Canadian Paul

Maybe a little histronical, Paulie, as he still looks a very healthy old man. If anything, losing a bit of weight can't hurt. For the DDP, I don't think it's worth adding him on any list. The DL never listens to my suggestions anyway so I suppose it doesn't matter if I say he should be taken off the list next year. Haha. Don't get me wrong, I'm not rushing to put him on my upcoming RDP, I guess I'm just noticing that, for the first time, he's actually showing his age. Maybe not as bad of a choice this year as I thought though.

Thanks for that link Captain Oates. Albert Hofmann is one of my 2005 ddp picks , but from that picture, he definitely looked like he has a few years left in him. I now expect for him to live to his 100th birthday. Regards, ff Now compare that one to this, taken in 2006. He's aged terribly over the past year or two. No news on his health, but it might be prudent to start watching him seriously. Even healthy people like Hofmann often degenerate rapidly once they hit their centenary.

Children's television writer Jim Thurman has died after a short illness. He had a hand in, among other things, The Muppet Show and was the voice of "Teeny Little Super Guy" on Sesame Street, of whom I just rediscovered on YouTube.

Yep, me too. Has he told everyone to take a hike at one time or another? I think of us as a dysfunctional family. We have plenty of feuds, but we get over it soon enough. Same with real life I think, except here we can be more vocal, more visible and longer lasting with our anger, because we don't see these people in real life. In the end, I think both love and hatred die down and most members are fairly indifferent or casual towards most others. Convergence towards the mean and all that.

Today, in my email, I received notice that Donald Tuzin, anthropologist and UCSD professor died on April 15th. When most people mentioned Tuzin at UCSD, aside from noting that he wrote a textbook which he then made mandatory for a class that at least 1/6th of the students at the university are forced to take, they talked about an oft-spread story. While I'm not certain of its veracity, it basically goes that after he wrote his book on the Ilahita Arapesh Indians and the way their "primitive" society functioned, he got the women to rebel against the heavily patriarchal society and essentially brought the village down in civil war. My own personal experience with the man came my Freshman Year of college, during my first ever final exam, on a Monday where I had two other exams afterwards. He had been my professor all quarter and, while I found him amusing at times, he was also difficult to approach and rather unfriendly in office hours. Anyhow, minding my own business and taking the final, I catch him out of the corner of my eye running up the stairs. He points to me and, like an umpire, yells at me, in front of the whole silent test taking class and tells me to get out of the room. Outside, he says "I know you were cheating, but I can't prove it. If I could, you'd be so out of it." I'm scared shitless of course, not the least of which is because he's very tall, very loud and missing a lot of teeth. Not to mention, by the way, that I most certainly was not cheating, yet I know that my denial sounds like the frightened ramblings of a guilty man. So, shaking, he yells at me a bit more and tells me to sit in my seat and finish the test. I was nervous wreck for my whole college career when it came to test time. I always sat hunkered down in my seat and closed my eyes whenever I looked away from my paper. I was absolutely paranoid, even though I later received a professional "apology" from him. Thought I don't think it had any physical effect on test scores, the psychological battering was enough to make me hate the man. It's strange. A man I feared so much, about whom I was so bitter, now lies dead. He was there at that moment in my life, a memory burned into my brain, clearer than most that I have, and now he's nothing more than a whisper in time. I'd never really told the story after the day that it happened, because the memory was fearsome. I felt this was the best place to get it off my chest, whether or not anyone out there cares. And now that he's dead, I no longer feel bitterness or hatred. I feel like I'll be able to breathe easily again during tests (too bad undergrad is over). My conclusions on the topic of this thread, by the way, is that I guess it comes down to relativity in part, and who's doing the "absolution" after death. Families and friends forgive more than most people, and they also produce the obituaries and memorials. Everyone is despised by some, loved by others and somewhere in the middle for the most. Mother Teresa had her detractors and Hitler had his Eva Braun. We may be hated relative to the standards of a person, or even a society, but not to all. Death does not absolve us, perhaps, but it does tend to silence our critics.

Following the illustrious TLC's example, I did my own "Four Horsemen" search and found quite possibly the antithesis to John Holmes: Err... in any case, happy birthday T4H! May you be as happy as either gentleman on your birthday!

Article I selected her on the DDP. Too bad it was only last year.

Whilst looking for health news on Jack Valenti, I stumbled across this recent interview with Kirk Douglas talking about his new book. Doesn't seem like he'll be going anywhere anytime soon. As for Valenti, in a coma and intensive care, so doing only marginally better than Preston, Spelling, Pincohet, Papon and the rest of the "doing fine" crew. Not disappointed that I put him on my WDP team just yet.

The mayor of Nagasaki was shot today and died tomorrow. My sense of good taste wonders whether or not I should say "betcha he's not the first person in Nagasaki to be blown away" as would be expected 'round these parts.

It sounds pretty serious. Thanks for the tip. ff Apparently it's not liver cancer, though I have a feeling there's more to the story than what's in the article.

