Hits home a little harder as I lost my grandfather (who had huge impact on my life) to Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS) when I was in 1st yr university. He succumbed to the disease within a year of diagnosis.
Hawking was nothing short of amazing. As his family put it he was: Brilliant. Persistant. Courageous. Humourous.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
After my dad was diagnosed with ALS over a year ago, we looked at Stephen Hawking as a source of some comfort and inspiration for a long and productive life with the disease. It is a cruel disease though if you don’t have the support around you. I am thankful that my dad didn’t have to suffer long with it.
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Out lived his life expectancy by like 50 years, really inspiring. And somehow managed to go on a day when people have annually started to turn their focus and attention to the subjects of math & science that defined his life and contribution to history.
Someone more poetic than me will have something nice to say about it.
A friend of mine was diagnosed with ALS less than a year ago. He's steadily deteriorated and now has 20% breathing capacity and likely is weeks from death. I'm saddened.
I admired his courage in the face of A.L.S.Truly remarkable.
But I have no idea about the ideas that originally made him famous. I tried to read A Short History of Time a couple of times, but my brain just doesn't work that way. it was like looking at hieroglyphics.
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"I was born on January 8, 1942, exactly three hundred years after the death of Galileo. I estimate, however, that about two hundred thousand other babies were also born that day. I don't know whether any of them was later interested in astronomy."
I wouldn’t want someone to erase my identity as a disabled person in my death, as it is a huge intrinsic part of who I am and how I see the world around me. It is unfair that in order for us to celebrate his life, we feel it necessary to remove a part of who Stephen Hawking was: a disabled man.
When I think of Hawking’s passing, I don’t see his spirit rising up out of his wheelchair to be free, because I don’t see his disability as something he needed to be freed from. Instead, I take comfort in the knowledge that wherever he is now, whether it be among the cosmos or in a black hole of nothingness, his disability is with him.
When I think of Hawking’s passing, I don’t see his spirit rising up out of his wheelchair to be free, because I don’t see his disability as something he needed to be freed from. Instead, I take comfort in the knowledge that wherever he is now, whether it be among the cosmos or in a black hole of nothingness, his disability is with him.[/I]
Er, okay, well, that's all fine and good for you, but do you have any idea if Hawking himself felt that way? I mean, his situation is different from some, in that his paralysis progressed over a period of decades. I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, as it's no doubt empowering to internalize a disability rather than treat it like something that's holding you back, but I'm not sure that can be projected onto others.
Either way, one thing I feel can be said with some certainty: he would probably prefer that people talk about him and remember him for his contributions to physics and cosmology, not his health or disability.
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