Morbidity (A Brief Post)

As is well-known to anyone who patronizes Yahoo! (and, really, who doesn't?), the homepage features an ever-shifting top-ten list of topics that are "Trending Now." As of this writing, the list comprises Salma Hayek, Jennifer Aniston, Adolf Hitler (ever see those three names in a sentence before?), Summer Recipes, Kellie Pickler, Transformers 3, Gregg Allman, Algae Bloom, Stock Prices, and Kim Kardashian.

Now, the only item on that list we felt compelled to click was Gregg Allman. Not because we're a fan. It's just that, whenever we see celebrities of a certain age--say 60+--on the list, we fear they've suffered a handshake with mortality. Turns out Allman has had a successful liver transplant (we wish him well). We think Yahoo! should really do something with the list to signal when someone is on the list for having recently experienced death. Gregg Allman was not such a big deal for us, but you can't imagine our relief when with quivering finger we clicked on Leonard Nimoy's name the other day. Turns out he was merely being honored by the Canadian town of Vulcan. Whew!!