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Stephen Hawking - 6 Days in Hong Kong

 

I think he looks pretty healthy in the article's picture, don't you? :blink:

 

Who am I kidding, he's a mind in a shell.

 

I'll be honest, I was faced with the possibility of an ALS diagnosis for about a week (then my neurologist decided to finally slap a label on me) and during that week, I had my plan of how I was going to party my ass off, then kill myself before I wound up looking anything like Dr. Hawking. No way in hell I'd want to be in his physical condition.

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I'll be honest, I was faced with the possibility of an ALS diagnosis for about a week (then my neurologist decided to finally slap a label on me) and during that week, I had my plan of how I was going to party my ass off, then kill myself before I wound up looking anything like Dr. Hawking. No way in hell I'd want to be in his physical condition.

As was I! Although for me it was for a month, while I waited for the results of my bloodwork. Admittedly I hadn't gotten as far along with my pre-demise plans as you had (and yours sound excellent), aside from the part where you kill yourself before the complete loss of muscle control set in. My dad had ALS - not a pretty thing to watch someone go through (and, I would guess, not pretty to actually go through, either).

 

Unlike Mr Hawking, however, my father never got a super-deluxe, space-age robotic wheelchair contraption. Not fair, really...

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this is what happens when your dad doesn't come up with string theory.

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I'll be honest, I was faced with the possibility of an ALS diagnosis for about a week (then my neurologist decided to finally slap a label on me) and during that week, I had my plan of how I was going to party my ass off, then kill myself before I wound up looking anything like Dr. Hawking. No way in hell I'd want to be in his physical condition.

As was I! Although for me it was for a month, while I waited for the results of my bloodwork. Admittedly I hadn't gotten as far along with my pre-demise plans as you had (and yours sound excellent), aside from the part where you kill yourself before the complete loss of muscle control set in. My dad had ALS - not a pretty thing to watch someone go through (and, I would guess, not pretty to actually go through, either).

 

Unlike Mr Hawking, however, my father never got a super-deluxe, space-age robotic wheelchair contraption. Not fair, really...

 

I saw a couple patients go through ALS and I don't want to imagine what it's like. I'm sorry to hear about your father...can't imagine being in your shoes there.

 

It's a shame no one told me until years after my experience that most of the time, a quick ALS test can be used. Spread your thumb and forefinger apart, and if the muscle sags between the index finger and thumb...uh oh.

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Guest iain

hey whats with all this gloomy talk-thi sis supposed to be a fun filled forum about..death.Erm..as you were then

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this is what happens when your dad doesn't come up with string theory.

:blink: Quite.

 

It's a shame no one told me until years after my experience that most of the time, a quick ALS test can be used. Spread your thumb and forefinger apart, and if the muscle sags between the index finger and thumb...uh oh.

I'm not sure it's as simple as that, at least from a gene inheritance point of view. I was given to understand that it isn't any of the particular muscular degeneration diseases that are in themselves hereditery, but rather the gene that means a person has the propensity to develop a muscular degeneration disease is. Thus, if my bloodwork had revealed the presence of this gene, it wouldn't have meant that I was definitely going to develop ALS, but that there is the possibility that I might develop it in future.

 

Which I think is worse, to be honest. At least if you knew for certain your muscles were going to go at some point, then when you started to see changes in your body you could go to your doctor and be like 'right, here we go' sort of thing. If I were told that I definitely might develop ALS, I'd be at the bloody doctor every day, worried about some new (quite possibly imagined) change in my body. Nightmare!

 

Not that I have hypochondriac tendencies or anything... :blink:

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I did a search which came up with a blank for the Prof.

 

I was wondering, in light of today's repeated Horizon programme,whether he had succumbed to his own paradox and finds himself both dead and alive at the same time.He has certainly been relatively quiet of late.

 

Ah-Just realised I searched the wrong field-nevermind.

 

[Topics merged -- MH]

Edited by Magere Hein

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I have seen Professor Hawking at the Royal Opera House twice in the last six months- whilst it cannot be said that he is looking in fine fettle, he is still getting out and about. I also saw that there was an audio book of "A Briefer History of Time". I can only hope he wasn't narrating it.

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I have seen Professor Hawking at the Royal Opera House twice in the last six months- whilst it cannot be said that he is looking in fine fettle, he is still getting out and about. I also saw that there was an audio book of "A Briefer History of Time". I can only hope he wasn't narrating it.

I don't know, out of everything his voice seems to have held up pretty well so far, although the speak 'n' spell impression is getting a little tiresome these days.

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He is getting divorced from his 2nd wife - the one who supposedly beats him up.

 

Hawking Divorce

 

That may improve his survival odds.

 

DWB :P

 

Now she'll be beating up his bank account too!

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I could see future trips into space routine for the public in say (15 - 20 years) but only in favore to the upper class.

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I could see future trips into space routine for the public in say (15 - 20 years) but only in favore to the upper class.

 

 

Mind, if too many of them leave the planet at one go Karl Marx's words may yet prove true.

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I don't know why anybody is betting here. I look at this guy and I know he's dead in three weeks. But I guess his death clock is longer then he looks.

