User:Admiralwaugh

Admiral C.W. Waugh is an attorney who received a BA, MA, and JD from the University of Florida. His real-life and Wikipedia interests include politics, art, mathematics, biography, history, tax law, estates and trusts, philosophy, adventures, traveling, Indonesia, East Asia, Eastern Europe, Australia, and lots of other stuff. He graduated from Starfleet Academy over a decade ago and is the youngest officer to ever hold the rank of Fleet Admiral.

Wikipedia Interests
Before registering his username on Wikipedia, he actively edited Douglas MacArthur, Steve Spurrier, Elizabeth II, and James T. Kirk. Unfortunately, people often choose to re-edit these articles with progressively worse writing than before. All of the aforementioned articles require moderate to significant revision. Some of the articles that he created from scratch include the ones for relativistic electron beam, due to his background in astrophysics, and Chiyo Uno, an author he enjoyed reading while living in Indonesia.

Excerpt from Cryptonomicon, mentioning General MacArthur
Randy and Avi look into their cups. A weirdly glittering layer of scum is floating atop their coffee.

“It is gold,” Furudenendu explains. Both of the Gotos laugh. “During the eighties, when Nippon had so much money, this was the fashion: coffee with gold dust. Now it is out of fashion. Too ostentatious. But you go ahead and drink.”

Randy and Avi do—a bit nervously. The gold dust coats their tongues, then washes away down their throats.

“Tell me what you think,” Goto Dengo demands.

“It’s stupid,” Randy says.

“Yes.” Goto Dengo nods solemnly. “It is stupid. So tell me, then: why do you want to dig up more of it?”

“We’re businessmen,” Avi says. “We make money. Gold is worth money.”

“Gold is the corpse of value,” says Goto Dengo.

“I don’t understand.”

“If you want to understand, look out the window!” says the patriarch, and sweeps his cane around in an arc that encompasses half of Tokyo. “Fifty years ago, it was flames. Now it is lights! Do you understand? The leaders of Nippon were stupid. They took all of the gold out of Tokyo and buried it in holes in the ground in the Philippines! Because they thought that The General would march into Tokyo and steal it. But The General didn’t care about the gold. He understood that the real gold is here,” he points to his head, “in the intelligence of the people, and here,” he holds out his hands, “in the work that they do. Getting rid of our gold was the best thing that ever happened to Nippon. It made us rich. Receiving that gold was the worst thing that happened to the Philippines. It made them poor.”

Douglas MacArthur at the Japanese Surrender, 1945
We are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the people of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice or hatred. But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve, committing all our people unreservedly to faithful compliance with the understanding they are here formally to assume.

It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past -- a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice

...

Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won....

As I look back upon the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear, when democracy was on the defensive everywhere, when modern civilization trembled in the balance, I thank a merciful God that he has given us the faith, the courage and the power from which to mold victory. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.

A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.

Men since the beginning of time have sought peace.... Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural development of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.