Renee Blodgett from We Blog the World turned her camera on Kris Kimel late in the afternoon on the last day of the 2011 festival to interview the IdeaFestival founder on the origins of the nerdocalypse. Give it a watch.
At the end of the brief interview, Kris hints at one of the presenters for next year, who, as it happens, appears on a very popular television show and has a Ph.D. in neuroscience. I'd say more. I also really like what working with the festival.
Wayne
You are living in a golden age of discovery.
In its short tenure in Earth-trailing orbit staring unceasingly on the stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way and looking for the tell tale blink-blink of other worlds momentarily blotting the star light reaching its open aperture, Kepler has expanded to 2,326 the number of candidate planets known to us. Of those, it's believed that 139 may circle their parent suns in orbits compatible with the presence of liquid water.
Over time, ground based scopes will conduct follow up observations to confirm the finds.
Isn't it amazing that in the short period of time that we've been able to detect these new worlds with improved astronomical techniques - a mere dozen years or so - information pointing to their existence now routinely pops up in the data?
Even if we find Earth-like worlds with watery surfaces, what is the real world, practical application of knowing that another planet like ours orbits in the habitable zone of its parent sun? After all, at distances ranging from tens to hundreds of light years away, no one from this period in our history will ever see them at close range. Still, as physicist Brian Cox explains to the BBC in response to the discovery of the most Earth-like of the most recent batch candidates, Kepler 22-b, it's one of the great questions ever. "Are we alone?"
The answer is illuminating either way.
For if we can find life elsewhere, let's say microbial life in the irradiated soil of Mars or beneath the ice of Europa or in the methane seas of Titan, to take three examples, then life may be a common feature of the universe. On the other hand, if we find no evidence of primitive life nearby, or locate terran hosts like ours with instruments like Kepler and, should it be flown, the Hubble successor, the James Web Telescope, would knowing we are alone in this vast and unreachable darkness then change how we behave?
Give the linked audio a listen.
Wayne
Image Credit for Kepler's field of view: Carter Roberts / Eastbay Astronomical Society.
In a media-saturated culture where business heroes can achieve cult-like status and presidential candidates appear to be auditioning for a television gig and not the office, is it time for quiet leadership? "Why We Need Quiet Leaders" argues that in knowledge-based organizations quiet leaders offer a better signal-to-noise ratio.
The authors argue that extraverted leadership commands the center of attention: being assertive, bold, talkative and dominant, providing and clear authority, structure and direction. However, pairing extraverted leaders with employees who take initiative, are more independent and speak out can lead to conflict, while pairing the same type of employees with an introverted leader, can be more successful. The researchers found in their study that when employees are more proactive, introverted managers lead them to higher profits, whereas where employees are not proactive, extraverted managers are more successful. They concluded that introverted and extraverted leadership styles can be equally effective, but with different kinds of employees.
The "authors" referenced in the quote above are behind this study: "The Hidden Advantages of Quiet Leaders."
Wayne
{vimeo}27194304|369|203{/vimeo}
If atoms are like phonons, why not drop those measures 27 octaves into the audio domain so that we can directly experience that information? Such techniques are not entirely unknown. After all, through infrared imaging, we can map heat of a fireplace - or the contours of the earliest known epochs of our universe. Could material science be improved if one could actually listen to exotic new combinations, if for example, oxygen, hydrogen and zinc all had distinct audio signatures?
What would it be like to walk in fields of sub-atomic particles, or to watch and listen to dilated time?
In this video, Professor in the Media Arts and Technology Department at the University of California-Santa Barbara, JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, describes how the creative and scientific communities collaborate using a domed sound proof instrument three stories high to make new discoveries, to materialize the immaterial.
Wayne
When encountering an interruption, the mind takes a step back and begins to think on a broader scale. The effect of has been well documented, but what's so interesting, according to Keith Sawyer's blog, is that the benefits of so called "global thinking" tend to linger after the original problem being addressed. The abstract he cites references six total studies on how the presence of obstacles triggers a broader take on the situation at hand, one of which concludes rather academically: "Conceptual scope increased after participants solved anagrams while hearing random numbers framed as an "obstacle to overcome' rather than a 'distraction to ignore.'"
Non-academically, context matters. Positive emotion contributes to expansive thought, and, in fact, a growing body of evidence from happiness studies links the two. In addition to the new information about the expansive mind - the effect can linger - the study reinforces the point that we see the world as we are, not as it is, and that, depending on whether the obstacles are viewed a positively or negatively, we might solve, or run, from the challenge.
Perhaps that's also part of the dizzying effect of falling in love - new possibilities and alternate futures become available, materializing in that comely woman or that tall and broad shouldered man - or why, in the course of normal development, children are so uninhibited and think so creatively. Everything in a child's environment is a challenge to her. With the energy of youth, she confronts them.
Just some thoughts.
Wayne