Languish.org

Quote from: Solmyr on January 03, 2025, 05:00:47 AM"Catwoman" Jocelyn Wildenstein kicks off the year.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/01/style/jocelyn-wildenstein-death-cec/index.html

Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on January 03, 2025, 09:17:42 PMThey started production?

Quote from: Sheilbh on January 14, 2025, 12:55:40 PMI think only Brits will know him - but RIP Tony Slattery :(

Brilliant interview from Hadley Freeman a few years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/29/tony-slattery-had-very-happy-time-went-slightly-barmy

When I was growing up I thought he was the funniest man on TV.

Quote from: viper37 on January 14, 2025, 01:04:20 PMOnly older Québécois like me will remember Kim Yaroshevskaya. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Yaroshevskaya)

A Russian emigrant, daughter of revolutionary Russians who fled Stalin's purges in 1933 at age 10.

She created a character named Fanfreluche, a doll who read stories and then interacted with the stories by entering the books to change it for a better ending.  I loved that as a young kid, which were reruns by then.

Died this week at 101 years old.

Quote from: Josephus on January 16, 2025, 01:44:22 PM:(

In my 20s he was movie God.

Quote from: Josephus on January 30, 2025, 02:10:52 PMMarianne Faithfull... a true legend.

Quote from: mongers on January 30, 2025, 03:03:34 PM

Quote from: Josephus on January 30, 2025, 02:10:52 PMMarianne Faithfull... a true legend.

That's a good innings and range of stroke played in it, especially considering her at times to the max lifestyle.  :bowler: 

QuoteActor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa found dead in their New Mexico home, police say

Actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa have been found dead in their home in New Mexico, the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office told CNN.

Their cause of death has not been confirmed but it is not believed to be foul play, Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Denise Womack-Avila said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Quote from: Razgovory on February 27, 2025, 11:34:13 AM100-1 odds: suicide by cop.

Quote from: PJL on February 27, 2025, 11:50:50 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on February 27, 2025, 11:34:13 AM100-1 odds: suicide by cop.

This.

Quote from: HVC on February 27, 2025, 06:10:24 PMBut only one of three dogs.

Quote from: grumbler on February 27, 2025, 06:09:57 PMIt looks like Hackman died of natural causes/heart attack, and his despairing wife subsequently killed herself and their dog.

QuoteThe causes of deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were revealed by authorities on Friday, more than one week after the couple was mysteriously found dead in their Santa Fe, New Mexico, home.

Hackman, 95, died of cardiovascular and Alzheimer's disease likely around Feb. 18, about one week after his wife died from a rare syndrome, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, on about Feb. 11, officials said.

Hackman's death was from "hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, with Alzheimer's disease as a significant contributory factor," Dr. Heather Jarrell, chief medical investigator for the state's Office of the Medical Investigator, announced at a news conference.

"Mr. Hackman showed evidence of advanced Alzheimer's disease," she said. "He was in a very poor state of health. He had significant heart disease, and I think, ultimately, that is what resulted in his death."

Arakawa, 65, died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare disease transmitted through rodent urine, droppings or saliva, officials said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the disease "initially causes flu-like symptoms that can progress to more severe illness where people have trouble breathing."
Those who contract hantavirus after being exposed to rodent excrement often feel ill for roughly three to six days, Jarrell said.

"Then they can transition to that pulmonary phase, where they have fluid in their lungs and around their lungs," she said. "And at that point, a person can die very quickly, within 24 to 48 hours, roughly speaking, without medical treatment."
Hackman was likely home with his deceased wife for one week before he died, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said. There was no food in his stomach, which means he had not eaten recently, but he had also no evidence of dehydration, officials said.

Hackman "was in an advanced state of Alzheimer's, and it's quite possible that he was not aware that she was deceased," Jarrell said, adding that the "question is difficult to answer."

The Academy Award-winning actor and his wife were found dead during a Feb. 26 welfare check, with no obvious signs of how they died, the sheriff's office said.

Authorities said last week that the couple tested negative for carbon monoxide. The New Mexico Gas Company also concluded its investigation for carbon monoxide at the home, saying there were "no significant findings" of leaks.

