"Slaughterhouse-Five" author is beamed up

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut is dead at 84. This AP article (which is no doubt one of those lengthy obits that news services write up years in advance) provides a thorough summary of his tragic life and quirky career. Among his many bizarre intellectual contributions is this grand idea:

"We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard... and too damn cheap," he once suggested carving into a wall on the Grand Canyon, as a message for flying-saucer creatures.