What if someone threw a baseball at you at 970 million kilometers per hour?
Bad things. Very bad things.
But one good thing to come out of that is a great and fun TED talk by my friend Randall Munroe, author of the "xkcd" and “what if?" comics.
[A transcript is available, too.]
Randall is a delight. He has in abundance that most wonderful and peculiarly human of all characteristics: curiosity. But it’s backed by a (very) keen intellect, and a sense of wonder that turns his stick figure comics into scientific poetry.
Drawing by Randall Munroe, from what if?
One of my favorite things in the world is to take a simple question and run it all the way through to its (sometimes most ridiculous) logical conclusion; its something science fiction authors Isaac Asimov and Larry Niven would do in their speculative non-fiction essays that I read as a kid. I’ve done it myself a few times, but Randall has a way of making it fun and accessible that I envy.
We should all be so curious, so eager to seek answers, and to not flinch from them when they may not be so palatable. Congrats, Randall!
[Randall has written a “what if” book which comes out in September. Go buy it!]
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