The point is that they all do it. The headlines and notifications. Including the phone’s native news app… So pick something you like - or if you wanna get outside your own bubble now and then, pick something contrarian to what you like. Or pick 2. Or 10.
But ya know, the headlines and notifications are the same, app to app. I have a bunch of them. Same notifications from all. If you click thru to the story, unless it’s a very large paper, the story will either be purchased from a wire service anyway, or purchased from a large paper such as the ones named above.
You can attempt to remove obvious blame as, but not all bias. I just go with a wide philosophical range of sources and read a diff source every day.
NYT WSJ and some others have paywalls. So they are great for headlines, but perhaps better to get a news aggregator app or similar where you won’t hit the paywall quickly.
I have subscriptions to some. Prob will subscribe to more if I can find the right deals. Gotta support journalism if I can afford to.
If you want a broad range of sources, consider a wire service source.
@KDemo
Haven’t read the CSM in a long time, but decades ago it had a stellar reputation for quality. Might give them another shot
Anyone who’s got Amazon Prime - now that Bezos has purchased WaPo, if you have Prime, you can get the Wash Post digital free for 6 months and then at a huge discount.
WSJ - they are a good news source esp for financials. Their editorial slant is reliably pro Wall Street and biz, duh.
They mostly piss me off by being expensive. If I could get a digital subscription for under $100 a year I’d likely bite. Last time I checked they were way more than that. (Students - active students, they have some kind of verification - and faculty/teachers can get a good price)
Papers often have holiday promo sales. I got a some kinda great perpetual NYT deal last Memorial Day. I do WaPo thru Prime.
I am waiting for WSJ to want me as a customer badly and offer me some incredible price.
I also look pretty often at politico, the economist, the guardian. La times sometimes. Feel guilty about not supporting the local rags, so am gonna price those this week. Huffpo sometimes. Newsweek online has done some great stuff lately. Real Clear Politics. BBC. The New Yorker sometimes. In case someone thinks they understand my political philosophies from the above list, I also periodically check in w the National Review. And CNN and BuzzFeed and others. And 538. And NPR sometimes. I rarely read “opinion” anything. If I do read opinion, it’s either an intriguing headline, or a recommended piece, or something from an “opinion” journal. I sometimes do Bloomberg and CNBC.
And I really like Morning Joe because of the looseness of the conversation, and like Rachel Maddow who definitely has a progressive POV and who also does a superb job of covering what she covers (did you know that Steve Bannon is a Maddow addict? Yeah, that Steve Bannon).
Some of the trad network weekend talk shows can be quite good but I’m never watching. I’ll pick up snippets from someplace else. CNN has a really boring and predictable talking head topic pattern and I won’t bother with them. Fox is worse. CNN needs an overhaul - of fewer camera-friendly predictable insight-free commentariat types and more brain-storming thoughtful people who aren’t ideologically predictable - and they need it BAD.
No “non-biased” source exists. The most unbiased source chooses what to cover and what to omit, what to emphasize and what are “facts”. But some are way way way worse than others. Sometimes they simply can’t cover a topic well, given their format. NPR, for instant, almost never does a deep dive into economic issues. It doesn’t fit their format well - but the light coverage of the topic by itself skews the feel of the medium.
Print media bias - they all have it but that doesn’t mean they are all equally biased. Fox’s skewing is so blatant that anything Murdock-sourced is suspect. As for the rest of them - you try to get a feel for what facts or arguments are missing or de-emphasized by reading what’s included and emphasized. Many of the reputable news sources do try, and try hard, to keep journalistic standards - tho they were certainly not prepared for DT and he completely schooled them. Furthermore, extensive news coverage in depth is really expensive. Only huge organizations have the $. If you want decent foreign coverage in depth, you have a choice of perhaps 5-8 sources in English and that’s it. No one else can afford it.
So pick your poison. Or your multiple poisons. It’s always been that way.
I don’t read all day. I barely read. glance at notifications and click thru if interested. I try to check out several diff news sources every week, at least to click thru to an article or two and also check their headlines. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I have a news-free week.
I wasn’t paying much attention to news until this last election heated up. I come and go in terms of news addiction. I might go back to localized worried ignorance. Or not. Undecided.
I have never figured out how to use Twitter effectively to track news. Just lazy I guess. (I have zero desire to comment and add to the Twitter noise).
“For the colonized person, objectivity is always directed against him” (Frantz Fanon)
Whatever one might think of various political POV’s, Fanon is dead on and logically correct re objectivity. What a news source sells is not only filtered thru the biases of the owners, editors, writers, and their read of what the market wants - it’s also filtered thru the larger cultural perspectives and social/economic theories that define an era and a place.
One hundred years from now, assuming our civilization survives, our arguments and POVs will seem antiquated and simplistic. Those people will have new or evolved, that, one hopes, are also improved ways of viewing the world. And their perspectives will seem primitive to people one hundred years after that.
@f00l@elimanningface well you can also get your news from the national enquirer as you wait in line at the grocery store. I am sure facebook would forgive you for trumping one of its main sources and reading it there rather than on facebook.
Source for charts and graphs? Since the charts differ in their “objectivity ratings”, the diff reflects either bias variances or methodology differences or both in their different takes? More info?
PS
That’s a lotta buncha reasons to source out from all over the place. Scrambles the brain better. Soon, I will walk down the sidewalks muttering “I dunno” all day long. Bliss.
PPS
National Enquirer isn’t what it used to be. Think it’s going downhill. It refuses to be objective in its coverage of BatBoy, and this pub doesn’t cover HRH Camila, the Duchess of Cornwall’s serial killing sprees at all. So it’s hard for me to trust it anymore.
PPPS.
USA Today has the best stupid colorful cutsie-pie charts and graphs. And that’s a high and difficult art.
No other print publications come anywhere close to that quality. It’s like they’re not even in the same business. Ya think?
@f00l yeah. Now to call them soon to figure out what it would cost compared to what we pay (2free lines would be paid for. But they give a discount as you’re moving promotions. )
I think you get to keep your free lines. Someone I know called them.
You also have to proactively sign up for this billing system, I have been told, and there is a deadline, and the deadline is today? Don’t know, am about to call for clarification.
@f00l So I looked into it, They said I could likely keep my Data line that’s free, but the mobile line would become paid, it would be $180 for 5 voice lines all inclusive, I’d still have my device payments (3 free iPhone 7’s) Plus keep the device payment discounts. I’m currently paying $140 + taxes for the 5 voice lines… So it’s a bump of $40, but my taxes are 22.50, so if a few of the lines ended up getting the $10 discount that would pay off ($2.50 discount). HOWEVER… I end up getting the shaft on tethering speeds… and it looks like to get kickback you may lose your device payment discounts (the free part of the free iPhone.)
DIGITS beta is not eligible for the mobile one all inclusive currently. I kind of like digits beta, It gave me a free 2nd number for now… Given that the discounts won’t be available, I think I’ll wait till the next Uncarrier to see what incentives they give me to move to ONE… Then again it may be like the iPhone pricing where I could have had a 6S… then again, I wouldn’t have a 7… so sometimes it’s good to wait, other times not so much.
@KDemo Not that it had long to live after somebody carved a gigantic hole in its base. Another one collapsed in the sixties. I think the policy now is to not do that. They should carve the recent one up into knick-knacks and raise funds for the park service.
@PocketBrain - According to accounts, lightning strikes created the original wound. Additional carving was inflicted in 1881 when it was still privately owned. Glad to hear this is no longer done.
Clare Hollingworth (10 October 1911 – 10 January 2017) was an English journalist and author. She was the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II, described as “the scoop of the century”.[1]
A rookie reporter for The Daily Telegraph in 1939, she spotted German forces massed on the Polish border, while travelling from Poland to Germany. She later helped rescue thousands of people from Hitler’s forces by arranging British visas.[1]
On 31 August 1939, Hollingworth had been working as a journalist for less than a week for The Daily Telegraph when she was sent to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. Hollingworth persuaded the British Consul-General in Katowice, John Anthony Thwaites, to lend her his chauffeured car for a fact-finding mission into Germany.[3] While driving along the German-Polish border, Hollingworth chanced upon a massive build-up of German troops, tanks and armoured cars facing Poland. The following morning Hollingworth called the British embassy in Warsaw to report the German invasion of Poland. To convince doubtful embassy officials, Hollingworth held a telephone out of her room window to capture the sounds of German forces.[3] Hollingworth’s eyewitness account was the first report the British Foreign Office had about the invasion of Poland.[2]
During the following decades, Hollingworth reported on conflicts in Palestine, Algeria, China, Aden and Vietnam.[2] In 1946 she was among the survivors of the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem that killed 91 people.[4]
John Simpson described her as the reporter who first interviewed the Shah of Iran, and, decades later, who last interviewed him too: “She was the only person he wanted to speak to”.[5]
She was the author of five books: The Three Weeks’ War in Poland (1940), There’s a German Right Behind Me (1945), The Arabs and the West (1950), Mao (1985), and her memoirs, Front Line (1990, updated with Neri Tenorio in 2005).
They are gone to L.A., where football teams go to die.
They were the first team I ever really got into in the 70’s, cheered for & went to games. Yeah, they haven’t done great lately, but I always liked watching the games when I could…
My birthday falls during what used to be their yearly run in NYC and for several years in a row, tickets to the circus were one of my birthday gifts. I have fond memories of my father (he died about two months before my 12th birthday) tho others attempted to keep that particular tradition alive for a few years after his death.
Having said that, the whole idea of using trained animals for entertainment has issues. (Of course, we are fine with using trained humans for entertainment, so I guess the whole brouhaha is merely more human hypocrisy.)
“Pinyin, which was adopted by China in 1958, gave readers unfamiliar with Chinese characters a crucial tool to understand how to pronounce them. These characters do not readily disclose information on how to say them aloud — but with such a system as Pinyin, those characters more easily and clearly yield their meaning when converted into languages like English and Spanish, which use the Roman alphabet.”
Remarkable human being. Among other things, Pinyin helped to change the literacy rate in China from 15% to around 95%. He lived an exemplary, long life.
Richard “Dick” Gautier (October 30, 1931 – January 13, 2017) was an American actor, comedian, singer, and caricaturist. He was known for his television roles as Hymie the Robot in the television series Get Smart, and Robin Hood in the short-lived TV comedy series When Things Were Rotten, a Mel Brooks send-up of the classic legend.
Gautier also played Hal, the partner of Stanley Beamish, in the short-lived sitcom series Mister Terrific (1967); and had various voice roles in the 1986 animated Transformers series (including the voice of Rodimus Prime). Wikipedia
/image Hymie the Robot
On Thursday, a bankruptcy court in Delaware approved an $88 million sale of the brand’s intellectual property and manufacturing equipment to Gildan, a Canadian apparel company that focuses on wholesale. Gildan will pay an additional $15 million to acquire American Apparel’s purchase orders and inventory, effectively giving the buyer all the tools it needs to launch a new clothing line from the ruins of the now defunct brand.
@Cerridwyn
Woot is still offering the option of American Apparel. I suppose AA’s production pipe will keep running until Gildan decides what to do with it.
RIP St Jude Medical, the name anyway. Abbott bought St Jude Medical, the company I work for, and aren’t wasting any time changing the name on everything. The acquisition should be a good thing and most everyone is optimistic as the product lines are mostly complimentary.
@tinamarie1974 Nope. Actually that is one reason to make the name change. There was always confusion about the name St Jude. St Jude Medical is not affiliated with St Jude Children’s Hospital.
Cernan concluded his historic space exploration career as commander of the last human mission to the moon in December 1972. En route to the moon, the crew captured an iconic photo of the home planet, with an entire hemisphere fully illumnitated – a “whole Earth” view showing Africa, the Arabian peninsula and the south polar ice cap. The hugely popular photo was referred to by some as the “Blue Marble,” a title in use for an ongoing series of NASA Earth imagery.
Apollo 17 established several new records for human space flight, including the longest lunar landing flight (301 hours, 51 minutes); longest lunar surface extravehicular activities (22 hours, 6 minutes); largest lunar sample return (nearly 249 pounds); and longest time in lunar orbit (147 hours, 48 minutes).
Cernan and crewmate Harrison H. (Jack) Schmitt completed three highly successful excursions to the nearby craters and the Taurus-Littrow mountains, making the moon their home for more than three days. As he left the lunar surface, Cernan said, “America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. As we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
In 1999 he published his memoir The Last Man on the Moon with coauthor Donald A. Davis, covering his naval and NASA career. He has been featured in space exploration documentaries, such as In the Shadow of the Moon, in which he stated: “Truth needs no defense” and “Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me.”[12] Cernan also contributed to the book of the same name.
Curiously, both Armstrong and Cernan graduated from Purdue University.
@f00l Probably not all that many universities had aero (or astro) programs back in the 50s, tho quite a few in the Big Ten have a long history. Both men were Midwest-born, no farther than 3hr from Purdue campus
@jbartus
Was he subbing for someone? Or did he play a Doctor in the past? Or in the 50th anniversary thing was he playing some sort of “show interregnum Doctor”?
@f00l The War Doctor was the persona of The Doctor that he refused to acknowledge. Ten & Eleven had to interract with the War Doctor as part of a plan to save Galifrey. Thus, we have an unnumbered Doctor.
@f00l so between when the original run was cancelled and 2004 when Russell Davies brought it back starring Christopher Eccleston the she didn’t just pick up the story line where it had left off. In effect, John Hurt played the real Ninth Doctor (but not the Ninth because he wasn’t a Doctor (it’s complicated)) and we were given insight into the life of The Doctor between the original run and the new run. He showed up during the 50th Anniversary as part of a story line whereby the various incarnations of The Doctor had to work together to save Galifrey and appeared either in-person or through archival footage.
Ok. I have a fanatic DW friend locally. I’ll ask him about this and he’ll talk for 6+ hours. I’ll get the details before I start daydreaming about something else along the way …
There are no tangents with DW.
There are no unimportant details with DW.
You can understand nothing if you have not seen every episode multiple times and have not personally discovered or personally reconstructed a missing episode.
You can understand nothing if you have not repeatedly consumed all the multimedia and related universe materials.
You understand nothing if you can’t give the entire plot and a complete n-joke and in-series reference list for every episode after watching the first 20 sec.
@compunaut
Re conversations with local DW fanatic:
When I’ve gently remarked that I’ve had all the info I can handle a few times and been ignored:
I start throwing out other topics, or coughing a lot, or claiming my brain is fried. Or I just suddenly remembered an urgent appointment to vacuum and dust all of outdoor Texas, and I’m already running late. He usually gets that he’s overloaded me after a few such excuses. It’s like a train. You start applying the breaks, and after a few miles you come to a stop.
(And then there a bunch of “one more thing” remarks until his brain gets out of full obsessed DW mode. I usually use dirty looks or excessive coughing to handle these.)
Someday I hope to get through at least all the modern Doctors. I’ve only seen a few eps of each modern incarnation.
I tried starting at the beginning old series once. I found the first Doctor nearly unwatchable to due to horrible horrible horrible horrible scripting and pacing. Hated them even tho you could see in them the germ of a great idea. But all my ambitions for catching up are not for this year.
@heartny Very sad, great actor. And known to a younger generation through his portrayal of Olivander in the Harry Potter series, but so many great, memorable roles. R.I.P.
I did get a capsule overview of where John Hurt’s “War Doctor” fit into the DW series today from my friend the DW fanatic.
I insisted "no spoilers! This left him frustrated, but he complied.
Since this friend couldn’t give me tons of spoilers, instead, I had to hear why none of the earlier Doctors could fill the dramatic space; why it was necessary that the storyline; all the show politics for the first season of new Doctor (Eccleston’s year); the politics of the writers and show runners since then; the politics of the “50th anniversary show”; BBC management incompetence and and scheduling incompetence. Etc etc.
I kept it to between 1 and 2 hours by insisting on limits and not backing down.
Richard Lawrence Hatch (May 21, 1945 – February 7, 2017) was an American actor, writer, and producer best known for his role as Captain Apollo in the original Battlestar Galactica television series, and also as Tom Zarek in the 2003 remake of Battlestar Galactica.
@f00l
I’ve actually never seen the show - in any version.
I understand the 2003? miniseries and following tv series (a reboot version?) are quite good. Is that correct?
@f00l Another one of my celebrity crushes bites the dust. Can’t believe he was 71. Seems like only yesterday he was a young Captain Apollo, son of Commander Adama.
@heartny I loved, loved, loved Apollo. I always wanted to be Starbuck(I was a kid) but I still loved Apollo.
He said about playing Apollo:
“In my case, ‘Battlestar Galactica’ was a milestone,” he wrote on his personal website. “It afforded me the opportunity to live out my childhood dreams and fantasies. Hurtling through space with reckless abandon, playing the dashing hero, battling Cylons, monsters and super-villains – what more could a man want?” Or any teen-aged girl?
@f00l When you posted this I thought there was something other than Battlestar Galactica and I just remembered- he replaced Michael Douglas on The Streets of San Francisco. Not as good an actor but just as dreamy.
Kenneth J. Arrow, one of the most brilliant economic minds of the 20th century and, at 51, the youngest economist ever to win a Nobel, died on Tuesday at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 95.
His son David confirmed the death.
Paul A. Samuelson, the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, called Professor Arrow “the most important theorist of the 20th century in economics.” When Professor Arrow received the award in 1972, Professor Samuelson wrote, “The economics of insurance, medical care, prescription drug testing — to say nothing of bingo and the stock market — will never be the same after Arrow.”
Professor Arrow — a member of an extended family of distinguished economists, including Professor Samuelson and Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and adviser to President Barack Obama — generated work that was technically forbidding even to mathematically oriented colleagues.
But over the decades, economists have learned to apply his ideas to the modern design of insurance products, financial securities, employment contracts and much more.
@RiotDemon
I meant to put this one up, I didn’t hear about the death until the cause of death splashed all over the news. This is not only a high-tech method of settling a “family problem”, it’s also a message from N Korea to the world.
“I am your planet’s psychopath. I’ll do anything to anyone. I don’t care if you nuke me. I’ll just nuke you back.”
In this photo, the kid being lifted to see President Kennedy is Bill Paxton at age 8.
Part of the Texas Monthly Interview
ES: Why’d you brave the crowds to see him?
BP: Because Bob was so excited that Kennedy was coming through town. We lived on Indian Creek Drive, bordering Shady Oaks Country Club. You could look across Shady Oaks from my window with a telescope—it was slightly elevated—and see Air Force One parked at Carswell Air Force Base. So Bob woke Dad up and said, “You promised you’d take me and Bill to see the president.” Dad looked out the window and saw that it was drizzling. He said that his first thought was “Oh, God, we’re going to line up in the rain.” He liked Kennedy, but it was the idea of wrangling the kids down there.
ES: Typical father attitude.
BP: Finally he said, “Okay, get your brother ready.” So we drove downtown. It took us, like, ten minutes, and we parked near the Hotel Texas. And we became part of the crowd that had gathered in the parking lot. I remember Kennedy walking across the street. He shook some hands and then went up on the podium. I’m not sure if it was [Senator Ralph] Yarborough or [Congressman] Jim Wright who said a few words, but then LBJ went up there and introduced the president. I remember my dad was taking turns putting us up on his shoulders. He was getting fatigued, and there were these two African American guys standing next to us. They said, “We’ll take those boys.” So I was sitting on a stranger’s shoulders, but I could see Kennedy. He was there in his suit; the rest of them on the podium had raincoats on. He was jocular, in good spirits.
ES: How did you hear that he had been shot?
BP: My dad took us to the Toddle House, and then he dropped us off at about ten a.m. We were going to St. Alice, which was a Catholic school. I remember going out on the playground at recess, and then a bell rang. We came back in—this was one of those old cinder-block, one-story grade schools, with a central hallway and classes on both sides—and we were told to put our heads on our desks. The radio was on, and the nuns were all crying. Then it was announced that he had died in Dallas. I couldn’t believe it. I’d seen him alive!
PS I believe the speaker Paxton refers to was Rep Jim Wright, later Speaker of the House. I know he was there and believe he spoke - I bid on the original Star-Telegram photo copy or Kennedy and Wright taken that morning that Jim Wright had kept. But of course mine was a nothing big - the photo went for thousands.
@sammydog01
He does seem to have been a thoroughly decent person.
It must be a little weird to run a successful industry in which the very recognizable and “known” product is yourself. That can mess with someone’s head.
Famous people can just get overwhelmed, if they are recognizable. Plenty of them are very decent, but guarded. And plenty of them really never were decent, or else get locked into the “diva” bubble or something.
In NYC the locals may tell about seeing someone famous later, but they treat famous people as if they were anonymous and unknown, when spotted on the street or in public. You don’t see so many random phone pix taken on the street of famous people coming out of NYC. The locals think that’s uncool.
@f00l
Here’s another photo of Bill Paxton on Nov 22, 1963.
These are stills from a film taken by Roy Cooper, a cameraman for KTVT-TV in 1963.
When Paxton visited the 6th Floor Museum in Dallas in 2007, he realized they might have photos of him taken the morning of the assassination. He went thru various archival footage from Kennedy’s time in FW and found himself. I believe these photos or the Cooper film are viewable at the museum. I’ll have to go see - I think I have a reason to go in March.
@sammydog01 I’m so sad about him passing. He was such a likeable actor and from the tweets, comments, etc. I’ve read a really nice guy. His new TV show had just started airing and he was good on it. Doubt the show will survive since it’s so new, which is sad for the other actors. RIP Bill!
@sammydog01 Shocked to hear this yesterday. I read it on the wire, but as expected, it was already posted here. Damn. I quote him often. Especially as Chet from Weird Science. Damn.
@PlacidPenguin He appeared in “Dr. Who,” “X-men: First Class,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and "Game of Thrones."
Apparently died as a result of a heart attack. Shame.
Chuck Berry, wild man of rock who helped define its rebellious spirit, dies at 90.
Chuck Berry, the perpetual wild man of rock music who helped define its rebellious spirit in the 1950s and was the sly poet laureate of songs about girls, cars, school and even the “any old way you choose it” vitality of the music itself, died March 18 at at his home in St. Charles County, Mo. He was 90.
I went to a Chuck Berry show. He never showed up.
So many great songs, though.
@Shrdlu Alexa is doing a good job of playing ALL his stuff, including instrumentals. Too Much Monkey Business, Don’t You Lie to Me, Beautiful Delilah, lots I’ve never heard. As soon as that guitar hits, you know who it is.
James Cotton, a pioneering harmonica player who worked with Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and helped establish his instrument as an integral part of modern blues, died on Thursday in Austin, Tex. He was 81.
rek Walcott was a complicated person and a great poet, and often those things are not divisible. The time I spent with him and his beautiful German-born partner, Sigrid Nama, in Derek’s native St. Lucia changed my life in ways that extended past the New Yorker Profile I wrote in 2004. I felt as though I had always known him—not known him, exactly, but seen him, been in his aura, his history, because, like my father, Derek was the product of a profound world, a distinctly Caribbean world with its history of colonialism and its imperceptible change, and home to so much more, including mothers who spared no amount of love to make you understand that you were their bright boy. Derek’s mother, Alix Maarlin, a schoolteacher, helped him publish his first poems, and it was the light of that first love that Derek always stood under; it made him shy about intimacy, while closeness was something he always sought. The first Mrs. Walcott believed in him with a pride that eclipsed the great honor of his 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature because she was the first to say, if only in her mind: “Why not be Shakespeare?” Anything was possible, and where you were from was just part of the story.
From The New York Times:
Derek Walcott, whose intricately metaphorical poetry captured the physical beauty of the Caribbean, the harsh legacy of colonialism and the complexities of living and writing in two cultural worlds, bringing him a Nobel Prize in Literature, died early Friday morning at his home near Gros Islet in St. Lucia. He was 87.
A Far Cry From Africa
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilizations dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?
Dark August
So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
of this black August.
My sister, the sun,
broods in her yellow room and won’t come out.
Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume
like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,
she will not rise and turn off the rain.
She is in her room, fondling old things,
my poems, turning her album.
Even if thunder falls
like a crash of plates from the sky,
she does not come out.
Don’t you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly
to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,
so that when you emerge, my sister,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,
all with not be as it was, but it will be true
(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, my sister, then
I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,
The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you.
Visiting The New Yorker website made me think of Alexander Woollcott, writer and round table member at the Algonquin Hotel, and Wolcott Gibbs, New Yorker editor. And so I didn’t check the spelling and I fucked it up.
Woollcott was one of the most quoted men of his generation. Among Woollcott’s classics is his description of the Los Angeles area as “Seven suburbs in search of a city”—a quip often attributed to his friend Dorothy Parker. Describing The New Yorker editor Harold Ross, he said: “He looks like a dishonest Abe Lincoln.” He claimed the Brandy Alexander cocktail was named for him.
Woollcott was renowned for his savage tongue. He dismissed Oscar Levant, the notable wit and pianist, by observing, “There is absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can’t fix.” He often greeted friends with “Hello, Repulsive.” When a waiter asked him to repeat his order, he demanded “muffins filled with pus.”[11]
His judgments were frequently eccentric. Dorothy Parker once said: “I remember hearing Woollcott say reading Proust is like lying in someone else’s dirty bath water. And then he’d go into ecstasy about something called, Valiant Is the Word for Carrie, and I knew I had enough of the Round Table.” [12]
Wolcott Gibbs, who often edited Woollcott’s work at The New Yorker, was quoted in James Thurber’s The Years with Ross on Woollcott’s writing:
“Shouts and Murmurs” was about the strangest copy I ever edited. You could take every other sentence out without changing the sense a particle. Whole department, in fact, often had no more substance than a “Talk [of the Town]” anecdote. I guess he was one of the most dreadful writers who ever existed.
After being kicked out of the apartment he shared with The New Yorker founders Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, Woollcott moved first into the Hotel des Artistes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, then to an apartment at the far end of East 52nd Street. The members of the Algonquin Round Table had a debate as to what to call his new home. Franklin P. Adams suggested that he name it after the Indian word “Ocowoica,” meaning “The-Little-Apartment-On-The-East-River-That-It-Is-Difficult-To-Find-A-Taxicab-Near.” But Dorothy Parker came up with the definitive name: Wit’s End.
Wolcott Gibbs (March 15, 1902 – August 16, 1958) was an American editor, humorist, theatre critic, playwright and author of short stories, who worked for The New Yorker magazine from 1927 until his death. He is best remembered for his 1936 parody of Time magazine, which skewered the magazine’s inverted narrative structure. Gibbs wrote, “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind”; he concluded the piece, “Where it all will end, knows God!”
Hey, @Thumperchick, if you see this, and not much else is going on (ha ha ha), I misspelled the Nobel Laureate poet’s name because I am a lazy idiot if anyone is wondering how I did that.
Sigh. If you have the time, can you fix this in the announcement post? If you are stressed or busy, don’t bother.
Correct spelling:
Derek Walcott, poet, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 1992.
I’m kinda astonished no one posted this yet - the announcement was hours ago. Perhaps it’s just a generational difference? If you’re not from around NYC and you are not from a certain generation, his name is vaguely familiar at best (if you heard of him at all)? Once, everyone knew who he was.
James Earle “Jimmy” Breslin (October 17, 1928 – March 19, 2017) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York Daily News Sunday edition. He wrote numerous novels, and columns of his appeared regularly in various newspapers in his hometown of New York City. He served as a regular columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, though he still published occasional pieces for the paper. He was known for his newspaper columns which offered a sympathic viewpoint of the working class people of New York City.[1]
One of his best known columns was published the day after John F. Kennedy’s funeral and focused on the man who had dug the president’s grave.[4] The column is indicative of Breslin’s style, which often highlights how major events or the actions of those considered “newsworthy” affect the “common man”. Breslin’s public profile in the 1960s as a regular guy led to a brief stint as a TV pitchman for Piels Beer, including a bar room commercial where he intoned in his deep voice: “Piels—it’s a good drinkin’ beer!”[6]
In 1969, Breslin ran for president of the New York City Council in tandem with Norman Mailer, who was seeking election as mayor, on the unsuccessful independent 51st State ticket advocating secession of the city from the rest of the state. His memorable quote from the experience: “I am mortified to have taken part in a process that required bars to be closed.”[7]
In 1977, at the height of the Son of Sam scare in New York City, the killer, later identified as David Berkowitz, addressed letters to Breslin.[9][10] Breslin survived the takeover of the New York Post by Rupert Murdoch. Jimmy’s manager, Steve Dunleavy, looked upon the David Berkowitz letters to Jimmy has the impetus to solidify the New York Post as a New York newspaper and a way to end the bad publicity associated with both the purchase of the New York Post and the reduction in force of many members of the newspaper guild. The New York Post became a tabloid in the British model although Murdoch and Dunleavy were actually Australian. Excerpts from these were published and later used in the Spike Lee film Summer of Sam, a film in which Breslin, portraying himself, bookends.[11] In 2008 the Library of America selected one of Breslin’s many Son of Sam articles published in the New York Daily News for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.[12]
In 1978, Breslin, despite having no significant acting experience, appeared in Joe Brooks’ feature film If Ever I See You Again in a main supporting role playing “Mario Marino”, the assistant to two Madison Avenue jingle composers.[13][14] Breslin’s performance received a Golden Turkey Award nomination for “Worst Performance by a Novelist”.[15]
In 1985, he received a George Polk Award for Metropolitan Reporting.[16] In 1986, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.[17]
Quotes
Politics: where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.
The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.
You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is the team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller?
When you leave New York you ain’t going anywhere.
Anything that isn’t writing is easy.
The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.
A job on a newspaper is a special thing. Every day you take something that you found out about, and you put it down and in a matter of hours it becomes a product. Not just a product like a can or something. It is a personal product that people, a lot of people, take the time to sit down and read.
When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.
I busted out of the place in a hurry and went to a saloon and drank beer and said that for the rest of my life I’d never take a job in a place where you couldn’t throw cigarette butts on the floor. I was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.
Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.
Pick up any newspaper in the morning. Count the words in the lead sentences. There will be at least 25 in all of them: Guaranteed. The writers just want to tell you how many degrees they have from this college or that university.
Don’t call me a journalist; I hate the word. It’s pretentious!
Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.
People born in Queens, raised to say that each morning they get on the subway and “go to the city,” have a resentment of Manhattan, of the swiftness of its life and success of the people who live there.
All political power is primarily an illusion. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.
What you want to do is not go to work. You’re not missing a thing. The worst thing I did was start work young.
That’s the horrible thing starting out, you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It’s just the same enemy - blank paper.
