Guest blogger: Nathaniel Givens

After much prodding from the folks here at Times & Seasons, circumstances have finally led Nathaniel Givens to accept our invitation to guest blog.  Lurking on the bloggernacle for years, he says, made him realize that his ideas aren’t getting any fresher.  So, finding himself with a surplus of unoccupied evenings (due to the necessity of working far from home), he discovered that now is the “later” he previously had in mind whenever he procrastinated the task of committing his ideas to digital paper, and he’s agreed to publish those ideas at T&S.

Nathaniel earned a BS in mathematics from the University of Richmond, then an ME in systems engineering from the University of Virginia, and most recently an MA in economics from the University of Michigan. His primary interest is the use of formal and informal models to understand ourselves and the world around us, e.g. in disciplines such as artificial intelligence and economic decision theory. What does this have to do with Mormonism? Hopefully that will become evident in his posts over the next two weeks.

When he’s not working in the DC area, Nathaniel lives with his wife and two kids in Williamsburg, VA. He is the son of Terryl and Fiona Givens, authors of “The God Who Weeps” (http://deseretbook.com/God-Who-Weeps-How-Mormonism-Makes-Sense-Life-Terryl-L-Givens/i/5083070), and brother of Rachael Givens Johnson, who writes for Patheos (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peculiarpeople/author/rgivens/). Nathaniel runs his own blog: Difficult Run (difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com).