My name is Will. It is a nice name, but take my advice and do not name your child an English word. People are very sensitive to the sound of their own names; it's common that I'll be walking down the street and I'll hear someone emphasize the word "will" or "well" and I'll stop and try to figure out who is talking to me. Or at least it was common until I got my iPod. Now I barely hear oncoming cars.

And now for a laundry list of "things I like" and "things I don't like."

Like: Scottish folk songs. Welsh accents. Genuine affection. Plays by Tom Stoppard, columns by Paul Krugman, movies by the Coen brothers. The Charles River. Forests. People who think a lot about movies, literature, human behavior or politics. New Yorker magazine. Traveling to countries I will not be able to visit when I am older and have kids.

Most relevant perhaps, I like kind, intelligent, opinionated women who have uncynical views of dating and romance.

Dislike: Doublethink. Supply side economics. Sophisticated rationalizations of selfish behavior. Bottled water.

Basically I'm the sort of person your mother wants you to date. That may not make me cool. But your mother is probably a smart woman and in all likelihood you should call her more often.

I am in my fourth year as a biochemistry Ph.D. student at Harvard. I do stuff that is too complicated to explain in an OkCupid text box but is related to embryo development and cloning.

Bossing around interns and laboratory technicians. And the best part is that I get to call it "mentoring."

People like to guess my ethnicity. I've heard everything from Hispanic to Iranian to Uigher.

a. Catch 22, The Sound and the Fury, Trainspotting. Everything Vonnegut ever wrote.

b. The Man Who Wasn't There, Trainspotting, Goodfellas, Adaptation, Das Boot the Director's Cut.

c. Belle and Sebastian, They Might Be Giants, Placebo, The Dandy Warhols, The Decemberists, Franz Ferdinand. For a long timeElliott Smith was my official court composer, but I've decided to fire him and appoint John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Seriously, do not listen to the album "Heretic Pride" unless you are prepared to buy a hundred dollars worth of Mountain Goats CDs.

But if you are roughly my age and you have heard of Phil Ochs, we should just get married right now.

d. Anything with heavy cream or almond extract. Not necessarily in combination.

e. (Favorite plays: this deserves a category): "The Real Thing" by Tom Stoppard, "Travesties" by Tom Stoppard, "Hedda Gabler" by Ibsen, "Temptation" by Vaclav Havel

1. Wikipedia

2. Dignity

3. This American Life podcasts

4. Greek Fisherman's Cap

5. Lungs

6. Pipets

Having long conversations with friends over dinner. Sometimes seeing a play or movie.

One day, I was walking down the street holding an ice cream cone when I slipped on some ice. For some reason, my gut instinct was not "brace for impact" but rather "keep ice cream cone upright". My knees took a beating, but the ice cream was unscathed.

Okay, actual private thing. I'm a little too introspective for my own good. If the same is true of you, we might well get along.

You are looking for someone tall, dark and handsome and are willing to settle for two out of three.