Whitney Houston, once one of the biggest stars in American popular culture, has died.

AP (“Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies“):

Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.

Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.

News of Houston’s death came on the eve of music’s biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It’s a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to cast a heavy pall on Sunday’s ceremony. Houston’s longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.

“I am absolutely heartbroken at the news of Whitney’s passing,” music producer Quincy Jones said in a written statement. “I always regretted not having had the opportunity to work with her. She was a true original and a talent beyond compare. I will miss her terribly.”

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world’s best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”

She had the perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

A tragic waste.

The last veteran of World War I was a waitress, and for 90 years no one knew her name.

Florence Green, a member of Britain’s Royal Air Force who was afraid of flying, died in England on Saturday, two weeks shy of her 111th birthday. She was believed to have been the war’s last living veteran — the last anywhere of the tens of millions who served.

Mrs. Green, who joined the R.A.F. as a teenager shortly before war’s end, worked in an officer’s mess on the home front. Her service was officially recognized only in 2010, after a researcher unearthed her records in Britain’s National Archives.

That Mrs. Green went unrecognized for so long owes partly to the fact that she served under her maiden name, Florence Patterson, and partly to the fact that she conducted herself, by all accounts, with proper British restraint, rarely if ever flaunting her service.

It also owes to the fact that her life followed the prescribed trajectory for women of her era: by the time the 20th century had run its course, Mrs. Green had long since disappeared into marriage, motherhood and contented anonymity.

With the death in May of Claude Stanley Choules, an Englishman who served aboard a Royal Navy battleship, Mrs. Green became the last known person, male or female, to have served in the war on either side.

Her death, at a nursing home in King’s Lynn, in eastern England, was announced on the Web site of the Order of the First World War, an organization based in Florida that keeps track of veterans.

In the spate of interviews she gave after her existence was discovered, Mrs. Green expressed quiet pride in her service. She also recalled approvingly the courtly behavior of the officers she served.

“It was very pleasant, and they were lovely,” she once told an interviewer. “Not a bit of bother.”

But though she was aware of her historical position as the war’s last veteran, Mrs. Green was philosophical about the war itself, one of the defining events of modern history, in which more than 20 million people died.

“It seems,” she remarked to The Independent last year, on the occasion of her 110th birthday, “like such a long time ago now.”

The daughter of Frederick Patterson and the former Sarah Neal, Florence Beatrice Patterson was born in London on Feb. 19, 1901, and moved to King’s Lynn as child.

In September 1918, two months before the war ended, Florence, then 17, joined the Women’s Royal Air Force. An auxiliary branch of the R.A.F., it had been created not long before to help free men for combat duty by recruiting women to work as mechanics and drivers and in other noncombat jobs.

(…)

Mrs. Green’s wartime experience remained unsung until 2009, when an English newspaper, The Lynn News and Advertiser, wrote about her 108th birthday. Andrew Holmes, a British researcher for the Gerontology Research Group, an American organization that keeps statistics on people who live well past 100, then located her service records in the National Archives, resulting in Mrs. Green’s recognition as a veteran the next year.

At her funeral next week, The Associated Press reported, the Union Jack will drape the coffin.

Given the extent to which World War One shaped the years and the world that followed it, it’s almost hard to believe that it’s reached the point that the Civil War had 50 years ago and that, before long, there will be nobody alive who remembers it.

Soul Train’s Don Cornelius has been shot to death. He was 75.

CNN (“Coroner: ‘Soul Train’ founder dead of gunshot wound“):

Don Cornelius, the founder of “Soul Train,” has been found dead in Los Angeles, Lt. Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said Wednesday.

He died of a gunshot wound at a house on Mulholland Drive, said Officer Tenesha Dodine.

Cornelius created a pilot for “Soul Train” using $400 of his own money, according to the website biography.com.

This is a breaking story and there are no details as to why or by whom Cornelius was shot. While “Soul Train” was never my cup of tea, it was an iconic show and Cornelius was a major figure in American popular culture.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times (“‘Soul Train’ creator Don Cornelius dead in apparent suicide“) reports that the wounds were self-inflicted.

“Soul Train” creator Don Cornelius was found dead at his Sherman Oaks on home Wednesday morning.

Law enforcement sources said police arrived at Cornelius’ home around 4 a.m. He apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

The sources said there was no sign of foul play, but the Los Angeles Police Department was investigating.

After an erroneous report that he had died spread across the Internet last night, Joe Paterno’s family reported that the legendary College Football Coach had passed away this morning:

Joe Paterno has died at the age of 85 after experiencing serious complications from lung-cancer treatment.

The health of Paterno, who had fought the disease for two months, had grown progressively worse after he recently broke his pelvis in a fall at his home in State College, Pa.

“It is with great sadness that we announce that Joe Paterno passed away earlier today,” said a statement from Paterno’s family, released Sunday, shortly after 10 a.m. ET. “His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled.

“He died as he lived. He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been.

“His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community.”

Paterno died at State College’s Mount Nittany Medical Center, where he had been undergoing treatment.

Paterno remained connected to a ventilator into Sunday, individuals close to Paterno’s family told The Washington Post.

The newspaper reported the family had communicated to the hospital his wishes not to be kept alive through extreme artificial means.

Paterno’s cancer diagnosis was revealed Nov. 18, nine days after he lost his Penn State head coaching job in the fallout of sexual abuse charges against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.

Jay Paterno, one of Paterno’s sons, thanked fans for their support Saturday.

“I appreciate the support & prayers. Joe is continuing to fight,” Jay Paterno wrote on his own Twitter account.

Paterno won two national championships and a Division I-record 409 games over 46 seasons at Penn State and the family has donated millions of dollars to the school.

But his legacy was clouded in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal that has resulted in 52 counts of child molestation against Sandusky. Paterno had announced his retirement early on Nov. 9, but the Penn State board of trustees fired him and university president Graham Spanier about 12 hours later. That day, Paterno called the scandal “one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

In his first public statements since the scandal broke, Paterno recently told The Washington Post that he did not know how to deal with the situation when he received a report from a graduate assistant that his former defensive coordinator was accused of abusing a boy in the showers.

“I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,” he told The Post in an extensive two-day interview at his home. “So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”

When Paterno was first diagnosed with lung cancer shortly after losing his job as Penn State’s Head Coach, the reports indicated that it was a “treatable” form of cancer. Obviously, though, no cancer is easily treatable, least of all lung cancer. In retrospect, given the news this morning it’s understandable why the family was initially reported as being pretty upset at the manner in which the erroneous reports were spread last night. The end was near in any case and hearing a false report obviously takes an emotion toll.

From The Washington Post’s obituary:

Until news of Sandusky’s transgressions rocked the university, Mr. Paterno had a virtually impeccable reputation. He was a sought-after speaker who also had been recruited, to no avail, to run for political office. President Gerald R. Ford made overtures to Mr. Paterno in the 1970s, trying to persuade him to run for Congress.

