Theoretical cosmologist on a Harley Davidson

I was reading an article about Stephen Hawking, the world famous physicist and cosmologist and author of A Brief History of Time, today and how the medical community is studying him – not because of his outstanding brain, but because he’s lived so long.

The man is a hero of mine – because of his brain. I find super intelligent people absurdly fascinating. And sexy. Honestly smart people who are also funny run my sexy meter way up there – putting looks into third place. Unless you look like Jax on Sons of Anarchy. That’s just eye candy.  But if you could merge the two of them together….

Wow – that was a hell of a tangent.

Back to Stephen Hawking who, for the record, I don’t find sexy. It’s the robot voice. I may find smart people sexy but I’m still disappointingly shallow at heart.

Tangent alert #2.

How much do I love this picture - 2 years after his diagnosis

Really – back to Stephen Hawking. The man was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS or Lou Gehrigs disease when he was 21 and given two years to live. He is turning 70 on Sunday which means he’s lived like 50 years past his life expectancy. He still doesn’t even use a ventilator to help him breathe. They say he’s still alive by sheer force of will. I suspect that means that he doesn’t whine all the time over hang nails and when he burns his tongue on hot coffee like some Sisters I know.

Hawking communicates solely by twitching his right cheek which registers on a wee little infrared sensor in his glasses which feeds the info to his computer which then selects words on his computer screen which are then spoken aloud by the famous synthesized robot voice. It can take him up to ten minutes to finish a complete sentence. Who else thinks this is mind boggling? The sheer amount of patience involved with this… Wow.

If I was sitting in his office, I’ll bet it would take him less than ten minutes to tell me to stop babbling and sit the hell down. I tend to bring that out in people. 

Now – knowing his limitations – keep in mind that until 2009 the man was the Lucasian professor of Mathematics, the same position held at one time by Sir Isaac Newton (!), at Cambridge University in England. Now Hawking holds the frivolous job of being the director of research at the Cambridge’s Centre for Theoretical Cosmology. What must be going on in this man’s head all the time? How frustrating that he can’t just say these things. The sheer level of brilliance is mind boggling.

I, on the other hand, am just impressed with myself in that I was able to shuffle both the brilliant Stephen Hawking and scrumptious Jax Teller in the same blog post.  I’ve covered the meat & potatoes and dessert all in less than 500 artfully strung together words.  Hardly genius, but talented if I do say so myself.