Anurysm.
Category: Obituaries
Falcon Launch Fails, Scotty Misses Orbit
This makes SpaceX 0 for 3 on its Falcon-1 rockets.
This time they lost three small satellites and the ashes of 208 people, including Star Trek alum Jimmy Doohan and astronaut Gordon Cooper.
It appears to have been a problem with stage separation:
“Four methods of analysis, vehicle inertial measurement, chamber pressure, on-board video and a simple physics free body calculation, all give the same answer. [Residual thrust caused] the first stage to recontact the second stage,” says SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk.
According to SpaceX, unburned fuel in the engine’s cooling channels and manifold combined with residual oxygen to produce enough thrust to overcome the separation impulse. The solution is to increase the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation.
Bummer for the families involved.
Solzhenitsyn Dead
I need to read some of his books.
Former White House Spokesman Tony Snow Dead
It’s too soon to say bad things about him, so I have nothing to say.
God is a Black Liberal Woman
And Jesse Helms is very surprised.
He died today.
Russert Dead of Heart Attack
Condolences to his family.
I have nothing appropriate to add at this time.
Rememberance: Steve Gilliard
The folks at Group News Blog have a remembrance far better than I could write.
It’s been a year since he died, and I miss him.
He was a brilliant polemicist and had an encyclopedic knowledge history, which was why he was spot on in Iraq.
I had always thought that if I were to run for office, I would want him, Paul T. Riddell, and Alexei Sayle to be my speech writers.
This is why I would never be elected dog-catcher in the US. Outraged truth telling does not net one votes.
I miss him a lot.
Yang Passes
Robert Lynn Asprin, Aka Yang the Nauseating, May 22, 2008, at home.
Bummer.
Take your stinking paws off of me you damn dirty ape!
Truth be told, I was never a fan of his acting, and his politics were paleolithic, but he was fun on talk shows.
Passings
My Grandmother, Sylvia Saroff, died last night. She was 99.
Arthur C. Clarke, Dead at 90.
Here.
He is among the last of his generation in SF.
Spinal Tap Gardener Dies in Bizarre Gardening Accident
Me bad, it was ABBA drummer Ola Brunkert who died in a bizarre gardening accident, not John “Stumpy” Pepys of Spinal Tap.
Yes, my joke is in very poor taste.
Gary Gygax Dead at 69
I bumped into him at a cafeteria at Gen Con in 1980, but never talked to him or anything.
He and Dave Arneson invented D&D, and ye,s I played, a lot, when I was younger.
Apologist for Racism, William F. Buckley Dead at 82
My condolences to his family, but his record of endorsing racism and fascism should not be ignored.
He was a fervent supporter of Franco, and (of course) Joe McCarthy, and he kept himself amused by coming up with reprehensible justifications for Jim Crow.
Of course, he was well respected, because he was from the right family and went to Yale.
See Steve Gilliard’s post speak like a conservative where he quotes Buckley:
The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.
National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.
The irony was that at the end of his life, he was abandoned by the Neocon community that he helped to create, because he actually had a bit of sanity.
Unlike, for example, Norman Podhoretz, there is every indication that he knew what he was doing and knew better (I’m talking about the appeals to racism here), but was too fond of his own words to do the right thing.
He was a good writer and a witty man though.
Rep. Tom Lantos Dead at 80
Here.
My condolences to his friends and family.
How many New York Times reporters it takes to cover the death of an actor with just a few movies to his credit:?
15
Heath Ledger, Actor, Is Found Dead at 28
By JAMES BARRON1…
Reporting was contributed by Al Baker2, Anne Barnard3, Brooks Barnes4, David Carr5, Sewell Chan6, John Eligon7, David S. Hirschman8, Thomas J. Lueck9, Angela Macropoulos10, Jennifer Mascia11, Colin Moynihan12, Campbell Robertson13, Melena Ryzik14 and Paula Schwartz15.
H/T Altercation.
A Friend of Mine Died Today
Her name was Lynn Hunter, but I knew her though our mutual activities in the SCA as, “Baroness Roana di Laci”, but usually, she was just Ro, as she she did not put on airs.
She had cancer, and she was about 3 months younger than me.
She is one of the few friends of mine with whom I never talked politics.
When I first met her, the subject of her employment came up, and it turned out that she had been fired by her previous employer, the Heritage Foundation, for having cancer.
I blurted out that I could probably find a lawyer willing to represent her pro bono, but she demurred.
I may be clueless, but even I figured out that we had differing views.
She was fun, and accessible, and welcomed my wife and I when we came to the area, and I’ll miss her.
Good journey, Ro.
ObituaryL Sally Smith, 78; Lab School Founder
She founded Washington DC’s innovative Lab School for children with learning differences. My wife has worked with them, and my daughter went to the Baltimore Lab School summer camp following 1st grade, which improved her reading skills sufficiently so that she was not held back (she has a reading delay).
Steve Gilliard Would Have Been 43 Today
He was about 2-½ years younger than me.
I’ve “known” him, in a completely non meatspace way, since Netslaves in the late 1990s, and I miss him.
Hat tip to the Group News Blog for notifying us of this.
The 11th Minute of the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month
89 years ago. What was then called Armistice Day.
A moment of silence.