“He transcends football,” Ford, a onetime University of Michigan gridiron standout, told the Pitttsburgh Post-Gazette in 2004. “I tried very strongly to get him to run for Congress, but he was so dedicated to Penn State and young people, he turned me down. Joe could have done anything he wanted to do in life because he’s so dedicated. . . . He’s not only a great motivator of young people, but he always has the best interest of his community at heart.”

Mr. Paterno called Penn State football his “Grand Experiment,” an attempt to marry athletics and academics to achieve another of his mantras: “success with honor.” He was particularly proud that his players went to class and earned their diplomas and that the football program was never implicated in seamy recruiting or academic scandals that plagued so many of the nation’s major athletic powers.

He was an old-school coach who would not allow his players to have their names sewed on the backs of their uniform jerseys and enforced a strict coat-and-tie dress code when his teams went on the road. He roamed the sideline usually wearing rolled up khaki pants, a white shirt and tie, white socks and athletic shoes.

His specialty was offense and he believed in having a strong running game. Several running backs he coached earned all-American honors and moved on to successful careers in the NFL.

(….)

Joseph Vincent Paterno was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 21, 1926. His father was an appellate court clerk who graduated from law school in his 40s. Mr. Paterno always credited his father with instilling in him the importance of education.

Mr. Paterno graduated from prestigious Brooklyn Prep, a public high school with a strong academic and athletic tradition. He played baseball, basketball and football, graduated second in his class and was student council president.

After serving in the Army, he went to Brown University in Providence, R.I. Playing alongside his older brother George, Mr. Paterno started at quarterback for Brown and led the team to a 7-2 record in 1948 and 8-1 in 1949.

An English major at Brown, Mr. Paterno was planning to attend Boston University’s law school after graduation. But in his senior year, he helped coach Brown’s quarterbacks, and the team’s head coach, Charles “Rip” Engle, persuaded Mr. Paterno to follow him to Penn State in 1950.

Mr. Paterno still had a notion to go to law school, but he decided to accompany Engle to State College and was named offensive backfield coach. He never left and coaching a number of outstanding players, including future NFL Hall of Fame running back Lenny Moore.

Engle stayed at Penn State for 16 years and never had a losing season. Mr. Paterno was aware that his mentor was planning to retire after the 1965 season and reportedly turned down six different offers to coach at other schools. In his first season as head coach, the Nittany Lions finished 5-5, but in the second year they improved to 8-2 and earned a bid to the Gator Bowl, the first of his 37 bowl appearances, with 24 bowl victories.

Of course, that legacy was forever tarnished in November when the news about decade-long  sexual abuse by former Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky became public, especially when it became known that Paterno had learned of one incident from a witness and done nothing to follow up after passing it up the administrative chain of command. Even then, though, Penn State’s students still stayed loyal to a man old enough to be their Grandfather, if not their Great-Grandfather. In that interview with the Post mentioned above, Paterno comes across as a bit naive about the whole scandal, not quite understanding what else he could have done, or should have done.

On some level, it’s sad to see Paterno’s life end this way. He was without question one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football. At the same time, the hagiography that developed ar0und him was symptomatic of the problems with collegiate athletics in general, and college football particularly, that still need to be dealt with. The Jerry Sandusky scandal is horrendous, and Paterno’s actions in response to it will now be judged by history. Nonetheless, I can’t help but remember the good times and his obvious ability to inspire his players. His actions later in life will always be a black mark that everyone can judge for himself, and of course history will make its own assessment. Outside of Bear Bryant, though, I can’t think of another NCAA Football Coach who has left a bigger mark on the game.

One of the most recognizable faces of 1990s politics has passed away:

Tony Blankley, a noted conservative author and commentator and former editorial page editor of The Washington Times, died Sunday morning, according to family sources. He was 63 and had been battling stomach cancer.

Mr. Blankley was an executive vice president of the Edelman public-relations firm in Washington, a visiting senior fellow in national-security communications at the Heritage Foundation, a syndicated newspaper columnist and an on-air political commentator for CNN, NBC and NPR.

He was also a regular weekly guest on “The McLaughlin Group.”

Mr. Blankley was editorial page editor of The Times from 2002 to 2007, and from 1990 to 1997 he served as press secretary and general adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

A Loyola University law graduate, he served six years in the Reagan administration in a variety of positions, including speechwriter and senior policy analyst. He also spent 10 years as a prosecutor with the California attorney general’s office.

Born in London, he became a naturalized American citizen after his parents moved to California after World War II. As a child, he acted in such television shows as “Lassie,” “Highway Patrol” and “Make Room for Daddy,” and he also appeared in movies with such stars as Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger.

It was from his time as Newt Gingrich’s Press Secretary during the years Gingrich was Speaker that Blankley is probably best well known. I was unaware he’d been ill, but I did find myself wondering recently why, unlike other former Gingrich aides, we hadn’t heard from him regarding his former bosses Presidential campaign and rise in the polls.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Sad news, indeed. I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Blankley a few times in recent years and found him charming and gracious.

On the matter of Blankley’s being silent on the candidacy of his former boss, I’m not surprised. I recall a conversation in the bar at the CPAC hotel some years back–it would have had to be 2006 or 2007–and I raised the subject of Gingrich’s rumored candidacy for the 2008 nomination. He said that it was essentially a publicity stunt to give Newt and his ideas more air time but that the former Speaker fully understood that he had too much baggage to win the nomination, much less be president.

My strong guess, in fact, is that the 2012 run was exactly the same and that Gingrich was as shocked as the rest of us when he surged to frontrunner status for a short time. I don’t think he was running for president so much as to the spotlight.

Vaclav Havel, who spent the 70s and 80s as a playwright-turned-dissident protesting in his own way against the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia and then became leader of the country in the 1990s, has died at the age of 75:

PRAGUE — Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who wove theater into politics to peacefully bring down communism in Czechoslovakia and become a hero of the epic struggle that ended the Cold War, has died. He was 75.

Mr. Havel died Sunday morning at his weekend house in the northern Czech Republic, his assistant Sabina Tancecova said said.

Mr. Havel was his country’s first democratically elected president after the nonviolent “Velvet Revolution” that ended four decades of repression by a regime he ridiculed as “Absurdistan.”

As president, he oversaw the country’s bumpy transition to democracy and a free-market economy, as well its peaceful 1993 breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Even out of office, he remained a world figure. He was part of the “new Europe” — in the coinage of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — of ex-communist countries that stood up for the United States when the democracies of “old Europe” opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion.

A former chain-smoker, Mr. Havel had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating to his years in communist jails. He was hospitalized in Prague on Jan. 12, 2009, with an unspecified inflammation, and had developed breathing difficulties after undergoing minor throat surgery.

Mr. Havel left office in 2003, 10 years after Czechoslovakia broke up and a few months before both nations joined the European Union. He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought his Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc, and was president when it joined NATO in 1999.

Shy and bookish, with wispy mustache and unkempt hair, Mr. Havel came to symbolize the power of the people to peacefully overcome totalitarian rule.

“Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred,” He famously said. It became his revolutionary motto which he said he strove to live by.

Mr. Havel was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and collected dozens of accolades worldwide for his efforts as a global ambassador of conscience, defended the downtrodden from Darfur to Myanmar.

