Stephen Hawking, RIP

 

Dr Stephen Hawking, Physicist (1942 - 2018)

Comments

[Todd Juvinall]

Incredible man. RIP Mr. Hawking!

[jon smith]

Stephen Hawkins has been my hero and even an inspiration of hope as I helped a good friend pass through the stages of ALS and ultimately death. I was incensed, frequently enraged, reading the right wing attacks, calling Dr Hawkings a "puppeteer" of the global warming hysteria and proponent of Agenda 21. Now you call him a saint? Excuse me if I sense crocodile tears.

[Todd Juvinall]

Just like all liberals you are one issue person. We on the right can disagree on a single issue and still have respect for the other person. You are just a leftwingnut hater and nothing more.

[George Rebane]

jons 832am - Thank you for using this memorial post to a great physicist to again reveal your thought processes. Please explain to our readers how you perceive that anyone here (me?) has called the man a "saint" for whom "crocodile tears" are now shed. Responding to such an invited revelation, invitations which you have eschewed in the past, would once and for all confirm suspicions of how you reason.

[jon smith]

GR 8:57
Hawkings has been a target and a pariah of the right wing for decades. He has been nothing short of your international lightning rod. Be it climate change, theology, United Nations, universal health care, secularism, or disdain for Trump, Hawkings has always been at the sharp end of the neo conservatives' ire. Todd squeaks, "Single issue", me think he needs to relearn how to count.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/the-hawking-delusion

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/09/stephen-hawking-palestinian-boycott-israel-history

http://www.firstpost.com/world/right-wing-victories-like-donald-trump-will-have-grave-implications-on-science-stephen-hawking-3351738.html

[George Rebane]

jons 933am - do you really think this effort answers my 857am? Please give it another try, or was that the best you could do?

[fish]

Posted by: jon smith | 14 March 2018 at 09:33 AM

Man isn’t even cold yet and you’re already using him to score lefty political points!

You stay classy .....!

[Russ]

Quote of the Day:

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.” -

Stephen Hawking

[Walt]

The prick has no shame.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/14/obama-commemorates-another-death-with-photo-of-himself/

[Scenes]

"Man isn’t even cold yet and you’re already using him to score lefty political points!

You stay classy .....!"

lol. That's exactly what I was thinking.

Bottom line. He was a fine professional physicist with a few real scores to his credit. Famous mostly for having ALS (see how many people know Penrose's name). Like a lot of public figures in academia, he felt the need to pontificate in areas outside of his field. So do I. So what, it's the human condition.

For God's sake Jon Smith, just let the dude get his credit without dragging some kind of modern political nonsense into it. It's enough that the man worked in a non-trivial area. Appreciate people for their real long term value, not for scoring points on some small town blog.

[jon smith]

Scenes- He would have asked for nothing less than to keep his views (contrary to yours or not) alive. Yes, he explored the non trivial and world threat from climate change and AI were what he spent his past few years warning against, yet, you want to trivialize that by only looking at his endeavors that fit your vision. He NEVER stepped back from people like you.

[Scenes]

"you want to trivialize that by only looking at his endeavors that fit your vision."

Well...like physics. Like most people, Hawking was worth listening to in some areas, not so much in others.

Trust the Jon Smiths of the world to build him into some sort of political tool that magically meets their vision of the world.

For God's sake man, let the body cool for a while.

[jon smith]

Scenes . . . and you, my good friend, have anointed yourself as the arbitrator of exactly which of Dr. Hawking's teachings are "worth listening to?"

Will you consult with the works of Luther or Goebbels before burning the books you have deemed not worth listening too? It would save us peons a lot of time if you would simply tell us what to believe.

[fish]

Posted by: jon smith | 14 March 2018 at 03:45 PM

Oh my......how long have you been saving that one?

”Will you consult with the works of Luther or Goebbels before burning the books you have deemed not worth listening too? It would save us peons a lot of time if you would simply tell us what to believe.”

There, there......cry it out Linda....I’m sure you’ll feel better.

[Scenes]

"Will you consult with the works of Luther or Goebbels "

lol. Well, it didn't take long for the Hitler card to get thrown down.

Really, it should be worth double bonus points. Still cooling body of famous physicist, go on a tear about evil right wingers, bring in Hitler. Gotta love it.

Luther is a mixed bag since there were books burned on both sides, but it's an interesting thing to say. In the cold civil war where 1/2 the population wants to bring down the Western canon, it makes a lot of sense to equate Luther and Goebbels.

Seriously, just go have a tot of wine, toast the things that you think Hawking brought to the world, and leave everyone else alone for a bit. Like one author of yore said, "the happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts" and you don't sound very happy to me.

[Bonnie McGuire]

Life has its ups, downs and all arounds. Always rewarding if you want to learn more and pay attention rather than follow the group and mob mentality. That's why I enjoy Dr. Rebane's discussion site, and wherever individuals want to discuss whatever. We're all special creations endowed with certain talents that altogether create everything we need. I do have a problem with dictators pretending benevolence using what they take from others in order to enhance their own image and power. You don't eat this or that... but don't force everyone to eat what you dictate and force them to pay for the regulations. You "believe" the climate is being changed because there are too many people on earth causing it, so make them pay, pay, pay...even genocide...all the while making yourself wealthy over your theory. And then the entity that's really in charge passes gas and a volcano erupts, spits sulphur into the atmosphere, and the climate cools down. Not too much cuz that would freeze everything on earth. I hope I didn't get too far off the subject of Dr. Hawking's passing, but Jon's prejudiced rampage stirred the pot.

[Account Deleted]

Poor jonnie boy - stepped in the cow manure again and ends up eating it while trying to insist he glides on a heavenly meadow!
I'm not sure where jon smith gets his 'ideas' but my suspicions are it's somewhere below his belt.
from jonnie boy - "... I thought y'all considered Stephen Hawkins a quack whose palms were padded by Al Gore."
And
"Now you call him a saint? Excuse me if I sense crocodile tears."
Maybe jonnie boy can back up his cow manure with actual quotes or facts to support his BS.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a pretty bright guy and knows a lot about astrophysics, but he wanders off into areas he's not well versed on and starts spouting bumper sticker nonsense at times.
Jonnie boy uses the usual left-wing cover of some sort of disease or handicap to mask a lack of reason or facts to back up his arguments. Funny how that doesn't work for conservatives. I don't care if a Mother Teresa is dying with an illness due to her saving a million babies from certain death - if she claims that 2+2 is 3, she's as wrong as joe schmoe from Kokomo.
The left loves to score points from suffering. Sorry - not into that.
Facts are stubborn things.
And -
Reality is not concerned with your 'feelings'.

[Todd Juvinall]

Liberals always go Hitler when they get their ass kicked in a simple debate.

[George Rebane]

For the lightly read, please be informed that we always pick and choose to which works and pronouncements of the celebrated wise and famous we listen. Examples that make the case are:
Newton - we accept his mechanics, gravity, and calculus while rejecting his equally embraced views and teachings on religion and spirituality.
Einstein - we accept the propositions of his general theory of relativity while rejecting his strongly contesting views on quantum mechanics ("Der Herr Gott würfelt nicht!)

More here - http://www.cracked.com/article_19777_5-great-scientists-who-believed-wildly-unscientific-things.html

Critical thinkers do that as a matter of course; the nebbishes worship the aura and have no ability to discriminate.

[Account Deleted]

GR at 6:27 - you got that right! Every time some one tries to use the Einstein Card in a debate - usually because they haven't got a clue about the subject - I point out that Einstein was a pretty smart guy, but he was wrong about Heisenberg's 'uncertainty principle'. Darwin was pretty bright and came up with some correct assumptions that later proved to be true, but he was wrong about a lot of things he posited.
Jonnie boy shows his true colors as a post-modernist girly boy. Because some one he knows has suffered from ALS, he then re-directs the suffering to cover for his fabrication of BS about what he claims folks here on RR have written about the late Stephen Hawking.

[L]

Think that should be "nicht!"

[George Rebane]

L 740pm - Absolutely correcto mundo Lar, thanks. The goddam TypePad spell checker did me in again. Where are its multi-culturalist leanings when we need them?

[Account Deleted]

Jonnie boy might want to actually read the articles he links to his posts.
The 3rd one at his 9:33 post is about Hawking addressing a group in Hong Kong.
Claims Hawking - "With Brexit and Trump... we are witnessing a global revolt against experts."
That would, of course, include the 'experts' who declared the 'end of snow' in the North East and Hillary's victory over Trump.
Not to mention water from the ocean lapping up upon the doorsteps of the buildings in down town Manhattan.
Not to mention that we would run out of petroleum 20 years ago and everyone would be starving by now.
Not to mention that the good folks in Hong Kong would now fret about 'deforestation' and not the fact that they are forever ruled by a dictator for life in a communist hell hole.
Yeah - that Stephen Hawking really knows it all.
C'mon folks - no one is god and everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time.

[Gregory]

jon smith... you've used two different spellings for Stephen Hawking's name. You missed the correct spelling each and every time.

My first knowledge of him was in 74/75 when his prediction of emissions from black holes on conservation of angular momentum grounds (now known as Hawking Radiation) hit my circles, at the time serious students of physics. By then I'd also already come to the conclusion that Man probably had created God in his/her own image and no the other way around. and wouldn't be needing or caring that Hawking published on a similar topic more recently as it really has nothing to do with anything, including the price and quantity of tea in China.

There's also nothing particularly insightful in Hawking's pronouncements on climate change.

[Gregory]

GR 627

That's "nebbishes" :)

[George Rebane]

Gregory 948pm - You're right, of course, thanks for the pick up.

[George Boardman]

Well, it didn't take long for this to get off track. Let me try a mid-course correction.

My sister died of ALS four years after it was diagnosed, about average for people who get this terrible disease. Having seen what she went through, it's almost inconceivable that Hawking could live with it for so long and accomplish what he did.

The human spirit at its best.

[jon smith]

Gregory 9:41-
"There's also nothing particularly insightful in Hawking's pronouncements on climate change".

The man can conjure up black holes and define things humans have barely imagined, yet you contend that he doesn't have the capacity to wrap his mind around climate change? . . . but, you do?

[fish]

Posted by: George Boardman | 15 March 2018 at 10:06 AM

Do we know if Hawking was the longest lived with the illness?

[fish]

Posted by: jon smith | 15 March 2018 at 10:17 AM

Jeez give it a rest Linda.....

[George Boardman]

Re Fish at 10:24:

Hawking is the longest-living survivor of ALS. There's a guy in Canada who's lived with it for 38 years, and occasionally somebody will make it as long as 10 years, but generally 4 years is about the best you can hope for.

[Bill Tozer]

Boardman is right on. Don’t matter what anyone thinks of Hawkins. The the bottom line is Stephen Hawkins serves to show up the heights the human spirit can soar no matter what condition the mortal shell is in. Just imagine how tragic it could have been if he could not find a way to get his voice out.

[Gregory]

Perhaps 'linda' will share what she found insightful about Hawking's pronouncements on climate.

I'll continue to scour my 941 for any hint of indicating relative intellectual capacities.

[fish]

Posted by: George Boardman | 15 March 2018 at 10:59 AM

A 50 year run for a disease that kills in 5 - 10 .....damn.....he may yet still be involved with pushing the frontiers of knowledge if he left his body to science!

[jon smith]

Greg 12:35
That a person of Dr. Hawkings stature, intellect, and unfettered access to the best minds on the planet would not only embrace, but act to further the reduction of man's impact on the climate speaks volumes. Of course a Grass Valley hammer swinger with a high school education can choose to disagree, but I'll stick with the overwhelming majority of intellectual powerhouses who are aligned with Dr. Hawking's concerns. Thank you.

[Todd Juvinall]

Chamberlin thought Germany could be trusted and he was one of the smartest Brits. Smart people can be wrong.

[Walt]

Ms. "jon". Since you believe everything that Hawking did, seen any little gray men? (he did)

[Paul Emery]

We have a appropriate tribute on Stephen Hawking on tonight's KVMR news program. 6PM after the BBC News.

[jon smith]

Todd 1:01
"Smart people can be wrong." Duh.
Would you rather go to a smart doctor or a dumb one? Oh, wait, please don't answer that :-)

[Gregory]

Got it, Linda 1258... he was, like, really, really really smart, said things aligned with the other really really really smart people you like and he didn't like Trump, either.

