Lil Wayne

Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. (born September 27, 1982), better known by his stage name Lil Wayne, is an American rapper. Formerly a member of the rap group the Hot Boys, he joined the Cash Money Records collective as a teenager. Get It How U Live, released in 1997, was Lil Wayne's first album with Hot Boys, and Tha Block is Hot, his solo debut, came out in 1999.

After gaining fame with two other albums in the early 2000s, Lil Wayne reached higher popularity with 2004's Tha Carter and its two subsequent albums Tha Carter II (2005) and Tha Carter III (2008). He earned various accolades following Tha Carter III, including being nominated for eight Grammy Awards. He will release a rock album titled Rebirth in 2009.
Early life

Lil Wayne was born Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. and grew up in the Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana.[1] Carter enrolled in the gifted program of Lafayette Elementary School and in the drama club of Eleanor McMain Secondary School.[2][3] He wrote his first rap song at age eight.[4] At age eleven, he met Bryan Williams, rapper and owner of Cash Money Records. Lil Wayne recorded freestyle raps on Williams' answering machine; Williams would eventually mentor the young Carter and include him in Cash Money-distributed songs.[5] When he was 12, he played the part of the Tin Man in his middle school drama club's production of The Wiz.[6] He dropped out of school at age 14 but later earned his GED.[2]

Music career

Hot Boys
Main article: Hot Boys

In 1997, Lil Wayne formed the group Hot Boys along with rappers Juvenile, Turk, and B.G.; at age 15, Wayne was the youngest member at that time. Hot Boys' debut album Get It How U Live! was released the same year, followed in 1999 by the group's major-label debut Guerrilla Warfare,[1] which reached #1 on the Billboard magazine Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and #5 on the Billboard 200.[7] During their career, the Hot Boys had two charting singles, "We On Fire" from Get It How U Live! and "I Need a Hot Girl" from Guerrilla Warfare.[8] Lil Wayne was also featured on Juvenile's single "Back That Azz Up", which reached #18 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks.[9] Let 'Em Burn, a compilation album of unreleased tracks recorded during 1999 and 2000, came out in 2003, several years after the group disbanded.[10] It reached #3 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and #14 on the Billboard 200.[7]

Early solo career (1999-2003)

Lil Wayne's debut solo album Tha Block Is Hot at age 17 featured significant contributions from the Hot Boys and went double platinum, climbing to #3 on the Billboard album charts.[1] The album earned him a 1999 Source magazine award nomination for "Best New Artist",[11] and also became a Top Ten hit.[1] The lead single was "Tha Block Is Hot". After the release of Tha Block is Hot, Lil Wayne was featured on the single, "Bling Bling", with B.G., Juvenile, Turk, and Big Tymers.

His 2000 follow-up album Lights Out failed to attain the level of success achieved by his debut[1] but was certified gold by RIAA.[12] Critics pointed to the lack of coherent narratives in his verses as evidence that he had yet to mature to the level of his fellow Hot Boys.[13] The lead single was "Get Off The Corner" which was noticed for an improvement in lyrical content and style, it also received a music video. The second single which received less attention was "Shine" featuring The Hot Boys. Near the release of Lights Out, Lil Wayne was featured on the single, "1# Stunna" with Big Tymers and Juvenile, which rose to 24th place on the Hot Rap Tracks charts.

Lil Wayne's third album 500 Degreez, released in 2002, followed the format of his previous two, with significant contributions from the Hot Boys and Mannie Fresh. While certified Gold like its predecessor,[12] it too failed to match the success of his debut.[1] The title was a reference to the recently estranged Hot Boys member Juvenile's recording, 400 Degreez.[14] The lead single was "Way Of Life" which like the album failed to match the success of his previous singles. After the release of 500 Degreez, he was featured in the single "Neva Get Enuf" by 3LW.[15]

Tha Carter and Tha Carter II (2004-2005)

In the summer of 2004, Wayne's album Tha Carter came out, marking what critics considered advancement in his rapping style and lyrical themes.[16] In addition, the album's cover art featured the debut of Wayne's now-signature dreadlocks.[1] Tha Carter gained Wayne significant recognition, selling over 1 million copies in the United States, while the single "Go DJ" became a Top 5 Hit.[17] After the release of Tha Carter, Lil Wayne was featured in Destiny's Child's single "Soldier" with T.I., which peaked at #3 on the U.S. Hot 100 and the U.S. R&B Charts.[18] The song Get Something (featuring Mannie Fresh) was supposed to appear on the album but failed to make the cut, however the music video was released.[19]

