GLOBAL BATTLE - KIDS TO SAVE THE WORLD SERIES by John Corvera

Buckle up your Particle Accelerators and dust off your chainsaws… the Phoenix Ultimate Geek Smackdown – aka PUGS – is going down once again!

Last year a few troublemakers and I wondered what really made an award winning geek. Was there someone afoot in the Valley who was a master of both comics and horror? Gaming and anime? Sci-fi and movies? Could one geek reign supreme against all comers?

The answer was Yes.

Eight challengers entered the mighty tournament of PUGS, and what started as a little thing ended up with a packed room and a raucous audience show worthy of the gladiators. After debating heart rending questions across the far realms of geekdom, Chris Calilung stood triumphant!

It was so brutal, so ridiculous, so contentious, and so utterly asinine we are doing it again!

PUGS II: The Wrath of Con

This time we’ve recruited some cohorts from Lightning Octopus and are doing it across two nerdtastic nights. On Thursday, any and all challengers will be whittled down to a scant eight finalists through a series of brutal questions and other perilous perils.

On Friday night those eight people will battle for the title of Phoenix Ultimate Geek and one will go home with a trophy possibly even more legendary than last year!

• Phoenix Ultimate Geek Smackdown: Official Phoenix Comicon Page
• Semi-Finals: Thursday, May 24th, Room 121, 8:00pm
• Finals: Friday, May 25th, Room 121, 8:00pm

Yes, the Finals are in the same room. They promise us they  will be able to get the blood out of the floor overnight.

Sound fun? Get it on your calendar and come witness the spectacle!

Sound easy? Well step up, Holmes, because we are…

Calling All Geeks!

If you think you’re manly, womanly, orcly, fiendly, snorgly, or any other-ly enough to enter the PUGS debate – just fill out the Phoenix Ultimate Geek Smackdown contestant form.

You must be attending Phoenix Comicon (and if you’re not, how can you call yourself a Geek?), and be available on Thursday and Friday nights at 8:00pm. Meet those requirements? Fill out the form!

And mark your calendar for Thursday and Friday for the crowning of the next Phoenix Ultimate Geek!

Bubbles by Phil Gibbs

At every family function the cameras come out to take dozens of pictures we’ll never look at again. An hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.

We create more content than we’ll ever consume and get lost in the noise. Without intent and focus, volume rushes in to take the place of quality.

I’m the King of taking on too much. It’s not that I lack the ability to say No, but that ability is overwhelmed by knowing so many interesting people, doing fascinating things, and having a seemingly endless stream of exciting and/or screwy things I want to try.

If every single thing I was currently doing or working on disappeared, with all the other stuff I want to do but lack the time I’d be just as busy as I am now.

To compound the problem, connecting people and ideas in new ways is both a strength and a pleasure of mine. Having a million things going on leads to serendipity I wouldn’t otherwise have. Of course, it also leads to more things I want to do. Rinse, drown, repeat.

So it’s time to purge.

In the next week I’m going to gut my RSS feed, and sort out just what combination of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ makes sense.

I’m going to get medieval on my project list and see what things I need to drop or rearrange.

I’m going to carve out time for some things that have suffered horribly – working out, reading, writing, drawing, and learning guitar.

I’m going to get back to just a few daily and weekly tasks to keep focused.

Part of this daily post writing project (I’m now 3 behind, I think) is to shake things up and help force me to reevaluate my time and how I spend it. I’m sure I’ll get all jammed up again eventually, but that’s just part of the process.

For right now I just need to get back down to doing a few things well rather than killing myself trying to do dozens of things half-way. It’s going to be painful to get there, but worth it when I do.

Hercules by Jeff Moriarty

I’m a big fan of podcasts and audiobooks, on every topic from pop-culture to science and technology. I shuffle them all together and listen to this odd audio salad while driving or working out.

I’m also endlessly fascinated by history, from the history of the Universe itself to the history of specific fascinating figures. It’s amazing what you can learn about yourself and our current world by looking at the path people have traveled before us. If you’re a history buff or just mildly curious for some new stories, there is some amazing material out there created by history buffs.

These four excellent history podcasts really stand out in my rotation, each for different reasons.

Stuff You Missed In History Class – Casual, conversational, broad. Part of the great Stuff You Should Know network, each episode Deblina and Sarah explore random topics from throughout human history. The format is very casual and engaging, and even when they cover topics I already know fairly well I rarely decide to skip ahead.

