Influences

By Wayne Brown

My "Habits" card (a tool to "burn-in" the Seven Habits) recommends that I make a list to thank those who have influenced me - made me "who I am". Not a bad idea. Making such a list in my head, it seems endless. This turns out to be related to two other lines of inquiry - the nature of "Self" - from Buddhist philosophy and the nature of "Self" as a phenomenon in nature - the unique organism of 100 trillion cells I call "me". The voices of people on this list may still speak to me-they are part of who I am.

Something amazing that turns up is the LACK of influence from a steady stream of friends and co-workers. Looking back, I should have been a lot more choosy about my High School friends, especially.  I spent a huge amount of time in U just "pissing away the time", zoning out on pot, and chasing skirts. I have left out a few people who had large negative effects - mainly just extreme frustration of "forward" progress even though the effects of their decisions made a huge difference to the course of my life. On the other hand, I have included individuals who made a huge positive change, even though I have long forgotten their names.

Famous people are included only if they either contributed to the way I think or somehow changed the world in ways that directly affected me. I have included "celebrities" where I am a serious life-long fan.

Influential girlfriends (the "skirts") are "coded" to omit names and reasons for being on the list. Their long-term impact on my life can be seen mostly in the rearview mirror.

Another card asks me to pay particular attention to "transition people" - those who nudged me into a significantly different way of thinking about the world or acting in it. That's a work in progress. Those people are marked with boldface.

So. mot in any particular order:

  1. Dad
  2. Mom
  3. Father In Law
  4. Wife
  5. Mother In Law
  6. U - Geometry
  7. Shimrat - Calculus - Newton's stunning invention
  8. Peck- Thesis supervisor - Introduction to undecidability 
  9. Rossander (of Rossander's Law - Nothing is so important it can't wait 3 weeks)
  10. Anton Colin (introduced me to computers)
  11. Micheal Potter
  12. HS - Physics - Renne
  13. HS - English
  14. Miss Burton HS Math - model teacher
  15. Sagan
  16. Bertrand Russel (Atheism 101)
  17. Jesus
  18. Mohammed
  19. Buddha
  20. TS - History of OT (defined and confirmed approach to myth)
  21. TS - NT (approach to NT)
  22. Bah'u'lla (a sprinkle of Bahai)
  23. Stephen J. Gould -  Paleo
  24. Covey (7 habits)
  25. Siegel - Science of Mindfulness 
  26. Hans Rosling (Factfulness)
  27. Primbrm (form within - the way I visualize brain states)
  28. Heinlein
  29. Ben Bova
  30. Larry Niven
  31. TS Ellion (Return to where we began)
  32. Galbraith
  33. Mins (Quasar) - Brainstorming
  34. St. Paul (love)
  35. St. Francis (prayer of)
  36. GF - LF
  37. GF - 1
  38. GF - P1
  39. GF 15
  40. GF -> drugs etc.
  41. Jaqueline Cyr
  42. Levin (accountant)
  43. Codd (relational database)
  44. Ian Aikenhead
  45. Phil Clark
  46. Mike Dessen
  47. H - Music teacher (tuning)
  48. Ian & Sylvia
  49. Bruce Cockburn
  50. PP&M
  51. Annie Lennox
  52. H G Wells
  53. Orwell
  54. Huxley - Brave New World
  55. Margaret Atwood
  56. Kahneman
  57. Lao Tsu (part of personal Zen)
  58. James Glick (Chaos)
  59. A - Statistics
  60. Wray - Modern Monetary Theory
  61. Greenspan - practical economics
  62. Gorbachev - practical communism
  63. Trudeau (sr) 
  64. Hofstadter (Surfaces) the nature of language and thought
  65. Rachel Maddow
  66. Noam Chomsky
  67. Keynes
  68. Adam Smith
  69. Phillip Rosedale - Creator - Second Life
  70. Bill Gates
  71. Steve Jobs
  72. Palmer Luckey - Oculus Quest
  73. Kepler
  74. Galileo
  75. Newton
  76. Von Neuman
  77. Copernicus
  78. Einstein
  79. Watson & Crick (1/2 each)
  80. Jeff Bezos (Amazon)
  81. C mRNA vaccine
  82. Richard Feinman
  83. Reza Aslan (historical Jesus)
  84. Joel Bakan (the Corporation)
  85. Tom Peters - In Search of Excellence
  86. Mc  ? - What is History
  87. John Stewart (Daily Show)
  88. John Oliver
  89. Clint Eastwood
  90. Naomi Kline
  91. Daniel Dennett
  92. Karl Marx
  93. Alan Turing
  94. George Burnard Shaw (socialism 101)
  95. Ayn Rand
  96. Inventor Blogging (Winer?)
  97. Tim Berners-Lee - World Wide Web
  98. First Helicopter Client
  99. First Jet Transport Client -> many recommendations
  100. Boss - S. Jersey -> sponsor of AIM 0.0
  101. Recommended for military contract
  102. Adel Tabish -> aviation micro business
  103. Quasar Ass-kicker - better writing, estimating
  104. Charismatic preacher -> Christianity phase
  105. Andy Hamilton - bug scientist - an evolutionary perspective
  106. Kubric
  107. Jack Nicholson
  108. Boss - K Chemicals - Practical O/R
  109. Joe Hawkwood - About farming, work
  110. Suzanne Easton (psych)
  111. Dr. O. (psych)
  112. Dr. Klassa (GP0
  113. Quinn, ablation, pacemaker clinic
  114. Alfred Binet - IQ and resulting misconceptions
  115. Christian Huygens - The world is my country
and growing ...


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