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Stephen Hawking Looking for Assistant
An anonymous reader writes "Wanted: Bright graduate student to assist world-famous scientist. International travel, developing computer systems and dealing with the press required.
Renowned astrophysicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking has announced he is looking for a graduate student to work for him for one to two years. Dust off those CVs, kids!"
And so far, in the 26 messages posted, I have detected damned little respect for the perservereance and intelligence of the man, who does after all, hold the Issac Newton Chair in Mathematics at Cambridge, no small feat by itself. To me that apparent lack of respect is most sad.
Here we have a man, who perhaps because of his disability, is giving his brain exersize that the rest of his body will never get, a man who has contributed much to our knowledge of the universe, and who may yet deduce the causitive reason for the accelleration we are seeing of distant objects before he passes.
As for his passing, I'd imagine that his health is monitored at least 10 times more diligently than any of us do for ourselves. That will see to it that the age related degenerative things are kept in check as best we know how to do. However, the real monitoring is more likely concentrated on the treatment of bedsores and that sort of thing, as well as maintaining his immune system as best we (the medical professions 'we') can. However, he has a resident rn to handle the bedpanish and bedsores sorts of things, so those duties would not normally fall to the assistant.
If I were 50 years younger, I'd kill for a chance at that job. Unforch, my experience level at 50 years ago wouldn't have allowed me to do what he needs done today. Without formal schooling, it does take a while to arrive at that point of having the knowledge needed.
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Cheers, Gene
Hawking's ability to use his clicker to pick-up words on his computer has deteriorated and making a sentence is a really tough job for him: you have to guess what he wants to say and watch his eyes for confirmation... it must be a maddening thing to know all that knowledge and all those ideas bottled up inside that brain that can barely communicate a few words a minute...
With all our technology, you'd think that we could do a better job of helping people with such crippling diseases to allow them communicate more fluently.
It's sad that this great mind may never be able to give us all it can, even if some of his ideas end up being wrong, there is still enough material there to make great advances in science.
Once you put someone - anyone - beyond all ability to be ridiculed, you put their life and opinions above the realm where people may discuss it as one of their own.
We human beings make fun of our own. We human beings kid around, tease, and poke at each other. Did you see the American show, "Last Comic Standing"? Josh Blue, a comic on there, had a solid case of cerebal palsy, as evidenced by his constant, jerky motion.
You know why he won?
The guy could laugh at himself. He could laugh at us laughing at him. He could laugh at stereotypes. He could laugh.
Maybe you could learn something about yourself from Josh.
Nothing in this thread so far - my earlier jest included - is so spiteful and cruel that even Steven himself couldn't get a chuckle from it.
Maybe the problem is that some people in this world take themselves and their conditions too damn seriously.
Strike that, I'm sure that's the problem.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39133
I wish more people read the Onion.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
"Actually, that's technically pulling an Occam, as it's a variation on Occam's Razor. Yeah, yeah, Holmes said it like that, but Occam's razor is generally thought to be the foundation for Holmes' theory. Er...Doyle's theory, as it were."
Actually I think you are dead wrong here. Occam's razor states that you should always choose the least complicated explanation. With Holmes practice deductional observation the more complicated theory is just as or more likely to be the one that actually occurred. Just because it seems simple when Holmes is done explaining it doesnt mean that it was the less complicated scenario. The least complicated scenario, if you have actually read any of the stories, is invariably selected by Inspector lastrade.
Take the case of 'The six Napoleans'. Lastrade comes to holmes with a case where a man is breaking into peoples houses to smash their busts of napolean. One of the simplest explinations is Lastrade's , "he's a nut, simply a nut", if I remember right. As it turns out it is because the man is smashing the busts because there is the bounty from a robery hidden inside of the six napoleans that all came from the same mold where the man use to work.
I know that there are better examples than the one that I used but it is the first that came to mind and is the one that required the least typing. I suspect you misunderstand Holmes when he says stuff like 'simplicity my dear watson' which I beleive to be a sort of arrogant irony. I also suspect that you threw this out there because you wanted us all to think that you are smart, even though the only reason that you know the term Occamm's razor is because it has been popularized in many TV shows and movies(originally in Contact?). For that, I forgive you. But dont misanalyze the legend that is Sherlock Holmes
I would go so far as to say they're completely different.
With Ockham's razor, once the theories that are easy to disprove are eliminated (easy as in obviously wrong and not even considered to begin with), then you choose the simplest of the remaining theories. This is because the chance that the simplest is correct is so likely as to make the expense of proving it to eliminate a negligible margin of error a wasteful endeavour. Ockham, of course, put it a lot simpler.
The Holmes quote is a completely different thing. It advocates taking the process of elimination to completion, asserting that the remaining theory could be infinitely complex and fanciful and still be correct, simply because it is the only possible theory left.
One would be crazy to apply Ockham's Razor to a criminal investigation. I mean if you did, you wouldn't really call it an investigation.