Life Begins at 5 o'clock

I've only heard of the above three. The first two 'cos they're recent, the last one 'cos he's on the DDP. Not exactly a ringing endorsement... For a British site, why aren't you doing the same lists, but for UK politicians? Or is that to come? There are a couple reasons: 1. My ethnocentricity makes me inclined to look for obscure politicians from America. 2. The general rule is that a UK obit is required to establish fame, and most of these people will get at least a blurb when they die on BBC. 3. This site gives me the opportunity to publish, as it were, the fruits of my morbid research. 4. I'll probably get to the British after these lists because this has become a weird sort of hobby for me. 5. When I start making lists of living Bratislavian politicians, it will be time to stop.

Wow, that Prince sounds like a total asshole. At least he's honest though. Anyhow, since [sarcasm] everyone on this forum cares about my opinion [/sarcasm], I have to admit that I'm a bit wary to be putting Zsa Zsa on any personal lists. I think she's excellent candidate when you have room for 50, so she sounds like a good bet for DL, but in terms of personal pools, she's been a huge corpse tease over the past few years and there's a lot of good candidates, as OoO has pointed out to us. I wouldn't put it past her to live for another few years... I have my own list of Death Teases and she's on it: 1. Gerald Ford 2. Zsa Zsa Gabor 3. Kirk Douglas 4. Elizabeth Taylor 5. Sihanouk 6. Suharto 7. Charlton Heston These people are ageless and will live forever.

Defense 1. Donald Rumsfeld (G.W. Bush) 2. William Cohen (Clinton) 3. William Perry (Clinton) 4. Frank Carlucci (Reagan) 5. Harold Brown (Carter) 6. James R. Schlesinger (Nixon/Ford) 7. Melvin Laird (Nixon) 8. Robert McNamara (Kennedy/Johnson) Somebody said that Defense Secretaries are well known in Europe. I'm curious if that is only because the current Secretary is such a...twunt? Is that the correct term?

Interior 1. Gale Norton (G.W. Bush) 2. Bruce Babbitt (Clinton) 3. Manuel Lujan (G.H.W. Bush) 4. Don Hodel (Reagan) 5. William Clark (Reagan) 6. James Watt (Reagan) 7. Cecil Andrus (Carter) 8. Thomas Savig Klepp (Ford) 9. Walter Hickel (Nixon) 10. Stewart Udall (Kennedy/Johnson)

Yea...and Treasury is a major department too. He gets his signature on the currency. I imagine the people from the less high-profile departments will be complete unknowns over there (they're virtually unknown over here too, even the incumbents.) Interestingly though, Thomas Kleppe, (b. in the 20's) Sec. of Interior for Ford apparently has alzheimers. Might be worth keeping an eye on him.

Yea...he doesn't look very good. Typically people that get pictures with the President stand if the President is standing...it's one of those respect things. If he makes it to next year, he should definitely be on the list.

Treasury 1. John Snow (G.W. Bush) 2. Paul O’Neill (G.W. Bush) 3. Lawrence Summers (Clinton) 4. Robert Rubin (Clinton) 5. Lloyd Bentsen (Clinton) 6. Nicholas Brady (G.H.W. Bush) 7. W. Michael Blumenthal (Carter)

It Begins: State 1. Condoleeza Rice (G.W. Bush) 2. Colin Powell (G.W. Bush) 3. Madeleine Albright (Clinton) 4. Warren Christopher (Clinton) 5. Lawrence Eagleburger (G.H.W. Bush) 6. James Baker (G.H.W. Bush) 7. George Shultz (Reagan) 8. Alexander Haig (Reagan) 9. Henry Kissinger (Nixon/Ford)

Okay, my next series of posts is going to involve the cabinet level secretaries of the Presidents of the United States. Each President usually has about 14 Secretaries (this changes as Depts are added, split up or eliminated completely...Homeland Security is a good example, Veterans Affairs, etc.) The current cabinet is composed of 15 officers: Secretaries of: 1. State 2. Attorney General 3. Interior 4. Transportation 5. Energy 6. Agriculture 7. Health and Human Wellness 8. Housing and Urban Development 9. Labor 10. Defense 11. Homeland Security 12. Veteran Affairs 13. Treasury 14. Education 15. Commerce Anyway, you can expect me to post the officers still clinging to the mortal coil over the next couple of days. Just from my initial forays into the available resources, it doesn't seem like anyone from any administration prior to Kennedy is still alive. To avoid repetition, people that served in more than one department are going to be listed only once, in whatever department they served in that has the greatest stature as judged by line of succession.

In his case, I imagine any infection has to be taken very seriously. To keep his blood pumping they've probably got him on all sorts of blood thinners that probably impair his immune responses to some degree. Also, wasn't it an infection that killed Christopher Reeve?

I hope you like it. I am a proud Pastafarian. In the Billy Graham thread I note that he is likely to be dragged off by the noodly appendage as punishment for a lifetime of heresy.