If you gather a lot of stuff, then you write it, write in scenes with dialogue. Somewhere in the middle, rising from all this research like strong metal towers, is your opinions.
He was a fanatical baseball fan, and wrote extensively of the Mets and the Yankees. He wrote a number of bestsellers: novels, centered around New York, organized crime, or baseball; non-fiction about baseball and politics, with a book about Watergate and the Impeachment; a memoir about his own aneurysm.
David Rockerfeller (head of Chase Manhattan), and incidentally, the oldest living member of the Rockefeller family and family patriarch from July 2004 until his death on Monday.
Chuck Barris
June 3, 1929 - March 22, 2017
Television creator, producer, and host best known for The Gong Show.
He was quite the character. Fun fact - He went to high school about 10 minutes from me at Lower Merion in the Philly burbs. This is also the alma mater of Kobe Bryant along with many other notables.
@cinoclav What’s funny (sad?) is that when I heard Chuck Berry dies, I immediately thought of Chuck Barris for some reason. I actually thought he died. Now it’s true.
Dallas Green
August 4, 1934 – March 22, 2017
MLB Pitcher, Manager, Scout, Executive
Coached the Phillies to their first World Series in 1980, integral in bringing lights and night ball to the Cubs, and managed both the Mets and Yankees. He spent over 60 years in baseball.
As a Phillies fan this one kind of hits hard. He was beloved by the fans and the organization.
@cinoclav With you 100%. Such good memories for me as a 10 year old. Dick Vermeil is the other standout in my mind, but 1980 was a pretty great year for Philly sports teams overall. RIP Dallas Green.
@ACraigL Apparently we’re about the same age. I turned 11 that World Series fall. (And shhh… but my actual name is Craig.) Yeah, 1980 was magical even if it ended in only one championship. It’ll be a sad, sad day when Dick Vermeil passes.
@ACraigL So, I grew up in DelCo, going through the Garnet Valley school system. That was up until the end of 9th grade when my (divorced) mother met someone and forced me to move away. Spent 10th-12th grades at my new school and graduated from… George Washington.
/giphy holy shit
Legendary comic Don Rickles, a rapid-fire insulting machine who for six decades earned quite a living making fun of people of all creeds and colors and everyone from poor slobs to Frank Sinatra, has died. He was 90.
Rickles died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles of kidney failure, publicist Paul Shefrin announced.
Sarcastically nicknamed “Mr. Warmth,” Rickles had mock disdain for stars, major public figures and all those who paid to see him, tweaking TV audiences and Las Vegas showroom crowds with his acerbic brand of takedown comedy. A good guy and devoted husband away from the stage, Rickles the performer heartlessly laid into everyone he encountered — and they loved it.
I wasn’t previously familiar with Motown songwriter Sylvia Moy, but found the article about her quite interesting. A little snippet on recording Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight”:
In the recording studio, though, there was no transcription of the lyrics into Braille for Mr. Wonder to read from. So Ms. Moy sang the words to him through his earphones.
“I would stay a line ahead of him and we didn’t miss a beat,” she said in a video interview in 2014 with Michelle Wilson, an independent producer based in Virginia Beach.
@PlacidPenguin Alexa, play music by Cuba Gooding. It produces live performances, recorded before Autotune. That’s the way music should sound. ‘Am I where real music is appreciated? he asked the crowd.’- yes, Cuba, you are. There will be concerts in heaven.
Arkansas carries out its first execution since 2005.
Convicted murderer Ledell Lee was executed in Arkansas on Thursday shortly before midnight – the state’s first death row execution since 2005.
The state had scheduled eight executions within 11 days this month in a race to use its lethal injection drugs before one of them expired. Courts blocked the first two executions, which had been scheduled for Monday, as well as another that had been scheduled for Thursday.
But they allowed the execution of 51-year-old Lee, who had sought a last-minute stay through the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court after lawyers from the Innocence Project and the American Civil Liberties Union argued for fresh DNA testing that they believed would vindicate him.
I have strong thoughts about this event, but I didn’t post this death to start a contentious discussion, or to state or promote/defend my own POV. We all know what our own takes and beliefs are on the death penalty, and on Arkansas’s plans for this week. We hardly need to argue or make provocative statements about it, that will change zero minds anyway.
I normally have considerable respect for well and carefully considered opinions which differ from mine. I hope that’s fairly commonplace.
Jonathan Demme
February 22, 1944 - April 26, 2017
"The Oscar-winning director passed away from esophageal cancer and complications from heart disease, for which he was originally treated in 2010 and suffered a recurrence in 2015." Known for hits such as The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.
@f00l I’d love to know if he was a smoker. Between the cancer and heart disease it would be the most common cause. If he was, it’s truly a shame that these diseases may have been avoided.
Chris Cornell
July 20, 1964 - May 17, 2017
"American musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist, primary songwriter and rhythm guitarist for Seattle rock band Soundgarden and as lead vocalist and songwriter for the group Audioslave."
@OldCatLady I posted this at the same time so I deleted it but I prefer my description of him:
Founder, former Chairman, CEO, and Sexual Harasser in Chief of Fox News and the Fox Television Stations Group.
@OldCatLady
I just listened to his recent bio - I think last Nov or Dec. The Loudest Voice In The Room.
Complex guy, as you would expect. He was born a hemophiliac, and he responded to the inevitable issues he had as a kid by becoming tough, and then tougher, and then tougher.
He started out as a decently enough, but as a very very competitive guy in the cutthroat TV world. And then he discovered, over time, that it was much to his career advantage to be an authoritarian, and then a bully, and then a terrorizing bully, and then a terrorizing bully who accepted no limits on his own complete right to total power, and on the complete expression and satisfaction of his personal beliefs and whims.
His treatment of the semi-rural community where he and his wife bought an estate is breathtaking - he basically decided to become the local feudal lord, and try to break anyone who seriously contested his right to control what happened locally. He had the money and the lawyers to make this happen. It’s also more or less how he ran Fox News.
He gloried in advertising is network as being “fair and balanced” when he was deliberately, and openly, pushing what was little more than propaganda on the talk shows, and being as “unobjective” as he could get away with on the news shows. He thought of the dichotomy between what he advertised and what he offered as being his little joke that he would shove down the news industry’s throat in triumph. The fact that he was essentially using the equivalent of Soviet news propaganda methods, but with far more subtlety, thrilled him.
He gloried in his authoritarian treatment of his staff, and esp his female on-air personnel, enjoying the idea that he had power over the “femininity image” and “feminine conduct” he network allowed in female personnel. His practice of ordering female staff to come in and “turn around slowly for examination”, as tho they were auditioning for a Hollywood role that required a top-notch 6-pack bod, was probably almost certainly as much something he did to enjoy his personal authority as head of Fox News, as it was something he did for sexual gratification - a level of authority, that, as far as he was concerned, gave him the right to impose an automatic “head male authority” over staff females. And of course, when he wanted some sort of explicit feeling of sexual power or sexual gratification, the female staff were there for those purposes also, and he saw this as his right, by having been tough enough to survive and thrive and gain such as position. His success “gave him the right”, to his way of thinking.
My guess is that, once Fox News was a roaring success, he felt little need to kowtow to the Murdocks. He may have practically bullied them also, once the $ poured in. After all, RM mostly agreed with the political agenda, and under Ailes, Fox News was the ultimate TV news cash cow, which allowed RM to go buy whatever else he wanted for the Murdock empire.
Ailes also saw it as his absolute right to re-shape the American political scene, including by methods such as lying, deception, and collusion. His idea of journalistic standards was more or less “whatever he could get away with selling to the public that furthered his agenda”. As he realized that his ideas for re-shaping the news as partisan POV both worked as a business idea for a news operation, with enormous financial payoff, and re-shaped the political dialogue, he then thought it his absolute right to change the way people here and elsewhere thought about news and “facts”. He had complete faith that he was right, and that he had every justification for doing as he pleased, and he thoroughly enjoyed both.
Had he been healthy, and stayed in position, he would have simply grown more ambitious. He would have seen it as his right and his duty to re-work as much of America as he could, partly as a political goal, and as much, because he could, and therefore he would and would enjoy doing it and make sure everyone around his knew he gloried in his power.
He would have worked with Trump, and then tried, by means subtle and less-so, to “own” Trump. Whatever political or philosophical compromises he had to make to do this would obviously have been justified.
He reminds me a little of old-time political power players who ran their localities as if they were princes. The infamous political machine operators in places like Louisiana, Chicago, and New York. He had, to his way of thinking, simply found a bigger and better playing field.
Chris Cornell, one of the most lauded and respected contemporary lead
singers in rock music with his bands Soundgarden and Audioslave,
hanged himself Wednesday [5-17-17] in a Detroit hotel room, according to the
city’s medical examiner. He was 52.
@f00l He was the Bond I grew up with so I tend to favor him but his other work was wonderful also. It’s said he was also a simply wonderful human being.
@f00l I feel exactly the same way, but he was perfect as “The Saint,” and also as Brett Sinclair in “The Persuaders!” There’s a fun site about the clothing worn by Moore, as Bond, Sinclair, and others, at bondsuits dot-com.
Sir Roger George Moore KBE (14 October 1927 – 23 May 2017). He was the third actor (after Sean Connery and George Lazenby) to play the British secret agent James Bond in seven feature films between 1973 and 1985 and Simon Templar in The Saint between 1962 and 1969.
He was the eponymous hero, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in the 1958–59 TV series Ivanhoe. Moore was cast as Beau Maverick, an English-accented cousin of frontier gamblers Bret Maverick (James Garner), Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) and Brent Maverick (Robert Colbert) in the ABC/WB western series Maverick (1960-1961).
Appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1991, Moore was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for “services to charity”. In 2008, the French government appointed Moore a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the same year he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Born in Stockwell, London, England, Moore became a tax exile from the United Kingdom in 1978, originally to Switzerland, and divided his year between his three homes; an apartment in Monte Carlo, Monaco, a chalet in Crans-Montana, Switzerland and a home in the south of France. He died in Switzerland.
Most people probably aren’t familiar with her name but you’ve likely seen her in her most famous role as Caitlin Bree in Clerks. While she only performed in one other movie, her role in Clerks will go down in history.
Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan); the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II); the brokering of the Camp David Accords; the transition of Iran from an important U.S. ally to an anti-Western Islamic Republic; encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union;[5] the arming of the mujahideen prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.
Brzezinski served as the Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appeared frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC News’ This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, is co-anchor. He was a supporter of the Prague Process.[6] His son, Mark Brzezinski, was the United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2011 to 2015. On May 26th, 2017, Brzezinski died at age 89.
As the heroic good guy on the CBS action series, he was among the highest-paid TV actors in the early 1970s. He played basketball for John Wooden at UCLA.
Mike Connors, who took a punch as well as anyone while playing the good-guy private detective on the long-running Saturday night action series Mannix for CBS, has died. He was 91.
A former basketball player for legendary coach John Wooden at UCLA, Connors died Thursday in Encino from leukemia, the actor’s agent confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
Mannix, the last series from Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s famed TV company Desilu Productions to air, ran for eight seasons from September 1967 until April 1975. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link and developed by executive producer Bruce Geller (Mission: Impossible), the hit show featured an electric theme from jazz great Lalo Schifrin and starred Connors as a noble Korean War veteran.
@f00l So was I. I’d never heard of Armenia until some mention of it in an article on him, and got the idea that if all the men looked like him, I wanted to go visit. Armenian-Americans seem to have prospered exceedingly. n.b. he died January 26th.
Jim Bunning
October 23, 1931 - May 26, 2017
Hall of Fame pitcher and Senator
I’d like to remember him for the phenomenal pitcher he was for my Phillies. Not so much as a cantankerous GOP Congressman/Senator from Kentucky…
Fred A. Kummerow, a German-born biochemist and lifelong contrarian whose nearly 50 years of advocacy led to a federal government ban on the use of trans-fatty acids in processed foods, a ruling that could prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths a year, died on Wednesday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 102.
He had been one of the first scientists to suggest a link between processed foods and heart disease. In the 1950s, while studying lipids at the university, he analyzed diseased arteries from about two dozen people who had died of heart attacks and discovered that the vessels were filled with trans fats.
He followed up with a study involving pigs that were given a diet heavy in such artificial fats. He found high levels of artery-clogging plaque in them.
Professor Kummerow published his findings about the role of trans fats in 1957, a time when the prevailing view held that saturated fats like those found in butter and cream were the big culprit in atherosclerosis.
I typed a remark yesterday, and then forgot to hit “Say It” or something
Thx for posting this one.
The science of food/health got all balled up in personal crusades and personal scientific distortions, midcentury and for some decades after, if I understand the history. Ancel Keys kinda tried to force everything in the wrong direction based on questionable science and cherry picked data. I think he was the biggest political name behind “saturated fats are bad”.
It didn’t hurt that the industries who wanted to sell carbs and trans fats were and are much much richer and better lobbied than the ranch and dairy industries. I don’t think Keys was anyone’s puppet, but gigantic ag must have loved him.
I remember reading that Dr Paul Dudley White 1886-1973 (Eisenhower’s cardiologist), who advocated preventive medicine, is supposed to have said somewhere that, during his years of medical training he almost never saw the sort of arteriosclerosis that was commonly killing people by the 1940-1950’s.
Of course, at the time Dr White was learning medicine, early 1900’s, lifetime consumption of trans fats, and of large amounts of white sugar, and to a lesser extent, large lifetime and daily consumption of white flower and other processed foods, was rather low in age 40+ adults. By the mid-1950’s, all that had completely changed.
Since then our ag corporations have gotten much more creative about how to “create and engineer foodstuffs”. The green revolution (they were worried about world starvation) combined with money interests have done a huge # on the genetics of grains, and who knows what in actually in packaged foods.
None of it is necessarily bad; or good. But we have no idea. We are the test group for all of it.
We really owe Kummerow for his work. Would that there was more research clear of emotional commitment to preconceptions, and free of bias injected by politics and corp interests.
I hope this doesn’t read as a polemic. Don’t mean it that way.
I don’t know anything except by casual reading, so if I come across as a know-it-all, I’m being antotal ass. I know more-or-less nothing.
I just read a lot, and retain a tiny bit of it, and wish I knew more.
Re: Attacks in London early Sunday morning (Saturday evening in the US):
At least six people are reported dead in the terror attacks in London and three attackers were shot dead by police, according to Scotland Yard. At least 20 additional casualties have been taken to six hospitals across London.
Seeing now that there were at least 30 reported injured.
And yeah, the two attacks (London Bridge where a van rammed into pedestrians and then the 4 occupants in the car got out and stabbed people, as well as the stabbings in Borough Market) were labelled as acts of terrorism.
Former NFL WR James Hardy, who was drafted by the Bills in 2008 (but, because he tore his ACL in his first season, he was benched most of the second season and then released), was found in an Indiana river on Wednesday.
Glenne Headly, who appeared in films such as Dick Tracy, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, as well as appearing in shows such as Monk, Encore! Encore! and ER, died last night at the age of 63.
/image Glenne Headly
(She was supposed to appear in an upcoming Netflix series entitled Future Man, a show which is/was in middle of being filmed.)
@PlacidPenguin I would say she was the best part of Making Mr. Right, but every part of that movie is great (well, actors/costumes anyway). So she was an integral part of the greatness of Making Mr. Right. Anyway, I love her. She was too young to go.
Hawaiian pizza inventor Sam Panopoulos died 8 May 2017, aged 83. Panopoulos is the Canadian man who invented Hawaiian pizza, a dish so divisive it led to an Icelandic presidential outburst this year.
He passed away in hospital suddenly on Thursday.
Panopoulos emigrated to Canada from Greece in 1954 when he was 20, eventually going on to own and operate several successful restaurants with his two brothers. In February, Panopoulos recounted to the BBC how he and his brothers came up with the idea for the pizza, topped with pineapple and ham.
@Ignorant Even though I lost my taste for campy Batman when I grew up, I still enjoy watching Adam West just act and have such a good time doing it. Plus when he did the “Grey Ghost” opposite Kevin Conroy in The Animated Series (and did other voice jobs in other Batman series), it just cemented him as being so very right as a presence in the Batman universe.
Adnan Khashoggi (25 July 1935 – 6 June 2017) was a Saudi Arabian billionaire international businessman, best known for his involvement in arms dealing. He is estimated to have had a peak net worth of around US$4 billion in the early 1980s.
He was certainly the most famous arms dealer of his era (1960-1980’s), and perhaps the richest. He was the introduction, dealer, and brokerage connection between Middle-Eastern governments and the US Defense industry. Later on, he was heavily involved in Iran-Contra, at the Reagan admin’s request. He also almost certainly helped Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos loot their country of funds and assets, including paintings by world-famous artists.
As a side note:
Adnan Khashoggi’s sister was author Samira Khashoggi Fayed who married businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed and was the mother of Dodi Fayed.
They’re saying it was associated with his fight with leukemia.
I saw people saying that just like when a president dies, the others go to the funeral, so too should the other actors who played Batman should go to his funeral.
David Fromkin, a nonacademic historian whose definitive book on the Middle East warned the West against nation-building by partitioning antagonistic religious groups behind arbitrary boundaries, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 84.
His seminal book on the Middle East, “A Peace to End All Peace” (1989), traced the roots of conflict in the region to the creation of unsustainable nations there through artificial mapmaking by European diplomats in the early 1920s, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
He concluded that those self-serving cartographers had grossly underestimated the indigenous population’s enduring faith in Islam as the foundation of everyday life, politics and government, and that they had failed to account for the Middle East’s lingering resentment of Western imperialism.
(from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/world/middleeast/obituary-david-fromkin-dead-middle-east-author.html?_r=0)
In a statement, former U.S. President George H.W. Bush mourned the death of his colleague and close ally, who first led West Germany and then oversaw its reunification with Communist East Germany.
John Avildsen, the man behind the camera for a string of beloved blockbusters in the 1970s and '80s, died Friday at age 81. The Oscar-winning director of Rocky and The Karate Kid died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles, his son Anthony told The Los Angeles Times.
“His iconic Rocky … has been lionized throughout our culture as the quintessential underdog story — a recurring theme in his notable body of work which included Save the Tiger and The Karate Kid franchise,” Paris Barclay, president of the Directors Guild of America, said in a statement Friday.
“Throughout the decades,” Barclay continued, “his rousing portrayals of victory, courage and emotion captured the hearts of generations of Americans.”
Sitting on a park bench overlooking Ocho Rios in Jamaica a few years back, Rupert Everett spots two women on the hill. One is like “a baby sparrow that has fallen from its nest”, he writes in his memoir. She appears a bit disorientated, wearing Uggs and a tracksuit. Everett describes her as “slightly chavvy”. The women are talking about prescription drugs. Everett starts to see that this little bird is beautiful, with her black eyes and unfiltered directness. She reminds him of someone.
It as if he has known her in a past life. She is both lined and girlish, and she walks beside him, telling him the names of trees, of every plant.
He has indeed known her, as so many of us do. Or the myth of her, anyway. This woman was Anita Pallenberg, who has died at the age of 73. Everett flashes back to when he was 14, masturbating over a 15ft-high image of Anita, on screen in Performance. This film is a portal for him and who he is to be. This film has it all: sex, androgyny, drugs, violence, gangsters, interior decoration. Nic Roeg’s movie remains as hallucinogenically strange and disturbing as ever and Pallenberg will be for ever remembered as Pherber: sexually omnivorous, dangerous, sweetly amoral. The movie came out in 1970, but it captures the psychosis of the end of the 60s, where art, crime and sex open up the gates of social mobility but identity becomes fragmented.
…
For performances and public outings, the Stones are said to have borrowed not only her style, but the clothing in her closet. In interviews, Keith Richards has mentioned becoming famous for his “look” while wearing her outfits.
Let’s raise a toast to the late great Anita Pallenberg, queen of the underground, the Rolling Stones muse who gave the Glimmer Twins their glimmer lessons. Pallenberg, who died Tuesday night at the age of 73 [Really 75], wasn’t merely Keith Richards’ consort – she was a rock & roll legend in herself, a style icon, a crucial part of the Stones’ mystique. She taught Keith her sinister glare, taught Mick Jagger her wiggle, taught Brian Jones how to wear floppy hats. Look at pictures of Keith before and after Anita – it’s like the difference between Buddy Holly and Jack the Ripper. As soon Keith connected with Anita, he lost his gawky shyness and learned to strut like her, wearing her scarves and shirts and bangles. She was the flower of evil in the Stones’ orbit, the baddest of bad girls – her grin declared she knew more about sin than any of these English schoolboys had ever imagined.
Things tended to burst into flames around Anita. Her friend Marianne Faithfull used to call her “Glenda Hindenburg.” “Loads of people were scared of me,” Anita said in Victor Bockris’ Keith Richards: The Biography. “I guess it was all that savoir-vivre that I had, and I was from Rome and I had traveled and been in New York and I knew all these people, and I was pretty reckless as well. You could see Keith and Mick exchanging looks like, ‘Who is this weird bird?’” That was putting it mildly. As Keith recalled, “She knew everything and she could say it in five languages. She scared the pants off me!”
She considered writing a memoir, but changed her mind when all publishers wanted was salacious stories about the Rolling Stones.
Paddington Bear’s creator Michael Bond has died. Have a marmalade sarnie in tribute. Two Paddington Bear movies were made; one in 2014, on AMZN video, the other is post-production. A TV series was made, also available on AMZN video. Bond also wrote a children’s TV series called The Herbs, a series of books about a guinea pig called Olga da Polga, and a series of adult mysteries featuring French detective Monsieur Pamplemousse.
/image Paddington Bear
Nelsan Ellis, the actor who played Lafayette on True Blood passed away from complications due to heart failure. He was only 39.
/image Nelsan Ellis
/image Lafayette True Blood
Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident Who Won Nobel While Jailed, Dies at 61
BEIJING — Liu Xiaobo, the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil on Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him an 11-year prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010 while locked away, died on Thursday. He was 61.
The bureau of justice of Shenyang, the city in northeastern China where Mr. Liu was being treated for cancer, announced on its website that Mr. Liu had died.
The Chinese government revealed he had liver cancer in late June only after it was virtually beyond treatment. Officially, Mr. Liu gained medical parole. But even as he faced death, he was kept silenced and under guard in a hospital, still a captive of the authoritarian controls that he had fought for decades.
He was the first Nobel Peace laureate to die in state custody since Carl von Ossietzky, the German pacifist and foe of Nazism who won the prize in 1935 and died under guard in 1938 after years of maltreatment.
Mr. Liu started out as a notoriously abrasive literary critic in Beijing in the 1980s. He was called a “dark horse” who bridled at intellectual conformity, even in the name of reform. But he was increasingly drawn into political questions as Deng Xiaoping, the Communist leader, resisted matching economic liberalization with political transformation.
In 1989, he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University when students in Beijing occupied Tiananmen Square to demand democratic changes and an end to party corruption. He returned to Beijing to support the protests. He later described that time as a turning point, one that ended his academic career and set him irrevocably into a life of political opposition.
Mr. Liu’s sympathy for the students was not unreserved; he eventually urged them to leave Tiananmen Square and return to their campuses. As signs grew that the Communist Party leadership would use force to end the protests, Mr. Liu and three friends, including the singer Hou Dejian, held a hunger strike on the square to show solidarity with the students, even as they advised them to leave.
“If we don’t join the students in the square and face the same kind of danger, then we don’t have any right to speak,” Mr. Hou quoted Mr. Liu as saying.
When the army moved in, hundreds of protesters died in the gunfire and the chaos on roads leading to Tiananmen Square. But without Mr. Liu and his friends, the bloodshed might have been worse. On the night of June 3, they stayed in the square with thousands of students as tanks, armored vehicles and soldiers closed in.
Mr. Liu and his friends negotiated with the troops to create a safe passage for the remaining protesters to leave the square, and he coaxed the students to flee without a final showdown.
Winner’s Chair Remains Empty at Nobel Event
Liu Nobel Is Awarded to Empty Chair
OSLO — Imprisoned and incommunicado in China, the Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, his absence marked at the prize ceremony here by an empty chair.
For the first time since the 1935 prize, when the laureate, Carl von Ossietzky, languished in a concentration camp and Hitler forbade any sympathizers to attend the ceremony, no relative or representative of the winner was present to accept the award or the $1.5 million check it comes with. Nor was Mr. Liu able to provide a speech, even in absentia.
Guests at the ceremony in Oslo’s City Hall listened instead to a recitation of his defiant yet gentle statement to a Chinese court before his incarceration last year. “I have no enemies and no hatred,” Mr. Liu said in “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court,” read aloud by the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. “Hatred can rot away at a person’s intelligence and conscience.”
Through his wife, Liu Xia, Mr. Liu sent word that he wanted to dedicate the award to the “lost souls” massacred in 1989 in Tiananmen Square.
For hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy. I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes in understanding the development of the state and changes in society, to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love.
…
Freedom of expression is the basis of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity and to suppress the truth.
I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints. Thank you!
Romero jump-started the zombie genre as the co-writer (with John A. Russo) and director of the 1968 movie “Night of the Living Dead,” which went to show future generations of filmmakers such as Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter that generating big scares didn’t require big budgets. “Living Dead” spawned an entire school of zombie knockoffs, and Romero’s sequels included 1978’s “Dawn of the Dead,” 1985’s “Day of the Dead,” 1990’s “Land of the Dead,” 2007’s “Diary of the Dead” and 2009’s “George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead.”
I meant to post this yesterday, and kept getting sidetracked.
From The Guardian
Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win mathematics’ Fields medal, dies at 40 Stanford professor had suffered from breast cancer Prestigious Fields medal is considered maths’ equivalent of the Nobel
Maryam Mirzakhani, a Stanford University professor who was the first and only woman to win the prestigious Fields medal in mathematics, has died. She was 40.
Maryam Mirzakhani: ‘The more I spent time on maths, the more excited I got’
Mirzakhani, who had breast cancer, died on Saturday, the university said. It did not indicate where she died.
In 2014, Mirzakhani was one of four winners of the Fields medal, which is presented every four years and is considered the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel prize. She was named for her work on complex geometry and dynamic systems.
“Mirzakhani specialized in theoretical mathematics that read like a foreign language by those outside of mathematics: moduli spaces, Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, Ergodic theory and symplectic geometry,” the Stanford press announcement said.
“Mastering these approaches allowed Mirzakhani to pursue her fascination for describing the geometric and dynamic complexities of curved surfaces spheres, doughnut shapes and even amoebas – in as great detail as possible.”
Her work had implications in fields ranging from cryptography to “the theoretical physics of how the universe came to exist”, the university said.
Mirzakhani was born in Tehran and studied there and at Harvard. She joined Stanford as a mathematics professor in 2008. Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, issued a statement praising Mirzakhani.
“The grievous passing of Maryam Mirzakhani, the eminent Iranian and world-renowned mathematician, is very much heart-rending,” Rouhani said in a message that was reported by the Tehran Times.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said her death pained all Iranians, the newspaper reported.
“The news of young Iranian genius and math professor Maryam Mirzakhani’s passing has brought a deep pang of sorrow to me and all Iranians who are proud of their eminent and distinguished scientists,” Zarif posted in Farsi on his Instagram account.
“I do offer my heartfelt condolences upon the passing of this lady scientist to all Iranians worldwide, her grieving family and the scientific community.”
Mirzakhani originally dreamed of becoming a writer but then shifted to mathematics. When she was working, she would doodle on sheets of paper and scribble formulas on the edges of her drawings, leading her daughter to describe the work as painting, the Stanford statement said.
Mirzakhani once described her work as “like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out”.
Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne said Mirzakhani was a brilliant theorist who made enduring contributions and inspired thousands of women to pursue math and science.
Mirzakhani is survived by her husband, Jan Vondrák, and daughter, Anahita.
Imagine a set or universe off all possible pool tables or all possible ping-pong tables …
From wikipedia:
Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014 for “her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces”.[24] The award was made in Seoul at the International Congress of Mathematicians on 13 August.[25]
At the time of the award, Jordan Ellenberg explained her research to a popular audience:
… [Her] work expertly blends dynamics with geometry. Among other things, she studies billiards. But now, in a move very characteristic of modern mathematics, it gets kind of meta: She considers not just one billiard table, but the universe of all possible billiard tables. And the kind of dynamics she studies doesn’t directly concern the motion of the billiards on the table, but instead a transformation of the billiard table itself, which is changing its shape in a rule-governed way; if you like, the table itself moves like a strange planet around the universe of all possible tables … This isn’t the kind of thing you do to win at pool, but it’s the kind of thing you do to win a Fields Medal. And it’s what you need to do in order to expose the dynamics at the heart of geometry; for there’s no question that they’re there.[26]
@f00l That Ellenberg quotation is a great one, and one I hadn’t seen before. I don’t know that Mirzakhani will ever be one of the big math names, but her work generalizing the three geodesics theorem is groundbreaking and fascinating. It answers questions raised by Riemann, answering questions made by Euler. Taking kind of a known idea for a given set of constraints and generalizing it is some of the most interesting work being done in math, to me. Sad to see such a mind depart.
As a side note, I think the Brits have it right with ‘maths’. Why, oh why did we decide to singularize an abbreviation for ‘mathematics’?
Perhaps I’m an “Americam English chauvinist” according to what I am accustomed to. I never encountered “maths” much until much after I left grad school. And so it seems a bit weird to me; I tend to associate it instinctively with the Harry Potter series.
To me, “math” always made sense. Because to me the primary thing was the method; and, most importantly, what the method might show about itself.
The actual material of various fields or subfields or areas of study was secondary. Which is one of many reasons why I wouldn’t have done well in academia back then. I was always such a purist, and so terrified of anything I could not suss out enough the logical implications of, including casual conversation about, say, coffee… And I could not deal well with even the minimal and “subject matter: abstraction” type social demands of the department.
It’s been more than 30 years sincei was resident and steeped in an academic world. More than 20 since I made much effort to read journal articles.
I am not capable of evaluating the weight of her workb without doing a good bit of reading. I just never focused that way, and given that you know something of that world, you know how unmeasurable that world is now, and how big it might get in another few decades.
I did have very close friends who specialized in algebraic topology. They stayed in academia; never got her level of achievement, but had decent careers.
We used to have long talks where they would explain over the course of a few days or a week what they were working on. Am I would ask insane questions, fueled in part by lack of familiarity. After I got enough background covered, I could follow it. They said I always thought so far outside the habitual constants of those who live and breathe a given subspeciality, that apparently some of my questions sometimes had utility in sparking some train of thought that might go somewhere for them.