A History of the World in 100 Objects – Fascinating, obscure, well produced. What do the objects we leave behind tell us about ourselves? As part of their History of the World production, the BBC put together a list of 100 objects from the British Museum that represented major turning points in the history of mankind, ranging from the first religions to the the invention of money. Each one has its own episode, and listening to them in order is an incredibly engaging trip through human history that follows a very different path than most historical summaries. The series is, sadly, complete, as I could have listened to another 100 episodes of this easily.

The History of Rome – Casual, quirky, fast-moving. Mike Duncan starts from the mythical founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, and continues past the Republic, through the Empire, and ends with the last of the Western Emperors 178 episodes later. If Rome has ever seemed like a dry topic, this podcast might change your mind. Mike is not a scholar, just a big fan of Roman history who loves to talk about it. Start from the first episode and listen right on through. You’ll not only get a better understanding of the history of Rome and the rise of Christianity, but the politics and issues that plagued Rome might  look a wee bit familiar…

Hardcore History – Deep, engaging, insightful. Dan Carlin’s podcast is aptly named. I won’t see an episode from him in a month, then a two-hour monster suddenly lands on my iPhone. I never get that long to listen at once, so I groan when these beasts show up but I always plow through them. Dan is also an enormous history fan, and he covers topics ranging from the Eastern Front in WWII, to whether our modern civilization could fall entirely apart like it has in the past. He gets not only into the “facts”, but also how our perception of them changes over time. He likes to compare our view of an event today from what it must have been like to someone living at the time. Very engaging, but not a casual listen.

Those are my standouts in the history category for me, and I’m always looking for new ideas if you know one I missed.

Mr Pumpkin and Mr Apple by Orin Zebest

I work on an event called Ignite Phoenix, in which 18 presenters go on stage to share their passions in 5-minute talks.  We fill an 850 seat theater, manage tickets, create tshirts and programs, bring in local bands and food trucks, live-stream it in HD, and have an incredible evening. It takes a core team of about ten volunteers, and an extended team of about another dozen people, months of planning, meetings, fund raising, and coordination to create what I (admittedly biased) think is one of the best grass-roots events in Phoenix.

As things were winding down at Ignite Phoenix last Friday someone came up to me after the show and said “You probably hear this all the time, but that was a great show. Thanks for all your hard work putting it on!”

I replied quite honestly that No, we don’t hear it all the time but we always appreciate it when we do. I had someone else come to me and say she had been coming to our events for nearly two years but only just now got around to saying Hello.

We get a fair amount of kudos and recognition, but a lot of it is online. And when you work on something big you will always get complainers, who even if they are few in number are usually loud and bitchy.

It never fails to make my day to have someone come up to me personally and say Thank You.

Sadly, I’m guilty of not doing this often enough myself. If I have bad service at a restaurant I’ll complain quickly, but how often do I stop and give extra thanks when it is great?

Saying Thank You is a little thing that can mean a lot. Never pass up an opportunity to tell someone you appreciate what they do, even if you think they’ve heard it before.

“I love humanity; it’s people I can’t stand.”
~ Charles M Schultz

I always enjoyed that quotation partly because there are so many ways to read it. Do you like our species collectively but hate individuals, or do you like our idealized concept, but think collectively we’re a bunch of jerks?

You can make a great case for both.

I’m endlessly fascinated talking with individual people, but as a species I’m not quite so bullish. More accurately, I think we are going to reap what we sow, and we’re sowing a whole lot of nasty into everything from our food supply to our global climate. I would not be surprised if I could gaze a thousand years into the future and find Earth entirely devoid of people.

Cheery, eh?

That long-term pessimist in me is one of many reasons I love people like Carl Sagan (and Richard Feynman, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, et al). They are far smarter than I, and not only have an optimism about the future but spend/spent much of their lives trying to take us there… kicking and screaming if need be.

The video below is the first part in The Sagan Series, which sets video to some of his more well known quotes. The Frontier is Everywhere looks out to imagine a world where we’ve finally reached the stars, and what those far descendants of ours will be like.

If you enjoy this, they are starting a companion series featuring Richard Feynman, which is different but just as fascinating. Feynman was a little more… cantankerous than Sagan, but just as brilliant.

I hope the optimism both of these esteemed scientists have for humanity proves well warranted.

(cc) What What on Flickr

I’m not sure why, but I’ve decided to write a blog post every day for the month of May. I expect it will end horribly.

In part, it’s to get me out of my writing habits. I’ve been writing more frequently lately, but I lack the diversity I used to have, and my voice is a mess. Plus there are about a billion things I’d like to talk about and never get around to posting. Declaring it out there in public will help me keep to it.

