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Welcome! It is Sunday, 8 April, 2007, and the time is 15:09 (UTC), or at least it was when the clock was last updated. It doesn't seem to work very well, at least not the whole time.
[edit] About Me
My name is CJMoss, and I am a teacher, mainly of English, but also French. My home base is currently Toronto, although I wind up in interesting parts of the world now and again in connection with my work teaching English.
See the picture? I always dress like that. No, not really, that was only for my brother's wedding. He got married in Scotland, you see.
He dressed like that, too, by the way. Also, many thanks to User:Glenlarson who, I have only just discovered, has posted this picture in the "Kilt" article. It's been there since March 2005, but I only discovered it on New Year's Day 2006.
One of the great joys in my life is travelling. I have been to five continents – Antarctica and South America are the only ones I haven't visited yet. I even spent five years living in China, but oddly, I picked up very little Chinese.
My other interests include, as some may have discerned from my contributions, languages, geography, railways (merging Coupler and Coupling (railway) was fun!), photography (many of the photos I've contributed are my own), offbeat humour as exemplified by (you guessed it) Monty Python, and politics. I have translated a good number of articles from German, mostly about resistance fighters in Nazi Germany, and others who were unfortunate enough to incur the Nazis' wrath. I have also done some articles about German cities, however, notably Gelsenkirchen (major expansion from the German article) and Forchheim (Oberfranken) (once again translated mainly from the German article).
If you are into translation between English and German (either way) or French and German, I wholeheartedly recommend this link:
Its worst shortcoming, however, is that it cannot deconstruct those long German agglutinations like Lebensversicherungsgesellschaftsbeamtenvereinigungsführungssondergespräch, a reasonably common word (6000+ hits on Google) that I'm sure every German says at least four or five times a week – those with big lungs, anyway. Seriously, though, compounds must sometimes be broken down into their constituent elements and run through the dictionary separately. You then have to work out their combined meaning.
[edit] Username
The username? That's my Chinese name, Kē Lǐsī, which I needed once for a bank account in China. The bank's system couldn't handle foreign names. The first syllable is a common Chinese surname which I was told had no particular meaning (although one dictionary that I looked in said it meant "axe helve"), and the two-syllable "given name" means "logical thought". It was not my own choice, by the way.
I shall shortly be going back to China, after which time I might have a bit of trouble editing Wikipedia, as I hear it's blocked from there, although on the other hand, I've heard there are ways around it.
I'll be in Nanjing teaching English.
If you've come to the page before, you may remember it saying something about Saudi Arabia, but that fell through. It's supposed to be a pretty good school in Nanjing, though; so let's hope it's nice and rewarding.
Well, I'm here, and today, for the first time, I have got through to Wikipedia. It may only be a fluke. Perhaps I've caught the censors with their guard down. On the other hand, if WP is now available, I'll start editing articles again.
[edit] A few photographs
Here are a few pictures that I've contributed to Wikipedia. These are all my own work:
The Terry Fox loonie is actually a scan. The Icefall and El Alamein pictures are transfers from slides. Does anyone know a better way to accomplish this? I'd like to replace those pictures with better versions, along with a few others not shown here.
[edit] Nationality
I ought to mention that I am.........
.........Canadian.
[edit] Sherlock Holmes and other articles
For all you Sherlock Holmes fans, all the articles about Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories about the fictional detective now have reasonably full synopses. You can thank me for that (for the most part). Don't try to pass it off as your own book report, kids. As a teacher, I can tell you that the easiest thing in the world for a teacher to do is to find out that you've downloaded your whole assignment from the Internet. Wikipedia is searchable using search engines.
I have started a few articles from scratch. Among them are the Solentiname Islands article (both the English and French versions; someone else did the German translation), the Constitution of Andorra article and the Outer Harbour East Headland article. Only Wikipedia would have an article about that. The Global Atmosphere Watch article is mine, too. I also inserted several lynx – I have a tendency to spell it like that as I am a cat lover – in existing articles pointing to my articles. Indeed, many of my contributions consist of inserting lynx to other articles.
