RIP

[Aberlour10]

Edgar Froese in the age of 70, the leader of Tangerine Dream.

[Cyberyeti]

New romantic pioneer Steve Strange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Strange

[y66]

David Carr, Times critic and champion of media.

 

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/02/12/business/20150213_CARR-slide-R5S4/20150213_CARR-slide-R5S4-jumbo.jpg

 

Excerpt from The Fall and Rise of Media (November 2009):

 

That feeling of age, of a coming sunset, is tough to avoid in all corners of traditional publishing. Earlier in November, the New York comptroller said that employment in communications in New York had lost 60,000 jobs since 2000, a year when the media industry here seemed at the height of its powers.

 

I arrived in New York that same year as part of Inside.com, a digital news site conceived to cover a media space that was converging and morphing into something wholly new. The site covered the mainstream media’s efforts to come to grips with new realities and efforts by new players to cash in on emerging technology.

 

Few of us could have conceived that in the next decade some of the reigning titans of media would be routed. Profligate dot-com ad money that had fattened print went away in a digital wipeout, and when digital media came back, it was to dine on the mainstream media rather than engorge it. After 2000, jobs in traditional media industries declined at a rate of about 2.5 percent annually and then went into a dive in 2008 or so. (Inside.com, an idea before its time — hey, let’s charge for high-quality, business-oriented content — disappeared after about 18 months.)

 

...

 

For those of us who work in Manhattan media, it means that a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that.

 

Certain stalwart brands will survive and even thrive because of a new scarcity of quality content for niche audiences that demand more than generic information. The chip that was implanted in me when I arrived at this newspaper — you might call it New York Times Exceptionalism — leads me to conclude that this organization will be one of those, but the insurgency continues apace.

 

Those of us who covered media were told for years that the sky was falling, and nothing happened. And then it did. Great big chunks of the sky gave way and magazines tumbled — Gourmet!? — that seemed as if they were as solid as the skyline itself. But to those of us who were here back in September of 2001, we learned that even the edifice of Manhattan itself is subject to perforation and endless loss.

 

So what do we get instead? The future, which is not a bad deal if you ignore all the collateral gore. Young men and women are still coming here to remake the world, they just won’t be stopping by the human resources department of Condé Nast to begin their ascent.

 

For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.

 

Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.

 

For them, New York is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave.

[GreenMan]

David Carr, Times critic and champion of media.

 

:(

 

David Carr was one of the very few people whose insight into media and culture I valued most highly. Often in trying to figure something out I would hope he had something to say about it, from which I was sure to gain illumination. Just last night I was quoting his article on Brian Williams and Jon Stewart in conversation.

[mike777]

Leonard Nimoy who played Mr. Spock has died at 83

 

 

The Virginian-Pilot

© February 27, 2015

 

LOS ANGELES

 

Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock in "Star Trek" and subsquent films has died at 83, The New York Times is reporting.

[mikeh]

one of my favourite blogs (not that I have many....in fact it may be the only blog I read on a regular basis) is pharyngula....not a site the religious amongst us would enjoy....has a post on him and a link to aspects of who he was besides playing spock.

 

From the little I knew of him, he always seemed to be a 'good guy'.

[y66]

Yasar Kemal, Master Turkish Novelist and Strident Political Critic

 

“He is one of the few writers who can deftly blend the compassion and love he feels for his characters with astute irony, morbid criticism and sharp social observations,” said one of them, Elif Shafak. “In each and every book, he touches and lifts up the beauty of becoming a free, soul-searching human individual, even in the most feudal social settings. He is the architect of unforgettable literary heroes and a beacon for writers of the generations that followed him.”

 

In “They Burn the Thistles,” a villager who shelters the outlaw hero, Slim Memed, gazes at him as he sleeps and describes him in terms that might apply to the novelist himself.

 

“In that man there’s a brave heart, a good brain, and great humanity,” he tells his wife. “He’s so big-hearted that both the aghas and the government are afraid of him. Terrified of him. There were 500 bandits in the mountains, but that didn’t bother the government. Why not? Because they were not generous, big-hearted men.”

[mikeh]

Terry Pratchett

 

I haven't read many of his books. I had the immense pleasure of listening to a speech he gave late last year (I saw it on television) where he wrote the words and they were delivered by Tony Robinson, the actor who plays Baldrick in the Blackadder series. Pratchett was already suffering from a form of Alzheimers that made it impossible for him to deliver that which he had written, but Robinson was superb, with Pratchett sitting nearby. He already had his death planned......sitting in his garden, with a drink (I forget which) and listening to his favourite music. I don't know if he was able to end his life that way, but I surely hope so. He was a good man...and a wise, and very, very funny man.

