Wikipedia

DonaldRichardSands

Joined 30 December 2010

This user's email is: don.sands.777@gmail.com


AccountAbility

This booklet provides information on basic bookkeeping for non-profits and outlines the financial accountability requirements of registered charities under the Income Tax Act.

  • "AccountAbility". Legal Resources for the General Public. Public Legal Education Association of Saskatchewan (PLEA). March 15, 2010. ISBN 978-1-926545-22-6. Retrieved 2012-10-29.


Journal

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2012, October 8

These are Elizabeth Hurd's notes for a speech she is to give at the University of Ottawa, October 18, 2012. Her concern is that the promotion of religious freedom and the strengthening of authoritarian religious interests have become one and the same. She refers to the hegemony of religious freedom. It empowers religious leaders at the expense of dissenters, doubters, and those on the margins.

Natural interests

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Dewey Soper Migratory Bird Sanctuary

Bird Studies Canada

Subpages

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User:DonaldRichardSands/Victims Services, Alberta
User_talk:DonaldRichardSands/Operation_Nonook_(Canada)
User:DonaldRichardSands/Community Services Worker
User:DonaldRichardSands/Targeted Initiative for Older Workers
User:DonaldRichardSands/Rwanda agricultural development programs
User:DonaldRichardSands/Adventist Academy Community Service programs
User:DonaldRichardSands/Adventist Academy Missions
User:DonaldRichardSands/Canadian Foodgrains Bank
User:DonaldRichardSands/Arctic food security
User talk:DonaldRichardSands/Centre for Northern Studies (CEN)
User:DonaldRichardSands/Nature list
User:DonaldRichardSands/The Canadian North
User:DonaldRichardSands/Adventist history, Africa
User:DonaldRichardSands/Adventist history, Malawi, Africa
User:DonaldRichardSands/Adventist universities in Africa
User talk:DonaldRichardSands/Malawi Adventist University
User:DonaldRichardSands/Comity (faith groups)

Important online resources
Ideas for future development
Adventism in Africa
The rivers and missions
Nile
Zambesi
Niger
Generations of Adventists, changes and development, examine doctrinal, institutional, congregational, and mission
First generation thought like other Christians on many topics. (1844-1874)
Second generation found more doctrinal support in Old Testament studies. (1874-1904)
Third generation and World missions (1904-1934)
Fourth generation: institutional development in church, health and education. (1934-1964)
Fifth generation: Crisis in doctrine, Hospitals as big business. (1964-1994)
Sixth generation: (1994-present)


In the land of Livingstone

User talk:DonaldRichardSands/Leonard R. Brand drafts/August 16 7:20 article copy
User talk:DonaldRichardSands/Leonard R. Brand drafts

User talk:DonaldRichardSands/NEWSTART

The Adventist Wiki Project

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The Adventist Wiki Project

Stories and Ideas

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Stories and Ideas

A Detailist

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It has been suggested that my involvement with my faith community has caused me to have blinders on making it so I cannot sense the bigger picture. My faith community is an integral part of my life but my tendency to include detail is not because of that. My work on the Letitia Youmans article illustrates this detailist tendency. Youmans had no connection to my faith community, yet my detailing ways are obvious. The main information about her came from an autobiography of hers, alas a primary source. I cut my WP editing teeth with a very patient editor who tried to teach me how a autobiography is problematic. The balance between good information and slanted information is a difficult one to attain for me, as Hrafn and others can attest.

