Elaine has asked me to include here a statement to the effect that she is an amateur geneologist interested in compiling complete vital statistics on all of the descendants of Henry and Ann Collins, who sailed to Massachusetts from England in 1635 and settled in Lynn, Mass.
My first love among the sciences was and remains astronomy. I am also fascinated by nuclear physics and the wilder and woolier areas of theoretical physics that have developed in the past century, especially quantum chromodynamics, electroweak theory, and such speculative notions as string theory. Combining these interests, of course, i am also interested in cosmology. Unfortunately, while i may have been very gifted in mathematics, at least in my youth, i never got far enough in that field to be able to digest much primary research in the physical sciences. Likewise, although i was very good at chemistry in secondary school i was never terribly keen on the subject beyond a certain point.
Among the biological sciences i was always more interested in zoology than botany, mycology, or any of the other `kingdoms' outside our own. I am a great fan of Stephen Jay Gould and have read almost all his Natural History essays on evolutionary theory.
My interests in the cognitive sciences outside of linguistics are fairly wide-ranging. It might be simplest to say that i'm interested in the entire field and everything in it.
I converted to Christianity in the middle of my undergraduate career after years of intellectual and spiritual struggle, and that circumstance as well as subsequent learning experiences at Kenyon and elsewhere convinced me that a status quo is at best extremely low on God's list of priorities. I therefore have had religious reasons to cultivate a high degree of intellectual flexibility and an openness to having my opinions altered by relevant evidence and persuasion.
As to my denominational affiliation, i am what in this country is called an Episcopalian. This term corresponds to what in most of the rest of the world is called `Anglican', a member of an international sorority of churches that are defined as being directly linked to the Church of England. As to my ecclesiology, i am what is typically called within Anglicanism `High Church' or `Anglo-Catholic': i maintain a highly sacramental point of view (meaning, to oversimplify greatly, that i tend to regard the salvific presence of God as manifest just barely below the surface of everyday life), and enjoy an elaborate liturgy. Unfortunately, within Anglicanism there is further danger of misconstruction, since many statements might lead the unwary to the conclusion that the `Anglo-Catholic' wing tends to be rather conservative or reactionary, opposed to liturgies in contemporary language and/or to the ordination of women and/or homosexuals, whereas i am adamantly in favour of all these things.
With regard to older literature my taste for speculative fiction ties in with my long interest in mythology and legend, and i especially enjoy such traditional themes resurfacing in the works of contemporary writers. I have devoted a lot of time and energy to studying the medieval romance cycles, especially the vast corpus of Arthurian literature, sometimes called `the Matter of Britain', and other Celtic, Germanic, and Classical mythological corpora and their modern representations.
I should mention that i also love stories about `elves' and `fairies', the `little people' whose lives are so much more graceful and elegant than ours. Don't know why i feel the way i do about them, just that for as far back as with can remember i've suffered from a mental condition i call `fairy-longing', a deep desire for such stories to be true.
Among contemporary writers i am currently especially fond of David Brin, James P. Hogan, Katherine Kurtz, and (in spite of her inconsistencies) Anne McCaffrey. And i am a passionate fan of Elfquest.