About Me....
A picture of me along the California coast near Bodega Bay (2007).
Recreation:
I'm currently training for my third running of the California International Marathon in Sacramento (December 5th this year). And yes, I realize this may not sound a lot like "recreation"; but actually, I quite enjoy trail running in particular, and it's nice to have a training schedule to adhere to so as not to succumb to my natural tendency to be lazy. To ensure that I have some sort of nagging injury to plague my marathon training, I also play softball with the "Landsharks" in the Alameda city league --- a team that has had the singular distinction of being mocked by John Madden himself on KCBS radio in the Bay Area (one of the sports journalists working at the station played on our team).
Music:
Although I no longer attempt to make a living being a musician, I still continue to write and produce songs (as time permits!). This task is much easier nowadays with the advent of decent PC-based recording software (e.g., Cubase SX), audio hardware (see, e.g., the M-audio site), and relatively inexpensive digital and analogue synthesizers (as a piano player, I much prefer a nice weighted keyboard for a master controller; I'm currently quite happy with the Yamaha S80 for this purpose). I hope to post some new mp3s soon, but in the meantime, if you are interested, you can check out a couple of tracks from a band I was in in the mid 80's (before the advent of all this home studio technology) called "The Task" (or in its later incarnation, "Dame Fortune"). And remember, this was the 80's....
Miscellaneous Links:
Opinion: Science and Public Policy
In my view, there is an increasing need for the scientific community to become more active in the political process. As a group, we must effectively communicate to policy-makers the relevance of a particular area of research to the national interest and welfare of the general public, and we must better inform the public of scientific consensus (when it exists) --- particularly on politically contentious issues. Fostering serious and ongoing outreach and education programs will help ensure that the public is well-informed about issues relevant to science and society, and not so easily swayed by myopic or uninformed partisan or religious viewpoints disguised as un-biased reporting or reasoned critiques of existing scientific theories. The American Geophysical Union (a professional organization of earth, ocean, atmospheric, space and planetary scientists) has a number of consensus policy statements on topics such as global climate change and teaching evolution that are worth a careful read. The American Association for the Advancement of Science also has a number of useful public policy positions including a statement regarding membership on federal advisory panels.