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+--- Thread: RIP Jay Lake (/showthread.php?tid=3107)
RIP Jay Lake - cranefly - 06-02-2014
Back in 1971 I watched a TV movie called Brian's Song. In it, the character played by James Caan is stricken with cancer soon after beginning a pro football career. Even on his deathbed he is telling his best football buddy that he'll soon recover and play again. After his death, everyone calls him courageous and a hero and a role model.
I remember having a WTF reaction to the movie. Courageous? He was a coward! He couldn't face the truth! Though the performances were very good, I thought it was a pretty sucky movie.
These days my stance has softened. Under such terminal conditions, it's all about coping. You do whatever you need to do, and believe whatever you want to believe, to cope with the situation in your remaining days. You try to maintain your quality of life, whatever that requires.
Still, I greatly favor a more realistic approach, which was Jay's approach. He educated himself about his condition, crunched the numbers, and knew the most likely outcome. He despised the "hope" expressed by those ignorant of the cold equations. It wasn't that he had given up hope, but he sized his hope commensurate with the odds, which were infinitesimal. He participated in ever more radical treatment programs right up until the end, and was the king of TMI, maintaining a blog detailing everything -- everything! -- he was going through, both physically and mentally. I have to admit I did not read a great deal of it. He also maintained another more general blog where he demonstrated a breadth and fluency of reasoning to parry the nonsense logic of our times.
I did not hang out with him a lot, but met him on a few occasions. Still, his online presence was profound, and it's hard to accept that his voice has been silenced.