The holding company behind struggling department store chain Sears is about to file for bankruptcy, reports The Daily Beast. Read the rest

Burt Reynolds, the onetime jock from Florida who became an American screen icon, has died. Read the rest

NBC cutting abruptly from a solemn John McCain tribute to masturbating dolphin-masked comedians will go down in the annals of mind-bendingly inappropriate segues. But my favorite is this from DJ and actor Casey Kasem, who loses his temper at "coming out of a fucking uptempo record every time I do a God-damned death dedication."

[h/t GhastlyGil] Read the rest

Charted by /u/draypresct at Reddit, this shows the death rates due to unintentional injuries by age for men and women.

Data from the CDC National Vital Statistics System. Cause of death methodology and other data descriptions here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mortality/lcwk1_hr.htm

edit: I used Microsoft Excel to make the graph. The data I used were the tables that included all races and ethnicities.

I'm surprised that teenage boys appear to suffer less accidents than adult men of any subsequent age. Read the rest

Joseph Jackson, father of late pop superstar Michael Jackson, is reported to have died early Wednesday. He was 89. Read the rest

Anthony Bourdain died today. He was 61.

You may have seen his CNN program, or read a book, but you don't know all the world lost until you first read the New Yorker essay that set his career as a journalist, educator, and broadcast star into motion. Read the rest

R. Lee Ermey, the retired U.S. Marine whose portrayal of shrieking, sadistic Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket became the gold standard for movie drill instructors, is dead at 74. The magic show is yet to be scheduled.

The Kanas native was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his memorable performance in “Full Metal Jacket,” immortalizing lines like “What is your major malfunction?” He also voiced the little green army man Sarge in the “Toy Story” films and played a helicopter pilot in “Apocalypse Now,” among many other roles.

A number of fellas have played Bozo the Clown over the years. Frank Avruch was the best. The world became a little bit less joyful earlier this week in the wake of his death at the age of 89.

Avruch played Bozo on TV during the height of the clown's popularity in the 1950s through to the 1970s. When not in front of the camera, Avruch wore the clown's smiling face and big, floppy shoes as a UNICEF Ambassador, bringing happiness to kids around the world. In 2007, his efforts for UNICEF were recognized by the United Nations.

According to The Boston Globe, Avruch is survived by his with, two sons and a whack of grandchildren. Read the rest

Ursula K. Le Guin died today at 88. The author of the Earthsea novels, The Left Hand of Darkness and many others, she was and remains among the brightest stars in the sky of fantasy literature.

Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88. Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause but said she had been in poor health for several months.

Ms. Le Guin embraced the standard themes of her chosen genres: sorcery and dragons, spaceships and planetary conflict. But even when her protagonists are male, they avoid the macho posturing of so many science fiction and fantasy heroes. The conflicts they face are typically rooted in a clash of cultures and resolved more by conciliation and self-sacrifice than by swordplay or space battles.

Photo: Oregon State University / Marian Wood Kolich (CC) Read the rest

Sad news from London, where Cranberries' lead singer Dolores O'Riordan died suddently today. The band's official page announced her death at about 1 p.m. EST, with no further details and a statement requesting privacy for her family.

My first time hearing Dolores O'Riordan's voice was unforgettable. It threw into question what a voice could sound like in that context of Rock. I'd never heard somebody use their instrument in that way. Shocked and saddened to hear of her passing, thoughts are with her family.

— Hozier (@Hozier) January 15, 2018

We are crushed to hear the news about the passing of Dolores O’Riordan. Our thoughts go out to her family at this terrible time. https://t.co/6p20QD2Ii5 pic.twitter.com/vXscj0VGHS

— Duran Duran (@duranduran) January 15, 2018

Dolores O’Riordan has had such a huge impact on me in so many ways. Watching the light and shade in her performances, her voice, her attitude. She’s the reason so many young girls saw a place for themselves in rock music. So, so sad. #DoloresORiordan

— MayKay (@MayKapes) January 15, 2018

I was living in America in the band’s heyday, they were massive there. When I got my first CD player the only CD I had was theirs and my friends listened to it obsessively. Their impact internationally was huge.

— Louise McSharry (@louisemcsharry) January 15, 2018

Read the rest

Erica Garner, the daughter of police brutality victim Eric Garner, died early Saturday aged 27. Inspired to activism by her father's killing, she suffered a massive heart attack on Christmas Eve and fell into a coma.

ABC News:

Garner's official Twitter account, run by her family and friends since she became ill, asked that she be remembered as a mother, daughter, sister and aunt with a heart "bigger than the world."

Eric Garner was choked to death by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who had attempted an illegal chokehold while arresting Garner for selling untaxed cigarettes. Pantaleo was not charged with a crime despite the death being ruled a homicide, and video of the attack being recorded by a bystander. The NYPD settled the family's lawsuit for $5.9m to avoid a civil trial.

