This past weekend I got the amazing opportunity of attending a talk by none other than Steven Hawking, as well as two Nobel Prize winners and the head of NASA. The whole talk was presented by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), situated in Muizenberg. For those of you who don’t know: Hawking is well known for his contributions on the field of black holes and cosmology. He is, in a certain sense, the Einstein of our time.
It was fascinating to see Hawking communicate. He has an illness (a type of motor neurone disease) which results in him only being able to move his eyes and his cheek (if I’m not mistaken). Because he is also unable to speak, he uses a computer-generated voice to speak (think Microsoft Sam). He constructs sentences by moving his cheek... amazing to see.
You can read more about Hawking at the following sites:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hawking
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXQeQD0CJzY
• http://www.hawking.org.uk/home/hindex.html
Check out the YouTube video – after the weightless footage you can see (and hear) him talking using his computer.
Inspirational stuff!
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Website of the Week
Website of the Week #3: http://www.iconfinder.net
An excellent resource for finding free icons that you can actually use personally and commercially. Excellent for websites, school projects and videos.
