User:Lou Sander
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[edit] About Me
I'm retired from a career in several medically-related high-tech industries. Along the way, I worked for Microsoft and for the pioneering computer hardware company DEC. In retirement I teach logic, critical thinking, management, marketing, mathematics, and practical computer subjects at the college level. I also teach Wikipedia 101, a short course for beginners in using and editing Wikipedia. Other than that, I do pretty much as I please, subject to financial limitations.
My basic editing activity is posting new articles, on subjects I either know about or can quickly research; I've posted well over a hundred of them. I also add information where it's needed and where I can help, and I fix errors wherever I encounter them. I closely watch a handful of controversial articles, mostly to help make them better, but also to see how well/poorly the editors deal with them. It's not a pretty sight.
I've posted many new articles about U.S. Navy ships. Ship articles are fairly easy to create, even if you've never seen a rowboat, and doing them is a good way to build your article total. If you'd like to do some ship articles yourself, I'll be glad to show you how. There are hundreds of ships still to be posted, and the basic information for their articles is readily available online. Once you've done a ship or two, you can do an article like USS Ottawa in less than an hour. It's pretty rewarding, but you know that if you've already posted new articles (it's also kind of cool to watch other people improve your articles). If you want to know more, send email.
WARNING: The paragraphs below plainly state the qualifications and accomplishments of an experienced person. If you consider such material immodest, you probably shouldn't read further. In any event, remember: If it's true, it isn't bragging.
[edit] I think I'm a pretty good editor because...
- I've done a lot of reading, especially in encyclopedias. I've been reading since I was three years old; when I was in second grade, the teacher told my parents I was reading at a seventh grade level. I've been reading encyclopedias since I those ancient times, and reading them extensively since the 1970's. I've spent countless hours reading the World Book and various editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I own a copy of the 1911 Eleventh Edition, and have spent many hours perusing it. IMHO, the guys who wrote it really knew how to write an encyclopedia. Very little of what they wrote was later shown to be wrong.
- I've learned at the feet of high masters. I got straight A's in high school (back when that was harder to do), and I earned degrees in rigorous subjects from Duke University (electrical engineering, with advanced placement in freshman English) and the University of Chicago (MBA/economics). I was far from earning straight A's at either place, but I got my share of them, plus a few D's, in a time when A's were much harder to get, and D's much easier). More recently, I've spent quality learning time at the feet of Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, and Thomas L. Saaty.
- Many have seen fit to publish my writings. That includes about 500 articles, columns, programs and reviews for dozens of publications, including local newspapers and computer magazines with worldwide circulation. During my "computer period" in the 1980's I was a prolific and well-known writer on Commodore subjects. I wrote dozens of articles, two books (one of them translated into Italian) and several very popular columns, most notably the Magic column in RUN magazine. (You can see the names and full text of some of the computer articles HERE). My work was reprinted in six other books that I know of. Though my computer writing spanned all the computers of the day, it stopped when Commodore faded from the scene. Since then, most of my writing has been for newsletters, web sites, corporate research reports, etc., though I occasionally do an article for a magazine. When writing for publication, I am always known as Louis F. Sander. In the not-formally-published-by-others category, I've written or compiled almost 300 online obituaries, about a hundred poems, and over 125 new articles in Wikipedia. I'm the creator and proprietor of two large web sites, HERE and HERE.
- Et cetera. I spent ten years as chairman of the board of a regionally important public library. In connection with that work, I spent thousands of hours in dozens of different libraries, where I learned a lot about information and how it's created, processed, and disseminated. Also, as stated up above, I teach logic and critical thinking.
The bottom line is that I've spent over half a century cultivating the art of being right. The most important part of that art is that when you aren't right, you admit it and learn from your mistake. Whatever my abilities in the lesser areas of the art, I claim absolute mastery of that one.
I think I'm a pretty good editor, Q.E.D..
[edit] You might also like to know (but probably not)...
- Born 1939, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. BSEE, Duke, 1961. MBA, Chicago, 1967. Vietnam era veteran (Naval officer) with three grown children and six grandchildren. ENTP.