Citations of interest

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Canadiana
Geology
Skepticism
Humanism

This distinctive reappraisal of humanism argues that humanist thought is a diverse tradition which cannot be reduced to current conceptions of it. By considering humanism via the categories of Romantic, Existential, Dialogic, Civic, Spiritual, Pagan, Pragmatic and Technological Humanisms, Halliwell and Mousley propose that the critical edge of humanist thought can be rescued from its popular view as intellectually redundant. They also argue that because these humanisms contain within them anti-humanist perspectives, it is possible to counter the charge that humanism is based upon an unquestioned image of human nature. The book focuses on the thought of twenty-four mainly European and North American thinkers, ranging historically from the Renaissance to postmodernism. It discusses foundational writers (some of whom have been claimed as anti-humanists) such as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Dewey and Sartre as well as the contemporary thinkers Habermas, Cixous, Rorty, Hall and Haraway, to construct a series of provocative dialogues which suggest the ongoing relevance of humanism to issues of ethics, art, science, selfhood, gender, citizenship and religion. Given the range and originality of the book's approach, Critical Humanisms will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers in the Humanities, particularly English, American studies, cultural studies, modern languages, philosophy and sociology.

From Google Books intro

Research ideas
Difficult Biblical Questions


Christian living, historical views
1895
1911
1920*


Origins

Middleton, Eric (207). The New Flatlanders: A Seeker's Guide to the Theory of Everything. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-1-59947-123-5.

In The New Flatlanders, teacher, scientist, and chaplain Eric Middleton challenges traditional ways of looking at reality by engaging readers in a "voyage of discovery starting with questions." The book engagingly begins with a discussion group embarking on an exploratory conversation about the nature of the universe and the place of human beings in it. Daunting questions emerge, such as "How can there possibly be a tear or hole in three-dimensional space? And if there is a hole, can something fall through it? Where would it fall to?" In short order, students and teacher are on a quest to develop a "working theory of everything" that takes them from stone circles to quarks, superstrings, quantum theory, the anthropic principle, evolution, consciousness, miracles, chaos, and the spiritual universe. The key to exploring these questions is finding a language with which to talk about the awe and wonder of today's science alongside the joy of experiencing the spiritual. This is done by interweaving into the discussions the philosophy of "Flatland," a nonreligious entry point to Jesus posited by nineteenth-century clergyman and educator Edwin A. Abbott in his classic parable Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.

Christian Missions

  • Witmer, A. C. (September, 1885). "The Islands of the Sea". The Gospel in all lands. New York, NY: Methodist Episcopal Church Mission Society: 437. Retrieved 2011-11-20. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) (gives statistics for number of deaths reported in New Hebrides)
  • Igler, David (June 2004). "Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770–1850". The American Historical Review. 109 (3). Chicago, IL: American Historical Association: 693–719. doi:10.1086/530552. Retrieved 2011-11-20.

    ... other diseases arrived on non-commercial voyages; missionary activities certainly spread germs, and Spanish conquests had dispersed deadly germs in parts of the Americas and Pacific prior to the late eighteenth century. Yet, for the period between the 1770s and the 1840s, trading vessels were the main agents of disease, creating in the Pacific what Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has called a "paroxysm" of the "microbian unification of the world." By 1850, the microbes of Europe, Asia, and Africa circulated in almost every Pacific population.

Christian media

Religious Concepts

Miracles

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of the Great Plains David J. Wishart U of Nebraska Press, 2004 - Reference - 919 pages

The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains is a cooperative project of the Center for Great Plains Studies and the University of Nebraska Press, with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Nebraska Foundation, and the Nebraska Humanities Council.

The Great Plains is a vast expanse of grasslands stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri River and from the Rio Grande to the coniferous forests of Canada--an area more than eighteen hundred miles from north to south and more than five hundred miles from east to west. The Great Plains region includes all or parts of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

The region, once labeled “the Great American Desert,” is now more often called the “heartland,” or, sometimes, “the breadbasket of the world.” Its immense distances, flowing grasslands, sparse population, enveloping horizons, and dominating sky convey a sense of expansiveness, even emptiness or loneliness, a reaction to too much space and one's own meager presence in it.

The Plains region is the home of the Dust Bowl, the massacre at Wounded Knee, the North-West Rebellion, the Tulsa race riot, the Lincoln County War, the purported Roswell alien landing, and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. From it have emerged furs, cattle, corn, wheat, oil, gas, and coal, as well as jazz, literature, and political reform. It has been inhabited for more than twelve thousand years, since Paleo-Indians hunted mammoth and bison. More recent emigrants came from eastern North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia, resulting in a complex and distinctive ethnic mosaic.

