[Updated: 24 October 2009 - communication, many minor updates & revisions]

To explain why I wrote this is... it's a few things. Only minorly (though, I suppose, important) is in case someone stops by who might make a date / mate / [fill in relationship type here]. For that, I have my OK Cupid profile, which is pretty succinct about what I like. I also have a separate post - About me, sexually - but be warned it may be TMI for you.

Moreso, this is a sort of one-stop place to write down all the things (that are write-down-able [a nontrivial constraint, that]) that currently make me 'me'. It's also a way for me to implicitly tell you, O Reader, how to interact with me, what to expect, etc. Things that normally only get covered over a long period of friendship and getting to know each others' ways of dealing with the world. (Unsurprisingly, "I like to communicate explicitly about meta issues" is in here. :-P)

To a certain extent, this reiterates my earlier (now fairly out of date) Care & Feeding Guide, but not really; it's also from a different perspective.
 

• I am fluent in English and Russian (though only marginally literate in the latter), can converse in American Sign Language (ASL), French and Spanish, and can get by (barely) in Japanese. My Mandarin and Arabic are basically useless at this point.
• I sometimes find it hard (or impossible) to talk, but my ASL ability is rarely impacted. Happens mostly when dehydrated, hypoglycemic, overworked, tired, very relaxed, or very very pleased.
  • It is somewhat important to know a few basic bits of ASL for cases like these, especially since they tend to be serious (and potentially emergencies). The critical bits are: the ASL alphabet, WATER, YES, NO, WHATEVER, STAY, STOP, FOOD, BLANKET, COLD, WARM, CAN'T, CAN, OK, NOW, THANKS, WAIT, WHY, WHERE, MEDICINE, NEED. My name-sign is CAT signed with an S handshape. The rest can be fingerspelled if necessary.
  • I made a YouTube video that demonstrates these signs and the alphabet. I suggest you watch it and sign along; it's short (<5 minutes) and will help.
  • Please learn these, really. I'll teach you whenever you like, and it only takes a few minutes, but it makes communicating in difficult circumstances waaaay easier.
  • If I can't even sign, then something is Seriously Wrong... but likely to pass once the environment is better. Assume that I need water, food, more moderate temperature, and less light and make those available ASAP.
• I have a separate post about what to do when I'm twitchy. Read it in case it comes up. The short version: please stay calm.
• My martial arts training has made it so that I will react very quickly to taps. One tap means "limit reached", two taps means "disengage", and three taps means "disengage NOW". Tap on anything available - me, yourself, the floor, whatever. If hands aren't available, use tongue-clicks. The louder and more obvious the better. These will produce an effect significantly faster than saying "stop". Though obviously I react to that too, it just takes a couple seconds longer to process. I use these signals also as a matter of habit, and it's best if you react to them also rather than needing explicit verbal direction. They are applicable universally, not just for martial situations.
• I use and respond to verbal meta-commands, most commonly "hold"/"continue" (temporarily pause/unpause a topic or action).
• I do not like being addressed by name, in direct proportion to the strength to which that address emphasizes its status as a proper designator. E.g. "Sai, ____" is fairly irritating. "Hello, Sai", or its use in the opening line of an email/letter, is nearly neutral. On the opposite end, being referred to by name - e.g. "Sai is ____" - is unobjectionable. "Ilya" is significantly more unpleasant; I can tolerate it, though. My name-sign is completely OK. Depending on the name given and the person giving it, I may actually enjoy being called by personal nicknames or pet names. "Sai" is, essentially, a nickname; it isn't something to call out in bed. And "Ilya" is not my name; you may use it only if you've known me since before 1999.
• I really dislike friends insulting each other "in jest". Please don't insult me; it's not funny and there are more positive ways to show affection.
  • "Silly" does not count as an insult. :-P
• I very rarely volunteer information about how I feel about something. Especially in intimate relationships (including friendship), it is very important to me that I be directly asked, e.g., "How do you feel about this?". As regards negotiations (esp. re poly), this is even more so, and I am sensitive to the difference between a statement along the lines of "am I going to be punished for this / did I break a rule?" and "how do you feel about this, I care and want to make sure it's as good as possible". I had one relationship where the former was much more the case, and this was hurtful as I felt that it was indicative of a lack of empathy and direct (rather than hypothetical) caring on their part.
• I rarely volunteer detailed information about myself, and expect that others will ask fractal questions if they actually do want to know. I never object to being asked, and am perfectly capable of saying "I'd rather not answer that right now because X ask again at time Y", so if in any doubt, ask.
  • My lack of initiating conversation about myself is an indication that I don't find it especially interesting, not that I object to talking about it if you are. This applies equally to fairly personal topics.
  • If I'm interested in you, I will ask you questions. Sometimes very probing or personal ones. If I cross a boundary, please tell me; preferably, tell me what the boundary is so I know how to respect it in the future.
  • I have essentially no TMI threshold. You can tell me anything without worrying that I will get upset, burdened by your problems, or the like.
  • While I am extremely empathic, I am not especially sympathetic; that is, while I am hyperaware of others' emotional states, I do not allow them to affect my own.
    
