People Who Inspired Me

Last updated 2004-06-28 by Roedy Green ©2000-2004 Canadian Mind Products.
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Introduction

Spider Robinson

User Friendly 0-671-87864-6 Spider Robinson	Star Dancers 0-671-87802-6 Spider Robinson	Lifehouse 0-671-87777-1 Spider Robinson
Death Killer 0-671-87722-4 Spider Robinson	Lady Slings the Booze 0-441-46929-9 Spider Robinson	Calahan's Crosstime Saloon 0-8125-7227-0 Spider Robinson
The Callahan Touch 0-441-00133-5 Spider Robinson	Off the Wall At Callahan's 0-312-85661-X Spider Robinson	Callahan's Legacy 0-8125-5035-8 Spider Robinson
The Callahan Chronicles 0-8125-3937-0 Spider Robinson	Callahan's Key 0-553-11163-9 Spider Robinson

Stephen Gaskin

	This Season's People
	0-913990-05-1
	Stephen Gaskin
My copy of this book has totally fallen to pieces I have read it so often.

Dr. John Lilly

In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits.
-- Dr. John Lilly

Dr. John Lilly Links

• obituary with list of books.
• Interview with John Lilly.
• Biography of John Lilly.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah has made a lot of money and has spent it to help blacks and women. I like her because of her warm and common sense. Someone once said that if God decided to incarnate again, He would appear as a black woman. Oprah would not be that bad a model. She gets better looking with every year she ages. I want to emulate her. She has proved herself a skilled negotiator, leader and organiser. She would be great as president of the USA.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

He made non-violence work. Gandhi's godson let me into his private museum of Gandhi memorabilia. Boy did that man write a lot of letters! See my collection of quotations.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

The fact we are still here we owe primarily to this man whose loyalty to his planet was greater than his loyalty to his country.

Ken Keyes Jr.

This man helped me more than any other put my life back together. I went to see him every Christmas right up to his death.

Noam Chomsky

An independent intelligent mind.

Jacques Cousteau

His early movies of marine life set my life path wanting to protect it.

David Suzuki

He has tirelessly and successfully presented the case for environmentalism for decades. He married Tara Cullis, a girl I palled around with in high school. He is Canada's best known scientist from his years hosting the CBC's The Nature Of Things. He is the author of dozens of books. His latest is A Lifetime of Ideals only availble in a few stores yet though you could get it via The David Suzuki Foundation.

Briony Penn

Briony Penn is a local Victoria resident, energetic environmentalist. She manages to put out a weekly newspaper column, a weekly TV show, Environmental, and raise two kids. She is funny and upbeat, not in the least fitting the stereotype of a tree hugger.

Svend Robinson

Svend is the gay member of parliament for Vancouver Burnaby. He vigorously champions left-wing causes when everyone else seems to have lost their steam. I want him to become Prime Minister of Canada. He tabled a Humanist Association petition asking to have irrelevant references to God taken out of the Canadian constitution. That got him in a lot of hot water with the Christian loonies and, to my disgust, with the NDP party. My Mom and Svend talked often. He phoned me once. I am leaving my personal copy of A Guide to the Naive Homosexual to him in my will.

Sir David Attenborough

He makes nature documentaries that are completely fascinating.

Steve Jobs

Jobs, unlike his rival Gates, appreciates technical beauty. He is the genius behind three great machines:

1. Apple ][, the first personal computer that you could use without a soldering iron.
2. The Mac, the first user-friendly personal computer.
3. NeXT, chock full of great ideas, including an object-oriented operating system.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Not only could he speak in a way that still stirs hearts decades after his death, he was courageous. He did what had to be done even though it cost him his life.

Nelson Mandela

Even after years of imprisonment, he swallowed his bitterness, and avoided ping pong retribution against the Afrikaners who had oppressed the blacks of South Africa.

Arthur C. Clarke

He writes sci fi novels that describe, with wonder, beautiful possible futures. They don't rely on cowboy soap opera plots to hold your attention.

