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Steven Hawking Considering Move To Canada
thepacketmaster learned of "...the possibility of Steven Hawking moving to Waterloo in Canada: 'A report out of Britain suggests Stephen Hawking is considering an invitation to come work at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics....But he's also being encouraged to move to Ontario by his University of Cambridge colleague Neil Turok, the mathematical physicist who will take over as Perimeter's executive director on Oct. 1. Perimeter confirmed last night that it has made a standing offer to Hawking...Turok is leaving Cambridge after failing to persuade university authorities, research councils and sponsors to spend $40 million...By comparison, Waterloo's Perimeter Institute has about $600 million in funding...The addition of Hawking to Perimeter's staff of top physicists would be a major coup for the research institute, founded in 1999 by Mike Lazaridis, founder and co-CEO of Research In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry.'"
all the top phycisits start leaving Germany when things started going downhill?
He's moving there to be closer to the headquarters of the Vice Presidential Action Rangers.
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
how long it will take his little chair to get him there. Does that thing have snow treads?
Canada also has better wheelchair access.
Its our national healthcare system.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Mr. Turok, mathematical physicist and dinosaur hunter, to you, pal.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Can we get the computerized voice with a Canadian accent, eh?
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Don't you get it? If you die in Canada you die in real life!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Probability states the worlds brightest people are probably in China or India. However due to political structure it may be harder to find these people in those countries. (less so in India)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I never realized Stephen Hawking was British. He doesn't sound it....
I mean, really, the university isn't even the best in Ontario, let alone the country
For math and physics it sure is the best, especially with the perimeter institute there now. Sounds like they sent you a nice rejection letter :)
I doubt Stephen Hawking gets out and about very much. And not just because of his disability. Many brilliant people are so eccentric they never need to leave their place of research, so it doesn't worry them too much whether their community is a happening place or not.
They hatin Patrolling they tryin to catch me theorizing dirty Tryin to catch me theorizing dirty
No more traffic jams on Silver Street.
Stephen Hawking changed his mind about what he wanted to eat for lunch.
"At first I thought I wanted fish," said Mr. Hawkings, "but then I decided I did not want fish. I eventually went with spaghetti."
There is much debate in science-related blogs as well as in academia about the significance of this change.
I guess you don't know where Cambridge is. Must be an American.
Hawking will have his venerable voicebox replaced by one of Canadian manufacture, based on an amalgamation of Geddy Lee and Alex Trebek's voice, which automatically interjects "eh" every 8th word.
The difference is that the US' corrupt regime don't give a rats ass of your religion.
Two words: Intelligent Design.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That sounds like a front organization for Aperture Science.
One of the coolest things about the Perimeter Institute is that they have a public lecture series. The lecturers are a mix of eminent scientists from inside and outside the Institute. The topics are mostly drawn from the edges of physics and cosmology. Some are more accessible to lay people than other.
The Institute has most of them available for offline viewing and reading. Maybe they could get Stephen Hawking one day.
... at least the 'A' key, eh?
Anybody want a peanut?
Britain isn't in the the US, dumbass. It's in England.
Perhaps Balmer might be able to make a modified version
Computerized voice: "Steve, get your dirty hands off my chair."
"World's leading physicist moves to the university in the middle of nowhere"
I wonder...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Waterloo has the best or at least second best computer science, mathematics and engineering programs in Ontario. I'm not sure where you gathered your information. Maybe if you are talking about arts degrees, but that is not what Waterloo is known for. I also don't think that Hawkings is hankering to get a fine arts degree, either.
Your ideas are shaped not just by your capabilities, but the ideas and interactions you came up with when you were growing up.
I believe that there is a significant percentage of population (probably around 10%) that could be just as bright as the top people in sciences, but they just took a different path. They didn't get the encouragements, or maybe they just didn't meet a friend in the 5th grade that had the same interest as them.
There is more to whom we become than some political structure. The ultimate you is shaped MUCH closer to your personal life than even the city hall.
