Aha ^_^ , when I was a kid... I used to read all sorts of books, especially on zoology, biology, psychology, mathematics, physics, astronomy, religion, anthropology, culture (this was fun, since, like you, I've had the chance to see more than half the world myself, including the countries you've mentioned), and what not... and also romantic and tragic novels. But those were mostly just elementary books at the school library.
Most of my recollections of recorded historic events and stuff were acquired during that period. If I seem to remember details rather fiercely, that's pretty much what Asperger's does to me
, besides a string of other pests such as bipolar disorder and OCD. I don't need to look things up in their sources anymore. I almost never have to do that. My memory bank greatly pains me already (there are a few things I don't want to know (or I want to stop knowing), but it's too late for that) :huh:.
Then I stopped reading books like about 7 years ago, because I was occupied with my own original ideas and all, and I did not want those books/authors to meddle with my independence and authenticity. I lived in multi-layered seclusion.
Nowadays, I sometimes read books again, but I don't take them 'seriously' anymore. I don't have to understand them. When there's a book before me, I refuse to read it progressively, just going through it by flipping the pages fast (like a mindless scanner) or reading the pages randomly, and that's that. It's purely recreational, like toilet reading. If you catch me speaking a little too much of philosophy (epistemology), don't take it seriously :lol: , since I can do it while idle.
Apart from all that, I do mathematics and theoretical physics at the University, or to be more specific, I do research on quantum gravity.
Trust me, there are other more brilliant physicists than just Hawking, but they are not so popular or simply refuse to be popular. They are really in love with science, they're married to what they do and spend so little time 'being promiscuous outdoors'. We have a mathematician colleague (also an Aspie, with some Bohemian traits) who refused to receive the Fields Medal (the equivalent of Nobel Prize in mathematics), laughing at it as just socially alienating luxury (he believes those people (both his fellow mathematicians and lay people) don't understand his work at all). My fellow Swede, Hannes Alfven, who did profound work on electrodynamics (magnetohydrodynamics) and its immediate application to the cosmos (giving birth to Plasma Cosmology), was mostly ignored by the Baron of the Elite (for his theory, like Hoyle's, was a pricking rival to the Big Bang Theory, especially on vast cosmological scales), though he did get the Prize he deserved (without him wanting it) at an idle, old age. (Don't read the Wikipedia account on this or that, it can be so very biased.)
The French existentialist Sartre also refused to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, back in the 1970s, I think. And yet, there are people who seem to want that Prize by being nice and chatty with the media (I forgot if Hawking might be among them). We need more independent people who are more than just puppets of thriving mediocrity and post-modernism... bold minds like you ^_^.
I'm occasionally bored with routines, and, like I said earlier, my being here is mostly when I am not in the mood to work (think) at all. So thank you for being here, like this, and really listening to the idle me
.
Evar, what sort of books do you read? Or do you look this stuff up? Have you studied philosophy or is it an area of special interest? I am about as much of a philosopher as Hawking, so I won't even try to talk philosophy at the same level as you do.
I had to look up Epistemology. First time you've stumped me with a word that I didn't know. :showoff:
ow oops.... i write it in the way i hear it lolz
?) origins.