With 1,316 entries contributed by more than one thousand scholars, this groundbreaking reference work captures what is vital and interesting about the Great Plains--from its temperamental climate to its images and icons, its historical character, its folklore, and its politics. Thoroughly illustrated, annotated, and indexed, this remarkable compendium of information and analysis will prove the definitive and indispensable resource on the Great Plains for many years to come.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=rtRFyFO4hpEC

Seventh-day Adventist History

Biblical Covenants

Creation/Evolution

  • Freundel, Barry (2004) [2004], "26, Evolution and Life on Other Planets", Contemporary Orthodox Judaism's response to modernity, Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, p. 242, ISBN 0-88125-778-8 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help) Freundel writes: "while it is true that some important Jewish thinkers take a creationist approach-"it all began in six days of twenty-four hours"-many do not."
  • Webb, George E. (1994). Evolution Controversy in America. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. p. 171. ISBN 0-8131-1864-6. (Webb discusses the November 9, 1972 California State Board of Education meeting on creationism. Webb mentions SDA John Ford, a member of the Board.)
  • Roth, Ariel A.; Leonard R. Brand (February 15, 1973). "The Truly Scientific Approach" (PDF). Review. 150 (7). Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Assoc: 4, 5. Retrieved 18-11-2011. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) (California State Board of Education hearing re: including creation as a theory of origins along with evolution.)
  • Brand, Leonard (March 16-22 2008). "Intelligent Design: Friend or Foe for Adventists?" (PDF). Institute for Christian Teaching. 4th Symposium on the Bible and Adventist Scholarship. Riviera Maya, Mexico: General Conference of Seventh-day Adventsts Education Department. pp. 1–8. Retrieved 2011-11-20. {{cite conference}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)

Creation/Evolution Thought Leaders

Editing to learn, Wikipedia as a writing club

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Wikipedia functions like a writing club. Opportunities for meaningful writing abounds and there are many writers with impressive experience ready to help the novice improve. Also, if a person wants to learn more on a particular topic, editing at Wikipedia is like working on a term paper produced by a team. The "paper" remains a rough draft until it is declared a "good article" or a "featured article." The stress is on what reliable sources say about the topic. The learning begins as one reads those sources. Then the editor meshes the ideas of the sourced material with the Wikipedia article. In this process, learning occurs; both on the topic at hand and in the the very process of writing.

Taking things in stride

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 Slap me with a trout if necessary. Go ahead; whack away!

Wiki Bullying

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In the eleven months I have been here, a significant minority of editors seem to be bullies. I have learned to distinguish between what I call a Wiki Dutch Uncle and a bully. Perhaps we need to define bullying. Wikipedia has two important policies: No Personal Attacks and Be civil to each other. The NPA policy deals with extreme cases. I don't think I have ever been personally attacked that way. The civility policy is one of the WP five pillars.

Wiki Etiquette

Wikipedia is like a school playground

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On the school playground some students play together, some alone. Some get along well, others get into fights. Some intimidate, others tattle-tale. The noticeboards are intended to be a place where conflicts can be addressed. I have only sought conflict resolution once. On the Wikipedia playground, there are no teachers. Some editors of experience are highly regarded and their counsel makes a positive difference. When fights occur on this playground, the conflict can be taken to a formal "committee" for counsel and decision.

Background

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I have been editing here at Wikipedia for only a short time. There certain things I like about this community:

  • It works on the Consensus model. This creates a motivation to discuss. When people discuss, they become somewhat acquainted with each other. This in turn leads to a sense of community.
  • Editing a disputed article is like a university level term paper produced by a team. Fellow students of all levels from freshmen to seniors help edit the work and give advice. one difference is that there is no deadline, usually. If it is an article for deletion AfD, there are two teams. One team wants to save the article from deletion and the other wants to make sure that it gets deleted. If the 'Delete' doesn't get involved at all, except to nominate the article, then after seven days even one of the students can decide to save the article.

