Obituaries

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Aquinas Walter Richard Sipe (December 11, 1932 – August 8, 2018) was an American Benedictine monk-priest for 18 years (1952–70 at Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota[1]), a psychotherapist and author of six books about Catholicism, the clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and clerical celibacy. Born in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, he was an American Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor trained specifically[2] to deal with the mental health problems of Roman Catholic priests. He practiced psychotherapy, "taught on the faculties of Major Catholic Seminaries and colleges, lectured in medical schools, and served as a consultant and expert witness in both civil and criminal cases involving the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests". During his training and therapies, he conducted a 25-year ethnographic study published in 1990 about the sexual behavior of supposed celibates, in which he found more than half were involved in sexual relationships. In 1970, after receiving a dispensation from his vows as a priest, Sipe married a former nun, Marianne; they have one son together.[3]

Sipe was a witness in more than 57 lawsuits, testifying on behalf of victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests.


In a May 2009 study, Sipe found that there were extensive problems in the sexual behavior of Burlington, Vermont Catholic clergy. He examined the records of 102 priests "whose records were available" between 1950 and 2002. He claimed that, out of this group, 23 priests were sexually involved with children under the age of 13 years, 15 were reported for involvement with married women and 19 priests were said to have had sexual relationships with adult men. He asserted that 49 priests could be said to have had a homosexual orientation.[6]

Sipe participated in 12 documentaries on celibacy and priest sexual abuse aired by HBO, BBC, and other networks in the United States, United Kingdom, and France and was widely interviewed by media including CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, People magazine, Newsweek and USA Today.[7]

Sipe's research and his book Sex, Priests and Power are specifically referenced in the 2015 film Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy, as being crucial in the story of the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize–winning 2002 investigation of predatory priests and the decades-long cover-up of the crimes of such priests by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The 1995 book is shown onscreen in its bright-red-covered hardback edition when the investigative team meet their first victim, Phil Saviano, the founder of the New England chapter of SNAP.[8] As a favor to director McCarthy, actor Richard Jenkins, who starred in McCarthy's 2007 film The Visitor, performed uncredited as the voice of Sipe in three phone calls in Spotlight, each based on real-life conversations with Spotlight reporters.[9] This includes one critical conference call which proves to be a turning point in the investigation: Sipe made the metric calculation that 6 percent of priests are pedophiles, which is then verified by the investigative team's subsequent research.[10]

Sipe was quoted (in part) as saying that "There are a pope or two who have resigned, several popes have been murdered but it's a very stable organization from the top down. What other monarchy do you know that's lasted for 2,000 years?"[11]

"The most valuable development since 2000 has been the open exposure of the misbehavior of priests and religious. This has been one element that alerts not just Catholics but members of other religious groups to the potential sexual dangers posed by men and women in positions of power over young people. The church has contributed to the education about child abuse and the need for prevention of abuse and to provide education for protection for all children and the vulnerable. Unfortunately the efforts of the Catholic Church have been forced on them by the public outcry, victims’ testimony, and the legal system that calls bishops and religious superiors to account for their gross neglect, conspiracies to conceal crimes, and fraud to keep abuse secret. It is an ongoing fight to keep the church honest. Catholic laymen and women (Governor Frank Keating and Chief Justice Anne Burke) who have worked closely with church officials say that the bishops do not want to change, but only want “business as usual.” The encouraging thing is that people do not accept the word of bishops as true, necessary or important anymore. Over thirty percent of men and women brought up as Catholic no longer identify themselves as Catholic."[12]


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

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Versatile author V.S. Naipaul

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul TC (/ˈvɪdjɑːdər ˌsuːrədʒprəˈsɑːd ˈnaɪpɔːl, naɪˈpɔːl/; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018), known as Sir Vidia Naipual or Sir V. S. Naipual, was a Caribbean writer of Indian descent and Nobel Laureate who was born in Trinidad with British citizenship.[1] He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad and Tobago, his bleaker later novels of the wider world, and his autobiographical chronicles of life and travels. He published more than thirty books, both of fiction and nonfiction, over some fifty years.

Much more at Wikipedia,

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From Animation Magazine: Chief Technology Officer of Walt Disney Imagineering

The pilot who died Monday (August 13) in a small plane crash in Sylmar, Calif. has been identified as Scott Watson, the brilliant chief technology officer of Walt Disney Imagineering, reports Deadline.com. Watson, 55, who was a Disney employee for almost 30 years, was described as a “humble genius.” He was killed in the single-engine aircraft crash in a field next to the San Fernando Valley freeway. October would have marked his 30th year with the company.

Those who worked with Watson said the brilliant and humble man left his mark on many of Disney’s theme park attractions, from Indiana Jones to Soarin’ Over The World to the upcoming Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge.

Watson held 45 patents that included a new approach to theme park ride vehicles to an apparatus for rendering 3D computer-generated graphics in real time, to a system for delivering an enhanced interactive TV broadcast, in which the video broadcast to one screen is enhanced by a simultaneous content delivered to a second device. He was also involved in the development of Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride, an early virtual reality trial at DisneyQuest in Orlando, Florida.

Former Disney Imagineer, Mike Peterson, recalled on Facebook how Watson stayed cool under pressure in during the Aladdin VR attraction. “I remember the night before opening, when he had a serious bug to fix, and he took a break to play a video game. Some managers would have screamed … ‘Get back to work! We have an opening tomorrow!’ Fortunately, our manager knew enough to leave us alone to concentrate on our projects…After the break had cleared his mind, he fixed the bug and the show opened on time. He was a truly unique and amazing person, who died doing what he loved.”

