Hawking Expecting To Make Full Recovery

explosivejared writes "Yesterday we discussed the medical scare that physicist Stephen Hawking was going through. Happily, his website has posted a succinct statement that he is being kept for observation, but he is comfortable and expecting a full recovery."

Comments

Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[damburger]

The man is a survivor, that is for sure. I saw him lecture a few months ago, and is still on form. He will still answer the dumbest questions from any snide creationist or just plain ignorant member of the public - even though it took him considerable effort to compose a response.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[mangu]

Just being a creationist doesn't make someone "snide".

Since English is not my first language, I had to consult a dictionary on this: snide - sly and malicious, which got me to sly - skillful at trickery or deceit

Well, yes, "snide" pretty much describes every creationist person I ever knew or heard about.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[JoshuaZ]

Well, this individual story might not tell us much but there's a lot of evidence that creationists are in general dumber and less educated than the general populace. (This is assuming that we define creationist to not mean "belief that God created the world" but rather almost any statement that makes more or less concrete claims about the role that God had in the universe). The GSS data is very strong in this regard, showing that there's a strong correlation between having a large vocabulary (which is a useful proxy for intelligence)and acceptance of evolution.http://www.halfsigma.com/2008/02/who-believes-in.html. Similar results occur when you look at SAT scores and IQ tests. In particular, Protestant denominations which are avowedly Young Earth Creationist have lower average SAT scores and IQ scores. See for example http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/05/biblical_literalism_or_low_iq.php which shows an extremely strong inverse correlations between the fraction of a denomination that ascribes to Biblical literalism and the IQ score (seriously, R^2 is around .86. You almost never get social science data that shows that strong a correlation).

One thing to keep in mind is that this doesn't necessarily mean that this doesn't necessarily imply that evolution is more likely to be correct or that the smart people are paying more attention to the evidence. Razib Khan, who put together the quick little analysis linked to above about IQ and Biblical literalism, has suggested (can't find link right now unfortunately) that smart people are more likely to believe ideas from other smart people and that this accounts for some of the strong correlation between intelligence and acceptance of evolution.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[tecnico.hitos]

I don't know... I always thought "what happened before the Big Bang" is a good question. I am still expecting a convincing answer.

I have heard that there was no time "before the Big Bang" because timespace is a single thing, but that only makes me wonder what triggered time or how matter could exist outside space, since there was no time.

Then, I get an explanation about how particles appear and disapear, coming and going from "somewhere else" (sorry, I don't remember the right term) without an apparent reason and how this happens all the time, but was particulary important when the matter was concentrated in one point.

This doesn't seem very rudimentary for me, I feel that I'm lacking information. Like: where exactly does the particles come from and if the particle appearing/disappearing happens in such small scale, how did the massively dense universe get formed.

...even google failed me.

Re:Full Recovery?

[Dr Caleb]

"Life is the leading cause of death, ya know."

"Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily." François de La Rochefoucauld

Re:Full Recovery?

[Ractive]

Life is the leading cause of death, ya know.

It's not really the cause but it's indeed a requirement.