Stephen Hawking on Aliens (the E.T kind, that is…)

From The Sunday Times

April 25, 2010

Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

President Obama signs historic health care bill

Richard Adams Tuesday 23 March 2010 16.21 GMT guardian.co.uk

The final, formal act that ends the long journey of US healthcare reform into concrete legislation happened just before noon this morning, when President Obama signed into law an $938bn overhaul extending coverage for 32 million uninsured Americans.

“Mr President, you’re the guy that made it happen… You’ve done what generations of great men and women have attempted to do, Republicans and Democrats,” said Joe Biden, introducing Obama at the signing ceremony. (Embracing Obama after his remarks, Biden appears to have been picked up on an open mic saying to the president: “This is a big f*****g deal”.)

The signing ceremony took place in a packed East Room of the White House before a crowd of congressional leaders, guests and members of the Kennedy family, including Vicki Kennedy, the widow of Senator Edward Kennedy, who had fought for years to reform America’s healthcare system and remove many of the system’s worst abuses. Representative Bart Stupak, who helped broker the anti-abortion compromise that brought his voting bloc on board and provided the crucial margin of victory, was also in the audience.

Before signing, Obama ticked off a list of the benefits that the new law would bring immediately. “This year, insurance companies will no longer be able to drop people’s coverage when they get sick,” he said, to loud applause.

Countdown Special Comment – Racial discrimination inherent in the Tea Party movement

olbermann has something to say:

Tech Presidents Day: George, Tom and Abe

By Randy Alfred – Wired.com
February 11, 2010

Wired.com marks Presidents Day weekend with brief vignettes of three of our techiest presidents: Washington steered national policy toward an embrace of science, Jefferson made a significant contribution to paleontology, and Lincoln devised and patented a gimmick for lifting stranded boats.

The Library of Congress has this manuscript of George Washington’s first State of the Union address.

Washington’s Advice

Jan. 8, 1790: During his first — and the nation’s first — State of the Union address, President George Washington urges the young nation to encourage the sciences and literature, calling knowledge “the surest basis for public happiness.”

He also called for importing “useful inventions from abroad” while encouraging homegrown genius to flourish, by means of offering patent protection for inventors.

Washington was trained as a surveyor, and he attached great importance to the study of science and literature. His views also reflected the general attitude of the gentry toward classical education. The Founding Fathers, most of who came from this class, were children of the Enlightenment, the philosophy of rationalism that rose in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Faith in science was a central pillar of that philosophy.