Gautama Buddha

He founded a religion that has lasted thousands of years. What is more remarkable is that his followers have been remarkably tolerant of adherents of other religions. Thailand, the land of smiles, is a Buddhist country.

Jack Lemmon

Jack Lemmon was an actor who died 2001 June. He did two roles that astound me. One was in Some Like It Hot. I laugh myself silly every time I see that movie. The other movie was The China Syndrome. He was so believable as the plant manager. That movie likely saved us from having to experience such a disaster in real life.

Leonard Cohen

Leonard is a poet and singer I have loved since my teens. His songs reflect the strangeness, beauty, torment and mystery of existence. Leonard sent my sister Daphne a card.

Roberta Flack

Robera Flack is a singer. I especially like her early work in First Take. I don't let myself listen too often. Her voice makes my heart raw.

Johan Sebastian Bach

Bach was a baroque era composer. He is incomparable.

Eddie Murphy

Eddie is an under-rated comic genius. His Coming To America makes me laugh years after seeing it when I recall scenes like the waterlogged petal throwers in the barber shop.

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is a film-maker. My favourites are Sleeper, Hanna and Her Sisters and Radio Days. He makes me nostalgic for times I never experienced. Sleeper is up there with Some Like It Hot as one of the funniest movies ever made.

Gene Roddenberry

His Star Trek Next Generation series has greatly helped liberalise the attitudes of the young by showing a utopian future world where the sexual equality is taken for granted, and money is no longer needed. Even the most scary monsters turn out to be much like us once we understand them.

Roy Nikijuluw

Roy is an Indonesian singer now living in the Netherlands. His singing Wind Beneath My Wings is one of the high points of my life. He was my lover for about a year.

Joan Baez

Joan Baez was one of the first people to protest the Vietnam War. She put up with huge amounts of abuse from the right to do it. Even after America woke up and saw the foolishness of the war, ordinary citizens continued to revile her. She came to speak at UBC. I went to see her. She wanted to talk politics. People wanted her to sing. She refused. I admired her gumption.

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader has been a tireless consumer and safety advocate since I was a kid. He tackles all manner of issues from Microsoft's monopoly, to air pollution to world trade. When you feel discouraged and ask "What can one person do?" have a look at Ralph Nader.

Bernie Siegel

Bernie has written numerous books especially Love, Medicine and Miracles : Lessons Learned About Self-Healing from a Surgeon's Experience With Exceptional Patients (ISBN: 0-06-091983-3). He demystifies and deterrifies the process of dying, at the same time showing you how to soldier through a major illness.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau : 1919-2000

The government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
-- Pierre Trudeau

See his biography.

Martha Stewart

I admire Martha Stewart for many reasons. She amazes me because she gets more done per day than probably anyone else on earth. She exposes people to the beautiful domestic arts of our past and present. She does everything with such perfection and care. I have coined the term martha in her honour. I do find it funny how she is so like her namesake in the Bible.

Bill Moyers

He is a television journalist who has a mild manner. He speaks to middle America in a measured voice. He did a PBS documentary called Earth On Edge that in a quiet way makes the case for an ecologically sustainable future.

I could see the power of his understated approach. People are so used to hearing screams of alarm, they just feel overwhelmed and react the way ostriches do. They have to be coaxed to gently explore these global problems rationally.

Bill Maher

Bill Maher was the host of Politically Incorrect. He is one of the few voices of common sense on television. He seem unafraid to offend advertisers, Christians, or Republicans. He is also wickedly funny. He has a new show Real Time with Bill Maher broadcast live every Friday night at 11:30 on HBO. I often disagree with him, but I admire his blunt honesty.

	Spin This!
	0-7434-4267-9
	Bill Press and Bill Maher
How to translate the spin and bullshit politicians sling.

Raymond Kurzweil

	The Age of Spiritual Machines : When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
	0-14-028202-5
	Raymond Kurzweil
A fascinating book giving the evidence why computers exceeding human intelligence are imminent.

