User:Xenonts
Hello! I'm Xenonts. I have been using Wikipedia for as long as I can remember,[citation needed] but I created my account in 2018. I wanted my user page to include various interests of mine, and I think it has essentially become a compendium of subjects I find intriguing. The main body of this page is under the "Wikipedia articles I find interesting" heading.
I am originally from Morris County, New Jersey (which falls in the region of North Jersey), in the United States, but am currently attending college in Ohio.
A bit more about me
[edit]If you're reading this far then you'd seemingly like to know a bit more about me as a person, but I don't wish to go too in depth on my personal life for presumably unsurprising reasons. However, below are some more general things (in no particular order) which I don't mind sharing. Also, please note that I’m not one to subscribe to labels of identity as a primary point to get to know someone and that I generally describe myself more by my interests.
- I'm currently studying environmental science in college
- My dream job would be to conduct research in the field of planetary geology
- I am almost always a visual editor of Wikipedia, as I'm not someone who is great with coding or similar conventions
- I am a bisexual man
- Sto studiando un po' l'italiano, ma non sono ancora fluente nella lingua!
- I consider myself an agnostic atheist
- I am a humanist and very much an optimist (or, more specifically, a secular agathist)
- My personal philosophy is, in a very basic sense, that society always trends towards good.
If you want to know about some more specific interests of mine, feel free to read some of the sections below.
Some of my central interests
[edit]- Americana
- Astronomy
- Baseball, as a fan of the New York Yankees
- Carl Sagan's works, including my favorite book, Pale Blue Dot
- Cartography/Geography
- Environmental science, as mentioned above
- Film photography; I mainly shoot with 35mm on an early 1950s Kodak Retina Ia
- Hiking
- History in general, but right now, particularly American history in the latter half of the 19th century (i.e., the Civil War and Gilded Age periods) as well as the mid-20th century
- Listening to music; I listen to many genres of music, but my favorite is probably classic rock
- My favorite band is Chicago, but my other favorites include the Beatles (and all four's solo work), Blood, Sweat & Tears, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and Phil Ochs.
- Playing instruments; I play several saxophones, and main the soprano saxophone, as well as low clarinets, my favorite of which being the alto clarinet
- Seinfeld
- Time as a concept
- Statistics
- Vexillology
Specific interests of mine
[edit]Some of my favorite books
[edit]- If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan (as mentioned above)
- The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
- What If? by Randall Monroe (I'm a big fan of his webcomic, xkcd, as well!)
Some of my favorite movies
[edit]- Bonnie and Clyde, 1967
- Dead Poets Society, 1989
- The General, 1926
- The Godfather, 1972
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 1966
- Stand by Me, 1986
Some of my favorite music albums
[edit]- 1984, Van Halen, 1984
- Abbey Road, the Beatles, 1969
- Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses, 1987
- Blood, Sweat & Tears, Blood, Sweat & Tears, 1968
- Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Transit Authority, 1969
- Chicago II, Chicago, 1970
- John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon, 1970
- Revolver, The Beatles, 1966
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles, 1967
- Time Out, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, 1959
- Wings at the Speed of Sound, Paul McCartney and Wings, 1976
Some of my favorite video games
[edit]- Deliver Us the Moon
- The Forgotten City
- L.A. Noire
- Minecraft
- Okami
- Railway Empire
- Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II
- The Wii series, with Wii Sports Resort being my favorite game in the series
Quotes I find memorable
[edit]- "For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance, but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him." (Matthew 13:12; c.first century AD)
- "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." —Jaques, (William Shakespeare, c.1599)
- "The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture." —Joseph Addison (1711)
- ”Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.” —Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892)
- "Because it's there." —George Mallory in response to being asked why he wanted to summit Mount Everest (1923)
- “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” —Jonas Salk (1960s?)
- "And that's the way it is." —Walter Cronkite's nightly news closing (first said c.1963?)
- "Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right." —Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)
- "And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." —Paul McCartney (1969)
- "It isn’t all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.” —Gene Roddenberry (1975?)
- "Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have." —Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption II, 2018)
- “You either have a mass spectrometer or you have a spouse.” —An environmental science professor of mine who notably has both (c. 2022)
Wikipedia articles I find interesting
[edit]Lastly, since this is Wikipedia, I think it's fitting for me to include a (very) long list of articles on various topics I've found intriguing over the years, not including ones I've already mentioned; essentially, the following is a list of articles I find cool and would recommend reading at some point either because they're very well written or explain particularly interesting concepts.