Disney Imagineering President Bob Weis said in a statement, “The Walt Disney Company is stunned and saddened by the loss of our long-time friend and colleague, Scott Watson. Those of us who worked with Scott during his nearly 30-year career at Disney knew him as a humble genius who made making magic look easy. Our hearts are with his family during this difficult time.”

http://www.animationmagazine.net/people/...ane-crash/

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Aretha Franklin has died of pancreatic cancer. 




Aretha Louise Franklin (March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer and songwriter. She began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, where her father, C. L. Franklin, was minister. In 1960, at the age of 18, she embarked on a secular career, recording for Columbia Records but achieving only modest success. After signing to Atlantic Records in 1967, Franklin achieved commercial acclaim and success with songs such as "Respect", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Spanish Harlem" and "Think". By the end of the 1960s she was being called "The Queen of Soul".

Franklin recorded acclaimed albums such as I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), Lady Soul (1968), Young, Gifted and Black (1972) and Amazing Grace (1972) before experiencing problems with her record company by the mid-1970s. After her father was shot in 1979, Franklin left Atlantic and signed with Arista Records, finding success with the albums Jump to It (1982) and Who's Zoomin' Who? (1985), and her part in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. In 1998, Franklin received international acclaim for singing the opera aria "Nessun dorma" at the Grammy Awards that year, replacing Luciano Pavarotti. Later that year, she scored her final Top 40 song with "A Rose Is Still a Rose".

Franklin recorded 112 charted singles on Billboard, including 77 Hot 100 entries, 17 top ten pop singles, 100 R&B entries and 20 number-one R&B singles, becoming the most charted female artist in the chart's history. Franklin's other well-known hits include "Rock Steady", "Jump to It", "Freeway of Love", "Who's Zoomin' Who", "Chain of Fools", "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)", "Something He Can Feel", "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" (with George Michael), and a remake of The Rolling Stones song "Jumpin' Jack Flash".

Franklin won 18 Grammy Awards and is one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, having sold over 75 million records worldwide.[1] Franklin received numerous honors throughout her career including a 1987 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in which she became the first female performer to be inducted. She was inducted to the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In August 2012, Franklin was inducted into the GMA Gospel Music Hall of Fame.[2] Franklin is listed in at least two all-time lists on Rolling Stone magazine, including the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, and the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.[3]


Much more at Wikipedia.

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Widely-cited scientist, expert on capillary motion in liquids:

Sir John Shipley Rowlinson FRS FREng (12 May 1926 – 15 August 2018) was a British chemist. He attended Oxford University where he completed his undergraduate studies in 1948 and doctoral in 1950. He then became research associate at University of Wisconsin (1950–1951), lecturer at University of Manchester (1951–1961), Professor at Imperial College London (1961–1973) and back at Oxford from 1974 to his retirement in 1993.

His works covered a wide range of subjects, including on capillarity—the tendency of liquid in narrow spaces to rise or fall without gravity—and cohesion—forces that make similar molecule stick together. In addition, he wrote on history of science, including multiple works on the Dutch physicist Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837–1923). He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. He received a Faraday Lectureship Prize in 1983 and was knighted in 2000.

In 1950, Rowlinson won a Fulbright scholarship and became a research associate at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. There, he was member of Joseph O. Hirschfelder's team and worked with C. F. Curtiss on various topics in physical chemistry.[2] In 1951 he moved to the University of Manchester where he worked as a Fellow.[1] Subsequently he became Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the same university.[1]

In 1961, Rowlinson was appointed Professor in Chemical Technology at Imperial College London.[2] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1970.[4][5] In 1974, he moved to Oxford as Dr Lee's Professor of Chemistry.[2] He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1976.[3] He received the Faraday Lectureship Prize in 1983 for 'exceptional contributions to physical or theoretical chemistry'.[3] He retired in 1993, becoming an Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.[3] After his formal retirement he continued to write scientific papers.[6] He was knighted in the 2000 Birthday Honours.[1]

 Throughout his career, Rowlinson wrote more than 200 papers and book chapters.[7] While he contributed to a wide range of topics, his main areas of focus were capillarity—the tendency of liquid in narrow spaces to rise or fall without gravity—and cohesion—forces that make similar molecule stick together.[7] His Molecular Theory of Capillarity—co-written with Benjamin Widom in 1982—is widely cited in scientific and engineering literatures: it had more than 2,000 citations by 2010.[6] His earlier work, Liquids and Liquid Mixtures (1958) is also similarly popular and is described by Widom as a "classic".[6] His acclaimed 2002 work Cohesion described intermolecular forces, their scientific history and their effect on properties of matter in great detail.[1] He also co-wrote a textbook Thermodynamics for Chemical Engineers (1975).[7] Other scientific topics he wrote about include phase transitions, critical phenomena, computer simulations of interfaces, glaciers, and information theory.[8]

In addition to his technical works, Rowlinson wrote about the history of science.[6] His works on this topic began with the Nature paper The Legacy of van der Waals in 1973.[7] He followed it up with further works on Johannes Diderik van der Waals, including a 1988 translation of van der Waals' doctoral thesis, and a 1996 biography of the Dutch physicist.[7] His colleague Benjamin Widom praised the translation as "no less[...] than a masterwork" and the accompanying introduction "brilliant both as science and as history".[6] His Molecular Theory of Capillarity also treats the topic's history in addition to its technical aspect.[9]

