Roger Abbott, Canadian actor and comedian (Royal Canadian Air Farce), died from chronic lymphocytic leukemia he was , 64.

Roger Abbott  was a Canadian comedian. A founding member of the comedy troupe Royal Canadian Air Farce, he was one of the troupe's stars and writers throughout its 29-year career on radio and television died from chronic lymphocytic leukemia he was , 64..

(July 10, 1946 – March 26, 2011)

Early life

Abbott was born in Birkenhead, England; at age 7, he and his family moved to Montreal. While attending Loyola High School, he met Don Ferguson, who would become a co-star of Royal Canadian Air Farce. After graduation in 1963, he attended Loyola College (now Concordia University).^[1]

Career

Abbott began his career in behind-the-scene jobs in radio.^[2] In 1970, comedians John Morgan and Martin Bronstein, who were were looking for non-actors who could write and perform their own material,^[2] convinced Abbott to join the cast of the improvisational theatre revue called The Jest Society (a pun on then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's famous goal of making Canada a "Just Society"). After a number of personnel changes, the troupe—now consisting of Abbott, Morgan, Bronstein, Don Ferguson, Luba Goy and Dave Broadfoot— became known as the Royal Canadian Air Farce. On December 9, 1973, they began a weekly broadcast on CBC radio.^[3] (Bronstein left the troupe the following year.)^[4] Each week, the show was broadcast in front of an audience in the CBC's Parliament Street studio. Abbott quickly showed his organizational abilities—Don Ferguson called him "the guiding light of Royal Canadian Air Farce" and "a combination of artistic, organizational and business talent".^[5] Abbott also became the "warm-up man" for the weekly broadcasts, chatting to the audience before introducing the rest of the cast. Abbott said the greatest influences on his style of comedy were Dave Broadfoot and the British comedy troupe Monty Python.^[5]
Air Farce made a 10-week series of television shows for CBC in 1980 at the same time as they continued to produce their weekly radio show. The producers of the American sitcom Taxi offered Abbott and Ferguson a chance to be writers on the show, but they turned the offer down.^[5]
In 1989, Abbott directed Huge Jumbo Comedy Thing, a show starring a troupe called the Maroons that CHOM-FM described as "Canada's answer to Monty Python".^[6]
For many years, Abbott and Don Ferguson co-hosted the annual televised Easter Seals Telethon.^[7]
In 1992, Royal Canadian Air Farce returned to television, this time as a weekly series, although the weekly radio series also continued to be produced until 1997. Abbott became well-known for many roles on the television show, including parodies of Jean Chrétien, The Queen Mother, Yasser Arafat, Leonard Cohen, George W. Bush, Brian Williams, Peter Mansbridge, Don Newman, Craig Oliver, and "Native Persons Spokesman" Billy Two-Willies.^[8]
The title of the television show changed several times, first shortened to Air Farce, then to Air Farce Live, and in its final season (2008–2009), Air Farce Live—The Final Flight.^[9] Air Farce continued to produce occasional specials for CBC, and Abbott's last appearance on Air Farce was their New Year's Eve special that aired on December 31, 2010.

Death

Abbott was diagnosed with the progressive disease chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1997, but only shared this fact with family and close friends.^[10][11] After a 14-year battle, he succumbed to leukemia on March 26, 2011 at Toronto General Hospital, age 64.

Tributes

• A video tribute to Abbott from his friends and colleagues at Royal Canadian Air Farce was posted on YouTube on March 27, 2011.^[8]
• An hour-long tribute to Abbott, featuring many of his memorable sketches, aired on CBC-TV on March 29, 2011.

Royal Canadian Air Farce's star on Walk of Fame in Toronto, signed by Roger Abbott and other cast members

• A memorial service entitled "Roger's Wrap Party" was held in Toronto on April 11, 2011. Speakers included Jessica Holmes, Dave Broadfoot, Vicki Gabereau, Luba Goy, and Don Ferguson.

Awards

• Gemini Humanitarian Award
• Governor General's Performing Arts Awards for Lifetime Artistic Achievement
• 15 ACTRA Awards
• a Juno Award
• a star on the Canada's Walk of Fame
• Honorary doctor of laws, Brock University, 1993

 

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Joe Bageant, American writer, social critic and political commentator, died from cancer he was , 64.

