RIP

[PassedOut]

Ray Manzarek

[y66]

Miller Barber, 82, Golf Champion With Odd Swing

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/06/13/sports/barberobit1/barberobit1-articleLarge.jpg

Barber didn’t seem a prime candidate for pro golf success. He was pudgy, he had hay fever, and his form was ungainly at best.

 

His right elbow flew outward on his backswing as he raised the club to the outside, bringing it high over his head, the shaft almost perpendicular to the ground. (In a classic backswing, the right elbow remains close to the body and the shaft ends up almost parallel to the ground.) After that he looped the club head inside and produced an orthodox downswing.

 

Fellow players likened Barber’s contortions to an octopus falling from a tree or a man trying to open an umbrella on a windy day. But he usually got the club face square to the ball, producing long drives and superb iron shots.

 

“He has a great release through the ball, and that’s one of the most important things,” Arnold Palmer told Newsday in 1989. “And don’t let that muscle tone fool you. He is strong.”

[ahh]

I am heartbroken James Gandolfini aka Tony Soprano sleeps with the fishes

[Winstonm]

I am heartbroken James Gandolfini aka Tony Soprano sleeps with the fishes

 

Ba da bing

[mikeh]

Iain (M) Banks died a couple of weeks ago: I didn't post because I didn't know about it, being on vacation.

 

An unappreciated writer, Iain excelled in both mainstream (Iain Banks) and SF (Iain M Banks), especially with his series of books based on the Culture. Many people disdain SF as populated by writers of little literary talent who write what is really no more than poorly constructed fantasy (fantasy writing is not the same as SF), but there are a number of writers in the field who possess significant talent. That number has been reduced by (a very important) 1.

[hrothgar]

Iain (M) Banks died a couple of weeks ago: I didn't post because I didn't know about it, being on vacation.

 

An unappreciated writer, Iain excelled in both mainstream (Iain Banks) and SF (Iain M Banks), especially with his series of books based on the Culture. Many people disdain SF as populated by writers of little literary talent who write what is really no more than poorly constructed fantasy (fantasy writing is not the same as SF), but there are a number of writers in the field who possess significant talent. That number has been reduced by (a very important) 1.

 

I'm not sure whether I agree that Banks was unappreciated. Both The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road are fairly well known in the UK.

 

"Use of Weapons" rates as one of my top 5 science fiction novels of all time. I rate "Last Call", "Declare", and "Startide Rising" in the same category.

Not much else.

 

Always loved his books. Glad I had the opportunity to drop him a note on his web page and say how much his work meant to me...

 

It sounds like you might have known him personally. Is this true?

[mikeh]

 

 

It sounds like you might have known him personally. Is this true?

Underappreciated might have been a better word, altho in recent years he did receive more recognition. No, I never met him: there is an outstanding eulogy for him available through the Economist website, and also on Pharyngula, one of my favourite blogs. I wish I had been aware of his illness, and had the opportunity of sending him a thank you for the hours of enjoyment his novels have brought me. I personally found his mainstream novels to be hit or miss, tho that may say more about me than about him. The Crow Road was a favourite of mine and Complicity perhaps my first. The Wasp Factory and The Bridge may be his best known mainstream works, but neither worked well for me.

 

Otoh, I enjoyed all of his SF.

[mycroft]

I have read elsewhere that he just boarded the GSV You're in the Wrong Universe for Fair. I appreciate.

[GreenMan]

Seymon Deutsch, age 78, multiple national and world champion, frequent partner of Bobby Wolff.

[Cyberyeti]

Iain (M) Banks died a couple of weeks ago: I didn't post because I didn't know about it, being on vacation.

 

An unappreciated writer, Iain excelled in both mainstream (Iain Banks) and SF (Iain M Banks), especially with his series of books based on the Culture. Many people disdain SF as populated by writers of little literary talent who write what is really no more than poorly constructed fantasy (fantasy writing is not the same as SF), but there are a number of writers in the field who possess significant talent. That number has been reduced by (a very important) 1.

I remember a radio interview with him where he crossed over briefly with the next guest who happened to be Michael Palin, at which point Banks revealed he'd been an extra in the scene at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail when he was a penniless student.

[Cyberyeti]

Doug Engelbart, you're probably using his invention right now.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart

[y66]

Doug Engelbart, you're probably using his invention right now.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart

His "mother of all demos" is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on youtube. According to Wikipedia

 

Engelbart slipped into relative obscurity after 1976. Several of his researchers became alienated from him and left his organization for Xerox PARC, in part due to frustration, and in part due to differing views of the future of computing. Engelbart saw the future in collaborative, networked, timeshare (client-server) computers, which younger programmers rejected in favor of the personal computer. The conflict was both technical and social: the younger programmers came from an era where centralized power was highly suspect, and personal computing was just barely on the horizon.

