Welcome to A Search For Truth. I'm not so vain to think I've actually found it, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what it'll look like.

So, what's this web log about? Like most blogs, it's a vanity site, but my interests are hopefully varied enough to keep you entertained. My interests and personality will be gradually revealed in my writings, but please keep in mind that I'm much nicer in person.

I will likely be writing about the following subjects, among others:

• libertarian politics, especially of the anarchocapitalist variety
• Austrian economics
• health physics and radiation protection
• good popularizations of the latest advances in physics and biology
• the GNU/Linux operating system and other open source software
• baseball, particularly the Atlanta Braves
• penguins
• movies and books about any or all of the above

I recently tried to set up shop over at myspace.com, but was foiled when I actually tried to make a blog entry. It said that either my browser or my OS was unsupported. Firefox on Linux, unsupported? Harrumph. They did ask about my heroes, which I thought was a nice touch, so I listed the following:

Murray Rothbard, the late S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Professor Rothbard was human liberty's greatest modern-day champion and dean of the Austrian School of economics until his death in 1995. He wrote lucid treatises of economics, politics and history, helped to found several institutions for libertarian progress (including the Libertarian Party, the Cato Institute, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute), and worked tirelessly to promote the ideal of human liberty. I have read several of his books and many articles, and I have never read anything by him that wasn't true (or uncannily prescient).

Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the author of several readbale popular books on evolutionary theory, including The Selfish Gene and (my favorite) The Blind Watchmaker. He is as unyielding a warrior for truth in the biological sciences as Rothbard was in matters of political economy. It is a mistake, however, to follow him unconditionally into the realm of politics, where he is mildly illiberal when it comes to education and highly intolerant when it comes to religion. I share his atheism, but I think it is a mistake to enforce secularity on the unwilling. That way lies totalitarianism.

Bernard Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Cohen is an iconoclast in the world of health physics. While most of the profession seems to be heading down a zero-tolerance road, his studies on low-level radon exposure clearly refute the applicability of the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model for estimating risks of low exposures of radiation. It hasn't happened yet, but Dr. Cohen's work will eventually result in a more common-sense appraisal of all of mankind's beneficial uses of radiation and radioactive materials.

As more people get added to my list of Long Duration Personal Saviors, I'll let you know.