Quote:Much delayed. I see Johnny Carson as one of the leading characters of the Silent Generation, a prime example of a memorable contributor to the American character.

The Silent may have had the largest collection of self-effacing comics, and as such types as Johnny Carson, Alan King, Bob Denver, and Richard Pryor leave the scene through death, we are going to miss them as we become more deadly in our seriousness in increasingly-dangerous time.

We need to poke fun at ourselves when egos bloat among people whose egos have no justification. But even without deaths we notice that the likes of Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke, Tim Conway, Carol Burnett, Mary Tyler Moore, and Bill Cosby no longer creating the humanistic comedy that we once thought the norm.

The Silent, a generation that many of us remember from youth (I was born in 1955) are now... old.

Comedy is not as easy an art as it looks.

Quote:Two disparate, elderly figures of music:

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)

It's been a bad year for classical music -- Mstislav Rostropovich, Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti, and now Stockhausen.

-- and

Ike Turner (1931-2007)*

Quote: Originally Posted by Pink Splice

Jesse Helms.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/...lms/index.html
Not to make light of a death, even of someone whose politics I abhor, but I wonder whether one of the last things that he heard was that Barack Obama -- a BLACK MAN -- had a chance to win Jesse Helms' beloved State of North Carolina?

Over his dead body, indeed!

Jesse Helms -- your man in the Senate if you were a racist and male chauvinist supporting tobacco and low wages.

He is a prime example of the operation of the generational theory as a mechanism of history; the exponents of obsolete passions and practices vanish from the scene through discreditation, senescence, and death. Part of progress is the removal of the questionable from history. To be sure that removes some harmless practices like powdered wigs and long written S's as well as nostalgic crazes for the not-so-great musical and artistic fads of youth who have since gone past elderhood into the Great Beyond -- but also such nonsense as "scientific racism", Earth-centered cosmology, feudalism, and slavery. It's certain that someone again will combine Jesse Helms' anti-intellectualism, opportunism, primitivism, and perhaps some now-novel form of bigotry -- perhaps someone now in elementary school.

Sure, we might miss someone like Hubert Humphrey far more... but good causes exist for someone like a Hubert Humphrey getting an early start in electoral politics and going far. Jesse Helms is irreplaceable, if only because his philosophy, useful as it was to some, was obsolete when he expressed it.

Quote:It's hard to overstate the Crisis that the Russians had from the Bolshevik Revolution to the end of the Second World War. I can't imagine anyone going through such times as a teenager (which Solzhenitsyn was during the forced collectivization and the Great Purge) and World War II as a young adult (Solzhenitsyn was 21 at the time of the Nazi invasion of the USSR) without facing severe conflicts about the basic realities of life.

Solzhenitsyn is not going to fade quickly from the scene. He remains the #1 dissident, now posthumous, of the Soviet Union and as such the primary alternative to the official Soviet explanation of the human condition in the USSR until the 1980s -- or those of émigré writers who had their own axes to grind, such as a desire to restore the Romanov dynasty or establish a right-wing dictatorship that would re-establish the class privilege that their families once had. The official Soviet explanation of things is itself largely discredited, having been forced to fit one narrow view of a self-serving elite. The reality of the Soviet Union was more out of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich than out of the official, glowing story of wise leadership "building Socialism".

He will remain controversial. He was more forgiving of Tsarist Russia and white émigrés than had been popular elsewhere -- among nations once under tsarist dominion. As a Russian patriot and nationalist his literary authority is likely to be used by those who would seek to re-establish Russian hegemony over peoples who have no fond memories of either tsarist or Soviet rule. He denounced the idea that the tsarist order sowed the seeds of the viciousness of the Soviet order and suggested that even the tsarist régime would have likely brought genuine progress without the terror, repression, and bloodletting of Soviet times if it had been given the chance -- contrary to much common perception outside of Russia.

(I, the composer of this post, believe that a right-wing Russia might have approached the brutality and repression of Lenin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev because of the tendency to make the more primitive forms of repression more severe and more pervasive as technology advances. Russia in 1917 was nearly as likely to go to the Hard Right as to the Hard Left, and I could hardly expect the White reactionaries to have established democracy. That some White reactionaries, most infamously the racist "philosopher" Alfred Rosenberg, introduced such bilge as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion to a receptive Nazi movement demonstrates that tsarist Russia and the White movement weren't wholly benign. Stalin's unique insanity fueled the terror that only the Nazis, Khmer Rouge, and Iraqi Ba'athists could imitate. I am convinced that a conservative Russia would have fostered economic growth and such progress as widespread literacy and universal schooling -- but likely with inequities enforced with consummate brutality by standards of elsewhere).

Quote:[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mel%C3%A9ndez]José Cuauhtemoc "Bill" Meléndez (November 15, 1916 – September 2, 2008) was a Mexican-born American character animator, film director, and film producer, known for his cartoons for Warner Brothers and the Peanuts series. Meléndez provided the voice of Snoopy and Woodstock in the latter as well.

A native of the Mexican city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Meléndez was educated in U.S. public schools in Douglas, Arizona, and later in Los Angeles at the Chouinard Art Institute (which would later become California Institute of the Arts).

Disney

In 1938, Meléndez was hired by Walt Disney to work on animated short films and feature-length films such as Bambi, Fantasia, and Dumbo. While there, he worked to unionize the rank and file animators he was working with. A member of the Screen Cartoonists' Guild, he left as part of the 1941 Disney animators' strike and never returned as an employee.

Warner Brothers

Three years later, he joined Leon Schlesinger's team at the Warner Brothers studios, where, as a member of the Bob Clampett, Art Davis and Robert McKimson units, he animated on a number of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck shorts (as "J.C. Melendez"). UPA put him on their payroll in 1948 to work on many television commercials, as well as the Gerald McBoing-Boing and Madeline shorts.

Bill Meléndez Productions

After a decade at two smaller production houses, Meléndez founded his own production company in 1964. Bill Melendez Productions helped produce the annually broadcast Christmas special A Charlie Brown Christmas, for which he won an Emmy Award and the George Foster Peabody Award despite having to work on short notice and with a tight budget. Meléndez performed the voice of Snoopy, who normally in the specials does not talk. Melendez was the only animator authorized to work on Charles Schultz's Peanuts characters.

Meléndez went on to do over 75 half-hour Peanuts specials, including the 1989 miniseries This is America, Charlie Brown, as well as four feature-length motion pictures – all with partner Lee Mendelson.

In 1979, he directed a made-for-TV animated version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Warner Bros. for the Children's Television Workshop.

Amongst the other comic strip characters he animated were Cathy and Garfield, as well as the 1992 special Frosty Returns.

Other work

In addition to animation, Meléndez was once a faculty member at the University of Southern California's Cinema Arts Department.

Quote:y RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: September 8, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/sp...n]Don Haskins, the Hall of Fame coach who transformed college basketball when he started five black players on a Texas Western team that defeated an all-white University of Kentucky squad for the 1966 N.C.C.A. championship, died Sunday. Haskins, who lived in El Paso, was 78.

“I just played my five best players,” Haskins once said in recalling Texas Western’s stunning 72-65 triumph over Kentucky. “In my mind, kids were kids, and I had some that could play.

“I didn’t really know until after the game and I got bushels full of hate mail how important that game was,” he added.

As the longtime college basketball coach Rick Majerus once put it: “It was one of the most socially meaningful victories in the history of sports. The Schmeling-Louis fight of college basketball.”

.....

The five Texas Western starters — Bobby Joe Hill, David Lattin, Willie Worsley, Harry Flournoy and Orsten Artis — did more than triumph over one of college basketball’s most storied programs in the Kentucky Wildcats, coached by the renowned Adolph Rupp and led that season by Pat Riley. The victory drew attention to the racially exclusionary policies in the Southeastern Conference and elsewhere, and it contributed to the collegiate recruitment of black players nationally.

