Sad news tonight that legendary hockey toughman Bob Probert is dead at 45. Probert was a Canadian professional ice hockey forward. He played for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks. While a successful player by some measures, including being voted to the 1987–88 Campbell Conference all-star team, Probert was best known for his activities as a fighter and enforcer. Probert was also known for his off-ice antics and legal problems, as well as being one half of the “Bruise Brothers” with then-Red Wing teammate Joe “Joey” Kocur, during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
During the 1985–86 and 1986–87 seasons, Probert spent the majority of his time with the Red Wings while occasionally playing for their minor league affiliate, the Adirondack Red Wings of the American Hockey League. In the 1985–86 season, he finished third on the team in penalty minutes behind Kocur and Randy Ladouceur, both of whom played more regular season games than Probert. In the 1986–87 season, Probert accumulated only 24 points, but amassed 221 penalty minutes.
The 1987–88 season saw Probert develop his fighting abilities and reputation as a enforcer with 398 penalty minutes. He also tied for third on the team in points with 62 (Petr Klima also had 62 points). That season, Probert played in his only NHL All-Star Game, and he contributed the most points during the Red Wings’ playoff run, in which Yzerman missed all but the final three games with a knee injury.
His career hit a snag in 1989 when he was arrested for cocaine possession while crossing the Detroit-Windsor border. He served three months in a federal prison in Minnesota, an additional three months in a halfway house, and was indefinitely suspended from the NHL. The NHL lifted the suspension at the conclusion of his prison term.
Trouble would continue for Probert in the 1990’s. On July 15, 1994, he suffered minor injuries when he crashed his motorcycle into a car in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. Police determined that his blood alcohol level was approximately triple the legal limit, and that there were also trace amounts of cocaine in his system. At the time of the accident, Probert had been ruled an unrestricted free agent. On July 19 of that year, the Red Wings announced that they would not offer him a contract. “This is the end,” said senior vice-president Jim Devellano. “[In] my 12 years with the organization … we’ve never spent more time on one player and his problems than we have on Probert.”
Probert went on to play for the Chicago Blackhawks, while his first season with the Blackhawks was the last in which he accumulated over 40 points in a season. From then on, his points and penalty minutes gradually decreased. While he never returned to the levels of point production he achieved with the Red Wings, he remained a physical force on the ice and continued many long-term rivalries with other enforcers.
Probert sustained various injuries during his time with Chicago, most notably a torn rotator cuff injury which caused him to miss most of the 1997–98 season. One of the more noteworthy occurrences of his career with Chicago is that he scored the final NHL goal at the historic Maple Leaf Gardens on February 13, 1999.
After the 2001–02 season, Probert was placed on waivers by the Blackhawks. Because he was not picked up by another team, he was advised that his role with the Blackhawks would be limited, or even relegated to playing in the minor leagues again. On November 16, 2002, Probert opted to “unofficially” retire so that he could join the Blackhawks radio broadcasting team. He had finished fourth on the NHL’s all-time list with 3,300 penalty minutes.
His stint with the Blackhawks radio team did not last long. In February 2003, it was reported that Probert went back to rehab. During the 2002–03 offseason, Probert formally announced his retirement.
On June 4, 2004, Probert was arrested for allegedly parking his BMW sport utility vehicle on the wrong side of the street and entering into an altercation over drugs with bystanders. Several police officers intervened and had to subdue Probert with taser and stun guns. He was later acquitted on all charges related to this incident.
On July 1, 2005, Probert was arrested at his Windsor-area home for breach of peace, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer. Probert’s attorney, Patrick Ducharme, advised the media, “I anticipate he will be pleading not guilty and going to trial.” Probert was arrested again on August 23, 2005, at a bar in Tecumseh, Ontario for violating two conditions of his probation that he not consume alcohol or be in an establishment that serves liquor. He was released after paying a $200 (Canadian) fine. All charges stemming from the arrest on July 1 were eventually dropped.
Hockey commentator Chris Johnston of the Canadian Press wrote tonight:
The hockey world has lost its top heavyweight.
