Charles Norwood, Jr, RIP

Here's what Fox News has to say:

Rep. Charles Norwood, Jr., a seven-term Republican congressman from Georgia, died Tuesday after battling cancer and lung disease. He was 65.

Norwood died at his home in Augusta, Ga., early Tuesday afternoon, his office said. The House interrupted debate on an Iraq war resolution for a moment of silence in his honor.

Norwood suffered from a chronic lung disease and later developed metastatic cancer that spread from his lung to his liver. He had declined further treatment last week and returned home to Georgia to receive hospice care.

A feisty, tobacco-chewing conservative who loved to hunt and who railed against government bureaucracy, Norwood was part of the Republican wave that took control of Congress in 1994.

He came out of nowhere to beat Democratic incumbent Don Johnson, becoming the first Republican to represent that northeastern Georgia district since shortly after the Civil War.

Friends say Norwood had hoped to follow that by becoming Georgia's first Republican governor in the modern era. He also considered a Senate bid, but he deferred running statewide after he was diagnosed with the life-threatening lung disease in 1998.

Anna Nicole Smith Dies, World Mourns

You may care: "Anna Nicole Smith Dead."

I have nothing to say. What kind of obituary do you give someone who's famous for marrying an old guy, waiting it out, and then trying to take all his money from his children?

R.I.P., Curtis Manning

On tonight's second episode of 24, the fourth in Season Six, Curtis Manning was killed by one shot to the neck from an H&K USP Compact 9mm (possibly .45) fired by one Jack Bauer.

He died trying to serve justice to a vicious murderer, his last words were, "I can't let that animal live."

Before joining CTU, he was a member of the Boston Police Department's SWAT unit and had previously served in the United States Army's Green Berets during Operation Desert Storm.

Manning had B.A. degree in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts.

***Update, 01/16 10:11 am***

Here's the video. Sad how Curtis looks at Jack after he's shot. On a side note: now Jack has no friends (with the exception of Chloe, but something tells me she's not good company).

Alexander Litvinenko Dies

Alexander Litvinenko, the journalist and former KGB spy who claimed he was poisoned for his vocal opposition to Putin, has died.

We reported on him earlier.

Milton Friedman Dead At 94

A great man. Milton Friedman has died:

A free-market economist, Friedman preached free enterprise in the face of government regulation and advocated a monetary policy that called for steady growth in money supplies.

His ideas played a pivotal role in informing the governing philosophies of world leaders like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Friedman believed that economic stabilization policy did not operate like a thermostat, because of the 'long and variable lag' between policy actions and their ultimate effects.

St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President William Poole, another noted monetarist, said much of modern central bank thinking stemmed from Friedman's work. Poole said Friedman's most important contribution was to bring theoretical economic thinking to bear on a range of public policy issues.

"Before Milton, economists were not taken seriously by public policy-makers," Poole said, citing the influence of Friedman's work on the issues of U.S. military conscription, school vouchers and tax policy, as well as his better-known contribution on the importance of money supply to inflation.

"He was an extraordinarily important figure in the profession," Poole said. Friedman called for a steady and predictable monetary policy as the surest guarantee against excessive fluctuations in the general price level and in the level of economic activity.

In 1976 Friedman's years of teaching and nearly two-dozen books were recognized with the Nobel Prize for economic science.

RIP, Steve Irwin

It's very sad, a true B.A. has died. Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was pierced by the barb of a stingray. Reports News 10:

Steve Irwin, the Australian TV personality and conservationist
known as the Crocodile Hunter, was killed today by a stingray barb to the heart during a diving expedition, police and his wildlife park said. 44-year-old Irwin was filming an underwater sequence for a television series on remote Batt Reef off the far northeast coast of Australia when he encountered the ray and was stung.

Crew members aboard Irwin's boat, Croc One, called emergency services in the nearest city, Cairns, and administered cardio pulmonary resuscitation techniques as they rushed the boat to nearby Low Isle to meet a rescue helicopter.

Medical staff pronounced Irwin dead at about midday...

Marine experts in Australia says it's not easy to be injured by a stingray, and very few people are killed by them. Neuroscientist Shaun Collin at the University of Queensland says Irwin, probably died because the barb pierced under his ribcage and directly into his heart.

Stingrays have a serrated, toxin-loaded barb, or spine, on the top of their tail. The barb can be up to ten inches long and it flexes if a ray is frightened. Collin says stings usually occur to people when they step on or swim too close to a ray and can be excruciatingly painful but are
rarely fatal.

My prayers go out to the Croc Hunter and his family.

RIP, Steve...