Category: Obituaries
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John Fund on the Late George McGovern
Whom did you vote for in '72? I voted for McGovern! But of course the Dems back then weren't the extremists they are today. John Fund remembers what was good about the man.
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Who Didn’t Survive the ’60s
1970 was the last year of the 'sixties, and these three died in September and October. Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson of Canned Heat. Date of death: 2 September 1970. Cause: "acute accidental barbituate intoxication." I saw him live with Canned Heat in 1968 in a club named Kaleidoscope on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Wilson's high-pitched voice…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Youth, Fast Cars, and Death
Tomorrow is the 57th anniversary of the death of James Dean. When the young Dean crashed his low slung silver Porsche Spyder on a lonely California highway on September 30, 1955, he catapulted a couple of unknowns into the national spotlight. One of them was Ernie Tripke, one of two California Highway Patrol officers who…
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Mary Travers
Mary Travers of PP & M fame died on this date in 2009. Here is something from the archives about her.
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The Euphemism of Obituary
How wonderful people are made to appear in death and how different from how they appeared in life.
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Richard Swinburne’s Obituary of C. J. F. Williams
I wasn't aware of this until now. Williams was London Ed's teacher. I battle the former via the latter. It came as news to me that Williams spent most of his life in a wheelchair. It testifies to the possibilities of the human spirit that great adversity for some is no impediment to achievement. I think also…
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Helmuth James von Moltke
I sometimes express skepticism about the value of the study of history. If history has lessons, they don't seem applicable to the present in any useful way. But there is no denying that history is a rich source of exemplary lives. These exemplary lives show what is humanly possible and furnish existential ideals. Helmuth James von Moltke…
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Kitsch King Kinkade Dead
RIP. But if you put a gun to my head and force me to choose between Kinkade and Rothko, I'll go with Kinkade.
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John Hick
John Hick has negotiated that mysterious transition that awaits us all. Here is one take on his passing. I saw him in action only once. I recall him questioning whether Jesus ever claimed to be God. An ill-mannered colleague of mine attacked him for that, churlishly. Hick retained his equaninimity, projecting a superiority that was…
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Remembering Michael Dummett
Hilary Putnam, Tim Crane, and a number of other philosophers offer their reminiscences on the passing of Michael Dummett. I thank the editors of The Stone for their linkage to my recent post, Searle, Subjectivity, and Objectivity.
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Xavier Ortiz Monasterio (1926-2011): An Existentialist Remembered
My former colleague Xavier Monasterio died last year on this date. Curiously, January 4th was also the date of death of his philosophical hero Albert Camus. This being a weblog, and thus an online journal of the personal and the impersonal, I didn't want the day to pass without a brief remembrance of the man. I'll…
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Reinhardt Grossmann (1931-2010)
An obituary by his Indiana University colleague, Nino Cocchiarella. "Grossmann was well known among his colleagues for his eagerness to discuss philosophical problems and to engage in sustained debate on fundamental positions." Sounds right. When I, a stranger, wrote Grossmann sometime in the '80s and posed some questions for him, he responded in a thorough…
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From an Obituary
"He lived his life like a fart in a whirlwind." I didn't make that up. I'm also none too clear as to what it means.
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Steve Jobs (1955-2011) on Death
This is from Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement address: When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse succumbed to the curse of 27 today. Why is 27 such an auspicious age for a quick exit from life's freeway? My guess is that at 27 one is still too young fully to appreciate the ravages to the body of life in the fast lane but is old enough to have done…