My goal is to crank out short posts on topics that cross my mind and see what sticks. If you tune in, expect a salad of silliness, crisp and fresh, with a side of bleu cheese. Then I’ll see what generates comments and go from there.

I’m open to suggestions, since, as you might have noticed, Boy Genius here decided to do this on the 2nd of May, so I’m already behind a topic.

Well, never let it be said I shy away from a challenge. And never let it be said that we’re all out of bacon, either.

Just to be safe.

Hipsters Hogging Sofas by Phil Gyford

I’ve always been fascinated by the names given to different groups of creatures.

It may seem dull if you’re only familiar with phrases like a “pack of dogs” or a “flock of sheep,” but those are the easy ones.

A “pride of lions” gets more interesting, as does a “school of fish,” but even this is just getting warmed up.

Know what you call a group of giraffes? A “tower of giraffes”. It’s strange but perfect. A group of hippopotamuses (hippopotami?) is called a “crash”. A group of crows is a “murder of crows.” Jellyfish? A “smack.”

It’s this odd little corner of our language where there appears to be only convention and no real rules. It’s full of alliteration, whimsy, and weirdness. Just my sort of thing.

But it gets me wondering, every so often, what you call a group of something where I’ve never heard the term before. In this case, what do you call a group of Hipsters?

I asked on Twitter a while back and sadly neglected to write down all the fantastic ideas I received. A few of the contenders that I recall are:

• An Irony of Hipsters
• A Handlebar of Hipsters
• A Stache of Hipsters
• A Cappuccino of Hipsters
• A Justifiable Homicide of Hipsters (see: Murder of Crows)

Why hipsters? Why not. It could be beneficial for places like coffee shops to help set up designated areas and such. And if you have a better idea, by all means let me know!

UPDATE: Had some great suggestions on Facebook including a “Cassette of Hipsters”, but my reigning favorite via Victor Moreno is “A TED of Hipsters”.

Starlight by Pankaj Kaushal

Last August I gave a talk at Ignite Phoenix After Hours on why death is something we, as a society, need to discuss more openly. The talk, and what happened afterwards, hit me rather hard so I haven’t discussed it much since.

I believe there is nothing more precious or personal than our own lives, and we should have the ability to end our lives with dignity whenever we deem it is no longer worth living. We cannot have strong Right To Die or Assisted Suicide laws unless we discuss this openly.

I also believe that many people needlessly take their own lives in moments of depression or despair, when they think there is no one who can help them or understand. We can save lives if people feel more open about discussing thoughts of suicide with those they love.

I’ve spoken many times in front of crowds, but my talk at Ignite Phoenix After Hours was the toughest I’ve ever given. There is no video, but you can read the bulk of what I said on my earlier blog about choosing to die. The talk itself went well, but as I came off the stage I was not prepared for the reaction.

Nearly twenty people approached me that night. One woman worked in a Hospice. A man was caring for his terminally ill mother. Another woman had attempted suicide when she was younger and knew how hard it was to talk to people. People kept coming up to me with their stories until I left the venue and went home to collapse.

They talked to me about it the next day. The next week. Nine months later, I had someone come up to me out of the blue at a grocery store and thank me for my talk. I was overwhelmed.

It kind of spooked me from posting anything more about the topic, which is ironic given the message of my talk. I didn’t want to become “that guy who always talks about dying”. I also felt woefully unequipped to respond to some of the powerful things people were sharing with me. Even though I knew most people just wanted someone to listen to them who understood, it was still very difficult to do.

Which is part of the whole issue here, right?

There is nothing more intimately, mortally personal than our own experiences with death, and I stood up as someone willing to talk about it. It doesn’t mean the topic came easy to me. I carry around a lot of the same cultural baggage on this topic as everyone else. It just means I’m willing to try and work through it, and be willing to listen when others want to talk.

And I encourage you to do the same. If you make it clear to the people you care about that you are willing to talk about suicide, living wills, euthanasia, and end of life care, you may be surprised who you find in your life that really wants to have that conversation.

In my Ignite presentation I referenced the powerful BBC documentary, Choosing to Die, in which author Terry Pratchett grapples with his own thoughts on suicide in the face of advancing Alzheimers. The entire video is on Vimeo, and you can watch it below.

Terry Pratchett – Choosing to die from Lisette Leona on Vimeo.

In Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die, He explores the realities of medically assisted death. Having been diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's disease in 2008, Terry considers how he might choose to end his life as his condition progresses. In a moving documentary he meets those who, like him, would like to control the way they die including a men suffering from degenerative conditions and he is with a British motor neurone sufferer as he carries out an assisted death at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

Zig

We have several dogs, and the smallest of these (by height) goes by the name of Zig. Zig is a Boston Terrier we adopted from a local rescue group, and is 25 pounds of solid attitude, focus, and obstinance.

