(1) This day in history:
…in 1966, “Star Trek” premiered on NBC-TV.
Which makes it the perfect day to release Captain Kirk’s autobiography:
“The Autobiography of James T. Kirk – The Story of Starfleet’s Greatest Captain,” is to be published by Titan Books on Tuesday – 49 years to the day after “Star Trek” premiered on television in 1966.
It comes with illustrations, including Kirk’s Starfleet Academy class graduation photo and an unsent letter he penned to his son.
Fan fiction plays a popular role in the “Star Trek” universe and interest has been building since actor William Shatner, the best-known embodiment of Kirk, appeared at July’s Comic-Con International with Goodman and read excerpts from the book. A Shatner-signed copy of the book can be found on the Internet selling for $150.00.
According to the autobiography, Kirk passed over the Vulcan Mr. Spock to be his first officer of the starship Enterprise; 20th century social worker Edith Keeler, not the mother of his son, was the great love of his life; and Kirk may have another son on a distant planet – who makes what suspiciously looks like “Star Trek” movies.
(2) Now there’s an official touchscreen that can turn your Raspberry Pi into a tablet.
Two years in the making, an official touchscreen for the tiny board has gone on sale.
The diminutive Raspberry Pi – a computer on a board the size of a credit card – has been wildly successful. It was created with the aim of encouraging children to experiment with building their own devices and while the makers thought they might sell 1,000 they have now sold well over five million.
(3) The roads must roll! Chris Mills on Gizmodo says “Replacing Subway Lines With High-Speed Moving Sidewalks Sounds Terrifying”.
London has the oldest subway system in the world: great for tourism, but sometimes not-so-great for commuters. There’s all sorts of sensible plans to upgrade the city’s public transport, but here’s one particularly outside-the-box solution: a 15mph moving sidewalk, looping 17 miles under London. What could go wrong!
(4) Erin Underwood has a fine interview with Rosarium Publisher Bill Campbell at Amazing Stories.
Bill Campbell
(ASM): What upcoming book or project are you are especially excited about? Why that book/project? (Bill, this can be a Rosarium book or something else.)
(BC): All of our projects are really near and dear to my heart, and so are our authors and artists. At this level, you really get to know the people you work with, and you really find yourself rooting for their success and work yourself to the bone to try to help them reach it.
I think the one project, though, that’s nearest and dearest to my heart is Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany that I co-edited with Nisi Shawl. I don’t know if I’d have ever written science fiction if it weren’t for Chip, and I can’t help thinking how hard it must’ve been for him to be alone in the field for as long as he was. He had to carry a mighty large load for a lot of people and did it with such grace and intelligence. I told Daniel Jose Older that there are, perhaps, five people on this planet who intimidate me. Delany’s one of them. I just wanted to thank him. It took over two years to do it properly, and, thanks to Nisi and the authors involved, it turned out a lot better than I could’ve possibly hoped.
(5) Tom Knighton’s blog has a new header with a photo of the author, which really brightens the place up.
(6) Mark Pampanin of SCPR has dug a little deeper into how gay rights got its start in science fiction.
But it’s true – gay and lesbian writers and activists who wanted to connect with others in the LGBT community in the 1940s could only do so with pseudonyms and double entendre. And they were able to do it with the help of another burgeoning movement with roots in Los Angeles – science fiction….
Kepner and Ben, as Jyke and Tigrina, were both devoted members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, which met weekly in the basement of the Prince Rupert Arms near downtown Los Angeles to imagine a future of technological marvels and social equality.
The society still exists. Now in Van Nuys, it’s the oldest running science fiction society in the world, and holds members just as devoted as Kepner and Ben once were, like June Moffatt, who joined the society in August 1947 when she was a teenager. She says she “only met Tigrina once” but she knew Kepner quite well.
“He was good fun,” says Moffatt. Moffatt knew Kepner was gay and an activist, but he was still just “one of the gang. I remember once sitting down next to [Kepner] and telling him he was in danger,” Moffatt says, laughing. “I was flirting with him.”
