he was a nice person and great professor... I am glad I had the opportunity to take a class with him
Dan McCracken died, peacefully in his sleep
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Re: Dan McCracken died, peacefully in his sleep
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The current theory goes that dying peacefully in sleep is possible. Elizabeth Simpson of the Virginian-Pilot explored this question further and a nice little article summarizing the excerpts from the AHCJ discussion can be found at: http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2011/07/reporter-explor...
My question is, given the existence of sleep paralysis which is both terrifying and plausibly able to leave "no evidence of thrashing about", if many people died "peacefully" but also awake and very scared.
As a sufferer of sleep paralysis, I would think it almost impossible that sleep paralysis itself could persist through dying painfully, since pain or other external stimuli (or passage of time, usually less than a minute) will generally kick you out of it.
That doesn't preclude the existence of some other paralysis mechanism, but I am not aware of any, so I think it's just wild speculation.
Re: Dan McCracken died, peacefully in his sleep
#23Yes, but did anyone try and revive him?
Re: Dan McCracken died, peacefully in his sleep
#24I'm a City College Student. I've taken 2 courses with Prof. McCracken and spoken with him privately on several occasions as well. He was an amazing man. A truly kind heart who knew how to bring out the best in people. Teaching was something he was very passionate about, he was still teaching courses last spring, well past the point of retirement. Dan McCracken knew how to make a difference to people and that was his real gift.
He could instruct in technical subjects, but he was already over that point of his life when I got to meet him. He had written his books, done his service with the ACM, made his contributions to the profession. What he devoted himself to later in life was cultivating people. He knew exactly how to nudge a student in the right direction to make them press onward. It worked for me. I don't think I would have made it through my freshman year without his encouragement.
I'll miss him. He was a wonderful person, a great teacher, and a warm presence. We should all be so lucky to as to know someone like him.
Re: Dan McCracken died, peacefully in his sleep
#25I'm sitting here looking at the brown, dog-eared old McCracken Fortran IV book from my high school comp sci class (1978). What magic it was to conceive of a program, cut it onto punched cards, suck the stack through a card reader, and then see my output appear, line by line, on the dot-matrix printer. Thank you, professor, for your contribution to computer science and for inspiring me to find the work I love.