    • I find empathy very interesting as an academic research topic, and am easily provoked into going on about it at length.
• As noted below, I purr (as an epiglottal rather than uvular trill). This is a sign that I am relaxed and pleased with whatever is happening, and usually brought on by particularly good skritching.
• I like to communicate explicitly about meta issues. It generally results in faster and more applicable results than doing things one at a time. I prefer to get the same in return - understanding how someone works internally (i.e. what it's like to be them), and letting that cascade into all the varied effects, than doing it the hard way. This applies to relationships and negotiations too - but it requires a fair amount of self-knowledge (and willingness to be somewhat "naked") to do well - qualities I strive for but sometimes miss.
• I am almost exclusively interested in very "heavy", intellectually and/or emotionally stimulating conversations with a high degree of novelty. I find conventional, superficial conversation to be boring and dissociating.
  
  • Some people find this to be somewhat taxing, as it makes them think more than they normally would, challenge their beliefs, or go into details that they'd normally be able to gloss over.
  • If you are getting tired, let me know, and we'll switch to something different and/or easier.
  • I prefer very high-content / intense interactions & stimuli in general, but I strongly dislike and avoid drama-whore behavior, like excessive bitching or failure to deëscalate conflicts.
• I am extremely sincere pretty much all the time. I really honestly mean exactly what I say 99.9% of the time, no innuendo or hidden agenda or the like (at least, not anything negative).
  • I've been told this is something unusual.
  • I am starting to shift this because it's actually a suboptimal habit when communicating with normal people (who react to the implied messages that would be [accurately] there if I were a normal person and not me), but it's still very noticeable.
  • I try to remember to preface possibly-mistaken things with a bunch of disclaimers, but that doesn't always work (and I don't always remember).
  • I don't lack a sense of humor, but I don't always respond in the usual ways - eg I'm more likely to deadpan a followup rather than laughing at it per se.
    • I vastly prefer wit over lowbrow humor.

