Michael Jackson dies at 50

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/25/jackson/index.html

(CNN) -- Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums -- including "Off the Wall," "Thriller" and "Bad" -- and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most popular artists of all time, died Thursday, CNN has confirmed.

He was 50.

He collapsed at his residence in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, California, about noon Pacific time, suffering cardiac arrest, according to brother Randy Jackson. He died at UCLA Medical Center.

Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said an autopsy would probably be done on the singer Friday, with results expected that afternoon.

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Wow. Was driving along the KPE when I heard the news. I remember back in 1982, Sis and I pestered Dad to buy what was our first ever album - Thriller. We played the cassette on the player and had much fun memorising the lyrics.





Thanks, MJ, for the memories. May you rest in peace.



In related news, ex-Angel Farrah Fawcett died today also, aged 62. Fawcett, who checked into a hospital in early April, had been battling anal cancer on and off for three years.



Photo credits here and here.

Post Date: 29 Jun 09

Pop singer England Dan dies of cancer at 61

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29895228/

Seals, John Ford Coley topped charts with hits such as ‘Nights Are Forever’

updated 11:36 a.m. ET March 26, 2009

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Dan Seals, who was England Dan in the pop duo England Dan and John Ford Coley and later had a successful country career, has died of complications from cancer. He was 61.

Longtime manager Tony Gottlieb said Seals, diagnosed with lymphoma two years ago, died Wednesday night at his daughter’s home in Nashville.

With England Dan and John Ford Coley, Seals had hits including “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” and “Nights Are Forever,” both in 1976. His country hits in the ’80s and ’90s included “Bop,” “You Still Move Me,” “Love on Arrival,” and a duet with Marie Osmond, “Meet Me in Montana.”



“I’ve loved to play and sing from the moment I knew what it was,” he told The Associated Press in 1992.

Seals, who is survived by his wife and four children, was in hospice care when he died.

“He was very positive,” said Gottlieb, Seals’ manager for about 30 years. “He participated in several clinical trials to assist with research on this type of lymphoma.”

Gottlieb said a major misconception about Seals is that he was a pop singer who came to country music. In reality, he said, Seals grew up singing country music and crossed into pop.

“He was raised in a very rural part of West Texas. His father was an amateur country singer, and he used to play with his dad. They were Hank Williams, Grand Ole Opry people. He was much more of a country singer than a pop singer.”

Seals’ older brother, Jimmy, was the Seals in Seals & Crofts, who recorded the hits “Summer Breeze” and “Diamond Girl” in the 1970s.

Until Dan Seals got sick, the brothers were working as a duo, Seals & Seals. They performed some shows and were recording an album but never finished it. The songs they did complete, about eight in all, will be released.

“In the last two years he only did like three shows,” Gottlieb said. “He just didn’t have the energy.”

Seals, whose father was a pipefitter, was born in McCamey, Texas, and grew up in Iraan, Texas, and Dallas.

His well-crafted songs tended to be insightful and graphic with lofty themes. In 1989, his music video for the song “Rage On” addressed a topic rare in country music: an interracial relationship. It showed angry youths smashing the windows of the car of a young man dating a girl of a different race. One boy hurled a beer bottle at the girl’s father. The song itself was about small town values.

“When we record songs, we take chances,” Seals said at the time. “We feel we are on the cutting edge of what we can do.”

I loved the song “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” and had blogged about it. Thanks for the music, Dan, and may you rest in peace.



Photo credit: here and here.

Post Date: 30 Mar 09

Thanks and farewell, Dr Ong

Dr Ong Chit Chung passed away peacefully of heart attack on Monday, 14 July 2008. Paid my last respects this afternoon at his Princess Of Wales Rd home.

It was an ang-mo style wake, and I wasn't too sure what I had to do, or not to do. But in the end, it went alright.

I had the privilege of serving Dr Ong as a VIP customer in my first job, attending to his telecommunications needs. Unassuming and friendly, he allayed all my early fears of being a difficult VIP customer. He even went to the extend of writing a complimentary letter and sending it to the CEO. It is now an important keepsake of mine.

I remember there was one I failed him, and he got really angry with me. The silly me failed to realise that I did not activate an important service for him, inconveniencing him on his overseas trip. I still blame myself for that foul-up.

I had the audacity of asking him for help in 1999 when I was going to register my marriage. Fort Canning Country Club was only a walking distance from the ROM, and it was a godsent that he was Chairman. When I brought the matter up to him in one of my visits to his office, he very gladly and quickly agreed. "Of course it can be done! We have very good food here," he enthused, and started recommending a list of finger food. He even assigned his own secretary to see to the smooth running of the event. I was very touched, and eternally grateful.

Considering he was managing so many companies while being an MP, I once asked him how he was able to juggle the heavy workload. "Have capable people that you trust to run the show," was his response.

Rest in peace, Dr Ong. And many thanks for touching my life.



Photo credit here.

