Salaried and Contract Work

This résumé is designed to be essentially silent on my work as an aspiring scientist-in-private-practice, as a private analyst of information and energy technologies, and as a freelance writer (in other words, on what I do in those numerous hours in which I am professionally active and yet am not functioning as a member of the conventional workforce). For the freelance writing, please consult my portfolio, in the "Literary" section of my Web site.

• 2003 February 12 to 2005 summer (and beyond): served as copyeditor for Canadian Journal of Physics with National Research Council of Canada Research Press (NRC RP), as a federal-tender subcontractor to IMC Information Solutions (Vancouver): editing involved (i) enforcing house rules for punctuation, spelling, and styling, in text, tables, mathematics, figure captions, and reference lists; (ii) rectifying minor, but tricky, mathematical typography points not covered by house rules (two examples: the setting of Dirac bra and ket in quantum mechanics; the correct spacing of differentials within integrals); (iii) querying authors on linguistic, as opposed to scientific, problems, while exercising vigilance essentially at the grammatical, yet in a modest and informal sense also at the scientific, level; and (iv) copyediting; work was performed in LaTeX source code with NRC RP *.cls and *.sty LaTeX add-ons; edited 13 papers in 2003, 4 papers in 2004, and 15 papers over the period 2005 January 1 through 2005 July 31 (with further papers anticipated over the coming months)
• 2001 April to 2005 summer (and beyond): provided part-time (hourly-rate) support for team of Prof. Robert F. Garrison (Professor Emeritus since 2001 summer), Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto: data acquisition and packaging at 1.88-m David Dunlap Observatory telescope, in multinational NASA NStars project (a spectroscopic survey of nearby stars); funding for 2004 and 2005 was from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada in virtue of a grant made to Prof. Garrison; 2002 and 2003 were unpaid, because of funding constraints; funding for 2001 was from NASA in virtue of a grant made to Prof. Garrison's team
• 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999 summers: performed casual tour-guide work (essentially popular-scientific lecturing to the general public) at the David Dunlap Observatory, University of Toronto (2005 duties: June 18, July 9, August 6, August 12, September 17, September 24, in all but two of these cases as head of the three-person tour-guide team, serving as the principal lecturer for the evening)
• 2004 November 22 to 2004 December 10 and 2002 November 18 to 2002 December 6: served as marker for the (Province of Ontario) Education Quality and Accountability Office, as an employee of Drake International (engaged in 2002 as a member of a small, special, category of non-teachers obtaining exceptionally high scores in recruitment screening administered by Drake), for the analytic reading and holistic writing components of the Province of Ontario (Grade X) Secondary School Literacy Test
• 2004 June 3 to 2004 June 23, 2003 July 14 to 2003 July 21, and 2003 April 15 to 2003 May 1: created indexes for Nelson Thomson Learning mathematics textbooks, Province of Ontario Grades 5, 3, and 4, respectively, in all three cases working in CINDEX indexing software from hardcopy page proofs (and see also below for indexing of physics textbook, 2001 March 15 to 2002 March 27)
• 2004 summer, 2003 summer: assisted very small, sporadically paying, client with minor literary work (yielding, rather usefully, two essays now in the "Literary" section of this site: "Cyber-Elites and Body Lotions: Some Business Values" and "Snapshots of a Planet in Peril")
• 2003 December 11 to 2003 December 19: served as copyeditor for five physics journal articles for American Institute of Physics, under an arrangement with a New Jersey office of Innodata Isogen: work was performed with traditional copyeditors' marks, with some additional special notations for eventual downstream processing by other personnel in an SGML- or XML-style environment, on hardcopy
• 2003, intermittently: supported two private clients with minor literary projects, in each case establishing for the (convinced, happy) client concerned that the literary work was not of sufficient merit to call for an expensive, long-term editorial engagement: (i) book manuscript evaluation and tutorial suggestions, for 9 billable hours; (ii) book manuscript evaluation in connection with the disposal of a literary estate, for 7 billable hours
• 2001 March 15 to 2002 March 27: created index for Nelson Thomson Learning 700-page four-author physics textbook, Province of Ontario (reformed curriculum) Grade 12, working in CINDEX indexing software from hardcopy page proofs
• 2001 November 14 to 2002 February 14: performed copyediting, and provided related counselling on many dozen scientific points, for Nelson Thomson Learning 700-page four-author physics textbook, Province of Ontario (reformed curriculum) Grade 12: work was organized as an onscreen edit in MS Word 2002, with revision-tracking and comment-balloon facilities, and with MathType for equation editing; total hourcount (billable and nonbillable) was 475h13
• 1997 March to 2001 July; for termination details, see psychiatric history, below: supplied part-time project management in Web development at Nebular Vision Research and Development Inc., Toronto (largest project was English-language editing and full project management of trilingual site for a Government of Greenland agency); concurrently, and in part under an arrangement with Nebular Vision, supplied editorial or proofreading support in three projects with Prentice Hall of Canada, College Division - (i) compilation of decorative literary quotations, through library research, for psychology textbook; (ii) correction of ecology-textbook hardcopy page proofs, with significant remedial copyedit on the proofs; (iii) checking and revision, as one member of a two-person team, of Web-based quiz materials for a marketing textbook
• 1996 June to 1996 August: supplied assembly and quality-control support in Toronto cleanroom laboratory for forward-endcap calorimeter maquette in the CERN ATLAS (Large Hadron Collider) project, on the team of Prof. Robert Orr, Department of Physics, University of Toronto
• 1994 August to 1995 September: participated in University of Toronto Professional Experience Year programme at Information Technology Security, Digital Equipment of Canada (unusual Certificate of Recognition, presented in 1995 by Digital Equipment of Canada Eastern Canada OMS/CNS Service Delivery with fifty-dollar cash reward, with citation "for an outstanding contribution toward the goals of the organization and Digital"): network security programming, in Digital Command Language (DCL) and C, and general network security administration
• 1978 August to 1991 September; for termination details, see psychiatric history, below: held continuous sequence of university philosophy teaching and research positions at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), University of New England (Armidale, Australia), National University of Singapore, University of Notre Dame (USA), University of Victoria (Canada), York University (Canada); publications in analytical philosophy of language in several first-ranking academic philosophy journals, including Mind; unsuccessful in York University tenure process

