1. BergerKing's Avatar
    10-11-12 08:02 PM
  2. cerealberry's Avatar
    Actor, TV host Gary Collins dies at 74 in Miss.

    http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_15996/cont...tguid=XXOMQy9Y

    Sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using Tapatalk
    10-14-12 07:40 AM
  3. amazinglygraceless's Avatar
    Longtime GOP Senate moderate Arlen Specter dies

    By PETER JACKSON, Associated Press

    HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) � Former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, the outspoken Pennsylvania centrist whose switch from Republican to Democrat ended a 30-year career in which he played a pivotal role in several Supreme Court nominations, died Sunday. He was 82.

    Specter, who announced in late August that he was battling cancer, died at his home in Philadelphia from complications of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, said his son Shanin. Over the years, Arlen Specter had fought two previous bouts with Hodgkin's disease, overcome a brain tumor and survived cardiac arrest following bypass surgery.

    Specter rose to prominence in the 1960s as an aggressive Philadelphia prosecutor and as an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, developing the single-bullet theory that posited just one bullet struck both President Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally � an assumption critical to the argument that presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The theory remains controversial and was the focus of Oliver Stone's 1991 movie "JFK."

    In 1987, Specter helped thwart the Supreme Court nomination of former federal appeals Judge Robert H. Bork � earning him conservative enemies who still bitterly refer to such rejections as being "borked."

    But four years later, Specter was criticized by liberals for his tough questioning of Anita Hill at Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court nomination hearings and for accusing her of committing "flat-out perjury." The nationally televised interrogation incensed women's groups and nearly cost him his seat in 1992.

    Specter, who had battled cancer, was Pennsylvania's longest-serving senator when Democrats picked then-U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak over him in the 2010 primary, despite Specter's endorsements by President Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders. Sestak lost Specter's seat to conservative Republican Rep. Pat Toomey by 2 percentage points.

    A political moderate, Specter was swept into the Senate in the Reagan landslide of 1980.

    He took credit for helping to defeat President Clinton's national health care plan � the complexities of which he highlighted in a gigantic chart that hung on his office wall for years afterward � and helped lead the investigation into Gulf War syndrome. Following the Iran-Contra scandal, he pushed legislation that created the inspectors general of the CIA.

    As a senior member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Specter pushed for increased funding for stem-cell research, breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease, and supported several labor-backed initiatives in a GOP-led Congress. He also doggedly sought federal funds for local projects in his home state.

    The former Democrat was not shy about bucking fellow Republicans.

    In 1995, he launched a presidential bid, denouncing religious conservatives as the "fringe" that plays too large a role in setting the party's agenda. Specter, who was Jewish, bowed out before the first primary because of lackluster fundraising.

    Despite his tireless campaigning, Specter's irascible independence caught up with him in 2004. Specter barely survived a GOP primary challenge by Toomey by 17,000 votes of more than 1.4 million cast. He went on to easily win the general election with the help of organized labor, a traditionally Democratic constituency.

    Specter startled fellow senators in April 2009 when he announced he was switching to the Democratic side, saying he found himself "increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy." Earlier in the year, he had been one of only three Republicans in Congress � and the only one facing re-election in 2010 � who voted for President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill.

    He also said he had concluded that his chance of defeating a GOP challenger in the 2010 party primary was bleak. But he said the Democrats couldn't count on him to be "an automatic 60th vote" to give the party a filibuster-proof majority.

    Specter outspent Sestak, a retired Navy vice admiral, but Sestak attacked him as a political opportunist who switched parties to save his job. A memorable campaign ad used Specter's own words against him: "My change in party will enable me to be re-elected."

    Specter was diagnosed in February 2005 with stage IV Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system. Announcing the diagnosis with his trademark doggedness, Specter said: "I have beaten a brain tumor, bypass heart surgery and many tough political opponents and I'm going to beat this, too."

    He wrote of his struggle in a 2008 book, "Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate," saying he wanted to let others facing similar crises "ought to know they are not alone."

    Cancer handed him "a stark look at mortality" and an "added sense of humility," Specter told The Associated Press.

    Intellectual and stubborn, Specter played squash nearly every day into his mid-70s and liked to unwind with a martini or two at night. He took the lead on a wide spectrum of issues and was no stranger to controversy.

