What's All This Brouhaha? » In memoriam

James W. Benson, SpaceDev founder, 1945-2008

Eric — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:41:51 +0000

Jim was my first cousin once removed.Â I haven’t seen him since I was an infant, and I didn’t really know of him until my mother told me about him perhaps five years ago.Â I wish I’d had a chance to meet him.Â I was sorry to hear the news last year that he was diagnosed with brain cancer, of the same type my grandmother died of.Â My condolences to the Benson family!

George Carlin, 12 May 1937 — 22 Jun 2008

Eric — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:43:07 +0000

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.

R.I.P. George A. Michael, Father of Supercomputing, 16 February 1926 — 5 June 2008

Eric — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:04:39 +0000

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 Scale Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Here’s his obituary from insidebayarea.com:

George Anthony Michael

Feb 16, 1926 ~ June 5, 2008 In Loving Memory George Michael, a resident of Livermore, passed away peacefully in his home on Thursday, June 5, 2008. George was born in Buffalo, NY on February 16, 1926. He moved to Livermore in 1953 from San Francisco to be closer to his job at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab where he held the position of a Physicist for 39 years. Mr. Michael was world renowned for his contributions to the Salishan Conference and the SuperComputing Conference. He was known as the Father of Super Computing. He was a mentor to many young students, who went on to become leaders in their respective fields. Mr. Michael’s passions in life were his family and the world of super computing. He was also a lifetime member of the N.R.A. and the Livermore Rod & Gun Club. Mr. Michael was preceded in death by his loving wife Hayde who passed away on December 26, 1986. He is survived by his 8 children: Karen (Dennis Golcher) Tootle of Livermore, Phyllis (Dr. Les) Wong of Michigan, Christine (Ron) Scrivani of Oakland, Patrick Michael of Twain Harte, Michael (Michele) Michael of Livermore, Theresa (Mike) Guerrero of Walnut Creek, Martha (Ray) Gates of Sacramento, Captain Sarah (Ret. Lt. Col. Todd) Standard of Maryland. He is also survived by 18 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren. Mr. Michael’s dedication, passion and leadership will be greatly missed by all. Visitation is from 5-7p.m. on June 12, Vigil service to follow at 7 p.m. at Callaghan’s Chapel 3833 East Ave, Livermore. Mass at St. Michael on June 13 at 11 a.m, 458 Maple St. Livermore. Private inurnment at a later date. In lieu of flowers, contributions to the ACM/IEEE Computer Society High Performance Computing (HPC) Ph.D. Fellowship Program fund may be sent to: ACM Attn: Stephen Sisler/HPC Fellowship 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701 New York, NY 10121-0701. Checks should be made payable to ACM.

R.I.P. Sir Arthur Charles Clarke 16 December 1917 â€“ 19 March 2008

Eric — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:21:34 +0000

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

R.I.P. Henry Horn, 8 August 2007

Eric — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 01:05:27 +0000

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

Accident kills three Scaled Composites workers, injures three

Eric — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:53:42 +0000

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.Â SpaceShipTwo has not yet been unveiled, but is being developed as a joint venture between Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic, and is expected to be used for the first private passenger-carrying suborbital space flight.

R.I.P. Don Herbert AKA Mr. Wizard, 10 July 1917 — 12 June 2007

Eric — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 04:56:27 +0000

Timmy: “Are we gonna discover the secret of life, Mr. Wizard?”

Mr. Wizard: “We will if we’re not careful, Timmy!”

â€””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 World”, but selected episodes of both are available on DVD from Mr. Wizard Studios.Â I think I’ll order a few.

Pink Floyd’s members play at Syd Barrett tribute

Eric — Sat, 12 May 2007 07:12:36 +0000

As reported by the BBC, it wasn’t a reunion.Â David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright played together, and Roger Waters played solo.

Shine on, you crazy diamond!

R.I.P. Wally Schirra, astronaut, 12 March 1923—3 May 2007

Eric — Fri, 04 May 2007 19:15:39 +0000

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

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

Eric — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:36:16 +0000

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 11 November 1922 â€” 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 for my predecessor I said, “Isaac is up in Heaven now.” That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resemble solemnity could be restored.

I made that joke, of course, before my first near-death experience — the accidental one.
So when my own time comes to join the choir invisible or whatever, God forbid, I hope someone will say, “He’s up in Heaven now.” Who really knows? I could have dreamed all this.

My epitaph in any case? “Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt.” I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.

So long, and thanks for all the foma!