As a Computer Science major at the University of Waterloo, I'm proud to hear that the Waterloo region and it's research and higher education institutes are attracting top minds to the area. Arguably, the university is already the top undergrad tech school in Canada and competitive with the top in the U.S. as well, but currently only on the undergraduate level. However, huge amounts of funding have been recently pouring into UW's graduate programs, and associated research institutes. Some Waterloo folks like to label the university "MIT of the north" but unfortunately, I'd argue that's currently only true on the undergraduate level. Its co-op program makes Waterloo grads among the most employable new grads in the world. With this kind of exposure I'm sure Waterloo will reach its goal of being competitive with the top U.S. tech schools in all areas within the next 5 to 10 years. Maybe they'll start making movies with references to Waterloo as well.:P Then again, most movies are made/produced in the U.S...
You laugh... but I've known people who live in Maine that couldn't find Canada on a map. I could understand from the deep south, where Canada is a mythical land of igloos and Eskimos, but Maine?!? There's parts of Canada that are further south than Maine, and there was a time when that state was part of Canada, for crying out loud....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
That appeal to statistics assumes that the population of brilliant people (both inherently brilliant and the learned) is uniformly distributed among the rest of the population of the world. This is demonstrably not the case. Some cities have higher concentrations of inventors, entrepeneurs, PhDs, etc., than other cities of equal size. Perhaps one city has a university to draw these people in, while the other one doesn't. Perhaps one area, way back when, had a guy or group of people that made some major discovery, started a new industry, which set that region on the path to continued discovery (e.g., Silicon Valley).
The same could be said for countries as a whole. One would expect to find a greater proportion of scientists in an industrialized country over an agrarian one, or over a nation that has only recently industrialized.
I am not trying to make a nationalistic or xenophobic argument against India or China, because I know for a fact that they have lots of brilliant people, I am just trying to delve deeper into the notion that a larger national population equals a larger population of [whatever else].
Is anyone else irked by the apparent misspelling? Steven != Stephen
Intelligent Design encompasses all religions except atheism.
I am a grad student in physics at waterloo (phd) and my female counterparts do not get paid anymore than me from the uni. Where the heck did you hear this?
Are you sure that you aren't just talking about 3rd party scholarships that are only available to women? The amount from you get from the actual university is the same for men and women.
To be fair, we have a Cambridge on this side of the pond, in Massachusetts, and it's home to a rather prestigious institution of higher learning. If one were unfamiliar with the work or background Stephen Hawking, it would be an innocent mistake to confuse our Cambridge (town) with your Cambridge (university).
And his synthesized voice tool should really be outfitted with an English accent :)
I'm a Physics Undergrad student at the University of Waterloo, and I am definitely excited. This will add a lot of value to my degree, and reputation for the physics department in general.
Never mind Maine - there are parts of Canada are further south than parts of Northern California. Look on a map for Point Pelee sometime .....
The original text adventure was written by Will Crowther, while working at BBN in Cambridge, MA, USA.
need to speak French first then English to be legal over there? Or is that only in Quebec?
Technically you get paid more, but I heard that the extra incentive for females really offsets the sausage-fest that is astronomy grad work.
This is what entropy is for.
And this has what to do with Hawking moving from England to Canada?
"Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby"
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
I gues tis shoves uz tat te dhing too doe iz zhoot gramaar nazii's on te spoot.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The funny thing is there is a Cambridge Ontario which just happens to border on Kitchener-Waterloo which is where Perimeter is. Wouldn't it be funny if he ends up moving from Cambridge to Cambridge? :)
Atheism is a religion like making fun of people for collecting stamps is a hobby.
There, I fixed that for you.
The typical response to that I see these days is that:
"Atheists have faith that there is no God since they have no proof that God does not exist.
Since they have faith then atheists are religious."
It would seem that all the reasons atheists may have for stating that do not count as "proof".
If you ignore the fallacy of proving a negative existence.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Historically, Muslim regimes have been very favorable to the science. That's no so much the case today, but blaming current Muslim regimes on the Koran is like blaming the industrial revolution on Christianity. It's a stretch, at best.
Not collecting stamps gives you time for a real hobby, just like atheism gives you time to do real science.
