User:Quintucket/Portal

This is a list of topics of interest. Unlike my Projects page, these are simply topics of general interest, though I may contribute as I get the chance.

Aviculture
I think that certain species of birds in aviculture are overlooked. Whether I will do anything about it is another matter entirely.
 * Aviculture (I created this page, though I did almost nothing to make it a good page.)
 * Softbills (likewise, with above).
 * Parrotlet (Oddly, I seem to contribute more when I don't create the page. I really think "always leave something undone" should have been kept.)
 * Conure (See above.)

Biology/Ecology/Taxonomy

 * Ethology
 * Jared Diamond (And all his books)
 * Animal intelligence (And related articles.)

Linguistics

 * Pragmatics (topic of my thesis
 * Semantics
 * Psycholinguistics
 * Language acquisition
 * Developmentalpsycholinguistics (combines the two above, my major)
 * Evolution of Language (Or technically, Origins of Language
 * Bastard Tongues (A book by Derek Bickerton)
 * Adam's Tongue (The sequel to the same)
 * ILAT (A major mailing list, frequented by prestigious linguists. Don't know if I can find enough sources to establish notability.

Linguists
While most of the linguists I talked to and/or worked with may not merit their own page (though I will certainly check there references in secondary sources), these ones certainly do.
 * Jill De Villiers (Smith College professor, member of my committee, very famous in her field.)
 * Thomas Roeper (UMass professor. Again, very famous, and influential, in his field.)
 * Lee Spector (Hampshire College Professor, notable for his work on computational linguistics.)
 * Lisa Green (UMass professor, African American English researcher.
 * Mohammad Hassan (linguist) (I may be spelling his first name wrong, I'll email him before I create the article. Any rate, he's one of the few Arab linguists to engage in traditional linguistic analysis.)

Computer Science
I'll talk about what topics interest me later, as I become more familiar with the field.

Neuroscience

 * Neuroscience (Most of the topics here are fairly well covered, but some influential neuroscientists may be missing.)
 * Neuropsychology (Is complete BS. Obviously, I probably won't be editing this one, unless I see something I can add without risking a violation of NPOV]])

Evolutionary Psychology

 * Evolutionary Psychology (Yeah. Yeah. I buy into it to a degree that disturbs most people.)
 * Sociobiology
 * Richard Wrangham (I've met him, and he is a genius.)
 * Catching_Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (book by Wrangham. I saw him lecture on the topics on the book.  Together with Adam's Tongue, I'd say it's the biggest innovation in the field in years.)
 * Robert Trivers (He has a reputation, I'll say that. I think Wikipedia's living person policy prevents me from saying more.)
 * William F. Zimmerman (literally wrote the book on evolutionary psychology.)

Languages
I'll add these later. I'm particularly interested in isolates and highly divergent languages.

My favorite science fiction authors

 * Jack Vance (pathetic, I know)
 * Arthur C. Clarke
 * Issac Asimov
 * Ursula K. Le Guin
 * Kurt Vonnegut (also, a local author)

My Favorite Other Authors

 * Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 * Mark Twain
 * William Shakespeare
 * Christopher Marlowe

Music
There are a number of under-covered artists and or genres which I would like to add or expand on. Given the stricter criterion for musical artists, albums, and songs I will start any new pages in a subpage until I can find basic biographic info and at least two media sources. My interests lie in folk music, and traditional music of all stripes, as well as early country, rock and roll, and rhythm and blues music. Most of these artists have pages, though there's a few who don't. Others need work, but I won't bother. I had a list of these, but I realized most of these actually have pages, even if a lot of them need work. So right now, the only artist I think I need to add is Maine folk/country singer John Lincoln Wright and the Sourmash Boys

History
I like pretty much all history, but some more than others. I'll note some particularly interesting/well written pages as I come across them.

Western Massachusetts
Pretty much everything about my home region, though I no longer participate. I may add some photos when I return though.
 * Western Massachusetts (I created this when I first came here, it was my reason for registering. And man, it violated so many of Wikipedia's current rules.
 * Lake Hitchcock