chaos theory

I’m a husband, a father of three, a Hampdenite/Medfielder/Baltimoron, a former Long Islander and upstate New Yorker, formerly bi-coastal, a veteran telecommuter, a writer, an editor, a technology pundit, an occasional ceramic artist, a code warrior, a former wire-puller and sysadmin, an early adopter, a beta-tester, a product reviewer, a graphic designer, a left-leaning libertarian (small “l”), a fair-trade coffee connoisseur; a skim-latté-drinking, minivan-owning, electric-guitar-hacking, iPod-listening, Science-Times-reading, digital-photo-taking, cat-caretaking, rat-carcass-scooping, bash-shell-using, Halo-playing over-the-hill poseur.

I am a geek. I am not afraid to break things to find out how they work. That includes politics, religion, and just about everything else. I read science books for fun. I believe in DIY, but I also believe in paying people to do what you’d best leave alone.

I met my wife by placing a personal ad in the City Paper. Its headline was “Thriving on Chaos”. Yes, I know that’s the title of a Tom Peters book. But my whole life had been (and continues to be) about turning over the applecart; he may own the title, but I live it. I could never do yoga. Tension is what keeps me alive.

I’ve cut my coffee habit back to about two cups a day. Being a potter, I made myself a 1-pint coffee cup.

I believe there’s room on the table for both steak and tofu.

I ride a bike when I have time, “urban assault” style. If someone runs over your toes on Charles Street as you come out of New No Da Ji, say hi–it’s probably me. The squirrells of Druid Hill Park know me by my tread pattern.

I am fond of Russian lit in translation. I consider Gogol’s short stories to be light airplane reading.

I used to be a Naval officer. Unfortunately, it took a year in the Navy before I realized that questioning authority was probably not a valued behavior among Naval officers, and that it was my single strongest personality trait. And unfortunately, my first assignment was aboard the most disfunctionally political haze-gray floater in the fleet, the USS IOWA (BB-61). Fortunately, I got to spend the last two years of my obligation to the Navy at the most anti-authoritarian of units (a patrol boat squadron in the Navy’s Special Warfare Command) where I spent time honing the skills that got me where I am today. And they eventually laughed off my Greenpeace bumper sticker.

I don’t fit on a left-right political continuum. I need a few more axes to describe myself. I am registered Independent, even though that means my vote in Baltimore basically doesn’t count.

If you want, for some reason, to find out about my sordid professional history, take a look at my non-resumé resumé.

Why Chaos Theory? Why the butterfly?

I took the picture of the butterfly on the header for this page at Corolla Light, North Carolina, sunning itself on a crumbled asphalt parking lot. It’s here to represent the “Butterfly effect”, the element of (actual) chaos theory that posits that the impact of a butterfly flapping its wings gets multiplied over time, potentially causing a chain reaction in the chaotic system we like to call the weather, eventually resulting in a tornado or hurricane thousands of miles away. It’s also representative of the Lorenz Attractor, a class of strange attractors defined by a set of non-linear equations that model convection in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Being a geek, I am always trying to hack the universe. Chaos theory, quantum physics, string theory, religion, metaphysics; they’re all handles to grab onto when trying to wrap our brains around the biggest questions we deal with, to build our belief systems so we can go about life feeling like we understand what’s going on. The Lorenz attractor is like the wheel of karma–little changes make big things happen. I believe small acts can change the world, and that there are patterns unfolding in the mess on my desk at this very moment.