User Profile

I am a grad student, currently working on my dissertation in political philosophy. I'm building on a burgeoning tradition in developing an Aristotelian form of classical (not contemporary and leftist!) liberalism.

I've flipped burgers and delivered pizza. I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor for one summer. And I served six years in the Louisiana Army National Guard as an intelligence analyst, the last three as my battalion's intelligence NCO (Sergeant, E-5). I love martial arts and have a 1st degree black belt in taekwondo, but haven't practiced in a while. When I finish my dissertation and get a regular job, I'd like to get back into martial arts.

I've been playing with the idea of writing F&SF for a while now, indulging in writing-based online freeform RPGs, but recently decided to start working seriously on that goal. My focus right now out of necessity has to be on finishing my dissertation, getting published academically, and getting an academic job, so it might be a while before I have any rough drafts of completed stories to share. But...I'm doing my homework: immersing myself in the genre, reading some writer's guides, developing story ideas, settings and characters, and practicing.

My interests in F&SF are broader than some, narrower than others. I'm not particularly impressed by so-called 'literary' fiction or, consequently, so-called 'literary' F&SF. These pieces usually, but not always, strike me as pretentious, boring, and/or unintelligible. I do like hard SF, space opera, military SF and the more humanistic SF. I like epic and heroic fantasy as well as some dark and urban fantasy, but I'm starting to get tired of the endless series involving a 'chosen one' who must fight the 'dark lord' with the very fabric of reality hanging in the balance. I prefer my magic logical and 'scientific', not ineffable. A little mystery and psychological horror are nice additions to F&SF, but I generally don't read straight mystery or horror. I like dystopian fiction as well. And some alternate history and historical fiction.

Anthologies I am currently (but slowly) reading: The Year's Best Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection, edited by Dozois; The Space Opera Renaissance, edited by Hartwell & Cramer; Best Short Novels 2006, edited by Strahan; Off the Main Sequence: The Other Science Fiction Stories of Robert A. Heinlein; The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith; The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction; Black Seas of Infinity: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft.

I blog occasionally on my main blog, Libertas, and on the Mises Economics Blog. My personal website url is www.veritasnoctis.net.

In addition to LiveJournal, you can also find me on Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut.

For your convenience, edification and reading/viewing pleasure, I have created an Aristotelian Liberal Amazon.com Store, which includes books on the burgeoning political philosophy, on market anarchism and the Austrian school of economics, and liberty-themed fiction (books and dvds).

Favorite Quotes:

"TANSTAAFL!!!" - Robert Heinlein

"The State is that great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." - Frederic Bastiat

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." - Ayn Rand

"I swear - by my life and my love of it - that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." - Ayn Rand

“I’m no Ayn Rander! She didn’t go nearly far enough!" - The Question, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley (2002)

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." - H.L. Mencken

"The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master in a slave plantation." - Frank Knight

"I have often wondered why the sounds of the beating drums do not make the marching soldiers shoot their officers and go home." - Albert Jay Nock

"Americans have a strange notion that the ordinary laws of economics do not apply to them. So doubtless they will think they are prosperous if the boom starts, and that deficits and indebtedness are merely signs of how prosperous they are." - Albert Jay Nock

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." - George Orwell

"Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it's yellow." - Edmund Burke

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." - Thomas Sowell

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is hacking at the root." - Henry David Thoreau

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." - Robert Heinlein

"The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys." - Robert Heinlein

"Historical experience suggests that policy makers are dense... Stupidity is not a very interesting analytic category." - Stephen D. Krasner

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