A Sad End To A San Diego Legend.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17931839

NFL star Junior Seau found dead in San Diego in apparent suicide

American football star Junior Seau has been found dead at his home in California in an apparent suicide.

Oceanside Police Chief Frank McCoy said the linebacker's girlfriend found him unconscious with a bullet wound to the chest on Wednesday.

Seau was a star player with the San Diego Chargers and spent 20 seasons in the National Football League (NFL).

In 2010 he drove his car off a cliff, hours after he had been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence.

Seau's mother, Luisa, wept uncontrollably as she spoke to reporters outside her son's house.

"I pray to God please take me, leave my son, but it's too late," she said.

[Break]

For residents of "America's Finest City" this news hit very close to the heart. Junior Seau was a fearsome presence on the gridiron of Jack Murphy Stadium. Junior brought something to the Chargers they never had before; a defense.

For most of San Diego's history the Chargers were an offensive marvel saddled with a defense made of Swiss Cheese. This was not too much of a problem in the glory days of Air Coryell; at least until the playoffs arrived.

Then there was the awful Ryan Lief interlude where San Diego sat in cellar with no defense nor offense to speak of. Seau was part of the turn around that made San Diego a contender in the typical NFL mode: strong defense and an adequate offense.

As age and injury took its toll, Seau played less and got hurt more often. It was only two years ago that Seau was finally forced to hang up his cleats for good. Even then Junior never got around to officially retiring.

It looks like Junior was not able to make that transition to civilian life. There is the 2010 incident, and this tragic end just two years later in Oceanside, California.

I wish that Junior Seau had found a way. He was an institution in San Diego, California with his own clothing line and a landmark restaurant in the Mission Valley community of San Diego, California. He had a lot of good years left in him, and a lot of good work to do. Unfortunately, like so many who live too long and too much in the limelight, his demons got the better of him. Far too many in NFL do end up on the wreckage heap. Ryan Lief's entire life would have been so much better for him if he had never set foot inside the NFL; look him up if you doubt the conclusion.

It's a bitter trade off that Seau made. For a time, on the field, he was Achilles in cleats. I remember it well. I remember the plays. I remember the fearsome presence. I remember the heart he put into the game and into the Charges. Maybe he left too much of that heart at Jack Murphy; maybe there was not enough of his heart left over for him. Rest easy Junior, it is a pity that the only peace you could find was the peace of the grave.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)

Lyndon Johnson is quoted as saying that in the Senate there are show horses and work horses.  What he never noted is that sometime an individual senator could shift between the two types.

Ted Kennedy started out as the very definition of a light weight. His only seeming qualification being that he was the baby brother of the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  As the Kennedys were running the state of Massachusetts as their personal fiefdom, this was sufficient for Teddy to win his brother’s seat.

In the early sixties, the Kennedy brothers formed a triple political threat. By the end of the decade, only the baby brother remained. First JFK, then RFK, were gunned down by marginal characters in an almost offhand manner. The nation has never come to grips the way both Kennedys lost their lives. The nation avoids the essential fact that our politicians are easy targets for lone wolves bearing a grudge and who have access to small arms.

After 1968 Ted found himself the Pater Familias of the Kennedy clan. He took on the  responsibility for raising both JFK’s and RFK’s small children. He also took on the political legacy of his dead brothers. It was a heavy burden and Ted Kennedy struggled very publicly with it. One year after RFK’s death, Ted showed the darker side of the Kennedy gene pool’s legacy. He proved himself every bit as reckless as his brother Jack by piloting his limo off the Chappaquiddick Bridge. In that car was a young woman Mary Jo Kopechne. The details of that accident were never adequately explained by Ted Kennedy nor by his lawyers.  The only agreed on facts is that the car ended up in the water along with a very dead Mary Jo. It is also agreed that Ted’s reporting of the accident was seriously delayed by at least ten hours.  There is a small cottage industry that speculates on what “really” happened at Chappaquiddick: the specific relationship of Ted to Mary Jo, why Ted decided to lawyer up before confessing to the accident, and what kind of condition then Junior Senator might have been in on that night.  Legally, Ted plead to leaving the scene of an accident. Personally and politically the liability was much, much larger. Mary Jo’s incorporeal frame followed Edward Moore Kennedy to the grave and beyond. Her name is forever linked to his.