Raymond Kurzweil in a computer scientist and general all round genius. He is most famous for his work on optical character recognition, speech recognition and music synthesisers. He has written some interesting books about the evolution of computers. Like me, he expects computers to become conscious in the not too distant future. He carefully charts how the rate of change is doubling every ten years. This lets us get a century's worth of innovation completed in a 25 years. The entire ninteenth century has only about as much innovation as eight of our current years. The diffent hundreds of regions of the brain use different sorts of neurons with differnt algorithms, but we can reverse engineer those algorithms. The general public is unaware just how far along we are to understanding the brain. For the 15 algorithms that have been reverse engineered so far, we have found ways thousands of times more efficient to do those same calculations. Kurzweil computes that for $1000.00 USD , you will be able to purchase the computing power equivalent to a human brain. This does not mean equivalent software will be available.

Tom Robbins

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues 0-553-34949-X Tom Robbins Raunchy and fun.

Jitterbug Perfume 0-553-34898-1 Tom Robbins My favourite.

Skinny Legs And All 0-553-37788-4 Tom Robbins

Still Life With Woodpecker 0-553-34897-3 Tom Robbins

Another Roadside Attraction 0-553-34948-1 Tom Robbins

Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas 0-553-37787-6 Tom Robbins

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates 0-553-37933-X Tom Robbins

Gore Vidal

(1925). There are several reasons why I admire Vidal. First, he was way ahead of his time tackling gay issues long before anyone else had the courage to tackle them. Second he write so well and precisely. Third, he hates Bush with the same passion I do.

	Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta
	1-56025-502-1
	Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is a man of letters, historian and novelist. This is where Vidal alleges that Bush Inc. were planning to invade Afghanistan long before 9/11, to topple the Taliban and hence expedite the Unocal pipeline.

Carl Sagan

(1934-1996) Astronomer who wrote books and created videos to introduce the public to the cosmos. The closest I ever feel to religious awe is listening to him. What an astounding universe we inhabit! I am overwhelmed with sadness every time I see him on video knowing he died so young, and there has been no one to step into his place advocating space exploration.

Women In Black

"The Women in Black are clearly prepared not only to die for their cause, but also to make what Dostoevesky correctly identified as a far greater sacrifice: to live for their cause. They are ready to lose their homes, their comforts, their liberty, to be vilified, beaten up and imprisoned. Their accountable actions require a far greater courage than throwing bricks at the police."

Tenzin Gyatso

Tenzin Gyatso is also known as the 14th Dalai Lama. I like him primarily because he fights fair. He has plenty of reason to be resentful about the Chinese takeover of Tibet, but he combats them with dignity, respect and non-violence. I'm not sure it would be good thing if Tibet were a theocracy instead of a democracy, but I imagine if he ran for president, he would have no trouble winning.

I saw a documentary about the Dalai Lama. He was involved in a ceremony handing out bits of grass that as I recall symbolised the grass in the Buddha's pillow. It was in some way supposed to aid the process of enlightenment. People were shoving, grabbing and hitting each other to get the strands of grass. Some of the Dalai Lama's aids tried to persuade the cameramen to stop filming. They were so ashamed of this unenlightened behaviour in seeking enlightenment. However, he just laughed. "It takes eons, eons" he said.

I went to see him on two occasions when he came to Vancouver. The first time we had to sit through many windbags before he got to speak. He was patient, but through his body language let us know he sympathised with our boredom. We made eye contact for a short while, which felt significant, as if we were passing some secret acknowledgement to each other. At the time I was troubled that the goal of spiritual growth was callousness and high indifference. In his homily he assured us that good old-fashioned kindness was still important. I cried with relief.

The second time I went to see him was in a giant hall. He gave a very complicated lecture way over my head. I was amazed that anyone could understand it, but everyone at least appeared to be giving rapt attention. It was reassuring that the people in charge of spiritual matters likely knew more about what they were doing that I did.

