Whipped Cream Difficulties

Godfrey Gao, actor. He was in “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones” and did some other work in Chinese films. (He was also the voice of Ken in the Mandarin version of “Toy Story 3”.)

Mr. Gao was 35 years old. He died of an apparent heart attack while filming a Chinese reality TV series, “Chase Me”, in which “participants scale tall buildings, skid down obstacle courses and hang from tightropes”.

The death of Mr. Gao, who was born in Taiwan and raised in Canada, set off a wave of anger on the Chinese internet, with millions of people criticizing the entertainment industry as focused on ratings at the expense of safety.
By Wednesday evening, the death of Mr. Gao was one of the most widely discussed topics on Weibo, a popular microblogging site, and hashtags about it had garnered hundreds of millions of views.

William Ruckelshaus, “Saturday Night Massacre” figure.

And on a night of high drama, as the nation held its breath and constitutional government appeared to hang in the balance, Nixon ordered his top three Justice Department officials, one after another, to fire the Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, rather than comply with his subpoena for nine incriminating Oval Office tape recordings.
Mr. Cox’s complete independence had been guaranteed by Nixon and the attorney general during the prosecutor’s Senate confirmation hearings the previous May. He could be removed only for “cause” — some gross malfeasance in office. But none was even alleged. Nixon’s order to summarily dismiss Mr. Cox thus raised a most profound question: Was the president above the law?
Mr. Richardson and Mr. Ruckelshaus refused to fire Mr. Cox and resigned even as orders for their own dismissals were being issued by the White House. But Robert H. Bork, the United States solicitor general and the acting attorney general after the dismissal of his two superiors, carried out the presidential order, not only firing Mr. Cox but also abolishing the office of the special Watergate prosecutor.

Clive James, British critic.

He once dismissed a tedious public affairs program as “the mental equivalent of navel fluff.” He described William Shatner’s acting technique in “Star Trek” as “picked up from someone who once worked with somebody who knew Lee Strasberg’s sister.”

Jonathan Miller, theater and opera director, “Beyond The Fringe” member, television host, and medical doctor.

I’m generally unfamiliar with his theater and opera work. But I remember when “The Body in Question” aired on US television: I was pretty impressed with the episodes I managed to catch, and would love to watch the whole series again. (It looks like it may be on YouTube, though not in great quality. I can’t find a DVD of it, or of “States of Mind”, which I would also love to see.)