What does one really say about oneself? I know this is where I'm supposed to put my elevator pitch but aren't we all infinitely more complex and complicated than that? If you genuinely would like to know about me, click here to contact me and let's go grab a coffee or a beer together sometime.
I realize the previous comments aren't very satisfying so, to liven it up, here's a video of me and friends back in Wyoming sometime around 2006-2007 give or take. I'm wearing the blue coat nearest to the camera.
Open in youtube: https://youtu.be/zrwM7qBPtcU
Same trip, different run: https://youtu.be/176qZVR232s
I play chess somewhat frequently. Here's a screenshot from my phone, May 1, 2022. I was proud of getting to a score of 1400.
I am interested in quaise, it's a geothermal energy company. I tried to find a page about it on Facebook and there wasn't one so I created this one: https://www.facebook.com/quaise.energy
I've been interested in fusion for years. When the national ignition facility in Lawrence Livermore California was being built I had high hopes it would figure out fusion ignition. So far they haven't. Now I'm hopeful that commonwealth fusion systems will be successful.
Since it first came out in 2012 I've been interested in crispr and in August 2017 I went to a radical life extension conference in California. I'm pretty excited about genetics. Recent news about it: Saudi Arabia Plans To Spend $1 Billion a Year Discovering Treatments To Slow Aging and: Scientists Claim They've Reversed Aging in Mice
Me and Aubrey de Grey
Raad fest 2017
http://www.sens.org
Me and Liz Parrish
Raad fest 2017
BioViva Science (bioviva-science.com)
What follows is taken mostly from facebook when I filled out their about section as a kid. A lot of it is a stale old snapshot in time of what I thought I was about back then but it's better than nothing.
I value, creativity, informed and educated critical thinking, discovering new concepts, grit in myself and others, either find a way or make one. Fortune favors the bold. Win or lose, we only regret chances we don't take. I care about people, and I value the happiness of others. I'm easy going and always ready to laugh. I enjoy academic conversations about potentially controversial topics; a dialogue not a debate, for me, a discussion isn't an argument to win it's about exploring ideas together.
For more on communication, I like the following ted talk: Daniel H. Cohen: For argument’s sake http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_h_cohen_for_argument_s_sake.html
- The social dilemma on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
- Joe Rogan Experience #1558 - Tristan Harris (social dilema) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OaTKaHKCAFg
- Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
- Constructive journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_journalism
- The great hack documentary on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80117542
Favorite quotes Be more kind than necessary, everyone has their own struggle to face. "We’re here. We should be having fun. If you’re not having fun, well, go have some!" - Mike Brotherton "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Leonardo da Vinci There is a child inside each one of us, who comes out in front of the person we are most comfortable with.
All we really have is control of ourselves. Book quote from owners share by Nathan Lowell One thing we know for certain is that chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort. http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend.html There are two types of people in this world. 1: Those that can extrapolate from incomplete data. - by Seffbasilisk "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists. It is real, it is possible, it is yours." Ayn Rand "The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." - Franklin D. Roosevelt Oglethorpe University Commencement Address (22 May 1932) "...violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers." - Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964 “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt more controversial: Media: "who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behavior. It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it's a handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell." - Dr. George Gerbner Politics: “You have thousands of years of violent tribal instincts pumping through your veins, itching for a fight. That makes you an easy tool for manipulation, and every good politician and pundit knows how to push those buttons to make people march neatly in formation. Don't succumb. Or else you'll start supporting the most bullshit legislation just because your guy is for it. Or you'll start knee-jerk rejecting anything the other "team" proposes. Not because it's bad for the country, but because you want to deny them a "win." It's a poisonous way of thinking. It will lower your IQ, it will rot your ability to think critically about the subjects that really matter. It's bad for you, it's bad for democracy, it's bad for the world. You have to be better and smarter than the person they think you are.” - David Wong https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-spot-b.s.-political-story-in-under-10-seconds/ Economics: "Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings." - Nelson Mandela “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” ― James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America "The owners of America do not want a population of well informed well educated citizens capable of critical thinking." - George Carlin "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." Theodore Roosevelt "The Progressive Covenant With The People" speech (August 1912) "...the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He made this statement in a message to Congress on April 29, 1938, while addressing the dangers of concentrated private power and its potential threat to democracy.