52 responses to “Stephen Hawking, RIP”

1. 

   Teine Rebane Estey

   16 March 2018

   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?

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2. 

   Gregory

   18 March 2018

   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.

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