David Rakoff, a “writer, aesthete, genius, New York devotee (the City was “the great love of my life,” he wrote), exceptional reporter and observer, performer, director and incredibly kind person,” has died of cancer. Give his This American Life episodes a listen.

The above screenshot is from his book, Half Empty, as screengrabbed by The Awl.

From a systems-engineering standpoint, it is easy to identify the point where Sally K. Ride began to leave the rest of the world behind. A flow chart of her life would show the crucial decision coming one day in 1977, when — as a 25-year-old astrophysicist winding up her doctoral work at Stanford University — she spotted an announcement in the campus newspaper about openings in the astronaut program, a career she had never even contemplated for herself. In what once would have been called an epiphany — but she herself would probably describe as a go/no-go decision node — she was up and out of the room before she had finished reading the notice, one of more than 1,000 women and nearly 7,000 men to apply for what would ultimately be the 35 slots in the astronaut class of 1978.

So begins our 1983 cover story on astronaut and pioneer Sally Ride. Read on. 

Nora was both hedgehog and fox. She knew a great deal about a great many things, and she delighted in sharing what she knew. A number of years ago, I was taking a trip to Rome, and she generously availed me of her guide to its enchantments, a small pamphlet she’d composed that included a thumbnail sketch of every terrific restaurant, of every amusing thing to do, of the right place to get a haircut or a manicure, all springily written and completely true. Nora prided herself in knowing how to do things, where to get them, what was good and in what way it was good. Think of the moments in her essays, her novels, and her movies when she addresses the fact of food. No one has ever written about food with more pleasure or more pleasurably—or more infectiously. You wanted to eat the thing she was kvelling about, right then and there, even before the next sentence.

Screenwriter and friend Stephen Schiff salutes Nora Ephron’s wonderful films, impeccable taste, and versatile strength to the end.

I remember going to a party in New York about 35 years ago. They all called me Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. I said, “You, ma’am, your name and phone number? And you, sir, your phone number? And you, sir?” And they said, “Why are you taking our phone numbers?” I said, “Because the night we land on the moon, you’re going to get called.” I was in London when we did. I called three of them, and when they answered I said, “Stupid son of a bitch,” and hung up.

Ray Bradbury, to Newsweek, Nov 12, 1995. We’re totally going to borrow this page from the Book of Bradbury.

I’m tired of seeing creatures from other worlds with the brains on the outside of the skull. There’s too much imitation going on by people who think they’re writers but aren’t. Don’t put me in outer space with another galactic war. I can’t stand galactic wars.

Ray Bradbury, to Newsweek, Nov 12, 1995.

You use these things; they don’t use you. If you allow them to use you, you’re sunk. A library is no better than the person who walks into it. A CD-ROM is no better than the people who use it. A computer’s the same way. It’s all been done backwards. The shuttle should have been done 30 years ago. It’s mail-carrying. They’re making topographical photographs of the planet, making atmosphere studies. It doesn’t lift the heart the way landing on the moon did. We should have done the shuttle first and then taken off for the moon and stayed there. Then we should go to Mars. You have to do one to do the other, otherwise you can’t go.

Ray Bradbury, to Newsweek, November 12, 1995. Bradbury died today at 91.

Dana Gordon was the Deputy Director of our Research Center from 1996 to 2008, leaving Newsweek just as she was getting married to her husband, Steve Dzik. She was an incredibly positive person, even as she received a diagnosis this past November of aggressive uterine cancer. Everyone who’s ever met her will remember her smile (ever-present) and her singsong voice — she was a walking melody. She died this past Thursday morning, after a brief but brave battle. Our thoughts are with her friends and family.

(Elsewhere: Crain’s, Special Libraries Association, History of News Libraries]

Scruggs was the man who made it cool to sound like that.

Our obit of banjo player Earl Scruggs, dead, this week, at 88.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949 - 2011

soupsoup:

Jack Kevorkian

(1928 - 2011)

(Source: ladymisskate, via brooklynmutt)