User:Ryguasu

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My real name is Chris Harris. I am a citizen of the United States, where I was born and where I reside. I graduated from Brown University in the spring of 2004 with a degree in computer science. In the past few years I've found myself employed as a cashier at the Brown Bookstore, a tutor of sorts at the Met School ([1]), a very individualistic, internship-based urban high school in Providence, RI, and a computer programmer at a small, Seattle-based web company serving mostly at legal professionals.

I've become an Anti-foundationalist about most everything through the process of asking too many questions. Under the influence of Nietzsche and William James, I feel both mildly liberated and not quite so mildly disturbed about how to lead my life. Let me know if you want to discuss how to live life in a Nietzschean, Pragmatic, or Humanistic way.

Wikipedia is by far my favorite web site, especially when it doesn't take 30+ seconds to save an edit. I finally made my first donation to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Feel free to leave comments at User talk:Ryguasu

1 About my username
2 Articles
3 About some other Wikipedians
4 Some thoughts about wikis
5 Answers to my questions
6 Notes for self
7 To do
8 Ramblings
9 Articles that need improvement
10 To reexamine
11 Ways Wikipedia is strange
12 Also interesting

[edit] About my username

My Wikipedia name, "Ryguasu", means "hen" (i.e. chicken) in Guarani, a language I learned a little bit of while living in Paraguay for a year. Arguably a stupid name (especially for a male?), it has the advantage that just about nobody on Earth except me has a desire to claim it as "theirs".

[edit] Articles

Here's a biased sample of articles I have been involved with:

[edit] About some other Wikipedians

Kukkurovaca is my arch-nemesis and good friend. Sometimes I understand what he says. I am jealous that, since I introduced him to Wikipedia, he's gone on to become twice the Wiki-dork that I am. Where does he find the time?

I hereby award you one blowfish.

कुक्कुरोवाच

Fred Bauder is the author of meta:Basic process, which, for some reason, bothers me more than any other article I've yet found on Wikipedia. My persistance finally got it moved to meta. Fred is the founder of Wikinfo. Although I am curious about what the effect of having articles written from several different points of view will be, I'm not convinced that his having forked Wikipedia will be beneficial overall; I think that having to come to some kind of consensus is good for an article. Interestingly, Fred has decided to include his Basic process article on Wikinfo, which makes me wonder if the "real" purpose of the fork wasn't to get away from me. =)

I think your efforts served to enlighten me regarding the no original research aspect of Wikipedia; motivated me to establish a forum where original research was encouraged; and helped me conform my editing here to that policy. Fred Bauder 11:07, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Some thoughts about wikis

User:Ryguasu/Toward an ED156 wiki

[edit] Answers to my questions

[edit] Notes for self

User:Ryguasu/Dewey

Fareed Zakaria. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

The deconstruction of mental illness is necessarily a high-priority task for postmodernism; if it fails, then the biological roots of mind/soul become more firmly established than postmodernism would care to admit.

[edit] To do

Teleology: definition in terms of Purpose is problematic
Conceptual metaphor: uh-oh -- the gobledygook squad was here!
Double negative: add history, NPOVify
add Copilia stuff
"facet" is a synonym for "ommatidium". (neither have articles)
"mental picture" is a vast oversimplification of "idea", in any reasonable understanding. fix it.
make What the Tortoise Said to Achilles coherent, and make more relevant links to it
put Ostrom-ish stuff at Tragedy of the commons and Prisoner's dilemma
George Lakoff: add book summaries, relativism disclaimer; move the not Lakoff-specific stuff to other articles
Cognitive science of mathematics vs Where mathematics comes from vs ...
Gender-neutral pronouns or Gender-specific pronoun or Non-sexist language or Douglas Hofstadter: add reference to Hofstadter's race-based pronoun piece
problematize Corporate welfare
add US stuff to Zebra crossing and Pedestrian crossing
Portable Document Format: clarify relationship to postscript

[edit] Ramblings

I might someday incorporate these into wikipedia articles:

[edit] Articles that need improvement

I don't really know how to fix these, but I can try to explain why I don't like them, if you're interested. (Note: this list was from the days when I thought I had time to add my two cents to every god damn article.)