IN: Carroll was born in Joliet, Illinois on May 18, 1945. His father worked in a coal processing plant. The family moved to San Diego in 1954 where Carroll grew up. He describes his early years in Ocean Beach as an ideal childhood.

Carroll is the author of Becoming a Critical Thinker, a textbook for introductory logic and critical thinking courses. It covers subjects such as language and critical thinking, the mass media and other sources of information, fallacies of reasoning, and inductive and deductive arguments. The book is subtitled A Guide for the New Millennium. Pearson Educational published the first edition in 2000 and the second edition was published in 2005. Becoming a Critical Thinker was born out of Carroll's classwork during his time in Sacramento City College. The Skeptic's Dictionary is the print version of the website skepdic.com and is available in Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. It provides definitions, arguments, and essays on supernatural, occult, paranormal, and pseudo-scientific subjects. The book features many examples of pseudoscientific beliefs over its eight chapters. In the last chapter, Carroll provides ways to improve critical thinking and skepticism. Similar to the website, it takes a skeptical stance, typically assuming that something is false until proven otherwise. The book came about when Ted Weinstein, a literary agent, contacted Carroll about creating the book. The book was eventually published by John Wiley & Son in August 2003 as an inexpensive paperback. The book is intended to be biased towards the skeptical side; it is not targeted towards true believers. Carroll also wrote a children's version of the Skeptic's dictionary which was released online on July 22, 2011. In 2013, it was published as a children's book under the title Mysteries and Science: Exploring Aliens, Ghosts, Monsters, the End of the World and Other Weird Things. He also wrote Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed! which was initially published by the James Randi Educational Foundation as an e-book in 2011. A paperback version is available from Lulu. The Critical Thinker's Dictionary was published in 2013. It features short articles about cognitive biases and logical fallacies.
QUESTION: Does he ever travel and do readings of his work?
IN: John Townes Van Zandt (March 7, 1944 - January 1, 1997), better known as Townes Van Zandt, was an American singer-songwriter. He is widely held in high regard for his poetic, often heroically sad songs. In 1983, six years after Emmylou Harris had first popularized it, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered his song "Pancho and Lefty", reaching number one on the Billboard country music chart. Much of his life was spent touring various dive bars, often living in cheap motel rooms and backwoods cabins.

Born in Fort Worth into a wealthy family, Van Zandt was a third-great-grandson of Isaac Van Zandt (a prominent leader of the Republic of Texas) and a second great-nephew of Khleber Miller Van Zandt (a major in the Confederate army and one of the founders of Fort Worth). Van Zandt County in east Texas was named after his family in 1848. Townes's parents were Harris Williams Van Zandt (1913-1966) and Dorothy Townes (1919-1983). He had two siblings, Bill and Donna. Harris was a corporate lawyer, and his career required the family to move several times during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1952, the family transplanted from Fort Worth to Midland, Texas, for six months before moving to Billings, Montana. At Christmas in 1956, Townes's father gave him a guitar, which he practiced while wandering the countryside. He would later tell an interviewer that "watching Elvis Presley's October 28, 1956, performance on The Ed Sullivan Show was the starting point for me becoming a guitar player... I just thought that Elvis had all the money in the world, all the Cadillacs and all the girls, and all he did was play the guitar and sing. That made a big impression on me." In 1958 the family moved to Boulder, Colorado. Van Zandt would remember his time in Colorado fondly and would often visit it as an adult. He would later refer to Colorado in "My Proud Mountains", "Colorado Girl", and "Snowin' on Raton". Townes was a good student and active in team sports. In grade school, he received a high IQ score, and his parents began grooming him to become a lawyer or senator. Fearing that his family would move again, he willingly decided to attend the Shattuck School, in Faribault, Minnesota. He received a score of 1170 when he took the SAT in January 1962. His family soon moved to Houston, Texas. The University of Colorado at Boulder accepted Van Zandt as a student in 1962. In the spring of his second year, his parents flew to Boulder to bring Townes back to Houston, apparently worried about his binge drinking and episodes of depression. They admitted him to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where he was diagnosed with manic depression. He received three months of insulin shock therapy, which erased much of his long-term memory. Afterwards, his mother claimed her "biggest regret in life was that she had allowed that treatment to occur". In 1965, he was accepted into the University of Houston's pre-law program. Soon after he attempted to join the Air Force, but was rejected because of a doctor's diagnosis that labelled him "an acute manic-depressive who has made minimal adjustments to life". He quit school around 1967, having been inspired by his singer-songwriter heroes to pursue a career in playing music.
QUESTION:
What school he went to?