evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, consilience, memetics, cultural evolution, economics, anthropology, primatology, neuroscience, positive psychology, cosmology, TOEs (Theories of Everything), global travel
beautiful people
metal
documentaries, ethnographic films, foreign films, rebel films -- network, the graduate, harold and maude, natural born killers, fight club, the deer hunter, taxi driver, apocalypse now, one flew over the cuckoos nest, in the realm of the senses, the hand (a segment from Eros), samsara, closer, children of paradise, weekend, lawrence of arabia, elephant, last days, my own private idaho, l.i.e., the piano teacher, saw, ichi the killer, full metal jacket, platoon, broken flowers, conan the barbarian, suicide club, battle royale, mulholland drive, requiem for a dream, beyond the call, saw 4, lions for lambs
the news. i don't really know what else is going on in tv. i've barely watched it the last 5 years.
Nietzsche, E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Robert Wright, Desmond Morris, Thorstein Veblen, Thoreau, Ayn Rand, Dostoyevsky, Robert Pirsig, Robert Greene, and books written by many others
I don't think anyone is perfect, but I admire things about lots of people. Mark Mancall, one of my Stanford professors, left a big impression on me. So did reading Nietzsche.