User:Blackcats
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[edit] Hello
Well I finally decided to go to the effort of putting something up here....
A relative newcomer, I first started taking note of Wikipedia in the Fall of '04, as Wikipedia pages started coming back more and more frequently in the results of Google searches. I then started monitoring the site fairly reguarlly and learning more about how it worked. I officially joined at the begining of February, 2005.
Thus far, my work has mostly focused on adding missing bits to articles and monitoring for NPOV. I feel that a neutral point of view can only truely be maintained if there is active input from people with all different points of view. In the interest of full disclosure, and to satify whatever curiosity anyone may have, I'll discuss mine below.
[edit] Disclosure
Here is some stuff about me which may be relevant to my perspective and POV, and may avoid unneccesary misunderstandings....
I'm an American male in my 20s. Secular, of Jewish and Italian descent. Euro-American (not "Cock-Asian" - I don't have any family from Azerbaijan or Georgia, thank you very much!). /* Disclosure */ I know this may seem like an attack on a personal page, but I see no reason to be only bias to just articles not pertaining to or relation to other such articles. I feel the remark about "Cock-Asian" is a slam to people that, unlike the user here, is happy to be caucasian and not embarrassed. If the user wants to identify himself as a Euro-American rather than a Caucausion [which is the same thing-please see your personal dictionary] then that is fine. But I feel offended of the sly comment and spelling caucasian in such a way as "Cock-Asian". Just because it's a personal page describing oneself, I don't believe it should be used to mock and/or abuse the rules of being appropriate on Wikipedia. I'm a vegan and cat lover.
I'm strongly anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Imperialism, pro-civil liberties and freedom, and a proud member of the 9/11 Truth movement. [1] I do not see all this as a matter of "left vs. right," but rather a matter of right vs. wrong. I attend to add more on this here soon...
I'm also a strong opponent of involuntary circumcision, hence my quote: "The foreskin is not a birth defect!" But this hasn't yet been a major focus of my work here.
I'm a strong believer in open source and free software, and the philosophies behind them, but I don't have any strong opinion on which name is better. I also think though that the Linux distro makers still have a lot of work to do to make their OS more usable by everday people - and the same holds true for a lot of free software aplications.
I'm a strong opponent of political correctness in particular and political and epistemological postmodernism in general. As an empiricist, I agree with Alan Sokal that in the long run, postmodernism can only hurt efforts for positive social change.
I believe in equality of the sexes, and do not identify as either masculist or feminist. My philosophy generally closer to the contemporary mainstream of the masculist movement than that of feminism.
I believe that when one is writing about someone of an unknown gender, he should feel free to use the male gramatical gender as the generic gender and not feel coerced to change the construction of his sentence such that it complies with feminist ideology.
[edit] Goodbye
I hope you guys enjoyed all that - feel free to leave questions/comments on my talk page...