- I played basketball at Duke University, but I did not play lacrosse. The basketball was in gym class. (That's the last of the jokes until you see my SSN.)
- When I was seven years old, I was shot at by a group of nonwhites who didn't like the names I was calling them. The (expletive deleted) missed. The same year, I stood alone on a sidewalk, about two feet from a rabid dog. I knew what rabies was, and I knew he had it. (As you might imagine, that stuff builds a kid's self-confidence; read on.) As an adult, I've had a root canal treatment without anesthesia, and I've watched a total stranger die. I've walked, alone, unarmed and unafraid, down foreign streets where a revolution was in progress and the intersections were guarded by stressed-out teenagers with machine guns.
- After college, I spent time as a commissioned officer aboard a warship and in a then-Top-Secret Navy Special Forces unit, where I learned to kill and went through the then-current version of survivial school. I never came close to needing or using those skills, but I suppose they're still in there somewhere. Wherever they are, they should stay there—don't (expletive deleted) with me.
- Nobody I know died in Vietnam, but my neighbor Jorge Arteaga and his friend were the first two Americans to die in Desert Storm. I've drunk pisco with Jorge's father, a Bolivian geologist. I am an expert rifle and pistol shot, and I carry. As a naval officer, I owned, and sometimes wore, a sword.
- I can swear like a sailor, and from time to time I exercise that skill. Some of my friends and students are criminals or victims of crime: my friend and coauthor Joseph R. Charnetski spent ten years in prison for killing his wife with a hammer; my student Angelique Enty was shot dead by a no-good boyfriend, who then committed suicide; another student's son was shot to death by one of his gangsta associates. Others of my friends and former students work in law enforcement, some of them in sophisticated cybercrime units. They can and do find people who vandalize pages on the Internet. Be careful.
- I've been both plaintiff and defendant in lawsuits for meaningful amounts of money, and I've been a key witness for a plaintiff in Federal District Court (my guy won). The IRS once confiscated my car, and kept it for over a year. In the end, I beat them. I've run for public office, and I've attended a session of a state supreme court. I've had regionally powerful political enemies. As a community organizer, I have affected the outcome of local elections. I know a lot about voting machines and voter fraud. (Republicans are newcomers, and amateurs; the other guys are, or at least they were in their heyday, highly trained professionals.) I have collected money on a real estate title insurance policy, and there's land I can acquire by adverse possession, (but the legal fees would be more than the land is worth).
- I know a lot of geography, and I've been to 38 states and 18 foreign countries/U.S. possessions. I can name the capitals of all the 50 states, and I've known 48 of them since I was two or three years old. (My mother says it was two, but I find that hard to believe. Sorry, Mom.) I've lived in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and aboard at least six ships, including destroyers, a cruiser and an aircraft carrier. (The ships were USS Canberra, USS York County, USS Conway, USS Rankin, USS Waller, and USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.)
- I have sailed and/or swum in the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Mediterranean Sea, and I've sunned myself on the French Riviera. I've spent a lot of time at sea in the Bermuda Triangle, and I've visited over 30 of one author's 501 Must-Visit Destinations. I've been to a bullfight in Spain; it differs a LOT from the fantasy role playing games so familiar to many Wikipedians. I've experienced an earthquake strong enough to knock things off shelves in my house, and a hurricane once blew over two big trees in my yard. I haven't yet been to India, but I'm fond of all things Indian. Elsewhere in the Commonwealth, I've never seen Mrs. Slocombe's pussy, but I've fantasized about her doing a silly walk. Here at home, I deeply distrust the New York Times, especially since Jayson Blair came out. CBS, too, especially since Dan. I greatly admire Fred on Everything, for both his thinking and his writing.
