As you know from the titles of all the pages on this site, my name is Robert Downey. You might expect that I get a lot of interesting e-mail concerning my actor counterpart, Robert Downey Jr., and you would be right.

I am NOT Robert Downey Jr. the actor. I don't know him. I'm not related to him (as far as I know). I don't know how to contact him. Yes, people are constantly making jokes about my name, and yes, they are constantly asking if I am constantly getting jokes about my name.

For those that are here to learn more about me (undoubtedly because you read something I wrote that made you mad and you want to find a way to express your anger), I'll do my best to sum it up in a concise manner.

So here it goes :

One good way to figure out where somebody stands and what they're all about is to identify the people they idolize and associate themselves with. Here is a list of people that I would consider personal heroes:

• Carl Sagan
• Richard Dawkins
• Charles Darwin
• Thomas Jefferson
• Thomas Paine