    Born in Wichita, Kan., on Feb. 12, 1930, Specter spent summers toiling in his father's junkyard in Russell, Kan., where he knew another future senator � Bob Dole. The junkyard thrived during World War II, allowing Specter's father to send his four children to college.

    Specter left Kansas for college in 1947 because the University of Kansas, where his best friends were headed, did not have Jewish fraternities. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951 and Yale law school in 1956. He served in the Air Force from 1951 to 1953.

    Friends say his childhood circumstances made him determined, tough and independent-minded. Specter considered his father's triumphs the embodiment of the American dream, a fulfillment that friends say drove him to a career in public life.

    He entered politics as a Democrat in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, when he was an assistant district attorney who sent six Teamsters officials to jail for union corruption.

    After working on the Warren Commission, he returned to Philadelphia and challenged his boss, James Crumlish, for district attorney in 1965. Specter ran as a Republican and was derided by Crumlish as "Benedict Arlen." But Crumlish lost to his protege by 36,000 votes.

    It was to be the last time until 1980 that Specter would win an election to higher office, despite three attempts � a 1967 bid for Philadelphia mayor, a 1976 loss to John Heinz for Senate and a 1978 defeat by Thornburgh for governor.

    Specter lost re-election as district attorney in 1973 and went into private practice. Among his most notorious clients as a private attorney was Ira Einhorn, a Philadelphia counterculture celebrity who killed his girlfriend in 1977.

    Finally, in 1980, Specter won the Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Richard Schweiker, defeating former Pittsburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty.

    After leaving the Senate in January 2011, the University of Pennsylvania Law School announced Specter would teach a course about Congress' relationship with the Supreme Court, and Maryland Public Television launched a political-affairs show hosted by the former senator.

    He is survived by his wife, Joan, and two sons, Shanin and Steve, and four granddaughters.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Ron Todt in Philadelphia and Lara Jakes contributed to this report.
    alnamvet68 likes this.
    10-14-12 12:12 PM
  4. alnamvet68's Avatar
    While I took great issue with his change of party affiliation (again), I have admired the greatness of his tenure as the longest serving Senator in history. "Snarlin" Arlen, Godspeed my friend.
    10-15-12 05:56 PM
  5. BergerKing's Avatar
    10-16-12 04:21 PM
  6. BergerKing's Avatar
    10-18-12 11:31 PM
  7. Laura Knotek's Avatar
    Stanford Ovshinsky, 'Edison of our age,' dies at 89

    Self-taught scientist is credited with inventing the nickel-metal hybrid battery as well as a new class of semiconductors.
    Steven Musil
    by Steven Musil
    October 18, 2012 9:29 PM PDT

    Stanford R. Ovshinsky, a self-taught scientist who invented the nickel-metal hybrid battery and a new class of semiconductors, died Wednesday at age 89.

    The cause of death was prostate cancer, according to his son, Harvey Ovshinsky.

    Hailed in 2006 by Economist magazine as "the Edison of our age," Ovshinsky held more than 200 patents on a wide variety of pioneering products, from thin-film solar cells to hydrogen fuel cells. In the 1950s, Ovshinsky upset conventional thinking by rejecting the notion that only well-ordered crystals had useful electronic properties and suggested that so-called amorphous, or disordered, materials could be harnessed to construct semiconductors.

    In 1960, he and his wife, Iris, formed Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) to develop his discovery -- dubbed "Ovonics" -- to the fields of information and energy.

    However, Ovshinsky's greatest consumer electronics contribution was perhaps in the form of the environmentally friendly nickel-metal hydride battery, which is used to power hybrid cars and portable electronics such as laptop computers, digital cameras, and mobile phones. In a partnership with General motors, he developed the battery that powered the EV1, GM's electric car.

    Born in Akron, Ohio, in 1922, Ovshinsky never attended college, but studies at a one-room library provided the basis for his scientific literacy, leading him to become director of research at automotive and defense supplier Hupp Corp. at age 30.

    Named "Hero for the Planet" by Time magazine in 1999, Ovshinsky was recipient of the German Inventors Association's Diesel Gold Medal in 1968 for his semiconductor discoveries. Despite ending his formal education in high school, he held numerous honorary doctoral degrees from universities around the world.