Authorities said last week that their deaths were "suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation," according to a search warrant affidavit.

Hackman was discovered on the floor in the mud room and it appeared he fell suddenly, according to the search warrant.
Hackman suffered from "severe heart disease, including multiple surgical procedures involving the heart, evidence of prior heart attacks and severe changes of the kidneys due to chronic high blood pressure," Jarrell said.

The actor's "initial pacemaker data revealed cardiac activity on Feb. 17, with subsequent pacemaker interrogation demonstrating an abnormal rhythm of atrial fibrillation on Feb. 18, which was the last record of heart activity," Jarrell said.
Hackman tested negative for hantavirus, officials noted.

Arakawa was found lying on her side on the floor in a bathroom, with a space heater near her body, according to the search warrant. Her body showed signs of decomposition; there was mummification to her hands and feet, the document said.

On the counter near Arakawa was an opened prescription bottle, with pills scattered, according to the search warrant. The pills were determined to be thyroid medication that was being taken as prescribed and did not appear to have any contribution to her death, officials said on Friday.

One of the couple's three dogs was found dead in a crate about 10 to 15 feet from Arakawa's body, officials said.

But their two other dogs were found alive. It appeared they had access to a doggy door; one dog was found near Arakawa's body and the other was located outside, according to Mendoza.
The sheriff on Friday outlined Arakawa's final days.

On Feb. 9, Arakawa picked up one of their three dogs -- the dog who was later found dead in the home with the couple -- from a vet hospital after a procedure, which may explain why the dog was discovered in a crate when the bodies were found, the sheriff said.

On the afternoon of Feb. 11, Arakawa went to a farmer's market, CVS and a pet food store, and entered her gated community at 5:15 p.m., the sheriff said.

There's no evidence she had any communication after Feb. 11, the sheriff said, saying all of her emails were unread after that date.

It's possible the dog died from lack of access to food and water, said Dr. Erin Phipps, veterinarian with the New Mexico Department of Health, but officials are awaiting results of the necropsy.
Dogs do not get sick from hantavirus, she noted.

There were 864 cases of hantavirus in the U.S. from 1993 to 2022, according to the CDC.

Quote from: Maladict on March 08, 2025, 05:40:44 AMWhy are all these personal details made public by the authorities? It's none of anyone's business. I get that dead people don't have privacy rights, but there's also no reason to do it other than entertaining the public's morbid fascination.

Quote from: Maladict on March 08, 2025, 05:40:44 AMWhy are all these personal details made public by the authorities? It's none of anyone's business. I get that dead people don't have privacy rights, but there's also no reason to do it other than entertaining the public's morbid fascination.

Quote from: Grey Fox on March 08, 2025, 01:39:31 PM

Quote from: Maladict on March 08, 2025, 05:40:44 AMWhy are all these personal details made public by the authorities? It's none of anyone's business. I get that dead people don't have privacy rights, but there's also no reason to do it other than entertaining the public's morbid fascination.

Gotta stop the conspiracies with transparency.

Quote from: Maladict on March 08, 2025, 05:40:44 AMWhy are all these personal details made public by the authorities? It's none of anyone's business. I get that dead people don't have privacy rights, but there's also no reason to do it other than entertaining the public's morbid fascination.

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 10, 2025, 03:24:40 PM

Quote from: Maladict on March 08, 2025, 05:40:44 AMWhy are all these personal details made public by the authorities? It's none of anyone's business. I get that dead people don't have privacy rights, but there's also no reason to do it other than entertaining the public's morbid fascination.

Two reasons.  One, it alerts the public to a health concern about the virus being present in that area.  Second, there was some suspicion of foul play, which is now answered in the negative.

Quote from: Josquius on March 11, 2025, 11:56:15 AMThat's terrible for him.
But got to ask as it stands out - THEIR lake?

