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This time around, we're talking to Kevin Vranes of No Se Nada.

What's your name?
Kevin "Angus" Vranes. The nickname is from playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament ten years ago when there were three other Kevins on our team and we had to differentiate somehow. The nom-de-tourney stuck for the rest of my Ultimate career.

What do you do when you're not blogging?
At this point almost all of my free time is spoken for by my 14-month-old daughter. When I do have free time the answer is season-dependant. Right now, elk and antelope hunting. Spring and summers, golf and Ultimate Frisbee. Winters, mostly lifting weights. Hard physical activity of some sort, anyway. I hike a lot in all four seasons, trying to get lost or have an encounter with a mountain lion. I'll also go through phases of becoming addicted to some mental game for a short time, like chess or su doku.

What is your blog called?
NoSeNada or No Se Nada or nosenada

What's up with that name?
It means "I don't know" in Spanish and is my tounge-in-cheek response to other bloggers in my field who seem to think they know way more than they do.

How long have you been blogging, anyway?
Since June '05 (and since January '06 on ScienceBlogs).

Where are you from and where do you live now?
I grew up about ten miles north of Stanford U in the Bay Area and now I'm in Boulder, CO. In between I've lived in four other states on both coasts and in between.

Would you describe yourself as a working scientist?
Yeah, well, that's where I get all my salary, but I'm more of a science policy guy now. I examine issues at the interface of science and public policy, mostly in natural hazards, climate change and water resouces. But since my Ph.D. is in the physical sciences (oceanography), I still call myself a scientist. Maybe unfairly.

Any educational experiences or degrees you'd like to mention?
Education is not intelligence and it doesn't stand in for experience, so I generally downplay the letters after my name and play up real-life experiences. I drove (city) busses while in undergrad, which was a fabulous educational experience. I was a geology undergrad and in the U.S. that means you spend your final summer doing intensive geology field work (some programs more intensive than others -- ours was geology boot camp). Instead of doing good geology (I got a C in that class) I spent the desert weeks hunting down and photographing lizards, snake and cool clouds. I spent a year at the senior-staffer level on the personal staff of a Senator from the Pacific Northwest. I also fixed equipment on tomato harvesters in CA's Central Valley one summer.

What are your main academic interests, in or out of your field?
Anything connected to natural hazards, and that covers many fields. Everything I bring back to how civilizations or societies interact with their environment. I consider myself a general Earth scientist, though, so I consume information in many disciplines within the earth sciences.

The last book you read?
I always have three or four running at once. The one I most recently finished is The Contested Plains by Elliott West. I'm about to finish On Killing by Dave Grossman. I also recently buzzed through Survive by Peter DeLeo. The first two are absolutely ground-breaking books; the last is a startling look at how far we can push ourselves and live.

What is your idea of a perfect day?
Living on a lake, waking up to go for a quick swim then heading to the golf course. Playing 18, scoring in the 70's, eating some food, then heading for the hills. Wandering in a wilderness somewhere, tracking animals, hopefully seeing a mountain lion or bear cubs or two bucks clashing antlers -- something rare to see. Coming back to play ultimate for the rest of the day.

What's your greatest habitual annoyance?
What, you mean like nose picking? In me, or other people? In other people I can't stand nervous, frequent laughter. In me, sometimes getting so locked up in all the technical or practical things going on in my world that I forget to slow down and notice my surroundings.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Does such a thing exist? No, i'm a real-world guy. Even though I read fiction occasionally, most out of appreciation for the writing, I'm pretty grounded in the here and now. I don't watch TV except in hotels and then only sports and news.

Your favorite heroes in real life?
1- Mark Twain for his utter irreverance, biting but absolutely spot-on human commentary, and ability to deliver it all with my kind of humor.

2- MLK Jr. for being such a man -- when I need inspiration I look up at a picture I cut out of a newspaper once and framed. It's MLK being taken down and cuffed at a lunch-counter sit-in. I can't even read his face (see the answer below for why that's important to me) but it's some mixture of fear of what the cops are going to do to him and no fear of what they might do. He's got his eyes on somebody out of sight in the foreground of the photo, finishing some business with that person even while he's being taken down.

3- Tom Brown, Jr. Look him up. If even half the stuff he's claimed to have done is true (and the jury might be out on that) like nobody I know of he has bridged two worlds that I live in.

What's your most marked characteristic?
Probably how I stare at people and through them, actually reading them and trying to unmask them rather than being polite and letting them keep their personality to themselves. People say it unnerves them sometimes. I like to read people and out of habit I evaluate people within a second or two of seeing them. Some people can sense I'm doing it and don't like it. Other people try to ignore that I'm doing it; still others are completely oblivious. The rare person senses it and likes it.

What's your principal defect?
Being too intolerant of stupidity or laziness and being too quick to assume those when somebody doesn't grasp something right away. Not a good trait in a teacher/professor.... usually I can squelch it, often I can't.

What quality do you admire most in a person?
Knowing yourself and knowing that you know yourself.

Who are your favorite writers?
The New Yorker is sometimes too liberal for my tastes, but they just have incredible writers in both fiction and non-fiction. As well The New York Times Magazine. Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Pollan. Salman Rushdie, Rick Bass and Tom Robbins for fiction.

What would you like to be?
The kind of tracker who can read an animal's thoughts in its tracks. The kind of hunter who can get close enough to touch the animal without the animal sensing it. The kind of person people seek out as a counselor.