Now, I don't say you can't be religious as a scientist. Actually I know quite a few very good scientists that believe in God. Usually, though, they take the Bible as a guideline for being a "good person", not a book telling you how the scientific parts of the world work. They understand the Bible as a guideline to live a good life, and quite frankly, it is a good book as such. Don't kill, don't steal, take a day off per week so you don't run into a burnout, and generally don't do what you wouldn't want others to do to you. That's a pretty good guideline to work with, if you ask me.
Frankly, I wonder how many of those that want to take the Bible all literally and insist in it being the all encompassing truth really want to use it to live a better life (for themselves, but even more for those around them), and how many just want to use it as a tool to wield power over others. It's been used for that purpose far too often. I'd say, more often than for the "better person" goals...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think you may be describing a mischaracterization of at least some atheists. The position of at least some atheists is that, skeptically, one believes on the basis of proof and evidence, and lacking either, the default is 'do not believe.' In such a paradigm, the opinion of an atheist is not an affirmative belief in nonexistence based on some concept of faith, but the result of having looked and found neither proof nor evidence.
If I say "I believe 1 + 1 = 2" that is actually shorthand for a more complex "If one accepts the following axioms, then..." which is a very different point of view than saying "Based on faith alone I believe..."
Society seems to have no tolerance for philatelists.
Only if you ignore the parts that say you should stone people, and eradicate whole villages if one of the members doesn't believe in the Bible's god, retain slaves, and that giving up your virgin daughter to a rape gang is preferable to turning over a foreign man to them. Those are just a few examples...
Question everything
Stop jumping to conclusions! User 243324 is correct: Hawking's potential move from the UK to Canada is clearly based upon US policy. It's the Republicans' fault, but the Democrats are no better, so he's going to pack his bags regardless of what happens in November. Plus, it proves astrology is correct. Take your nay-saying to Digg.com where it belongs!
Godwin right in the first post! Bravo I say, Bravo! A true and shining accomplishment in the field of utterly irrelevant comparisons.
In all seriousness, I do think scientists are an excellent canary for the local political/cultural environment. They rely on public funding while demanding the right to teach/work as they see best.
That's what Hitler said when he forced scientists to bow to the party line.
The funny thing is there is a Cambridge Ontario which just happens to border on Kitchener-Waterloo which is where Perimeter is. Wouldn't it be funny if he ends up moving from Cambridge to Cambridge? :)
Today class I have question for you: what is the distance between Cambridge and Cambridge. Does not compute is not an answer :)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
True enough, but be honest with yourself. If there's are books about not collecting stamps, organizations dedicated to not collecting stamps, and websites all about how to not collect stamps, and movements to preach the greatness of not collecting stamps, guess what not collecting stamps has become?
Who in their right mind would want to move to Waterloo? I mean, really, the university isn't even the best in Ontario, let alone the country and Waterloo itself is in the middle of nowhere.
UWaterloo is one of the top universities in the world for Math and CS. Besides the Perimeter Institute, it also has the Institute for Quantum Computing which is pretty major in the field. Also, the Fields Institute was originally founded at UWaterloo before moving to the University of Toronto (the only other university in Canada that's comparable in Math). UWaterloo also has strong ties with industry. Research in Motion is right next door and has hundreds of Waterloo graduates in CS working for them. Microsoft has a good number of UWaterloo graduates as well. It's really exciting that he's thinking about going there (not only for Waterloo but also it's very great for Canada as a whole).
Actually, Canada got it's name when Jacques Cartier and company, well, mangled the St-Lawrence Iroquois word 'kanata,' which means 'town' or 'village.'
There's a sweet little 'Canadian Heritage' edvert that illustrates this as Cartier and company coming over a hill and meeting said Iroquois for the first time. The local elder offers to bring them to his village, repeatedly using the word 'kanata.' Cartier turns to a religious scholar, and asks for a translation. The scholar, having never heard this language before, stammers out something about 'Ka-na-da' being the name of the land. Meanwhile, an unlettered sailor is trying to convince them that the elder is specifically pointing at the village. "I'm *sure* he means those huts over there!"
You have to watch it to get the humor, I think. Mainly the looks on various faces.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I find the argument that lack of proof on either side means we can't draw a conclusion particularly facetious. Consider the claim "there's an invisible, intangible, silent, odourless, rabbit living inside your computer"
You can't demonstrate this to be false, I can't demonstrate it to be true, so I guess to be logical we'll have to both be agnostic about the rabbit.
