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Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

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Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#71

Post by grecy »

luma wrote: post #55
Bud wrote: post #9

Really a special presence on the radio for so many years. So intelligent, so humane, so humorous, so useful! I feel I learned much about the art of troubleshooting in general from Car Talk.

This is a point that I think a lot of people are missing: Click and Clack, while being funny, were primarily master troubleshooters. They could digest incomplete descriptions of a problem over the phone from a neophite user and in the span of a phone conversation, usually with no ability to run tests, could work out a plausible root cause and a corrective course of action. The "Stump the Chumps" segment would occasio…

I'm an Engineer, and I'm constantly shocked how many people don't have basic troubleshooting abilities. I've always considered it a "basic life skill", but experience has shown me that's not true.

Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#72

Post by drdeadringer »

I missed the Alzheimers detail until this post, and realizing how old these dudes were//are.

I still remember them receiving phone calls from the space station ["Well, I've called everyone else, so..."] and from above//below the Arctic circle ["Yea, so, our warmest is about -50 and we have this odd problem..."].

Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#73

Post by startupfounder »

I grew up in Cambridge, MA and always got a good laugh walking through Harvard Square and looking up at the sign for the firm of Dewey, Cheatem & How[0]. The third story window is where the Magliozzi brothers had their office. RIP Tom and his amazingly contagious laugh, still makes me smile thinking about it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey%2C_Cheatem_%26_Howe

Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#75

Post by serf »

teddyh wrote: post #25

> Tom and Ray haven't done the show live for two years; Car Talk has been airing archives of old shows. Berman says Ray would like to continue doing that, as a tribute to his brother. Soo… Apparently the show as you all have known it for the last two years will be unaffected. Alternately, the show died two years ago and you never noticed. EDIT: I thought that this news meant the show was ending and was surprised to r…

>Soo… Apparently the show as you all have known it for the last two years will be unaffected. Alternately, the show died two years ago and you never noticed.

>There was no offense intended.

The use of ellipses for dramatic silence , elongated words, and the personal targeting of your statements ("YOU all have known..." "YOU never noticed") indicate that "There was no offense intended." was really just a statement made for the sake of indemnifying yourself from the backlash of impersonal comments made about the death of another human, rather than a statement of ignorance and apology.

I don't honestly believe you when you say that you felt this thread was about the radio show going off the air rather than subject/topic line itself (the death of a person). I think that's an excuse to make your actions appear more excusable.

RIP Tom. You shaped much of my youth.

Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#76

Post by eric_bullington »

My Dad and I were lamenting this news today. We listened to the show together. And although my Dad spent his career in aircraft maintenance (as an officer in the AF), corporate finance, and now (in semi-retirement) higher education, he is a talented car mechanic who fixed all our cars until I was 5 or 6 and he became too busy at work to do so. He understands cars at an almost intuitive level, and even though I'm a decent mechanic myself, I frequently call him up when I'm wondering what's going on with a car.

And I see several other comments here about people listening to the show together with their fathers, and how their fathers were talented mechanics. It's definitely a generational thing.

So many mechanically-inclined boys who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, including Tom and Ray Magliozzi, were into building and repairing cars, just as many mechanically-inclined boys in the 1970s and 1980s were into building, repairing, and programming computers.

(I do say "boys" because this seems to have been a mostly male gene [correction: gender] phenomenon. Fortunately, I think this may be changing now.)

My Dad gets along well with computers (particularly spreadsheets), but he little understanding of how they work inside.

It makes me wonder if my 4-year-old son or 7-year-old daughter and their friends will be strikingly talented in some new field, like virtual reality or nanotechnology, but will marvel at my knowledge of C and of the inner workings of early computers.

Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#77

Post by adt2bt »

pit wrote: post #32

That's too bad, those guys were hilarious. Here's Leslie Lamport solving one of the Car Talk puzzles with TLA+: https://github.com/fintler/tlaplus/raw/master/examples/CarTa...

I'm busy reading his article on Paxos & of course I find this here. Feels like a classic case of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

Regardless, oh my goodness. When you see the solution spit out you just wanna drop your head on the desk. It's that "ahaaa" moment we probably don't feel often enough.

Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#78

Post by nooron »

eric_bullington wrote: post #76

My Dad and I were lamenting this news today. We listened to the show together. And although my Dad spent his career in aircraft maintenance (as an officer in the AF), corporate finance, and now (in semi-retirement) higher education, he is a talented car mechanic who fixed all our cars until I was 5 or 6 and he became too busy at work to do so. He understands cars at an almost intuitive level, and even though I'm a de…

What a thoughtful comment. I don't intend to attack, so please take the following question in good faith: did you mean to say "male gene" or "male gender"?

I'd certainly agree for the former, but I would hope you'd elaborate more if you were to suggest a purely genetic origin.

Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#79

Post by eric_bullington »

nooron wrote: post #78
eric_bullington wrote: post #76

My Dad and I were lamenting this news today. We listened to the show together. And although my Dad spent his career in aircraft maintenance (as an officer in the AF), corporate finance, and now (in semi-retirement) higher education, he is a talented car mechanic who fixed all our cars until I was 5 or 6 and he became too busy at work to do so. He understands cars at an almost intuitive level, and even though I'm a de…

What a thoughtful comment. I don't intend to attack, so please take the following question in good faith: did you mean to say "male gene" or "male gender"? I'd certainly agree for the former, but I would hope you'd elaborate more if you were to suggest a purely genetic origin.

Oops, I meant gender. That's what I get for multitasking.

Re: Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77

#80

Post by theg2 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #4

I hope Melissa "the Twerp" Peterson ( http://www.wnyc.org/story/1421-my-dog-hates-you-too/ ) does a eulogy for him. (Girl who wrote a letter complaining that the show sucked and that she had to listen because her parents did in the car... they had her on and she'd periodically call in for years) My all-time favorite was the episode where someone called in and said that their vehicle would run pretty well but with lot…

Pretty good best of here: http://www.wbur.org/2014/11/03/car-talk-tom-best-of

Car Talk was my gateway into NPR growing up when I used to listen with my dad on long drives. I've had the fortune to meet the Car Talk brothers many times and they were just as funny and friendly in person as they were on the show. RIP Tom.

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