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<\/p>\nHaving just touched down in London from SciFoo 2008, I stare, tinged with jetlag, at the blank page and wonder how anyone could adequately summarize a get-together so bizarrely wonderful. <\/p>\n
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\nSpoiled for choice<\/strong> Dueling, self-organized sessions at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California<\/p>\n \nI participated in sessions on the possibility of using Massively Multiplayer Online Games as a sort of giant geeky cluster processor<\/a> for scientific research projects, and saw a flying car (or ‘roadable aircraft’, as the CEO of Terrafugia, who looks about ten years old, prefers to call it). I watched the Pope’s astronomer defend Vatican-inspired cosmological research, talked about Descartes and Maxwell with one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson, and \u2013 after a day’s session had pummeled my brain into submission \u2013 laughed non-stop through an hour of science-inspired stand-up comedy<\/a>. I watched a rather dry presentation about databases for mega-data devolve into a philosophical argument about whether Craig Venter is a ‘real’ scientist for gathering large datasets and seeing correlations without posing a hypothesis. In fact, later there was an entire session brainstorming how the traditional scientific method might evolve and be tweaked for better effect in the future. I saw an earnest neurologist and an evo-devo maven debate the deeper implications of a dancing cockatoo<\/a> and glib gerontologists positing how we might extend our lifespans through multiple targeted interventions. I ate lunch with carbon sequestration specialists and Google engineers, sat in the hotel hot tub with futurists and solid-state physicists, skived off talks in the bright Silicon Valley sunshine with statisticians, professors of risk and macroeconomists.<\/p>\n \n \nNon-linear<\/strong> A freewheeling discussion of public engagement, LabLit<\/a> and why Everything is the Media’s Fault (check out a certain someone’s fetching five o’clock shadow)<\/p>\n \nThe chaotic nature of the entire event was equally evident in the session I helped organize with SF novelist John Gilbey and pseudoscience basher Ben Goldacre called ‘Seducing the Public with Science. (Ben wanted to call it ‘Pimping Science’ or ‘Seducing the Pubic’ but was gently overruled.) Someone spontaneously decided to summarize the unfolding discussion on the white board and, as you can see from the figure above, what it lacked in coherence it made up for in raw enthusiasm.<\/p>\n \nThe only drawback was that the Googleplex’s impressive array of free snacks did not include Cheetos<\/a> or indeed much in the way of the faux cheese-based snack food which is so imperative to fuel my intellectual thought processes. Fortunately, there was a goodly amount of evening booze and a critical mass of Brits to help deploy it liberally. (And yes, both Matt<\/a> and Cameron<\/a> managed to look adorable with hangovers. What’s their secret?)<\/p>\n \n Having just touched down in London from SciFoo 2008, I stare, tinged with jetlag, at the blank page and wonder how anyone could adequately summarize a get-together so bizarrely wonderful. Spoiled for choice Dueling, self-organized sessions at the Googleplex in … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.lablit.com\/images\/Whiteboard.jpg\")
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