Who is Technocrat

Technocrat is a handle/username that Richard Careaga has glommed onto since 1996. The corresponding password was silverback. It seemed at the time to strike just the right chord in combining intellectual arrogance with machismo chest-thumping.

Who he isn't

I am not the director/cimatographer of the same name. I had it first, so I don't know why his parents didn't run a check of birth records first. It's unfair that I get so much mistaken credit for his work.

Who he used to be

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet
A pawn and a king
I've been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing
Each time I find myself
Flat on my face
I pick[ed] myself up and [got]
Back in the race [except that last time]

(You thought that was gonna be Sinatra, dinna ya?)

Places lived

Boston, St. Louis, Boston, St. Louis, Houston, LA, Seattle, LA, Columbus OH, Amherst, St. Louis, Tampa, Boston, Madison CT, Dutch Harbor AK, Anchorage, Modesto CA, San Francisco, Lake Forest IL, Seattle, Sarasota FL, Seattle

Subjects schooled in and mostly left unmastered

Latin, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, history of western civilization, geology, geophysics, regional planning, law (although I'm pretty good at the history, planning and law parts).

Computer languages at least just beyond "Hello, World"

FORTRAN, BASIC, Pascal, C, Perl, Python, R, Julia

Autos owned

Beetle, Corolla, Fiat, Subaru, Golf, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Audi

(Notice a pattern? A Ford salesman insulted me when I was in high school—I swore revenge on Detroit.)

Composers especially liked

Bach, Orff, Glass

Musicians especially liked

Aaron Neville, Ali Akbar Khan, Alison Krause, Angel Romero, Aretha Franklin, Average White Band, B.B. King, The Band, Bering Strait, Big Mama Thornton, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bill Monroe, Bob Dylan, Bob Weir, Bonny Bramlett, The Birds, Carlos Santana, Dave Brubeck, David Bromberg, Derek Truck, Diana Krall, Dianne Reeves, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Doc Watson, Emmy Lou Harris, Etta James, Gillian Welch, Glenn Gould, Gram Parsons, Hank Snow, Jackie DeShannon, Jackson Browne, Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Joni Mitchell, Keith Jarrett, Linda Ronstadt, Lyle Lovett, Maria Muldaur, Mark Knopfler, Maura O'Connell, Mavis Staples, Merle Travis, Michael Bloomfield, Miles Davis, Pablo Casals, Patti Smith, Ralph Stanley, Ramsey Lewis, Ravi Shankar, Ray Charles, Rhianna Gibbons, Sheila Blanco, Son House, Stan Getz, Steven Stills, Ute Lemper, Van Morrison, Vince Guaraldi, Wanda Jackson, We Five, Willie Nelson … and too many more that didn't make the cut because I had to draw the line somewhere.

(If you can't pick me out of a police lineup based on this list alone, you need to sharpen your stereotypes.)

Culinary

I cook for a former restaurant reviewer and assistant food editor for the San Francisco Chronicle which shows the thickness of my hide in taking reconstructive criticism. In what I like to think of as right-thinking prescience, I took up cooking in 1966. I had several motivations. I grew up on the food typical of the day, dull, bland, insipid, tasteless and unappetizing. I couldn't find a second girlfriend whose family took us out to eat in LA Chinatown and I couldn't afford to go to sit-down restaurants on my own dime. There was a hint of women shouldering their way into society at large—few year's latter that would become woman's liberation. It seemed entirely possible that I might pair off with one who had refused to learn to cook on matters of principle coupled with a strange notion that chicks found men who cooked hot.

I'll get around to sharing some of my favorite dishes.

TK

That's newsbiz speak for more to come. Anything else you'd like to know about me, I'm happy to answer just as soon as I refresh myself on any related statutes of limitation.

Mascot of the Day

I am not so vain as you might think from how often my visage appears—it's hard to get model releases. The word "Mascot" should, therefore, also be taken in a respectful, kindly way, except when I am mocking someone in the public eye. (You know who you are.) Or principal religious figures of monotheistic traditions established after 609 CE due to a conspicuous lack of tolerance on the part of some congregants over that sort of thing.

Who me