Subject: Intro
   Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 17:57:30 -0700
  From: "Maximilian J. Sandor" <max@transmillennium.net>
    To: childwrite


Hi!

I'm known as Maximilian Sandor since 1997. My label before
that was 'Joachim Steingrubner' but few people outside Germany
could pronounce any part of this name (not speaking of the 
whole name in one breath). Changing one's label is an 
interesting experience and perhaps I was in some kind of
mid-life crisis, too, and I wanted to see how easy it would
be to start over with a new name.

I live in LA since the early '80s. More info on my person is
at http://transmillennium.net/max/ and, also (less serious)
at http://transmillennium.net/pnohteftu/ch17.html .

My motivation for writing stories for children stems from
a perceived lack of relevant information in my own childhood.

I believe that an understanding of structures and conditions
requires information which is embedded in a context instead
of 'raw laws' and for that purpose (and for fun, of course)
I wrote a PhiloFi e-mail sequel of altogether more than 1,400
pages; see http://transmillennium.net/jdf-logs/  [PhiloFi
stands for 'PHILOsophical FIction']

After different attempts to communicate my views on the 
_Original_ message of Gotamo Siddharto (nowadays called 
'The Buddha') via publications like the CyberSangha and in
seminars in Ojai, California, I switched to a mixture of
information, humor, illustrations, and short stories for 
this purpose as well (see http://transmillennium.net/pnohteftu/ )

In a sense, I would still like to go further than to tell
stories and I'm thinking about how to embed incentives to 
increase functional understanding in computer games or 
interactive processes on and off the computer. (I designed
several prototypes of computer games for AIDS education 
for the UCLA AIDS Center.)

Professionally, I help cancer researchers at one of the 
largest cancer research centers in the US with advice
on information technologies. Even though this happens
within the School of Medicine at UCLA, I'm not teaching 
any classes and don't have experience as a 'regular' 
teacher or educator.

Last, not least, my view is that information with
educational content that exceeds the enumeration of 
predigested 'facts' is rare for both adults AND children
alike. From my observation, there seems to exist a 
tremendous need for both.

In short, I'm happy and grateful that John is pushing 
the childwrite-project into a larger context and am 
looking forward to read more of the articles/stories 
from members of this list!

Max


Maximilian Joachim Sandor, Ph.D.
--------------------------------
     TransMillennium, Inc.

max@transmillennium.net
msandor@jccc.medsch.ucla.edu

http://www.transmillennium.net/max/