Ray Bradbury Longed for Open Seas

For most of you who were there, Ray Bradbury's holographic appearance at IdeaFestival 2007 was the highlight of an expansive three days. Bradbury's stories of finding refuge in libraries while writing Fahrenheit 451, of the serendipitous path that led to The Martian Chronicles, of his deep well of belief in human potential, and most memorably, his tabletop-pounding demand to "do what you love!" - they came back to me this week. There have been other remembrances in the past couple of days since his death - a few of you have taken to Twitter - and many of them have been extraordinarily moving. But the passage below, pulled from a Paul Gilster post at Centauri Dreams, captures a bit of the magic I enountered in an aged and passionate man nearly five years ago.

Neil deGrasse Tyson likes to quote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on the topic: 'If you want to teach someone to sail, you don’t train them how to build a boat. You compel them to long for the open seas.' Ray Bradbury was not a boat-builder, and in his science fiction he was content to leave the details of construction to others. His driving wish, deep and unquenchable, was to awaken in his readers the same passion for raw experience he found within himself, by invoking the small events that define all our lives. Midnight carnivals, small town summers and rockets cutting into the dawn became his working materials, lighting fires that for many of us will burn long after he is laid to rest.

His invocation to be fully available to raw experience is the secret, isn't it?

Do you long for open seas too?

Wayne

Image: Andrzej Mirecki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IKAROS_solar_sail.jpg

Art lies, true science, fried brains

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. Pablo Picasso

Using artwork that she had a hand in curating, "Knocking on Heaven's Door" author and Harvard Prof. Lisa Randall describes how art can clarify the difficult concepts that physicists often encounter in the purely abstract, in the math.

She was recently awarded the Andrew Gemant Award, which is given annually for significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics.

Like her, we think art can make physics sensational. Take, for example, time dilation. Does it have a color? Does it beat to the flourishes of Grandmaster Flash or Bach? Can it be touched or embedded in ambient, smart objects that respond to our presence? Prof. Randall, have you ever thought about an orbiting public art project that would bring time dilation to our senses?

Perhaps relativity just needs to escape the textbooks and make its way to our fingertips for its truth be realized - one fried brain at a time.

All-access passes to see Lisa Randall and many other scientific and creative pioneers at IdeaFestival 2012 are now available. I hope to see you there.

Wayne

Make a move (even if you're unsure)

It's hard to say we’re lucky when we face a crisis, but we at least have the luxury of knowing that action is called for—of being forced to move. The truest tests of skill and intuition come when everything looks quiet and we aren’t sure what to do, or if we should do anything at all. — Garry Kasparov

Many people might know what to do in the face of imminence - when sales are weak, when creative differences have put the movie at risk, when the new data is clearly pointing in a different research direction. But what about when all is calm and the signals are weak? What then?

It's an interesting question. The moves we make "when all is quiet" count just as much as those driven by urgency.

Kasparov's quote comes from a warm and illuminating book I recently finished, "The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive" by Brian Christian. I really can't recommend it highly enough.

The first African-American International Grandmaster in chess, Maurice Ashley, will present at IdeaFestival 2012 on "the relationship between chess, business strategy and success" during an event for all-access pass holders. All-access passes are now on sale.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by Adam Jones, Ph.D.

The IdeaFestival will make you weak in the knees

If stories are essential to how we humans understand and interpret the world, what separates the good ones from the bad ones? Alison Gopnik believes it's a certain startling quality, and finds that common ground between the good story and good science:

Good stories are strange. What strong scientific theories, even those crafted in pop form, have in common with good stories is not some specious universality. It’s that they make claims so astonishing that they seem instantly very different from all the other stories we’ve ever heard. Good stories are startling....

Good science is more like Proust than Mr. Popper’s Penguins; its stories startle us with their strangeness, but they intrigue us by their originality, and end by rewarding us with the truth, after an effort. It is the shock good stories offer to our expectations, not some sop they offer to our pieties, that makes tales tally, and makes comtes count.

At the IdeaFestival this year, theoretical physicist Lisa Randall will describe how parallel universes might be possible, about how black holes and dark energy shape reality, about how the truth might be stranger than any fiction we could ever image. You won't want to miss her story. In fact, great stories are required to appear at the IdeaFestival, which is why we spend so much time finding and bringing leading innovators, doers and dreamers to Louisville. The surprise happens when you realize that person it talking directly to you, when it occurs to you that you had never really thought of it that way and, when, right after your head absorbs the news, your fingers and toes start to tingle.

Going a little weak in the knees makes life worth living doesn't it?

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by quinn.anya

Shakespeare Behind Bars Bio

The Mission of Shakespeare Behind Bars is to offer theatrical encounters with personal and social issues to the incarcerated, allowing them to develop life skills that will ensure their successful reintegration into society.

Shakespeare Behind Bars was founded on the beliefs that all human beings are inherently good, and that although convicted criminals have committed heinous crimes against other human beings, this inherent goodness still lives deep within them and must be called forth. Participation in the program can effectively change our world for the better by influencing one person at a time, awakening him or her to the power and the passion of the goodness that lives within all of us.

Shakespeare Behind Bars offers participants the ability to hope and the courage to act despite their fear and the odds against them. By immersing participants in the nine-month process of producing a Shakespeare play, Shakespeare Behind Bars uses the healing power of the arts, transforming inmate offenders from who they were when they committed their crimes, to who they are in the present moment, to who they wish to become.

The Shakespeare Behind Bars program allows each participant the opportunity to:

• develop a lifelong passion for learning, especially those participants who are at high risk of not completing or continuing their education;
• develop literacy skills (reading, writing, and oral communication), including those participants who are classified as learning disabled and/or developmentally challenged;
• develop decision making, problem solving, and creative thinking skills;
• develop empathy, compassion, and trust;
• nurture a desire to help others;
• increase self esteem and develop a positive self image;
• take responsibility for the crime/s committed;
• become a responsible member of a group, community, and family;
• learn tolerance and peaceful resolution of conflict;