Lindsay Beyerstein is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn. She was born in Vancouver and moved to the US to study philosophy with Daniel Dennett at Tufts University. After receiving her MA, she moved to Brooklyn and worked as a pharmaceutical advertising copywriter before becoming a full-time journalist. Lindsay's reporting has appeared in Salon, Slate, New York Press, The Washington Independent, In These Times and The Globe and Mail amongst other publications, and her photography has appeared in TIME and The Austin American Statesman. She is the recipient of a 2009 Project Censored Real News Award for her reporting on the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Lindsay is the Media Consortium's healthcare blogger and a regular guest on the Nancy Skinner show on Air America Radio. She blogs at Majikthise.
What has been your best blogging experience? > Covering the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Post frequently, engage other bloggers by linking to their posts, and comment on other blogs.
What are your favourite blogs? > Pandagon, Talking Points Memo Muckraker, and Think Progress.
Who are your intellectual heroes? > Philosopher David Hume, philosopher W.V.O. Quine, and muckraking journalist I.F. Stone.
What are you reading at the moment? > I just finished Kathryn Joyce's outstanding book Quiverfull, a work of reported non-fiction about a radical American anti-contraception movement. I'm currently reading Wage Theft in America by Kim Bobo.
Who are your cultural heroes? > Writer David Foster Wallace, documentarian Errol Morris, and television host Rachel Maddow.
What is your favourite movie? > Goodfellas.
Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > George Ainslie's Breakdown of Will, because it gave me new insights about the nature of the self and rational decision-making over time.
Who are your political heroes? > Adlai Stevenson, Eugene Debs, Thomas Jefferson.
What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > 'The ground game is everything.'
If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > I'd make the income tax system dramatically more progressive.
What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > Unchecked greed.
Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > The best is definitely yet to come. I believe in progress.
What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > I like Freud's dictum that people need two things in life, to work and to love.
Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > Probably not.
What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Compassion.
What personal fault do you most dislike? > Greed is tied with irrationality for the worst fault.
Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > I am prejudiced against the New York Yankees.
What is your favourite proverb? > 'Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.'
What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > It's a waste of time for me to go out dancing, even though it's time well spent for others. I have a hard time believing golf is worthwhile for anyone.
What, if anything, do you worry about? > Money.
Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > I'd like to live in Vancouver, British Columbia. It's where I grew up and where most of my family lives.
What would your ideal holiday be? > A week in New York with a lavish expense account. I live in New York, but that would probably still be my choice. That, or a trip to Moscow with an equally lavish budget.
What do you like doing in your spare time? > Reading, cooking, taking photographs.
What is your most treasured possession? > My camera.
What would be your ideal choice of alternative profession or job? > A doctor.
Who is your favourite comedian or humorist? > Hendrik Hertzberg.
Which baseball team do you support? > The Boston Red Sox.
If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true, what would you wish for? > I would like a full-time job as an investigative reporter for a national newspaper.
How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I wouldn't change much at all. I'd just cut back on the boring stuff I need to do to make ends meet.
If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > Mark Twain, Alexander the Great, and Albert Einstein
[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]