Not that any solution or path forward ever came from me. No way. I knew far too little. To begin to have the capacity. Just that I did know how to be curious and ask questions and poke holes. I guess an outside perspective from a “well-known trained mathematical no-nothing” could suggest stuff to them.
Unfortunately, after various life traumas, I’ve lost track. My fault as much as anyone else’s, I fear; or more than anyone’s.
I miss it. Persons my age were looking for tenure track positions when the iron curtain loosened and then fell. Differently all these positions that would have been open to recent PHDs were going to world class Eastern Europeans and Russians who were amazed at what an American University would pay.
So perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t stick to it. Besides, walking catastrophe no matter where I go, so … Or perhaps I would have concluded I couldn’t do the level of work. ???
Or not. Who knows? I am or was prob incapable of functioning in that type of structure anyway. But that’s another story.
It’s been a long time since I wanted to actually re-visit Riemann and Euler a little. But there is so much to do. I prob won’t make the time.
I am really angry about her dying so young.
I wonder how the path was for her, being female and from Iran. I hope there was no special alienation or stress, beyond the normal, for her. But who knows? Every personality, every consciousness is unique.
(I should warn you that I am the world’s most irresponsible person or something. I’m trying. Bear with me if you can.)
@f00l Oh, I shouldn’t pretend to be able to evaluate her work either but from the standpoint of an armchair math(s) enthusiast. I have a pretty weak, theoretical grasp of the concepts that led up to the three geodesics theorem, which I’m certain was not even her most important solve. I just know enough to get that it’s always a big deal when one can make something that previously worked for x work for x, y, z, and so on…
I too have wondered about how hard things may have been for her, given her roots. I think about the mathematical genius from India, Ramanujan, who too died tragically young at 32, albeit a hundred years ago (give or take). No formal training. The connections between his ethnicity, class, education… who knows what led to his not being taken terribly seriously while he was alive… but now many put him up there with Euler.
@f00l There were a few times in college, when I was studying the (Engineering required) calculus 3 and DiffEQ classes when a glimmer of the amazing stuff behind them shown through, but just a glimmer. I passed the classes but I never had the kind of mind that could really understand and get deeply into high maths. Some envy but great respect for a mind that capable. Its not easy but there’s lawful magic in there waiting to be found if the seeker is good enough.
His résumé includes ‘Mission: Impossible,’ ‘Tucker: The Man and His Dream’ and ‘North by Northwest.’ It does not, however, include 'Star Trek.'
Martin Landau, the all-purpose actor who showcased his versatility as a master of disguise on the Mission: Impossible TV series and as a broken-down Bela Lugosi in his Oscar-winning performance in Ed Wood, has died. He was 89.
Landau, who shot to fame by playing a homosexual henchman in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest, died Saturday of “unexpected complications” after a brief stay at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, his rep confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
After he quit CBS’ Mission: Impossible after three seasons in 1969 because of a contract dispute, Landau’s career was on the rocks until he was picked by Francis Ford Coppola to play Abe Karatz, the business partner of visionary automaker Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges), in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).
Landau received a best supporting actor nomination for that performance, then backed it up the following year with another nom for starring as Judah Rosenthal, an ophthalmologist who has his mistress (Angelica Huston) killed, in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).
Landau lost out on Oscar night to Kevin Kline and Denzel Washington, respectively, in those years but finally prevailed for his larger-than-life portrayal of horror-movie legend Lugosi in the biopic Ed Wood (1994), directed by Tim Burton.
Landau also starred as Commander John Koenig on the 1970s science-fiction series Space: 1999 opposite his Mission: Impossible co-star Barbara Bain, his wife from 1957 until their divorce in 1993.
A former newspaper cartoonist, Landau turned down the role of Mr. Spock on the NBC series Star Trek, which went to Leonard Nimoy (who later effectively replaced Landau on Mission: Impossible after Trek was canceled).
Landau also was an admired acting teacher who taught the craft to the likes of Jack Nicholson. And in the 1950s, he was best friends with James Dean and, for several months, the boyfriend of Marilyn Monroe. “She could be wonderful, but she was incredibly insecure, to the point she could drive you crazy,” he told The New York Times in 1988.
@f00l
Actuqlly it seems he died Saturday. The announcement was today
Fine actor. I always heard, a fine human being.
One of his great late-life great roles was a hilarious sequence in Entourage, a part written and modeled to a degree on the career and adventures of producer Robert Evans, if I recall correctly.
@f00l
I heard that one of the reasons the part in Entourage worked so well for Landau as an actor is that Robert Evans had input on who was going to play his fictional counterpart, and wanted Landau.
Evans and Landau and the writers thought the whole thing was so much fun that Evans let the crew shoot in his very over-decorated and gorgeous house, instead of creating a set. This is the house Evans lives in.
It’s something else. Another lifestyle in another world than mine.
As is the character that was modeled on Evans and written for for Landau.
Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington dead at 41: report
Chester Bennington, the lead singer of rock band Linkin Park, has committed suicide, TMZ reports. He was 41.
Bennington, who has long been plagued by substance abuse problems, hanged himself and was found Thursday morning around 9 a.m. at a private residence in Palos Verdes Estates, according to TMZ.
@Barney I know two people that tried to commit suicide by pills. They survived. I don’t think most people survive a hanging unless they’re terrible at tying knots. If it breaks your neck, it’s quick.
@RiotDemon They used either the wrong pills or the wrong amount or they weren’t really trying – it was a plea for help.
They outlawed hanging in Kansas because it was inhumane and it took too long. Even the hanging “experts” couldn’t get it right. No, suicide by hanging is not the way to end it.
@f00l Why one more day? If he had decided to do it, it wouldn’t have made that much difference.
I have nothing against the assisted end of life options as practiced in Canada and similar. That sort of thing seems very humane and justifiable to me.
Almost every time one is not in medical extremis or in some other unimaginable political prisoner situation or similar situation, that person hasn’t just “decided to do it”.
According all info that can be forensically recovered from these situations, the thought is always constant back and forth, back and forth, in the person’s mind.
Certain. Not certain. Almost certain. Not certain. And on it goes. For most people, until they start to come out of the depressive state of mind.
And in the end many people do it or set it in final motion just to get the indecision over with.
Others make a small symbolic personal gestures. Which no one but that person understands. So no one responds properly. So the depressed person thinks or imagines that was “fate” giving them the go ahead.
Other people force themselves into a numbed out state of mind. Or the depth of their depressive thinking takes them there. They are under the influence of intoxicants or lack of sleep or being so depressed that they stop responding emotionality and can’t feel anything, often enough.
Then they set it in motion.
Almost everyone who gets saved does not want to go back there and try again, at least after a few months. Or they don’t want to go back they are try again until they get knocked back into the same mindset again.
They almost never proceed rationally and calmly do do it again or try to again the minute they can, with no back and forth, no internal struggle. Because that is one decision that, when made in a depressed state, has no rational quality to it.
It is not a rational mindset. Period.
It is neurotransmitter driven tunnel vision where all arguments and factors lead inexorably to a single false resolution, if the person is in bad enough shape.
It is an error state in the brain.
So do I support just monitoring everyone 24/7? Of course not.
To some degree people have to have their freedom to self-destruction even if they are not capable of thinking in any kind of reasonable or productive or rational way.
Freedom matters. So we live with some risks. For ourselves. For others.
But as for the direct answer to your question:
Why one more day?
Because the day he chose was symbolic. If he had failed today, tomorrow or a week from now would not have had the same symbolism to him.
So he would have had to work himself up to it all over again.
Yes. He would have had to work himself up to our all over again.
I promise that’s accurate. I promise.
Which means he had not finally decided in any rational way that doing it tomorrow is the same as doing it today. Which means he was using the symbolism of the day as an extra emotional push to get himself to do it.
People work themselves up to it in the same way sometime works themselves up to taking on a machine gunner nest solo during wartime.
It’s not a “normal” decision in any way.
Certainly not in his case. Even with what must have been a terrible state of mind.
(Obviously this is not the same as a dying person or sometimes whose physical pain can’t be relieved or someone facing torture or whatever)
So
One more day.
Because then one more day
And then one more day
And then one more day.
And then another. And another.
And that’s how we do it when times are really bad. All of us. Some people - most people - may never flirt with that. It may never get that black on their heads. But for many people it does.
But there are really bad times we all have to get thru. And often in the darkest of those times, it is what one believes about oneself or believes about life at that moment that drives ones to take a really dark final choice, a choice that simply need not have happened.
But afaik you just damned keep going. That’s the alternative. The one he was so messed up he could not see.
So yes. One more damned day.
No one in that state or mind or any other state of mind is all that great at predicting the future path of a given life, excepting people in a few narrow circumstances that medicine and the rest of us recognize are different than this (because in those special circumstances the options are really genuinely truly rationally narrow.)
@f00l
Maybe he had something physically wrong with him and he chose now to die and to not wait until the future when he would no longer have control over whether he lived or died. You don’t know. I don’t know.
Yes, I hate to see a life snuffed out. Damn it, I hated to have to make the decision about a DNR for my mother. And yes, she had lived a long time; she, at one time, said she did not want a DNR. But I also that think (yes, I use the word “think”) she wouldn’t have wanted to continue living the way she was.
I’m lucky. The DNR was never required. I would have been wracked with guilt.
So, do you think that my own decision for a DNR is committing suicide even though, right now, my health is stable, but within just a few years, it won’t be and I’ll be attached to a machine at least 3 times a week in order to stay alive? If I have a car accident, tomorrow, and they could save me, would that be committing suicide in your definition?
I hate it that an individual cannot choose to die when he or she wants.
Maybe he had something physically wrong with him and he chose now to die and to not wait until the future when he would no longer have control over whether he lived or died. You don’t know. I don’t know.
You are right. I don’t know. I will probably never know.
But these news reports often have a “feel” to them.
If you were planning a rational and well considered end to your own life, would you hang yourself - on the birthdate of a person you had an emotional connection to, who had committed suicide himself shortly before? Would that be your tribute to your family and friends, to your own life, and to this other person’s life?
I suspect most of us would opt, in that circumstance, for something either sudden, or painless and peaceful. And not on the birthdate of someone who had committed suicide himself. Not on the birthdate on someone they had an emotional connection to.
So, do you think that my own decision for a DNR is committing suicide even though, right now, my health is stable, but within just a few years, it won’t be and I’ll be attached to a machine at least 3 times a week in order to stay alive? If I have a car accident, tomorrow, and they could save me, would that be committing suicide in your definition?
No. How could I?
I presume you know you own situation as well as you can without going to Medical school yourself. I presume you have listened to reasonable counsel and medical perspective. I presume you have given this decision your best attention and deliberation.
You clearly appear to be as rational as the rest of us. So I presume your decision is the best one you can make under the circumstances.
If I were hanging out with you every day, when things had gotten bad, and I thought you had good days left, I might not much like the DNR. But I would respect it; and respect the intentions and thought and choice behind it. Your life belongs finally to you.
So it must be, if we are not to be slaves to some other, inferior purpose set by someone else.
I don’t know all the facts in today’s case. And don’t wish to know.
But it didn’t feel at all like your situation, based on initial reports.
Some -many - instances of the act of ending one’s own life are nothing like what you have chosen for yourself and your own situation.
I have the right to think and feel profound sadness and regret about those. And frustration.
I hate it that an individual cannot choose to die when he or she wants.
Rational individuals who have access to normal ranges of activities in life can do exactly that. (There are constrictions for the disabled, obviously, and other persons in restricted circumstances.)
What percentages of these types of instances (as with today’s news) are rational and calm and well considered?
Dunno. Guessing not a high percentage tho.
I am - personally - opposed to monitoring people 24/7 or anything like that for anything but very short periods of time. A few weeks at most. (Unless the person is obviously a long way from rationality. I have known a person who believed he was US President. He wasn’t. That’s the sort of situation that justifies more monitoring, in my personal philosophy).
I understand that that means risk for all of us who are involved with others. And some risk for all of us within ourselves.
To my mind that value of the freedom outweighs the risk.
If I were headed in that direction, I would personally allow nothing and no one to interfere. That’s me.
But when someone makes an irrational and irrevocable choice that destroys their own future and is almost certainly devastating for other people close to that person, I am not happy about it and I do not resign myself to some thought that it’s “ok”.
And I don’t have to pretend that these self-destructive actions, if taken in an extreme state of mind, were somehow “rational” or “ok” when so often they weren’t.
And I wish they had given themselves one more day. Yes.
That’s just me.
Futile wish, yes.
I wish it anyway.
To me, part of the best of human capacity is that we keep wishing for more light against all that darkness.
I hope we keep wishing that wish. Futile or not. Whatever.
Actor John Heard, best known for playing Macaulay Culkin’s dad in the Home Alone movies, has died at 72.
His body was discovered in a hotel room near Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, where he had recently undergone back surgery.
In addition to his role as Peter McAllister in the Home Alone franchise, Heard also starred as a co-worker to Tom Hanks in the 1988 comedy Big and a dirty cop in the first season of HBO’s The Sopranos, for which he earned a guest-acting Emmy nomination in 1999.
Heard’s other credits include films The Milagro Beanfield War and Beaches (both released in 1988) and the John Grisham adaptation The Pelican Brief (1993). He also starred in the TV adaptation of the author’s 1993 novel The Client and had guest roles in the CSI franchise.
He was a great actor. I’m curious as to what the cause of death turns out to be. Kind of weird, everyone would confuse him and John Hurt who happened to pass away in January.
She was just a good human being, civilizing Frank Sinatra, and doing good works. I used to live in Palm Springs, in the long ago days, and I admired her for all she went through, and for all she did. RIP.
June Foray (June Lucille Forer), born 18 Sep 1917, died 26 July 2017. She was the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Lucifer the Cat (Cinderella), Cindy Lou Who, Jokey Smurf, Granny (owner of Tweety Bird), Grammi Gummi (Adventures of the Gummi Bears), Grandmother Fa (Mulan), Magica De Spell and hundreds of others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Foray
The first lady of voice acting, one of the original members of animation organization ASIFA-Hollywood and founder of the annual Annie Awards, was also instrumental in the creation of the Oscars’ animated feature category. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honoring her voice work in television.
US actor and playwright Sam Shepard has died at the age of 73.
Shepard wrote more than 40 plays and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Buried Child in 1979.
He went on to be nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for 1983’s The Right Stuff and starred in films like Black Hawk Down as well as co-writing 1984’s Paris, Texas.
He died at home in Kentucky on Thursday, his family have confirmed.
Shepard’s death came after he experienced complications from motor neurone disease, also known as ALS.
His first major acting role was in Terrence Malik’s Days of Heaven in 1978, in which he starred alongside Richard Gere.
Other film credits include Steel Magnolias, The Pelican Brief and The Accidental Husband.
Samuel Shepard Rogers IV[1] (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017),[2] known professionally as Sam Shepard, was an American playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director, whose body of work spanned over half a century. He was the author of forty-four plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983). Shepard received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. New York described him as “the greatest American playwright of his generation.”[3]
Few of you probably have ever heard of the organization this man created and lead but he made a huge difference in the lives of many of us, many who we know and loved or who passed through our lives.
It is with great sadness that the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) announces the passing of its president, Val J. Halamandaris, after a long illness on July 23, 2017. Often referred to as the “leader of the last great civil rights movement”, Val worked tirelessly for 50 years to improve the lives and secure the rights of America’s elderly and infirm. A self-described “small-town boy who came to Washington, D.C. many years ago, full of ideals,” Val responded to President John F. Kennedy’s call to public service by joining the staff of Senator Frank E. Moss (D-UT) and enrolling in George Washington University and then Catholic University Law School. Val was quickly drawn to the issues facing senior citizens with the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging and was instrumental in crafting the landmark Medicare and Medicaid programs, including the home health benefit. In 1967, Val and Senator Moss created the “Moss Amendments,” which set minimum federal standards for nursing homes. In 1969, Val led an eight-year investigation of nursing homes around the United States, culminating in a 12-volume report, the first of 25 major reports Val wrote for Congress. In 1972, Val produced the first hearings on hospice and wrote the original legislation to provide Medicare coverage for hospice. Val’s investigation into Medicare and Medicaid fraud made such abuse a felony and led to the creation of state and federal oversight of the problem. Working with Rep. Claude Pepper (D-FL) in the House of Representatives, Val continued his fight for the aged by helping create the Medicare hospice benefit and reforming the sale of health insurance to senior citizens. Distressed by the conditions he found in America’s nursing homes, Val left Congress to find what he called “a better way” health care in the home. When Val founded NAHC, institutionalization of the elderly was the rule and home care was unknown to many. Due in no small part to Val’s hard work, leadership and unflagging advocacy, NAHC now represents the nation’s 33,000 home care and hospice organizations, two million nurses, therapists and other caregivers and the 12 million infirm, ill, and disabled Americans who receive health care in their homes. Inspired by an encounter with Mother Theresa, Val founded the Caring Institute in 1985 to promote the values of caring and public service and grant scholarship money to young persons. President Bill Clinton called Val “a remarkable human being and one of the most exceptional people that I have ever known” and Claude Pepper said Val was “the best, brightest, and most talented person to have worked for him in 50 years of public service.” To the end of his days, Val was guided by these words from President Kennedy: “What we need to do is take care of people till the end of their days, we have the resources, and we have the money. What is at stake is the very future of American democracy and how we are going to be viewed through the prism of history because all great civilizations can be measured by a common yard stick- how did they take care of our vulnerable populations.” For his lifetime of dedication to the public good, Val will be posthumously honored with the Pope Francis Award for Charity and Leadership in October. One of the most impactful Americans of the last 50 years, Val cannot be replaced and will never be forgotten. He is survived by his wife, Kathleen M. Brennan; three sons, their wives; six grandchildren and one brother.
Requescat in Pace Val. You did a lot for many. All the home health and hospice industry will miss you.
Robert Hardy
October 29, 1925 - August 3, 2017
British actor, most recently known for playing Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, in the Harry Potter films. He also starred in the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, in numerous portrayals of Winston Churchill and in many other roles throughout more than 70 years of acting.
@cinoclav We loved the “All Creatures Great and Small” books and the series, though admittedly the TV adaptation was a bit soapy. I loved how his children described him: ‘gruff, elegant, twinkly and always dignified’… Rest in Peace.
The Phillies have confirmed that former Phillies catcher Darren Daulton has died after a battle with brain cancer. He was 55 years old.
Daulton’s baseball career began in 1980. He played every season with the Phillies before retiring in 1997 and split the last year with the Florida Marlins.
During the Phillies’ 1993 National League Championship season, he had 24 homers and 105 RBI. Daulton was inducted into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2010.
In 2013, he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, which is an aggressive form of brain cancer. In 2015, doctors said he was cancer-free after surgery, extensive chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
@ACraigL Truly one of the greatest guys in sports when it came to the fans. Funny story, I used to drive past his neighborhood going to work and I knew which house was his. Every once in a while I’d cruise through looking to see if I saw him (or his wife - this was when he was married to Lynne Austin, the Hooters/Playboy model). Slowly driving past his house I looked up and he was in front of the window in what was obviously a closet/dressing area, standing there in just his underwear. I would’ve preferred seeing her but it did make all the girls at work jealous.
Here’s the portfolio page for the house showing when he owned it. http://w01.co.delaware.pa.us/pa/publicaccess.asp?UAYN=Y&MyAction=RealFolioSearch&Folio=27-00-00866-19
@yahsah15 He was one of the singers that were ‘out of style’ when I was in school; if you liked that ‘country’ music you were weird. They hated on the Carpenters too, who I always loved. I always liked many of his songs; he had a great voice, and I’ve seen some videos of him playing on a guitar that were just amazing. A true artist.
I always wanted to hear him sing with Olivia Newton John; turns out he did a couple times so I had some nice music to listen to this AM…
The verified world’s oldest man, Yisrael Kristal, resident of Haifa, Israel, died Friday, just before his 114th birthday.
He was an Auschwitz survivor.
“He always saw only light and good in everything”
JERUSALEM – Yisrael Kristal, the world’s oldest man who lived through both World Wars and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp has passed away just a month short of his 114th birthday, his family said Saturday.
Oren Kristal, a grandson, said he died Friday. “He managed to accomplish a lot. Every year he lived was like a few years for somebody else,” Oren told The Associated Press.
Last year Guinness World Records awarded Kristal a certificate as the world’s oldest man at his home in Haifa, Israel.
Kristal was born to an Orthodox Jewish family near the town of Zarnow in Poland in 1903.
“When he was a child during World War I in Poland he was a helper for a booze smuggler, he used to run barefoot in the snow through the night many kilometers with a heavy package on his back at about 12 years old, smuggling alcohol between the lines of the war,” Oren, his grandson said.
“He used to walk very fast until he was very old, faster than me, and he used to tell me that when he was my age if you didn’t walk fast enough your feet would stick to the frozen ground,” Oren recalled his grandfather telling him.
Kristal was orphaned shortly after World War I and moved to Lodz to work in the family confectionary business in 1920.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Kristal was confined to the ghetto there and later sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. His first wife and two children were killed in the Holocaust. Six million Jews were systematically murdered by German Nazis and their collaborators during WWII.
“He used to tell us whenever we were mourning someone that we should consider that they are being buried in the land of Israel, most of the people he knew did not get to be buried in a grave when they died,” Oren said.
Kristal survived World War II weighing only about 81 pounds - the only survivor of his large family.
“He was a very hard working man, a lot of energy always running from one place to another doing something,” Oren, his grandson said.
He said his grandfather participated in one of his great-grandsons bar mitzvah just a few weeks ago.
An observant Jew, Kristal himself only celebrated his bar mitzvah last year, a hundred years later than usual. He missed his bar mitzvah - the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony celebrated when a boy turns 13 - because of World War I.
Oren said his grandfather gave no explanation to the secret for his incredible longevity.
He is survived by two children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, media reported.
Holocaust survivor to celebrate bar mitzvah at 112 years old.
After 100 years of waiting, the oldest man alive is finally getting the celebration he deserves.
Israel Kristal, a 112-year-old Holocaust survivor didn’t get to celebrate becoming a man according to Jewish tradition. When he turned 13 — the typical time to celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah, a coming of age ceremony — it was 1916, and World War I was unfolding around him.
“His father was in the Russian army, his mother had died three years before,” Kristal’s daughter Schulamit Kristal Kuerstoch told the Local Germany. “No one was celebrating in this moment.”
And about 30 years later, still having never recognized the milestone, Kristal was deported to Auschwitz as World War II invaded his Polish homeland.
He lost both his wife and their two children to the Holocaust, but he was freed when American soldiers liberated his concentration camp.
Kristal, who also holds the Guinness world record for being the oldest man alive, will celebrate his 113th birthday on Thursday, and his family is using the occasion to celebrate his century-long overdue bar mitzvah.
“We’re going to celebrate with many family members …” his daughter told the news outlet. “We will bless him, we will dance with him, we’ll be happy with him … but you can’t feel like you’re 13 when you’re 113.”
Kristal when he nabbed the title from Guinness World Records in March admitted he didn’t know the secret to a long life, but promised he would continue to march forward.
“There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men than me who are no longer alive,” he said. “All that is left for us to do is to keep on working as hard as we can and rebuild what is lost.”
Stuart Thompson, the prolific theatrical producer, manager and six-time Tony Award winner behind such Broadway sensations as Proof, God of Carnage and The Book of Mormon, has died. He was 62.
Thompson died Thursday of complications from esophageal cancer at his home in New York, according to his husband, Joe Baker.
@Ignorant I met him briefly once, in Las Vegas. Growing up the telethon was always a must watch for us; the national telethon was usually in Las Vegas as well as the local (with Gus Giuffre, who was a well known local celebrity and also called bingo for our annual school fundraisers, along with other people we knew; Las Vegas was still not so very large back then).
I don’t remember the details but he set a very nervous (at just by chance walking down a hallway next to him) high schooler at ease, shook my hand, and we talked briefly about both the band event that evening, and the telethon for the minute or so it took to reach his destination. He seemed a genuinely nice person.
Every year at the end of the telethon, he would sing that 'You’ll never walk along" song, and never be able to finish it. Towards the end of the time I watched I think he finally started getting all the way through the song.
47:48 in if the timestamp still doesn’t work on the embed.
Jay Thomas
July 12, 1948 - August 24, 2017
Actor, comedian, radio host. Best known for his roles on Cheers and Murphy Brown. Cancer strikes once again.
@OldCatLady A couple weeks ago, I decided to finally take a deep dive into the works of Steely Dan. I don’t regret it. I just wish I’d done it sooner, so I could have seen them live.
@pitamuffin They toured fairly regularly again starting in the mid-90s. They did a three night stand in NYC about a year ago. One night, doing all of Aja.
Dave Hlubek, a founding member of Jacksonville-based rock band Molly Hatchet, has died.The band announced the news via its Facebook page:
“It is with great sorrow to announce the passing of our beloved friend and band member Dave Hlubek. Dave was one of the founding lead guitarists of Molly Hatchet. Amongst his many contributions to southern rock is “Flirtin’ with Disaster.” Our condolences and our prayers go out to his family during this time of loss. He will be missed but never forgotten, as the music lives on through his legacy in Molly Hatchet.”
More details at http://ultimateclassicrock.com/molly-hatchet-dave-hlubek-dead/
Barry “Frosty” Smith ( Bartholomew Eugene Smith-Frost)
(born March 20, 1946 in Bellingham, Washington) died after a long illness on April 12, 2017, at the age of 71.
I know him best for his work with Lee Michaels. Incredible music from a 2-man band.
I didn’t see it listed earlier & just noticed it.
@daveinwarsh Strange thing happened today.
This album came in the mail today. His 3rd album.
It’s in pretty good shape & it’s a difficult one to find.
I didn’t order it.
Its being reported that Jerry Pournelle, science fiction author, and long time author of the Chaos Manor columns in Byte magazine, and later the web, where he invited readers into his entry and evolution into the world of home computing as that world also evolved and grew, has passed away.
His last posts at his site were about his trip to DragonCon; no details were provided at the time of this post beyond the fact of his passing.
Jerry had been a regular guest on the TWiT network on their This Week in Tech podcast until fairly recently. He had worked in aerospace and the defense industry.
I grew up with his books, and those he co-wrote. His endless optimism blended with a realistic view of humans and their foibles, the recipes for ‘survivial with style’, his determination, not giving up after being afflicted with a brain tumor, and later a debilitating stroke, were inspirations.
Rest in Peace, Jerry. Another person I will always regret not having met.
@duodec he was an interesting man. He and Larry were almost polar opposites in many ways, but they created well together. It’s been many years since I walked the SciFi con circuit, and I always loved spending time with Larry and went out of my way to avoid Jerry. Good writers are not always good with people.
Oath of Fealty was my favorite of their collaborations. Have read it so many times, and can still do it again.
It’s been a long time since I visited Chaos Manor. Too long
Apart from his fiction and his many other interests, and his multi-way of looking at things, I just loved his attitude. Always irascible and insightful. (Even when you’d grabbed the wrong end of the stick, Jerry! )
His office looked exactly like it should have looked. ; )
Grant Hart, Hüsker Dü Drummer and Singer, Dies at 56
Grant Hart, a drummer, vocalist and songwriter for the influential Minnesota rock band Hüsker Dü, died on Wednesday at his home in St. Paul. He was 56.
The band’s publicist, Ken Weinstein, said the cause was cancer.
Edie Windsor, plaintiff of United States v. Windsor which decriminalized the Defense of Marriage Act and paved the way for marriage equality, died on September 12, 2017 at the age of 88.
Edie Windsor had been an advocate at the forefront of gay/lesbian rights for most of her life, including sponsoring what is now known as The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trangender Community Center, or simply The Center. (As a personal note, I regularly attend and contribute to support groups at The Center.) Edie married her wife Thea Spyer when marriage equality was legalized in Canada in 2007. Spyer died in 2009 and Edie was not treated as her legal spouse in executing her estate, which is the case that eventually led to the US vs. Windsor ruling.
While I don’t have nearly as much information about her as a technologist, she also was a computer scientist, working for IBM for many years.
Having attempted prior research on her work with IBM and beyond, it’s pretty hard to come by. I believe she was instrumental in creating JCL for OS/360, which lives on (in a very, very distant way, certainly) in z/OS.
I didn’t know she was influential in the existence of some manuals I used to reference once. But all is forgiven. She’s not responsible for 360/370 IBM-speak.
I owe her. She was willing to sacrifice her privacy for her principles. She had guts. She took risks and made a materially better world for all of us.
I remember him best from Repo Man, Paris, TX, Twin Peaks.
Critic’s Notebook: Harry Dean Stanton, a Zen Cowboy Who Said Everything by Saying Nothing
The hugely respected cult actor was a master of minimalism whose soulful hangdog style graced a long list of prestige screen credits from Hitchcock to Coppola, Scorsese to Lynch.
Deep in his bones, Harry Dean Stanton understood the sheer expressive power of saying nothing and doing very little. The veteran cult actor and musician, who died yesterday at 91, elevated a kind of Zen minimalist performance style into high art. His bittersweet reward for this unshowy approach was a spotty screen career that took decades to blossom, but the huge groundswell of respect and goodwill he accrued served him well in his glorious autumn years. He gambled on the long game, and it finally repaid him handsomely.
Like a kind of counterculture Clint Eastwood, the Kentucky-born Stanton had a face that seemed to be hewn from the vast rocky canvas of the American landscape itself, immutable and immortal. That magnificent face, gaunt and haunted, baleful and vulnerable, seemed to say everything even when his mouth said nothing. And saying nothing was his default setting. A laconic World War II veteran, he racked up around 200 screen credits across 60 years without ever seeming to crave the spotlight. To Stanton, the burdensome duties of stardom had limited appeal.
With his permanent hangdog frown and blue-collar small-town air, Stanton was typecast as a character actor, a label he dismissed during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2013. “Every actor is a character actor,” he shrugged. “I was offered a whole career. I could have been a leading man, much more famous, much richer, and with more pussy, onscreen and off.” But he chose to shun a mainstream career because, he said with a dry laugh, it was “too much work.”
Stanton’s road-hardened screen persona had more in common with veteran rock outlaws like Keith Richards or Johnny Cash than most of his Hollywood peers. A friend of Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson, he partied with the Laurel Canyon hippie-rock crowd in the 1960s and 1970s. He once aspired to be professional singer himself, but eventually “surrendered” to acting. A lifelong chain-smoker and late-night drinker, he was still performing in LA bars with his Tex-Mex band into his eighties. “Singing and acting are actually very similar things,” he told the Observer in 2013. “Anyone can sing and anyone can be a film actor. All you have to do is learn.”