In a way, the rest of Kennedy’s career can be seen as a type of penance for his carelessness on that night. He became a more serious political personality after Chappaquiddick.  Still the full transformation required one more act of political self-flagellation. That is the best way to view Ted’s manic run against Jimmy Carter.

The campaign against Carter positively invites amateur psychoanalysis. It started out as a train wreck and ended in self-immolation. Ted started out with a disastrous interview on CBS and went downhill from there. Ted only hit his stride when his chances for the nomination had evaporated. He won some meaningless late primaries and then went to the convention with the crackpot plan of separating the President of the United States from his pledged delegates.  Carter’s team easily quashed Ted’s quixotic plan with   ruthless efficiency.  Still Ted’s petulant behavior at the convention added further disarray to an already fractured party.

Ted sat out the election licking his wounds and Carter failed to live up to his initials of J.C. by being unable to provide the political miracle that his candidacy required.  Enter Ronald Wilson Regan and the long dark night for liberalism.  For the next thirty years Ted Kennedy was fighting a rear-guard action.

For twelve years Ted Kennedy did battle against Regan-Bush and the forces of reaction. He became the consummate insider, working the angles, finding allies in the oddest of places, pulling off minor and major miracles in the era of “Government is the Problem” like SCHIP. Even with the election of a Democratic President Ted Kennedy still had an up-hill struggle; the ideology of Regan still ruled D.C. While Bill Clinton claimed to be a “New Democrat” he actually more resembled a much older type of Democrat from the Gilded Age: the “Bourbon Democrat.”  Bill Clinton’s term of office had more in common with Grover Cleveland than FDR.  The parallels between Clinton’s and Cleveland’s second term are especially unnerving.

If the “Big Dog” was a bit smaller than advertised Kennedy had his hands full with dealing with the un-dynamic duo of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney. Bush was the consummate ideological reactionary.  Bush’s mission was nothing less than the full dismantling not only of the legacy of the 60’s but also of the New Deal.  Along the way Bush shredded the 4^th Amendment, the separation of church and state, and our nation’s long-standing moral guiding principles.

Once again Kennedy was the road-block, the voice of Liberal consciousness calling out in the wilderness. He was spot on about the error of the Iraq war and much else. Still his leadership example was ignored by his more timorous Democratic colleges. John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton all voted for the Iraq War.  Any one of those future candidates had to do was read the unedited CIA report to discover that Bush’s Cassis Belli was supported by a swamp of lies. One can not prove that Kerry, Clinton and Edward were looking at Bush’s stratospheric approval ratings or listening to the clamorous din of the Corporate Media advocating a rating-boosting conflict but one would have good reason to suspect. Kennedy was having none of it.

It is, however, Ted’s last political act that will be the most controversial. Ted Kennedy’s full-throated support of Barack Obama is the most perilous legacy that the Liberal Lion leaves behind.  Hard core, dead ender, PUMA, Clintonistas are still furious about Ted’s support of the Junior Senator from Illinois’ run.  Some are still muttering about how this was Kennedy’s revenge for Hillary’s supposed slight of JFK’s contribution to the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The discussion of that particular bit US History is best left to another place and time. In a primary process that was only decided by some one hundred delegates, it is impossible to really determine what pushed Obama over the top. What effect if any did Kennedy’s support have in the critical month of February? Who really did Hillary in? A “back-stabbing” Ted Kennedy or an incompetent Mark Penn?  One thing for sure political scientists and historians not yet born will be making their bones on these questions and others for decades to come.

