60 MinuteS last night had an interview/profile thing on Michael Jordan, shot mostly at his fantasy camp for rich middle-aged guys. For those who haven’t encountered the concept before, this is a pseudo-basketball-camp thing where investment bankers pay $15,000 apiece to spend a few days playing basketball with Michael Jordan. Or, based on the shots they had of the games, standing around stupidly while Jordan makes them look silly.
This got me thinking that this is a market we really need to exploit. I mean, granted, there are a lot more ex-jocks with a spare $15,000 than there are scientist-wannabes, but given the way our economy is set up, we seem to have a nearly infinte number of people with way too much money. Surely, there are people out there who would happily shell out, say, $1,000 to spend a few days proving theorems with Ed Witten, or sitting in the control room at CERN with Carlo Rubbia, or something.
As a discipline, we need to find a way to tap into this market. I’ll gladly volunteer myself– for $500, you can come into my lab and help me wind magnet coils… You can sleep on the couch in the student lounge– it’ll be just like being a grad student, only, you know, less angst-ridden.
Question for the audience: If there were such a thing as a famous scientist fantasy camp, and you had $15,000 to spend on it, who would you want to spend a week working with?
If there were such a thing as a famous scientist fantasy camp
Isn’t that what Gordon Conferences are for?
I dunno who’s big in the field, to be honest. But wouldn’t it be fun to get a big chunk of time on a honkin’ big optical telescope?
Either that, or high-powered lasers. Assuming it’s just like Real Genius of course.
Forget it. The only scientists people would pay money to hang out with are evil scientists, what with their eeeevil schemes and death rays and armies of bouffant-toting women with double entendre names clad in identical jumpsuits. You show me a scientist whose office has a shark tank and world map with an X scrawled over various world capitols, and we’ll talk business.
Actually you can go on archaeology, paleontology, or geology trips where you can do some working. I actually think if grad students weren’t the slaves, errr resources, they are this would work great!
I mean I would pay a few hundred bucks to make observations and even do scut work – have to be promised a mention in the paper… I think you could find tons of people who would enjoy this. I think experimental people would be much better – watching Witten write a paper about cohomology spaces or something would be boring because I wouldn’t have a clue, but with experimental apparatus, even if you don’t know the full working of the theory being tested, you could still get a feel for the actual equipment and help and feel a little proprietory about it.
It could be like baseball – you start rooting for one group, even make donations – You could have little Science-sport pages: “Small college confines atom to new record – take that MIT”, then: “MIT strikes back” 🙂 Ok I am having fun with this, but I actually think there is something there. Astronomy and Ecology are the only sciences I know where non-professionals are accepted gathering raw data that is of general use, and i think this is a big disconnect.
Haha, interesting idea 🙂
Not so long ago, Bill Tozier auctioned off on ebay the opportunity to coauthor a paper with him and thus gain a low Erdos number. IIRC the attempt failed because the high bidder didn’t understand what he was bidding on.
Probably E.O. Wilson, Thomas Eisner, and May Berenbaum. Any location that has insects would do. 🙂
Richard Feynman. I can’t afford to waste $15k; I want my money’s worth. 😉
As a current grad student, does that mean I’m living the dream?
As a current grad student, does that mean I’m living the dream?
Yes you are and you better enjoy it while you can!
Definitely Feynman. The night time side trips “out on the town” would be a great bonus! 😉
Dude, I would GLADLY path $1k to get a “Space Camp” kind of thing at CERN.
At Huntsville, they do week long Aviation Challenge and Space Camp for adults for like $1200. I think some more sciency stuff like this would be a great idea.
Couple of comments: it has been done, I just blogged it, but both ASP and Carnegie auctioned “go observing with famous astronomer” nights (in Hawaii). ASP got $16,000 for a trip with Geoff Marcy (hey, more than Jordan!), can’t remember what Carnegie got, but it was in the same ballpark.
Secondly, $1,000 is too little – not cost effective given the salaries of the high end faculty.
It would barely cover the salary cost+overhead for a day with a senior academic. Now in groups of ~ 10 it might be cost effective, but then you have to factor in organizational costs etc. Really, the payoff is more at $10,000 if you want any one-on-one time.
For comparison, NASA and NSF pay $4-800 per day plus cost to get people on panels, which is not enough to make it worth while just for the money, just enough to sweeten the aggravation.