 Joe Bageant was an American author and columnist known for his book Deer Hunting With Jesus  died from cancer he was , 64. Bageant was originally raised in Winchester, Virginia. He left Winchester and worked as a journalist and editor. In 2001, Bageant moved back to Winchester.

(1946-2011) 

In Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War Bageant discusses how Democrats have lost the political support of poor rural whites and how the Republican Party has convinced these individuals to vote against their own economic self-interest. The book is mainly centered on his hometown, Winchester.
In 2010, Bageant published a similarly themed book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, ISBN 978-1846272578. Bageant used his extended family’s post WW II years experience to describe the social hierarchy in the United States of America. The book examines the post-war journey of 22 million rural Americans into the cities, where they became, the author argues, the foundation of a permanent white underclass and comprise much of today’s heartland “red state” voters.
Bageant frequently appeared as a commentator on radio and television internationally, and wrote a progressive online column distributed to hundreds of blogs and websites. He maintained his own blog, called Joe Bageant, and also served as a roving honorary editor with Cyrano's Journal Today and The Greanville Post, two sites devoted to progressive political and media analyses.
On January 4, 2011, Bageant announced on his web site that he had been "struck down by an extremely serious form of cancer" which was inoperable and was unable to engage in correspondence or his usual work, but hoped to be able to resume them in the future.^[2]
On March 27, 2011, it was announced on his website that he had died on March 26 following "a vibrant life" and a four-month struggle with cancer. ^[3]

 

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Paul Baran, American Internet pioneer, died from complications from lung cancer he was , 84 .

 Paul Baran was a Polish American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks. He was one of the three earliest researchers of packet switching techniques, and went on to start several companies and develop other technologies that are an essential part of the Internet and other modern digital communication.

(1926–2011)

Early life

Paul Baran was born in Grodno, Poland (which is now in Belarus) on April 29, 1926.^[1][2] He was the youngest of three children in a Jewish family,^[3] with the Yiddish given name "Pesach". His family moved to the United States on May 11, 1928,^[4] settling in Boston and later in Philadelphia, where his father, Morris "Moshe" Baran (1884–1979), opened a grocery store. He graduated from Drexel University in 1949 (then called Drexel Institute of Technology), with a degree in electrical engineering. He then joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, where he did technical work on UNIVAC models, the first brand of commercial computers in the USA.^[5] In 1955 he married Evelyn Murphy, moved to Los Angeles, and worked for Hughes Aircraft on radar systems. He obtained his Masters degree in engineering from UCLA in 1959, with advisor Gerald Estrin while taking night classes. His thesis was on character recognition.^[1]

Packet switched network design

After joining the RAND Corporation that same year, Baran took on the task of designing a "survivable" communications system that could maintain communication between end points in the face of damage from nuclear weapons.^[6] At the time of the Cold War, most American military communications used High Frequency connections which could be put out of action for many hours by a nuclear attack. Baran decided to automate RAND director Franklin R. Collbohm's previous work with emergency communication over conventional AM radio networks and showed that a distributed relay node architecture could be survivable. The Rome Air Development Center soon showed that the idea was practicable.^[7]
Using the mini-computer technology of the day, Baran and his team developed a simulation suite to test basic connectivity of an array of nodes with varying degrees of linking. That is, a network of n-ary degree of connectivity would have n links per node. The simulation randomly 'killed' nodes and subsequently tested the percentage of nodes who remained connected. The result of the simulation revealed that networks where n ≥ 3 had a significant increase in resilience against even as much as 50% node loss. Baran's insight gained from the simulation was that redundancy was the key.^[8] His first work was published a a RAND report in 1960,^[9] with more papers generalizing the techniques in the next two years.^[10]
After proving survivability Baran and his team needed to show proof of concept for this design such that it could be built. This involved high level schematics detailing the operation, construction and cost of all the components required to construct a network that leveraged this new insight of redundant links. The result of this was one of the first store-and-forward data layer switching protocols, a link-state/distance vector routing protocol, and an unproved connection-oriented transport protocol. Explicit detail of these designs can be found in the complete series of reports "On Distributed Communications", published by RAND in 1964.^[11] The design flew in the face of telephony design of the time, placing inexpensive and unreliable nodes at the center of the network, and more intelligent terminating 'multiplexer' devices at the endpoints. In Baran's words, unlike the telephone company's equipment, his design didn't require expensive "gold plated" components to be reliable.