• I purr. Sounds weird if you're not used to it. Can come out as anything from a growling sound to a steady vibration.
• I am very easily distracted by shiny things - e.g. dreamcatchers, some fractals, vials of silver, pretty rocks, charged rings, a cat being excessively cute, etc. Cut my line of sight if you want to snap me out of it.
• I occasionally want to have retractable claws.
• I sometimes do the 'kneading' thing.
• I sometimes sneak up behind people without letting 'em notice me.
• I like being skritched, but not scratched. (I.e., I don't like pain.) However, the level of strength and clawyness I prefer is considerably more than most people expect.
• I stretch in sometimes amusing ways. It's very pleasant.
• Warm areas - particularly fireplaces, warm people, and moderately sunny grass - make me want to curl up and nap happily (until I overheat at least).
• I really, really, really like being sung to.
• In an appropriate situation (i.e. when I'm feeling particularly catlike and affectionate), I will curl up in someone's lap, on their stomach, or etc. I don't usually fit.
• I really like giving & receiving massages (and have 400 hours of professional training in it), assuming that other people involved are friendly and either trained or willing to learn. (Receiving a massage well is also a skill [in communication], FWIW.)
• I don't consider myself a furry (though I have friends who are), and have never felt a desire to wear any cat attire, tail, ears, fursuit, etc., except perhaps because I'd find it funny. Anthropomorphic comics are neat though - e.g. Ozy & Millie. Ailuranthropy is perhaps the closest semi-accurate label.
• I have a very high need for touch, and when it's not sated regularly, I get depressed.
• I am extremely responsive to pleasant sensory input of all kinds... as in walking party trick, have a near orgasm from eating a good peach extremely. Touch, taste, and smell particularly.
  
  • I consider myself a hedonist in the sense that I explicitly try to cultivate the skill of appreciating pleasure and am very good at it, but not in the sense of connotated 'sin' or of having lower ethical standards to acheive that pleasure.
  • I find it rather hard to enjoy things that are unethical - which is one reason why I will do a larger than normal amount of ethics checking etc in certain situations, like potential "more-than-friends". Helps make sure that that side of me is content with everything and that I don't have a sour aftertaste.
• I like a lot of things. Like all this stuff.
  

• My facial structure is lopsided, because my jaw is bent to my right a bit. Most people don't notice.
• I have pointy ears.
• I have strabismus (one form of "lazy eye"), and had surgery for it when I was a child, but not completely / early enough to be fully corrected. At any given time, one eye is dominant, the other not - usually my right is dominant. The nondominant eye only contributes peripheral vision, does not fuse with the primary field, and has a tendency to roll upwards a few degrees. It resets when I refocus.
  
  • "Magic eye" books, "3d glasses", binoculars, and the like do not work on me at all, as I have absolutely no stereo vision (i.e. no fusion).
  • I can still see depth just fine in almost all cases (binocular vision is only needed for a minority of the cues for depth perception). However, I do not know if my experience of it is the same as others', as I have never had stereo vision and therefore do not really know what I am missing. I am told there is normally some sort of subtle "popping" effect for objects examined at close distances.
  • If you want to "look me in the eye", you'll need to figure out which one is the live one.
  • People hardly ever notice any of this unless I tell them about it, and give a minute or two of coaching on how to see the differences.
  • Yes, you can ask about it, and yes I'm willing to teach you how to spot it.
• My hat size is very large - size 8 or so. Other clothing sizes are small - 32"x32" pants, 36 chest (48 euro), size 9 shoes.
• I have no allergies... but get nauesous at the smell/taste of alcohol and meat, and upset stomach at a small variety of other foods. I don't mind if you eat meat near me, so long as if it's something that smells very strong (e.g. barbecue) I am upwind of you.
  • There are a few foods that cause me upset stomach: e.g. dried apricots, cranberry juice, cow milk, and pesto. (I do like pesto, though, so I'll have it in small amounts if it's good.)
• As a kid, I could barely write due to 'a lack of fine motor coordination'. My handwriting is still fairly unpretty. I like to think of it as having intrinsic encryption.
• I am very flexible in most ways. I cannot, however, do splits.
• I can hear very high pitched sounds (higher than most people).
  
  • This includes the sound that TV sets and some fluorescent lights make, and is rather irritating (bordering on painful). It is less so when a TV is actually playing something (because of sound masking), but a set just sitting on its blue screen without anything playing is very unpleasant to be near.

• I try hard to be open and make myself understood. However, this rarely seems to work as well as I'd like; there is frequently a disconnect of some sort.
• I tend to be either very fast to respond to email, or very slow. Mostly depends on whether it's emotionally demanding or not.
• I don't tend to control my affect for social effect, and my 'native' affect can be somewhat difficult to read. Thus, if you're not familiar with how I display normally, you're liable to read me as being flat, cold, possibly even hostile.
  
