A few days ago I was wondering whether there was an RSS feed for recent deaths. So far the wikipedia recent deaths page is what resembles the most; I imagine I could write a screen-scraper for it. When I have tuits.
Since then, some of the recent deaths have made unusual noise. Everyone blogs about the deaths of Reagan and/or of Ray Charles. Reagan, who was heavily criticized during his period of activity, is now almost a saint. Only a few voices dare recall how harmful his policies were. As Brassens used to sing, les morts sont tous des braves types. Maybe that's due to his illness, drawing compassion? Probably; the horrible disease he had is a sure way to destroy your personality and turn you into a pitiful puppet of the few reflexes that remain from the time you still were a person. It's difficult to imagine a more awful end. At least he didn't suffer, since there was no longer any "he". And then Ray Charles dies. Great singer. Great musician. Yes. Not much else to say. Didn't made anything new the last twenty years. A star, but living on what he invented when he was young. Time had come for him. Meanwhile, Steve Lacy dies. Steve Lacy, the guy who almost created the soprano saxophone in jazz. A major influence on John Coltrane himself, to whom he gave saxophone lessons. One of the very earliest pionieers of free jazz. One of the most breathtaking sounds that ever came out of a soprano sax. Someone who innovated until the last day of his existence. He stayed all his life in the shadows of giants; and he died, unfortunately, unnoticed, in the shadows of giants. RIP Mr Lacy. You won't be forgotten.Re:Dead People Server
rafael on 2004-06-14T12:50:26
There is not much info in there compared to the wikipedia.OK, so here's a rough RSS feed generator. Maybe I'll host it when I have my internet back.
use strict;
use XML::RSS::SimpleGen;
our $url = qq(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_deaths);
rss_new($url, "Recent Deaths", "Recent Deaths, by the Wikipedia");
rss_language("en");
get_url($url);
while (
m{
<li>
<a\s+href="[^"]*"\s+title="([^"]*)">\d*</a> # date
\s*
<a\s+href="([^"]*)"[^>]*>([^<]+)</a> # link and name
(.*?) # bio
</li>
}xgs
)
{ rss_item($2, $3, "$1: $3$4"); }
rss_save('recentdeaths.rss', 45);
Only a few voices dare recall how harmful his policies were.
And you must feel so special being one of those few enlightened people. How can you be so daring? Aren't you afraid something's going to happen to you? After all, apparently many people far more popular and powerful than you don't even dare to recall how harmful Reagan's policies were. Must be a really dangerous thing to say.
Re:Only a few
hfb on 2004-06-14T22:06:41
Well, it's probably because those who dare remember might be forced to think of the current policies by comparison. I knew one of Reagan's economic advisors who, when he'd get tipsy at department fuctions, would confirm most of our worst fears about the Reagan administration. Of course, having a controlling wife forcing her astrologer onto national policy makers or a president who was diagnosed with alzheimer's early in his presidency seems quaint by todays standards. Perhaps the future will be fucked up enough to make kids today get all gushy about how great dumbya was when he dies. I sincerely hope I'm dead by then.Re:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-14T22:12:55
Was Reagan really diagnosed with alzheimer's early in his Presidency? Like, pre-1984?
By a doctor, I mean.
Re:Only a few
hfb on 2004-06-15T04:58:15
YESRe:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-15T14:21:01
If you can get me a source, I'll correct the Wikipedia article.
Re:Only a few
hfb on 2004-06-15T14:44:05
Well, Murray Weidenbaum is a pretty reliable source, but it was in the papers even before the 84 election. He was a veg the past 10 years and alzheimers is a gradual disease...just do the math. They discovered it when he got his full medical examination very early in his first term. Of course, he's dead now, so history will likely forget this detail until 50 years from now someone does a full honest biography of his presidency.Re:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-15T15:17:02
Can't find it on a google search for Murray Weidenbaum Reagan alzheimer's. It's a shame those old papers aren't online.
Do you have any documented proof at all that Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's before the 84 election? How do you know what you know about that medical examination?
Re:Only a few
hfb on 2004-06-15T15:37:44
Uh, maybe you missed the part earlier where it included departmental function, i.e. a wine and cheese type thing since I worked in the department. He said these things to me, I didn't read it on line.Re:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-15T15:44:21
Yeah, I think I did. So what, exactly did he say? That Reagan had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in a medical exam early in his first term? Did they do an autopsy to confirm, or was it just a dementia diagnosis? When exactly was the dementia apparent?
And how, exactly, did Reagan survive approximately 22 years with a disease that takes 10? As it is, since his official diagnosis was in 1992, he managed to beat the average and last 12.
Re:Only a few
hfb on 2004-06-15T15:53:19
Well, to be honest, I wasn't really interested at the time as I recall since I was homing in on the free food, but he said that Ronnie was dotty, took lots and lots of naps and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's early in his first term. That, and a few unkind words towards the real executive in chief with a fondness for short red skirts and astrology.
And for a disease which you seem to willing to believe only takes 10 years to come to full form, you accept the idea that it isn't diagnosable a bit too easily. Maybe he just got lucky and had the best medical care money could buy. Besides, we haven't seen much of him since he left office.