    "He was the last of his kind," Harley Shaiken, professor of Education and Geography at the University of California at Berkeley, said in a statement that compared Ovshinsky to Henry Ford.
    Stanford Ovshinsky, 'Edison of our age,' dies at 89 | Cutting Edge - CNET News
    10-19-12 12:37 AM
  8. BergerKing's Avatar
    10-21-12 06:48 AM
  9. Laura Knotek's Avatar
    Indian Activist Russell Means Dies - WSJ.com

    Associated Press

    SIOUX FALLS, S.D.�Russell Means, a former American Indian Movement activist who helped lead a 1973 uprising against the U.S. government and appeared in several Hollywood films, died Monday at age 72.

    Mr. Means died his ranch in South Dakota, Oglala Sioux Tribe spokeswoman Donna Salomon said.

    Mr. Means in August 2011 said he had developed inoperable throat cancer. He said he was forgoing mainstream medical treatments in favor of traditional American Indian remedies and alternative treatments away from his home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

    Mr. Means led AIM's armed occupation of the South Dakota town of Wounded Knee, a 71-day siege that included several gunfights with federal officers. AIM was founded in the late 1960s to protest the government's treatment of Native Americans and demand the government honor its treaties with Indian tribes.

    Mr. Means in 2011 said that before AIM, there had been no advocate on a national or international scale for American Indians and that Native Americans were ashamed of their heritage.

    "No one except Hollywood stars and very rich Texans wore Indian jewelry," Mr. Means said. "That's all changed." The movement eventually faded away as Native Americans became self-aware and self-determined, Mr. Means said.

    He was often embroiled in controversy, partly because of AIM's alleged involvement in a 1975 killing. But Mr. Means was also known for his role in the movie "The Last of the Mohicans" and for his unsuccessful run for the Libertarian nomination for president in 1988.

    Paul DeMain, publisher of Indian Country Today, said plenty of Indian activists existed before AIM but the group became the "radical media gorilla."

    "If someone needed help, you called on the American Indian Movement, and they showed up and caused all kind of ruckus and looked beautiful on a 20-minute clip on TV that night," Mr. DeMain said.

    Mr. Means said he felt his most important accomplishment was the founding of the Republic of Lakotah and the "re-establishment of our freedom to be responsible" as a sovereign nation inside the borders of the U.S. His efforts to have his proposed country recognized by the international community continued at the United Nations, he said, even as it was ignored by tribal governments closer to home, including his own Oglala Sioux Tribe.

    But others may remember him for his former organization's connection to the killing of Annie Mae Aquash, whose death remains synonymous with AIM and its often violent clashes with federal agents in the 1970s.

    Authorities believe three AIM members shot and killed Ms. Aquash on the Pine Ridge reservation on the orders of someone in AIM's leadership because they suspected she was a Federal Bureau of Investigation informant. Two activists�Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham�were eventually convicted of murder. The third has never been charged.

    Mr. Means blamed Vernon Bellecourt, another AIM leader, for ordering Ms. Aquash's killing. Mr. Bellecourt denied the allegations in a 2004 interview, four years before he died.

    Also in 1975, murder charges were filed against Mr. Means and Marshall, an AIM member, in the shooting death of Martin Montileaux at the Longbranch Saloon. Mr. Marshall served 24 years in prison. Mr. Means was acquitted.

    Mr. Means also briefly served as a vice-presidential candidate in 1984, joining the Larry Flynt ticket during the Hustler magazine publisher's unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination.

    But Mr. Means always considered himself a Libertarian and couldn't believe that anyone would want to identify as either a Republican or a Democrat.

    "It's just unconscionable that America has become so stupid," he said.

    His acting career began in 1992, when he portrayed Chingachgook alongside Daniel Day-Lewis''s Hawkeye in "The Last of the Mohicans." He also appeared in the 1994 film "Natural Born Killers," voiced Chief Powhatan in the 1995 animated film "Pocahontas" and guest starred in 2004 on the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

    Mr Means recounted his life in the book "Where White Men Fear to Tread." He admitted to his frailties and evils but also cited his successes.

    "I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be," he said.

