I doubt I'll contribute a skyscraping amount to Wikipedia, but if I have said something you want to discuss then talk to me by all means, though please be civil or I shall ignore the hell out of you.
Thank you for your comments on the Voltaire Page edit
Jam Person -- I have no idea if this is appropriate, or if I should be using another means to get a shout out to you, but thank you for your observations about Voltaire on the discussion page. Specifically, you were taking to task all the folks who were getting upset, because not enough attention had been paid to Voltaire's "rascism."
It's too long a story why, but I was an "older" college student during the middle 80s (now I'm just "old" period). Words fail me to tell you the level of rage and frustration I experienced in my labor history classes, when legions of morons (and I mean in books and articles, not just students) attacked the Western Federation of Miners union (for example) for excluding Chinese and ignoring "women's rights." Thank goodness I was much nicer then, because now I doubt I could keep from saying/shouting "Are (GERUND FORM OF CRUDE EXPRESSION FOR SEXUAL INTERCOURSE) stupid? They're literally fighting a civil war in Idaho over collective bargaining--and losing. What do you think would have happened if the WFM did endorse equal rights for women--whatever that might mean in the 19th century west?" I did try to explain the above (sans cursing), only to be regularly told "Well, you only think that because you're white & a guy. How do you think the Chinese women felt?" How do you answer that? I don't know the right way, but the wrong way is to try and explain how there WEREN'T any Chinese women in Idaho, because the immigration laws at the time allowed Chinese men, but not women, to enter the US.
But don't get me wrong. I am soft on, and a long time apologist for, the politically correct movement. But god, it gets hard sometimes trying to get people to understand that the past is like a foreign country: they do things differently there (to coin a phrase).
That's why I found your comments so refreshing. Wikipedia IS Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: these articles aren't multi-volume editions of the subject's entire life. These articles are a service to tell the casual reader why Voltaire is worth knowing about. Was Voltaire a speciesist who ate veal? Probably--but should that really be a focus of the article? And Beck thinks MTV makes him want to smoke crack.
Hey, I am seriously overstaying my welcome here--but if you're a Voltaire guy, there's a brief hilarious blurb in Palle Yourgrau's "A World Without Time." The book itself is wonderful (if you like that kind of stuff), and is about the friendship/collaboration between Einstein and Godel. Kurt Godel, poor guy, really was a nut who loved Leibniz for reasons that aren't important here, so of course Godel had no use for Voltaire. Godel even claimed (with no evidence) that after Liebniz's death, large parts of his work had been destroyed "by people who did not want mankind to become more intelligent." A friend of Godel's told him that was crap (not in those words), and asked if that was true about Leibniz, then why weren't any of Voltaire's papers destroyed? Godel answered "Whoever became more intelligent by reading Voltaire?" (paperback edition, Basic Books 2005, p.15).
Well....I laughed when I read it. Bill Abendroth (talk) 06:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)