I saw the Father of the Internet at work yesterday. Yeah, for real. He was giving some sort of press conference outside my building. I'm talking about Vint Cerf, obviously.

Today, I got to hear Al Gore speak. For real! He came to talk about his new documentary. He basically went through the next interation of the presentation that was the basis for the film.

I have to say that he really is an engaging speaker. Funny as hell, too. (He introduced himself as "The former next President of the United States".) And the guy's got a darn good grasp on science and a fairly analytic mind. (He was ad-libbing about some slides that he had added to his presentation just that morning to try out on us, and described one chart as depicting "sort of a step function". This wasn't something he had memorized; he knew what he was talking about.)

At one point, he was talking about how much he gives that particular talk, and how each time it's different. He said his favorite time was on a houseboat in Tennesee. He recounts it like this:

So there we were at midnight on a houseboat in the middle of a lake, about 40 drunk rednecks, all completely saturated in Pabst Blue Ribbon. And someone makes the mistake of asking me what I think of global warming. So I opened up my 17'' powerbook and right there on the foredeck went through the entire presentation I'm about give to you here today with them, all still drinking as I went along.

Let me tell you, these people were not primarily Democarats, and not typically aware about environmental concerns. But at the end, they realized the importance of the crisis ahead of us all. After it was over, one of them told me that he never thought about global warming, and said: [In thick "southern" accent] "Well, day-yam... I had no fucking idee-er it was so important..."

Hearing a former V.P of the U.S. drop an f-bomb using a hillbilly accent in front of a few thousand people was very amusing.

His presentation was an eye-opener for sure. He said that one of the main reasons he ran for President was that he believes that it will take policy to effect real change. He said that having someone in the White House aware of the issues and able to act quickly and decisively on them was, he felt, of paramount importance to the entire planet (the U.S. is repsonsible for some 35% of the world's greenhouse gasses, and by Gore's reckoning stands the best chance of showing how real change can make big differences).

There were a few sideways comments about the current administration, and the debt it owes to oil and pharmaceutical companies and the like. Everyone laughed. I felt sort of sad. Our President probably can't spell "global warming", much less think about way to act on it, and here's this guy who's pretty much been devoted to it since 1978 and he never got a shot to "save the world". That's a lofty goal, and I believed him when he said that he felt like he had a moral and social imperative to make life better.

When we got back to the cubes, my coworker was fuming mad. I thought he got bad news on the phone or something. When I asked, he launched into a tirade about how the silver-spoon C student we have for a president is such a sham. Here's this guy that can really engage you mentally and the guy we got instead is basically a high-functioning moron working at the behest of a few influencing businessmen.

But it was a good talk, and I'm glad I got to see him talk. I love the talks at work, and sometimes marvel at the quality of speakers we get. It really is one of the best perks we've got. Heh heh... Yahoo got Tom Cruise and his space-alien antics, we get Al Gore and some really meaty scientific data. Seems about as fair assessment as any of the differences between them and us... :-)