The Long Overdue Post: the wrap-up

The day after The Reason Rally and meeting my science icon for the first time (the Toronto debate did not count as "meeting", lol). I had hoped originally to do some sightseeing in DC but time was *really* tight with packing in so many events. And Bill Nye the Science Guy was hosting StarTalk Live! at AwesomeCon....can't say no to some Science Guy action. Had I some extra cash lying around for the trip, I would have loved to get some VIP tickets and meet him but sadly, not to be. So we hung out at the comic book nerdfest (not my thing but definitely Bree's). I took some pics in the spirit of the event but I wasn't in my element until I found an aisle of MY PEOPLE!!! Headed by a table from The Planetary Society and other such science geeks. StarTalk was amazing, really happy to see David Grinspoon on the panel (but let's face it, I was hoping for certain scientists who happened to be in town, heh).

The one thing that was most important to me on this weekend of science and skepticism was to do something, even just to take a moment, to remember the one person sadly missing from an event like this. Everyone felt his absence....Hitch.

Christopher Hitchens was one of the most important authors of our time. Journalist, author, raconteur, contrarian, Trotsky-ite...the adjectives could go on and on. He was handsome, charming, passionate, and fearless. He had a recall for everything he's read and a command of language that was breathtaking. Plus he was gifted with a beautiful speaking voice and a wit so sharp it could cut you in half...when he wasn't using it to tell you filthy jokes. He could write at a pace that would stun you...and drink so much you would wonder how it didn't stun him. A tireless advocate for reason and atheism (or anti-theism), he influenced everyone who ever heard him speak or read his words. And we lost him before any of us were ready for him to go. Four years on there is still an empty hole in everyone's life where Hitch used to be.

We had bandied around many ideas on how to take a moment to remember him, many we simply did not have time for. But there was one that I would not be swayed from. One place that was the most important place for me to be that day...the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Jefferson and he both shared a birthday. And anyone who is familiar with Christopher's work knows how much he admired Jefferson, having written a book about him. It's also the place he was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.

The Jefferson Memorial is fairly complex to get to actually, but it's in an absolutely gorgeous location on the Potomac. It has shady paths winding around it and just a stunning view of the rest of DC. I had to take a moment to myself just to have a few quiet moments and just remember Christopher Hitchens and what he had meant to me. How I would likely not be standing in this spot at all had he not been this part of my life. Wish I had been presented with the opportunity to meet him. But those of us he influenced strive every day to live up to the example that he set and even though he is gone, we try to make him proud of the legacy he left. After a while, we took some photos and called an Uber because it was insanely humid, I was running lowish on time as Sunday night I had to leave for the loooooong bus ride back across the border. While there and wearing our atheist pride out in the open for all to see, we were confronted by yet ANOTHER Christian crackpot from the rally. And buddy, you picked the wrong time, place and frame of mind to push you idiotic ideas on me. I was ready to throw down with this guy and at the end he figured he'd won as we had to get our ride. I told him I'd be more than happy to pick this up via email. He agreed and said he had all *sorts* of evidence that he could send me. Then he realized I was serious and suddenly he had to get to work...

BOOM...don't mess with me. I do not bluff.

So, after a weekend of very little sleeping and the kind of humidity that makes people have heart attacks...I got on my bus to go home with a miserable summer cold. Pretty much one of the worst bus trips of my life, made worse by having to leave such a fun and completely inspiring weekend.

The Long Overdue Post part 2

It was up early to make my way over to the Amtrak station Saturday morning to head to DC for The Reason Rally and meet up with Bree. Grabbed a cab and met her at the hostel where I dropped off my stuff in a locker for the day and she introduced me to some people from the hostel that were joining us. First priority, find coffee. Then we made our way over to the rally site. Before we even started up the sidewalk, we got stopped by the first of Ray Comfort's people. Ken and Bree got into a spirited "discussion" with the guy who gave us all Ray's book (which is hilarious) while the rest of us were a tiny bit impatient to get over to the rally site. We got stopped over and over and over by the seeming hundreds of Christians there to "minister" to all of us poor lost atheists. We got handed pamphlets and yelled at by preachers with bullhorns, told we were going to hell repeatedly (that's always a favourite), people stepping out in front of us or following us around with their Bibles...we engaged a few of the more interesting ones but after a while it ceases to be amusing and gets really tiresome. It just felt like they were EVERYWHERE. You know, we don't hang out at their churches and shove Richard Dawkins books at them and harass them about evolution. How is this behavior considered acceptable at an event where people just want to come and hang out with people they can relate to?

It likely took us an hour or so to make our way through all the crazy and to the rally site. We worked out where to sit - personally I would have been happier sitting in the main crowd where we could see the main stage but I was outvoted as people wanted to sit in the shade so I caved to the peer pressure and we sat over by one of the side screens instead. I would have been fine with the discomfort of the sun and the heat in order to be more a part of the experience. The most important things for me to see in the speeches were David Silverman and Lawrence Krauss - two people who have made such a massive impact on my life, which I will talk about shortly. We went to see the vendor tent for a bit, got some lunch and I managed to convince them to get closer to the stage for those two speeches as I wanted to be an actual part of the main group when Silverman spoke. Both of their speeches were every bit as powerful and inspirational as I had thought they would be. People in our group were less familiar with David than I was...but man, he can win people over in a hurry.

I'm going to pause a moment here to say that if it weren't for David Silverman, I don't know that I would actively call myself an atheist. Out loud...to actual people. But I would never have gotten there at all without Lawrence Krauss. Both of them literally changed my life. So, I'm going to take a sidetrip here and talk a bit about what the rally meant to me, in addition to a bit about the rally itself.

I'm pretty sure that I've posted before about the near-death experience I had when I was 19 where I nearly drowned in a boating accident. That was what lead me to being pagan because it was the thing that I found that at the time matched how I felt. It was all about reverence for the natural world and it tapped into my roots, my love of history and personal genealogy. My ancestry is deeply rooted in Britain, Scotland and Ireland and I've always felt this draw to the history of the Celts. Though I've never felt that any deity was an actual PERSON, (at the time, more of an energy or spirit that lives in everything) I did keep to the Wheel of the Year and the solstices. Especially Imbolc, as the day is sacred to Briget (the Celtic goddess of fire, poetry and inspiration) and Samhain. Yes, I even read tarot cards (and yes I still have them...useful for meditating. Honest.) I'm getting off topic but I want you to know where I'm coming from. I guess relearning the love I used to have for science and the stars reignited with Neil deGrasse Tyson rebooting Cosmos but NDT was just my "gateway scientist". The first time I heard Lawrence Krauss speak, I was hooked. And through his Origins project, he opened up this world of science that I can't believe I didn't know really existed. I had never been introduced to science like this before. Science was that thing they force you to take in school that the only memories you have of it later is the stuff you did to try and avoid going to science class. Just a bunch of what seems like meaningless facts and assigned reading from boring textbooks. And yet, I remember a time that I used to love looking at the stars, even though I never owned a telescope. I'd put the big zoom lens on my camera and put the tripod out to look at Earthshine and tell people about it who walked past. I lost that somewhere along the way....but Professor Krauss and others gradually brought that back with all this other stuff I had never heard before.

My path to atheism started with Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens God is Not Great. It had been a feeling that I'd had all my life really, I'd never believed in a god the whole time I was in the Baptist church. Everyone talked about a "personal relationship with God" but I never once experienced that. It was just what you did on Sunday. I volunteered in the Sunday school and memorized all the Bible verses...but it was just a thing to do. It never meant anything to me. Eventually I stopped going even though it got me "looks" from some of the members of my family. But it was one of those things that you didn't talk about. When I first bought The God Delusion, it felt a little like I was sneaking porn into the house. Yes, I'd like a bag. Did anyone SEE me buy it? Should I put it on the bookshelf where people might actually notice it?? It was a little less shocking somehow by the time I bought Hitch's book. It started me to thinking and questioning but the doors didn't blow off for me until Lawrence Krauss entered my life and that was the end of that. However, it was David Silverman that gave me the courage to actually say it out loud. I didn't have much choice after hearing him speak really. He's got this annoying tendency to be all clear and well-spoken...and right. Well, fuck. ;-) So now here I am, having twitter fights with theists on a regular basis and just generally being an outspoken atheist. And I blame that entirely on David Silverman...and I'm sure he's very happy with himself, lol. This was the first time I had ever been in a crowd of atheists. It was an amazing experience as I live in a heavily Presbyterian area and it's difficult to not have many people at all that I have anything in common with.

Back on track now....so I got to meet Silverman briefly at the rally, he signed my book and I told him...yes, you did your little number on me and made me come out as an atheist this year. I know he loves being right, lol. We left early-ish because I still had to get my bags from the locker downstairs and check in at the hostel, have dinner and we had to get freshened up and changed for the VIP cocktail party.

Before the trip, I had become the digital curator for Lawrence Krauss on the Wakelet site. A group of us are profiling scientists and collecting their work onto a site where everything is easy to find. I got tapped due to my personal Wakelet where I had an extensive amount of stuff on both Professor Krauss and Christopher Hitchens. So I set out profiling both of them for the Ultimate Collections Project and finished LK's just in time for his birthday shortly before the rally. I tracked down an email and tried not to gush as I told him the effect he'd had on my life and this was the best way I had at hand to pay a little bit of tribute to him as a thank you. And he was sweet enough to email me back telling me that he loved it. So, I went to the VIP event in this kind of weird headspace. How often do you actually get to meet the people who have had that kind of impact on you? Not a lot of talking time to be had as he's always really popular but I did get my picture taken with him and Bree. That in and of itself is a big thing. I don't get my picture taken...hardly ever. I prefer being behind the camera, not in front of it. There's a certain feeling of safely, being behind the camera. It sort of separates you from the event, it's a bit like having a shield. I also hate pictures of myself frankly. it takes a LOT to get me in front of a camera. (It takes a fair bit just to get me to a party, let's be honest.) But I really wanted to mark this weekend and meeting him more than I wanted to hide in my normal, antisocial shell.

After the VIP event there was an afterparty and I wanted to dance. Didn't happen as I got ditched and hung out at the afterparty totally by myself. I had a very expensive drink and went out on the dance floor anyway thinking that eventually Bree would join me but it never happened. I didn't want to *leave* because she was tipsy but eventually I got bored of hanging out alone. I was kind of pissy the rest of the night and then she got irritated. But this is the exact reason that I don't go to parties. I don't feel at all comfortable in these kinds of situations and I pretty much always get ditched by whoever I go with. I don't do "small talk" but if I have someone to dance with, it's all good. Otherwise, I get moderately anxious and depressed. My social anxiety only rears it's head under certain situations and then I just have to deal with it. I don't always handle it well.

I'm going to end this one here as the post is longer than I expected. Next post will be AwesomeCon and Christoper Hitchens.

A long overdue blog....

Granted that I have a really short attention span and I get sidetracked easily...but I am WAY overdue to post about my trip to NYC and Washington DC. So here goes...

Got to NYC around 7am, having left Orillia at 3:30 in the afternoon the day before. Dropped stuff off at the hostel, went to my favourite breakfast spot - Community Food and Juice. Then I decided to figure out where to go and get my credentials for The World Science Festival. Can I just say here that the Christopher Street subway stop could very well be the most confusing thing I've ever seen while still being an amazing subway stop? (There's a Starbucks and a Big Gay Ice Cream like, right there.) But there are also like 6 streets meeting up in the one spot...and the street that looks like it's signed to be 4th is TOTALLY NOT. For the record, it takes you way the hell out of the way. However, being that it's New York all you have to do is flag down a taxi. Finally found the building and figured out where I went wrong getting there, got my credentials for the next day and headed back uptown. Needless to say, there was a lot of coffee involved at this point whilst I headed for the one place that I hadn't made it to last trip (otherwise known as The Year of The Great Halloween Blizard)...The American Museum of Natural History. But most importantly - The Hayden Planetarium. To see Dark Universe.

Can I just LIVE in that place...with that space show above me and surrounded by The Voice of the Universe that is Neil deGrasse Tyson?!? If I lived in New York, I'd want to be there every week. Or NDT could just call me every so often and speak to me in his "director" voice. That would work for me too. At any rate, I was at the museum until I could check into the hostel. Explored several of the rooms with the animal dioramas, the Hall of the Universe (so cool), and while I was there I got the messages that Dave at work and his wife had their baby so I *had* to buy him a NASA shirt. After having dinner near the hostel, I decided I was too tired to do anything else so I headed back to the hostel with munchies, got organized for the next day and settled in to watch the Oliver Sacks event via the livestream.

Thursday morning I decided to just walk around, hit up some favourite places and take photos...areas in the northern part of Central Park, went to Union Square and after lunch I went down to check out Washington Square Park before my first volunteer shift. This could easily now be the best place in the world to people watch. What did I see there over the course of the weekend? A couple that looked like they were getting engagement photos done, a guy in a wizard hat doing tarot card readings, lots of puppies in the dog parks (including some interesting sexual displays...just sayin'), a bluegrass duo playing on some of the most unusual instruments I've seen (and considering my 10 years with the folk festival, that is really something), the greatest chalk drawing I could have imagined and a guy dressed like a 13th century monk with a lawn umbrella that had JESUS among other things written on it and a knapsack with a giant vinyl of a cross dripping blood. I may attach photos of things at the end of the post. I could just hang out in this place all the time.

My first volunteer shift was doing Front of House for Brian Greene's panel "To Unweave a Rainbow: Science and the Essence of Being Human". It was at the Skirball Center which is a gorgeous performing arts place right across from Washington Square Park. Suchan who was our coordinator was amazing...as was Julianne who manages the Skirball Center. We got the programs stuffed and organized, and then went in to the auditorium to get a little tour and assignments. So...it's really distracting to listen to someone while Brian Greene is behind you onstage. But I did my door assignment, handed out programs and surveys, then we got to sit in the VIP section during the panel so that afterwards we restrict stage access and clear the auditorium when it was done. Anything that provides me the opportunity to sit in the VIP section while someone like Brian Greene is talking...yeah, sign me up! The whole thing was a lot of fun and we had a great group of people that love or study science, including Holly who was a teacher from Australia! Geez, and I thought I'd come a long way!

Then it was straight back to the hostel for me because I had another volunteer shift first thing in the morning. I'd been excited about this one too as I had little idea what I would be doing as it was labelled "production" in my itinerary. Turns out I got to be a production assistant for World Science U For a Day. I was the only volunteer that actually got to be in the room during the lectures! I ran the timer for the scientists and the microphone for the Q&A as well as some little tasks that needed doing. Sarah was awesome amid some shall we say - challenges? Justin Khoury's talk went off pretty smoothly. Barry Barish has a massive attachment to his laser pointer and pretty much had his back to the audience and the cameras the entire time, much to Sarah and the cameraman's consternation. "I talked to him about it..." *shrug*. The drawback to that is when you want the director to let you know when there is 10 minutes left and you have your back to her the entire time, it becomes a tiny bit difficult. And then there was Ray Weiss. Who I now kind of adore. I do rather enjoy people who have a straight-forward and slightly crotchety nature, what can I say?

Sarah to cameraman: So, he's already advised me that he's going to have his back to the camera most of the time. I told him this is going up online and we need him to turn around. Cameraman: And? Sarah: He said that it's a complicated presentation and we're just going to have to deal with it....

Not only did he have his back to the camera for most of it, he borrowed Barry Barish's laser pointer. And he *somehow* managed to kill the batteries 3 times during his presentation forcing the director to have to sneak in the camera frame repeatedly to change batteries. Twice, fairly successfully. Third time a little less so, lol. He also had my favourite moment during the morning while talking about a slide of people who were involved in LIGO. "All these people are all dead. Well, that guy there is still alive but the rest of them are dead." At which point the director put her head in her hands while I tried not to fall out of my seat from laughing. I was actually really disappointed when the morning came to an end. I was actually really having a great time but I gave instructions to the afternoon PA, went to grab lunch and headed back to the hostel to change, get organized for the really early bus the next day and then go down for the event I had been anticipating since the moment I knew it was happening -- seeing Brian Greene reprise Light Falls.Light Falls has Professor Greene narrating actors in a storyline about Einstein developing the General Theory of Relativity. It has this really cool 3D type light display where the actors are between sheets of light, reading words from letters and journals to tell the story that Brian weaves together into a narrative with his usual humour and charm. "Yes, Einstein was one of those kids that if he was alive today...would be nicknamed Einstein." It was even better and more engrossing than I had anticipated. And when Suchan saw me before the show he came right over and gave me a big hug. Such a wonderful experience all the way around, I didn't want to leave after the show was over. And I really didn't want to leave New York. But the next morning I'd be on Amtrak to Washington DC for the next big adventure which I will put in the next blog post.

New York Inspiration

So... this year for vacation (as anyone who remotely knows me has heard about for a while) I decided to spend my vacation time attending and volunteering at The World Science Festival in NYC.
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The WSF is run by Brian Greene and his wife Tracy Day...and it's pretty amazing. All over the city with both ticketed and free events bringing all different branches of science to the public.  I couldn't wait to be a part of it.
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I came to Brian's work a little late - not when he published The Elegant Universe - but after I had seen him as part of one of Lawrence Krauss' Origins panels, The Storytelling of Science. Prof. Krauss introduced him with "I feel like he's a long-lost son" and Brian came out and proclaimed, "Papa!!" and hugged him until he was told to knock it off.
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I liked him immediately.  :)
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Since then I have watched everything of his on YouTube, read his books and articles, and even taken classes from him via World Science U online.  He's a wonderful teacher...he gets you so involved in the classes that it's hard to believe that you aren't in the room with him.  And when he puts on that boyish smile...he can even make me do *math*.
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I've seen so many panels and productions from the past WSF years and it looked amazing with such a wide range of programming. I got to work the two events that I most wanted to, as well but more on that later.

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I just have to say that the festival is run so wonderfully. In the volunteer handbook, they talk about the volunteers all being a family with Brian and Tracy as the "proud parents" (which always makes be think of the moment that I discovered him). It's really true too. Everyone is so professional and so welcoming.</p>

Now...I want to do this every year!!  Maybe next time I will even have a chance to thank Brian for everything that he has taught me, in  person.

Feeding the Trolls

So, starting this year I decided to live life in a more honest fashion. It started with actually admitting, publicly, to being an atheist. And boy, did it go public...after Richard Dawkins retweeted my post about it. For a long time I stayed in the comfort of past pagan beliefs but never with an actual deity involved. That has never been a part of the picture, only a kind of nebulous "connective energy" in the natural world. But the world of science communicators along with Christopher Hitchens - The Four Horsemen - chipped away at that for a while and the cart was finally tipped over by Prof. Lawrence Krauss, as I've talked about in previous posts. My life hasn't been the same since, in a good way. Or at least an interesting way.

I don't do things in half-measures. And I respect those scientists, who are not only on the forefront of research, but those who spend their time communicating science to the public. The ones who are best at it, make you feel like you are a part of the conversation. Prof. Krauss had Mariette DiChristina on his last live ASU Origins broadcast this spring and she summed it up perfectly when she said the secret to communicating science isn't dumbing it down or making it accessible...it's about inviting people in.

This year I am volunteering at The World Science Festival, co-founded by Brian Greene. Prof. Greene is an absolutely fantastic teacher of complex subjects who taught me, via his online classroom on World Science U, all about Special Relativity. It was weird and wonderful and he taught it SO well that I was captivated by it. After that I am going down to Washington DC to party with 30,000 or so of my new closest friends at The Reason Rally then continue the party with the scientists speaking at the event. That is what this year is bringing my way. And maybe, just maybe, next year will bring me to the ASU cruise with Prof. Krauss and Prof. Dawkins as we talk evolution and so much more whilst in the Amazon. 8 days with two people who absolutely changed my life and to whom I am so incredibly grateful that they put themselves out there, challenging those who would try and throttle scientific discovery and those who would undermine education. The abuse that they take from the public astounds me...both that people find it acceptable to malign those who push the science's boundaries and push against ignorance and intolerance. I am also amazed by how they handle the rancor that they get deluged with on the internet.

I dove headfirst into "discussing" matters with science trolls, creationists and IDers this year. Frankly, if I am now a part of this community than I'm in all the way. That people have no problem advertising their ignorance to the wide world of the internet is amazing. More than that though, it has deepened my respect for those who do this every single day. And have been for years, decades even! I honestly don't know how they can deal with the level of stupidity I've seen and not want to shake people. I asked Prof. Krauss about it on Twitter...

First of all, the fact that he puts up with me on Twitter is astonishing. I tend to...get uppity with people on his Twitter feed. It just sort of seems to happen. What can I say? He and Hitch have been a "bad" influence on me, lol. But even more than putting up with me, every so often we have snippets of conversation. And when he's had his live ASU events (which I adore), a lot of the time he uses a question that I tweet in. Last time, the event with Mariette, he actually mentioned me by name. I appreciate the fact that while he started to call me "a frequent twit", he changed it to "tweeter". I mean, both of those could be accurate. :) He's just so wonderful at making these events feel like an actual conversation more than a kind of staged event. I hope he knows just how much some of us appreciate everything that he does and the amount of time he spends doing this at the expense of his actual research.

So, just be warned internet trolls. You mess with "my" scientists - you and I have a problem. And even though I know that it is sometimes a useless argument, I feel it necessary to have the conversation because of others who may stumble across comment threads, and who might believe incorrect information on either a subject or a person. So bring it on.

Science vs God

I finally did something I've wanted to do for *ages* ... I got to see Lawrence Krauss up close and personal at a live event. So, here's my disclaimer: it's entirely possible that I have a teeny tiny nerd-crush on Prof. Krauss. (And anyone who knows me is either laughing or snorting derisively...I know who you are!) Just because he's incredibly brilliant, handsome, charming, witty and I love not only his books but hearing him speak does NOT mean... (/p>

Fine, whatever. At any rate, it was a nice day for hoofing it around Toronto so I walked up for some food at Caplansky's (like I could pass up smoked meat and latke's) and got to the event fairly early. Proceeded to make new friends who were as masochistic as I was for standing outside in the chilly weather to get really good seats. We chatted about Prof. Krauss and his various partners in crime, the upcoming Reason Rally and Non-Conference, cool places to learn about science-y things and eventually went in to get seats. Front row with all my new peeps from the line to make sure the people who live in the real world were well represented. I have to admit that he had made a comment on Twitter that got me thinking a few days before the event, "What if I am alone in a crowd of religious zealots and creationist????" So, thankfully that was not the case!

It would have been much more enjoyable just to hear Prof. Krauss but this was a Science vs God debate so there was also a guy named Stephen Meyer going on about Intelligent Design and a creationist "scientist" named Denis Lamoureux. Same tired old claims from the creationist side and this ridiculous thing about combination locks from the IDer, though I will give Meyer props for struggling through the debate with a migraine. He gets credit for being a trooper but not for anything he actually said. And before he made his argument...Prof. Krauss just dismantled Meyer. It was pretty fantastic to behold. "Stephen will come across as an interested scholar, and I want to disabuse you of that right away." and just took off after that. (I'll put a link to the debate at the end, you should watch it.) I'm not going to go into the meat of the debate as you should see it and judge the arguments for yourself. I will just say that science wiped the floor with the religion based crap the others were spouting.

Unbeknownst to me prior to the even, there was a reception after the debate. I didn't have a lot of time between the end an the last bus out of Toronto but decided that I had to go. It could be ages before he's back in Toronto for an event, especially since it's likely going to be at least a year until his next book comes out. I was in there for a bit, signed up for CFI Canada membership which I've been meaning to do for a while -- goes well with my membership in the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science as well as in The Planetary Society. Then I noticed Prof. Krauss came in and had a small crowd around him.

Granted, I have a little nerd-crush on him...but he was also pretty important in changing my life. I wrote a blog post a while back about how important Richard Dawkins was (along with Christopher Hitchens) in exposing me to this wonderful world of scientific inquiry, skepticism and more reasonable thinking. But I don't think that I actually would have had the courage to actually even admit to *myself* let alone anyone else that I was an atheist without Prof. Krauss. He was this incredibly forthright and passionate communicator of science and critical thinking and unabashedly atheist. I'm not exactly sure what it was that really resonated so much with what he said but there it is. He's taught me so much about physics that I had NO idea about...made me so excited about things like gravitational waves and just gave me the feeling like I could be really honest about who I really was and how I really saw the world. So...when I was standing a few steps away from him and he finished talking to a cute little retiree about how Prof. Dawkins was doing I thought to myself, "I'm going to thank him for everything he's brought into my life...." And as he was going to go and get a drink, he looked at me and said, "Hey, I saw you sitting in the front row! Thanks for coming."

I probably looked like I'd been hit in the back of the head with a board right at that moment. Let's be honest, doesn't matter how embarrassing it is...I had one thought sprint through my mind. "Lawrence Krauss just talked to me." Granted I was sitting right in his line of view and I did have my RDFRS membership pic quite visible (and again, anyone who knows me also knows that I'm never the quietest person in any room. EVER) but I will take what I can get. And although I did not get to have what I'm sure would have been a very witty and erudite conversation between the two of us (hey, one can dream...don't ruin the little picture I have built up in my mind about that), I did get him to sign my book and to listen to him mentioning his current areas of research and talking physics with people. Plus, I did not say anything that I would be mortified about at a later date. Not yet anyway, lol. It was an amazing night and I'll look forward to the next time he comes back to Toronto for an event. I will end, giving the last word to him and not myself...

Messenger of the Universe

So...recently I had VIP tickets to see Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Sony Center in Toronto. And it was awesome.

He gave us a choice of topics for current events and the audience chose gravitational waves. He had this gorgeous video of exactly what happened when the black holes collided. "Those two black holes up there? Represent...two black holes". He went on to go over the mass of them and what happened when they collided, which I blogged about quite a bit in a previous post. But it sounds awesome when it comes in NDT's voice. Then when they showed the collision and the formation of the waves, he shouted, "See that! That's what formed!" as he pointed at them while running with them and off the stage.

He went on to show us a rather life-altering picture of Pluto (that which can never been unseen), and then talked a bit about evolution. Did you know that we are more closely related to mushrooms than either we or they are related to green plants? Yeah, me neither actually. :) And he talked about the importance of science being such a large part of a country's consciousness that it even appears on it's money. We got some props for replacing kids playing hockey with the Canadarm and an astronaut. He says that's Chris Hadfield...because Chris Hadfield told him so.

What is really going to stay with me though, more than anything is the end. I am always struck with "the bug" whenever I hear someone in their field who is wonderful in presenting science to the public in a clear and concise manner while still infecting you with the passion that they feel for it. The closing of the night...the auditorium went incredibly silent and an amazing picture of Saturn filled the screen. He talked about how we truly only discovered the Earth, by leaving it. And as the picture shifted from Saturn to the small speck that it our planet - Neil deGrasse Tyson read a passage from The Book of Carl. As he read the words, in that resonant voice, that seems as big as the universe itself, the picture came closer and closer to earth and showed Earth's moon in comparison before going back out to the original, as he read:

If you look at earth from space, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It's up to us.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

I can never say anything better than that.

The Year That Science Fights Back

In a previous post, I talked about what brought me to this whole business of atheism, science and reason. It's pretty out in the open now via the power of Twitter! Since then, I have also joined the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science which lately merged with the Center For Inquiry so it will be exciting to see what the next year brings! And I think I picked a great year to start off in a more honest and grounded way because thus far, it's shaping up to be a fantastic year. I have dubbed 2016 as the Year That Science Fights Back.

I have to stop here and talk about something that just happened that is incredibly cool. I have to talk about this because Dr. Krauss has spoken (and tweeted) about this so much and he relays information so beautifully that there is no way you can't be excited about it. His enthusiasm is so contagious that when the press conference was going on just a few days ago, I secreted myself away over in my corner, pretending to do work on the computer while in reality, I had my tablet tucked up right by it so that I could watch and listen. Luckily, it was not a busy day as I was not exactly the most productive member of the team, lol. I excuse this by rationalizing how important science is to my job. Ok, yes I am a retail peon...but I'm a retail peon that sells cool technology like home automation, wearable technology and other things that connect to the Global Positioning System and the Internet of Things. Science! (Feel free to yell that like Bill Nye.) BUT ... Einstein plays a key role in this as well. I'm totally now going to roll out some Lawrence Krauss/Brian Greene knowledge. I do this for your own good....and because I absolutely love talking about it and I mostly get blank stares at work.

