From:    Albertus Magnus                        Area: Metaphysical
To:      All                                     7 Apr 95 21:44:50
Subject: The Week in Death: March 10-17         UpdReq 

                                The Week In Death
 Celebrity Birthdays, Friday, March 17
 Rob Lowe, actor (31) Danny Ainge, basketball player (36) Lesley-Anne
 Down, actress (41) Kurt Russell, actor (44) Patrick Duffy, actor (46)
 John Sebastian, singer-songwriter (51) Sidney Barthelemy, mayor of New
 Orleans (53) Gene Pitney, singer-songwriter (53) Monique Van Vooren,
 actress (61) Mercedes McCambridge, actress (77) Sammy Baugh, football
 player  (81) John O. Pastore, former R.I. senator (88)
 Quote of the Week
 He's dead, Jim.
  --DeForest Kelley (We can hardly believe it ourselves,
                     but we've never used this one before).
 The Week In Death (March 10 -- March 16)
 Scott Amedure (NA), talk-show guest. Jonathan Schmitz was invited to
 appear on Jenny Jones' talk show. Schmitz was told he would be
 introduced to a secret admirer, and was surprised to find it was a male
 acquaintance, Amedure. So three days later, Schmitz murdered Amedure.
      We can't gag enough over this one. Jenny and her producers should
 be ashamed of themselves for what is now SOP on popular talk-shows --
 ambushing their guests. Had he survived, Amedure should have been
 ashamed for participating in such a puerile and exhibitionist stunt,
 Americans should be ashamed for voyeuristically watching such claptrap,
 and Schmitz should be locked away for a long, long time.
 Frank Blair (79), news anchor. An original member of the "Today" show.
 Leon Day (78), athlete. A star pitcher for the Negro Leagues. Some say
 he was better than the great Satchel Paige, and though comparing
 pitchers is tough, he played against Paige four times and won three of
 those games. Day died a week after being named to the Hall of Fame.
 Alfred Goullet (103), athlete. A champion professional bicycle racer,
 Goullet's record of covering 50 miles in 1 hour, 49 minutes and 8
 seconds still stands.
 Paul Fowler (83), astrophysicist.  Fowler helped develop the theory of
 nucleosynthesis, which posits that after the Big Bang, stars, fuelled
 only by hydrogen and helium, produced all other elements. His work won
 him a Nobel in Physics in 1983.
      "All of us are truly and literally a little bit of stardust."
           -- Paul Fowler
      "... So they sprinkled moondust in your hair
           and golden starlight in your eyes of blue."   -- The Carpenters
 Franciszek Gajowniczek (94), WWII POW. Gajowniczek, a sergeant in the
 Polish Army, had been captured by the German army and sent to Auschwitz.
 There, he was selected to die of starvation in a dungeon known as the
 "hunger bunker." He escaped when Rev. Maksymilian Kolbe volunteered to
 take his place. Gajowniczek was blamed by fellow prisoners for the death
 of the priest; after the war he campaiged to have Rev. Kolbe named a
 saint. Kolbe was, but his canonization became a subject of controversy
 when it was discovered that he had authored several anti-Semitic tracts.
 Paul Kipkoech (33), athlete. World champ in the 10K meter in 1987.
 Herb McCracken (82), college football player and coach. Invented the
 huddle. His Lafayette team was playing Penn in 1924; he discovered that
 a scout for Penn had stolen his offensive signals. He instructed his
 players to start behind the line of scrimmage, share the signals amongst
 themselves, then initiate play.  He was also a co-founder of the
 Scholastic publishing company.
 Edward V. Roberts (56), disabled rights crusader. Paralyzed from the
 neck down (though with use of a single finger) and requiring an iron
 lung to survive, Roberts became the first severely disabled student to
 attend UC Berkeley, where he earned both a bachelor's and master's
 degree. He co-founded the Center for Independent Living, and the World
 Institute on Disability. He served as director of California's State
 Department of Rehabilitation under Gov. Jerry Brown.
 From the Where Do These Idiots Come From Department? (WDTICFD): Three
 surveys taken in 1994 together indicate that as many as 45,000 convicted
 felons attempted to purchase firearms last year, but were thwarted by
 mechanisms put in place under the Brady law. That translates to 2 to 3.5
 percent of all applicants for handguns. The surveys were conducted by
 the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, CBS News, and the
 International Association of Chiefs of Police.
      That would've sounded good to us, except that there is no penalty
 to convicted felons for trying to buy a gun, so all 45K or so were
 subsequently free to buy firearms through illegal channels.
      Now here's the idiot, James Q. Wilson, a professor at UCLA: "I
 don't think the test of the Brady Bill is whether felons have been
 stopped from buying guns. The test is whether felons have been stopped
 from buying guns and then killing people with them. And that we don't
 know." Now, maybe TWIDman is missing something here, but wouldn't the
 only way to prove that felons would have used their guns to kill people
 would be to let them buy the guns, and then count how many people they
 kill? Seems to us that if letting people die is the only proof of the
 test, a little ambiguity over the results is a tolerable thing.
      It's like those scientists who argue that there's no proof that the
 use of certain chemicals leads to the depletion of the ozone layer, or
 even that the depletion of an ozone layer is a bad thing. Well, the only
 way to prove the theory is to eliminate the ozone layer, and if the
 theory is correct, then who's going to replenish the ozone? The morons
 who argued against the theory? Ounce of prevention, people. Ounce of
 prevention.
                       (c)1995 Brian Santo
... Most editors are failed writers--but so are most writers. * Eliot


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From:    Albertus Magnus                        Area: Metaphysical
To:      All                                     7 Apr 95 22:01:20
Subject: The Week in Death: March 17-23         UpdReq 

