Brief bio: Emigrated from Russia at age 9, grew up in Boston, went to Chicago for college and to Dallas for medical school and graduate school. Did residency training and research fellowships in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and then went into industry, where I help run certain aspects of clinical trials. Along the way, I have accumulated many wonderful friends, now scattered all over the country. I am on Tribe partly to keep in touch with them, and partly to reach out to cool new interesting people.
A word about requests to be added as a friend. In Russian, the word that translates as "friend" indicates a close relationship with some implied intimacy and obligation. I know that's not the way it's used here, and I obviously don't hold to a rigid standard on this, but I generally do not apply the word "friend" to people I have never met at all. Thus, if we haven't met and you ask to be added and I don't do so, please don't take it personally.
** JOKES!! **, Anything Goes Martial Arts, bioethics, Buddhists Just Wanna Have Fun, Cognitive Science, Dead Can Dance, Eclectic Self Defense, Eldergoths, Filipino Martial Arts, Fire, Fire Art Injuries, Fire Martial Arts, fire staff, Fire-breathing, Generation-R, Goths, Gun Rights, Healthcare Professionals, I wear black, Incus-Music for Fire Worshippers, Jewbu, Latin Percussion, MEDICINE, Neurophysiology and Neurobiology, Nichiren Buddhism/SGI, Pennsylvania Fire Arts Association, Pentjak Silat, Percussion & Drumming, PEX - The Philadelphia Experiment, Philadelphia Fire Arts, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of the conscious/unconscious, Radiology, Salsa!, Secular Humanism, Skeptic Talk, Skeptics, Snow Crash, Stickfighters, Students of the Sword, The Dresden Dolls, The Flaming Sword, The goth aesthetic, Vampire, WildFire, Word Freaks,