Mason Inman - science journalist

I missed the first meeting of the Athanasius Kircher Society in New York a few days ago, and I'm not sure I'm sad about it.

Kircher was an eccentric collector of freaks and factoids during the 17th century, and has had a bit of a revival in popularity lately. 

At first I was kind of pissed, because I saw that the New Yorker had a Talk of the Town bit on it, and I'd thought of pitching a story to the New Yorker about the meeting when I heard about it over a month ago.

But then reading the article, I'm not sure how much I would have missed, really.

Kircher’s popularity is also growing among the general public, at least with a certain type of self-consciously twee New York hipster (the event sold out a month in advance), for whom YouTube is a modern-day Museum Kircherianum.

Joshua Foer, a twenty-four-year-old freelance science writer, called the meeting to order. Foer is the founder of the Kircher Society, which consists mainly of a Web site that draws attention to subjects (hair museums, blind photographers, thousand-year-old pieces of popcorn) that Kircher might find inspiring.

I didn't know before that one of the Foer brothers was behind this, but now it all makes sense. I love them, but I hate them.