Blogesphere Loses One

Damn. Bad news at Right Thinking from the West Coast. Blogger "Lee" (identity protected name) has passed away at 38. He founded that blog and moved to China a few years ago and began writing on the blog Lee in China. His buddy JimK posts:

This is about the worst thing I can imagine ever having to post on this site. Lee is...and will always be...100% unique, a force of nature and someone we are all better off knowing. I’m also going to ask that we leave the politics at the door temporarily.

*UPDATE*
Well, as far as I know - and I will not pester his family for info, so everything I am getting is second and third hand - Lee passed in the night. I got email from him a couple of days ago, and he was online as well, so the timeframe seems to be overnight Monday, Beijing time.

Lee was one blogger who got me into the whole thing. I used to read Right Thinking on the West Coast daily when he was living stateside. He was a conservative/libertarian who railed against leftists and Bush style Republicans equally. A few years ago, he moved to China for work and had some interesting posts that you could never read in a newspaper or the Economist.

I have posted about him on this blog: Is China Home for a Free Market, Libertarian American?

I definitely had him in mind when I started this blog. How it's important to speak your mind and not worry about being politically incorrect. (I'm a politically incorrect guy, but putting it in writing is harder than you think.) And, if you've examined the facts, it's ok to change your mind on big issues like the Iraq War.

Damn. I've never met him, but I'll miss his writing.

UPDATE: Here was one of my favorite posts, he published a letter that he really sent to his cable company: (excerpt)

What a load of crap. Here’s the fact. Your service sucks. Your company sucks. If I lived in an area where I could get a satellite signal I’d dump your worthless company in less time than it takes to say “satellite.” For now, however, I am stuck with you. My brother, who lives in Texas, also has Time Warner cable. His experience is no different. The signal goes out every time a grasshopper farts. When you call for service, someone with a completely unintelligible foreign accent reads from a script designed specifically to placate the usual group of drooling hordes who will accept your dismal performance and stunning incompetence as merely the cost of doing business.

So, here is my question. Are you planning on ever improving your service? Or is the crap I have had to put up with the past six months what Time Warner had in mind when it spoke of “improvements” and “exciting” changes? Because, frankly, I could go to any special needs class in any public school in this city, randomly grab ten retarded children, and the service they would provide could not possibly be any worse than what I have experienced since Time Warner took over Comcast. Actually, it would be better, because at least retarded children have a legitimate excuse.

And please, don’t insult me by copying and pasting a form letter into an email. Escalate this one up the chain. If I wanted to talk to someone in India I’d get myself vaccinated against the plague and go visit the Taj Mahal. I’m in America, I want to speak to an American, preferably one who speaks English and can actually do something about this problem. Don’t patronize me or think you’re going to be able to placate me with soothing words and phrases. There is one way to solve this problem, and that is for you incompetent bunch of tools to improve the service you provide me.

I anxiously await your trite, condescending form letter.