{"id":7492,"date":"2017-07-11T12:16:12","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T20:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=7492"},"modified":"2017-07-12T06:43:51","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T14:43:51","slug":"the-600","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=7492","title":{"rendered":"The 600."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\u00a0\"<\/a>

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n

When a pop science symposium takes place in Bulgaria’s premiere, state-of-the-art convention hall\u2014 when past speakers include bestselling authors and actual scientists talking about their own cutting-edge research\u2014 and when they ask you to give a talk on a profoundly difficult branch of science in which you have no formal expertise whatsoever\u2014 it’s reasonable to assume, right off the bat, that the invitation is meant in jest. When it turns out to be real, it’s reasonable to wonder if the whole thing isn’t some kind of cruel hoax.<\/p>\n

This is the attitude with which I approached last month’s trip to Sofia, to give a talk at something called “Ratio<\/a>“. I didn’t know what shadowy cabal lurked behind these Bulgarian TED talks, or why they had painted a bullseye on my back. I knew it was most likely a trap, but I’d been published in Bulgaria. I had readers there. It was a risk I had to take.<\/p>\n

\"Vasselina,<\/a>

Vassilena, Lubo, and me. We fight crime.<\/p><\/div>\n

Turns out, though, this annual symposium with the high-end production values is basically a hobby<\/em>: the part-time brainchild of a couple of people with day jobs, who one day just decided that Bulgaria needed a popular science event and set out to make it happen. Lubo Baburov runs an online shopping site; Vassy Valchanova is in Marketing and loves cats. For shadowy evil masterminds they both turned out to be pretty awesome.<\/p>\n

Their many minions, far as I can tell, put the whole thing together out of the sheer love of science; at least, they don’t get paid anything. Ratio’s numerous corporate sponsors presumably get some kind of positive PR out of their contributions, but why shouldn’t they? It’s a damn good cause.\u00a0 Hey, they paid my<\/em> way.<\/p>\n

\"To<\/a>

To give you some idea of just how<\/i> professional, this is what was waiting for me after my talk.<\/p><\/div>\n

Put it all together, and you get a day-long event run so proficiently, so glitch-free, that it puts to shame most of the professional<\/em> conferences I’ve attended.<\/p>\n

The days leading up to this event, mind you, were not entirely without incident. I spent most of one day on interviews which ranged from smooth and free-wheeling to, well, dissonant. (Try going on live radio when, due to time constraints, the translator at your side is turning your words into Bulgarian at the same time you’re speaking them in English. I dare you to deliver focused and cogent responses in the presence of simultaneous dubbing.)\u00a0 And there was this other interview with a different translator\u2014 for an outlet that was only ever described to me as “Socialist NPR”\u2014 whose first question was “Tell us, what is your favoured theory for the origin of life on this planet?”<\/p>\n

\"Socialist<\/a>

Socialist NPR. Magic crystals.<\/p><\/div>\n

It was not a question I’ve ever been asked before. I certainly wasn’t expecting it. I did my best: talked about my fondness for the “catalytic clay” model, where tiny vacuoles in the clays around hydrothermal vents provided convenient sticky surfaces for the accumulation of the organic molecules that precipitated from this mineral-rich, energy-dense environment, concentrating and containing them so they could interact in biologically-significant ways even in the absence of cellular membranes. I mentioned the whole RNA-World thing, pointed out how certain brands of RNA could act both as catalysts for those reactions and as replicators in their own right.<\/p>\n

They smiled and nodded and spoke among themselves, jotting down my words on a yellow notepad. I thought it had gone pretty well until they’d departed, at which point Lubo rolled his eyes and told me that my answer had been translated as: “Magic crystals in the deep sea are awakened by energy.”<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>

My Bulgarian Publishers! One of them is taller than me!<\/p><\/div>\n

I met my Bulgarian publishers, who\u2014 judging by their choice of authors\u2014\u00a0 are obviously in the business more for love than for money. I hung out at a retro Soviet-era Space Age restaurant where you have to sit on a swing to use the toilet. I snapped pictures of many strange and dystopian monuments, ranging from brutalist Soviet-era kitsch to artefacts that have obviously leaked across the dimensional boundary from some parallel timeline.\u00a0 I got briefly swept up in Sofia’s Pride Parade en route to dinner, reveled vaguely in the obvious feel-good ambiance of the thing, and then\u2014 the next day\u2014 discovered a note someone had sent me on Facebook Messenger two days before, mentioning that the local LGBT community faced a fair bit of hostility and wondering if I might want to informally join the parade. (I would have, too\u2014 for longer than those happenstance five minutes\u2014 if I’d seen the message in time. For future reference: my presence on facebook is reluctant at best, and I utterly loathe<\/em> Messenger. Anyone trying to get in touch with me would be better off sending smoke signals.)<\/p>\n

