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High Table at Cambridge with Stephen Hawking
bughunter writes "Accomplished astrophysicist and SF author Gregory Benford shares a personal account of his recent conversation with Stephen Hawking at Reason Online. As usual, Benford's style is engaging and informal, and this doesn't read like a typical interview. Although the article is short on jargon, Benford and Hawking share insights on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, as such minds are want to do. We even get a glimpse of Cambridge tunnel hacking. Of course, there's also a plug for Hawking's new book, The Universe in a Nutshell."
Now, this is marginally on topic, but is someone like Hawking an argument for or against evolution by means of natural selection as it occurs today? To the best of my knowledge, he has yet to have children, but still, being married there is always the potential. In prehistoric times, a man suffering from his affliction would have no chance at reproducing, thus eliminating his genetic material from the gene pool. So I guess he material is still in the gene pool, because of the potential to reproduce...
Anyway, Hawking is a great man and if he contributes anything applicable to the regular Joe Citizen's daily life, it should be the fact that a man should not be judged by his appearance, the brightest minds may lay inside deceptive shells.
The premise that linux is 'revolutionary', and that it will someday supplant the Beast of Redmond as the desktop OS of choice is entirely flawed. The linux craze was a creation by stock market speculators, brokerage houses, and venture capitalists. Their purpose was to pump up the valuations of certain linux-oriented corporations. When their valuations were sufficiently high they dumped their shares and made obscene profits.
The unfortunate thing was the number of highly intelligent people who were swept up in this fraud. I have several friends, respected and published scientists, who put a lot of money in these stocks, and subsequently lost a lot of money. Now that H. Blodgett is being investigated for his role in some of these pump and dump schemes, I wonder how long it will be before the investigation reaches to the upper echelon's of today's linux-biz powerhouses.
Many of you are slow to wake up to this fact, and wishing that it wasn't true only proves your culpability. The truth is obvious in light of these facts. Linux is a fraud. If we look back with an objective eye, it's quite plainly so. The moral high-ground linux once held now has evaporated. If you know someone who is a linux advocate, please bitch slap them, because they should have known better.
i never heard of this mr. hawker guy, but i bet his book isnt as good as my 'the road ahead' i hope you all run out and purchase it
You all LOVE Stephen Hawking so much because you love to wonder about things. Well I'll give you something to wonder about
Is that Hawking guy a spazz or what? It makes me sick to even look at him. Total gross out.
I pissed my pants. I'm not ashamed.
Yeah! Larry Flynt is right! You guys suck!
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
Stephen Hawking spends his life trying to come up with a history of everything that makes sense to his mind. He purports that other universes exist, but that there is no way to prove their existance--and he even admits that there is no scientific way to prove these theories.
I say now that Hawking does not practice science, but rather the religion of science. Be he priest, prophet, or simple thelogian, he is no more a scientist than I am.
Any imaginative author or deluded "holy man" can define the universe and then find details and create a history that is logically consistent, and can adapt such a theory to any and all data that might refute it. I say that Hawking and his theories are no more scientific than religion, and the fact that his work inspires true, falsifiable science is nothing more than a happy coincidence.
If you do not agree with what I say, then please formulate a reply and refute me. Science--real science--is not bound by a chosen notion of God's existance or nonexistance and does not deal with things that cannot be tested in reality.
I say that Science says nothing that is not proven fact, and that to brand one ascetic dream "science" and another "religion" is a disservice to both and an obstruction to the search of Reality that real Science seeks.
All replies are welcome, and replies with answers are asked for.
I've bumped into Hawking on the street while he was waiting for a bus. He doesn't give a shit about meeting any layperson who knows or cares about the subjects he studies (or in my case a non-published but degreed pro in the same field). In a nutshell, he is one arrogant asshole. Add that to the fact that he dumped his devoted wife who took care of his bed-ridden ass over a decade for a wet nurse, and you'll get my point.
Plus his weakly grounded theories could well be bullshit -- Damn! Who wants to read his blather.