Quote:By HOLBROOK MOHR
Associated Press Writer


JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- Roy K. Moore, an FBI agent who oversaw investigations into some of the most notorious civil rights-era killings, including those depicted in the movie "Mississippi Burning," has died. He was 94.

Moore's daughter, Sandra Giglio, said he died Sunday in a Madison, Miss., nursing home of complications from pneumonia and other ailments.

Moore, a former Marine and native of Oregon, had established a solid reputation in the FBI when bureau director J. Edgar Hoover sent him to Mississippi in 1964 after the disappearance of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

Nearly two months later, their bodies were dug out of an earthen dam in Neshoba County. "Mississippi Burning," released in 1988 and starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, was based on the case.

Bill Minor, a veteran Mississippi journalist who covered the civil rights struggles, said Monday that Moore established the first "full-fledged FBI bureau" in Mississippi and set his sights on the Ku Klux Klan.

"Those who underestimated the bulldog determination of Roy Moore and the corps of agents he assembled - many of whom had never been to Mississippi when Moore got the job - made a mistake," Minor wrote in a 1971 article republished in his 2002 book "Eyes on Mississippi."

Nineteen men were indicted in 1967 on federal charges of violating the civil rights of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. Seven were tried and convicted and served six years or less in prison.

The federal trial ended in a hung jury for Edgar Ray Killen, a part-time preacher and saw mill operator. However, the case was reopened decades later and Killen was convicted of manslaughter in state court in 2005 and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Giglio said Moore was respected by his law enforcement colleagues.

"The men that worked for him said he was tough and strict but they really respected his work ethic," Giglio said. "And he was a good dad and he was a good husband. His job took him away a lot and demanded a lot, but he was there for us."

Moore retired from the FBI in 1974 and worked as a security expert in the banking industry. He also stayed active in civic organizations, his daughter said.

Giglio said Moore made such an impression on her husband and her sister's husband that both men joined the FBI after getting to know him.

"I guess he was a pretty good recruiter in that way," she said.

Services for Moore are at 2 p.m. Friday at Wright and Ferguson Funeral Home in Ridgeland, Miss.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Quote:Samuel P. Huntington died at age 81:


Originally Posted by Harvard University


'One of the most influential political scientists of the last 50 years'

By Corydon Ireland

Harvard News Office

Samuel P. Huntington - a longtime Harvard University professor, an influential political scientist, and mentor to a generation of scholars in widely divergent fields - died Dec. 24 on Martha's Vineyard. He was 81.

Huntington had retired from active teaching in 2007, following 58 years of scholarly service at Harvard. In a retirement letter to the President of Harvard, he wrote, in part, "It is difficult for me to imagine a more rewarding or enjoyable career than teaching here, particularly teaching undergraduates. I have valued every one of the years since 1949."

Huntington, the father of two grown sons, lived in Boston and on Martha's Vineyard. He was the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books and over 90 scholarly articles. His principal areas of research and teaching were American government, democratization, military politics, strategy, and civil-military relations, comparative politics, and political development.

"Sam was the kind of scholar that made Harvard a great university," said Huntington's friend of nearly six decades, economist Henry Rosovsky, who is Harvard's Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Emeritus. "People all over the world studied and debated his ideas. I believe that he was clearly one of the most influential political scientists of the last 50 years."

"Every one of his books had an impact," said Rosovsky. "These have all become part of our vocabulary."

Jorge Dominguez, Harvard's vice provost for International Affairs, described Huntington as "one of the giants of political science worldwide during the past half century. He had a knack for asking the crucially important but often inconvenient question. He had the talent and skill to formulate analyses that stood the test of time."

Huntington's friend and colleague Robert Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, called him "one of the giants of American intellectual life of the last half century."

To Harvard College Professor Stephen P. Rosen, Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs, "Samuel Huntington's brilliance was recognized by the academics and statesmen around the world who read his books. But he was loved by those who knew him well because he combined a fierce loyalty to his principles and friends with a happy eagerness to be confronted with sharp opposition to his own views."

Huntington, who graduated from Yale College at age 18 and who was teaching at Harvard by age 23, was best known for his views on the clash of civilizations. He argued that in a post-Cold War world, violent conflict would come not from ideological friction between nation states, but from cultural and religious differences among the world's major civilizations.

Huntington, who was the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, identified these major civilizations as Western (including the United States and Europe), Latin American, Islamic, African, Orthodox (with Russia as a core state), Hindu, Japanese, and "Sinic" (including China, Korea, and Vietnam).

"My argument remains," he said in a 2007 interview with Islamica Magazine, "that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states."

Huntington first advanced his argument in an oft-cited 1993 article in the journal Foreign Affairs. He expanded the thesis into a book, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," which appeared in 1996, and has since been translated into 39 languages.

To the end of his life, the potential for conflict inherent in culture was prominent in Huntington's scholarly pursuits. In 2000, he was co-editor of "Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress." And just before his health declined, in the fall of 2005, he was beginning to explore religion and national identity.

"His contributions ranged across the whole field of political science, from the deeply theoretical to the intensely applied," said Putnam, author of a lengthy appreciation of Huntington in a 1986 issue of the journal PS: Political Science and Politics. "Over the years, he mentored a large share of America's leading strategic thinkers, and he built enduring institutions of intellectual excellence."

And Putnam added a personal note. "What was most rare about Sam, however, was his ability to combine intensely held, vigorously argued views with an engaging openness to contrary evidence and argument. Harvard has lost a towering figure, and his colleagues have lost a very good friend."

Timothy Colton, the Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies at Harvard, remarked on his old friend's breadth of intellectual interests. He used the American political experience as a pivot point (Huntington's doctoral dissertation was on the Interstate Commerce Commission), but soon deeply studied a globe-spanning range of topics.

"He was anchored in American life and his American identity, but he ended up addressing so many broad questions," said Colton, who had Huntington as a Ph.D. adviser at Harvard in the early 1970s. "His degree of openness to new topics and following questions where they take him is not as often found today as when he was making his way."

Huntington's first book, "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations," published to great controversy in 1957 and now in its 15th printing, is today still considered a standard title on the topic of how military affairs intersect with the political realm. It was the subject of a West Point symposium last year, on the 50th anniversary of its publication.

In part, "Soldier and the State" was inspired by President Harry Truman's firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur - and at the same time praised corps of officers that in history remained stable, professional, and politically neutral.

In 1964, he co-authored, with Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Political Power: USA-USSR," which was a major study of Cold War dynamics - and how the world could be shaped by two political philosophies locked in opposition to one another.

Brzezinski, a doctoral student at Harvard in the early 1950s who was befriended by both Huntington and Rosovsky, was U.S. National Security Adviser in the Carter White House from 1977 to 1981. In those days, said Rosovsky, the youthful Huntington, though an assistant professor, was often mistaken for an undergraduate.

According to his wife Nancy, Huntington was a life-long Democrat, and served as foreign policy adviser to Vice President Hubert Humphrey in his 1968 presidential campaign. In the wake of that "bitter" campaign, she said, Huntington and Warren Manshel - "political opponents in the campaign but close friends" - co-founded the quarterly journal Foreign Policy (now a bimonthly magazine). He was co-editor until 1977.

His 1969 book, "Political Order in Changing Societies," is widely regarded as a landmark analysis of political and economic development in the Third World. It was among Huntington's most influential books, and a frequently assigned text for graduate students investigating comparative politics, said Dominguez, who is also Antonio Madero Professor of Mexican and Latin American Politics and Economics. The book "challenged the orthodoxies of the 1960s in the field of development," he said. "Huntington showed that the lack of political order and authority were among the most serious debilities the world over. The degree of order, rather than the form of the political regime, mattered most."