Among his many honors were Sweden’s prestigious Olof Palme Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest United States civilian award, bestowed on him by President George W. Bush for being “one of liberty’s great heroes.”

An avowed peacenik whose heroes included rockers like Frank Zappa, he never quite shed his flower-child past and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.

Mr. Havel first made a name for himself after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring reforms of Alexander Dubcek and other liberally minded communists in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Mr. Havel’s plays were banned as hard-liners installed by Moscow snuffed out every whiff of rebellion. But he continued to write, producing a series of underground essays that stand with the work of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov as the most incisive and eloquent analyses of what communism did to society and the individual.

One of his best-known essays, “The Power and the Powerless” written in 1978, borrowed slyly from the immortal opening line of the mid-19th century Communist Manifesto, writing: “A specter is haunting eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called ‘dissent.”‘

In the essay, he dissected what he called the “dictatorship of ritual” — the ossified Soviet bloc system under Leonid Brezhnev — and imagined what happens when an ordinary greengrocer stops displaying communist slogans and begins “living in truth,” rediscovering “his suppressed identity and dignity.”

He knew that suppression firsthand.

Born Oct. 5, 1936, in Prague, the child of a wealthy family which lost extensive property to communist nationalization in 1948, Havel was denied a formal education, eventually earning a degree at night school and starting out in theater as a stagehand.

His political activism began in earnest in January 1977, when he co-authored the human rights manifesto Charter 77, and the cause drew widening attention in the West.

Mr. Havel was detained countless times and spent four years in communist jails. His letters from prison to his wife became one of his best-known works. “Letters to Olga” blended philosophy with a stream of stern advice to the spouse he saw as his mentor and best friend, and who tolerated his reputed philandering and other foibles.

The events of August 1988 — the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion — first suggested that Mr. Havel and his friends might one day replace the faceless apparatchiks who jailed them.

Thousands of mostly young people marched through central Prague, yelling his name and that of the playwright’s hero, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the philosopher who was Czechoslovakia’s first president after it was founded in 1918.

Mr. Havel’s arrest in January 1989 at another street protest and his subsequent trial generated anger at home and abroad. Pressure for change was so strong that the communists released him again in May.

That fall, communism began to collapse across Eastern Europe, and in November the Berlin Wall fell. Eight days later, communist police brutally broke up a demonstration by thousands of Prague students.

By December 1989, Havel was named President of Czechoslovakia, a position to which he was elected in 1990 in the first free elections in that country since the Germans arrived in 1938. He served in that position until 1992, when the Czech Republic and Slovaka mutually decided to dissolve a nation that had been haphazardly put together at the end of World War One. Havel served as President of the Czech Republic from 1993 until 2003.

Reason’s Nick Gillespie links this morning to a 2003 piece in the magazine written by Matt Welch at the time Havel was leaving office:

Vaclav Havel, the 66-year-old former Czech president who was term-limited out of office on February 2, built his reputation in the 1970s by being to eyewitness fact what George Orwell was to dystopian fiction. In other words, he used common sense to deconstruct rhetorical falsehoods, pulling apart the suffocating mesh of collectivist lies one carefully observed thread at a time.

Like Orwell, Havel was a fiction writer whose engagement with the world led him to master the nonfiction political essay. Both men, in self-described sentiment, were of “the left,” yet both men infuriated the left with their stinging criticism and ornery independence. Both were haunted by the Death of God, delighted by the idiosyncratic habits of their countrymen, and physically diminished as a direct result of their confrontation with totalitarians (not to mention their love of tobacco). As essentially neurotic men with weak mustaches, both have given generations of normal citizens hope that, with discipline and effort, they too can shake propaganda from everyday language and stand up to the foulest dictatorships.

Unlike Orwell, Havel lived long enough to enjoy a robust third act, and his last six months in office demonstrated the same kind of restless, iconoclastic activism that has made him an enemy of ideologues and ally of freedom lovers for nearly five decades.

(…)

Three successive United States presidents have fallen under Havel’s spell, and he in turn has used his access to cajole them into taking military action against Slobodan Milosevic, expanding NATO, and minding the lessons of Munich. Clinton and George W. Bush in particular seem tongue-tied and awe-struck in the presence of someone who actually fought communism and lived to tell about it; Havel returns the favor by flattering America’s role in taking down the Evil Empire. His open, though qualified, flattery of the U.S. is one reason Noam Chomsky considers him “morally repugnant” and on an “intellectual level that is vastly below that of Third World peasants and Stalinist hacks.”

Chomsky’s insults aside, Havel has enabled Czechs to punch above their weight in international affairs for 13 years; this will likely end as the extraordinary geopolitical circumstances that created him fade and are replaced by more provincial Czech political concerns. Havel himself sees his career as a massive historical accident, even a joke. But as he walks off the global stage, Czechs and the rest of the world can be thankful that someone like him was essentially in the wrong place at the right time. He remains a figure from whom not just insight but inspiration can be drawn.

“The most important thing,” Havel said in his final New Year’s address as president, “is that new generations are maturing, generations of people who grew up free and are not deformed by life under Communist rule. These are the first Czechs of our times who inherently consider freedom normal and natural. It would be great if the breaking through of these people into various parts of public life leads to our society more factually, thoroughly and impartially examining its past, without whose reflection we cannot be ourselves. I also hope it will lead to our successfully parting with many ill consequences of the work of destruction the Communist regime wreaked upon our souls.”

Sitting here twenty years after the collapse not just of the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, but of the Soviet Union itself, it’s easy to forget that men like Havel existed, why they had to exist, and the risks they took to keep the flame of freedom burning in the darkness.

Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after.

The inestimable Mr. Hitchens was one of those rare public figures who genuinely lived by the maxim in Stacy McCain’s masthead: “One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.” (Arthur Koestler). And, regardless of whether one agreed with him or not, he always commanded one’s attention when he spoke out. He’ll be called many things over the next few days. “Brilliant,” “firebrand,” “masterful rhetorician,” perhaps even “piquant.” But it’s doubtful even he himself could have adequately captured in mere words what made him such a striking and important figure.

He will be missed. R.I.P.

Update (Doug Mataconis): From The New York Times:

Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died Thursday at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62.

The cause was pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer, said the magazine Vanity Fair, which announced the death. In recent days Mr. Hitchens had stopped treatment and entered hospice care at the Houston hospital. He learned he had cancer while on a publicity tour in 2010 for his memoir, “Hitch-22,” and began writing and, on television, speaking about his illness frequently.

“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” Mr. Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair, for which he was a contributing editor.

He took pains to emphasize that he had not revised his position on atheism, articulated in his best-selling 2007 book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” although he did express amused appreciation at the hope, among some concerned Christians, that he might undergo a late-life conversion.

He also professed to have no regrets for a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking. “Writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that — or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation — is worth it to me,” he told Charlie Rose in a television interview in 2010, adding that it was “impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late nights, without that second bottle.”