Rowlinson also contributed to the administration of science in his native United Kingdom.[1] He expanded the scope of Oxford's physical chemistry research and history of science teaching.[1][7] He supported Oxford's collection displayed at the Museum of the History of Science.[7] He was the editor of the journal Molecular Physics.[1]


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

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Yelena Shushnikova, Soviet/Russian gymnast

Yelena Lvovna Shushunova (Russian: Елена Львовна Шушунова; name sometimes rendered Elena Shushunova; 23 April 1969 – 16 August 2018) was a World, European, and Olympic championship winning Russian gymnast.[1][2][3] Shushunova is one of five women (Larisa Latynina, Věra Čáslavská, Ludmilla Tourischeva and Lilia Podkopayeva are the other four) who have won the grand slam of All-Around titles: Olympics, World Championships, European/Continental Championships.[4] Shushunova was renowned for pioneering complex skills as well as for her explosive and dynamic tumbling and high consistency.[5]

Shushunova was named as a member of the Soviet national gymnastics team in 1984, but was unable to compete at the 1984 Summer Olympics as the Soviet Union boycotted the Olympics.[7] Instead, she competed at the 1984 Friendship Games in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia, where she finished third all around and helped the USSR to a gold in the team event.[4]

The following year Shushunova made her breakthrough by winning the all-around title at the European Championships.[7] She also won three gold medals in the event finals on vault, floor exercise, and uneven bars (which she shared with East German Olympian Maxi Gnauck). At the World Championships she won five medals including the all-around title, which she shared with compatriot Oksana Omelianchik. She took first on vault, third on beam, and second on floor. In her floor exercise she tumbled a double layout, and side Arabian 1 and 3/4 salto, both rare skills for women at that time; in fact, women are no longer allowed to compete saltos which end in a roll. Here she displayed her signature skill, a straddle jump to prone support, a rare and innovative move for the 1980s.[7]

Shushunova's dominance in women's gymnastics continued at the 1986 World Cup in Beijing. There she won the all-around, vault, uneven bars, and floor exercise titles. In this competition she displayed an increased level of difficulty on two apparatus, showing a Rulfova flic (full twisting Korbut flic) on balance beam and a tucked full in double salto dismount on the uneven bars.[4] At the 1986 Goodwill Games she led the Soviet team to a gold medal, but then fell twice in the all-around finals to finish second to teammate Vera Kolesnikova. She rallied in the event finals to take, once again, the vault, bars, and floor golds and the beam silver.[8]

In 1987, Shushunova lost the European title to Romanian Daniela Silivaș due to a fall on a double layout dismount from the uneven bars.[9] At the European Championships she earned a bronze in the all-around and a gold on vault.[4] She continued to show increased difficulty on all apparatus by competing a double layout dismount on the uneven bars, a layout Thomas salto on floor, and a full in dismount on beam. Later that year her team lost the World Championships team title, placing second to the Romanian team. Shushunova also lost the world title to Romanian Aurelia Dobre, finishing in second place.[7] In the event finals she retained her vault title with her textbook Yurchenko full and Yurchenko 1.5, beating Romanian Eugenia Golea. She also earned a bronze medal on the uneven bars.[7]

In 1988, Shushunova competed at the Summer Olympics in Seoul. She scored three perfect scores of 10 in optional events and won the individual all-around and team event titles. She also won silver on balance beam and bronze on uneven bars.[5][7]

Shushunova retired from competition two months after the 1988 Olympics and later returned to her home city of Saint Petersburg, where she worked for the city's sports committee.[6] She helped to organise the gymnastics events of the 1994 Goodwill Games and 1998 European Championships, both of which were held in Saint Petersburg.[4]

In 2004, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.[10] In the following year she was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.[7]

More at Wikipedia.

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International diplomat Kofi Annan is no longer among us.

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And a very bad man.


Former Colonel Sergio Arredondo, convicted of killing at least 14 people in 1973, has died at Santiago's Military Hospital.

A convicted Chilean army death squad member died at age 92 in the Santiago.


Former Colonel Sergio Arredondo died on Wednesday at the Military Hospital in Santiago.
Arredondo was carrying out a 15-year sentence for orchestrating the deaths of 14 people at the Punta Peuco prison in Antofagasta that took place in October 1973, shortly after Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) overthrew the democratically elected government of socialist Salvador Allende. Arredondo’s killings were part of the ‘Caravan of Death’ during which approximately 75 teachers and social activists were tortured and murdered by several military leaders.

The now deceased colonel had been carrying out his sentence since February 2016. Arredondo is the fourth Caravan of Death executioners to have died while serving time in prison over the past several months, preceded by Risiere Altez, Leonidas Bustos, and Rene Cardemil. He died of terminal lung cancer.

Arredondo’s death occurred on the same day that several Chilean legislators brought a formal request to remove several Supreme Court Justices from their posts for freeing five former military members serving time for crimes against humanity (1973 - 1990).

With the support of human rights organization, the legislators presented a constitutional accusation, roughly an indictment, against the judges, Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Kümsemüller, and Manuel Valderrama for "evident abandonment of constitutional obligations" and “enabling impunity.”