(7) Black Nerd Problems’ L. E. H. Light declares “No More Diversity Panels, It’s Time To Move On”.
What’s a convention program director to do? They want to present and represent “diversity” in their audience. They’re hearts are in the right place, or not. As others have pointed out, sometimes The Diversity Panel is an excuse for the convention to avoid actually integrating their other panels. Well intentioned or not, the recent fuss at the Hugos really proves this point: we’re here, we’re not going any where. We and our allies vote for awards and read books and *gasp* write and publish them too! The “why is diversity important” is an answered question. So what’s next?
(8) Yesterday I had a clip about a spider clock, but there is a lot more to know about mechanical spiders if you’re interested. (The two of you who raised your hands can keep reading.) One example is this video, Inside Adam Savage’s Cave: Awesome Robot Spider!
We’re back in Adam’s cave to check out his latest obsession, a robot spider with incredibly realistic movement. Adam shows off the special box and platform he built to tinker and calibrate the spider, and then sends it crawling around the pool table in his shop. It’s not for the arachnophobic!
Other recommended one-day build videos are this one building Cylon raiders and troopers from plastic model kits with Aaron Douglas:
And this one building his Kirk chair:
(9) BBC Two has optioned China Miéville’s The City & the City and will develop the novel into a four-part series based on the Inspector Tyador Borlú character. British screenwriter Tony Grisoni is writing the adaptation.
“We are thrilled to be bringing China’s dazzlingly inventive novel to BBC Two,” said Damien Timmer, managing director at Mammoth Screen, which will produce the project. “It’s a 21st Century classic — a truly thrilling and imaginative work which asks big questions about how we perceive the world and how we interact with each other.”
(10) As you already know, Soon Lee is hosting a collection of the punny variations on the title of Rachel Swirsky’s “If you were a dinosaur, my love” produced on File 770 today.
(11) John Scalzi has entered Hugo hibernation. (See last comment on this post at Whatever).
I have officially come to the end of thinking about the Hugos for 2015. If other people decide they want to, that’s their business, but as for here, my plan is let it be through the end of the year. Because, fuck me, I’m tired of them.
May I also suggest that you let it go as well? Surely the rest of your 2015 is better spent doing something else with your time. I’m not saying you have to. I’m just saying you should. That goes for everyone.
(12) John C. Wright, on the other hand, is still roaming the tundra hunting for fresh prey.
If you voted, please write Sasquan, and demand, not ask, that they release the nomination data. The idea that the data must be kept private to avoid someone from deducing the voter’s identities is an absurd lie, not worth wasting ink to refute. They are trying to hide a bloc voting pattern, or a large number of votes that were entered after voting closed or something of the sort.
No, see, THE CABAL keeps certain people down, while THE CONSPIRACY boosts certain people up. Hope that helps. https://t.co/ckISAdztGr
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 8, 2015
(13) Charles Rector in Fornax #5 [PDF file] begins his editorial on the 2015 Hugos with this tantalizing hook —
Have you ever taken a firm position on a subject only to realize later that you were on the wrong side and as time went on, you got to wonder how you ever took that previous position? That was my experience with this year’s Hugo Awards. When the year started, I was on the side of the slates. It seemed that the slates were a good idea given the state of the Hugo Awards.
I bet you’ll never see a turnaround like that anywhere else.
(14) 100 Years of Robots in the Movies. (Despite the title I’m pretty sure I saw a split second of Doctor Who in there – and other TV shows…)
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Jerry Pournelle, Ita, and John King Tarpinian for some of these links. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist.]
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@Doctor Science: Vg’f cerggl zhpu ubeevoyr qrcerffvat guvatf sebz gur jbeq tb naq vg qba’g fgbc. V hfhnyyl nibvq gung xvaq bs guvat, ohg znqr na rkprcgvba sbe Wrzvfva naq qba’g crefbanyyl erterg vg, SJVJ; yvtugre zbzragf naq uhzbe qb fgvyy rkvfg, nygubhtu gurer’f nyjnlf gur xabjyrqtr gung urnil fghss vf jnvgvat.