Armed with a quick wit and a keen appetite for combat, Mr. Hitchens was in constant demand as a speaker on television, radio and the debating platform, where he held forth in a sonorous, plummily accented voice that seemed at odds with his disheveled appearance. He was a master of the extended peroration, peppered with literary allusions, and of the bright, off-the-cuff remark.

In 2007, when the interviewer Sean Hannity tried to make the case for an all-seeing God, Mr. Hitchens dismissed the idea with contempt. “It would be like living in North Korea,” he said.

Mr. Hitchens, a British Trotskyite who had lost faith in the Socialist movement, spent much of his life wandering the globe and reporting on the world’s trouble spots for The Nation magazine, the British newsmagazine The New Statesman and other publications.

His work took him to Northern Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain and Argentina in the 1970s, generally to shine a light on the evil practices of entrenched dictators or the imperial machinations of the great powers.

After moving to the United States in 1981, he added American politics to his beat, writing a bimonthly Minority Report for The Nation. He wrote a monthly review-essay for The Atlantic and, as a carte-blanche columnist at Vanity Fair, filed essays on topics as various as getting a Brazilian bikini wax and the experience of being waterboarded, a volunteer assignment that he called “very much more frightening though less painful than the bikini wax.” He was also a columnist for the online magazine Slate.

His support for the Iraq war sprang from a growing conviction that radical elements in the Islamic world posed a mortal danger to Western principles of political liberty and freedom of conscience. The first stirrings of that view came in 1989 with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwah against the novelist Salman Rushdie for his supposedly blasphemous words in “The Satanic Verses.” To Mr. Hitchens, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, confirmed the threat.

In a political shift that shocked many of his friends and readers, he cut his ties to The Nation and became an outspoken advocate of the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and a ferocious critic of what he called “Islamofascism.” Although he denied coining the word, he popularized it.

He remained unapologetic about the war. In 2006 he told the British newspaper The Guardian: “There are a lot of people who will not be happy, it seems to me, until I am compelled to write a letter to these comrades in Iraq and say: ‘Look, guys, it’s been real, but I’m going to have to drop you now. The political cost to me is just too high.’ Do I see myself doing this? No, I do not!”

Hitchens’ atheism always seemed to be the one bugaboo among the conservatives who had come to admire him, to the point where, just this week The Daily Caller published a piece insinuating that the battle with cancer was leading Hitchens to the point where he was about to convert to Christianity. Jeffrey Goldberg pushed back on that idea quite strongly:

Very early in his cancer, Hitchens told me that there would come a time when someone, a charlatan, maybe, or perhaps even some presumptuous person of misdirected goodwill, would try to convince the world that he was undergoing a deathbed conversion. I didn’t believe that such a thing would happen. “Watch,” he said.

Hitchens also said that if information emerged that he had, at some late stage, made a statement of faith, or a religious confession, including but not limited to, “I accept Jesus as my lord and savior,” or, “Muhammad, peace be unto him, is the messenger of God,” or, “the Lubavitcher rebbe is the true messiah and currently living in Brooklyn,” that his friends were to make it known that it was not the true Hitchens doing the confessing. This is what he told me once, during a video conversation we posted on this website: “The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain,” he said. “I can’t guarantee that such an entity wouldn’t make such a ridiculous remark. But no one recognizable as myself would ever make such a ridiculous remark.”

So, just to be clear: Christopher Hitchens has not found God, and is not finding God. It is mischievous to suggest otherwise.

Earlier this year, Hitchens was the subject of a 60 Minutes interview:

Hitchens was a fascinating guy. Even when one disagreed with him, it was impossible to dismiss him, and hard to argue against him.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Just a couple days ago, I read what one presumes was Hitchens’ last work, a Vanity Fair article reflecting on the maxim, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

In fact, I now sometimes wonder why I ever thought it profound. It is usually attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker. In German it reads and sounds more like poetry, which is why it seems probable to me that Nietzsche borrowed it from Goethe, who was writing a century earlier. But does the rhyme suggest a reason? Perhaps it does, or can, in matters of the emotions. I can remember thinking, of testing moments involving love and hate, that I had, so to speak, come out of them ahead, with some strength accrued from the experience that I couldn’t have acquired any other way. And then once or twice, walking away from a car wreck or a close encounter with mayhem while doing foreign reporting, I experienced a rather fatuous feeling of having been toughened by the encounter. But really, that’s to say no more than “There but for the grace of god go I,” which in turn is to say no more than “The grace of god has happily embraced me and skipped that unfortunate other man.”

[...]

I lay at the point of death. A congestive heart failure was treated for diagnostic purposes by an angiogram that triggered a stroke. Violent and painful hiccups, uninterrupted for several days and nights, prevented the ingestion of food. My left side and one of my vocal cords became paralyzed. Some form of pleurisy set in, and I felt I was drowning in a sea of slime In one of my lucid intervals during those days of agony, I asked my physician to discontinue all life-supporting services or show me how to do it.

[...]

So as a rational actor, taking the radiation together with the reaction and the recovery, I have to agree that if I had declined the first stage, thus avoiding the second and the third, I would already be dead. And this has no appeal.

However, there is no escaping the fact that I am otherwise enormously weaker than I was then.

[...]

These are progressive weaknesses that in a more “normal” life might have taken decades to catch up with me. But, as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less. In other words, the process both etiolates you and moves you nearer toward death. How could it be otherwise? Just as I was beginning to reflect along these lines, I came across an article on the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. We now know, from dearly bought experience, much more about this malady than we used to. Apparently, one of the symptoms by which it is made known is that a tough veteran will say, seeking to make light of his experience, that “what didn’t kill me made me stronger.” This is one of the manifestations that “denial” takes.

I am attracted to the German etymology of the word “stark,” and its relative used by Nietzsche,stärker, which means “stronger.” In Yiddish, to call someone a shtarker is to credit him with being a militant, a tough guy, a hard worker. So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing.

Brutally honest to the end.

We held Kim’s services this morning. These were my prepared remarks. Having composed this in my head over the course of many sleepless nights, I delivered it stream of consciousness, using the notes as a backup. I’m not sure how close the two versions are. 

Good morning. I’m James, Kim’s husband.

Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to remember her. Her mother, Sue, her brother Steven, her sisters Karen and Debbie, and I appreciate your support.

We wish the circumstances were happier.

Many of you were at our wedding. Having both attended plenty of them, we wanted to keep our ceremony short—I don’t think it lasted twenty minutes—and get right to the reception. They were quite literally handing out the champagne for the toast while we were taking our vows.

Kim would have wanted to do that here and we’ve tried to capture that spirit. But, while we want this to be a celebration of her life, there’s no pretending that it’s a happy occasion.

The worst 15 minutes of my life started at 1:05 Sunday morning. I went from being startled awake by a crying baby, to confusion as to why Kim wasn’t comforting her, to panic when I couldn’t wake her, to sheer desperation of trying to revive her while waiting for the ambulance, to shock when my fears were confirmed.

But I still had a crying baby and a toddler waking up . So, within 10 minutes, I was calling the one person in the world who was going to be more hurt than I was: Kim’s mother, Sue.

In addition to being the girls’ grandmother, she was also their nanny, having moved down from Connecticut almost three years ago to help take care of Katie.

