Two sad passings to report. First, Stephen Jay Gould, noted paleontologist and author, whose ideas on “punctuated equilibrium” invigorated the scientific debate over macroevolution. I quite enjoyed his (often heated) exchanges with Richard Dawkins, a more traditional Darwinian evolutionist (whose views I tend toward). Dr. Gould was 60.
[link via Robert Musil]
Second, David Berg, cartoonist of Mad Magazine fame, whose strip “The Lighter Side of…” I grew up with. Great stuff.
Mr. Berg died Friday.
In recent years (with the help of the invaluable eBay), I’ve reconstituted my entire late 1960s-early 1980s Mad collection.
Tonight, I’ll revisit a few of Mr. Berg’s strips and have a wistful giggle or three.
[via Marc Weisblott]
update: More on the Gould passing from Matthew Yglesias and Knowitall Blowhard.
Bummer – I met Dave Berg at my shul’s Passover seder two years ago. He was a really nice guy.
I picked up a somewhat scuffed copy of Berg’s 1972 book, My Friend God, at a used bookstore yesterday. While I was thrilled to find it without much of a search effort, I suspect it’s actually the easiest to find of all the MAD library just because it was so radically different from those paperback reprints of the magazine. (Dozens of which I once owned–all long, long gone to landfill.) It’s a fascinating, timeless read: only Berg’s sentiments about how hippies were ruining the world seem dated. Of course, that’s part of the charm. Dare I say it, the way the book is written is like a prototype of a blog. (Only instead of links, you just get lots of <b>BOLD CAPITALIZED WORDS</b> where Berg wants to emphasize a certain point.)