[jjbrr]

Terry Pratchett

 

I haven't read many of his books. I had the immense pleasure of listening to a speech he gave late last year (I saw it on television) where he wrote the words and they were delivered by Tony Robinson, the actor who plays Baldrick in the Blackadder series. Pratchett was already suffering from a form of Alzheimers that made it impossible for him to deliver that which he had written, but Robinson was superb, with Pratchett sitting nearby. He already had his death planned......sitting in his garden, with a drink (I forget which) and listening to his favourite music. I don't know if he was able to end his life that way, but I surely hope so. He was a good man...and a wise, and very, very funny man.

 

The sun goes down upon the Ankh,

And slowly, softly fades -

Across the Drum; the Royal Bank;

The River-Gate; the Shades.

 

A stony circle's closed to elves;

And here, where lines are blurred,

Between the stacks of books on shelves,

A quiet 'Ook' is heard.

 

A copper steps the city-street

On paths he's often passed;

The final march; the final beat;

The time to rest at last.

 

He gives his badge a final shine,

And sadly shakes his head -

While Granny lies beneath a sign

That says: 'I aten't dead.'

 

The Luggage shifts in sleep and dreams;

It's now. The time's at hand.

For where it's always night, it seems,

A timer clears of sand.

 

And so it is that Death arrives,

When all the time has gone...

But dreams endure, and hope survives,

And Discworld carries on.

[hrothgar]

Terry Pratchett

 

I haven't read many of his books. I had the immense pleasure of listening to a speech he gave late last year (I saw it on television) where he wrote the words and they were delivered by Tony Robinson, the actor who plays Baldrick in the Blackadder series. Pratchett was already suffering from a form of Alzheimers that made it impossible for him to deliver that which he had written, but Robinson was superb, with Pratchett sitting nearby. He already had his death planned......sitting in his garden, with a drink (I forget which) and listening to his favourite music. I don't know if he was able to end his life that way, but I surely hope so. He was a good man...and a wise, and very, very funny man.

 

I loved Pratchett's work. I bought Pyramids and Wyrd Sisters for my nephew when he was but three...

[GreenMan]

The best tribute I've seen, from xkcd:

 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/terry_pratchett.png

[Cyberyeti]

Bob Burns founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, one of the few bands I really regret I never saw live (I was 12 at the time of the plane crash)

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/music/founding-member-lynyrd-skynyrd-bob-burns-dies-georgia-car-crash-n335721

[paulg]

Ritchie Benaud.

 

 

Shane Warne has posted a moving tribute at https://instagram.com/p/1RkVW7uAWw/

[Aberlour10]

Günter Grass, Nobel-winning German novelist, dies aged 87

[mike777]

'Louie Louie' Singer Jack Ely Dies in Oregon at 71

 

greatest song of all time!

 

https://www.yahoo.com/music/louie-louie-singer-jack-ely-dies-in-oregon-at-71-117640751856.html

 

A truly sad day in rock and roll.

[Trinidad]

Ben E. King

[Cyberyeti]

Errol Brown

 

[Trinidad]

B.B. King

 

What will Lucille be without him?

 

Rik

[PassedOut]

John F. Nash Jr.

[kenberg]

John F. Nash Jr.

 

The article speaks of "giving a student an intergalactic driver's license". Al Vasquez was an undergrad at MIT when he received this license, but he told me that Nash later rescinded it, I have forgotten why. Vasquez has written some about Nash, I believe, so I trust he doesn't mind me mentioning this.

 

It is impossible, I imagine, to write an obituary about Nash without getting into his mental problems. But what comes across absolutely, when Al speaks of Nash, is the pleasure and privilege that Al took in their mathematical interactions. Madness is a tragedy, brilliance is a gift.

 

I don't subscribe at all to the notion that brilliance and madness go together. Not in mathematics, not in art, not anywhere. But a brilliant person who is eccentric or even nuts can sometimes, through his brilliance, make his way to fame. The less brilliant troubled minds you never hear about.

[ArtK78]

Henry Bethe. See thread in BridgeWinners here: http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/rip-henry-bethe-1944-2015/

[y66]

Henry Bethe. See thread in BridgeWinners here: http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/rip-henry-bethe-1944-2015/

I will miss his commentary and many thoughtful posts on BW. Farewell Henry Bethe.

[Cyberyeti]

Sir Christopher Lee and Ron Moody.

[PassedOut]

Walter Shawn Browne, Chess Grandmaster, Dies at 66

 

Sad. He was one of a kind.

[mikeh]

Chris Squire Founding member, significant songwriter and bassist for Yes. Even today I occasionally put one of their early albums on the turntable, sit back and listen, eyes closed. Heart of the Sunrise has one of the best intros in prog rock. Close to the Edge has some amazing sounds. None of the lyrics ever made sense, but they were written for the way the words sounded not what they meant.