Post Date: 21 Jul 08

Author Arthur C. Clarke dies

CNN report here.

Author Arthur C. Clarke, whose science fiction and non-fiction works ranged from the script for "2001: A Space Odyssey" to an early proposal for communications satellites, has died at age 90, associates have said.

Clarke had been wheelchair-bound for several years with complications stemming from a youthful bout with polio and had suffered from back trouble recently, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

He died early Wednesday -- Tuesday afternoon ET -- at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, Chase said.

He had been taken to hospital in what we had hoped was one of the slings and arrows of being 90, but in this case it was his final visit," he said.

In a videotaped 90th birthday message to fans, Clarke said he still hoped to see some sign of intelligent life beyond Earth, more work on alternatives to fossil fuels -- and "closer to home," an end to the 25-year civil war in Sri Lanka between the government and ethnic Tamil separatists.

"I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible," he said. "But I'm aware that peace cannot just be wished -- it requires a great deal of hard work, courage and persistence."

Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick shared an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay for "2001." The film grew out of Clarke's 1951 short story, "The Sentinel," about an alien transmitter left on the moon that ceases broadcasting when humans arrive.

As a Royal Air Force officer during World War II, Clarke took part in the early development of radar. In a paper written for the radio journal "Wireless World" in 1945, he suggested that artificial satellites hovering in a fixed spot above Earth could be used to relay telecommunications signals across the globe.

He is widely credited with introducing the idea of the communications satellite, the first of which were launched in the early 1960s. But he never patented the idea, prompting a 1965 essay that he subtitled, "How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time."

His best-known works, such as "2001" or the 1953 novel "Childhood's End," combined the hard science he learned studying physics and mathematics with insights into how future discoveries would change humanity.

David Eicher, editor of Astronomy magazine, told CNN that Clarke's writings were influential in shaping public interest in space exploration during the 1950s and '60s.

"He was very interested in technology and also in humanity's history and what lay out in the cosmos," Eicher said. His works combined those "big-picture" themes with "compelling stories that were more interesting and more complex than other science fiction writers were doing," he said.

Tedson Meyers, the chairman of the Clarke Foundation, said the organization is now dedicated to reproducing the combination of imagination and knowledge that he credited the author with inspiring.

"The question for us is, how does human imagination bring about such talent on both sides of the brain?" he asked. "How do you find the next Arthur Clarke?"

Clarke was knighted in 1998. He wrote dozens of novels and collections of short stories and more than 30 nonfiction works during his career, and served as a television commentator during several of the Apollo moon missions.

Though humans have not returned to the moon since 1972, Clarke said he was confident that a "Golden Age" of space travel was just beginning.

"After half a century of government-sponsored efforts, we are now witnessing the emergence of commercial space flight," he said in his December birthday message.

"Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will travel to Earth orbit -- and then, to the moon and beyond. Space travel and space tourism will one day become almost as commonplace as flying to exotic destinations on our own planet."

Watch the video below:



Bye bye, Sir Arthur. I knew your greatness, and bought books hoping to catch a glimpse of that greatness. But alas, mediocrity and sloth impedes my link to you ...



Photo credit here.

Post Date: 7 Apr 08

Everest legend Edmund Hillary dies

CNN report here.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest to win renown as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, has died, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Friday. He was 88.

...

The accomplishment as part of a British climbing expedition even added luster to the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II four days later, and she knighted Hillary as one of her first act.

But he was more proud of his decades-long campaign to set up schools and health clinics in Nepal, the homeland of Tenzing Norgay, the mountain guide with whom he stood arm in arm on the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953.

He wrote of the pair's final steps to the top of the world: "Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest.

"Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation -- these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed," Hillary noted.

"But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn't believe it.

He said: "I removed my oxygen mask to take some pictures. It wasn't enough just to get to the top. We had to get back with the evidence. Fifteen minutes later we began the descent."

Bye bye, Sir Edmund. Thank you for the adventure, and making the day a significant one.



Photo credit here.

Post Date: 11 Jan 08 @ IMM McD

Bye bye, Dan

2 days ago, CNN reported that Dan Fogelberg had passed away.

"Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits "Leader of the Band" and "Same Old Lang Syne" helped define the soft-rock era, died Sunday at his home in Maine after battling prostate cancer. He was 56."

I have been afraid for many years, fearing that this day might come. But death comes to everyone, and dear old Dan is no exception.

Thank you for the wonderful music and your wonderful voice. Thank you for introducing to me Leader of the Band and Longer, 2 songs that touch my heart whenever I listen to them. Every single time.

Rest in peace, Dan, and do remember to watch over us from Heaven.



Picture credit here.

Post Date: 18 Dec 07

Bye, Mate

I've not seen anyone so enthusiastic and dramatic before. He actually got me interested in crocodiles.

I've always thought that if any mishaps were to happen, a crocodile would be involved. I was wrong. It was a stingray instead.

May you rest in peace, mate.