World Science Fest LEARNING at its Best!

Friends,

This post reprises my coverage of the first annual World Science Festival -- one of the best, most moving and educational series of events I've ever had the privilege to attend.

Well, it's back -- June 10 - 14, with a dazzling array of programs that will take place throughout the city.

Please visit the World Science Festival site to learn more and buy tickets.

And here's hoping to see you there!

I'll again be taking in as much of festival as I can...especially for and with The Producers' Project, which helps K - 12 students and teachers make and share media on such subjects as math, science and more.....

Warmly and looking forward,

Wendy Dubit
The Renewables: Thinkable is Doable
The Producers' Project: A New Lens on Learning





Post of 06.02.08:

Recently, I realized and articulated why I’d moved to New York so many years ago: THIS is the place and pace of accelerated learning, creation and connection that I long for and love.

I was tickled when a recent Smithsonian article claimed the same, with Joan Acocella proposing that New Yorkers are a highly involved (bordering on intrusive) species of peeps pre-selected for higher energy and ambition.

I’d argue that even the wildlife here is that way:

I’ve seen Pale Male eating in public. (He drools!) I’ve communed with raccoons. (I had one as a next door neighbor until they took the scaffolding down.)

But now, can I just effuse a bit about the World Science Festival?!

This week, I was IN HEAVEN thanks to physicist Brian Greene, producer Tracy Day, actor and author Alan Alda, friend Sunny Bates and all the others whose brilliance, warmth, humor and magic formed a float of math, science and humanities such as I’d never known!

The city was at its Nobel~est….

I savored every second of Mayor Bloomberg's "NY Loves Science" speech and Leon Lederman's cosmic jokes.

I watched in anticipation and appreciation as the inaugural Kavli Prize recipients in astrophysics, neuroscience and nanoscience were announced, and was thrilled to meet founder Fred Kavli and laureates Louis E. Brus and Thomas Jessell afterwards.

There were compelling cases for vertical farms and a balanced renewable energy policy; rousing discussions about regenerative medicine and thorny bioethics issues; and impressive displays of neuroscientific fireworks -- monkeys who can manipulate mechanical third arms with their minds and minimally conscious men coming back to life.

I drilled down deep with NIH' Eric Wasserman, whose enviable title is Chief, Brain Stimulation Unit, and shared fresh ideas with Vivavi founder Josh Dorfman, who, though he calls himself the Lazy Environmentalist, is anything but lazy.

I heard Jim Gates, Lucy Hawking and others tell self-deprecating tales of science experiments gone wrong.

I was there when TPP’s own Jack Chiarello and hundreds of others came alive with wonder.

I was moved to tears by Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin’s speed and accuracy and by William Phillips’ "absolute zero" (or as close as it gets) ballooon tricks.

I had my picture taken with Ms. Frizzle of Scholastic’s Magic School Bus.

I learned from Saul Griffith how and why to shave a few thousand watts off my energy consumption and from Dan Nocera how to think and live more like a leaf.

And I went wild with joy, as we all did, when Andy Revkin (pictured above) ended a Powering the Planet town hall meeting with an accoustic guitar original about unsequestered CO2 (or was it liberated carbon?).

At dinner, I traded life stories with Eben Bayer, whose Ecovative Design centers around a fungi-based foam that will someday allow us to grow our own homes!

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.

So when World Science Fest officially ended last night -- with a Science of Longevity session about how "the 90s are and new 50s" and with Alan Alda performing Dear Albert, which he wrote based on letters to and from Einstein -- I knew that, for me, and for so many, WSF would live on.

INSPIRED, The Producers' Project will enable K - 12 students and staff to make and share even more math and science-oriented media (music, film, television, blogs, games) than before.

I’ve bought a slew of related domain names that range from Infinitesimal to Infinite and Smallest to Allest to Adult Math.

I vow to launch a “Love Letters to Darwin” campaign someday.

And I feel as if I've value-added to my DNA....

I woke up this morning knowing....I’m going to learn a lot today!

Warmly and looking forward,

Wendy Dubit
The Renewables: Thinkable is Doable