Enthusiastic Brights (Page 3)
Susan K. Perry
Susan K. Perry is a writer on social psychological topics. Her seven books include her dissertation-turned-bestseller Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity, for which she interviewed 75 famous novelists and poets (famed flow expert Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was on her doctoral committee); and Loving in Flow: How the Happiest Couples Get & Stay That Way. She contributed to several academic volumes. Having taught for years at university extension programs, she prefers, as an introvert, constant access to her keyboard’s Delete key. She blogs for The Brights, Psychology Today, and Patheos, aiming to enhance public understanding of secularism, rationalism, and humanism. Her first novel is Kylie’s Heel (Humanist Press, 2013), in which an atheist advice columnist copes with great loss without the comfort of faith. Visit her website.
Matt Cherry
He has spent two decades as a professional leader in the humanist movement in three different countries. Matt recently served eight years as Executive Director of the Institute for Humanist Studies before moving to a position with the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), representing it at the United Nations. Matt has served as secretary and president and vice president of the United Nations NGO (non-governmental organization) Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief and also as official NGO delegate to the U.N., representing the IHEU. He serves as International Editor for the New Humanist magazine, published by Britain's Rationalist Press Association, for which he writes a quarterly column, "International Insight."
Babu Gogineni
He is a leader in Indian humanism and now International Director - South Asia of International Humanist and Ethical Union. Babu has been international advisor to the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief, member of the management council of the International Historical Court, and co-editor of three books: Rationalist Essays; The Humanist Way; and International Humanist and Ethical Union--Past, Present and Future. He has translated some of Maupassant's short stories into Telugu, his mother tongue. As Executive Director of IHEU he led the world wide campaign to rescue Dr. Shaikh, victim of Pakistan's barbaric blasphemy laws. Now his particular focus is on the situation of the dalits in India, where he resides.
Paul Geisert
He was a biology teacher in Chicago in the 60s, a professor in the 70s, an entrepreneur and writer in the 80s, and a co-developer of learning materials and web sites in the 90s. (You are invited to visit a very small Brights-related project, Teaching about Religion: Focus on Freethought.) Paul is creator of the noun, bright, which he coined as a result of his being invited to the "Godless Americans March on Washington" in 2002. Although he did attend, so as to be part of the diverse array of people there in support of its civil rights goals, Paul determined no longer to be willingly characterized as someone whose complex outlook could be summed up only in reference to another's religion, and certainly not as somehow lacking. He is now Associate Director of The Brights' Network.
Sheldon Lee Glashow
He is a Nobel Laureate and the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University and Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Harvard University.. Glashow did his doctoral studies at Harvard University, and his post-doctoral work at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, CERN, and CalTech. He taught physics at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley before joining the faculty at Harvard University, where he remained from 1966-2000.Additionally, he shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg for his contributions toward a unified theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions.
Vincent M. Wales
He is a novelist and web essayist and founder of the Freethought Society of Northern Utah. He also answers questions about atheism on AllExperts.com and was the original guide for About.com's site on Agnosticism/Atheism. His novel, One Nation Under God, addresses the growing problem of the intermingling of government and religion. While his other novels do not focus on such issues, all have outspoken non-believers as major characters. Visit his author site: www.vincentmwales.com.
Ray Melnik
Ray, a Senior Network Architect and existential author, lives in upstate New York and works in Midtown Manhattan. He is raising caring intelligent children with an emphasis on science, music and the philosophy forwarded by the brights. No myths are advanced as fact. He finds in this movement a little hope for the future. Ray has written two novels, The Room and To Your Own Self Be True.
Andrés González Cantú
He is a proud and active Mexican Bright and chess player. He has been a very inquisitive person since a little boy. He grew up in a home where all opinions were debated respectfully. Thanks to his mother, he began to read books at three and, imitating his father, became a pathological reader. He is self-taught in English, German, Italian, Latin, and Koinи Greek. In high school, Andrйs was strongly influenced by a teacher who was a naturalist and an inspiring teacher.
Jozef Hand-Boniakowski
Jozef has a Ph.D. in Distance Education and Communications Technology and is co-editor and publisher of Metaphoria. A writer and thirty-year veteran teacher, he is in a lifelong activist. Twice elected Justice of the Peace (Wells, VT), he founded the American Mootist Organization, implemented a free meals program (NJ) and an alternative Memorial Day service (NJ and VT). A member of the Industrial Workers of the World and both Vermont and National Education Associations, Jozef is a poet and dulcimer player, pen and ink mosaic artist who has been an amateur radio operator WB2MIC since 1963. A member of Veteran for Peace, in 2004 he was awarded the national VFP's peacemaker award.
Christer Sturmark
Author, lecturer, venture capitalist and chairman of the Swedish Government IT-political Strategy Group. Christer studied computer science at the University of Uppsala and in 1996 he founded one of the major Internet companies in Europe. Today he is involved in different companies, including music software company NoteHeads, together with Per Gessle (Roxette) and Bjцrn Ulvaeus (ABBA). For more than ten years, he has been writing and speaking about the global network society and its social and cultural aspects. Today, he is involved in political work to keep Sweden the number one network society in the world. You can read more about Christer and his current work at www.sturmark.se.
Amy Alkon
The Advice Goddess has made numerous television and radio appearances, including ones on Politically Incorrect, Good Morning America, The Today Show, NPR, CNN, MTV, and Entertainment Tonight. She has long had a hilarious and psychologically sound syndicated advice column running in newspapers across the U.S. and Canada. Amy was a fan of the late psychologist Albert Ellis, who in comparing her to others in the business, recognized her as "saner than most." For five years, she also penned "Ask Amy Alkon," a popular advice column that ran exclusively in the New York Daily News. Although her columns read as humor, they are based in science, psychology, evolutionary psychology, and ethics.