- In another realm, I'm starting to think of biology as the "Dan Rather of sciences," since I've seen the questionable nature of some of its most respected achievements: the Galapagos finches, the peppered moth, Piltdown man, Archaeoraptor, Haeckel's drawings, the Miller-Urey experiment, and the meticulously peer-reviewed work of superstar biologist Hwang Woo-suk. (And speaking of Famous Men of Science, I have something in common with Euler: my Erdős number is unknown but probably infinite. I have a friend with Erdős number 2, and there's an outside chance that he and I could coauthor some sort of paper. If that happens—and I'm encouraging it—my Erdős number will be known, and will be 3.)
- My own published writing has been read in nearly every country of the world (e.g., Papua New Guinea), and one of my books was translated into Italian. I was heard on local radio before I was in high school. For several years I was a featured personality on AOL's predecessor Quantum Link, and I've twice had 15 minutes of fame on local TV. The first was coverage of my Computer Kindergarten classes in the early 1980s. The second was in my role as an expert on pornography in public libraries (I'm against it). A major TV station sent a crew to my home to interview me as I called up naughty bits on my laptop. Fun, that.
- I've participated in about 300 board meetings of non-trivial organizations, and I've presided at about a third of them. I've left an enduring mark as the leader of eight different organizations: a university's hobby club, two units of the U.S. Navy, two manufacturing businesses, an important suburban public library, and two membership organizations for adults. (See HERE and HERE).
- I've worked in the marketing and product management end of some reasonably exciting areas of medicine, most of them in their early days of commercialization: hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, heart-lung machines for open heart surgery, artificial heart valves, organ preservation systems, laboratory information systems, computerized radiation therapy planning, computerized nuclear medicine, computerized interpretation of electrocardiograms, cardiac catheterization, CAT scanning, mammography, medical ultrasound, patient monitoring systems, and TENS, to mention the most prominent ones. In all cases, my knowledge is that of a marketing person, rather than that of a scientist or clinical practitioner. I've worked with many of those folks, though, particularly in radiology, radiation physics, cardiology, cardiac surgery, and pathology. My acquaintances in those areas included Robert Cade and Dana Shires, the inventors of Gatorade, and heart surgery pioneers Denton Cooley and Michael E. DeBakey. I'm sure that all of them forgot me very quickly.
- When I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 1970s, I sold 8KB of 8-bit computer memory for $10,000. At those prices today, a 1GB flash drive would cost $1.3 billion. Do the math.
- I was at Digital when I sold the previously mentioned laboratory information systems. Today, such things are in just about every lab in the industrialized world, but back then, they were new and mysterious articles. At one time, I had sold more of them than any other person in the world: two.
- The first car I remember riding in was my father's 1941 Chevrolet. The first one I owned was a 1953 Chevrolet. Since then, I've owned a lot of them, notably a white Firebird convertible, two other Firebirds, and a Grand Prix that a female British radiologist called "the most beautiful motorcar I've ever seen." Most of the others have been GM or foreign. I buy them new or used, and I sell them when they no longer pass State Inspection. You save a lot of money that way. Currently I have an age-appropriate blue Buick Lesabre and a red Mazda Protegé 5 Zoom-Zoom.
- I've ridden in or on more than my share of cars, trucks, ships, boats, airplanes, etc., including some slightly unusual ones: hot air balloon, sailplane, Piper Cub, seaplane, flying boat*, military and civilian helicopters, ship-to-ship highline, motorcycle*, 30' motor home*, 8' sailboat*, 47' sailboat, London taxi, passenger train, cable car, ski lift, aerial tramway, funicular railway, lots of Navy ships including destroyers*, LSTs, an aircraft carrier, and an attack cargo ship*, various landing craft and amphibious vehicles, and even, once, a donkey*, (an asterisk means I drove it).
- I've seen five planets and the Galilean moons of Jupiter through my own telescope, and fallopian tubes through a surgeon's laparoscope. I've seen the curvature of the earth, both directly at sea and projected in many eclipses. I've stood at the brink of Niagara Falls and the Arizona Meteor Crater, and I've been inside a very large underground cave. None of this compares to the times I've seen the heavens on a warm, clear night, from the flying bridge of a large and totally darkened ship, hundreds of miles from land, with absolutely no light except for that from the stars.
- I've designed many electronic circuits, a 400 square foot outdoor deck, and college-level computer programming courses, most of which I later built or taught. I've built about a dozen Heathkits, including a DX-100 transmitter and a GR-295 color TV set. I've known morse code since 1955. (W3BOA, DXCC, QCWA); I've been DX, and I've operated Maritime Mobile, but I haven't been on the air since the 1960s. I first carried a pager in 1965, which was also the first year I used a copy machine.
- I'm an exceptionally creative amateur programmer, mostly in various forms of BASIC. I wrote my first computer program, in FORTRAN, in 1966. Since then, I've spent over 30,000 hours at the keyboard. I've owned at least twenty different computers, and my laser printer is bigger and faster than yours. So, probably, is my 13x19 inch inkjet.
- I fly the American flag, 24 hours a day, and illuminated at night, but I'm not some kind of a nut about it. As a teacher, I practice the soft bigotry of low expectations, and my students definitely appreciate it.
- Though I've never been on an organized athletic team, I was a decent club-level tennis player (3.0-3.5) into my 50s, and I was once a fairly good recreational volleyball player. I am of the Steeler nation, and I'm totally capable of using a Terrible Towel to snap a welt on your Cleveland- or Baltimore-loving ass. I've seen Roscoe Tanner play tennis; Roberto Clemente play baseball; and Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, and the Steel Curtain play football. I've been to many Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Spirit games, plus a few Steelers games and two World Series games with the St. Louis Cardinals. I've attended a number of professional wrestling matches, and I live fairly close to Bruno Sammartino (if you like having an unswollen face, don't try telling him it's fake). Once I was so close to Renée Richards, I could have touched her on the Adam's apple. But none of the above was as exciting as seeing Ricky and Danny Seemiller demonstrate world-class table tennis skills at Monroeville Mall.
- I was in a Shadyside bar when I saw Christian Laettner make "the shot" against the Kentucky Wildcats. (I was at a party and wasn't even watching the game; I saw it on the way to the men's room.) I once met Coach K and his wife at the Charlotte airport; they didn't recognize me. As a Duke freshman on January 27, 1958, I saw the unranked Duke Blue Devils basketball team beat the #1-ranked West Virginia Mountaineers with Jerry West and Mary Lou Retton's future father Ronnie, 72-68. Wow! The next Thanksgiving, on national TV, I saw the highly regarded Duke football team get crushed 50-0 by their pathetically weak arch-rival North Carolina Tar Heels. Win some, lose some, I guess.
- I went to my twenty-fifth high school class reunion, and now I've gone to my fiftieth. Go Indians! Classmates remembered me as very smart and very funny, especially the latter. I told 'em if they wanted to know what I'd done since high school, they could see a lot of it right here. You should go to your own reunions—you'll find treasures there that you don't even know you have. You can even fall in love there. Believe it.
- I am a faithful husband, and I am safe around women and girls, even if they are stunningly attractive. That having been said, there is room in my heart, including at its very center, for hundreds and hundreds of people, including, possibly, you. I love little children, and I can make any baby or toddler smile. I hug my granddaughters (ages 8 and 5) at every opportunity, and if their mothers allow it, I also hug their little friends (one of them has adopted me as her grandfather). I tell my students I love them like my nieces and nephews; they believe it because I mean it. I'm pretty much fond of people from cultures other than my own; I generally like the Jews, Arabs and Parsis I've met, and considering my age and ethnicity, I'm pretty good friends with a remarkable number of Negroes. (Six of the latter are my informally adopted sons or daughters.) I have a rap that dozens of blacks have applauded, and I can speak in black dialect in a way that only offends dull-witted white folk. I eat, and like, collard greens and black-eyed peas; they are best if cooked with fatback and followed with sweet potato pie.
- When I was in college, some friends and I hitchhiked to some hick town to watch a KKK rally that had gotten some notorious publicity. The Klan was upset about something that the Lumbees were doing. The rally never materialized, but we did see a car full of people wearing white hoods. Otherwise, the place was crawling with cops. All in all, it was a pretty excellent adventure.
