Cities & urbanism
I love learning about cities, urban life, and, strangely, subways. My favourite cities are Vancouver, London, and Moscow. I'm also interested in the North-central European cities of Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Brussels, Luxembourg, and Prague.

Fiction & writing
As a former English student, I like to loiter in used bookstores and read. I'm particularly fascinated by spy and espionage novels (Len Deighton, John Le Carré); classic detective and mystery fiction (Georges Simenon, G.K. Chesterton, P.D. James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ray Bradbury's crime fiction); medical mysteries (Ellis Peters, Robin Cook, Michael Palmer, Patricia Cornwell); fictional detectives (Jules Maigret, Father Brown, Adam Dalgliesh, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Lord Peter Wimsey, Brother Cadfael); science fiction of Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells; writings of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Dostoyevsky, Sherwood Anderson, Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Arthur Miller, John Updike, Edward Albee, Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, John Saul, Evelyn Lau

See also Eddy's Reading Room

Art
My favourite artists are Rembrandt, Marc Chagall, Michel Delacroix, Magritte, Matisse, O'Keeffe, and Edward Hopper.

Music
Most of my favourite music is from the 80s and early 90s. I also like a lot of Quiet Storm (eg Anita Baker and Luther Vandross). I'm also particularly fond of Lisa Stansfield, Rick Astley, and Michael McDonald. See my favourite songs here. To expose my neurons to something different, I try the following:

Robert Miles; minimalist (Philip Glass); orchestral pop; Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Stravinsky's primitive, exotic orchestrations; cello music of Boccherini, Pablo Casals, and Jacqueline du Pré; Gregorian chants

Canadian Television and Radio!
For much of my childhood, I watched a lot of Canadian television and radio. I've always loved Canadian programs because they have a grittiness and reality that we don't find with some of the more sensational American equivalents. Below are some of my favourites from past and present. I particularly like those programs which conspicuously and unabashedly take place in large Canadian cities. My favourite Canadian actor is fellow Vancouver lover David Cubitt (of Traders and E.N.G. fame).

As it Happens (CBC Radio), CityTV West (Vancouver), Da Vinci’s Inquest (Vancouver), Danger Bay (Vancouver), Dear Aunt Agnes (Toronto), Degrassi Junior High (Toronto), E.N.G. (Toronto), The Fifth Estate, IDEAS with Paul Kennedy (CBC Radio), The King of Kensington (Toronto), Loveline (not Canadian, but a great radio show!), Man Alive, Marketplace (Toronto), MOJO Radio (Toronto/Vancouver), Neon Rider (Vancouver/Fraser Valley), Night Heat (American show, but takes place in Toronto), North of 60 (native community, Northwest Territories), Northwood (North Vancouver), Report on Business Television, Royal Canadian Air Farce, SCTV, Street Legal (Toronto), Traders (Toronto), Urban Angel (Montréal), Venture, YTV

Other peculiar interests
Television spy drama Mission Impossible (1966-1973 and 1988-1990); comedians and actors Mel Brooks, Bill Cosby (and The Cosby Show), Lily Tomlin, Vincent Price, Diana Rigg (The Avengers, Mystery! [PBS]); late 1970s sitcoms (Maude, SOAP, WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi, The Jeffersons); other sitcoms: Head of the Class, The Golden Girls (can't wait for the DVD!)

Classic comic strips: Beatle Bailey (Mort Walker), Andy Capp (Reg Smythe), Hägar the Horrible (Chris Browne), Charles Schulz and Peanuts (my favourites: Charlie Brown, Lucy, Schroeder), B.C. (Johnny Hart), and our main man, Ziggy (Tom Wilson)

Historical figures I love to read about
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)—steel magnate and philanthropist, and the man who wanted to see a library in every American city, "Free to the People"; William Randolph Hearst; Thomas Jefferson; George Eastman

Causes I support
Here is the list of the causes I strongly champion and support.

And, oh yes, my philosophical bents
For the philosophically-inclined, here's where I currently stand, in flow-chart form. The relations between these philosophies may not be immediately clear (or may even seem downright bizarre), but after giving it a lot of thought, I find many interesting connections and parallels between them...

Skepticism:
Protagoras
Pyrrho
Hume
|
V
Phenomenology
|
V
Humanism and Existentialism:
Kierkegaard
Sartre
Gabriel Marcel
Karl Jaspers
Berdyaev
|
V
Rousseau on education
|
V
T.S. Kuhn
|
V
(Moderate) Post-modernism:
Foucault
Derrida and Deconstructionism
|
V
Humanistic and non-directive psychology,
based on Carl Rogers

A short note: I feel I am "moderately Post-modern" in that I see the value in Phenomenology and Deconstructionism and, although I value people's search for actual truth, I also see value in considering what new possibilities there might be in a world in which there weren't "truth" and absolute "meaning". I appreciate the Post-modern belief that focussing almost obsessively on finding truth can distract us from living in the moment and appreciating things, texts, and people for what they are to us as individuals. This protects us from inadvertently distorting and perverting valuable experience by excessively molding it to fit different philosophical paradigms.