Brief Biography of Tim Farage

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio to my excellent parents, Peter and Mary Farage.  I have two younger brothers, Mark and Chris, also excellent, except of course for Chris. My brothers, with a bit of help from their wives, gave me 5 (yes, excellent) nieces and nephews, except, of course, for my nephew, Eric.

As of December 28, 2007, I have completely lost my sense of humor.  This is because my once beloved nephew, Eric, had the temerity to beat me in one of those idiotic video games.  (Wii Tennis, if you must know).  This is the first and only time I have ever lost at anything to anybody.

My parents were born in the US, but all four of my grandparents were born in Syria or Lebanon. They came to America in the early 1900's and helped to start the first Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church in Cleveland.
 
My paternal grandmother tutored Algebra while she was in Syria, and could keep scores in her head, so I credit her for my math genes.

My parents were and still are devout Orthodox Christians.  My father also was a student of the Rosicrucian Fraternity as am I.  It was from him that I got a 'save the world' passion that has never left me.

After graduating from Parma Senior High (in the Cleveland area), I went on to get my undergraduate degree at Case Western Reserve University, where I graduated Magna Cum Laude.  I majored in Math and Psychology, and minored in Physical Science and Philosophy and also received state certification to teach Math. 

I later received an MS degree in Computer Science (Magna Cum Laude) in 1985 from The University of Texas at Dallas.

Have you ever looked around and said, "We can do so much better than this"?  Well, I've had that feeling since I was about 12, and my main passion is to figure out the best ways to do this - the best ways to raise and educate our children, the best economic and governmental systems, the best ways to grow spiritually, etc.  This passion has shaped almost every part of my life - at least the parts that I’m proud of.
 
With this in mind, in 1975 I moved to Stelle, Illinois, an intentional Christian community whose purpose was to do exactly that - to build a community that attempted to live by God's Laws in every way possible.  I eventually became the director of the school there (The Stelle Learning Center), and that was a wonderful experience - one of the best in my life.

Some of the core principles of the school were:

1) Mastery learning (a student did not move onto new material in a particular area until he or she mastered the current material).

2) Love of learning (we believed that it is natural for students to love to learn, and it was our responsibility as teachers to foster this).

3) Self-paced and self-directed learning (to the extent we could, we would allow students to learn at their own rate, and to pursue topics that were of interest to them).

I still agree with these principles, and now, with the Internet, it is easier than ever to realistically apply these principles. 

In 1982, I was asked to start a branch of the Stelle Learning Center in Dallas, so I moved there that summer, and started the school in the fall.  Because of disagreements with one of the administrators, I left this position, with great sadness.

Around this time, I met my future wife, Jimmye, a true ‘Mother of the World’, who surprisingly said, ‘yes’ when I asked her to marry me.  She says that she still doesn’t regret it, although people that know me find this hard to believe.  We have one beloved daughter, Amanda, born in 1990, whom I could brag about for pages, but I’ll be kind enough not to. But if you insist, she…. 

After spending some time doing real estate renovation, I got a job as a software engineer at the Raytheon Company writing digital signal processing software for the Department of Defense. I then went over to do some more software engineering at Inet Technologies, a company that monitors and manages signaling systems used by telecommunications carriers. At Inet Technologies, I was the team leader in the GeoProbe software division. This software monitored the SS7 system, collected call data, and presented statistical analyses of this data to the telecommunication carriers in order to improve their systems. 

In 2000, I became a full-time Senior Lecturer at UT Dallas’ Computer Science department, where I remain to this day.  I most frequently teach the various Discrete Mathematics courses, and Automata Theory, which I love teaching. 

I have been honored to receive the President's Outstanding Teacher Award and the Computer Science Excellence in Teaching Award.  I was also nominated for the University of Texas Regents Outstanding Teacher Award.

Aside from my teaching duties, I received a grant to help create online educational materials for UTD.  I love doing this because a great online lesson can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world, and at any time over the Internet.  Online education also allows for students to learn by mastery, and can foster love of learning if done properly.

Beside my passion for education, I have a blog devoted to building a better world – that is, building a world that lives according to God’s Laws (also called Natural Laws).  Topics range from the importance of strong families, to good government, free-market economic systems, and rational environmentalism.  My blog related to this can be found at www.timfarage.com.

I am also responsible for the Rosicrucian Fraternity's blog at www.veracity.org.

I am both a scientist and a Christian and believe that there can be no contradiction between the two, because there is only one truth about the world.  Because of this I have spoken about the scientific evidence for God.

I truly wish to assist in the United States becoming 'One Nation under God'.