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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!"
Don't be dissin da MC/a.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Alas I am too old and creaky and the wrong discipline, computer science, myself to qualify for job. But what a chance! To actually live, rather than read, those books and concepts that Hawkings ponders. What a way to expand one's imagination. Then the quotidian tasks for a person of this intellectual stature would seem light.
My sincere and most envious congratulations to whomever gets this position,
Jim
Actually, it shouldn't be too hard to identify the illness, even from an armchair, for exactly the reasons I outlined. The number of neurologically degenerative diseases that actually spontaneously go into remission is not exactly high. That alone should eliminate the vast majority of ALS-like diseases to something much more manageable. We also have video footage from different stages. Horison did a documentary on Professor Hawking prior to him losing his speech to the trachea operation. We certainly have video footage of him since. Again, that should allow you to exclude certain possibilities. Finally, although a lot of his body has no motor control worth speaking of, his hands most evidently do as that is how he controls the chair and the voice synthesizer, although he's not exactly a speed demon on typing with it. His face also does - he doesn't lack the ability to show emotions.
Oh, that made me think of something else. Those are the same muscles he pushed the hardest from shortly before being diagnosed until he became a total invalid. He would swing on trees extensively, according to his mother in one documentary. It's suspected his heavy physical exercise regimen may have contributed to the disease slowing down and stopping later on in his life, but I believe it to be highly significant that the muscles he pushed the most suffered the least. Again, that can't possibly be characteristic of too many conditions.
From these well-documented and well-established facts, it should be easy to go through those conditions which Professor Hawking might have and discard those that simply don't behave in the way observed. (Or, to pull a Sherlock Holmes, reject the impossible and whatever is left - however improbable - must be correct. This doesn't work in practice for most things, but in this one case, there will be few enough possibilities that eliminating the impossible should be very doable indeed.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well if you're going for a sort of academic career, then the next "level" I would think would be this sort of apprenticeship. Which would be pretty cool considering there are many people capable of getting a doctorate, but only one such opportunity to work for Stephen Hawking. I imagine that if you could land that job then your resume would only need one sentence. "Stephen Hawking picked ME to work for him".
Breakfast served all day!
Circumcision is child abuse.
some of the greatest and most disparate minds and egos on the planet.
And that's the real rub - his ego can be a bit, shall we say awkward. I'd expect you'd need a very thick skin to deal with him on a day to day basis, unless he's mellowed a LOT over time.