Who Is This Crazy Bill Dearmore Guy, Anyway?

When I was a kid -- way back in prehistoric times before everybody had color TV and broad-band Internet -- there was a show on radio called "Just Plain Bill." I've used that appellation for myself many times since.

I'm just plain Bill.

I was born in the year my culture calls 1939, in the plain little town of Sunset in North Texas, in the United States of America, on the third  planet of a plain yellow dwarf star we call the Sun, about 25,000 light years from the center of a plain spiral galaxy known as the Milky Way. It's plain, that is, as spiral galaxies go. Even the plainest spiral galaxy is pretty spectacular, as you can see below!

I've been in the Lone Star State all my life so far, except for a couple of short stays in California as a kid and one in Oklahoma as a young man.

I would like to tell you that I'm a tenured Professor of Microbiology at a large, highly respected university, and that I have Ph.D.'s in astrophysics, history, chemistry, and linguistics, as well as lesser degrees in anthropology, math, philosophy, computer science, daydreaming, girl watching, and a dozen or so other fields of study.

I would also like you to know that I've written over 300 books on more than 60 different subjects and that I publish the results of my research in at least two refereed scientific journals every month. Sometimes more.

But I can't tell you any of that. None of it would be true. I'm NOT a Dr. Dearmore. I'm just plain Bill.

I actually do have a couple of years of college, and I wish I had a lot more; but I'm mostly self-educated. I have time to study -- especially now that I'm retired -- and a compulsion to learn as much as I can.

I also seem to have a talent for simplifying difficult ideas to make them both interesting and understandable for other people. I made a pretty good living doing it for a few years, but you'll have to judge for yourself. Not everybody agrees, of course.

Oh, well!

Even when I was spending 40 to 60 hours a week writing software documentation, web pages, employee manuals, and various other materials for my employer, I spent most of my own time reading and studying a wide range of subjects to satisfy my hunger for knowledge. As a result, I consider myself an informed non-professional, writing for other non-professionals who may not have the time or desire to study the things I do.

The late Isaac Asimov, author of almost five hundred books and many thousands of short stories, articles, and essays, referred to himself as a "professional explainer." I'm not a professional anything, and I have neither Asimov's talent nor his education. On a smaller scale, though, an explainer is exactly what I want to be.

It was Roger Staubach who said "When you start worrying about mistakes is when you start losing." But Louis E. Boone said "Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life is: could have, might have, and should have." Well, I do worry about misteaks mistakes; but I work slowly, double check facts, run my articles by other informed people, and try hard to get things right.

Fear of mistakes is NOT going to stop me from doing this; it's just going to make me more careful. If I make mistakes anyway, I'll correct them when it is pointed out. Then -- if it seems necessary -- I'll call the correction to your attention by mentioning it on the home page and the next Update. When I publish a serious mistake on this site, I will NEVER attempt to cover it up. I promise. (I made at least one shortly after I started this website, and you can still read about it in the archives.) I would far rather that people say I made some mistakes than that I let fear of mistakes keep me from doing what I "could have, might have, and should have" done.

I promise to try hard to keep this site both interesting and thought-provoking. Since I'm here to share a little information as simply as I can, I write in a very informal style. I can say "this writer did such and such," but I'd rather say "I did it." And you may have already noticed that a few sentences here don't even have a subject and predicate, in spite of what your grammar teachers told you. Like this one, for example.

I've defined my main purposes in creating NoBull as these:

1. To understand and explain various areas of science as simply and interestingly as possible.

2. To encourage critical thinking and reason in all areas of life.

3. To use critical thinking and reason to understand a variety of difficult and controversial concepts, and (when possible) to reach appropriate conclusions.

4. To share some fun with our readers. After all, skeptics need fun, too.

Notice that our goals do NOT include debunking anything or convincing anybody that "we are right and you are wrong." We often discuss subjects that are quite controversial, but we will not argue about them. Our sole intention is to present the known information and reasonable ideas in an understandable way.

I do want to infect you with an enthusiasm for learning that you'll spread like the flu. I want to show you the wonderful story of science in an interesting and simple way so you'll catch the fever of discovery, too.

Since my purposes here are to inform and entertain -- and not to "show off" -- I try to write in a way that will accomplish those goals.

When I discuss scientific subjects here, I am not likely to ever argue against established scientific principles. I am NOT a scientist; so I am not qualified to do that, even if I were so inclined. I may occasionally try to explain both sides of a genuine disagreement among scientists, but my purpose will be to simplify them and make them more understandable.

Since I will not usually be trying to prove anything, you'll find few if any footnotes on this site; but I'll provide links to related information when it seems helpful.

For anybody who's read this far, here's a little more personal information.

I've been referred to from time to time as a "space nut" (or more often, simply as "spacey" or "nutty"). Actually, I am very enthusiastic about science and technology generally, and about space exploration and utilization in particular. In recent years, I've also developed an almost obsessive interest in evolutionary biology.

I enjoy reading good science fiction when I have time. It stirs the imagination and explores possible futures, so we can think about them before we get there. Isaac Asimov (the "professional explainer") was one of my heroes, along with Carl Sagan, Ben Bova, Stanley Schmidt, Robert Heinlin, and other great speculative writers.

I was reared to be a very strict and devout Independent Baptist Fundamentalist; but I eventually got over it. (Read Saved in the Nick of Time, if you wonder about my "de-conversion.") I am now an atheist and a secular humanist.

Politically, I usually tend to be on the liberal side. I am  pro-choice, pro-freedom, pro-humanity, pro-science, and very pro-skepticism. I used to favor the death penalty for some exceptionally heinous crimes, until we began learning from DNA evidence that we were convicting so very many innocent people. Under present circumstances, I can no longer support it.

Well, that's me, and it's probably more than you ever wanted to know about me. So I'll stop here.

I'll be adding to the No Bull Website as often as I have time and feel like I can. If it stimulates anybody to genuinely think about something he or she might not have considered otherwise, it will have served a worthy cause. Regardless whether or not that person ever actually agrees with anything I have to say.

This page was last updated 08/21/09 04:43 PM.

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