[mbay]

Came in here to post this. This guy is unhinged by the way. He came in to give a talk in a course I was taking at UC Berkeley and as he continued to ramble on he noticed the students starting to glance at the clock on the wall above his head. He went off on a half-baked rant about how clocks don't matter and we should think for ourselves or something, then he stands up ON A CHAIR WITH WHEELS and pulls the clock off the wall. This guy is not young obviously - I was standing under him ready to catch him if he fell and the whole class was horrified.

[jacobolus]

“Unhinged” is a pretty uncharitable description, and your “horrified” class sounds a bit closed-minded.

Another way to describe the same is “excitable, passionate, and non-conforming”.

But I would instead say “Cliff Stoll is a national treasure”. I’m super jealous of the middle school kids who got to have him as their science teacher.

[wyclif]

I feel like the world needs more people like Clifford Stoll. He represents one of the last vestiges of the "old, weird America", from a time when "Think Differently" meant something real and wasn't a marketing slogan. Sure he's eccentric, but that's what makes him unique, and I tend to optimize for uniqueness when it comes to things like art, literature, music, and even science.

I read his book The Cuckoo's Egg when I was in high school and I found it vastly entertaining and enlightening. It's dated now but I think people could still get something out of reading it.

[rosser]

> But I would instead say “Cliff Stoll is a national treasure”.

Indeed. The man has more than earned a few eccentricities.

[tptacek]

I saw him speak in the late 1990s. He was absolutely a character, but also a fantastic speaker. Nobody was looking at their watches at the (well-attended) talk I was at.

[inflatableDodo]

>He went off on a half-baked rant about how clocks don't matter and we should think for ourselves or something

I had a conversation recently with someone who was telling me how visiting Cape Canaveral didn't convince them of the existence of space travel. This comment is eliciting a similar feeling of despair.

[wglb]

I saw him speak twice. His sense of wonder is pretty unmatched.