woo! was just at hawking’s big information paradox lecture, it was really surreal (i’ve never been at one of his lectures before) – There was a big pile of press people there – the wanted
initially to get the first four rows in the theatre to be press only (the fecking neck of them journalists!), but were in the end, except for the camera men at the sides, restricted to the four rows of the
stepped part of the hall (about half way).
We arrived around fifteen minutes before and the theatre was about half full, but by half past (when it was scheduled to start) the place was completely packed except for a row or two right at the very back
(the hall is rectangular, so the back bits are *realllly* far away), but Hawking didn’t come in until a quarter two, coming from the back of the hall up the left, through a pile of cameramen (Well, they
got out of his way) with his wife i believe, up the specially constructed ramp onto the stage,
Then petros gave his introduction, then kip thorne and the other guy gave a quick talk, then the talk commenced..it was really wierd i had no idea how he would lecture, but it was cool (initially very
surreal, but quickly technical beyond the bounds of my experience).
Then the question session, (a mixture of a few technical questions which one of his (rather hot looking) PhD students answered, and 2 press questions, the first answer took him around 10 minutes to write and
was only a single sentence, the second “i don’t know”,…, so yeah then we left and the press people were left to have him to themselves for a bit).
But that was it…oh yeah and an encyclopedia of baseball was presented to the other guy…kip thorne isn’t giving in yet until he has the details though.
And that was that.