The Chipper Young Man at the Blaze

Kalium has been kind enough to get things started off right with a good introduction and a solid background for what we're doing here. As he's offered up a solid mini-biography for himself, it seems only rational that I should do likewise.

I was born in Dearborn, MI back in 1984 as the only child my parents would ever have. There I lived in my father's first house until I had reached four years of age, when we moved to what is still my home in Livonia. During that time I was introduced to the church, baptized Presbyterian like my father, occasionally visiting Roman Catholic services with my mother. Aside from that, and my mom's love of angel figurines, my parents were seldom overtly religious. Engineers both, they spent their time teaching me to think, rather than just to believe.

As I rose through my first years, I was always a bit different than the other kids, though it took a while for anyone to figure out why. I was blessed to have a preschool teacher who recognized that I had a talent for academics and knew that the Livonia Public Schools had a program for gifted students. I applied and was accepted to a program that would carry me all the way through high school graduation. Upon graduation, I completed an undergraduate engineering program in Computer Science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I'm currently up at Michigan State, seeking an MBA.

If one wants to understand my politics, it's sufficient to understand my three basic views. I am an ardent believer in federalism; a vigorous but limited national government, strong state and local governments, and as much power retained by the people and private sector as may be considered reasonable. I'm also a firm believer in the rule of law and the power of persuasion; the laws normally should be what they are until you can get 51% of the people to agree that the law should be something different. And finally, I believe that education is the best gift that can be given to a society and the people living in it.

It often amazes me how similar Kalium and I are, while still often reaching radically different answers about how the world should be. I look forward to seeing how that plays out here. Whether we agree or not, I almost always find the conversations fun.