I’m a magazine editor and science writer by trade, having snuck into the business 35 years ago so I could learn a lot of interesting stuff and actually get paid for doing it. I’ve always been motivated by curiosity rather than ambition, and it’s hard to find things that I’m not interested in one way or another, though this is not to be taken as a challenge. I’m somewhere between an INFP and an INTP according to Myers-Briggs. I’m very patient by nature. I’m a realistic optimist: Life is going to bite you eventually, and when that happens, you deal with it as best you can; in the meantime, make things fun.

Gearing up for some change. I work (from my home office), read a lot, wall-climb three times a week. I spend a lot of time at the gym but am not a fitness or health evangelist—I just like working out. I’d like to get to know some new people and do some new things, which can be difficult for me because I’m a bit of a shy guy.

I’m fairly good at many things, very good at several (editing, making sandwiches, relating to kids and animals), and hopeless at more than a few (gardening—I have the killer’s touch; wine—not a clue). While I believe these things to be true, I generally don’t think people are good at self-analysis, so . . . .

No idea. Perhaps that I’m male—hard to miss with a beard.

Books: Currently reading Cloud Atlas. On the nightstand for constant sampling are Nabokov, Philip Roth, Emily Dickinson, P.G. Wodehouse; also some junk.

Movies: Philadelphia Story, Day for Night, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Touch of Evil, Shampoo, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Twentieth Century, The Wanderers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The World of Henry Orient

Music: Renaissance, Classical, Bluegrass, Jazz, Indie/Alt-Folk

Food: Sushi, lasagna, coffee, scallops, avocados, French food, dark chocolate

Family, ideas, books, music, movies, art—essentially, beauty in all forms

A number of personal writing projects that I’ve been chipping away at over the years. There are also a bunch of random questions that I carry around to work on if I’m standing in a line or can’t get to sleep or something. These tend to be on the order of: If people really do have a purpose in the cosmic scheme of things, what might that be? Why is the first-person-singular I always capitalized in the English language (unlike in other languages), and is it possible that texting will change this in a permanent way? I suspect some people would find these questions just annoying, so I don’t share them a lot.