"melvin stern was a us academic oceanographer who focused on fluid dynamics he served as the ekman professor of oceanography at florida state university and was an elected member of both the national academy of sciences and the american academy of arts sciences dr stern was the first researcher in the world to mathematically describe salt fingering a phenomenon produced by the unique combination of temperature and salinity in the density stratified oceansborn january 22 1929 and a native of new york city melvin received his bee degree in electrical engineering from cooper union in 1950 a ms in physics from illinois tech in 1952 and a phd in meteorology from mit in 1956melvin was a prominent scientist whose groundbreaking theories on ocean currents are still the benchmark today he began his career at whoi as a research assistant in physics from 1951 1952 on military leave to serve in the air force from 19521957 he returned to whoi in the same position from 1957 1964 he then went on to the university of rhode island and then to florida state university in 1987 where he was a professor for many yearsa pioneer in his field melvin was one of the founders of the whoi geophysical fluid dynamics gfd program which he continued to attend through 2004 he returned for the programs 50th year celebration in 2008 and then again last summer to deliver a lecture at a special dinner for lou howard he was elected to the national academy of sciences in 1998melvin stern died on february 2 2010 in philadelphia pa he was 81 he is survived by astrid his wife of 55 years and children darienne stern amanda stern and philip stern"

— Melvin Stern 🦆

"will page is the director of economics at spotify a swedish based digital music service to date spotify has launched in 57 countries around the world and recently announced that it has reached 40 million active users and over 10 million paying subscribersfor six years he was the chief economist at the prs for music a nonprofit collection society representing writers composers and music publishers in the ukpage graduated with an msc in economics at the university of edinburgh in 2002 his masters thesis germanys mezzogiorno revisited looked at the problems facing east germany ten years after german reunification the paper was published by deutsche bank in 2003 and cited in 2005 by martin wolf in the financial timeshe previously worked for the uk government economic service at the scottish executive working for the office of the chief economic adviser and department of finance he contributed to the scottish executive economic discussion paper series with a publication on infrastructure investment economic growthduring this period he established a moonlighting career in music writing for the award winning music publication straight no chaser magazine interviewing the bbc awards for world music 2004 winner rokia traore and working with the brazilian composer eumir deodato on the north sea jazz festival performances in 2003 and 2008his most notable contribution to the music industry is an annual report titled adding up the uk music industry now in its second year the report shows how much the uk music industry is worth and more importantly how it all hangs together the paper has received extensive press coverage in the guardian the times and financial timespage contributed to the campaign to save the new music radio station bbc 6 music in may 2010 he presented two facts to the debate i 6 music is playing more unique songs and ii paying royalties to more unique songwriters than any other radio stationhis most cited collaboration was with eric garland of bigchampagne titled in rainbows on torrents asked whether the radiohead legal free offering could compete with illegal free downloads he also challenged the popular long tail theory showing that the demand for digital music instead followed a log normal distributionhe sits on the advisory board of music agency sound diplomacy"

— Will Page 🦆

"nassim nicholas taleb arabic alternatively nessim or nissim born 1960 is a lebaneseamerican essayist scholar statistician and risk analyst whose work focuses on problems of randomness probability and uncertainty his 2007 book the black swan was described in a review by the sunday times as one of the twelve most influential books since world war iitaleb is a bestselling author and has been a professor at several universities currently distinguished professor of risk engineering at new york university polytechnic school of engineering and coeditor in chief of the academic journal risk and decision analysis he has also been a practitioner of mathematical finance a hedge fund manager a derivatives trader and is currently a scientific adviser at universa investments and the international monetary fundhe criticized the risk management methods used by the finance industry and warned about financial crises subsequently profiting from the late2000s financial crisis he advocates what he calls a black swan robust society meaning a society that can withstand difficulttopredict events he proposes antifragility in systems that is an ability to benefit and grow from a certain class of random events errors and volatility as well as convex tinkering as a method of scientific discovery by which he means that optionlike experimentation outperforms directed research"

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb 🦆

"will mccants is a scholar of militant islamism he is a fellow at the saban center for middle east policy and director of the project on us relations with the islamic world at the brookings institution an adjunct faculty member at johns hopkins university he is a former senior advisor on violent extremism to the us state departments office of the coordinator for counterterrorism founder and coeditor of the website jihadica he is also a research analyst for the cnas center for strategic studies a nonprofit organization that encompasses the center for naval analyses and the institute for public researchdescribed by william maclean the security correspondent for reuters as a leading scholar of militant islamism mccants was one of a number of experts to be singled out for criticism in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 norway attacks his message on twitter saying ansar aljihad alalami or the helpers of the global jihad had posted a claim of responsibility for the attacks was given prominence in the new york times though he expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the claim and the times noted it could not be confirmed following the revelation by norwegian police that the prime suspect was a norwegian man holding antimuslim views mccants was heavily criticized by other bloggers in a piece for electronicintifadanet entitled how a clueless terrorism expert set media suspicion on muslims benjamin doherty described how mccants tweets were presented in the new york times and then spread by the bbc and other mainstream news outlets there has been criticism by some academics of dohertys article for unfairly blaming mccants for the medias mistakesin an article published by brookings mccants explained the strong salafist representation in the egyptian governmentmccants is author of a 2011 book entitled founding gods inventing nations conquest and culture myths from antiquity to islam based on his doctoral research at princeton university"

— Will McCants 🦆