Profile of the day: Richard Stallman

Tyler Cowen writes:

This is one of the best “essays” I have read on any topic and it builds very nicely from apparently humble beginnings.

Andrew Gelman comments. This is Stallman's Wikipedia page. And these are two videos, here and here. Fascinating for many reasons!

Eight intellectual profiles and more.

McArthur Fellows:
Ronald Fryer (Economist).
Peter Hessler (Journalist and writer).
Tiya Miles (Historian).
Matthew Nock (Psychologist). 
Sarah Otto (Biologist). 
Shwetak Patel (Computer Scientist). 
Melanie Sanford (Chemist).
William Seeley (Neurologist).

See the full list here.

Two things by and about Tim Ferriss

Learn anything, TED video
A book review of his “The 4-Hour Body.”

Writer profile of the day

Atul Gawande

Intellectual profile of the day

Kwame Anthony Appiah. Here
His webpage

Scientific profile of the day

Thomas Eisner

Sunday's Profile, Alvin E. Roth

The Matchmaker. Here [Marginal Revolution and Gregory Mankiw]

Roth was already well established in economics by the time of that Princeton talk. As a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, he had played an instrumental role in turning an economics department aimed at training undergraduates into a nationally recognized research institution. His role was an informal one — while he wasn’t chair of the department, he was, as his onetime colleague John Kagel said, its “600 pound-gorilla.” Thanks to an offer from Yale, Roth had secured a commitment from the university administration to fund the hiring of more than a dozen new economics professors. It was a staggering number, which speaks to just how badly Pitt wanted him on its team.