Archive for obituaries
Mr. Roarke is dead!
There will be no more fantasies.
Ricardo Montalban, the Mexican-born actor who became a star in splashy MGM musicals and later as the wish-fulfilling Mr. Roarke in TV’s Fantasy Island and the title character in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, died Wednesday morning at his home. He was 88.
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News from Sacramento, Portland, Oahu
This catches my eye as I arrive in Sacramento:
George Francis, the nation’s oldest man, who lived through both world wars, man’s first walk on the moon and the election of the first black president, has died. He was 112.
and here is some of that vibe I didn’t like in Portland:
PORTLAND — On the streets of Portland, the brawny twin brothers James and Michael Johnson were known as the “Twin Towers,” 32-year-olds whose mere presence could strike terror among the homeless.
Police say they have linked them so far to five unprovoked assaults against transients at Colonel Summers Park in Southeast Portland, and say they suspect more victims are out there.
“They’re always picking on people who are older and frailer. There’s no fair fights here,” Portland Detective Kevin Warren said. “For the most part, it’s just a beat-down. They’re just beating people up because they’re thinking they’ll get away with it.”
One man sleeping on a park bench was pounded with his own bicycle, and another homeless man who yelled at the twins to stop was stabbed in the leg, police said.
In November, one of them allegedly threw a homeless woman in her 50s down a flight of stairs at the park after she asked them why they attacked the homeless. A witness who tried to intervene was then assaulted.
“I’ve never seen a couple of guys doing serial assaults like this with no apparent motivation … which got us motivated to find and locate other victims,” Warren said.
Meanwhile, back in Hawaii there was a blackout and the Obama girls caused a ruckus:
Barack Obama, trying to enjoy the last semblance of normal life before he becomes U.S. president on January 20, caused a commotion when he took his daughters to a shopping mall in Hawaii on Friday.
It made for a surreal scene — the president-elect, daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, and family friends eating at a table at the mall watched by a crowd of onlookers and surrounded by anxious-looking Secret Service agents.
The agents struggled to hold back people trying to get closer to snap pictures of Obama eating a tuna and melted cheese sandwich and the girls enjoying shave ices, a local treat made from finely shaved ice and fruit syrup.
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Christ’s brain is found and other interesting takes on the news
Archeologists in England have discovered a 2000 year old brain. I suggest that it is actually the Holy Grail. The Grail is the skull of Christ and it comes with his brain. Christ has returned, now let the games begin. Imagine if they connect it to a computer and suddenly Christ inhabits the internet and brings the Christ consciousness to the world wide web of relationships.
Here is the story…all the Christ stuff is added by me of course…but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
In Papua new Guinea there are a number of people who believe that we, as individuals are simply the manifestations of the relationships we inhabit. So, I am simply a result of all the relationships I am a part of…in this case, I think it bears thinking about that the recent reemergence of relationships that I thought had left my life is empowering and makes me a greater version of the human being that I am. A lot of this is the result of the internet, which I believe has actually achieved a level of consciousness as the bridge between all these multi-billions of relationships that inhabit it. Now, I am joking about the 2000 year old brain, but in terms of awakening to the next stage of evolution, I think it is safe to say that the web has facilitated the emergence of Homo connecticus.
On a completely different tack, one of the rowers across the Pacific has been rescued less than 100 nautical miles from his goal of Australia after rowing 9,500 nautical miles. He seems upbeat, but man, that must hurt like a mothertrucker.
An astounding piece of financial news came out this week when the former head of Nasdaq admitted that a $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme. Absolutely astounding that this was allowed to take place at all.
Mr. Madoff’s investment advisory business had “deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in losses of approximately billions of dollars…”
Is it any wonder that we are in an economic meltdown? In another precursor to the coming chaos, Ecuador has decided that billions of dollars in debt are illegal and is defaulting. Expect to see many more countries follow suit. Personally, I fully support this. The debt and loans creatd by the IMF and other Bretton Woods Institutions are illegal, immoral, and the root cause of a huge amount of suffering.
