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Only just read this. He will really be missed. I hope that, if there is some kind of afterlife, there will be a debriefing where he gets all the answers to the world's mysteries before going off for a chat with Charles Fort and Colin Wilson.
I really hope that too. I have a sneaking suspicion that if there is an afterlife, we don't get all the answers, instead we just get a whole different set of questions. But knowing EG like we do, I'm sure he will love that.
 
I really hope that too. I have a sneaking suspicion that if there is an afterlife, we don't get all the answers, instead we just get a whole different set of questions. But knowing EG like we do, I'm sure he will love that.
Maybe we get the answers for this world but in the next one there is a whole new set of strangeness. A world without strangeness is not worth having.
 
Maybe we get the answers for this world but in the next one there is a whole new set of strangeness. A world without strangeness is not worth having.
I would like to hope you are right, but I am not that optimistic. I suppose we will all find out in time...... Or will we?
 
My IP Adress has been banned for some time (again) and I have been suddenly let back on...to find....this.

I am in shiock and denial like we all are.

He was always genial. A;ways knowleadgeable. Always interesting. And scarily intelligent with it all.

He is irreplaceable.
 
Only just read this. He will really be missed. I hope that, if there is some kind of afterlife, there will be a debriefing where he gets all the answers to the world's mysteries before going off for a chat with Charles Fort and Colin Wilson.
I'll bet he headed straight for the best library he could find, to see what he could dig up about Dyatlov Pass, the Yuba City Five, and dozens of other mysteries.
 
I just saw the sad news this week - I don't know why, but it knocked me sideways for a bit - it seemed to me from my limited interactions with him, that he was that vanishingly rare combination of very smart, wise and tolerant. I shall miss his presence here and if there is anything after then I hope it's to his liking. Fair winds and following seas @EnolaGaia. :hoff:

Dammit to heck. :(:glum:
 
I'm so sorry to hear this he was a generous and intelligent man. Between October and November last year he was helping my colleague and I with the analysis of some historical photos. We had to temporarily hold that piece of work but returned to it a week or so ago, I was just writing the acknowledgement section when I realised I wasn't sure about his surname. I thought it was Whitaker but you don't want to get it wrong, so I just pm'ed him when I noticed the 'Account Retired' notice and found this thread.
 
EG has now been gone - moved to the great library - a little over a month now. I am getting used to him not being here.

Last week, I dreamt of him. I assure everyone here that I almost never dream of people I know, and that I have never met EG in real life. In the dream, I asked him when he was going to resume his research. He laughed and said he had other things to do first, that he never did in his previous life, like waking barefoot in the grass. He was barefoot, standing on the grass, and smiling. He still had his beard and hair, but they were both brown. He also looked thinner and about 35-40 years old. He was happy and healthy.

@gattino - WTF?!? This is your area, not mine.
 
It's the first I've heard of this news. :(

@Endlessly Amazed well it certainly is a very hopeful and reassuring dream. I've not myself had any involving post mortem communication, but yours is very consistent with many such dreams usually had by family members and close friends. I'm certainly willing to believe it was a sincere message.
 
I have spent the last hour or so reading this thread.

A bit late I know but I am extremely sad to hear of EG's passing.

I used to look for his posts, it didn't matter what the subject was I always knew they would be well written and leave me a little bit more knowledgeable on topics I had hitherto not known I might be interested in.

And gosh, what a cv!

It has been an honour to know EG through his posts over the 14 years I have been a proud member of of this forum.

Rest in peace EG I will really miss you.
 
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EG comes to mind every time I go outside and watch the ISS. I am grateful to him for raising my consciousness regarding iridium satellites, and solving the riddle of the glinters that had puzzled me for decades. Well done, mate. And thanks again. (yes, he lurks :bananas:)
 
EnolaGaia's Necrolog entry is in the current issue of the FT (429). For those who don't read the mag, this is my obit for him.

**********
Necrolog – Randy Whitaker

The term Renaissance man is hugely overused, but in the case of Dr Randall Whitaker it can be used with absolute justification. An engineer, draftsman, professional musician, television cameraman, editor and lecturer, Randy was a polyglot polymath with an astounding breadth, depth and scope of knowledge from the mundane to the bizarre – indeed there seemed to be nothing that he knew nothing about.