Education

• 1996 September to 1999 May: completed full sequence of Astrophysics Specialist AST* courses at Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto (A+, A+, A+, A+, A, A-)
• 1999: completed USDA CEDIT 360 correspondence course in book indexing (obtaining perfect marks in the final examination)
• 1990 September to 1994 May, and 1995 September to 1996 May: completed University of Toronto Specialist Programme in Computer Science and Physics (a programme that corresponds to the British concept of "Joint Honours"), significantly exceeding the courseload requirements in the physics portion; degree awarded with Distinction (a grade of honours that corresponds to the British concept of "Upper Second")
• 1974 September to 1978 August (with doctoral thesis defence early in 1979): completed philosophy B.Phil., D.Phil., at Oxford University (doctoral thesis title was "Occurrences, Pseudo-Occurrences, Propositions, and Individuals"; thesis discussed formal-language adverbs, quantified tense logic, formal ontology)
• 1970 September to 1974 May: completed Honours B.A. in philosophy, with heavy additional concentration in English literature, at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia (with University silver medal for highest standing in Faculty of Arts: although degree certificate was issued for Honours in philosophy, the university administration offered the option of having the certificate show instead completion of combined-Honours B.A. in philosophy and English; I stress, therefore, that I may be considered to have solid Dalhousie baccalaureate credentials not in philosophy alone but also in English)

