User:Skyfaller

- Who I am**

Hi, I'm Nelson Pavlosky, a junior at Swarthmore College. I am a founding member of the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, a campus group inspired by the EFF, Creative Commons, and the Free Software Foundation. You may have heard of me or the SCDC in connection with the Diebold memos, perhaps in this NY Times article. The SCDC was one of the first student groups to host the memos on its website, and I have successfully sued Diebold. We are now trying to jump start an international student free culture movement, with the help of Downhill Battle.

Links:

What I do wiki-wise

So far my contributions to the Wikipedia have mostly consisted of spelling and grammar fixes, but I'm starting to write a few articles here and there when I can, such as:

inner light

I'm also interested in meta-wikipedia issues of how we can get the whole mess to work better.

I also contribute to other Wikimedia under the same name.

Where my username came from

If you're wondering where "Skyfaller" came from, it originates from A Dry, Quiet War, a novelette by Tony Daniel. Basically, it's a synonym for "space marine", specifically a "drop trooper" much like the ones from Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers. The difference is that the "skyfaller" from Tony Daniel's universe is a multi-dimensional being who has come back from the war at the end of time, and cannot be killed in any normal fashion; a skyfaller is not just a man in a powered suit. Check out this little poem from the story (it's admittedly a bit over the top):

The Skyfaller's Scream

They sucked down my heart
to a little black hole
You cannot stab me.

They wrote down my brain
on a hard knot of space,
You cannot turn me.

Icicle spike
from the eye of a star
I've come to kill you.

As you can see, this is perfect a perfect username for playing online combat games :-) Ironically, I am a Quaker.