Photo by Ian Adare

Sunday, October 18

David is back and I am happy! The first “full day” went relatively well. Today is a repeat of the day before. There are some minor issues with microphones, but it all gets worked out. For the afternoon, we have panel discussions and TVO informs me that they want to use their sound guy instead of me for the sound. This is fine by me. It frees up David to catch up on file conversions from the week earlier and I shift to David’s duties. Our normal day to day tasks suffer because of our focus on the Festival. It was nice to have an opportunity to catch up a bit. The long days seem like no big deal. Today runs 15 hours.

Monday, October 19

Before I go to work, I head to the doctors. My arm, which still tingles and is sore, has soft tissue damage in the triceps and I have nerve damage in my neck. I get prescribed some pain killers and told to take both Physiotherapy and Massage therapy. I’ll start that once the festival is over next Monday.

Today is the first day of The Agenda with Steve Paikin sessions. The evening’s talk is a breeze having done so many of them over the weekend. The Agenda sessions, make me kind of nervous but, in a way, we don’t have much to do for it compared to our normal lectures. With our normal theatre talks, we provided sound, projection, screen switching and the web feed. For the Agenda, we just send a program feed to the projector in the overflow room and provide the web encoding. Despite the fact that there isn’t too much to do, I still find myself running around with TVO, ‘putting out fires’. The box they rented to feed the TV stations doesn’t work, so I need to get them access to our server room just hours before the show to fix that problem. There are reports that the live feed isn’t working in Toronto, so we check on satellite. It turns out the problem was the carrier and not us. The satellite and local cable feeds were working perfectly. Quitting time comes and I go home a happy man.

Tuesday, October 20

It is my day off! I sleep in, play some games and stay at home. Life is good.

Wednesday, October 21

I hoped to come in at noon, but, instead, I came in early to teach Amanda how to use Access Grid and record a talk. Many of our normal weekly recordings were not cancelled during the week. Instead, their times were moved. Cliff’s course is one of these lectures that changed times. Amanda is fantastic, but she hasn’t been with us long enough to run everything on her own yet; nevertheless, the day went by very smoothly. For the Agenda, I took care of the overflow room and web-cast and let Amanda watch over the TVO director’s shoulder. It is a pretty cool experience for my tech people to have. It also allowed for one of us to be in close proximity to TVO in case they needed a PI person to “go-for” anything in particular.

Thursday, October 22

Yet another day off!!! Life is really good. I had no days off during Einstein Fest and the one gig that I did take off then, fell apart and I ended up having to come back in anyhow. During this festival, nothing fell apart! I enjoyed my day to myself and got some laundry done.

Friday, October 23

Today runs like clockwork, but my phone vibrates during the show. My wife is sick in a bad way. I need to get home and help her out for the evening. After the theatre show is done, I leave Amanda and Matthew in charge of the Agenda gig and head home.  Amanda and Matthew do a fantastic job holding down the fort.

Photo by Ian Adare

Saturday, October 24, 2009

It is 7:50am and I bid my wife farewell and good night. It will be midnight before I see her again. Today, David was on sound and I ran the projection while Matt recorded everything. Overall, the day went very well. Again, for the panel discussions, TVO wanted their own soundman running things. That was totally fine by me as it gave me time to figure out scheduling for next week and run a few other desk jobs. David shifted over and took my spot running the screen visuals. In the evening, we all stayed late for Sunday rehearsals. After that I dismissed Matthew and David and stayed later with the lighting crew. Twenty minutes between one presentation ending and the doors opening for another is not enough time. It would have been nice if this window was closer to an hour or even an hour-and-a-half.

In the evening, while I am helping the lighting guys, things are a little more relaxed. I find myself thinking about the help that I received for this series. All of my employees are remarkable. David, Matthew, Amanda, and Anton all did stand up, fantastic jobs. Between Matthew, Amanda and Anton, I was allowed to keep two of them as employees after the festival. They all did such a great job that I made a case to keep all three of them on part-time. Thanks guys, I’ll recommend you to any employer because you guys are amazing. David, as well, has done a fantastic job. One more day left until we can get back to our normal routines!

Wondering about what went on behind the scenes at Quantum to Cosmos? Jacob, our Audio Visual Coordinator, reveals all with this diary he wrote throughout the festival.

Monday, October 5

Decided upon two new AV technician hires and finished version 3 of the Q2C tech schedule now including, counting myself, a total of six workers. Went to Judo in the evening and injured my left arm and shoulder.

Wednesday, October 7 to Thursday, October 8

Finished version 4 of the schedule and sent it out to all of my technicians. Talked to rental companies and finalized logistics with them. I also brought the new guys in for training.

Friday, October 9

Decided my 80 pound projector in the AV booth would come down and go to Princess Twin and my spare 80 pound projector would take the old one’s place here at PI with a rented lens on it to fit a new screen. Friday, we took the projector down. Six people on that job and it was difficult to get because of how awkward it is to get at the thing. We delivered the projector to Princess Twin and checked it out. Everything was perfect! To make things even better, my arm and shoulder quit bothering me. TVO delivered their gear. What a huge amount of road-cases they brought!

Saturday, October 10 to Sunday, October 11

This was my last weekend off before the craziness of Q2C. Saturday, I helped move my parents to a new home. Sunday, I went to Oktoberfest with my wife and Mother-in-law. What a great time!

Monday, October 12

Came in on Thanksgiving to meet some performers and tend to some administrative work. I was shocked at how many people from PI were actually in working on the holiday. It was nice to see I wasn’t the only one not having a traditional meal. 

Tuesday, October 13

Set up day!!! AVW-TELAV, whom I once worked for, delivered a whole bunch of great technical gadgets for me to use in our shows. We set up the projector in my theatre with its new lens. Oh No!!! We had the wrong lens! The next little while, I worked out AVW-TELAV flying us the correct one from Montreal within two days. The rest of the tech set up went very well. Late at night, we pack up a truck with empty road-cases and I re-injured my arm. Argh!!! Pins, needles and pain, please go away! To shake things up even more, I receive an email at 10pm at night stating that one of my techs can no longer work any of the shifts I scheduled him as of Thursday because he accepted a job elsewhere.

Wednesday, October 14

Set up day: day 2! The excitement of setting up wore off, but we continue to labour away. We brought our Digital Rapids box, the encoder that we use for streaming video on the web, to my theatre and set things up. Lighting was a big issue as the lights seemed to be set initially for theatre rather than a mix of theatre and TV. TV Lighting generally needs to be much brighter than what the human eye would prefer. For both, we need to keep the theatre brighter than we normally would. In the evening, I had a tech rehearsal with the Penderecki String Quartet. Nothing went right! We couldn’t get the Macintosh computer to talk to my projector without plugging it in directly. The image was no good from the start no matter what source I used simply because we didn’t have the right lens on the unit yet.  Because the theatre’s first day is tomorrow, I need to get all of the Penderecki stuff out of the theatre before I can leave. During the few minutes that I can sneak away here and there, I sent out a 5^th version of the AV schedule. After 16 hours at work, 13 hours after deducting meal breaks, I signed out and went home.

Thursday, October 15

Why won’t this pain in my arm go away? My triceps hurt and pins and needles scorch throughout my arm. No matter what I do, it won’t go away. I’m taking Tylenol and Advil. It doesn’t help much. I’m scheduled for 4pm, but work needs to get done so I go in for 9am. The install at Princess Twin takes much longer than I expected, but by 12:15pm I am done and able to pick up a sandwich at King Street. I eat while heading to the Caroline Street building and continue to work straight through lunch time. Set up is behind and doors open really soon. When the doors open for the public, we still have a worker climbing lighting trees and aiming the lights. It would have been nice if this was finished earlier. When the doors open though, you need to go with what you have, so the worker has to stop. The first show went well with very few hiccups. As with most shows, I know where the problems lie, but the audience is usually unaware, so in the end, everything is good. We had a ten panelist discussion. There is a lot to do for these shows and a lot to concentrate on. It reminds me of the bigger shows that I used to do before I came to Perimeter Institute. After another 13 hour day, I am done and ready to go home.

Friday, October 16

[Ring, Ring, Ring] My phone goes off while I am relaxing in my pajamas watching morning television. “Where are you!?” exclaims Renee, “Penderecki is in your theatre waiting for you!” I check the clock. It is 9:10am. “I’m not in until 10am,” I responded. “Not according to the schedule I have!” mentioned Renee. I showered and got to work for 9:30am. Turns out, we were both right, but the schedule I based my work time was old and wrong. We loaded in quickly for Penderecki and had the system up fast. Anton and Matthew, two of my workers, did most of the heavy lifting. My arm was still in pain. Enough pain to prompt me to call the doctor. I could go for an appointment on this day, but I had work to do so I scheduled the appointment for Monday. All of the experimental concerts at PI are a lot of work for me and my crews. This one was no exception. The end result looked cool.