Tha Carter II, the follow-up to the original Tha Carter album, was released in December 2005, this time without production by longtime Cash Money Records producer Mannie Fresh, who had since left the label. Tha Carter II sold more than 238,000 copies in its first week of release, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, and went on to sell 2,000,000 copies world wide. The lead single, "Fireman," became a hit in the US, peaking at 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Other singles included "Grown Man", "Hustler Muzik", and "Shooter" (featuring R&B singer Robin Thicke). Lil Wayne also appeared on a remix of Bobby Valentino's "Tell Me", which rose to #13 on the U.S. R&B Charts.

In 2005, Lil Wayne was named president of Cash Money, and in the same year he founded Young Money Entertainment as an imprint of Cash Money.[20] However, as of late 2007, Lil Wayne reported that he has stepped down from the management of both labels and has handed management of Young Money over to Cortez Bryant.[21]

Collaborations and mixtapes (2006-2007)

In 2006, Lil Wayne collaborated with rapper Birdman for the album Like Father, Like Son, whose first single "Stuntin' Like My Daddy", reached #21 on the Billboard Hot 100. Instead of a follow-up solo album, Lil Wayne reached his audience through a plethora of mixtapes and guest appearances on a variety of pop and hip-hop singles.[1] Of his many mixtapes, Dedication 2 and Da Drought 3 received the most media exposure and critical review. Dedication 2, released in 2006, paired Lil Wayne with DJ Drama and contained the acclaimed socially conscious track "Georgia Bush," in which Lil Wayne critiqued former US president George W. Bush's response to the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans. Da Drought 3 was released the following year and was available for free legal download. It contained Lil Wayne rapping over a variety of beats from recent hits by other musicians. Numerous of features in prominent hip-hop magazines such as XXL[22] and Vibe[23] covered the mixtape. Christian Hoard of Rolling Stone magazine considered the mixtapes Da Drought 3 and The Drought Is Over 2 "among the best albums of 2007."[24]

Despite no album release for two years, Lil Wayne appeared in numerous singles as a featured performer, including "Gimme That" by Chris Brown, "Make It Rain" by Fat Joe, "You" by Lloyd, and "We Takin Over" by DJ Khaled (also featuring Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, and Birdman), "Duffle Bag Boy" by Playaz Circle, "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" by Wyclef Jean (also featuring Akon), and the remix to "I'm So Hood" by DJ Khaled (also featuring T-Pain, Young Jeezy, Ludacris, Busta Rhymes, Big Boi, Fat Joe, Birdman, and Rick Ross). All these singles charted within the top 20 spots on the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Rap Tracks, and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts. On Birdman's 2007 album 5 * Stunna, Lil Wayne appeared on the singles "100 Million" and "I Run This" among several other tracks. Wayne also appeared on tracks from albums Getback by Little Brother, American Gangster by Jay-Z, and Graduation by Kanye West. "Make it Rain", a Scott Storch production that peaked at #13 on the Hot 100 and #2 on the Hot Rap Tracks chart,[25] was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for 2008.[26]
Performing at the Beacon Theatre in July 23, 2007.

Vibe magazine ranked a list of 77 of Lil Wayne's songs from 2007 and ranked his verse in DJ Khaled's "We Takin Over" as his best of 2007, with "Dough Is What I Got" (a freestyle over the beat of Jay-Z's "Show Me What You Got") from Da Drought 3 the second song.[23] At the end of 2007, an MTV poll selected Lil Wayne as "Hottest MC in the Game",[27] The New Yorker magazine ranked him "Rapper of the Year",[5] and GQ magazine named him "Workaholic of the Year".[28] In 2008 he was named "Best Rock Star Alive" by Blender magazine[2] and "Best MC" by Rolling Stone.[3]

Tha Carter III (2008)
Main article: Tha Carter III

Initially planned to be released in 2007, Tha Carter III's largest delay came after the majority of the tracks were leaked and distributed on mixtapes, such as "The Drought Is Over Pt. 2" and "The Drought Is Over Pt. 4". Lil Wayne initially decided to use the leaked tracks, plus four new tracks, to make a separate album, titled The Leak. The Leak was to be released December 18, 2007, with the actual album being delayed until March 18, 2008,[29] The release of The Leak in this format never came to fruition, but an official EP titled The Leak and containing five tracks was released digitally on December 25, 2007.

