My opinions are strong but I am open minded and empirical. I love dogs, horses and social justice. My background is in history and I still pursue it. Aside from the dogs, horses and books, my main hobby is playing guitar and messing around inside guitar amplifiers. Drummers welcome. I run the dogs in the woods a lot.

I love the word dogsbody. My two best friends are a high end vintner and the chef at a well known and very good Boston restaurant. This is fortunate since I like food and wine quite a bit. For reasons mysterious to me, I am not that big a fan of the Oxford comma. But I recognize that sometimes you need it. I like it when people say "trite" instead of using "cliche" as an adjective. I dislike it when people say co-conspirator. That is redundant. There is no such thing as a conspiracy of one. Conspirator is perfectly sufficient.

I am as comfortable in jeans in a t-shirt as I am in heels and a little black dress, and am looking for a partner in crime. Someone I can roll over on when I need to cut a deal with the cops.

I wish there were an option for "Jewish, humanist atheist" under religion. I'd say "Hellenized Jew," but then I'd only attract classics and history majors. Plus I am afraid of Maccabees.

Old dogs are my kryptonite.

Trying to help a few animals. I currently have three previously abused/neglected pets. All are doing great. I have learned a lot about animal behavior these past few years. I'd like to think I made a few miserable dogs and horses happy. It isn't exactly saving the world, but it is better than nothing.

EDIT: Two of my three horses have died in the past year so I am down to one abused/neglected pet.

My job is pretty flexible, and stresses long term planning and strategy. So it is pretty fun and doesn't rule my life. I like it that way. It is a professional career, but it isn't an obsession. I feel lucky.

Quickly divining the the important aspect of an issue or problem. Generally, that helps with identifying solutions too.

My voice.

Books: True Horsemanship Through Feel, True Unity: Willing Communication Between Horse and Human, Catch-22, The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War, What Ever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears?, All the Pretty Horses, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Radio Free Albemuth, The Cyberiad, Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, The Watchmen, Love and Rockets, Lone Wolf and Cub, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Prison Notebooks (written like crap but amazing), The Worldly Philosophers. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (also poorly written but brilliant), The Great Crash, 1929, The Good War, The Trial of Socrates (Stone), The Iron Wall, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Kautsky), Orientalism, Capital. Syntactic Structures.

Movies: The Thin Man, The Philadelphia Story, Casablanca, The Thin Red Line (1998 Terrence Malick version), Office Space, Battle of Algiers, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, The Ice Storm, Coffey, The Killer, The Killers (1946 version with Lancaster and Gardner, NOT the 1964 version with Reagan), Burn (Queimada), Zelig.

TV Shows: Deadwood, The Wire, Rome, The Shield, Rumpole of the Baily, I, Claudius, The Larry Sanders Show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Farscape.

Music: Bad Brains, Descendants, Jimi Hendrix, Parliament-Funkadelic, Heatmiser, Coltrane, Gershwin, 3rd Base, Billy Bragg, Johnny Cash, The Clash, Johnny Clash, Social Distortion, Alkaline Trio, The Ataris, Sugar, Hüsker Dü, Bowie, Shudder To Think, Jawbox, Burning Airlines, Foo Fighters, Dinosaur Jr., The Promise Ring, 1208, Bouncing Souls, The Jam, The Beatles, The Catherine Wheel, Anti-Flag, The New York Dolls, They Might be Giants, Plastilina Mosh, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, John Schofield, Lester Young, Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Charlie Christian, Duke Ellington, Cannonball Adderly, James Blood Ulmer, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Mike Bloomfield, Bill Frissel, Monk, The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Dolly Parton, Junior Brown, Miriam Makeba, Brenda Fassie, Jonah Sithole, Thomas Mapfumo & Blacks Unlimited, Johnny Clegg, Boom Shaka, Albert Nyathi, Public Enemy, New Pornographers, Guided by Voices, anyone named Wainwright, The Lucky Stars, Justin Townes Earle, Graham Central Station, Bootsy's Rubber Band, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Love Spit Love, Rare Essence, Backyard Band, Troublefunk, Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, Fire Party, The Rubberbandits, Jeremy Lyons.

Country: Zimbabwe.

Food: Sushi, Sashimi, Fried Rice, Ma Po Tofu, Huājiāo, pretty much everything.

Internets: Jay Smooth, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Desert Island: Kind of Blue, Catch-22 and hamachi. If my island has TV and movies I guess it would be Buffy and The Philadelphia Story.

Just dogs really. Well, internet access and TV, I admit it. And Sushi. OK, fried rice too. Maybe limes, but that is it.

Human rights. Animal welfare.

Why so many women on here seem to think the Earth is bigger than the Sun. Are they all joking?

Another perplexing thing I see on a lot of profiles is answering that straight women kissing "in bars in hopes of attracting men" is "girlish fun" or "incredibly hot," while at the same time answering that they would not date a man who has had homosexual sex, or even saying that homosexuality is a sin. I thought that kind of double standard was supposed to be the purview of men.

Why duck face? Whose idea was that?

Fooling around in my laboratory with some Gin and other chemicals.

I like to work really hard at things until I am better than most people and then give them up. My favorite tree is the cedar. I use the expression "five by five" altogether too much. I know where to get a good bialy in Boston. I drink anti-socially. I like Blink-182.

I'm the blood on your guitar.
I'm that wave you caught back in 1975.

You find me interesting.
You think the S word (socialist) is a compliment.
You think Glenn Beck is a racist demagogue and a charlatan.
You think Cesar Milan is a pseudo-scientific fakir.
You are bat-shit crazy and wish to stalk and potentially murder me.
You are comfortable in other people's skin.
You are a feminist. If you don't think of yourself as a feminist, we are probably not going to have much common ground.

Ayn Rand? Seriously?