I read like I'm going blind. Everything listed here, I have read at least once.

I am a secular-humanist, a literate consumer of science, a bibliophile, and an autodidact. I am 6'3" / 200lbs and I have the worst farmer's tan you will ever see.
I work as an internet mechanic at a webhosting company in North Scottsdale where I stay up...more »

I read like I'm going blind. Everything listed here, I have read at least once.

I am a secular-humanist, a literate consumer of science, a bibliophile, and an autodidact. I am 6'3" / 200lbs and I have the worst farmer's tan you will ever see.
I work as an internet mechanic at a webhosting company in North Scottsdale where I stay up late at night and program when I'm not talking to India.


Kurt Vonnegut once wrote of artists (and especially writers) as being like canaries carried into the mineshaft to warn of carbon monoxide poisoning. When the artists start screaming, it should be a clue that something in the world needs our urgent and honest attention, lest it become become a cluster-f*** of human tragedy. Orson Wells - "1984" is an artist screaming. And we are no longer listening because "The Simple Life" is back from the commercial break.

Steven Pinker - "The Blank Slate" should be a requirement for graduating college. Together with "Obedience to Authority" it answered many of my questions regarding human actions, and gave me a position of Hobbesian cynicism.

"Catcher in the Rye" struck a resonant chord with its illustration of Holden Caulfield: An aimless youth who is neither wise nor virtuous. Whose honest observation of others around him is giving rise to his own pessimism about people. Through all his malcontent he is balanced by his altruism, his love for his younger sister and his plain spoken appreciation for little things that few think about. A independent and self-satisfying moral sense serves to wrap it all up into a slightly neurotic personality with a good heart. I was once Holden. I still am in some ways.
I even detest Hollywood.

"Diaspora" gave me a glimpse of the future that I wish to work towards. « less