Tag: Obituaries

NPR Navel Gazing

I’m listening to the Cokie fest at NPR on the news of the death of Cokie Roberts of breast cancer.

I get that she is a significant figure from the early days of the network, and certainly her passing should be noted, but the wall-to-wall coverage was excessive.

If it had been Sy Hersh, or Bob Woodward, or Carl Bernstein, there would have been a 5 minute appreciation.

I understand that a number of people at National Public Radio feel this loss personally, but you are supposed to be journalists.

Suck it up, and leave space for other news.

1/2 of World’s Ayn Rand Worst Tribute Band Ever, the Koch Brothers, Dies

David Koch has died of complications of prostate cancer at age 79.

Their wealth came largely from their father selling technology to Josef Stalin, and he had been funding the right wing for years.

There is an argument that one should not speak ill of the dead, but David Koch was a public figure, and his fans will no doubt use this as an opportunity to shape his legacy, so I feel that speaking the truth is essential at this juncture in any public forum except for his funeral or wake.

In my case, I will start with a list of positive things about his positive contributions to the public discourse and public policy in his time in American politics:
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That is all.

The $100 Million Dollar Cat is Dead

Tardar Sauce, better known as “Grumpy Cat”, has died of a UTI at age 7.

In cat years, she was in the prime of life.

Here permanently peeved expression was due to feline dwarfism, so it could be argued that we are actually seeing is the world’s most extreme case of “resting bitch face” ever seen on a cat.

Over her short life, this cat may have earned as much as $100,000,000.00.

Capitalism is amazing, huh?

Damn, Peter Tork?

The Monkees’ bass player is dead at age 77:

Peter Tork, a blues and folk musician who became a teeny-bopper sensation as a member of the Monkees, the wisecracking, made-for-TV pop group that imitated and briefly outsold the Beatles, died Feb. 21. He was 77.

The death was announced by his official Facebook page, which did not say where or how he died. Mr. Tork was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer affecting his tongue, in 2009.

There goes another bit of my childhood.

The Man Beat Wall Street

I am referring, of course, to John Bogel, the founder of Vanguard, and the man who gave us the index fund, which showed that the self-appointed masters of the universe on Wall Street did worse than a random throw of the dice.

He died yesterday, aged 89:

John C. Bogle, who founded the Vanguard Group of Investment Companies in 1974 and built it into a giant mutual fund company, with $4.9 trillion in assets under management today, died on Wednesday at his home in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He was 89.

His personal assistant, Michael Nolan, said the cause was esophageal cancer. Mr. Bogle, who had struggled with a congenital heart defect and had several heart attacks, received a heart transplant in 1996.

Mr. Bogle built Vanguard, which is based in Malvern, Pa., on a cornerstone belief that was anathema to most mutual fund companies: that over the long term, most investment managers cannot outperform the broad market averages. He popularized and became the leading proponent of indexing, the practice of structuring an investment portfolio to mirror the performance of a market yardstick, like the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index.

“Indexing was the purview of institutional investors, but Jack Bogle came up with the consumer version,” said Daniel P. Wiener, the editor of The Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, a newsletter and website that has tracked the company for decades. “He made people aware of expenses, and told them that costs come right out of the bottom line.”

But Mr. Bogle became a harsh critic of the mutual fund industry in later years. In the second half of the 1990s, he said, stock market investors were spoiled by average annual returns of more than 20 percent per year and, as a result, cared too little about the high expenses they were paying to mutual fund managers for those managers’ presumed expertise at picking stocks. Mutual fund companies, he said, were all but immoral for accepting such fees.

He was right.

Need to Offer an Alternative to the Hagiography

George H.W. Bush has died at the age of 94.

I am sure that many people will wax eloquent about the passing of a, “kinder and gentler,” Republican.

I think we need to understand what he was and what he did.

As is now tacitly acknowledged, he negotiated with the Iranians in 1980 to ensure that they held the hostages past the election, which does arguably fit the constitutional definition of treason, which, along with his role in sending a teenager to prison for almost decade as a political stunt, his atrocious behavior dealing with the AIDS crisis, and his full throated embrace of bigotry as a political tactic. (Willie Horton)

When you look at the coarsening of our political discourse, George Herbert Walker Bush was a genteel relic of an older era, he was an enthusiastic supporter of (on edit) racist dog whistles.

Sarah Palin’s 2008 Running Mate Just Died

John McCain has died at age 81 of brain cancer.