Stanton began his career on TV in the mid 1950s, appearing in pulpy westerns and thrillers for numerous directors, including Alfred Hitchcock. He graduated to the big screen with small but striking roles in films like Stuart Rosenberg’s Cool Hand Luke (1967), Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (1973), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II (1974), Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and John Carpenter’s Escape From New York (1981). But it was was not until the mid 1980s that a new generation of left-field indie directors, many of them European, began to recognize Stanton’s potential a kind of alternative Hollywood icon. For outsiders, his weathered face became a road map of the altered states of America, the messy human reality behind the shiny billboard.
A punky British writer-director in LA exile, Alex Cox gave Stanton one so his most memorable co-starring roles as Bud, the hard-nosed veteran car repossessor in his apocalyptic neo-noir sci-fi comedy Repo Man (1984). Cox wanted Dennis Hopper for the part, but his minimal budget would not stretch that far. Instead, Stanton brought a hard-won, lived-in, bone-weary truth to a spoofy comic-book movie, his natural understatement lending extra conviction to Bud’s bracingly caustic worldview: “look at those assholes, ordinary fucking people. I hate 'em!”
Shot back to back with Repo Man, Stanton’s most celebrated starring role could hardly be more different. Drinking with Sam Shepard in a New Mexico bar, the frustrated actor casually voiced his yearning for a character with “some beauty or sensitivity”. This led Shepard to craft a lead party with Stanton in mind, as traumatized high plains drifter Travis Henderson in German director Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984). Like a mythic character from an old western ballad, Travis is a mute man in black, wandering the wide open spaces of south Texas, fleeing from a shattering emotional catastrophe that slowly comes into focus as the film unfolds.
It is testament to the expressive power of Stanton’s granite-carved face and soulful, doleful eyes that Travis barely speaks a word for the first half of Paris, Texas. His grizzled features feels inseparable from the elemental landscape around him, hollow and lonely and timeless, his deep-rooted anguish echoed in the plaintive twangs of Ry Cooder’s poetically bare score. “I related to the fact that he didn’t talk for a half an hour,” Stanton told The Vulture in 2013. “The syndrome of being silent. Silence is a powerful statement.”
Paris, Texas won multiple awards and broad critical acclaim, earning the 57-year-old Stanton belated art-house superstar status. It led to supporting roles in more mainstream projects, like John Hughes’ Pretty In Pink (1986) and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). But Stanton’s most consistent screen champion in his latterday career was David Lynch, who cast the veteran star belatedly in multiple projects, starting with Wild at Heart (1990). In an ironic reversal of his Repo Man experience, Stanton was Lynch’s first choice to play Frank Booth in Blue Velvet (1985), but he declined and the role went to Hopper.
In the sinister carnival funhouse of Lynchworld, Stanton typically represents an anchor of wholesome all-American normality. Lynch has repeatedly praised the actor for his easy humor, laidback manner and apparent “innocence” on screen. “Everyone loves this guy,” the director said during a university speech in 2006. “He has no pretenses, he is so natural it’s unbelievable.”
Arguably Stanton’s finest detour into Lynch’s mind-bending twilight zone has been his deadpan performance as Carl Rodd in in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1997), which he reprised this year in the triumphantly bizarre reboot of Twin Peaks on Showtime. Carl is straight-talking everyman who has seen enough weirdness not to feel tempted any more by darkness on the edge of town: “I’ve already gone places, I just want to stay where I am.”
Still working deep into his eighties, Stanton enjoyed some of the fringe benefits of elder statesman kudos in his final decade. Swiss director Sophie Huber’s enchanting but elusive documentary portrait Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2013) stands as a fittingly gnomic epitaph, immortalizing the ageing star’s geologically rugged face in luminous monochrome, like a living Ansel Adams landscape photo. Huber also captures Stanton singing to camera in several intimate, beautifully tender performances that recall Johnny Cash’s final, pockmarked, pared-down recordings.
Stanton’s last leading role came in the quirky independent feature Lucky from actor turned director John Carroll Lynch (no relation to David), which premiered at SXSW Festival in March this year. Wizened as a dry twig and clearly in fragile health, the 90-year-old veteran fully inhabits the title character, a chain-smoking old curmudgeon facing up to his own mortality with beatific calm in a backwater desert town. David Lynch plays a supporting role, leading a hefty shot of absurd comedy and meta-textual resonance. Elegiac in tone but full of warmth and humor, Lucky feels almost like a planned memorial, a bittersweet lap of honor. Stanton knew what was coming.
Harry Dean Stanton left a huge dent in the American landscape with just a handful of starring roles, dozens of memorable cameos and an alluring Zen Cowboy attitude that struck a universal chord far beyond his own screen fame. In later life, when strangers recognized him but could not quite place his face, he would tell them he was a retired astronaut. Which, on some level, he was.
If major screen stardom eluded Stanton, that was largely his personal choice. In any case, he embraced his left-of-mainstream reputation with typically understated calm. “You end up accepting everything in your life,” he told the Observer in 2013. “Suffering, horror, love, loss, hate, all of it. It’s all a movie anyway.”
Peter Travers on Harry Dean Stanton: 'The Coolest Dude in the Room
“When I die,” Harry Dean Stanton told me once, “people are going to say, ‘I thought he was dead already.’” Typical Stanton – and atypically wrong. Though reports insist that the man actually has died at 91, avid moviegoers know he’s always been around when we needed a Stanton fix at the movies. Hell, he made over 200 of them. His latest, ironically titled Lucky, with Stanton starring as an atheist on a spiritual journey, opens in two weeks…
Penny Chenery, Owner of the Triple Crown Winner Secretariat, Dies at 95
From a much longer article:
Penny Chenery, who took over her father’s thoroughbred farm with little knowledge of horse racing and became one of the few prominent women in the sport as the owner and breeder of Secretariat, perhaps the fastest horse who ever raced, died on Saturday at her home in Boulder, Colo. She was 95.
Her death was announced by her family.
When Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes in 1973, capturing the Belmont by an astounding 31 lengths, he was a national celebrity. He appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated and attracted thousands of fan letters.
When Secretariat died at 19 in 1989, Ms. Chenery, who oversaw his fortunes as the manager of her family’s Meadow Stable in Virginia, recalled how he had enthralled so many in troubled times.
“In 1973, the country was in an emotional slump,” she wrote in The New York Times. “It was the time of the Watergate and Nixon scandals, and people were looking for something wholesome to admire. I’ve always felt that because he was a chestnut horse and our stable colors were blue and white, he was running in red, white and blue.”
Robert Shaw, the inventor of one of the best holidays ever (Pi Day), passed away on August 19th, from complications of Alzheimer’s (age 78). His life will be celebrated this Sunday, and yes, there will be Pie.
Eric Eycke, Ex-Corrosion of Conformity singer, passed away last week. He was in hospice battling a number of health issues.
He left the band shortly after the release of their first album. They started off as a punishing hardcore band during the times of Black Flag and Bad Brains. After he left, the band eventually turned into more of a doom metal / stoner rock band. http://loudwire.com/ex-corrosion-of-conformity-singer-eric-eycke-passes-away/
Mr Hall also became a sort of icon in mathematical circles, thanks to a Parade Magazine column written by Marilyn Vos Savant about what came to be known as “The Monty Hall Problem”.
[The quickest intuitive explanation of the solution might be this:.
The justification for the “contestant” changing their original selection can be simplified this way:
The “host” knows all the information about the doors in advance.
Once the “contestant” makes their first choice, the “host” adds information by displaying what is behind a lesser-valued door.
As the “host” has now injected information, the “contestant” can now recalculate the odds of the remaining choices, based in the additional information, just justifying the odds-favored choice of changing doors.]
(Obviously this strategy is not guaranteed to play to the “contestant’s” advantage in a single run or a small number of runs. It does, however, prove to be experimentally valid in observations of outcomes involving models of extended-run testing.)
Thus, the “contestant”, by following Vos Savant’s recommended course of action, does increase the probability of choosing a more valuable door.
Mr Hall, well-regarded for his intelligence and business sense, knew of this problem and was said to be intrigued by it. He was said to be honored that his name had gotten attached to a mathematical conundrum of some public note.
The given probabilities depend on specific assumptions about how the host and contestant choose their doors. A key insight is that, under these standard conditions, there is more information about doors 2 and 3 that was not available at the beginning of the game, when the door 1 was chosen by the player: the host’s deliberate action adds value to the door he did not choose to eliminate, but not to the one chosen by the contestant originally. Another insight is that switching doors is a different action than choosing between the two remaining doors at random, as the first action uses the previous information and the latter does not. Other possible behaviors than the one described can reveal different additional information, or none at all, and yield different probabilities.
The Parade column and its response received considerable attention in the press, including a front page story in the New York Times in which Monty Hall himself was interviewed. (Tierney 1991) Hall understood the problem, giving the reporter a demonstration with car keys and explaining how actual game play on Let’s Make a Deal differed from the rules of the puzzle. In the article, Hall pointed out that because he had control over the way the game progressed, playing on the psychology of the contestant, the theoretical solution did not apply to the show’s actual gameplay. He said he was not surprised at the experts’ insistence that the probability was 1 out of 2. “That’s the same assumption contestants would make on the show after I showed them there was nothing behind one door,” he said. "They’d think the odds on their door had now gone up to 1 in 2, so they hated to give up the door no matter how much money I offered. By opening that door we were applying pressure. We called it the Henry James treatment. It was ‘The Turn of the Screw.’“ Hall clarified that as a game show host he did not have to follow the rules of the puzzle in the vos Savant column and did not always have to allow a person the opportunity to switch (e.g., he might open their door immediately if it was a losing door, might offer them money to not switch from a losing door to a winning door, or might only allow them the opportunity to switch if they had a winning door). “If the host is required to open a door all the time and offer you a switch, then you should take the switch,” he said. "But if he has the choice whether to allow a switch or not, beware. Caveat emptor. It all depends on his mood.”
@f00l I had a definite crush on Monty Hall when I was a little girl. Sad to lose him in the world.
I occasionally watch reruns of Let’s Make a Deal and watching someone put items in order from least to most expensive in 1980 dollars can be surprisingly tense.
From a much longer article, which covers his choices about those the magazines in some depth:
Mr. Newhouse, known as Si, and his younger brother, Donald, inherited an impressive publishing empire from their father, Samuel I. Newhouse, and built it into one of the largest privately held fortunes in the United States, with estimates of the family wealth running over $12 billion at the turn of the 21st century. While Donald led the more profitable newspaper and cable television operations, Si took charge of the more glamorous magazine division, Condé Nast.
Much of that glamour was created under Si Newhouse’s direction. Though he was a shy man and often painfully awkward in public, Mr. Newhouse hired some of the most charismatic magazine editors of the late 20th century, among them Tina Brown and Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair and Diana Vreeland and Anna Wintour at Vogue, and encouraged them to behave like the celebrities they extolled in his publications.
It helped that he rewarded them with salaries, expense accounts, clothing allowances and housing loans that were the envy of their peers. Newhouse editors also enjoyed spectacularly generous budgets at their magazines, which often ran deep in the red for years before turning profits.
“I am not an editor,” Mr. Newhouse told The New York Times in 1989. “I flounder when people ask me, ‘What would you do?’ ” His philosophy, he said, was to let his editors run free. “We feel almost that whichever way it goes, as long as it doesn’t do something absolutely screwy, you can build a magazine around the direction an editor takes.”
But when Mr. Newhouse deemed a magazine’s direction “screwy,” he didn’t hesitate to fire editors, sometimes so maladroitly that they first found out about their dismissals on television or in the gossip columns.
Newhouse magazines were criticized for exalting the rich and famous through articles that gave their personal foibles and professional exploits equal importance. But as circulation and advertising revenues at his periodicals soared, other publishers took up the glitz-and-scandal approach to journalism. By the end of the 20th century, even the most serious newspapers and magazines offered profiles of entertainers, businesspeople, artists and politicians that balanced weighty accomplishment with juicy gossip.
His magazines came to stand for a golden era of publishing and became an integral part of the culture they were covering.
“The LAPD has no information about the passing of singer Tom Petty. Initial information was inadvertantly provided to some media sources. However, the LAPD has no investigative role in this matter. We apologize for any inconvenience in this reporting.”
The CBS news division said in a statement: “CBS News reported information obtained officially from the LAPD about Tom Petty. The LAPD later said it was not in a position to confirm information about the singer.” (Independently of the CBS report, Variety also reported that Mr. Petty had died and later updated its article, citing the Police Department statement.)
Late Monday afternoon, the headline on the CBS article had been changed from “Tom Petty, legendary rocker, is dead at 66” to “LAPD clarifies it cannot confirm Tom Petty’s death.”
It seems that as if 2 hours ago, not CBS, the LAPD, nor other sources can confirm that Petty has died.
@f00l he was found unconscious after a cardiac arrest. Paramedics got a pulse… He was put on life support. No real brain functions. His family ceased life support, but his body hasn’t given up yet… Unfortunately there isn’t much hope if all that is true.
@jbartus I see this thread as a way to celebrate the lives of exceptional people- to look back on their accomplishments. Also to learn more about people I have never heard of but made a difference in the world. I don’t see mass murders fitting in here. That of course is just my personal opinion.
this thread focuses on celebrities because its predecessor explicitly described its purpose as being about the passing of celebrities. https://meh.com/forum/topics/rip-2016-edition “I thought it would be interesting to see how many celebrities do go in 2016” imo the massacre in vegas deserves its own thread, rather than being relegated to a minor mention in a celebrity death thread.
@no1 I seem to recall from my earliest days here on the Meh forum being chastised for trying to dictate the topics of discussion in a discussion thread I had created. This chastisement was well deserved, and that was in a thread I myself had created.
You are of course entitled to your opinion and to voice that opinion. By that same token I’m entitled to voice mine. You’re right that the tragedy that took place in Las Vegas deserves to be much more than a footnote to a collection of celebrity deaths. Sadly it would appear that nobody else has felt this way strongly enough to bother making such a thread. If you like you may consider my post here to be a commentary on how ridiculous it is that Tom Petty has garnered more overt sympathy here than the now 59 dead in Vegas. I’m sorry if my perspective interrupted some people’s nostalgia trip.
“…being chastised for trying to dictate the topics of discussion in a discussion thread” - if i came across as trying to dictate the direction of the discussion in this thread, then i wrote poorly and i apologise. my intent was simply to point out the reason why the thread has historically focused on celebrity deaths while ignoring other topics.
I had thought, in this thread, of mentioning the horror of last night in LV and the many lost lives also.
I did not, in part because I just didn’t want do a post about it yet.
I’m just emotionally tired and discouraged and trying to come to terms with this terrible thing. I keep thinking of the lives cut short. Of the injured. Of those of who have lost family members.
I am quite saddened at the loss of Petty. It’s something “normal sized” as a source of sorrow . It’s one I do not find it difficult to talk about at the moment.
Last night’s hideous events in Las Vegas bring other sorts of emotions, much stronger ones, about serious violence and senseless loss and tragedy, and all the thoughts and feelings of us all, and the injured people and maimed lives, and all the personal beliefs that all of us bring to a mass murder situation, political or otherwise.
I don’t have a simple of beliefs about the politics, Esp regarding firearms. My own thoughts are on that are complex to me, and I am a now and then user of personal firearms. Many in my family have them.
I don’t wish to discuss the politics of that in this thread. Not even a little bit.
I have avoided in depth news reports today on LV, until I could focus on them. I have no idea if a motive for the shooting has been found, or whether perhaps last night’s shooter will be found to have some measurable and serious physical brain disorder.
So I did not bring it up. Yet.
Not because I believe that Petty’ death is in any way more significant than horrific anonymous random mass murder. I believe and feel nothing of the sort.
Rather, because Petty’s death is something I can bear to talk about. The LV shooting … I’m still, at this remove of miles, knowing no one there, in shock. It just hurts so much.
If that makes me a coward who sometime mis-values events in public, because I did not mention the shooting in LV yet today here, then for this day, so be it.
I could say that my thoughts, all our thoughts, are with the victims and their families. T thoughts are.
Will that help them? I hope so. Bit I don’t know.
Can I avoid the political nonsense garbage talk, filled with judgement, distortion, alt facts, that I’m sure will roil the news commentaries for some time?
And can I then still hope to catch good, measured, intelligent commentary and hope that we will actually have discussions about this topic not filled with manipulation and self-righteousness and rigid stupidity?
I don’t know. I’m just tired of people getting shot for no reason. Il I’m tired of pointless tragedy. Sometimes …
It’s just so bad. I don’t really have useful words. Wish I did.
I’m glad that you brought it up. I just wasn’t ready to.
I people don’t get into arguments about whether it belongs in the thread or not.
@jbartus Who’s lives were more important, a couple gunned down in Las Vegas or the two 15-year olds killed execution style here in town?
Who was more important, an adult standing in the street in Charlottesville that was killed by a car or the 6 year old struck and killed by a car here over the weekend?
We make bullshit value judgements as a society all the time. Check your obituaries- how many of those people deserved to die?
Maybe if we really cared about every death and not just ones that happened all at once we would be a kinder society.
@sammydog01 none of the above. My issue is that less than 24 hours after a massive, senseless tragedy we’re apparently more worried about the death of someone who had the good fortune to be born with talent, who abused his body with drugs, and whose life ended naturally than we are about the nearly 60 people dead and 500 wounded in a completely senseless act of violence carried out on the large scale.
Tom Petty made great music, and it’s a shame that his time has come and passed, but you’ll have to excuse me for not getting all bleary eyed over his passing when there are hundreds of people suffering due to such a senseless act of violence. Frankly the fact that his passing got as much press as it did treading directly on the heels of the massacre in Las Vegas is unconscionable and disrespectful to the hundreds of victims. There’s plenty of time to mourn for the poor dead rich rock star who probably caused his own death, the Vegas victims deserve better than to be shuffled off into the background without even a word. Celebrity shouldn’t trump tragedy.
Go ahead and be sad for whomever you like, it’s your right, but I’m going to go ahead and keep exercising my right too, regardless of what you think of it.
Frankly the fact that his passing got as much press as it did treading directly on the heels of the massacre in Las Vegas is unconscionable and disrespectful to the hundreds of victims.
(please dint take this as an attack. It’s my reaction. My opinion. Nothing more.)
I completely disagree with the word remark because I disagree with your assessment of the reasons that Petty’s death got the attention it did on that day.
Petty was a significant cultural figure, and his death, unexpectedly and at a relatively young age, world have gotten a lot of attention on a normal day. And that fine by me.
But also that’s somewhat beside the point, because Sunday and Monday were not normal days.
Not now. I hope, not ever.
I think - I heard several people say this or similar yesterday, quietly, and in pain - They talked about Petty’s death because they could bear to. Because they could not find words for what happened in Vegas. Or because they had words but couldn’t beat to speak them.
Petty’s death was within “normal”. And so, therefore, painful, but bearable.
What in Vegas was so much further into incomprehensible pure horror.
Yesterday I saw people try to speak of the events and horrible tragedy in LV, say half a sentence, and stop. They didn’t know how to go on.
Years from now, I know which one will still haunt us (all of us). It won’t be Petty’s death, as sad as that it.
Years from now we will mourn the pointless loss of lives, and shattered lives of the injured, and shattered families. Years from now we will still feel a kind of shocked pain that still had trouble finding words.
People sometimes or often spoke yesterday, of Petty, because they could stand to.
Because in the middle and aftermath of shocking evil and loss, their (and my) brains fought to rest for a moment on some tiny piece of something - some event - that is comprehensible on a normal scale.
I hope you won’t be too hard on people, or quick to be judgmental. That people speak of Petty doesn’t necessarily mean that is who is on their minds, that they cannot speak of yet.
I spoke of Petty yesterday. But he was, only for a short moment, the person who was on my mind.
@f00l Tragedies happen every day everywhere. Check your local newspaper. They only get our attention when they are big like this one. That’s why they happen- attention whores like the attention. Maybe we should back off.
I follow the news. Have all my life. Local and beyond. I presume many of us do.
I am well aware if the flow of news events and their frequency. And the flow of terrible news events. And the constant flow of horrible outcomes for the innocent.
This goes on within our lives and our species, more or less. I hope our kind makes some progress along the way. I don’t know whether or not we do.
In my prebious remark, I wasn’t specifically speaking to your remarks and perspective. If I should have, I apologize.
The last previous remark of mine was specifically addressed to the concerns of another. Those remarks may or may not have value.
If I should be backing off something I cannot see I should be backing off from, apologies.
Some of these horrors seem to be enacted by attention whores and those with a flawed and horrible agenda.
Others:. I just don’t know. We have much to learn on about how a fairly normal person (sometimes) goes in a terrible and obsessive direction and causes tragedy.
@f00l Second, I don’t understand the difference between one guy killing 58 people and 58 guys killing one each. The same number of people are dead. The same number of families are in mourning. We, as a country, almost revel in mass murders. The news will be featuring this story for another couple of weeks. Every detail will be covered. The victims will all be featured in the press nationally. And some random tourist that gets shot on the strip is anonymous. It’s like everyone’s life doesn’t have the same value.
@jbartus This thread is getting ridiculous.
Yes, everyone is shocked at the senseless murder of so many people by an evil crazed killer.
People are also very sad about the sudden death of Tom Petty, who is known world-wide.
Maybe this thread could be renamed to mention famous and celebrated people, with another thread to include the murder of innocent people. I dunno…
I do know that I hope this killer idiot is forgotten in history and the families of the murdered and injured can carry on. We need to stop bickering about what the hell goes in the thread & carry on!
My prayers for those murdered, injured & for Tom Petty’s family.
Just my 2 cents… Sorry if I offended someone…
To sate the lust of power; more horrid still,
The foulest stain and scandal of our nature
Became its boast — One Murder made a Villain,
Millions a Hero. — Princes were privileg’d
To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.
Ah! why will Kings forget that they are Men?
Beilby Porteus, 1759
“If only one man dies […], that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.”
There are many ways to feel about the events in Vegas and similar horrors. Or about other pointless acts of violence. I suppose I cycle through some if these.
Here is one.
Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
By Dylan Thomas
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
Gord Downie - Canadian rock musician, writer, and occasional actor died at the age of 53 (brain cancer). Best known as the front man for The Tragically Hip
“Gord knew this day was coming — his response was to spend this precious time as he always had — making music, making memories and expressing deep gratitude to his family and friends for a life well lived, often sealing it with a kiss on the lips”
Fats Domino, one of the architects of rock ‘n’ roll, died yesterday at 89 years old at his daughter’s suburban New Orleans home. Haydee Ellis, a family friend, confirmed the news to NPR. Mark Bone, chief investigator for the Jefferson Parish Coroner’s office, tells NPR Domino died of natural causes.
In the 1940s, Antoine Domino, Jr. was working at a mattress factory in New Orleans and playing piano at night. Both his waistline and his fanbase were expanding. That’s when a bandleader began calling him “Fats.” From there, it was a cakewalk to his first million-selling record — “The Fat Man.” It was Domino’s first release for Imperial Records, which signed him right off the bandstand.
Producer, songwriter, arranger and bandleader Dave Bartholomew was there. He described the scene in a 1981 interview now housed at the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University. “Fats was rocking the joint,” Bartholomew said. “And he was sweating and playing, he’d put his whole heart and soul in what he was going, and the people was crazy about him — so that was it. We made our first record, ‘The Fat Man,’ and we never turned around.”
@no1 I had the day off today so naturally came down with a cold, so didn’t go out to do anything useful or fun. Magnum PI was on; first episode I’ve watched in a long time, though it was one of my favorite series back then.
John Hillerman, best known for his portrayal of stuffy Brit Jonathan Higgins, the foil to Tom Selleck’s unconventional detective on Magnum P.I., has died at his home in Texas from unknown causes, according to The New York Times. He was 84.
Born on Dec. 20, 1932 in Texas, where he was also raised, Hillerman ironically became most associated with a British character, Magnum P.I.’s by-the-book Higgins. (from http://ew.com/tv/2017/11/09/john-hillerman-dead-magnum-p-i-chinatown-actor-dies/)
It’s ironic how many Brits are now playing Americans, yet to this day I’ll bet most people still thought John Hillerman was actually British. He was a wonderful actor. RIP John
@snapster Dammit. That’s about one of the worst things I’ve heard (right after them moving the payment process over to Amazon, which caused me to quit buying at wine dot woot).
Wine Country Connect is a management, sales and logistics company based in Sonoma, CA. Founded in 2005, Wine Country Connect pioneered a new way for wineries to sell wine online with the launch of Wine.Woot (now a subsidiary of Amazon)
Wine Country Connect’s producer-direct model is the industry leader in compliant e-commerce sales, helping wineries reach millions of new buyers.
In addition to Wine.Woot, Wine Country Connect has developed strategic partnerships with Rue La La, Touch of Modern, Meh.com, VINEBOX, Groupon Goods, and Fab.
Updated 7:55 PM EST November 12, 2017
Longtime gossip columnist Liz Smith, who started her column at the New York Daily News in 1976, has died, according to the newspaper. She was 94.
Known affectionately as the “the Grand Dame of Dish,” Smith’s legendary work included a chronicle of Donald and Ivana Trump’s divorce, which made front-page news.
"Covering the glitters"
Smith’s column, which was titled simply “Liz Smith,” became a staple in the publication for a quarter century, and was syndicated in almost 70 newspapers.
Smith started her journalism career as a CBS Radio news producer for Mike Wallace, according to the New York Daily News.
But it was her sharp writing at Cosmopolitan — namely the salacious details of the romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton — that led to her break at the Daily News.
Her clever barbs and scathing commentary elevated her to the level of notoriety shared by the A-listers she covered — many of whom are now remembering her fondly.
“Loved Liz Smith. Smart and funny. Gossip from the High Road,” actor Rob Lowe tweeted.
I met her once, accidentally, in my school years. She had been school friends in her youth with the mom of a friend of mine. They had stayed in touch off and on, and I just happened to come over when she was present.
I had no idea of her media standing until more than a decade later. But she knew how to command a room. And (to the perceptions of a schoolkid), she was funny as hell.
‘Malcolm Young, guitarist and co-founder of pioneering rock band AC/DC, has passed away, the band said in a statement Saturday. He was 64. Young’s family said he passed away peacefully Saturday with his family at his bedside. He is survived by his wife O’Linda and two children.’
“He leaves behind an enormous legacy that will live on forever,” the band said. "Malcolm, job well done."
His brother died last month. George Redburn Young (6 November 1946 – 22 October 2017)
Azzedine Alaïa, Fashion’s Most Independent Designer, Is Dead at 82
This loss has perhaps little daily relevance to most of us. But he was a creative force and a an interesting man, who refused to act by the common strategies of the luxury industry. And who made, or was capable of making, by himself, all his designs, starting with cloth and scissors.
He practiced fashion design as art.
I’ve no desire to wear this sort of clothing, even if I could afford it, would look decent in it, and had that sort if social life. But it’s lovely to look at.
Azzedine Alaïa, one of the greatest and most uncompromising designers of the 20th and 21st centuries, died on Saturday in Paris. He was 82.
…
Known as a sculptor of the female form, and worn by women from Michelle Obama to Lady Gaga, Mr. Alaïa was equally famous for his rejection of the fashion system and his belief that it had corrupted the creative power of what could be an art form.
While this thread is full of famous and noteworthy people, most of whom left a positive impression on the world, I figured that this news might cheer some people up.
Joan Hess 1949- 23 Nov 2017, aged 68. Joan Hess was the author of the Claire Malloy Mysteries and the Arly Hanks Mysteries, formally known as the Maggody Mysteries. She won the American Mystery Award, the Agatha Award, for which she had been nominated five times, and the Macavity Award. She was a member of Sisters in Crime and a former president of the American Crime Writers League. She contributed to multiple anthologies and book series, including Crosswinds, Deadly Allies, Malice Domestic, and The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. She also wrote the Theo Bloomer mystery series under the pseudonym Joan Hadley… This past year Joan completed an unfinished manuscript (The Painted Queen) of Elizabeth Peters. Based on extensive notes and conversations with Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters), her devoted friend, Joan took on the task of completing the last edition of this cherished series.
Many if us remember this as a signal part of growing up;
ACTRESS Heather Menzies-Urich who famously played Louisa von Trapp in the 1965 hit film The Sound of Music has died aged 68.
Heather, who was also the widow of actor Robert Urich, had very recently been diagnosed with brain cancer, according to her son Ryan Urich.
He said his mother died on Christmas Eve, surrounded by her children and family members.
“She was an actress, a ballerina and loved living her life to the fullest,” Urich said.
“She was not in any pain but, nearly four weeks after her diagnosis of terminal brain cancer, she had enough and took her last breath on this Earth at 7.22pm.”
@OldCatLady That is so sad, I love her books. I did not hear that, so glad I read this. I love murder mystery books. I will miss looking for her latest.
Let’s hope this ends up being a very short list.
@heartny 2nded! But I worry that it will be a longer one…
He technically died in 2017. Although with timezones…
Rajbinder Singh Brar, known as ‘Raj Brar’ in the Punjabi singing industry, dead at age 47.
You sohma’bitch!
Breakingnews.com is officially dead.
@PlacidPenguin Breaking News alerts were basically my primary news source. Wondering what to replace it with.
Maybe I’ll just not pay attention to anything in the world around me for a while and see what that’s like.
@awk
Same. Sigh…
/giphy sigh
@awk
Any news app will do. Huffpo WSJ NYT WashPost USA Today CNN whatever. Just pick one you like.
@f00l
So… Considering that some of those are biased, some are ridiculous, and some are both…
@f00l I don’t like any of those.
@awk
@PlacidPenguin
The point is that they all do it. The headlines and notifications. Including the phone’s native news app… So pick something you like - or if you wanna get outside your own bubble now and then, pick something contrarian to what you like. Or pick 2. Or 10.
@PlacidPenguin.
Lemme know when you find a completely unbiased news source.
Oops sorry forgot the universe would burn out before one became available.
Everybody got flaws.
@f00l
Well we had one which wasn’t completely biased, but now it’s closed.
Also, I thought you knew me better than that. I listen to things which are ridiculous.
@PlacidPenguin
I know. I took it off my phone yesterday.
But ya know, the headlines and notifications are the same, app to app. I have a bunch of them. Same notifications from all. If you click thru to the story, unless it’s a very large paper, the story will either be purchased from a wire service anyway, or purchased from a large paper such as the ones named above.
You can attempt to remove obvious blame as, but not all bias. I just go with a wide philosophical range of sources and read a diff source every day.