I spent much of each day sampling the local beerage and having eighteen different varieties of pork shoved endlessly down my gullet. (Anywhere else on the planet the term “pork bacon” would be redundant; in Bulgaria, it’s a high-level classification roughly equivalent to “phylum”.)<\/p>\n

\"Fiording<\/a>

Fjording Pride. That’s us along the bottom.<\/p><\/div>\n

The rest of the time I\u00a0 anxiously went over my notes and hoped I wouldn’t go down in flames.\u00a0 After all, the guys scheduled to speak right after me were real<\/em>\u00a0 neuroscientists. Plus my talk was half-recycled; a chunk of the previous month’s Pyrkon lecture stapled onto some late-breaking headlines, a couple of new modules, and a change of focus for a different audience. I was worried that someone from Poznan might have made it down to Sofia (Europe’s small, right? Traveling from Poland to Bulgaria is like taking a bus across the GTA); half-convinced they’d start booing when they realized they’d made the trip for the same old slides.<\/p>\n

\"You<\/a>

You literally couldn’t take a dump without seeing my name. (Well, you could, but only if you didn’t wash your hands afterward.)<\/p><\/div>\n

It was for this explicit reason I’d arranged to spend most of my time in Bulgaria before<\/em> Ratio. If I crashed and burned, at least I wouldn’t have to hang around to face the music. I’d be out of there on the next flight.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, though, it went pretty well. Over six hundred people in the audience and not a single catcall; in fact, people seemed to like it a lot. Made some awesome new contacts, including a corporate lawyer who specializes in contract law, and who is now on my List Of Pesterable Experts. I even got to talk about Westworld during the group Q&A at day’s end.<\/p>\n

Really, I wasted a perfectly good ulcer.\u00a0 I’d even do it again.<\/p>\n

\"ratio-insectconsciousness\"<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n

\n

\"At<\/a>

At this point I was just giving thanks the damn thing was over.<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\"Oh<\/a>

Oh right, and there were all these other guys too…<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The day’s speakers shared the stage for an overall Q&A at the end of the day. Emil Wagenstein was responsible for coming up with context-appropriate background slides on the fly. I honestly don’t know how he did it in real-time, without knowing where the conversation was even going. Once I started talking about LSD and he threw a couple of sixties-era hippies up on the screen. Took him about two seconds.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

\n

\"Signing<\/a>

Signing. Apparently one of these books did really well in Bulgarian. The other tanked.<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
\n

\n

\"I<\/a>

I don’t quite remember why I was sticking a pen up this guy’s nose. I think I got the idea from a Cory Doctorow novel.<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

This is a beer for necrophiliacs. I was going to say Only in Bulgaria, but I bet you can get it in Poland too.<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The Wild Dogs of Sofia are a placid and gentle lot. In Trump’s America, they’d tear your fucking throat out.<\/td>\n

\u00a0\"You<\/a><\/p>\n

You gotta use one if you want to use the other. Especially after all that Pork Bacon. Leverage, you know.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Tomb of the Forgotten Tourist.<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
 <\/p>\n

\n

\"This<\/a>

This is what the Terminator did to its digs before the snooze button kicked in.<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

This is the least intimidating monument I saw in Sofia. I believe it is called “The Coming of the Lord”.<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\"Me<\/a>

Me trying to graciously take in stride Lubo’s unmistakable expression of profound awe and reverence as he counts down the seconds to my departure.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a pop science symposium takes place in Bulgaria’s premiere, state-of-the-art convention hall\u2014 when past speakers include bestselling authors and actual scientists talking about their own cutting-edge research\u2014 and when they ask you to give a talk on a profoundly difficult branch of science in which you have no formal expertise whatsoever\u2014 it’s reasonable to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-road","category-public-interface"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7492"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9933,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492\/revisions\/9933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}