Sound like a heap of bullshit to you? Yeah, that's what you sound like.
There is no sensible way to differentiate a world in which the rabbit I described exists from one where it does not, this renders the claim meaningless. By analogy, "There is a God" becomes a meaningless claim at around the point when you realise there is no possible evidence that would convince a theist that they are wrong.
In reality the argument is asinine. "Look, you Atheists are just a religious as us!" is what seems to be the point. The reality is a bit deeper than that. As another post pointed out, an overwhelming lack of evidence of the positive existence of something requires that you default to "that thing does not exist".
The requirement that it *might* exist derives completely from the person making the positive proposition. You say that you believe a "God" exists. You have no proof of course, or at least none that would stand up as scientific proof that would truly establish the positive existence. You have defined the physical and/or metaphysical aspects of that "God" yourself or have accepted what you have been taught they are. Now you are expecting people to prove that an idea you came up with or chose to believe doesn't exist?
Sorry, the world doesn't work that way.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
BTW, Canadian taxes are actually a little lower than ours, and they get free healthcare! taxes in Canada.
No, they're not. Assuming the author of that page is correct, their federal income tax is (slightly) lower than what the US has.
However, Canada also has federal sales tax, provincial income tax, and provincial sales tax. The US has no federal sales tax, and state taxes vary widely (no sales tax in Oregon, no income tax in Washington, etc).
I lived in Canada for three years, and I paid something like 20% combined sales tax alone.
I do think that their healthcare system is slightly preferable to ours, but they both have big problems IMO.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Science makes one assumption: The simple explanation is more likely to be true. The idea that fundamental rules don't change might seem like and assumption but let's look at our options:
In a random universe the fundamental rule it is: This is a random universe.
In a universe with an all powerful god then it is: God decides how things operate.
In a non random universe without god it is: Some set of rules define how all interactions take place.
Now it might not seem obvious how science could differentiate between the above situations but what's a simpler answer you randomly roll heads 100 billion times in a row or it is a non random dice? As to God, if some set of rules define all observed behavior then adding a god to such a universe is a more complex situation.
You left off one of my favorites: Having God call in a bear to maul children making fun of baldness.
I've always wondered how biblical scholars would explain that (I haven't asked yet).
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/07/16/hawking-perimeter.html
The University of Cambridge has poured cold water on reports its most famous physicist might be coming to Canada to work, saying Wednesday Stephen Hawking "has no plans" to leave.
A report in the Daily Telegraph in the U.K. said Hawking was contemplating joining his colleague Neil Turok at Waterloo, Ont.'s Perimeter Institute. The South African-born cosmologist Turok, 49, is leaving Cambridge to take over the role of executive director at the institute, which was founded in 2000 by Research in Motion co-founder Mike Lazaridis and is devoted to the study of theoretical physics.
Cambridge's statement called the report "unfounded speculation."
It is possible to synthesize British accents. Hawking has had many opportunities to upgrade his speech software. He chooses to continue to use DECtalk even though it is outdated because it is "his voice" now.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Like the Pilgrims who started out from Plymouth and ended up in Plymouth.
"People who live in Maine"... thats your problem. Very different from people *from* Maine. A lot of Maine is populated by New Yorkers that couldnt afford Long Island waterfront. They cant find Massachusetts on a map even though they drove through it to get to Maine, and they hit a few Starbucks there on the way.
Real Mainiacs can be identified by their large feet evolved for crossing snow drifts, know where they are relative to Canada just by sniffing the air, and can find the nearest unguarded border crossings using a mutated recessive gene. A Real Maniac, most importantly though, will pretend to look at the map you shove at them and give you a fiendishly crafted answer with the sole intended result of making you go back to New York and never returning. An answer like "What's Canada?" for instance...
Which begs the question: if you can determine which parts of the Bible to follow (i.e. golden rule), and which parts to ignore (i.e. slavery, rape, stoning), where does the ability to "sift" come from? It certainly can't come from the book that you have to be critical about. It's clearly something innate in (most) people that is a product of genetics and culture. More than that, some truths are universal, they go without saying, and do not require a book as a guideline. As for the grandparent, if these people NEED the book to live a good life, you need to look for more competent friends. I say anyone who reads the Bible as anything more than an interesting work of fiction is a fool.