NYT WSJ and some others have paywalls. So they are great for headlines, but perhaps better to get a news aggregator app or similar where you won’t hit the paywall quickly.
I have subscriptions to some. Prob will subscribe to more if I can find the right deals. Gotta support journalism if I can afford to.
If you want a broad range of sources, consider a wire service source.
@awk
That’s what I’ve decided to do
@f00l - This reinforces my trust that The Christian Science Monitor is reliably unbiased. Do not be misled by the name.
I agree - these news sources are going to need our help, in the last month I began subscribing.
@KDemo Please, all MSM is biased. Some websites listed on that website as unbiased are pure propaganda units.
@awk That’s what I’ve done since the election. It’s blissful.
@Fuzzalini @awk
I keep on forgetting it’s closed, and I keep on typing “br” in address bar before I remember.
I blame @jbartus that I keep on forgetting.
@KDemo
Haven’t read the CSM in a long time, but decades ago it had a stellar reputation for quality. Might give them another shot
Anyone who’s got Amazon Prime - now that Bezos has purchased WaPo, if you have Prime, you can get the Wash Post digital free for 6 months and then at a huge discount.
WSJ - they are a good news source esp for financials. Their editorial slant is reliably pro Wall Street and biz, duh.
They mostly piss me off by being expensive. If I could get a digital subscription for under $100 a year I’d likely bite. Last time I checked they were way more than that. (Students - active students, they have some kind of verification - and faculty/teachers can get a good price)
Papers often have holiday promo sales. I got a some kinda great perpetual NYT deal last Memorial Day. I do WaPo thru Prime.
I am waiting for WSJ to want me as a customer badly and offer me some incredible price.
I also look pretty often at politico, the economist, the guardian. La times sometimes. Feel guilty about not supporting the local rags, so am gonna price those this week. Huffpo sometimes. Newsweek online has done some great stuff lately. Real Clear Politics. BBC. The New Yorker sometimes. In case someone thinks they understand my political philosophies from the above list, I also periodically check in w the National Review. And CNN and BuzzFeed and others. And 538. And NPR sometimes. I rarely read “opinion” anything. If I do read opinion, it’s either an intriguing headline, or a recommended piece, or something from an “opinion” journal. I sometimes do Bloomberg and CNBC.
And I really like Morning Joe because of the looseness of the conversation, and like Rachel Maddow who definitely has a progressive POV and who also does a superb job of covering what she covers (did you know that Steve Bannon is a Maddow addict? Yeah, that Steve Bannon).
Some of the trad network weekend talk shows can be quite good but I’m never watching. I’ll pick up snippets from someplace else. CNN has a really boring and predictable talking head topic pattern and I won’t bother with them. Fox is worse. CNN needs an overhaul - of fewer camera-friendly predictable insight-free commentariat types and more brain-storming thoughtful people who aren’t ideologically predictable - and they need it BAD.
No “non-biased” source exists. The most unbiased source chooses what to cover and what to omit, what to emphasize and what are “facts”. But some are way way way worse than others. Sometimes they simply can’t cover a topic well, given their format. NPR, for instant, almost never does a deep dive into economic issues. It doesn’t fit their format well - but the light coverage of the topic by itself skews the feel of the medium.
Print media bias - they all have it but that doesn’t mean they are all equally biased. Fox’s skewing is so blatant that anything Murdock-sourced is suspect. As for the rest of them - you try to get a feel for what facts or arguments are missing or de-emphasized by reading what’s included and emphasized. Many of the reputable news sources do try, and try hard, to keep journalistic standards - tho they were certainly not prepared for DT and he completely schooled them. Furthermore, extensive news coverage in depth is really expensive. Only huge organizations have the $. If you want decent foreign coverage in depth, you have a choice of perhaps 5-8 sources in English and that’s it. No one else can afford it.
So pick your poison. Or your multiple poisons. It’s always been that way.
I don’t read all day. I barely read. glance at notifications and click thru if interested. I try to check out several diff news sources every week, at least to click thru to an article or two and also check their headlines. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I have a news-free week.
I wasn’t paying much attention to news until this last election heated up. I come and go in terms of news addiction. I might go back to localized worried ignorance. Or not. Undecided.
I have never figured out how to use Twitter effectively to track news. Just lazy I guess. (I have zero desire to comment and add to the Twitter noise).
“For the colonized person, objectivity is always directed against him” (Frantz Fanon)
Whatever one might think of various political POV’s, Fanon is dead on and logically correct re objectivity. What a news source sells is not only filtered thru the biases of the owners, editors, writers, and their read of what the market wants - it’s also filtered thru the larger cultural perspectives and social/economic theories that define an era and a place.
One hundred years from now, assuming our civilization survives, our arguments and POVs will seem antiquated and simplistic. Those people will have new or evolved, that, one hopes, are also improved ways of viewing the world. And their perspectives will seem primitive to people one hundred years after that.
We just have to try to do our best.
@KDemo
I owe you an apology. I meant to simply reply to your post and thank you for mentioning the Christian Science Monitor.
Then gremlins and demons took over my brain. This happens a lot.
So then I went off on some long weird rant about how I access news. And seek “objectivity”, such as it is or isn’t.
Except that your username was still at the top of the post. (@f00l shrinks down in chair.)
That rant was never directed at you, and I doubt you’re much in need of my rants.
That was just my brain going nuts.
So I guess I’m still a Goat, in more ways than one. Mea Culpa.
@awk Maybe checkout facebook. I heard their newsfeeds are popular and very reliable. This was shared with me on facebook.
@f00l I shared your tip about the WaPo Prime benefit and several friends found it useful. They thanked me very much, so unblames to you.
@f00l Don’t worry- no one read it.
@sammydog01
Touché
@OldCatLady
Yeah I just found out about the WaPo deal. Would have subscribed 6 months ago had I known.
@elimanningface
Everything on Facebook is always completely and totally fair and true.
I believe in that statement, 'cause I saw it on Facebook.
@f00l - I’ll forgive you - as soon as I dig out from under this pile of publications.
@PlacidPenguin @awk @f00l
@f00l @elimanningface well you can also get your news from the national enquirer as you wait in line at the grocery store. I am sure facebook would forgive you for trumping one of its main sources and reading it there rather than on facebook.
@Kidsandliz
Source for charts and graphs? Since the charts differ in their “objectivity ratings”, the diff reflects either bias variances or methodology differences or both in their different takes? More info?
PS
That’s a lotta buncha reasons to source out from all over the place. Scrambles the brain better. Soon, I will walk down the sidewalks muttering “I dunno” all day long.
Bliss.
PPS
National Enquirer isn’t what it used to be. Think it’s going downhill. It refuses to be objective in its coverage of BatBoy, and this pub doesn’t cover HRH Camila, the Duchess of Cornwall’s serial killing sprees at all. So it’s hard for me to trust it anymore.
PPPS.
USA Today has the best stupid colorful cutsie-pie charts and graphs. And that’s a high and difficult art.
No other print publications come anywhere close to that quality. It’s like they’re not even in the same business. Ya think?
@Kidsandliz
Re Facebook
I forget how to read while I’m on that site. Something about that site just turns off the skill for me. FB is for baby pix.
Hopefully Lars Ulrich?
@serpent
/giphy shocked and confused
@conandlibrarian I said hopefully. A man can hope. For the greater good of humanity.
@serpent He is a tool, but he is half-responsible for the greatest rock / metal band of all time.
/giphy Ride the Lightning
@serpent
Who has he murdered?
In our society, dickheads get to live and usually they get to go free.
drone.horse (soon)
@Ignorant @shawn
/giphy crying penguin
Tmobile Taxes… Dead soon…
@sohmageek
Had to look it up. Excellent news. Hope is becomes a fad.
@f00l yeah. Now to call them soon to figure out what it would cost compared to what we pay (2free lines would be paid for. But they give a discount as you’re moving promotions. )
@sohmageek
I think you get to keep your free lines. Someone I know called them.
You also have to proactively sign up for this billing system, I have been told, and there is a deadline, and the deadline is today? Don’t know, am about to call for clarification.
@f00l So I looked into it, They said I could likely keep my Data line that’s free, but the mobile line would become paid, it would be $180 for 5 voice lines all inclusive, I’d still have my device payments (3 free iPhone 7’s) Plus keep the device payment discounts. I’m currently paying $140 + taxes for the 5 voice lines… So it’s a bump of $40, but my taxes are 22.50, so if a few of the lines ended up getting the $10 discount that would pay off ($2.50 discount). HOWEVER… I end up getting the shaft on tethering speeds… and it looks like to get kickback you may lose your device payment discounts (the free part of the free iPhone.)
DIGITS beta is not eligible for the mobile one all inclusive currently. I kind of like digits beta, It gave me a free 2nd number for now… Given that the discounts won’t be available, I think I’ll wait till the next Uncarrier to see what incentives they give me to move to ONE… Then again it may be like the iPhone pricing where I could have had a 6S… then again, I wouldn’t have a 7… so sometimes it’s good to wait, other times not so much.
Om Puri - January 6, 2017
probably best known (in the western world) for his role in City of Joy.
Historic Pioneer Cabin Tree toppled in California storm.
Wikipedia says ~1000 years old, this article says 2000 years. Either way, a tragedy.
@KDemo
@KDemo Not that it had long to live after somebody carved a gigantic hole in its base. Another one collapsed in the sixties. I think the policy now is to not do that. They should carve the recent one up into knick-knacks and raise funds for the park service.
@PocketBrain - According to accounts, lightning strikes created the original wound. Additional carving was inflicted in 1881 when it was still privately owned. Glad to hear this is no longer done.
Clare Hollingworth
Wikipedia:
Born 10 October 1911
Knighton, Leicester, England
Died 10 January 2017 (aged 105)
Hong Kong
Occupation Journalist
Clare Hollingworth (10 October 1911 – 10 January 2017) was an English journalist and author. She was the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II, described as “the scoop of the century”.[1]
A rookie reporter for The Daily Telegraph in 1939, she spotted German forces massed on the Polish border, while travelling from Poland to Germany. She later helped rescue thousands of people from Hitler’s forces by arranging British visas.[1]
On 31 August 1939, Hollingworth had been working as a journalist for less than a week for The Daily Telegraph when she was sent to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. Hollingworth persuaded the British Consul-General in Katowice, John Anthony Thwaites, to lend her his chauffeured car for a fact-finding mission into Germany.[3] While driving along the German-Polish border, Hollingworth chanced upon a massive build-up of German troops, tanks and armoured cars facing Poland. The following morning Hollingworth called the British embassy in Warsaw to report the German invasion of Poland. To convince doubtful embassy officials, Hollingworth held a telephone out of her room window to capture the sounds of German forces.[3] Hollingworth’s eyewitness account was the first report the British Foreign Office had about the invasion of Poland.[2]
During the following decades, Hollingworth reported on conflicts in Palestine, Algeria, China, Aden and Vietnam.[2] In 1946 she was among the survivors of the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem that killed 91 people.[4]
John Simpson described her as the reporter who first interviewed the Shah of Iran, and, decades later, who last interviewed him too: “She was the only person he wanted to speak to”.[5]
She was the author of five books: The Three Weeks’ War in Poland (1940), There’s a German Right Behind Me (1945), The Arabs and the West (1950), Mao (1985), and her memoirs, Front Line (1990, updated with Neri Tenorio in 2005).
RIP San Diego Chargers.
They are gone to L.A., where football teams go to die.
They were the first team I ever really got into in the 70’s, cheered for & went to games. Yeah, they haven’t done great lately, but I always liked watching the games when I could…
@daveinwarsh
The move would appear to seriously suck. Way to blow off your loyal fans.
@daveinwarsh our plan to hoard all the NFL teams is underway, 2 down 30 to go.
@Ignorant
We’ll keep the 'boys. You can have Jerry. We’ll have plenty of billionaires left after he moves to LA.
@Ignorant I know of a team in Chicago that you are more than welcome to.
William Blatty (novelist and screenwriter), best known as the author of The Exorcist: January 12, 2017 (aged 89).
http://screencrush.com/william-peter-blatty-rip/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Peter_Blatty
Interesting fellow, really. Screenwriting credits include A Shot in the Dark (Pink Panther, with Peter Sellers).
Cause of death not given.
Not necessarily a person, but Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to close after 146 years:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/apnewsbreak-ringling-bros-circus-to-close-after-146-years/2017/01/14/672bfe94-dad0-11e6-a0e6-d502d6751bc8_story.html
@heartny
@heartny I have mixed feelings about this.
My birthday falls during what used to be their yearly run in NYC and for several years in a row, tickets to the circus were one of my birthday gifts. I have fond memories of my father (he died about two months before my 12th birthday) tho others attempted to keep that particular tradition alive for a few years after his death.
Having said that, the whole idea of using trained animals for entertainment has issues. (Of course, we are fine with using trained humans for entertainment, so I guess the whole brouhaha is merely more human hypocrisy.)
Zhou Youguan, the inventor of Pinyin, a way to express Chinese into words using the Roman alphabet, died January 14, 2017, at age 111.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/14/509820277/zhou-youguang-architect-of-a-bridge-between-languages-dies-at-111
Quoting from the article:
“Pinyin, which was adopted by China in 1958, gave readers unfamiliar with Chinese characters a crucial tool to understand how to pronounce them. These characters do not readily disclose information on how to say them aloud — but with such a system as Pinyin, those characters more easily and clearly yield their meaning when converted into languages like English and Spanish, which use the Roman alphabet.”
Remarkable human being. Among other things, Pinyin helped to change the literacy rate in China from 15% to around 95%. He lived an exemplary, long life.
@Shrdlu - That is a staggering statistic. Thank you.
@KDemo
@shrdlu
Yes. That’s a seriously significant human life.
Richard “Dick” Gautier (October 30, 1931 – January 13, 2017) was an American actor, comedian, singer, and caricaturist. He was known for his television roles as Hymie the Robot in the television series Get Smart, and Robin Hood in the short-lived TV comedy series When Things Were Rotten, a Mel Brooks send-up of the classic legend.
Gautier also played Hal, the partner of Stanley Beamish, in the short-lived sitcom series Mister Terrific (1967); and had various voice roles in the 1986 animated Transformers series (including the voice of Rodimus Prime). Wikipedia
/image Hymie the Robot
@mahoneyli I actually remember the short-lived TV series “Mr Terrific”. http://www.tv.com/shows/mr-terrific/
@mahoneyli @Stumpy91 I actually remember him from his appearances on Tattletales.
@mahoneyli My orthodontist from eons ago (when I was like 12-14ish?) looked and sounded very much like Dick Gautier.
JAN 12, 2017
R I P American Apparal
On Thursday, a bankruptcy court in Delaware approved an $88 million sale of the brand’s intellectual property and manufacturing equipment to Gildan, a Canadian apparel company that focuses on wholesale. Gildan will pay an additional $15 million to acquire American Apparel’s purchase orders and inventory, effectively giving the buyer all the tools it needs to launch a new clothing line from the ruins of the now defunct brand.
@Cerridwyn
Woot is still offering the option of American Apparel. I suppose AA’s production pipe will keep running until Gildan decides what to do with it.
@f00l or they have cases of them lying around already
RIP St Jude Medical, the name anyway. Abbott bought St Jude Medical, the company I work for, and aren’t wasting any time changing the name on everything. The acquisition should be a good thing and most everyone is optimistic as the product lines are mostly complimentary.
@Stumpy91 does that include the hospital in Memphis?
@tinamarie1974 Nope. Actually that is one reason to make the name change. There was always confusion about the name St Jude. St Jude Medical is not affiliated with St Jude Children’s Hospital.
@Stumpy91 Interesting.
Speaking of St Jude Medical, this.
I’ve had several people mention this to me (I have a pacemaker). FWIW, mine is not at all vulnerable to this flaw.
Eugene Cernan, last man to walk in the moon, died today at age 82.
https://www.nasa.gov/astronautprofiles/cernan
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Cernan
He took this photo
Apollo 17
@f00l
At the Neil Armstrong Memorial Service
From Wikipedia
Curiously, both Armstrong and Cernan graduated from Purdue University.
@f00l
@f00l Probably not all that many universities had aero (or astro) programs back in the 50s, tho quite a few in the Big Ten have a long history. Both men were Midwest-born, no farther than 3hr from Purdue campus
My Coke Rewards.
February 20, 2006 - June 30, 2017
March 22- last day to enter codes at MCR
June 30- last day to redeem for rewards
July 1- the fun continues at coke.com
@ilovehollboll I used to get coke rewards in the form of frequent buyer discounts from my local dealer.
Mary Tyler Moore
@Ignorant Oh, this makes me so sad. Damn it.
@snapster
She could turn the world on with her smile.
@Ignorant
Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke dancing to “You Wonderful You”
They are more or less perfect.
Another classic
@f00l at least Dick is still dancing.
Mike Connors, ‘Mannix’ Star, Dies at 91. I loved that show
http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/mike-connors-dead-dies-joe-mannix-1201971140/
@heartny
I loved it too.
Barbara Hale, Perry Mason’s Della Street Dead At 94
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/01/27/barbara-hale-perry-masons-della-street-dead-at-94/
@heartny
Apparently we’re off to a bad start this year.
John Hurt, Oscar-Nominated Star of ‘The Elephant Man,’ Dies at 77
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/john-hurt-dead-dies-elephant-man-alien-1201971891/
@heartny He was a wonderful Doctor Who, among so many other roles.
@heartny oh no! I really wanted to see more of The War Doctor.
@heartny
I didn’t know he was a Doctor. Which one?
He was astonishing in so many things. Elephant Man and 1984 …
@f00l Special Doctor Who episodes featuring three known Doctors and a fourth ‘new’ one (and first hint towards the current Doctor)
In case its not clear the above is a link. That was probably my favorite episode ever.
@f00l he was The War Doctor during the 50th Anniversary event “The Day of The Doctor”
@f00l here you can see him walking towards us in the center.
@jbartus
Was he subbing for someone? Or did he play a Doctor in the past? Or in the 50th anniversary thing was he playing some sort of “show interregnum Doctor”?
@f00l The War Doctor was the persona of The Doctor that he refused to acknowledge. Ten & Eleven had to interract with the War Doctor as part of a plan to save Galifrey. Thus, we have an unnumbered Doctor.
@f00l so between when the original run was cancelled and 2004 when Russell Davies brought it back starring Christopher Eccleston the she didn’t just pick up the story line where it had left off. In effect, John Hurt played the real Ninth Doctor (but not the Ninth because he wasn’t a Doctor (it’s complicated)) and we were given insight into the life of The Doctor between the original run and the new run. He showed up during the 50th Anniversary as part of a story line whereby the various incarnations of The Doctor had to work together to save Galifrey and appeared either in-person or through archival footage.
@jbartus
Ok. I have a fanatic DW friend locally. I’ll ask him about this and he’ll talk for 6+ hours. I’ll get the details before I start daydreaming about something else along the way …
@f00l Just bring a squirt gun, and spray him every time he dies to go off on a tangent. Similar to cat training…
@compunaut
There are no tangents with DW.
There are no unimportant details with DW.
You can understand nothing if you have not seen every episode multiple times and have not personally discovered or personally reconstructed a missing episode.
You can understand nothing if you have not repeatedly consumed all the multimedia and related universe materials.
You understand nothing if you can’t give the entire plot and a complete n-joke and in-series reference list for every episode after watching the first 20 sec.
@f00l I am confused. Was my explanation not clear?
@jbartus
I was replying to @compunaut.
He suggested that it was possible for s DW fanatic to go in a tangent.
As we all know, if a DW fanatic is talking about anything in the universe with a possibly connection to The Doctor, there exist no possible tangents.
Every possible detail is extremely relevant and necessary, and you must know every detail or you cannot understand The Doctor.
@f00l I meant with regards to your wanting to ask your friend.
@jbartus
Yeah. I was just trying to give you an idea of what the conversation with the DW fanatic would be like.
@f00l Perhaps a fire hose can be substituted for the squirt gun…
@compunaut
Re conversations with local DW fanatic:
When I’ve gently remarked that I’ve had all the info I can handle a few times and been ignored:
I start throwing out other topics, or coughing a lot, or claiming my brain is fried. Or I just suddenly remembered an urgent appointment to vacuum and dust all of outdoor Texas, and I’m already running late. He usually gets that he’s overloaded me after a few such excuses. It’s like a train. You start applying the breaks, and after a few miles you come to a stop.
(And then there a bunch of “one more thing” remarks until his brain gets out of full obsessed DW mode. I usually use dirty looks or excessive coughing to handle these.)
Someday I hope to get through at least all the modern Doctors. I’ve only seen a few eps of each modern incarnation.
I tried starting at the beginning old series once. I found the first Doctor nearly unwatchable to due to horrible horrible horrible horrible scripting and pacing. Hated them even tho you could see in them the germ of a great idea. But all my ambitions for catching up are not for this year.
@heartny My mortality is becoming more and more apparent with each of these passing’s.
@heartny
Was just on Reddit looking at something, when I saw a headline for a suggested post which showed that he died.
Sigh…
/image John Hurt
/giphy John Hurt
@heartny Very sad, great actor. And known to a younger generation through his portrayal of Olivander in the Harry Potter series, but so many great, memorable roles. R.I.P.
@compunaut
I did get a capsule overview of where John Hurt’s “War Doctor” fit into the DW series today from my friend the DW fanatic.
I insisted "no spoilers! This left him frustrated, but he complied.
Since this friend couldn’t give me tons of spoilers, instead, I had to hear why none of the earlier Doctors could fill the dramatic space; why it was necessary that the storyline; all the show politics for the first season of new Doctor (Eccleston’s year); the politics of the writers and show runners since then; the politics of the “50th anniversary show”; BBC management incompetence and and scheduling incompetence. Etc etc.
I kept it to between 1 and 2 hours by insisting on limits and not backing down.
@f00l You should be blaming the goat
@f00l The Day of the Doctor episode is wonderful. Don’t worry about all the side crap.
@duodec
If you let my friend start talking about DW, all is lost unless you smack him with a crowbar or something. He doesn’t stop on his own.
John Wetton (12 June 1949 – 31 January 2017)
Singer and bass guitarist for bands such as King Crimson and Asia passed away today from colon cancer.
@Sabre99 f*ck cancer
Irwin Corey: July 29, 1914 - February 6, 2017
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/07/513879165/the-worlds-foremost-authority-has-died-prof-irwin-corey-was-102
/image Professor Irwin Corey
“Walking on water is a trick…But life is a miracle.”
@Shrdlu
Had forgotten about him.
Hope he had a great life.
Richard Hatch, star of Battlestar Galactica, dead at age 71 of cancer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hatch_(actor)
@f00l
I’ve actually never seen the show - in any version.
I understand the 2003? miniseries and following tv series (a reboot version?) are quite good. Is that correct?
@f00l I loved that show. He could easily go in the celebrity crush thread (although Starbuck was pretty hot too).
hahahahaha “dick hatch” hahahahahaha
/giphy dick hatch
@f00l Another one of my celebrity crushes bites the dust. Can’t believe he was 71. Seems like only yesterday he was a young Captain Apollo, son of Commander Adama.
@heartny I loved, loved, loved Apollo. I always wanted to be Starbuck(I was a kid) but I still loved Apollo.
He said about playing Apollo:
“In my case, ‘Battlestar Galactica’ was a milestone,” he wrote on his personal website. “It afforded me the opportunity to live out my childhood dreams and fantasies. Hurtling through space with reckless abandon, playing the dashing hero, battling Cylons, monsters and super-villains – what more could a man want?” Or any teen-aged girl?
@f00l When you posted this I thought there was something other than Battlestar Galactica and I just remembered- he replaced Michael Douglas on The Streets of San Francisco. Not as good an actor but just as dreamy.
Al Jarreau, Singer Who Spanned Jazz, Pop and R&B Worlds, Dies at 76
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/12/arts/music/al-jarreau-singer-who-spanned-jazz-pop-and-rb-worlds-dies-at-76.html
Your Song (It’s a Little Bit Funny)
@f00l
@cranky1950
Yeah. I’ll take 5.
Warren frost. Actor. WW II VET. http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2017/02/18/actor-warren-frost-dies-middlebury/98095266/
1925-2017
He was in Seinfeld and Twinpeaks also Matlock.
Kenneth Arrow, Nobel-Winning Economist Whose Influence Spanned Decades, Dies at 95
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/business/economy/kenneth-arrow-dead-nobel-laureate-in-economics.html
Part of the NTY story:
I can’t believe no one posted Kim Jong-nam yet… He sounded like the sanest of the bunch… 1971- feb 13 2017
@sohmageek I was reading this article last night.
http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/what-actually-is-the-insanely-potent-vx-nerve-agent-that-killed-kim-jongnam/
@RiotDemon
I meant to put this one up, I didn’t hear about the death until the cause of death splashed all over the news. This is not only a high-tech method of settling a “family problem”, it’s also a message from N Korea to the world.
“I am your planet’s psychopath. I’ll do anything to anyone. I don’t care if you nuke me. I’ll just nuke you back.”
@sohmageek
I liked his hat choices.
Bill Paxton, age 61.
/image Bill Paxton Twister
@sammydog01
Way too young. : (
@sammydog01 @f00l
Complications from surgery.
@sammydog01 He was great as Hudson in Aliens…
/youtube game over man
@sammydog01 What a sad bit of news. :-{ He was just a decent human being, and an excellent actor.
http://people.com/movies/bill-paxton-dead-complications-surgery-age-61/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Paxton
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/bill-paxton-dead-61-article-1.2982645
I’m going to crawl back in bed and pretend this day didn’t happen.
@sammydog01 that sucks.
@sammydog01
@shrdlu
@etheltheflog
@PlacidPenguin
I thought I remembered that he was from FW and Aledo. Not the same schools I went to.
He saw John Kennedy leave the Texas Hotel on the morning of Nov 22, 1063.
The Day Bill Paxton Saw John F. Kennedy
http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/the-day-bill-paxton-saw-john-f-kennedy-7118827
Interview in Texas Monthly
http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/bill-paxton/
In this photo, the kid being lifted to see President Kennedy is Bill Paxton at age 8.
Part of the Texas Monthly Interview
PS I believe the speaker Paxton refers to was Rep Jim Wright, later Speaker of the House. I know he was there and believe he spoke - I bid on the original Star-Telegram photo copy or Kennedy and Wright taken that morning that Jim Wright had kept. But of course mine was a nothing big - the photo went for thousands.
@Shrdlu To me he seemed like the kind of guy you could go get a beer with, and not many actors fit that description.
@sammydog01
He does seem to have been a thoroughly decent person.
It must be a little weird to run a successful industry in which the very recognizable and “known” product is yourself. That can mess with someone’s head.
Famous people can just get overwhelmed, if they are recognizable. Plenty of them are very decent, but guarded. And plenty of them really never were decent, or else get locked into the “diva” bubble or something.
In NYC the locals may tell about seeing someone famous later, but they treat famous people as if they were anonymous and unknown, when spotted on the street or in public. You don’t see so many random phone pix taken on the street of famous people coming out of NYC. The locals think that’s uncool.
@f00l
Here’s another photo of Bill Paxton on Nov 22, 1963.
These are stills from a film taken by Roy Cooper, a cameraman for KTVT-TV in 1963.
When Paxton visited the 6th Floor Museum in Dallas in 2007, he realized they might have photos of him taken the morning of the assassination. He went thru various archival footage from Kennedy’s time in FW and found himself. I believe these photos or the Cooper film are viewable at the museum. I’ll have to go see - I think I have a reason to go in March.
@sammydog01 Did you know Bill Paxton was in a New Wave band in the 80s? He was! And here’s one of their singles:
@sammydog01 I’m so sad about him passing. He was such a likeable actor and from the tweets, comments, etc. I’ve read a really nice guy. His new TV show had just started airing and he was good on it. Doubt the show will survive since it’s so new, which is sad for the other actors. RIP Bill!
@sammydog01 Shocked to hear this yesterday. I read it on the wire, but as expected, it was already posted here. Damn. I quote him often. Especially as Chet from Weird Science. Damn.
Judge Wapner, 97. He was Judge Judy’s predecessor on The People’s Court. And kind of hot in a silvery haired way.
@sammydog01
That TV show is a scream. I have to leave a room if it’s on, or I get sucked in.
At least he got a really long life. I hope he found it a good one.
@sammydog01 This was one of the shows I recalled fondly during my high school years. And maybe some college? Anyway, 97! Nuthin’ wrong with that.
Neil Fingelton has passed away at 36.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Fingleton
@PlacidPenguin He appeared in “Dr. Who,” “X-men: First Class,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and "Game of Thrones."
Apparently died as a result of a heart attack. Shame.
Chuck Berry, wild man of rock who helped define its rebellious spirit, dies at 90.
I went to a Chuck Berry show. He never showed up.
So many great songs, though.
@KDemo This breaks my heart, truly. I’m now going to go somewhere and curl up in a little ball of self-pity and sorrow.
@Shrdlu -
Huey Lewis @Huey_Lewis_News
Chuck Berry. Maybe the most important figure in all of rock and roll. His music and his influence will last forever. - Huey
@Shrdlu Alexa is doing a good job of playing ALL his stuff, including instrumentals. Too Much Monkey Business, Don’t You Lie to Me, Beautiful Delilah, lots I’ve never heard. As soon as that guitar hits, you know who it is.
@KDemo
I saw Keith Richards and Ron Wood channel him often enough. What a musician.
Go Well, Chuck. I’m glad we had you for a little while.
He finally made it to The Promised Land.
Bruce Springsteen
@springsteen
Chuck Berry was rock’s greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock ‘n’ roll writer who ever lived.
@KDemo This has been making the rounds again in the wake of his passing… Chuck Berry snapped off a handful of quick punk
albumsong reviews for a punk zine in the 80s, and they’re priceless.My favorite, in reference to The Ramones
s/t“Sheena is a Punk Rocker”:@brhfl - Hah! Those are really great! No one has accused him of humility.
@brhfl - Hah! Those are really great! No one has accused him of humility.
Bears repeating.
James Cotton, Blues Harmonica Legend, Dies at 81
Somehow we missed this, he died March 16.
Derek Walcott, poet, 1992 Nobel Laureate in literature, died today.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/derek-walcott-a-mighty-poet-has-died
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/derek-walcott
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/books/derek-walcott-dead-nobel-prize-literature.html?_r=0
From The New Yorker:
From The New York Times:
A Far Cry From Africa
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilizations dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?
Dark August
So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
of this black August.
My sister, the sun,
broods in her yellow room and won’t come out.
Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume
like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,
she will not rise and turn off the rain.
She is in her room, fondling old things,
my poems, turning her album.
Even if thunder falls
like a crash of plates from the sky,
she does not come out.
Don’t you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly
to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,
so that when you emerge, my sister,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,
all with not be as it was, but it will be true
(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, my sister, then
I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,
The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you.
@f00l - This last photo is really remarkable.
@KDemo
Yeah. I think I have to save that photo.
@f00l
Dammit. I misspelled his name.
Derek Walcott.
Visiting The New Yorker website made me think of Alexander Woollcott, writer and round table member at the Algonquin Hotel, and Wolcott Gibbs, New Yorker editor. And so I didn’t check the spelling and I fucked it up.
Sorry, idiotic unforced error.
Alexander Woollcott is worth a mention “in his own write”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Woollcott
Wolcott Gibbs also had his lively moments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolcott_Gibbs
@f00l ping someone to fix the misspelling, under the circumstances…
@Kidsandliz
Good Idea. I kinda hate bothering @thumperchick right now tho.
Hey, @Thumperchick, if you see this, and not much else is going on (ha ha ha), I misspelled the Nobel Laureate poet’s name because I am a lazy idiot if anyone is wondering how I did that.
Sigh. If you have the time, can you fix this in the announcement post? If you are stressed or busy, don’t bother.
Correct spelling:
Derek Walcott, poet, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 1992.
@thumperchick
Thanks for fix. If only you could fix me …,
I’m kinda astonished no one posted this yet - the announcement was hours ago. Perhaps it’s just a generational difference? If you’re not from around NYC and you are not from a certain generation, his name is vaguely familiar at best (if you heard of him at all)? Once, everyone knew who he was.
A Quote For Meh:
Legendary Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin dead at 88
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/legendary-daily-news-columnist-jimmy-breslin-dead-article-1.3002601
‘Unlettered bum’ Jimmy Breslin, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author, dies
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/03/unlettered_bum_jimmy_breslin_p.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/legendary-daily-news-columnist-jimmy-breslin-dead-article-1.3002601
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Breslin
From Wikipedia:
Quotes
He hosted SNL. I can’t find the stuff on Youtube, but here is a link to the opening monologue on NBC’s site.
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/jimmy-breslin-monologue/n9451?snl=1
He was a fanatical baseball fan, and wrote extensively of the Mets and the Yankees. He wrote a number of bestsellers: novels, centered around New York, organized crime, or baseball; non-fiction about baseball and politics, with a book about Watergate and the Impeachment; a memoir about his own aneurysm.
His books can be seen here:
https://smile.amazon.com/Jimmy Breslin/e/B000AQ77Y6/ref=la_B000AQ77Y6_af?rh=n:283155,p_82:B000AQ77Y6&sort=date-desc-rank
@f00l The World According to Breslin, a collection of some of his columns, is on a one-day sale for $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00704TS66?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B00704TS66&linkCode=xm2&tag=ebb-fb-20
@OldCatLady
Thx! He was a character and a fixture, and always in the side of the unpretentious,and the ordinary person.
@OldCatLady @f00l Appears to be $1.99 on the Play store as well - and several other books of his are at the $2.99 point.
@brhfl
Thx. Copying this over to the “Deals” thread.
David Rockerfeller (head of Chase Manhattan), and incidentally, the oldest living member of the Rockefeller family and family patriarch from July 2004 until his death on Monday.
He was 101.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/business/david-rockefeller-dead-chase-manhattan-banker.html
Chuck Barris
June 3, 1929 - March 22, 2017
Television creator, producer, and host best known for The Gong Show.
He was quite the character. Fun fact - He went to high school about 10 minutes from me at Lower Merion in the Philly burbs. This is also the alma mater of Kobe Bryant along with many other notables.
@cinoclav What’s funny (sad?) is that when I heard Chuck Berry dies, I immediately thought of Chuck Barris for some reason. I actually thought he died. Now it’s true.
@ACraigL I also associated the names immediately. I think any time you hear one it takes a second to register which guy it is.
@cinoclav Or did he? Maybe his reported death is allowing him to go deeper into cover as a CIA assassin.
@cinoclav
Chuck Barris Gets Gonged
Thanks for the memories…
@cinoclav All I know is the country has been a whole lot ickier since Gong show and Puttin on the Hits went off the air.
@ACraigL So, are you saying you might be responsible?
@mossygreen Might be? Don’t get on my bad side, Mossy.
@cranky1950 I keep reading that as “Putin on the Hits” which seems apropos considering how many people have been killed by him lately.
Dallas Green
August 4, 1934 – March 22, 2017
MLB Pitcher, Manager, Scout, Executive
Coached the Phillies to their first World Series in 1980, integral in bringing lights and night ball to the Cubs, and managed both the Mets and Yankees. He spent over 60 years in baseball.
As a Phillies fan this one kind of hits hard. He was beloved by the fans and the organization.
@cinoclav With you 100%. Such good memories for me as a 10 year old. Dick Vermeil is the other standout in my mind, but 1980 was a pretty great year for Philly sports teams overall. RIP Dallas Green.
@ACraigL Apparently we’re about the same age. I turned 11 that World Series fall. (And shhh… but my actual name is Craig.) Yeah, 1980 was magical even if it ended in only one championship. It’ll be a sad, sad day when Dick Vermeil passes.
@cinoclav Sixers in the finals, Flyers lost the cup in game 6, and Eagles with an NFC championship. Pretty magical indeed.
Huh. It would be weird if we actually knew each other. George Washington HS. You?
@ACraigL So, I grew up in DelCo, going through the Garnet Valley school system. That was up until the end of 9th grade when my (divorced) mother met someone and forced me to move away. Spent 10th-12th grades at my new school and graduated from… George Washington.
/giphy holy shit
@cinoclav
@ACraigL
Paul O’Neill (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)
February 23, 1956 - April 5, 2017
from chronic illness
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/don-rickles-dead-legendary-comic-was-90-720153
Legendary Comic Don Rickles Dies at 90
Legendary comic Don Rickles, a rapid-fire insulting machine who for six decades earned quite a living making fun of people of all creeds and colors and everyone from poor slobs to Frank Sinatra, has died. He was 90.
Rickles died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles of kidney failure, publicist Paul Shefrin announced.
Sarcastically nicknamed “Mr. Warmth,” Rickles had mock disdain for stars, major public figures and all those who paid to see him, tweaking TV audiences and Las Vegas showroom crowds with his acerbic brand of takedown comedy. A good guy and devoted husband away from the stage, Rickles the performer heartlessly laid into everyone he encountered — and they loved it.
@f00l
Sigh…
This one is near the top of my sads. A true legend lost.
@f00l The Grim Reaper took the wrong Donald from Queens. Redo!
@OldCatLady
Don Rickles on The Tonight Show, 1978 with Carson:
@f00l
Anyone besides me want a little more of Don Rickles?
Here is Jimmy Kimmel with some memories and clips. Good stuff:
John Warren Geils, Jr.
Better known simply as J. Geils of his namesake band.
Guitarist/Musician
February 10th, 1946 - April 11th, 2017
Centerfold is one of my all time favorites.
@cinoclav
Missed hearing about this death, till this thread.
Sucks.
@f00l It was only announced a few hours ago but a lot of sites didn’t pick it up til more recently.
Dave’s Mom died,
Link to Daves Mom
@cranky1950
She was always a gem.
RIP, Charlie Murphy
@medz
: (
Too young.
Peter Hansen
(December 5, 1921 – April 9, 2017)
A bit late on this one, but Ralph Archbold, Philadelphia’s official Benjamin Franklin impersonator had died at age 75.
http://6abc.com/news/benjamin-franklin-actor-ralph-archbold-has-died/1836085/
And with him, goes a little piece of my Philadelphia childhood.
@sanspoint
I didn’t know Philly had one.
Cool. Hope somebody talented steps up.
Aaron Hernandez
(Yes. The former Patriots player.)
November 6, 1989 - April 19, 2017.
He hung himself this morning in jail.
@PlacidPenguin Oh shit. Going to do some reading now.
@PlacidPenguin
Wow, this guy just can’t stop killing people.
@hems79 Now he put a stop to it.
@PlacidPenguin
Shit.
Ok w the puns and jokes, but this whole thing is tragic.
Hey, let’s cut funds for medical and behavioral research. What a great idea!
@f00l Death panels were never a myth. They were just misattributed.
@moondrake
Yeah. : (
I wasn’t previously familiar with Motown songwriter Sylvia Moy, but found the article about her quite interesting. A little snippet on recording Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight”:
Cuba Gooding Sr. (April 27, 1944 – April 20, 2017)
Everybody’s Got to Vote
@PlacidPenguin
Fucking no. Too Young. Dammit.
@PlacidPenguin Alexa, play music by Cuba Gooding. It produces live performances, recorded before Autotune. That’s the way music should sound. ‘Am I where real music is appreciated? he asked the crowd.’- yes, Cuba, you are. There will be concerts in heaven.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-arkansas-executions-supreme-court-20170420-story.html
I have strong thoughts about this event, but I didn’t post this death to start a contentious discussion, or to state or promote/defend my own POV. We all know what our own takes and beliefs are on the death penalty, and on Arkansas’s plans for this week. We hardly need to argue or make provocative statements about it, that will change zero minds anyway.
I normally have considerable respect for well and carefully considered opinions which differ from mine. I hope that’s fairly commonplace.
I did think the event deserved a mention.
Erin Moran (actress known for playing Joanie Cunningham on Happy Days (and the short lived Joanie Loves Chachi)
October 18, 1960 – April 22, 2017
@PlacidPenguin This makes me sad. She had a rough adult life, I guess she’s finally at peace.
Oh, no! How very sad.
http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/happy-days-star-erin-moran-dies-at-56-1202393048/
56 years old; truly sad.
@PlacidPenguin
Today I am seeing that she had Stage IV cancer of some sort.
I don’t know any details, but gather that her adult life was tumultuous and difficult.
mutz the cat
@Yoda_Daenerys aww, what a beautiful cat. I’m sorry.
@Yoda_Daenerys
Beautiful Mutz. It must hurt so much.
Thinking of you.
Jonathan Demme
February 22, 1944 - April 26, 2017
"The Oscar-winning director passed away from esophageal cancer and complications from heart disease, for which he was originally treated in 2010 and suffered a recurrence in 2015." Known for hits such as The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.
@cinoclav
And this:
Gifted director. Sorry to lose him.
@f00l I’d love to know if he was a smoker. Between the cancer and heart disease it would be the most common cause. If he was, it’s truly a shame that these diseases may have been avoided.
@cinoclav
Yeah. Or other lifestyle factors. I don’t know that about him.
Sometimes you can take one look at a photo of someone and know they are or were a heavy smoker. : (
These sorts of faces are less common now, happily.
W H Auden
@cinoclav And he got his start under one of the Kings of the B-Movie, Roger Corman.
Michael Parks (April 24, 1940 - May 9, 2017)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Parks
/image Michael Parks
Better link for Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Parks
Dammit, I liked him. He was a genuine class act.
To add some strangeness to all this, here’s a brief bio of his son (no mother listed, only father):
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0662960/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
I dunno.
/image James Parks
Former handegg WR Michael Jackson who played in the 90s for the Browns and Ravens died at the young age of 48 in a motorcycle accident.
@PlacidPenguin
I don’t know the player, but I hate hearing that.
Powers Boothe, who was known for his roles in “Sin City,” “Nashville,” “Deadwood,” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”, has died at the age of 68.
/image Powers Boothe
@PlacidPenguin
Sin CIty
Mentioned here (and it appears to be of natural causes, for certain values of natural).
http://tvline.com/2017/05/14/powers-boothe-dies-deadwood-actor-dead-age-68/
@Shrdlu
Still too young. Death by natural causes at that age could mean some terrible condition. Since he died … one assumes …
Chris Cornell
July 20, 1964 - May 17, 2017
"American musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist, primary songwriter and rhythm guitarist for Seattle rock band Soundgarden and as lead vocalist and songwriter for the group Audioslave."
Another huge loss for the music world.
@cinoclav That’s a musical career I wanted to continue another thirty years at least. RIP, Chris.
@cinoclav
Gorgeous talent.
@cinoclav this is really sad. So young. I saw Soundgarden with Nine Inch Nails 3 or 4 years ago. Brought back so many memories. Chris sounded great.
/youtube Black Hole Sun
Roger Ailes, May 15, 1940 – May 18, 2017. His views changed the world of news and shaped the American electorate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ailes
@OldCatLady I posted this at the same time so I deleted it but I prefer my description of him:
Founder, former Chairman, CEO, and Sexual Harasser in Chief of Fox News and the Fox Television Stations Group.
@cinoclav His ouster is recent enough that possibly people will remember details.
@OldCatLady When it comes to people like him, everyone should be reminded forever what a piece of shit he was.
@OldCatLady
I just listened to his recent bio - I think last Nov or Dec. The Loudest Voice In The Room.
Complex guy, as you would expect. He was born a hemophiliac, and he responded to the inevitable issues he had as a kid by becoming tough, and then tougher, and then tougher.
He started out as a decently enough, but as a very very competitive guy in the cutthroat TV world. And then he discovered, over time, that it was much to his career advantage to be an authoritarian, and then a bully, and then a terrorizing bully, and then a terrorizing bully who accepted no limits on his own complete right to total power, and on the complete expression and satisfaction of his personal beliefs and whims.
His treatment of the semi-rural community where he and his wife bought an estate is breathtaking - he basically decided to become the local feudal lord, and try to break anyone who seriously contested his right to control what happened locally. He had the money and the lawyers to make this happen. It’s also more or less how he ran Fox News.
He gloried in advertising is network as being “fair and balanced” when he was deliberately, and openly, pushing what was little more than propaganda on the talk shows, and being as “unobjective” as he could get away with on the news shows. He thought of the dichotomy between what he advertised and what he offered as being his little joke that he would shove down the news industry’s throat in triumph. The fact that he was essentially using the equivalent of Soviet news propaganda methods, but with far more subtlety, thrilled him.
He gloried in his authoritarian treatment of his staff, and esp his female on-air personnel, enjoying the idea that he had power over the “femininity image” and “feminine conduct” he network allowed in female personnel. His practice of ordering female staff to come in and “turn around slowly for examination”, as tho they were auditioning for a Hollywood role that required a top-notch 6-pack bod, was probably almost certainly as much something he did to enjoy his personal authority as head of Fox News, as it was something he did for sexual gratification - a level of authority, that, as far as he was concerned, gave him the right to impose an automatic “head male authority” over staff females. And of course, when he wanted some sort of explicit feeling of sexual power or sexual gratification, the female staff were there for those purposes also, and he saw this as his right, by having been tough enough to survive and thrive and gain such as position. His success “gave him the right”, to his way of thinking.
My guess is that, once Fox News was a roaring success, he felt little need to kowtow to the Murdocks. He may have practically bullied them also, once the $ poured in. After all, RM mostly agreed with the political agenda, and under Ailes, Fox News was the ultimate TV news cash cow, which allowed RM to go buy whatever else he wanted for the Murdock empire.
Ailes also saw it as his absolute right to re-shape the American political scene, including by methods such as lying, deception, and collusion. His idea of journalistic standards was more or less “whatever he could get away with selling to the public that furthered his agenda”. As he realized that his ideas for re-shaping the news as partisan POV both worked as a business idea for a news operation, with enormous financial payoff, and re-shaped the political dialogue, he then thought it his absolute right to change the way people here and elsewhere thought about news and “facts”. He had complete faith that he was right, and that he had every justification for doing as he pleased, and he thoroughly enjoyed both.
Had he been healthy, and stayed in position, he would have simply grown more ambitious. He would have seen it as his right and his duty to re-work as much of America as he could, partly as a political goal, and as much, because he could, and therefore he would and would enjoy doing it and make sure everyone around his knew he gloried in his power.
He would have worked with Trump, and then tried, by means subtle and less-so, to “own” Trump. Whatever political or philosophical compromises he had to make to do this would obviously have been justified.
He reminds me a little of old-time political power players who ran their localities as if they were princes. The infamous political machine operators in places like Louisiana, Chicago, and New York. He had, to his way of thinking, simply found a bigger and better playing field.
@f00l In other words - he was an even bigger louse than we ever imagined.
@cinoclav
you got it.
@f00l Hopefully there is a special place in Hell for him.
@darkdragon we were were discussing him a little bit above. Even more depressing to find out he hung himself.
@RiotDemon Oops, sorry I missed it. I’ve been having random mouse-scrolling issues and I think that caused it. Bad dragon!
@RiotDemon Now that really breaks my heart.
Manchester Arena explosion: 19 dead after blast at Ariana Grande concert.
@KDemo
Ugh.
Now it’s at 22.
@PlacidPenguin
Kids.
Sir Roger Moore
October 14, 1927 - May 23, 2017
Best known for James Bond and as Simon Templar in The Saint.
Another victim of cancer.
@cinoclav Rest in Peace.
He lived a long life giving entertainment to millions.
@cinoclav
I wasn’t so wild about him as tongue-in-cheek Bond, but he was a gifted actor.
@f00l He was the Bond I grew up with so I tend to favor him but his other work was wonderful also. It’s said he was also a simply wonderful human being.
@cinoclav
I have heard that about him as a person.
@f00l I feel exactly the same way, but he was perfect as “The Saint,” and also as Brett Sinclair in “The Persuaders!” There’s a fun site about the clothing worn by Moore, as Bond, Sinclair, and others, at bondsuits dot-com.
@aetris I have a “Spy Collection” DVD set with a bunch of episodes of “the Persuaders!”. I’m gonna pull them out and watch.
Sir Roger George Moore KBE (14 October 1927 – 23 May 2017). He was the third actor (after Sean Connery and George Lazenby) to play the British secret agent James Bond in seven feature films between 1973 and 1985 and Simon Templar in The Saint between 1962 and 1969.
He was the eponymous hero, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in the 1958–59 TV series Ivanhoe. Moore was cast as Beau Maverick, an English-accented cousin of frontier gamblers Bret Maverick (James Garner), Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) and Brent Maverick (Robert Colbert) in the ABC/WB western series Maverick (1960-1961).
Appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1991, Moore was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for “services to charity”. In 2008, the French government appointed Moore a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the same year he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Born in Stockwell, London, England, Moore became a tax exile from the United Kingdom in 1978, originally to Switzerland, and divided his year between his three homes; an apartment in Monte Carlo, Monaco, a chalet in Crans-Montana, Switzerland and a home in the south of France. He died in Switzerland.
@OldCatLady I already posted it.
@cinoclav
Too much info ain’t bad. : )
@cinoclav I took so long to compose mine that you posted yours. Now I can’t edit. His wiki page has much more detail, though.
Seattle Seahawks legend Cortez Kennedy (who played with the Seahawks from 1990 until 2000) has died at the age of 48.
/image Cortez Kennedy
@PlacidPenguin
Too young.
@PlacidPenguin Yes. I just heard this.
He was such a great Hall-of-Fame Defensive Tackle.
My prayers go out to his friends and family.
Lisa Spoonauer
December 6th, 1972 - May 20, 2017
Most people probably aren’t familiar with her name but you’ve likely seen her in her most famous role as Caitlin Bree in Clerks. While she only performed in one other movie, her role in Clerks will go down in history.
Obituary (She was 44 years old; and she leaves her own little girl behind. Enormously sad).
http://ew.com/movies/2017/05/23/lisa-spoonauer-dead-clerks-actres-dies-44/
@cinoclav
Saw that.
Sigh…
(More recent pic.)
@PlacidPenguin Actually that’s Marilyn Ghigliotti who played Veronica. This is a more recent picture of Lisa. Taken from her actual obit: http://www.hasslerfuneralhome.com/book-of-memories/2939274/Spoonauer-Lisa-/obituary.php
@cinoclav
@PlacidPenguin Just hoping we haven’t now cursed Marilyn.
@cinoclav
Well, if we did, then think of the possibilities.
Of course though, “with great power comes entertainment and a bowl of popcorn”.
Well, crap. Anne R. Dick, third wife of Philip K. Dick, died May 19th.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/books/anne-dick-dead-wife-and-muse-of-philip-k-dick.html
I came back too late to edit this. She died on April 28th; the article above is dated May 19th.
@Shrdlu
: (
Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter, Dies at 89
Also he is the father of Mika Brzezinski, of the Morning Joe news show on MSNBC.
He was recently honored at a dinner at Columbia University.
NYT amp link:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/zbigniew-brzezinski-dead-national-security-adviser-to-carter.amp.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski
Quoting Wikipedia:
With Jimmy Carter and the Pakistani President.
Also, he dressed well and had a nice haircut.
Mike Connors, Principled Private Detective on ‘Mannix,’ Dies at 91
from The Hollywood Reporter
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mike-connors-dead-star-mannix-was-91-969213
I was very fond of this show, way back when.
@f00l So was I. I’d never heard of Armenia until some mention of it in an article on him, and got the idea that if all the men looked like him, I wanted to go visit. Armenian-Americans seem to have prospered exceedingly. n.b. he died January 26th.
Gregg Allman, Southern rock heavyweight of Allman Brothers fame, dies at 69
The Allman Brothers Band - Statesboro Blues
@KDemo
Shit shit shit.
Gregg Allman - Come And Go Blues - 12/11/1981
@f00l - Better representation - intimate. Thanks.
@f00l https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/arts/music/gregg-allman-dead-allman-brothers-band.html?emc=edit_na_20170527&nl=breaking-news&nlid=67284344&ref=cta&_r=0
Lots of great performances linked on his Twitter page.
Jim Bunning
October 23, 1931 - May 26, 2017
Hall of Fame pitcher and Senator
I’d like to remember him for the phenomenal pitcher he was for my Phillies. Not so much as a cantankerous GOP Congressman/Senator from Kentucky…
Frank Deford, legendary sportswriter, commentator, and novelist, died Sunday at the age of 78.
December 16, 1938 – May 28, 2017.
/image Frank Deford
@PlacidPenguin
He was a great one.
I’m hoping Dan Jenkins writes a few more books yet. He’s not young anymore, either.
@f00l
I’d Know That Voice Anywhere: My Favorite NPR Commentaries
https://www.amazon.com/Know-That-Voice-Anywhere-Commentaries-ebook/dp/B01AGZ8LZ4/ref=la_B000APVZKY_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496083861&sr=1-3&refinements=p_82%3AB000APVZKY%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A618073011
Former Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis has died at the age of 98.
/image Konstantinos Mitsotakis
We seem to have skipped mentioning Noriega’s death.
Fine by me.
Apologies to all that I broke the silence. I should know better.
Tho I didn’t know he had gone from being a US convict to a French convict to a Panamanian convict.
Again, fine by me.
Wonder if he ever learned to dig heavy metal?
@f00l Manny was incarcerated down the street from where I usta live. The Richmond Blimp base.
@f00l The playlist. I liked anything by the Doors.
Fred A. Kummerow, a German-born biochemist and lifelong contrarian whose nearly 50 years of advocacy led to a federal government ban on the use of trans-fatty acids in processed foods, a ruling that could prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths a year, died on Wednesday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 102.
He had been one of the first scientists to suggest a link between processed foods and heart disease. In the 1950s, while studying lipids at the university, he analyzed diseased arteries from about two dozen people who had died of heart attacks and discovered that the vessels were filled with trans fats.
He followed up with a study involving pigs that were given a diet heavy in such artificial fats. He found high levels of artery-clogging plaque in them.
Professor Kummerow published his findings about the role of trans fats in 1957, a time when the prevailing view held that saturated fats like those found in butter and cream were the big culprit in atherosclerosis.
@OldCatLady
I typed a remark yesterday, and then forgot to hit “Say It” or something
Thx for posting this one.
The science of food/health got all balled up in personal crusades and personal scientific distortions, midcentury and for some decades after, if I understand the history. Ancel Keys kinda tried to force everything in the wrong direction based on questionable science and cherry picked data. I think he was the biggest political name behind “saturated fats are bad”.
It didn’t hurt that the industries who wanted to sell carbs and trans fats were and are much much richer and better lobbied than the ranch and dairy industries. I don’t think Keys was anyone’s puppet, but gigantic ag must have loved him.
I remember reading that Dr Paul Dudley White 1886-1973 (Eisenhower’s cardiologist), who advocated preventive medicine, is supposed to have said somewhere that, during his years of medical training he almost never saw the sort of arteriosclerosis that was commonly killing people by the 1940-1950’s.
Of course, at the time Dr White was learning medicine, early 1900’s, lifetime consumption of trans fats, and of large amounts of white sugar, and to a lesser extent, large lifetime and daily consumption of white flower and other processed foods, was rather low in age 40+ adults. By the mid-1950’s, all that had completely changed.
Since then our ag corporations have gotten much more creative about how to “create and engineer foodstuffs”. The green revolution (they were worried about world starvation) combined with money interests have done a huge # on the genetics of grains, and who knows what in actually in packaged foods.
None of it is necessarily bad; or good. But we have no idea. We are the test group for all of it.
We really owe Kummerow for his work. Would that there was more research clear of emotional commitment to preconceptions, and free of bias injected by politics and corp interests.
I hope this doesn’t read as a polemic. Don’t mean it that way.
I don’t know anything except by casual reading, so if I come across as a know-it-all, I’m being antotal ass. I know more-or-less nothing.
I just read a lot, and retain a tiny bit of it, and wish I knew more.
Re: Attacks in London early Sunday morning (Saturday evening in the US):
At least six people are reported dead in the terror attacks in London and three attackers were shot dead by police, according to Scotland Yard. At least 20 additional casualties have been taken to six hospitals across London.
@PlacidPenguin
So…
It was 10:08 PM on Saturday night in London.
Seeing now that there were at least 30 reported injured.
And yeah, the two attacks (London Bridge where a van rammed into pedestrians and then the 4 occupants in the car got out and stabbed people, as well as the stabbings in Borough Market) were labelled as acts of terrorism.
Updated numbers:
Seven people were killed, three attackers dead, and 48 were hospitalized.
@PlacidPenguin Add in America’s credibility. Dear Leader has pissed off the Brits, which takes some doing.
@OldCatLady
Every time I see that title, I start thinking of the OTHER person with that title.
@PlacidPenguin You mean ‘Dear Leader’?
@OldCatLady
Yup.
Jean E. Sammet, an early software engineer and a designer of COBOL, died on May 20 at the age of 89.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/technology/obituary-jean-sammet-software-designer-cobol.html
Peter Sallis, the voice actor of Wallace (from Wallace and Gromit), has today died at 96.
/image Peter Sallis
@PlacidPenguin I always enjoyed those movies (though I admit I favored Gromit).
I think one of the stores on the way home carries Wensleydale cheese. Maybe I’ll pick up a spot of cheese to commemorate.
@PlacidPenguin And I found some Wensleydale with cranberries at the store. Its actually quite good!
Good show, Wallace, and Mr. Sallis…
Former NFL WR James Hardy, who was drafted by the Bills in 2008 (but, because he tore his ACL in his first season, he was benched most of the second season and then released), was found in an Indiana river on Wednesday.
He was 31.
Glenne Headly, who appeared in films such as Dick Tracy, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, as well as appearing in shows such as Monk, Encore! Encore! and ER, died last night at the age of 63.
/image Glenne Headly
(She was supposed to appear in an upcoming Netflix series entitled Future Man, a show which is/was in middle of being filmed.)
I enjoyed her acting in Mr. Holland’s Opus (just watched it again recently).
Enormously sad news. There doesn’t seem to be much about it yet, but here’s the Wikipedia page (where details will probably continue to show):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenne_Headly
@PlacidPenguin
I really liked her as an actor. Was she known to be ill?
@f00l
Cause of death still being determined.
@PlacidPenguin I would say she was the best part of Making Mr. Right, but every part of that movie is great (well, actors/costumes anyway). So she was an integral part of the greatness of Making Mr. Right. Anyway, I love her. She was too young to go.
Not much on detail, but a request for privacy for the family.
http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/movies/glenne-headly-dick-tracy-dirty-rotten-scoundrels-star-dies-62-n770326
Hawaiian pizza inventor Sam Panopoulos died 8 May 2017, aged 83. Panopoulos is the Canadian man who invented Hawaiian pizza, a dish so divisive it led to an Icelandic presidential outburst this year.
He passed away in hospital suddenly on Thursday.
Panopoulos emigrated to Canada from Greece in 1954 when he was 20, eventually going on to own and operate several successful restaurants with his two brothers. In February, Panopoulos recounted to the BBC how he and his brothers came up with the idea for the pizza, topped with pineapple and ham.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/adam-west-dead-batman-star-832264
Adam West, Straight-Faced Star of TV’s ‘Batman,’ Dies at 88
/image family guy adam west
Such a fine and decent human being. I’ll lift a glass to him this evening. We should all strive to be so honorable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_West
http://adamwest.com/
I recommend watching “Starring Adam West” if you haven’t already…or even if you have.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2719448/
@Ignorant Even though I lost my taste for campy Batman when I grew up, I still enjoy watching Adam West just act and have such a good time doing it. Plus when he did the “Grey Ghost” opposite Kevin Conroy in The Animated Series (and did other voice jobs in other Batman series), it just cemented him as being so very right as a presence in the Batman universe.
@Ignorant
Really good guy. I hope he had few regrets.
@Ignorant
@Ignorant RIP Adam West
@Ignorant Adam West Bat-Signal Memorial Lighting: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDzkCGjL2DgSq9-Z3rZ2SvIgoBweEZ4Qe
Somehow I missed this one:
Adnan Khashoggi (25 July 1935 – 6 June 2017) was a Saudi Arabian billionaire international businessman, best known for his involvement in arms dealing. He is estimated to have had a peak net worth of around US$4 billion in the early 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi
He was certainly the most famous arms dealer of his era (1960-1980’s), and perhaps the richest. He was the introduction, dealer, and brokerage connection between Middle-Eastern governments and the US Defense industry. Later on, he was heavily involved in Iran-Contra, at the Reagan admin’s request. He also almost certainly helped Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos loot their country of funds and assets, including paintings by world-famous artists.
As a side note:
All of them were estranged from each other.
Here is a Vanity Fair article by Dominick Dunne about Khashoggi’s financial decline in the 1980’s.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1989/09/dunne198909
Here is his obit from The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/07/adnan-khashoggi-obituary
Here is an article from The Independent which discusses his status as a world-famous “whoremonger”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/adnan-khashoggi-dead-saudi-arms-dealer-playboy-pleasure-wives-billionaire-lifestyle-wealth-profit-a7778031.html
Not an admirable man, but a big player during his life and times.