Your choice of words is also interesting... "unfettered access to the best minds on the planet". His access was amongst the most fettered, by his illness, and we celebrate his life that made the best of a bad deal. In the modern age, virtually everyone has unfettered access to the work of the best minds though it is true... most folk, like you, don't actually read and compren

Here's his publication list... nothing related to climate that I can see.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/publications.html

For an irreverent view
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/07/stephen-hawking-flies-off-the-scientific-reservation/

[jon smith]

"he was, like, really, really really smart, said things aligned with the other really really really smart people you like and he didn't like Trump, either."
No argument there.

It is telling that you are so patronizing towards him - the one thing he truly abhorred. Did he not even call himself, more than once, the luckiest man in the universe?

We all have unfettered access to the best minds in the world?? Please ring up Paul Allen for me and have him return my call asap. Thanks Greg. Hawkins did exactly that, and Allen "returned his call before lunch." I'm still waiting for my phone to ring. Ding dong.

[Gregory]

I'm not patronizing at all about Hawking, "jon/linda". I'm patronizing of you.

Yes, we all have unfettered access to the best minds, most of which have passed on to wherever we go on our way towards room temperature. It's called a library... also the internet.

Paul Allen is one of the best minds? Well, keeping his founders stock at Microsoft with Gates pestering him to give it back is probably indicative of a great mind. What did he share with Hawking?

[Todd Juvinall]

Oh Linda stop it. Hawking was much smarter and better looking than you and you are just kissing up.

[jon smith]

Jeez Luiz Greger - Hawkins considered Allen one of the overall smartest people he knew. Allen is listed as one of the most intelligent people in the world (https://superscholar.org/smartest-people-alive/). Hawkins and Allen conspired to create https://www.alleninstitute.org but I'm sure that's peanuts from your lofty perch.

[Gregory]

Geeze Linda, I'd never stoop to using a bargain basement college rating webside to find a list of the world's smartest people, and if you would read carefully... I've made no motion to be included on that list. Nonetheless, even without the smartest man who was living until yesterday on my side and the side of thousands who have come to the same conclusion, I'll keep my notion until the real research shows otherwise.

Considering the number of times Hawking has lost bets on research that he had a hand in, I'm not sure I'd be on the losing side of his Venusian musing about an incineration of our world from CO2 even if I couldn't rationally cite the research that led me to the skeptical side. Hawking was a Labour partisan, and in general, astrophysicists are heavily skewed to the left.

[jon smith]

You are right Greg, "in general, astrophysicists are heavily skewed to the left", as are astronauts who have viewed earth from space. Even strongly conservative men like John Glenn are bumped to the left of center once they grasp how finite this planet and its resources are. That is why tamping down threats or even potential threats to our planet such as climate change are a big deal to these guys.

[Gregory]

I think the astrophysics being more lefty has to do with there's less tethering to reality. As the wiki bio states,

"Hawking estimated that he studied about 1,000 hours during his three years at Oxford. These unimpressive study habits made sitting his finals a challenge, and he decided to answer only theoretical physics questions rather than those requiring factual knowledge."

[Teine Rebane Kenney]

jons 832am -So George says "Rest in Peace" to a dead genius who lived with a horrible illness and immediately gets attacked for being insincere? (Totally understanding now why he makes a sandbox to throw sand in.)

If you personally knew George or paid attention to the fact that he celebrates (and makes room for) all great thinkers without having to agree with every thought they have, you'd also know an unquenched curiosity within him as he humbly believes in & seeks relationship with a sentient Creator who can be 'known'. Hawking's discoveries about our universe could add to the discovery of its Creator; the 'I am' that WAS before there ever was such a thing as TIME. Great thinkers compound their knowledge, build on each other and provide an ever higher platform for the young thinkers to start their curiosity driven discovery. His intellectual peers seem to believe Hawking raised the platform really high.

Wishing a man to rest in peace is something you deem George not capable of solely because he disagrees with some of the mans thoughts? If you think that's true, so much of this blog might be lost on you JonS and that's sad. I too have made space for the thoughts posted here. He's sometimes intentionally offensive and writes with an urgency that seems aggressive. But hey, it's his blog and he gets to do whatever he wants. The one thing I can say is that he's consistent and reasonable, he has a credo, and he lives by it well. He will make the time to listen to others and change his mind if he gets new information. If you think he's kidding when he asks you a question, I can assure you that no frivolous word escapes his fingers. Answer him.