Gurer vf abapbafrafhny ercebqhpgvir frk (vafgvghgvbany pbrepvba, abg vaqvivqhny-gb-vaqvivqhny ivbyrapr), naq jbefr bssfperra. Gurer vf obql ubeebe gung pnzr nobhg qhr gb bssfperra zhgvyngvba. V jbhyq fnl gur bafperra (ba-cntr?) ivbyrapr vf zbqrengryl tencuvp, ohg V znl abg or gur orfg whqtr bs gung fvapr V vafgvapgviryl fxvz bire fghss gung V vaghvg gb or gbb zhpu sbe zr, jvgubhg qryvorengryl abgvat vg.
—
Unrelated to anything at all, I seem to vaguely recall there was some fellow with a Turkish name who wrote some essay or other that was linked here (a post or comment) within the past month. Does anyone remember what I’m talking about? I can’t find it again…
@buwaya
From what I’ve seen*, when you post at VD’s site, you come from a generally sympathetic worldview, but argue about priorities. Here you are coming from a diametrically opposed worldview and often create strawman arguments about eg. race. Additionally, you tend to keep your comments vague, which is very useful for goal post shifting. In summary, you come off more like a devil’s advocate over there, whereas you’re more straight-up troll here. HTH HAND.
* Which isn’t much, as I don’t care all that much, and really don’t like wading through the VD cesspool.
I had no idea CompuServe still existed. Next you’ll tell me Delphi is still there, too.
*Googles*
Oh.
Zil:
Thank you. I think I’ll let some other member of the household go first, then.
I mean — gur svefg puncgre be fb vf nyy, ‘guvf vf gur jnl gur jbeyq raqf, sbe erny’, ohg V jnf ubcvat vg zvtug or, xvaq bs, vebavpnyyl ubcrshy? Rira ubcrshy jvgubhg vebal? Znlor?
Qrfcnvevat NAQ svefg-bs-n-gevybtl vf ABG zl phc bs grn.
My mother met a moose face-to-face when pregnant with me. They both stared at each other until the moose got bored and wandered away. She says it was scary and wondrous at the same time. Being pregnant didn’t stop my mother from climbing mountains. It did slow her down so my dad frequently ended up a ways ahead before realizing she’d fallen behind. For years I’ve given her moose stuff but as they are downsizing and trying to declutter I’ve been asked to stop unless it’s practical and fits with the decor of the current house.
Clicky? (I may get the dreaded double emails of everything, but never mind…)
Well yes, especially if the moose stuff is life sized. (ducks and runs)
https://youtu.be/wioh5qUj7fM
Very important point.
@Doctor Science: Well, you could say that there is, in a long-term kind of sense. I wouldn’t say it’s *hopeless* or *resigned*; there is simply a lot of really screwed-up stuff happening, which might be met with a number of character and narrative responses that are neither hopeless nor uncomplicatedly hopeful.
Letting someone close to you have the first go sounds like a great idea — they would know you much better to hand down a “no, read it” or “yeah, not for you”.
I *just* started it this morning. I’m busy packing for a long weekend away, but should actually be able to get my teeth into it tomorrow. (And then after that there’s a stack of four more books from the library already packed. And I think I need to grab something from my ancient TBR pile just as a break from eligible works.)
We used to have a problem in sweden with german tourists stealing our trafic signs with warnings against moose. Nowadays, we sell them instead.
No, just like the Porsche I got her was a matchbox car* the moose stuff has been cups, towels, small stuffed animals, Xmas ornaments, cookies, cakes…
*when asking for stuff it’s important to be specific “when you get rich I want a Porsche” needed to include definitions for “rich” and “Porsche” 😉
Oh it is so much better than that – it is Compuserve/Netscape/AOL. If it was Geocities as well it would be the true Sargasso Sea of Cyberspace.
buwaya: Have you tried giving snarky unhelpful advice? That’s my usual method.