His 1991 book, "The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century" - another highly influential work - won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, and "looked at similar questions from a different perspective, namely, that the form of the political regime - democracy or dictatorship - did matter," said Dominguez. "The metaphor in his title referred to the cascade of dictator-toppling democracy-creating episodes that peopled the world from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, and he gave persuasive reasons for this turn of events well before the fall of the Berlin Wall."

As early as the 1970s, Huntington warned against the risk of new governments becoming politically liberalized too rapidly. He proposed instead that governments prolong a transition to full democracy - a strand of ideas that began with an influential 1973 paper, "Approaches to Political Decompression."

Huntington's most recent book was "Who Are We? The Challenges of America's National Identity" (2004), a scholarly reflection on America's cultural sense of itself.

Samuel Phillips Huntington was born on April 18, 1927, in New York City. He was the son of Richard Thomas Huntington, an editor and publisher, and Dorothy Sanborn Phillips, a writer.

Huntington graduated from Stuyvesant High School, received his B.A. from Yale in 1946, served in the U.S. Army, earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1948, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1951, where he had taught nearly without a break since 1950.

From 1959 to 1962, he was associate director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. At Harvard, he served two tenures as the chair of the Government Department - from 1967 to 1969 and from 1970 to 1971.

Huntington served as president of the American Political Science Association from 1986 to 1987.

Huntington was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs from 1978 to 1989. He founded the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, and was director there from 1989 to 1999. He was chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies from 1996 to 2004, and was succeeded by Jorge Dominguez.

Huntington applied his theoretical skills to the Washington, D.C., arena too. In 1977 and 1978, he served in the Carter White House as coordinator of security planning for the National Security Council. In the 1980s, he was a member of the Presidential Commission on Long-Term Integrated Strategy.

Huntington is survived by his wife of 51 years, Nancy Arkelyan Huntington; by his sons Nicholas Phillips Huntington of Newton, Mass. and Timothy Mayo Huntington of Boston; by his daughters-in-law Kelly Brown Huntington and Noelle Lally Huntington; and by his four grandchildren.

There will be a private family burial service on Martha's Vineyard, where Huntington summered for 40 years.

In the spring, there will be a memorial service at Harvard. Details are pending.


As I recall, Howe and Strauss had plenty of references to his theories.

Harvard's color is crimson -- right?

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 12-27-2008 at 11:54 PM.

Quote:Good riddance to a fascist pig!

   John Colin Campbell Jordan (19 June 1923 - 9 April 2009) was a leading figure in postwar Neo-Nazism in Britain. In the far-right nationalist circles of the 1960s, Jordan represented the most explicitly 'Nazi' inclination in his open use of the styles and symbols of the Third Reich.

   Through organisations such as the National Socialist Movement and the World Union of National Socialists, Jordan advocated a pan-Aryan "Universal Nazism".

   Although later unaffiliated with any political party, Jordan remained an influential voice on the British far right.

   At Cambridge Jordan had formed a "Nationalist Club", from which he was invited to join the short-lived British Peoples Party, a group of former British Union of Fascists members led by Lord Tavistock, heir to the Duke of Bedford. Jordan soon became associated with Arnold Leese and was left a house in Leese's will, which became the Notting Hill base of operations when Jordan launched the White Defence League in 1956. Jordan would later merge this party with the National Labour Party to form the British National Party in 1960, although he would split from this after a quarrel with John Bean, who felt that Jordan's open National Socialism was a bar to progress.

   Jordan then founded the National Socialist Movement (in 1962, this later became the British Movement in 1968) along with John Tyndall. In August 1962, Jordan hosted an international conference of National Socialists at Guiting Power in Gloucestershire. This resulted in the formation of the World Union of National Socialists, of which Jordan was the commander of its European section throughout the 1960s, and at which he was elected "World Führer" with George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party as his deputy. On 16 August, Jordan and Tyndall, together with Martin Webster, Denis Pirie and Roland Kerr-Ritchie were charged under the Public Order Act 1936 with attempts to set up a paramilitary force called Spearhead, based on the SA of Nazi Germany. Undercover police had observed Jordan leading the group in military manoeuvres. He was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment.

   In October 1963, while John Tyndall was still in prison, Jordan, who had just been released, married Tyndall's fiancée, Françoise Dior, the former wife of a French nobleman and the niece of the French fashion designer Christian Dior. This hasty marriage, on 5 October 1963, was ostensibly to prevent her deportation as an undesirable alien. When Tyndall was eventually released, the marriage caused friction, and he split with Jordan in 1964 to form the Greater Britain Movement. In 1967 Jordan was again prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for 18 months under the Public Order Act 1936 for distributing a leaflet “The Coloured Invasion”, a vituperative attack on black and Asian people.

   In the Leyton byelection of 1965 Jordan was punched at a public meeting by Denis Healey, then Secretary of State for Defence. The fracas came about because the far right were using the by-election to stir up inter-racial hatred to defeat the Labour candidate (and Foreign Secretary) Patrick Gordon-Walker. He had already been defeated in the October 1964 general election in the Smethwick constituency after racist campaigning tactics by the successful Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths.

   Jordan reorganised the National Socialist Movement as the British Movement in 1968, but in 1974 he was obliged to step down from the leadership in favour of Michael McLaughlin. His demise was further accelerated by his arrest for shoplifting lingerie from Marks and Spencer. Magistrates in Birmingham convicted him of the offence, and he was fined £50 on 15 June 1976.

   In the 1980s, Jordan revived Gothic Ripples, originally Leese's publication, as his personal political project.

   Jordan maintained ties to groups led by Kevin Watmough, such as the White Nationalist Party and the British Peoples Party as well as the American National Socialist Workers Party. In 2000, he expressed scepticism over the efforts of the British National Party to soften its hard right stance.

   Colin Jordan died at his Pateley Bridge home on 9 April 2009.

   Source: Wikipedia.

   What a schmuck -- someone who stands for the ideology that so many of his heroic British peers sacrificed greatly to fend off in those heroic months of 1940 and 1941!

Quote: Originally Posted by Child of Socrates
R.I.P., Uncle Walter.
We lost a great one, a journalist with some credibility for his dispassionate delivery of the news on a medium that intellectual elites despised. Flawed as the format of 30-minute news at 6:30 PM is, and even he recognized its limitations (Read a newspaper!), it was far less flawed when he and such GI contemporaries as Howard K. Smith, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley competed for early-evening audiences. Millions accepted it as their sole source of news, and they almost got away with it (not that I suggest doing so now, as those who relied upon the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC were shown to have been more likely to get the War in Iraq wrong). With him and GI newspeople on TV, TV news had newspaper connections; after him, TV news eventually became more like entertainment if not outright propaganda at its absolute worst.

Quote:Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist known for his contributions to many fields of economics, beginning with his general statement of the comparative statics method in his 1947 book Foundations of Economic Analysis. Samuelson was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 1947 and was sole recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1970, the second year of the Prize.

Samuelson was born in Gary, Indiana on May 15, 1915. In 1923 Samuelson moved to Chicago; he studied at the University of Chicago and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1935. He then completed his Master of Arts degree in 1936, and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1941 from Harvard University. As a graduate student at Harvard, Samuelson studied economics under Joseph Schumpeter, Wassily Leontief, Gottfried Haberler, and the "American Keynes" Alvin Hansen. Samuelson comes from a family of well-known economists, including brother Robert Summers, sister-in-law Anita Summers, and nephew Larry Summers. He died on December 13, 2009, at the age of 94.

