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About
[Last updated 3/13/2016.]
I am a wildly overeducated Hispanic man who once thought he would have a long, sedate career as an academic; I was diverted into a long, sedate career as a computer consultant to business. My avatar is a photograph of me. I married my eternal love in 1969, but our life together is much better described as eight to ten different marriages in succession as our circumstances have changed. Many hijinks have ensued. Today, life is very good. Tomorrow? Ask me tomorrow.
Interests
I know a fair bit about hard science, and a bit more than that about the soft "sciences." Sociology, psychology, and economics are intellectual pursuits that suffer from what Richard Feynman called "physics envy," i.e., the desire for a fixed set of principles and formulas that apply everywhere and all the time. They aren't; often they're mumbo-jumbo and prejudice dressed up in pseudo-science.
I enjoy thinking about the difference between science and non-science, and with luck, I'll be able to write sensibly about that difference.
Favorite Books
[Duplicated from another site]
Fiction: Catch-22; One Hundred Years of Solitude; Candy; Histoire d'O; Couples; Get Shorty; Devil in a Blue Dress; Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Perdido Street Station, The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency; Bangkok 8; A Handmaid's Tale; Even Cowgirls Get The Blues; Inferno; The Odyssey; Love in the Time of Cholera; and many, many others.
Non-fiction: Gödel, Escher, Bach; The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; The Selfish Gene; The Starry Messenger; The First Three Minutes; The Last Three Minutes; A History of Time; and many, many others.
Favorite Authors
[Duplicated from another site]
Oliver Sacks, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Iain M. Banks, Dashiell Hammett, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, William Butler Yeats, Ogden Nash, Elmore Leonard; Tony Hillerman; John Updike; Carl Hiaasen; Cara Black; Donna Leon; Walter Mosley; John le Carré, China Mieville; Stephen Pinker; Stephen Jay Gould; Sigmund Freud; Galileo Galilei; Douglas Hofstader; Robert Pinksy; Robert Fagles; Gabriel Garcia Marques; Umberto Eco; and many, many others.
Favorite Movies
[Duplicated from another site]
Boom boom, bang bang. Science fiction. Stuff in black-and-white.
Here's a sampler: Casablanca; The Maltese Falcon; Dr. Strangelove; The Producers; Blade Runner; The Deer Hunter; Pennies From Heaven; Cleopatra; Pulp Fiction; Kill Bill (Parts 1 and 2); From Dusk 'til Dawn; 2001; Avatar; Memento; Smiles of a Summer Night; The Pawnbroker; The Godfather II; Eating Raoul; Tank Girl; Barbarella; Training Day; Full Metal Jacket; Seven Samurai; The Magnificent Seven; and many, many others.
Favorite TV Shows
To be completed.
Favorite Music
All music. ALL music.
I am a wildly overeducated Hispanic man who once thought he would have a long, sedate career as an academic; I was diverted into a long, sedate career as a computer consultant to business. My avatar is a photograph of me. I married my eternal love in 1969, but our life together is much better described as eight to ten different marriages in succession as our circumstances have changed. Many hijinks have ensued. Today, life is very good. Tomorrow? Ask me tomorrow.
Interests
I know a fair bit about hard science, and a bit more than that about the soft "sciences." Sociology, psychology, and economics are intellectual pursuits that suffer from what Richard Feynman called "physics envy," i.e., the desire for a fixed set of principles and formulas that apply everywhere and all the time. They aren't; often they're mumbo-jumbo and prejudice dressed up in pseudo-science.
I enjoy thinking about the difference between science and non-science, and with luck, I'll be able to write sensibly about that difference.
Favorite Books
[Duplicated from another site]
Fiction: Catch-22; One Hundred Years of Solitude; Candy; Histoire d'O; Couples; Get Shorty; Devil in a Blue Dress; Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Perdido Street Station, The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency; Bangkok 8; A Handmaid's Tale; Even Cowgirls Get The Blues; Inferno; The Odyssey; Love in the Time of Cholera; and many, many others.
Non-fiction: Gödel, Escher, Bach; The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; The Selfish Gene; The Starry Messenger; The First Three Minutes; The Last Three Minutes; A History of Time; and many, many others.
Favorite Authors
[Duplicated from another site]
Oliver Sacks, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Iain M. Banks, Dashiell Hammett, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, William Butler Yeats, Ogden Nash, Elmore Leonard; Tony Hillerman; John Updike; Carl Hiaasen; Cara Black; Donna Leon; Walter Mosley; John le Carré, China Mieville; Stephen Pinker; Stephen Jay Gould; Sigmund Freud; Galileo Galilei; Douglas Hofstader; Robert Pinksy; Robert Fagles; Gabriel Garcia Marques; Umberto Eco; and many, many others.
Favorite Movies
[Duplicated from another site]
Boom boom, bang bang. Science fiction. Stuff in black-and-white.
Here's a sampler: Casablanca; The Maltese Falcon; Dr. Strangelove; The Producers; Blade Runner; The Deer Hunter; Pennies From Heaven; Cleopatra; Pulp Fiction; Kill Bill (Parts 1 and 2); From Dusk 'til Dawn; 2001; Avatar; Memento; Smiles of a Summer Night; The Pawnbroker; The Godfather II; Eating Raoul; Tank Girl; Barbarella; Training Day; Full Metal Jacket; Seven Samurai; The Magnificent Seven; and many, many others.
Favorite TV Shows
To be completed.
Favorite Music
All music. ALL music.