  • I am essentially never ever hostile, angry, or the like; if you think that's the case, and you are not posing an immediate physical danger to me or mine, you're probably wrong and it'd be a good idea to talk to me so we can clear it up.
• I find it hard to break the 'no touch' barrier with people I don't already have a (physically/emotionally) close relationship with. Depending on who and what the situation is however, I am usually pretty positively responsive to overtures by others. Just ask.
• I procrastinate things I don't really want to do, and sometimes even ones I do want to do.
• Basic maintenance stuff is usually the first to go when I get depressed - cleaning up, eating well, etc.
• When I get seriously hurt, angry, or depressed by something - or have a stray thought cascade into an unpleasant memory or the like - I'll sometimes shut down my exterior self for a short while while I process it and deal with it internally.
  
  • This could take anywhere from a fraction of a second to a couple hours of real time, and sometimes happens with almost no warning, though I will try to say something like "I'll be back in ___ minutes" first.
  • During it, I'm unlikely to be very usefully responsive; though I will hear things that are said, I probably won't react to them at all until afterwards unless there is an extreme immediate necessity.
  • This can be rather disconcerting in the (rather rare) cases where it goes on for more than a minute or so; in those cases, providing water and basic physical comforts is generally a good idea if you can.

• I prefer to sit with my back to a far wall or corner in restaurants - where I can see everything and be in a tactically good position.
• I strongly dislike people standing in my "blind spots", rather than moving into normal vision or even totally behind me. It makes my brain itch.
• I frequently have episodes of very strong interest in something - a topic, a food, a skill, whatever - and then mostly forget about it.
• I almost always have a lot of theoretical knoweldge about subjects I have very little experience in.
  
  • I tend to prefer to do a lot of preparation about new things, rather than just dropping into something and learning from experience alone.
• I am a fairly internally complex; in large part this is due to the amount to which I have intentionally modified my mindstate, triggers, reactions, emotions, etc. Some of the 'aftermarket wiring' is a bit out of date and in need of repair. Some of it has had some fairly robust tamperproofing added to it. Most of it is in a state of change; if anything, trying to constantly change and improve myself is one of the few things that *hasn't* ever changed about me.
• I've practiced meditation techniques for a long while now. My writeup of what I do is here. Most of it is pretty ingrained stuff by now, that I try to have actively going on almost all the time. I still forget, though, frequently enough, and I'm not as skilled at most points (especially the more recent ones) as I would like. However, it does result in a rather ... plastic view of myself.
  
  • For example, changing how I think about a particular subject (not as in "my opinion", but actually as in "how I think") is usually an option on my list of potential responses to a situation. I'm however fairly hesitant to do this without a good enough reason, and/or without knowing that the resultant mindshape would be more beneficial to me in the long run. Most modifications are not so much things that one can ask that about, but simply different in ways that are hard to understand before you effect the change.
• I am a ULC ordained minister. I have been asked a couple times to officiate at friends' weddings, but so far each time they found someone else.
• I go out of my way to help people; particularly for medical emergencies. Or gunshot victims (I've tended two to date). I pull over for people who are stuck, stop and help someone who has a flat (even if it takes an hour to fix), grab my cell & medical kit and start running if I hear someone yelling for help, hold the door for strangers, etc etc. I do this simply because it's the right thing to do, and generally refuse offers to pay me back (hopefully they extend the same courtesy to others later on). I got CPR-AED/FPR training but it was pretty repetetive of what I already knew; at some point I'd like to get a full (W)EMT or paramedic cert, just 'cause.
  • I find it mildly confusing that other people don't do the same, but I guess that's normal. Sad. :(
  • Ironically, my ultimate morality if I knew that it was a balance of my life vs anyone else's would almost always side with self-preservation (because I have no particular belief in life after death). But yet I'm perfectly willing to risk my life for others'. Funny how that works.