[edit] Places in Germany
I have created or expanded articles about every municipality in the following German districts (Kreise): Höxter, Groß-Gerau, Waldeck-Frankenberg, Siegen-Wittgenstein, Hochtaunuskreis, Lahn-Dill-Kreis, Schwalm-Eder-Kreis, Wittenberg (district), Marburg-Biedenkopf and Vogelsbergkreis. I have also expanded or created articles for individual towns here and there, such as Flensburg, Bobingen and Bergen auf Rügen. The Rothaargebirge, Nuremberg U-Bahn and Kellerwald articles are mine, too. All are the result of translations from the German Wikipedia.
Moreover, Friedrich Kittler, while a person rather than a place, has claimed his rightful place here in the English Wikipedia thanks to my translating skills.
[edit] Geography and maps
Perhaps you've noticed a "geographical" streak in those articles that I mentioned. As a traveller, I am very fond of geography (or has my love of geography made me interested in travelling? I'm not quite sure). To that end, I have also linked several place articles to satellite images and interactive maps. I have also made maps. Here come a few now.........
I won a barnstar for that last one. If you'd like a map made for an article, I'll give it a try.
If you would like to try your hand at making maps, for Wikipedia or other purposes, I also wholeheartedly recommend this link:
[edit] Travel
I have been to quite a number of countries. They are as follows:
[edit] In the Americas
[edit] In Europe
[edit] In Africa
[edit] In Asia
[edit] In Australia & Oceania
…and on the map, that looks like this: 
I have yet to set foot in either South America or Antarctica.
[edit] PET PEEVES
If you would like to annoy me, you need only do one of the following things:
-
- Correction: It looks as though it may now not be so easy, as someone has seen fit to pare down the big box of special characters to a bare minimum, making it impossible to generate certain characters easily. I have no idea why someone would want to do this. Is there an administrator out there who can tell me why, or better yet, reinstate the box?
- Correction of the correction: Duh, this'll teach me to make pat judgments, I guess. I have examined the new system and found that in fact, it has been expanded; so now there is even less of an excuse for not using special characters where they are warranted. You can even put Vietnamese special characters quite easily, which you couldn't do before. I would, however, criticize the "German" set: All it shows is vowels with macrons over them (ĀāĒēĪīŌōŪūʻ) and one character that looks like a box on my browser (What is it, anyone?), none of which is particularly German. The "Latin/Roman" set, though, curiously offers the one extra character that you need for German: the "ß".
- Correction of the correction of the correction: It now seems as though we've reverted to the old system with the big box.
- Use "due to" adverbially — It is an adjectival expression and can therefore only modify a noun. These are right:
-
- "He has a cough due to a cold."
- "Bad weather due to environmental problems threatens us."
- "It was an accident due to carelessness."
- ...and these are WRONG!!!!!!! ....
- "He left the city due to crime." (The crime did not make the city!)
- "The plane was late due to the weather." (?! – no noun there to modify)
- "We need to take the car due to a lack of time." (The lack of time is responsible for the car?!)
- In these last three examples, "due to" should be replaced with something adverbial such as "owing to", "because of", or "as a result of".
- Use "prior to" in any way — Why do we need a pretentious Latin-based expression when we can say "before"? By the way, if you do use it, it is adjectival, like "due to".
- Use any of the "—person" words — These include, but are not limited to, salesperson, foreperson, ombudsperson and chairperson. I sometimes think people who write like that ought to be thrown down a personhole. Why should anyone be ashamed of his or her sex? By the way, that usage ("his or her") I actually tolerate, but not if it's repeated over and over again in one short passage.
- Use needless hyphens — There is no need for hyphens in words such as northwest, southeast, yearlong, stepmother (absolutely forbidden in all the step— words), counterrevolution, catlike (a hyphen is generally only used with the —like suffix if the root word ends in —ll), waterwheel, and so on. You also leave hyphens out in expressions such as five years old, but having said that, see the next peeve...
