Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

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Obit watch: January 11, 2023.

Wednesday, January 11th, 2023

George Pell, Cardinal and former Vatican treasurer.

From 2014 to 2019, Cardinal Pell was the church’s financial czar and third-in-command, and he tried to push through reforms to make its finances more transparent. Those efforts were truncated in 2017, when he was forced to return to Australia to face trial on charges of sex abuse dating to the 1990s. The case transfixed Australia — cameras met Cardinal Pell at the airport when he arrived from Rome.
In December 2018, he was convicted by an Australian jury of five counts of child sexual abuse of two choir boys that were said to have occurred in 1996, during his time in Melbourne. Less than two years later, in April 2020, Australia’s highest court overturned the conviction, saying that there was “a significant possibility” that he was not guilty.
Throughout the proceedings, Cardinal Pell maintained his innocence. At a news conference in Rome in 2017, he said he had been a victim of “relentless character assassination.” He said, “The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me.”
At the time of his death, Cardinal Pell faced a civil suit by the father of a now-deceased choir boy who alleged that the cleric had abused the boy when he was archbishop of Melbourne. In a statement, the claimant’s lawyer said the suit would continue, adding: “There is still a great deal of evidence for this claim to rely upon.”
Separately, a 2017 Australian government inquiry into the abuse of tens of thousands of children in churches, schools and other institutions over a period of decades found that Cardinal Pell had been aware of the sexual abuse of children by other Roman Catholic priests as early as 1974, but failed to take action.

Blake Hounshell, NYT reporter and editor.

His family said in a statement that he had died “after a long and courageous battle with depression.” The police in Washington were investigating the death as a suicide, a police official said.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline. If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Posted in Media, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 31, 2022.

Saturday, December 31st, 2022

Wow. When it rains…

Joseph Alois Ratzinger, also known as Pope Benedict XVI. Vatican News Service.

Barbara Walters. THR.

I know I’m being short with both of these. Mike the Musicologist is up for New Year’s, and we have a long list of things to do. Also, both of these stories are being covered by everybody and his brother, so these obits are more for the hysterical record than they are hot news flashes.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, Religion, TV | Comments Closed

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Sunday, December 25th, 2022

Not exactly traditional, or musical, but why not?

Not a video, but I kind of liked this. One line in particular got me in the feels:

In January 1947, Sewell Avery, the CEO of Montgomery Ward, returned the exclusive rights to May because it was the right thing to do.

…”because it was the right thing to do.”

(Since I’ve already linked Paul Harvey, here’s the rest of the story: Bob May left Montgomery Ward to manage Rudolph, but returned seven years later. Yes, he made a ton of money, but sales declined over time, and the federal tax rates were usurius. He worked for Ward’s until his retirement in 1970, and died in 1976. He converted to Catholicism in 1972, after his second wife died, and married her sister the same year.)

Here’s a brief historical note, suitable for use in schools, from the Imperial War Museum:

And now a musical interlude from our interlude.

One more, I think, just for fun:

Merry Christmas to one and all. May those of you on the watch have a quiet shift. May those of you who are suffering find comfort.

Posted in Christmas, History, Religion | Comments Closed

Noted.

Thursday, December 22nd, 2022

This story is a couple of days old, but I only got around to reading it this morning. When Rod Dreher says the NYT got a story about religion right, you should probably pay attention.

“The Miraculous Life and Afterlife of Charlene Richard“, about a Cajun farm girl who died in 1959 and the lengthy effort to make her a saint.

This is long, but I think it repays the effort. There’s a lot of discussion in the article about the specifics of the canonization process (including the relatively recent changes) and the internal Church politics involved in making someone a saint. If this isn’t the kind of thing that makes your eyes glaze over, I commend this article to your attention.

Posted in Clippings, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 24, 2022.

Thursday, November 24th, 2022

Frederick P. Brooks Jr., one of the great figures in computer science, has passed away. He was 91.

…he is best known for being one of the technical leaders of IBM’s 360 computer project in the 1960s. At a time when smaller rivals like Burroughs, Univac and NCR were making inroads, it was a hugely ambitious undertaking. Fortune magazine, in an article with the headline “IBM’s $5,000,000,000 Gamble,” described it as a “bet the company” venture.
Until the 360, each model of computer had its own bespoke hardware design. That required engineers to overhaul their software programs to run on every new machine that was introduced.
But IBM promised to eliminate that costly, repetitive labor with an approach championed by Dr. Brooks, a young engineering star at the company, and a few colleagues. In April 1964, IBM announced the 360 as a family of six compatible computers. Programs written for one 360 model could run on the others, without the need to rewrite software, as customers moved from smaller to larger computers.

