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☆ Sylvain Saudan, ‘Skier of the Impossible,’ Is Dead at 87
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-25 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Sylvain Saudan, who was widely known as the “skier of the impossible” for his audacious and potentially life-ending descents down some of the steepest, most inaccessible slopes in the world, died on July 14 at his home in Les Houches, France. That Mr. Saudan lived into his ninth decade puzzled many people — including Mr. Saudan himself. Beginning in 1967, when he plunged down the Spencer Couloir on the Aiguille de Blaitière mountain in France — a 55-degree slope roughly equivalent, on skis, to a free fall — Mr. Saudan spent his life defying gravity, avalanches and obituary writers. “One mistake, you die,” Mr. Saudan once said. “You fall, you become a prisoner of the mountain — forever.”

Persons: Sylvain Saudan, Marie, José Valençot, Saudan, Spencer Couloir, Mr, “, ” Locations: Les Houches, France

☆ Herbert Hoelter, Prison Consultant to the Rich and Infamous, Dies at 73
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-16 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

In the summer of 2003, as Martha Stewart’s trial on charges connected to securities fraud was nearing its conclusion, the CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper aired a segment speculating about how severe her punishment would be if she were convicted. “Sometimes,” Mr. Cooper said, “it seems as though rich criminals seldom end up swapping smokes on Cell Block H. So if it’s not hard time in the joint, what kind of sentence could she get?”His guest was Herbert Hoelter, a sentencing reform advocate who, to fund his nonprofit work at the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, had become a concierge to the federal prison system for white-collar criminals, helping them to secure alternative or shorter sentences and to navigate life as an inmate. “Our philosophy isn’t that punishment should not occur,” Mr. Hoelter said, “it’s that it should occur in different ways.”

Persons: Martha Stewart’s, Anderson Cooper, “, Mr, Cooper, Herbert Hoelter, Hoelter, ” Organizations: CNN, National Center

☆ Michael C. Jensen, Who Helped Reshape Modern Capitalism, Dies at 84
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-26 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Michael C. Jensen, an economist and Harvard Business School professor whose evangelizing for stock options, golden parachutes and leveraged buyouts helped to reshape modern capitalism and empower Wall Street’s greed-is-good era, died on April 4 at his home in Sarasota, Fla. The death was confirmed by his daughter Natalie Jensen-Noll. “Mike was a kind of born proselytizer,” Eugene F. Fama, a University of Chicago professor and Nobel laureate in economics who collaborated with Professor Jensen, said in an interview. “He was very sure of himself in terms of his ideas being correct and, you know, pathbreaking.”They were also incendiary. In his book “The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite” (2017), the journalist Duff McDonald called Professor Jensen an “instrument of intellectual violence” who “created a Frankenstein that no one knows how to kill.”

Persons: Michael C, Jensen, Natalie Jensen, Noll, Werner Erhard, Jensen’s, Mike, proselytizer, ” Eugene F, Fama, Professor Jensen, “, ”, Duff McDonald Organizations: Harvard Business School, University of Chicago Locations: Sarasota , Fla

☆ Denny Walsh, Reporter Who Tussled With Mayors and Editors, Dies at 88
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-19 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Denny Walsh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who was a consummate nuisance to mobsters, corrupt politicians and his editors, especially at The New York Times, which fired him, died on March 29 at his home in Antelope, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento. His daughter, Colleen Bartow, confirmed the death. She said he had been suffering from several respiratory ailments. Mr. Walsh began his career in 1961 at The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, where he hot-dogged around the newsroom smoking cigars and used the floor as his ashtray. “His laugh was loud and uncontrolled and bordered on the malicious.”

Persons: Denny Walsh, Colleen Bartow, Walsh, Louis, “ Walsh, Pat Buchanan Organizations: The New York Times, Louis Globe, Democrat Locations: Antelope, Calif, Sacramento, The St

☆ John Sinclair, 82, Dies; Counterculture Activist Who Led a ‘Guitar Army’
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-04 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

John Sinclair, a counterculture activist whose nearly 10-year prison sentence for sharing joints with an undercover police officer was cut short after John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang about his plight at a protest rally, died on Tuesday in Detroit. His publicist, Matt Lee, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure. As the leader of the White Panther Party in the late 1960s, Mr. Sinclair spoke of assembling a “guitar army” to wage “total assault” on racists, capitalism and the criminalization of marijuana. “We are a whole new people with a whole new vision of the world,” he wrote in his book “Guitar Army” (1972), “a vision which is diametrically opposed to the blind greed and control which have driven our immediate predecessors in Euro-Amerika to try to gobble up the whole planet and turn it into one big supermarket.”He also managed the incendiary Detroit rock band the MC5. Their lyrics — “I’m sick and tired of paying these dues/And I’m finally getting hip to the American ruse” — were a kind of ballad for the cause.