Selling the idea

After the publication of "On Distributed Communications'", Paul Baran presented the findings of his team to a number of audiences, including AT&T engineers (not to be confused with Bell labs engineers, who at the time provided Paul Baran with the specifications for the first generation of T1 circuit which he used as the links in his network design proposal). In subsequent interviews Baran mentions how his idea of non-dedicated physical circuits for voice communications were scoffed at by the AT&T engineers who at times claimed that Baran simply did not understand how voice telecommunication worked.^[12]
Leonard Kleinrock developed a theoretical basis for the operation of packet networks in his Ph.D. thesis in 1961. Baran used the term "message blocks" for his units of communication. Donald Davies at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom was the first to use the term "packet switching" in 1965, and apply the concept to a general-purpose computer network. Davies' key observation was that computer network traffic was inherently "bursty" with periods of silence, compared with relatively constant telephone traffic.^[1][13]
In 1969 when the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was developing the idea of an inter-networked set of terminals to share computing resources, among the number of reference materials considered was Baran and the RAND Corporation's "On Distributed Communications" volumes.^[1] The resiliency of a packet switched network that uses link-state routing protocols used on the Internet stems in some part from the research to develop a network that could survive a nuclear attack.^[1][14]

Later work

In 1968 Baran was a founder of the Institute for the Future, and then involved in other networking technologies developed in Silicon Valley. He was involved in the origin of the packet voice technology developed by StrataCom at its predecessor, Packet Technologies. This technology led to the first commercial pre-standard Asynchronous Transfer Mode product. He was also involved with the discrete multitone modem technology developed by Telebit, which was one of the roots of Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing which is used in DSL modems. In 1985, Paul Baran founded Metricom, the first wireless Internet company, which deployed Ricochet,^[2] the first public wireless mesh networking system. He also founded Com21, an early cable modem company.^[5] Following Com21, Baran founded and was president of GoBackTV, which specializes in personal TV and cable IPTV infrastructure equipment for television operators.^[15] Most recently he founded Plaster Networks, providing an advanced solution for connecting networked devices in the home or small office through existing wiring.^[16]
Baran extended his work in packet switching to wireless-spectrum theory, developing what he called "kindergarten rules" for the use of wireless spectrum.^[17]
In addition to his innovation in networking products, he is also credited with inventing the first metal detector, a doorway gun detector.^[5][18]
He received an honorary doctorate when he gave the commencement speech at Drexel in 1997.^[19]

Death

Baran died in Palo Alto, California at the age of 84 on March 26, 2011^[1][20], due to complications from lung cancer.^[14] Upon his death James Thomson, the president of RAND stated that "Our world is a better place for the technologies Paul Baran invented and developed, and also because of his consistent concern with appropriate public policies for their use.".^[20] One of the fathers of the internet, Vinton Cerf, stated that "Paul wasn't afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do,"^[14] According to Paul Saffo, Baran also believed that innovation was a "team process" and he didn't seek credit for himself.^[18] On hearing news of his death, Robert Kahn, co-inventor of the Internet, said: "Paul was one of the finest gentlemen I ever met and creative to the very end."

Awards and honors

• IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal (1990)^[21]
• Marconi Prize (1991)
• Nippon Electronics Corporation C&C Prize (1996)
• Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science (2001)^[5]
• National Inventors Hall of Fame (2007)
• National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2007)^[22]
• UCLA Engineering Alumnus of the Year (2009)^[2

 

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Carl Bunch, American drummer (Buddy Holly and the Crickets) died he was , 71.

