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His last op-ed in the NY Times: http://nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/oliver-sacks-sabbath.html http://nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/oliver-sacks
by leothekim 11y ago
His last op-ed in the NY Times: http://nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/oliver-sacks-sabbath.html http://nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/oliver-sacks-sa...
"And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.”
- mendelk 11y agoAnd interesting HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065710
- facetube 11y agoAnd today is Sunday.
- js2 11y agoThe Jewish Sabbath is Friday sundown (three stars visible) to Saturday sundown. Edit: see mark212's clarification below. I've confused the start and end.
- linkydinkandyou 11y agoActually, the Sabbath is from Friday Night to Saturday night. The Christians have perverted this.
- js2 11y agoIsn't that what I wrote?
- mark212 11y agoNot to be overly picky, but the three stars visible thing is when Shabbat ends on Saturday night, not when it begins. The start of Shabbat strictly speaking is when the sun dips below the horizon and is commemorated by the lighting of two shabbat candles. The last time for lighting those candles is 18 minutes prior to the astronomical event of sun-below-horizon, which under rabbinical interpretation is the true beginning of shabbat (that is, the last minute during which "work" -- in the technical, term of art sense -- may be performed without sanction). It's a key event in Jewish ritual and not surprisingly there's a ton of commentary and meaning-making that has attached to how, when, where, and why Shabbat observance is undertaken. It is said that "More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews."
- linkydinkandyou 11y agoThank you, Mark for defending me. Nothing bothers me more than when Silicon Valley geeks try to take Jewish law and twist it to fit their new-age mumbo jumbo.
- js2 11y agoThank you for the clarification.
- bashinator 11y agoThis is why I love the javascript that allows me to collapse threads.
- facetube 11y agoRight, his last (full) day here was the sabbath. Seemed oddly appropriate, at least in that completely and totally coincidental way.
- js2 11y agoAh, I misinterpreted your comment.
- rodgerd 11y ago> my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer A less-known side of Sacks: he held the California state record for a 600 lb squat in his younger years.
- bashinator 11y agoHe also had a collection of every atomic element. That's no small accomplishment.
- dredmorbius 11y agoA number of photos are floating around Reddit: 600# squat, while interning in San Francisco: http://i.imgur.com/BhetDWl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/BhetDWl.jpg On the beach: http://i.imgur.com/RSjcMzm.jpg http://i.imgur.com/RSjcMzm.jpg In Greenwich Village, 1961: https://i.imgur.com/6VIaPX1.jpg https://i.imgur.com/6VIaPX1.jpg More recently, swimming: https://jennifernew.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/imgres.jpg https://jennifernew.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/imgres.jpg
- dylanjermiah 11y agoWow, I had no idea. That's truly impressive, especially for the time.
- krick 11y ago> not on the supernatural or spiritual > what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself I would say this is pretty much definition of “spiritual”…
- kleer001 11y agoHow? I was under the impression that spirit means the idea of a noncorporial essence that survives the body. I wonder what leap you're making to get there from here. If anything I think his books are his distributed essence, worming their way into the collective unconscious, and collective conscious.