Persons: John Sinclair, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Matt Lee, Sinclair, ”, Army ”, “, I’m Organizations: White Panther Party, Army Locations: Detroit

☆ David E. Harris, Trailblazing Airline Pilot, Is Dead at 89
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-23 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

David E. Harris, a former Air Force bomber pilot who at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s became the first Black pilot hired by a major commercial airline in the United States, died on March 8 in Marietta, Ga., about 20 miles northwest of Atlanta. American Airlines hired Mr. Harris in 1964, and he flew for the carrier for 30 years, rising to captain in 1967. In 1984, he made history for the second time with American when he flew with the first all-Black cockpit crew on a commercial airliner. Before Mr. Harris was hired, airline executives had discriminated for years against Black pilots out of fear that white passengers wouldn’t want to board the planes they flew, and that it would be too difficult to find them hotel accommodations. “He knew that he was extremely qualified, so on paper he would seem like an ideal candidate to many commercial airlines,” Michael H. Cottman wrote in his book “Segregated Skies: David Harris’s Trailblazing Journey to Rise Above Racial Barriers” (2021).

Persons: David E, Harris, Leslie Germaine, Michael H, Cottman, David Harris’s, ” Organizations: Air Force, American Airlines, Black Locations: United States, Marietta , Ga, Atlanta

☆ John C. Bahnsen Jr., 89, Dies; Fierce Commander During the Vietnam War
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-04 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

John C. Bahnsen Jr., a retired Army brigadier general who was awarded 19 decorations for valor during the Vietnam War, mostly for his swashbuckling, hands-on command of an air cavalry troop that saw heavy combat, died on Feb. 21 at his home in Rochelle, Ga. His wife, Peggy Bahnsen, a retired lieutenant colonel, confirmed the death. She said he had congestive heart failure. General Bahnsen was among the most decorated combat veterans in U.S. history. He earned most of those awards during the second of two Vietnam tours, when he led a troop in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment that was commanded by Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, the son of Gen. George S. Patton Jr. of World War II fame.

Persons: John C, Bahnsen Jr, Peggy Bahnsen, Bahnsen, George S, Patton, Patton Jr Organizations: Army, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment Locations: Vietnam, Rochelle , Ga

☆ Niklaus Wirth, Visionary Software Architect, Dies at 89
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-22 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 1999, an up-and-coming software engineer in Switzerland was preparing for a conference in France when he learned that the Swiss computer scientist Niklaus Wirth, a pioneer in the field, was also attending and would be on the same flight. The engineer, Kent Beck, had never met Dr. Wirth. But, he recalled in an interview, upon arriving at the airport he told the gate agent: “My colleague Professor Wirth and I are flying together. Among other feats in computer history, Dr. Wirth had created Pascal, an influential programming language in the early days of personal computing. “It was out of character for me to be that bold,” Mr. Beck said of his duplicity, “but I would have regretted it the rest of my life.”

Persons: Niklaus Wirth, Kent Beck, Wirth, “, Professor Wirth, Mr, Beck, Taylor Swift, Pascal, ” Locations: Switzerland, France, Swiss

☆ Joel Belz, Trailblazer in Christian Journalism, Is Dead at 82
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-14 | by ( Michael S. Rosenwald | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Joel Belz, the founder of World, a pioneering Christian magazine covering politics, culture and other topics through a biblical lens while occasionally drawing wider notice for its reporting on prominent religious figures behaving less than holy, died on Feb. 4 at his home in Asheville, N.C. His brother Andrew Belz said the cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease. Before World, a biweekly, was launched in 1986, religious periodicals were often cheaply mimeographed and filled with church news. Mr. Belz, a preacher’s son who grew up reading Time, wanted to replicate the journalistic ambition and crisp look of Henry Luce’s publication for an evangelical audience. Today, World News Group, which includes the magazine, website, children’s publications and podcasts, says it has an audience of about 500,000 people.

Persons: Joel Belz, Andrew Belz, Belz, Henry Luce’s, ” Mr Organizations: Gazette, World News Locations: Asheville, N.C, Cedar Rapids , Iowa

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