Hawking Searching For Africa's Einsteins

nuke-alwin writes "Stephen Hawking has traveled to South Africa in search of Africa's Einsteins. The project will create Africa's first post-graduate center for math and physics. The British government has unfortunately decided not to back the project, which is hoping to fight poverty by identifying the kind of talent that can create wealth." Neil Turok is deeply involved as well; he was recently named to head the Perimeter Institute in Canada, whose server we brought to its knees this morning.

Comments

Niel Turok

[moderatorrater]

Niel Turok was quoted as saying, "I'll also help defend the starving African children from rampaging dinosaurs, free of charge."

And when they find one, the headline will be

[Anonymous Coward]

Hawking finds some African math guy.

Of course they won't fund it

[eln]

If Hawking wants to get money for this sort of thing, he needs to make it into a reality show and get a TV network on board. Some ideas:

Africa's Next Top Physicist. Every week, contestants will be tasked with solving a major problem in physics. Their efforts will be judged by a panel led by Hawking, using Tyra Banks as a body double. The loser will be eliminated from the competition and thrown into the African savanna, where he will be eaten by a lion.

African Idol: Physics edition. Auditions will be held in various tribal areas throughout Africa. Hilarity will ensue as the ever-caustic Hawking mocks contestants' failures to adequately explain string theory. Losers will be thrown into the African savanna, where they will be eaten by lions.

Deriving With the Physicists. Contestants will be paired up with professional physicists and tasked to derive the Unified Field Theory. Each week, progress will be gaged by a panel of judges. Losers will be thrown into the African savanna, where the lions, fully sated from contestants from the earlier shows, will ignore them. They will then be shot by poachers.

Survivor: Africa. Contestants will spend the entire show dealing with extreme heat, drought, and the ever-present threat of starvation and disease while trying to scrape up enough money to attend school while keeping his family fed and not dying from malaria. The one who can manage to survive long enough to attend a post-graduate physics program wins.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

[joeman3429]

The more you know *rainbow star goes by*

Whoosh...

[Anonymous Coward]

racism is a tool of the rich to keep everyone else at each others' throats so they won't notice who's really using and abusing them OMG... racism is a conspiracy by the rich to get us to hate each other?

I just *knew* the Jews had to be behind this!

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

[Ihmhi]

I'm pretty sure there's loads of math involved in economics and things like managing hedge funds. Don't CEOs make something on the order of 10 trillion dollars a second?

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

[zippthorne]

Well.. certainly more math than you've demonstrated the capacity for...

Re:Einstein is over-rated

[icegreentea]

This is why the best football and baseball players don't get paid more than our top engineers... wait, what?

Re:OLPC as Einstein detector

[Kenshin]

Does it start flashing when one is detected, and does a helicopter land outside shortly after that?