• If I am your friend, that carries with it some implicit promises - I will not ever, though avoidable intentional action or inaction: hurt you, break a promise, or disclose private information outside your boundaries (i.e. in ways I know or reasonably believe you would object to). I expect the same in return; if I don't get it, you're not likely to remain my friend very long.
  • I am fairly careful about actually giving my word on anything in a strong way. When I do, it's permanent and rather tightly binding. I don't do so for things I know I might mess up by accident - e.g. getting somewhere or doing something by a particular time, etc.
• I trust others to act in keeping with their history, temperement, and situation. IOW, I generally believe that (for better and/or worse) you will continue acting as you are and have been. If you want me to trust you to do X, do X consistently. Simple.
• I detest being lied to far more than being told something unpleasant. The former will risk my not speaking to you again, or at least not considering you a friend; the latter will only risk a tense conversation. Choose accordingly.
• I will believe others, unless I have actually found them to be liars, to be totally truthful and correct about describing their perceptions or subjective experiences - even sometimes for 'bizarre' ones. However, this is tempered by two things - first, perceptions frequently do not reflect external reality; and second, conscious and/or communicated perception is frequently a rather murky rendition of the real thing.
  • I do not trust anyone to be 100% correct about any other subject whatsoever. I will take some on credence if, e.g., it is a field they have studied or have experience in, but then that only extends to their ability to make statements about the truth of past fact and present generality, not necessarily of specific present or future fact.
• I don't have a sense of respect-as-subjugation. There are only peers, some of whom have more skill and therefore teach it, and some of whom are functioning in particular organizational capacities that have them making the decisions or leading a group. But I don't extend respect for somebody in one domain to others; they need to be earned separately. In no case do I grant someone respect solely by virtue of their position, job or role. This has occasionally caused problems with people either feeling that I didn't respect them when I did (because I don't act with deference), or feeling they deserved to be respected in all areas simply because they were respected in one (e.g., a martial arts sensei wanting to be emulated to a degree that included their personal mannerisms or things outside their range of actual expertise).
  
  • Generally speaking though, I respect the large majority of people in most ways.
• I am very affectionate when allowed and/or encouraged to be, and very easily affected by / responsive to affection displayed towards me. To guard against that, I have a bit of a disjoint between emotion and trust - and go with the latter when it comes to making serious decisions. I am very touchy about having this weakness used against me, or used in any way to manipulate me.

