User:Slrubenstein
Hi. I used to believe I had nothing to say about myself beyond what I contribute to articles, which I hope reflects my knowledge and interests but not my biases, and to talk pages, in which I try to be honest about my biases, especially if someone asks. I still think that as a Wikipedian I am best judged by my work on Wikipedia, although those who now care to, may judge me by what I read and what I watch. Of course, I am always willing to answer a question if you ask me. Anyway, I now believe I can do what so many other Wikipedians have done on their user pages: introduce myself:
 | This Wikipedian is deceased. His user page is preserved here in his memory. Learn more about this Wikipedian at Steven Rubenstein. |
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This is the userpage of Slrubenstein, a great guy and a dedicated and skillful Wikipedian, who contributed more than 30,000 edits to Wikipedia since his first edit on December 12, 2001 to his last on March 1st 2012.
Being a cultural anthropologist by profession he made most of his contributions in areas related to human culture, but he was also a prolific editor in other areas, contributing hundreds of edits to pages such as Jesus, Race and Franz Boas. In the world of academia he was a recognized expert on the culture of the Shuar people of Ecuador, as well as an ardent spokesperson for indigenous rights. He was also a dedicated proponent of free knowledge, and over the 11 years he edited he also made many important contributions to developing the basic policies and guidelines by which Wikipedia operates. He will be sorely missed by the Wikipedia community and by all who knew him.
The tale of the fool, the naif, the adventurer, the wiseacre, may be the best weapon against the myths of the state.
— Steven Rubenstein, 2002.
| This is a Wikipedia user page. This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user whom this page is about may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Slrubenstein. |
Hi. I used to believe I had nothing to say about myself beyond what I contribute to articles, which I hope reflects my knowledge and interests but not my biases, and to talk pages, in which I try to be honest about my biases, especially if someone asks. I still think that as a Wikipedian I am best judged by my work on Wikipedia, although those who now care to, may judge me by what I read and what I watch. Of course, I am always willing to answer a question if you ask me.
Anyway, I now believe I can do what so many other Wikipedians have done on their user pages: introduce myself:
Everyone has one question. For the Little Prince, the question is whether his drawing #1 frightened them. If they answer "Why should I be frightened of a hat?" he knew that they understand nothing.
Here is my question:
- Do you believe that ...
- (CHOOSE ONE: Michaelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or statue of David, the Dome of the Rock, The Gilgamesh Epic, the Iliad, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist, Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Arnold's "Dover Beach," Melville's Moby-Dick, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, Forster's A Passage to India, Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, Greene's The End of the Affair, Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, Fowles's The Magus, Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy (see [1], [2], [3]), Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Ninth symphony, Ellington and Coltrane's Duke Ellington & John Coltrane, and for the cognoscente, Springsteen's "Darkness on the Edge of Town," and Elvis Costello's "Alison")
I think of those people who would answer "no" to my question whenever I read this passage from Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum:
- Idiot. Above her head was the only stable place in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business, not hers. A moment later the couple went off — he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter — their first and last encounter — with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?
There is one other question I think is rather important (actually, I suspect "my one question" is really a corollary of this question, or this question is just a cruder version of "my one question"):
|
Two Poems by Bertholt Brecht
[edit]A Bed for the Night I hear that in New York
At the corner of 26th street and Broadway It won't change the world
It won't improve relations among men Don't put down the book on reading this, man. A few people have a bed for the night
For the night the wind is kept from them |
On the Critical Attitude The critical attitude
Strikes many people as unfruitful Canalising a river
Grafting a fruit tree |
Comments or Questions for me
[edit]Since I have been here people have posted questions and comments to my user page and talk page indiscriminately. I have archived all of this material on this page. But if you wish to make a comment, please do so on my talk page.
The rest of this page is somewhat self-indulgent
Some pages I care about
[edit]Since I started contributing to Wikipedia I have edited a number of pages. However, there are a few where I am especially proud of the research I did in order to contribute to the article:
Articles
[edit]Cultural and historical background of Jesus
Policies and guidelines
[edit]Over the years I have at times put considerable work into:
which I believe have helped maintain the encyclopedic quality of Wikipedia.
Essays on Wiki-Process
[edit]Wikipedia:Advice for new administrators
Wikipedia:The role of policies in collaborative anarchy
The Durova Incident (by JzG) (Note: I care about this very clear-headed and informative analysis of one of the many overblown incidents here that are symptomatic of a whole set of systemic problems at Wikipedia. I did not play any significant role in the incident, and did not write or edit this page.)
The continued harassment of Slim Virgin (an account by the victim) (Note: I neither wrote nor edited this page, but consider it another very instructive example of a crippling weakness of Wikipedia.)