Bob Probert, who fought nearly as many personal demons as he did NHL tough guys during a 16-year career, died Monday. He was 45.
Probert was the most feared fighter of his generation, dropping the gloves more than 200 times while playing for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks.
“I’ve seen them all and I haven’t seen anybody tougher than him,” TV commentator Don Cherry told The Canadian Press. “He was the best.”
Despite the tough guy image and his personal struggles away from the arena, Probert was extremely well-liked by those who knew him.
“Off the ice, everything was a whole different story,” said Clark. “He was one of the good guys and he’d do anything for anybody.”
Added Cherry: “He was a gentle giant. He was so soft spoken when you’d sit down and chat with him. He would almost whisper.”
Probert played for the Red Wings from 1985 to ’94, and for the Blackhawks from 1995 to 2002.
Probert died after collapsing while enjoying an afternoon of boating with his family on Lake St. Clair near Windsor, Ontario. His father-in-law, Dan Parkinson, a police officer who was on the boat, attempted to revive Probert using CPR.
Today marks the 98th anniversary of the birth of English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist Alan Turing.
Turing was influential in the development of computer science and providing a formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, playing a significant role in the creation of the modern computer.
Alan Turing also played a significant role in cryptography during World War II, working as a main participant in the efforts at Bletchley Park in England to break German ciphers. The German military had developed an encryption machine known as Enigma, and Turing worked on the problem of the German Enigma machine, collaborating with Dilly Knox, a senior codebreaker. On September 4, 1939, the day after the UK declared war on Germany, Turing reported to Bletchley Park.
Within weeks of arriving at Bletchley Park, Turing had specified an electromechanical machine which could help break Enigma faster than the bombe, named after and building upon the original Polish-designed bomba. The bombe, with an enhancement suggested by mathematician Gordon Welchman, became one of the primary tools used to attack Enigma-protected message traffic.
Professor Jack Good, cryptanalyst working at the time with Turing at Bletchley Park, later said:
Turing’s most important contribution, I think, was of part of the design of the bombe, the cryptanalytic machine. He had the idea that you could use, in effect, a theorem in logic which sounds to the untrained ear rather absurd; namely that from a contradiction, you can deduce everything.
Turing decided to tackle the particularly difficult problem of the German Enigma “because no one else was doing anything about it and I could have it to myself”. In December 1939, Turing solved the essential part of the naval indicator system, which was more complex than the indicator systems used by the other services.
The same night that he solved the naval indicator system, he conceived the idea of Banburismus, a Bayesian statistical technique to assist in breaking naval Enigma, “though I was not sure that it would work in practice, and was not in fact sure until some days had actually broken”. Banburismus could rule out certain orders of the Enigma rotors, reducing the time required to test settings on the bombes.
Turing traveled to the United States in November 1942 and worked with U.S. Navy cryptanalysts on Naval Enigma and bombe construction in Washington, and assisted at Bell Labs with the development of secure speech devices. He returned to Bletchley Park in March 1943.
From 1945 to 1947 he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he worked on the design of the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine). He presented a paper on February 19, 1946, which was the first detailed design of a stored-program computer. Although ACE was a feasible design, the secrecy surrounding the wartime work at Bletchley Park led to delays in starting the project and Turing became disillusioned. In late 1947 he returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year. While he was at Cambridge, the Pilot ACE was built in his absence. It executed its first program on 10 May 1950.
In 1948, Turing, working with his former undergraduate colleague, D. G. Champernowne, began writing a chess program for a computer that did not yet exist. In 1952, lacking a computer powerful enough to run the program, Turing played a game in which he simulated the computer, taking about half an hour per move. The game was recorded. The program lost to Turing’s colleague Alick Glennie, although it is rumored that it won a game against Champernowne’s wife.
This Turing test was a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence.
Turing’s personal life caused him great trouble during his time. His homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952—homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time—and he accepted treatment with female hormones and chemical castration as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, several weeks before his 42nd birthday, from an apparently self-administered cyanide poisoning, although his mother (and some others) considered his death to be accidental. On September 10, 2009, following an Internet campaign, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war. Brown issued a statement which read in part:
Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him … So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.