Saturday, October 17

Today is the big day. This is no longer a rehearsal. We are doing 5 lectures back to back . To add frustration, David, my number one tech called in sick the night before, so I am short staffed on the first “full-day” of work. Lucky for me, both Amanda and Matthew step up to the plate and offer to extend their shifts and cover David’s work. The day went fairly well and I was generally pleased with how things transpired. I originally planned on utilizing the part-time hires as “go-for” people and they proved to me this day that they can do a whole lot more.

By Megan, Speaker Logistics Coordinator

The festival is finished, but far from forgotten. Here at Perimeter Institute, we are already looking forward to exciting things to come. But before we move on to the next exciting chapter, it’s nice to pause and reflect on everything that went on within these walls over the last month.

Many times throughout the festival I’ve been asked  to share my perspectives on how things went. And the truth is, I couldn’t be more pleased. Everything went off without a hitch! Our speakers arrived safely, the events were fantastic, and the festival culminated in an amazing collection of lectures and panels that are utterly inspiring.

Since I had an “insider’s view” on the backstage of the festival, I thought I would share a few of my favourite moments at Q2C. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but just a sampling of moments that made me smile.

1. Seeing the non-physicists’ faces light-up at the sight of so many blackboards. Blackboards must ignite a child-like affinity for scribbling.  There’s no shortage of blackboards around PI, and the visitors seemed to love this.  It’s true that one of the exciting things about working in Perimeter Institute is the  beauty of the building itself. It’s been a joy to watch first-time visitors explore the building with wide-eyed enthusiasm. Take the description Steve Paikin wrote on his blog:

To walk the halls of this building, as I have over the past two days, is to see a space, interestingly designed, with plenty of young people roaming the hallways, writing physics equations on huge, wall-sized blackboards, playing billiards, or pumping iron in a workout room.

Well, in truth, I have yet to see anyone pumping iron in the workout room, which, for some reason seems to be a less popular place to spend time than the Black Hole Bistro, or,well, just about anywhere else. But regardless, Perimeter Institute is a pretty spectacular building and watching our visitors experience it for the first time was a true joy.

(And by the way, equations aren’t the only thing written on the blackboards.)

2. Walking into the Reflecting lounge, just prior to our first panel, to see Katherine Freese, Leo Kadanoff, Lawrence Krauss, Neil Turok, Sean M. Carroll, Anton Zeilinger, Gino Segrè, Andrew White, David Tong, all together in one room! Not only was it amazing to see so many great minds packed into one room, it also meant that none of my nightmares had come true; not a single speaker was given the wrong flight times or was left stranded at the airport! <sigh of relief>

3. Meeting Vaclav Smil and Andrew Revkin, and watching them in action in a live interview on stage was great fun. Although Vaclav is a distinguished professor on the environment faculty at the University of Manitoba, Andrew has written that Vaclav “really should be in the department of everything.”  You can watch the event here - but you’ve got to stay on your toes during this interview! Valcav spews out his exciting, sometimes controversial ideas at a rapid pace. For highlights, check out Andrew’s recap on his blog, Dot Earth: Smil on Hummers, Hondas, Meat, Heat.  And be sure to check out his latest post, Al Gore’s Climate Choice, an intruiging review of Al Gore’s new book.

4. Seeing Steven Hawking float in zero gravity. No we didn’t send Steven Hawking into space.  But Peter Diamandis did - well, not exactly.  In his lecture (one of my favourites: The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent it Yourself) Diamandis notes that one of his favourite experiences of all time was flying Stephen Hawking into zero gravity, through parabolic weightless flights offered by his company, Zero Gravity Corporation:

One of the most exceptional experiences I had, in all of Zero G, that made of the 11 years worth [of hard work] it, was the chance to give the world’s expert in gravity, the experience of zero gravity.

Peter included in his presentation some fabulous photographs taken during Stephen Hawking’s flight. It’s amazing to live vicariously through him as he delights in the freedom of weightlessness.