Wikipedia Adventures

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I first came to Wikipedia with a very naive idea. I had just enough of the historian in my blood that I favored primary sources over secondary ones. I scorned secondary sources as inferior. My first serious attempt at editing was the Graham Maxwell article. For most of the citations, I used a wonderful archive with thousands and thousands of links to church journals. Long before the Internet, these journals served like Facebook does today, especially the letters to the editor and incidental information about who was visiting whom. I guess those journals are a mixture of primary and secondary sources. I found over forty journals which spoke of Maxwell. Most of the information were simple facts about him. There was no need for synthesis; and I avoided any attempt at such. My first accolade for work done came from someone who liked my work on that article.

My next major attempt was an article on the Canadian school teacher and temperance leader Letitia Youmans. I actually start the article, the first one for me. This brought my first serious encounter...

I met most of my colleagues here by discussions/disputes on the Southern Adventist University page. My faith community has established an archival system containing thousands and thousands of documents mostly church journals and books. This resource is world-class, IMO. The Graham Maxwell article illustrates how I like to work with an article using the church archives. Some have suggested that a church journal is not an independent source when editing about a church topic. I contend that it depends on how the material is used. My church's journals seldom criticize members of the church. For controversial figures, the coverage is unbalanced, or non-committal. They are biased toward the mother organization. Many of these same journals have editors who practice publishing only after making sure the facts given are reliable. In non-controversial matters, they are a powerful resource.

Further to church journals. Graham Maxwell in his retirement years became a source of controversy within the church. I tried to find reliable sources which discussed the problem and found very little. One argument from silence. The church usually publishes obituaries of their professors, etc. I have looked an looked for a church published obituary for him and can find nothing.

My first attempt to save an article was with the Generation of Youth for Christ article. The attempt succeeded.

My current attempt to save an article is with the Leonard R. Brand article. Brand does sound scientific work but not that significant. I view him as one of the many rank and file scientists who add to our ever-growing body of knowledge of science. He has contributed to published works on Shearwaters, Chipmunks, Cactus Mice, Whales in Peru, Salamander tracks comparing lab studies with field fossil studies in the Grand Canyon, whale fossils in Peru, and turtle fossils in Wyoming. His Wyoming study has led him into the field of cartography, map-making. The Wyoming geological survey cites his contributions to the maps of Wyoming.

Primary and Secondary Sources

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My next major attempt was an article on the Canadian school teacher and temperance leader Letitia Youmans. I actually start the article, the first one for me. This brought my first serious encounter with an advisor. Cactus Writer kindly asked me to explain my thinking re: primary sources. The main source for Letitia Youmans was her autobiography. She wrote things about herself that no one else would know or report upon. Of course...

More later...

A Suggested Wikipedia Philosophy (modified)

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In discussion with a mentor, I have come to adjust my view of the following. The difference is that admins and non-admins are equals. Admins can actually 'push buttons' in order to solve problems caused by non-editors. Admins have management rights, not commanding rights. That being said, here is what I wrote earlier:

Administrators are like Commissioned Officers. Non-admin editors with special tasks and privileges are like non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel are the other non-admin editor. I am on the rank of other personnel. The ones who I have strongly disagreed with could be ranked as 'other personnel' as well. This is true for many who agree with me on things, as well.

Something to do:

Find out who among the Commissioned Officers, the WP admins, have experience on articles dealing with the Creationst-Naturalistic Science articles. Get their advice. This is best to do when there is no dispute roiling. One editor has cautioned me against admin-shopping. I agree, though I am not sure what admin-shopping is. It is probably where an editor in dispute canvasses editors he likes to help him win a dispute. The 'help me' tag, in such instances, keeps the helping process random.

Life Adventures and Wikipedia Articles

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Toronto Reference Library

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The Toronto Reference Library, along Yonge Street, provides an amazing collection of books, otherwise difficult to find. There are close to 100 books discussing creationism. The first floor is mainly computers available to patrons and a large television projection screen. They were showing the funeral of Jack Layton.

