Name: Martin Sargent

Job Title: Consultant

Homepage: Haven't built one yet

Hometown: Spencerport, New York

Favorite website: The New York Times

First computer: Apple IIc

College/University: Syracuse University, University of London, Cornell University

Former Life: Itinerant student, PC Computing Editor

Favorite piece of technology: The wok

Favorite author and book: Authors: Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Tom Wolfe; book: Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Favorite movie or TV show: Friday (movie), Connections With James Burke (TV)

Favorite quote: "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." Tom Waits

Motto: "No harm in that."

The Proust Questions

What is your most marked characteristic? Laid-back, lampin' attitude

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Graduating from Cornell summa cum laude and phi beta kappa, and winning the English department's award for the best honors thesis

When and where were you happiest? I'm pretty content in the here and now

What is your greatest regret? Not having the time to think up good answers to these questions

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being with all my peeps on a catered island in Micronesia

What is your most treasured possession? My Al Green box set

Where would you like to live? By a river in the deep woods

What is your greatest fear? Wasps and hornets

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Self-doubt

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Worrying about nothing

What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Temperance

What is your greatest extravagance? Bar bill

What is your favorite journey? My friends and I used to always drive to Key West, Florida, for New Year's Eve. Those were good trips.

What is it that you most dislike? The Puritan ethic

What is the quality you most like in a man? Entertainment value

What is the quality you most like in a woman? Honesty

What do you most value in your friends? Their devotion to each other and to having a good time

If you were to come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? An Erie Canal barge pilot

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be? The reincarnation of Jacques Cousteau

How would you like to die? Trying to save humanity from the Far Right