The doctor turned thriller author ("Andromeda Strain," "Jurassic Park") has died at age 66 of cancer.

He was probably the tallest man in history to be famous for something unrelated to being tall.

I read his autobiography many years ago. It includes a section about how he was inspired by Uri Geller to learn how to bend spoons with his mind. He used to attend house parties in the early 1970s of spoon benders — mostly Lockheed engineers and their families, with everybody sitting around bending spoons telekinetically. He said he got pretty good at bending spoons with his brain waves, but then he got bored with it.

I have no idea what to make of that.