Having spent the better part of...I want to say 2 years, lurking around the now-defunct official Vox Box blog, mostly as an attack dog and the comic relief, I come...in peace (yes, cheesy and cliche!!! *claps*). Alright, seriously, alien humor aside, I thank Nick and the ladies for the opportunity to be a contributor to this magnificent endeavor.
About me:
My name is Jeremiah Max Salinger, and I am 19 year old college sophomore at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I'm majoring in Wildlife Ecology & Management, concentration in Commercial Fisheries with minors in Evolutionary Psychology and Marine Science. How did I end up in the hotbed of intolerance in America (just kidding)? Well, I lived there for ten years until my parents split up, upon which I moved Spokane with my mother. I'm an alum of Lincoln Heights Elementary (and not that new one...the old school, yeah...I'm old), Chase Middle School, and Ferris High School, Class of 2008...Saxons rule the world, by the way. :)
As I may have revealed in posts to the old blog, I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of Autism at the age of 10. Asperger's Syndrome is characterized by physical clumsiness, difficulties in social interaction, specific subject obsession (usually in childhood...mine was airline flight timetables), and a lack of cognitive retardation...to summarize, I walk, talk, think, smart off, etc. just like any other person now that I've had years of intensive therapy...still clumsy though. In case anyone wonders, my position on the whole idea of "Oh, what if we could cure your condition?" is that 1) I don't consider what I have to be a condition--it is a gift from G-d and 2) If there ever was a cure, I wouldn't want it and I believe that any self-respecting person with AS should reject it as well--if the world cures its people with Autism disorders, it can say goodbye to the best musical, mathematical, literary, scientific, and dramatic minds it has ever seen.
Okay, next up. The casual viewer may not have noticed that when I described my diagnosis of AS as a gift, I didn't spell out His name. Why? As a Jew (Reform with Zionist leanings, in case anyone is interested), I believe to be an affront to G-d to spell out his name on a medium that can be destroyed because destroying the medium is destroying praise of Him (it is sacrilege, akin to what I think Christians would call taking His name in vain, yes?). On a similar cord, I am pretty strongly pro-Israel, and I'm not ashamed of it...among groups and people that torque me off are Amnesty International (sometimes...ever since that woman from Frisco came to my senior year CWA class, I've been a bit bitter) and Uri Avnery. That is not to say that I don't advocate peace in the Middle East--on the contrary, I do. I also am supportive of the two-state solution, one for Jews and one for Palestinians. However, I will not support the second state being run by terrorists.
Alright, serious stuff aside...time for random trivia.
Favorite color: red
Favorite authors: Tom Clancy, Brad Thor, Michael Connelly, Vince Flynn, Nelson DeMille, Karen Traviss, Michael Oren (yes, him)
Average daily coffee intake: ~ 2 pots
Birthday: July 11th
Hobbies: Computer gaming (mainly tycoon games, Call of Duty, Top Chef, and Civilizations), reading (except for this lit class I'm taking on the Internet...250 pages in a week is insane!), cooking, and being a newsie (right now, I've got CNN on TV, and four of my five tabs open right now are the Spokesman Review, the Wall Street Journal, The Jerusalem Post, and The Guardian)
Any other questions about me, feel free to post them. My beat will be international news, with a focus on the Middle East...most articles will come from the Jerusalem Post and either Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya. If I get kind of fiery in my responses...well...I'm passionate. :) Okay, next poor schmuck's turn!
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right on, right on jeremiah! :) welcome to the club!
ReplyDeletewell wait - let me rephrase that: right on for your excellent taste in authors AND caffine! coffee is great...that's all that needs to be said...
Coffee=life. Very simple equation. :)
ReplyDeleteSo what do you listen to BRO????
ReplyDeleteIt's in some of my post on here already Nick, but, to summarize: Dropkick Murphys, Sublime, James Blunt, Matisyahu, Flogging Molly, Social Distortion, Bob Marley, Jibbs, The Dubliners, and Bon Jovi.
ReplyDeleteWhat made you decide to major in Wildlife Ecology & Management? That sounds really interesting, whatever it is, exactly...what would a career in this major involve? Is it sort of in the environment-preserving genre?
ReplyDeletehmmmm jeremiah!! i must totally agree...
ReplyDeletecoffee=life...now THAT should definitely be on a t-shirt. wait! who am i kidding, that could just be tatoo'd on our foreheads right underneath 'we heart the VOX'...
yeah? how does that sound? :D
Emi: I've been to more zoos and aquariums than I can count...went to the university farm every day for 8 years when I was little, and yeah, I'm an environmentalist.
ReplyDeleteEcologists study interactions, in a general sense, with the two best known divisions being wildlife (or, as a zoologist would say 'lower animal') and social (my father's Ph.D is in Social Ecology, for instance...he's a sociologist, pretty much). We wildlife ecologists study the interactions in ecosystems, biomes, all the way up to the planetary level. Within our field there are different specialties...some of us work on plants, some on animals, some on wildlife-nonliving element interactions (e.g.--toxicology). As for me (and I find this odd, because I coulda sworn my concentration was Fisheries...turns out, it's Fisheries and Marine Mammals), I would like to work for the federal government while I'm still in the US (I plan on emigrating to Israel sometime in the next 10-15 years and working for the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority, perhaps on Lake Kinneret).
We do research, a lot of it--the higher ups will have their own labs, of course, but to be perfectly honest, most of our research is done in the fields, with an office only being necessary primarily for statistics work. It's perfect work for people like me who don't like sitting at a desk all day.
Chloe: Absolutely...we can get that put on a shirt, instant fundraiser...like this: in big letters "Coffee=Life" and then under it in smaller letters "Please support the Vox Box coffee fund"