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from the The-Force-will-be-with-you,-always. dept.
Submitted via IRC for cmn32480
Carrie Fisher, the actress best known as Star Wars' Princess Leia Organa, has died after suffering a heart attack. She was 60.
Family spokesman Simon Halls released a statement to PEOPLE on behalf of Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd:
"It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning," reads the statement.
"She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly," says Lourd. "Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers."
Source: http://people.com/movies/carrie-fisher-dies/
[UPDATE:]
Submitted via IRC for martyb
NPR reports: Actress Debbie Reynolds Dies A Day After Daughter Carrie Fisher's Death.
That means that Billie Lourd, who had a minor role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and was slated for a part in the sequel, Star Wars: Episode VIII, lost both her mother and her grandmother in the same week.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by jelizondo on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:09PM
While it is sad that Carrie Fisher has passed away and in no way demeaning her success, I find it troubling that not one pip about Vera Rubin’s [theverge.com] death appeared in this site, supposedly peopled by folks who would know who she was.
It is no wonder Trump won when otherwise intelligent people care more about an actress than a scientist.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:30PM
Blow it out your butt :)
What I find troubling is that you went through all that trouble to post a link, but couldn't submit a story. How were we supposed to know? We rely on users submitting stories of interest here. You could take that story, talk about her accomplishments, and then wish her well. That "pip" you're searching for can come from you.... "Jelizondo writes:"
Sounds like a good story, so perhaps you should submit it here? I checked the submission queue and she is nowhere to be found. Write something up to explain her accomplishments to the non-astrophysicists here, and contribute something.
I enjoyed the article, and I appreciated you bringing it here. It would be even better as not something off-topic in a thread honoring someone that has had a large impact on the world of sci-fi.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @09:08PM
It was the top fucking story on more relevant sites like Voat and Drudge
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday December 27 2016, @10:10PM
Annnnnnnnnnnndddddddddd? Did somebody submit the stories there, or did they have paid staff that does it all?
The way it works around here is that users submit stories, and it's not just staff. They're around for other things, and we have editors to help with what you submit. So now we have two people who can't figure out how to contribute and post a story, but can find the time to bitch and denigrate the site for what?
It's kind of pathetic that you get so bent out of shape, when at towards the upper right of your screen it says how many articles there are, the left has the submit story button, AND you have every ability to check the submissions and pending queue.
I'm giving jelizondo another hour or so, then I AM submitting the story. Then we will have it HERE as well. Of course, I'm not an astrophysicist, so I'm not the best candidate for the submission. Immerman or Tathra could probably say something nice and meaningful (they're two people that seem quite knowledgeable).
If you care so much, you can do the exact same thing and honor her here..... but will you spend yet even more effort flaming us, when instead you can write about how you admired her and the contributions to science she gave us?
You can click the submit button. It won't hurt. Pwomise.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:55PM
It is no wonder Trump won when otherwise intelligent people care more about an actress than a scientist.
You must be new here.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday December 27 2016, @09:17PM
Rubin was a medium size player, Fischer was a top billing actress, so she's gonna win.
Rubin pretty much is famous for two things. First is around the turn of the last century there is no ether confuses many people who aren't paying attention into thinking "we" have no net velocity, but she did a lot of work with cosmic background redshift or maybe it was galactic redshift but whatever the details don't matter. The other thing she's famous for is again more redshift doppler stuff hmm galaxies seem to be rotating so fast that they should fly apart unless they have shittons of dark matter or dark energy or something not glowing like a star creating lots of extra gravity to hold them together. Its interesting important stuff but someone would have figured it out sooner or later.
Now I'll throw out two possibly controversial analogies. Lets say Steve Jobs hung on alive till now and Widlar never turned into a drunk causing him to die extremely young. Now its true that Widlar ruled 60's era linear integrated circuits with his crazy yet brilliant current mirrors and band gap references and larger designs like some kick ass opamps for their day and a power supply chip that I actually used just 20 years ago and is still being made AFAIK. Bandgap references are stereotypical EE product where you take a pile of ridiculously non-linear components and wiring them up just so in opposition to each other, you get something shockingly linear or in the case of a bandgap reference, its a constant voltage regardless of, well, most anything, temp, power supply, etc. I chose Widlar because he's famous for two things, his mirror topology (there are others) and his voltage reference (again there are other, newer, better ones) which is similar to Rubin being mostly famous for two things.