Quote from: Syt on March 11, 2025, 03:21:47 PMI'm sorry, mongers :(

Quote from: Maladict on March 21, 2025, 06:21:38 AMRIP Eddie Jordan

QuoteOleg Gordievsky obituary
Russian spy who was the highest ranking KGB officer to defect to Britain
Richard Norton-Taylor
Fri 21 Mar 2025 18.23 GMT

(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d9f43fd1dfc21256ee3554a621e1644a8a98beae/0_1658_2563_1536/master/2563.jpg?width=1900&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none)
Oleg Gordievsky was smuggled out of Russia in the boot of a car driven by an MI6 officer. Photograph: Richard Wayman/Alamy

For more than a decade the senior KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, who has died aged 86, spied for MI6 before escaping execution by being dramatically smuggled out of the Soviet Union in the boot of a car. He was the highest ranking KGB officer to defect to Britain, and his most important contribution as a spy was to warn Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan of the Soviet leadership's paranoia at a time when the world was moving dangerously close to nuclear war.

Gordievsky first came to the notice of MI6 after a tip-off from a Czechoslovakian spy, Standa Kaplan, who had defected to Canada. Kaplan mentioned Gordievsky as an old friend from the KGB academy, where they would together question the direction the Kremlin was taking. By then Gordievsky was a KGB officer attached to the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen; in 1972 he responded favourably to delicate approaches made by MI6 officers in the Danish capital, after phone taps revealed that in calls to his wife in Moscow he had expressed growing concern about the Kremlin's actions, specifically mentioning the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He began spying for Britain when he returned to Moscow in 1974.

He continued to do so when – to the delight of British intelligence – he was moved in 1982 to London, where he was eventually appointed the KGB rezident, its head of station. However, in 1985 Soviet suspicions about him surfaced following a tip-off from Aldrich Ames, a senior CIA officer who was spying for the KGB. Gordievsky was summoned back to Moscow for questioning and, after four months of being closely watched, escaped in an episode that might have come straight out of the pages of spy fiction.

Over his many years of spying, Gordievsky's most valuable achievement was reassuring the Kremlin that a major annual Nato exercise in Germany, code-named Able Archer 83, was not the precursor to a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. It was a period of heightened cold war tension between the two superpowers, which was made worse by Reagan's rhetoric and the paranoia of the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, who came to power in 1982. In 1981, when he was head of the KGB, Andropov had launched Operation Ryan, which dispatched KGB officers around the world to gather evidence of US plans for a first strike. Gordievsky later described how KGB officers in London were ordered to find out whether NHS hospitals were stocking up supplies of blood and to watch the windows of the Ministry of Defence and other Whitehall departments to see if their lights were burning through the night.

Through his MI6 handlers, Gordievsky warned Thatcher, who in turn warned Reagan, that the Kremlin's concern about what the US and Nato were up to was genuine. With the KGB hierarchy in Moscow reluctant to dismiss Andropov's paranoia, it was left to Gordievsky to reassure the Kremlin that Nato had no intention of launching nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. Later, Gordievsky's other valuable role was assuring western leaders, notably Thatcher, that the new Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, was a genuine reformer who should be taken seriously.

Gordievsky was born in Moscow. His father, Anton, was a highly committed officer of the NKVD, the KGB's precursor, and an enthusiastic supporter of Stalin's purges, but his mother, Olga, a statistician, hinted privately to Oleg that she held Soviet communism in contempt. While his elder brother, Vasily, was establishing a career in the KGB, Oleg studied at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

He subsequently joined the Russian foreign service and was posted to East Berlin in 1961 just as the wall was being constructed. He accepted an invitation to join the KGB in 1963 and was posted to Copenhagen. After his second tour there, when he was recruited by MI6, he returned in 1978 to Moscow, where he threw himself into brushing up his English and learning about British politics. Helped by a shortage of KGB British experts, he was rewarded in 1982 with a posting to London.

In London Gordievsky regularly met his MI6 handlers at a safe house in Bayswater. Thatcher was told about him, but she knew his identity only as "Mr Collins". MI6 officers passed him chickenfeed – snippets of low-grade intelligence – to keep Moscow Centre happy with his work. Among information he fed MI6 was material about Britain he saw in the KGB's vast archives.

