The day began with The Internet is NOT Flat . Ethan Zuckerman was joined by international bloggers Amira Al Hussaini, former news editor of leading Bahrain newspaper Gulf Daily News and now Middle East and North Africa editor of Global Voices and Georgia Poppelwell to discuss fascinating international bridge building and discourse occurring on the internet. Al Hussaini blogged here about her appearance on Thursday in a slot on a panel vacated by Iranian Nobel Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi after the Mullas in Iran refused to give her permission to attend. You can read a nearly verbatim account of Zuckerman's talk here. Wayne Hall covers the trio here. It was the only presentation where I felt a bit of an equal, as I watched the same glazed eyes in this audience that I see when I talk about RSS feed!
My smugness was promptly shattered by the next talk, Parallel Worlds, Higher Dimensions, Time Warps and more...by Michio Kaku, leading theoretical physicist at City University of New York and author of several best- selling books including Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension and Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century. Wayne Hall digests the talk here and continues with the next presentation, Jeffrey Schwartz on the Mind and Brain here.
Next up was Louisville's own Dan Gediman, executive producer of NPR's This I Believe series. The 30,000 essays he has received to date are up on the website, indexable in a variety of ways.
At the Kentucky Center For The Arts Bombard concert hall psychiatrist and extraordinary pianist Richard Kogan presented West Side Story at 50: The Mind and Music of Leonard Bernstein. Dr. Kogan was quite the raconteur, funny and insightful, and the music was breathtakingly beautiful.
Not much of a science fiction fan, I skipped the dinner with Ray Bradbury, but now wish I had stayed to see him "beamed in" by hologram. His presentation was covered by the Courier-Journal and the IF Blog.
You might ask, who in the world assembled these world class speakers and puts on this annual event? Kris Kimmel, president of Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation. He may have a host of other talents, but he certainly is an event planner extraordinaire. Most of the events were free.
UPDATE: In my corner of the blogosphere, Stephanie Allen West at Idealawg posts Talks by Ray Bradbury, Jeffrey Schwartz, Michio Kaku, Laurence Gonzales, and more
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