I guess i'll do what mostly everyone else has done and bullet point some things about me and then fill in the rest with answers to questions

About me

• I am 24 years old
• Grew up in MA, went to school in MD, now live in DC
• Majored in geology with a minor in astronomy
• I work at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum as a contractor for the invertebrate zoology department
• Thought i would play poker for a living; went to grad school at UNLV fully funded and failed to prioritize poker and schoolwork so i ended up dropping out and moving back to DC
• I just got out of a 5 year relationship, and am already in another..
• Used to play a lot of sports; now i run consistently, practice gymnastics here and there, and play in a softball league in the spring and summer
• Been on POG since the summer of 2013
• My screen name is pronounced 'sook', but most people have gotten used to 'suck', which i agree has far better potential for innuendos and puns
• Oh, and i'm gay

Picture of me 4 years ago when i was at field camp for geology. We went on a tour of some mine and got to watch them blow up stuff with explosives.





Anything else you'd like to know, please feel free to ask!

How fast can you run a 5k?

How the **** can you possibly pronounce Suq as "Sook"?

Yes! Fellow scientist!

let's start with some easy ones:

What are your thoughts on the possibility of life on Europa?
What is your stance on life in the Universe? (Does it exist, have we been visited, will we be visited?)
What interests you about invertebrate? Are you more interested in other animal familes?

My last sanctioned 5k was in June; ran it 20:44 which was a 6:41 m/m pace. I was shooting for 6:20 pace but sometimes in races i start out too fast and screw myself over later.

Eh. I originally thought it was 'suck' as well for a while, and then i think i heard someone else pronounce it differently and i was like huh, that sounds more correct.

20 min 5k is great. I used to be able to do 19ish min in highschool and that was my prime

I guess I better hope that it takes you >10 minutes to eat a pint of ice cream then.

In terms of probability? I think there's maybe a slightly greater than 50% chance of life on Europa. And by life i mean nothing terribly complex. I actually did some research a while back on the subject because i found it pretty fascinating, and it coincided with my interest in planetary science. I haven't read up much on the subject matter recently, but the hypothesis that had the most support was that tidal forces could potentially keep the water warm enough and create deep sea vents that could harbor life. It's completely plausible. The only problem that most people don't realize is that its ridiculously difficult to send a lander there because we haven't quite figured out how to send a completely sterile craft into space from Earth. Arriving and getting a false positive would be such a waste.

I believe there is other life in the universe. Will humans ever come into contact with it? Probably not. In high school i thought the Drake equation was pretty cool. Even if the probabilities and propagation of error were outrageous, it still condensed to a non-zero probability that there was intelligent life in the Universe besides us. There was also a theory floating around for a while about silicon based life forms, which i cant even imagine what that would look like. And even arsenic based life forms on Earth iirc, which was later debunked.

Money lol. I wasn't career oriented in college, so i've had a difficult time landing a job in a city where geology is not in high demand. I volunteer in the Mineral Sciences department, and my supervisor alerted me of a contract position in IZ cataloging shells, so i snap accepted because i had nothing better at the time and i'm still trying to work my way up in the museum. I worked in an entomology lab for two summers a few years ago. I've been interested in insects for basically my whole life, so i think i'd even enjoy a position in the entomology department here if a vacancy ever opens.

How easy/hard was it to come out to your parents?

I'm in the same boat wrt life. You do some very basic probability calculations and you'd be stupid to assume we're alone in this Universe. But because of the size of the universe, speed of light etc. I too doubt we'll ever make contact. It is interesting to look at evidence of extra terrestrial life in ancient Earth civilization though. There is some pieces of evidence you can't really ignore and really makes you scratch your head.

Why don't you participate in Miss POG? I don't think being gay is a good reason. If there was a Mr. POG I would certainly weigh in on guys I'd bang.

What is the coolest/most impressive gymnastic-type thing you can do?

My father died when i was much younger, so i only had to come out to my mom. She is a very understanding, loving, open-minded person, so i was never really nervous about her having a negative reaction. It was still irrationally tough to tell her, though. I remember writing her a letter explaining that i knew who i really was etc, and that i had already come out to basically all my friends. I'm fairly sure she had some sort of intuition that i was gay though, so it wasn't quite a shock for her. She would casually drop things like 'I dont care who my kids end up with, i just want you guys to be happy' and i would roll my eyes lol. I started telling people when i was 14, and i was officially 'out' at 16 once i told my mom. I was very lucky in my coming out experience.

Can you give a few examples? Are you talking like stonehenge type creations or other things?


It's less of gay/straight thing and moreso of a i don't really know many females in pop culture. I kinda live under a rock when it comes to television etc. But i guess i could still contribute thoughts on nominees

What are your thoughts on the possibility of life in Europe?

"slightly greater than 50% chance of life on Europa. And by life i mean nothing terribly complex"

lol @ abiogenesis being "nothing terribly complex"

what's the stupidest thing you've ever done while driving?

How did you get your undertitlte?

Why do you have such SN?

Why do you have such avatar?

Who are your favorite ww players?

Inside a gym probably a triple full. A front flip with three twists. I was the only one on the team who had ever landed one

Outside of a gym probably just back tucks and handstands wherever. It's funny when new people learn i do gymnastics, cause the dialog is almost always the same:
'Can you do a backflip?'
'Yes'
'...can you do one right now?'
'Yes'

Never said abiogenesis isnt complex. I was saying on a scale of microorganisms to macroinervetebrates, we'd be lucky to find some bacteria floating around somewhere. But who knows, maybe we'll find plume worms and complete deep sea vent ecosystems.

Played poker from midnight to 7am once while already tired, drove back and fell asleep on the highway and drifted 3 lanes. Woke up before hitting the guardrail and was able to correct it. Luckily there were no other cars near me.

Yes, stonehenge, pyramids for example (i.e where'd they get the technology to do that, I'm not 100% sold on pulleys etc.) but moreso little things. For example I was watching a documentary on how grave robbers in the early 20th century in two very different parts of the world found small models of what appeared to be birds dating back thousands of years. When studied, they were found not to be birds, but more like models of very modern aircraft. When scientists built scale replicas of the models, they were found to fly very well using aeronautical techniques we use today in military aircraft.

Then you can get into all the texts, wall carvings etc. of ancient peoples revering 'angels' and flying machines etc. and you can't help but wonder as lost in translation these things are, is there some truth to it?

a greater than 50% chance of life on Europa is what you believe, correct?

I knew exactly what you meant by 'nothing complex'

A lot of people think of ET life as giant ugly monsters, when in reality if it does exist in our Solar System it's more likely to be nothing more than single-celled organisms or bacteria.

Although giant sea-slugs under Europa's ice would be leet

cuz a self-replicating lifeform arising outta nothing isn't complex

think he meant relatively, compared to life on earth

the point is he feels there's a greater than 50% chance of self-replicating organisms arising out of some chemical soup by happenstance, on Europa.