5. Meeting Neal Stephenson and discovering that… he’s a really nice guy. Don’t you love it when you’re a fan of someone and they turn out to be a super nice person? Not only was it a pleasure to have Neal Stephenson participate in two panels - Seeing Science Through Fiction and Wired 24/7 - he was also incredibly gracious. I had the pleasure of sharing an office with him during the festival which also gave me major bragging rights to my friends.

6. Being reminded of what it means to be human while watching, Are We Bound for Space?  It was yet another of my favourite panels. Not only did it yield terrific debate, it also spurred this mini rant by Chris McKay, which turned out to be my very favourite quotation from the entire festival.  Here’s what Chris said about whether we should send humans or machines into space:

I want to hammer away at this notion that the reason we go into space is science, and… we compare humans to machines and how well they do science. That’s the wrong way to think about it. We are humans and we live our [lives] to fulfill our human experience and interest, and science is a tool we use - it’s not something we serve. We don’t go into space to do science, we use science to understand how we will relate to space and how it will fold into our human future. Humans are ultimately the only source of value and interest. Science is merely a tool. And this gets lost at NASA headquarters a lot. They start asking questions like, are humans the best tool to do science on mars. And i go wait, wait, humans aren’t tools! Humans are goals in themselves. Science is the tool. And I think that’s something we need to keep remembering. Why do we keep sending humans into space? Not to do science, but because we are humans and that’s what we do - we go everywhere we can.

7. Seeing Cory Doctorow arrive in a red cape and goggles… well, okay, maybe that didn’t happen. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to meet Cory Doctorow, another world-shaker, even though he didn’t deliver his lecture on the global copyfight while wearing a red cape. Or goggles.

Photo courtesy quinnums, full set here (not taken at Q2C, unfortunately.)

8. The last five minutes before Nadia El-Awady left for the airport. I missed the live session of Do we still believe in science? but watched it online instead. Our panelists were so great, and I loved having Nadia El-Awady’s perspective on the Arab world. Before she left, I managed to pick her brain a little bit on what it would take to get more people to better understand the scientific method. She reminded me the real problem is the ability to verify information, and explained the extent of the problem in Egypt, which is a country close to my heart.

9. Scoring a signed copy of Michael Belfiore’s book, hot off the press. Michael joined me for lunch one day in the Bistro, and not only did I enjoy a great conversation with him (about doulas, of all things) he also gave me a signed copy of his book, The Department of Mad Scientists - it was in fact his second signed copy, since the book was just published on October 20.  It included a note that said: “Megan, believe that impossible is possible.”  I’m inspired already, and can’t wait to read the book. To listen to Michael read an excerpt from the book, head over to his blog.

10. Wilson da Silva - in general. His dynamism, energy, and humour helped to make our Science in the Pub sessions a hit.  It also didn’t hurt that he quoted one of my favourite comedy shows, Big Bang Theory, in the opening panel.  Kate Arkless Gray, who did a fabulous job producing the Science in the Pub sessions, was also wonderful to have at PI during the festival.  A woman of many talents, that one is.  She even missed accepting a Radio Academy Award in the UK to be with us at Q2C.

Wilson da Silva, me and the Mars Rover

So, now it’s your turn! What were your favourite festival moments?

The Fusion Solution is the name of this Sunday’s Science in the Pub event where I’ll appear with Wilson da Silva, Stewart Brand, and Jordan Morelli. But fusion isn’t on my agenda.

Instead, I’ll outline a little-known program by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) that I believe has much greater potential to solve some of our energy problems in the near term. It’s called BioFuels, but that prosaic title belies what may be one of the most important projects DARPA has undertaken since it created the Internet 40 years ago.

EERC research manager Tom Erickson with carbon sequestration system

While I was researching my book The Department of Mad Scientists (released yesterday), DARPA program manager Douglas Kirkpatrick told me that an obscure group at the University of North Dakota was developing some of the most innovative technology he had ever seen. High praise from a guy who works at an agency pushing such diverse technologies as quantum computing, jet propulsion, artificial intelligence, and biomedicine to the limits of possibility. Naturally, I had to see for myself what he was talking about.

During my visit to the University’s Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC), I met with the managers and engineers developing DARPA’s biofuel, and caught a glimpse of a future in which we as a society are no longer subject to the tyranny of King Oil, as Kirkpatrick likes to put it.

The group has already created the world’s first completely renewable jet fuel. In goes straight vegetable oil into a processor, out comes military-grade JP-8, packing enough energy per cubic centimeter and remaining fluid enough at low enough temperature (-47 C) to safely power jet aircraft.