…

But there was a problem. The software needed to deliver on the IBM promise of compatibility across machines and the capability to run multiple programs at once was not ready, as it proved to be a far more daunting challenge than anticipated. Operating system software is often described as the command and control system of a computer. The OS/360 was a forerunner of Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
At the time IBM made the 360 announcement, Dr. Brooks was just 33 and headed for academia. He had agreed to return to North Carolina, where he grew up, and start a computer science department at Chapel Hill. But Thomas Watson Jr., the president of IBM, asked him to stay on for another year to tackle the company’s software troubles.
Dr. Brooks agreed, and eventually the OS/360 problems were sorted out. The 360 project turned out to be an enormous success, cementing the company’s dominance of the computer market into the 1980s.

He did go on to found the University of North Carolina computer science department and chaired it for 20 years. I would actually say that he’s best known for something else:

Dr. Brooks took the hard-earned lessons from grappling with the OS/360 software as grist for his book “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering.” First published in 1975, it soon became recognized as a quirky classic, selling briskly year after year and routinely cited as gospel by computer scientists.
The tone is witty and self-deprecating, with pithy quotes from Shakespeare and Sophocles and chapter titles like “Ten Pounds in a Five-Pound Sack” and “Hatching a Catastrophe.” There are practical tips along the way. For example: Organize engineers on big software projects into small groups, which Dr. Brooks called “surgical teams.”
The most well known of his principles was what he called Brooks’s law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” Dr. Brooks himself acknowledged that he was “oversimplifying outrageously,” but he was exaggerating to make a point.
It is often smarter to rethink things, he suggested, than to add more people. And in software engineering, a profession with elements of artistry and creativity, workers are not interchangeable units of labor.

And this is a nice thing to see in an obit:

During his IBM years, Dr. Brooks became what his son described as “a convinced and committed Christian” after attending Bible study sessions hosted by his colleague and fellow computer designer Dr. Blaauw. “I came to see that the intellectual difficulties I was having as a scientist with Christianity were secondary,” Dr. Brooks recalled in the Computer History Museum interview. He taught Sunday school for over 50 years at a Methodist church in Chapel Hill and served as a leader and faculty adviser to Christian study and fellowship groups at the university.

…

The major prizes typically cited his work in computer design and software engineering. But during his years at North Carolina, Dr. Brooks also turned to computer graphics and virtual reality, seeing it as an emerging and important field. He led research efforts that experts say included techniques for fast and realistic presentation of images and applications for studying molecules in biology.
“The impact of his work in computer graphics was enormous,” said Patrick Hanrahan, a professor at Stanford University and a fellow Turing Award winner. “Fred Brooks was a thought leader way ahead of his time.”

I have read The Mythical Man-Month (a long time ago, when I was a young sysadmin) and enjoyed it. I wish I had met Dr. Brooks.

Posted in Books, History, Obits, Religion | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 21, 2022.

Wednesday, September 21st, 2022

Valery Polyakov, cosmonaut.

He was also a physician, specializing in space medicine. He volunteered for a mission to see how the human body would hold up in micro gravity on a proposed Mars trip.

Dr. Polyakov took off for the Russian Mir space station on Jan. 8, 1994, and returned to Earth 437 days, 17 hours and 38 minutes later, on March 22, 1995. He had orbited Earth 7,075 times and traveled nearly 187 million miles, according to the New Mexico Museum of Space History.

That’s still a record.

He worked out while in space and returned looking “big and strong” — “like he could wrestle a bear” — Wired quoted the American astronaut Norman Thagard as saying.
Rather than be carried out of his capsule on his return, Dr. Polyakov walked on his own strength, sat down, stole a cigarette from a friend and began sipping brandy, according to “The Story of Manned Space Stations: An Introduction,” by Philip Baker.

Rev. John W. O’Malley, prominent Catholic historian.

