The old people’s friend took Frank Lautenberg early this morning: Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), the last World War II veteran in the Senate and the chamber’s oldest member, died Monday morning. He was 89. In a statement, Lautenberg’s office said he died at 4:02 a.m. “due to complications from viral pneumonia.” He is survived by …
RIP
Roger and You and Me
For some reason, the death of Roger Ebert is really hitting hard. I was a member of the Ebert club the last couple of years (I was an early adopter for this, and never missed a newsletter), and they were some of my favorite emails. Growing up with an aerial antenna (some of you remember …
Terrible News
RIP, Roger Ebert.
RIP, Ed Koch
Dead at 88.
Kate Urquhart, RIP
Commenter Gex lost her partner Kate to cancer over the weekend. If you’re in the Minneapolis area, there’s a benefit show tonight at the Mall of America House of Comedy at 7:30. Tickets are available at the House of Comedy website. There’s also a Give Forward page for donations for those who are interested.
Aaron Swartz Is Dead
Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday. Swartz was a prodigy computer science whiz (co-developer of RSS — at 14) and information-should-be-free activist who was facing up to 35 years in jail for downloading the JSTOR archive of about 4.8 million documents. From The New York Times: Mr. Swartz was 26, and his death was due to …
A Little Melancholy
Got the word today that my grad school advisor died from pneuomnia, the old man’s best friend. I talked to his wife and have spent the night talking to all the people I knew in grad school. We’re all just devastated. Other than my dad and my CO from the military, he was one of …