Christopher Hitchens, RIP

Ross Douthat on "The Believer's Atheist":

But in the world of journalism, among his peers and competitors and sparring partners, it was nearly impossible to find a religious person who didn’t have a soft spot for a man who famously accused faith of poisoning absolutely everything.

Intellectually minded Christians, in particular, had a habit of talking about Hitchens as though he were one of them already — a convert in the making, whose furious broadsides against God were just the prelude to an inevitable reconciliation. (Or as a fellow Catholic once murmured to me: “He just protests a bit too much, don’t you think?”) This is not a sentiment that was often expressed about Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any other member of the New Atheist tribe. But where Hitchens was concerned, no insult he hurled or blasphemy he uttered could shake the almost-filial connection that many Christians felt for him.

Some of this reflected his immense personal charm, his willingness to debate with Baptists and drink with Catholics and be comradely to anyone who took ideas seriously. But there was something deeper at work as well. American Christian intellectual life is sustained today, to a large extent, by the work of writers very much like Hitchens — by essayists and journalists and novelists and poets, from G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis to W. H. Auden and Evelyn Waugh, who shared his English roots, his gift for argument and his abiding humanism.

Recognizing this affinity, many Christian readers felt that in Hitchens’s case there had somehow been a terrible mix-up, and that a writer who loved the King James Bible and “Brideshead Revisited” surely belonged with them, rather than with the bloodless prophets of a world lit only by Science.

In this they were mistaken, but not entirely so. At the very least, Hitchens’s antireligious writings carried a whiff of something absent in many of atheism’s less talented apostles — a hint that he was not so much a disbeliever as a rebel, and that his atheism was mostly a political romantic’s attempt to pick a fight with the biggest Tyrant he could find.

This air of rebellion did not make him a believer, but it lent his blasphemies an air of danger and intrigue, as though he were an agent of the Free French distributing literature deep in Vichy. Certainly he always seemed well aware of the extent to which his writings traded on the unusual frisson of saying “No!” to a supposedly nonexistent being.
New York Times | December 17, 2011

And here is Ian McEwan: Christopher Hitchens, Consummate Writer, Brilliant Friend

Steve Jobs, RIP

He brought the magic.

Harriet Ball: RIP

The EdWeek story quotes from her self-published "Fearless Math" manual. In it, she asserted that most students, particularly those at risk, "learn most naturally and best through play, songs, patterns, movement, imitation, imagination, and rhythm." Her method incorporated all those elements, the story explains. Ball insisted there's nothing wrong with drills—as long as they're presented in a fun and engaging manner. "Drill won't kill," she liked to say. "Boredom is the killer."

Teacher Who Inspired KIPP Schools Dies in Houston

Martin Gardner, RIP

from City Journal:

The first time I encountered a column in Scientific American entitled “Mathematical Games,” I thought it was a contradiction in terms. Along with most English majors, I equated math with drudgery, not diversion. Then I read the piece. Its author, Martin Gardner, showed me how wrong I was. Over the years, he also showed me (and a few million others) how to understand topics that ranged from the left-handedness of molecules to the devious origins of Scientology to the secrets of sleight-of-hand artists to the in-jokes of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So it came as no surprise that when Gardner died last week at 95, he was mourned not only by mathematicians and physicists but by magicians, literary scholars, theologians, crossword-puzzle fans, writers, and editors. Indeed, the author of some 80 books was a classic example of the polymath (according to Webster’s: “From the Greek polymathēs, ‘having learned much’; a person, with superior intelligence, whose expertise spans a significant number of subject areas”).
The son of an Oklahoma-based oil prospector, Gardner gave no hint of what was to come when he attended local schools in Tulsa. He went on to the University of Chicago, majoring in philosophy and attending a wide variety of courses—but not a single one in math. “Beyond calculus,” he was to confess, “I am lost. The only way I could comprehend higher mathematics was to make a game of it.” Gamesmanship became an integral part of his long life—and perhaps the most important part.
“Sometimes I think it would be nice to grow up,” he liked to say well into his 90s. “Other times I think, ‘Why bother?’”

The Mathemagician

Martin Gardner, R.I.P.

Stefan Kanfer
City Journal
27 May 2010

Jett Travolta, RIP

I love this picture.

The story is here.

Tim Russert, RIP

We were all pretty stunned this afternoon when news of Tim Russert's death arrived.

Reading some of the coverage I discovered numerous references to Russert's "Jesuit education"

As host of Meet the Press, Russert established himself as the consummate Washington insider, but he drew much of his knowledge and authority from his roots outside the Beltway. He was born in 1950 in Buffalo, N.Y., and his Rust Belt, Catholic roots constantly and conspicuously informed his work. He wrote memorably about his Buffalo upbringing and his father's influence on him in his memoir Big Russ and Me. As one of his NBC colleagues, Lisa Myers, once said of him, "Buffalo is a critical secret to understanding him," and he himself cited his Jesuit education as critically formative.