He was prolific, publishing 14 books and editing eight more. He wrote in a breezy, precise fashion that managed to convey deep thoughts in simple terms, and many of his books sold as well among lay audiences as they did among academics. Several were translated into multiple languages.
“This approach is a form of correction to myself,” he said in a 2020 interview with Brill, his Dutch publisher. “I have to be humble enough to acknowledge that if the 10-year-old does not understand, it means that, deep down, I did not understand.”
Father O’Malley wore his learning lightly. Friends called him puckish. His personal page on the website for Georgetown’s Jesuit community lists the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini among his favorite artists, but also the outré filmmaker John Waters. (Father O’Malley was especially partial to Mr. Waters’s movie “Hairspray.”)
He was perhaps best known as a historian of the Jesuit order, which was founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540 to provide, according to conventional wisdom, the Vatican with a militant defense against the Reformation and to expand its influence through the founding of educational institutions.
Starting with “The First Jesuits” (1993), Father O’Malley showed that neither of those qualities were present at the order’s creation. By wading through thousands of letters written by Loyola and others, he concluded that the Jesuits were in fact designed as a pastoral project, intent on saving souls in the face of the dramatic social upheavals rocking Europe in the late medieval era, and only gradually took on their later reputation.

Arnold Tucker, Army quarterback.

At a time when college rules restricted substitutions, Tucker played not only quarterback but also safety, punt returner and kickoff returner. The one blemish on his team’s records was a 0-0 tie in a game against unbeaten Notre Dame in 1946 at Yankee Stadium.
That same year he earned first-team All-America honors and came in fifth in Heisman Trophy balloting — behind Blanchard and Davis, of course. (Davis won the trophy that year; Blanchard got his the year before.)
But before graduating in 1947, Tucker won the Sullivan Award as America’s outstanding amateur athlete. He was drafted by the Chicago Bears but never played professional football. For several years in the mid-1950s he was an assistant coach at West Point to Vince Lombardi, who went on to glory with the Green Bay Packers.

Blanchard and Davis were Felix “Doc” Blanchard and Glenn Davis, “Heisman Trophy-winning running backs remembered in football lore as Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside”. They somewhat overshadowed Mr. Tucker, who actually died on January 10, 2019.

There was a paid death notice published online and buried in the pages of The Miami Herald that January. And at the end of the year The Associated Press listed Tucker (just his name and age) among the many “notable sports deaths in 2019.” But his death was otherwise not widely reported in the mainstream press, which had, almost 80 years ago, chronicled his (and Blanchard and Davis’s) gridiron exploits and later, when their time came, gave both Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside substantial obituaries, Blanchard’s in 2009 and Davis’s in 2005.
Reached by phone on Tuesday, Tucker’s daughter, Patricia Nugent, confirmed his death. And when asked why it hadn’t gotten much publicity, she said that she had never reached out to the national news media. The Times discovered he had died in seeking to update an obituary about him that was prepared in advance in 2010.

Maury Wills.

Wills set a modern major league record when he stole 104 bases in 1962, eclipsing the record of 96 set by Ty Cobb in 1915 and transforming baseball from the power game that had prevailed since Babe Ruth’s heyday. He set the stage for Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals, who stole 118 bases in 1974, and Rickey Henderson of the Oakland A’s, who set the current record with 130 steals in 1982.

…

In his rookie season with the Dodgers, the team won the World Series, defeating the Chicago White Sox, who had their own outstanding base-stealer in Luis Aparicio. Wills stole 50 bases in 1960, his first full season, and went on to win the National League’s base-stealing title every year through 1965.
He was named the league’s most valuable player in 1962. He played on Dodger World Series championship teams again in 1963 and 1965 and a pennant-winner in 1966, teams powered by the pitching of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.

…

He stole 586 bases (putting him 20th on the all-time major league career list) and had a career batting average of .281, with 2,134 hits — only 20 of them home runs. He was a five-time All-Star and winner of the Gold Glove award for fielding in 1961 and 1962. He remained on the Hall of Fame ballot for 15 seasons but was never inducted.

Posted in History, Obits, Religion, Science, Sports | Comments Closed

Brief historical note, suitable for use in schools.

Saturday, September 10th, 2022

The first two doctorates in computer science in the United States were awarded on June 7, 1965.

One of them was awarded to Irving C. Tang. I can’t find a lot of information online about him, though I think this might be his obituary.

The other one was awarded to Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Yes, that’s right: one of the first computer science PhDs in the United States wasn’t just a woman, but a nun. And a good Cleveland girl.

Sister Kenneth’s life took an interesting turn when, as a high school math teacher on the west side of Chicago in her mid-40s, she “read the signs of the times andas early as 1961 responded by enrolling at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire for her first workshop in computer education.” As Sister Kenneth told it, “I just went out to look at a computer one day, and I never came back. … It looked to me as if the computer would be the most revolutionary tool for doing math that I could get.”

This is a recent biographical paper about Sister Keller, who passed away in 1985. She sounds like a very interesting person: she had a long career teaching (at one point, she sat down with Buckminster Fuller to discuss “how computers could augment his work”) and as an administrator who pioneered the use of computers in administration. She was also an early advocate for microcoputers in education.

