"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Mar 7, 2011

Things I did not know until today...

Isaac Asimov died of AIDS related complications.

Would it have mattered if it had been acknowledged that one of the most public faces of rational inquiry, speculative fiction, playful disbelief and popular science had died of AIDS, back then?

I don't know.

Seems like it might have.

5 comments:

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

It seems that he wished to reveal this information, but unfortunately bowed to pressure from his physicians. If such a well-regarded individual could have revealed that he was HIV positive, it could possibly have inspired sounder policies regarding the disease. When "those people" are suffering, society tends to blame the victim, when a famous, "blameless" person is suffering, people can muster some sympathy.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

This reminds me of yet another reason why Saint Ronnie's reputation and his actual existence are mirror opposites.
~

fish said...

Didn't really help when Arthur Ashe revealed he was HIV positive because of a blood transfusion (although he didn't reveal his condition till the 90's). But black black black....

Randal Graves said...

I didn't know this either.

Murr Brewster said...

Shoot, I thought he was still with us.

I need to get out more.