Every time I see our society decline away from the selfish capitalistic madness of the past, I admit to feeling giddy. I know that not everyone feels the same way…especially older people that were indoctrinated with some pretty severe blinders in the 1950′s -1970s.
At least Bettie Page doesn’t have to witness it. The iconic first generation Playboy Bunny died last week at age 85. Nudity didn’t bother her, she said, explaining: “God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds.”
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Mountains that shouldn’t be there.
We like to think that science can give us all the answers but sometimes we don’t know as much as we think we do. Take the huge range of mountains that goes across Antarctica and the fact that scientists can’t explain why they are there, they can explain why they shouldn’t be there though.
An Antarctic mountain range that rivals the Alps in elevation will be probed this month by an expedition of scientists using airborne radar and other Information Age tools to virtually “peel away” more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of ice covering the peaks. One of the mysteries of the mountain range is that current evidence suggests that it “shouldn’t be there” at all.
And while the UFO’s that an Australian Psychic predicted would hover over Alabama didn’t materialize, a recently released report shows that U.S. fighters have been scrambled to see UFO’s in Britain.The files are online at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos
One pilot said he was seconds away from firing 24 rockets at the object, which moved erratically and gave a radar reading like “a flying aircraft carrier.” The pilot, Milton Torres, now 77 and living in Miami, said it spent periods motionless in the sky before reaching estimated speeds of more than 7,600 mph (12,000 kph).After the alert, a shadowy figure told Torres he must never talk about the incident and he duly kept silent for more than 30 years.His story was among dozens of UFO sightings in defence ministry files released at the National Archives in London.
And here is a story even more bizarre…who the hell would do this?
The Asheville (N.C.) Citizen Times reports, “A dead bear was found dumped this morning on the Western Carolina University campus, draped with a pair of Obama campaign signs, university police said.”
Maintenance workers at 7:45 a.m. found a 75-pound bear cub dumped at the roundabout at the entrance to campus, said Tom Johnson, chief of university police. “It looked like it had been shot in the head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled together and stuck over its head,” Johnson said. University police called in N.C. Wildlife Resources officials to remove the body and help in the investigation. “This is certainly unacceptable,” Johnson said. “Someone was wanting to draw attention to the election.
“If we find out who they are, we’ll make sure Western Carolina University deplores the inappropriate behavior that led to this troubling incident,” said Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor “We cannot speculate on the motives of the people involved, nor who those people might be. Campus police are cooperating with authorities to investigate this matter.”
So, what is real? Can you steal something that doesn’t actually exist in the real world? Apparently you can. You can even get punished for it.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – A Dutch court has convicted two youths of theft for stealing virtual items in a computer game and sentenced them to community service.
Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of “virtual goods.”
The Leeuwarden District Court says the culprits, 15 and 14 years old, coerced a 13-year-old boy into transferring a “virtual amulet and a virtual mask” from the online adventure game RuneScape to their game accounts.
“These virtual goods are goods (under Dutch law), so this is theft,” the court said Tuesday in a summary of its ruling. Identities of the minors were not released. The 15-year-old was sentenced to 200 hours service, and the 14-year-old to 160 hours.
Here is another question that needs an answer since we don’t have one…why are middle aged American white women killing themselves?
U.S. suicide rates appear to be on the rise, driven mostly by middle-aged white women, researchers reported on Tuesday. They found a disturbing increase in suicides between 1999 and 2005 and said the pattern had changed in an unmistakable way — although the reasons behind the change are not clear.
One can certainly speculate…especially about the emptiness of the career track.
Finally, it appears that we are close to the time when we can make cars and planes out of paper. Now who in the world would believe that?
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Unhappy Birthday for Americans- even The Optimists
This is a long article and I am posting it in full below. On another sad note, Larry Harmon, aka Bozo the Clown died on July 3rd. Once my brother and I subsisted on Larry Harmon peanut butter and bread plus coconut rum when we were marooned in the bahamas in squeaking slippers…but that is another story.
Even folks in the Optimist Club are having a tough time toeing an upbeat line these days. »» Unhappy Birthday for Americans- even The Optimists
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