Toronto Music Garden

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The Toronto Music Garden locates along the Toronto harbourfront; right near the Harbourfront Centre. It honours Yo Yo Ma and his musical creativity.

 
 
 
 

Peterborough Lift Lock

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Recently, we visited Peterborough and took the brief cruise on the Trent Canal up to the Peterborough Lift Lock. The technology of that lock is impressive.

QiGong

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Anyone here know about QiGong?

Yesterday, I noticed this middle-age man sitting in a prominent section of lawn near city hall sitting cross-legged with hands in a yoga-like prayer position. He seemed friendly and I have been in a conversant mood lately, with everyone, so I stopped and sat with him, and we talked.

He said he noticed my energy, my interest in things and my tension; a very observant fellow. As people walked by, they would often say hi to him, and/or he to them. The lawn was along a busy pedestrian thoroughfare. I observed his sensitivity to people and was really impressed. I told him about my conversant mood/lifestyle and about my recent wonderful visit to the Toronto waterfront, Queens Quay, the Yo Yo Ma Music Garden, etc. Be careful of downtown Toronto, he warned, some people don't like talking and they may get violent towards you. (Sounds like some people at Wikipedia, lol. ) Advice noted. Anyway, here is the lead from the Wikipedia article about the discipline:

Qigong or chi kung (气功) is the Chinese philosophy and practice of aligning breath, physical activity and awareness for mental, spiritual and corporeal health, as well as the development of human potential.[3] It includes aspects of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chinese martial arts[4], Daoism and Buddhism and thus purportedly the spiritual awakening to one's true nature.[5]

The first part sounds like part of what my faith community calls its "health message". The last part sounds eclectic; a gathering of oriental thought and practice.

Any thoughts? I have started a discussion on my talk page. DonaldRichardSands (talk) 16:27, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Two birds, urban wetlands, deer and apples

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I walked Thickson's woods nature reserve[1]. Saw a flash of blue, the flutter of a brown denizen of the woods, stark contest between urban and natural, deer layings.

  1. ^ A Guide to Thickson's Woods: A treasure chest of biodiversity, retrieved August 18, 2011

A time and place for everything: conversing

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My Wikipedia experiences during the first half of August 2011 focused on an attempt to rescue the Leonard R. Brand article from deletion. It was an intense time. Meanwhile, in my 'real' life, I had begun to get into this really chatty, conversant lifestyle. It was fun (for me), but tiring. Well, the article was saved for now. The closing admin recommended that another nomination for deletion could be raised in two months, or so. The evening before his decision, three editors had cautioned me about writing so much on the Brand AfD page. The closing admin mentioned how hard it was to read through all my edits. (He did not mention me by name which is a WP courtesy.) So from this, I have learned that there is a time and place for everything. I will state it this way:

Do not be conversant about life on notice boards.

This makes sense. Other people have to read those boards to solve a Wikipedia concern. They don't want a lot of story-telling and philosophizing about life in general. So, I have resolved not to converse about life on notice boards or talk pages of articles. I will use this user page or my talk page, a new section, to philosophize. If we meet here on Wikipedia and you find my conversing about life annoying, just tell me, and on that venue I will honor your concern.



Discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette assistance#User:####

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  You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette assistance#User:Hrafn. – Lionel (talk) 16:36, 26 August 2011 (UTC) – Lionel (talk) 16:36, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  • Lionel, I guess I need to look at my own user page more often. Here is the record of concern re: Hrafn.
http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikiquette_assistance&diff=prev&oldid=446864772#User:Hrafn
Eventually, Hrafn bowed out of editing the Leonard R. Brand article. My editing approach was affecting his health, he reported. I found Hrafn to be a very tough-minded editor with excellent editorial judgment but lacking in WP civility. That being said, I would rather have him involved in the articles I work on. He has some helpful insights. DonaldRichardSands (talk) 19:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Projects

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 This user participates in
WikiProject Creationism.
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