I am a 30-year-old composer, writer, teacher, guitarist, and single-speed bike freak.
My interests are fairly broad. Foremost, I am a musician and composer who writes 1) progressive guitar-oriented metal and 2) contemporary chamber music. But I am also a teacher - I teach Music Theory, Music History and Integrative Arts at Penn State's Altoona campus - an author, a journalist, a husband, a soon-to-be father and an XC single-speed bicycle enthusiast. I am an avid blogger both here at myspace and at "Forms Most Beautiful" where I keep a blog. You can read the one here or there.
Currently I am most interested in the way that science, philosophy, religion, and to some extent the arts, have shaped our history. I am not very interested in economic forces in politics but in how memes have changed through history and what forces are at play now and how we ought to shape some and eliminate others.
The world is being gripped more and more by the terror of theocratic thinking and action. Unfortunately, the United States has too many Christian literalists with their own agenda of Salvation+Oil+American Destiny=Armageddon and the Arab world and its constituent allies have ideas about the Islamization of the earth. If there is one thing I can agree with Rick Santorum about (man it hurts to say that) it's that the modern Islamic world is anti-modern. But that is where my agreement with Santorum stops because he is the "civilized" Christian side of the same coin - Islamo-fascism's biggest ally in the creation of a global Third World Dark Ages is the United States government under the shadow theocracy of G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. This has to stop.
Therefore, I devote my free time to the study and exercise of reason, learning about history and the best ways to defend and promote freedom. As it turns out, the liberal (not politically liberal) education is the best way to do that. All people need to learn about the math, science, their language, their history and the broader international and cosmological history. All of my reading and writing and learning and living have led me to believe that we live in a world with no god or gods in it and that we human beings must make the best of the circumstances we have. We must do the best because we believe in inherent good, not because of authority.
The Rev
I strongly encourage all of my visitors to click on the Richard Dawkins link on the opposite side of this page, Point of Inquiry, and the others.