- I am a reasonably sophisticated amateur psychologist, especially with regard to the work and ideas of Carl Jung. I have expert knowledge of his theory of psychological types, including its popular manifestation in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I'm ENTP, the rational Inventor. They do things like making this crazy user page and living the life it depicts. (Jung said that people see ENTPs as "amoral adventurers." He was right; they are wrong about the first part, and right about the second.)
- I've met and talked with some notable people, including Bill Gates, Steve Case, George Shultz, and Nobel laureates Herbert Simon and Godfrey Hounsfield. (Of all those big-time guys, only Steve Case might remember me.) I never met Timothy McVeigh, but I edited his writing and got it published for him. It was his very first national exposure. I hope I'm not responsible for lighting his passion for fame, but if I am, so be it. (I'm pretty sure he had big-time help with the bombing, and I'm absolutely sure he'd remember me.)
- I've had passing encounters, but no conversation, with O. J. Simpson, Arlen Specter, and Redd Foxx in hotel lobbies, and with Henry Cabot Lodge, John Heinz and Dick Groat on planes or at airport gates. Martha Stewart stopped by my table at a restaurant, and I've had lunch, one-on-one, with Heloise.
- My favorite movies include The Blues Brothers and Men in Black, or any of their sequels. The first movie I ever saw was Dumbo, and I remember seeing Fantasia as a very little kid. Today, I rarely see a film, but I sometimes watch Turner Classic Movies on TV. Neither my wife nor I watch dramatic programming on television. (We have never seen a minute of CSI, for example, and we probably never will.)
- When I was younger, I played chess, Scrabble, acey-deucey, hearts, pinochle, and even Canasta. I was very good at Scrabble, and OK at the rest of them. In the early 1990s, my friend Laura Hopper and I were co-winners of one of Games Magazine's most difficult contests ever; we deserved it. Today, I play very few games, but I consistently win 55% of my medium difficulty tries at spider solitaire. I do play the lottery, especially when the prizes are large. Some might say I'm a high roller, since I've bought over $1,000 worth of Powerball tickets at one fell swoop. (Actually, it's for a lottery pool that I've organized. We win something at every single drawing.)
- When I was a little kid in the early 1940s, I owned a 78 rpm record player with an electric motor and mechanical sound reproduction. They don't make 'em like that any more. Records were scarce in those days, and I think I owned two of them. One was Schubert's Marche Militaire. In high school (class of 1957), I was an early and enthusiastic fan of the music now called rock and roll. It was then just starting to be played on AM radio stations. I sat in or near the front row at live performances by acts such as Bill Haley and the Comets, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, and Bo Diddley. Today, I like classical music for its beauty and relaxing qualities, oldies because I heard them when they were new, and country music for its artistry and its honesty in depicting real life. I can easily get goose bumps over Lorrie Morgan's Something in Red, which isn't just about shopping. (If you follow the link, scroll down to read the lyrics. Be sure to allow the popup so you can hear the music, too.)
- Though my father, mother, father-in-law, and son-in-law are or were professional musicians, I don't make any music myself. (When the other kids in the neighborhood were taking swimming lessons, my parents signed me up for piano lessons. It pissed me off, and I didn't like the piano at all.) If I had ever learned to make music, I think I could have been a good songwriter. Download this 205KB PDF file and see if you agree.
- Not counting myself, my favorite poets are, in chronological order, Archilochus of Paros, Rumi, Robert Herrick, William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, and Countee Cullen. If it doesn't rhyme, I probably don't like it very much.
- Like The Daily Show and Rush Limbaugh, I know how to mix humor with truth, and I can pack lots of both into one paragraph. All facts but one in this and the prior paragraphs are absolutely, and usually verifiably, true. (The humor's in there, too, but it's also in the eye of the beholder. Some of it is also in the links.)