For good or ill Ted Kennedy’s final legacy is now linked to the legacy of Barack Obama. If Obama turns out to be nothing more than a very clever technocrat that exploited the justified revulsion against Bush-Cheney’s eight years of incompetence and misrule, then Ted Kennedy turns into just another person who had the wool pulled over their eyes.  Is Obama nothing more than yet another iteration of a Blue Dog Democrat, the spiritual heirs of the Bourbon Democrats? Is Obama in short a fraud? Or is Obama one of those rare politicians who spring up every forty years or so; a man who changes the very rules of the political game? The answer to that question will determine the final coda of Edward Moore Kennedy’s legacy.

In the long view though Kennedy’s legacy is secure, his near half century of  public service will be a beacon shining out long after lesser lights have faded. The rise, fall and subsequent rise of Ted Kennedy is a story we will tell ourselves for generations yet to come. Each generation will add to the myth, each generation will find its own meaning to this uniquely American life. The story of Edward Moore Kennedy has not ended; it has barely begun.

MJ and Rush

It is not terribly surprising that Rush is left clueless about MJ.
Other than Rush’s addiction to Oxycontin he shares little with the ex king of pop.

Measured against MJ, talent for talent, Rush is a flea standing next to a blue whale. For most of Rush’s life he was a failure, he was man who finally found a shtick and a niche in talk radio.

If Rush is tiny compared to MJ his imitators are even smaller. If Rush’s so called talent is barely visible theirs can only be seen by an electron microscope. Most of this outcry from the conservative chattering class is pure envy.

This is not to say that other, darker feelings don’t lie beneath the surface. The ugly reality of race baiting, racial politics and pure vicious racism are always part and parcel of any conservative pundits stock and trade.

Pop music and pop culture are shot through with the rhythms, emotions, movements, hopes, fears, dreams, songs, loves, passions, losses, hurts and triumphs of people of color. No wonder Rush does not get it. No wonder he tries to squeeze MJ’s story in to his warped vision of reality. Thus MJ becomes a part of the success of Ronald Regan, Rush’s cultural / political hero. MJ becomes an adjunct to the deification of Don Reynaldo, MJ becomes part of the Ayn Rand Positivist myth.

That is the only place MJ fits in the world view of the right wing. He can only be useful as proof of the glories of unfettered capitalism. Otherwise he is one more example of how “liberals” in “Hollywood” are undermining the moral fiber of the USA. This is were the accusations of child molestation fit in for Conservatives. It is a gold mine for them. It is proof that performers in general and A-A performers specifically are degenerate sex fiends. It is “proof” that pop culture is nothing more than a plot to destroy our moral fiber.

The corporate media chimes in because scandal sells, sex sells and sex scandal sells the most. Keep those eyeballs glued so the network can sell those ads. It is all about the money Lebowski.

Michael Jackson

The death of Michael Jackson is a repeat of Elvis in a very scary way. Michael never did Vegas but the meteoric rise rapid burn and late stage bizarre behavior is an echo of Elvis. At both their ends Michael and Elvis were shadows of their former selves, victims of their own excesses.

I do fear what happens next in the story of Micheal Jackson. He was not allowed to have a normal childhood, adolescence, nor adulthood. He will not be allowed an ordinary death. He was both a great performer and a profoundly damaged personality. After the initial wave of sympathy the long knifes will come out. I’m afraid Micheal will not be allowed to rest easy. The vultures are already circling.

I just have a very bad feeling about how this will play out. We are remembering the man who sung “Billy Jean,” “Beat it,” “Thriller,” and so on. We are remembering the man who moon-walked into our heart. We are forgetting the man who twice got into deep kimchee for possibly molesting underage boys. Once he had to pay hush money, the other time he had to face criminal charges. I do feel an overwhelming sadness for the man who was Micheal Jackson mainly because I have a gut feeling that his life story is a Shakespearean tragedy. I have a gut feeling that his memory is going to be torn to shreds.

