User:Larvatus/Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Larvatus is the nickname, pseudonym, and e-mail address of Michael Zeleny (b. February 26, 1958, a Usenetter who describes himself as an 'assault philosopher'.
His exploits have gleaned him a handful of enthusiasts amidst a multitude of detractors. His ill manners have caused the allegedly voluntary exile from the U.S.A. of Min Zhu, co-founder and former President and CTO of WebEx, and father of Zeleny's former partner in business and romance, Erin Zhu, who is currently married to Blixa Bargeld, the leader of German pop group Einstürzende Neubauten.
His Usenet notoriety is owed to his propaganda of Platonism, sparring with John McCarthy and other advocates of artificial intelligence, and a challenge solicited from Zeleny by Mike Godwin, who subsequently backed out of a duel, insisting on substituting a game of Trivial Pursuit.
Zeleny was born in Moscow, in the former U.S.S.R.. He has lived in Odessa, Ukraine, attending Odessa high school No. 116 and appearing on the stage of the Odessa Opera Theater. Despite showing early promise by winning the Odessa Olympiads in mathematics and physics for three years in a row, he is a mathematician manqué.
Following a brief incarceration for acts of civil disobedience staged in Moscow's Dzerzhinsky Square in October of 1976, Zeleny's family followed him in voluntary exile from the U.S.S.R. on February 8 of 1977. Since then he has lived in Rome, Italy, as well as in Chicago, Illinois; New York City, New York; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Los Angeles, California. He claims to have given its name to the Free Software Foundation, and having been expelled therefrom in 1985, by Richard Stallman. According to Zeleny, Stallman and his allies took exception to his opposition to the proposed terms of the GPL and his insistence that "Free" meant just what it said. He concedes that Linus Torvalds' adoption of the GPL copyleft, which requires that any derivative software be distributed under the same terms, has preempted Microsoft's strategy of embracing, extending, and extinguishing competing software products in its dealings with Linux.
Zeleny attended U.C.L.A. between 1986 and 1990, returning there between 1993 and 1995. He graduated from Harvard in 1993 with a degree in assorted humanities. Zeleny has co-edited a collection of papers in memory of his teacher Alonzo Church. (See here [1] for an Amazon.com listing.) He serves as an editor of Alonzo Church's Collected Works for the MIT Press.