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I don't know why anybody is betting here. I look at this guy and I know he's dead in three weeks. But I guess his death clock is longer then he looks.

Life expectency of ALS patients isn't particularly good, but he's doing quite well in the circumstances. If I'm to go by his looks he's already dead but failed to notice.

 

Oh dear, I suddenly realise that he's a zombie. A very clever zombie, even. The horror.

 

regards,

Hein

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Has Stephen Hawking ever said or written anything that's useful to his fellow man? An example, from Wiki:

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"But according to Hawking's new idea, presented at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, on 21 July 2004 in Dublin, Ireland, black holes eventually transmit, in a garbled form, information about all matter they swallow:

 

The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon.

 

—GR Conference website summary of Hawking's talk"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Can anyone understand any of that tripe? I'd contend the photos of Britney Spears exiting a car in full commando mode have had a greater and more meaningful impact on the world's population than anything old Hawkwind's ever piped up.

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Life expectency of ALS patients isn't particularly good, but he's doing quite well in the circumstances. If I'm to go by his looks he's already dead but failed to notice.

 

Oh dear, I suddenly realise that he's a zombie. A very clever zombie, even. The horror.

 

regards,

Hein

I dunno. I still reckon he died a while back, and that his "nurse" just programmes random, incomprehensible stuff into his voice box, and then wheels him out for shows whenever the bills need paying.

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Has Stephen Hawking ever said or written anything that's useful to his fellow man? An example, from Wiki:

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"But according to Hawking's new idea, presented at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, on 21 July 2004 in Dublin, Ireland, black holes eventually transmit, in a garbled form, information about all matter they swallow:

 

The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon.

 

—GR Conference website summary of Hawking's talk"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Can anyone understand any of that tripe? I'd contend the photos of Britney Spears exiting a car in full commando mode have had a greater and more meaningful impact on the world's population than anything old Hawkwind's ever piped up.

His words sound familiar, but so do the first snake oil salesman's. My knowledge and understanding of calculus is insufficient to say whether this makes mathematical sense or not.

 

I sort of understand what he's on about. Sort of as in: I understand it qualitatively, so I expect my understanding is completely wrong. If I try to apply that understanding to what Dr Hawking writes so tersely, I get this: we used to think that there's no way of deducing the past of a black hole from its current state, because every black hole with the same mass, angular momentum and electric charge looks the same, regardless of how it acquired those properties. If I understand the above correctly that thought is wrong for mathematical reasons. From the way a black hole produces Hawking radiation we can, in principle, deduce information about the black hole's past. I fail to see how this bombshell changes my life.

 

This leaves the question of the use of his work. I have no idea. Cosmology isn't an applied science, but there's no way of knowing where applications may be found.

 

regards,

Hein

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This nobhead-on-wheels is a plagiarist of the worst kind. All he's done is rob Einstein's stuff and repackage it - and made it worse if you ask me. If he didn't have the illness, the electronic voice and hideous leer he'd be nowhere - and he soon will be literally nowhere if there's any justice. Ok he's come up with some new sh*t - but that's just what it is - sh*t: "black holes eventually transmit, in a garbled form, information about all matter they swallow" - bollocks!!! A black hole NEVER transmits anything - all it does is absorb until one day when it's absorbed EVERYTHING the f*cker explodes big-bang style and the whole cycle starts over again - if indeed there is a cycle. Hawkings tosh is like saying if a woman gives u a BJ and swallows it, eventually a corrupt printout of ur DNA strand will emerge from her jacksie. In fact that is probably more likely to happen than what old numnuts there is saying. Overrated tw*t.

 

If you want a bloody good laugh at wheelchair-willy's expense look here: http://www2.b3ta.com/hawking/ it's effing hilarious.

 

Jack :ghost:

 

Has Stephen Hawking ever said or written anything that's useful to his fellow man? An example, from Wiki:

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"But according to Hawking's new idea, presented at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, on 21 July 2004 in Dublin, Ireland, black holes eventually transmit, in a garbled form, information about all matter they swallow:

 

The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon.

 

—GR Conference website summary of Hawking's talk"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Can anyone understand any of that tripe? I'd contend the photos of Britney Spears exiting a car in full commando mode have had a greater and more meaningful impact on the world's population than anything old Hawkwind's ever piped up.

His words sound familiar, but so do the first snake oil salesman's. My knowledge and understanding of calculus is insufficient to say whether this makes mathematical sense or not.

 

I sort of understand what he's on about. Sort of as in: I understand it qualitatively, so I expect my understanding is completely wrong. If I try to apply that understanding to what Dr Hawking writes so tersely, I get this: we used to think that there's no way of deducing the past of a black hole from its current state, because every black hole with the same mass, angular momentum and electric charge looks the same, regardless of how it acquired those properties. If I understand the above correctly that thought is wrong for mathematical reasons. From the way a black hole produces Hawking radiation we can, in principle, deduce information about the black hole's past. I fail to see how this bombshell changes my life.

 

This leaves the question of the use of his work. I have no idea. Cosmology isn't an applied science, but there's no way of knowing where applications may be found.

 

regards,

Hein

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