We keep the dog food for our crazy pack in a large plastic bin in our laundry room, and when we fill it back up we close the door to prevent the pooches from crowding around and drooling. A few weeks back as I was pouring out a new bag of food, Zig sat expectantly on the other side of the door wanting to get in. My wife was out there, chuckling, so I thought I’d have some fun.

I took a few kibbles of food and flicked them under the door out at Zig.

She completely lost her mind.

This was the greatest thing ever in the history of things to happen to this dog. She went bananas chasing the pieces of food as they skittered across our tile. I’d try to get them past her but she was the most motivated goalie in history. We laughed, had fun, and then we forgot about it.

Zig didn’t.

Zig stares at a Magic Door

The next morning we saw her sitting on the floor, staring at the bottom of the laundry room door. My wife and I were both right next to her, so we had no idea who she thought was in there that might be sending out food. It didn’t matter, she still waited. No food came out, but that didn’t stop her. Quite the opposite.

She began staring at the bottom of every door in our house, sometimes even if the door was open. She could easily just peek around the door and see nobody was there, but she doesn’t. There is a simple explanation for how food comes out from under that door, but she doesn’t make the connections. Instead, she is sure our doors are magic and randomly spit out food.

Then it occurred to me what was going on – our dog had created her own religion.

Magic Doors

Thousands of years ago when our ancestors looked out at the big, scary world they blamed Gods. From Anu to Osiris to Chaac to Thor to Yahweh to Allah, they came up with magic explanations for things they didn’t understand.

Zig and another Magic Door

They would pray and offer sacrifices, and when things went their way they would feel confirmed. When their prayers were unanswered then they assumed the Gods were mysterious or someone just wasn’t faithful enough. But they kept on praying. They kept on staring at their magic door.

The stars were the souls of the dead, crops would fail because the Gods were angry, the Sun went around the Earth, sickness was caused by demons… all things our ancestors believed until they looked behind the magic doors.

They thought the Gods lived in the clouds until we soared past the clouds and landed on the moon.

That’s what science gives us – not all the answers, but an understanding that we need to keep searching and learning. That just praying and hoping won’t change the world. That we can understand what makes things work by studying, by questing, by exploring. That we can always be moving forward.

We hope Zig figures out there is no magic to her door. She would still enjoy the food that comes out when we play the game, but wouldn’t waste her time staring at it the rest of the day hoping for a miracle. Our other dogs understand how the door-game works, so maybe someday she will, too.

Beer Sampler by JMR_Photography

I love beer. Most people would probably consider me a beer snob in that I can’t stand Coors, Budweiser, or other popular brands. I like craft beer and exploring all the different tastes and styles from IPAs to stouts. Though if you really evaluated me to real “Beer Snob” standards I’m still very much of a newcomer, and I’m happy that way. I just like exploring tasty things, and don’t really care much about IBUs and brewing differences required for different grains.

I’m also a bit of an Arizona nerd, and am of the firm opinion there is far, far more to see, do, and experience in this state than most people realize. Complain to me there there is nothing going in Phoenix (or Arizona) and watch my eyes start to twitch. So when a commentor on a local board said there were “no good Arizona beers”, it hit two of my nerd buttons at once. The person is, quite simply, an idiot.

Great Arizona Beer

Being a Baby Beer Nerd, I did not want to craft a rebuttal on my own. I kicked it up the food-chain and asked the Arizona Craft Beer Lovers group on Facebook for their favorite Arizona beers. I specifically did not ask for “best Arizona beers” as this was not a competition, and beer preferences are very subjective. I just wanted to know what the Serious Beer Nerds in Arizona really like. They delivered!

Thirty-three different craft beers…
across thirteen Arizona breweries…
in nine different cities!

It’s a great list. Some of these I haven’t tried myself, so I got my own homework out of the deal to correct that issue.

Beers listed in Green were the most popular in the group, and everything in Yellow also received multiple votes. I put in each brewery’s home city, but most of these beers are available throughout the state. I also added a link to the brewery’s website so you can get more info.

No Excuses – Drink Arizonan!

If you just weren’t sure where to find great beer made in Arizona, or were intimidated by unfamiliar names and labels, you’re out of reasons to procrastinate. Arizona has tons of great beer and brewries, so get out there and try some.

I know there are many others out there, so if I missed your favorite, tell me about it!