Sri Lanka's rebel leader 'killed'

The leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, Velupillai Prabhakaran, has been killed, the military says.

It said Prabhakaran - along with two of his top commanders - had died while trying to flee from the last rebel-held patch of jungle in the north-east.

The military said it had crushed the Tamil Tigers' 26-year insurgency, as people around the country celebrated.

No photos of Prabhakaran's body have been released. The army says it is working to identify it among the dead.

The claims cannot be verified as reporters are barred from the war zone.

More at BBC here

The BBC's Obituary is here

Snip

For a rather long time Prabhakaran has been the God-King of Tamil Elam. His was the ruthless genius that nearly carved out a new Tamil nation from Sri Lanka. He had basically battled the much larger forces of the Government to a stand still. But in the last 24 months or so it all went terribly wrong. Through subterfuge and through naked aggression the armed forces of Sri Lanka have slowly ground the Tamil Tigers into a fine powder.

It has been a brutal affair. The government of Sri Lanka was able get one of Prabhakaran's sub-commander to turn on him, splitting the Tamil Tigers asunder and greatly weakening the military strength of the Tigers. Then the Government proceeded to consistently pressure and attack the Tigers using the superior numbers and logistics of the Army to grind down the Tigers in a slow battle of attrition. Someone in Sri Lanka must have at least glancinly perused the strategies of Grant and Sherman. The willingness to engage the LTE day after day and to keep attacking was definitely like Grant. The bloody-mindedness of the Sri Lankan government caused much hand-wringing in the International community but the pearl-clutching messages delivered by the usual suspects had zero effect. The Sri Lankan Government was bound and determined to put an end to the insurgency that had plagued it for over a quarter century.

Still the downfall of the Tigers may have its actual roots all the way back to the Indian intervention. The Indians originally came as honest brokers and sympathetic to the Tamil cause. The Indians have a strong Tamil representation in the South thus both International and domestic imperatives lead to the Indians deploying to the Island formally known as Ceylon.

Somehow it all went south in a hurry. The specifics of who did what to whom and when are all terribly murky as only politics in South Asia can be. The Indians came to the Island less than enthusiastic in first place, the intervention was mostly Rajiv Gandhi's bright notion and was not all that popular with the domestic Tamils in India as one would suppose. The Indians were ambivalent about the prospect of refereeing the conflict and the Tamils of Sri Lanka made it clear that they were not about to accept any attempt by a foreign power to regulate what they saw as a purely domestic conflict. The Tamils essentially chased the Indians off their island and then blew up Rajiv Gandhi as a parting good riddance gesture. So much for the Indian attempt to impose some kind of reconciliation. The ruling elites in India came face to face with one of Murphy’s Laws : No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Flash forward to the present and it is no wonder that the Indian Government sat on its hands while the government of Sri Lanka ripped into Tamils like a chain-saw though soft butter. The idea of “once bitten, twice shy” translates quite well into all of the languages the Indians might speak. So too does “you made your bed, now lie in it.” It is in that final bed that Prabhakaran now rests.

