly energetic source of inspiration to many users. Your constant efforts deserve appropriate appreciation and encouragement. Thanks for being there and doing a job no one else can do. ¶ dorftrottel ¶ talk ¶ 23:34, December 5, 2007 |
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NOR Award | |
| Thanks for your wisdom and advice, hope you can relax, stick in or whatever suits you best, you have my somewhat uncomprehending support against these slings and arrows of outrageous nonsense. .. dave souza, talk 19:13, 1 September 2007 (UTC) |
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Original Barnstar | |
| For courage and fortitude in the face of a vicious corporate smear campaign. Mantanmoreland 23:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC) |
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Thumbs up to Sarah | |
| A fabulous person and a terrific editor who perseveres despite remarkable adversity. Please accept this humble token of appreciation from one of your many admirers on Wikipedia. Sandahl 21:09, 25 August 2007 (UTC) |
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| For suffering the jockstrap slings and suction-cup arrows of outrageous abuse. Crockspot 21:05, 25 August 2007 (UTC) |
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The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |
| As the top contributor to Verifiability (by far), No original research (by far), Biographies of living persons (by far), and No personal attacks, you deserve this barnstar. Thank you! Jreferee (Talk) 05:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC) |
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The Purple Star | |
| Condolences for the publicity. Virgin, Slim Virgin, eh? :-) This too shall pass. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:53, 30 July 2007 (UTC) |
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| For repeatedly helping to end the bias on the holocaust page and looking after the truth. Freetown 02:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC) |
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The Epic Barnstar | |
| To SlimVirgin, for quite extraordinary research and editing work in support of NPOV at Zionism, leading to substantial improvements in that article. BYT 13:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC) |
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SlimVirgin has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, Love, A record of your Day will always be kept here. |
My dearest Slim, today is your well deserved Day, and this modest dedication is joined by my everlasting gratitude to you. Enjoy it, friend - and don't forget to check your mail! :) Love, Phaedriel - 10:57, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
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The Special Barnstar | |
| I wanted to thank you for the amount of work you have done in the mainspace. You have done an impressive amount of work, both in quality and quantity. Again, thank you. :) Acalamari 01:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC) |
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The Holocaust Memorial Star | |
| To SlimVirgin, for your tireless and selfless dedication and effort in greatly improving the Holocaust and related entries, I thank you for all of us, and hereby award you the Holocaust Memorial Star. Those who cannot remember the past... Crum375 18:28, 6 May 2007 (UTC) |
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The Society Barnstar | |
| Awarded for your nuanced and balanced dissemination of information regarding animal rights activism in human society. Specifically inspired by a superb re-write of the Animal Liberation Front article. Rockpocket 17:59, 12 April 2007 (UTC) |
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| I present this strawberry ice cream to SlimVirgin for her fantastic work in bringing articles into line with the BLP policy, and for her willingness to help new users. ElinorD 21:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC) |
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Barnstar of Diligence | |
| For your dedication and perseverance in accomplishing what no one thought possible: making our core content policies succinct, easy to understand and consistent with each other. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC) |
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| This fist of respect goes to SV for caring in 2006 about the writing. Happy New Year! --qp10qp. |
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Defender of the Wiki | |
| For continuing to defend the project against self-promoters and charlatans, and incurring great wiki-stress in the process, I award you this barnstar. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 03:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC) |
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| A posse ad esse, a verbis ad verbera: for your ability to cut through it. --Docg 17:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC) |
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Original Barnstar | |
| Congratulations on your Great Idea to combine several similar policies into one policy. This is a long over-due step. I hope it succeeds and then maybe you can move onto others! I appreciate your hard work and boldness in proposing this. Johntex\talk 00:20, 12 October 2006 (UTC) |
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Goldenwiki Award | |
| Congratulations upon Rudolf Vrba becoming a featured article, you have worked on it for months with amazing diligence, intelligence and above all superlative research and wide backround reading. In honor of all your efforts and in recognition of your contributions to worldwide scholarship that this article will now reflect it is my honor to present you with this Goldenwiki award. Mazel Tov ! IZAK 08:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC) |
