source: AP

George Carlin, the dean of counterculture comedians whose biting insights on life and language were immortalized in his “Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV” routine, died of heart failure Sunday. He was 71.

YouTube: George Carlin’s “Stuff”

Carlin’s jokes constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the “Seven Words” - all of which are taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day. When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening. “So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the “Saturday Night Live” debut in 1975 and appearing some 130 times on “The Tonight Show.” He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to the “Bill and Ted” movies.

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Jack Burns. Then they met Lenny Bruce, who influenced Carlin.

Carlin’s first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

July 22, 1972 - Police officers lead comedian George Carlin off the Summerfest grounds in Milwaukee, Wis. after using allegedly profane language during his act at Summerfest. (AP Photo)

“The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,” Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. “There’s an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. … It’s reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.”

Tim Russert Dies From Apparent Heart Attack

Source: NY Post:

Tim Russert, NBC journalist and political heavyweight host of “Meet the Press,” has died after collapsing at NBC’s Washington news bureau, a source said. He was 58 years old.

Russert, who rose from the inside world of politics where he was former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s press secretary and one-time chief of staff to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was able to successfully cross over to political journalism and rise to become one of its leading lights.

More from MSNBC:

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when he collapsed, the network said. He and his family had recently returned from Italy, where they celebrated the graduation of Russert’s son, Luke, from Boston College.

Tim Russert with his son Luke

Source 1: CNN
Source 2: BBC

A 25-year-old man, Tomohiro Kato, plowed into pedestrians with a truck in a crowded Tokyo neighborhood (Akihabara) Sunday and then stabbed 17 people in three minutes, killing at least seven in a grisly attack. “He was screaming as he was stabbing people at random,” an unidentified witness told public broadcaster NHK.

Kato was arrested with blood on his face. “The suspect told police that he came to Akihabara to kill people,” said Jiro Akaogi, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. “He said he was tired of life. He said he was sick of everything,” Akaogi said.

The Akihabara district specialises in electronic gadgets and video games and is especially popular with people interested in comic books and distinctive fashion. It is also home to one of the first shops to sell personal robots and robotics. The area is often crowded on weekends.

Once rare, stabbing attacks have become more frequent in Japan in recent years. In March, one person was stabbed to death and at least seven others were hurt by a man who went on a slashing spree with two knives outside a shopping mall in eastern Japan. In June of 2001, a man with a history of mental illness burst into an elementary school in Japan and killed eight children. He was executed in 2004.

Designer of Pringles can is buried in his invention

Source: CNN:

The man who designed the Pringles potato chip packaging system was so proud of his accomplishment that a portion of his ashes has been buried in one of the iconic cans.

One lucky winner will get a prize inside a special box of Pringles. Try and guess what it is.

Fredric J. Baur, of Cincinnati, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice in Cincinnati, Ohio.Baur’s children honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave in suburban Springfield Township.

Baur was an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Procter & Gamble Co. Baur filed for a patent for the tubular Pringles container and for the method of packaging the curved, stacked chips in the container in 1966, and it was granted in 1970.

From the Washington Post:

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, facing a likely prison term of four to six years for running a Washington area call-girl ring, apparently hanged herself Thursday in a storage shed behind her mother’s mobile home in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Photo of “D.C. Madam” Deborah Palfrey, courtesy of Getty Images

Dubbed “the D.C. Madam” after a grand jury in Washington indicted her 14 months ago on prostitution-related racketeering charges, Palfrey, 52, repeatedly told journalist Dan Moldea last year that she would rather die than live behind bars.

Palfrey had been previously incarcerated for 18 months in California in the early 1990s after being convicted of running a prostitution ring.

Palfrey was convicted April 15 of financial racketeering, money laundering and using the mail for illegal purposes. Allowed to remain free while awaiting her July 24 sentencing, Palfrey went to Tarpon Springs to stay with her 76-year-old mother. Palfrey’s body was found in a shed outside her home in Sun Valley Estates Mobile Home Park.

Upon entering the shed located on the west side of the residence, Blanche Palfrey discovered her daughter, Deborah, apparently hanged herself using a nylon rope from a metal beam on the ceiling of the shed. Police found 2 suicide notes.