Issuing supreme power to you...one moment.

My self-summary Propose an edit

I discuss: Low tolerance for small talk, but extraordinarily high tolerances for tossing around ideas, for analyzing the everyday (especially how to fix the bus system in NY).

I play games: scrabble, bridge, Settlers, Telephone Oracle, Katamari Damancy, and Cranium. I love the combination of social activity with intellectual puzzle and friendly competition.

I organize people together: the Ice Cream Crawl, reading stories to each other in the park, a bridge club, and large amounts of theatre going.

I give my time and money to help make the world better. I think there are ways of structuring one's life to both enjoy it thoroughly and promote justice in the world.

What I'm doing with my life Propose an edit

I'm a web designer for Columbia University's libraries, which not only is fun in and of itself, it carries two killer perks: borrowing privileges, and free classes, so I'm taking classes right now on civil society, and how non-profits and NGOs work (or more often, don't), between the public and private.

I'm really good at Propose an edit

knowing good and cheap restaurants in every neighborhood, tying everything into economic decision theories, playing board games, being on time.

The first thing(s) people usually notice about me Propose an edit

I find it really hard to complete sentences due to my preference for compound-complex sentences, and a tendency to digress at the first thought that's interesting; I've always thought it would be handy to have a stack to store conversation topics such that you could digress without worry of losing the main thread.

What's the question for this box again?

My favorite books, movies, music, and food Propose an edit

The last few months have been heavy on ethics, so nighttime reading of Rising Up and Rising Down (when is violence justified) with Normative Ethics (surprisingly readable from a curmudgeon like Shelley Kagan), and A Theory of Justice. I tend to binge and purge with books rather than keep favorites around, but I have deeply liked Godel, Escher, Bach; Spaceman's Blues; and Feed.

I do watch movies, most recently enjoying The Lives of Others and Half Nelson although I'll have to admit I'm much more partial towards theatre, where I'm a huge fan of Peter Hall's Propeller troupe (most recently seen in the devastating Taming of the Shrew at BAM), The Pillowman, Journey's End, Arcadia, and just about everything that Les Freres Corbusier does (Heddatron, Hell House, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant)

I'm an absolutely voracious consumer of music: much as I dislike the trend of content producers looking to lock down content through DRM, all-you-can-eat jukeboxes like Rhapsody stand as a clear benefit of the current war.

Anyway, music: at least for the moment, Of Montreal, Edan, Max Richter, Lindstrom, The Lounge Lizards, Four Tet, Sleater-Kinney, Tapes'n Tapes, LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, The Decemberists are seeming to get played a lot.

New York is the best place in the US for restaurants, but the absolute worst to be stuck on the street and not know where you're going to eat, so I'll stick to specific recoommendations and let you figure out the patterns: Yakitori Totto, St. Alp's Teahouse, Mooncake Foods, Vatan, Ali's Kabab Shack, Kang Suh, Di Fara's.

* That is, unless you like paying $30/person for mediocre food.

The six things I could never do without Propose an edit

Libraries, music player, a deck of cards, supermarket, sneakers, glasses

I spend a lot of time thinking about Propose an edit

ethical systems. Maybe it'll pass, but if there's one question worth having a good answer to, isn't it "What should one do?" Let me know if you have a better question.

Related to this, how much systems that emphasize individual self-gain can lead to overall good.

On a typical Friday night I am Propose an edit

at a theater, organizing a movie screening, cooking for the next week,

The most private thing I'm willing to admit here Propose an edit

I try hard, but I completely fail at being able to play music. Why can't my hands parallelize?

You should message me if Propose an edit

You have ideas for other crawls (Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate, already taken). You want to show me the parts of your neighborhood that make it unique and not just a grid of apartment buildings. You don't grow tired of talking about what you've just read. You want a challenge to what you think, and and ready to give that too. You are seriously involved in trying to figure out what the good and the right are. You like playing games.

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