User:Dino

Why do I write for wikipedia? I believe in open content / open source. It keeps my brain active. I write of things I know, of a few things I don't know and probably shouldn't touch, and am forced to research things and learn about them, if I am to write a decent article on a topic.

File:User dino.jpg
dino, taken in 1997 in Lavenham, England

Plus, it's kinda fun.

Zip me an e-mail for any questions or concerns, or use my Talk page -- I check it with relative frequency.

My main site is http://greenplasma.com & I am trained in mathematics (primarily) & chemistry & live in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Articles I wrote or nearly entirely wrote (most recent first)

Ward Hill Lamon (Abraham Lincoln's bodyguard. Filled in for the joy of writing & researching of it.)
The Vanishing Hitchhiker (An urban legend that I heard as a child.)
Willie Sutton (An American criminal who never said "Because that's where the money is".)
Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Preserve (Part of my adopted state of Colorado.)
Red Cloud (Native American leader. He was the most successful of all native leaders in his wars against the US military, and deserved to be filled in.)
Theodore Parker (American Unitarian minister, abolitionist, and a controversial interesting person..)
Godwulf of Asgard (My brother does genealogy, and I was as suprised as anyone to discover I descended from a figure from Norse mythology. I descended from Odin too, but He already has an article.)
Tin pest (Chemistry. An autocatalytic reaction of the metal tin.)
Gehenna (See next, Fire and Brimestone.. A religious thing. I filled it in for the heck of it & because I found writing & researching it interesting.)
Fire and brimstone (A religious thing. I filled it in for the heck of it & because I found writing & researching it interesting.)
Siloviki (A Russian thing)
Quietism (Christian sect. Needed filled in.)
Epic Western (On a genre of the Western movie.)
Cyanide process (Chemistry. A controversial gold mining technique.)
Scalawag (Post Civil war term in the US.)
Sullivan Act (A controversial gun control question in New York City. Deserved an article; it traces to 1911.)
Teton Dam (A horrible failure of the United States Bureau of Reclamation in my native American West.)
O'Shaughnessy Dam (I used to live in Yosemite National Park, and am well aware of the controversial issues surrounding this dam, John Muir,"Dam Hetch Hetchy!", the San Francisco Water Board, and Donald Hodel,. Deserved to be filled in, but needs more detail.)
Carpetbaggers (A stub I did; Reconstruction era after the US Civil War)
Oregon Constitution (A stub I did on my home state's constitution only because it needed filled in.)
Vote-by-mail (A stub I did. Needed filled in.)
Bonneville Dam (A stub I did on a dam in my native Northwest)
Buck Owens (A stub I did for no good reason than the fact it was there.)
Crittenden-Johnson Resolution (A smallish article relating to the American Civil War.)
Open Range (movie) (A Western movie. Deserved it's page filled in. I don't care if it's politically incorrect. I love Westerns. And I'm left of center.)
Copperheads (politics) (A political group during the U.S. Civil War.)
The Virginian (Wild West stuff. I'm a Western native.)
Norse Saga (I have read a few in English & love their style. )
compos mentis & non compos mentis (Two stub articles I wrote because they were there.)
Habu snake (A snake that lives on Okinawa.)
Chief Ouray (A missing link in the next.)
Alferd Packer (America's only convicted cannibal, and the name of a college grill at the next.)
University of Colorado at Boulder (My alma mater, where I went to grad school in mathematics, leading to the next article ...)
Campbell-Hausdorff formula (Initial page on a mathematical topic.)
Perfect crime (A stub I did for no good reason than the fact it was there.)
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (Info on an American author and abolitionist.)
Two Years Before the Mast (Info on the previous author's most famous work. )

Freethought (Yes, Virginia, there are a skeptics and freethinkers in the USA. Out of the closet! A freethinker and proud!.)
Junker (Wrote to fill in a non-existent link in the next. )
Revolution_of_1848 (A lot of writing that took a long time, & has several sub-pages. Interests me because some of my German ancestors came to America as result of the failures of 1848.)
Battle_of_Vicksburg (And several of its main sub-pages, on the American Civil War.)
Fort_Donelson (American Civil War.)
Battle_of_Palmito_Ranch (The last land battle of the American Civil War.)

Articles to which I have made substantial contributions

Hitchhiking (I spent over three years of my life hitchhiking. I do not need to read Jack Kerouac. I lived it.)
Philip Sheridan (Figure on the Union side of the Civil War, controverisial both then and after.)
Edgar Cayce (I'm a skeptic; he was a fraud.)
Mary Celeste (I'm a skeptic. While the abandonment of the boat remains mysterious, there is no evidence of anything from the "world beyond.")
Buffalo Bill (.I just added detail to Western movie... Added a lot of detail here & cleaned up a mess. BB is a misunderstood figure, and really something of a lefty.)
Owen Wister (Wrote the Virginian.)
Western movie (Added some detail.)
Major re-write of Donner Party — Guess it makes sense, having done Alferd Packer (above)
Okinawa prefecture#History (Part of the page on Okinawa, specifically, it's history.)
Battle of Okinawa (Largely re-wrote after I found weird details such as Japanese surrendering the island *after* the end of the war. I lived on Okinawa, summer 1995 - summer 1997)
Gettysburg Address (Almost completely re-wrote when I found the wrong speech.)

Smallish articles or stubs I wrote or at least started

California Spangled cat (Filled in for kicks.)
The Mysterious Stranger (Novella by Mark Twain.)
Bridge of the Gods (On my native Northwest.)
Bonneville Slide (On my native Northwest.)
Privateer (A link in an article that referred back to the original article. Fixed..)
Ruritania (For kicks.)
Sadie Hawkins (For kicks. I grew up reading Li'l Abner.)
Fifty-Four Forty or Fight (American history.)
Byssus (For the heck of it.)
Comma splice (English usage.)
Seiche (Small article I did for kicks. I'm a skeptic, and seiches are common sources of Loch Ness Monster myths.)
Coastal Range (Stub I did for kicks. I was raised behind Oregon's coast range.)
Rain shadow effect (Stub I did for kicks. I was raised in one.)
Yurt (Stub I did for kicks.)
Red ochre (Stub I did for kicks.)
White flag (Stub I did for kicks.)
Sylvia Brown (A psychic fraud. Why do I waste time on junk like psychics?)
The Long Goodbye (A mystery by Raymond Chandler. Deserved to be filled in.)
Farewell, My Lovely (Chandler again. One of the best damn writers I have read.)
Hypnopompic state & Hypnagogic state (I'm a skeptic, and these deserved to be filled in, as they are common sources of Out-of-Body-Experiences.)
Psychic detective (A psychic fraud.)
Roll on, Columbia (A song I grew up singing, growing up in the Northwest. My original on this was pretty small; someone else filled in a lot of detail.)

Article to which I have added or changed one word

Oh, get real.

Yes, I have done other small things not here listed.