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Defender of the Wiki | |
| Awarded to SlimVirgin for her defense of Justice on Wikipedia. IZAK 06:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC) |
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| Awarded to SlimVirgin for her Wisdom in this regard. IZAK 06:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC) |
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| Awarded to SlimVirgin for her Valor IZAK 06:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC) |
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Barnstar of Diligence | |
| For demonstrating calmness, resolve, and dedication to editorial excellence in the face of controversy and abuse, I, Xoloz, award SlimVirgin this well-deserved Barnstar of Diligence. Xoloz 20:07, 26 May 2006 (UTC) |
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Original Barnstar | |
| For your laudable concern for good editing and sourcing and your tireless efforts toward the same I award you the Original Barnstar--Drboisclair 19:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC) |
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Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |
| On the occasion of her 30,000th edit, a Tireless Contributor Barnstar for SlimVirgin, who has still managed to keep her sense of humor in the face of the unceasing onslaught... Jayjg (talk) 17:39, 2 May 2006 (UTC) |
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| SlimVirgin whom I had always endeavored to emulate, is the ideal Wikipedian beyond any iota of doubt. --Bhadani 16:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC) |
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Original Barnstar | |
| For your patience, kindness and decency, your help with difficult pages, and above all your much valued friendship, I'd like to give you this barnstar. Grace Note 06:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC) |
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Original Barnstar | |
| A barnstar for the ideal Wikipedian. Thanks for all your good work. You don't know how appreciated you are. [[Sam Korn]] 12:40, 9 January 2006 (UTC) |
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Resilient Barnstar | |
| Thank you for defending my name in the recent spat of User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters's 3RR block. I appreciate the time and effort that you spent discussing items with that user, and the calm demeanor that you (virtually...) expressed. So, here's the Resilient Barnstar for you! Thanks a lot, Bratschetalk |
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Tightrope Award | |
| You are hereby presented with your own unique Tightrope Award, which represents the amazing Charles Blondin carrying Jimbo Wales safely across the Niagara Falls. Think of it as an early prototype of editors like you carrying Wikipedia on their shoulders! Bishonen 21:42, 27 August 2005 (UTC) |
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The Sandwich of Diligence | |
| Awarded for Unswerving Strength and Tenacity. This is a special award created for fighting vandalism on my user pages. Wear it with pride, brave Wiki-warrior! Hamster Sandwich 01:20, 26 August 2005(UTC) |
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| For dealing kindly but firmly with Gabriel/Gavin, I think you deserve this (repeated) award. N (t/c) 21:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC) |
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Barnstar of Diligence | |
A Barnstar of Diligence to you as ... your work is diligent and invaluable to Wikipedia. D. J. Bracey (talk)  01:37, 18 August 2005 (UTC) |
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| What a champ! I hereby award you this wifflebat award for your amazing patience and hard work and perseverance in helping to get people, including ardent opponents, to recognize FeloniousMonk's merits as an admin candidate. Tomer TALK 06:28, August 11, 2005 (UTC) |
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Original Barnstar | |
| Wow, I keep running into your great edits all over the place. You are quite simply among the finest Defenders of the Wiki we have ever had ... I hereby award you the Cool as a Cucumber Award, for remaining cool when the situation gets hot ... func(talk) 3 July 2005 17:04 (UTC) |
| For working around the clock to block vandals, I hereby award you the "Glowing Barnstar". Keep up the good work. Anonymous editor June 29, 2005 18:26 (UTC) |
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Defender of the Wiki | |
| For your hard work in keeping LaRouche movement propaganda out of Wikipedia, I hereby award you the ancient Defender of the Wiki barnstar. Willmcw, 17 Feb 2005 |
Featured articles I've written or helped to write
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Night is a work by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father, Shlomo, in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps toward the end of the Second World War. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, described as devastating in its simplicity, Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the father-child relationship as Shlomo declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful teenage caregiver. Night is the first book in a trilogy—Night, Dawn, and Day—reflecting Wiesel's state of mind during and after the Holocaust, marking his transition from darkness to light, according to the Jewish tradition of counting the beginning of a new day from nightfall. "In Night," Wiesel said, "I wanted to show the end, the finality of the event. Everything came to an end — man, history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with night." (more...)