Anyway in my analogy I guarantee if Jobs died yet again or whatever today and so did Widlar that Jobs will get all the coverage. Its just kinda how it is.
Something fascinating about Jobs, Fischer, Widlar all those folks had trouble with chemical abuse and died pretty damn young. So this is an interesting time to be alive in early Gen-X or whatever because healthy clean living pre-war hero's of the old days are finally getting around to dying while boomers who took very poor care of themselves are dying at the same time as ancient pre-WWII healthy people. Living a chemically enhanced lifestyle seems to cost between one and two generations of life. I'm too lazy to look it up but if Rubin had been an alkie like Widlar and died at 30 like Widlar I donno if she would have lived long enough (sober enough?) to have done anything famous.
Theres also an aspect of political correctness, Rubin was all feminist rah rah in her later years and if she were, say, a right wing man, I guarantee for political reasons we'd not be hearing about her at all. But because she was a woman in a man's field theres lots of popular science coverage implying she invented the universe, the galaxy, math, BS like that. Don't get me wrong, she was a cool minor player in the field. But just a minor player. Only getting the extra coverage in the news any other minor player would never get, because of her genitals.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday December 28 2016, @10:03PM
Props for mentioning Widlar. He along with Pease and Williams are the unsung heroes of the analog world.
But it strikes me as odd that you didn't mention Dennis Ritchie. Ritchie passed away Oct 11th, 2011. less than a week after Steve Jobs who passed away Oct 5th. He didn't get the same mention that Jobs did. Oddly enough, Jim Williams and Bob Pease passed away within a week of each other that same year in June. Pease on the 18th and Williams on the 12th. 2011 was a very sad year for the tech world.
I don't care to follow celebrities or anything about them. But those guys, with the exception of Jobs (no disrespect, I just don't care for him) were my celebrities.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday January 02 2017, @01:16PM
Dennis Ritchie
I wanted to find a guy who did two separate things of similar level that the press is confusing into one thing. So the Widlar-ian chimera of the current band mirror gap reference could be a thing in journalist land...
were my celebrities.
As a little proto-engineer I used to read Pease's column in that tech industry magazine who's name I long forgot. A collection of those would be the world's weirdest EE textbook. They used to be online at Nat Semi's website, er I think they were.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday January 02 2017, @03:28PM
Electronic Design. I used to get it way back and enjoyed his columns. Called Pease Porridge and always included his tag line: "Whats all this X stuff anyhow?"
An appropriate column: http://electronicdesign.com/analog/what-s-all-widlar-stuff-anyhow [electronicdesign.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @09:27PM
At least link to WaPo [washingtonpost.com] who give more attention to the important details alongside the gender politics.
Unlike The Verge, we are more interested in her contributions to science, rather than the fact she had a vagina.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Tuesday December 27 2016, @09:41PM
Keep in mind that during the holiday week, we are trying to schedule out multiple days in advance to afford the editors time off and the ability to enjoy their families.
As of this comment, we are currently scheduling stories for December 30th (UTC). A story on Vera Rubin is slated to go out on December 30 at 1:11am UTC.
If you take a look into the story and submission queues [soylentnews.org], you will see a larger number from Arthur T. Knackerbracket. Arthur is the story scraping RSS bot that we use when the queue gets empty.
Please feel free to toss something in, it'd be a nice help to the editors. We'll even credit you as a first time submitter, if you'd like.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:41AM
You twat! Carrie Fisher was an actress, a writer and a witty, intelligent woman who publicly battled bi-polar disorder and addiction. Despite all her problems, she was forthright, unapologetic and held in the highest regard by the public and (seemingly) everyone that knew her. The circumstances of her passing were both unexpected and sad. She was and remains a cultural icon and this is the of many first celebrity deaths this year that brought tears to my eyes.
Carrie Fisher was a public personality, we grew up with her and most of us liked her. Vera Rubin??? I have no idea who the person behind that name actually is.