> I read the obituaries today. It's something I rarely do, but today I read the obituaries. There were two that stuck out at me. The first one was of the inventor of a type of cake pan, dead at 82. The obituary went on and on about the success of the cake pan-eventually there were over a million sold. Nothing about the dead man's personality, character or life were included in the obituary aside from the story of the cake pan he invented. The line that summed up his life was "Inventor of cake pan." The most important thing he accomplished in 82 years of life was inventing a cake pan.
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I think you read a news article on the obituary page. A true obit contains information about the family, funeral arrangements, and a brief account of the deceased's life.

If there is widespead interest because of something important that the person did, a newspaper may publish an article about that. They usually run the news article on the same page as the obit. Sometimes the story is picked up by a wire service, so it may run in other newspapers that don't include the obit.

Actually, the invention of that cake pan was a big thing. Even a mouse trap is big if it sells a million copies.

Sometimes a story is edited simply by chopping off the last few paragraphs. Editors do this to make the article fit the space available. So you might not have seen the complete article.

As for the young marine; yes, it's sad. It makes me wonder why we send them over there. It makes it nice for the madmen who no longer have to come to America to kill Americans. When we figure out how to measure progress in a war like that, maybe we well be able to figure out if any progress is being made.

Maybe we should avoid reading the obituaries. It's depressing.
Howard