Sister Kenneth had a keen sense of humor. She was often recruited by phone to job openings around the country, and she would politely listen to the pitch. When the topic of salary came up, she would surprise the recruiter by saying, “You know, I couldn’t accept a salary since I’ve taken the vow of poverty.”

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Obit watch: April 25, 2022.

Monday, April 25th, 2022

For the historical record: Orrin Hatch.

Jim Hartz, NBC news guy and former “Today” host.

Sarah Shulze. She was 21 years old and ran track for the University of Wisconsin.

She earned academic all-Big Ten honors in 2020 and 2021 for cross country and in 2021 while running at Wisconsin.

According to her family, her death was a suicide.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Laura Hales. I am not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nor had I heard of Ms. Hales previously. However, I have a lot of respect for people who explore the difficult parts of their religion.

Ms. Hales was a writer and podcaster.

The Haleses maintained a website, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, devoted to examining that contentious aspect of the history of the church and its 19th-century founder. In 2015 they co-wrote a book on the subject, “Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding.” In 2016 Ms. Hales compiled and edited “A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS History and Doctrine,” a book of essays by church scholars whose chapters include “Race, the Priesthood and Temples,” “Joseph Smith’s Practice of Plural Marriage” and “Homosexuality and the Gospel.”
But Ms. Hales found an even bigger audience when, in 2017, she created the podcast “Latter-day Saint Perspectives,” which she recorded, edited and hosted. In 130 episodes, before she closed it out last year, the podcast brought on experts to talk about aspects of church history and doctrine.
Some of the episodes were light, like one on Joseph Smith’s dog. But most took a serious look at topics that might be confusing or troubling to church members. “Homosexuality and the Gospel,” “The L.D.S. Church and the Sugar Industry” and “A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism” were among the episode titles.
The church has long been criticized by outsiders and former members for aspects of its history, doctrine and culture. But Ms. Hales, a lifelong church member, approached the subjects from “a faithful but not necessarily devotional perspective,” as she put it in the podcast’s final episode, last May.

…

Ms. Hales took up many topics in her writing and on her podcast, but she dealt with polygamy so often that in 2015 she wrote an essay for The Millennial Star, a blog maintained by church members, entitled “Why I Write About Polygamy.” In the essay, she mentioned that she and her husband had given a number of presentations on the subject.
“The most unanticipated question I have fielded in these forums is why I feel a need to defend polygamy,” she wrote. “Perhaps it is because I don’t see my work as a defense of polygamy so much as an effort to help more people better understand the history of polygamy.”

She was only 54. Pancreatic cancer got her.

The Lustgarten Foundation.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Religion, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 21, 2022.

Thursday, April 21st, 2022

Robert Morse, actor. THR. Other credits include “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (both the Broadway musical and the film version), “Night Gallery”, “Trapper John, M.D.”, “Wild Palms”, the 1985 “Twilight Zone” revival, and a short called “Why I Live at the P.O.” based on the Eudora Welty story.

Dede Robertson, Pat Robertson’s wife.

CNN+. NYT

Posted in Media, Movies, Obits, Religion, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 3, 2022.

Thursday, February 3rd, 2022

John C. Koss, headphone innovator.

Mr. Koss and his friend Martin Lange Jr., an engineer, developed a portable stereo phonograph in 1958 that they called a “private listening station.” It had a turntable, speakers and a privacy switch that let users plug headphones into a jack. But most of the headphones available, like those used by telephone operators, shortwave radio users and pilots, were incompatible and not stereophonic.
So they rigged up cardboard cups that contained three-inch speakers and chamois pads from a flight helmet, and they attached them to a headband made of a bent clothes hanger covered with a rubber shower hose.
“And, oh man, whew, it was just bouncing in my ears,” Mr. Koss said in an undated video interview on the Koss Corporation’s website. “It was a great sound. Now the whole thing was there. Anybody that listened to it, it was like the first time you drove in a car or the first time you did anything.”

…

“For many industry professionals, the Koss Pro/4 headphone was the entry into good stereophonic sound that could be heard on headphones,” Jim Anderson, a professor at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, said in an email, referring to a product first produced in 1962. “Koss set a standard for construction quality and audio for many years and had the market virtually to themselves.”

Jean-Jacques Beineix, French director. His first movie was “Diva”.

I wanted to see “Diva” when it was theatrically released because: moped chase in a subway. But at the time, this was impossible for me. I don’t recall it ever playing when UT had a film program. But now, it is available in a reasonably priced Kino Lorber blu ray (affiliate link). And I believe it is on the list: if not, it will be shortly.

