Leora Lawton's Electronic Cottage

Welcome to
Leora Lawton's Electronic Cottage!

Last updated April 25, 1999

Welcome!

Pardon the dust while I do some remodelling! That's a joke: websites are *always* under construction, or else they are simply cobwebbed.
You can find my on-line journal right here.

My friends have called me non-orthogonal, uncorrelated, post-modern, living on the edge,and just plain unusual. This is because I have lots of diverse facets and interests. They are:

Career

I'm a sociologist, demographer, family sociologist and gerontologist by training. But after trying to find a professorship, and being *extremely picky* about where I'd live at a time when the job market shrank, I found myself without a professorship. After listening to hundreds of hours of career development tapes, and reading books, I finally managed to learn enough to create a new career. Currently I wear two professional hats:
(1)I am Senior Research Consultant for a market research company that caters to the IT industry, Prognostics, Inc., where I design research, develop new statistical models, teach methods, and conduct analysis.
(2)I am founder and sole proprietor of TechSociety Research. My clients are primarily established market research firms who subcontract to other analysts and consultants. I also work directly with electronics manufacturers. Besides doing customer satisfaction research, I help design new services to enhance the companies' understanding of how to do their business better. I don't do much here right now, but it's good to keep it going a bit.

If you want more detail, check out my curriculum vita or my resume.

Leisure

I'm a deadhead and I love live rock and roll.

I'd rather be hiking. My favorite place in the world is the Sierra Nevadas. Being in the back country is an altered state of consciousness. Maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, but no picture can really do justice to the beauty of nature. Still, you might try seeing how you feel when you view this view of yosemite.

I'm also a fanatical swimmer. Well, a serious swimmer. But not a fast one. I swim about 4 mornings a week, for about 45 minutes, before work. There's a great source on-line for finding swimming pools... Swimmer's Guide On-Line You can be one of the interactive authors by contributing more listings.

I read lots of books, i'm not much into movies or tv... For some reason, this page is the only one that encourages people to send me email. It's a good sign of humanity, I think, that an interest in liteature makes people want to stop and say hello.

I'm addicted to IRC (internet relay chat). You can find me on 'qnet' (irc.qnet.com). There's an IBM java applet that will get you to qnet. Look for me on #krunk. I usually go as eeyore.

Ethnicity

I'm an eclectic orthodox Jew, and I teach torah classes here and there in Berkeley. I have been teaching at local Jewish centers in Berkeley, for example, an introductory course to Judaism at chochmat halev, sort of a new age Jewish meditation center. The classroom has persian rugs, candles and funky pillows and chairs. I also have taught at Lehrhaus Judaica. My synagogue is Congregation Beth Israel
My background is that I'm an American and an Israeli citizen and I went to a right-wing yeshiva, Neve Yerusalayim, for two years. Yup. You cannot imagine how weird it is for a berkeley neo-hippie deadhead to be surrounded by a bunch of new yorkers in a religious environment. But there I was. It's the learning, the ethics and philosophy that got me. Also, to this day some of my very dearest friends are the people I met there. The place has peer-pressure and rabbi-pressure, but I honestly think they have the most amazing teachers there as well. Neve is a women's institute for Jewish studies, with programs for beginners to advanced, from 3 weeks to 2 years. Interested? Check out their home page or send e-mail to: neve@haven.ios.com. Tell them I sent ya.

Also, now that Pardes in Jerusalem got Rabbi Daniel Landes to be their Director, I can now recommend that place for those who like a little more flexibility. My former breslov rabbi, Natan Greenberg, just set up a little yeshiva in Bat Ayin, where he lives (it's near Efrat).

Of course, there's other Jewish stuff on-line too, doncha know.

Now that I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area, the source for Jewish information is www.jewish.org, which includes a list of synagogues, community centers, the Jewish Bulletin, you name it.

I'm also a northern californian by orientation. Go bears!

Friends and Internet Communities...

I'm a member of several internet communities...virtual meeting places that often lead to physical space gatherings, and nurturing professional and personal relationships. One such group is the wheel, a break-off from a usenet group, rec.music.gdead. We talk about all kinds of subjects, get together for shows, listen to each other's problems, share recipes, discuss (read: argue) politics, and generally entertain each other. Here is a picture of a small gathering.

Another group I hang out in is on IRC. Here are some of their webpages and stuff:

My buddy mach (aka kenrick mock). Kenrick, Eingang and I wrote a paper together: Cyberspace Game Show Hosts: Agents for Socialization, Not Just Entertainment check it out

drumstick
iba
goodag
nats
pegasus
sound

You can look at me with some of my friends from IRC when we had a gathering at the Millenium restaurant in San Francisco in April 1995. I'm the one in the colorful sweater, shoulder-length brown hair, glasses.

This really good looking guy is no-one(aka Peter Mc) and he's now moving to Berkeley to start a position at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs.
Here's a picture from the fulton/oswego irc group gathering. From top left: t-pau, blotto, snacker, insomniac and fireftr. Sitting is Nats, Sama (and baby Mikela), ticadoc and me.

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