Carl Bunch  was an American musician died he was , 71..
Carl Bunch was born in Big Spring, Texas and began playing drums as a teenager, in order to recover from extensive surgery on his right leg. By age seventeen, he was recording with Ronnie Smith and the Poor Boys, in Clovis, New Mexico. Buddy Holly was also recording in Clovis at the same time and was impressed with the young drummer.

(November 24, 1939 - March 26, 2011)

Bunch was invited to join Holly on the "Winter Dance Party" tour in 1959, along with Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings. The tour bus heater failed, and Bunch suffered from frostbite and was hospitalized. On February 3, 1959, Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were killed in a plane crash. Bunch rejoined the tour on February 5, in Sioux City, Iowa. Ronnie Smith, Jimmy Clanton and Fabian were also recruited to help fill out the playbill. The tour ended on February 15, 1959, in Springfield, Illinois.
Bunch then enlisted in the United States Army, but eventually he was drawn back to music. After his discharge from the Army, he spent some time playing for the Bob Osburn band, before moving to Nashville to play for Hank Williams, Jr. and Roy Orbison.
Carl Bunch eventually left the music industry and became a minister. He attended Buddy Holly-related events during the 2000s, signing autographs as "The Frostbitten Cricket". Carl died on March 26, 2011 from diabetes.

 

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Greg Centauro, French pornographic actor, died from cardiac arrest he was , 34.

Greg Centauro  was a French pornographic actor and director from Marseille. Also known by aliases Greg C., Mark De Lorenzi and Ralph Gotti, he had performed in well over 300 films and directed in over 200  died from cardiac arrest he was , 34..


(January 10, 1977 - March 26, 2011)

Career

Centauro was born on January 10, 1977, in Marseille, France, and was living in Budapest, the porn capital of Europe at the time of his death. He once had a relationship with famed French ex-porn actress, model, singer, and TV moderator Clara Morgane.^[1] As part of the adult industry for more than a decade, Centauro acted in over 300 films and is regarded as the master of Gonzo. He was also a director and worked on hundreds of projects with some of the biggest names and companies in the adult film business. He was the in house producer for Paradise Film Entertainment and won several important awards with them including: eLine-Award 2007 Best International Series For Ass Drippers,^[2] eLine Award 2007 Best International Actor For Greg Centauro, eLine Award 2008 Best German Actor For Greg Centauro, Erotixxx Award^[3] Venus 09 Best German Film For Paradise Film – Black And White 4 U. He liked the music of the German rock outfit Rammstein and is heavy into dark and scary movies like Stigmata and Scarface. His other interests included wake boarding and jet skiing. Greg Centauro was also a huge fan of tattoo art and had several himself. He was one of the few European actors getting offers from American film studios.

Death

Centauro died of acute heart failure on March 26, 2011. He was 34 years old.

Filmography/Extract

• Anal History
• Fucking Beautiful 7
• Ass Drippers
• Nuts, Butts, Euro Sluts
• Pretty Chicks
• Das Edelmodel
• Sex Maniac Bitches

Film Labels

• Paradise Film Entertainment
• Digital Sin
• Platinum X Pictures
• Zero Tolerance

Awards

• eLine-Award 2007 Best International Series For Ass Drippers
• eLine Award 2007 Best International Actor For Greg Centauro
• eLine Award 2008 Best Best German Actor For Greg Centauro
• Erotixxx Award Venus 09 Best German Film For Paradise Film – Black And White 4 U

 

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Harry Coover, American inventor (Super Glue) died he was , 94.

Harry Wesley Coover, Jr. (March 6, 1917 – March 26, 2011) was the inventor of Eastman 910, commonly known as Super Glue died he was , 94.

Life and career

Coover was born in Newark, Delaware, and received his Bachelor of Science from Hobart College before earning his Master of Science and Ph. D. from Cornell University. He worked as a chemist for Eastman Kodak from 1944–1973 and as Vice President of the company from 1973-1984.^[1] He later moved to Kingsport, Tennessee,^[3] where he spent the rest of his life.

