‘I Just Wanted to Be Free’: The Radical Reverberations of Muhammad Ali

Apparently we just lost Muhammad Ali. Damn.

Fritz Stern, Prominent Historian and Academic, Dead at 90

Fritz Stern, a refugee from Nazi Germany who became a prominent historian, government adviser and a longtime professor at Columbia University, has died. He was 90. (...)

Stern's books included "The Politics of Cultural Despair," ''The Failure of Illiberalism" and "Five Germanys I Have Known." He also was a frequent commentator on current events. In a 2004 speech, he spoke of parallels between the Nazis and the Christian right. Earlier this year, he told The History News Network that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was a symptom of the "dumbing down of the country."

"When I arrived in this country, Franklin Roosevelt was the president," he said. "That someone like Trump, who is a nobody except for his money, immense ambition and ugliness, is not only offering himself but is actually accepted by many people as a candidate, is simply incomprehensible."

He recently warned against a new extreme right movement in Europe and other regions of the world.

"I believe we find ourselves in an era of fear ... fear spread all over the place ... of fear used politically by the right,” he told DPA in New York.

"I sometimes regret having grown in the middle of the end of democracy, and now, towards the end of my life, I must once again fight for democracy. A sad balance,” he concluded. Stern also found it hard to understand why people were backing the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, who he defined as the best example “of the the growing idiocy of the United States and the horrific role of money.”

He was particularly interested in the role that the political and cultural elites — the ostensible gatekeepers and guardians of civilized values — played in smoothing the way for Hitler’s rise, and in the German resistance to liberal modes of thought.

He pursued these avenues of inquiry in the essays collected in “The Failure of Illiberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany” (1972) and “Dreams and Delusions: The Drama of German History” (1987).

Fritz Richard Stern was born on Feb. 2, 1926, in Breslau. His father, Rudolf, was a physician, like nearly all his male relatives. His mother, the former Käthe Brieger, held a doctorate in physics. Both families had converted to Lutheranism.

Dr. Stern, falling into line with family tradition, entered Columbia as a pre-med student, but classes with Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling stoked his enthusiasm for the humanities.

Torn, he approached Albert Einstein, a family friend, for counsel. Should he pursue the study of history or medicine? “That’s simple: Medicine is a science, and history is not,” he recalled Einstein replying. “Hence medicine.”

Ignoring the advice, Professor Stern pursued history, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1946, a master’s degree in 1948 and a doctorate in 1953. (...)

 Skydog wrote: 
Nah. It's just our shitty local newspaper that fired all its editors.

 Skydog wrote: 
I thought the day was dragging a bit.

 n4ku wrote: 
1932-2106?!? is this some sort of time traveling Dorian Grey obit?

isao tomita, 1932-2106

Harry Kroto dies

The distinguished chemist Harry Kroto died on April 30, 2016, at the age of 77, according to Chemical & Engineering News (May 2, 2016). Kroto shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for their discovery of fullerenes, carbon molecules assuming exotic shapes, such as the spherical buckminsterfullerene. As Chemical & Engineering News observed, "The discovery was greeted with both enthusiasm and skepticism, noted the Nobel Prize committee when announcing the 1996 prize: 'No physicist or chemist had expected that carbon would be found in such a symmetrical form other than those already known.'" Kroto was also concerned with the public understanding of science, helping to establish organizations to aid science communicators and science educators. (...)

Former Sen. Conrad Burns dead at 81

• By MATT HUDSON and TOM LUTEY mhudson@billingsgazette.com tlutey@billingsgazette.com

Phil Kives, K-Tel International founder, dies at 87

Papa Wemba

oh. now I understand. crap.. 

we lost a good friend this year too..  

maybe it is the year. 

 Somebody made this on January 14. 

ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Just scroll back through these two threads... ridiculous.

Farewell to Zaha Hadid, the great dame of architecture

Ah, Facebook. Sort of a six degrees thing, several years ago I was thinking about a song by Radio Birdman, the Australian punk band from the 70s with occasional reunions since, and remembered the time I was listening to it on the way to visit our new baby in the hospital. When I walked in, Justine was talking to a nurse and they both looked at me and I said "what" and they said I looked funny and I said what else is new? Oh that's right: I got a new CD today of Australian punk bands from the 70s. The nurse said Oh that's funny. We have an ER doc who used to be in a punk band in Australia in the 70s! I thought of course. Then she said "Deniz Tek" and I almost passed out. Well it was hot that day. But really the odds. Are long. So anyway years later I was facebooking and saw something someone posted in California about music and I told that Deniz Tek story and someone else thought that was interesting so they clicked "add friend" and it was a guy in Bozeman Montana who I've still never met but has been involved in a lot of music over the years and still is. Anyway, he's friends with Deniz and they're in a band together so I'm Facebook friends with Deniz now too. So anyway I was talking with the guy in Bozeman (where "talking" means "posting on the internet, just like here") and one day another guy clicked the ol' Add Friend button and I was "wha?" but it was Joe Skyward, who spent a lot of time in Bozeman working and recording so he saw me talking to Ron the Bozeman guy. Joe, though was in the Posies (as Joe Bass), a great power pop band, and Sunny Day Real Estate too. Well a couple of years ago he started posting some really powerful thoughts and positive, always super positive and I thought Oh, he's joined a cult! But no, it was cancer. 

Joe Skyward.

Creator of ‘The Waltons’ Earl Hamner Jr. dead at 92

The life and death of DJ Derek, an unlikely reggae legend
Derek Serpell-Morris was a cardigan-wearing ex-accountant who became ‘the blackest white man in Bristol’ and a hero to Don Letts and Massive Attack. After going missing in July 2015, his body was finally discovered earlier this month. This is the story of his mysterious disappearance and extraordinary life

Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford dies at 46 after battle with cancer, family says