It included, he said, reports that the KGB regarded Michael Foot as an "actual agent" and made regular payments to the future Labour leader, whom they codenamed "Agent Boot". However, Gordievsky's claims about Foot, which he said MI6 believed, were inconsistent, and sit oddly with Foot's longstanding record of opposing the Soviet Union and its policies. After the Sunday Times published allegations in 1995 that he was a Soviet "agent of influence", Foot successfully sued for libel and was awarded substantial damages.

Gordievsky did, however, identify one individual with the potential to inflict real damage to British interests. He was Michael Bettaney, an unstable MI5 officer who had been sent to trouble-torn Northern Ireland, where various traumatic incidents led him into heavy drinking and a nervous breakdown. Confused and embittered, in June 1983 Bettaney had stuffed a batch of highly sensitive internal MI5 documents, including the names of senior MI5 staff, into the letter box of the London house of the KGB rezident, Arkady Guk.

Suspecting a trap, Guk consulted Gordievsky, who at the time was his deputy. Gordievsky told Guk he was clearly the victim of a set-up, before informing, as quickly as he could, his MI6 controllers. Bettaney became the first MI5 officer to face trial under the Official Secrets Act and was sentenced to 23 years in jail, while the exposure of Guk during the trial enabled the UK government to expel him, conveniently paving the way for Gordievsky to take over as the KGB's head of station in London.

Shortly afterwards the KGB got wind, through Ames, that one of their senior officers was a mole working for British intelligence. Various checks, allied to the way the Bettaney affair had panned out, soon pointed to Gordievsky as being that mole.

In May 1985 he was summoned back to Moscow and taken to a KGB safe house, where he was drugged and interrogated. Although he was released, he knew it would only be a matter of time before he would be interrogated again. Under a plan worked out in advance by MI6, at 7.30pm every Tuesday its officers would keep a watch on a certain bread shop in Moscow. In case of emergency, Gordievsky was told to turn up there wearing a grey cap and holding a plastic bag with the bright logo of Safeway supermarket.

An MI6 officer would then walk past him munching a Mars bar or a KitKat – a signal that would confirm the triggering of an operation, codenamed Pimlico, to smuggle him out of Russia. In July 1985 he activated the plan by visiting the bakers with his Safeway bag, and the next day caught a train to Leningrad (now St Petersburg), where he took another train to a Russian town close to the Finnish border.

In the course of an extraordinary day in which KGB teams tried to track down two cars driven by MI6 officers and their families, he was eventually shoved into the boot of one of them. After the tensest of moments, Soviet border guards, whose dogs were distracted by the smell of soiled nappies in Gordievsky's car, let through the two vehicles, which had diplomatic plates. Gordievsky emerged in Finland and was flown to Britain via Norway. In Moscow he was sentenced to death, in absentia, for treason.

MI6 quickly found him a house near Godalming in Surrey, where his identity was protected. But he was without his family and lonely, and suffered the withdrawal symptoms that spies so often experience once the excitement of their secret life and defection has died down. Aware of the dangers, MI6 encouraged Gordievsky to write a history of the KGB with the Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew. The KGB: The Inside Story was published in 1990, and the following year Gordievsky produced Instructions From the Centre, a book that described how he and fellow KGB officers conned Moscow headquarters into believing their intelligence reports were the result of expensive lunches with valuable British contacts.

His autobiography, Next Stop Execution, was published in 1995, accompanied by the claims about Foot.

In 2007, Gordievsky was appointed CMG, for "services to the security of the UK".

Later that year he was rushed to hospital where he spent 34 hours unconscious. He claimed he was poisoned with thallium by "rogue elements in Moscow", a contention that was never proved but led him to criticise MI6 for not looking after him properly.

His first marriage, to Yelena Akopian, a KGB officer, ended in divorce. In 1979 he married Leila Aliyeva, whom he met in Copenhagen, where she worked for the World Health Organization. They had two daughters, Maria and Anna.

