There is a crazy person at the conference this year. This is not unexpected: our discipline attracts a certain number of these people. Because we are lazy about reviewing submitted abstracts, the moonbats are occasionally given a platform to speak. Because our discipline is mathematical, these presentations usually involve quantum mechanics or Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Dr. Moonbat, unaffiliated with any academic or scientific organization, presented a poster last night. Most poster boards have an area of about 8'x4'. This was not enough: he had printed his poster on pieces of glossy stock, maybe 17"x11", and covered the surface of the board. Pieces around the side were affixed by their edges, so that they stuck off into thin air and encroached on the neighboring poster. Each panel had its own title: "Local Lorentz Symmetry," "de Broglie Equation." There was no presentation title, no abstract, and no conclusions. The panels were arranged in seemingly random order. If you read the panels vertically, the first equation encountered was (4); horizontally, (19). There were at least three Equation (19)s, each completely different.
Mostly everyone avoided Dr. Moonbat like the plague, but a few kind souls wandered by and asked about his research. Dr. Moonbat launched into his presentation with the fervor of a television evangelist. When he noticed me watching from a slight distance, he motioned me over excitedly, trying to draw me in. I absent-mindedly wandered away (behavior typical of those in my discipline).
Later that night in the hotel bar, I noticed him alone at the bar. He seemed pretty drunk, or maybe just insane. He tried to engage the bartender in conversation, and when that failed, he tried to enjoin a nearby table of tourists. It only required a few sentences for the tourists to realize that this friendly stranger had issues; they switched from speaking English to German in an attempt to get him to go away. It worked.
While there is a certain tragic air surrounding Dr. Moonbat, I don't feel too badly for him. He is gainfully employed. He could afford plane tickets and the hotel room to come here. He has a rich fantasy life. He has a hobby. We should all be so lucky.
Monday, July 31, 2006
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6 comments:
I'm in theoretical physics, and at our meetings, the weirdoos (possibly the same as yours) are usually in the "mathematical physics" section. Most of them have "real" jobs like Dr. Moonbat, so it's mostly funny. Apart from an architect who doesn't believe in gravity but says that the civil engineers made it up to suppress architects. That worries me.
My husband (physicist) gets lots of emails from crazy people with 'theories' about quantum mechanics.
What worries me about the guy at your conference is that he will be telling people he went to this conference and presented at it, and might even list some of the people who were there. That does a real disservice to the public if they end up thinking that academia legitimizes these fruitloops (or worse, if they get their only information about what mathematics in academia does from him).
It's a guilty pleasure, but I love having at least one crazy person at every conference I go to. In my field craziness is harder to spot since it's so prevalent, but extra-crazy usually steps in to solve that. I'm having a lovely memory right now of a professor of Victorian literature who brought a violin to her presentation on Oscar Wilde in an attempt to ... I have no idea, but it was great theatre.
I'm trying to think of crazy people at Linguistics conferences, and I can't think of any (except the keynote speaker who spent HALF his allotted time, about 45 minutes, ranting and raving about how the 'field' hadn't understood his contribution).
But if I don't notice crazy people at conferences, does that mean I'm the crazy person? Worrying.
... and i'm sure he has a blog, and is writing, right now, all in caps, about his great conference where there was this odd-ball watching from a slight distance, who fled when he motioned towards he.
*sigh*
There's one at every conference, no matter the discipline. Especially literature, though. Makes me sad.
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