Hugo Chavez and Paul Bearer.

Stupid world. Quit killing the good ones.

Duane Gish, notorious for his use of the "Gish gallop," which is a method of uttering dozens if not hundreds of previously-debunked lies so rapidly that no honest scientist could possibly respond to them all in the time allotted when debating on the side of Biblical creationism, has died.

Good.

And he died on my birthday. Happy birthday to me!

ref: http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/03/duane-g … ead-at-91/



edit: punctuation

Last edited by Nova (03-07-2013 02:14:00 PM)

I guess videogames are art now.

SexingTouga24/7/365 wrote:

Margaret Hilda Thatcher has died.

The parties people are throwing to celebrate are warming my heart. Whether or not she had some good points, she was a racist, classist horror who decimated a number of people's lives.

Wonderful poet, great translator, and nice guy Seamus Heaney has passed.

Marcia Wallace, voice of Edna Krabappel.

Flanders is a widower twice over.

RIP Nelsen Mandela.

You probably won't find some unbiased source that goes very deep, unfortunately. It's funny, in a way, that he was convicted for things he very likely had no hand in, instead of crimes he was openly attached to, but people were hurt by his actions and he was actively upping the militancy and combat readiness of his organization. They pretty clearly did want a coup. It becomes an issue, then, of to what extent these violent actions or intimidation tactics are justified or, whether or not, on occasion someone was just shot because so-and-so didn't like them. And, without being there, breathing in that atmosphere, it's probably impossible to really get a lock on.

He wasn't a spree killer, but he was a terrorist. He was in charge of militant kill squads and bomb-makers. If he'd been slaughter happy, though, you'd think more people would've died after he was released. That, to me, is the remarkable thing. He didn't appear to be notably enraged or murderous towards his captors or the previous government the way I'd anticipate someone in his circumstances to be. Instead of being misanthropic, he was incredibly good at establishing rights for people of all ethnicities, genders, religions and sexualities even if the new government itself was a bit of a mess.

Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney were demanding he be put back into prison forever.

It comes to a point where it does become bigger than the actual human being. If he was every horrible thing or even a third of the horrible things he was accused of, it'd dampen everything done in his name, whether that's logical or not. It'd cast a sick shadow on so much. But, if he wasn't any of those things, that, too would weaken the image. So, I think, most people want one myth or another so that he can be a man on a t-shirt or a magic name to invoke.

People can be complicated, I think is the moral.  Or at least they can resist easy sorting into the "good" and "evil" bins.  He hurt some people, he helped a whole lot of people, and the hurting and helping probably came in part from fundamentally the same traits of his character.  But all I really know is that he has been a beloved icon in South Africa since his presidency, and that South Africans are in a better position to evaluate his life in context than I am.

Beat me to Peter O'Toole. RIP. I loved him in many of the things I've seen him in (which, admittedly, certainly isn't all of what he's done, but still). Definitely a great and classic actor for large portions of his career.

Mandela is interesting. It sort of upsets me how much of what he did has been highly whitewashed in hindsight. It's a very winner writes history thing, in my eyes. ... Not to condone the actions of the regime he was up against or anything either, of course. But the way the modern media (in the US at least) treats him rubs me wrong. And again, not to say he didn't do good things for many people and bring about social justice. Either way, RIP to him as well. Everyone has reasons for what they do and, usually, they're not simply purely based on good or evil.

Justin Carmical (better known as JewWario) killed himself on the 23rd of January.

I just read about in in the local paper. Damn shame. He was a great director.