Recent Significant Volunteer Work

• 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001: assisted Prof. Robert F. Garrison with editing and scientific updating, as second author, of the "Brightest Stars" article in the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Observer's Handbook (an annual publication with some international readership, with a press run of around 12,000 copies): responsibilities included revising and checking 621 celestial-coordinate data items in a 314-row table, checking and querying stellar magnitudes and colour indices, bringing some order to traditional (essentially Arabic) stellar nomenclature, and assisting Prof. Garrison in a review of MK spectral types; also maintained Prof. Garrison's professional Web page, with a late-2002 complete overhaul of Prof. Garrison's 34-item personal scientific bibliography
• full horticultural seasons of 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, and also October of 1999: upgraded gardens for David Dunlap Observatory, University of Toronto, in my private programme of practical environmental stewardship and horticultural self-study; time investments in 2004, 2003, 2002 operations were 70 hours, 63 hours, 23 hours, respectively; University of Toronto made partial reimbursement for some materials; by 2005, the portion of the Observatory gardens which was my own creation, as distinct from legacy beds and plantings, comprised (i) a few hundred spring bulbs, (ii) 8 shrub roses companion-planted with Lavandula angustifolia, (iii) two major new beds of annuals-with-perennials double-dug to a depth of 30 centimetres and heavily manured, to a total major-bed area of around 7 or 8 square metres, and (iv) minor plantings, including two legacy, but now rejuvenated, concrete planter bowls and two new small double-dug, heavily manured highlight beds
• 1999 summer to 2005 summer (and beyond): assisted Prof. Robert F. Garrison (Professor Emeritus since 2001 summer) in Linux computing (including creation of two Debian GNU/Linux version 3.0 workstations and one install of an auxiliary hard drive) and stellar spectroscopy, at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the University of Toronto and the David Dunlap Observatory in the University of Toronto (in high tens or low hundreds of hours of work annually, over and above work paid for by grant monies and therefore formally recorded in the paid-work section of this résumé)
• 2005 spring: served as judge in University of Toronto Space Design Context, appraising 12 space-station proposals of junior-high and high-school students, for a time investment of 7 or 8 hours
• 1997 to 2002 summer; for termination details, see psychiatric history, below: served on 400-page book project (Estonian-language editing, SGML typesetting to HTML, RTF, some PostScript) for Estonian academic organization Korporatsioon Vironia; for a time investment of some hundreds of hours; book was published in hard covers in 2003 or 2004, with a press run of around 400 or 500 copies
• 1999 spring to 2000 summer (for termination details, see psychiatric history, below); also 2002: served as Toronto Branch Membership Chair, Editors' Association of Canada (EAC) (and donated 15 hours' questionnaire data analysis in summer of 2002, radically redesigning the questionnaire at the completion of my work; the revised design was adopted by the EAC when the 2002 survey was repeated in 2003)

Psychiatric History

It is prudent to supply a full psychiatric history on this résumé page because many people (corrrectly) perceive me to be eccentric. (One might, alternatively, say, in the demeaning language of business, that since I am damaged merchandise, commercial transparency requires me to supply the marketplace with a damage assessment.) My difficulties, which have persisted at a steady level as the years have gone by, put me into some mild danger of becoming a homeless "street person". My best guess, however, is that (to use briefly the language of pastoral theology) I shall be granted sufficient graces to rise above my difficulties.

It is possible that this psychiatric history will prove useful not only to prospective clients or employers but also to two classes of medical researchers: (i) investigators of sexual pathologlies such as the homosexual boot fetish, particularly in relation to Asperger's Syndrome and genetically driven dysthymic unipolar depression; (ii) investigators of side-effects from Prozac (fluoxetene hydrochloride), particularly as presented in electroencephalographic sleep studies. (I may indeed later succeed in drawing the attention of some relevant clinical research workers to this portion of my résumé. If additional clinical subjects like me can be located, some useful dissertation work could perhaps be undertaken by a graduate student or two, ultimately generating a couple of helpful articles in the peer-reviewed journals.)

Although a résumé is standardly presented in reverse chronological order, forward chronological ordering maximizes clarity in this particular psychiatric history.

For a more colourful and literary treatment of the themes touched on here in necessarily grey and clinical language, the reader is referrerd to the "Literary" section of my site for links to, or other pertinent information on, my pieces "Total Catholic Woof", "Leather Lent", and "Depression, the Body Politic, and Frankelian Freedom-to-Appraise".

