{"id":31637,"date":"2026-01-11T16:05:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T22:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=31637"},"modified":"2026-01-11T16:05:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T22:05:36","slug":"obit-watch-january-11-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=31637","title":{"rendered":"Obit watch: January 11, 2026."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/10\/obituaries\/bob-weir-dead-grateful-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DlA.2BfK.SAeaD4Vo5zHP&#038;smid=url-share\" target=\"_blank\">Bob Weir<\/a>, of the Grateful Dead.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IORPscB3vbc?si=YG5x50YHejEEfCKf\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/achewood.com\/2008\/02\/28\/title.html\" target=\"_blank\">the sound of eight confused men getting paid<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PqB-2HcFCvs?si=RpAxPk4bLgs_y2SZ\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/maFxE\" target=\"_blank\">Stewart Cheifet<\/a>. My older readers may remember him from back in the day as the host of &#8220;Computer Chronicles&#8221; on PBS.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/Gqu6s\" target=\"_blank\">Hessy Levinsons Taft<\/a>. I confess she wasn&#8217;t that notable, but this is a fun story in historical retrospect.<\/p>\n<p>When she was six months old, in 1934, her family hired a photographer to take a portrait of her. The photographer, feeling whimsical, submitted the photo as an entry for a contest &#8220;to find a baby representing the epitome of the Aryan race&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/Gqu6s\" target=\"_blank\">Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, chose the winner.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>She won the contest. Which made things rather complicated, as she and her family were Jewish.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-news\/tk-carter-dead-the-thing-the-way-back-1236469274\/\" target=\"_blank\">T.K. Carter<\/a>, actor. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0141953\/?ref_=fn_t_1\" target=\"_blank\">Other credits<\/a> include &#8220;The Corner&#8221; (For those of you who have read the book or watched the mini-series, he was Gary McCullough. For those of you who haven&#8217;t read the book, I commend it to your attention.), &#8220;A Rage In Harlem&#8221; (1991), &#8220;Runaway Train&#8221;, and &#8220;Quincy, M.E.&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/a6LFh\" target=\"_blank\">Erich von D\u00e4niken<\/a>, crank. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/a6LFh\" target=\"_blank\">Mr. von D\u00e4niken was 32 and managing a hotel in Davos, Switzerland, when he published his first and by far most popular book, \u201cChariots of the Gods,\u201d in 1968. In breathless prose, saturated with exclamation points and folksy interjections such as \u201cHey, presto!\u201d Mr. von D\u00e4niken posited that virtually the sum of human knowledge and ability had been bestowed by extraterrestrials.<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/a6LFh\" target=\"_blank\">With little evidence and a lot of innuendo, he proclaimed that the Egyptian pyramids could have been built only with alien expertise. (\u201cIs it really a coincidence that the height of the pyramid of Cheops multiplied by a thousand million \u2014 98,000,000 miles \u2014 corresponds approximately to the distance between the earth and sun?\u201d he wrote.)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/a6LFh\" target=\"_blank\">The birdman cult of Easter Island, Mr. von D\u00e4niken declared, developed as a way to honor the supreme beings who had flitted down from the outer atmosphere to land on that remote spot in the Pacific, off the coast of South America.<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/a6LFh\" target=\"_blank\">Because an iron rod in a temple in Delhi, India, appeared impervious to rust, it must have been made from a celestial alloy, he insisted. Similarly, he said, when viewed from the air, the geoglyphs of Nazca, Peru, are obvious landing strips for spaceships. And artwork on a Mayan sarcophagus depicts not a king descending into the underworld, he concluded, but an astronaut-god piloting a spaceship.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It sounds ridiculous, but people bought into this [stuff]. Including me. In my defense, I was left unsupervised. Also, I was very young at the time. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=6688\" target=\"_blank\">See also.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/a6LFh\" target=\"_blank\">Over the next half century, he published over 40 more books, which were translated into some 30 languages, and though none of them offered much variation from his original themes or ideas \u2014 subsequent titles included \u201cGods From Outer Space,\u201d \u201cThe Gods Were Astronauts\u201d and \u201cArrival of the Gods\u201d \u2014 they collectively sold more than 70 million copies.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/a6LFh\" target=\"_blank\">Mr. von D\u00e4niken wrote his second book from prison. In 1970, a Swiss court convicted him of fraud, forgery and embezzlement, determining that, as a hotel manager, he had falsified financial records to subsidize what the court called a \u201cplayboy\u201d lifestyle. He served about a third of a three-and-a-half-year sentence.<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/a6LFh\" target=\"_blank\">Critics pointed to Mr. von D\u00e4niken\u2019s criminal history as proof of a penchant for deception. But Mr. von D\u00e4niken seemed unfazed, even comparing himself to Jesus. \u201cPeople don\u2019t ask if Christ was convicted of a crime,\u201d he told Playboy in 1974. \u201cWhat has that to do with the message Christ brought?\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bob Weir, of the Grateful Dead. (the sound of eight confused men getting paid) Stewart Cheifet. My older readers may remember him from back in the day as the host of &#8220;Computer Chronicles&#8221; on PBS. Hessy Levinsons Taft. I confess she wasn&#8217;t that notable, but this is a fun story in historical retrospect. When she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,97,31,40,99,16,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-geek","category-history","category-movies","category-music","category-nazis","category-obits","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31640,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31637\/revisions\/31640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}