Gordiesvky told neither of his wives that he was a double agent, to protect them if they were subjected to interrogation if he was caught or fled. Leila and his daughters were on holiday in Azerbaijan at the time of his escape. Under pressure from the KGB, Leila divorced him. In 1991, she and their daughters were allowed to join him in Britain. But forced separation and the knowledge that Gordievsky had led a double life meant their relationship could not be restored. She soon returned to Russia. Their daughters, who do not use their father's name, are believed to still live in Britain.

Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, intelligence officer, born 10 October 1938; death announced 21 March 2025

Quote from: mongers on March 11, 2025, 08:42:22 AMWell on Sunday by brother had to pull the body of his father-in-law out of their lake. He's was found floating face down in the water after being absent for a couple of hours.
Presumably the coroner will determine if it was a heart attack/ stroke etc.

Grim for my brother and his family, and a reminder of just how fleeting life is, even when it's not a celebrity.

Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 30, 2025, 09:34:10 AMRichard Chamberlain, actor. Known for Shogun and the first to play Jason Bourne, on a TV mini-séries. Died the the day before his 91st birthday.

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/richard-chamberlain-dead-dies-shogun-thorn-birds-1236351970/ (https://variety.com/2025/film/news/richard-chamberlain-dead-dies-shogun-thorn-birds-1236351970/)

QuoteTop Gun and Batman actor Val Kilmer dies aged 65

Hollywood actor Val Kilmer, known for his roles in some of the biggest movies of the 1980s and 90s, including Top Gun and Batman Forever, has died aged 65.

He also starred in 1991's The Doors - playing the band's frontman Jim Morrison - plus the Western Tombstone and crime drama Heat.

Kilmer died of pneumonia on Tuesday in Los Angeles, his daughter Mercedes told US media. She said her father had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but later recovered.

Tracheotomy surgery affected his voice and curtailed his acting career, but he returned to the screen to reprise his role as fighter pilot Iceman alongside Tom Cruise in 2022's Top Gun: Maverick.

"See ya, pal. I'm going to miss you", American actor Josh Brolin wrote alongside a picture of himself and Kilmer on Instagram.

"You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There's not a lot left of those", he added.

In 2021, Kilmer released a documentary chronicling the highs and lows of his life and career. Val, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, features 40 years of home recordings, including him speaking with a voice box post-cancer surgery.

Born Val Edward Kilmer on 31 December 1959, Kilmer grew up in a middle-class family in Los Angeles.

His parents were Christian Scientists, a movement to which Kilmer would adhere for the rest of his life.

Aged 17, he became the then-youngest pupil to enrol at the Julliard School, in New York, one of the world's most prestigious drama conservatories.

Kilmer had two children with his ex-wife, actress Joanne Whalley.

Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2025, 08:32:33 AMRIP Doc Holliday.

Quote from: Sheilbh on April 02, 2025, 08:38:14 AMOh RIP :(

Quote from: Sheilbh on April 02, 2025, 08:38:14 AMOh RIP :(

This news made me sadder than I expected or is normally the way with celebrities' deaths. A lot of his films were regular watches when I was a kid.

Quote from: Josquius on April 21, 2025, 03:08:21 AMSooo.....JD Vance killed the Pope.

Quote from: DGuller on April 21, 2025, 10:04:59 AMI saw the news yesterday of the Pope meeting with JD Vance, and was surprised, because I thought he was supposed to be dying.  Turns out he was.  How awful for him that JD had to be one of the last things he saw.

Quote from: Tamas on April 21, 2025, 03:54:14 AM

Quote from: Josquius on April 21, 2025, 03:08:21 AMSooo.....JD Vance killed the Pope.

The elderly should be saved from having to meet these idiots. First Truss and the Queen, now this.

Quote from: mongers on April 21, 2025, 03:41:26 PM

Quote from: Tamas on April 21, 2025, 03:54:14 AM

Quote from: Josquius on April 21, 2025, 03:08:21 AMSooo.....JD Vance killed the Pope.

The elderly should be saved from having to meet these idiots. First Truss and the Queen, now this.

