User:Sundog

I happily stole the moniker "Sundog" from Bruce Stirling, who used it to refer to a certain variety of rootless cosmos-politan in his Maker/Shaper trilogy.

I'm American and live in a small, isolated Western town. I've spent nearly half my life living or traveling outside the US, always solo (not military or corporate). Tokyo is the city I know best; I lived there from the early boom until well into the bust.

My interest in resilience goes back to the early '70s. Someone loaned me a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog and I was fascinated. This was shortly before the first oil crisis which hit just before I finished high school. By the early '80s the city and region I'd grown up in, which had enjoyed a bumpy but generally prosperous economy, was devastated.

I studied civil engineering for three years because I had numerical literacy and saw "appropriate technology" as a means of rectifying injustice and promoting security. But I became disillusioned and eventually completed a self-designed BA that combined engineering, political science and anthropology leavened by literature and history.

One professor was ex-CIA and asked if I were interested in working for the government. Since 9/11 I've often wondered if I could have done some good. I'm not sure how I became aware of John Robb but my view of the world has never been the same since reading "Brave New War." I'm happy to have the opportunity to muck about on this young wiki.

Don't take anything I say too seriously! I'm no expert about any damn thing.