The list is in the process of being broken down into different categories for easy browsing. Some articles may fit into more than one category; in these cases, they have been sorted into the category I feel best represents the article. The categories are partially based on Wikipedia's content categories.
Formal sciences
[edit]Human geography, history, politics, and culture
[edit]- 1967 March on the Pentagon
- Aleutian Islands World War II National Monument
- Antarctica during World War II
- Atka B-24D Liberator
- Atlanticism
- Aviation in the pioneer era
- Balloonfest '86
- Battle for Mexico City
- Battle of Cuddalore (1783)
- Belle Époque
- Canyon de Chelly National Monument
- Cape to Cairo Railway
- Central Park be-ins
- Childlore
- Christmas truce
- City of Greater New York
- City-state
- Common heritage of humanity
- Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir
Language, literature, writing, and symbology
[edit]- All the world's a stage
- Ampersand
- Anadrome
- Anglo-Frisian languages
- Antiqua–Fraktur dispute
- Breviograph
- The Brick Moon
- Calque
- Canadian raising
- Chess annotation symbols
Music
[edit]Instruments and music creation
[edit]Music consumption, theory, and analysis
[edit]Natural sciences
[edit]Biological and life sciences
[edit]Physical sciences
[edit]- 1639 transit of Venus
- 1973 Concorde eclipse flight
- Aerobot
- Aeronomy
- Airborne observatory
- Albedo
- And yet it moves
- Armalcolite
- Atlantic coastal pine barrens
- Atmosphere of Earth
- Atmosphere of the Moon
- Atmosphere of Pluto
- Atomic clock
- Beach wrack
- Blake Plateau
- Blood Falls
- Blowhole (geology)
- Boeing YAL-1
- A Boy and His Atom
- Brackish water
- Chirality
- Cold seep
- Colonization of the Moon
- Color temperature
- Cryptic (geology)
Philosophy and religion
[edit]Specific places on Earth
[edit]Sports
[edit]U.S. territory and statehood
[edit]Visual arts, art movements, and architecture
[edit]Miscellaneous and highly intersectional topics
[edit]Cultural impact of the Beatles
Data and information visualization
Dizzy Gillespie 1964 presidential campaign
Escape attempts and victims of the inner German border
Extreme trans-Neptunian object
Flag of the Green Mountain Boys
Flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict
Glossary of environmental science
Glossary of jazz and popular music
High-altitude nuclear explosion
Historical regions of the United States
History of timekeeping devices
History of the United States (1789–1815)
History of the United States (1865–1917)
History of the United States (1964–1980)
John Brown's Provisional Constitution
John McConnell (peace activist)
Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania
L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat
Large denominations of United States currency
List of artificial objects on the Moon
List of artificial radiation belts
List of chemical compounds with unusual names
List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience response
List of European tropical cyclones
List of historical unrecognized states
List of medieval abbreviations
List of musical works in unusual time signatures
List of nicknamed Major League Baseball games and plays
List of photographs considered the most important
List of regions of the United States
List of state partition proposals in the United States
List of tautological place names
List of unsolved problems in physics
List of visionary tall buildings and structures
A man was lynched yesterday flag
Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone
Memoirs of the Twentieth Century
My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love
Names of the American Civil War
Neoabolitionism (race relations)
New York – New Jersey Line War
Non-numerical words for quantities
Obsolete denominations of United States currency
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
Photographers of the American Civil War
Physics beyond the Standard Model
Political geography of Nineteen Eighty-Four
San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth
Shooting an apple off one's child's head
Solar eclipse of July 28, 1851
South Atlantic tropical cyclone
Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest
Superseded theories in science
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana
United States Antarctic Program
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
Uncategorized (to fit into later list)
[edit]List of chemical element naming controversies
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
External links
[edit]Firstly, here's the link to my user page on Wikimedia Commons, but please note that it currently only links back to this page.
Here are some other websites outside of Wikipedia that I find interesting. Please note that I have no affiliation with any of them.
- earth.nullschool.net—a real-time visualization of certain climate data on Earth
- isitfridayyet.net—I’ll let you figure out this one yourself
- shademap.app—an interactive map that shows the locations of shadows on Earth
In closing
[edit]Thank you for reading this far! I'd like to leave you with a quote from Carl Sagan, which also happened to be my senior yearbook quote in high school:
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." (1980)
~~~
Cent'anni!