I was born in Western, New York state on July, 28th of 1969. They had just landed on the moon (if you believe that sort of thing - ha ha) a few days earlier and I have always told people that ever since I was young I wanted to be either a physicist or an architect - both vocations having the privilege of thinking about the natural world!
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After completing high school I attended Monroe Community College and SUNY Brockport and picked up a B.S. with majors in Physics and Mathematics. I then went to graduate school at the University of Arkansas, where I studied experimental nonlinear optics with Surendra Singh and wrote my dissertation in theoretical atomic physics (three-body scattering) with Mike Lieber.
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My wife Kathy ("Kat") and I have been married since 1997 and have four beautiful kids (cats): Musashi (a.k.a., "Moose"), Taliesin (a.k.a., "Tally"), Underfoot (a.k.a., "Princess") and Sketches (a.k.a., "Prescious"). The boys are decidely more reserved!
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Princess |
Tally |
Moose |
Precious |
Kat and I enjoy lots of physical activity, including Yoga, swimming and long walks. While in graduate school I took up Tomiki Aikido under sensei Ed Mink (Article) and earned a first-degree black belt certificate (shodan).
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Since that time I have practised many different martial arts including Brazillian (Gracie) Jiu-Jitsu, Pikiti Tersia and Yi-Chaun. I have also taught a few classes of my own at various times and venues that I have come to call, "moving body healing mind." More to come...
I usually tell people that I am a Physicist because I wanted to be a Philosopher but didn't feel that I could
make any money as a Philosopher. Of course now I realize that making money as a Physicist is nearly impossible
too without working for the government! At any rate, the
philosopher in me still reigns and my favorite quote (lately) is the following from Will Durant (my gradfather's favorite philosopher):
"Human knowledge had become too great for mankind. ... All that remained was the scientific specialist, who
knew more and more about less and less, and the philosophical speculator, who knew less and less about more and
more. ... The common man found himself forced to choose between a scientific priesthood mumbling unintelligible
pessimism, and a theological priesthood mumbling incredible hope. ... In this situation the function of the
professional teacher was clear. ... [t]o learn the specialists language, as the specialist had learned nature's,
in order to break down the barriers between knowledge and need, and find for new truths old terms that all
literate people might understand. For, if knowledge became too great for communication, it would degenerate into
scholasticism, and the weak acceptance of authority; mankind would slip into a new age of faith, worshiping at a
respectful distance its new priests; and civilization, which had hoped to raise itself upon education
disseminated far and wide, would be left precariously based upon a technical erudition that had become the
monopoly of an esoteric class monastically isolated from the world by the high birth rate of terminology."
Durant wrote this in 1953 and I think that because science has developed at a pace that was not even imaginable then, it is far more true now. I am of course educated in science but do not really fall into the whole of the scientific view. To me scientism is probably just as "bad" from a logical perspective as fundamentalism is from a spritual perpsective. Though I tend to think that the methods of science may come to the same conclusions as those of the philosopher or priest, that other, more colloquial and personal view of exoeriences is also necessary. In short my philosophy is that we need science and spirit.