So Einstein had two theories that I know you've all heard of - Special Relativity and General Relativity. Special Relativity deals mostly with how time isn't really what you think it is. It's got some really cool and totally crazy ideas in it that I'm not going to delve into right now. I might expound upon them in a later blog post but you really should go over to worldscienceu.com and take Brian's class on it - amazing. But I'm digressing a tad. General Relativity (which I'm going to be talking about here mostly) is how gravity affects spacetime as mass warps the space around it. And that if space could warp, it could also ripple when disturbed.

At any rate, this is one of my big takeaways that I use at work ALL the time because it's cool and I want to give more people a little science bit that they can take away and think about. Maybe they might actually think about how something that seems like obscure science actually affects their lives. And because...I'm a huge nerd and I'm going to lay some science on you whether you like it or not anyway. So, what you might not know is that you wouldn't be able to use GPS were it not for Einstein. GPS works by triangulating your position from satellites in orbit around the earth. Due to the speed at which light travels, in order to know where you are they have to be accurate to 20-30 billionths of a second. But part of special relativity is that the faster you go, the more that time slows down and the satellites travel about 8000 miles per hour. But general relativity also plays a role because gravitational fields also affect time. So without taking both of those into consideration, the GPS would be off by 38000 nanoseconds per day. It would basically stop working after 2 minutes and it would be off my 10 kilometers after just one day! How freaking amazing is that?!?!?!

So, unless you've been living under a rock, you will have heard the news that 100 years after Einstein predicted them in general relativity, LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (one in Washington and one in Louisiana), picked up gravitational waves coming from 2 colliding black holes in the area of the Magellanic Cloud. It took the waves about 1.3 billion years to reach us and within minutes they released 3x the mass of our sun (converted into energy...e=mc2, yo) and 50x the power of all the stars in the universe.

I'm going to give you a moment to ponder that. And for you to consider that gravity is considered the weakest force in the universe. I know, right? (I'm not going to advise you to prove it by pushing someone off the roof of a building, lol.) Some of you are going to know where that comes from. Anyway, this holds really cool things for the future. Dr. Krauss was cool enough to answer a question that I sent when he did his Einstein panel in his ASU Origins Project (check it out on YouTube because it was amazing). I wanted to know if the detection of gravitational waves might mean that they could potentially prove the multiverse theory. He mentioned that if they could detect the waves coming from the Big Bang they could test the model of inflation and see if it implies the existence of other universes. So that even if we couldn't directly see them, there would be strong indirect evidence of their existence. So cool. But think about all the other stuff we could find out going forward. There's been talk of gravitational astronomy to see things that using light has never before been able to show us, and possibly finding out about dark matter! And maybe...just maybe...there's that whole thing about extra dimensions that are a part of string theory. And that is just the stuff we know about...who knows the things they will find that no one knew to even ask the question let alone derive the answer for. Which likely leads to more questions.

"I've often said the two greatest states to be in if you're a scientist is either wrong or confused, and I'm often both." ~~ Lawrence Krauss

Going forward this year, I am seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson is speak in Toronto in just over a week, which is spectacular because he very, very rarely comes up here. I splurged and bought VIP tickets to perhaps have the opportunity to meet him and perhaps ask him some things. He is our *personal* astrophysicist after all. :) Then, in March I get to see Lawrence Krauss debate a theologian and a creationist which should be *awesome*. He comes back to Canada fairly frequently but I've never had the opportunity to go and see him speak or debate before. The amount of things that I learn from him I couldn't even begin to discuss. He's so active in the public sphere between Twitter, lectures on YouTube, his books, his scientific publications (which I read all the time even if I don't understand *everything*, especially the math part, lol) and the writing he does for The New Yorker. I will have to try very hard not to giggle with delight when he gets on a roll taking down the pseudoscience and religious nonsense at the Toronto debate. Usually I can't help it but I will try and behave in public. Try.

Then I have The World Science Festival coming up at the beginning of June in New York City where I will also endeavor to take in the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium this time. Then I'm heading down to Washington, DC for that weekend to attend The Reason Rally where Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco and Richard Dawkins will be among the speakers. Yes, totally taking a selfie in front of the White House. I'm pretty stoked as I've never been to DC before and I can't wait to see it! Plus being in a crowd full of like-minded people is going to kind of refreshing for a change.

I'm going to stop there but I do have a diatribe coming up for the next post potentially. Peace, out. ~ L.