Within the hour I was doing what it later occurred to me is exactly what Kim would have been doing if the roles were reversed: going on Google to figure out how you tell a toddler that their mother is gone. It turned out to be one of those rare occasions when my instinct for direct talk was right.

Within an hour and a half, I started doing what I do: writing a blog post about what had happened. It took me three hours, off and on, and I finally published at 5:30 realizing that, despite making a pretty good living as a writer, I didn’t have words to express my loss.

As of this morning, it had received 438 comments, 201 Facebook shares, and 236 re-tweets.

The outpouring of support has been overwhelming. There have been more phone calls, emails, Facebook and blog comments, and home visits than I can count.

Because of Kim’s personality and strong ties to even distant relatives, I knew she had a strong support network. And, I’ve learned, mine’s pretty strong, too.

The tangible support from Kim’s POS family and my Atlantic Council family has been amazing.

So has the help we’ve had from the Three Marys.

Mary Godbout, Sue’s next door neighbor, Kim’s friend, and the mother of Katie’s two best friends, Chloe and T.J., drove my mother-in-law over in the middle of the night and helped keep Katie distracted and entertained while the EMTs and police were occupying the upstairs and the rest of us were absorbing the loss.

The woman known as Crazy Mary Diamond when I met Kim seven years ago and who re-emerged in our lives three years ago as Mary Stirewalt, Responsible Mother, has been a constant presence—making calls, running errands, and attending to needs we didn’t know we had.

Mary Newhouse, the den mother of the POS family and longtime Friend of Kim, worked tirelessly planning this morning’s remembrance. She realized that the turnout for Kim would be massive and thought of a thousand things that would never have occurred to me, with my contribution mostly consisting of answering “I dunno” or “Sounds fine” to a hundred questions.

While I like people, I like them in small groups and small doses. So, the deluge of well wishers has been exhausting. But it’s also been incredibly helpful. Not just the bringing of food and running of errands but also being forced to talk about the loss and about the good times with Kim. There’s a reason this ritual has developed and lasted so long.

To say that Kim was much more patient than I am is an understatement. And she was a softie who managed to make everyone feel special. But, like me, she was fundamentally a bottom line person.

In classic Kim fashion, after trying on several wedding dresses to find one she liked, she went on the Internet and found a place that would make them to order based on her measurements for something like $400. It rained heavily on our wedding day but we didn’t let that interfere with our plans to run around DC getting our pictures taken in our wedding outfits. That dress and my tux got soaked but were dry enough by the time we said I Do.

Six weeks or so later, she looked into having her dress cleaned and put away as a keepsake. It was going to cost more than the dress cost to make. She decided and I agreed that it was our commitment to each other, not the dress, which was important. So she donated the dress to a local charity and never looked back.

Kim and I loved each other and enjoyed each other’s company and spent almost all of our free time together. Fundamentally, though, we chose each other because she was the one I wanted to raise a family with and vice versa.

I will miss her daily, not only as my wife but as the mother of my children. Her death at such a young age is a tragedy and I don’t have the words to express my sadness that my little girls won’t get to grow up with their mommy and that she won’t get to see them grow up.

But, aside from a few minutes of feeling sorry for myself here and there, I’ve never had any doubt that I’d be able to take care of the girls on my own, just as she would have had I been the one to go.

This week has shown me, though, that I don’t have to do it all myself.

Kim would have wanted the maudlin part of this morning’s remembrance kept short and to move on to the celebration.

So, I decided that four speakers, each representing different parts of her life, was enough. Kim had so many friends that choosing only four to speak this morning was no easy task.

She’s been at Public Opinion Strategies for almost sixteen years and made so many friends there that are a part of our life. Of the eleven people on the list I was keeping in the wee hours that morning of who to call once it was late enough to do so—I’m a firm believer that bad news can keep—eight of them had POS connections. And three of them are among our four speakers today.

POS is a multi-million dollar a year business that’s also a family—complete with the yelling and profanity.

Aside from that emergency call to Sue, Neil Newhouse was the first person I called. He’s a founding partner of the firm and was Kim’s first boss there. By the time I met Kim, she was an all but legally adopted member of the Newhouse family. In addition to being the godmother to their recently departed Cavalier, Betsy, a regular guest in our house during Neil and Mary’s frequent travel, she was included in all the major life events. We were there celebrating Tommy’s and Cassidy’s graduations and they were there celebrating Katie’s and Ellie’s birth. And, as noted earlier, his wife Mary was constantly by our side during this trying week.

My next call was to Libby Mehaffey, who became Kim’s friend at POS and remained close since moving back to Minnesota with her husband Matt right after Kim and I got married. Those of you who know me will understand how close the friendship was when I tell you that, not only did the four of us spend ten days together in the same house and rental car along with their then-8-month-old Veda, but we did it again in Arizona a few years later after Katie was born.

Wayne Travers, known in those days as Skip, was one of two of Kim’s college buddies on my list, along with Ron Setkowski. Skip got the nod here because he was the first to volunteer and much more likely than Ron to get through this without breaking down.

The third name on my phone list, Jennifer Reeke, got pushed to my “call back later” list when I realized that, while it was 9:30 Sunday here it was 1:30 Monday morning in Australia. Unfortunately, she discovered the news for herself on Facebook before I could get back to making calls. Jen and Kim go back to grade school in Connecticut and reconnected up here. In fact, Jen worked at POS for a while. I was there for the birth of their second daughter, Cassidy, while Kim and I were still dating. And, of course, she and her husband John were there for the birth of our girls.

So, let me turn it over to Jen, her oldest friend, to say a few words.

She leaves behind two little girls she loved more than anything, Katie, who turns 3 on New Year’s Eve, and Ellie, who was born June 21.

We met in August 2004 and were married on October 8, 2005. She had just turned 35 and I was a few weeks shy of 40 but neither of us had been married before. We shared religious and political worldviews but very different personalities. She was extroverted, sunny, and patient to my introverted, grumpy, and antsy. I almost certainly got the better of that bargain.

Kim was my partner, helpmate, and confidante. Her passing leaves a gaping hole in my life.

I still haven’t told Katie. She knows something unusual is going on, since the paramedics came at a little after 1 this morning and the police didn’t leave until well after 4. But she seemed pretty much herself, requesting her favorite cartoons and playing with toys until I got her back to sleep a little while ago. Sadly, neither of my little girls are likely to remember their mommy other than from photos and videos.

The next few days will be stressful, not only dealing with my grief and suddenly becoming a single parent but the throngs of people coming by to pay their respects and deal with their own grief. Kim has a large extended family that she was close to and a lot of friends.  While I prefer to deal with people in small groups and small doses, I owe it to Kim to do that for her.

Obviously, I’m still in shock at this unexpected loss. Organizing my thoughts and writing them down is how I process, well, pretty much everything.  Words fail me right now.

Greg Halman, an outfielder for the Seattle Mariners baseball team, was stabbed to death in his native Holland. His brother is the chief suspect.