Dealing with harassment on wikipedia by User:JzG
Essays on Wiki-Research
[edit]Advice on researching with Wikipedia
Suggestions for excellent content by User:AndyZ
Librarian's Guide to the way Wikipedia works by User:DGG
Librarian's view of Wikipedia and Reliability also by User:DGG
Some of my favorite books and poems
[edit]Literature
[edit]Unknown
- The Gilgamesh Epic trans. by Herbert Mason
Jewish
[edit]- A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (1997) The University of California Press ISBN 0520212142
- God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1976) Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0374513317
- The Prophets (2001) Perennial Classics ISBN 0060936991
- The Rabbinic Mind (2001) Global Publications at SUNY Binghamton University ISBN 1586840940
- The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (1972) Schocken ISBN 0805203648
- The Star of Redemption (2005) University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 0299207242
Leo W. Schwarz, editor
- Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People (1977) Modern Library ISBN 039460413X
Anthropology
[edit]For the Neophyte
[edit]- Patterns of Culture (1989) Mariner Books ISBN 0395500885
- Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going (1990) Perennial ISBN 0060919906
- Stranger and Friend (1966) W.W. Norton & Company ISBN 0393004104
- Europe and the People Without History (1997) University of California Press ISBN 0520048989
For the Veteran
[edit]- Naven (1958) Stanford University Press ISBN 0804705208
- Race, Language, Culture (1940) The University of Chicago Press ISBN 0226062414
- To Square with Genesis: Causal Statements and Shamanic Ideas in Wayãpí(1989) The University of Iowa Press ISBN 0877452482
Terrence Deacon
- The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain (1998) W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 0393317544
- Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object (2002) Columbia University Press ISBN 0231125771
- The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (1994) University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0816624372
- Rain Forest Exchanges: Industry and Community on an Amazonian Frontier (200) Smithsonian Books ISBN 1560989831
- Village on the Border: A Social Study of Religion, Politics and Football in a North Wales Community (1989) Waveland Press ISBN 0881334855
- The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology (1967) Random House
- The Notion of Tribe (1975), Cummings ISBN 0846515482
- Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico (1975) Bedford/St Martins ISBN 0312073151
- The Mehinaku: The Dream of Daily Life in a Brazilian Indian Village (1980), University Of Chicago Press ISBN 0226307468
Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar
- Laboratory Life (1986), Princeton University Press ISBN 069102832X
- Tristes Tropiques (1992) Penguin Books ISBN 0140165622
- The Dialectics of Social Life (1971) George Allen and Unwin ISBN 0043010490
Yolanda and Robert F. Murphy
- Women of the Forest (1985) Columbia University Press ISBN 0231060890
- Culture and Practical Reason (1978) The University of Chicago Press ISBN 0226733610
- Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity, and Indian Identity in the Southern United States (1994) Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521466695
- Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1983), University of North Carolina Press ISBN 0807841064
- Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (1991) University Of Chicago Press ISBN 0226790134
- The Nervous System (1991) Routledge ISBN 0415904455
- Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (1992) Routledge ISBN 0415906873
- Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (1999) Stanford University Press ISBN 0804732000
D. Lawrence Wieder
- Language and social reality: The case of telling the convict code (1974) Mouton ASIN B0006C9O5E
- Learning to Labor (1981) Columbia University Press ISBN 0231053576
Social Sciences and the Humanities
[edit]- The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (1988) Pantheon Bools ISBN 0394757303
- Ways of Seeing (1995) Penguin Books ISBN 0140135154
- All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1988) Penguin Books ISBN 0140109625
- I and Thou (1971) Free Press ISBN 0684717255
- Music: A Very Short Introduction (2000) Oxford University Press ISBN 0192853821
- On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism (1983) Cornell University Press ISBN 0801492017
- The Origin of Species (2004) Castle Books ISBN 0785819118
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
- Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1983) University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0816612250
- Of Grammatology (1998) Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 0801858305
- Dissemination (1983) University of Chicago Press ISBN 0226143341
- The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921 (2003) Verso ISBN 1859844413
- The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929 (2003) Verso ISBN 1859844464
- The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929-1940 (2003) Verso ISBN 1859844510
- The Wretched of the Earth (1965) Grove Press ISBN 0802150837
- Discipline & Punish : The Birth of the Prison (1995) Vintage ISBN 0679752552
- The History of Sexuality : An Introduction (History of Sexuality) (1990) Vintage ISBN 0679724699
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000) Continuum International Publishing Group ISBN 0826412769
- Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1997) Touchstone ISBN ISBN 0684829460
- Three Case Histories (1996) Touchstone ISBN 0684829452
- The Interpretation of Dreams (1980) Avon ISBN 0380010003
- Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (2000) Basic Books ISBN 0465097081
- Central Problems in Social Theory (1979) University of California Press ISBN 0520039750
- The Best and the Brightest (1993) Ballentine Books ISBN 0449908704
- Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (1997) University of California Press ISBN 0520210409
- We Have Never Been Modern (1993) Harvard University Press ISBN 0674948394
- Jacques Lacan (1991) University of Massachusetts Press ISBN 0870237373
- Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1963) International Publishers ISBN 0717800563
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