Tha Carter III was released on June 10, 2008, selling more than a million copies in its first week of release, the first to do so since 50 Cent's The Massacre in 2005.[30] The first single "Lollipop", featuring Static became the rapper's most commercially successful song at that point, topping the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first Top 10 single for Lil Wayne as a solo artist, as well as his first #1 on the chart. His third single from Carter III', "Got Money" featuring T-Pain, peaked at #13 on the Billboard 100. Along with his album singles, Lil Wayne appeared on R&B singles "Girls Around the World" by Lloyd, "Love In This Club, Part II" by Usher, "Official Girl" by Cassie, "I'm So Paid" by Akon, "Turnin' Me On" by Keri Hilson, and "Can't Believe It" by T-Pain; rap singles "My Life" by The Game, "Shawty Say" by David Banner, "Swagga Like Us" by T.I., "Cutty Buddy" by Mike Jones, and "Haterz" and the remix to "Certified" by Glasses Malone; and pop single "Let It Rock" by new Cash Money artist Kevin Rudolf. On July 14, 2008, the Recording Industry Association of America certified Tha Carter III two times platinum.[31] In an October 2008 interview with MTV News, Lil Wayne announced plans to re-release this album with all new tracks, including a duet with Ludacris and remixes of "A Milli".[32]

The lineup for New Orleans' 2008 Voodoo Experience concert, to be held in October, featured Lil Wayne. Jonathan Cohen of Billboard magazine reported that the event would mark his biggest hometown headlining set of his career.[33] Lil Wayne will be reuniting with Hot Boys alongside Juvenile, Turk, and B.G. They plan to release an album after B.G.'s solo album Too Hood to Be Hollywood is completed.[34] Wayne also performed as the 2008 Virgin Mobile Music Fest with Kanye West, performing the remix of "Lollipop" with West and also lip-syncing to Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You".[35]Lil Wayne also performed at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards with Kid Rock ("All Summer Long"), Leona Lewis ("DontGetIt (Misunderstood)") and T-Pain ("Got Money").[36] On the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, he performed "Lollipop" and "Got Money".[37] He later performed at the homecoming rally at Vanderbilt University[38] and the 2008 BET Hip Hop Awards with 12 nominations.[39] He won the "MVP" title at the BET Hip Hop Awards and seven others.[40] It was revealed that M.I.A. dropped out of performing on the tour due to her pregnancy, however Jay Z is expected to perform with Wayne on the song "Mr. Carter" at select shows.[41]

On November 11, 2008, Wayne became the first hip-hop act to ever perform at the Country Music Awards. He played alongside Kid Rock for the song, "All Summer Long", in which Wayne did not rap but instead played guitar along Kid Rock's band.[42] Shortly after, Wayne was nominated for eight Grammys - the most for an artist nominated.[43] Wayne was then named the first ever MTV Man of the Year at the end of 2008.[44]

DJ Drama stated that there would be a third installation of the Dedication mixtape series with Lil Wayne,[45] who insisted that it will would be a full album under the title.[46] However despite the fact Wayne wanted to release Dedication 3 as an album, it was released as a mixtape on November 14, 2008.

Rebirth (2009)

Wayne stated that he would release a debut rock album titled Rebirth. It was set to be released on April 7th, 2009 but is now slated for a May 19, 2009 release.[47] "Prom Queen", the lead single, debuted on January 27 immediately after a live Internet broadcast of his concert in San Diego.[48] "Prom Queen" peaked at #15 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.[49]

Future work

He has announced several possible upcoming projects, including a collaboration album I Can't Feel My Face with rapper Juelz Santana that has been in production for several years.[50][51] On the website HipHopDX.com, he has discussed a possible R&B album titled Luv Sawngz, for which he will heavily rely on a vocoder.[52] He has also talked with singer Lloyd about doing a collaboration album in the future.[53] On June 19, 2008, Lil Wayne and T-Pain formed a duo called T-Wayne[54] and planned to release an album.[55]