AP (“Seattle Mariners outfielder Greg Halman slain“):

Dutch police say Seattle Mariners outfielder Greg Halman(notes) has been stabbed to death and his brother has been arrested as a suspect.

Rotterdam Police spokeswoman Patricia Wessels says police were called to a home in the Dutch port city early Monday morning and found Halman bleeding from a stab wound.

The officers attempted unsuccessfully to resuscitate the 24-year-old.

Wessels says the officers arrested Halman’s 22-year-old brother. She declined to give his name, in line with Dutch privacy rules.

She said the brother was being questioned by police.

Just horrible.

Halman had been playing baseball professionally since he was sixteen and played for the Dutch national team in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. His father, Eddy Halman, and brother, Jason Halman, also played for the Dutch team. I haven’t been able to determine if he has other brothers, so don’t know whether Jason is the accused killer. His sister, Naomi Halman, is a professional basketball player in Europe, having previously played for UC Irvine.

CBS (“Andy Rooney dead at 92“)

Andy Rooney, the “60 Minutes” commentator known to generations for his wry, humorous and contentious television essays – a unique genre he is credited with inventing – died today. He was 92 and had homes in New York City, Rensseleaerville, N.Y. and Rowayton, Conn.

Rooney had announced on Oct. 2, 2011 in his 1097th essay for “60 Minutes” that he would no longer appear regularly.

Rooney wrote for television since its birth, spending more than 60 years at CBS, 30 of them behind the camera as a writer and producer, first for entertainment and then news programming, before becoming a television personality – a role he said he was never comfortable in. He preferred to be known as a writer and was the author of best-selling books and a national newspaper column, in addition to his “60 Minutes” essays.

But it is his television role as the inquisitive and cranky commentator on “60 Minutes” that made him a cultural icon. For over 30 years, Rooney had the last word on the most watched television program in history. Ratings for the broadcast rose steadily over its time period, peeking at a few minutes before the end of the hour, precisely when he delivered his essays – which could generate thousands of response letters.

Each Sunday, Rooney delivered one of his “60 Minutes” essays from behind a desk that he, an expert woodworker, hewed himself. The topics ranged from the contents of that desk’s drawer to whether God existed. He often weighed in on major news topics. In an early “60 Minutes” essay that won him the third of his four Emmy Awards, his compromise to the grain embargo against the Soviet Union was to sell them cereal. “Are they going to take us seriously as an enemy if they think we eat Cap’n Crunch for breakfast?” deadpanned Rooney.

Mainly, his essays struck a cord in viewers by pointing out life’s unspoken truths or more often complaining about its subtle lies, earning him the “curmudgeon” status he wore like a uniform. “I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn’t realize they thought,” Rooney told the Associated Press in 1998. In typical themes, Rooney questioned labels on packages, products that didn’t seem to work and why people didn’t talk in elevators.

Rooney asked thousands of questions in his essays over the years, none, however, began with “Did you ever…?” a phrase often associated with him. Comedian Joe Piscopo used it in a 1981 impersonation of him on “Saturday Night Live” and, from then on, it was erroneously linked to Rooney.

ABC (“Journalist Andy Rooney Dies at 92“):

Andy Rooney, the rumpled writer whose weekly riffs about the absurdities of everyday life made him one of television’s longest-running commentators, died Friday night, just weeks after his farewell broadcast on “60 Minutes.” He was 92.

He died from complications from a recent a recent surgery.

Rooney presented his first commentary on “60 Minutes” in 1978 and he became a weekly fixture the following year when he assumed his perch at the end of the broadcast.

It would be a remarkable run. By the end of Rooney’s final appearance Sunday, Oct. 2, he had presented 1,097 original essays and had worked for CBS for 62 years.

“One day about 10 years ago the door to my office opened and who walked in but Bill Gates. … Seemed like a nice guy and has done more with his money than most billionaires. But that’s as far as I want to go being kind to Bill Gates,” Rooney said in one of his classic essays.

“I had one typewriter for 50 years, but I have bought seven computers in six years. I suppose that’s why Bill Gates is rich, and Underwood is out of business.”

In a 2008 commentary, Rooney marveled at the flood of Christmas catalogues stuffing his mailbox. “This is a Sears catalogue. Sears, whatever happened to Roebuck? You never hear Sears, Roebuck anymore. Call if you’re out there, Roebuck,” he deadpanned.

In one of his final appearances, Rooney kvetched about changes in pop music. “If I am so ‘average American,’ how come that I have never heard of most of the musical groups that millions of others Americans apparently are listening to,” he said.

“The singers I know have been replaced by singers like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Usher. I mean, who?

AP (“Former ’60 Minutes’ commentator Andy Rooney dies“):

Andy Rooney, the curmudgeonly commentator who spent more than 30 years wryly talking about the oddities of life for “60 Minutes,” died Friday night, CBS said. He was 92.

Just a month ago, Rooney delivered his last regular essay on the CBS newsmagazine.

CBS said he died Friday night in New York from complications from a recent surgery.

Rooney, also a syndicated newspaper columnist, talked about what was in the news. But he was just as likely to use his weekly television essay to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why banks need to have important-sounding names or whether there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs. Smith’s Pies.

He won three Emmy Awards, including one for his story revealing there was no Mrs. Smith.

Rooney began his “60 Minutes” commentaries in 1978 and was still at it three decades later, railing about how unpleasant air travel had become. “Let’s make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention. We’ll pick a week next year and we’ll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days,” he told viewers.

“I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn’t realize they thought,” Rooney once said. “And they say, ‘Hey, yeah!’ And they like that.”

In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, he looked ahead to Barack Obama’s upcoming inauguration with a look at past inaugurations. He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge’s 1925 swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, “That may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did.”

Rooney wrote for CBS stars such as Arthur Godfrey and Garry Moore during the 1950s and early 1960s, before settling into a partnership with newsman Harry Reasoner. With Rooney as the writer, they collaborated on several news specials, including an Emmy-winning report on misrepresentations of black Americans in movies and history books. He wrote “An Essay on Doors” in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and women.

“The best work I ever did,” Rooney said. “But nobody knows I can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I’m a writer and producer. They think I’m this guy on television.”

Rooney angrily left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his heated essay about the Vietnam War. He went on TV for the first time, reading the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for it.

He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of specials. Notable among them was the 1975 “Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington,” whose lighthearted but serious look at government won him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.

“A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney” aired on “60 Minutes” for the first time on July 2, 1978. Rooney complained about people who keep track of how many people die in car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of July is “one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace.”

I haven’t watched “60 Minutes” with any regularity in years, although it was a staple of my Sunday night viewing for probably 25 years. Rooney’s segments were always something to look forward to.

Rooney joins a long list of men who retired at the top of their profession and died within weeks. Paul “Bear” Bryant and Steve Jobs come immediately to mind as examples, but it happens all too often.

Oddly, while the news is all over Twitter, his Cato colleague Chris Edwards‘ personal reflection is the only news item I’m seeing:

We were all saddened today at Cato to learn of the death of our friend and colleague Bill Niskanen. Sitting down the hall from Bill over the past 10 years, I’ve learned a great deal from him about economics, fiscal policy, and perhaps most importantly, how to approach public policy work with balance, accuracy, and integrity.

Bill called them as he saw them. If he thought your work was in error, he’d tell you bluntly. But he always had time to help you work through issues and to discuss ideas and data at great length. He brought the same honestly to his views on political issues—he really didn’t care what party label people had when judging their policies, and so he set the standard for Cato’s nonpartisan analysis.

One impressive thing about Bill was the huge range of his policy interests and scholarship. At Cato, Bill tackled issues in fiscal policy, international trade, defense spending, foreign policy, public choice economics, macroeconomics, monetary policy, and corporate governance. He even published a statistical analysis of crime rates.

Bill was a mentor and a good friend, and I will miss him.

Cato has also done a cursory update to his bio:

William A. Niskanen, who passed away in 2011, was chairman emeritus and a distinguished senior economist at the Cato Institute. Between 1985 and 2008, Niskanen was the chairman of the Cato Institute, following service as a member and acting chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. Niskanen also served as director of economics at the Ford Motor Company, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, assistant director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, a defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, the director of special studies in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the director of the Program Analysis division at the Institute of Defense Analysis. He wrote on many public policy issues including corporate governance, defense, federal budget policy, regulation, Social Security, taxes, and trade. Niskanen’s 1971 book Bureaucracy and Representative Government is considered a classic.

I don’t know the cause of death or whether he had been ill. He certainly leaves behind a major legacy as an economic thinker and, it would seem, some good friends.

The co-founder of one of the most successful technology companies ever has passed away after a years-long battle with cancer:

Steve Jobs, the demanding visionary who understood before anyone else how deeply we would live our lives through our devices, has died at the age of 56, only weeks after resigning as chief executive of computer giant Apple Inc. for health reasons.

Jobs revitalized Apple by transforming smartphones, computers, and media players into objects of desire. He insisted the company put the human experience first, focusing on design as well as technological prowess. Fifteen years ago,Apple flirted with bankruptcy; today, it is one of the most successful companies on earth. Only oil titan Exxon Mobil Corp. is worth more.

“He taught all of us how to transform technology into magic,” said John Sculley, Apple’s chief executive in the mid-1980s, and the man who once had Jobs kicked out of the company he’d co-founded.

After he was ousted, Jobs endured a decade of exile. But the experience taught him lessons that would, once he returned, help him lead Apple to unimaginable heights of achievement.

“Steve’s big contribution to the computer industry was to take it away from the nerds and give it to the people,” said Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet networking technology and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955 to Syrian immigrant Abdulfattah John Jandali and Joanne Schieble, both graduate students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

In an interview with the New York Post in August, Jandali, now 80 and vice president of a casino in Reno, Nev., said Schieble gave Jobs up for adoption because her father would not allow her to marry him.

But only a few months after the baby was adopted by Paul Jobs, a machinist, and Clara Jobs, an accountant, Schieble’s father died, and she married Jandali. The couple had another child. Jobs didn’t meet his biological sister for more than 30 years.

Jobs attended high school in Cupertino, Calif, the town where Apple would later be headquartered. Graduating in 1972, he went to Reed College in Oregon, but dropped out after one semester. He remained at the a campus hanger-0n for another year, taking the occasional philosophy course. Jobs returned to California in 1974, and took a job at videogame company Atari Inc. After a few months, he resigned and traveled to India in search of spiritual enlightenment.

By 1975, Jobs was back in California, where he was active in a local computer club. The most prominent member was a young man named Steve Wozniak, who had a knack for building homemade computers. Jobs and Wozniak b uilt a prototype machine in the garage of Jobs’ parents, and in 1976, they co-founded Apple Computer. to sell their machines. T

They sold hundreds of the original Apples, but their next machine, the much more capable Apple II, remained in production for 16 years and launched the personal computer industry.\

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

Steve Jobs, the iconic Apple co-founder who reshaped the world’s digital landscape, died Wednesday, ending a storied career that saw him ousted from the company he co-founded only to return from exile to lead the Apple to greater glory with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. He was 56.

Jobs, who stepped down as CEO earlier this year for health-related reasons, had suffered for years from pancreatic cancer and related illnesses and in 2009 underwent a liver transplant. His death was announced by Apple.

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve,” the board of directors said in a statement.

Jobs was considered by many to be the greatest corporate leader of the last half century, and indeed his numerous successes rank him alongside Ford, Disney and Edison as a giant of American business.

He was a taskmaster who demanded the most from his employees – often in expletive-laden bursts – and wasn’t afraid to scrap products that didn’t meet his expectations. But consumers benefited from his perfectionism, which resulted in beautiful and intuitive products.

Under Jobs, Apple devices helped to change the way consumers buy music, read books and enjoy movies. Jobs himself dragged those industries, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the digital future. The products created during his tenure gave rise to a legion of fans who proselytize on the company’s behalf, demonstrating loyalty rarely granted to a maker of electronic gadgets.

From The New York Times:

Beginning in 1986, Mr. Jobs refocused NeXT from the education to the business market and dropped the hardware part of the company, deciding to sell just an operating system. Although NeXT never became a significant computer industry player, it had a huge impact: a young programmer, Tim Berners-Lee, used a NeXT machine to develop the first version of the World Wide Web at the Swiss physics research center CERN in 1990.

In 1996, after unsuccessful efforts to develop next-generation operating systems, Apple, with Gilbert Amelio now in command, acquired NeXT for $430 million. The next year, Mr. Jobs returned to Apple as an adviser. He became chief executive again in 2000.

Shortly after returning, Mr. Jobs publicly ended Apple’s long feud with its archival Microsoft, which agreed to continue developing its Office software for the Macintosh and invested $150 million in Apple.

Once in control of Apple again, Mr. Jobs set out to reshape the consumer electronics industry. He pushed the company into the digital music business, introducing first iTunes and then the iPod MP3 player. The music arm grew rapidly, reaching almost 50 percent of the company’s revenue by June 2008.

In 2005, Mr. Jobs announced that he would end Apple’s business relationship with I.B.M. and Motorola and build Macintosh computers based on Intel microprocessors.

By then his fight with cancer was publicly known. Apple had announced in 2004 that Mr. Jobs had a rare but curable form of pancreatic cancer and that he had undergone successful surgery. Four years later, questions about his health returned when he appeared at a company event looking gaunt. Afterward, he said he had suffered from a “common bug.” Privately, he said his cancer surgery had created digestive problems but insisted they were not life-threatening.

Apple began selling the iPhone in June 2007. Mr. Jobs’s goal was to sell 10 million of the handsets in 2008, equivalent to 1 percent of the global cellphone market. The company sold 11.6 million.

Although smartphones were already commonplace, the iPhone dispensed with a stylus and pioneered a touch-screen interface that quickly set the standard for the mobile computing market. Rolled out with much anticipation and fanfare, iPhone rocketed to popularity; by end of 2010 the company had sold almost 90 million units.

Although Mr. Jobs took just a nominal $1 salary when he returned to Apple, his compensation became the source of a Silicon Valley scandal in 2006 over the backdating of millions of shares of stock options. But after a company investigation and one by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he was found not to have benefited financially from the backdating and no charges were brought.