Adam West has died at the age of 88.
I can’t come up with a proper post to commemorate his life, so I’ll let Wikipedia do the talking.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_West
/image Adam West
They’re saying it was associated with his fight with leukemia.
I saw people saying that just like when a president dies, the others go to the funeral, so too should the other actors who played Batman should go to his funeral.
Edit: Just noticed the subthread above
Whoops…
David Fromkin, a nonacademic historian whose definitive book on the Middle East warned the West against nation-building by partitioning antagonistic religious groups behind arbitrary boundaries, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 84.
His seminal book on the Middle East, “A Peace to End All Peace” (1989), traced the roots of conflict in the region to the creation of unsustainable nations there through artificial mapmaking by European diplomats in the early 1920s, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
He concluded that those self-serving cartographers had grossly underestimated the indigenous population’s enduring faith in Islam as the foundation of everyday life, politics and government, and that they had failed to account for the Middle East’s lingering resentment of Western imperialism.
(from
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/world/middleeast/obituary-david-fromkin-dead-middle-east-author.html?_r=0)
@OldCatLady
thx. looks interesting.
Helmut Kohl, Chancellor Who Reunited Germany, Dies at 87
By CRAIG R. WHITNEY and ALAN COWELL
JUNE 16, 2017
New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/world/europe/helmut-kohl-german-chancellor-dead.html
(quoted from NPR)
John Avildsen, Oscar-Winning Director Of ‘Rocky’ And ‘Karate Kid,’ Dies At 81
(NPR)
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/17/533333494/john-avildsen-oscar-winning-director-of-rocky-and-karate-kid-dies-at-81
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/17/533333494/john-avildsen-oscar-winning-director-of-rocky-and-karate-kid-dies-at-81
Anita Pallenberg, Creative Influence To Rolling Stones, Dies At 75
http://www.npr.org/2017/06/15/533023800/anita-pallenberg-creative-influence-to-rolling-stones-dies-at-73
difficulties of being a rock star girlfriend
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/14/anita-pallenberg-first-rock-chick-no-easy-gig-being-muse-rolling-stones
originator of the boho-luxe style
http://www.refinery29.com/2017/06/159325/anita-pallenberg-style-career
For performances and public outings, the Stones are said to have borrowed not only her style, but the clothing in her closet. In interviews, Keith Richards has mentioned becoming famous for his “look” while wearing her outfits.
(Still from the film Performance)
17 reasons Anita Pallenberg was the coolest girl in the world
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/17-reasons-anita-pallenberg-coolest-girl-world-sixth-rolling/
Keith and Anita in 2014
Marianne Faithfull and Anita in the 1960’s
Marianne Faithfull and Anita recently
At London Fashion Week 2016
From Rolling Stone:
She considered writing a memoir, but changed her mind when all publishers wanted was salacious stories about the Rolling Stones.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/arts/music/anita-pallenberg-dead-actress-rolling-stones-figure.html?smid=pl-share
@f00l
https://embryonic-soul.blogspot.com/2012/07/femme-fatales-part-i-anita-pallenberg.html
Where The Wild Things Are
Stephen Furst, actor who played Flounder in ‘Animal House,’ dies at 63 from complications from diabetes.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/17/entertainment/stephen-furst-obit/index.html
@heartny
This one hurts. Had the foolish illusion: everyone in that film other than Belushi would have longish lives.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
He was always so enjoyable to watch.
@heartny i’m so tired of babylon 5 actors dying
Paddington Bear’s creator Michael Bond has died. Have a marmalade sarnie in tribute. Two Paddington Bear movies were made; one in 2014, on AMZN video, the other is post-production. A TV series was made, also available on AMZN video. Bond also wrote a children’s TV series called The Herbs, a series of books about a guinea pig called Olga da Polga, and a series of adult mysteries featuring French detective Monsieur Pamplemousse.
/image Paddington Bear
@OldCatLady
Wife of Stan Lee, Joan Lee died, 93 years old. They were married for 69 years… http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/joan-lee-dead-wife-marvel-comics-legend-stan-lee-was-93-1018951
@sohmageek that story about how they met. Aww. Sweet.
Nelsan Ellis, the actor who played Lafayette on True Blood passed away from complications due to heart failure. He was only 39.
/image Nelsan Ellis
/image Lafayette True Blood
@RiotDemon
He should have had 40-50 years to go.
: (
@f00l agreed. Always makes me sadder the younger they are.
@RiotDemon So so sad. He was incredibly talented.
From The New York Times
Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident Who Won Nobel While Jailed, Dies at 61
BEIJING — Liu Xiaobo, the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil on Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him an 11-year prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010 while locked away, died on Thursday. He was 61.
The bureau of justice of Shenyang, the city in northeastern China where Mr. Liu was being treated for cancer, announced on its website that Mr. Liu had died.
The Chinese government revealed he had liver cancer in late June only after it was virtually beyond treatment. Officially, Mr. Liu gained medical parole. But even as he faced death, he was kept silenced and under guard in a hospital, still a captive of the authoritarian controls that he had fought for decades.
He was the first Nobel Peace laureate to die in state custody since Carl von Ossietzky, the German pacifist and foe of Nazism who won the prize in 1935 and died under guard in 1938 after years of maltreatment.
Wish I had far more of that sort of courage.
@f00l
More from there Times article:
Mr. Liu started out as a notoriously abrasive literary critic in Beijing in the 1980s. He was called a “dark horse” who bridled at intellectual conformity, even in the name of reform. But he was increasingly drawn into political questions as Deng Xiaoping, the Communist leader, resisted matching economic liberalization with political transformation.
In 1989, he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University when students in Beijing occupied Tiananmen Square to demand democratic changes and an end to party corruption. He returned to Beijing to support the protests. He later described that time as a turning point, one that ended his academic career and set him irrevocably into a life of political opposition.
Mr. Liu’s sympathy for the students was not unreserved; he eventually urged them to leave Tiananmen Square and return to their campuses. As signs grew that the Communist Party leadership would use force to end the protests, Mr. Liu and three friends, including the singer Hou Dejian, held a hunger strike on the square to show solidarity with the students, even as they advised them to leave.
“If we don’t join the students in the square and face the same kind of danger, then we don’t have any right to speak,” Mr. Hou quoted Mr. Liu as saying.
When the army moved in, hundreds of protesters died in the gunfire and the chaos on roads leading to Tiananmen Square. But without Mr. Liu and his friends, the bloodshed might have been worse. On the night of June 3, they stayed in the square with thousands of students as tanks, armored vehicles and soldiers closed in.
Mr. Liu and his friends negotiated with the troops to create a safe passage for the remaining protesters to leave the square, and he coaxed the students to flee without a final showdown.
@f00l
Earlier, from the Times
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11nobel.html
Winner’s Chair Remains Empty at Nobel Event
Liu Nobel Is Awarded to Empty Chair
OSLO — Imprisoned and incommunicado in China, the Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, his absence marked at the prize ceremony here by an empty chair.
For the first time since the 1935 prize, when the laureate, Carl von Ossietzky, languished in a concentration camp and Hitler forbade any sympathizers to attend the ceremony, no relative or representative of the winner was present to accept the award or the $1.5 million check it comes with. Nor was Mr. Liu able to provide a speech, even in absentia.
Guests at the ceremony in Oslo’s City Hall listened instead to a recitation of his defiant yet gentle statement to a Chinese court before his incarceration last year. “I have no enemies and no hatred,” Mr. Liu said in “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court,” read aloud by the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. “Hatred can rot away at a person’s intelligence and conscience.”
Through his wife, Liu Xia, Mr. Liu sent word that he wanted to dedicate the award to the “lost souls” massacred in 1989 in Tiananmen Square.
@f00l
Full Times obit
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-chinese-dissident-nobel-dies-at-61.html?referer=
@f00l
From a Times blog, here is the text of his Final Statement, read at the Nobel ceremony. Composed before he entered jail:
https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/text-of-chinese-dissidents-final-statement/?scp=2&sq=Liu Xiaobo 2008&st=cse
Some quotes:
…
George Romero, director of Night of The Living Dead, dies at age 77.
I first saw that film as a teenage at t drive-in. It scared the f outta me. The noises really got to me.
Of course, I loved it and had to got see it a few more times.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-me-george-romero-20170716-story.html
@f00l He’ll be back…
I meant to post this yesterday, and kept getting sidetracked.
From The Guardian
Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win mathematics’ Fields medal, dies at 40
Stanford professor had suffered from breast cancer
Prestigious Fields medal is considered maths’ equivalent of the Nobel
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/15/maryam-mirzakhani-mathematician-dies-40
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/us/maryam-mirzakhani-dead.html?_r=0
@f00l
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani
http://news.stanford.edu/2017/07/15/maryam-mirzakhani-stanford-mathematician-and-fields-medal-winner-dies/
Some images
Imagine a set or universe off all possible pool tables or all possible ping-pong tables …
From wikipedia:
@f00l That Ellenberg quotation is a great one, and one I hadn’t seen before. I don’t know that Mirzakhani will ever be one of the big math names, but her work generalizing the three geodesics theorem is groundbreaking and fascinating. It answers questions raised by Riemann, answering questions made by Euler. Taking kind of a known idea for a given set of constraints and generalizing it is some of the most interesting work being done in math, to me. Sad to see such a mind depart.
As a side note, I think the Brits have it right with ‘maths’. Why, oh why did we decide to singularize an abbreviation for ‘mathematics’?
@brhfl
Perhaps I’m an “Americam English chauvinist” according to what I am accustomed to. I never encountered “maths” much until much after I left grad school. And so it seems a bit weird to me; I tend to associate it instinctively with the Harry Potter series.
To me, “math” always made sense. Because to me the primary thing was the method; and, most importantly, what the method might show about itself.
The actual material of various fields or subfields or areas of study was secondary. Which is one of many reasons why I wouldn’t have done well in academia back then. I was always such a purist, and so terrified of anything I could not suss out enough the logical implications of, including casual conversation about, say, coffee… And I could not deal well with even the minimal and “subject matter: abstraction” type social demands of the department.
It’s been more than 30 years sincei was resident and steeped in an academic world. More than 20 since I made much effort to read journal articles.
I am not capable of evaluating the weight of her workb without doing a good bit of reading. I just never focused that way, and given that you know something of that world, you know how unmeasurable that world is now, and how big it might get in another few decades.
I did have very close friends who specialized in algebraic topology. They stayed in academia; never got her level of achievement, but had decent careers.
We used to have long talks where they would explain over the course of a few days or a week what they were working on. Am I would ask insane questions, fueled in part by lack of familiarity. After I got enough background covered, I could follow it. They said I always thought so far outside the habitual constants of those who live and breathe a given subspeciality, that apparently some of my questions sometimes had utility in sparking some train of thought that might go somewhere for them.
Not that any solution or path forward ever came from me. No way. I knew far too little. To begin to have the capacity. Just that I did know how to be curious and ask questions and poke holes. I guess an outside perspective from a “well-known trained mathematical no-nothing” could suggest stuff to them.
Unfortunately, after various life traumas, I’ve lost track. My fault as much as anyone else’s, I fear; or more than anyone’s.
I miss it. Persons my age were looking for tenure track positions when the iron curtain loosened and then fell. Differently all these positions that would have been open to recent PHDs were going to world class Eastern Europeans and Russians who were amazed at what an American University would pay.
So perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t stick to it. Besides, walking catastrophe no matter where I go, so … Or perhaps I would have concluded I couldn’t do the level of work. ???
Or not. Who knows? I am or was prob incapable of functioning in that type of structure anyway. But that’s another story.
It’s been a long time since I wanted to actually re-visit Riemann and Euler a little. But there is so much to do. I prob won’t make the time.
I am really angry about her dying so young.
I wonder how the path was for her, being female and from Iran. I hope there was no special alienation or stress, beyond the normal, for her. But who knows? Every personality, every consciousness is unique.
(I should warn you that I am the world’s most irresponsible person or something. I’m trying. Bear with me if you can.)
@f00l Oh, I shouldn’t pretend to be able to evaluate her work either but from the standpoint of an armchair math(s) enthusiast. I have a pretty weak, theoretical grasp of the concepts that led up to the three geodesics theorem, which I’m certain was not even her most important solve. I just know enough to get that it’s always a big deal when one can make something that previously worked for x work for x, y, z, and so on…
I too have wondered about how hard things may have been for her, given her roots. I think about the mathematical genius from India, Ramanujan, who too died tragically young at 32, albeit a hundred years ago (give or take). No formal training. The connections between his ethnicity, class, education… who knows what led to his not being taken terribly seriously while he was alive… but now many put him up there with Euler.
@f00l There were a few times in college, when I was studying the (Engineering required) calculus 3 and DiffEQ classes when a glimmer of the amazing stuff behind them shown through, but just a glimmer. I passed the classes but I never had the kind of mind that could really understand and get deeply into high maths. Some envy but great respect for a mind that capable. Its not easy but there’s lawful magic in there waiting to be found if the seeker is good enough.
Rest in Peace.
Actor Martin Landau died today at 89.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-landau-dead-ed-wood-811318
@f00l
Actuqlly it seems he died Saturday. The announcement was today
Fine actor. I always heard, a fine human being.
One of his great late-life great roles was a hilarious sequence in Entourage, a part written and modeled to a degree on the career and adventures of producer Robert Evans, if I recall correctly.
Goodbye, sweet man. I know it was a long life, but I’m still sorry you’re gone. Truly. The world’s a little less bright.
@f00l
I heard that one of the reasons the part in Entourage worked so well for Landau as an actor is that Robert Evans had input on who was going to play his fictional counterpart, and wanted Landau.
Evans and Landau and the writers thought the whole thing was so much fun that Evans let the crew shoot in his very over-decorated and gorgeous house, instead of creating a set. This is the house Evans lives in.
It’s something else. Another lifestyle in another world than mine.
As is the character that was modeled on Evans and written for for Landau.
Dammit
NY Daily News
Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington dead at 41: report
Bennington, who has long been plagued by substance abuse problems, hanged himself and was found Thursday morning around 9 a.m. at a private residence in Palos Verdes Estates, according to TMZ.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.tmz.com/2017/07/20/linkin-park-singer-chester-bennington-dead-commits-suicide
@f00l just came to post this. He hung himself on what would of been Chris Cornell’s birthday, who hung himself back in May.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4715568/amp/Linkin-Park-singer-Chester-Bennington-commits-suicide.html
@f00l
Knowing nothing of his current circumstances, I so hate it when this happens.
When he thought he had no future and there was no one he could or would reach out too.
And he was prob in no shape to understand how this might resonate in the mind and moods of someone else who is vulnerable. Especially a fan.
Wish he had made it thru one more day.
@RiotDemon
Dammit dammit dammit.
@f00l Why one more day? If he had decided to do it, it wouldn’t have made that much difference.
What I can’t understand is why someone wants to commit suicide by hanging. That’s an awful way to go. Pills would be so much easier and less painful.
@Barney I know two people that tried to commit suicide by pills. They survived. I don’t think most people survive a hanging unless they’re terrible at tying knots. If it breaks your neck, it’s quick.
@RiotDemon They used either the wrong pills or the wrong amount or they weren’t really trying – it was a plea for help.
They outlawed hanging in Kansas because it was inhumane and it took too long. Even the hanging “experts” couldn’t get it right. No, suicide by hanging is not the way to end it.
@Barney nether way is the way to go. Suicide sucks.
@RiotDemon So we’ve been told. I’m not so sure anymore.
@Barney
please don’t say that.
@Barney
I have nothing against the assisted end of life options as practiced in Canada and similar. That sort of thing seems very humane and justifiable to me.
Almost every time one is not in medical extremis or in some other unimaginable political prisoner situation or similar situation, that person hasn’t just “decided to do it”.
According all info that can be forensically recovered from these situations, the thought is always constant back and forth, back and forth, in the person’s mind.
Certain. Not certain. Almost certain. Not certain. And on it goes. For most people, until they start to come out of the depressive state of mind.
And in the end many people do it or set it in final motion just to get the indecision over with.
Others make a small symbolic personal gestures. Which no one but that person understands. So no one responds properly. So the depressed person thinks or imagines that was “fate” giving them the go ahead.
Other people force themselves into a numbed out state of mind. Or the depth of their depressive thinking takes them there. They are under the influence of intoxicants or lack of sleep or being so depressed that they stop responding emotionality and can’t feel anything, often enough.
Then they set it in motion.
Almost everyone who gets saved does not want to go back there and try again, at least after a few months. Or they don’t want to go back they are try again until they get knocked back into the same mindset again.
They almost never proceed rationally and calmly do do it again or try to again the minute they can, with no back and forth, no internal struggle. Because that is one decision that, when made in a depressed state, has no rational quality to it.
It is not a rational mindset. Period.
It is neurotransmitter driven tunnel vision where all arguments and factors lead inexorably to a single false resolution, if the person is in bad enough shape.
It is an error state in the brain.
So do I support just monitoring everyone 24/7? Of course not.
To some degree people have to have their freedom to self-destruction even if they are not capable of thinking in any kind of reasonable or productive or rational way.
Freedom matters. So we live with some risks. For ourselves. For others.
But as for the direct answer to your question:
Because the day he chose was symbolic. If he had failed today, tomorrow or a week from now would not have had the same symbolism to him.
So he would have had to work himself up to it all over again.
Yes. He would have had to work himself up to our all over again.
I promise that’s accurate. I promise.
Which means he had not finally decided in any rational way that doing it tomorrow is the same as doing it today. Which means he was using the symbolism of the day as an extra emotional push to get himself to do it.
People work themselves up to it in the same way sometime works themselves up to taking on a machine gunner nest solo during wartime.
It’s not a “normal” decision in any way.
Certainly not in his case. Even with what must have been a terrible state of mind.
(Obviously this is not the same as a dying person or sometimes whose physical pain can’t be relieved or someone facing torture or whatever)
So
One more day.
Because then one more day
And then one more day
And then one more day.
And then another. And another.
And that’s how we do it when times are really bad. All of us. Some people - most people - may never flirt with that. It may never get that black on their heads. But for many people it does.
But there are really bad times we all have to get thru. And often in the darkest of those times, it is what one believes about oneself or believes about life at that moment that drives ones to take a really dark final choice, a choice that simply need not have happened.
But afaik you just damned keep going. That’s the alternative. The one he was so messed up he could not see.
So yes. One more damned day.
No one in that state or mind or any other state of mind is all that great at predicting the future path of a given life, excepting people in a few narrow circumstances that medicine and the rest of us recognize are different than this (because in those special circumstances the options are really genuinely truly rationally narrow.)
One more damned day.
@f00l
Maybe he had something physically wrong with him and he chose now to die and to not wait until the future when he would no longer have control over whether he lived or died. You don’t know. I don’t know.
Yes, I hate to see a life snuffed out. Damn it, I hated to have to make the decision about a DNR for my mother. And yes, she had lived a long time; she, at one time, said she did not want a DNR. But I also that think (yes, I use the word “think”) she wouldn’t have wanted to continue living the way she was.
I’m lucky. The DNR was never required. I would have been wracked with guilt.
So, do you think that my own decision for a DNR is committing suicide even though, right now, my health is stable, but within just a few years, it won’t be and I’ll be attached to a machine at least 3 times a week in order to stay alive? If I have a car accident, tomorrow, and they could save me, would that be committing suicide in your definition?
I hate it that an individual cannot choose to die when he or she wants.
Maybe he didn’t want just one more damned day.
@Barney
You are right. I don’t know. I will probably never know.
But these news reports often have a “feel” to them.
If you were planning a rational and well considered end to your own life, would you hang yourself - on the birthdate of a person you had an emotional connection to, who had committed suicide himself shortly before? Would that be your tribute to your family and friends, to your own life, and to this other person’s life?
I suspect most of us would opt, in that circumstance, for something either sudden, or painless and peaceful. And not on the birthdate of someone who had committed suicide himself. Not on the birthdate on someone they had an emotional connection to.
No. How could I?
I presume you know you own situation as well as you can without going to Medical school yourself. I presume you have listened to reasonable counsel and medical perspective. I presume you have given this decision your best attention and deliberation.
You clearly appear to be as rational as the rest of us. So I presume your decision is the best one you can make under the circumstances.
If I were hanging out with you every day, when things had gotten bad, and I thought you had good days left, I might not much like the DNR. But I would respect it; and respect the intentions and thought and choice behind it. Your life belongs finally to you.
So it must be, if we are not to be slaves to some other, inferior purpose set by someone else.
I don’t know all the facts in today’s case. And don’t wish to know.
But it didn’t feel at all like your situation, based on initial reports.
Some -many - instances of the act of ending one’s own life are nothing like what you have chosen for yourself and your own situation.
I have the right to think and feel profound sadness and regret about those. And frustration.
Rational individuals who have access to normal ranges of activities in life can do exactly that. (There are constrictions for the disabled, obviously, and other persons in restricted circumstances.)
What percentages of these types of instances (as with today’s news) are rational and calm and well considered?
Dunno. Guessing not a high percentage tho.
I am - personally - opposed to monitoring people 24/7 or anything like that for anything but very short periods of time. A few weeks at most. (Unless the person is obviously a long way from rationality. I have known a person who believed he was US President. He wasn’t. That’s the sort of situation that justifies more monitoring, in my personal philosophy).
I understand that that means risk for all of us who are involved with others. And some risk for all of us within ourselves.
To my mind that value of the freedom outweighs the risk.
If I were headed in that direction, I would personally allow nothing and no one to interfere. That’s me.
But when someone makes an irrational and irrevocable choice that destroys their own future and is almost certainly devastating for other people close to that person, I am not happy about it and I do not resign myself to some thought that it’s “ok”.
And I don’t have to pretend that these self-destructive actions, if taken in an extreme state of mind, were somehow “rational” or “ok” when so often they weren’t.
And I wish they had given themselves one more day. Yes.
That’s just me.
Futile wish, yes.
I wish it anyway.
To me, part of the best of human capacity is that we keep wishing for more light against all that darkness.
I hope we keep wishing that wish. Futile or not. Whatever.
John Heard
March 7, 1945 - July 21, 2017
Actor John Heard, best known for playing Macaulay Culkin’s dad in the Home Alone movies, has died at 72.
His body was discovered in a hotel room near Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, where he had recently undergone back surgery.
In addition to his role as Peter McAllister in the Home Alone franchise, Heard also starred as a co-worker to Tom Hanks in the 1988 comedy Big and a dirty cop in the first season of HBO’s The Sopranos, for which he earned a guest-acting Emmy nomination in 1999.
Heard’s other credits include films The Milagro Beanfield War and Beaches (both released in 1988) and the John Grisham adaptation The Pelican Brief (1993). He also starred in the TV adaptation of the author’s 1993 novel The Client and had guest roles in the CSI franchise.
He was a great actor. I’m curious as to what the cause of death turns out to be. Kind of weird, everyone would confuse him and John Hurt who happened to pass away in January.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Heard_(actor)
http://www.tmz.com/2017/07/22/john-heard-dead-at-72-home-alone/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001334/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
:-{
Barbara Marx Sinatra died, July 25th, 2017.
She was just a good human being, civilizing Frank Sinatra, and doing good works. I used to live in Palm Springs, in the long ago days, and I admired her for all she went through, and for all she did. RIP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Sinatra
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/07/25/barbara-sinatra-wife-frank-sinatra-dead-at-90.html
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/entertainment/barbara-sinatra-dies/index.html
Goodbye, sweetie. You did good.
June Foray (June Lucille Forer), born 18 Sep 1917, died 26 July 2017. She was the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Lucifer the Cat (Cinderella), Cindy Lou Who, Jokey Smurf, Granny (owner of Tweety Bird), Grammi Gummi (Adventures of the Gummi Bears), Grandmother Fa (Mulan), Magica De Spell and hundreds of others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Foray
The first lady of voice acting, one of the original members of animation organization ASIFA-Hollywood and founder of the annual Annie Awards, was also instrumental in the creation of the Oscars’ animated feature category. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honoring her voice work in television.
June Foray, Voice of ‘Bullwinkle Show’s’ Natasha and Rocky, Dies at 99 http://variety.com/2017/tv/people-news/june-foray-dead-dies-rocky-natasha-bullwinkle-1202508180/ via @variety
@OldCatLady
Almost got to 100.
But wow! What a great catalog of work!
From her TV tropes page:
— Chuck Jones
— The very apt title to her memoirs.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/JuneForay
Sam Shepard: US actor and playwright dies aged 73
BBC
https://www.google.com/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/40777076
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Shepard
Wikipedia
With Patti Smith
@f00l This one hurts. Somehow it got buried in the political hoorah this week.
Few of you probably have ever heard of the organization this man created and lead but he made a huge difference in the lives of many of us, many who we know and loved or who passed through our lives.
It is with great sadness that the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) announces the passing of its president, Val J. Halamandaris, after a long illness on July 23, 2017. Often referred to as the “leader of the last great civil rights movement”, Val worked tirelessly for 50 years to improve the lives and secure the rights of America’s elderly and infirm. A self-described “small-town boy who came to Washington, D.C. many years ago, full of ideals,” Val responded to President John F. Kennedy’s call to public service by joining the staff of Senator Frank E. Moss (D-UT) and enrolling in George Washington University and then Catholic University Law School. Val was quickly drawn to the issues facing senior citizens with the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging and was instrumental in crafting the landmark Medicare and Medicaid programs, including the home health benefit. In 1967, Val and Senator Moss created the “Moss Amendments,” which set minimum federal standards for nursing homes. In 1969, Val led an eight-year investigation of nursing homes around the United States, culminating in a 12-volume report, the first of 25 major reports Val wrote for Congress. In 1972, Val produced the first hearings on hospice and wrote the original legislation to provide Medicare coverage for hospice. Val’s investigation into Medicare and Medicaid fraud made such abuse a felony and led to the creation of state and federal oversight of the problem. Working with Rep. Claude Pepper (D-FL) in the House of Representatives, Val continued his fight for the aged by helping create the Medicare hospice benefit and reforming the sale of health insurance to senior citizens. Distressed by the conditions he found in America’s nursing homes, Val left Congress to find what he called “a better way” health care in the home. When Val founded NAHC, institutionalization of the elderly was the rule and home care was unknown to many. Due in no small part to Val’s hard work, leadership and unflagging advocacy, NAHC now represents the nation’s 33,000 home care and hospice organizations, two million nurses, therapists and other caregivers and the 12 million infirm, ill, and disabled Americans who receive health care in their homes. Inspired by an encounter with Mother Theresa, Val founded the Caring Institute in 1985 to promote the values of caring and public service and grant scholarship money to young persons. President Bill Clinton called Val “a remarkable human being and one of the most exceptional people that I have ever known” and Claude Pepper said Val was “the best, brightest, and most talented person to have worked for him in 50 years of public service.” To the end of his days, Val was guided by these words from President Kennedy: “What we need to do is take care of people till the end of their days, we have the resources, and we have the money. What is at stake is the very future of American democracy and how we are going to be viewed through the prism of history because all great civilizations can be measured by a common yard stick- how did they take care of our vulnerable populations.” For his lifetime of dedication to the public good, Val will be posthumously honored with the Pope Francis Award for Charity and Leadership in October. One of the most impactful Americans of the last 50 years, Val cannot be replaced and will never be forgotten. He is survived by his wife, Kathleen M. Brennan; three sons, their wives; six grandchildren and one brother.
Requescat in Pace Val. You did a lot for many. All the home health and hospice industry will miss you.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/val-halamandaris-obituary?pid=1000000186214737
@Cerridwyn
Now that’s a life.
Wow.
@f00l yeah, he was really one of the good ones.
Robert Hardy
October 29, 1925 - August 3, 2017
British actor, most recently known for playing Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, in the Harry Potter films. He also starred in the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, in numerous portrayals of Winston Churchill and in many other roles throughout more than 70 years of acting.
@cinoclav We loved the “All Creatures Great and Small” books and the series, though admittedly the TV adaptation was a bit soapy. I loved how his children described him: ‘gruff, elegant, twinkly and always dignified’… Rest in Peace.
Darren Daulton
January 3, 1962 - August 6, 2017
The Phillies have confirmed that former Phillies catcher Darren Daulton has died after a battle with brain cancer. He was 55 years old.
Daulton’s baseball career began in 1980. He played every season with the Phillies before retiring in 1997 and split the last year with the Florida Marlins.
During the Phillies’ 1993 National League Championship season, he had 24 homers and 105 RBI. Daulton was inducted into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2010.
In 2013, he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, which is an aggressive form of brain cancer. In 2015, doctors said he was cancer-free after surgery, extensive chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
You’ll be missed Dutch.
@cinoclav This hurts my childhood. Damn. So sad.
@cinoclav Loved him! Met him at a bank opening in 2014, he was so friendly and happy.
@ACraigL Truly one of the greatest guys in sports when it came to the fans. Funny story, I used to drive past his neighborhood going to work and I knew which house was his. Every once in a while I’d cruise through looking to see if I saw him (or his wife - this was when he was married to Lynne Austin, the Hooters/Playboy model). Slowly driving past his house I looked up and he was in front of the window in what was obviously a closet/dressing area, standing there in just his underwear. I would’ve preferred seeing her but it did make all the girls at work jealous.
Here’s the portfolio page for the house showing when he owned it. http://w01.co.delaware.pa.us/pa/publicaccess.asp?UAYN=Y&MyAction=RealFolioSearch&Folio=27-00-00866-19
@callow That’s a great shot. I’m just plain sad today.
One of my favorties. So sad. Rest in peace Darren.
Glen Campbell, 81
Farewell, and we will all miss you, sir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Campbell
http://www.glencampbell.com/glentraviscampbell
@yahsah15
@shrdlu
1985 … ACL …
@yahsah15 He was one of the singers that were ‘out of style’ when I was in school; if you liked that ‘country’ music you were weird. They hated on the Carpenters too, who I always loved. I always liked many of his songs; he had a great voice, and I’ve seen some videos of him playing on a guitar that were just amazing. A true artist.
I always wanted to hear him sing with Olivia Newton John; turns out he did a couple times so I had some nice music to listen to this AM…
The verified world’s oldest man, Yisrael Kristal, resident of Haifa, Israel, died Friday, just before his 114th birthday.
He was an Auschwitz survivor.
I salute this man.
Actually, I’m in awe. What a life.
Most of the contract was sources from AP.
http://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/yisrael-kristal-worlds-oldest-man-dead-at-113/
@f00l
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/holocaust-survivor-celebrate-bar-mitzvah-112-years-old-article-1.2792237
Holocaust survivor to celebrate bar mitzvah at 112 years old.
