Black holes and baby universes and other essays Book

This is a very different book from A Brief History of Time. Hawking notes he doesn't want to write an autobiography, and puts off people who try to persuade him by saying he's "considering it" when he's just avoiding it. I actually think this reads a bit like an autobiography; half of it is devoted to childhood anecdotes, why he got into physics, how his disease affects him (or doesn't), how he feels about his celebrity and his image with the public.

I can never decide how much I like Hawking. He can be lowkey condescending at times, but on the other hand he admits his shortcomings freely and quickly and has this droll tone conveyed throughout that makes him irresistible. ("When I was twelve, one of my friends bet another friend a bag of sweets that I would never come to anything. I don't know if this bet was ever settled and, if so, which way it was decided.")

He also says something rather interesting about the machine that conveys his speech: "The synthesizer is by far the best I have heard because it varies the intonation. The only trouble is that it gives me an American accent. However, by now I identify with its voice. I would not want to change it even if I were offered a British-sounding voice. I would feel I had become a different person." - This reminds me of the EXTREMELY interesting cyborg movement led by Neil Harbisson, which seeks for non-organic bodily additions (antennae, implants, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, etc.) to be legally/ethically/socially recognized as part of the body.

I do have a little hatred in my heart for Hawking because of how much he hates philosophy, and how little he seems to understand of it. I'm not saying he *couldn't*, of course, he certainly could if he bothered to. But from what he says, it seems he's read very, very little philosophy, and generally refuses to think about it, but is happy to criticize it out of spite (because apparently some philosophers criticize him). Because his criticisms of what philosophy of science accomplishes is, to borrow a phrase from I-can't-remember-whom, "picking the stick up from the other end." Same stick, different end, totally different point. The goals he says philosophers of science are failing at simply aren't their goals.

I also don't really agree with this fiction that he's the best at explaining cosmology to laymen. He's not bad, but I've definitely read better-phrased material on the same subjects. He also sometimes has a tendency to mess up his pacing. Like he'll natter on for days about something that I'm like "Yeah, duh, we all know this, Stephen, don't talk down to us, move on." And then other things that absolutely bewilder me, he skips over all "yeah duh of course" but no, not duh.

I did learn, which I had not previously known, that there may well be "white holes" in the universe which are the counterpart to black holes; as black holes suck matter in, they expel that matter, though not, of course, in any recognizable way. And that baby universes might exist where particles go while inside a black hole, before they are emitted by the white hole that is born somewhere else. Lovely.