Turing has been honored in various ways in Manchester, England, the city where he worked towards the end of his life. In 1994, a stretch of road (the Manchester city intermediate ring road) was named Alan Turing Way. A bridge carrying this road was widened, and carries the name Alan Turing Bridge. A statue of Turing was unveiled in Manchester on June 23, 2001. It is in Sackville Park, between the University of Manchester building on Whitworth Street and the Canal Street gay village. The statue depicts the “father of modern computing” sitting on a bench at a central position in the park. The statue was unveiled on Turing’s birthday.
In 1999, Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, and stated:
The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.
In 2002, Turing was ranked twenty-first on the BBC nationwide poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.
Turing’s epitaph reads:
Hyperboloids of wondrous Light
Rolling for aye through Space and Time
Harbour those Waves which somehow Might
Play out God’s holy pantomime
Happy Birthday, and much respect and appreciation for all of your work, Alan Turing!
From the renowned source of all official knowledge, Wikipedia:
Davis’s first success was as Charmaine “Schultzy” Schultz in the sitcom The Bob Cummings Show on NBC. She auditioned for the role because her friend’s boyfriend was a casting director and recommended her for the part. She won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series twice out of four nominations for this role. On February 9, 1960, Davis received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In the 1965–1966 television season, she appeared as Miss Wilson, a physical education teacher at a private girls’ academy in San Francisco, in John Forsythe’s NBC sitcom The John Forsythe Show. For a period in the 1960s and 1970s, Davis was known for her appearances in television commercials for the Ford Motor Company, particularly for the mid-sized Ford Fairlane models. Davis was featured in commercials for Minute Rice until the mid-1980s.
From 1969 to 1974, Davis played housekeeper Alice Nelson in The Brady Bunch television series. Since then, she has returned to take part in various Brady Bunch TV movies, including The Brady Girls Get Married (1981) and A Very Brady Christmas (1988). She also reprised her role as Alice Nelson two short-lived Brady Bunch spin-off television series: The Brady Brides (1981) and The Bradys (1990), both of which lasted only six episodes. She also made a cameo appearance as a truck driver named “Schultzy”, a reference to her days on The Bob Cummings Show, in The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995.
In the early 1990s, Davis focused on theater. She performed in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace, and a world tour production of Crazy For You.
Davis never completely retired from acting; in her later years she appeared in several disposable mop commercials featuring famous television domestics, and has appeared in a number of Brady Bunch reunion projects, most recently TV Land’s The Brady Bunch 35th Anniversary Reunion Special: Still Brady After All These Years. On April 22, 2007, The Brady Bunch was awarded the TV Land Pop Culture Award on the 5th annual TV Land Awards. Davis and other cast members accepted the award, and she received a standing ovation.
Wow it’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the was launched on the back of the .
I remember at first all the jokes about its technical problems, it had poor eyesight, and needed many repairs.
HST was not going to give up the fight easily, though, and went on to capture some of the most beautiful and awesome images from deep space imaginable.
is releasing today a brand new Hubble photo of a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the . Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula.
The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “” photo from 1995, but is even more striking in appearance. The image captures the top of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.
Hubble fans worldwide are being invited to share the ways the telescope has affected them. They can send an e-mail, post a message, use the hashtag #hst20, or send a . Or, they can visit the “Messages to Hubble” page on http://hubblesite.org, type in their entry, and read selections from other messages that have been received. Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope’s many terabytes of science data. Someday, future researchers will be able to read these messages and understand how Hubble had such an impact on the world.
A very happy birthday to legendary musician and recording industry executive Herb Alpert, founder of the Tijuana Brass Brand, the “A” in A&M Records, and composer of “Spanish Flea”, which many people also call the theme to the Chuck Barris game show, “The Dating Game”.
One internet chronicler put it best regarding Spanish Flea:
everything instantly becomes awesome if this is played
This may be the most accurate statement anywhere on the internet.