    Mr. Means's death came a day after former U.S. Sen. George McGovern died in South Dakota at the age of 90. Mr McGovern had traveled to Wounded Knee with U.S. Sen. James Abourezk during the 71-day siege to try to negotiate an end.

    "I've lost two good friends in a matter of two to three days," Mr. Abourezk said Monday. "I don't pretend to understand it."
    10-22-12 03:48 PM
  10. BergerKing's Avatar
    10-23-12 12:17 AM
  11. middbrew's Avatar
    Dave May was one of the good guys of baseball. He will truly be missed.
    10-23-12 06:47 AM
  12. BergerKing's Avatar
    10-25-12 02:56 AM
  13. Laura Knotek's Avatar
    Letitia Baldrige, Etiquette Maven, Is Dead at 86

    Letitia Baldrige, the imposing author, etiquette adviser and business executive who became a household name as Jacqueline Kennedy�s White House chief of staff, died on Monday in Bethesda, Md. She was 86. .

    Her death was confirmed by Mary M. Mitchell, a longtime friend and collaborator.

    At 35 Ms. Baldrige, known as Tish, left her job as public relations director for Tiffany & Company to help out a friend, the former Jacqueline Bouvier, becoming, in essence, the social secretary of the Kennedy White House as it emerged as a center of culture, art, youthful elegance and sparkling state dinners.

    Ms. Baldrige left the White House in June 1963, less than six months before President John F. Kennedy�s assassination, to work for the Merchandise Mart, a Kennedy family business enterprise in Chicago. She went on to found her own public relations and marketing business.

    In the 1970s she established herself as an authority on contemporary etiquette, writing a syndicated newspaper column on the subject and updating �Amy Vanderbilt�s Complete Book of Etiquette� in 1978, less than four years after Ms. Vanderbilt�s death. Ms. Baldrige�s face soon appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which hailed her as the nation�s social arbiter.

    After that, her own name was enough to attract readers, and in 1985 she published �Letitia Baldrige�s Complete Guide to Executive Manners,� which dealt with behavior in the workplace and outside it. In that book, she declared it acceptable to cut salad with a knife. She recommended that whoever reaches the door first � either man or woman � open it. And she suggested infrequent shampooing when staying on a yacht, to be considerate about conserving water.

    Ms. Baldrige, who stood 6 feet 1 inch tall and became known for her elegant silver hair, long contended that the heart of all etiquette was consideration for other people, rather than a rigid set of rules.

    �There are major C.E.O.�s who do not know how to hold a knife and fork properly, but I don�t worry about that as much as the lack of kindness,� she told The New York Times in 1992. �There are two generations of people who have not learned how important it is to take time to say, �I�m sorry� and �please� and �thank you� and how people must relate to one another.�

    In addition to her all-purpose etiquette guides, she narrowed her focus in books about weddings, social lives, job success and child-rearing. Even when she went far afield of her specialty, as with �Public Affairs, Private Relations� (1991), a novel about romance and class differences in Washington, she threw in comments about manners.

    She wrote at least three books that capitalized on her brief, shining White House career: �In the Kennedy Style: Magical Evenings in the Kennedy White House� (1998, with Ren� Verdon); �A Lady, First: My Life in the Kennedy White House and the American Embassies of Paris and Rome� (2001); and �The Kennedy Mystique� (2006, with four co-authors). Those books� revelations tended toward menus, recipes and minor shockers, like Mrs. Kennedy�s habit of referring to Helen Thomas and another newswoman as �the harpies.�

    In a 1964 oral history interview for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, she remembered the Kennedys as perfectionists and the president as an amazing manager.

    �He was like a wonderful department store manager who goes through the store and knows everybody�s name and knows how all the departments work and knows how to wrap packages better than the wrappers in the wrapping department,� she said.

    Letitia Baldrige was born on Feb. 9, 1926, in Miami and grew up in Omaha, the youngest child of Howard Malcolm Baldrige, a Republican state legislator who became a United States congressman in 1930, and the former Regina Connell. (Their son Malcolm was secretary of commerce in the Reagan administration.)

