: About Me

I was born in Nashville, Tennesee in 1939. In the intervening years I got old and now I am observing the aging process with morbid fascination. But I digress.

After a couple of years in Detroit during WWII my family came back to Nashville. My Dad joined the Navy. When I was five my mother told me the war was over and Daddy was coming home. I knew the war was bad but I had thought of it as like the weather, something we always had.

In keeping with the custom of the time and place I attended white segregated schools all the way through college. When the supreme court ruled against segregation, I decided that I was an integrationist. I graduated from East High in 1957; Oprah Winfrey graduated in 1971.

Even Vanderbilt was segregated with the exception of some Korean and Brazilian students and six students in the divinity school. It was at the bookstore at Vanderbilt that I read Bertrand Russell's Why I am not a Christian and became an atheist.

I finally experienced integrated schooling at the University of Illinois where I became president of the Humanist Society and met my wife, a black woman. I majored in psycholinguistics. I met Noam Chomsky once as a guest speaker in a linguistics course. I met Roger Ebert in his capacity as editor of the Daily Ilini and a Young Democrat. Roger read, printed, and sometimes discarded several of my letters to the editor.

I was much too busy to concentrate on my studies. After I was dismissed from graduate school I came to San Francisco, then Berkeley with my soon-to-be wife. I became a computer programmer, later a technical writer. We had three children one now in politics, one a third-year law student, and one an actress. I have four grandchildren ranging in age from four to twenty-one.

I have a longstanding interest in science, politics, race and ethnicity, and languages. Although I never got very good at any one language, I have the ability to think in whatever language I am learning from the beginning. I also enjoy Karaoke. I have a nice bass voice but I lack training and my singing literally ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I have offered my children and grandchildren my insights into the world and the nature of the universe, often going over their heads. One of my greatest compliments was when my oldest granddaughter took a physics class in college and the teacher asked the students to write what they believed about the universe. My granddaughter wrote "I believe whatever my grandpa believes."

My passion is ...

Seeking out the truth and believing I have found it.

I know too much about ...

Nothing. You can never know too much.

My parents always told me ...

Don't listen to your other parent.

My childhood ambition ...

To be the first man on the moon.

My favorite memory ...

Too numerous to mention, too private to reveal.

Why I write ...

My Dad said he talked to himself because he liked to hear an intelligent man speak. That is why I write.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Liberal and conservative ideology, science, science fiction, mindless sitcoms, Dancing with the stars.

My first job ...

Paper boy. Or was it programmer?

My best moment ...

Any time I think of the perfect comeback at the time I need it.

My inspiration ...

My father, who called himself a conservative, as the inspiration for most of my liberal beliefs.

Politics, News & Issues > US Elections Will Americans vote for a black man or white woman?

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"My friend," said my daughter, "is voting for the chick. I'm voting for the Negro. Who are you voting for?" "What about the good ole boy?" I asked. According to identity politics, my daughter had a choice between the woman, Hillary Clinton, and the man, Barack Obama, who, like her, was biracial. The Southerner, John Edwards, would have been the logical choice for me. Now that the Republicans have decided on John McCain, I should go for the old white guy. Fortunately we have gone beyond the stereotypes of identity politics. We voted as a family for Barack Obama in the California primary and...

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