About

my childhood & family

Born at Georgetown University Hospital the day after President Reagan was shot, I lived for nearly two years in Shepherd Park, Washington, DC, after which my parents and I moved with our German Shepherd named Latke to Derwood, an area without precise boundaries in central Montgomery County, Maryland, between Rockville and Gaithersburg. I have one younger brother: Alex, an aerospace/software engineer.

my education

I attended the local public primary schools: Mill Creek Towne Elementary and Redland Middle. Later I attended Richard Montgomery High School, a nearby public school with an International Baccalaureate program, and graduated in 1999 with an IB diploma. That fall, I enrolled in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, where I was a student through 2002. I also did a semester at the Raphael Recanati School, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, in the Lauder School of Government’s BA program for Middle East Security Studies, Counter-Terrorism and International Affairs. But who knows – maybe I’ll finish my BA at NYU after all?

my Aliyah

After spending another year in Derwood, in July 2004 I immigrated to Israel and rented an apartment with a roommate Ari in Baka, Jerusalem, near Ulpan Etzion. I later moved to Jerusalem’s downtown area with a different roommate Ben in March 2005. I stayed in that apartment until April 2006, when I moved to lively central Tel Aviv. I’ve truly enjoyed living in this sweet apartment with successive roommates – Adina, Danielle, Shikma, Cori – as well as frequent house guests.

my interests

Some of my passions include philosophy, history and geography. My main philosophical foci are ethics and politics, and my favorite ancient philosopher is Epicurus. Academically, I have always tended to concentrate on Jewish history, but I am also intrigued by European and Russian history, American history, the history of ideas, and comparative revolutions. I’m a bit of a news and politics junky. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t read Haaretz, Ynet, the Jerusalem Post, the Drudge Report, Slate, and Arts & Letters Daily.

my politics

I’m a one-time minarchist and a lapsed Libertarian.

my Zionism

I’m a Zionist in the traditional, political, social and historical senses of that term, an alumnus of Betar, a proud Oleh and advocate of Aliyah, and an admirer of the great Zionist leaders from earlier eras, such as Herzl and Jabotinsky.

my sports

I am moderately passionate about two sports teams: the New York Yankees and the Washington Redskins. I’ve been a devoted Yankees fan since the mid 80s and a Redskins fan since the early 90s. I’ve attended many Yankees games in the bleacher section of Yankee Stadium, and three Redskins games. I try to watch Redskins games on television when presented with the rare opportunity.

my music

I appreciate lots of different kinds of music, even including country, though I don’t care for techno. I especially enjoy classic punk rock and proto-punk, as well as roots reggae. Right now one of my favorite bands is Groundation.

my type

I have been known to make use of Carl Jung’s system of psychological typing to facilitate personal relationships and encounters, particularly relying on functional analysis. I’m an iNtj; what type are you?

my computing

I’ve used Macintosh computers for something like 20 years and currently have an aging and slow Powerbook G4 as well as a lovely Mac Plus and an iMac, though I find I’m doing more and more computing on my iPhone.

my pictures

I love photography and have these cameras in my rotation: an old, heavy Nikkormat SLR that I absolutely adore, a brand-spanking-new Canon Digital Rebel, my old Canon Powershot G5 and my iPhone.

my work

Perhaps because of my interest in history, I have enjoyed participating in archeology for almost a decade and a half, and in Jerusalem I spent more than a year working at an archeological excavation of material from Har HaBayit. Right now I work in the internet industry in the Tel Aviv area.

my dog

His name is Sharav. He was born in early January 2007 and he’s probably a Belgian Shepherd mix. He’s adorable, submissive, friendly, quiet, generally well behaved and not too big (about 23 kilos).

my etc.

If this information wasn’t enough for you, I’m on the Facebook, so you can hunt me down there. I also update my status occasionally.

my sites

Nathan’s Page of Dark Cynicisms (March 1998 – summer 2000)

• my first website ever, mainly self-mocking, funky javascripts
• eventually too much serious material

Transfer Interrupted (summer 2000 – summer 2001)

• boring, very little content

Serene Angst 1.0 (summer 2001 – summer 2002)

• extremely simple design
• combined funny and serious content

Serene Angst 2.0 (summer 2002 – January 2003?)

• flashier, based in frames and embedded style sheets
• first blog (The Daily Aliyah), powered by Blogger

Serene Angst 3.0 (February 2003? – summer 2003)

• very few graphics
• used a second blog (Notes), also powered by Blogger, as part of site
• three column design with cascading style sheets (finally)

Faith in Nathan 1.0 (September 2003 – winter 2003)

• switched to Movable Type, integrating old content as blog entries
• more navigable, but ugly and poor design (still three column)
• corrupted Berkeley database caused early demise

Faith in Nathan 2.0 (February 2004 – September 2005)

• maintained three column design, but with more attractive style
• Gallery-powered photo gallery

Faith in Nathan 3.0 (October 2005 – August 2007)

• switched to WordPress CMS
• kept three column idea and used very heavily modified version of Journalized-Blue to maintain basic styles and minimize changes in appearance
• too much variety in content – tried too much to appeal to different audiences

Lines Writing Lines (September 2007 – present)

• swinging back towards simplicity, minimizing and redirecting excess content
• moving to Cutline design
• built on a Mac using Firefox and not intended to be viewed in non-standards-compliant browsers

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