Remembering some well-known dead guy

Kristine recounts that she was by sheer stroke of fortune the one to break the news to Richard Dawkins that Jerry Falwell had joined the Thanato-American demographic:

Later that night, I was at Richard’s table when someone asked how Jerry Falwell died. And if there was one moment in my life when I was ready with a clever answer, this was it.



“He had an attack where his heart should have been,” I replied.

Here's something strange. When I heard about Falwell, the first thoughts in my head were of Jim Henson and John Lennon, two people who died unexpectedly and left the world poorer for it. Falwell was just the opposite of that—someone who lived to a ripe old age and made the world worse while he was here.



Some people are always looking for good ideas and good information, and when they find them they spread them far and wide, to the benefit of everybody. Other people fight the spread of information and try to keep people as ignorant and unquestioning as possible. Falwell and his defenders fall into the latter group. The world suffers from the presence of people like that.