A Quiet Hero - Madelyn Dunham

Cpl Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan

Birth: Feb. 12, 1987
Death: Aug. 6, 2007, Iraq

Spc. Kareem R. Khan of Manahawkin, N.J. enlisted July 21, 2005 right after graduating from Southern Regional High School. As a freshman at Southern Regional High School, Khan enrolled in the district's Air Force Junior ROTC program. During his one year in the program, he proved himself to be solid student and citizen. He wanted to show that not every Muslim was a fanatic and that some would risk their lives for America. Though his father "spoiled him rotten," Kareem was always a polite teenager, who respected his elders. His father's favorite memory is when Kareem used to wake up at 5 a.m. on weekends to accompany his dad at work at a local marina. He loved to watch football with his dad, cheering on the Dallas Cowboys during Sunday afternoon or Monday night games, while munching on popcorn. He also used to challenge his little stepsister to video games. The two would spend hours sprawled out on the living room floor and sometimes Kareem would try to show her how to do certain moves, and ended up taking over the controller. Aliya looked up to her stepbrother and she was proud when he came with her to school and talked to her class at Southern Regional Intermediate School during his leave. Later, he came with her to the school book fair. The family used to send two large bags of Starbursts in his care packages, because Kareem would pick out all the orange ones and leave the rest for his Army buddies. He was also a big fan of Disneyworld, as was the entire family. The family would take at least one trip to Disneyworld every year, and the living room and dining room of the family's split-level home is filled with souvenirs from those trips, like a wall hanging of Cinderella, figurines of Mickey Mouse and Disney-themed snow globes. Kareem was so crazy about Disneyworld that when he had a two-day leave following his graduation from Fort Benning, Ga., he had a backpack full of clothes stashed in the bush, so the family could immediately drive to Florida. Khan was sent to Iraq in July 2006, after spending a year at Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Wash. He came home for two weeks in September 2006 and was supposed to be home permanently last month, but his tour was extended through the end of September 2007. At the end of his tour, Kareem was considering re-enlisting or going to medical school. He worked with a medic unit when he first got to Iraq. When he came home to visit, he was happy to stay at home, even asking his mother, who lives in Maryland, to come up to New Jersey to visit. He had been awarded the Purple Heart for injuries from previous combat. His awards and decorations include the Purple Heart and Army Commendation Medal. His family received a purple heart, a bronze star, and a good conduct medal he received during his tour of duty. He died in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device at age 20.

Army
1st Battalion
23rd Infantry Regiment
3rd Brigade
2nd Infantry Division
Stryker Brigade Combat Team
Fort Lewis, Wash.


Burial:
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington
Arlington County
Virginia, USA
Plot: Sec 60 Site 8441


Next time some one spouts off about Muslim Terrorists remind them about Cpl Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, United States Army.

H/T To By GottaLaff at the Political Carnival
H/T To Caroline (#46561848) at Find A Grave
H/T To The New Yorker

Russian author Solzhenitsyn dies

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident writer and Nobel Literature Prize winner, has died. He was 89.

The ITAR-Tass news agency cited his son Stepan as saying that he died late on Sunday of heart failure.

Solzhenitsyn served with the Red Army in the second world war, but became one of the most prominent dissidents of the Soviet era, enduring labour camps, cancer and persecution by Soviet officialdom.

He was born on December 11, 1918, studied physics and mathematics at Rostov University and became a Soviet army officer after Hitler's invasion in 1941.

Solzhenitsyn's experience in the network of labour camps was vividly described in his book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

His major works, including The First Circle and Cancer Ward, brought him world admiration and the 1970 Nobel Literature Prize.

Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his citizenship and sent into exile in 1974 after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, his monumental history of the Soviet police state.

He settled in the US, returning to post-Soviet Russia as a hero in 1994.

More at Al Jazeera

Just Another Day in Bush World.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Friday announced changes to procedures for the cremation of slain U.S. troops after concerns emerged about the military's use of a crematorium that burns both human and animal remains.

The changes were unveiled late in the day after Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on the Defense Department for an independent investigation into the cremation of a U.S. soldier due to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

"There is no mission more important than the dignified return of our fallen heroes to our families," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

The crematorium in question was used by the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the bodies of troops killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other overseas locations are returned to the United States, officials said.

In a Friday letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, McCain said the Army notified the Senate Armed Services Committee of a report that one soldier's remains had been cremated at a pet crematorium. The soldier was scheduled to be buried on May 20 at Arlington, across the Potomac River from Washington.

"This report is very disturbing and our men and women in uniform who make the ultimate sacrifice must be treated with dignity," McCain, a Vietnam War veteran and the Senate committee's senior Republican, wrote in the letter.