    Growing up with two older brothers helped make her tough, Ms. Baldrige said. Speaking to her hometown newspaper, The Omaha World-Herald, in 1997, she recalled the time her brother Robert had swung his new baseball bat, a holiday gift, too close to her. �I was knocked unconscious for three hours,� she said. �My brothers called it the best Christmas so far.�

    Like her future employer Mrs. Kennedy, Letitia attended Miss Porter�s School in Farmington, Conn., and Vassar College. She did graduate work at the University of Geneva in Switzerland but still found that she had to learn secretarial skills to find a good State Department job.

    Beginning in the late 1940s, she worked in Paris as social secretary to David Bruce, the United States ambassador to France, and his wife, Evangeline; then in Rome as assistant to Clare Boothe Luce, at that time the ambassador to Italy. On that first job she made a major faux pas by unknowingly seating a Frenchman next to his wife�s lover at a dinner party. As a result, she often said, she learned the value of heartfelt, repeated apologies.

    When she returned to the United States, she went to work for Walter Hoving, the chairman of Tiffany & Company. Her first book was �Roman Candle� (1956), a memoir about her European adventures, which one critic, Elizabeth Janeway, accused of managing �to invest Rome with as much color and atmosphere as if it were her native Omaha.� Her last book was �Taste: Acquiring What Money Can�t Buy� (2007).

    Most of Ms. Baldrige�s career was spent as an entrepreneur, as head of her own businesses in Chicago, New York and Washington, where she had a home at the time of her death.

    Yet she continued to be identified with her White House days. �That�s all right,� she told The Times in 1998. �It was a moment in history, and to be part of it is incredible.�

    Ms. Baldrige married Robert Hollensteiner, a real estate developer, the year she left the White House. He survives her, along with their daughter, Clare Smyth; their son, Malcolm Baldrige Hollensteiner; and seven grandchildren.

    Family, Ms. Baldrige believed, was where the patterns for manners, humanity and true civilization were set, and the American family was failing to do its job.

    �We are not passing values on to our children,� she told The Toronto Star in 1999. �We are not sitting down at the dinner table talking about the tiny things that add up to caring human beings. Jackie learned from her mom, who had beautiful manners.�


    This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

    Correction: November 1, 2012



    An obituary on Wednesday about the author, etiquette adviser and business executive Letitia Baldrige misspelled the given name of the wife of David Bruce, the former United States ambassador to France, for whom Ms. Baldrige worked as social secretary. She was Evangeline Bruce, not Evengeline.


    This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

    Correction: November 2, 2012



    An obituary on Wednesday about the author, etiquette adviser and business executive Letitia Baldrige misidentified the college from which Jacqueline Kennedy, for whom Ms. Baldrige worked in the Kennedy White House, graduated. Mrs. Kennedy attended Vassar, as did Ms. Baldridge, but she graduated from George Washington University; Mrs. Kennedy did not receive a bachelor�s degree from Vassar.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/us...ies-at-86.html
    11-04-12 01:38 AM
  14. Laura Knotek's Avatar
    Milt Campbell, 1st black Olympic decathlon winner, dies - CBS News

    GAINESVILLE, Ga. Milt Campbell, who became the first African-American to win the Olympic decathlon in 1956 and went on to play pro football and become a motivational speaker, has died, his family said. He was 78.


    Linda Rusch, Campbell's partner of 13 years, said Campbelk died Friday at his home in Gainesville, about 55 miles northwest of Atlanta. She said he had been fighting prostate cancer for a decade.


    "He was extremely disciplined," Rusch told The Associated Press on Saturday. "He had huge passion. For you to win the gold you have to be so self-motivated and so self-disciplined. And you have to have a very strong mind."


    "He literally had to train himself to have this incredible mind, to be such a positive thinker," she added. "He carried that way of life throughout his whole entire being."


    A native of Plainfield, N.J., Campbell was a rising high school senior when he won the silver medal in the decathlon at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, finishing second to Bob Mathias. The Americans swept the decathlon that year. Four years later, Campbell won gold at the Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia.


    "World record holder Rafer Johnson was hampered by injury, but even in full health he probably couldn't have beaten Milt Campbell in Melbourne," according to "The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics" by David Wallechinsky.


    Campbell had hoped to qualify for the Olympic team as a hurdler, but he finished fourth during tryouts.


    "I was stunned," Campbell said in the book. "But then God seemed to reach into my heart and tell me he didn't want me to compete in the hurdles, but in the decathlon."