Stuart Thompson, ‘Book of Mormon’ Producer and Six-Time Tony Award Winner, Dies at 62
https://www.google.com/amp/www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/stuart-thompson-dead-book-mormon-producer-six-time-tony-award-winner-was-62-1030977
@f00l God of Carnage is one of my favorite plays. Thanks for the good work Stuart.
Dick Gregory, Trailblazer of Stand-Up Comedy, Dies at 84.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dick-gregory-dead-stand-up-comedy-legend-civil-rights-activist-was-84-1004479
Bruce Forsyth
http://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/661373/Bruce-Forsyth-dead-aged-89-Strictly-Come-Dancing-The-Generation-Game-The-Price-is-Right
Sonny Landham
Best known for his role in Predator.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-entertainment-news-updates-august-predator-sonny-landham-dead-1503166811-htmlstory.html
Jerry Lewis
"Jerry Lewis, Nonpareil Genius of Comedy, Dies at 91"
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/advance-obit-jerry-lewis-dead-721408
@Ignorant I met him briefly once, in Las Vegas. Growing up the telethon was always a must watch for us; the national telethon was usually in Las Vegas as well as the local (with Gus Giuffre, who was a well known local celebrity and also called bingo for our annual school fundraisers, along with other people we knew; Las Vegas was still not so very large back then).
I don’t remember the details but he set a very nervous (at just by chance walking down a hallway next to him) high schooler at ease, shook my hand, and we talked briefly about both the band event that evening, and the telethon for the minute or so it took to reach his destination. He seemed a genuinely nice person.
Every year at the end of the telethon, he would sing that 'You’ll never walk along" song, and never be able to finish it. Towards the end of the time I watched I think he finally started getting all the way through the song.
47:48 in if the timestamp still doesn’t work on the embed.
Brian Aldiss is gone (August 19th, which was his 92nd birthday). I’m just so sad.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/21/science-fiction-author-brian-aldiss-dies-aged-92
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Aldiss
“Who Can Replace a Man?”
@Shrdlu
A master.
Jay Thomas
July 12, 1948 - August 24, 2017
Actor, comedian, radio host. Best known for his roles on Cheers and Murphy Brown. Cancer strikes once again.
Good guy. Really sad. For more details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Thomas
I always enjoyed his annual Letterman appearance.
/youtube jay thomas letterman christmas
Tobe Hooper (director of such things as Poltergeist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Lifeforce), died August 26th, in Sherman Oaks, CA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobe_Hooper
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/aug/27/tobe-hooper-texas-chainsaw-massacre-poltergeist-director-dies-aged-74
Walter Becker, co-founder and guitarist of Steely Dan has died at age 67
http://variety.com/2017/music/news/donald-fagen-walter-becker-dead-steely-dan-1202546352/
@sanspoint Alexa is playing Steely Dan for me. So many songs I’d never heard. Many were already on the earworm rotation.
@OldCatLady A couple weeks ago, I decided to finally take a deep dive into the works of Steely Dan. I don’t regret it. I just wish I’d done it sooner, so I could have seen them live.
@sanspoint There was only a short time to see them live. They were a studio band for most of their time together.
@pitamuffin They toured fairly regularly again starting in the mid-90s. They did a three night stand in NYC about a year ago. One night, doing all of Aja.
Dave Hlubek, a founding member of Jacksonville-based rock band Molly Hatchet, has died.
The band announced the news via its Facebook page:
“It is with great sorrow to announce the passing of our beloved friend and band member Dave Hlubek. Dave was one of the founding lead guitarists of Molly Hatchet. Amongst his many contributions to southern rock is “Flirtin’ with Disaster.” Our condolences and our prayers go out to his family during this time of loss. He will be missed but never forgotten, as the music lives on through his legacy in Molly Hatchet.”
More details at http://ultimateclassicrock.com/molly-hatchet-dave-hlubek-dead/
Another music legend has passed away: Holger Czukay of the legendary Krautrock band Can was found dead at their former studio. He was 79.
https://pitchfork.com/news/cans-holger-czukay-dead-at-79/
Barry “Frosty” Smith ( Bartholomew Eugene Smith-Frost)
(born March 20, 1946 in Bellingham, Washington) died after a long illness on April 12, 2017, at the age of 71.
I know him best for his work with Lee Michaels. Incredible music from a 2-man band.
I didn’t see it listed earlier & just noticed it.
@daveinwarsh Strange thing happened today.
This album came in the mail today. His 3rd album.
It’s in pretty good shape & it’s a difficult one to find.
I didn’t order it.
@daveinwarsh Get out of the house now.
/giphy ghost
Its being reported that Jerry Pournelle, science fiction author, and long time author of the Chaos Manor columns in Byte magazine, and later the web, where he invited readers into his entry and evolution into the world of home computing as that world also evolved and grew, has passed away.
His last posts at his site were about his trip to DragonCon; no details were provided at the time of this post beyond the fact of his passing.
Jerry had been a regular guest on the TWiT network on their This Week in Tech podcast until fairly recently. He had worked in aerospace and the defense industry.
I grew up with his books, and those he co-wrote. His endless optimism blended with a realistic view of humans and their foibles, the recipes for ‘survivial with style’, his determination, not giving up after being afflicted with a brain tumor, and later a debilitating stroke, were inspirations.
Rest in Peace, Jerry. Another person I will always regret not having met.
@duodec
Lucifer’s Hammer (w/ Larry Niven) One of my all time favorite gloom and doom books.
(I hate this thread.)
@Barney
Me too, but the thread serves a purpose.
And Lucifer’s Hammer ended on a hopeful note.
@duodec That’s why LH is one of my favorites.
I am filled with sorrow. Pournelle was one of my favorites, both as an author, and as a human being.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/
Just in case the site is overwhelmed, it says:
@duodec We met his mind.
@duodec he was an interesting man. He and Larry were almost polar opposites in many ways, but they created well together. It’s been many years since I walked the SciFi con circuit, and I always loved spending time with Larry and went out of my way to avoid Jerry. Good writers are not always good with people.
Oath of Fealty was my favorite of their collaborations. Have read it so many times, and can still do it again.
RIP Jerry
@duodec
Thanks
It’s been a long time since I visited Chaos Manor. Too long
Apart from his fiction and his many other interests, and his multi-way of looking at things, I just loved his attitude. Always irascible and insightful. (Even when you’d grabbed the wrong end of the stick, Jerry!
)
His office looked exactly like it should have looked. ; )
Jerry Pournelle’s eulogy, from his eldest son, has been posted on Chaos Manor. It is a good read.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/eulogy-in-remembrance/
I think his son may have picked up some of Jerry’s skill with words. And more than ever, I wish I had met the man.
Troy Montgomery of the country duo Montgomery Gentry- 9/8/2017, age 50. Helicopter crash on the way to a show. I have their CD in my car. Sad.
Grant Hart, Hüsker Dü Drummer and Singer, Dies at 56
Grant Hart, a drummer, vocalist and songwriter for the influential Minnesota rock band Hüsker Dü, died on Wednesday at his home in St. Paul. He was 56.
The band’s publicist, Ken Weinstein, said the cause was cancer.
https://nytimes.com/2017/09/14/arts/music/grant-hart-husker-du-drummer-dies.html
Edie Windsor, plaintiff of United States v. Windsor which decriminalized the Defense of Marriage Act and paved the way for marriage equality, died on September 12, 2017 at the age of 88.
Edie Windsor had been an advocate at the forefront of gay/lesbian rights for most of her life, including sponsoring what is now known as The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trangender Community Center, or simply The Center. (As a personal note, I regularly attend and contribute to support groups at The Center.) Edie married her wife Thea Spyer when marriage equality was legalized in Canada in 2007. Spyer died in 2009 and Edie was not treated as her legal spouse in executing her estate, which is the case that eventually led to the US vs. Windsor ruling.
While I don’t have nearly as much information about her as a technologist, she also was a computer scientist, working for IBM for many years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/us/edith-windsor-dead-same-sex-marriage-doma.html?mcubz=0
@Kawa Thanks for posting this one.
She was a runner-up for Time’s Person of the Year in 2013, and their fairly lengthy overview of her life is a good read.
Having attempted prior research on her work with IBM and beyond, it’s pretty hard to come by. I believe she was instrumental in creating JCL for OS/360, which lives on (in a very, very distant way, certainly) in z/OS.
@brhfl
@kawa
I didn’t know she was influential in the existence of some manuals I used to reference once. But all is forgiven. She’s not responsible for 360/370 IBM-speak.
I owe her. She was willing to sacrifice her privacy for her principles. She had guts. She took risks and made a materially better world for all of us.
Thank you, Edie Windsor.
Harry Dean Stanton
I remember him best from Repo Man, Paris, TX, Twin Peaks.
Critic’s Notebook: Harry Dean Stanton, a Zen Cowboy Who Said Everything by Saying Nothing
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/critics-notebook-harry-dean-stanton-a-zen-cowboy-who-said-everything-by-saying-nothing-1039865
Peter Travers on Harry Dean Stanton: 'The Coolest Dude in the Room
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/peter-travers-on-harry-dean-stanton-the-coolest-dude-in-the-room-w503569
Penny Chenery, Owner of the Triple Crown Winner Secretariat, Dies at 95
From a much longer article:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/sports/horse-racing/penny-chenery-dead.html?referer=#modal-lightbox
stanislav petrov, the man who saved the world, d. 19 May 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
@no1
Had not heard about that.
In memory of Mr Petrov:
Robert Shaw, the inventor of one of the best holidays ever (Pi Day), passed away on August 19th, from complications of Alzheimer’s (age 78). His life will be celebrated this Sunday, and yes, there will be Pie.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Memorial-service-set-for-Pi-Day-creator-Larry-Shaw-12206726.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day
Eric Eycke, Ex-Corrosion of Conformity singer, passed away last week. He was in hospice battling a number of health issues.
He left the band shortly after the release of their first album. They started off as a punishing hardcore band during the times of Black Flag and Bad Brains. After he left, the band eventually turned into more of a doom metal / stoner rock band.
http://loudwire.com/ex-corrosion-of-conformity-singer-eric-eycke-passes-away/
Hugh Hefner has died at the age of 91 (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017).
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/27/hugh-hefner-iconic-founder-of-playboy-has-died-at-age-91.html
@mflassy Cojones
@cranky1950
Zeitgeist.
@f00l Never a more apt illustration of the word.
Anne Jefferys January 26, 1923 - Sept 27, 2017
You really need to be old for this one, she played Marion Kirby on Topper. Also a villainess on General Hospital.
Monty Hall, genial host, creator, and producer of Let’s Make A Deal, died at age 96.
I presume that since Mr Hall created and had ownership of his long-running and well-loved show, he made quite a nice television “deal” for himself
http://variety.com/2017/tv/people-news/monty-hall-dead-dies-lets-make-a-deal-1202577178/amp/
Mr Hall also became a sort of icon in mathematical circles, thanks to a Parade Magazine column written by Marilyn Vos Savant about what came to be known as “The Monty Hall Problem”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
[The quickest intuitive explanation of the solution might be this:.
The justification for the “contestant” changing their original selection can be simplified this way:
The “host” knows all the information about the doors in advance.
Once the “contestant” makes their first choice, the “host” adds information by displaying what is behind a lesser-valued door.
As the “host” has now injected information, the “contestant” can now recalculate the odds of the remaining choices, based in the additional information, just justifying the odds-favored choice of changing doors.]
(Obviously this strategy is not guaranteed to play to the “contestant’s” advantage in a single run or a small number of runs. It does, however, prove to be experimentally valid in observations of outcomes involving models of extended-run testing.)
Thus, the “contestant”, by following Vos Savant’s recommended course of action, does increase the probability of choosing a more valuable door.
Mr Hall, well-regarded for his intelligence and business sense, knew of this problem and was said to be intrigued by it. He was said to be honored that his name had gotten attached to a mathematical conundrum of some public note.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-3-door-monty-hall-problem/
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MontyHallProblem.html
One of the original Vos Savant columns on the topic:
http://marilynvossavant.com/game-show-problem/
Wikipedia
@f00l
https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDD1E3FF932A15754C0A967958260
NYT link to article containing Mr Hall’s comments on the probability puzzle.
@f00l I had a definite crush on Monty Hall when I was a little girl. Sad to lose him in the world.
I occasionally watch reruns of Let’s Make a Deal and watching someone put items in order from least to most expensive in 1980 dollars can be surprisingly tense.
S.I. Newhouse Jr., Who Turned Condé Nast Into a Magazine Powerhouse, Dies at 89
(Publisher of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, among other magazines)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/obituaries/si-newhouse-dead.amp.html
From a much longer article, which covers his choices about those the magazines in some depth:
tom petty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Petty
@no1
He didn’t.
@no1 I just heard this news. RIP.
@no1 Wow. Too young.
@no1 he’s gone into the great wide open
@capguncowboy I find this news to be quite heartbreaking
@no1 - Nooooo - Not Tom Petty!!!
Fuck
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lapd-clarifies-cannot-confirm-tom-petty-death/
“The LAPD has no information about the passing of singer Tom Petty. Initial information was inadvertantly provided to some media sources. However, the LAPD has no investigative role in this matter. We apologize for any inconvenience in this reporting.”
That just puts a cap on this horrible day.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/02/rock-star-tom-petty-dies-heart-attack
Enough already.
@no1
CBS Erroneously Reports Tom Petty’s Death, Setting Off an Outpouring
Late this afternoon:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/business/media/tom-petty-cardiac-arrest.html
From the middle of the NYT article:
It seems that as if 2 hours ago, not CBS, the LAPD, nor other sources can confirm that Petty has died.
Updates? Anyone?
@f00l he was found unconscious after a cardiac arrest. Paramedics got a pulse… He was put on life support. No real brain functions. His family ceased life support, but his body hasn’t given up yet… Unfortunately there isn’t much hope if all that is true.
@RiotDemon Most all sources now agree that he has indeed died. Very strange, possibly news sources trying to be the ‘first’ to break news?
@daveinwarsh
Confirmed dead by family.
: (
@f00l @daveinwarsh
This thread is often focused on celebrities and I do understand why but…
58* every day average people and no less than 500 injured in Vegas last night.
*-at present
@jbartus I see this thread as a way to celebrate the lives of exceptional people- to look back on their accomplishments. Also to learn more about people I have never heard of but made a difference in the world. I don’t see mass murders fitting in here. That of course is just my personal opinion.
@sammydog01 I’m sorry your view of this thread does not mesh with my use of it.
this thread focuses on celebrities because its predecessor explicitly described its purpose as being about the passing of celebrities. https://meh.com/forum/topics/rip-2016-edition “I thought it would be interesting to see how many celebrities do go in 2016” imo the massacre in vegas deserves its own thread, rather than being relegated to a minor mention in a celebrity death thread.
@no1 I seem to recall from my earliest days here on the Meh forum being chastised for trying to dictate the topics of discussion in a discussion thread I had created. This chastisement was well deserved, and that was in a thread I myself had created.
You are of course entitled to your opinion and to voice that opinion. By that same token I’m entitled to voice mine. You’re right that the tragedy that took place in Las Vegas deserves to be much more than a footnote to a collection of celebrity deaths. Sadly it would appear that nobody else has felt this way strongly enough to bother making such a thread. If you like you may consider my post here to be a commentary on how ridiculous it is that Tom Petty has garnered more overt sympathy here than the now 59 dead in Vegas. I’m sorry if my perspective interrupted some people’s nostalgia trip.
“…being chastised for trying to dictate the topics of discussion in a discussion thread” - if i came across as trying to dictate the direction of the discussion in this thread, then i wrote poorly and i apologise. my intent was simply to point out the reason why the thread has historically focused on celebrity deaths while ignoring other topics.
@no1 you’re fine. For what it’s worth the ‘if you like’ portion of my post was more like ‘this is what I’m actually doing’
@jbartus
I had thought, in this thread, of mentioning the horror of last night in LV and the many lost lives also.
I did not, in part because I just didn’t want do a post about it yet.
I’m just emotionally tired and discouraged and trying to come to terms with this terrible thing. I keep thinking of the lives cut short. Of the injured. Of those of who have lost family members.
I am quite saddened at the loss of Petty. It’s something “normal sized” as a source of sorrow . It’s one I do not find it difficult to talk about at the moment.
Last night’s hideous events in Las Vegas bring other sorts of emotions, much stronger ones, about serious violence and senseless loss and tragedy, and all the thoughts and feelings of us all, and the injured people and maimed lives, and all the personal beliefs that all of us bring to a mass murder situation, political or otherwise.
I don’t have a simple of beliefs about the politics, Esp regarding firearms. My own thoughts are on that are complex to me, and I am a now and then user of personal firearms. Many in my family have them.
I don’t wish to discuss the politics of that in this thread. Not even a little bit.
I have avoided in depth news reports today on LV, until I could focus on them. I have no idea if a motive for the shooting has been found, or whether perhaps last night’s shooter will be found to have some measurable and serious physical brain disorder.
So I did not bring it up. Yet.
Not because I believe that Petty’ death is in any way more significant than horrific anonymous random mass murder. I believe and feel nothing of the sort.
Rather, because Petty’s death is something I can bear to talk about. The LV shooting … I’m still, at this remove of miles, knowing no one there, in shock. It just hurts so much.
If that makes me a coward who sometime mis-values events in public, because I did not mention the shooting in LV yet today here, then for this day, so be it.
I could say that my thoughts, all our thoughts, are with the victims and their families. T thoughts are.
Will that help them? I hope so. Bit I don’t know.
Can I avoid the political nonsense garbage talk, filled with judgement, distortion, alt facts, that I’m sure will roil the news commentaries for some time?
And can I then still hope to catch good, measured, intelligent commentary and hope that we will actually have discussions about this topic not filled with manipulation and self-righteousness and rigid stupidity?
I don’t know. I’m just tired of people getting shot for no reason. Il I’m tired of pointless tragedy. Sometimes …
It’s just so bad. I don’t really have useful words. Wish I did.
I’m glad that you brought it up. I just wasn’t ready to.
I people don’t get into arguments about whether it belongs in the thread or not.
@jbartus Who’s lives were more important, a couple gunned down in Las Vegas or the two 15-year olds killed execution style here in town?
Who was more important, an adult standing in the street in Charlottesville that was killed by a car or the 6 year old struck and killed by a car here over the weekend?
We make bullshit value judgements as a society all the time. Check your obituaries- how many of those people deserved to die?
Maybe if we really cared about every death and not just ones that happened all at once we would be a kinder society.
And I can be sad about Tom Petty’s death too.
@sammydog01 none of the above. My issue is that less than 24 hours after a massive, senseless tragedy we’re apparently more worried about the death of someone who had the good fortune to be born with talent, who abused his body with drugs, and whose life ended naturally than we are about the nearly 60 people dead and 500 wounded in a completely senseless act of violence carried out on the large scale.
Tom Petty made great music, and it’s a shame that his time has come and passed, but you’ll have to excuse me for not getting all bleary eyed over his passing when there are hundreds of people suffering due to such a senseless act of violence. Frankly the fact that his passing got as much press as it did treading directly on the heels of the massacre in Las Vegas is unconscionable and disrespectful to the hundreds of victims. There’s plenty of time to mourn for the poor dead rich rock star who probably caused his own death, the Vegas victims deserve better than to be shuffled off into the background without even a word. Celebrity shouldn’t trump tragedy.
Go ahead and be sad for whomever you like, it’s your right, but I’m going to go ahead and keep exercising my right too, regardless of what you think of it.
@jbartus
(please dint take this as an attack. It’s my reaction. My opinion. Nothing more.)
I completely disagree with the word remark because I disagree with your assessment of the reasons that Petty’s death got the attention it did on that day.
Petty was a significant cultural figure, and his death, unexpectedly and at a relatively young age, world have gotten a lot of attention on a normal day. And that fine by me.
But also that’s somewhat beside the point, because Sunday and Monday were not normal days.
Not now. I hope, not ever.
I think - I heard several people say this or similar yesterday, quietly, and in pain - They talked about Petty’s death because they could bear to. Because they could not find words for what happened in Vegas. Or because they had words but couldn’t beat to speak them.
Petty’s death was within “normal”. And so, therefore, painful, but bearable.
What in Vegas was so much further into incomprehensible pure horror.
Yesterday I saw people try to speak of the events and horrible tragedy in LV, say half a sentence, and stop. They didn’t know how to go on.
Years from now, I know which one will still haunt us (all of us). It won’t be Petty’s death, as sad as that it.
Years from now we will mourn the pointless loss of lives, and shattered lives of the injured, and shattered families. Years from now we will still feel a kind of shocked pain that still had trouble finding words.
People sometimes or often spoke yesterday, of Petty, because they could stand to.
Because in the middle and aftermath of shocking evil and loss, their (and my) brains fought to rest for a moment on some tiny piece of something - some event - that is comprehensible on a normal scale.
I hope you won’t be too hard on people, or quick to be judgmental. That people speak of Petty doesn’t necessarily mean that is who is on their minds, that they cannot speak of yet.
I spoke of Petty yesterday. But he was, only for a short moment, the person who was on my mind.
My real thoughts were elsewhere.
Hope I’m up to that. Here and there, and more .
@f00l Tragedies happen every day everywhere. Check your local newspaper. They only get our attention when they are big like this one. That’s why they happen- attention whores like the attention. Maybe we should back off.
@sammydog01
I follow the news. Have all my life. Local and beyond. I presume many of us do.
I am well aware if the flow of news events and their frequency. And the flow of terrible news events. And the constant flow of horrible outcomes for the innocent.
This goes on within our lives and our species, more or less. I hope our kind makes some progress along the way. I don’t know whether or not we do.
In my prebious remark, I wasn’t specifically speaking to your remarks and perspective. If I should have, I apologize.
The last previous remark of mine was specifically addressed to the concerns of another. Those remarks may or may not have value.
If I should be backing off something I cannot see I should be backing off from, apologies.
Some of these horrors seem to be enacted by attention whores and those with a flawed and horrible agenda.
Others:. I just don’t know. We have much to learn on about how a fairly normal person (sometimes) goes in a terrible and obsessive direction and causes tragedy.
@f00l First of all,
/giphy hugs
@f00l Second, I don’t understand the difference between one guy killing 58 people and 58 guys killing one each. The same number of people are dead. The same number of families are in mourning. We, as a country, almost revel in mass murders. The news will be featuring this story for another couple of weeks. Every detail will be covered. The victims will all be featured in the press nationally. And some random tourist that gets shot on the strip is anonymous. It’s like everyone’s life doesn’t have the same value.
@jbartus This thread is getting ridiculous.
Yes, everyone is shocked at the senseless murder of so many people by an evil crazed killer.
People are also very sad about the sudden death of Tom Petty, who is known world-wide.
Maybe this thread could be renamed to mention famous and celebrated people, with another thread to include the murder of innocent people. I dunno…
I do know that I hope this killer idiot is forgotten in history and the families of the murdered and injured can carry on. We need to stop bickering about what the hell goes in the thread & carry on!
My prayers for those murdered, injured & for Tom Petty’s family.
Just my 2 cents… Sorry if I offended someone…
@daveinwarsh I love you Dave.
To sate the lust of power; more horrid still,
The foulest stain and scandal of our nature
Became its boast — One Murder made a Villain,
Millions a Hero. — Princes were privileg’d
To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.
Ah! why will Kings forget that they are Men?
Beilby Porteus, 1759
“If only one man dies […], that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.”
Joseph Stalin, 1947
There are many ways to feel about the events in Vegas and similar horrors. Or about other pointless acts of violence. I suppose I cycle through some if these.
Here is one.
Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
By Dylan Thomas
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
Gord Downie - Canadian rock musician, writer, and occasional actor died at the age of 53 (brain cancer). Best known as the front man for The Tragically Hip
“Gord knew this day was coming — his response was to spend this precious time as he always had — making music, making memories and expressing deep gratitude to his family and friends for a life well lived, often sealing it with a kiss on the lips”
@lichme Aw, I didn’t recognize the name, but I love The Tragically Hip. Sad news.
Fats Domino, Architect Of Rock And Roll, Dead At 89
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/25/522583856/fats-domino-architect-of-rock-and-roll-dead-at-89
@f00l He’s going to have one spectacular New Orleans funeral procession. A big voice from my youth. Didn’t know he grew up speaking French Creole. http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41753839
Robert “Benson” Guillaume, 89
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/24/559889873/robert-guillaume-groundbreaking-emmy-winner-in-soap-benson-dies
roy halladay, american baseball pitcher, cy young winner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Halladay
@no1 And amazingly good guy. This saddened me greatly, especially as a Phillies fan.
john hillerman, actor (“magnum, p.i.” among other works). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hillerman
@no1 I had the day off today so naturally came down with a cold, so didn’t go out to do anything useful or fun. Magnum PI was on; first episode I’ve watched in a long time, though it was one of my favorite series back then.
Higgins was a great character.
John Hillerman, best known for his portrayal of stuffy Brit Jonathan Higgins, the foil to Tom Selleck’s unconventional detective on Magnum P.I., has died at his home in Texas from unknown causes, according to The New York Times. He was 84.
Born on Dec. 20, 1932 in Texas, where he was also raised, Hillerman ironically became most associated with a British character, Magnum P.I.’s by-the-book Higgins. (from http://ew.com/tv/2017/11/09/john-hillerman-dead-magnum-p-i-chinatown-actor-dies/)
It’s ironic how many Brits are now playing Americans, yet to this day I’ll bet most people still thought John Hillerman was actually British. He was a wonderful actor. RIP John
@snapster Dammit. That’s about one of the worst things I’ve heard (right after them moving the payment process over to Amazon, which caused me to quit buying at wine dot woot).
@snapster Soooo … wine.meh?
(This is opposed to whine.meh … that exists already.)
@narfcake nothing dot-meh, that’s for sure. Tired of that box.
@snapster
Shit. Is the one part of Woot I still like.
@snapster now I’m sad. Where will I buy all the Wellington at?! (what’s left of it)
@jbartus
Let us hope some source will appear. In the meantime:
https://www.winecountryconnect.com/
Sign up for their making list.
(And Meh/Mediocre)
See this thread:
https://meh.com/forum/topics/is-it-time-for-meh-wine
Chuck Mosley of Faith No More
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/chuck-mosley-former-faith-no-more-singer-dead-at-57-w511563
Famed NY gossip columnist Liz Smith dead at 94
(CNN)
I met her once, accidentally, in my school years. She had been school friends in her youth with the mom of a friend of mine. They had stayed in touch off and on, and I just happened to come over when she was present.
I had no idea of her media standing until more than a decade later. But she knew how to command a room. And (to the perceptions of a schoolkid), she was funny as hell.
‘Malcolm Young, guitarist and co-founder of pioneering rock band AC/DC, has passed away, the band said in a statement Saturday. He was 64. Young’s family said he passed away peacefully Saturday with his family at his bedside. He is survived by his wife O’Linda and two children.’
“He leaves behind an enormous legacy that will live on forever,” the band said. "Malcolm, job well done."
His brother died last month. George Redburn Young (6 November 1946 – 22 October 2017)
@OldCatLady
He stopped performing due to early onset dementia, I read?
: (
@OldCatLady
Hey Malcolm. If you’re on a highway, we’re going with you. Deal?
Azzedine Alaïa, Fashion’s Most Independent Designer, Is Dead at 82
This loss has perhaps little daily relevance to most of us. But he was a creative force and a an interesting man, who refused to act by the common strategies of the luxury industry. And who made, or was capable of making, by himself, all his designs, starting with cloth and scissors.
He practiced fashion design as art.
I’ve no desire to wear this sort of clothing, even if I could afford it, would look decent in it, and had that sort if social life. But it’s lovely to look at.
(NYT)
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/fashion/azzedine-alaia-obituary.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
From a much longer article:
…
On November 19th, Charles Manson died at the age of 83.
Washington Post article.
While this thread is full of famous and noteworthy people, most of whom left a positive impression on the world, I figured that this news might cheer some people up.
@mflassy Good Riddance. A POS not worth remembering.
David Cassidy, Singer and ‘Partridge Family’ Teen Idol, Dead at 67
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-cassidy-partridge-family-teen-idol-dead-at-67-w512168
Joan Hess 1949- 23 Nov 2017, aged 68. Joan Hess was the author of the Claire Malloy Mysteries and the Arly Hanks Mysteries, formally known as the Maggody Mysteries. She won the American Mystery Award, the Agatha Award, for which she had been nominated five times, and the Macavity Award. She was a member of Sisters in Crime and a former president of the American Crime Writers League. She contributed to multiple anthologies and book series, including Crosswinds, Deadly Allies, Malice Domestic, and The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. She also wrote the Theo Bloomer mystery series under the pseudonym Joan Hadley… This past year Joan completed an unfinished manuscript (The Painted Queen) of Elizabeth Peters. Based on extensive notes and conversations with Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters), her devoted friend, Joan took on the task of completing the last edition of this cherished series.
@OldCatLady I’m not finding a death notice for Joan Hess. Where did you see this?
Interesting person. Here’s a brief bio of her:
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2749
@Shrdlu https://www.facebook.com/joan.hess.773 and https://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/, and more tribute pieces. I completely forgot to cite sources, sorry.
@OldCatLady
Not news i wanted to encounter. : (
Thx for post.
@OldCatLady I don’t mean to bump this, but wanted to put the full URL to the tribute, since it was very touching (and had good information, as well).
https://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2017/11/joan-hess-rip.html
Sad news
Many if us remember this as a signal part of growing up;
ACTRESS Heather Menzies-Urich who famously played Louisa von Trapp in the 1965 hit film The Sound of Music has died aged 68.
Full articles here:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5209925/heather-menzies-ulrich-dead-sound-of-music-age-68-louisa-von-trapp/amp/
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-heather-menzies-urich-20171225-story,amp.html
@f00l
Third from left in the Trapp family movie still.
@f00l
I think she played the 2nd oldest Von Trapp daughter.
Rose Marie, actress and showbiz legend, dies at 94
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/28/entertainment/rose-marie-dies/index.html
@heartny Baby Rose Marie
@cranky1950
@heartny
She was something.
@heartny I loved her on the Dick Van Dyke show.
The alphabet ends at Y. Sue Grafton died last night. http://mysterywriters.org/sue-grafton/
@OldCatLady I need to go queue up one of her books in my kindle. Sad.
@OldCatLady
Ok I didn’t want that. Really didn’t.
@OldCatLady That is so sad, I love her books. I did not hear that, so glad I read this. I love murder mystery books. I will miss looking for her latest.