• I believe that most problems have solutions; that the problems are usually due to a (hidden) conflict or misunderstanding that can be examined by going meta and doing good pattern analysis; and that most problems are not isolated, and are best addressed with a systems approach if possible, to resolve the current issue and preempt any following ones.
• I believe that most human emotions, needs, and wants can be both replicated at will, and supplanted with internal sources, but that acquiring the needed skill to do this is a rather arduous process, and not necessarily the best option.
• I believe there to be three basic forms of meditative practice - focusing on nothing, focusing on one thing, and focusing on everything. Ultimately, these become indistinguishable, but the three forms encompass everything I have seen in every religion, spiritual practice, and etc.
• I do not believe that the Bible (nor any other religious text) contains any more truth in it than is self-evident if you do not start from the (circular) position that it is true. (That excludes most of it, FWIW.)
• I believe that it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of a God, but that, insofar as one ascribes certain specific traits to one, those may be testable (at the least, for internal consistency - e.g. a god cannot be omnipotent, omnibeneveloent, omniscient, AND demanding and not be some sort of sadist).
  • In my experience, most Christians display incredible ignorance of both the content of the Bible and basic logical reasoning, and most strong atheists display a faulty belief both that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and that the qualia of others' experiences is either uninteresting or disprovable. Both annoy me.
• I believe that everything can (and perhaps should) be viewed, and treated, as being sacred. This is not at all incompatible with my non-theism.
• I believe that religion, crudely put, offers people an answer to questions such as, 'what is sacred' and 'why'. It is this readiness of the answer - its prepackaged, marketed nature - that makes religion appealing. I prefer to figure things out on my own, which is why I sometimes call myself a 'gnostic'.
• I believe that persons are, by and large, intelligent and nice, whereas people are, by and large, stupid and mean.
• I believe that many religion-starters have something good that they are going on, but that the religious institutions that spring up around them tend to fossilize and drain the life out of whatever truth they had, and turn it into mindless ritual. Buddhism and Christianity are examples of this.
• I do not believe in "sin". I do believe in ethics - but not in any external (i.e. deific) enforcement of them. I consider gaining compliance in a behavior by threat of force or punishment (viz., stereotypical Christian hellfire&damnation spiels) to be unethical and, more relevantly, unsustainable.
• I believe, in some sense, in Discordianism. This quote is a decent representative of my reasons: "To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder." -Greyface and Negativism.
  • I seek the creative.
• I believe that it is almost never useful to ask "Can this be done?", compared to "How can this be done?".
• I believe that consciousness is merely one of several ways to describe the world. It happens to be the one that we experience firsthand - i.e. it has qualia to us - and the farther that other organisms are from us in physical / neurological makeup, the harder it is (if indeed at all possible) to empathize with what it's like to be them. However, there are organizational levels both higher and lower than human consciousness - e.g. atomic, cellular, biosystemic, social, cultural, astronomical - that can equally be used to describe the same phenomena. It is impossible to say whether or not they are "conscious" because we are not capable of understanding what it would be like to be a bacterium, or to be a hundred thousand people. In that sense, I am a hardcore agnostic as to whether they, and by analogy whether systems markedly different from our own (e.g. non-neurally-structured AI), are or are not conscious - that is, whether they have a "what it's like to be them" or not.
  • I believe John Searle's "Chinese Room Argument" is critically flawed in a number of ways:
    a) it does not address the possibility of a meta-consciousness, that is a consciousness consisting of the system and man combined (and in my observation of Searle himself during class - and asking him the same question - he basically just dismisses it out of hand rather than having a proper philosophical counterargument)
    b) it does not address the sentience, or recorded sentience, of the "magic book of translations", and indeed such a book would of necessity have to be sentient (or indistinguishable from it) in order for its instructions to give a positive Turing test; the human in the setup is after all really merely a fancy machine and thus the whole example collapses back down to a standard mechanical Turing test
  • I believe that AI cannot be sentient in the same way as we unless it is structured in the same way - and at a sufficiently complex structural mimicry, it would be functionally indistinguishable.
  • I flatly reject the behaviorist or functionalist approach to philosophy of mind that leaves out qualia as being flawed beyond recognition of what "mind" could be - though they certainly have uses for analytical purposes, they cannot justifiably be held to represent what happens within humans.
  • I believe that there is a family-resemblance-category within the population of humans, of how much we can empathize with what it's like to be each other. At sufficient levels of neurological, pharmocological, and/or social differences, this empathy attenuation becomes quite marked. E.g. it is difficult to understand what an acid trip is like if you've always been sober, and it is difficult to understand what the a deaf/blind person's world is like if you've not been deaf/blind for a long time. This empathy gap is only repairable to the extent to which we are capable of putting ourselves in a more similar experience to the target; e.g. by wearing a blindfold & heavy earplugs for long enough to acclimatize to the world through other senses.