    The 6-foot-3, 217-pound Campbell, who attended Indiana University, was drafted in 1957 by the Cleveland Browns, where he played one season in the same backfield as Jim Brown. Campbell then played for various teams in the Canadian Football League until his football career in 1964.


    Campbell was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1999 and was honored this year by the International Swimming Hall of Fame. In 2000, the New Jersey Sportswriters Association named Campbell its New Jersey Athlete of the Century.


    In June, he was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame along with nine others, including actor Michael Douglas, author Joyce Carol Oates and the late New York Giants owner Wellington Mara.


    Linda Rusch said Campbell dreamed of being a great athlete as a young boy competing with his older brother, Tom.


    "He actually would look at the ceiling and say 'I am going to be the world's greatest athlete' every day," she said. "He needed to beat his brother."


    Rusch said Campbell became a motivational speaker, and maintained a positive outlook despite the loss of a son to cancer and as he himself fought the disease. In addition to Rusch, he is survived by three grown children.


    "Someone would say, 'How are you feeling?' He'd say, 'Great,'" Rusch said. "He was such a fighter. And with this cancer, he tried to fight it until the end. For his wife. For his family. And for his friends."


    Rusch said Campbell was a whirlwind of activity � playing tennis as well as riding bikes, horses and motorcycles � until cancer treatment began slowing him down. She said the past year was a special one, with him being honored by the New Jersey and the International Swimming halls as well as being invited to attend the Olympic trials in Oregon.


    "People called and said, 'We need you out here,'" she said. "He didn't get the recognition in the '50s. He got it all this year and he died."
    11-04-12 10:23 AM
  15. BergerKing's Avatar
    11-07-12 12:06 AM
  16. middbrew's Avatar
    11-07-12 01:35 PM
  17. Laura Knotek's Avatar
    Silicon Valley Nation: Venture capital pioneer Paul Wythes dies

    Silicon Valley Nation: Venture capital pioneer Paul Wythes dies

    Brian Fuller


    11/7/2012 10:42 AM EST

    SAN FRANCISCO--During the 1960s, Paul Wythes used to steer his big blue Pontiac around the Santa Clara Valley's orchards looking for business signs that had the word "technology" on them.

    When he saw the word, he'd stop his car, "go in and say to the lady in the lobby, 'I�m so-and-so from Sutter Hill, here�s my card, and I�d like to meet the CEO.' And eight or nine out of 10 times, the CEO would come out and he�d say, 'Hi, who are you?' And I�d tell him, and I�d ask if he had fifteen minutes ... The smart CEOs always spent the time with you because they were smart to realize that some day they may need venture capital."

    Those were the early days of venture capital in what would become the Silicon Valley, just a handful of years after the 1958 enactment of the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Act would transform company investment from the rarefied piggy banks of Rockefellers, Whitneys and other well-heeled families to groups of business people in venture capital partnerships.

    Paul Wythes, one of the valley's pioneering venture capitalists, died Oct. 30 at Stanford University Hospital and Clinics. He was 79.

    He founded Sutter Hill Ventures in 1964, and he and his colleagues were instrumental in helping build companies such as Linear Technology, Apollo Computer, Qume, LSI Logic, Telllabs and Applied Materials. In addition, Wythes helped co-found the National Venture Capital Association.

    Raised in Camden, N.J., Wythes got a mechanical engineering degree from Princeton, although he often said he should have pursued an EE. In a 2006 interview as part of an venture capital industry oral history project, Wythes said:


    "I liked electrical engineering, but I committed to mechanical and I stayed with it. That was not a disaster at all, but around here it is more electronics than it is engines."

    From engineering to business
    A summer job at the drafting board at RCA turned him off from bench engineering and got him starting to think about the business side of a technology career.

    "I looked around RCA at that group I was with, and these were people that were engineers, they were, I don�t know, 50- 55- 60-years-old, and they are still at the drafting board. And I said, I don�t� think I want to do that."

    After graduating from Princeton and getting a business degree from Stanford, Wythes worked for Honeywell and Beckman before a friend asked him to start a venture capital arm of the real estate firm Sutter Hill Corp. It was just a few years after the SBIC, which allowed the SBA to license private "Small Business Investment Companies" to help with financing and managing small entrepreneurial businesses in the United States, was enacted.

