...Extropians seem pretty cool, though I don't call myself one. I like their principles a lot. I also like monkeys.
One of the most severe of all problems of evidence interpretation is that of trying to interpret all the confusing signals from the outside as to who one is. In this case, the potential for intralevel and interlevel conflict is tremendous. The psychic mechanisms have to deal simultaneously with the individual's internal need for self-esteem and the constant flow of evidence from the outside affecting the self-image. The result is that information flows in a complex swirl between different levels of the personality... in an attempt to reconcile what is, with what we wish were.--Douglas R. Hofstadter
Goedel, Escher, Bach
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.Here, if you're interested, is the last version of this page, which for several years refused to answer the question at all. And who can blame it? Nonetheless, I've decided to do better this time; so here are--Alan Watts (attributed)
Basic basics: My name is Rachel Jade Grey (used to be Cunningham). My handle at most online places is badlemming or lemming, and my permanent email address is lemming@alum.mit.edu. The lemming thing started in my freshman year of college because we know about lemmings, but a bad lemming, now that's the one going off the cliff for its own reasons and probably not with the usual result.
Intermediate basics: I'm 25, female, homo sapiens and blonde. I have two degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, but I work in software now and I like that pretty well. I live in Cambridge with three cats and one bug (okay, not really, that's just what I call my husband Alan). We don't want kids, but I do have a biological daughter who lives on the West Coast. I like knowing she's out there. Egg donation is cool.
Advanced basics: I like to change myself. All the time. It's one of the few things I find intrinsically fun and interesting, and it's almost the only thing I've consistently done all my life--which probably makes me look pretty inconsistent from the outside.
...there's not a huge division between technical things and art. Nor is there that much difference between men and women, most of the time. Dividing people into cat people and dog people might make a semi-meaningful dichotomy, if we just have to be split into two camps--but then, what's so great about that?
...socially liberal and fiscally conservative is the way to be... because one should be able to manage one's own personal life, and one's own money. (So, speaking of dichotomies, I will never figure out how the Reps and Dems ever emerged as opposites in the general view, but I'm usually apolitical and manage to not think about this too often.)
...some of the best rewards in life are cities, cats, sex, rain, books, and food. Ideally, I would spend a lot of time walking through Boston with Alan in a very light rain, between Chinatown, where I would have just eaten Thai food, and Victor Hugo, where I would buy books and where there is a cat named Blue. Later there would be a thunderstorm.
...Extropians seem pretty cool, though I don't call myself one. I like their principles a lot. I also like monkeys.
...television and cars are pretty sucky, and are therefore not owned. This seems normal to me, but hooking a VCR to the computer without gaining TV reception at the same time turns out to be tricky, and if I were anything like the norm, it wouldn't be. I conclude that I am not normal.