Alpert’s musical accomplishments include five number one hits, twenty-eight albums on the Billboard charts, eight Grammy Awards, fourteen Platinum albums and fifteen Gold albums.
He disbanded the Tijuana Brass Band in the late 1960’s, released a new album by them in 1971, and re-formed TBB in the mid-1980’s. Alpert also performed an instrumental version of the US national anthem @ the 1988 Super Bowl.
Aside from his own performing musical career, and his work various television executives creating music for Chuck Barris’ many concept shows and others’ commercials, Alpert worked with and produced many popular artists on the A&M label. Notables include The Carpenters, Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66, Liza Minelli, Janet Jackson, and others.
His discography includes:
(1962) LP-101 (mono)/101S (stereo)
South of the Border (1964) LP-108/SP-4108
(1965) LP-110/SP-4110
(1965) LP-112/SP-4112
What Now My Love (1966) LP-114/SP-4114
S.R.O. (1966) LP-119/SP-4119
Sounds Like… (1967) LP-124/SP-4124
Herb Alpert’s Ninth (1967) LP-134/SP-4134
The Beat of the Brass (1968) SP-4146
Christmas Album (1968) SP-4166; reissued as SP-3113
Warm (1969) SP-4190
The Brass Are Comin’ (1969) SP-4228
Greatest Hits (1970) SP-4245
Summertime (1971) SP-4314
Solid Brass (compilation) (1972) SP-4341
Foursider (compilation) (1973) SP-3521
You Smile – The Song Begins (1974) SP-3620
A Treasury of the Award-Winning plus selections from the Baja Marimba Band (1974) Longines Symphonette LWS-500-505
Coney Island (1975) SP-4521
Just You and Me (1976) SP-4591
Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (compilation) (1977) SP-4627
Herb Alpert/Hugh Masekela (1978) SP-728
Main Event Live! (1978) SP-4727
Rise (1979) SP-4790
Beyond (1980) SP-3717
Magic Man (1981) SP-3728
Fandango (1982) SP-3731
Blow Your Own Horn (1983) SP-4919
Bullish (1984) SP-5022
Wild Romance (1985) SP-5082
(compilation) (1986) CD-2501
Classics Volume 1 (1987)
Keep Your Eye On Me (1987) SP-5125
Under a Spanish Moon (1988) SP-5209
My Abstract Heart (1989)
North on South St. (1991)
The Very Best Of Herb Alpert (compilation of Tijuana Brass and solo material) (1991)
(1992)
(1996)
Passion Dance (1997)
Colors (1999)
(compilation of Tijuana Brass and solo material) (2001)
(2005)
(2006) Shout Factory
Rise (reissue) (2007) Shout! Factory
Anything Goes (2009) Concord Jazz CJA-31441-02
Quite a list I think you would agree.
So pour yourself a nice martini, sit back in your velvet smoking jacket, and please enjoy the song that makes everything awesome. Thank you and Happy Birthday Mister Herb Alpert:
was born on this day in 1966. Born in Toronto, Canada, he lost his eyesight at the age of eight months due to a rare form of cancer. He persevered to become an acclaimed musician, sharing his beautiful talent with the world. Healey actually started playing the guitar at the age of three years old.
An amazing blues/rock guitarist, Jeff Healey released several oustanding records. During his too-brief lifetime, he also toured with many acts, including Dire Straits, , , , ZZ Top, Steve Lukather, Eric Clapton and many more.
His discography includes:
1988: (Arista)
1989: Road House Soundtrack
1990: (Arista)
1992: Feel This (Arista)
1995: (Arista)
2000: Get Me Some (Eagle)
2002:
2003: Live at Healey’s (Bolder)
2004: Adventures in Jazzland (Healeyophonic)
2005: (Eagle)
2006: It’s Tight Like That (Stony Plain)
2008: (Stony Plain)
2009: Songs From The Road (Stony Plain)
I like the premise of Joe Trippi’s book, ““; but I like the lyrics of the original song even more:
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by , Tom
Jones, , Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
The 21st Century Revolution is over, and they have won. Big Pharma, Big Media, and Big Politics have won – and note that I am not including Big Government in the list of winners.