In an interview on MTV's Mixtape Monday, Wayne asserted the possibility of an album titled Tha Carter IV.[56] Following Tha Carter III's achievement of selling over 2 million copies, becoming 2008's best record, Wayne re-signed with Cash Money Records for a multi-album deal.[57] Wayne said Tha Carter IV will be released in 2009 just before the holidays.[58]

It has also been confirmed that Wayne will be releasing a collaboration album with Young Money, with the first single confirmed as "Every Girl". [59]

Television and film career

Lil Wayne was a guest debater going up against Skip Bayless on the "1st & 10" segment on the January 6, 2009 edition of ESPN First Take.[60] On February 10, 2009 he also appeared on ESPN's Around The Horn and beat out veterans Woody Paige, Jay Mariotti and fellow New Orleanian Michael Smith to win that show's episode.[61]Wayne is set to produce and compose music for the film Hurricane Season.[62] A documentary titled Tha Carter is also in production and was released at the Sundance Film Festival.[63] Prior to the 2009 Grammy Awards, Wayne was featured in an interview with Katie Couric.[64] On February 7, 2009, he presented the Top Ten List on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman.[65]

Personal life

Family and education

Wayne has two daughters. One was born when he was a teenager[4], and another named Reginae Carter with his high school sweetheart Antonia "Toya" Johnson. Carter and Johnson married on Valentines Day of 2004 and divorced in 2006.[66] His newborn son, Dwayne Carter III, was born on October 22, 2008 at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati.[67]

After earning his GED, Wayne enrolled at the University of Houston in January 2005 with plans to major in political science.[68] To earn his degree, he had been taking online courses,[4] An article in Urb magazine in March 2007 asserted that Wayne had been earning high grades at Houston,[69] and by the end of the year Wayne discontinued his education there.[70]

Sports and musical interests

In an interview with Blender magazine, Lil Wayne revealed one of his favorite bands from childhood to be rock group Nirvana, and cites them as a major influence in his music.[71]

On September 24, 2008, Lil Wayne published his first blog for ESPN in their issue, ESPN The Magazine. Wayne revealed he was a fan of tennis, the Green Bay Packers, the Boston Bruins, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Red Sox.[72] Wayne continued writing for ESPN, eventually reporting at the ESPN Super Bowl party.[73]

Lil Wayne made his debut on ESPN's daily sports round table show "Around The Horn" on Feb. 10, 2009. On February 24, 2009, Wayne was saw wearing a red adhesive bandage on his cheek at the Miami Heat-Detroit Pistons, honoring Dwyane Wade and his "Band-Wades".[74]

Drug use and arrests

Wayne told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric on her All Access Grammy Special in 2009 that he enjoys smoking marijuana recreationally.[75] He has been arrested for use or possession of marijuana and other drugs.

In the latter half of 2007, Lil Wayne was arrested twice. On July 22, 2007, Lil Wayne was arrested in New York City following a performance at the Beacon Theatre; the New York City Police Department discovered Lil Wayne and another man smoking marijuana near a tour bus. After taking Lil Wayne into custody, police discovered a pistol on his person, and he was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and marijuana.[76] Another arrest was on October 5, 2007, following a performance at Qwest Arena in Boise, Idaho, on felony fugitive charges after Georgia authorities accused the rapper of possessing a controlled substance.[77] The incident was later described as a "mix-up" and the fugitive charges were dropped.[78]

On January 23, 2008, Lil Wayne was arrested alongside two others. His tour bus was stopped by Border Patrol agents near Yuma, Arizona. A K-9 Unit recovered 105 grams of marijuana (3.7 ounces), almost 29 grams of cocaine (1.02 ounces), 41 grams of MDMA (1.4 ounces) and $22,000 in cash. Lil Wayne was charged with four felonies: possession of narcotic drug for sale, possession of dangerous drugs, misconduct involving weapons and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was granted permission to travel outside of the state and remain out of custody on the $10,185 bond he posted.[79] On May 6, 2008 Wayne returned to court in Arizona to plead not guilty to the charges.[80]

In February 2009, production company RMF Productions filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against Wayne, following a $100,000 advance payment for three shows, all of which were cancelled by the artist.

Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin (born August 21, 1973, in Moscow, Soviet Union) is co-founder of Google, Inc., the world’s largest internet company, based on its search engine and online advertising technology.[5] He is ranked by Forbes as the 32nd richest person in the world. In 2007 he and co-founder Larry Page were together ranked #1 of the “50 Most Important People on the Web” by PC World Magazine.

Brin emigrated to the United States at the age of six due to his family’s educational barriers in the Soviet Union. Earning his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, he followed in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, double-majoring in computer science. After graduation, he moved to Stanford to acquire a Ph.D in computer science. There he met Larry Page, who quickly became his intellectual soul-mate and close friend. They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin’s data mining system to build a superior search engine. The program became popular at Stanford and they suspended their Ph.D studies to start up Google in a rented garage.

The Economist magazine referred to Brin as “Enlightenment Man," and someone who believes that “knowledge is always good, and certainly always better than ignorance," a philosophy which is summed up by Google’s motto of making all the world’s information "universally accessible and useful."

Sergey Brin was born in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union, to Russian Jewish parents, the son of Michael Brin and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University. His father is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother is a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. [7] [8]

Childhood in the Soviet Union

In 1979, when Brin was six, his family felt compelled to emigrate to the United States. In an interview with Mark Malseed, author of The Google Story,[9] Sergey's father explains how he was "forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer even before he reached college. Officially, anti-Semitism didn't exist in the U.S.S.R. but, in reality, Communist Party heads barred Jews from upper professional ranks by denying them entry to universities. Jews were excluded from the physics departments, in particular..." He therefore changed his major to mathematics where he received nearly straight A's. However, he said, "Nobody would even consider me for graduate school because I was Jewish." [10] The Brin family lived in a small, three-bedroom, 350 square foot apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother. Sergey told Malseed, "I've known for a long time that my father wasn't able to pursue the career he wanted," but Sergey only picked up the details years later after they had settled in America. He learned how, in 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics conference in Warsaw, Poland, he announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. "We cannot stay here any more," he told his wife and mother. At the conference, he was able to "mingle freely with colleagues from the United States, France, England and Germany, and discovered that his intellectual brethren in the West were 'not monsters.'" He added, "I was the only one in the family who decided it was really important to leave...".[10]

Sergey's mother was less willing to leave their home in Moscow, where they had spent their entire lives. Malseed writes, "For Genia, the decision ultimately came down to Sergey. While her husband admits he was thinking as much about his own future as his son's, for her, 'it was 80/20' about Sergey." They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result his father "was promptly fired." For related reasons, his mother also had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, not knowing whether their application would be granted. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself computer programming. In May, 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.[10]

At an interview in October, 2000, Brin said, "I know the hard times that my parents went through there, and am very thankful that I was brought to the States."[11] A decade earlier, in the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his father led a group of gifted high school math students, including Sergey, on a two-week exchange program to the Soviet Union. "As Sergey recalls, the trip awakened his childhood fear of authority" and he remembers that his first "impulse on confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police car." Malseed adds, "On the second day of the trip, while the group toured a sanitarium in the countryside near Moscow, Sergey took his father aside, looked him in the eye and said, 'Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.'"[10]

Education in America

Brin attended grade school at Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, but he received further education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland, nurtured his interest in mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. In September 1990, after having attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Brin enrolled in the University of Maryland, College Park to study computer science and mathematics, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in May 1993 with honors.[12]

Brin began his graduate study in Computer Science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation. In 1993 he interned at Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica[13]. He is on leave from his Ph.D. studies at Stanford.
Search engine development

During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. In a recent interview for The Economist, Brin jokingly said "We're both kind of obnoxious." They seemed to disagree on most subjects. But after spending time together, they "became intellectual soul-mates and close friends." Brin's focus was on developing data mining systems while Page's was in extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its citations in other papers." [6] Together, the pair authored what is widely considered their seminal contribution, a paper entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine."[15]

Combining their ideas, they "crammed their dormitory room with cheap computers" and tested their new search engine designs on the web. Their project grew quickly enough "to cause problems for Stanford's computing infrastructure." But they realized they had succeeded in creating a superior engine for searching the web and suspended their PhD studies to work more on their system.[6]

As Larry Malseed wrote, "Soliciting funds from faculty members, family and friends, Sergey and Larry scraped together enough to buy some servers and rent that famous garage in Menlo Park. ... [soon after], Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 check to “Google, Inc.” The only problem was, “Google, Inc.” did not yet exist — the company hadn’t yet been incorporated. For two weeks, as they handled the paperwork, the young men had nowhere to deposit the money."[10]

The Economist magazine describes Brin's approach to life, like Page's, as based on a vision summed up by Google's motto, "of making all the world's information 'universally accessible and useful.'" Not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that is today beyond the web," such as digitizing books, and expanding health information.[6]

Health Information

In May 2007, Brin married Anne Wojcicki in The Bahamas. Wojcicki is a biotech analyst and a 1996 graduate of Yale University with a B.S. in biology. [4][16] She has an active interest in health information, and together she and Brin are developing new ways to improve access to it. As part of their efforts, they have brainstormed with leading researchers about the human genome project. “Brin instinctively regards genetics as a database and computing problem. So does his wife, who co-founded the firm, 23andMe,” which lets people analyze and compare their own genetic makeup (consisting of 23 pairs of chromosomes).[6] In a recent announcement at Google’s Zeitgeist conference, he said he hoped that some day everyone would learn their genetic code in order to help doctors, patients, and researchers analyze the data and try to repair bugs.[6]

Brin's mother, Eugenia, has been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. In 2008, he decided to donate a large sum to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where his mother is being treated.[17] Brin used the services of 23AndMe and discovered that although Parkinson's is generally not hereditary, both he and his mother possess a mutation of the LRRK2 gene that puts the likelihood of his developing Parkinson's in later years between 20 and 80%.[6] When asked whether ignorance was not bliss in such matters, he stated that his knowledge means that he can now take measures to ward off the disease. An editorial in The Economist magazine states that "Mr Brin regards his mutation of LRRK2 as a bug in his personal code, and thus as no different from the bugs in computer code that Google’s engineers fix every day. By helping himself, he can therefore help others as well. He considers himself lucky. ... But Mr Brin was making a much bigger point. Isn’t knowledge always good, and certainly always better than ignorance?" [6]

Views Chinese Censorship of Google

Remembering his youth and his family's reasons for leaving the Soviet Union, he "agonized over Google’s decision to appease the communist government of China by allowing it to censor search engine results," but decided that the Chinese would still be better off than without having Google available.[6] He explained his reasoning to Fortune magazine:

"We felt that by participating there, and making our services more available, even if not to the 100 percent that we ideally would like, that it will be better for Chinese web users, because ultimately they would get more information, though not quite all of it." [18]

[edit] Awards and recognition

In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...". [19] And in 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering," and elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." They joined a "select cadre of 32 of the world's most influential communications technology pioneers..." [20]

In February, 2009, Brin was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, which is "among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer ... [and] honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice...". He was selected specifically, "for leadership in development of rapid indexing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web." [21]

In their "Profiles" of Fellows, the National Science Foundation included a number of earlier awards:

"he has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. ... PC Magazine has praised Google [of] the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award, for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards." [22]

[edit] Other interests

Brin is working on other, more personal projects that reach beyond Google. For example, he and Page are trying to help solve the world’s energy and climate problems at Google’s philanthropic arm google.org. He had Google invest in the alternative energy industry to find wider sources of renewable energy. They are trying to get companies to create innovative solutions to increasing the world's supply.[23] He is an investor in Tesla Motors, which is developing the Tesla Roadster, a 221-mile (356 km) range battery electric vehicle.

Brin has appeared on television shows and many documentaries, including Charlie Rose, CNBC, and CNN. In 2004, he and Larry Page were named "Persons of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight. In January 2005 he was nominated to be one of the World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders." He and Page are also the executive producers of the 2009 film Broken Arrows.

In June 2008, Brin invested $5 million in Space Adventures, the Virginia-based space tourism company. His investment will serve as a deposit for a reservation on one of Space Adventures' proposed flights in 2011. So far, Space Adventures has sent five tourists into space.[24]

He and Page co-own a customized Boeing 767-200 and a Dornier fighter jet, and pay $1.3 million a year to house them and two Gulfstream V jets owned by Google executives at Moffett Federal Airfield. The aircraft have had scientific equipment installed by NASA to allow experimental data to be collected in flight.[25][26]

Brin is a member of AmBAR, a networking organization for Russian-speaking business professionals (both expatriates and immigrants) in the United States. He has made many speaking appearances.