I was raised wild in the Sierras of California and the desert beaches of Baja, Mexico. I'm a liberal scientist who values empiricism, art, expression, and challenging ideas. After winding my way through high school in Putney, VT, and enjoying the fields of Oberlin, OH for college, I find myself in Boston investigating how our brains process memory, emotion, and decision making, and how that changes in relation to alcoholism.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Road trips across the US with friends, friends of friends through Europe. Hosting couchsurfers has been a real pleasure. I've found wonderful hosts for neuroscience conventions, sure beats the hotel!

Interests

For the original Friendster, profiles could have an alphabetical list of interests. It's surprising how well my list has held up: abstract games, badminton, bicycles, books, boston, botany, brains, breaking things, building computers, cooking, economics, farming, feminism, film, fire, frisbee, ginger, go, hanging on things, hiking, iconoclasm, interactive art, linux, manual labor, massage, mountains, music, oberlin, oceans, origami, peace, politics, putney, reading, sailing, science, scuba diving, shucking oysters, singing badly, skinny-dipping, strange and yummy tea, subversive art, surfing, sushi, swimming, videogames, weightlifting, wikipedia, wilderness, wind

• arts
• books
• singing
• womens rights
• cooking
• politics
• reading
• origami
• music
• hiking
• surfing
• scuba diving
• sailing
• snowboarding
• swimming
• badminton
• economics
• neuroscience
• science
• road trips
• beaches
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Again, from the turn of the millenium:
Music:
Cat Power, Tool, Ani DiFranco, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Tori Amos, That Dog, Postal Service, The Rentals, The Mountain Goats, The Cranberries, Dar Williams, Dan Bern, Dead Prez, Elliott Smith, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, The Strokes, Radiohead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, Leonard Cohen, Belle and Sebastian, Nine Inch Nails, Jesus Christ Superstar, Grateful Dead, Bjork, Bran Van 3000, Blonde Redhead, Ladytron, Outkast, Rainer Maria, Les Miserables, Magnetic Fields, Erin McKeown
Movies:
Control Room, Capturing the Friedmans, Brokeback Mountain, Secret of NIMH, Wallace and Gromit, Harold and Maude, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro films, Hayao Miyazaki films, Charlie Kaufman films, Cohen brothers films, Wes Anderson films, P.T. Anderson films, American Beauty, Billy Elliot, X-Men series, The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential
Books:
Hanif Kureshi, Ursula K LeGuin, Anne McCaffery, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, V.S. Ramachandran, Paul Krugman, Richard Feynman, Jonathan Lethem, Dan Savage, Where the Wild Things Are, Dune, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Watching divers drop a hundred feet into the ocean from the cliffs of Acapulco with hosts I'd just met. Sailing through hurricane swells outside my childhood home in Mexico, then waking up inside the eye of the dying hurricane, with vertical cloud walls all around me and a clear blue sky above. Snowboarding down double black diamonds (well beyond my skill level) through fresh powder so thick it was like falling through pillows. Fueling the perseverance to complete my degree.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Mexico, United States

• 

•