The episode did little to taint Mr. Jobs’s standing in the business and technology world. As the gravity of his illness became known, and particularly after he announced he was stepping down, he was increasingly hailed for his genius and true achievement: his ability to blend product design and business market innovation by integrating consumer-oriented software, microelectronic components, industrial design and new business strategies in a way that has not been matched.

If he had a motto, it may have come from “The Whole Earth Catalog,” which he said had deeply influenced him as a young man. The book, he said in his commencement address at Stanford in 2005, ends with the admonition “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

“I have always wished that for myself,” he said.

Jobs and Wozniak were the modern day versions of the inventor working alone in their lab, and what they created has helped change the world. Jobs himself displayed a kind of business genius that you don’t see very often. When he introduced the iPod, then the iPhone, and then the iPad, he managed to create products that we didn’t know we needed or wanted, and he’s left a mark not just on the computer industry, but also on films, music, and television.

One of Jobs’ s biggest business rivals back in the day has released this statement:

Bill Gates, the former chief executive of Microsoft, said in a statement that he was “truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’s death.” He added: “The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”

PALO ALTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Steve Jobs’ family today made the following statement regarding his death:

Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family.

In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve’s illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories.

We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.

More to come, I’m sure

Former Dallas Cowboys flanker and author Peter Gent poses with copies of his bestseller, "North Dallas Forty," in New York. (Associated Press / August 26, 1974)

Pete Gent, the former Dallas Cowboy and Michigan State player best known as the author of “North Dallas Forty,” has died at 69 from pulmonary illness.

LA Times (“Former NFL player and author Peter Gent dies“):

Former NFL player Peter Gent, whose book about the seamier side of football was made into the movie, “North Dallas Forty,” has died in his native Michigan. He was 69.

Gent had been ailing for months and died Friday from a pulmonary illness at his boyhood home in Bangor in western Michigan, where he had lived since 1990, his son Carter Gent said Saturday.

Gent was a star basketball player at Michigan State University in the 1960s. He didn’t play college football but got an NFL tryout with the Dallas Cowboys in 1964 and played five seasons with the team.

His 1973 novel “North Dallas Forty” dealt with drugs, sex, greed and self-preservation in pro football. It was made into a movie six years later, starring Nick Nolte as an aging player and Mac Davis as a quarterback. Gent wrote a sequel, “North Dallas After Forty,” as well as other books, including a memoir about coaching his son’s baseball team, “The Last Magic Summer: A Season With My Son.”

Gent was drafted by the NBA’s Baltimore Bullets after averaging 21 points a game in his final season at Michigan State. Instead, he headed to Dallas to try his hand at football.

“He had heard you’d get $500 just for showing up,” said Carter Gent, 35, of Kalamazoo. “The wide receivers coach liked him. He was long and lean and had good hands.”

Carter Gent said his father seemed pleased with how the movie “North Dallas Forty” turned out but he usually didn’t watch it years later.

“He was just a brilliant guy who had a lot of other interests. He read a lot and loved history,” Carter Gent said. “Watching sports didn’t do much for him.” Gent, who was divorced, also is survived by a daughter, Holly Gent Palmo of Austin, Texas; a brother, Jamie Gent; and four grandchildren.

Sad news. Gent was one of many Dallas players during that era who were great athletes with no football background. He played from 1964 to 1968 and had a rather lackluster career, catching a total of 68 passes. But he gained great notoriety with “North Dallas Forty” and had modest success with its sequel, “North Dallas After 40″ (1989) and “The Franchise” (1983).

Charles Percy, who was one of the stalwarts of the moderate “Rockefeller” wing of the Republican Party, which pretty much died off after the 1980 election, has died at the age of 91:

Charles H. Percy, the wonder boy from Illinois, president of Bell & Howell at 29, a United States senator at 47, and for four years chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, died early Saturday morning in Washington, D.C.

He was 91, and had struggled with Alzheimer’s disease in recent years.

Percy won his seat in 1966, less than two months after the brutal murder of his daughter Valerie, a crime that shocked Chicago and the nation. The murderer was never caught, and to this day the case is often the first thing Chicagoans think of when remembering Percy, despite his many accomplishments.

He might have been president. Upon taking office, the dapper, handsome Percy immediately was pegged as presidential timber, one of the “New Breed” Republicans, by a GOP eager to move beyond the disastrous Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964. He was on the cover of Time magazine, and no less a figure than Dwight D. Eisenhower predicted he’d be president.

But it was perilous to be both an outspoken liberal and a Republican, and Percy’s presidential hopes were thwarted by more conservative Republicans such as Richard Nixon.

Percy also was hobbled, paradoxically, by his honesty, energy and ambition, traits which some viewed as character flaws.

“He seemed to be a whirlwind of self-promotion, obsessed with public relations,” George Will wrote in 1974. “He seemed to be a blend of two disagreeable and until then unblendable character traits: cynicism and naivete.”

Before he joined the Senate, Percy distinguished himself in the business world. He started working at Bell & Howell right out of college, by 23 he was on the Board of Directors, and at 29 he became the youngest person to ever serve as President and CEO of a major American corporation. After joining the Senate, Percy quickly got on to the short list of potential Presidential candidates of a party that had been deeply hurt in the 1964 election (interestingly, Percy was a Goldwater delegate at the 1964 Republican Convention in San Francisco), and he was an outspoken member of the Senate:

Percy was an outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam, which he visited in 1967. During a tour of the Dak Son refugee camp near the Cambodian border, his party came under mortar and rifle attack and had to be rescued by U.S. helicopter gunships.

“I never got lower to the ground in my life,” Percy later said.

Percy did not abate his criticisms of the war when it ceased being Lyndon Johnson’s war and became Richard Nixon’s war.

“Is it worth tearing ourselves apart inside and spending a half billion dollars a week?” he asked in 1969. “I say it’s not worth it.”

Nixon disagreed, and placed his fellow Republican on his infamous Enemies List.

In 1970, Percy joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he chaired for his last four years in office. The same year, Percy persuaded Nixon to give future Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens a spot on the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit — Percy was known for having an excellent eye for judicial talent.

In 1972, Percy won re-election by more than a million votes.

The biggest controversy of his second term came when Sen. Percy, the State of Israel Bonds Committee’s 1970 Man of the Year, made a visit to the Middle East in 1975 and called on Israel to “take some risks for peace” by negotiating with Yasser Arafat and withdrawing to its 1967 borders.

Pro-Israel groups never forgave Percy — though, ironically, his suggestions were embraced in subsequent peace efforts.

He was elected to a third term in 1978, but in 1984, his image was tarred in a bitter Republican primary, and he was defeated in the fall by Democrat Paul Simon.

That 1978 campaign is significant for another reason. The Republican Party of 1978 was broad enough to include Ronald Reagan and Charles Percy, and that year Reagan campaigned vigorously for Percy even though the two disagreed on many issues, and despite the fact that there was a more conservative candidate running as an Independent. Could you imagine that happening today?

Photo via Politico