Tragic Losses... and the insensitivity of Trolls

I wasn't sure how to write this. I wanted to remember an old acquaintance (I wouldn't presume to call him 'friend'... I wasn't privileged to know him that well, but we attended the same school for 2 years... a small and close-knit school). But, not being a close friend, I wasn't sure how best to accomplish it.

Last week, this old acquaintance made the news. Was it for his brilliant mind? No. For his tremendous accomplishments? Sadly, no. He made the news for plunging 16 floors to his death in New York. He became merely another event to support "the NYU Curse". Nobody's really sure what happened... I won't speculate. He deserves better than speculation and gossip. As do his widow and now father-less infant daughters.

Sam Roweis was, like many of his fellow UTS Alumni, a brilliant mind. He was the sort of person (when I knew him, and by all accounts right up 'til last Tuesday) who had a smile for everyone... and a contagious one, at that. a PhD from Cal-Tech under his belt, he became employed by U of T in 2001, and with the exception of a year as visiting faculty at MIT in the middle of the last decade, he was at U of T until accepting a position at NYU in 2009. He was 37 when he died. Think about that for a minute. 37 and he had already been a researcher/lecturer/professor for nearly a decade. 37 and considered "an expert" in the field of machine learning... "artificial intelligence"... a leader in cutting-edge research.

More than his academic accomplishments, though, he was a good person. A person who will be sorely missed by the people in whose lives he featured prominantly, who will be missed by past students and research colleagues, who will be missed by anyone who shared conversation with him, by his family, and most dearly by his wife and through her memories, by the daughters who never had a chance to know him.

And yet, complete strangers feel justified in bashing him in the comments section of various media & blog sites on the 'net. They feel no qualms about posting such comments as "nice jump Einstein" on articles which would be read by his friends and family. To them, obviously, he wasn't the man we knew. To them, he wasn't a man at all... he was just a new item... a statistic. To them I say... this was a man... a man with family and friends who loved him... an man with tremendous accomplishments to his name... and sadly, a man who apparently had problems to which he saw no solution. Apparently. Because, nobody really knows what happened or what lead to his death, except Sam.

Regardless of their personal views on suicide in general as an action, could they not take 2 minutes to consider that there might be people seeking articles about his death in a quest for answers in their grief? :(

This article, though, was linked in the comments to a story at Huffington Post about Sam's death, and in a strange way, inspired me to write a tribute of sorts to this man with whom I shared friends and a school for 2 years in my youth.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/14/825132/-Grieving-via-Google

So I have a request for anyone who might read this... before you post a comment on a public site, consider your possible audience. Whether that means the family and friends of the dead, the family of people whose actions you may find abhorrent, or people whose personal tragedies you simply don't understand... regardless of how you may see the 'news items', for someone, the situation may be tragic... and they might be hurting quite enough without reading your inane and frankly insulting comments.