There is an argument that one should not speak ill of the dead, but John McCain was a public figure, and his fans will no doubt use this as an opportunity to shape his legacy, so I feel that speaking the truth is essential at this juncture in any public forum except for his funeral or wake.

In my case, I will start with a list of positive things about his positive contributions to the public discourse and public policy in his time in American politics:
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That is all.

Peter Parker Weeps

Spiderman co-creator Steve Ditko has died at age 90:

New York police confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on Friday that one of Marvel Comics’ legendary staffers, Steve Ditko, was found dead in his apartment this week. Ditko was 90.

The creator of Dr. Strange and the original artist (plus “co-creator,” according to Stan Lee) for Spider-Man had been found days earlier, on June 29, and police told THR that they believed he had been dead for two days when he was found. Reports indicate Ditko left behind no family or survivors.

Ditko’s impact on Marvel Comics may only be rivaled by his reclusive nature in later years. After creating and developing Spider-Man with Lee in 1961, Ditko premiered lasting hero Dr. Strange in 1963, and Ditko would continue to write and draw Dr. Strange stories for Marvel until 1966. Disputes over money and friction with Lee reportedly drove Ditko to leave Marvel in 1966, and Ditko shunned the public spotlight shortly thereafter; he gave his last formal interview in 1968, though he continued contributing comics to other publishers.

Most notably in his later career, he created Squirrel Girl. 

Thoughts on Barbara Bush Upon Her Passing

Not a whole bunch, except to note that she got a rather weird compliment from Nixon in the White House tapes, that, “She knows how to hate.”

I think that there is a pretty good chance that, had she been born 2 or 3 decades later, she would have been the first major party woman candidate for US President.

I’ve always felt that she was both the smartest and tough member of the Bush family.

On the other hand, I have seen the discussions on Twitter regarding her, and I’ve alternately felt that they were crass and callous, and felt guilty for not understanding the mockery, and felt that they were very funny, and felt guilty for not being offended that they were crass and callous.

Basically, it’s all guilt.

That is so Jewish.

Requiem for My Nemesis


RP’s Film Debut


In the Cat Run

You may not be aware, but I have a nemesis.

The Perry the Platypus to my Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz was RP the Cat, the smartest, fastest, and most ferocious representative of the species Felis silvestris catus that I have ever met.

In late 2011, I caught one of the colony of feral cats in the area with the goal of adopting it.

It was RP the cat, and much mayhem ensued, all of which involved much blood loss on my part.

She, we later saw her with her litters, found a way to get into and out of the house

When we adopted cats from the Humane Society, RP came into the house and ate the cat food, a fact that we verified with a time lapse camera.

At this point, Charlie named the cat Rodentia Phage, eater of rodents, RP for short, though after my escapades with the cat, RP came to stand for Ravage and Pillage.

We were unamused with the situation, as RP brought in things from the outside, most notably fleas.

At this point, this cat came to be my great white whale.

So, I set up a “Have a Heart” trap that fed into a cat cage (about 1m x 1.5m x 1m), and when that did not work because RP knew not to step on the touch plate, so I used more computing power than was used to put Neil Armstrong on the moon to improve the cat.

It worked, but I never managed to tame her, and eventually I slipped up, and she got out, and she was in the house, but had forgotten how to get out, so for the next 5 years she was in the house skulking around and successfully evading us.

Two days ago, we noticed some blood on the couch, and after examining our cats, realized that it had to be RP.

I searched, and found her in an awful state, barely able to move, with a wound on her neck and trouble breathing.

She was feeble enough that I could catch her and get her to the vet.

The diagnosis was that it was an abscess that went septic, and there was nothing that could be done, so we had her put to sleep.

Valhalla has added its most hard core new resident.

I will be downing a bourbon in her honor tonight.

What follows is a list, in chronological order of my interactions with, and reflections about, RP the cat:

  1. It Appears that I Do Have Time to Bleed
  2. All that Blood, So Little Cat
  3. I have a Cat Infestation
  4. Who Knew that I Would Be the Proprietor of a Cat House?
  5. This is Not Going to End Well………
  6. Well, I got the Cat Trap Together
  7. No Cat in Trap Yet………
  8. How I Vanquished the RP!
  9. Light Posting Tonight
  10. Moar Katnip, or the Dog Gets It!
  11. An Old Home Remedy that Worked for Me
  12. Squee!!!!!