Another 7 Interesting People (of all sorts..)

This is a continuation of the theme of the previous post.


David Weinberger (1950-Present) is a technologist, speaker, and author best known for his books: Cluetrain Manifesto and Everything is Miscellaneous. David holds a Ph.D from University of Toronto and serves as a fellow of Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. He's written comedy for Woody Allen, taught philosophy in New Jersey, been a humor columnist, a dot-com entrepreneur, and a marketing consultant.


Iain H. Murray (1931-Present) has been a pastor and co-founder of a publishing company named Banner of Truth Trust. Murray is noted for having served as an assistant to the well-known Martyn-Lloyd Jones. He has five children and ten grandchildren and has written many books, including biographical works onCharles Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, Jonathan Edwards, A.W. Pink, and John Murray.


Gram Parsons (1946-1973): Gram was a musician known for his solo work and also his time with the Flying Burrito Brothers, The International Submarine Band, and the Byrds. In his early years he studied theology for a semester at Harvard. Despite being originally from the south, he did not become passionate about country music until he listened to Merle Haggard in Boston. Gram then quickly became a prominent pioneering musician in the genres that would be later known as "country rock" and "alt country". Parsons died at the young age of 26 from a morphine overdose. There is currently a petition to have him inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. One wonders what he may have been able to accomplish had he lived longer and had a stable life comparable to his contemporary Chris Hillman. The turbulent nature of Parson's existence did not stop at death, as his body was snatched by some friends in order to be cremated. Speculation and controversy have risen from the unusual events that occurred after his death.


Tim O'Reilly (1954-Present) is an Irish-born Harvard-graduate entrepreneur who is best known for founding the technical publishing company "O'Reilly Media". Tim has a close relationship with the free software and open source communities and is commonly credited as having coined the term "web 2.0". O'Reilly is also on the board of CollabNet and MySQL AB.


R.J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) was a Reformed philosopher, theologian and historian. He is best known for his role in solidifying the ideas behind the controversial topics of Christian Reconstructionism and theonomy. Born to parents that were fleeing the Armenian Genocide of 1915, R.J. grew up mainly in California with a short stay in Detroit. He received a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Education from U.C. Berkley, and he was ordained by the PC-USA in 1944. In 1958, he left the PC-USA for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He spent over eight years serving as a missionary to the Shoshone and Paiute Indians on a reserve in Nevada, and then became a pastor in Santa Cruz. In the early 1960's, he published "By What Standard?" and was also called upon as an expert witness in defense of the rights of home schoolers. In 1965, he founded the Chalcedon Foundation. Rushdoony wrote many books on topics such as philosophy, education, history, law, politics, and theology.


Lawrence Lessig (1961-Present) is a professor of law at Stanford and founder of Center for Internet and Society. He's specialized in copyright-related matters and laws in cyberspace, but now his emphasis is turning to matters related to political corruption. He has a B.S. in Economics & Management, a M.A. in philosophy from Cambridge, and a Juris Doctor from Yale. Lessig had strong conservative/libertarian views until his philosophy training in Cambridge, where he espoused views which aligned him closer with a modern liberal view, though he still considers himself a constitutionalist. Lessig has been legal counsel against the U.S. Attorney General (ie. John Ashcroft) on cases pertaining to copyright law and public domain.


Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was an American economist and advocate of a minimized government and a free market. His 1962 work "Capitalism and Freedom" was a major landmark in intellectual basis for his ideas and sold half a million copies. As for his political party affiliation, Friedman considered himself a libertarian philosophically, but a member of the U.S. Republican Party for the sake of expediency not principle. Though originally a supporter of the New Deal, as his career developed he became a strong critic of it. He provided a strong intellectual framework for what libertarians and conservatives believe in regard to economics. Friedman served as Barry Goldwater's economic advisor during the presidential campaign of 1964 and later became one of Nixon's advisors and a member of one of his Advisory Commisions, an opportunity that Friedman used to speak against the non-voluntary military draft. His main work, though, was in the areas of economics. He contributed to the monetarist school of economic though. Beyond his influence in the USA, Friedman's work made an impact on the politics of countries such as Iceland, Estonia, and Chile. The consistency of his dealings with Chile is a somewhat controversial topic, specifically on the topic as to whether his support of the dictatorship there was consistent with his libertarian ideals.