His professional positions include:

* Coming to M.I.T. in 1940 as an Assistant Professor of Economics and was appointed Associate Professor in 1944.
* Serving as a staff member of the Radiation Laboratory from 1944 to 1945
* Professor of International Economic Relations (part-time) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1945.
* Professor at M.I.T. in 1947 and then an Institute Professor.
* Guggenheim Fellow from 1948 to 1949.

Samuelson's book Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947, Enlarged ed. 1983), is considered his magnum opus. It is derived from his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University, and makes use of the classical thermodynamic methods of American thermodynamicist Willard Gibbs.[2] The book proposes to:

* examine underlying analogies between central features in theoretical and applied economics and
* study how operationally meaningful theorems can be derived with a small number of analogous methods (p. 3),

in order to derive "a general theory of economic theories" (Samuelson, 1983, p. xxvi). The book showed how these goals could be parsimoniously and fruitfully achieved, using the language of the mathematics applied to diverse subfields of economics. The book proposes two general hypotheses as sufficient for its purposes:

* maximizing behavior of agents (including consumers as to utility and business firms as to profit) and
* economic systems (including a market and an economy) in stable equilibrium.

In the course of analysis, comparative statics, (the analysis of changes in equilibrium of the system that result from a parameter change of the system) is formalized and clearly stated.

The chapter on welfare economics "attempt(s) to give a brief but fairly complete survey of the whole field of welfare economics" (Samuelson, 1947, p. 252). It also exposits on and develops what became commonly called the Bergson–Samuelson social welfare function. It shows how to represent (in the maximization calculus) all real-valued economic measures of any belief system that is required to rank consistently different feasible social configurations in an ethical sense as "better than," "worse than," or "indifferent to" each other (p. 221).

There are 388 papers to date in Samuelson's Collected Scientific Papers. Stanley Fischer (1987, p. 234) writes that taken together they are unique in their verve, breadth of economic and general knowledge, mastery of setting, and generosity of allusions to predecessors.

Samuelson is also author (and since 1985 co-author) of an influential principles textbook, Economics, first published in 1948, now in its 19th edition. The book has been translated into forty-one languages and sold over four million copies. Written in the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II, it helped to popularize the insights of John Maynard Keynes. A main focus was how to avoid, or at least mitigate, the recurring slumps in economic activity. Samuelson wrote: “It is not too much to say that the widespread creation of dictatorships and the resulting World War II stemmed in no small measure from the world’s failure to meet this basic economic problem [the Great Depression] adequately.” This reflected the concern of Keynes himself with the economic causes of war and the importance of economic policy in promoting peace.

Samuelson is co-editor of Inside the Economist's Mind: Conversations with Eminent Economists (Blackwell Publishing, 2007), along with William A. Barnett, a collection of candid interviews with top economists of the 20th century.

Samuelson is considered one of the founders of neo-Keynesian economics and a seminal figure in the development of neoclassical economics. The following is an excerpt on the reasons for awarding him the Nobel Prize:

More than any other contemporary economist, Samuelson has helped to raise the general analytical and methodological level in economic science. He has simply rewritten considerable parts of economic theory. He has also shown the fundamental unity of both the problems and analytical techniques in economics, partly by a systematic application of the methodology of maximization for a broad set of problems. This means that Samuelson's contributions range over a large number of different fields.

He was also essential to creating the Neoclassical synthesis, which incorporates Keynesian principles with neoclassical principles and dominates current mainstream economics. In 2003, Samuelson was one of the 10 Nobel Prize winning economists signing the Economists' statement opposing the Bush tax cuts.

Samuelson was one of the first economists to generalize and apply mathematical methods developed for the study of thermodynamics to economics. As a graduate student at Harvard, he was the sole protegé of the polymath Edwin Bidwell Wilson, who had himself been the sole protegé of Yale's great physicist Willard Gibbs. Gibbs, the founder of chemical thermodynamics, was also mentor to American economist Irving Fisher and he influenced them both in their ideas on the equilibrium of economic systems.

Samuelson’s 1947 magnum opus Foundations of Economic Analysis, from his doctoral dissertation, is based on the classical thermodynamic methods of American thermodynamicist Willard Gibbs, specifically Gibbs' 1876 paper On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances.

In 1947, based on the Le Chatelier principle of thermodynamics, a principle taught to Samuelson by Wilson in lecture, he established the method of comparative statics in economics. This method explains the changes in the equilibrium solution of a constrained maximization problem (economic or thermodynamic) when one of the constraints is marginally tightened or relaxed. The Le Chatelier principle was developed by French chemist Henri Louis le Chatelier, who is notable for being one of the first to translate Gibbs’ equilibrium papers (in French, 1899). Samuelson’s use of the Le Chatelier principle has proven to be a very powerful tool and found widespread use in modern economics. Attempts at neo-classical equilibrium economics analogies with thermodynamics generally, go back to Guillaume and Samuelson.

Stanislaw Ulam once challenged Samuelson to name one theory in all of the social sciences which is both true and nontrivial. Several years later, Samuelson responded with David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage: That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them.

For many years, Samuelson wrote a column for Newsweek. One article included Samuelson's most quoted remark, and a favorite economics joke:

To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties.

Source: Wikipedia

Yes, he was the author of my Economics 1 textbook in college. It read much like a chemistry text, which is a compliment.

Quote:One of the lowest bolgie of Dante's Inferno, almost certainly, if not in the recent annex established for Nazis and Stalinists, the bolgia that Dante never visited because he was born too soon to do so.

What a shock it would be if he found upon his death that God is... Jewish! And, of course, that He hates Nazis as the most egregious and damnable of blasphemers as well as murderers, torturers, and thieves.

He was a piece of work before he reached advanced age, so I don't have any sympathy for him.

Oh, in case you think it is a religious statement on my part -- I suggested that Serb butchers of Muslims would find it quite unpleasant to discover after death that God is Allah and that Muhammad is His Greatest Prophet.

Quote:He was one of the worst persons to have ever lived, one of the few who could be compared to the worst Nazi war criminals, Japanese war criminals of World War II, Stalinist henchmen, or Khmer Rouge without being a Nazi, Japanese military figure of World War II, Stalinist, or Khmer Rouge.

Hanging is gentle in contrast to what his eternally-damned soul now experiences. Even being mauled to death by a tiger is gentler.

... As I have said of Dante's Inferno, Dante wrote his Inferno a few centuries too early; he didn't have a bolgia nasty enough for Nazis, Stalinists, Japanese political and military leaders of World War II, Khmer Rouge, and leading Ba'athists of Iraq. Maybe it is simply so disgusting that it defies description even by the Great Poet.

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 01-27-2010 at 01:21 AM.

Quote:Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 1919 – 21 March 2010) was best known as the director (Festspielleiter) of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951 until the latter's death in 1966. From then on, he assumed total control until he retired in 2008, although many of the productions which he commissioned were severely criticized in their day. He had been plagued by family conflicts and criticism for many years. He was the son of Siegfried Wagner, the grandson of Richard Wagner, and the great-grandson of Franz Liszt.

His mother, Winifred Wagner (née Williams-Klindworth), was English. He was born at Wahnfried, the Wagner family home in Bayreuth in Bavaria. In addition to his elder brother Wieland (1917-66), he had an elder sister Friedelind Wagner (1918-1991), and a younger sister Verena Wagner (Verena Lafferenz, born 1920).

During the 1920s Winifred Wagner was an admirer, supporter and friend of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, who became a regular visitor to Bayreuth. Wolfgang Wagner first met Hitler in 1923, when he was four years old, and the Wagner children were encouraged to call him "Uncle Adolf" or "Uncle Wolf" (his nickname). When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he showered favours on the Wagner family. Wolfgang was a member of the Hitler Youth but never joined the Nazi Party. He joined the German Army in 1939. During the Polish campaign he was severely wounded in the arm, and he was discharged as medically unfit in June 1940 (Hitler visited him in the hospital).

