User:TimidGuy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I have a Ph.D. in the humanities and a passionate interest in science and technology. And a love for the game of tennis, which I play three times a week.
I'm a Macintosh guy.
Wikipedia fascinates me. Most of my work here so far has been the article on Transcendental Meditation, but I hope to branch out into other areas that interest me, As my username suggests, I don't have the stomach for slugging it out on the discussion page. My impression so far is that Wikipedia is dominated by those who are the most brazen and who have the most time.
This whole Wikipedia thing fascinates me. I loved Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds. And Steven Johnson's book Emergence. I definitely think that Wikipedia is an instance of the phenomena these books describe.
Here are other books that are my favorites:
- Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
- Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade
- Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa by Stephen Oppenheimer
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubne
- The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright
My passion tends toward prehistory and paleoanthropology, but only insofar as it gives a glimpse of the big picture -- where we came from and how we got to where we are.
In an attempt to improve the article on Transcendental Meditation, I've created a /sandbox in which the editors involved can list and prioritize the issues.
- Poll finds people think Wikipedia "somewhat reliable"
- Wikipedia biographical errors attract more attention
- Association of Members' Advocates nominated for deletion
- Reference desk work leads to New York Times correction
- WikiWorld comic: "Charles Lane"
- News and notes: Alexa, Version 0.5, attribution poll
- Wikipedia in the news
- Features and admins
- Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
- The Report on Lengthy Litigation