The Marshalsea was a prison on the south bank of the River Thames in Southwark. From at least 1329 until it closed in 1842, it housed men under court martial for crimes at sea, political figures accused of sedition, and—most famously—London's debtors, the length of their stay determined largely by the whim of their creditors. The prison became known around the world in the 19th century through the English novelist Charles Dickens, whose father was sent there in 1824, and who based several of his fictional characters on the experience. All that is left of it now is a long brick wall separating an unkempt public garden from a local history library, the existence of what Dickens called "the crowding ghosts of many miserable years" marked only by a plaque from the local council. "It is gone now," he wrote, "and the world is none the worse without it." (more...)
The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Edwardian England from 1903 until 1910. It was triggered by allegations, vigorously denied, that William Bayliss of University College London had performed an illegal dissection on a brown terrier dog—anaesthetized, according to Bayliss; conscious and struggling, according to two Swedish activists who infiltrated the lecture. A statue erected by antivivisectionists in memory of the dog led to violent protests by London's medical students, who saw its provocative plaque—"Men and women of England, how long shall these things be?"—as an assault on the entire medical profession. The unrest culminated in rioting in Trafalgar Square on December 10, 1907, when 1,000 students marched down the Strand, clashing with 400 police officers, suffragettes, and trade unionists, in what became known as the Brown Dog riots. (more...)
Rudolf Vrba was a professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia in Canada. In April 1944, he and a friend became two of only five Jews to escape from Auschwitz and pass information to the Allies about the mass murder that was taking place there. The 32 pages of information the men dictated to horrified Jewish officials in Slovakia became known as the Vrba-Wetzler report, the first detailed report about Auschwitz to reach the Allies that they saw as credible. Although its release to the public was controversially delayed until after the transport to Auschwitz of 437,000 Hungarian Jews had begun on May 15, 1944, the report is nevertheless credited with having saved many thousands of lives. (more...)
Stanley Green, the Protein Man, was a 20th-century sandwich man who became one of London's much-loved eccentrics. For 25 years, rarely missing a day, Green patrolled Oxford Street with a placard warning of the disturbing effects on the libido of too much protein. His solution was: "Less Lust, By Less Protein: Meat Fish Bird; Egg Cheese; Peas Beans; Nuts. And Sitting." For a few pence, passers-by could buy his 14-page pamphlet, Eight Passion Proteins with Care, which reportedly sold 87,000 copies over 20 years, its front cover observing, "This booklet would benefit more, if it were read occasionally." Green's campaign to suppress desire, as one commentator put it, was not invariably popular, leading as it did to two arrests for obstruction and the need to wear green overalls to protect himself from spit. (more...)
Ian Tomlinson (7 February 1962–1 April 2009) was an English newspaper vendor who collapsed and died on his way home from work during the 2009 G-20 London summit protests. A first autopsy suggested he had suffered a heart attack and had died of natural causes, but a week later The Guardian obtained footage showing him being struck on the leg by a police officer wielding a baton, then pushed to the ground. Tomlinson walked away from the incident but died moments later. After the newspaper published the video, the Independent Police Complaints Commission ordered a second postmortem, this one indicating that Tomlinson had died from an abdominal haemorrhage. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to bring charges, but in May 2011 an inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing, forcing the CPS to review that decision. The incident sparked an intense debate in the UK about the relationship between the police and the public, and the role of citizens in monitoring police and government activity—so-called sousveillance. (more...)