The Jesuits are inextricably linked to questioning, and so was Russert.

Appreciation: Tim Russert, 1950-2008

Russert grew up in Buffalo, New York, where his father worked as a truck driver and sanitation worker. He said he was the first person in his family to have a chance to attend college. He went to a small Jesuit university, John Carroll, in suburban Cleveland.

"For me my life is now complete. I have a Jesuit education and a Notre Dame diploma," he said near the end of his talk, referring to the honorary doctor of laws he had received earlier in the ceremony.

Russert feels right at home at Commencement
Notre Dame, 2002

It was a Jesuit homecoming for "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert at Boston College's 128th Commencement Exercises on May 24.

The Jesuit-educated NBC newsman, a BC parent-to-be who closed his address to some 3,000 graduates by donning a Maroon and Gold ball cap and exclaiming "Go Eagles!" had the crowd in Conte Forum on its feet with a speech that mixed humorous anecdotes from sports and politics with a call to service delivered from the heart of Catholic social teaching.

"Please do this world one small favor - remember the people struggling alongside you and below you," Russert urged the Class of 2004 at ceremonies moved indoors by rain.

"No matter what profession you choose, you must try, even in the smallest ways, to improve the quality of life of children in this country," Russert said.

"The best commencement speech I ever heard was all of 16 words: 'No exercise is better for the human heart than reaching down to lift up another person.'"

Russert, a product of Jesuit schooling at Canisius High School in Buffalo and John Carroll University in Cleveland, and whose son Luke will be a BC freshman this fall, was presented with an honorary Doctorate of Laws.

[snip]

Russert's address was an ode to blue-collar democratic values and Jesuit education.

The author of the best-selling book Big Russ & Me recalled the "true lessons of life" he had learned from the "quiet eloquence" and decency of his World War II veteran father, a truck driver and sanitation man who worked two jobs for 30 years and "never complained."

Russert became the first in his family to go to college when he went to John Carroll, where, he said, he received a "superb education.

"And so, too, with you," he said. "You chose a school that was different and you made the choice deliberately...

"You've been given an education that says it's not enough to have a skill. Not enough to have read all the books or know all the facts. Values really do matter.

"Boston College...a Catholic university founded by the Jesuits: Its only justification for existing is because it has a special mission - training young men and women to help shape and influence the moral tone and fiber of our nation and our society. And that means now you have a special obligation and responsibility...

"You have something others would give almost anything for! You believe in your God, in your country, in your family, in your school, in yourself, in your values...

"The values you have been taught, the struggles you have survived and the diploma you are about to receive, have prepared you to compete with anybody, anywhere.

"People with backgrounds like yours and mine can and have made a difference.

"In Poland, it was a young electrician named Lech Walesa, the son of a carpenter, who transformed a nation from communism to democracy.

"In South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who became President Nelson Mandela, a brave black man who worked his way through law school as a police office, spent 28 years in prison to make one central point - we indeed are all created equal.

"And on Sept. 11, at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in the fields of Pennsylvania, it was our brother and sister police, fire and rescue workers who properly redefined modern-day heroism.

"All these men and women have one thing in common with you: Like the past, the future leaders of this country and this world will be born not to the blood of kings and queens, but to the blood of immigrants and pioneers."

Russert, speaking two weeks before the 60th anniversary of D-Day, urged graduates to "remember it is your grandparents, and your parents, who defended this country, who built this country, who brought you into this world and a chance to live the American dream.

"Will your generation do as much for your children?" he asked. "You know you must. Every generation is tested. Every generation is given the opportunity to be the 'Greatest Generation.'"

He hailed the "generous spirit of service" shown by the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and the Boston College Appalachia Volunteers.

And he cited BC tutors at the West End House, in Allston, "where the community room is now called the Boston College Room [see page 6], and where a young nine-year-old girl named Adrienne Andry was mentored for 16 years by BC students. She is now attending BC herself, saying simply, 'I feel like I want to give back because I've been helped so much by BC students.'

[snip]

Russert left the crowd laughing with anecdotes from the worlds of sports, journalism and politics.

"In preparing for today, I had thought about presenting a scholarly treatise on the Bush-Kerry presidential race, but I thought better of it," he said. "I guess I'm like that noted philosopher, Yogi Berra: I get it eventually. After Yogi had flunked [an] exam, his teacher came down the aisle, shook him and said, 'You don't know anything.' Yogi looked up and said, 'I don't even suspect anything.'"

Russert Talk Stresses Values, Jesuit Education

Benazir Bhutto, rip

Here's Hitchens:

The sternest critic of Benazir Bhutto would not have been able to deny that she possessed an extraordinary degree of physical courage.