The three magistrates voted to conditionally release former judge Gamaliel Soto, and former soldiers, Jose Quintanilla Fernandez, Hernan Portillo Aranda and Felipe Gonzalez Astorga, along with police officer Manuel Perez Santillan, who had been carrying out sentences for kidnapping, torture, homicide, and crimes against humanity they committed at the Punta Peuco prison during the Pinochet regime.
The three magistrates ruled to release them in July based on good behavior.

In the official document submitted Wednesday, the Congress members argue the justices failed to review international convention on human rights law. The indictment will be voted on Thursday and if approved five legislators will be randomly selected to review the request.

[/url]
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/C...-0021.html

And what was the Caravan of Death, and how did it operate?

The squad was made up of several Army officers. They were led by Army Brigadier General [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_Arellano_Stark]Sergio Arellano Stark, appointed by Augusto Pinochet "Official Delegate of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and President of the Government Assembly." Other members included Arellano's second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Sergio Arredondo González, later director of the Infantry School of the Army; Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo, an Army Intelligence officer and later operations chief of the DINA secret police; Captain Marcelo Moren Brito, later commander of Villa Grimaldi, the torture camp; Lieutenant Armando Fernández Larios, later a DINA operative and involved in the assassination of Orlando Letelier (Salvador Allende's former Minister) and others.[2]


The group traveled from prison to prison in a Puma helicopter, inspecting military garrisons and then ordering — or carrying out themselves — the execution of the detainees. The victims were then buried in unmarked graves. General Joaquin Lagos explained why he didn't return the bodies of the 14 executed prisoners of Antofagasta to their families:

Quote:I was ashamed to see them. They were torn into pieces. So I wanted to put them together, at least leave them in a human form. Yes, their eyes were gouged out with knives, their jaws broken, their legs broken ... At the end they gave them the coup de grace. They were merciless. "[...] "The prisoners were killed so that they would die slowly. In other words, sometimes they were shot them by parts. First, the legs, then the sexual organs, then the heart. In that order the machine guns were fired[3][4]

Though the Rettig Commission puts the count of murdered individuals at approximately 3,000 during the 17-year Pinochet regime, the deaths of these 75 individuals and the Caravan of Death episode itself are highly traumatic, especially as many of the victims had voluntarily turned themselves in to the military authorities, were all in secured military custody and posed no immediate threat because they had no history of violence, nor were threatening to commit any such violence.

According to Oleguer Benaventes Bustos, the second in command at the Talca Regiment when General Arellano landed there on September 30, 1973, the squad's aims were to instill "terror" in potential opponents as well as to ensure the loyalty to the new assembly of military staff outside the capital:

Quote:It seems to me that one of the reasons for the mission was to set a drastic precedent in order to terrorize the presumed willingness of the Chilean people to fight back. But without any doubt, it was also intended to instill fear and terror among the commanders. To prevent any military personnel, down to lowest ranking officers, from taking a false step: this could happen to you![5]

Beside the summary executions of scores of opponents, General Arellano punished several military officers for not being "harsh enough" on prisoners, including the constitutionalist officer Lieutenant Colonel Efrain Jaña Giron in Talca and Army Major Fernando Reveco Valenzuela in Calama.[2] Giron, in charge of Mountain Regiment N 16, was dismissed on September 30, 1973 for "failure to fulfill military duties" and replaced by his second in command, Olaguer Benaventes Bustos. He was then imprisoned two years in Santiago.[2] Valenzuela, who presided over the first court martial of Calama, was forced to resign on October 2, 1973, as he was considered too lenient. Transported to Santiago, he was also judged guilty of "failure to fulfill military duties" and subsequently tortured at the Air Force War Academy in Talca and imprisoned for 15 months.[2]

On October 19, 1973, General Joaquin Lagos, commander of the Army 1st Division and zone chief in State of Siege, designated as governor of the Province of Antofagasta after the coup, presented his resignation to Pinochet. The day before, the leader of the squad, Arellano, had arrived in his district and executed 56 persons behind Lagos' back. In some cases, prisoners were sliced with machetes before being shot. When General Lagos learnt of these murders, he requested a meeting with Pinochet and offered him his resignation. Years later, he explained that he did not return the corpses to the victims' families for burial because he was too "ashamed" of the barbarous slaughter of the men.[2] According to the NGO Memoria y Justicia, "it is believed that Lagos’ denunciation brought a halt to the spiral of murders.[2]"


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

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the smarmy, superficial Robin Leach -- purveyor of the shallow materialism of the Reagan era

Robin Douglas Leach (29 August 1941 – 24 August 2018) was an English entertainment reporter and writer from London. Beginning his career as a print journalist, first in England and then in the United States, he became best known for hosting the television series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous from 1984 to 1995. The show focused on profiling well-known celebrities and their lavish homes, cars and other materialistic details. His voice is often parodied by other actors with his signature phrase, "champagne wishes and caviar dreams."

...

Leach moved on to the Daily Mail as Britain's youngest "Page One" reporter at age 18. In 1963, he immigrated to the United States, maintaining his English accent throughout his life (which would become a trademark of his when he began working in television years later). He wrote for several American newspapers, including New York Daily News, People and Ladies Home Journal, before launching GO Magazine in 1967[2] and then became show business editor of The Star.