The Muhammad al-Durrah incident took place in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000, when France 2 filmed Jamal al-Durrah and his son, Muhammad, as they crouched for cover during a firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian security forces. The network reported that the pair had been hit by Israeli gunfire, and that the boy had died. Later reports suggested that it was Palestinian gunfire that had killed him, or even—controversially—that he may not have been killed at all. The footage acquired what one writer called the iconic power of a battle flag. For the Palestinians, it confirmed their view of the apparently limitless nature of Israel's brutality, while for the Israelis, the world's willingness to believe they had fired the shots amounted to antisemitism. Charles Enderlin of France 2 called the footage a "cultural prism," its viewers seeing what they want to see. (more...)
Abu Nidal was the founder of a militant Palestinian group known as the Abu Nidal Organization. At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, he was widely regarded as the most dangerous and ruthless of the Palestinian political leaders. The group's most notorious attacks were on the El Al ticket counters at Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985, when Arab gunmen high on amphetamines opened fire on passengers in simultaneous shootings, killing 18 and wounding 120. When he died in 2002 of gunshot wounds in Baghdad—having committed suicide, according to the Iraqis, or been murdered, according to the Palestinians—The Guardian wrote of him: "He served only himself, only the warped personal drives that pushed him into hideous crime. He was the ultimate mercenary." (more...)
Joel Brand (April 25 1906–July 13, 1964) was a Hungarian Jew who played a prominent role in trying to save the Hungarian Jewish community during the Holocaust from deportation to Auschwitz. Described by Yehuda Bauer as an adventurer who felt at home in "underground conspiracies and card-playing circles," Brand teamed up with fellow Zionists in Hungary to form the Aid and Rescue Committee, a group dedicated to helping Jewish refugees escape to Hungary. Shortly after Hungary fell too, Brand was asked by SS officer Adolf Eichmann to broker a deal between the SS and the U.S. or UK to exchange up to one million Hungarian Jews for 10,000 trucks. The deal was thwarted by the British government and the Jewish Agency, to Brand's great distress. "Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry's official leaders ever since," he said. "All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear." (more...)
Bernard Williams was an English moral philosopher, regarded as one of the most important British moral philosophers of his time. Williams spent over 50 years seeking answers to one question: "What does it mean to live well?" and became known for his efforts to return the study of that question to its foundations: to history, politics, and psychology, and, in particular, to the Greeks. He became known as a great supporter of women in academia, seeing in them the possibility of a synthesis of reason and emotion that he felt eluded analytic philosophy. The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum said he was "as close to being a feminist as a powerful man of his generation could be." (more...)
Some other articles I've worked on
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was an Austrian philosopher who held the professorship in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947, and inspired two of that century's principal philosophical movements, logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy. In 1999 his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations was ranked by professional philosophers as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy. (more...)
The murder of PC Keith Blakelock, a police officer with the London Metropolitan Police Service, occurred during the Broadwater Farm riot in Tottenham, north London, on 6 October 1985. The violence broke out after a black woman died of heart failure during a police search of her home, and took place against a backdrop of unrest in several English cities, and a breakdown of the relationship between the police and local black communities. Blakelock had been assigned on the night of his death to protect firefighters. When his unit was forced back by rioters, Blakelock stumbled and fell, and was surrounded by a crowd. He received over 40 stabbing and cutting injuries, including the penetration of a six-inch-long knife into his neck. He was the only police constable to have been killed in a riot in Britain since PC Robert Culley was stabbed to death in Clerkenwell, London, in 1833. (more...)
The White House Farm murders took place near the English village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy on 7 August 1985, when Nevill Bamber, a farmer and magistrate, his wife, their adult daughter, and her six-year-old twin sons, were shot and killed inside the Bambers' farmhouse. It became one of the most notorious criminal cases of its generation, with all the ingredients – as The Times put it – of a classic whodunit: a massacre in the English countryside, overbearing parents, an unstable daughter, a scheming son, a jilted girlfriend, and bungling police. The remaining member of the family, Jeremy Bamber, was given five life sentences after a tip-off from an ex-girfriend, and has protested his innocence ever since. (more...)
Animal rights, or animal liberation, refers to the idea that the most basic interests of human and non-humans should be afforded the same consideration. Advocates approach the issue from different philosophical positions, ranging from the protectionist side of the movement, presented by philosopher Peter Singer – with a utilitarian focus on suffering and consequences, rather than on the concept of rights – to the abolitionist side, represented by law professor Gary Francione, who argues that animals need only one right: the right not to be property. (more...)
The Jan Hus Educational Foundation was founded in May 1980 by a group of British philosophers at the University of Oxford. It ran an underground education network in the former Czechoslovakia, then under Communist Party rule, organizing seminars on philosophy, smuggling in books, and arranging for Western academics to give lectures. It was deemed a "Centre of Ideological Subversion" by the Czech police, and some of the visiting philosophers were arrested or placed on the "Index of Undesirable Persons." The network was active until the Velvet Revolution saw the overthrow of the Communist Party in 1989. In October 1998, at Magdalen College, Oxford, President Vaclav Havel awarded medals to several of the Foundation's organizers, including Roger Scruton, who received the Medal of Merit (First Class) of the Czech Republic. (more...)
The Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, founded in October 1878, is a philosophy discussion group that meets weekly at Cambridge during term time. The club has been highly influential in analytic philosophy. Members have included many of British philosophy's top names, such as Henry Sidgwick, J.M.E. McTaggart, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and several papers regarded as founding documents of various schools of thoughts had their first airing at the slub. It was during a club in October 1946 that Wittgenstein famously waved a hot poker at Sir Karl Popper while discussing whether philosophical problems are real or just linguistic games. The club secretary described the meeting as "charged to an unusual degree with a spirit of controversy." (more...)
Laura and Lawrence Nelson were African-Americans who were lynched in Okemah, Oklahoma, on 25 May 1911. They had been arrested after Okemah's deputy sheriff was shot and killed at their home when he arrived with a posse to investigate the theft of a cow. Laura said she had fired the shot. Three weeks later, 40 armed white men arrived at the local jail, kidnapped them, and hanged from from a bridge over the North Canadian River. Hundreds of sightseers gathered the following morning, and photographs of the bodies were sold as postcards. The event was commemorated in a several songs by the folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose father was present at the lynching. The Nelsons were among at least 4,743 people lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 of them black, 73 percent of them in the South. (more...)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights organization. The largest animal rights group in the world, with two million members and supporters, it was founded in 1980 by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco, and made its name the following year during the Silver Spring monkeys case, a widely publicized dispute about experiments conducted on 17 macaque monkeys inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. The case lasted ten years, involved the first police raid in the United States on an animal laboratory, the first criminal conviction of an animal researcher—overturned on appeal—triggered an amendment in 1985 to the Animal Welfare Act, and established PETA as an internationally known organization. (more...)
The Deir Yassin massacre took place on 9 April 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Arab village of roughly 600 people. The invasion occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem during the civil war that preceded Israel's declaration of independence. The deaths became a pivotal event in the Arab-Israeli conflict for their demographic and military consequences, sparking terror within the Palestinian community, encouraging them to flee from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish troop advances, and strengthening the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later by invading Palestine. (more...)
The 1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramla took place in July 1948 during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when 50,000–70,000 Palestinians—one-tenth of the overall Arab exodus from Palestine—fled or were expelled from the cities, as Israeli troops moved into the area following Israel's declaration of independence. The people of Lydda walked 17 kilometers to Barfiliya in temperatures of 30–35 °C, carrying whatever possessions they could, the harsh conditions of the march causing up to 355 deaths among the refugees, mostly from exhaustion and dehydration. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued ever since, with the fate of the refugees at its core. (more...)