Activist Erica Garner has passed away, according to tweets from her official account. She was an activist against police brutality, and the eldest daughter of Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after being placed in a police chokehold.

— NPR (@NPR) December 30, 2017

Our dear sister Erica Garner has just passed away.

When you were her friend, you her friend through all adversity. She was a fierce protector of her friends and family. A truth teller. As genuine and authentic of a soul you’ll ever encounter.

We’re less because of this loss.

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) December 30, 2017

Erica Garner was an exceptional young woman. She was a loving daughter, sister, mother, friend. Jane and I send our deepest condolences to the entire Garner family and to all those she has impacted.

A headline meaningful only to Britons of a certain age, and for all others a momentary visit to the strange alternative reality of UK childrens' light entertainment in the 1970s and 1980s. Keith Chegwin is dead at 60.

Chegwin was known for hosting programmes including children's game show Cheggers Plays Pop and Swap Shop. ...

He went on to make infamous Channel 5 nudist gameshow Naked Jungle, appearing naked except for a hat, and also starred as himself in Ricky Gervais show Extras....

The larger-than-life character, described by his family as "a loving husband, father, son, brother, uncle and friend" leaves two children and his wife Maria. He had been cared for at a hospice in recent weeks.

Photo: BBC

Here is footage from the nude game show.

Read the rest

Harry Dean Stanton, who starred in Repo Man, Twin Peaks, Alien and many other movies and TV shows, is dead at 91.

Stanton also led his own band, first known as Harry Dean Stanton and the Repo Men and later simply as the Harry Dean Stanton Band, and would play pickup gigs in L.A. area clubs. Bob Dylan, with whom he worked on Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 film “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” was a friend. Another friend was Hunter S. Thompson, and Stanton sang at his funeral.

The character actor was the subject of two documentaries: 2011’s “Harry Dean Stanton: Crossing Mulholland” and Sophie Huber’s 2013 “Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction,” which featured interviews with Wenders, Shepard, Kris Kristofferson, and Lynch.

Rolling Stone reports that country legend Glen Campbell is dead at 81.

Campbell was a rare breed in the music business, with various careers as a top-level studio guitarist, chart-topping singer and hit television host. His late-career battle with Alzheimer's - he allowed a documentary crew to film on his final tour for the 2014 award-winning I'll Be Me - made him a public face for the disease, a role President Bill Clinton suggested would one day be remembered even more than his music.

Read the rest

The Washington Post's Jason Samenow reports that "people don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly."

The conclusion is that of a wide-ranging study, Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes, which found that the death toll nearly triples when a severe hurricane is given a feminine name.

Abstract

Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action. This finding indicates an unfortunate and unintended consequence of the gendered naming of hurricanes, with important implications for policymakers, media practitioners, and the general public concerning hurricane communication and preparedness.

The study was formulated to track individual willingness to seek shelter. In other words, sexism is what's killing them, not the storm. The death toll since 1950: 50 deaths from female storms compared to 23 from male storms.

Meteorologists seem unimpressed: "I am not ready to change the naming system based on one study," the WaPo quotes ones.

UPDATE: Sorry about the oldnews: turns out this is three years old and has been widely contested. Read the rest

Sheila Michaels, popularizer of the honorific "Ms." for women, is dead at 78. The BBC:

"I didn't belong to my father and I didn't want to belong to a husband - someone who could tell me what to do."

Born in St Louis, Missouri, Ms Michaels spent some of her childhood in New York City. She was a lifelong feminist activist, biblical scholar, and collected oral histories of the civil rights movement later in life.

In her professional life, she worked as a ghostwriter, editor, and even ran a Japanese restaurant - but her obituary in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes her favourite job was being a New York City taxi driver.

"Ms." — referring to women without reference to a husband or lack thereof — dates to 1901, but was only adopted by the New York Times in 1971.

Oddly, Wikipedia has an extensive article for Sheila from South Park, but not a word for Sheila Michaels. Someone who can nagivate that place should fix this! Read the rest

Actress and entertainer Carol Lee Scott died this week at 74. Britons of a certain age will remember 1980s' TV witch Grotbags; Americans of any age are in for a bizarre treat.

Her character Grotbags was a dastardly pantomime witch, with a bright green wig and face to match. She famously hated "brats" and did her best to spoil the fun of children, using her "Bazazzer" - a pointy stick with a gold hand on the end of it.

Fans of the show flooded Twitter with comments, with Gary Dewar writing: "Daleks. Zelda. Skeletor. Nothing - NOTHING - terrified me quite like Grotbags. Bravo!"

Noob added: "Rest in peace Grotbags. You made my early years awesome. I was so scared of you!" ... The show, set in the Gloomy Fortress, also starred puppeteer Richard Coombs.

Here she is presenting a ghoulish game show with her gay robot:

Read the rest