(this means: Tuesday, August 3rd, 1976, at 7:40AM Paris local
time)
Place of birth:
Paris, France (13th
arrondissement, at the “clinique Isis”, 19
boulevard Arago)
Gender:
male
Photograph:
vide
contra; see
also this page for more
photographs of me.
Eye color:
medium blue (actually, my
right eye is of a slightly lighter shade than my left eye)
Hair color:
light blond
Height:
1.74m (that's 5′8″ in
these ridiculous US units)
Weight:
65.5kg (that's 144lb in these
ridiculous US units)
Citizenship:
French (by birth, through my mother)
and Canadian (also by birth, through my father)
Father:
John Andrew
Madore
Mother:
Geneviève
Panaud
Paternal
grandparents:
Andrew Francis Madore (deceased) and Eunice
Lilian Arthur (deceased)
Maternal
grandparents:
Robert Panaud (deceased) and
Thérèse Seigneuret (deceased)
Contact information
The most reliable way to contact me is
by email. If you need to phone me, you
should at least try my apartment's
phone before you try my cell
phone. If you need to send me regular mail,
my Paris address can be used,
but if you are sending me something related to my work, use
my address at work. If you just
want a little chat, ICQ may be
a way.
C/S 96
(I guess this would be called graduating class of 2000 in some
places)
Personal stuff
Alternate names:
I have
essentially two: “Ruxor” and “Gro-Tsen”.
Ruxor (the name comes from an old novel of
mine—but it's really not worth reading) is a kind of alternate
identity; I use it as my nick on IRC and elsewhere. Gro-Tsen (the name has a complicated
story) is my character as a Zen master;
I use it as my nick among my friends of the ENS.
Kinsey score:
6 (this means I'm
gay)
Status:
Living with my boyfriend
Brothers &
Sisters:
Biologically, none. However, Émeric
“Mouton” Tourniaire and myself have adopted each other
as brothers, so effectively I now have two (younger) brothers and
three (younger) sisters.
Hobbies:
spending too much time in
front of computers; reading literature and writing some of mine; going to
movies; listening to music (mainly classical / film music / Celtic,
but I dabble in other genres too, like disco or techno); walking
around Paris (especially at night); intellectual masturbation of all
kinds (only intellectual, you ask? well, I think you can guess the
answer to that)
Favorite books:
Jorge Luis
Borges: El Aleph (The
Aleph)
Jean Giraudoux: La Guerre de
Troie n'aura pas lieu (The Trojan War will not take
place)
José-Maria de Heredia: Les Trophées
Richard Bach:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Jacques Monod: Le Hasard et la Nécessité
(Chance and Necessity)
Italo Calvino: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (If
on a Winter's Night a Traveler)
Georges Perec: La Vie, Mode d'emploi (Life: A User's
Manual)
Victor Hugo:
Bug-Jargal
Umberto Eco:
Baudolino
Isaac Asimov: Second
Foundation
Douglas Hofstadter: Gödel,
Escher, Bach
Douglas Adams: The Hitch-Hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy
Jean Racine:
Bérénice
Armistead Maupin:
Tales of the City
Gottlob Lessing: Nathan der Weise (Nathan the
Wise)
Oscar Wilde: The Happy
Prince
William Shakespeare: A Midsummer-Night's
Dream
J. R. R. Tolkien: The
Hobbit
Some people I greatly admire:
Isaac
Asimov; Élisabeth Badinter; Robert Badinter; Jorge Luis Borges;
Willy Brandt; René Cassin; Noam Chomsky; Charles Darwin; Bette
Davis; Richard Dawkins; Umberto Eco; Stephen Fry; Caius Gracchus;
Hadrian; David Hilbert; Douglas Hofstadter; Victor Hugo; Michelangelo;
Bertrand Russell; Alan Turing; Leonardo da Vinci; Oscar Wilde
My sense of humor:
I'm not sure how
one can describe a sense of humor, but let me mention that I very much
like Douglas Adams (The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy), Woody Allen, Alain Chabat, Philippe Geluck (Le Chat), Gary Larson (The Far
Side), the Monty Pythons, The Onion (especially
their horoscopes) and Charles Schulz (Peanuts); on the
other hand, there are things that I do not find funny, for
example nearly all puns and plays on words, or scenic jokes involving
food (such as the “pie-in-the-face” joke).
If I were:
a letter: A; a color: sky
blue; a season: spring; a stone: a lapis-lazuli; an alchemist's
element: air; a metal: nickel; a gas: argon; an object: a pillow; an
animal: a lion; a tree: a willow or a poplar; a flower: a petunia; a
fruit: a peach; a taste: vanilla; a drink: milk; a dish: roast
chicken; a sport: volley-ball; a weapon: a bow; a capital sin: pride;
a feeling: amusement; a myth: Prometheus bound; a Greek
god: Apollo or Hermes; a Fantasy character race: a Half-Elf; a Fantasy
character class: a wizard; a fiction character: Hari Seldon; a
historical character: Hadrian; a painting: Magritte's Domain of
Arnheim or Poussin's Shepherds
of Arcadia; a sculpture: Michelangelo's David,
of course; a word: “clear”; and all in all:
eclectic
Some things I like:
Sleeping.
Sleeping is the single thing we spend the greatest amout of
time doing (well, at any rate, for me it is), so we might as well
enjoy it. And I do. So here's a nice little quote: There are two
pleasant moments in a day: in the evening when we go to bed, and in
the morning when we don't get up.
Wasting time by chatting
about anything.
People who are able to talk about more than a
single topic (a rare gift, verily).
Intellectually elegant
solutions to problems of all kinds (of course, I reserve the right to
define what I mean by “intellectually
elegant”).
People who remember how to
smile.
People who have this marvelous quality that they are
able to remain calm at all times without seeming indifferent or
uninterested, nor altogether too serious.
Modern architecture:
spacious buildings made mostly of glass, for
example.
Consulting dictionaries.
Cows. I mean, the
animal, Bos taurus: in the first place, cows give milk, and
milk is the drink of the gods; and besides, cows have such lovingly
placid eyes.
Sheep. I mean, the animal, Ovis aries: I
was once viciously attacked by an ewe when I was small, but, since
then, I've been shown that sheep are tender and gentle animals.
Incidentally, I have a stuffed sheep in my room, which was given to me
by friends (the kind of friends that, having which, I do not need
enemies): I lovingly named it “cutlet”.
Ducks (I
mean the live animal, not the food): ducks are ridiculously pompous
and mindless creatures, so I feel a great kinship to
them.
Chinese, Indian and Italian food; umami
taste and coriander.
Some things I
dislike:
People who try to bestow their moral
standards upon others. Fanatics of all kinds, but religious (or
moral) fanatics above all.
People who take me for an idiot
without admitting it (there's nothing wrong with taking me for an
idiot so long as you admit it).
People who have no defects: as
Elizabeth Taylor once said, they usually tend to have some pretty
annoying virtues.
People who have the same defects as I do: so
I can't blame them as I would like.
Utterly gratuitous laws
and rules.
Hair splitting in more than sixteen parts (up to
sixteen is all right).
Brussels sprout: there are various
vegetables that I dislike (celery, for instance), but none is as
deeply repulsive to me as the brussels sprout.