CURRENT MISSION

learn, learn, learn

ABOUT ME

I am academic, eccentric, serious and silly. I can be very earnest about issues of social justice, humanism and democracy, but in world-view tend towards light-hearted absurdity and satire.

I live in a funky old one room building at my parents place, located on 6.6 acres of land way out in the Sonoran desert of the Tucson mountains -- we're about ten miles (16 kilometers) west of the city of Tucson (the city of Tucson is kind of a sprawling mess, as cities in the southwest U.S. tend to be, so it’s hard to say where the city ends and the countryside begins, but we're about 10 miles from the nebulous “center” of the city).

You can see some of my photography and where I was working last summer on my much neglected blog.

Here is what I'm up to this summer.

You can see my adoptive village and one of the cool projects I worked on here.

PHILOSOPHY

Now that's a loaded question... How to answer such a thing other than to live life and figure it out as you go? But... If this helps... Secular-humanist/atheist; lover of both science and art; believer in the power of logic, but aware of it's uselessness in solving the current challenges to "the good life" for the people of this world without a strong set of ethical premises; and: this is the only life we'll ever get, so we'd better make the damned best of it we can--I think it's a moral obligation, of sorts...

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Contact us if you need bed(s), a big soft couch, and/or flat places for sleeping (the roof of the main house is a lovely place to sleep; very good star-gazing).

Also, if I have time I'd be happy to show folks around the area; I was born here, so I know it quite well.

Unfortunately, a car is essential for travel out where we live, so you'll either need a rental, or be willing to be stuck out in the desert (it is a beautiful desert though) or be dropped of and picked up in town at the whim of our current work/study schedules.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

A good bit. I joined couchsuring.org in May of 2008 for a trip to Chihuahua and the Sierra Madre Occidental. Since then I have hosted a fair number of people, and have used couchsurfing in the U.S., Mexico, Bolivia, and Peru.

visited 9 states (4%)Create your own visited map of The World or Like this? try: Visited Countries

Interests

Everything really, although jurisprudence doesn't seem to capture my interest as much as most other things...

Especially: hiking and backpacking; rock-climbing; dual-sport motorcycling; molecular biology; ecology; evolutionary biology; yoga; prose and poetry; music; gourmet cooking; Latin American studies; development and comparative economics; sustainable agriculture; progressive social activism, organization and movements; history of the Americas; water harvesting and desert agriculture; soil science, terra preta soils, and carbon sequestration; plant genetics and breeding; the effects of agronomic developments on human nutrition; solar-tank tilapia aquaculture; natural resource management; energy policy and biomass energy production (e.g. biodiesel synthesis, bacterial methane production, thermal depolymerization, etc.).

• arts
• poetry
• photography
• dining
• cooking
• yoga
• gardening
• traveling
• pottery
• blogging
• music
• violin
• hiking
• backpacking
• atheism
• sports
• rock climbing
• agriculture
• biology
• ecology
• economics
• genealogy
• history
• logic
• mathematics
• science
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Books-

Favorite Fiction: everything ever written by Barbara Kingsolver, but especially The Poisonwood Bible; Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin series (because really, can you ever have too much Royal British Navy/Napoleonic wars historical fiction?); everything by José Saramago; J.R.R. Tolkein; Juan Rulfo's Los Llanos en Llamas and Pedro Páramo; Casa de los Espíritus by Isabel Allende; The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuinn; and of course 1984 by George Orwell, although it has to be one of the most depressing books ever written.

Everything by Eduardo Galeano, whose work is sometimes non-fiction, sometimes quasi-fiction/satire/poetry...

Non-fiction: Textbooks (sad, eh?); One River, by Wade Davis; Mollie's Job, by William M. Adler; Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond; everything by Bill Bryson, but especially A Walk in the Woods, and A Short History of Nearly Everything; most everything written by Richard Dawkins, especially The Extended Phenotype and The God Delusion; Whither Socialism? by Joseph Stiglitz, economist extraordinare; After Capitalism, by David Schweickart.

Books I hate: everything by Jean Auel and Ayn Rand...also, I hate Ishmael by Daniel Quinn; sorry, all you Ishmael fans...some of the conclusions are ok, the premises and argumentation...ugh!

Movies-

Baraka
Black Cat, White Cat
I Heart Huckabees
Omohide Poro Poro
Amelie (how can you not love it?)
Delicatessen (ditto)
The Fisher King
Brazil (Terry Gilliam's directors cut, of course...first time I saw it, I laughed and was happy; after that, it's made me sadder each time)
The Triplets of Belville
Everything ever produced by Miyazake and Studio Ghibli
Mar Adentro
The Science of Sleep
City of God (Cidade de Deus)
Empire of the Sun
The Big Lebowski
O Brother Where Art Thou?
La Promesse
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Bicycle Thief
and of course, The Icicle Thief
The film adaption of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (and Stoppard's orginal play also, of course, a favorite).
Kenneth Branagh's film adaption of Much Ado About Nothing
Every documentary ever produced by David Attenborough, but especially The Private Life of Plants, The Life of Birds, and, of course, Planet Earth.

I hate: just about everything Disney has ever produced, except Fantasia...

Music-

Western classical, Chinese and Indian classical, traditional and (some) pop music from all over the world: Celtic, bluegrass, old-time, folk, 60s, etc. I especially like: Susana Baca, Shakira (her non-English stuff), Tori Amos, Kevin Johansen, Cesaria Evora, Rita Ribeiro, the Putumayo albums Samba Bossa Nova, Brasileiro and Acoustic Brazil...and all kinds of other stuff. However, I dislike most U.S. pop music...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Sorry, I'm gonna list a bunch of things...

Being a student for 12 years (ages 5-17) at Kino School in Tucson, AZ, USA. Being a student for 5 years at The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, WA, USA. Living in the tiny village of Yunguilla in the Ecuadorean highlands north of Quito, and helping the community build an artisan studio/ceramics workshop. Growing a garden in the desert where we live. Building a 8+ thousand gallons (30,000+ liters) rainwater harvesting system for the garden. Teaching science and math for 2 years at Kino School. Growing/breeding tilapia for food. Learning Spanish, Portuguese, and Esperanto. Learning about this amazing, crazy, wonderful, horrible, awe-inspiring world in which we all live and die.

Teach, Learn, Share

Anything and everything...should be evident from above info...however, things I might be especially good at TEACHING: Spanish, Portuguese, and/or Esperanto (oh, and English too, I suppose...); rock climbing; desert gardening and water harvesting; the Asian game of go/weiqi/baduk; cooking (especially Indian); photography (especially dealing with digital SLRs and RAW file manipulation in Adobe's CameraRaw); violin; and general wackiness.

Oh, and if anyone needs professional/archival prints of their digital photography and/or digitized artwork, let me know!

Countries I’ve Visited

Bolivia, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay

Countries I’ve Lived In

Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, United States

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