Pentagon officials said the issue came to light after a soldier who works at the Pentagon attended the cremation of a comrade killed in combat and expressed concern about the crematorium. The crematorium is in an industrial area and has a sign advertising the fact that it also cremates pets.

The Pentagon said it had no evidence that the remains of troops had been treated inappropriately at the crematorium.

According to officials, the remains of humans and pets were cremated at separate incinerators at the Delaware crematorium. But officials said Gates believed it was insensitive to cremate the bodies of troops at a site which also cremated animals.

From now on, the military would only use cremation facilities attached to funeral homes, Morrell said.

"The families of the fallen have the secretary's deepest apology," Morrell told reporters at the Pentagon.

"Those still serving have his commitment that this department will do everything it possibly can to adhere to the principle that the remains of all members of the armed forces must be treated with the dignity and respect that their sacrifice demands," he said.

More at Reuters

Former Sandia labs director dies

By MELANIE DABOVICH Associated Press Writer
Article Launched: 05/06/2008 12:57:28 PM MDT

ALBUQUERQUE—Morgan Sparks, who led Sandia National Laboratories for nearly a decade and invented a device that has revolutionized almost every aspect of modern life, has died.

Sparks died Saturday at his daughter's home in Fullerton, Calif., Sandia said Tuesday in a news release. He was 91.

Sparks worked for 30 years at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey before taking over as director of Sandia in 1972. He served in the post until his retirement in 1981.

Sandia and Bell labs officials said Sparks invented the first practical transistor, a semiconductor device that led to devices such as personal computers, cell phones and DVD players.

Transistors work something like light switches, flipping on and off inside a chip to generate the ones and zeros that store and process information inside a computer.

Sparks joined the Semiconductor Research Group at the New Jersey lab in 1948 just as three of the group's physicists—John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley—were developing the first transistor for which they won the Nobel Prize, said Peter Benedict, a spokesman for Bell. The New Jersey lab is the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent.

Sparks conducted materials science research with the group and worked with fellow team members Shockley and Gordon Teal to help develop the microwatt junction transistor in 1951.

Junction transistors began replacing vacuum tubes in electronic devices such as portable radios. Soon, transistors became essential in electronic computers and their production grew monumentally after the emergence of the microchip in the 1960s.

Benedict said Bell lab scientists who worked on early transistor technology created something that is fundamental to everyday life.

Snip

More here

The transistor started the electronics revolution of the late 20th Century. Solid State Devices were smaller, used less power, and were much more reliable than the tube technology that proceeded them. Small, rugged transistors made radios truly portable and inexpensive. Transistor radios eventually lead to personal media devices like the Walkman and the iPod.

Transistors were the first of many semiconductor devices constructed of silicon and other elements. From transistors came Integrated Circuits and the modern electronics revolution. We take the reliability of solid state devices for granted these days. Few remember how finicky and flaky tubes were. Tubes burnt out, shorted out, and just faded in and out. Trouble shooting a tubed TV set or Radio was a black art. Transistors were much easier, they either worked or failed to work. Transistors failed at a much lower rate then tubes and failed either at the very beginning of their life cycles or at the very end.

Transistors allowed electronics to become much more modular; circuit boards replaced tubes and wires. Reliability went up; as did ease of repair. The only downside was that individual components became less and less replaceable. The days of replacing a single resistor or capacitor or diode became a fond memory. In many instance the individual devices became far too small to pull out or replace by ordinary repairmen. Repair became replacement as modularization took over. Many times the entire device became disposable. Cheap transistor radios lead the way. The Battery powered devices sold quickly and were just as quickly thrown away. There are probably more Walkmans in landfills then on peoples hips these days; just as there will be more iPods in the waste stream than on people's ears at some time in the future. A typical iPod is expected to last a year and a half. The life span of tubed radios were much longer.