Last summer, DARPA shipped some of the stuff to Flometrics, which successfully used it to launch a rocket from the Mojave Desert. Next up for DARPA and EERC: develop the means to manufacture it in volume at less than $3 a gallon.

Flometrics green fuel powered rocket launch

If all goes as planned, the green jet fuel could power much more than military jets. JP-8 already powers generators and ground vehicles as well as aircraft, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t do so for the civilian world as well. For an encore, DARPA has already launched its Cellulosic and Algal Biofuels program, which seeks to create renewable fuels from non-food sources such as grasses. Now we’re cooking!

I can’t wait to hear what my fellow panelists have to say about fusion. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for practical fusion power to arrive. Not with the BioFuel solution growing in our own backyards. 

Michael Belfiore is a writer focused on breakthrough technologies poised to change our world and is the author of “The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs”. He writes for Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Air & Space, and for emerging technology companies. 

Watch Michael’s sessions online, live and demand at q2cfestival.com:

Thursday, October 22, at 8:00 PM

The Agenda: Robotics Revolution and The Future of Evolution

Saturday, October 24, at 7:00 PM

Science in the Pub: The Fusion Solution 

By Ross Diener

S. James Gates gave a talk yesterday, entitled “Does Reality Have a Genetic Basis?” The talk was quite interesting, but I must admit that I have seen most of the material before. I think this was a good thing, though, because it meant that I could listen very carefully to this man of substance and style, as Neil Turok described him. Professor Gates gave a talk about the fundamental particles and the Large Hadron collider, gravitational wave experiments and strings, but present throughout the talk were small and delicious insights, like the chocolate chips inside a cookie. I am going to focus on the chocolate chips.

He began the talk with a tour of the various length scales we see out there. We started at the size of the universe, and quickly zoomed in until we were looking at red blood cells. We kept zooming and we saw that in these cells were nuclei, and in these nuclei were strands of DNA. He also noted that with science we have examined the human genome, and we have discovered that all humans have common ancestors from Africa, the “cradle of mankind.” This certainly wasn’t new to me, but it came with a chocolate chip. Professor Gates said that science has the power to tell us who we are. With science, we have found out about our heritage, and we know that every human being has the same African ancestors. Philosophers can speculate about interconnectedness of humanity, but with science we can say with certainty who we are, and where we came from.

 The talk continued, and we zoomed towards smaller and smaller objects, from DNA to atoms, to protons and neutrons, to the most fundamental particles, and finally to the limits of modern experiments. At this point, he said, we can no longer use our senses to determine how nature works. We can’t see or touch nature at these very small scales, because modern experiments are limited. This doesn’t mean that what happens at these small scales will not affect us, and that it is not important. This just means that we cannot contemplate nature in the usual way, which is with experiments. At this point I got another tasty chocolate chip. Dr. Gates presented the idea that mathematics is like a sixth sense, or a form of extra sensory perception. We can use this sixth sense of math to examine nature at scales where experiments don’t cut it. This is very similar to the kind of thing that might keep Lawrence Krauss up at night, as I described in my last blog post . I haven’t thought about this idea carefully enough, so that is all I am going to say. But what is great about this chocolate chip is that it certainly does make you think.

Dr. Gates then proceeded to talk about his research. He has been working on simplifying very nasty theoretical physics equations through the use of graphical tools he calls Adinkras. If you take a look at the picture, you will notice that Adinkras really are nifty looking objects. A mathematician or physicists might call an Adinkra beautiful. The word beautiful is often used to describe objects in math and physics that are particularly symmetric, or simple, or as I put it, nifty. An interesting point that Dr. Gates brought up, and the last chocolate chip, is that if you strive for mathematical beauty in your description of physics, you usually end up being right. A lot of physicists would say that Einstein’s theory of relativity is beautiful because of its strong relation to geometry. Our current model of particle physics relies heavily on symmetry, and symmetry is beauty. Even people’s faces a judged to be more beautiful if they are symmetric. It is the hope of many theoretical physicists that we might describe all of physics with some beautiful, magical, mathematical fact. The idea that physics is beautiful is a chocolate chip I can certainly swallow. But beauty isn’t everything. Dr. Gates was careful to point out that aesthetics cannot be our only guide to describing nature. Nature is far more clever than any one of us, and she has a far better sense of beauty than we do.