    In his oral-history interview, Wythes suggested many of the basics of investing have not changed, even though the venture capital industry has evolved over the decades.


    "In this business you�ve got to do a lot of hard work, you�ve got to have some smarts, you�ve got to be a pretty good judge of character, and you�ve got to have some luck. Those are the four things that count most in this business. Luck isn�t 80 percent, but it�s certainly 10 or 20 percent. Hard work and good judgment about people are very important."


    He also talked about the notion of deferred gratification, noting he and his wife saved for a time to buy that big blue Pontiac he drove around the valley:


    "You know, people today want to start with a BMW as their first car or a Mercedes. They don�t really have much in the way of deferred gratification. Money is there for doing a good job, and it�s a fall-out for doing a good job, I don�t view it as the ultimate goal. I would hope I would live better than I lived when I was a kid growing up, and I think that�s the dream of everybody in this country. I have done much better economically than I ever thought I would do, which is a nice outcome, but it was not my primary objective or goal when I entered the VC profession."


    Wythes, who leaves a wife, Marcia, and three children, died two days before another of his investments, the San Francisco Giants, won their second World Series championship in three years.
    11-08-12 12:08 AM
  18. middbrew's Avatar
    Larry Hagman dies at the age of 81.

    http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20121123-actor-larry-hagman-notorious-as-dallas-villain-j.r.-ewing-dies.ece
    Last edited by middbrew; 11-23-12 at 11:22 PM.
    11-23-12 10:48 PM
  19. BergerKing's Avatar
    Oh, wow. I hadn't heard that!
    11-24-12 01:11 AM
  20. middbrew's Avatar
    11-24-12 08:43 AM
  21. BergerKing's Avatar
    I'd heard he'd been shot, that's an ugly way to go out.
    11-24-12 03:55 PM
  22. Laura Knotek's Avatar
    Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar dies at 86


    Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar has died after a battle with pneumonia, according to his Facebook page.

    �Though his time on earth has ended, he is speaking with Jesus now in his heavenly home,� read a statement on the page. �The angels in heaven are rejoicing and his family is celebrating a life well lived.�

    Ziglar's executive assistant Laurie Magers says Ziglar died Wednesday at a hospital in the Dallas suburb of Plano.

    Ziglar�s speaking career had lasted more than 50 years, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, before he retired in 2010.

    He was known for corporate training and motivational speeches that aimed to improve people's personal lives and careers. His company includes more than a dozen other speakers who advocate "The Ziglar Way."

    Ziglar has written more than 29 sales and motivational books, including "See You at the Top" and "Over the Top," and has made appearances with U.S. presidents and world leaders, according to his website.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.
    Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar dies at 86 | Fox News
    11-28-12 12:27 PM
  23. BergerKing's Avatar
    11-28-12 06:53 PM
  24. Laura Knotek's Avatar
    Police: Chiefs player kills girlfriend, takes own life at Arrowhead Stadium
    Linebacker Jovan Belcher identified as shooter, sources say




    KANSAS CITY, Mo. —

    A Kansas City Chiefs football player shot his girlfriend before shooting and killing himself at Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday morning, police said.


    KMBC 9 News sources identified the player as linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25.

    The incident began when a woman was shot several times in the 5400 block of Crysler Avenue about 8 a.m. Saturday, according to a woman who identified herself as the victim's mother. The woman said the shooter was her daughter's boyfriend, a Chiefs football player.

    The woman died from her injuries, police said.

    Police said their involvement began when they received a call about a man armed with a gun in the parking lot of Arrowhead Stadium. When officers arrived at the stadium they found a man holding a pistol to his head and talking with coaches, police said.

    Investigators said the man shot himself.

    Arrowhead Stadium was placed on lock down after the shooting.

    The Chiefs released a statement about the shooting a short time later:

    “We can confirm that there was an incident at Arrowhead earlier this morning. We are cooperating with authorities in their investigation,” it said.
    Police: Chiefs player kills girlfriend, takes own life at Arrowhead Stadium | Local News - KMBC Home
    12-01-12 11:05 AM
  25. middbrew's Avatar
    I was just about to post that Lak. Crazy situation.
    12-02-12 11:31 AM
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