My last purchase was several DVDs...Capote, Crash, Star Wars Episode Three, King Kong, The Fugitive, among others.

Here's a pretty good website for likely candidates...it breaks people up by birth year. Probably not the most comprehensive of all lists, but it had pictures of the people, which was interesting. http://www.genarians.com/pre1904.html

Two weeks. Dead wife and broken hip = broken heart + heart condition x the mean rate of inflation in the Pacific Rim - the number of apostles at the last supper + the number of pages in the bible to a factor of 3 / the number of days in creation = April 14.

Right now I'm working through A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It is a history of science, but it's not as dry and stodgy as those histories tend to get. Some of the stories are pretty funny actually - Calculus was published due to a bet, the astronomer Hubble's body was hidden by his wife, and no one knows were it is, Newton once jammed a needle into his eye just to see what would happen. Lots of stuff that most science classes would probably do well to teach simply to keep the subject more lively.

REPUBLICANS ROCK! DEMOCRATS WILL DESTROY THE USA Who would have thought George Dubya had learnt to use the internet.... Perhaps he's not such a mentally challenged pyschopath as we suspected. Mind you, could have been Dangerous Dick doing it for him, like all other decisions. Republicans: the people that gave you Watergate, Iran Contra, Iraq and the biggest deficit this side of the side Democrats: the people that gave you the odd sex scandal, the New Deal, Civil Rights Legislation and a surplus Democrats: the people who gave us welfare, no new oil refineries, Collusion gave America no new oil refineries. Do you think an oligarchical market will suffer low prices? You don't have a complete free-market system of gas refiners and importers. The nature of the business keeps entrants low, meaning it's easier for cullosion to occur. That has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with greed. no nuclear power, the EPA (to raise gas prices by requiring more and more additives)THose additives prevent the release of more lead and other carbons harmful to the atmosphere. higher taxes whenever and where ever possible, trial lawyers, Republican Politicians aren't lawyers who sue people? You ought look at the biographies of your Republicans Congressmen, some of them have done fairly well in court. lenient sentences for criminals, gun bans, endless death penalty appeals, the ACLU (All Communists Love Us), socialist programs to ruin society and create a bunch of dependent ne'r-do-wells, worthless teachers busy indoctrinating and not teaching, I must say you're correct about the teachers, look how you turned out. Vietnam, It seems to me that Nixon and Johnson both share a lot of culpability for Vietnam, and yes, Truman started the thing, but Eisenhower didn't stop it either did he? Both parties dropped the ball on that issue.the liberalizing of the Iraq war so that we're fighting it like sissys and not warriors (torture at Abu Ghrab, my ass). Hey buddy, since Iraq happened, has your cost of living gone down? The American people are getting a great deal on this one. And why would you advocate torture? How is that productive? A. This is the 20th Centure, B. This is America, we simply do not do things like that, we're better than that. C. It provides valuable propaganda to the insurgents. Democrats are all that is wrong with the USA. They will truly be our down fall. No, China is a bigger problem then the Democrats. You'll realize this when you're drafted to defend Tiawan, because that war is going to completely reshape daily life in America. ANd civil rights were pushed through by Republicans. Civil Rights in 1964 was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat. And after signing that legislation he made the famous observation "we've lost the South for a generation." And he was right. For greater evidence, if the Republicans were so good to the blacks, how come the blacks keeping electing the people that (according to you) oppress them? Democrats fought it tooth and nail. Only through revisionism do they make claim to it. The Southern democrats probably did fight quite hard, and after they lost they switched to the Republican party a la Strom Thurman. Rarely am I so blunt, but you sir, are an ignorant twunt.

Balmerese - highly bastardized American form of the English language, dialect spoken in the mid-Atlantic region. (background...a lot people in Baltimore really do speak an odd local accent, enough so that they pronounce Baltimore, "Balmer". These people are Baltimorons.) U gonna wach dem O's? Um gonna get me some karabs ensum natty boh and go on down the oooshun hon.

Academy Awards Winners for Best Supporting Actress 1. Celeste Holm 1947 2. Eva Marie Saint 1954 3. Dorothy Malone 1956 4. Miyoski Umeki 1957 5. Shirley Jones 1960 6. Rita Moreno 1961 7. Patty Duke 1962 8. Estelle Parsons 1967 9. Goldie Hahn 1969 10. Cloris Leechman 1971 11. Tatum O’Neal 1973 12. Lee Grant 1975 13. Vanessa Redgrave 1977 14. Mary Steenburgen 1980 15. Linda Hunt 1983 16. Anjelica Huston 1985 17. Dianne Wiest 1986 18. Olympia Dukakis 1987 19. Geena Davis 1988 20. Brenda Fricker 1989 21. Whoopi Goldberg 1990 22. Mercedes Ruehl 1991 23. Marisa Tomei 1992 24. Anna Paquin 1993 25. Mira Sorvino 1994 26. Juliette Binoche 1996 27. Kim Basinger 1997 28. Judi Dench 1998 29. Angelina Jolie 1999 30. Marcia Gay Harden 2000 31. Jennifer Connelly 2001 32. Catherine Zeta-Jones 2002 33. Renee Zellweger 2003 34. Cate Blanchett 2004 35. Rachel Weisz 2005