Be that as it may, electronics have invaded every nook and cranny of our lives. Modern cars absolutely depend on their fuel management computers to help them pass smog requirements. Burger emporiums depend on pre-programed registers to ring up value meals. Homes are made more secure by motion sensors and key-pad alarm controls. LCD s have made large screen TVs a easy splurge for most people. Not only that, LCD s have reduced the weight of TV sets considerably.

We like to think of the late 20th Century as the "Atomic Age." While Little man, Fat Boy and their decedents made their marks on the era, they maybe get more press then they deserve. Yes, there was the ICBM and there were nuclear powered vessels but they had less impact on day to day life then the humble and simple transistor. Even fearsome nuclear weapons eventually depended on solid-state devices to guide them to their intended targets. Nuclear power stations too depended on sensors and control systems that used transistors and their descendants the I.C. Chip. Modern life is inextricably depends on cheap, sturdy, and reliable solid state devices to function. Silicon rules the age we live in much more than we realize.

Marine burned over 97% of body in '05 dies

ASSOCIATED PRESS • May 2, 2008

A Marine sergeant who became a symbol of resilience as he strove to recover from a roadside bomb blast in Iraq that blanketed 97% of his body with burns has died, the Defense Department said. He was 22.

Sgt. Merlin German died April 11 at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where he was continuing treatment for the injuries he suffered in combat on Feb. 22, 2005, the Pentagon said Thursday.

The former turret gunner was dubbed the “Miracle Man” for his determination in facing his wounds, which cost the former saxophone player his fingers and rippled his face with scars. He endured more than 40 surgeries, spent 17 months in a hospital and had to learn to walk again.

Meanwhile, he started a charity, Merlin’s Miracles, to aid child burn victims and considered college and a career.

“Sometimes I do think I can’t do it,” he told the Associated Press last year. “Then I think: Why not? I can do whatever I want. ... Nobody has ever been 97% dead and survived, and lived to walk.”

Born in New York City, German moved to its suburbs as a teenager. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in September 2003, according to his charity’s Web site. He was medically retired four years later, the Defense Department said.

German had been stationed at Camp Pendleton. Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that the state Capitol’s flags would be flown at half-staff in German’s honor, saying the sergeant’s “courage and unfailing loyalty serve as an inspiration to Americans everywhere.”

Snip

Semper Fi Sgt. Merlin German and may flights of Angels escort you to the promised land.

Obituary: Sir Arthur C Clarke

Science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died at the age of 90 in Sri Lanka.

Once called "the first dweller in the electronic cottage", his vision of the future, and its technology - popularised in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey - captured the popular imagination.

Arthur C Clarke's vivid - and detailed - descriptions of space shuttles, super-computers and rapid communications systems were enjoyed by millions of readers around the world.

His writings gave science fiction - a genre often accused of veering towards the fantastical - a refreshingly human and practical face.

Clarke's ideas and gadgets engaged his readers because of, not despite, their plausibility. Quite often, his fictional musings formed the basis of what we now see as science fact.

Passion for science

Arthur C Clarke was born in Minehead, a town in Somerset in the south-west of England, on 16 December 1917.

A farmer's son, he was educated at Huish's Grammar School in Taunton before joining the civil service.

A youthful interest in dinosaurs and Morse code blossomed into a fascination with all things scientific.

During World War II, Clarke volunteered for the Royal Air Force, where he worked in the, then highly-secretive, development of radar.

Demobbed at the war's end, he went to King's College, London, where he took a First in maths and physics, before becoming a full-time writer in the late 1940s.

He wrote story-lines for the comic-book hero, Dan Dare, inspired Gene Roddenberry to create Star Trek and posited Clarke's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Beyond this, during the war, he published a paper in which he predicted that, at 22,000 miles above the Earth's surface, communications satellites would sit in geo-stationary orbit, allowing electronic signals to be bounced off them around the globe.

2001

His vision, soon proved, revolutionised the communications and broadcasting industry.