Wolfgang worked with his older brother Wieland Wagner in 1951 on the resurrection of the Bayreuth Festival following Germany's collapse after the Second World War. Since that time, the festival has run on an annual basis. On Wieland's death in 1966, Wolfgang became the sole director of the festival and, under his directorship, the famous Bayreuth Festspielhaus underwent extensive renovations. He stepped down on 31 August 2008 when the year's festival had finished.

Both brothers contributed productions to the Bayreuth Festival, but Wolfgang did not enjoy the same critical reception as Wieland did. Like his brother, Wolfgang favoured modern, minimalist stagings of his grandfather's works in his productions. As director of the festival, Wolfgang commissioned work from many guest producers, including innovative and controversial stagings such as the 1976 production of the Ring Cycle by Patrice Chéreau. However, he confined the stagings at the festival to the last ten operas by his grandfather that make up the Bayreuth canon established under the direction of his grandmother Cosima Wagner.

Wolfgang attracted some criticism for what was seen as his autocratic sway over the Festival, much of which comes from within the Wagner family itself. Wieland's daughters, Daphne and Nike Wagner, have accused their uncle of ill-treating their branch of the family, saying that he drove them and their mother out of the family home following their father's death and destroyed the scenery, models and correspondence with artists relating to their father's work. Wagner writer Barry Millington notes two rather inconsistent threads of criticism about Wolfgang's role in managing the presentation of the family's connection with the Nazis. Daphne accuses him of blackening her father's name by releasing information on Wieland's connection with the Bayreuth satellite of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, while Wolfgang's own son, Gottfried, accuses him of having tried to suppress all information about the Wagner grandchildren's connection with the Nazis.

Nonetheless, he helped make the Bayreuth one of the most popular destinations in the world of opera. There was a ten-year waiting list for tickets. In 1994, he invited Werner Herzog (who had staged Lohengrin at Bayreuth in 1987) to make a documentary about the festival, which was released under the title Die Verwandlung der Welt in Musik (The Transformation of the World into Music).

Source: Wikipedia

Quote:   William Earnest "Ernie" Harwell (January 25, 1918 – May 4, 2010) was an American sportscaster, known for his long career calling play-by-play of Major League Baseball games. For 55 years, 42 of them with the Detroit Tigers, Harwell called the action on radio and television. In January 2009, the American Sportscasters Association ranked Harwell 16th on its list of Top 50 Sportscasters of All Time.

   Ernie Harwell grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, working in his youth as a paperboy for the Atlanta Georgian; one of his customers was writer Margaret Mitchell. He was an avid baseball fan from an early age; he became visiting batboy for the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association at the tender age of five and never had to buy a ticket for a baseball game since then.

   Ernie attended Emory University where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity and where he helped edit The Emory Wheel. After graduating, Harwell began his career as a copy editor and sportswriter for the Atlanta Constitution and as a regional correspondent for The Sporting News. In 1943, he began announcing games for the Crackers on WSB radio, after which he served four years in the Marines.


   In 1948, Harwell became the only announcer in baseball history to be traded for a player when the Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager, Branch Rickey, traded catcher Cliff Dapper to the Crackers in exchange for breaking Harwell's broadcasting contract. (Harwell was brought to Brooklyn to substitute for regular Dodger announcer Red Barber, who was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer.)

   Harwell broadcast for the Dodgers through 1949, the New York Giants from 1950–1953 (including his call of Bobby Thomson's "shot heard 'round the world" in the 1951 National League pennant playoff game on NBC television), and the Baltimore Orioles from 1954–1959. Early in his career, he also broadcast The Masters golf tournament, as well as pro and college football.

   In 1960, Harwell became the "voice" of the Tigers, replacing Van Patrick. George Kell had begun doing Tigers radio and TV broadcasts in 1959, and was instrumental in bringing Harwell to Detroit. "George called and said, 'I recommended you and the Tigers asked me to get in touch with you.'" Harwell said. "I came and that was it."

   Harwell teamed with Ray Lane in the broacast booth from 1967-72. In 1973, Paul Carey replaced Lane, forming the Tigers' best-known broadcasting team, until Carey's retirement after the 1991 season.

   On December 19, 1990, the Tigers and radio station WJR announced that the station wanted to go in a "new direction" and that 1991 would be Harwell's last, as his contract was "non-renewed". Fans across Michigan and throughout the baseball world were outraged, but the ballclub and the radio station (who eventually wound up blaming each other for the decision) stood firm: "(Harwell's firing is) not going to change no matter how much clamor is made over it," said team president Bo Schembechler. (The former University of Michigan football coach, a legend in his own right in the Wolverine State, continued to face harsh criticism before quitting in 1992, when owner Tom Monaghan sold the team). Rick Rizzs was hired away from the Seattle Mariners to call Detroit's games in 1992, teaming with Bob Rathbun; predictably, they were not as popular as Harwell and Carey had been.

   Harwell worked a part-time schedule for the California Angels in 1992. The following year, the Tigers were purchased by Mike Ilitch, who made it one of his first priorities to bring Harwell back. The 1993 season concluded with a three-person radio team (Rizzs, Rathbun and Harwell) with Ernie calling innings 1–3 and 7–9 of each game. Rizzs returned to Seattle following the 1993 season. From 1994 to 1998, Harwell called television broadcasts for the Tigers. In 1999, he resumed full-time radio duties with the Tigers, teaming with analyst Jim Price and continuing in that role through 2002. During spring training of that year, Harwell announced that he would retire at the end of the season -- this time on his own terms; his final broadcast came on September 29, 2002. Dan Dickerson replaced Harwell as the lead radio voice for the Tigers.


   Nationally, Harwell broadcast two All-Star Games (1958, 1961) and two World Series (1963, 1968) for NBC Radio, numerous ALCS and ALDS series for CBS Radio and ESPN Radio, and the CBS Radio Game of the Week from 1992 to 1997. He also called the 1984 World Series for the Tigers and WJR.


   Following his retirement, Harwell came back briefly in 2003 to call a Wednesday Night Baseball telecast on ESPN, as part of that network's "Living Legends" series of guest announcers. In 2005, Harwell guested for an inning on the Fox network's coverage of the All-Star Game (which was held in Detroit that year), as well as an inning on the ESPN Radio broadcast. For Game 3 of the 2006 American League Division Series between the Tigers and New York Yankees, he provided guest commentary on ESPN's telecast for two innings, called an inning of play-by-play on the Tigers' radio flagship WXYT, and guested for an inning on ESPN Radio. Harwell also called one inning of Game 1 of the 2006 World Series for WXYT.

   Harwell served as a guest color commentator for two Tiger games on FSN Detroit on May 24 and 25, 2007. Harwell worked the telecasts (alongside play-by-play man Mario Impemba) as a substitute for regular analyst Rod Allen, who took the games off to attend his son's high school graduation. (Harwell had filled in for Allen once before, on a 2003 telecast.)

   He also appeared as a guest on an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball telecast in Detroit on July 1, 2007. His typical sense of humor was on display. He talked about working beside the deep-voiced Paul Carey ("next to him, everyone sounds like a soprano") for 19 years, "which seemed like 30." He then asked Jon Miller and Joe Morgan how long they had worked together. "19 years." Harwell grinned at both of them, "Uh-huh, uh-huh."

   Harwell occasionally did vignettes (small video clips) on the history of baseball for Fox Sports Detroit's magazine program Tigers Weekly.