- Except for the identity-theft jokes, this stuff is also true: My ancestors were German and Swiss—I think some were Pennsylvania Dutch. My maternal grandfather was a successful and somewhat famous mechanical engineer whose forebears came to America in 1755, probably to escape religious persecution. He died before I was born, as the result of an industrial accident. My paternal grandfather came here from Germany in the 19th century and became a grocer in Charleston, SC. All three of his sons graduated from college as electrical engineers. His three daughters married and raised families. My father graduated from Clemson, and my maternal grandfather from Penn State, where he was a varsity football player. The girl who was to become his wife and my grandmother attended Keuka College. My mother attended Beaver College, but left before graduation. My wife is German and Hungarian. Both of us are orphans, but we don't think it gives us absolute moral authority. (You can think so if you'd like, and both of us will appreciate it.) We've bought and sold seven houses. Our current property is modest in size, and on a somewhat undesirable hillside, but it includes a forest and a garden. I like to go walking in both—they are home to an abundance of birds and wildlife (you can see a complete list HERE). I have three grown children: a wayward son whose life has been totally ruined by alcohol (but I love him anyway), a daughter who was a cheerleader and later married a rock star, and a son who was a pretty good college soccer player/track star and now runs a Manhattan real estate company. My grandchildren call me "Hubby." My family, neighbors, and long-time friends call me "Skip." My Social Security Number is 671-55-51212. My ZIP code is unlisted, and my password is * * * * * *. I do not answer emails from Nigeria, but that doesn't make me a racist. I more or less adhere to (esp. nos. 11-13) their Articles of Faith, but that doesn't make me a Mormon. (Though, like some pre-20th-century members of that church, I have two life partners.) I value beauty, truth, duty, honor and virtue, and I hope that you do, too. (If you don't, it's never too late to start.) I do not lie, cheat, or steal, but all of us are sinners, so occasionally I have done all three. I have never been divorced or arrested, or smoked a cigarette, and neither has my wife. (My wayward son has been or done all three, and has also spent time in jail and mental hospitals.)
If you care to know more, just Google my name and you'll find it. I'm not the famous baby doctor, and I'm definitely not the orchid or the tragically murdered cop.
SECOND WARNING: The following paragraph is directed specifically at fools. Others can read it, of course, but shouldn't (and won't) take it personally.
- Life has taught me to suffer fools, but not to suffer them gladly or for a protracted period of time. It has also taught me of their relatives the assholes and the pissants. When someone seems to be one of the three, I give them the benefit of the doubt. Then I give them a second chance, and usually a third. After that, I put them on ignore. And in spite of constant temptations, I try hard not to give them voice lessons. (Robert A. Heinlein was right—you spend your time and energy, and they just snout their keyboards and grunt.)
"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes." – Proverbs 12:15
[edit] Articles started
I like to do articles that relate to my short career as a Naval officer, which was spent aboard USS Rankin and as a Beach Jumper. (It's not just a job, it's an adventure.) That has led to doing an article for every Navy ship built where the Rankin was. (Other people did one or two of them, but I did the rest.) Recently I created or significantly edited articles for all the Navy's 117 attack cargo ships. This wasn't as hard as it might seem, since the basic facts are available at DANFS. But there was a lot of copy editing, heavy-duty Wikification, fact checking and research. I've also created or meddled with other articles that interest me, or were red links somewhere, etc., and of course I expand, fix errors, etc. in articles that I come across that need it.
Click here to see the 100+ U.S. Navy ship articles I've started
[edit] Other Articles of Interest
Amphibious cargo ship
Analytic hierarchy process (I extensively rewrote it.)
Ann Coulter and related articles (I don't necessarily love her, but I respect her brilliance.)
Caterpillar Club (A cool subject that needed work.)
The Wirral (My son and I were there once, and the locals couldn't explain what it was.)
[edit] Edit counter
Create an entire article = one edit
Delete a comma = one edit
There are a couple of naughty words in the details of my edit count. That's because I monitor a few controversial articles, and occasionally I contribute to them. Please don't think less of me for that (and besides, I told you I can swear like a sailor).
