User:Jim Nightshade

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--Who wields me, wields the world! 02:28, 1 February 2007 (UTC)Username: Jim Nightshade

This user has been adopted by Dev920.

This page is under construction. My real name is David Pendery. I am currently a student in a doctoral English literature program in Taipei, Taiwan. I live here and work as an English teacher and editor.

I have been editing on Wikipedia since about August 2006. I think my first edit was on Philosophy of History, while I was doing some research for a paper I was working on. noticed some weaknesses and omissions on the page. Later I was doing some research for a class I was teaching, and I edited Richard Rodriguez, the Mexican-American writer. I am very interested in what Wikidpedia is doing, and strongly believe in the value of this approach to learning and organizing information.

I am a serious student, scholar and writer and try to write with this attitude on Wikipedia. I think I have made some good additions, and I always try to follow the rules strictly, and contribute well-written pieces.

I'll add more to this at another time. Write now I am busy finishing three final papers for school. I am writing one on Moral Realism in literature; a second on English historical consciousness and the King Arthur tales, read through St. Augustine's Confessions; and a third on moral currents in American drama, focusing on Sam Shepard and Neil Simon. Some of these ideas I hope to include in my disseration, which will be about moral behavior, narrative, history and temorality.

[edit] News, June 2007: Wikimania Presentation Proposal Idea and Request for Comment

My presentation proposal has been accepted at Wikimania in Taipei in August 2007. My paper is entitled "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: The Mind of Wikipedia." I want to air this idea, because I think it is a unique take on the structure and value of Wikipedia.
My plan is to analyze and “theorize” Wikipedia through the work of Dr. Gerald Edelman, a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine who has written recently about the structure and content of human consciousness (the title of my paper is the title of Edelman’s 1992 book). Basically, my thesis about the “mind” of Wikipedia is that the project mirrors the structure of human consciousness (as proposed by Edelman). You can see the entire version of my abstract at Wikimania Program Ideas, http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Ideas
Thank you if you want to offer any feedback or suggestions.