The Important Questions of Our Time - What if....

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks pondering human existence, and asking the really big questions, like, what would happen if every person on earth shined a laser pointer on the moon? Luckily, we live in a world with Randall Munroe who can provide us with some peace of mind. If you don’t have the time to watch the video below, the answer is, not much. But then, you’re probably thinking, what if we used really big lasers? No, bigger than that. The answers lie within.

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion

3 Thoughts on "The Important Questions of Our Time — What if…."

I got to see Randall Munroe speaking live in the UK (in Bath) last Saturday night. The first half of his show was an amusing talk by him about his time at NASA and how he got to be a cartoonist and question-answerer. That was very charming, amusing and interesting.
The second half was him being interviewed, and attempting to answer some questions posed by the interviewer and by the audience (via Slido). This was less successful, mainly because the interviewer, popular economist and statistician Tim Harford did a very poor job of interviewing, asking sensible questions – he asked about cricket (absurdly) and economics, not science, and choosing interesting questions from the audience suggestions. (Tim Harford s usually very sensible and interesting on the Radio and in the Financial Times, so maybe he just had an off day.)
https://www.fane.co.uk/randall-munroe
This is my favourite Randall Munroe cartoon:
https://xkcd.com/552/