I’m sad that today I’m adding a slide to one of my live presentations, adding Steve Jobs to the list of famous people who died treating terminal diseases with woo rather than with medicine.
Seven or eight years ago, the news broke that Steve Jobs had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but considering it a private matter, he delayed in informing Apple’s board, and Apple’s board delayed in informing the shareholders. So what. The only delay that really mattered was that Steve, it turned out, had been treating his pancreatic cancer with a special diet and other alternative therapies, prescribed by his naturopath.
Most pancreatic cancers are aggressive and always terminal, but Steve was lucky (if you can call it that) and had a rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which is actually quite treatable with excellent survival rates — if caught soon enough. The median survival is about a decade, but it depends on how soon it’s removed surgically. Steve caught his very early, and should have expected to survive much longer than a decade. Unfortunately Steve relied on a naturopathic diet instead of early surgery. There is no evidence that diet has any effect on islet cell carcinoma. As he dieted for nine months, the tumor progressed, and took him from the high end to the low end of the survival rate.
Eventually it became clear to all involved that his alternative therapy wasn’t working, and from then on, by all accounts, Steve aggressively threw money at the best that medical science could offer. But it was too late. He had a Whipple procedure. He had a liver transplant. And then he died, all too young.
Joss Weatherby
I was browsing through the short-wave bands a couple nights ago for the hell of it and came across some quack medical radio show about getting rid of toxins in the body. They were telling people to swallow clay, and if you got a rash from the clay you should put clay on the rash... Its just the toxins coming out.
People who do not subscribe to most modern medicine are idiots.
infinity HiGH
quote:
Originally posted by djash
Can't use Windows anymore, it get's worse and worse, still use XP
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.
….
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Vivid Boy
you guys say he revolutionized the tech world? but what did he really do? produced a digital walk man and called it the ipod and make it look sleaker and cooler then the other mp3 players out on the market at the time. He then very intelligently marketed this product (with a huge wallet) to the millennial generation. He then combined already used technologies into this walkman and combined it with a phone to make the iphone. Phones had already been playing mp3's and hookin up to the internet way before the iphone. Really he was just the tim the toolman tailor of the tech world. He took what was already out there and gave it more power.
I condone him for it, but I say he was a better marketer then he was a an inventor or revolutionary.
Joss Weatherby
quote:
Originally posted by Vivid Boy
you guys say he revolutionized the tech world? but what did he really do? produced a digital walk man and called it the ipod and make it look sleaker and cooler then the other mp3 players out on the market at the time. He then very intelligently marketed this product (with a huge wallet) to the millennial generation. He then combined already used technologies into this walkman and combined it with a phone to make the iphone. Phones had already been playing mp3's and hookin up to the internet way before the iphone. Really he was just the tim the toolman tailor of the tech world. He took what was already out there and gave it more power.
I condone him for it, but I say he was a better marketer then he was a an inventor or revolutionary.
What about the Macintosh? His work at NeXT that led to OS X? If you only include his work before he left Apple in the 1980s you have someone who deserves more than enough praise for his accomplishments.
Vivid Boy
hey im not knocking the guy at all. He was brilliant when it came to marketing, I just don't view him as the god of the tech world. There are alot of great products that dont get to see the light of day due to $$ restraints.
He set the pace in the last decade for sure. I just dont view him as ahead of his time like others do. He was just very good at organizing and incorporating other technologies into his products and making it very simple for the user.
That is definitely a winning formula no matter what product you are selling. I just don't see him as this renaissance man, the modern day leonardo da vinci that a good chunk of the population view him as. I just see him as a good business man.
Joss Weatherby
Thats true. No one will celebrate the passing of Tim Berners-Lee or Robert Metcalfe like they did of Steve Jobs, but thats the same for anyone who works in the background and actually propels the industry.
srussell0018
mp3 player, smart phone, tablet computer. Revolutionized them all. Android wouldn't exist without the iphone.
Halcyon+On+On
off. :stongue:
So annoying. He was a successful businessman. End of. He did not change anything meaningful whatsoever; maybe he changed the "face" of some things, but that's as far as it goes.
KushnOJ
I love my Macbook. Talk about a great tool. I will keep it forever.
