It's been awhile since the founder of our forum has been mentioned. Most here today go back long enough to remember Alex.
After a very long absence, Kate McCallum finally contacted me this past week and we had some great communication via email. Kate is still traveling the world playing elite level competitive bridge. ..........on her way to Las Vegas for the next competition. She is still greatly missing Alex.
Hard to believe it's been over 2 years since Alex's sudden passing........March 6, 2017 at just 76 years young. His birthday is September 30, 1940. (during the Battle of Britain) as Kate tells me that Alex used to say when making reference to his birthday.
ALEX McCALLUM, 1940-2017
CHEERS!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain
The Battle of Britain (German: Luftschlacht um England, literally "The Air Battle for England") was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) defended the United Kingdom (UK) against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe. It has been described as the first major military campaign fought entirely by air forces.[17] The British officially recognise the battle's duration as being from 10 July until 31 October 1940, which overlaps the period of large-scale night attacks known as The Blitz, that lasted from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941.[18]German historians do not accept this subdivision and regard the battle as a single campaign lasting from July 1940 to June 1941, including the Blitz.[19]
My favorite Alex story related to him being a liberal but very open minded. We never doubted his fairness and even handed moderating skills which never suggested leaning in one political direction......though Kate told me that he was even more liberal then she is and she is pretty liberal.
She told me, shortly after we met, that the only thing that they ever really disagreed on politically was climate change...........thanks to me.
As every good liberal knows, we are having a horrible climate crisis and people that disagree with that(like me) are deniers. Seriously, there is very little tolerance or open mindedness when it comes to people like me sharing the authentic science which contradicts the climate crisis narrative.
For much of the last 10 years, when climate change came up here on MarketForum, metmike the poster would provide what Alex the moderator called "epistles" that would be, very similar to metmike's climate posts today, very lengthy discussions loaded with links, data, graphs, observations and authentic, compelling science as evidence that there is no climate crisis and we are enjoying the best weather/climate in the last 1,000 years.
Alex the open minded liberal took note and completely changed his view on climate change. In fact, he created a special place in the MarketForum library that he called "climate talk" for all of metmikes climate posts.
It is extraordinarily rare to see somebody do a,complete about face with regards to their view on a political topic like this (people's view on this, unfortunately is based almost entirely by the politics, even though its science).
So I have always had even more respect for Alex as somebody that really listened to what other people had to say and heard what their message was, even if it disagreed with what he thought that he knew.