Completely off topic of course but:
The GST Tax (General Services Tax) is currently at 6%, the Provincial Sales Tax (at least here in British Columbia) is at 7%, so here I pay a grand total of 13% tax on most purchased items and services. In Alberta there is no provincial sales tax.
We do pay both Federal and Provincial Income tax though.
However, after hearing the horror stories of people experiencing problems under the US health care system, I will take ours anytime. Its not perfect but its available to everyone.
Case in point: a friend of mine discovered he had a brain tumour the size of a grapefruit (which explained the headaches and vision problems he had). After 2 weeks or so waiting for a chance to get an operation, he was in, got the tumour removed, spending a few weeks in the hospital total, and was out without any problems and no complications thankfully. As far as I know it cost him absolutely nothing. That doesn't seem to be the case for a lot of Americans.
As for on topic: I would be highly honoured as a Canadian to have Stephen Hawking move here and work at Waterloo.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
The same could be said for countries as a whole. One would expect to find a greater proportion of scientists in an industrialized country over an agrarian one, or over a nation that has only recently industrialized.
Or that has over 50% people with a nonscientific worldview?
</flamebait> :)
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I think I counted once, there are 12 states with territory of a higher latitude than the southernmost point in Canada. The strange part is that Vancouver has much milder winters than Pelee Island, despite having a more northern latitude by over 650mi.
And actually the southernmost territory in Canada is Middle Island, just south of Pelee Island (home to some nice wineries), which is south of Point Pelee, the southernmost point of the Canadian mainland.
And there are far more Canadians with residences in southern US than in Maine, aka Snowbirds.
I was worried about getting modded OT but the Cannuck posts are scoring better than the Hawking ones!
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
"Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby"
But you can't mail yourself to heaven.
But seriously, an atheist is someone who subscribes to a belief that there are no gods. There are religions, Wicca for example, that do not worship any god. Atheism is also practiced in organized groups much like congregations with "intelligent design". I would argue the only reason atheism is not considered a religion is that atheists don't want us to.
Granted, someone who rejects religion and does not engage in organized atheist practices would also be called an atheist. But you'd have to be pretty serious about not collecting stamps to be compared to actively organized atheists.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
You'll find lots of books, lectures, and web sites about physics and social psychology. I guess you believe that physics and social psychology are religions.
If someone mentions any American town I could probably name the state it is in.
Springfield. :)
What is "simpler" ?
Your are basing your assumption that #3 is simpler because it is simpler given your frame of reference. A lot of people will think #2 is simpler. You will even find some wakos that will think #1 is simpler.
What is it called when you try to adapt facts to your (mine, theirs) theory ? There is a word for it, but I forgot.
I find it interesting that you are trying to proof that god doesn't exist to an agnostic. How often have you tried doing that before ? (Trying to prove god doesn't exist to an atheist is much more common).
I also find it odd the way some people treat science like most theists treat religion. It is not necessarily your case, but you reminded me of it.
In any case, can you agree with me that there is no coherent definition of god ? Is your definition of god the same of ... lets say, the pope ? If the definition is not the same, how can you prove that god (as defined by the pope) doesn't exist, if your definition is different ?
The thing I admire the most about science is the willingness to admit it might be wrong. We know a lot of theorems, models and such. Even Newton's "laws" are not laws per se, they are theorems (and yes, I believe in them). Even Occam's Razor is a theorem (proved to be right in 99.9999% of the cases, or something like that). Using it is a good idea.
Is there a way to prove Newton's "laws" are the absolute truth ? Everywhere ? We know it doesn't hold true inside a black hole.
Working under the assumption that there is no god, and thus science must strive to explain things is very wise. God's non-existence is a good theorem as any. If science can't explain a fact, you probably got your facts wrong. Or is working under some other wrong assumption. I agree with all that.
What I don't agree is for a person to categorically state the God's non-existance is the absolute truth. I also don't agree with someone saying the oposite. Thus, I'm an agnostic.
morcego