My Vices
I have a number of semi-harmless vices. Most of them revolve around my hobbies. For example, I can recommend Orvis fly rods. My favorite rod is a simple Orvis 8 1/2 foot, 5-weight, medium action fly rod with an equally simple Battenkill disk drag fly reel. I use it all the time. I also have a pair of Orvis Silver Label "no sweat" waders. They rock. I recently got a really nice St. Croix seven-and-a-half for three and I put a little Battenkill on it, as well. Highly recommended for small trout streams and panfish.

Product Shot

For some reason, trout fishing always puts me a mood for decent scotch and hand-rolled cigars, i.e. real vices. I like scotch that actually has something to say to you, in particular Johnnie Walker (an available blended scotch in Michigan, where the liquor laws are rather restrictive) and Balvanie DoubleWood (a Speyside scotch produced at The Balvenie Distillery in Banffshire). Johnnie Walker is good on ice. Don't put Balvanie on ice, though. I beg you.

As far as good cigars are concerned, I tend to buy Churchill-sized ones manufactured by Arturo Fuente (of course) and by Maria Mancini (made in Honduras, the box-pressed maduros are very nice and reasonably priced). I also like the box-pressed cigars made by Punch and by Acid. If you enjoy good cigars on trout streams, then you also need a Zippo lighter. Just owning one makes you proud to be an American.

I like to play nice guitars. For me, that means Fender electric guitars (the Fender American Standard Stratocaster is the best electric guitar for the money, I would argue). I like D'Addario strings on stratocasters. Quality sound. Particularly with a tube amp, though it is hard to get the settings right so that it does not sound too thin or too distorted. I have a nice Yamaha classical guitar, too. Very nice for fingerpick-style playing.

What is in my CD player, you ask? Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain, Gillian Welsh's Time (The Revelator), Paul Simon's You're the One and Anthology, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's So Far, Eric Clapton and B.B. King's Riding with the King, Clapton's Reptile, Willie Nelson's Milk Cow Blues, Michael Hedges' Live on the Double Planet, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Duke Ellington's Indigos and soundtrack for Anatomy of a Murder, Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, Mark Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia, The Pogues' If I Should Fall From Grace With God, and Counting Crows' August and Everything After.

Sometimes I am asked, "What are your favorite works of philosophy?" I have read most of the classics of western philosophy, some of the classics of eastern philosophy, and much in the area of contemporary philosophy. My favorites are:

Plato, The Republic
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations
Gottfried Leibniz, Monadology
David Hume, An Inquiry into Human Understanding
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
John L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia