Thu, 17 Nov 2005

Stephen Hawking Lecture

I was given a VIP pass to see Stephen Hawking in person at the Paramount yesterday, so I had to attend. Unfortunately after I arrived, it was announced that due to some heath issues, he was not actually able to make it to Seattle. Stephen's lecture coorinator gave us this story:

Stephen was pulled off the resporator he sleeps on last Monday, and flat-lined. He was resuscitated and everything turned out to be okay. Stephen still wanted to go to Seattle for the lecture, but his doctors and wife vetoed the idea.

But fear not, there was a production crew of 8 Intel employees in two Satellite trucks to save the day. The LCD projector turns on, and a web browser at an Intel website pops up. It is some sort of web conference site, allowing you to view slides along with the cast.

The video starts buffering and streaming at 2280kbps, and we watch a jumbo version of Stephen speaking for about an hour or so. The operator was flipping between slides and the video stream, and accidently closed the browser a couple times, but otherwise it worked out pretty well.

At the end, it was question time. No, apparently we can't ask questions directly anymore. We were given a canned top ten list instead. Questions ranged from what Stephen's take was on the Simpsons episode he stared in, to stem cell research, the mars space program, and what his IQ was.

Even though I did not get to see im in person on the stage of the paramount, it still was a great moment to see the man talk about the origins of the universe.

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