Stephen Hawking Takes Beijing; Now, Will Science Follow?

BEIJING, June 19 — Like an otherworldly emperor, Stephen Hawking rolled his wheelchair onto the stage of the Great Hall of the People on Monday, bringing with him the royalty of science and making China, for this week at least, the center of the cosmos.

Slouching in profile, draped in black and moving no more than an eyelid to send his words to a mesmerized audience of 6,000, Dr. Hawking ruminated on the origin of the universe as the headliner of an international physics conference.

"We are close to answering an age-old question," he concluded. "Why are we here? Where did we come from?"

But as weighty as his speech was, his mere presence was a powerful symbol of what China is and would like to be.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/science/20hawk.html?hp&ex=1150776000&en=6df9ff632bdeba92&ei=5094&partner=homepage

While they're going forward, we're going backward.

When evolution is outlawed only outlaws will evolve. ;)

So sad where our country is headed.

Things in China aren't all that great. Did you see that program on the Discovery Times. No labor laws, environmental disaster, highest executions with organ trading, and wealth in the hands of the few. I am not in denial that China is becoming more of a superpower and the owner of US debt, but their situation isn't all that great.....

Shame on you.

When someone gives out opinion of a country when s/he has never set a foot on it, readers be aware.

That best way to know what you talking about is from your own experiece like the one post below. You have to be there. Forget about these TV programs, they are at best second hand information. Take a trip to China (or to North Korea or Iran or Cuba these "axis of evil" countries for that matter) to see for yourself. It would probably open your eye and your mind forever. It would make you be immune to propaganda.

..related field than ANY type of Science (Per-aise Jee-sus).
15 Years from now, most of these same students will be on food stamps...

and they use their science for all kinds of wonderous things like forced abortions and mobile death units for criminals!!! Can't wait to see what they come up with for their re-education camps and sweat shop workers! Perhaps electric fencing around the sewing machines and mind control for the camps?

but remembering back to HS science, 10th grade, an instructor showed us fireworks, a chemical reaction with what he claimed were normal, everday household chemicals, but he refused to tell us what those chemicals were.

I guess he expected all of us to believe him. Idiot.

Below is an email sent to me by someone who used to live and work
at Los Alamos. By the choice of words, you can see this is someone
who probably wouldn't post at DU. (I got his permission to post this.)

We are literally being eviscerated as a functioning modern country.

China may be an environmental and civil rights hell-hole; but it is
at least based on realpolitic, not some lunatic, fundamentalist fantasy.

arendt

<quote from "Former LANL Person">

Since about 1970, depending on who was president of the U.S., Los Alamos
National Lab ranged between 40% and 60% nonweapons research. Among many
other things, it did some interesting work in alternative energy during
the previous oil crisis in the 1970s. Once nuclear weapons were no longer
the primary focus, the purpose of the Lab changed to be a center for excellence
in research, which was judged to be in the national interest since it helped keep the
country on the cutting edge.

Naturally, some of that excellence was still needed in weapons
research, some nuclear and some conventional. The point, though, was to
have and attract a diverse set of scientific pursuits that would lead to
the U.S. maintaining its edge in both defense and civilian innovation.

We need a place like that now more than ever, with the economy and
today's particular brand of capitalism failing to support innovation in
this country. There has to be some way to stimulate research that is
divorced from the economic system of outsourcing and H1-B visas that are
draining people's desire and ability to go into research-oriented fields
of study. There has to be some place where people can say "When I get
out of school, I want to go there."

I am sad to see Los Alamos being left to rust, but it is less
because of the loss of the institution than the loss of the idea, with
nothing new coming in as a positive replacement. The deterioration
being allowed to take place at Los Alamos feels the same to me as that
happening at NASA. People seem to have lost the will to do great things.

</quote>

research, some nuclear and some conventional."

Yes, imagine if the USA had stopped inventing new weapons technology after 1929. Whose weapons technology would the USSR have copied?

Imagine if soldiers were reduced to wrestling with the enemy and putting the enemy in handcuffs. How would medics stay employed?

My point was, that even insiders of the Nuclear Weapons complex
are fed up with the priorities of the Neocons.

arendt

With our national and personal debt so high, there is no more to invest in our future.

Msongs

can you sing?
www.msongs.com/vocalistwanted.htm

I was in China a few months ago. One day we took a trip from Beijing out to the Great Wall; our bus travelled there by a 4 line divided highway comparable to one of our better - maintained interstates. Once out of Beijing the landscape was mostly flat cultivated fields with an occaisonal small village. At one point we passed a sign in Chinese and English announcing " Life Sciences Research City." There was an entirely new town being contructed on the former rice paddies in the middle of nowhere, with a group of large 2 or 3 story windowless buildings near the highway (labs perhaps) and high rise appartment buildings beyond. Not far past that new city was an exit for "Software Development City." In the hazy distance there was another new city going up. I was astonished. I can't imagine the proudly ignorant troglodytes in the current administration even conceiving of funding a major research center for any kind of science. Yeah, China is a central - planning state with all the evils that implies, but the Chinese can clearly see that the future belongs to those nations that invest in science and technology.

...It is sad, but they are all realistic observations and I ConCur with everyone.

There's no theocratic mob running riot there. The US seriously risks its dominance with this flirtation with obscurantism.

He has little respect for most of mankind ...