 Superglue

In 1942, while searching for materials to make clear plastic gun sights, Coover and his team at Eastman Kodak first worked with cyanoacrylates, rejecting them as too sticky. Nine years later, Coover was overseeing Kodak chemists investigating heat-resistant polymers for jet canopies when cyanoacrylates were once again tested and proved too sticky. That time around, however, Coover recognized that he had discovered a unique adhesive. In 1958, the adhesive, marketed by Kodak as Super Glue, was introduced for sale.^[4]
Generally, cyanoacrylate is an acrylic resin which rapidly polymerises in the presence of water (specifically hydroxide ions), forming long, strong chains, joining the bonded surfaces together. Because the presence of moisture causes the glue to set, exposure to moisture in the air can cause a tube or bottle of glue to become unusable over time. To prevent an opened container of glue from setting before use, it must be stored in an airtight jar or bottle with a package of silica gel. Another convenient way is attaching a hypodermic needle on the opening of glue. After applying, residual glue soon clogs the needle, keeping moisture out. The clog is removed by heating the needle (e.g. by a lighter) before use.
Cyanoacrylate is used as a forensic tool to capture latent fingerprints on non-porous surfaces like glass, plastic, etc.^[5] Cyanoacrylate is warmed to produce fumes which react with the invisible fingerprint residues and atmospheric moisture to form a white polymer (polycyanoacrylate) on the fingerprint ridges. The ridges can then be recorded. The developed fingerprints are, on most surfaces (except on white plastic or similar), visible to the naked eye. Invisible or poorly visible prints can be further enhanced by applying a luminescent or non-luminescent stain.

Chemical structure of methyl cyanoacrylate, the basis of Superglue

While much attention was given to the glue's capacity to bond solid materials, Coover was also the first to recognize and patent cyanoacrylates as a tissue adhesive. First used in the Vietnam War to temporarily patch the internal organs of injured soldiers until conventional surgery could be performed, tissue adhesives are now used worldwide for a variety of sutureless surgical applications.^[4]

Other inventions

Coover held 460 patents, and Super Glue was just one of his many discoveries.^[4] He viewed "programmed innovation," a management methodology emphasizing research and development, among his most important work. Implemented at Kodak, programmed innovation resulted in the introduction of 320 new products and sales growth from $1.8 billion to $2.5 billion. Coover later formed an international management consulting practice, advising corporate clients around the world on programmed innovation methodology.^[6]
Coover received the Southern Chemist Man of the Year Award for his outstanding accomplishments in individual innovation and creativity. He also held the Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management, the Maurice Holland Award and was a medalist for the Industrial Research Institute.^[6] In 2004, Coover was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame.^[2] In 2010, Coover received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.^[7]
Coover died of natural causes at his home in Kingsport, Tennessee, on March 26, 2011.^[1]

 

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Cibele Dorsa, Brazilian actress and writer, commited suicide by jumping he was , 36.

Cibele Dorsa  was a Brazilian actress, model and writer. She also appeared on the cover of the April 2008 issue of Playboy Brazil  commited suicide by jumping he was , 36..

(October 14, 1974 – March 26, 2011)

Personal life

Dorsa had a relationship with the Brazilian entrepreneur Fernando Oliva with whom she had a son, also named Fernando. Later she married and divorced the Brazilian show jumping rider Alvaro de Miranda Neto, who subsequently married Athina Onassis Roussel. Dorsa and Miranda had a daughter named Viviane.^[3]
On June 7, 2008, Cibele Dorsa suffered a grave car accident that killed the friend who drove the car and caused her severe injuries. She stayed one month in hospital and more two months immobilized. About this tragic experience she wrote a book titled 5:00 da Manhã (meaning 5:00 A.M. in Portuguese). The title is a reference to the hour when the accident occurred. ^[4]
In 2010, she started a relationship with the E! Brazil TV presenter Gilberto Scarpa. They planned to get married in April 2011 but Scarpa committed suicide by jumping out of their apartment on January 30, 2011. Scarpa jumped through the same window that Cibele Dorsa would end up jumping less than two months later. ^[5]

Death

Dorsa died on March 26, 2011 after having fallen from a window on the seventh floor of her apartment building in Morumbi, São Paulo. The death was being investigated as a probable suicide.^[6][7] The suicide was confirmed by messages posted in her Twitter and a suicide letter addressed to her children.^[8]

 

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