Born in 1951 in Bristol, VA, he was a straight A student at school, earning a College Scholarship and spent his late teens and twenties in a variety of roles whilst studying, a mixture of the technical and artistic, or whilst a draftsman both. According to his friend Tom Rotenberry he was also a very talented musician playing keyboards with a number of bands. He was never idle: his academic career led him to Sweden in the late 1980s, where for a number of years he worked first as a Systems Analyst at The Swedish Agency for Administrative Development and eventually became an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Umeå . On his return to the US, he became a technical and development consultant for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at, of all places Wright-Patterson AFB (yes, of course I asked him, and no, he didn’t) also working with Northrop Grumman. His CV read like something from Tom Clancy.

In 2004 he joined the then young and fresh-faced Fortean Times Message Board with the username EnolaGaia – this in itself was a pleasing pun, which later transpired to have a deeper significance than any of us hitherto realised (his father had been involved with the Manhattan Project). It soon became clear that he was an absolute goldmine of knowledge: what marked Randy out more than anything was his ability to relate context to anecdote to evidence, his career in academia having given him a rigid sense of discipline particularly in relation to sources and chain of evidence. This and his comprehensive technical experience marked him out as a potential moderator which he happily became in August 2018, quickly becoming an invaluable member of the team playing an integral part in our migration to the CFI later that year and running much of the technical side of our admin (perhaps surprisingly – actually, no, not surprising – he was also a moderator on the truckers’ site the Toyota Tacoma Forum, performing the same functions.)

Perhaps his greatest Wild Talent was his ability to find things. According to Tom Rotenberry:

“He was known to show up at a gathering of friends where everyone had been searching in tall weeds for hours trying to find a lost item of value and he would walk straight to it and pick it up. He found my high school class ring on eBay. It had been lost for 50 years.”

On the board, this talent manifested as finding citations: his skill was unparalleled and even a cursory glance at the forums today will turn up myriad examples of requests from others for lost evidence followed in short order by an immaculately composed reference from EnolaGaia, usually delivered not with a triumphant “found it!” post but rather with a rather understated “Is this what you were maybe looking for?” manner. Of all the denizens of the fortean net, he was always the most Jeevesian.

Towards the end of 2022 he had been admitted to hospital, in his own, entirely characteristic words “I realised I was compromised”, but was nonetheless shocked to learn that he had suffered multiple heart attacks within one day. Two weeks of in-patient treatment followed, returning to his Ohio home for Christmas where he sadly suffered a relapse over New Year, and passed away. The subsequent outpouring of shock and condolence on the Forteana Forums is testament to his popularity, his kindness, his wisdom and his knowledge. And on a personal level, though we never met in person, I will deeply miss a very good friend and colleague. Farewell, EnolaGaia: Finder of Lost Things.

Dr Randall D Whitaker, MSc, Phd, born October 1951, died Jan 1st 2023 aged 71.
 
EnolaGaia's Necrolog entry is in the current issue of the FT (429). For those who don't read the mag, this is my obit for him.

**********
Necrolog – Randy Whitaker

The term Renaissance man is hugely overused, but in the case of Dr Randall Whitaker it can be used with absolute justification. An engineer, draftsman, professional musician, television cameraman, editor and lecturer, Randy was a polyglot polymath with an astounding breadth, depth and scope of knowledge from the mundane to the bizarre – indeed there seemed to be nothing that he knew nothing about.

Born in 1951 in Bristol, VA, he was a straight A student at school, earning a College Scholarship and spent his late teens and twenties in a variety of roles whilst studying, a mixture of the technical and artistic, or whilst a draftsman both. According to his friend Tom Rotenberry he was also a very talented musician playing keyboards with a number of bands. He was never idle: his academic career led him to Sweden in the late 1980s, where for a number of years he worked first as a Systems Analyst at The Swedish Agency for Administrative Development and eventually became an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Umeå . On his return to the US, he became a technical and development consultant for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at, of all places Wright-Patterson AFB (yes, of course I asked him, and no, he didn’t) also working with Northrop Grumman. His CV read like something from Tom Clancy.