Guys you are aware that Vance's middle name is Damien?  :ph34r:

Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2025, 08:36:58 AMTommy Lee Jones is dead.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2025, 08:36:58 AMTommy Lee Jones is dead.

Quote from: Sheilbh on May 20, 2025, 05:33:55 PMRIP George Wendt :(

(Honestly did not know he was still alive and astonished to discover he was only 76 - and in his mid-30s when he was in Cheers :blink:)

Quote from: Razgovory on May 17, 2025, 10:16:20 PMJoe Don Baker died.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECupIhIuei0

Quote from: Sheilbh on May 20, 2025, 05:33:55 PMRIP George Wendt :(

(Honestly did not know he was still alive and astonished to discover he was only 76 - and in his mid-30s when he was in Cheers :blink:)

Quote from: Tonitrus on May 20, 2025, 06:16:44 PMNorm!  :(

Quote from: crazy canuck on May 30, 2025, 03:20:42 PMHot Lips has passed

Quote from: Savonarola on June 09, 2025, 03:14:58 PMRIP Sly Stone (https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/entertainment/sly-stone-death)

Quote from: HVC on June 13, 2025, 12:14:25 PMHarris Yulin. He's was one of those faces you saw in a lot of movies and shows. He was also in one of my favourite DS9 episodes.

Quote from: Josephus on July 22, 2025, 01:28:55 PMOzzy Osbourne.

Glad he made it for his last gig.

When I was 16, way back when, he was all the rage. I remember buying his first two albums. His second, Diary of a Madman, certainly influenced my later purchases as I matured musically.

Quote from: Josephus on July 22, 2025, 01:28:55 PMOzzy Osbourne.

Glad he made it for his last gig.

Quote from: Zanza on July 22, 2025, 03:11:03 PMLegendary. Had his farewell concert two weeks ago, raising 200 million for charity. Can't go out better as a rock star.

Quote from: Josephus on July 24, 2025, 11:42:15 AMNah, he's just pretending. Soon, he'll get up, put his hand to his ears, hear the crowd cheer him on and rise up to vanquish the Undertaker.

Quote from: Sheilbh on July 22, 2025, 02:22:31 PM

Quote from: Josephus on July 22, 2025, 01:28:55 PMOzzy Osbourne.

Glad he made it for his last gig.

Not really to my taste at all but I very much enjoyed the photos and clips of him at his last gig:
(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4bb2d215f58d6ce13a67e5647360804ec2a1a389/0_0_3868_2579/master/3868.jpg?width=1010&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=2251f614a3b68f1d78d9f29df3edc3a1)

RIP :(

Quote from: Savonarola on July 28, 2025, 03:51:46 PMRIP Tom Lehrer (https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/american-musical-satirist-tom-lehrer-183226199.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKtcKFlyBOkXI8MGTLoLBJocwRNC-ogUQefhji55FdCGRYJP3x5n6lHtlUGhaPAppZajHg14Mi4_nPq5tfHWB10WlhxqZhFL4_EfSSTWJW4uxBNX5ddELMW_PinNAYdu27uU3Dmf1V8DA_fLnbwOHDE6zgQhwOvUA-xI4ITqRz2w), he took us on wings of song and helped us forget, for a while, our drab, wretched lives.

Quote from: frunk on July 28, 2025, 04:14:25 PMRIP Tom Lehrer.  I think we should all pour one out for the inventor of the Jello Shot.  Supposedly he also cited Lobachevsky in one of his recently unclassified papers for the NSA.

Quote from: Savonarola on July 28, 2025, 05:13:05 PM

Quote from: frunk on July 28, 2025, 04:14:25 PMRIP Tom Lehrer.  I think we should all pour one out for the inventor of the Jello Shot.  Supposedly he also cited Lobachevsky in one of his recently unclassified papers for the NSA.

It would have been better if he hadn't cited him and just used the quote.

QuoteIn 1957, while working for the National Security Agency, Lehrer coauthored a paper in which he snuck in the song's line "Analytic and Algebraic Topology of Locally Euclidean Metrizations of Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifolds" into the reference section as an uncited and unpublished paper by Lobachevsky.