I wonder what really happened there and if he ever got past that.

[PassedOut]

Edmund S. Morgan

[jonottawa]

[hrothgar]

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Remembering-Cory-Monteith-1067806.aspx

 

Embarrassing, I know, but I liked Glee...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WxPyUzWSPA

[ArtK78]

Dennis Farina. I loved Crime Story on TV in the late 1980's.

 

http://xfinity.comca...FoxNews/newest/

[Cyberyeti]

Mel Smith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Smith

 

Got his break in the satirical show "Not the 9 o'clock news" with fellow young comedians Pamela Stephenson (now Mrs Billy Connolly and a psychologist), Rowan Atkinson and Griff Rhys-Jones.

 

They produced a number of great sketches although many have dated badly since circa 1980.

 

This satirises the religious outcry when Mony Python's life of Brian was released.

 

 

He then went on with Griff to make a further show "Alas Smith and Jones"

 

In more recent years he was an actor and director.

[Trinidad]

JJ Cale

 

Rik

[y66]

On his Tuesday day off from the Eccentric, Bob Brinig would get up about 2pm, have a drink go into the kitchen, maybe fry a few onions than return to the lounge and watch TV, then back to the kitchen many times over the course of the day, adding different ingredients to the meal, followed by a glass of his favourite sauce. By 10pm a great meal would emerge, sometimes completely different from what was "planned" at the beginning of the session.

 

It never occurred to me to cook this way until I read this post last February. I've tried it a few times now including today. Bob Brinig was definitely onto something. Cheers Bob!

[y66]

Seamus Heaney, April 13, 1939 to August 30, 2013

 

http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.1510725.1377862697!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_940/image.jpgSeamus Heaney photographed in 1989. Photograph: Peter Thursfield/The Irish Times

 

From "Clearances" which he wrote for his mother after her death in 1984:

 

She taught me what her uncle once taught her:

How easily the biggest coal block split

If you got the grain and the hammer angled right.

 

The sound of that relaxed alluring blow

Its co-opted and obliterated echo,

Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen,

 

Taught me between the hammer and the block

To face the music. Teach me now to listen,

To strike it rich behind the linear black.

 

....

 

I thought of walking round and round a space

Utterly empty, utterly a source

Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place

In our front hedge above the wallflowers.

The white chips jumped and jumped and skitted high.

I heard the hatchet's differentiated

Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh

And collapse of what luxuriated

Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all.

Deep-planted and long gone, my coeval

Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,

Its heft and hush became a bright nowhere,

A soul ramifying and forever

Silent, beyond silence listened for.

[Fluffy]

Ba da bing

 

OMG how could I miss this?

 

 

Winstonm

  .........

  Group: Advanced Members

 Joined: 2005-January-8

Gender: Male

   Posts:

             http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwhv2roIab1qd47jqo1_500.gif

[Winstonm]

I'm gone? Who knew?

[gordontd]

Warwick Pitch, founder of the Young Chelsea Bridge Club.

[y66]

Ruth Patrick, 105, a Pioneer in Science And Pollution Control Efforts

 

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/09/24/us/patrick-obit2/patrick-obit2-articleLarge.jpg

 

Dr. Patrick was one of the country’s leading experts in the study of freshwater ecosystems, or limnology. She achieved that renown after entering science in the 1930s, when few women were able to do so, and working for the academy for eight years without pay.

 

“She was worried about and addressing water pollution before the rest of us even thought of focusing on it,” James Gustave Speth, a former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, said in an e-mail message.

 

Dr. Patrick built her career around research on thousands of species of single-cell algae called diatoms, which float at the bottom of the food chain. She showed that measuring the kinds and numbers of diatoms revealed the type and extent of pollution in a body of water. Her method of measurement has been used around the world to help determine water quality.

 

Dr. Patrick’s studies led to the insight that the number and kinds of species in a body of water — its biological diversity — reflected environmental stresses. That idea became known as the Patrick Principle, a term coined by the conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy. In an interview, Dr. Lovejoy, of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, said the principle can be applied to bigger settings, like an entire ecosystem, and lies at the heart of environmental science.

 

...

 

Dr. Patrick believed it essential that government and industry collaborate in curbing pollution and was a consultant to both in developing environmental policy. In 1975, she became the first woman and the first environmentalist to serve on the DuPont Company board of directors; she was also on the board of the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company. She advised President Lyndon B. Johnson on water pollution and President Ronald Reagan on acid rain and served on pollution and water-quality panels at the National Academy of Sciences and the Interior Department, among others.

[mike777]

Best-selling author Tom Clancy has died at age 66

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/best-selling-author-tom-clancy-died-age-66-152101522.html