Briefly, Time

The smiling fellow above is number 137 on my hero list, and his name is Stephen Hawking. He was born this day 1942 in Oxford, England. I know that today is also Elvis Presley's birthday, and considering where I live he should probably be a hero, but I just never cared for his music that much (my mother, on the other hand, thinks he hung the moon. I guess swiveling hips are her kind of thing). Instead, I choose the fellow above, and he is probably one of the smartest ten people on the planet. I confess that all I have read by him was his "Brief History of Time", and most of it sailed lazily over my head. The parts I did (I think) understand made me so depressed that I figured I would leave Mr. Hawkins' writing alone for a while for my own sake. He is quite simply a fucking genius. A genius that, as you can tell by the photo above, has had MASSIVE physical obstacles to overcome, but has managed, with a lot of help, to overcome then enough to have been the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University for the last thirty years. You generally don't get that type of gig if you are a moron, and he is far and away one of the brightest minds dealing with black holes, and theoretical physics in the world. When he first got the disease that put him in the wheelchair, ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease, he was told he had two to three years to live. That was when he was 21, today he is 68 and still alive, but has had to retire from the Professorship due to his illness. However, for showing us all that the mind is free of the body's disabilities in spectacular fashion, Dr. Stephen Hawking (January 8th, 1942-present), you, and not Elvis, are my hero of the day.


P.S. I know I said I would catch up with the hero parade, and post one for yesterday, but I searched and was unable to find one. Therefore, since it is my blog, and my rules apply the post about my little secret will have to suffice, but for form's sake I will, with regret, have to say that for January 7th, there is no hero of the day.