   He was known for his low-key delivery, southern accent (Detroit "Ti-guhs"), and conversational style. Some of his trademark phrases were:

   * "That one is long gone!" (His trademark home run call, with an emphasis on "long")
   * "He stood there like the house by the side of the road, and watched it go by." (After a called strikeout)
   * "Called out for excessive window shopping." (Also after a called strikeout)
   * "It's two for the price of one!" (After a double play)
   * "A fan from (insert a city) will be taking that ball home today." (When a fan would catch a foul ball)
   * "The Tigers need instant runs." (When the team was behind in the late innings)

   Harwell would also begin the first spring training broadcast of each season with a reading from Song of Solomon 2:11-12 (KJV): "For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

   The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association named Harwell as Michigan Sportscaster of the Year 19 times, and inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 1989. Harwell was also honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981 as the fifth broadcaster to receive its Ford C. Frick Award, and was elected to the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame in 1998, among many other honors. In 2001, Harwell was the recipient of the prestigious Ty Tyson Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting, awarded by the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association (DSBA). In 2009, Harwell was named the first recipient of the DSBA's Ernie Harwell Lifetime Contribution Award. The award, called the Ernie Harwell Lifetime Contribution Award, is named after the Hall of Fame Detroit Tigers announcer. Harwell is the first winner of the award. The award will annually honor an individual from the broadcast industry who has contributed outstanding time and effort to the betterment of sports broadcasting through a lifetime body of work. The Georgia Sports Hall of Fame inducted Harwell in 2008. In 2010 Harwell was named as a recipient of the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award from Fordham University radio station WFUV. The press box at Detroit's Comerica Park was officially named the "Ernie Harwell Media Center" following his retirement from broadcasting.

   Harwell's 1955 essay "The Game for All America", originally published in The Sporting News and reprinted numerous times, is considered a classic of baseball literature. He also authored several books, and penned an occasional column for the Detroit Free Press.

   Harwell also wrote popular music. His first recorded song was "Upside Down" on the Something Stupid album by Homer and Jethro in the mid-1960s. In the liner notes of the album, it says: "Detroit Tiger baseball announcer wrote this one, and we think it's a fine observation of the world today, as seen from the press box at Tiger Stadium. We were up there with Ernie one day and from there the world looks upside down. In fact, the Mets were on top in the National League." All told, 66 songs written by Ernie Harwell have been recorded by various artists. "Needless to say, I have more no-hitters than Nolan Ryan." – Ernie Harwell in article published May 31, 2005 in the Detroit Free Press

   Harwell made a cameo appearance in the 1994 film Cobb and in the made-for-television movies Aunt Mary (1979), Tiger Town (1983), and Cooperstown (1993). His voice can be briefly heard in the films Paper Lion (1968) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and in the TV movie The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2004). Harwell appeared as an interview subject in the 1998 documentary film The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg and has contributed to numerous other baseball-themed documentaries and retrospectives over the years.

   The 1997 text-based computer simulation game APBA for Windows: Broadcast Blast features play-by-play commentary by Harwell.

   Harwell served as a spokesman for Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan. His contract with the organization, which began in 2003, ran for ten years with an option for another ten. Had Harwell fulfilled the entire contract (by which time he would have been 95 years old), Blue Cross had pledged to extend it for yet another decade. Harwell formerly ran a blog

   about healthy living and fitness for BCBS. He retired from it on March 5, 2009.

   A devout Christian, Harwell had long been involved with the Baseball Chapel, an evangelistic organization for professional ballplayers.

   In 2004, the Detroit Public Library dedicated a room to Ernie Harwell and his wife, Lulu, which will house Harwell's collection of baseball memorabilia valued at over two million dollars.

   On April 26, 2008 Harwell was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from The University of Michigan at their Spring Commencement ceremony. One week later, on May 3, 2008, he was presented with another Honorary Degree of Laws this time from Wayne State University.

   In late 2008 Harwell began to appear in television public service announcements for the Michigan Association of Broadcasters, advising viewers about the DTV transition in the United States.

   Harwell was a member of the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy Board, an organization which attempted to save portions of Tiger Stadium. He offered to donate a large portion of his historic collection of baseball memorabilia, which he had collected over the course of his storied career, if part of Tiger Stadium could have been saved for a museum.

   On September 3, 2009, Harwell announced that he had been diagnosed with incurable bile duct cancer, and that he, his family and doctors had decided against surgery or other treatment of the condition.

   Harwell sat down for a 60 minute interview on an episode of MLB Network's Studio 42 with Bob Costas. The episode premiered November 17, 2009.

   Harwell lived in Farmington Hills, Michigan and moved to Novi, Michigan in the late 1990's where he lived until his death. At the time of his death at age 92, he still exercised regularly, did sit-ups, used a treadmill, and lifted weights. He was set to receive the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting on May 5 in New York City, just one day after his passing. Harwell considered Scully to be the best broadcaster of all-time. However, in accepting the award on Harwell's behalf, Al Kaline noted "We Tiger fans respectfully disagree."

Quote:Comment by KaiserD2

I saw the most famous incident in Tatum's career in 1978. I was living near Boston and rooting for the Patriots. It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen on an athletic field. The camera actually zoomed in on the trainers treating Stingley, trying, and failing, to get a knee-jerk reflex out of him. I knew what that meant.

It has now become apparent that football by its nature inflicts lasting, very serious injuries on those who play it and dooms them in many cases to early dementia and/or death. Yet it's hard to imagine it losing popularity all the same. Parents will allow kids to play a few years just for fun, and the ones who show promise will never give up the chance for glory at surreptitious (that is, collegiate) or official professional teams. And they'll figure, it can't happen to me.

American football is a little like our gun obsession--it sets us apart.

Quote:The horrific shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others Saturday is hard enough to comprehend, even without knowing that one of the victims was a little girl.

Among the six killed and 13 injured reportedly in Tucson, Ariz. was 9-year-old third-grader Christina-Taylor Green*. Green had two personal connections to Major League Baseball; She was a daughter of Los Angeles Dodgers scout John Green and a granddaughter of former Philadelphia Phillies manager Dallas Green.

From the portrait painted in the Arizona Daily Star, she seemed like a neat little girl all on her own:

• Already a good speaker, her father said, Green recently was elected to the student council at her elementary school.
• Green told her parents she wanted to attend Penn State and make a career helping those less fortunate.
• She loved animals and dancing — especially ballet — along with hip-hop and jazz music.
• She was athletic, too; Green liked to go swimming with her 11-year-old brother, also named Dallas. She also was the only girl on her Little League baseball team. She played second base.

Her grandfather, 76, managed the Phillies when they won the World Series in 1980. He also managed the Yankees and Mets and was general manager of the Chicago Cubs.

Dodgers owner Frank McCourt released a statement:

"We lost a member of the Dodgers family today. The entire Dodgers organization is mourning the death of John's daughter Christina, and will do everything we can to support John, his wife Roxana and their son Dallas in the aftermath of this senseless tragedy. I spoke with John earlier today and expressed condolences on behalf of the entire Dodgers organization."

A budding political scientist, the young girl was there to meet Giffords when Jared Loughner allegedly opened fire.

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 01-09-2011 at 05:37 PM. Reason: add link

Quote:No relation, but she was a near-neighbor at one time. She may be one of the last living Americans to remember Tsar Nicholas II as her ruler (but probably with no affection).

As I once commented after watching Fiddler on the Roof, Imperial Russia was a horrible place in which to be a Jew. It was also a horrible place in which to be... a Russian! (She was neither Russian nor Jewish, by the way).

