User:John Abbe



Or not. But still fascinated by the Paleolithic in the Timeline of historic inventions, among everything else. --2018-2019

Haven't edited this much in a looong time, but it seems a 10-year cycle of sorts is underway... --2017

home page: http://ourpla.net/

Earlier
''Welcome to Wikipedia, John! Not meaning to dog your steps, it's just that everything you've been editing has been interesting. :)''

Thanks, Stephen! What have I written here? I don't track everything (I don't always log in), but I was very happy to add the first link to Meditation to the Buddhism page (! - and later added it to the List of Buddhist topics), and wrote something on the deeper aspects of Nonviolence. (Then noticed there are several such pages; someday I may take on merging them.) I apologize to all serious Wikipedians for so often failing to do proper research within and outside of Wikipedia, and doing the occasional original thinking out loud here. I come from the old wiki world where that was the point, and it's taking me a long time to get used to this.

I rewrote part(/all?) of the intro to Nonviolent Communication (NVC) at one point and am glad to see that several bits that are imho core to NVC have remained present there (probably helps that I referenced my own, um, independent writing on another website :-). Sadly, my attempt to introduce ease of linking and eliminate exclusivity to the web into the intro of Wiki has not fared as well (should find/create some external sources I guess). Wiki is so many things to so many people, the only common denominator seems to be the easy editability, and I've met people to whom even that is not central.

I keep coming back to the to the Paleolithic and early Neolithic eraoric on the Timeline of historic inventions. My focus on that era has heightened since reading Guns, Germs and Steel, both from general interest, and particularly from wanting to better understand how power-over (Mary Parker Follett) / domination (Walter Wink) / Taker (Daniel Quinn) systems - cultural, political, personal, etc. - have become so powerful & adaptive, and infected nearly the whole human species. So that we can reverse the tide and achieve World Undomination! (aka power-with, partnership, leaver. Or mender (Sharif Abdullah).

My ears have enjoyed learning a lot about the roots of rock & roll by working on the impossible First rock and roll record.

In a fit of up-to-the-momentness, I updated the Pluto page on March 15, 2004 to reflect the announced discovery of Sedna.

Way back when, i participated in the development of, and slow-motion edit wars in, the Sri Lanka pages.



ObWiki: I've been into wiki since 1998 or so, helped start RecentChangesCamp, and worked on http://wagn.org/ for a few years.

Didn't log in To Wikipedia in 2002 or 2003. My 2001 edits were as JohnAbbe

Articles I'd like to write, Real Soon Now:
 * interdependence (someone else got there first) (later: a very disjointed entry, which is probably why it got redirected to systems theory even though that page includes almost nothing explicit about interdependence)
 * transformational movement (compare reform movement and revolution)
 * World Undomination (just kidding, probably, but related writing/editing has and will appear on the appropriate pages)

I would write about science fiction here, but read little lately :-/, and when I do, enjoy more the community feel of [Bookshelved] wiki and the freedom to write original thinking there and on my own wiki. I may reference some of that here eventually. [2017 update - alas, BookShelved is long gone.]

My great-aunt Elfriede Abbe really was a remarkable artist. Her brother was Ernst Abbe but not that Ernst Abbe, although Clifford Stoll did once gave me an Abbe prism.

I am related to the Robert Abbe who pioneered radiation therapy in the United States of America and founded the Abbe Museum. Cleveland Abbe &mdash; first chief scientist of the (U.S.) National Weather Service &mdash; was my great-great-grandfather. I never met either of them though. ;-)

Feb 17, 2021
Some time last year it became clear that masks, ventilation, distance are more important than handwashing. Unfortunately, the flatten the curve message has struggled to stay in the public consciousness.

March 10, 2020
Testing in serious numbers is just getting underway in the US, so the number of cases reported here will be jumping. (3/8) “Don’t panic” is always good advice (thank you, Douglas Adams) but “Better safe than sorry” also seems to apply here.

This article on pandemic phases (3/9) notes that phase two is "when people who don’t realise they have contracted Covid-19 go about their daily lives rather than stay isolated." This is where a lot of the US is right now, and the article includes (already on Wikimedia), depicting how being careful now will help prevent COVID-19 from doing more harm than it will already:



A doctor in Italy (now on lockdown across the country) noted yesterday: "Some of our colleagues who are infected also have infected relatives and some of their relatives are already struggling between life and death. So be patient, you can't go to the theatre, museums or the gym. Try to have pity on the myriad of old people you could exterminate."

Context
Simple living, Consumerism, Gandhian economics, Regenerative economics,

List
Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough (book from the two films)

I Am (2010 American documentary film)

Koyaanisqatsi

E. F. Schumacher: The Other Way (1975) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb-OaI0w0cw

Gandhian economics - eg Ella R. Bhatt segment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvevGMHZp6k

this list is impossibly long - maybe later

copyright
I hereby license all of the writing and any other original material by me here as: