Hank Asher (May 9, 1951 - January 11, 2013) was a businessman best known as "the father of data fusion." With a reported fortune of around US$500 million earned as the founder of several data fusion / data mining companies that compile information about companies, individuals and their interrelationships from thousands of different electronic databases. “He’s kind of a legend” among those who use investigative data tools, says Greg Lambert, a legal information specialist.
Asher dropped out of school at the age of 16 and worked as a draftsman in a local factory. Later he worked in a union job painting radio towers, with a house painting business on the side. Asher moved to Florida to avoid the seasonal shutdown in painting, soon establishing a business painting condominiums on Florida's Gold Coast. By the age of 21, he had 100 painters working for him and was reportedly grossing US$10 million a year.
In 1982 Asher smuggled cocaine while living in the Bahamas over a seven-week stint, flying to Colombia and Belize in his plane. Later he joined F. Lee Bailey and the Drug Enforcement Administration, convincing other Americans in Bahamas to exit the drug trade. "He was never charged with a crime, but a cloud of negative publicity has hung over his head for years, even prompting his resignation from Seisint's board [in 2003]."
Asr (Hebrew: אָשֵׁר, Modern shr, Tiberian šhr), in the Book of Genesis, is the second son of Jacob and Zilpah, and the founder of the Tribe of Asr.
The text of the Torah argues that the name of Asr means happy/blessing, implying a derivation from the Hebrew term 'eshan his in two variations—beoAsri (meaning in my good fortune), and ishsheruni, which textual scholars attribute to different sources—one to the Yahwist and the other to the Elohist. Many scholars suspect that the name of Asr may have more to do with a deity originally worshipped by the tribe, either Asrah, or Ashur, the chief Assyrian deity; the latter possibility is cognate with Asr.
Asr played a role in selling his brother Joseph into slavery (Gen. 37:23–36). Asr and his four sons and daughter settled in Canaan. On his deathbed, Jacob blesses Asr by saying that "his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties" (Gen. 49:20).
Asr was the eighth son of the patriarch Jacob and the traditional progenitor of the tribe Asr. However, some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation.
Asher is a common Jewish and Christian given name, after a character in the Old Testament.
Asher is a fictional character in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series of novels. Asher is a Master Vampire, and the lover of Jean-Claude and Anita Blake.
Like Jean-Claude, Asher is fantastically handsome, having been selected for his beauty by Belle Morte, the vampire that made him. Anita describes his hair as the color of metallic gold and his eyes as the pale blue of a Siberian Husky. Although the left side of his face and body is angelically beautiful, his right side is hideously scarred; Asher has become an expert at using his hair, posture, and shadow to present only his left side to viewers until an opportune moment arises to reveal his scars, if desired.
In the epilogue to Burnt Offerings, Anita states that Asher intended to explore whether modern cosmetic surgery could help his scars. However, when this issue is mentioned in Cerulean Sins it only refers to Asher's ability in bed, which had been limited until a surgeon had removed the restricting scarred foreskin. No other cosmetic surgery or options is talked about and Anita says that touching the scars is like touching any other part of Asher. During a few different intimate times, she's made a point to kiss or caress the scarred side first, then the non-touched side.