Gary Becker ז״ל

Gary Becker, one of the greatest living economists and a longstanding member of the University of Chicago faculty, has died. עליו השלום.

Gary Becker

(Photo courtesy Nobelprize.org.)

UPDATE: Gary Becker links follow.

James J. Heckman (pdf)

The Godfather of Freakonomics Has Died — Here Are His Most Groundbreaking Theories

Chicago Tribune

The Wall Street Journal

The New York Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The New Yorker

UPDATE 2: University of Chicago Gary Becker Obituary

(Links via Lex and Joseph Morris.)

RIP Bob 2

Bob Casale, guitarist for DEVO – aka Bob2, died this week. My wife found this awesome version of “Gut Feeling” on Youtube that I will post here in remembrance. DEVO is a very underrated band and I encourage you to take a deep dive past the “Whip It” stuff if you haven’t already (although I like “Whip It” too).

Cross posted at LITGM.

Steve Fromholz, R.I.P.

Steve Fromholz died in a hunting accident this week-end. One of the Austin songwriters of the seventies, Fromholz perfected a kind of tough lyricism. The laconic irony was caught in a tag from that time – “a rumor in his own time.” But he was a rumor with legs. His influence on the next generation is obvious in works like Lovett’s.

Fromholz was named poet laureate of Texas in 2007, four years after he’d suffered a stroke and then retrained himself in his art. Perhaps best known for the narrative precision of the Texas Trilogy, which captures the tough (and often rewarding) life of ranching in dry places. Here is a version of the lyrics. It’s hard to get some of those lines out of your head; they reverberate because they work, somehow, intensely; they give us a warm strength (“and cattle is their game and Archer is the name they give to the acres they own . . .”) thinking of those resilient characters.
Another obit. And another.
Lovett saw him as mentor and they share that ranching/literary background.

Obituary – Historian and Writer T.R. Fehrenbach

Late to the party on this one, since I dropped my newspaper subscription a couple of years ago, but one of the ladies of the Red Hat circle I belong to mentioned this to me last night at our monthly dinner out. She couldn’t quite recall his name, but outlined enough that I figured it out, and confirmed by routine googlectomy this morning. He was our own local Victor Davis Hanson; I never met him in person, but I had friends and associates who had. A fantastic historian,(and a military veteran as well, since he was of that era) but personally rather bland and plain-spoken. Two of his books, Lone Star and Comanches are on my desk shelf within reach, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

T.R. Fehrenbach, who made history read like news.