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Portrait courtesy of Kerry Kalathas. (C) 1992.
Born: 1957, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
Education: Chambersburg Area Senior High (CASHS) 1974, B.S.
Mathematics & Chemistry, 1978, Lebanon
Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania; M.S. Computer Science, 1980,
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Hobbies: reading, buying books,
buying CDs, listening to CDs, genealogy,
bridge, ballroom and Latin dance (thanks to Titus at DanceUp), painting, skiing,
cross-country skiing, hiking, bicycling, travelling, computational
linguistics.
Thai Quest
Live in Zurich? Like Thai food? See the results of our
quest to find the best Thai curry in Zurich - Thai
food lover's
guide to Zurich
Titles
Since May 2002, when I acquired a small piece of land in Scotland (one
square foot, to be exact), I carry the title Laird of John
O'Groats. (The land is a nature preserve; by selling the deeds
and accompanying titles, the land is saved from development as e.g.
commercial pine farms). Details here in English and
German.
You can call me Laird Bill ... just don't call me late to dinner!
Genealogy
Family Tree
Here's my family tree in brief and a name register. Got to get the
full version back on line someday!
Photo Gallery
Photos of my ancestors
2002 Trip to Western Pa.
Photos from research trip to
Huntingdon and Cambria Counties, Pa.
Queries
Here's the information I'm currently seeking for these surnames: Wyse, Kelly, especially Isaac Kelly,
b. 1815, McMullen. (See
also
Kellys in Indiana Co).
Pennsylvania 67th Regiment Info
Some stuff I learned about the Civil
War unit my great-grandfather served in.
Top 10 Book List
I tried to pick my top ten
books of all time. In no particular order, here they are:
- The
Sherlock Holmes series, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The
Canon.
- Lempriere's Dictionary, by Lawrence Norfolk. Dickens meets
the surrealists. In his first novel, this guy managed to do write a
novel that really feels like Dickens but crosses the line from surreal
to bizarre. Wild conspiracies, tender love, lots of classical
references...I couldn't put it down. There really was a Lempriere, a
young man from Jersey who moved to London to write a dictionary of the
classics. I've been moved by this book to claim the existence of
a new genre of historical fiction, which I call Weird History.
More on that later!
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick.
The book that Blade Runner was very loosely based on. A quintessential
Dick story of the lonely struggle of the small guy and the elusive
nature of reality.
- The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth. An amazing
achievement...a contemporary novel that you can't put down...written
entirely in verse. Check out his wonderful Indian novel A Suitable Boy, which is about 15
times as long.
- L'Amante Senza Fissa Dimora, by Carlo Fruttero and Franco
Lucentini. (English translation is titled "No Fixed
Abode", but out of print.) A French princess working as an art dealer
meets a
mysterious man in Venice. To say much more would spoil the
story. F&L both wrote the text for book jackets. When
they met each other and started to write each other, they were both
around 60, I believe. Lucentini committed suicide, ending their
literary career.
- Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens. Hard to pick just
one Dickens book. This was very good...also Nicholas Nickleby, etc. See
also Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini's completion of Dicken's The
Mystery of Edwin Drood. The recent pastiche Jack Maggs,
which is the story of Great
Expectations retold from the point of view of the convict who
was transported to Australia, is brilliant.
- the Castle Amber series, by Roger Zelazny. One of my
favorite authors of all time. It was a delicious pleasure to wait for
each new
volume in the two pentalogies.
- Titan/Wizard/Gaea, by John Varley. Science fiction of
great humor and unbridled imagination.
- Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. No computer
scientist could help loving this book, could he? I'd read it a dozen
times. Not
just for kids.
- any of a dozen classics...the great thing about classics
is that they really are great books.
Honorable mention: Watership Down, Richard Adams; Little Big,
Alistair Crowley; Justiz, Friedrich Duerenmatt; Homo Faber,
Max Frisch; War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy; Shadow of the
Torturer and the rest of the series, Gene Wolfe; The Unbearable
Lightness of
Being, Milan Kundera; A Thief of Time and others, by Tony
Hillerman;
the Fafhrd and Mouser stories by Fritz Lieber; many
things
by Orson Scott Card (Redemption: the Story of Christoper Columbus,
or some such is very good); Jazz, Toni Morrison; anything by
Mark
Twain.
A thousand more books.
Politics
Living abroad, I notice that most Americans are ill-informed about
their
tax burdens. Read some excerpts from the
New
York Times - if you're American, you pay the least amount of taxes
of
any Western nation - so stop complaining and pay your fair share!
(In an odd footnote, on September 28, 2004 the Swiss Department of
Finance reported that 34% of Swiss believe their taxes are higher than
in the rest of Europe - a belief that is only possible if you never
read a newspaper or travel within Europe - while only 32% are aware
that in truth, Swiss taxes are significantly lower than in the rest of
Europe. Our representative democracy works surprisingly well
considering this level of ignorance.
