I’m going to make a last minute substituion of Tammy Faye Messner for Mary Kate olsen.
My final list is:
1 Fidel Castro
2 Ariel Sharon
3 Chuck Berry
4 Billy Graham
5 Ruth Graham
6 Tammy Faye Messner
7 Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq
8 Bob Newhart
9 Senator Ted Stevens
10 Senator Robert Byrd
11 Yegor Gaidar, former Russian prime minister
12 Indonesian dictator Suharto
13 Kirk Douglas
Is this Jeff guy famous for being ill? I mean is he famous at all?
And that’s a perfectly valid point about the political prisoner thing. However, the militants don’t represent the Nigerian government (in fact, the government is usually the one to foot the ransom) and Dieghi isn’t being held hostage because MEND considers his political views dangerous (at least, common sense tells me that an Italian oil worker probably has negligle views, if any, about MEND’s agenda). Ergo, not a political prisoner but an unfortunate participant (that’s also in dire need of medical attention, which is why I picked him over the other three hostages) in what boils down to a struggle over money.
As for Jeff Tonn, having a disease that (so far) can’t be identified by medical professionals is newsworthy in and of itself. I wouldn’t have put him on my list if it hadn’t been a debilitating disease. Add the fact that he has his own web site it should be pretty easy to check if he passes away.
If there are rules I don’t know about IRT death pool selections and these two or others are ruled out, then my alternates will simply take their spot on my list.
Fair enough?
Not from what I can tell. That is my complaint.
I disagree, both that having an unidentified disease is a newsworthy occurrence and that Jeff Tonn qualifies as a celebrity, but I have no cites to back up the former and I don’t make the rules so good luck with the latter.
All hands, prepare for Time Jump…
My list, which I just put together from basically nothing (I have almost no special inside information):
and We’re Off
I hope I’m not too late… My browser timed out on me while I was trying to post my list.
I’ll testify to a slow dope server if it’s any help.
Well, actually what happened is that as soon as I hit “Preview Post”, I was brought to a page telling me to log in again. I remembered that [thread=400338]this was discussed very recently[/thread], and that is basically meant that my post was lost, but I hadn’t thought of it before trying to post because 1) I was using my girlfriend’s computer running IE instead of my computer running Firefox and 2) also for this reason, I hadn’t chosen the “Remember me” option, which seems to be what causes the problem. So it was the first time this ever happened to me.
Fortunately, I still had another tab with all the Wikipedia pages with my selections in the history stack. So I was able to rewrite it pretty quickly, but I lost time rewriting my selections’ job and birthdate and I posted one minute late.
Anyway, it’s no big deal. I don’t expect my selections to give me many points (actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if none of them died this year, and in any case, some of them I don’t want to see die yet), so if the fact that I posted one minute late is a problem, we’ll just keep them as unofficial selections.
Now that the betting windows have closed, it is time to look over the lists. Who has the best? The Worst?
I see many newbies going for the high-point young self-destructive types. That line of betting does not win. Look at Keith Richards.
I regret having Mohammed Ali on my list, being as I missed Ariel Sharron. A simple lack of research on my part. Sharron is a “giveme.”
In fact, I bet we could (together) come up with a list of dead ringers, so to speak.
Anyone else a sure thing?
Fidel. If they admit it…
I’d venture to say most of us would cut severus a little slack here. I mean, who amongst us has not experienced the Dope’s infamous sloooooooow as moooollllllaaaaassssseeeeessss server before?
Anybody got Darrent Williams? American footballer shot dead.
That would be very creepy.
FWIW I’d second that. It’s not his fault the hamsters were too busy getting pissed on sesame seed wine to process his post correctly.
Sheesh you’d think I’d have remembered to tick the box last time…
And as for all the rules, well folks, it is just a game, not a matter of life and …, uh, ummm, back to whatever you were doing! 
What fun is that?