 Celebrity Birthdays, Friday, March 24
 Robert Carradine, actor (41) Donna Pescow, actress (41) Pat Bradley,
 golfer (44) Nick Lowe, bassist (46) Bob Mackie, fashion designer (55)
 Larry Wilson, football player (57) Roger Bannister, runner (66) Vanessa
 Brown, actress (67) Byron Janis, pianist (67) Norman Fell, comedian (71)
 Joseph Barbera, cartoonist-producer (84)
 Quote of the Week
 "We are a killing society, awash with violence.  I told the students
 on the first day, murder is a window into American culture."
      --Austin Sarat, Amherst College Professor
 The Week In Death (March 17 -- March 23)
 Florence Chadwick (76), swimmer.  Set two womens' records
 for crossing the English Channel, in 14:20 to France in 1950,
 and in 16:22 to England in 1951.
 Pedro Gonzalez (99), civil rights advocate.  Gonzalez was among the first
 in the nation to broadcast a Spanish-speaking radio show, during which
 he agitated against deportations of Mexican-Americans and other indignities.
 In 1934, he was convicted of raping a 16-year-old, but six years later
 the woman recanted, he was released, and resumed his radio career.
 Earlier, Gonzalez had been a telegraph operator for Pancho Villa.
 Odette Hallowes (82), British agent in WWII.  The first woman awarded the
 George Cross.  A French national married to an Englishman, Hallowes was
 recruited into the French Resistance, operating in Cannes.  When Axis
 armies swept through the area, she fled to the Alps, but there was
 betrayed and captured.  The Gestapo burned her back with a hot iron, and
 ripped out all of her toenails, but she refused to divulge the names of
 two fellow agents, and was released.  France awarded her the Legion of Honor.
 Brig. Gen. James Howard (81), aviator.  The only pilot to win the Medal
 of Honor in aerial combat over Europe in WWII.  In 1944, Howard was in
 command of a squadron of P-51 Mustangs assigned to protect bomber groups,
 when he was separated from his fellows.  He flew to the defense of a several
 B-17s coming back from a bombing run, and single-handedly held off 30
 German fighters for over half an hour before having to return to base.
 In the fight, he was credited with shooting down four enemy craft.
 Sidney Kingsley (88), playwright.  Won a Pulitzer in 1933 for his first
 play, "Men in White," a hospital drama.  Coupled with his "Detective
 Story," the two plays are considered to be forerunners of most of the
 doctor and cop shows on TV.
 Ron Kray (61), crime boss.  Ron and his twin brother, Reg, ran the London
 underworld from about 1957 to 1969.  Ron was considered the more violent
 of the two, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, though Reg was the one
 who actually killed Jack "The Hat" McVitie, the murder for which both
 were jailed.  []  In the film "The Krays," the two were portrayed by
 Gary and Martin Kemp, the twins from Spandau Ballet -- and isn't that a
 band  you forgot all about?  Reg survives.
 William F. Rickenbacker (67), a senior editor of National Review and the
 son of WWI ace/Eastern Airlines founder Edward Rickenbacker.
 Myra P. Sadker (52), educator and writer.  In her 1994 book Failing at
 Fairness: How America  Schools Cheat Girls, Sadker contended that
 consciously or subconsciously, educators interact more with boys, goad
 them more, and make more substantive comments on their work.
 Sunnyland Slim (87), singer.  Pianist, singer and composer of Chicago blues.
 James Walton (73), businessman.  Brother of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.
 James, known as Bud, was a vice president with the retail chain.  Forbes
 estimated that he was worth a billion dollars -- which only placed him
 83rd on the list of the wealthiest people in America.  You suppose the 82
 who are wealthier are donating to PBS, every opera house in America,
 every dance company in America, every museum in America, every medical
 foundation, every educational institution, the U.S.  Olympic Committee,
 and their local Girl Scout troupe, picking up the slack from the evil
 gub ment?  Of course they are.
 From the Unsubstantiated Rumors File (URF): We received news that Bonzo
 Dog Band member Viv Stanshall recently died in a fire, but the news came
 via the Internet, and we all know how reliable news on the Net is.  We
 are attempting to verify before we do an obit.
 From the Killer Course Department (KCD): About one-fifth of the 1570
 students at Amherst College are taking a class titled "Murder," and,
 they say, it ain't a gut course.  The class materials list includes the
 novels "Crime and Punishment," "In Cold Blood," "MacBeth," and "The
 Talented Mr. Ripley" (By recent TWID inductee Patricia Highsmith), the
 films "Pulp Fiction" and "Psycho," various legal cases, an episode of
 "Geraldo," and Snoop Doggy Dogg s video "Murder Was The Case."
 From the Your Tax Dollars At Work Department (YTDAWD): After
 stonewalling for four years, the CIA has finally acknowledged what most
 people believed all along: that one of its "assets" -- a Guatemalan
 colonel on its payroll, Julio Roberto Alpirez  -- murdered a leftist
 guerilla, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, who was married to a U.S.  lawyer, and
 Michael Devine, an American who ran a hotel in the Guatemalan rain forest.
 The Guatemalan military is in its second decade of an extensive
 program to murder dissidents.  Some rights groups peg the number of
 people killed at an incredible 100,000.  The murder of Devine was the
 ostensible reason the U.S. cut off military aid to Guatemala in 1991.
 The Week in Death will be on hiatus for two weeks.  TWIDman and Mrs.
 TWIDman are going to Europe.  If anybody wants to feed our cats,
 drop us a line.  Expect Three Weeks in Death on Good Friday.
... Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old age a regret. * Disraeli


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