User:Chris77xyz

Chris
I'm new at this, but I'll start off with some of the things most users on here seem to put: I was born in 1977, am an Aquarius, am mostly of German/ Swedish ancestry, attended University of Richmond in Virginia for one year & then Loyola University in New Orleans, and moved about an hour outside of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. My main interests are ichthyology/ marine biology/ herpetology (reptile/amphibian biology), music (genres such as shoegaze, no wave, ambient, space rock, post-punk), modern art, photography, grammar, existentialism, John Stuart Mill/ Utilitarianism, conciseness, Honda/Acura automobiles, nutritional science/ food allergies, organic chemistry, global warming vs. global cooling debate, sculpture, basketball, bicycling, and avant-garde topics in general. I played two high school football games against a team led by a guy named Peyton; my dad played center on Vanderbilt Univ.'s basketball team. Some of my not-so-impressive-in-hindsight kiddie academic accomplishments were being valedictorian in 5th grade, and state Literary Rally champion in French in 9th grade. My initials are CPR, which would be even funnier if you knew my dad's profession. I was always a staunch atheist, but have become an agnostic in the last 5 years or so, after suffering from Genuine Disgust and Rage Inside™. I have used only Apple computers since about 1990. I don't even think I would know how to turn on a PC, and have decided to keep it that way. I taught myself HTML in 1999-2000, mainly via using PageSpinner.

I feel that frequently using the word "I" in sentences is a hallmark of a person with poor writing skills, but it is inevitable on a bio page like this. Sorry...

Articles
Some music-related pages I have created on here include: Plexi/ Cheer Up, Velour 100, Poem Rocket, Seefeel's Quique, For Against, & Justin Trosper. I have contributed a fair to large amount to ones on Unwound, Bailter Space, Hovercraft, Long Fin Killie, The Sound, Comsat Angels, Slowdive, Catherine Wheel, Mars, Swervedriver, National Skyline, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, Polvo, Kitchens of Distinction, Rhys Chatham, Fender Jazzmaster, Fender Prosonic, Thurston Moore, Shoegaze, Dream pop, The Sea and Cake, Rake, The Church's Starfish, Verve's A Storm in Heaven, A R Kane, Windy & Carl, Live Skull, Southpacific, etc. There are a lot of cult-favorite underground bands whom I feel deserve pages on Wikipedia, but I am still deciding if they are "noteworthy" enough before creating said pages. I've learned that it's a bit futile to edit articles on highly-popular bands, as their articles tend to be ravenously curated by ultra-biased fanboys. I ran a now-on-hiatus online music zine called Cold Comfort, which you can google if you'd like. To learn way too much about my musical tastes, visit http://rateyourmusic.com/~shockofDAYLIGHT. Some biological topics I've contributed to are Uromastyx and sub-articles of Trionychidae/Apalone.

Tenets
Overall, I try not to edit/create pages on Wikipedia unless I have been familiar with the subject for at least 10 to 15+ years, though I think ~5 years can suffice if the entity is of fairly recent vintage. I feel the site would be a lot better if everyone followed this rule. For example, I have been studying/owning certain species of reptile/fish since the '80s, but I still feel like too much of a rookie to edit articles on them. (I was an obsessive dinosaur expert in the early to mid '80s, but a lot of the science on them has changed dramatically since then, so I don't feel I should contribute info to dino articles.) The main thing I try to remove on Wikipedia pages is bias/opinion/pseudo-information/self-serving information. I also am miffed when Wiki articles become clearinghouses for arcane pop-culture trivia tidbits. (It seems that Family Guy and The Simpsons pop up in the trivia section of every major article.)

A cool quote I heard recently is: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity," by Horace Mann. Chris77xyz 19:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)