Quote from: frunk on July 28, 2025, 05:20:36 PM

Quote from: Savonarola on July 28, 2025, 05:13:05 PM

Quote from: frunk on July 28, 2025, 04:14:25 PMRIP Tom Lehrer.  I think we should all pour one out for the inventor of the Jello Shot.  Supposedly he also cited Lobachevsky in one of his recently unclassified papers for the NSA.

It would have been better if he hadn't cited him and just used the quote.

QuoteIn 1957, while working for the National Security Agency, Lehrer coauthored a paper in which he snuck in the song's line "Analytic and Algebraic Topology of Locally Euclidean Metrizations of Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifolds" into the reference section as an uncited and unpublished paper by Lobachevsky.

QuoteAllan Ahlberg obituary: prolific children's author
Mischievous writer, who with his illustrator wife Janet produced more than 150 books including Peepo! and The Jolly Postman, dies aged 87
The Times
Thursday July 31 2025, 6.28pm, The Times

"Back then to Paddington/ Weather wet and mild/ Brand-new mother/ Second-hand child."

This was how the children's poet and writer Allan Ahlberg described the day his adoptive mother collected him from his Croydon orphanage. Born in 1938 to a young single mother unable to cope, Allan, still a baby, then became part of a poor but upright working-class family living in the Black Country town of Oldbury. There were no books — apart from Allan's regular Sunday school prizes to come — and not much conversation. But there was stability, care and affection however sternly administered. He went on to write many lovingly detailed poems on the smells, textures, tastes and toys of his childhood. His only adult book, The Bucket, based on these memories, is a mini-masterpiece of the nostalgic genre.

Aged ten, he discovered he was adopted after being taunted by a fellow pupil passing on comments heard at home. Angry with his parents for keeping this from him, he came to feel something of a cuckoo in the nest, reading avidly and dreaming of becoming a writer rather than watching television with his parents.

(https://www.thetimes.com/imageserver/image/%2Fb01a7f2a-ee6a-4b27-af4e-68b1896a1b5c.jpg?crop=1987%2C1787%2C0%2C0&resize=1181&format=webp)
Peepo! was a baby's view of the world

His abiding passion for football was not shared by his younger brother Andrew, also adopted. With little else in common, the two never got on and remained separate as adults. Ahlberg eventually appreciated his parents' love and was at his mother's bedside when she died. His father, a gentle, hard-working labourer, died earlier. An affectionate but remote figure, he was described by Ahlberg in a poem as My Invisible Dad.

Leaving Oldbury Grammar School aged 17 with A-level passes in science, he opted for three years of National Service which meant he could send more pay to his mother, no longer working as a house and office cleaner. He was briefly a postman, gravedigger and plumber's mate before deciding aged 22 to overcome his shyness and become a primary school teacher. While at Sunderland Teacher Training College learning his future craft, he met Janet Hall, a talented artist. They married in 1969.

A natural and popular teacher, Ahlberg loved his job. Still too shy herself to take up teaching, Janet illustrated make-and-do junior craft books but longed to try stories instead. When he was ten years into his successful career in the classroom, she asked her husband to write her one. This he did, surprising himself with how easily it came. Determined to do more, he gave up teaching. Many rejection slips were to arrive in the next anxious 18 months before three titles were accepted in one week, all by different publishers.

Burglar Bill, the pick of the bunch, was based on a story Ahlberg had once told his class. It features a benign middle-aged thief who steals everything, including fish and chips, cups of tea and finally, by accident, a baby. Everything ends happily, with Bill now together with Burglar Betty, the baby's mother, returning everything he had previously stolen to start a new life. Janet's watercolour illustrations, firmly outlined in pen or pencil, expertly bring to life favourite details from their joint past. The rounded faces and ready smiles of her characters amply reflect the high good humour of Ahlberg's text.

The illustrations for their next joint effort, Each Peach Pear Plum, won Janet the Kate Greenaway Medal for 1978. Ahlberg's deceptively simple poems here combine simplicity of form with his unique brand of quirky humour. They describe characters from nursery rhymes and fairy stories playing I Spy with each other from page to page, with Janet's luminous illustrations the perfect accompaniment.