Leach got his start in television as a regular contributor to AM Los Angeles, with Regis Philbin & Sarah Purcell on KABC-TV. Other television work includes reporting for People Tonight, on CNN and Entertainment Tonight and helping start Good Morning Australia, as well as the Food Network. Leach was also a guest at the World Wrestling Federation's WrestleMania IV, where he read the rules for the championship tournament. Leach hosted an exposé documentary of Madonna – Madonna Exposed – for the Fox network in March 1993. The documentary was a biography of Madonna focusing on her career and publicity stunts. Before the documentary aired, he gave Madonna a cell phone number; he claimed that at any point during the airing Madonna could call Leach and argue any point. Madonna never called and the documentary continued without incident.[citation needed] He also hosted the Lifestyles spinoff Fame, Fortune and Romance,[3] along with future Today Show host Matt Lauer.[4]

Leach hosted The Surreal Life: Fame Games on VH1 in 2007. He also served as the public address announcer for the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Starting in 1999, he resided in Las Vegas.[5] He wrote for the Las Vegas Sun and the daily VegasDeluxe.com website from 2008 through June 2016,[6] when he was hired by Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Review-Journal.[7]

Leach appeared in the 2006 documentary film Maxed Out, which chronicled the rise of the credit card industry in the United States and the concurrent increased personal debt among working-class people. Leach remarked, "Nobody would watch Lifestyles of the Poor and Unknown". The comment was highlighted by a review in The Baltimore Sun.[8]

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

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Senator John McCain has died.

(Arizona Republic)

John McCain, a former Vietnam POW and Navy pilot, was a powerful figure in Washington in his six terms as Arizona senator and twice ran for president.



(Photo: Tom Tingle/The Republic)


John McCain, who endured more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before becoming the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and serving Arizona for more than 30 years on Capitol Hill, died Saturday at age 81.
McCain died at 4:28 p.m., his office announced. His wife and other family members were with him.
Destined to be remembered among the political giants of Arizona history, the six-term U.S. senator disclosed in July 2017 that he had been diagnosed with a deadly form of brain cancer called glioblastoma.

Meghan McCain, his TV commentator daughter, wrote Saturday on Twitter: "I love you forever - my beloved father."
McCain was a two-time presidential candidate, losing the GOP nomination in 2000 to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the general election in 2008 to then-Sen. Barack Obama.

The unsuccessful White House bids were spotlight moments in a long political career that began with his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982. After two terms, McCain ascended to the U.S. Senate in 1987, replacing legendary Republican U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 was the only other Arizonan to top the national ticket of a major U.S. political party. McCain was re-elected to the Senate in 1992, 1998, 2004, 2010 and 2016. He became Arizona’s senior senator in 1995 and chairman of the influential Armed Services Committee in 2015.
 

Often called a maverick, McCain was a complicated personality and will be remembered as the most important political figure to emerge from Arizona in the past 50 years.


https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/pol...538330001/

[Galen]

(08-25-2018, 09:01 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Senator John McCain has died.

(Arizona Republic)

John McCain, a former Vietnam POW and Navy pilot, was a powerful figure in Washington in his six terms as Arizona senator and twice ran for president.

I am happy to see him out of the Senate given his neocon tendencies.  A brain tumor like the one that took him out is not something I would wish on anyone.

[Eric the Green]

(CNN)Neil Simon, the playwright and screenwriter whose indestructible comedies -- including "The Odd Couple," "Barefoot in the Park," "The Sunshine Boys" and "Brighton Beach Memoirs" -- made him one of the most successful writers in American history, has died. He was 91.



https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/26/entertain...index.html

The cause of death was complications with pneumonia, according to his publicist, Bill Evans. Simon died around 1 a.m. Sunday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

A member of the famed "Your Show of Shows" writing staff for Sid Caesar, Simon was an entertainment mainstay for more than six decades. Starting with his first Broadway success, "Come Blow Your Horn" (1961), there was seldom a time when a Neil Simon work couldn't be found on stage or screen (or, occasionally, television).

At one point, in the late 1960s, he had four shows on Broadway at once.

Even a partial list of his works summons the comic highlights of late 20th-century American theater: "Barefoot in the Park." "The Odd Couple." "Sweet Charity." "Plaza Suite." "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers." "The Prisoner of Second Avenue." "Brighton Beach Memoirs." "Lost in Yonkers." "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."

And that's just for starters. Simon wrote more than 30 plays.

Add in his original screenplays -- such as "The Out-of-Towners," "The Heartbreak Kid," "The Goodbye Girl" and "Seems Like Old Times" -- and one can get a sense of Simon's dominance.

my comment: we seem to be in a time of many important deaths right now. It happens in spates and cycles. Who's next?

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A great pen is silenced.

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Inge Borkh (26 May 1921 – 26 August 2018) was a German soprano.

Borkh was born as Ingeborg Simon in Mannheim, Germany, in 1921. She was initially an actress and had some training in dance, both of which served her well in opera: she became known both for her voice and for her dramatic intensity – the "singing actress" exemplified, years before the term became common usage.

She studied singing in Milan and made her debut in 1940 at the opera in Lucerne as Czipra in Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron. She remained in Switzerland until 1951, when she sang a sensational Magda in the first German-language performance of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul in Basel. It was her key to international stardom, leading to engagements in the world's great opera houses: Vienna, Munich, Berlin, London, New York, and San Francisco.