Re:Only a few
jhi on 2004-06-15T16:14:13
In the "alzheimer's organization" (http://www.alz.org/Resources/FactSheets.asp) and there the "Alzheimer's Disease (PR617Z)" (http://www.alz.org/Resources/FactSheets/FSADfacts.pdf) says "People with Alzheimer’s die an average of eight years after first experiencing symptoms, but the duration of the disease can vary from three to 20 years."Re:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-15T15:23:50
He was a veg the past 10 years and alzheimers is a gradual disease...just do the math.
All right
... from Wikipedia: Average duration is approximately 10 years.
So are you saying Reagan beat the odds and battled Alzheimer's for twenty years? Or are you saying Wikipedia is wrong? I could search the history and see if there's been an edit war over the average term of the disease.
Incidentally, Alzheimer's can't be truly diagnosed until an autopsy is performed. Until then, it is indistinguishable from other forms of dementia. Of course, dementia is pretty obvious without a diagnosis (my grandmother has it), so what exactly did they find in that alleged medical examination during his first term? If he had dementia, it would have already been obvious.
There's a Mark-Jason Dominus quote here about making stuff up I'd like to use here...
Re:Only a few
hfb on 2004-06-15T15:43:16
Yeah, and I've got a few dozen about believing everything you read online or on Wikipedia. Alzheimer's can be diagnosed, since they can guage the dopamine levels and do a cat scan of the areas of the brain, e.g. substantia nigra, that indicate the onset of the disease. They were teaching that in med schools by the time he entered office.Re:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-15T15:55:25
That's interesting, because the doctor my father-in-law is taking my wife's grandmother to seems to be unaware of this and cites the "can't diagnose Alzheimer's without an autopsy" as well. He must be really out of date. I was aware of this before I saw it on Wikipedia; I really went there just to check the term of the disease.
I might make some comments about believing everything you hear at wine and cheese functions. I'm not sure exactly how this "he told me at a party" stuff is supposed to be more reliable than what's online. I'm skeptic about just about everything; if you had told me Alzheimer's actually lasts twenty years instead of ten, I'd have some small reason to doubt Wikipedia and would be investigating now for additional opinions and evidence.
So you heard at a party that Reagan had low dopamine levels? And on the basis of that the rest of us should all just take your word for it and revise our understandings?
Re:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-15T15:57:25
Elaine, I can't even find a conspiracy-wacko site that states Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's or even dementia while in office, and with the number of Reagan haters out there, I find that surprising.
Re:Only a few
hfb on 2004-06-15T16:23:42
Well, be realistic, there are plenty of other things to bash Ronnie on and who really wants to think that the man with the launch codes was dotty enough to launch, snack on a few jelly bellies, take a nap and completely forget about the whole thing? He's dead, just wait for the biography.Re:Only a few
rafael on 2004-06-15T16:40:34
In France, hiding the truth about the president's health is a national sport. Just google for "Mitterrand Gubler".Re:Only a few
rafael on 2004-06-15T07:42:21
Well, dare might not be the right word (non-native speaker here). When someone dies, esp. after a long and painful agony, people tend to remember only the positive things about him; that's very natural. In the case of Reagan, that means that people focus on the non-political side of his biography, since he was such a catastrophic president (although Bush raised the standards recently). This amusing cartoon (found via Dave Cross) summarizes the current situation.Re:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-15T14:24:20
non-native speaker here
Sorry; I forgot that.
;) From an American liberal, I would have taken that as a grossly exaggerated statement that people are scared to speak negatively about Reagan right now. And I've actually heard several American liberals (and one American libertarian) say just that. Of course, it doesn't really mesh with reality; lots of people are speaking negatively about Reagan right now. Re:Only a few
pudge on 2004-06-15T17:46:13
The problem is, Reagan's policies weren't particularly harmful. Sure, they weren't perfect, but on balance our country did far better under his policies than any President since FDR. His policies led us to a dramatic economic turnaround and victory in the Cold War. The number of people in poverty didn't decrease significantly, but didn't increase either.
Also, you say "was heavily criticized during his period of activity," but he was far more praised than criticized. He won 48 of the 50 states for reelection (and Bush won big four years later mostly because of Reagan, too). He is remembered fondly not because we are forgetting the bad, but because we thought it was mostly good at the time, and still do.
I'm sorry, implying Reagan was not extremely popular just doesn't fly. He was not as popular as FDR, to be sure, but in the 20th century, he was second only to FDR in popularity. I'd have to put him ahead of the only other two very popular Presidents I can recall, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower. LBJ won his election big, but much of that was because of Kennedy (similar to Bush in '88), and he was very UNpopular by the time he left (which is why he didn't even bother running).Re:Only a few
jdavidb on 2004-06-15T17:58:48
49 states. One of those was DC.
Re:Only a few
pudge on 2004-06-15T18:37:18
Oh right, 49 of the 51 slates of electoral votes.:-) Re:Only a few
rafael on 2004-06-15T19:10:49
You know what? I don't really care about Reagan. I'm not a citizen of the USA and this poor chap is now dead. I wrote a journal entry about Steve Lacy and RSS feeds and it turns out to provoke an avalanche of posts about Reagan. Next time I'll choose a more neutral subject, like (for example) XSLT applied to gay marriage.Re:Only a few
pudge on 2004-06-15T19:28:33
Fair enough. I didn't want to turn it into a big thing, just responding to part of what you wrote.:-)