Edgar Mitchell

Edgar Mitchell was the sixth astronaut to walk on the moon. What makes him interesting is a cosmic consciousness experience he has on his return flight to earth. What also makes him interesting is he straddles the world between hard science and the flakes, irritating both sides. I figure the best research pickings have to be in places where people have been too embarrassed to look.

I saw him in 2001 August. I had a brief CC-like experience, or more accurately, a feeling of reaching out internally and touching something alien, distant and beautiful, as he described his experience in the spacecraft. I publicly asked him if his experience was a one shot thing and if there was any way to induce it other than becoming an astronaut. He said that he had learned to induce it pretty well at will using meditation. He also repeated the phrase: Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water, After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. which I think was his hint to me that he now considered himself enlightened and possibly a personal hint to me not to become too much of a space cadet. I caught him once deliberatly exaggerating the meaning of Bell's theorem to some flakes claiming it would allow faster than light communications. Then I later caught him yarding some flakes back into hard science.

Chuck Moore

I like Chuck Moore because he invented Forth which let me both communicate with dolphins and create Abundance. I met him and his wife in 1991. I told people in my Computer Paper column that they should all turn out to see him, just so they could tell their grandkids they had seen Charles Moore. It was something they should not pass up, like getting so see Einstein, even if they thought they would not understand his lecture. I spent the weekend talking with him and his friends. It was an exhilarating time talking with someone with such an eye for Spartan beauty and totally new ways of looking at problems. I took notes and lost them. I never did write up my experiences with him and the guilt about it has nagged me to this day.

Bernie C. Till

Christopher Reeve

Christopher Reeve is the actor who played Superman. Later he broke his neck in a horse-riding accident and became paralysed from the neck down. His reputedly magnificent penis still worked, but he could not feel anything. He said that he still treated his penis kindly and allowed it to have sex with his wife. He did not treat it as an alien thing, just because he could no longer feel it or control it. He is an inspiration to everyone with some ghastly condition to bear because he both enjoys the present moment and hangs on to hopes for a brighter future. He needs medical research to allow him to walk again. I ask everyone to co-operate, blocking only those experiments which are excessively cruel.

What is my personal connection? When I was a little boy, my grandmother dyed me a red cape on her woodstove and I ran around her yard with it flowing out behind me. Chris signed an Ending Hunger declaration card when he was here in Canada. I touched it. Finally, when Jimmy dumped Leslie, I took her to see the first Superman movie. Neither of us had seen it before. We were so blown away. It took us out of our troubles on a wave of exhilaration. I watched the Barbara Walters interview where he was unusually candid about his predicament. I ask you to join with me in performing a quantum miracle for Chris, letting him get up and walk. We'll leave flying for another day :-). Unlike regular miracles, quantum miracles don't violate the laws of physics, though they sometimes can give that impression.

Judy Collins

In 1970, she released Farewell to Tarwathie where she sang acapella with whales on the Whales and Nightingales album.

Julie Andrews

Her clear voice brings sunshine to even the darkest day. She is probably best known as Mary Poppins and as Maria in Sound Of Music. Just thinking about her singing Edelveis brings tears to my eyes. People forget her role as Jerusha in Hawaii where she and the Alii Nui Queen Malama teach her Scrooge-like fundamentalist husband Abner the meaning of love and acceptance. She lost her voice following a botched throat operation, but gamely went on stage without it, discovering how much her fans still love her whether she can sing or not. I ask you to join with me in performing a minor quantum miracle for Julie -- restoring her voice.

My personal connection? I touched someone who had touched the magic bag in Mary Poppins. I like to sing along.

Gwynne Dyer

Gynney Dyer is a Canadian historian and filmmaker. He tackles grim subjects like war and terrorism with a dry humour that helps you think clearly about them.

	War
	0-517-55615-4
	Gywnne Dyer
Also a miniseries documentary.

	The Defence Of Canada, Volume I
	0-7710-2975-6
	Gywnne Dyer

	Ignorant Armies : Sliding into War in Iraq
	0-7710-2977-2
	Gywnne Dyer

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