Allen, Mich. —

Nellie (Galinis) Timm, 106, of Coldwater, passed away on Sunday, November 27, 2011 at Sandy’s Adult Foster Care Home in Allen.
Mass of Christian Burial will be held on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 11:00 AM at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Coldwater with Rev. Fr. Dan Doctor officiating. Interment will follow at Oak Grove Cemetery. Visitation will be Tuesday, Nov.29, 2011 from 4:00 - 6 :00 PM, with a Rosary to begin at 6:00 PM at Dutcher Funeral Home in Coldwater.

Nellie was born June 15, 1905 in Rumbones, Lithuania to Joseph & Berniece (Adrmavcule) Yarmala. She married Peter Galinis in Dec. of 1927 in Lithuania, he preceded her in death in 1968. She then married John Timm in May of 1971, he preceded her in death on April 3, 1983.

Nellie came to the Coldwater area in 1928. She spent many years helping on the family farm before going to work at the former Pants Factory and then the Shaw Shoe Factory where she worked for many years. Nellie was an active member of St. Charles Church, where she had belonged to the Altar Rosary Society. She was a gifted singer and dancer and had been the Cantor at her former parishes in both Detroit and Lithuania, where she had also performed. Nellie was a skilled seamstress and enjoyed crocheting.

...
obituary, Coldwater (Michigan) Daily Reporter

Quote:[url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/vaclav-havel]Václav Havel, the dissident playwright who led the Czechoslovakian "velvet revolution" and was one of the fathers of the east European pro-democracy movement that led to the fall of the Berlin wall, has died aged 75.
Reports quoted his assistant, Sabina Tančevová, as saying Havel died at his weekend house on Sunday morning, and the news was announced on Czech television during an interview with the current prime minister, Petr Necas.
Necas called Havel "the symbol of 1989" and said he did "a tremendous job for this country".

Havel's state funeral is likely to draw a crowd of leaders, artists and intellectuals from around the world. Havel was a renowned playwright and essayist who, after the crushing of the Prague spring in 1968, was drawn increasingly into the political struggle against the Czechoslovakian communist dictatorship, which he called Absurdistan. His involvement in the Charter 77 movement for freedom of speech won him admiration around the world.
His commitment to non-violent resistance helped ensure the velvet revolution was bloodless. It also help ensured that the "velvet divorce" three years later, when the country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, was equally peaceful.

Havel opposed the split and stepped down from his position as president in 1992, rather than oversee the process. However, he stood for the presidency of the Czech Republic early the following year and won. It was a non-executive position but Havel brought to it both moral authority and prestige on the world stage. He stayed in the position, despite bouts of ill health including lung cancer, until 2003.

His role in the east European revolutions of 1989 was second only to Lech Walesa's in Poland. As the twin inspirations of the pro-democracy movement, they were strikingly contrasting figures: Walesa a flamboyant, brash, working-class union agitator; Havel a soft-spoken intellectual from a well-to-do family, who was a reluctant politician.

He was one of a generation who came to political consciousness in the 1960s. Rock stars such as Frank Zappa were among his heroes and late in life he continued to sign his name with a small heart-shaped flourish.
His motto was: "Truth and love must prevail over lies and hate."

Quote:Leila Alice Denmark (née Daughtry; February 1, 1898 – April 1, 2012) was an American pediatrician. She was the world's oldest practicing pediatrician until her retirement in May 2001 at the age of 103. She was one of the rare supercentenarians renowned for reasons other than longevity; the only such person living to be 114. On December 10, 2011, at age 113 years 312 days, she became one of the 100 oldest people ever. At her death she was the 4th-oldest verified living person in the world and the 3rd-oldest verified living person in the United States.

Born in Portal, Georgia, Denmark was the third of 12 children born to Elerbee and Alice Cornelia Hendricks Daughtry. Her paternal uncle was Missouri Congressman James Alexander Daugherty.] She attended Tift College in Forsyth, Georgia, where she trained to be a teacher, but decided to attend medical school when her fiancé, John E. Denmark (1899-1990) , was posted to Java, Dutch Indies, by the United States Department of State and no wives were allowed. She was the only woman in the 1928 graduating class of the Medical College of Georgia, and married soon after graduation. Denmark is credited as co-developer of the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine in the 1920s and 1930s.

Following graduation, she accepted a residency at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia and moved to the Morningside-Lenox Park neighborhood with her husband. Denmark was the first physician on staff at Henrietta Eggleston Hospital, a pediatric hospital on the Emory University campus, when it opened. In private practice, she saw patients in a clinic at her home and devoted a substantial amount of her professional time to charity. She never refused a referral from the public health department. On March 9, 2000, the Georgia General Assembly honored her in a resolution.

Denmark outlined her views on child-rearing in her book Every Child Should Have A Chance, published in 1971. She was among the first doctors to object to cigarette smoking around children, and drug use in pregnant women. She believes that drinking cow's milk is harmful, and that children (and adults) should eat fruit instead of drinking fruit juices, and drink only water.

On her 100th birthday in 1998, she refused cake because there was too much sugar in it. When she refused cake again on her 103rd birthday, she explained to the restaurant's server that she had not had any food with sugar in it (other than natural sugar like fruit) in 70 years. She wrote a second book, published in 2002, with Madia Bowman titled Dr. Denmark Said It!: Advice for Mothers from America's Most Experienced Pediatrician.

Denmark lived in Alpharetta, Georgia until age 106, when she moved to Athens, Georgia to live with her only daughter, Mary Hutcherson. On February 1, 2008, Denmark celebrated her 110th birthday, becoming a supercentenarian. According to Hutcherson, Denmark's health deteriorated severely in the autumn of 2008, but improved until recently. In addition to Hutcherson, her only child, Denmark had two grandchildren, Steven and James, and two great-grandchildren, Jake and Hayden.

February 1, 2012, Leila Denmark became the 89th verified person to reach the age of 114.

At the time of her death, Leila Denmark was the 76th oldest ever woman and the 83rd oldest ever person on record.

Quote:Unlike the others who have ('found God' after doing horrible things), he has been consistent. He also scrupulously avoided partisan politics. He has been a conservative (why should I expect that to change?); it is not the conservative values but instead selfish ambition that led him astray.

He pioneered it, so it may not have been a hustle. The really nasty ones are those who "find God" and then do nasty things to people -- like many in the Reagan and second Bush Administrations and among GOP leadership in the 112th Congress. I have no reason to believe that Chuck Colson didn't believe what he said after finding God. He has been consistent.

If anything, contemporary Movement Conservatism makes me nostalgic for the conservatism of forty years ago.

Quote:Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni, known as the Pinta Island tortoise, Pinta giant tortoise, Abingdon Island tortoise, or Abingdon Island giant tortoise, is a subspecies of Galápagos tortoise native to Ecuador's Pinta Island, believed to have become extinct in June 2012

The last known individual of the subspecies was a male named Lonesome George (Spanish: El Solitario Jorge/George), who died on 24 June 2012. In his last years, he was known as the rarest creature in the world. George served as a potent symbol for conservation efforts in the Galápagos and internationally.

George was first seen on the island of Pinta on 1 December 1971 by Hungarian malacologist József Vágvölgyi. The island's vegetation had been devastated by introduced feral goats, and the indigenous C. n. abingdoni population had been reduced to a single individual. It is thought that he was named after a character played by American actor George Gobel. Relocated for his safety to the Charles Darwin Research Station, George was penned with two females of a different subspecies. Although eggs were produced, none hatched. The Pinta tortoise was pronounced functionally extinct as George was in captivity. On 24 June 2012, Lonesome George died of unknown causes.