In 2004 he joined the then young and fresh-faced Fortean Times Message Board with the username EnolaGaia – this in itself was a pleasing pun, which later transpired to have a deeper significance than any of us hitherto realised (his father had been involved with the Manhattan Project). It soon became clear that he was an absolute goldmine of knowledge: what marked Randy out more than anything was his ability to relate context to anecdote to evidence, his career in academia having given him a rigid sense of discipline particularly in relation to sources and chain of evidence. This and his comprehensive technical experience marked him out as a potential moderator which he happily became in August 2018, quickly becoming an invaluable member of the team playing an integral part in our migration to the CFI later that year and running much of the technical side of our admin (perhaps surprisingly – actually, no, not surprising – he was also a moderator on the truckers’ site the Toyota Tacoma Forum, performing the same functions.)

Perhaps his greatest Wild Talent was his ability to find things. According to Tom Rotenberry:

“He was known to show up at a gathering of friends where everyone had been searching in tall weeds for hours trying to find a lost item of value and he would walk straight to it and pick it up. He found my high school class ring on eBay. It had been lost for 50 years.”

On the board, this talent manifested as finding citations: his skill was unparalleled and even a cursory glance at the forums today will turn up myriad examples of requests from others for lost evidence followed in short order by an immaculately composed reference from EnolaGaia, usually delivered not with a triumphant “found it!” post but rather with a rather understated “Is this what you were maybe looking for?” manner. Of all the denizens of the fortean net, he was always the most Jeevesian.

Towards the end of 2022 he had been admitted to hospital, in his own, entirely characteristic words “I realised I was compromised”, but was nonetheless shocked to learn that he had suffered multiple heart attacks within one day. Two weeks of in-patient treatment followed, returning to his Ohio home for Christmas where he sadly suffered a relapse over New Year, and passed away. The subsequent outpouring of shock and condolence on the Forteana Forums is testament to his popularity, his kindness, his wisdom and his knowledge. And on a personal level, though we never met in person, I will deeply miss a very good friend and colleague. Farewell, EnolaGaia: Finder of Lost Things.

Dr Randall D Whitaker, MSc, Phd, born October 1951, died Jan 1st 2023 aged 71.

If only we could all have someone we'd never met write such kind words after our passing.
 
I'll bet he's already made suggestions for improving their catalogue and filing system.
If someone suggested improvements for my filing and catalogue systems, there'd be fisticuffs!



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Belated condolences to Dr. Whitaker's family.
He was a beautifully unusual combination of 'wow? .. this man's clever! .. but then also with a nice added side line of: 'and I'd also like to go to the pub with him and he'd probably chuckle if one us farted' .. that's how I took to him anyway. Still gutted but chin up in any case . XX
 
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One night we got into a heavy conversation about some topic he also cared about, I can't remember what it was about but he replied with ..

"I have a reputation for "transforming into a machine" during crises and effectively / efficiently dealing with whatever the Cosmic Joker throws in my path. My late best friend of all time pinpointed this as my most impressive superpower.

Among other things, I spent 8 years as a front-line representative for the Social Security Administration, overseeing a welfare-dependent population of circa 17,000 unfortunate and needy souls. I dealt with a lot of folks in crisis as well as a lot of their crises. However ...

I already knew at that point in my life my empathy / sympathy only extended to people I knew and valued. In my professional role I was "official", cut no corners, and let the chips fall wherever they may. If someone needed help I was the guy who knew how the systems worked to get them help ASAP. If someone tried to rip us off or owed money back I was so fearsomely effective at nailing them that the agency secretly reviewed all my cases overnight for a month before concluding I was simply doing the job by the book.

Our client population asked for me by name, because they knew whether the news was good or bad I'd give 'em straight answers and a clear explanation for things.

Here's my point ... I don't have the "automatic benevolence toward anyone / everyone" gene. In the job described above I dispensed more aid and more punishment than anyone, but I didn't "care" in the sense of letting it get to me personally. My colleagues who "cared" all washed out.

This is why I didn't go into medicine as my extended family continually urged me to do during my early youth. I've provided first aid and other emergency help at (e.g.) accident scenes and been a caregiver in other situations, but I've long known in my heart this wasn't the sort of role I was really cut out for.

Same goes for parenting ... I don't have the "all kids are a blessing; I wanna have some" gene.

Make no mistake - I have tons of respect for parents, caregivers and medical professionals. It's just that their path isn't my path. A half-century of experience has validated my youthful beliefs about this.."

.... he also wasn't afraid to have a laugh though and seemed to have a soft spot for us more silly posters so I reckon we're going to miss him as well. I'll try to find some of his less profound stuff lol.
This was perfect. Thanks for sharing, Swifty. :bpals:
 
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