If what you accuse George of is actually your process of thinking, then wouldn't you expect him to throw sand back at you? He doesn't. I'm wiping the sand out of my eye as you suggest, "I take it ALL personally, and conclude that everyone thinks just like I do!" Everyone is probably genuinely curious to hear what your original thoughts are Jon S. (In my youth, if I threw sand when frustrated all the kids kinda moved away from 'that angry girl'. To redeem myself, I had to build a good sand castle that was sturdy & defendable. I loved digging moats and drawbridges now that I think of it. :) Throwing sand was easy, building an interesting sand castle that stayed up was harder and took patience & time.)

As a tribute, Curiosity Stream (through March 23rd) is allowing free access to Stephen Hawking's Emmy award winning 3 part series called Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places. I watched the 3 - 30 min segments with the long awaited final part 3. It's here https://curiositystream.com/hawking/ for us all. As you'll see... Hawking made no part four. My guess is, he's there.

May he rest in peace.

[jon smith]

Teine- Thank you. I respect your words and will rethink my words regarding GR.

[Todd Juvinall]

You get between a daughter and her dad you better hang on to your family jewels bub.

[Teine Rebane Kenney]

JonS 918pm You're welcome! My lifelong proximity to George provided a literal front row seat to his university of knowledge. As one of his sharpest critics, I can vouch for his ability to sit still and listen to someone tell him how many ways from Sunday "he was wrong". He never attacked me as a person, he sat still & he listened to my frequent arguments against his beliefs. He's an intellectually and physically imposing figure. At 6'4" he towered over me as a child, yet I was never afraid or turned away when I would emotionally present him with 'my case'. Bet you can imagine how many times my case was against HIM as a person?! He asked me questions, explained his beliefs and his only critique was to encourage me to form my thoughts better. In debates I never heard dismissive words like "Shut-up" or "Because I said so, now get our of here!".

I think he wants us all to exercise our brain bones better & become really good critical thinkers. He has faith in the critical thinking process, and is genuinely curious as to how we come to our conclusions.

I was captive & sometimes reluctant student of Dr. George Rebane for 18 years. As it's turned out I ended up choosing to be a student for the most of the following 34 years.

I wasn't forced to like an elephant more than a donkey, but if I preferred the donkey, I'd been taught how to defend my reasons.

I think this blog may have even started for my sister and me. It's a place for us to go and hear "What Daddy thinks of something". So think of your comments as a gift to me to read long after he's gone. I may be one of the few people who goes back and back and back again to read his posts because his voice will read it aloud in my mind. This is his legacy to his children, grandchildren (6) and great-grandchildren (4), so perhaps that explains WHO he is speaking to and why such urgency.

I just take a seat & enjoy my spot. Although I rarely post, I daily read. Aren't we are all just a little more fortunate to pull up a stool to this URL and hear to what George Rebane thinks about something?

[Gregory]

Teine - thanks for jumping in

'jon smith' various

Here's another view of Hawking, from a physicist, Michael Guillen:

"By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement," Hawking declares, "Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children."

Hawking is a fellow theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to our speculations about the behavior of black holes. I met him at Harvard some thirty years ago and subsequently interviewed him for ABC News, shortly after the publication of his first book, "A Brief History of Time."

Stephen was a far-out thinker back then, but credible; it's what made him exciting. But now that he has allowed the media to turn him into the Amazing Kreskin of science, I find it hard to take him seriously.

The saddest thing about his latest wild-eyed pronouncement is that it contributes to the politicization of a timely and legitimate topic, climate change. Hawking has committed the unforgivable sin of allowing hyperbole and his progressive political views to grossly distort his cold-eyed scientific judgment.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/stephen-hawkings-indefensible-politicization-of-science/article/2627915

Feel free to trash the author for publishing in the Washington Examiner or suggesting his degree and practice of theoretical physics (it appears he didn't run hard enough to jump onto a tenure track) doesn't give him the right to criticize Hawking. I can feel 'jon' seething, "how dare he!"

Let me again say Hawking's work predicting radiation from Black Holes was brilliant, and I am eagerly awaiting some astronomer's verification of it; it is a shame that it didn't happen in time to make Hawking eligible for a Nobel in physics, but it may well happen. If I was a betting man I'd say I'd give odds over which would come first, a little ice age throwing cold water on climate alarmism vs a discovery of Hawking Radiation.