• I believe that all drugs should be legalized for intelligent use - i.e. for use by informed adults who know what they're getting into - except for substances that have both a very strong (i.e. willpower-overriding) addictive power, and a significant detrimental effect on an addict; and for drugs whose use causes a significant danger or detriment to non-using people in the vicinity (e.g. PCP, alcohol when driving, etc).
  • In other words, I believe that the current scheduling of drugs is grossly out of line with the definitions of the drug schedule, and that they need to be re-evaluated and only classified based on actual medical evidence documenting a need for controls that overrides individuals' right to control their mind.
• I believe that no drugs should be legal for unintelligent use, except as prescribed by a doctor. This includes alcohol and caffeine.
  • Quirk: I dislike the use of any drug as a crutch, i.e. for use other than as a way to reach a novel mindstate that can then be learned from and self-created. Particularly so for the lubricating use of alcohol - yeah it's hard to learn how to relax soberly, but it's worth the effort damnit. On the other hand, I use caffeine in this fashion (to help me wake up and/or stay awake), so I'm not really 100% hardline about it.
• I believe that marriage type contracts, and associated rights, should be legal for any arrangement of informed, consenting, non-coerced adults, to opt in to as they like, with certain minimum clauses required to be in the contract in order to protect all parties from possible pressure or exploitative behavior. This includes but is not limited to polyamorous, same-sex, and incestuous relationships. What rules religious institutions choose to apply to relationships they would like to regulate, sanction, or condemn, is no concern of mine.
• America is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic. That it is a "democracy" is propaganda.
• I believe that a democracy can only exist in a efficiently, beneficently functional way insofar as the participants are informed and rational. Neither of these are true of America at large. This is why it's a republic.
• I believe that the K-12 educational system in America, at least as I have experienced it, is extremely incompetent and in need of massive reforms or outright abandonment; that socialization is not a sufficient excuse for the existence of such a system; and that both children and more explicit inmates should have real purpose to their lives (i.e. work on real, worthwhile projects, jobs, and goals). Inasmuch as life is arbitrary and purposeless for them, a true meritocracy cannot exist, and therefore you get very similar (abusive and stupefying) social systems in both primary schools and prisons.
• I believe that potential life does not have the same ethical status (viz. abortion) as actual life. However, I do not believe that birth is an adequate dividing line that causes something to be "alive" or sentient enough to be murderable. I am very unsure about what that line should be, and thus where the difference would be between an abortion I support (because it is the person's choice of their body, and the fetus is not yet sentiently "alive") and one I would not (because the fetus is sentiently "alive" enough to count as a human). So in other words, I'm ambivalent on abortion. Pragmatically speaking, it would be nice if people were just a bit more 'with it' and a) didn't have a need for abortions (through contraception and the like), or b) did 'em promptly instead of dragging it out.
  • This comic (last panel) nicely encapsulates my position.
• I believe that the Middle East situation is seriously fucked up on all sides. The US needs to grow some balls and slap Israel down when it crosses the line; Israel needs to immediately retreat from all of its illegally occupied territories and stop killing lots of civilians in response to relatively minor attacks; Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine seriously need to stop condoning terrorism and attacking Israel. I believe that if they all do so, then peace may result, and that if they do not, it definitely won't.
• I believe that genetically modified food, and organisms, is a good idea, assuming that their effects (environmental and nutritional) are properly tested and understood, and that they are not modified in negative ways (e.g. plants that are not able to reproduce).

• I want to travel the world, primarily by backpack and foot, visiting as wide a sampling of the environments (both social and ecological) in it as possible. Preferrably for more than a couple years straight.
• I want to succeed in creating a non-linear 2d writing system, and have it fulfill all of my desiderata.
• I want to become fluent in all of my currently known languages (English, Russian, French, Spanish, ASL, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic), and possibly pick up some Gaelic, Hindi, and Sanskrit as well.
• I want to learn to play an instrument that I can easily carry with me, that is capable of a wide range of styles / moods.
• I want to "fulfill my potential", whateverthehell that means.
• I want to become rich enough to not have to worry about money. $10 million in the bank should do well enough.
• I want to find a career / job / path that will have me seriously and sustainably fulfilled in all my interests. Either that, or do a long and very diverse selection of things that will make for good experiences.
• All this stuff.
• I want to be a cop for a while, though not as a career. Long enough to pump it for the learning experience.