Profile

Affectionate, officially bisexual but in practice queer, Caltech and commune alumnus, comfortable, compulsive, concupiscent, convivial, hospitable, male, malicious, mirthful, misanthropic, neurotic, nonlimerent, reliable, self-centered, sentimental, skeptical, timid, unfashionable.

67 in. (171 cm), 150 lb (10 stn 10 lb, 70 kg), 80 yr; trimmed gray beard; gray hair cut once a year, in the spring. NBCS .B2 t- w- g+ k+ s++ r p.

Freelance copyeditor, work at home, edging into retirement.

Magazines: The New York Review of Books, American Scientist, Harvard, Engineering & Science. Also browse in Science and Nature at the library.

Newsgroups: alt.books.george-orwell, alt.politics.libertarian, alt.usage.english, comp.emacs, gnu.announce, gnu.emacs.announce, gnu.emacs.bug, gnu.emacs.gnus, gnu.emacs.help, gnu.misc.discuss, ne.transportation, rec.music.folk, sci.lang, soc.motss, alt.quotations

Comic strips & cartoons: Dilbert, Doonesbury, For Better or for Worse, Danziger, Pluggers, xkcd, SMBC, Abstruse Goose, Bear with Me.

Mailing lists: copyediting-l, ballad-l, GayCruisinginNewEngland, Boston Bears, BrotherhoodOfBears, etc.

Other Internet haunts: news.google.com, www.mudcat.org, Andrew Sullivan, www.afolksongaday.com, Facebook, reddit, lodginginpublic.blogspot.com, tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com, Language Log

TV: None, ever.

Formative books (roughly in order of first reading them): Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Road to Wigan Pier; Dos Passos, U.S.A.; Koestler, Darkness at Noon, The Age of Longing; Vonnegut, Player Piano; Tolstoy, War and Peace; Warren, All the King's Men; Wiener, Cybernetics; Stewart, Earth Abides, Storm; Burdick, The Ninth Wave; Luce & Raiffa, Games and Decisions; Parkinson, Parkinson's Law; Kornbluth, Syndic; Huie, The Revolt of Mamie Stover; Agee, A Death in the Family; Skinner, Walden Two; Lovejoy & Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity; Kipling, Captains Courageous.

Favorite short stories: Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger; John Collier, Witchs Money; J. J. Coupling, Period Piece; Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp; Chan Davis, Adrift on the Policy Level.

Musical tastes: Sentimental about classical music, but don't have the attention span or empathy to appreciate it as most people seem to. Folk. Popular, up to about 1940.

Places I have lived: southern California, southern Vermont, Scotland, Boston area, Long Island, central Virginia.

Medications: Aspirin, lisonopril.

Prejudices: You had better keep me off the jury if anyone connected with the case engages in peasant agriculture, promotion, high finance, or drug-law enforcement.

I am the most marginal person I have heard tell of. I am attracted to fringe groups (queers, folkies, libertarians) & therein to the fringes of those fringes (bis, bears, singing groups), and even there I don't belong.