She triumphed in her portrayals of the most challenging dramatic roles: Aida and Lady Macbeth (Verdi); Tosca and Turandot (Puccini); Fidelio (Beethoven); Medea (Cherubini); Elsa, Sieglinde and Senta (Wagner); Helena, Empress and Dyer's Wife (Richard Strauss); Euryanthe (Weber); and Antigone (Carl Orff). But it was as Salome and Elektra – both by Richard Strauss – that she gained her greatest fame. None of her performances were captured on film—except for the Dyer's Wife from Munich—but some of her great performances were recorded, and both complete works as well as excerpts from a wide array of performances are now available on CD. The complete works include Antigone, Turandot, Iphigénie, Medea (Gui), Die Frau ohne Schatten (Keilberth), Die Walkuere (Sieglinde / Bayreuth, Keilberth 1952), and her famed Elektra and Salome (Mitropoulos).

Borkh was one of the leading dramatic sopranos of the 1950s and 1960s, though she recorded infrequently. She can be heard on CD performing Scenes from Elektra and Salome, conducted by Fritz Reiner in the 1950s (RCA Victor 09026 68636-2) as well as a famous 1960 version of Elektra with the Dresden Staatskapelle Opera Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm (Deutsche Grammophon 445 329-2). Her Turandot was recorded for DECCA, conducted by Erede, with del Monaco, Tebaldi and Zaccaria in the other leading roles. Also for DECCA, she recorded a famous recital in which she sings mostly arias from Italian operas. In 1965 she recorded the role of Tove in Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder under Rafael Kubelik for Deutsche Grammophon.

Borkh retired from opera in 1973 after seven performances of Elektra in Italy, and briefly went back to the theater as an actress of the spoken word. She also for a while turned chanteuse, doing a unique cabaret act, a souvenir recording of which, Inge Borkh singt ihre Memoiren, is available on Preiser CD.

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

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Population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (Italian: [luˈiːdʒi ˈluːka kaˈvalli ˈsfɔrtsa]; 25 January 1922 – 31 August 2018) was an Italian American population geneticist, who has lectured at Stanford University. 



Cavalli-Sforza initiated a new field of research by combining the concrete findings of demography with a newly-available analysis of blood groups in an actual human population. He also studied the connections between migration patterns and blood groups.
Writing in the mid-1960s with another genetics student of Ronald A. Fisher, Anthony W. F. Edwards, Cavalli-Sforza pioneered statistical methods for estimating evolutionary trees (phylogenies); to estimate evolutionary trees, they used maximum likelihood estimation. Edwards and Cavalli-Sforza wrote about trees of populations within the human species, where genetic differences are affected both by treelike patterns of historical separation of populations and by spread of genes among populations by migration and admixture. In later papers, Cavalli-Sforza has written about the effects of both divergence and migration on human gene frequencies.

While Cavalli-Sforza is best known for his work in genetics, he also, in collaboration with Marcus Feldman and others, initiated the sub-discipline of cultural anthropology known alternatively as coevolution, gene-culture coevolution, cultural transmission theory or dual inheritance theory. The publication Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach (1981) made use of models from population genetics and infectious disease epidemiology to investigate the transmission of culturally transmitted units. This line of inquiry initiated research into the correlation of patterns of genetic and cultural dispersion.

Cavalli-Sforza has summed up his work for laymen in five topics covered in Genes, Peoples, and Languages.[2] According to an article published in The Economist, the work of Cavalli-Sforza "challenges the assumption that there are significant genetic differences between human races, and indeed, the idea that 'race' has any useful biological meaning at all". The book illustrates both the problems of constructing a general "hereditary tree" for the entire human race, and some mechanisms and data analysis methods to greatly reduce these problems, thus constructing a fascinating hypothesis of the recent 150,000 years of human expansion, migration, and human diversity formation.[3] In the book Cavalli-Sforza asserts that Europeans are, in their ancestry, about two-thirds Asian and one-third African.[4]

Cavalli-Sforza's The History and Geography of Human Genes[5] (1994 with Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza) is a standard reference on human genetic variation. Cavalli-Sforza also wrote The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution (together with his son Francesco).

Earlier, in the 1970s, he and Walter Bodmer wrote what was the standard textbook on modern human genetics, and was also a basic reference for population genetics more generally, as the field was at the time, The Genetics of Human Populations. WHFreeman, 1971. The two, with Bodmer as first author, later wrote another more basic text, Genetics, Evolution, and Man WHFreeman, 1976. Along with his 1994 book these are essentially classical presentations of human genetics before the genomics era began providing very much more detailed data.

Cavalli-Sforza's proposed Human Genome Diversity Project to gather further genetic data from populations around the world did not advance as he originally envisioned the project.

Cavalli-Sforza has conducted several studies of how language differences may serve as barriers to gene flow between adjacent human populations. His studies of human migration have tested hypotheses of linguists Merritt Ruhlen and Joseph Greenberg about language "superfamilies." The hypothesized superfamilies are controversial among other linguists.[7]

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Luca_Cavalli-Sforza

[Teejay]

Vale Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza

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Italian conductor Claudio Scimone

Claudio Scimone (23 December 1934 – 6 September 2018) was an Italian conductor.

He was born in Padua, Italy and studied conducting with Dmitri Mitropoulos and Franco Ferrara.[1] He has established an international reputation as a conductor, as well as a composer. He has revived many baroque and renaissance works. His discography includes over 150 titles,[2] and he has won numerous prizes, including the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros.

