"My degree (or degree equivalent) inadvertently makes me competent in fixing household appliances"

Full disclosure: I did not complete my undergraduate degree. I changed majors a couple of times while I was studying at Georgia Tech, and it kind of sets you back when classes in your major field turn into electives. I got as many quarter hours as would have been necessary for graduation, but I never actually completed the requirements for any specific degree before my scholarships ran out and I had to find a way to support myself. I left on good standing.

Does that equate to a degree, though? Probably not. But what I did for a living after that (and to some extent, during) was work with computers in just about every way possible, and I've done so since 1986. Not counting taking a year or so off to concentrate on my writing.

The one appliance I can be trusted to take a screwdriver to is your PC. However, anything that comes in a metal box and responds okay sometimes to a gentle soldering is probably not outside the scope of my abilities. I can re-seat connections, swap out components, replace fuses, etc. I know which is the wrong side of a power supply to poke with a metal thingy. I know which funny smells mean bad, bad things and which you can ignore. I don't like to take apart anything that runs on more than twelve volts, but, hey, if it was considered broken already before I touched it, what could it hurt? As long as it's unplugged before surgery begins, anyway.

My actual classwork was in chemistry and psychology. Not many household appliances run on chemistry, and those that do should probably remain sealed. If you had a pigeon or rat you needed trained to press a lever under certain circumstances, I'd probably be okay with that. But there are very few appliances that are pigeon or rodent powered—and if there are, they should probably remain sealed, too. I'm doing okay training the dogs, but they're probably not appliances either. Unless you consider them part of the security system.

I've trained the pugs not to rush the food bowl as soon as food is put in it. I'm proud of that. Anyone who knows pugs knows it's usually futile to try to get between a pug and dinner. Or anything else they want to eat. It's a start.

"I can be a prick when it comes to science"

When I'm not sure I'm right, I don't argue like I think I'm absolutely right. I cut the people on the other side of the argument some slack. When I think I'm right, however, there will be no slack. Even if I'm dead wrong. If someone offers evidence that I'm wrong, however, I fold my hand gracefully and take my whuppin'. However. Even when I'm not sure at all I'm right, but when I'm dead sure the other guy is wrong, there is no mercy.

This certainly extends to science. Because whether or not something is provable as right or wrong, it's fairly easy to tell whether it's good science, and whether the situation described is consistent with known facts, with itself, and with the scope of rational thought. Science, as a body of laws and theories and such, it particularly plastic. You can't get married to any of it. But science as a process, science as rigorous testing of hypotheses and verification under as many different circumstances as can be arranged—that's concrete. If what you're waving in my face and calling science isn't a product of the scientific process, I will drag your ass out to the woodshed.

Intellectually, I am certain that even the process of science is subject to its own laws—i.e., as soon as something better comes along, we are forced to embrace it, whatever it is. But you will never convince me that "something better" can be a gut feeling, a private communication from some self-proclaimed authority, or some thousands-of-years-old text that is right because it says so.

Find me something that produces more accurate and more consistent results than the scientific process and I'll buy it off you on the spot.

"I left the respectable sciences to pursue humanistic studies of the sciences"

It was a hard choice, but, not having the money to finish a degree and get employed in a lab that I could raid surreptitiously at night, I had to move to theory and theory about theory. The hard sciences—the ones that stink and shock and make loud popping noises and such—will always be my first love. But I was wooed away by the phenomenon of emergence, that feature or natural science where simple things band together and form unexpectedly complex phenomena. This happens at every juncture of the sciences, from quantum dynamics to subatomic physics, from subatomic particles to atomic structures, from single atoms to molecular chemistry, from chemistry to biochemistry, from biochemistry to biology, from biology to physiology, from physiology to psychology, from psychology to sociology, from sociology to ... the next thing. And we all know there is a next thing, even if we don't know what it is yet. There's also the possibility that sociology is the wrong branch to follow, and we should be watching something else. Like there are other forms of chemistry than biochemistry that someone could choose to focus on to see where it should go. Carbon chemistry was the jumping off point on our planet, but who knows what it might be elsewhere? Religion and sociology and politics are all emergent from individual and small-group/tribal psychology, but which is the one that bears watching? Could it be more than one? Or something else entirely?

Maybe you get the idea, maybe you don't. In any case, that's one of the reasons I write. I write about things I know about, but I write pointed in the direction of the unknown. Various and sundry genres of speculative fiction, speculation and surrealist sketches ... this is why I write what I write. That's the direction I'm permanently facing. I want to see it coming.

"Will gladly kick sexual harasser’s ass"

I'm quite aware that's not an ass being kicked on the badge, but it gets the point across.

I think under most circumstances gender is completely irrelevant. If we aren't discussing physiological processes that are distinct to XX or XY configurations of genetic material or contemplating having sex and trying to work out the plumbing involved, I don't want to hear about it. If I catch you saying something that reveals you to be the sexist pig you are, I will let you know I'm onto you.

I don't care who (or what) you have sex with as long as the other party/parties is/are willing. Not my business. You can have whatever opinions you like, but I'd better not catch you enforcing your prejudice toward or against some gender's abilities or judgment or emotional stability or any other feature that denies some individual the shadow of the doubt that he/she/they/it can perform at any level they care to achieve. Gender isn't the only prejudice I'll take to task, but it's certainly a hot button of mine. Race, physiological configuration, sexual orientation, background, creed, religion, wealth, IQ, whatever...none of these things determine any person's worth as a human being. If you want to know if someone can do something, you let them attempt it and then judge. End of story.

And if I catch you using your position or trust and/or authority to pursue any kind of gratification at the expense of someone else, particularly in any way that shows a lack of respect for them as a human being, you'll be lucky if all you get from me is a bootheel to the groin. If you're a friend you might get a warning first, but if you're the sort of person who would do that, odds are you're not my friend and I won't have to worry about hurting your feelings when I taser your gonads.

"Has frozen stuff just to see what happens I"

First thing I ever froze was a mood ring I slipped away from my oldest sister when she wasn't looking. It was a 1970s model, so it wasn't very durable. This sort of single-layer version would just go directly to dark blue on my hand and stay there, so I would do what I could to enjoy the changing colors in an unairconditioned house in Georgia in the summer. Those old-school LCD thingies tended not to recover too well from a long stint in the freezer.

Anything that was ever remotely associated with being a thermometer would visit the freezer at least for a little while. As well as liquids that could be expected to change viscosity. I remember a jar of honey I put in the freezer for a day and then turned it over to see if it would ever flow down toward the lid, even given a week or two. I never figured out how it would end because someone invariably needed the honey for something before the experimental period was over. Usually whoever needed liquid honey would be somewhat less than amused.

I was also fond of psychological experiments that involved putting stuff in the freezer. Like, say, taking a latex glove, filling it to normal hand-shape with hot water (less air in it to form bubbles), tying it off, freezing it solid, cutting the glove off, and then leaving it in the icemaker in the fridge at work to shake hands with the next person who needed ice for their soda.

Sure, the science of that is pretty weak and juvenile and didn't necessarily need repeating in order to confirm the basic facts: Water takes the shape of its container, water gets hard when it gets cold, coworkers scream their fool heads off when they find an inexplicable frozen hand in the icemaker. But it was always good for a laugh.