Christopher Hitchens, writer.
Kim Jong-il, North Korean monarch in all but name, tyrant, and serial mass-murderer. (Roast in Hell!)
[/url](arguably his antithesis)
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." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/de...havel-dies
Robert James Gilbert Anderson, English Olympic fencer -- showed Hollywood stars how to do convincing combat*
Gordon Hirabayashi -- sociologist, involved in the USSC case Hirabayashi v. United States*
Richard Threlkeld, CBS correspondent*
Gustav Leonhardt, Dutch harpsichordist, period-performance pioneer*
Cy Twombly, artist
Sandor Feher, Hungarian violinist, hero of the Costa Concordia sinking -- rescued children*
Etta James, singer
child-killer whom I will not name this time*
Joe Paterno, legendary Penn State football coach until disgraced*
Paavo Berglund, Finnish conductor*
Don Cornelius, emcee of Soul Train
Dorothea Tanning, artist and writer*
Angelo Dundee, trainer of Mohammed Ali
Last known WWI veteran, Florence Green
Whitney Houston, singer
Gary Carter, Hall of Fame Catcher. *
I remember seeing a Detroit Tiger game being broadcast from New York -- with the New York Mets. The Mets were honoring their retiring catcher Mike Piazza, and the greatest living catchers of the time were there except for Jorge Posada (with the Yankees, and obviously unavailable) . The Tigers then had Ivan Rodriguez, and he caught for the Tigers. Others in attendance were Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Carlton Fisk, Bill Freehan, and Yogi Berra, If you believe in ghosts, then Roy Campanella was surely somehow in attendance. Since then Gary Carter and Yogi Berra have since left our world for that great Field of Dreams.
-- moi.
Harry C. McPherson, political wonk
Jan Berenstain, part of the creation of the Berenstain Bears.
Davy Jones, Monkee.
Andrew Breitbart, hack journalist*
Donald Payne, US Representative, (D,NJ-10)
Ghiath Tayfour, Syrian boxing champion, likely murdered by gangsters (the Assad regime).*
Frank Rowland, Nobel-Prize chemist, professor at UC-Irvine*
John/Ivan Demjanjuk, traitor to humanity as a brutal guard at Nazi death camps. Gone to the Gulag that will never be abolished (Hell!)*
Lisa Laster, sister of one of my favorite posters.
Earl Scruggs, innovative banjo player*
Adreienne Rich, feminist poet
Miguel de la Madrid, former President of Mexico*
Leila Denmark, pediatrician living to age 114*. Considering the profession, what could be more ironic than a pediatrician being the oldest person recognized in Wikipedia for reasons other than reaching an advanced age! Many of her infant patients have lived full, long lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leila_Denmark
Ferdinand Porsche, designer of the Porsche 911*
Thomas Kinkade, artist often derided for his marketing techniques*
Mike Wallace. Last journalist many people wanted to see interviewing him. *
Dick Clark. Rock music impresario.
Charles Colson. Nixon trickster, got a conscience, got religion, and regained some credibility
I said of him:
Ernest Callenbach, SF writer.
Levon Helm.
Moose Skowron, baseball star.
Junior Seau, American football star
George "Goober Pyle" Lindsey, comic actor*
Kim Jong-il, North Korean monarch in all but name, tyrant, and serial mass-murderer. (Roast in Hell!)
[/url](arguably his antithesis)
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." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/de...havel-dies
Robert James Gilbert Anderson, English Olympic fencer -- showed Hollywood stars how to do convincing combat*
Gordon Hirabayashi -- sociologist, involved in the USSC case Hirabayashi v. United States*
Richard Threlkeld, CBS correspondent*
Gustav Leonhardt, Dutch harpsichordist, period-performance pioneer*
Cy Twombly, artist
Sandor Feher, Hungarian violinist, hero of the Costa Concordia sinking -- rescued children*
Etta James, singer
child-killer whom I will not name this time*
Joe Paterno, legendary Penn State football coach until disgraced*
Paavo Berglund, Finnish conductor*
Don Cornelius, emcee of Soul Train
Dorothea Tanning, artist and writer*
Angelo Dundee, trainer of Mohammed Ali
Last known WWI veteran, Florence Green
Whitney Houston, singer
Gary Carter, Hall of Fame Catcher. *
I remember seeing a Detroit Tiger game being broadcast from New York -- with the New York Mets. The Mets were honoring their retiring catcher Mike Piazza, and the greatest living catchers of the time were there except for Jorge Posada (with the Yankees, and obviously unavailable) . The Tigers then had Ivan Rodriguez, and he caught for the Tigers. Others in attendance were Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Carlton Fisk, Bill Freehan, and Yogi Berra, If you believe in ghosts, then Roy Campanella was surely somehow in attendance. Since then Gary Carter and Yogi Berra have since left our world for that great Field of Dreams.
-- moi.
Harry C. McPherson, political wonk
Jan Berenstain, part of the creation of the Berenstain Bears.
Davy Jones, Monkee.
Andrew Breitbart, hack journalist*
Donald Payne, US Representative, (D,NJ-10)
Ghiath Tayfour, Syrian boxing champion, likely murdered by gangsters (the Assad regime).*
Frank Rowland, Nobel-Prize chemist, professor at UC-Irvine*
John/Ivan Demjanjuk, traitor to humanity as a brutal guard at Nazi death camps. Gone to the Gulag that will never be abolished (Hell!)*
Lisa Laster, sister of one of my favorite posters.
Earl Scruggs, innovative banjo player*
Adreienne Rich, feminist poet
Miguel de la Madrid, former President of Mexico*
Leila Denmark, pediatrician living to age 114*. Considering the profession, what could be more ironic than a pediatrician being the oldest person recognized in Wikipedia for reasons other than reaching an advanced age! Many of her infant patients have lived full, long lives.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leila_Denmark
Ferdinand Porsche, designer of the Porsche 911*
Thomas Kinkade, artist often derided for his marketing techniques*
Mike Wallace. Last journalist many people wanted to see interviewing him. *
Dick Clark. Rock music impresario.
Charles Colson. Nixon trickster, got a conscience, got religion, and regained some credibility
I said of him:
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.
Ernest Callenbach, SF writer.
Levon Helm.
Moose Skowron, baseball star.
Junior Seau, American football star
George "Goober Pyle" Lindsey, comic actor*
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.