They’ve taken over “our” media . We’ve sacrificed privacy in exchange for free web services and cheap applications. We’ve sacrificed our free will for video and cheap, scandalous amusement. As usual, the current search trends on the major search engines show what we as a culture are really interested in:
March Madness, the latest wardrobe malfunction, and some pills that will make us better in bed or have lower cholesterol like magic. Sign me up, all I need is a bracket, a bypass, and a bottle of pills. Better living through chemistry was the funny term we used to use for self-medication. Now it’s legitimized by advertising about the latest miracle cure to shed those unwanted pounds, get it up more often, and find the gold at the end of the non-existent rainbow.
Need some entertainment while you’re waiting for that pill to kick in? No problem, here you go, we have 57 channels of Ultimate Mixed Martial Arts combat! Here you go America, watch these pituitary cases bash each other’s brains in (to slightly update and paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks). Go back to bed America, we are in control.
Get the book ““, edited by John Lahr and presenting the best of Hicks’ philosophies, for some light reading. You can also buy Bill Hicks’ DVD’s and CD’s online, or go to youtube to see some video clips of his , or find them at fine retailers everywhere hardly anyhwere in the States. Hicks still isn’t that popular in his own homeland. So much for the artists being appreciated more when they are dead.
We’ve been lulled into thinking that we want all smoke and no fire. Fire burns and is hard to figure out. Smoke is interesting to watch but illusory.
Speaking of which, there’s a pill for that – just take it to quit smoking. Then go back to bed, America, your government is in control.
While you’re drifting off, think about who the government really is….sweet dreams:
Every day I become more convinced that Mr. Hand, played by Ray Walston in the seminal movie , was correct in believing that everyone is on dope.
No? You beg to differ? Not so fast – I’m talking to you Little Miss Patchouli Legalize-It. But I’m also calling you out, Mr. Cialis Q. Flomax. It’s all dope, and Mr. Hand was right:
You people are all high.
Either that, or…..
The latest big viral sensation on these internet tubes is already being touted as “the worst campaign ad ever.” It was produced by the campaign of one , Republican primary candidate Senator from California (and Protector of the Tubes).
Carly Fiorina used to run , and her tenure at HP featured such exciting developments as:
breaking up one largely functional company into many individualized fiefdoms run by her legion of demon-sheep-fighting monkeys
acquiring just before Compaq went completely under
a series of leaks to the press, illegally-taped phone calls and meetings, and unlawful disclosure of personnel information in an attempt to discredit members of the HP
So you can see why she would make a great Senator from California.
Last week, her campaign unleashed a tour-de-force of a ad:
The video is ’s “” du jour, kids are making and remixes, and merchandise featuring the “Demon Sheep” is available for sale.
Whoa whoa whoa…wait a minute. Demon Sheep merchandise? Stuff based on a political ad released just last week has manufactured and is available for sale this Monday morning?
Carly Fiorona now beats Carly Simon in a GoogleFight (www.googlefight.com)?
Interesting. You might even call it intriguing. It sounds to me like Fiorina has finally gotten the hang of this internet marketing crap.
By creating an attack ad that looks like it was filmed by high-school art students drunk on Everclear and Kool-Aid, and sporting a script that could have been written during a bad acid trip, her campaign has tapped into the public’s unquenchable for cheap, pointless entertainment.
Sad news tonight that legendary hockey toughman Bob Probert is dead at 45. Probert was a Canadian professional ice hockey forward. He played for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks. While a successful player by some measures, including being voted to the 1987–88 Campbell Conference all-star team, Probert was best known for his activities as a fighter and enforcer. Probert was also known for his off-ice antics and legal problems, as well as being one half of the “Bruise Brothers” with then-Red Wing teammate Joe “Joey” Kocur, during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
more importantly – Happy Birthday Ann B. Davis!
