Probably the best known sufferer is Professor Stephen Hawking, who has had MND for many years, but he has a very slow developing form of MND: most people survive only a year or two after diagnosis. MND has touched my life particularly through watching first my stepfather and then a young academic colleague die of it.
There is no cure, although in recent years research has yielded some promising leads and at least one drug that seems to slow the disease's progression. Further research funding is desperately needed. Check out the MND Association.
My son Richard has several blogs, including The Velvet Bear and You Called Your Kid What?. His latest is The Memory Blog.
My son-in-law Andrew (known to all and sundry as Pat) also blogs, but since he's a software architect or some other synomym for computer geek, it's all Greek to most of us. (That's rich, coming from a statistician!)
By the way, if anyone has a copy of the Parker Brothers "Astron" game, please email me. This is the American version of the game. It has a rolling board which is a map of the world. It was later reissued in the USA as "Sky Lanes," so I'd be interested in that, too. I have the British version by Waddington's (with a board based on a journey from Earth to Saturn), which I loved as a kid, and I'm curious to see how different the American one is.
Another long-standing interest is in amateur dramatics. My wife Ann and I belong to a local amateur dramatic group, the Cubbington Players.
I have recently revived a childhood interest in a construction system called Brickplayer. Everyone is familiar with Lego, which began life as mainly for constructing houses and other buildings. The idea of Brickplayer is to build such things using real miniature bricks and mortar. The result is much more realistic than a Lego building, as well as being more demanding to build. I have acquired quite a lot of old Brickplayer bricks, windows, doors, etc, and I've starting designing my first project. Dave Meesam's Brickplayer website is an inspiration!
Below are some old links that used to be on my academic pages.
Over the years, I've had a lot of pleasure from malt whisky, so here is something to savour - The Edinburgh Malt Whisky Tour.
Finally, do you love folk music? My old friend Ian Robb is a leading light in Canadian folk-song circles.
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