Profile
|
||
| User: | dirkcjelli (668017) Angry Child of the Enlightenment
... we also have punch and pie |
|
| Name: | Dirk | |
| Location: | Worcester, Massachusetts, United States | |
| Birthdate: | 1980-02-08 | |
| Bio: | BS in physics from WPI (with honors) Attended classes in grad physics at UConn for one year. MS in Materials Science and Engineering at WPI. Pursuing Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at WPI I should be done with my Ph.D. by ~May 2008 or so. I've been dating Kadath (lj name) for 4+ years now, and she's great. We're planning on getting married Sept-Oct 2008 
The Cosmos is all that there is or ever was or ever will be... if we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers. Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don't have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen — or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness. Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing. COSMOS, Carl Sagan | |
| Memories:: | 1 entry | |
| Interests: | 136: aclu, adam smith, alan moore, alternative energy, amber, ambrose bierce, anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, antitheism, astronomy, atheism, babylon 5, baron d'holbach, benjamin franklin, bertrand russell, black adder, books, bourbon whiskey, brian flemming, carl sagan, childfree, civil liberties, coffee, communism, compatibilism, cosmology, cosmos, crappy_space_voltron_and_the_european_union, csicop, cyberpunk, dan dennett, david hume, democratic transhumanism, engineering, epicurianism, ethics, euler's identity, fading suns, feminism, firefly, flywheels, francis bacon, free speech, freethinkers, freethought, galileo, giordano bruno, gweep, gweeping, gweepnet, h.l. mencken, hypatia of alexandria, iain banks, iain m. banks, iww, james randi, jared diamond, john locke, ken macleod, laplace, larry niven, liberty, libraries, lord of light, marcus aurelius, mark twain, martial arts, materialism, materials science, memes, memetics, metallurgy, metaphysical naturalism, methodological naturalism, mikael bakunin, modernism, my culture is defective, new england, nicola tesla, nine inch nails, noam chomsky, nuclear power, pharyngula, physics, pi tau sigma, post-scarcity, post-singularity, posthumanism, progress, pz myers, reading, richard carrier, richard dawkins, richard feynmann, robert ingersoll, roger zelazny, roleplaying, rpgs, sam harris, samuel clemens, schadenfreude, sci-fi, science, science fiction, scott westerfeld, secession, secular humanism, secularism, shadowrun, skepticism, socialism, solar cells, space, space exploration, spinoza, steampunk, sterling engines, steven brust, stirling engines, stoicism, strong atheism, sustainability, syndicalism, t.s. eliot, the culture, the enlightenment, the primacy of evidence, the scientific method, the watchmen, thomas jefferson, thomas paine, transhumanism, uncensored interests lists, warren ellis, weird science, william shakespeare | |
| Schools: | Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School - North Dighton, MA (1994 - 1998) Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Worcester, MA (1998 - present) | |
| Friends: | ||
| Account type: | Basic Account | |
