Architect and mathematician Christopher Alexander died at age 85 on March 17.
Alexander’s “The Timeless Way of Building” is on my desk shelf between Wald’s “Sequential Analysis” and “A Survey of Matrix Theory and Matrix Inequalities”. I honestly did not know that Christopher Alexander was also a mathematician.
I will always remember his deadpan delivery: “He was my ride.”
Also turned down the moth-ridden cabana crap:
Mr. Jones played perhaps his most significant role in the 1953 Baton Rouge bus boycott, a long-overlooked event that helped inspire the landmark boycott two years later in Montgomery, Ala., prompted by the arrest of Rosa Parks.
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The boycott ended with the partial desegregation of city buses, with the front two rows of seats reserved for White people and the last two rows for Black people. While some protesters had hoped for a more dramatic outcome, historians today describe the Baton Rouge boycott as a prototype of others to come.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. consulted with organizers in Baton Rouge before organizing the Montgomery boycott, which lasted 382 days and ended with a Supreme Court ruling desegregating the Montgomery transit system.
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During his service in World War II, Mr. Jones sustained shrapnel wounds that he would bear for the rest of his life.
“The doctor told me it would really hurt in 75 years, but I wouldn’t have to worry about that,” he said in 2021. “I fooled him. It hurts, and I’m still picking it out of my head and arm. A piece came out just above my left eye yesterday.”
He waited nearly eight decades for his service to be recognized with a Purple Heart, receiving the award only last year. The long delay was symbolic of what he saw as the slow move toward justice in the civil rights movement.
“It’s going to take a while,” Mr. Jones told the Advocate. “You just need to be willing to take a stand.”
ETA: quotes
This could also go on LGBTQ+ & Queer Positive News
Was already braced for this after his diagnosis reveal last year, but this still hurts. So much of my youth spent admiring his work.
Leo deserved it
9 posts were merged into an existing topic: Whatcha Watchin’?, Season Two
The person behind one of the more popular gifs here on the BBS has tragically passed away.
Didn’t see this anywhere here: Patricia A. McKillip (1948-2022) – Locus Online
Remember him by breaking your keyboard one last time
Very sad to hear that Bob Lanier died at 73.
“Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes.”
Lanier would smoke cigarettes during halftime break and Kareem knew this. He used this information to his advantage by running more in the second half when playing Detroit and Milwaukee.
Not a celebrity, but the first African American to hold this position…
RIP!