This book was later chosen as one of its ten best titles on the award's 50th anniversary. Finding the stories behind nursery rhymes and putting the rhymes into fairy stories worked brilliantly at a time, sadly no longer true, when most children were still familiar with such traditional fare. Its success gave the couple much needed financial security for their future as the most productive and creative husband and wife team yet in British children's literature.

Peepo! was also a bestseller. It affectionately details the typical domestic sights a baby might once have witnessed at a time of tin baths, coal buckets and cluttered front rooms. Told in verse, a circular punched-out hole on the middle of each page gives readers a glimpse of what's to come once they turn over. It is still wartime, with Dad wearing his army uniform as he kisses his baby son good night. Written in about four weeks, it took Janet many more months to get the illustrations right for historical detail. The book came out to ecstatic reviews.

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He revisited his childhood in The Boyhood of Burglar Bill

By now there was daughter Jessica, who early on showed great interest in a Mothercare catalogue. Thinking outside the box once again, the couple came up with The Baby's Catalogue, published in 1982. Illustrated pages on a variety of Mums, Dads, Pets, Teas, Prams and other child-friendly entries accompany numerous pictures of five different babies breastfeeding, on their potties, in the bath and otherwise getting on positively with their young lives apart from the moment when one of them is pictured in mid-howl. Fully involved in the publishing and printing process, advising on type size, paper quality, colour reproduction, covers and even binding, the Ahlbergs were now in a position to make sure they were always listened to.

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The Jolly Christmas Postman, illustrated by Janet Ahlberg, 1991

Jessica also had a hand in an even greater success. Watching his daughter in her high chair playing with the morning post, pulling out letters and then forcing them back into their envelopes, Ahlberg came up with the idea for The Jolly Postman, or Other People's Letters. This took little time to write but up to three years of experimenting with paper-engineering before it was completed. Real letters in real envelopes stuck onto the page accompany short, easy-rhyming poems which include Goldilocks apologising to the Three Bears and Jack taunting the Giant over his beanstalk exploits. There is also a threatening solicitor's letter written on behalf of Little Red Riding Hood warning off the Big Bad Wolf. Superbly illustrated in full comic vein and selling over six million copies, its sequel The Jolly Christmas Postman won Janet the Kate Greenaway Medal for the second time.

Many more joint publications followed as well as individual efforts, with Ahlberg working with other illustrators including Fritz Wegner and Raymond Briggs. He also brought out two collections of verse, Please Mrs Butler and I Heard it in the Playground, both drawing on his memories of teaching. But their work together stopped in 1994 with Janet's death from breast cancer at 50 years old.

Working through his initially disabling grief, Ahlberg found relief in bringing out Janet's Last Book, a privately printed personal selection from her lifetime of creativity. Going on to work on two books with his daughter Jessica, now also an illustrator, he eventually found happiness again after marrying Vanessa Clarke, formerly his editor at Walker Books. Slim, mild-mannered and boyishly handsome to the end, he is survived by Vanessa, Jessica, two stepdaughters, Saskia and Johanna, and two granddaughters.

In 2014 he declined the Booktrust's Lifetime Achievement Award because it had Amazon as its main sponsor. Moving from Bath to Lewes, East Sussex, to be near his Brighton-based daughter, he still wrote in his shed every day despite the onset of Parkinson's disease. My Brother's Ghost and The Boyhood of Burglar Bill both memorably revisit his childhood, this time in story form. But as in a late poem, there were more times now when "The phone rings/ But never long enough/ For the Slow man."

His readership remained huge. In the Philippa Pearce Lecture given in Cambridge in 2016 he quoted a letter received from Mia, a child aged he guessed about seven. "I love all the books that you make. I really love them all and they are so good. I love them all." She spoke here for all the many other young fans of his over 150 titles.

(George) Allan Ahlberg, children's poet and writer, was born on June 5, 1938. He died on July 29, 2025, aged 87