- Leave hyphens out where they are needed — You must use hyphens in expressions such as five-year-old, where they are used attributively (a five-year-old boy) or as nouns (She's only a five-year-old). They are also de rigueur in adjectival expressions containing a number and a unit:
-
- a six-hour wait
- a 5000-kilometre flight
- 50-degree heat (although you could write this as "50° heat")
- Write or say "so therefore" — Boys and girls, can you say … redundant? Both those words convey the same meaning. Use one or the other, but not both.
- Use the word gender when you mean sex — Pure prissiness this is. Gender is a grammatical term, not a biological one.
- Use Imperial or US units — Wikipedia makes it clear to me just how badly there needs to be a world standard. I am fully conversant with metric units and I wish everyone else were. My greatest pet peeve with regards to units is certain liquid measures, such as gallons. Writers sometimes don't say whether they mean Imperial or US gallons, which are different. I then can't even edit in a metric equivalent. There are also long tons and short tons, but writers sometimes don't specify which they mean (or perhaps don't realize that there are these two different tons).
- Refer to former East Bloc countries, China, or Cuba as "Communist" — Cold War propaganda dies hard, doesn't it? Those places were/are not workers' paradises. I know. I've actually lived in China. To me, calling it "Communist" is laughable. However, "Stalinist" or "Maoist" (as the case may be) will do, since those countries were/are modelled on Stalin's and Mao's warped visions, although I must say that China's money madness nowadays has driven the last nail in Maoism's coffin.
- Tag a stub article about a Nazi victim with this:
-
- {{Nazi-stub}}
- which makes this appear:
This article on Nazi Germany is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
- This stub tag displays the Nazi crooked cross, which I consider wholly unfitting, arguably insensitive and potentially offensive to these people's memory. Many of them fought and died trying to overthrow Hitler or otherwise get rid of the Nazi régime. Please save this tag for articles about the Nazis, their policies, or their more prominent criminals (they were all criminals, after all).
- Spell Hitler's name wrong — not that I have any great love for the man, of course, but his name was Adolf, not Adolph. I've lost count of how many times I've corrected that mistake.
- Edit my userpage — I'd rather get a message on my Talk page if it's about something that needs, for technical reasons, to be done. If it's anything else, hands off, please. I'll determine what goes on my userpage if you don't mind (and even if you do).
- Nominate any of my userboxes for deletion — Some people just have nothing better to do than to cause trouble.
[edit] Interesting articles
What follows is a selection of articles that I have found on Wikipedia – none started by me although I've edited a few – which struck me as odd, funny, extremely esoteric or arcane, or whatever. Here they are...........
- Inflation fetishism — Some people have some rather unwholesome preoccupations. At first, I believed the writer was pulling our legs (see Talk:Inflation fetishism), and I am still not thoroughly sure he isn't.
- Corn dolly — Ah, but are they inflatable? *ahem* Excuse me.
- Mooresville, Missouri — Population: 89. Awesome.
- Jerome, Arkansas — Here's a place with 46 people that calls itself a "city". It also has an area of about 50 ha.
- Windhexe — Well I'll be blowed.
- Trim (cat) — Now how many cats go down in history?
- Stonecutters — A fictitious organization in a fictitious universe. Why is it worth noting in an article?!
- Cyniclons — I don't like anime; so what would I know about this? Well, apparently that writer doesn't know much about it either.
- T.G. Finkbinder — What's here is apparently true, but I have a feeling one of his students probably wrote it. Update: It has been deleted as unnoteworthy.
- The CAS School, Karachi — If I had to give this a new title, I would choose How not to write a Wikipedia article. Update: It has been improved ever so slightly.
- Infernum — Have you ever heard of these guys? I hadn't, but I'm not much into the Warsaw music scene. I get the impression from the article that they never exactly made a splash in the world of popular music. Are they really worth an article?
- Ecirb — I get the impression that this is a pathetic attempt to promote a garage band. Update: And it would seem I was right. It has now been deleted as unnoteworthy, and as a "vanity" article.
