I am, quite thoroughly, what is often disparagingly referred to as a hillbilly. I was born and raised in Bryson City, NC, as were my parents, and some subset of their parents, etc. for a quite a while back. Bryson City is nestled pretty much smack dab in the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains. I can’t imagine having grown up anywhere else, and I still get a little nervous when the land around me gets too flat.
I’m a big a fan of Baldassare Castiglione and a whole-hearted believer in the sound advice of Hugh of St. Victor: Omnia disce, videbis postea nihil esse superfluum. Nevertheless, the list of things beyond astrophysics I have time to seriously turn my hand to is quite countable. I’ve spent a preposterous number of hours since I was about 16 playing college/quiz bowl. I played on the UT national championship team as a senior and I still try to play once or twice a year.
This particular pursuit probably helped to put me in pretty good stead when I got a chance to be on Jeopardy!
Much of the rest of my time since adolescence has been spent participating in team sports of various kinds. The one that seems to have stuck (mostly because there tends to be a bunch of old guys like me who want to play and I seem to enjoy it most) is lacrosse, something I didn’t even pick up until I was in grad school. Feeding my lax habit, I was the head coach of the Knoxville Catholic High School Lacrosse team for several years.
I have an Erdös number no greater than 3
Erdös –> Barak –> Saylor –> Messer
If you count my TV appearance with Trebek (this seems to be commonly accepted), my Bacon number is no greater than 3
Bacon –> Nicholson –> Trebek –> Messer
Therefore, my Erdös-Bacon number is no greater than 6. According to Wikipedia, this is less than that of Noam Chomsky, Natalie Portman, and Steven Hawking (all 7), and equal to that of Carl Sagan and Danica McKellar. This, combined with my world-class ability to eat cornbread, has provided me exactly as much monetary benefit as you think it has.