He also directed “Betty Blue”, which seems to have divided critics. Interestingly, before “Diva”, he worked as a second assistant/second unit director on several films…including “The Day the Clown Cried”.

Sister Janet Mead, Australian nun…and, with all due respect, musical footnote.

Sister Janet’s recording of “The Lord’s Prayer,” which featured her pure solo vocal over a driving drumbeat — she had a three-octave range and perfect pitch — became an instant hit in Australia, Canada and the United States. It soared to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 during Easter time in 1974, and she became one of the few Australian recording artists to have a gold record in the United States.
The record sold more than three million copies worldwide, two million of them to Americans. Nominated for the 1975 Grammy Award for best inspirational performance, it lost to Elvis Presley and his version of “How Great Thou Art.”
Along with Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” famously covered by the Byrds in 1965, “The Lord’s Prayer” is one of the very few popular songs with lyrics taken from the Bible.

…

She later described the period of her record’s success as a “horrible time,” largely because of demands by the media.
“It was a fairly big strain because all the time there are interviews and radio talk-backs and TV people coming and film people coming,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Shunning the spotlight, she declined most interview requests and all offers to tour the United States.

…

Sister Janet later withdrew from the public eye almost entirely, and her third album, recorded in 1983, was filed away in the Festival Records vaults. The tapes, including a 1983 version of “The Lord’s Prayer” and covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Cat Stevens, were rediscovered by Mr. Erdman in 1999 and included on the album “A Time to Sing,” released that year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sister Janet’s hit single.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 22, 2022.

Saturday, January 22nd, 2022

Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk. Tricycle:

Known to his thousands of followers worldwide as Thây—Vietnamese for teacher—Nhat Hanh was widely considered among Buddhists as second only to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in the scope of his global influence. The author of some 100 books—75 in English—he founded nine monasteries and dozens of affiliated practice centers, and inspired the creation of thousands of local mindfulness communities. Nhat Hanh is credited with popularizing mindfulness and “engaged Buddhism” (he coined the term), teachings that not only are central to contemporary Buddhist practice but also have penetrated the mainstream. For many years, Thich Nhat Hanh has been a familiar sight the world over, leading long lines of people in silent “mindful” walking meditation.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of Thich Nhat Hanh’s role in the development of Buddhism in the West, particularly in the United States. He was arguably the most significant catalyst for the Buddhist community’s engagement with social, political, and environmental concerns. Today, this aspect of Western Buddhism is widely accepted, but when Nhat Hanh began teaching regularly in North America, activism was highly controversial in Buddhist circles, frowned upon by most Buddhist leaders, who considered it a distraction from the focus on awakening. At a time when Western Buddhism was notably parochial, Nhat Hanh’s nonsectarian view motivated many teachers to reach out and build bonds with other dharma communities and traditions. It would not be an exaggeration to say that his inclusive vision laid the groundwork for the flourishing of Buddhist publications, including Tricycle, over the past 35 years.

I am not a Buddhist, and I am spectacularly bad at Zen. But I enjoy reading about Zen, and I was familiar with him from my reading.

Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the idea of death. “Birth and death are only notions,” he wrote in his book “No Death, No Fear.” “They are not real.”
He added: “The Buddha taught that there is no birth; there is no death; there is no coming; there is no going; there is no same; there is no different; there is no permanent self; there is no annihilation. We only think there is.”

“Nhat Hanh is my Brother” by Thomas Merton.

Louie Anderson. THR.

Breck Denny, writer and actor. He was only 34: according to his family, he died of a “rare spontaneous splenic artery rupture”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Religion, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 12, 2021.

Sunday, December 12th, 2021

Anne Rice.

Everybody’s been on this like flies on a severed cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation, but I wanted to note it for two reasons:

1. The hysterical record.

2. When I looked early this morning (probably around 7:30 AM) the NYT had what I thought was a very brief and superficial obit up, with no mention that a longer one would be coming. When I checked later in the afternoon, that one has been slightly expanded and the usual “a fuller obituary will be published soon” note was there. The current obit seems to be the end product (modulo any corrections that come in).

Noted:

By her late teens, she had become disillusioned with the Catholic faith.
“I have a great deal of anger against a church that would teach kids a 7-year-old could burn in hell for French kissing, right alongside a Nazi sadist,” she told The Times in 1988. In the late 1990s, though, she would return to a belief in God after decades of atheism; over the next several years she wrote two novels inspired by the life of Jesus, as well as a memoir, “Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Journey” (2008).

Posted in Books, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

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