- Belly Puddle — Another band that no-one has heard of.
- Cryptic Gallbladder Splatter — These guys sure know how to have fun! At least the article is mercifully short.
- Body nullification — Some new ideas for Michael Jackson?
- Centwine — Cheap plonk?
- Drag City — No doubt a lot of fun to visit if it suits one's tastes.
- Saavedra position — Sounds naughty; the article says it was named after a Spanish priest.
- River Piddle — Sounds idyllic.
- Wank — Positively charming.
- Cum fart — Only on Wikipedia, eh? Also interestingly, another article on a similar topic, called Vaginal flatulence, is being considered for deletion. Update: The Vaginal flatulence article is apparently all right, but the Cum fart article has now been merged into Oral sex, and this link will now redirect there.
- Green manure — Not as disgusting as it sounds.
- Black and White (trance duo) — Entrancing.
- Postal Orders of Cyprus — What are these? Secret clubs for postmen? Even the article doesn't fully explain what it's on about.
- Ganja State University — Like, woooow, maaaaan … where do I sign up?
- Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster — Very encyclopaedic indeed.
- Porker Hogg — Not quite kosher, I don't think.
- Seborga — Neither is this, but I suppose it brings tourists.
- Jerk — It's brainier than you might think.
- Cameltoe — But this sure as hell isn't.
- Golden Cross — Someone's favourite local?
- Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz — Someone's trying to outdo me in the German concatenation department.
- Hollywood Left — Yeah, right. Celebrities are such brainless oaves they need a list.
- Mr Danger — It's apt, but I rather think it qualifies as an entry on the List of political epithets or the List of pejorative political puns, and not as an article. Update: It has now actually been expanded beyond one sentence.
- Buffalo Chips Running Club — That's a hell of a name.
- Exploding diet — A rather drastic way to lose weight?
- .mw — Well I'm glad I found out!
- Polish car number plates — Now here's something that'll appeal to a lot of readers.
- San Diego Yacht Club — Likewise.
- Nerd — A sociological exploration of ostracism from a rather interesting perspective, I thought.
- Exploding animal — Unwholesome preoccupations, indeed!
- Ray Twinney — A dead mayor of a suburban town whose term in office came to an ignominious end as the RCMP laid various charges against him. He will soon be forgotten. Why is there an article about him?
- Darwinian poetry — This is supposed to produce "intelligent" poetry.
- Southpark Mall (Colonial Heights, Virginia) — Some kid's favourite hangout?
- Tai Mei Tuk — I have actually walked straight through this community and I didn't even realize it was a community. It is an utterly forgettable place. Why is there an article about it?
- explodingdog — I don't care what it takes! This has just got to stop!
- Samuil Shatunovsky — It says he's a famous Ukrainian mathematician, and nothing else. There isn't even a Ukrainian interwiki link. I'm sure he was very famous.
- Anti-Barney humor — This is quite a long article considering the kind of thing that it's about, which surely won't stay in vogue all that long (if it even still is among the few who practised it).
- Leisnig — A little hamlet that no-one's ever heard of.
- Roderich Fick — A German man whose last name is a German vulgarism. Interesting.
- Fucking, Austria — Speaking of which...
And now, just for the hell of it, a whole heap of userboxes........
the UK
the Netherlands
Belgium
France
Monaco, the smallest country I've visited
Germany
East Germany, the only country that I've been to which has ceased to exist
Switzerland
Austria
Italy
Poland
Belarus
Russia, which is also in Asia (I actually went to Siberia, but I won't mention Russia again under "Asia")
Japan
Malaysia
Singapore
Thailand
South Korea
North Korea (that represents a trip to Panmunjŏm, of course)
China
Taiwan, which most governments will tell you is not a country
Brunei
the Philippines
Indonesia
Macau, which was Portuguese the first few times I went there; so I count it
Mongolia
Israel
Jordan
Saudi Arabia (one swinging place)
Bahrain
the United Arab Emirates
Oman
