User:Mataharii

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Welcome
Welcome to my user page.

Places I've been
Mexico, England, Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, El Salvador, Honduras, Egypt, Grenada, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Israel.

Interests
 Note: The following text was taken, with some alteration, from Ford.

World studies, particular interest in history, geography, ancient languages and symbols, and the nature and practice of dominion. Proponent of transcendent rationalism, and its corollary, stewardship. Also proponent of cosmopolitanism.

Leading frustrations on Wikipedia
'' Note: The following text was taken, verbatim and without permission, from Ford. &lsquo;I&rsquo; below refers to Ford, not to Mataharii.''

Administrator abuse. &mdash; This frustration trumps all others. There is little if any point in editing here when self-important editors with special powers violate written policies that are meant to govern the use of these special powers.

Biased edits. &mdash; I agree with the sentiments of some that calling a thing by its proper name is important &mdash; dictatorship, rule, oppression, murder. That is much of the point of the above pages, particularly Earth as it is. I am happy to deal in controversy elsewhere; but Wikipedia, with its open format, is not the place. We have all agreed to produce something that is dry and factual; we should do only that. Of course, this bias is most frustrating when it involves calling a thing what it is not, and is accompanied by accusations that a neutral position is biased.

“Settled” matters. &mdash; Policies which are subject to change are taken as divine fiat; agreements reached between a handful of editors at some indeterminate time in the past are taken as constitutional law. And such “settled” or “established” policies are held to trump even the policy of neutrality.

Adulation of “superiors”. &mdash; Religious figures, royalty and nobility, and other holdovers of pre-modern times are subjects that some editors are clearly incapable of treating neautrally. Styles and titles that are assumed by self-important individuals, or disingenuously “granted” them by their supporters, or bestowed by presumptuous governments, are perhaps matters of fact that can be noted; but they cannot be used if the encyclopedia is to remain neutral. John Paul II and Tenzin Gyatso are not “holy”, Elizabeth Windsor is not “majestic”, and those who insist that to call them so is not an endorsement of these claims are dupes. Naturally, there is a lingering fascination with the pre-modern culture of nobility, and there is no shortage of those here who treat the persistence of the nobility as a terrific game; but between such neo-romantics, fame-addled celebrity worshippers, and the pious devotees of religions and patriotisms of various kinds, the encyclopedia is a testament to inequality, where the egalitarian ideal is treated as unacceptable bias.

Page ownership. &mdash; Some pages are treated like personal property their originating editors. Those editors resist any changes not of their own doing (id est, “this wording has stood the test of time”).

Gratifying vanity or commercial interest of subjects. &mdash;  While self-identification is worth taking into account, when self-identification becomes self-promotion we are not in any way obligated to follow suit. If we do so, we abandon the policies of neutrality and common usage and actually engage in advertising. This includes the practice of writing brand names in all caps, which companies support because it calls attention to their brands. This also includes the non-standard and utterly-ridiculous practice of considering the definite article as part of the name of something to the extent that it should be included in an article’s title and capitalized in the middle of a sentence. All the arguments for this practice would likewise support silliness like “graduated from the presitigious The George Washington University”, and will lead to this eventually, if they have not already.

 Note: This concludes the text that was taken from Ford.

Various things I believe

 * Wikipedia-related:
 * Wikipedia is the future.
 * When in doubt, delete.
 * United States is always better than American. US should be U.S.
 * Wikis, and all its various applications, have done more to further peace and prosperity in the world than have any confused political notions or armies of bureaucrats and meddlers.
 * It won't kill you to be nice to other Wikipedians. Defend your honor and mark your territory elsewhere.
 * Others:
 * All governments lie. Big time.
 * Conspiracies abound. Also big time.
 * The northern United States is too cold.
 * Global warming is a lie.
 * Darwinism and Human Evolution are the religions of atheists.
 * The Austrian School of Economics is the only one that has a clue.
 * Political boundaries, citizenship, and other such notions are asinine.
 * All skin is some shade of tan; everybody is born somewhere. The fact that your epidermis is of a lighter or darker shade, and that your parents lived within a certain geopolitical entity, entitles you to nothing.
 * Ayn Rand was wacky, brilliant, but wacky.
 * And so is Anne Coulter
 * Dogs are beautiful and noble animals.
 * France has had its less than glorious times; as we have had ours.
 * War is big business.
 * "Nazi" means National Socialist; let's not forget that.
 * Socialism, in all its forms, to include Fascism, Nazism, and Communism (et al), has killed more people than any other belief system including religion.

Communist state imitations
I was born in 1963, and remember that the Soviet Union and Communist China were once "the" Evil empires of the world. I remember seeing the Berlin Wall on TV. The cold war fascinates me, what if we still had the Soviet Union, what would the world be like today? Would Soviet citizens be allowed on the Internet? Would they write blogs? I like how they were always trying to copy the west. Here is a table with a list of examples:

WikiLicense
I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below: