Friday, May 30, 2014

Factory Reset

I wish there was a factory reset button for our bodies. With a computer if something catastrophic happens you can drop in a disk and return the machine back to the settings it had when it was fresh out of the box.

The human body needs that.

I'm saying this after having a medical issue that which really sucked and is leaving me with traces of pain. The proper term is post herpetic neuralgia. I had shingles. On my face. It felt like I was getting a facial tattoo 24/7.  But after the outbreak on my face had scabbed over and healed, the pain remained. It's the nerves which were damaged by the shingles not going back to normal. I'm on meds, but it is taking a while for it to work. I hope it works soon.

So my wanting a reset is to get rid of the pain and have my face feel normal again. But in the reset scenario all the other damage to my body would be gone. The injuries from work and sports and other things I still carry. I think everyone has these traces of a life lived with them but you get used to the  pain. And the amount of pain you can get used to is pretty amazing. It just settles in and becomes a new normal.

I don't want this nerve pain to be a long term new normal. I want to reset.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Ode to Neil

I was working a gig last week. Neil Degrasse Tyson was speaking at the event. It became my mission to be at the 2 meetings he spoke at.

The first meeting was a small one for some students. He did a Q&A instead of prepared remarks. I loved how intelligent he spoke off the cuff. He was articulate and engaging. There was one question a student asked I remember. "If there was a pill which would let you live forever would you take it?"

He thought for a moment and I'm going to paraphrase his answer. 'Because we have a finite period of time on the planet and we don't know how long that is, we have a drive to do things. If you knew you would live forever there is no urgency to get out of bed. There is always going to be tomorrow to do something. But I'd probably take the pill.'

Good answer. I don't know if I'd be aware that forever would make people stop striving to accomplish anything. I wouldn't take the pill because you'd have to work forever.

The second meeting he spoke at was in the lunch session. It was a speech I think he's given many times before. Probably since 2010. There was a slide he used that he hadn't updated since 2010. It was interesting. He pointed out how many Jews had won the Nobel Prize. It was over 20% of the prizes given out. He then commented how many Muslims had won a Nobel Prize in the sciences. 3. And that was because of an anti-curiousity which happened in Islam after the 12th century. Why does something happen? Allah's will. A number of the things he said were also integrated into the Cosmos series on FOX. A few things paralleled what was said in the series but stated more plainly. In a way that might offend people if they chose to take offense.

Then, later, as I was walking down one of the hallways in the hotel I saw a crowd of people. In the middle of the crowd was Tyson. He had been waylayed in the hallway by some people with questions. As I approached I heard him giving a master class.

There was a woman, white, 50's, who was trying to refute climate change. Her arguments were weak and conspiratorial. She was a watcher of right wing news and talk, and it came out later she was even further down the rabbit hole with conspiracy theories.

Tyson was a gentleman and never said she was stupid. He gently tried to tell truth to a mind like a closed fist. She said climate change was just so wealth could be redistributed. She pointed out that a TCP report changed data to match the desired finding. I thought TCP reports were in the movie Office Space.

Tyson told her where she was wrong but she insisted. She had one fact and that was going to disprove EVERYTHING. The crowd around her was rolling it's eyes. She was monopolizing his attention and hadn't seen she'd already lost. He told her if she didn't believe climate change then don't sell your beach front house.

He talked about Katrina and New Orleans. The same woman said "We can steer hurricanes." That stopped him. He looked directly at her. "No, we can't." Her reply was, "We've been able to control the weather since the 60's." His reply was the only hint of sarcasm he empoyed, "Oh, The Illuminati!" This got a laugh out of the crowd.

The woman asked him about elongated skulls that had been found in South America. "I don't know anything about that." He replied. Which was an interesting thing. He stated that he had no information about a subject. Which is probably the best thing to do rather than bullshit a subject you don't know anything about. The woman continued, "They did NASA testing and found there was alien DNA in the bone." Again he replied. "I haven't heard anything about that." I do recall seeing a program on some Discovery channel about elongated skulls. But it was Ancient Aliens, I think. If anything on that show had been proven true, it would be called SCIENCE. The woman, undaunted, pulled out her smart phone and, I think, started doing a web search for elongated skulls to prove to him something she said was not crazy. She didn't succeed.

One man in the crowd looked at her tag, and asked what company she was with. I think to find out what company hired the conspiracy loving nutcase and never do business with them.

Others asked questions. One was about evolution and man. The asker was saying "in 10,000 years..." Tyson said it isn't a case of 10,000 years but millions of years. Which is true. Evolution is a slow process.

It was fun to hear him speak extemporaneously on so many subjects while just in a hallway. I think I was there for 30 minutes. Then he did some pictures with people, some selfies with others. After that he went to get ice cream. Which is where he was headed when he got stopped by questions.

Truly a kind man, a brilliant man. And at no time did he talk down to people but made his point in language others could  understand. I could tell there is a side to him that can be firm and immovable. I saw glimpses of it in my 3 encounters.