With all the talk in the Betty Ford thread about husbands and wives, it may be prudent to note that one of ol' Ingy's wives Ellen bit the rose coloured dust of the murky Swedish mire on March 6. Granted, they divorced over half a century ago, but at least it's something relevant to bring this since-September 2006-untouched candidate back from the all-too-metaphorical dead.

Disastrous year for the Deathlist? Perhaps, but it's only a quarter over, and we all remember the complaints that were flowing in around this time last year, which ended up being our second best year ever. Not many people of note have been dying this year, is all. Take the DDP for example. Out of 1,764 "celebrities" 37 have died. That's about 2%. Granted, a significant number of the picks are crap, but last year, by April 16, 27 out of about 964 had died or about 3%. Meanwhile, the DL has had 1 hit out of 50, which is 2%. The fact that more have died without a UK obit is irrelevant because those candidates could not have been DL hits either, for that very reason. But then consider this. Out of the 37 celebrities, (WWI veterans, "world's oldest," executed prisoners, Josie Grove, Marcheline Bertrand etc.) 11 do not meet the DL criteria. That leaves 25 (since Ernest Gallo was the mutual hit) which can be divided into several categories: People no one championed on the forums: George Sewell, Freddie Francis, Baron Francis Arthur Cockfield, Carlo Ponti, Frankie Laine, Baroness Lena Jeger, Betty Hutton, Eddie Robinson People who died unexpectedly: Kurt Vonnegut, Anna Nicole Smith, Bruce Bennett, Arthur Schlesinger Jr People who we would fit in the Ruby Muhammad "sketchy notability" category: Sir Arthur Marshall, Robert Anton Wilson, A.I. Bezzerides, Michael Brecker, Benny Parsons, Molly Ivins Others: Maurice Papon, Magnus Magnusson, Yvonne de Carlo, Art Buchwald, Sidney Sheldon, Charles Forte, John Inman Out of the others: Buchwald was looking to be on the mend at the end of 2006, there was no news about de Carlo's health, no one knew that Magnusson had pancreatic cancer, Forte was just one of any number of old people that could have been chosen and Inman was as vaguely ill as any number of suggestions on the DL. So out of the seven, only Papon and Sheldon can be considered serious misses. Arguments could also be made about Magnusson, Forte and Inman, but those three would have just been shots in the twilight. So really, while the list is far from perfect, it's not as bad as it looks and it certainly, given the fact that we're only one quarter through the year, I really think people should just quit complaining until year's end. Look how foolish a lot of people looked at the end of 2006, when DL pulled off its 2nd best year ever. I'll be the first to say that many aspects of the list were poorly conceived but a)complaining won't help we haven't had all that many reasonable misses and c) the year is far from over!

Mollie Orshansky, the economist who came up with the Orshansky Poverty Threshold died way back in December of last year but, for legal reasons, it only just got mentioned now.

Here's one that I think fits the theme of this thread. Last week, creator of the comic strips B.C. and The Wizard of Id Johnny Hart died of a heart attack at his work station, aged 76. This week, cartoonist Brant Parker, who co-created and drew The Wizard of Id has died at the age of 86.

Happy Birthday ie+!

Beat you to it in the Do Ho thread. Having more than smug to say this afternoon, however, Audrey Santo, the brain-injured girl who could allegedly perform miracles, has died. Probably not even heard of in the UK, since it's much more of a U.S. fascination, but she did spend 19 years in a comatose-like state. Granted, she was in poor health like Sharon to begin within, but even a quarter of that time would mean he's got a few years left in him...

And now he's out for good at the age of 76.

Well, last year MPFC got a hit from Henry Beachell a short time after he turned 100. Well this year, the honour goes to research astronomer Dorrit Hoffleit, who has died less than a month after turning 100.

Sheikh Saad attends Squash Open. Picture included, but I'm not sure if he's in it or not. Submitted for your consideration: I can't link to the picture itself, but his picture is on the Arabic Wikipedia The tall fellow 2nd from the right looks like him, but then they're all related so they may look very much alike and it may be the current Amir or someone else in the family.

Herman Solveen, Germany's oldest man and a WWI veteran has been removed off of the Surviving Veterans page on suspicion of having died in 2006, but the only proof I could find was an anonymous IP who changed the German wikipedia to reflect a new "oldest living man in Germany" and claimed Solveen was dead. Likely true, but that's a far cry from actually being true.

The MSNBC link doesn't work so well for me, so here's the Fox News one, which carried the original story. Significantly, Granted, you can't always trust them, but I suspect this one is pretty on the mark.

Florence Finch, New Zealand's oldest ever and the sixth oldest verified person in the world has died at age 113.

Just noticed that British WWI Officer Philip Mayne was a unique hit for You Mean He's Not Already?, but there's yet to be a UK obit (the sole source is Austrailian).

The last surviving British officer of World War I, Philip Mayne, has saluted his last at the age of 107.

Which one is that then, Kowalski or Wycech? I couldn't see any mention of it on the discussion page on Wiki. Actually I am mistaken. They were discussing a potential candidate that may have died: Józef Piotrowski. Same first name as Kowalski, got them mixed up.