Alyrium Denryle

Basic Description and Off-Board Life

Thinker, pupating biologist (due to emerge in may), homosexual, argumentative jackass with a heart of gold. Alyrium's real name is Benjamin Allen. He is a 21 year old senior majoring in biology at Arizona State University, the New American University according to its president Michael Crow. Alyrium is busy as hell. He currently has two research projects, the first which is active is a multifaceted project in which he assists in the annotating of the Nasonia genome which has recently been sequenced, as well as looking at potential speciation genes in the oxidative phosphorelation pathway. His role in this is limited to data collection and culture maintenance. The second project in which he and a friend are primary investigators, is a gut content analysis of introduced Lithobates catesbeiana (Formerly Rana) in Arizona's Salt River Valley. This is currently on hold until holiday break and is in the data collection phase. Thankfully bullfrogs in Arizona are active year round.

Alyrium is also a member in good standing of Sigma Phi Beta Fraternity, a national Queer/Allied collegiate fraternity based at Arizona State. He serves as chair of the Finance Committee and also serves on the Judiciary board and as a Peer Mediator.

Alyrium also indulges in several guilty pleasures. The first is engaging in a weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons in which he plays arcane spellcasters almost exclusively. The second is a penchant for checking out, flirting with, and otherwise enjoying attractive men, straight or gay. Thankfully Alyrium has a disarming harmless demeanor which does not threaten the masculinity of the straight ones. Another pleasure is hunting street preachers and nursing his special hatred for creationism.

Political Positions

Alyrium, after a paradoxical early college rebellion that compelled him to accept components of conservative political philosophies, has swung back to his true liberal/leftist inclinations. He supports abortion rights and has joined in pro-choice protests and argues with pro-life demonstrators. He was against the Iraq war from the start, however feels that if we leave at this point, civil war and open genocide in are inevitable and Iraq will be annexed by one of its neighbors in whole or in part. He is obviously for gay marriage and does public speaking to advocate for GLBTQ issues and to educated people about GLBTQ people. He supports any any all scientific research so long as it is conducted ethically. Including stem cell research, genetic modification, and both reproductive and therapeutic cloning. He is against the death penalty in practice because the justice system is not infallible, but recognizes that some people cannot be rehabilitated and need to simply be removed from society. An outspoken critic of any and all forms of creationism, he also publicly advocates the Theory of Evolution. Oddly however Alyrium is very critical of gun-control laws that would disarm the common citizen.

Religious/Philosophical background

Alyrium accepts a form of philosophical naturalism and views religion as being irrational and unsupported by evidence. However he also views religion as having consequences based upon those who hold it. He views religion as offering justification for undesired actions only in individuals already prone to commit such acts, or in individuals who are easily persuaded to commit such acts. He also finds that different people use religion as their justification for committing desired actions and feels that it does not matter how a person rationalizes doing good things so long as they do good things. He will however viscously attack the concept of a supreme being. He just does not denigrate the holder of a god belief as often as others of his atheistic bent.