OK, I’ve been tagged with the latest blogosphere “meme”: Barry wants me to list “Five Things you don’t know about me”. I thought I was an open book, but here are some of my not-too-deep-and-dark secrets (I suppose you’ve already read enough about my thoughts on cosmology and statistics for now):

1. When I was in graduate school, I wrote record reviews for Spin Magazine (well before they had a website).
2. I went to high school with Brooke Shields and Mira Sorvino. As a wannabe thespian, I played opposite Mira in She Stoops to Conquer and Play it Again, Sam–and even kissed her on stage. I had good enough taste to have a crush on her well before she was famous.
3. My paternal grandmother was born in Shepetovka, Ukraine, on the eve of the First World War, and didn’t meet her father until the family was reunited in New York City after the war.
4. If I had to have a UK-sitcom-style catchphrase, it might be “it’s good to be close”, due to an unfortunate teenage incident involving an underground garage, a concrete column, and a Jaguar (automobile, not feline).
5. I spent New Year’s Eve this year with some ex-Soviet friends drinking Royal Tokaji Aszu and watching the Warsaw-pact holiday classic, The Irony of Fate.

Happy New Year!