News Roundup-Week Ending April 15, 2007

Johnny Hart Died Saturday

So who was Johnny Hart? He was the creator of two of my long-time favorite comic strips, B.C. and The Wizard of Id. I especially loved the Wizard of Id for the occasional appearance of their local undertaker. Hart died Saturday at age 76 while working at his home in Nineveh, NY. “He had a stroke,” his wife, Bobby, said Sunday. “He died at his storyboard.”

Hart’s “B.C.” strip was launched in 1958 and eventually appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers with an audience of 100 million, according to Creators Syndicate Inc., which distributes it.

Former Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi spent $20 million to become the fifth space tourist

The man given much of the credit for overseeing the development of Microsoft’s Word software blasted into space over the weekend as the fifth space tourist.

Charles Simonyi, who was once chief architect at Microsoft and now runs his own development company called Intentional Software, began his journey into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at just after 11:30pm Saturday local time. Simonyi traveled with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin inside the Soyuz TMA10 spacecraft.

Disney to Host Gay Nuptials

The Walt Disney Co. has changed its policy and will allow same-sex couples to take part in its Fairy Tale Wedding program at its California and Orlando, Fla., resorts and cruises, a Disney spokesman confirmed Friday.

“We want everyone who comes to Disney to recognize their special occasion to feel welcomed and respected,” Disney Parks and Resorts spokesman Donn Walker told Gay.com on Friday.

Would that everyone had that attitude.

Voter Fraud, A Big Non-Starter
“Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections.” Just 120 people have been charged with voter fraud crimes, and 86 convicted as of last year, and Ann Coulter isn’t one of them.