Serious Play
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If you've noticed a rise in the general IQ level and the number of MacArthur winners wandering the streets in these parts in the last few days, chalk it up to another of Art Center's biennial design conferences, this year themed "Serious Play," at the South Raymond Avenue campus.
Hundreds of designers and big thinkers from all over the world are there through Friday evening, and it's not only smart as a tack -- it's fun. Jump-roping and juggling kicked it off Thursday night, along with martinis and oysters, and before the keynote by Tim Brown, everyone found a rubber-band powered finger rocket that can fly 100 feet taped under their chairs and catapulted them toward the stage at once.
Today it's been JPL Director Charles Elachi updating us on Mars, with Berkeley physicist George Smoot, who won his Nobel in 2006 by proving the Big Bang. As the leading mapper of the universe , he took us places none of us had ever remotely dreamed of going before. Host is NPR's John Hockenberry, broadcasting his new morning show "The Takeaway" from Pasadena this week..