No wonder, then, that Sir Arthur counted both Rupert Murdoch and CNN founder Ted Turner among his friends and accolytes.

But it was his creation, with the legendary film director Stanley Kubrick, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, that brought Arthur C Clarke world-wide fame.

Based on Sir Arthur's book, Sentinel, and with its mysterious monoliths, the psychopathic Hal 2000 computer and a final sequence which baffled many cinema-goers, 2001 quickly established itself as a cult classic.

He lectured, was feted by everyone from the astronaut Buzz Aldrin to R Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, and appeared on television, most notably in Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World.

Sir Arthur's private life was as off-beat as his books. After a failed marriage, he moved to Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, in 1956, where he lived, with a business partner and his family, scuba-dived and played table-tennis with local youths.

But his status as the grand old man of science fiction was threatened when, in 1998, allegations of child abuse, which he strenuously denied, caused the confirmation of a knighthood to be delayed.

Although cleared by an investigation, Sir Arthur's unconventional lifestyle continued to cause some raised eyebrows right up to his death.

A seer of the modern age, Sir Arthur C Clarke was an original thinker, a scientific expert whose tales combined technology and good old-fashioned storytelling and whose influence went far beyond the written page.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/2358011.stm

Published: 2008/03/18 22:14:40 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

Snip

One of the greatest authors of all time is gone. Clarke raise Science Fiction out of the pulp-fiction ghetto where had languished for the better part of a half-century. Only the Daddy of the genre , HG Wells had more impact. With Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov he raise the literary bar that few have matched. Unfortunately SciFi had degraded into SciFi and fantasy in the book stores. Most of what sits on bookstore shelves these days are poorly written serials that are cranked out with numbing repetition. These books do well enough as escapist literature for teen-aged males but fall far short of the master works of earlier generations. Even Clarke himself indulged in some swamp crawling in his later years co-authoring many substandard mediocrities that traded on his hero status. Re-read his earlier works, they are absolutely stunning. While you are at it Re-Read Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. Of all the short stories in the English Speaking world; "Rocket Summer" has got to be at the very pinnacle of the form. Not a word is wasted, and the economy of the story is awe inspiring--Bradbury makes Hemingway's prose look like logorrhea.
It is a shame Sir Arthur did not get to see the movie "Rendezvous with Rama" based on his book of the same name. I hope director David Fincher and actor Morgan Freeman do the story justice.

From George Elliot


O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
Of miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's minds
To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor, anxious penitence is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air;
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better--saw rather
A worthier image for the sanctuary
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love--
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever."

There is more at the link above.

Lawrence King RIP

By Shark-fu Of Angry Black Bitch

Somebody’s baby, somebody’s friend…

Lawrence King was 15 years old.

He was somebody’s baby and somebody’s friend.

He was loved and cared for but he was also taunted and bullied for being gay.

On Feb 12 Lawrence King was shot in the head while working in his school’s computer lab.

He was declared brain dead the next day.

A 14 year old fellow student is being charged with the murder of Lawrence King. It is alleged that Lawrence King was targeted because he was gay and prosecutors have filed murder charges against the suspect with the additional allegation of a hate crime.

Hate, fear and bigotry have turned a junior high school into a crime scene and a young man into murder victim and I can’t help but think that Lawrence King was somebody’s baby before he was a headline. He was somebody’s friend before he was the victim of a hate crime.

Now, those who knew him and loved him mourn the loss of him because Lawrence King will forever be 15 years old.

Somebody’s baby…full of the promise that is a life yet to be lived.

Somebody’s friend…with so much of the happiness and joy of it all yet to be experienced.

In St. Louis there will be a vigil and candlelight walk in remembrance of Lawrence King Wednesday, February 27th at 6:45pm at Mokabe’s. The vigil will be held indoors unless the weather allows otherwise. The candlelight walk will take place afterwards.

May God have mercy…