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What I do, mostly, is teach and do philosophy at
Texas A&M
University. My research interests encompass both the
sacred and the profane: on the one hand, metaphysics and
philosophical logic; on the other, the application of these
to problems of representing and managing information in
engineering and manufacturing systems. Consequently, I spend
a lot of time with engineers, who are generally really nice
people once you get to know them. Before arriving in College
Station, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of
Language and information at Stanford University for
two years. I really liked it there, and was even willing to
chair the philosophy department if they would have let me
stay, but they hired Fred Dretske instead; go
figure. Prior to that I was a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, where
I wrote a dissertation on platonism in set theory with two
exemplary philosophers, Penny
Maddy and Al
Plantinga; please don't read it. It gets
way too cold in Indiana. I graduated with a BA in philosophy
from Pacific Lutheran
University, a small liberal arts college in Tacoma,
Washington, about 30 miles south of Seattle and 50 miles
northwest of Mt. Ranier. I was a music major for one year at
Central Washington
University in Ellensburg just east of the Cascade
mountains, and began as a music major at PLU, but made the
mistake of taking courses in philosophy and mathematics.
Despite abandoning music as a career, I still play the
piano often. My favorite classical composers are Bach
and Brahms,
in that order. I am also a serious jazz fan, and am
especially big on most everything Miles
Davis did between 1959 and 1970. Non-jazz favorites
include Stevie
Ray Vaughan (I live in Texas, after all), Shawn
Colvin, Ricky
Lee Jones, and Steely Dan.
After ten years of jogging started taking its toll on my
knees I took up road
cycling. (Go here
to get information about some nice rides in the area, and here for a peek into my deeper nature).
The Bryan / College Station community supports a robust and
friendly group of riders of various stripes known
collectively as the Brazos Valley
Cyclists. I occasionally race (or some approximation thereof) in
the Masters category (45+ — that’s all I’m
saying) and enjoy training with A&M's powerhouse cycling team. The weather
here is great for cycling, and would make it very hard for
me to leave (like I've got options). I also love
backpacking. Here are some nice
pictures from three hikes taken on an
excursion into the Canadian Rockies with my wife Tazim.
Here are some
more nice pictures of a recent trip we took in the Ansel Adams
wilderness area in the High Sierra in California with our
friends Ed and Susanne (the
photographer). I am also an
Episcopalian (of sorts -- like all good Episcopalians), and
have two exceptional adult children, whose ages I shall not
divulge other than to say that it frightens me that I have
children as old as I do.
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