On 24 June 2012, at 8:00 am local time, Director of the Galápagos National Park Edwin Naula announced that Lonesome George had been found dead by his caretaker of 40 years, Fausto Llerena. Naula suspects that the cause of death was heart failure consistent with the end of the natural life cycle of a tortoise. A necropsy is planned to determine an official cause of death. He was believed to be over 100 years old, and he weighed 200 lbs. The event may have marked the total extinction of his subspecies. The reason for the ambiguity is that one or more individuals from the subspecies may still be living in captivity or on a neighboring island in the Galápagos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonesom...onesome_George

Quote:my comment on her -- Back when every TV station seemed to have its locally-produced, unique programming most had some local character on some clubhouse program introduce some cartoons and some interesting guests. Then came the lengthened time for washday weepers and vapid talk shows. When independent channels began to proliferate such programming did not re-appear, but those channels filled with reruns. Too bad. The kids are missing something.

I was in the wrong market for Sally Starr, but I remember the general pattern. There might be a "Ranger Jim" on WJIM-TV in Lansing (get it?) or some 'cowboy', sea captain, or... whatever. That character let kids be kids.

Quote:[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler

"During the Freedom Rides of 1961, Seigenthaler was sent in his capacity as assistant to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights John Doar[10] to be chief negotiator for the government, in its attempts to work with Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson. After several days of refusing to return calls, Patterson finally agreed to protect the Riders, but their state trooper escort disappeared as soon as they arrived in Montgomery on May 20, 1961, leaving them unprotected before the waiting white mob.[11]

Seigenthaler was a block away when he rushed to help Susan Wilbur,[12] a Freedom Rider who was being chased by the angry mob. Seigenthaler shoved her into his car and shouted "Get back! I'm with the Federal government"[13] but was hit behind the left ear with a pipe. Knocked unconscious, he was not picked up until police arrived 10 minutes later, with Montgomery Police Commissioner Lester B. Sullivan noting, "We have no intention of standing police guard for a bunch of troublemakers coming into our city." "

He was featured in a recent PBS doc about the freedom riders.

Quote: By coincidence I have a little Chilean wine -- I just drank a toast to this nasty man's death. Cheers!

Gestapo, KGB, SAVAK, BOSS, DINA, Mukhabarat -- they are much the same despite the differences of ideology.

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 08-10-2015 at 12:37 AM.

Quote:Augusta Marie Chiwy (6 June 1921 – 23 August 2015) was a Belgian nurse who served as a volunteer during the siege of Bastogne. She worked with US Army doctor John "Jack" Prior and fellow Belgian nurse Renee Lemaire, treating injured soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge.

Chiwy, the daughter of a Belgian veterinarian from Bastogne and his Congolese wife, was born in the Belgian Congo. She returned to Belgium at the age of nine. In 1940, when she was 19, she went to Leuven to be trained as a nurse.

On 16 December 1944, the day the Germans launched their offensive, Chiwy returned to her family in Bastogne for Christmas. At that time the town seemed safely in American hands, but within days was surrounded by German troops advancing into Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. Chiwy attended to civilian and military casualties with her uncle, a doctor, until 21 December, when she volunteered to serve as a nurse at the first-aid station of the 20th Armored Infantry Battalion, 10th Armored Division, commanded by Dr. John Prior. Chiwy worked at the aid station in the Rue Neufchateau, and even donned an Army uniform in order to go out into the field to collect the wounded while under fire.

On 24 December 1944, the first aid station was hit by a German bomb, killing over 30 wounded men and another volunteer nurse Renee Lemaire. Chiwy was with Prior in an adjoining building and was blown through a wall, but survived unhurt. She continued to assist the American forces until the siege was finally lifted two days later.

After the war Chiwy worked at a hospital treating spinal injuries, married a Belgian soldier and had two children.

She rarely spoke of her experiences after the war, and it was assumed in some historical accounts of the battle that she had died there. British historian Martin King, while researching his book Voices of the Bulge, finally tracked her down in a retirement home near Brussels, hearing her story, and bringing her to public attention.

Stephen Ambrose makes a passing reference to her in his book Band of Brothers, under the name "Anna", and she also briefly appears in the television series based on the book, portrayed by Rebecca Okot.

In July 2015 a documentary film about Chiwy entitled Searching for Augusta: The Forgotten Angel of Bastogne, produced by Martin King and directed by Mike Edwards, won the Emmy Award for Historical Documentary.

Chiwy died on 23 August 2015 near Brussels, Belgium.

On 24 June 2011, Chiwy was made a Knight in the Order of the Crown. The medal was presented in the name of King Albert II of Belgium by Belgium's Minister of Defence Pieter De Crem. On 12 December 2011, Chiwy was awarded the Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service by the United States Department of the Army. It was presented to her by the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman.

Quote:Bears and humans have much in common (similar diets, territoriality, ferocity, aggression, intelligence, capriciousness, cunning, upright gait, and occasionally size). Both species see in each other much of what they dislike about themselves.

Quote: Last edited by pbrower2a; 01-28-2016 at 03:09 PM.

Quote:(A)ffectionately known as CrowJoe to friends, was a historian and author of the Crow Nation of Native Americans. His writings on Native American history and reservation culture are considered seminal works, but he is best known for his writings and lectures concerning the Battle of the Little Bighorn. During his lifetime he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Bronze Star Medal and the Légion d'honneur. During World War II, he became the last war chief of the Crow Tribe, and was the last living Plains Indian war chief. He was a founding member of the Traditional Circle of Indian Elders & Youth.

After spending the latter half of 1942 working in the naval ship yards in Bremerton, Washington, Medicine Crow joined the Army in 1943, became a scout in the 103rd Infantry Division and fought in World War II. Whenever he went into battle, he wore his war paint beneath his uniform and a sacred eagle feather beneath his helmet. Medicine Crow completed all four tasks required to become a war chief: Touching an enemy without killing him, taking an enemy's weapon, leading a successful war party and stealing an enemy's horse.

He touched a living enemy soldier and disarmed an enemy when he turned a corner and found himself face to face with a young German soldier:

“ The collision knocked the German's weapon to the ground. Mr. Crow lowered his own weapon and the two fought hand-to-hand. In the end Mr. Crow got the best of the German, grabbing him by the neck and choking him. He was going to kill the German soldier on the spot when the man screamed out 'momma.' Mr. Crow then let him go. ”

He also led a successful war party and stole an enemy horse – not one, but fifty horses from a battalion of German SS-officers, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode off. He is the last member of the Crow tribe to become a war chief. Of his story, documentarian Ken Burns said, "The story of Joseph Medicine Crow is something I've wanted to tell for 20 years." Medicine Crow was interviewed and appeared in the 2007 Ken Burns PBS series The War, describing his World War II service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Medicine_Crow

Quote:Imperial Wizard of Georgia KKK dies after shootout with police

According to Georgia police, J.J. Harper was well-known in Georgia for his role in the local chapter of the KKK:

Law enforcement confirmed Harper's involvement in the white supremacy movement.

"Yes, he was. He had a membership drive on the courthouse steps," said Deputy David Grantham with the Dooly County Sheriff's Office.

During the standoff, Harper told officers and various news outlets that "someone was going to die today".

Harper shot multiple rounds at officers before walking back inside his home.

Agents confirm they fired a round at Harper before a gunshot was heard inside the home.

Police were called to the home after a domestic dispute. Harper kept police at bay for roughly eight hours, telling those on site that "someone is going to die today."

[url=http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/19/1517530/-Imperial-Wizard-of-Georgia-KKK-killed-after-shootout-with-police?detail=email&link_id=1&can_id=cac3ba5a145b91ef293e1580fc1cd589&source=email-imperial-wizard-of-georgia-kkk-dies-after-shootout-with-police&email_referrer=imperial-wizard-of-georgia-kkk-dies-after-shootout-with-police&email_subject=imperial-wizard-of-georgia-kkk-dies-after-shootout-with-police]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...ut-with-police


Suicide by cop by one of America's leading fascists. What a stupid way to go... but what can one expect from the Klan?