3/4 bottle of schmirnov vodka 2 Dannon Lite and Fit fruit yogurts (expired) A plate covered in foil 1/2 gallon milk (2%, expires in 3 days) Pizza from last week

More fun... Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor 1. Karl Malden 1951 2. Red Buttons 1957 3. George Chakriris 1961 4. George Kennedy 1967 5. Joel Grey 1972 6. Christopher Walken 1978 7. Timothy Hutton 1980 8. Louis Gossett Jr. 1982 9. Michael Caine 1986 10. Sean Connery 1987 11. Kevin Kline 1988 12. Joe Pesci 1990 13. Jack Palance 1991 14. Tommy Lee Jones 1993 15. Martin Landau 1994 16. Cuba Gooding Jr. 1996 17. Robin Williams 1997 18. Benicio del Toro 2000 19. Jim Broadbent 2001 20. Christopher Cooper 2002 21. Tim Robbins 2003 22. Morgan Freeman 2004 23. George Cloony 2005

Charlton Heston or Gerald Ford...

This post isn't really about Cheney or the Vice-Presidency, but about the Wives of the Vice Presidents. I've been looking through the internet whether two are still living: 1. Judy Agnew, wife of disgraced Nixon VP Spiro Agnew, who has completely fallen off the face of the earth 2. Joan Mondale, who surprisingly doesn't have a wikipedia entry given her husband's relatively high profile career as straight man to Jimmy Carter and chum for Ronald Reagan. Anyway, I'm tired of paging through links and was wondering if some others might want to take up the fight about what ever happened to these second ladies.

More fuel for the fire: Academy Award Winners for Best Director 1. Delbert Mann 1955 2. Mike Nichols 1967 3. William Friedkin 1971 4. Francis Ford Coppola 1974 5. Milos Forman 1975 6. John Avildsen 1976 7. Woody Allen 1977 8. Michael Cimino 1978 9. Robert Benton 1979 10. Robert Redford 1980 11. Warren Beatty 1981 12. Richard Attenborough 1982 13. James L. Brooks 1983 14. Sydney Pollack 1985 15. Oliver Stone 1986 16. Bernardo Bertolucci 1987 17. Barry Levinson 1988 18. Kevin Costner 1990 19. Jonathon Demme 1991 20. Clint Eastwood 1992 21. Steven Spielberg 1993 22. Robert Zemeckis 1994 23. Mel Gibson 1995 24. Anthony Minghella 1996 25. James Cameron 1997 26. Sam Mendes 1999 27. Steven Soderbergh 2000 28. Ron Howard 2001 29. Roman Polanski 2002 30. Peter Jackson 2003 31. Ang Lee 2005

Shouldn't someone perhaps tell Rude Kid about that? Or is it more a matter of not being able to find sources for the fact that they're dead? I'm curious how important age is in the decision process. DDP simply provided a population of nominally famous people. They were picked merely because they're the 20 oldest selections that have a birthyear. Giving Scarrabelotti the joker was completely impulsive. I've never heard of the man, but I've barely heard of any of the people on the list anyway. I reasoned that it would make no difference who was the Joker since the hypothesis is that nearly all of them will die anyway. If my hypothesis is correct, it makes virtually no difference who the Joker is becuase there's a high probability it'll be a hit. Regarding the likelihood of an obit...since this is an artificial list, in the event there are no points awarded becuase of their obscurity, I'm still going to award points because this is just a casual experiment.

My final post for the night... Academy Award Winners for Best Actress 1. Louise Rainer 1936 2. Joan Fontaine 1941 3. Jennifer Jones 1943 4. Olivia de Havilland 1946 5. Jane Wyman 1948 6. Joanne Woodward 1957 7. Elizabeth Taylor 1960 8. Sophia Loren 1961 9. Patricia Neal 1963 10. Julie Andrews 1964 11. Julie Christie 1965 12. Maggie Smith 1969 13. Glenda Jackson 1970 14. Jane Fonda 1971 15. Ellen Burstyn 1974 16. Louise Fletcher 1975 17. Faye Dunaway 1976 18. Diane Keaton 1977 19. Sally Field 1979 20. Sissy Spacek 1980 21. Meryl Streep 1982 22. Shirley MacLaine 1983 23. Marlee Martin 1986 24. Cherilyn Sarkisian 1987 25. Jodie Foster 1988 26. Kathy Bates 1990 27. Emma Thompson 1992 28. Holly Hunter 1993 29. Jessica Lange 1994 30. Susan Sarandon 1995 31. Frances McDormand 1996 32. Helen Hunt 1997 33. Gwyneth Paltrow 1998 34. Hillary Swank 1999 35. Julia Roberts 2000 36. Halle Berry 2001 37. Nicole Kidman 2002 38. Chalize Theron 2003 39. Reese Witherspoon 2005