{"id":4649,"date":"2018-03-14T19:01:36","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T00:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4649"},"modified":"2018-03-14T19:01:36","modified_gmt":"2018-03-15T00:01:36","slug":"and-not-fade-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4649","title":{"rendered":"And Not Fade Away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Long-time readers of this blog may remember <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2211\">my<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2279\">imaginary<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2394\">rivalry<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1452\">with<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1561\">Stephen<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1684\">Hawking<\/a>. We never did get that opportunity to face each other in a cage match aboard the International Space Station (even though my victory was always a foregone conclusion). But I digress. I was truly sorry to learn of his passing yesterday. Not only did he make scientific contributions that will be remembered for decades, but he demonstrated to the world that it&#8217;s possible to live a rich, full life with a significant disability. Not all of us will get to be world-class physicists or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mg8_cKxJZJY\">appear on an episode of <em>Star Trek<\/em><\/a>, but perhaps some kid with a disability will learn about Hawking and realize that her dreams of being a writer or programmer or whatever aren&#8217;t so far-fetched after all. Even better, perhaps future kids with disabilities will wonder why their grandparents made such a big deal over Hawking&#8217;s wheelchair and speech synthesizer when his mind and sense of humor were his most defining characteristics.<\/p>\n<p>Godspeed, Professor. Eternity beckons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long-time readers of this blog may remember my imaginary rivalry with Stephen Hawking. We never did get that opportunity to face each other in a cage match aboard the International Space Station (even though my victory was always a foregone conclusion). But I digress. I was truly sorry to learn of his passing yesterday. Not <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4649' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,12,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability","category-personal","category-science","category-14-id","category-12-id","category-19-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-1cZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4650,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649\/revisions\/4650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}