Who else but George Carlin could have gotten the “seven dirty words” shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits into a Supreme Court decision? Carlin truly was a Man for the Millenium.

I first met George Michael at a conference, and on several occasions we had interesting discussions about various computers including the DEC PDP-1. He had been in poor health for several years, and passed away last Thursday. Some of his computing stories may be found at Stories of the Development of Large [...]

Arthur C. Clarke invented the geostationary satellite, hence the designation of the circular orbit over the equator as the “Clarke Orbit”.  His science fiction has received many awards, including the Hugo and Nebula.

Henry Horn was the editor of HP Key Notes.  He was very well known in the HP calculator user community, and will be missed.

The Los Angeles Times reports that an explosion at the Mojave airport killed three workers and injured three others, during a test of the propellant flow system for SpaceShipTwo.
In 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded manned spacecraft, and won the Ansari X Prize.  SpaceShipTwo has not yet been unveiled, but is being developed as [...]

Timmy: “Are we gonna discover the secret of life, Mr. Wizard?”
Mr. Wizard: “We will if we’re not careful, Timmy!”
—”Mr. Wizard and Timmy” parody by Stevens & Grdnic
I’m not old enough to have seen the original “Watch Mr. Wizard” show, and I hadn’t even heard of Don Herbert’s more recent Nickelodeon series “Mr. Wizard’s [...]

As reported by the BBC, it wasn’t a reunion.  David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright played together, and Roger Waters played solo.
Shine on, you crazy diamond!

Wally Schirra flew on the Mercury 8, Gemini 6A, and Apollo 7 missions.

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 11 November 1922 — 11April 2007. He’s up in heaven now.
From “God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian”:
I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A.H.A. memorial service [...]

My mother just informed me that her greyhound Dawnie was diagnosed with an osteosarcoma today, and had to be euthanized.  She had been in pain since late last week, and although it’s possible that she could have been kept alive for a few more weeks, it would have just been more weeks of pain.  Mom [...]