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Stephen Hawking turned 71 on Tuesday. He's one of the world's most famous disabled people and so very clever too, but as someone who uses a computer with synthetic speech, it is his robotic voice which always grabs my interest. Quirky blogger Maria Popova has posted-up about the life of the celebrated physicist; it's called A Brief History of Time, the same name as his famous book. The 1991 production features original music by Philip Glass, interviews with his family and close friends, plus, an older, slightly less understandable version of that famous voice.

The hashtag #Cut4Justin was trending Monday evening on Twitter. The pop star had been photographed smoking a joint and fans were posting pictures of self-harm injuries, apparently inflicted in a plea for Justin to stop taking drugs. Outraged tweeters then claimed that Bieber fans had 'hijacked' a real mental health problem, and were using it to show their devotion.

Lived experience bloggers have helped me understand lots of disability things over the years and in Cosmopolitan is no exception. Rosie cut herself for over a decade. She says that any one of these girls is "very likely to have self harmed in the past, and is using the hashtag - however misguidedly - to expose her suffering to a wider audience; a cry for help seen by millions more than her usual handful of followers."

Actor Michael J Fox, who lives with Parkinson's, . The Associated Press reported on Sunday that Fox will play a newscaster in a US TV comedy based on his personal experiences of Parkinson's. In the series, due to air on NBC in the US in September, Michael J Fox leaves his job due to the illness but returns when a new medical regime starts controlling many of his symptoms. He currently plays lawyer Lewis Canning in The Good Wife which I really enjoy because he uses the discomfort of colleagues on witnessing his physical jerks and other symptoms, to gain sympathy and win cases. It'll be interesting to see how Fox portrays the condition in the new show. And it's rather impressive that he's continuing to get jobs and is keen to explore his life with Parkinson's.

Why depression has made me a better doctor. This was a which caught my attention on Saturday. The piece is a great insight into the life of someone with a unique point of view.

Cavanagh, a rheumatologist from Galway in Ireland, writes that he can see the system from a patient's perspective and is more empathetic as a result. "It has made me much more attuned to psychiatric symptoms in my patients (even when they may not be aware of them themselves) and to develop a language that allows me to engage them in discussions about their mental health in a non-threatening way."

He says that as many as a quarter of doctors will meet the criteria for a depressive illness by the end of their first year of training and up to 51 percent of female doctors have a lifetime history of depression.

World Braille Day took place last Friday. To celebrate, History Today magazine tweeted an article from their archive on , inventor of the famous tactile reading method for blind people. It is hard to believe Braille has only been around since 1829. Before technological advances caused the medium to become less than essential, it was the one and only way for blind people to access the written word. And it was particularly welcome for me as a child in a blind boarding school, when I was desperate to continue with that Enid Blyton adventure after lights out.

• Emma Tracey is a Broadcast Journalist at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. She's been blind since birth, has a natural love of accessifying technology and her idea of a good night in is watching a box set of Grey's Anatomy with Twitter and a glass of wine.

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