Claudio Scimone was the founder of I Solisti Veneti (the ensemble with which most of his recordings have been made) and at the time of his death was the honorary conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal.[3]
With the Philharmonia of London, he conducted the first recording of Muzio Clementi’s Symphonies.[4][5]
Scimone led the world to discover the importance of Vivaldi’s theatrical works, beginning with the first modern performance of Orlando furioso, featuring Marilyn Horne and Victoria de Los Angeles.[4]

In the reborn Fenice Claudio Scimone directed the first modern revival of the Venetian version of Maometto secondo by Rossini.[6]

He also gave the modern premieres of Moses in Egypt and Oedipus at Colonus by Rossini, and The Last Judgement by Salieri.
Claudio Scimone was awarded the title of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (the highest ranking honour of the Republic). He was also awarded an honorary law degree from the University of Padua.[4]

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

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Screen and TV actor Burt Reynolds has died.

Quote:He began acting on television in the late 1950s, and made his film debut in Angel Baby (1961). Following a regular role as Ben Frazer in Riverboat, he joined the cast of Gunsmoke as "halfbreed" blacksmith Quint Asper, and performed that role during the years just before the departure of Chester Goode and just after the appearance of Festus Haggen. He used his television work to secure leading roles for low-budget films and played the titular role in the spaghetti western Navajo Joe (1966), before playing the title character in police drama Dan August (1970–71). He later disparaged the series, telling Johnny Carson that Dan August had "two forms of expression: mean and meaner". Reynolds appeared on ABC's The American Sportsman hosted by outdoors journalist Grits Gresham, who took celebrities on hunting, fishing and shooting trips around the world. Saul David considered Reynolds to star in Our Man Flint, but Lew Wasserman rejected him.[21] He had the lead in Impasse (1969) and Shark!, the latter with director Sam Fuller who disowned the rough cuts.[22] Albert R. Broccoli asked Reynolds to play James Bond, but he turned the role down, saying "An American can't play James Bond. It just can't be done."[23] Reynolds made his breakout role in Deliverance and gained notoriety when he posed naked in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan.[24][25] During the 1970s, Reynolds played leading roles in a series of action films and comedies, such as White Lightning (1973), The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (also 1973), Lucky Lady (1975) or Smokey and the Bandit (1977). He made his directorial debut in 1976 with Gator, the sequel to White Lightning. During the 1980s, his leading roles included The Cannonball Run (1981) and Malone (1987) and All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989). After starring in Paul Thomas Anderson's second film Boogie Nights (1997), Reynolds refused to star in Anderson's third film, Magnolia (1999). Despite this, Reynolds was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Boogie Nights.[4][26] He voiced Avery Carrington in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City released in 2002.[27] He had support parts in Miss Lettie and Me (2003) and Without a Paddle (2004), and two high-profile films: the remake of The Longest Yard (2005) and The Dukes of Hazzard (2005).[28] Reynolds turned in a critically-acclaimed performance in the drama The Last Movie Star (2017), one of his last films.[29] In May 2018, he joined the cast for Quentin Tarantino's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood[30], but died before shooting his scenes[31].

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

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Amway co-founder and billionaire Richard DeVos, Sr.

Quote:Richard Marvin DeVos Sr. (March 4, 1926 – September 6, 2018) was an American billionaire businessman, co-founder of Amway with Jay Van Andel (company restructured as Alticor in 2000), and owner of the Orlando Magic basketball team. In 2012, Forbes magazine listed him as the 60th-wealthiest person in the United States, and the 205th-richest in the world, with an estimated net worth of $5.1 billion.[3] At one point, he was one of the 10 wealthiest Americans.

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

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It happened exactly 120 years ago, back when coal miners were treated as badly as if the coal dust that blackened their faces were from 'excessive melanin' instead. Violence in labor disputes has been the biggest source of political violence culminating in homicide in American history -- even worse in volume than race riots and right-wing terrorism such as the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Just a reminder.



The Lattimer massacre was the violent deaths of at least 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite coal miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897.[1][2] The miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicity, were shot and killed by a Luzerne County sheriff's posse. Scores more workers were wounded.[3] The massacre was a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW).[4]

The economies of Central and Eastern Europe were struggling in the late 19th century. The European rural population was growing faster than either the agricultural or new industrial sectors of the economy could absorb, industrialization was disrupting both the agricultural and craft economy, and there was increasing competition from large-scale commercial and foreign agricultural producers.[5] These factors drove most of the mass immigration to the United States.[5] Disproportionate numbers of new Slavic immigrants worked in the coal mining industry,[5] where they were among the most exploited of all mine workers.[4] During strikes in Northeast Pennsylvania by English-speaking miners in 1875 and 1887, many Slavic miners were imported as strikebreakers, and were "despised as scabs" by the English-speaking immigrant and American miners of the region.[6]

Conditions in coal mines of the late 19th century were harsh. Mine safety was very poor, such that 32,000 miners in Northeast Pennsylvania had lost their lives since 1870.[7] Wages, already low in a highly competitive industry, fell 17 percent during the mid-1890s after a coal industry slump.[4][8] Although wages had improved some by the fall of 1897, anthracite coal companies in the region cut wages and consolidated operations within the mines (often resulting in more laborious working conditions).[4] In some cases, companies forced workers to lease homes from the company and required them to see only company doctors when injured.[4]