The Animal Liberation Front is a name used internationally by animal liberation activists who engage in direct action on behalf of animals. Covert cells around the world remove animals from laboratories and fur farms, sabotage facilities, arrange for safe houses and veterinary care, and operate animal sanctuaries. According to the activists, any act that furthers the cause of animal liberation, where reasonable precautions are taken not to harm human or non-human life, may be claimed as an ALF action. (more...)
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Jack Sarfatti is an American theoretical physicist specializing in the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness. Working largely outside academia, he argues that mind may be crucial to the structure of matter, that retrocausality may be possible, and that physics – which he calls the "Conceptual Art of the late 20th Century" – has replaced philosophy as the unifying force between science and art. Sarfatti was part of an informal group of physicists in California known as the Fundamental Fysiks Group, who in the 1970s, according to David Kaiser, a physicist and historian of science at MIT, helped to nurture some of the alternative ideas in quantum physics that today form the basis of quantum information science. (more...)
Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot (1888–1947) was an English governess who became notable as the first wife of the American poet, T.S. Eliot. She has been seen variously as a femme fatale who enticed Eliot into a disastrous marriage, or as his muse, without whom some of his most important work would never have appeared. They separated in February 1933, after which Eliot shunned her entirely, hiding from her and instructing his friends not to tell her where he was. She finally caught up with him on 18 November 1935 at a book fair in London, carrying her dog, Polly, three of his books, and wearing a British Union of Fascists uniform, a black beret, and black cape. As he signed copies of the books for her, she asked him, "Will you come back with me?" and he replied, "I cannot talk to you now," then left. It was the last she saw of him. Her brother had her committed to an asylum in 1938, where she remained until she died nine years later, the year before Eliot won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (more...)
Sally Amis (1954–2000) was the youngest child of the writer, Sir Kingsley Amis, and his wife, Hilary Bardwell. She lived for the most part out of the public eye, but came to public attention in 2010, when her brother, Martin Amis, based one of the characters in his latest novel, The Pregnant Widow, on her life. The novel is about the feminist revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and Amis has described Sally as one of its most spectacular victims. Troubled most of her life by mental illness, alcoholism, and promiscuity, she suffered a stroke at the age of 40, and died six years later. Amis said he had talked to her about possibly writing her story: "She very memorably said, 'You know you can write about me, and you know you can tell the truth, and you can say everything, and I won't mind.'" (more...)
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Bradley Manning is an American soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having leaked restricted material to the website WikiLeaks. The leaked material included over 250,000 United States diplomatic cables, as well as footage of the July 2007 Baghdad airstrike and of the Granai airstrike in Afghanistan. (more...)
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David Icke is an English writer who has devoted himself since 1990 to researching what he calls "who and what is really controlling the world." Describing himself as "the most controversial speaker and author in the world," he has written numerous books explaining his views, characterized as New-Age conspiracism, and has attracted a substantial following around the world. At the heart of his theories lies the idea that a secret group of reptilian humanoids rules the world, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie. (more...)
Jeremiah Duggan (1980–2003) was a British-Jewish student at the Sorbonne in Paris, who died in disputed circumstances in Germany. His death became controversial because it occurred while he was attending a youth cadre school organized by the LaRouche movement, an international network led by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. The German police ruled Duggan's death a suicide after eyewitnesses said he had run down a busy road for over a kilometre, and had been struck by several cars. In November 2003 a British coroner rejected a suicide verdict, ruling that Duggan had received fatal head injuries when hit by one of the cars and had been in a "state of terror" when he died. (more...)
Policies I've helped to write
Wikipedia:No original research: Wikipedia does not publish original research. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; or any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not advanced by the sources. (more...)
Wikipedia:Verifiability: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations, and for any material challenged or likely to be challenged. (more...)
Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons: Editors must take particular care when adding biographical material about a living person to any Wikipedia page ... Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced – whether negative, positive, or just questionable – should be removed immediately, without waiting for discussion. (more...)
