Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the stubborn dissident who outlasted the Soviet Union, has died at age 89.His 1962 book A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, about a Soviet prison camp inmate, made him both famous and a favorite target of government authorities. (A mathematician and professor, he had already spent a decade in prison camps and then in exile in Kazakhstan.)
Brrrother. The tabloids are doing their best to reopen the Steve Fossett case, suddenly yakking about how Fossett may have faked his own death.
‘Gapper’ is our term for a profile we probably ought to have had long ago.
Can’t get enough of this charming video of the singer Feist on the new season of Sesame Street:If the tune sounds familiar, you may recognize it from the popular iPod Nano “a little video for everyone” commercial…
Google celebrates Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter today with a doodle on their home page.Once again, poor Mr. McGregor can only wave his rake and rage on while a cuddly rabbit steals his livelihood and gets all the good press. It’s sad.
The terrific writer Joseph Mitchell was born 100 years ago today.Mitchell wrote with a “fondness for the eccentricities of New York life,” as The Associated Press put it in their 1996 obituary. His stories, mostly published in The New Yorker, are full of saloonkeepers, Bowery bums, oystermen and oysters, beefsteak cooks, crazy storytellers, and the uncream of Manhattan.
The Washington Post has concluded its 12-part series on the death of Chandra Levy and has named a suspect: a Salvadoran immigrant named Ingmar Guandique.
Randy Pausch, the professor whose frank and uplifting “Last Lecture” made him an unexpected public hero, has died at age 47.Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006 and told he had 3-6 months to live. Soon after, he gave a funny, heartfelt last lecture to students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, on the topic of achieving childhood dreams.
We were poking fun at celebrity names the other day. But it turns out the celebs have got nothing on New Zealanders.
We’ve just posted new profiles of two Olympic swimmers: Natalie Coughlin and Dara Torres.Couglin was the hit of the 2004 Athens Olympics, where she won five medals (two gold, two silver, one bronze). Torres won five medals at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 (two gold and three bronze).Torres is a wee bit more famous right now because she’s 41, the mother of a two-year-old, and has been semi-retired since her 2000 Sydney heroics. She’s the oldest swimmer ever to qualify for the Olympics.