- The German Ideology: Including Thesis on Feuerbach (1998) ISBN 1573922587
- The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2002) Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0374528497
- The Passion of Michel Foucault (2000) Harvard University Press ISBN 0674001575
- Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis (2000) Basic Books ISBN 0465046088
- Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1991) Penguin Books ISBN 0140159959
- Beyond Good and Evil (1989) Vintage ISBN 0679724656
- The Genealogy of Morals (2003) Dover ISBN 0486426912
- World Hypotheses: a Study in Evidence (1961) University of California Press ISBN 0520009940
Thirty-nine of my favorite movies
[edit]- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Terry Gilliam)
- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
- The Big Country (William Wyler)
- Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks)
- Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean)
- Biruma no Tategoto (The Burmese Harp) (Kon Ichikawa)
- Cabaret (Bob Fosse)
- City Lights (Charlie Chaplin)
- Cop Land (James Mangold)
- Cradle Will Rock (Tim Robbins)
- Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange) (Jean Renoir)
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick)
- Dr. Zhivago (David Lean)
- La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) (Federico Fellini)
- 8½ (Federico Fellini)
- Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) (Marcel Carne)
- The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
- The Graduate (Mike Nichols)
- Ikiru (To Live) (Akira Kurosawa)
- Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci)
- The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese)
- Little Big Man (Arthur Penn)
- The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
- Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson)
- Moonstruck (Norman Jewison)
- North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock)
- Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)
- Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) (Jacques Demy)
- Pecker (John Waters)
- Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
- Salvador (Oliver Stone)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan)
- Tom Jones (Tony Richardson)
- Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
- I Vitelloni (The Yearlings) (Federico Fellini)
- Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks)
- Z (Costa-Gavras)
Movies I have a soft spot for
[edit]- Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, Wrath of God) Werner Herzog
- Amarcord (I Remember) (Federico Fellini)
- The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
- Die Hard (John McTiernan)
- Excalibur (John Boorman)
- Lili (Charles Walters)
- The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey)
- The Natural (Barry Levinson)
- Network (Sidney Lumet)
- The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
- The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
- Raging Bull (the cure to any chick-flick) (Martin Scorcese)
- Searching for Bobby Fischer (Steven Zaillian)
- Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh)
- Shane (George Stevens)
- The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan)
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Kerry Conran)
- Star Wars (George Lucas)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan)
- The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)
- The Thin Red Line (1998 film) (Terrence Malick) (with Paths of Glory, one of the two greatest war films)
- True Grit (1969 film) (Henry Hathaway)
- Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
- West Side Story (Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins)
- The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
- The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
"Great" movies I hate
[edit]- Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner)
- E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Speilberg)
- Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming)
- Intolerance (D.W. Griffith)
- On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan)
How I learned to hate Chick Flicks
[edit]- An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford)
- Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks)
- Beaches (Garry Marshall)
- Sleeping with the Enemy (Joseph Ruben)
The answers to two common questions
[edit]Tools
[edit]- Wikiblame
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For repeated vandalism by an anonymous IP address, it is helpful to take the following additional steps:
- Trace the IP address (cf. http://dnsstuff.com) and add
{{whois|Name of owner}}to the user talk page of the address. If it appears to be a shared IP address, add{{SharedIP|Name of owner}}or{{SharedIPEDU|Name of owner}}. - For repetitive anonymous vandalism, particularly where registered to a school or other kind of responsive ISP, consider listing it on Wikipedia:Abuse reports.
No RfXs since 00:01, 2 April 2026 (UTC).—cyberbot ITalk to my owner:Online |
Frequently used templates
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This page is often frequented by trolls. Do not feed the trolls by attempting to argue with them. |
Archives
[edit]The Closet
[edit]- User:Slrubenstein/Hey 172!!
- User:Slrubenstein/Case Against CheeseDreams
- Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate
- Fourdee goes down
- Another anti-Semite
- Jagz attracts attention
- What a night! [8], [9], [10]
- Charles Matthews
- User:Noloop
- TechnoFaye crash and burn
- User:Noleander
The Closet Shelf
[edit]User:Slrubenstein/The box on the shelf in the closet
My Sandbox
[edit]- User:Slrubenstein/Sandbox
- User:Slrubenstein/Sandbox/history of Judaism
- User:Slrubenstein/sandbox/covenant code
- User:Slrubenstein/sandbox/Jews and Money
- User:Slrubenstein/sandbox/Economic history of the Jews
My filing cabinet
[edit]- User:Slrubenstein/Jewish authorities
- User:Slrubenstein/Local news
- User:Slrubenstein/NOR
- User:Slrubenstein/Judaism
- User:Slrubenstein/old race
- User:Slrubenstein/molecular genetics
- user:Slrubenstein/Verifiability
I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
| Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0 | ||
| I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under Wikipedia's copyright terms and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides. | ||