In August 1897, the Honey Brook division of the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company laid off workers at its strip mines, cut the pay of the remaining employees, and raised fees for workers residing in the area's company towns.[4] The company consolidated its mule stables, forcing teenage mule drivers to travel much farther each day to pick up their mules (time for which they were not compensated).[4][9] After inconclusive talks, 25 to 35 teenaged drivers struck on August 14, 1897.[4][9] A scuffle between a supervisor and some drivers led to additional walkouts by strip miners as well as underground coal miners, and by August 16 nearly 2,000 workers were on strike.[4][9] Nearly all the miners joined the UMW (United Mine Workers) on August 18, and within two days almost all the mines in the region had closed due to the spreading strike.[1] Many Slavic miners had not joined the nascent United Mine Workers, both because of ethnic discrimination exhibited by English-speaking and American miners but also because of the poor relationships between unionized miners and the former strikebreakers.[6] But worsening working conditions and a UMW call for a 15 percent wage increase drew many Slavic miners into the union.[1][10]

The first wave of the strike ended on August 23, after the company agreed to pay overtime, bring wages up to the regional average, allow miners to see their own doctors when injured, and no longer force miners to live in company-owned housing.[4] A second strike began on August 25. Teenaged breaker boys at the A.S. Van Wickle coal breaker in the nearby village of Colerain struck for higher wages as well.[4] When Van Wickle attempted to use Slavic workers as strikebreakers, the Slavs joined the strike instead. Although the strike spread to two other nearby coal works, the company quickly agreed to raise wages up to the regional average and the strike ended on or about August 28.[4]

But when the new pay rates were announced on September 1, only a limited number of workers received raises.[4][10] Management did agree to treat Slavic workers more fairly,[10] but the mine owners reneged on their other promises.[4] The strikes resumed. On September 3, 3,000 workers marched on four mines, shutting them down.[1][11]

The mine owners' private armed force, the Coal and Iron Police, proved too few in number to break the strike, so the owners appealed for help from Luzerne County Sheriff James F. Martin.[10] Martin established a posse of about 100 English and Irish citizens to prevent any further marches from occurring.[1][2] Within five days, 8,000 to 10,000 miners were on strike.[1][4][12] On September 8, mine owners demanded that the sheriff of Schuylkill County arrest several thousand miners who had assembled near Pottsville and had forced a mine to shut down, but the sheriff refused.[10]

 On Friday, September 10, about 300 to 400 unarmed strikers—nearly all of them Slavs and Germans—marched to a coal mine owned by Calvin Pardee at the town of Lattimer to support a newly formed UMW union.[1][2][4][9][10] Their goal was to support the newly formed UMW union at the still-open Lattimer mine.[2][9] The demonstrators were confronted by law enforcement officials several times on the road and ordered to disperse, but kept marching.[10]

The deputies had spent most of the morning joking about how many miners they would kill.[13] While on a streetcar headed for Lattimer with the sheriff and his comrades, one deputy was overheard saying "I bet I drop six of them when I get over there."[14][15]
When the demonstrators reached Lattimer at 3:45 pm, they were met again by the sheriff and 150 armed deputies.[2][9][16] Sheriff Martin ordered the marchers to disperse, and then attempted to grab an American flag out of the hands of the lead marcher.[2][9][17] A scuffle ensued, and the police opened fire on the unarmed crowd.[2] At least 19 miners died, and anywhere from 17 to 49 others wounded.[1][2][3][9][17] Many had been shot in the back, and several had multiple gunshot wounds which indicated that they had been targeted by the deputies.[10][18]

 The strike led to temporary mob rule in the area. After Sheriff Martin telephoned for help, the Pennsylvania National Guard was dispatched to the county to restore order.[10][19] Late on the evening of September 10, more than 2,500 troops of the Third Brigade (partly stationed in Luzerne County) had been deployed.[19] Local Slavic community leaders held a rally on September 11 to try to calm the workers, raise money for the provision of the families, and seek the prosecution of Sheriff Martin and his deputies.[10] Outraged miners searched in vain on September 12 for Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company mine superintendent Gomer Jones, and destroyed his home when they could not find him.[10] On September 20, a group of Slavic women (armed with fireplace pokers and rolling pins) led some 150 men and boys to shut down the McAdoo coal works, but were turned back by the quick arrival of National Guard troops.[19][20] The Guard's artillery unit was withdrawn on September 24, and the rest of the troops five days later.[19]

Sheriff Martin and 73 deputies were arrested and put on trial.[9][10] At trial, the defendants claimed that the marchers had refused to obey an order to disperse and were charging toward the sheriff and his deputies.[18] As recounted by witness John Pusti in formal testimony:

Quote:I was with the strikers when the shooting occurred. When we approached the Sheriff he walked to the middle of the road and told us to stop. Some few of the men went forward, and I then heard two volleys from the deputies. None of the strikers was armed. I was shot in the right arm and as I started to run I was shot in the right leg, the ball entering from the back and coming out in front.[21]

Further medical evidence showed that nearly all the strikers had been shot in the back.[10][18] Nonetheless, the sheriff and his deputies were acquitted.[9][10]

The Lattimer massacre was a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW).[4] The UMW, struggling to establish itself in Pennsylvania's coal mines, witnessed a dramatic upsurge of more than 10,000 new members.[9][10] The incident helped end a longstanding myth about the docility of non-English speaking miners.[22] Just three years later, the union was powerful enough to win large wage increases and safety improvements for miners throughout the region.[2] It significantly boosted the union career of John Mitchell, an activist for the UMW who would be elected president of the national union due to his efforts during the Lattimer strikes.[23]
The crossroads where the Lattimer massacre occurred remained unmarked for 80 years. In 1972, the United Labor Council of Lower Luzerne and Carbon Counties and the UMW erected a small memorial on the site.[24]


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