K A R L   H.   C O R Y A T

I am a writer/musician living in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Simplest-Case Scenario (published by Null Set Press) My ambitious philosophy-of-science book, a revolutionary new picture of how the universe works. Based on my prize-winning physics essay described below. Music Books (all published by Backbeat Books) Guerrilla Home Recording, Second Edition The Frustrated Songwriter's Handbook, co-authored with Nicholas Dobson of the Immersion Composition Society The Bass Player Book (editor only) Science Writing My physics essay "Toward an Informational Mechanics" won a Judging Panel Discretionary Prize in the 2012 competition by the Foundational Questions Institute (a wonderful amalgam of Nobel laureates, world-famous theorists, and insane crackpots), and co-sponsored by Scientific American magazine. The topic was "Questioning the foundations: Which of our basic physical assumptions are wrong?" I argued that assuming information in the world derives from underlying objects or things, with absolute properties, is standing in the way of a "simplest case scenario" account of the universe and ultimate reality. (For a more layperson-friendly introduction to these ideas, check out one of my other web pages, www.biocentricity.net.) I also write opinion pieces about mainstream physics and other issues in my blog (written under a pseudonym). Music Journalism As an editor for Bass Player magazine for 14 years, I interviewed Prince, Sting, Flea, Brian Wilson, Geddy Lee, Les Claypool, Ozzy Osbourne, and many others. Jeopardy In 1996 I appeared on three episodes of the TV game show Jeopardy. Afterward, I wrote So You Want to Be a Jeopardy Contestant, my treatise on how to prepare for and succeed on the show. Since then, a scoring method that I mentioned on that page has become popular with Jeopardy enthusiasts; they call it the Coryat score. Thanks, fellow Jeopardy fans! Music I have been making music for decades (here is a useless Bandcamp page with a few of my songs), and I have made several videos of myself performing covers of songs, playing all of the instruments myself, with the clips synchronized together. Comedy I have over 80,000 subscribers as an occasional comedian on YouTube. Other Web Pages Commuter Traffic Education Page, where I ranted for paragraph after paragraph about how we could clear up rush-hour traffic if only we used our brains. This was the first Web page I ever did, back in early 1996, so cut me some slack.

Shit You Don't Need To Know •  Born in San Rafael, California. •  Raised in Vermont, upstate New York, and Connecticut. •  Attended Brunswick School in Greenwich, Connecticut, grades 10-12. •  Attended U.C. Berkeley; B.A. in Biological Science. •  Consulting Editor of Bass Player magazine. •  Pants size: 30 w / 32 l. •  Find life relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of things. •  Interests include the Oakland Athletics, digital video, photography, home improvement, barrel-making, hole-digging, and self-touching. karlc@pisspoor.com