• 1953 July 12: was born in small-town Canada into an exile-Estonian family, as the only child of my late father's second marriage; my father (1912-1991) was an agronomist of some distinction, attached to the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture, with research facilities (including a shared office) at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College
• 1953 to 1968: had an unremarkable childhood, with no significant abuse and no significant home pathology (but family life was rather often unhappy, with the shouting, slapping, strapping, and so forth common in many families at the time, and with an additional shadow cast by our own exile-Estonian emotional experience in the setting of the Cold War; further, my extended family presents psychiatric pathology on the paternal side; I trace pathology, in one instance outside my nuclear family as outright alcoholism and heterosexual promiscuity, but predominantly as depression, in altogether five individuals, including myself, over a total of four generations)
• 1957 or 1958: had first suggestions of abnormal sexual fantasies, involving a type of rubber boot; my fantasies became more pronounced at puberty in 1966 and continued to be pronounced thereafter
• 1973 or 1974: had first psychiatry, for depression; took essentially no medications; performed self-mutilation (opening one major vessel in the left forearm) some months after the psychiatry began
• 1974 summer to 1978 summer: found partial relief for depression and anxiety by leaving Canada for graduate studies at Oxford
• 1975, 1976: took the tricyclic antidepressant amitriptiline (tradenamed Elavil) in a sub-clinical dose (about 25 mg daily), under the supervision of a general practitioner, after trivial self-mutilation (with razor scratches) at a time of academic stress
• 1977: had brief, severe depression, at a time of academic or career-related stress, with brief psychiatry (in health service either formally or de facto affiliated with Oxford University, at either the Littlemore or the Warneford facility): had no overnight hospitalization, and I believe took essentially no medication
• 1982: took professional assistance from psychiatrist and psychologist, in effort to address depression and homosexual desires: the psychologist's programme of controlled masturbation with prescribed rubber-boots-with-woman fantasies led to a panic or rage attack and hospitalization for a night or two; took essentially no medication
• 1983 December: was formally received as a convert into Catholic Church
• 1987/1988 academic year: had first significant police contact (had panic or rage attack in library at University of Notre Dame in USA, with brief loss of control, probably including brief shouting or gesticulation, or else weeping; police interview made in library was subsequently communicated to a Notre Dame vice-presidential office; there was no psychiatric intervention)
• 1990 autumn: underwent what is up to this point my principal life crisis, with emotional ramifications that I continually find myself having to address: I was asked by York University to resign from faculty, probably in essence because of my rigid and demanding classroom and interpersonal style (my positive statistics from student course-evaluation forms notwithstanding), deriving from what the then-current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV termed "Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder" ("OCPD"; not to be confused with the better-known DSM-IV condition "OCD"); four weeks after tendering the requested resignation, I had a panic or rage attack in which I tried to self-mutilate on my left forearm with a sharp paper knife; police intervention led to hospitalization in a locked ward under Province of Ontario "Form One"; I left hospital on my own initiative after Form One provisions were lifted, because it was more or less appropriate for me to continue teaching my classes; this initiative required me to sign a form testifying that I was leaving contrary to hospital advice
• 1991 January: was relieved of my teaching duties by York University because of depression (some psychiatric support was given, I believe, but there was essentially no medication); brief police interventions occurred after one or more further panic or rage attacks, but there was no hospitalization; I continued on salary at York University until the formal expiry of my contract in the summer of 1991
• 1999 summer: was physically expelled from a meeting of a fully orthodox Catholic support group for chaste homosexual persons after a panic or rage attack, induced by my fear of the priest's probable reactions to my immediately impending confession of Internet misbehaviour; there was no police intervention; I was readmitted to the support group two or so years later
• 1999 summer: was diagnosed (whether correctly or incorrectly) with both autistic-spectrum Asperger's Syndrome and clinical depression by "Doctor XYZ" (my pseudonym for a physician attached at the time to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on the University of Toronto campus): Dr XYZ prescribed a low clinical dose of the SSRI antidepressant fluoxetene hydrochloride (tradenamed Prozac); Prozac was continued for around 12 weeks; Prozac induced strong and unusual suicidal ideation after a few weeks, with probable sleep disturbance, but did not change my underlying mood; after suspecting a sleep disorder (which I privately now believe was induced by the medication), Dr XYZ ordered a two-night sleep study at Toronto Western Hospital, with electroencephalogram (EEG) and other monitoring; the sleep study revealed massively broken sleep, with many tens (even more than ten tens?) of nocturnal awakenings, and severe daytime drowsiness; the EEG readings in the study did not, however, present depression symptomatology
