AUTHOR(S)

I would prefer not to write anything about myself, but experience has taught me that many people are interested in knowing something about the author of the blogs they read, so:

MY WITNESS

I am a Christian.  I will not hide or apologize for my faith.  I came to it through a lengthy and rigorous search for the truth.  Now, my faith frames the way I see the world and guides the way I think.  You will find it woven into the fabric of everything I believe. At the same time, I do not push my faith on others.  This does not mean I will not explain it to anyone who asks about it, or that I won’t defend it.  All it means is that I am trying to be obedient to Christ’s direction as to how we are to treat others.  Christ told his disciples to preach the Good News and to teach people about his free gift of Salvation, but he also told His disciples that, if they should encounter someone who doesn’t wish to hear, they are to leave them to Him.  There is nothing in Christ’s teachings that tell His disciples to be ‘ugly’ followers: quite the contrary.  This is the example I am trying to learn, and though I fail and fall far short of the mark quite often, I will keep trying to be this person until I die.

MY BIO

I am 47, married, father of three boys.  I grew up in the upper peninsula of Michigan, but moved to the panhandle of Florida when I was 11.  I spent nine years as a tank mechanic in the U.S. Marines. I served the last three years of those years my Company’s Maintenance Chief and Commander of the Company’s recovery vehicle.  I was serving in this position during Desert Storm.  I turned 24 the day after hostilities ended.  After the war, I went to college, spent some time as a single father of two young boys, found myself back in North-West Florida where I remarried and still live today.

MY EDUCATION

I earned an AA in pre-engineering and finished 1 ½ more years toward my mechanical engineering degree after that.  At that time, I got interested in the law and decided to work my way toward law school.  Instead of taking political science like most aspiring pre-law students were doing at the time, I majored in philosophy and sociology.  I earned a BA in both.  I past my first try at the LSAT and was accepted to law school.  I had taken the GRE as a back-up, so I could apply to a post-graduate program in philosophy should my law school application fail.  I did extremely well on the GRE and was actively recruited by the philosophy department of the school from which I graduated.  I am currently contemplating a return to college to pursue a Master’s degree in either history or philosophy.

MY CAREER

 I am currently the sole proprietor of a resin model company.  I research, design, manufacture, market and sell resin products for the scale modeling community.  I have built architectural models for some large construction firms, including a model that was used to help convince the local population to support a local fly-over project that was eventually built on the beach side of our city.  I have also done some rapid-prototyping work for several major U.S.-based electronic firms, as well as the U.A. Air Force.  For a period of time, I had parts that I modified and manufactured for the Air Force flying in the F-15’s at our local base.

MY PERSONALS

I am inquisitive by nature.  I want to know the truth about all things: the truth as it is, not as I would like it to be.  I am acutely self-aware, so I know that people often take my on-line comments as arrogant and condescending.  I don’t mean to come off that way, but I am working to correct these shortcomings in myself.  It doesn’t help that I am a direct, matter-of-fact type of personality, and that I use a formal writing style learned while in philosophy school.  For what it’s worth, I’m also trusting to the point of being naïve, honest to a fault and somewhat deficient when it comes to detecting sarcasm.  Finally, I have a rather odd memory: I can never remember the things most people deem important (like names and social events), but I have an uncanny ability to recall facts and details that most people never notice. My friends have accused me of being a real life Sheldon Cooper (of the TV series, The Big Bang Theory).

I have a wide variety of interests.  I still read WW II history, build models and, when time allows, I enjoy my retro board games.  I can speak with some knowledge on anything from macramé and needlepoint to Italian cooking to classic literature to quantum mechanics, but I am mostly interested in philosophy, history, the law, politics, language and human behavior (psychology and sociology) – and in that order.  I tend to read 2-3 books at a time and complete about that many every month. I am not averse to reading something written by someone with an opposing point of view.  In fact, my philosophy training taught me this is the only way to truly understand their position.  If I wanted to do so, I could argue Marx as well as Marx ever did.

MY GREATEST FEAR

Ezekiel 3: 17-19

 ¹⁷Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.

 ¹⁸When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

 ¹⁹Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

I’m not a prophet, but, for whatever reason, I seem to have a sense for the general direction of history.  I see things that most people don’t — connections between the past and current events – and what I see are dark times for the future of mankind.  This is the reason for my fear.  I do not want to fall under the condemnation of Ezekiel, so I started this blog to warn whoever has ears to hear…