The Most Interesting People in the World

Scott Hardie | May 23, 2020
What is an interesting thing about you that almost nobody knows?

Chris Lemler | May 23, 2020
I watch a Soap Opera

Steve West | May 23, 2020
I qualified for MENSA membership for several years but never joined. I have issues with IQ testing and interpretation but it was estimated to be 170. Big deal.

Scott Hardie | May 25, 2020
I never wear shorts because I have large scars covering much of both legs.

Steve, that does not surprise me. I have issues with the testing and interpretation as well. Setting aside common criticisms about racial bias, the one time I took a real IQ test, some of the test questions seemed awfully arbitrary, nearly to the point of uselessness.

Chris, keep it up! I've used "soap opera" as a pejorative term for shows that get lost in the weeds of a too-complicated plot (ahem), but what I really mean to call them is "bad soap opera," because there have definitely been lots of good soap operas.

Erik Bates | May 25, 2020
[hidden by request]

Samir Mehta | May 25, 2020
[hidden by request]

Denise Sawicki | May 26, 2020
All my interesting stories are probably at least 20 years old and Scott has probably heard them all already. Nonetheless, since I accidentally mentioned Fermilab in the group chat, a little background on that. When I was in college and doing an internship at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, I one day got a phone call from this woman asking me to tour her lab in Geneva. Geneva, Illinois happens to be one of the nearest towns to Batavia and I naively thought she meant that and responded "OK" but in probably a rather un-enthused manner. She seemed confused at my response. After hanging up I figured out she in fact meant the more famous Geneva in Switzerland, and she wanted me to tour that in preparation for possibly going to grad school at her university. I managed to get in touch with her again and set up the trip. So I was able to go there, tour CERN, and also visit my Swiss relatives (my mother's cousins) who lived in Lausanne. I got to test out my rudimentary French skills. This is also how it happened that the first time I ever tried alcohol (or Indian food) was in an Indian restaurant in Switzerland. I really did not have the taste for wine yet at the time and it was a few years before I would drink alcohol of my own accord. I like Indian food now too.

I did not continue to grad school with the physics. The most advanced thing I do now is trigonometry.

Kelly Lee | May 26, 2020
That is great, cause I also thought, oh, Geneva, that's like, a mile down the road, whatever. Wow! CERN!

Scott Hardie | July 6, 2020
I neglected to reply to this at the time, but better late than never:

Samir, I want to fix your IMDb credit! I edit IMDb data all the time and so it's at this weird intersection for me of knowing that I can fix something wrong in their data and being able to help a friend. I will resist unless you actually want it fixed. And those are good stories! I don't recall getting into any really private areas, except a few rooms of the White House when I was a kid in the eighties and my father worked for the federal government and got us in for a party and a tour.

Denise, I know I've heard a bunch of the Fermilab stories, but I have never gotten tired of the subject. Maybe it's boring from the inside, but someone like me who can only admire advanced science from afar, it's pretty neat and exclusive. :-) I think I even visited you there once, but I didn't see much of the inside. I just read about the facility again online and learned something that I didn't previously know, that a town ceased to exist to make room for it.