IdeaFestival

Latest from Neuroscience: Brain scans find F. Scott Fitzgerald

Responding in the transcript of a SEED salon featuring Tom Wolfe and the founder of The Law and Neuroscience Project, Michael Gazzaniga, to a question on the state of neuroscience, Wolfe recounts what another scientist had to say on the subject of what we really know about the human brain:

'The human brain is complex beyond anybody's imagining, let alone comprehension.' He said, 'We are not a few miles down a long road; we are a few inches down the long road.' Then he said, 'All the rest is literature."

Now I realize that a celebrated author like Wolfe would say that, but the remainder of the discussion is quite good, taking its cue from that remark as the two tackle literature, social standing, why, alone among our cultural achievements, speech should be celebrated, and the role of human narrative in defining and, in one amusing anecdote relayed by Gazzaniga, expanding ethical boundaries.

They also question whether or not an understanding of the relevant science, such as it is, renders the idea of free will obsolete. And in a welcome nod to the futility of that discussion, Gazzaniga gets to the heart of the matter by asking rhetorically, "free from what?"

Gazzaniga is the author of a brand new book on the science of the unique, as well as The Ethical Brain.

An edited video of the latest SEED paring is here.

Wayne

Registration open for The Filmmakers Studio

With the special support of the The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Kentucky Film Lab is again sponsoring The Filmmakers Studio, which will be held in conjunction with the IdeaFestival.

Jack Epps, Jr. (Screenwriter – “Top Gun”, “Anaconda"), Anna Richardson (Miramax New York Special Projects), Jason Epperson (“On the Lot” runner up) and Mark Poole (Louisville Producer/Director - “Dead Moon Rising”), will serve as faculty for the workshop.

Registration for the intensive hands-on workshop, which will include production and screenwriting tracks, is now open.

Wayne

Venture art, venturing out

In a recent blog post, Ethan Zuckerman describes his trip to a Creative Capital retreat. Unwilling to let any news slip by that features not one, but two past IdeaFestival participants, I had to post.

Ruby Lerner, by the way, also appears in this IF Conversation:

Creative Capital, as Ethan points out in his post, has applied venture capital techniques to funding the artists with whom it works.

He goes on to say that attending gatherings of people who do not share your professional interests - "other people's conferences" - is a pretty good way to learn something new - not to mention makes for a humbling experience. It's an effective way to discover something new. Having taken the concept of venture capital and applied to the support of artists, Ruby certainly knows a thing or two about making beneficial connections between widely divergent fields.

All of which reminds me of what it's like walking around at IdeaFestival. You're not exactly sure what's happening, or why the cosmologist just brought up Hemingway, but you're strangely turned on by it.

Wayne

Honoring Randy Pausch

Editor's note: Jeffrey Manber is a writer, commercial space pioneer, former IF speaker and a principle in the new movie Apollo's Orphans. These are his thoughts on the passing of the Randy Pausch, of "last lecture" fame.

I wonder how many of us harbor the idea of floating weightless in space as one of those little life-long dreams so important to who we truly are. I’m thinking about this given the news that Randy Pausch the professor whose “last lecture” made him a symbol for the wisdom of everyday life experiences,  passed away on July 25^th from pancreatic cancer.

His lecture, delivered at Carnegie Mellon on Sept. 18, 2007, has become of course, first a YouTube phenomena and later a best seller book. His down-to-earth advice on growing up (he was grateful for being allowed to paint pictures on his walls), thoughts of his wife, on never giving up no matter how many brick walls must be confronted, struck a chord with millions of viewers and readers.

Amongst the remaining wishes of his life the professor mentioned wanting to experience floating in the weightlessness of zero-gravity. And there we are, confronted once again that for so many of us, there is something special about the frontier of space, a place as filled with gigantic planets and inconceivable forces, as with the wonder of floating and flying and running along alien surfaces.

Dr. Pausch realized that particular dream: NASA allowed him on one of their KC-135 zero-gravity missions. Even there he had to overcome yet another metaphoric brick wall. When his students in a virtual reality program won the right to fly aboard a KC-135 flight, it was understood that faculty members were not allowed. So Dr. Pausch applied as a journalist covering the mission to experience the thrill of zero-gravity.

Taken for granted was his desire to play for a football team; work with Disney, or to take part in a Star Trek film. Yet for those who came of age in the glory of the Apollo program, there remains a life-long wonder of what was then accomplished. Let us hope that this feeling towards space travel, and the desire to personally experience it, never becomes extinguished.

NASA does these sort of things badly, but an educational zero-gravity program named after Dr. Randy Pausch would be a fitting memorial for a man who moved so many with his clear-eyed list of the priorities of life.

Jeffrey

IF on Wordle: textual healing

Having used the word art site Wordle to crunch the text from IFblog, I'm a little concerned about my word choice. "Know," I get. Given the wide diversity of subject matter, one of the themes around which this blog can be organized is the knowing enterprise. Similarly, "Belief," "People" and "Can" also appear weighted correctly. I get that too.

But "Nothingness?!" Okee-Dokee.

Wayne

Movies that changed your life

The IdeaFestival and the Louisville Film Society have selected three films to be shown in the “Movies That Changed Your Life” series. From the 170 nominations made over the last month, here is the lineup:

• Friday, August 1 - To Kill A Mocking Bird
• Friday, August 29 - When We Were Kings
• Friday, September 26 - (during IF) Dr. Strangelove

The series will be held at the new Brown-Forman Amphitheatre in Waterfront Park starting at 9:30 PM. In event of bad weather, any cancelled movies will be screened in early October. Admission is free. Amphitheatre opens at 8:00 PM for blankets, chairs and picnicking.

Wayne

Girls equal boys in math skill

This just in: in the largest study of its kind, girls' math skill measures up to boys'.

Wayne

Rocketeer

Carrying the hopes for low-cost access to orbit, Space-X's Falcon 1 is scheduled to fly sometime in the days following July 29, according to Smithsonian's Air&Space. Unlike the first two tries, "Flight 003" will carry paying cargo, including, in another first, one very small satellite that will deploy a technology straight out of science fiction, solar sails.

On board cameras filmed Flight 002, above, and watching stage separation and the Earth gradually getting smaller is, for me, a real thrill.

Should all go well, fourteen Falcon flights are scheduled through 2011. But saying in a recent speech before the Royal Aeronautical Society that "it is difficult to predict how long that window will remain open," Musk, who has sunk $100 million of his own money into Space-X, has much bigger goals in mind for the nascent commercial space transportation sector - sending humans to Mars.

There are a couple of ways to think about "that window."

First, the risk/reward ratio in the rocket business is very, very high, so spending a mind boggling fortune is easily done.

Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott, who will be speaking at the IdeaFestival in September, will address the second.

Wayne

"Living Library:" Can we Talk?

Asking whether the concept can be applied to museums as well as libraries, Nina Simon at Museum 2.0 describes a unique experience pioneered by some Danish libraries. What if, instead of checking out a book to read, you could check out a person to talk with?

A "Living Library" requires "'Books,' who openly and honestly represent certain stereotyped groups (i.e. Feminists, Disabled People, Muslims, Police, Goths, Gays), 'Readers,' who check out the Books for 45-minute to 2-hour discussions, and Librarians, who facilitate the whole process.'" 

More here.

Wayne

Louisville: Funky

Los Angeles Times: "Old Louisville, Kentucky will Surprise You." The IdeaFestival is listed among the many hip things to do in Possibility City.

Wayne