• 2000 January: received short course (4 weeks?) of ineffective SSRI antidepressant buspirone (tradenamed Buspar) under Dr XYZ; discontinued both the buspirone and the psychotherapy after deciding that Dr XYZ's liberal positions on sexuality were in significant tension with Catholic moral teaching (Dr XYZ suggested that for a Catholic homosexual man, a marriage-of-convenience to a woman was a morally and medically viable option; further, he minimized worries over masturbation by remarking, in irony, "Stop masturbating and I'll write a book about you")
• 2000(?): made afternoon visit to emergency room of Saint Michael's Hospital, Toronto, after panic attack with minor self-mutilation on left forearm, in a climate of rising anxiety induced by unsuccessful participation in a twelve-step group, for which I here use the pseudonym "ABCDE Anonymous" (I had been participating, on instructions from the Catholic priesthood, in an attempt to address my compulsive fantasies, including Internet-driven fantasies, of homosexual and rubber-boot or leather-boot sex; these fantasies had from around 1979 onward led me to make a dozen or so boot purchases, in each case with subsequent discarding of the purchase; I had also in the period from 1978 (or 1979?) to early 1982 had mild forms of sexual congress, not involving anal or oral genital manipulations, with various men, safely outside the university world, and in two of these cases had entered into an emotional or romantic involvement lasting several weeks)
• 2001(?): participated as volunteer in blind or double-blind sleep-medication trial of experimental melatonin derivative agomelatine (developed by pharmaceutical corporation Servier) under supervision of Toronto Western Hospital; one volunteer in four received placebo, one volunteer in four received fluoxetene hydrochloride, and two volunteers in four received agomelatine; although I did not know which medication I had been randomly allotted, I judged from an onset of suicidal ideation and other now-familiar emotions that I had been allotted the fluoxetene hydrochloride (I had warned Toronto Western before the start of the experiment that I had been suicidal in 1999 when receiving this substance, but Toronto Western nevertheless had me enter the Servier experiment); confronted Toronto Western Hospital in panic or rage attack, and was immediately relieved of my duty to take the medication
• 2001 summer: left part-time employment at a financially troubled small startup, Nebular Vision Research and Development, with panic or rage attack, in a climate exacerbated by managerial physical threats and longstanding managerial withholding-of-compensation (effective pay for four years' work had been on the order of CAD4.00/hour); requested, and received, a few minutes' police assistance in removing my belongings from the firm
• 2001 to 2003, intermittently: made two further unsuccessful multi-week attempts to work the programme of ABCDE Anonymous; this task was complicated by the fact that participants were almost entirely heterosexual and by the fact that participants had sexual pathologies seemingly more severe than my own
• 2002 summer: was transferred by police and ambulance to emergency room of Saint Michael's Hospital, where restraining straps were applied and a tranquillizer was administered, after panic or rage attack at a politically tense meeting of the Korporatsioon Vironia Estonian-language book project; was provided with a bed for the night and was discharged in the morning
• 2002 summer: was relieved because of panic or rage attack (or weeping attack, or similar loss of control) from volunteer position at Editors' Association of Canada
• 2003(?) to 2005 summer (and beyond): found partial relief through the work of a psychiatrist from the Cognitive-and-Behavioural school (with essentially no medications); one-hour psychotherapy sessions were held roughly once every two or three weeks, with at least one many-month period free of psychotherapy
• 2003(?) to 2005 summer (and beyond): found (partial?) relief, at the suggestion of a general practitioner with special interests in "orthomolecular psychiatry", for disturbed sleep, by taking 0.5 mg of over-the-counter melatonin (this is considered a very low dose); discontinued melatonin, except for five or so high-stress nights each month, in 2005 August, without perceptible ill effects
• 2004 June: was transferred by police from the confessional at Saint Patrick's Church in Toronto to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health after a panic or rage attack prompted by the perceived indifference of the priest to my problem of homosexual fantasies; was placed on "Form One" in locked ward for about 72 hours; was discharged after expiry of Form One
• 2005 June to 2005 October: found initial relief from obsessive homosexual fantasies (including Internet-driven rubber-boot fantasies) through renewed participation in ABCDE Anonymous, but then experienced rising and sinister anxiety; at the height of the anxiety, accidentally discovered an unhappy fact (and yet not so unhappy as to impute criminal liability) concerning a small corner of the Catholic Church in Toronto, and had severe post-midnight panic attack within the confines of my room; resorted in the ensuing days to blasphemous remarks in private telephone chat; accepted from a competent spiritual advisor "WXY" the need to conceal the discovered fact from the canonically prescribed ecclesial authorities, since their more-or-less-inevitabliy maladroit intervention would now bring spiritual harm to another person; left ABCDE Anonymous in a happy, low-key way on 2005 October 12; conveyed sincere, albeit tormented, expression of contrition to WXY around 2005 October 14