@hampus. Kinda how 420th Streets, mileposts, and other road signs with 420 get stolen by cannabis fans here?
cmm on September 9, 2015 at 11:32 am said:
I don’t think paddling River Tam is safe.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/Fireflyois2.jpg
Also. Massive blockquote.
@scott.
River Tam could kill me with her brain
River Song…well, she makes Daleks beg for mercy.
So, yeah…
MISCHIEVOUS CLOCKWORK OCTOPUS!
Ok, I’m sold.
I need to elaborate more on the octopus:
@Laura Resnick:
I really ought to write alternate history, because the alternate timeline in which I won elections includes:
1976: President Frank Church
1980: President Edward M. Kennedy
1984: President Jesse L. Jackson
1988: President Jesse L. Jackson
1992: President Edmund G. (‘we call him Jerry’) Brown, Jr.
2000: President Bill Bradley (best basketball player at the G8 summits)
2004: President Howard Dean
That’s not to mention celebrated U.S. Senator Gore Vidal.
People unprepared to lose gracefully on a frequent basis should consider switching allegiance to a nice, tidy dictatorship. (Though, if WSFS were obliged to operate under same, maybe we’d luck out and get GRRM as Supreme Benevolent Dictator for Life.)
Speaking of things with 8 legs — do those of you who are arachnophobes have a similar reaction to octopodes? Are there insects that set off the “SPIDER ICK” reaction, or is it taxon-specific?
And once they finish the Cross Rail project just about everything will be routed underneath chez Stevie; fortunately the novelty value of feeling the earth move continues to provoke amusement rather than irritation.
Having been subjected to a blizzard of information about how it’s all really happening, so we have to sort things now, it’s a bit disconcerting that I have been deprived of my view of the Gherkin by the erection of scaffolding, at which point everything ground to a juddering halt. It seems odd that people put up all the scaffolding and then go away, time being money and so forth, yet two months later the old building is still deserted.
Thanks to all the rain the grass on the roof of the next building along is flourishing, but there are still no mountain goats. I appreciate that pedestrians would be disconcerted should one misjudge and plummet earthwards, but a stouter fence, and small goats, should work perfectly well.
Or possibly rabbits, though I suspect that rabbits are more sensitive than goats; admittedly just about any species is more sensitive than goats, but it would be nice to have something to deter pigeons from nesting there.
Flying a hawk once a month strikes me as an insufficient deterrent, particularly when the weather encourages seagulls to come this far upriver; we used to have a very active Barbiduck group, which is why there are little ramps into the lakes for ducklings and the occasional baby coot, but unfortunately seagulls enjoy eating ducklings. In a better world we could persuade the seagulls to eat the pigeons…
Regarding scary (?) spiders:
At the moment I am reading “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and I enjoy it.
It shares some common ground with “A Deepness in the Sky” (Vernor Vinge).(Which I’m sure y’all know, it being a Hugo winner and all.)
So… would “Children of Time” be eligible for next years Hugo?
That said, some spiders are less scary than other spiders. I am sure we could come up with a funny little formula, if anyone would care to do the research (oh well, I would not be suprised if some obscure paper along these lines is already out there):
Spider_Scariness as a function of: {Leg_Length, Hair(?)_Length, Hair(?)_Density, Main_Body_Volume, Overall_Size, Jumping_Reach, Number_of_Eyes, Number_of_Legs, Venomousness, Average_Swarm_Size, Shape/Type_of_Net, Size_of_Net, Propagation_Speed, Mating_Habits, …}
Note that small, hairless, jumpy spiders are kinda cute. So we gotta allow for negative Spider_Scariness.
Also note, Number_of_Legs is NOT a constant, and does affect scariness. A Spider with several legs missing is less scary. Rather, a pitiful sight. Unless you are an android who dreams of electric sheep.
Cacheperl on September 9, 2015 at 2:19 pm said: So… would “Children of Time” be eligible for next years Hugo?
At a quick glance, I think the answer is “yes”–unless someone else is aware of a pre-2015 edition?
Katsu is the name of the octopus. It’s a Japanese clockwork mischievous octopus.
And no, I don’t know what it is about spiders, but I am not spooked by octopuses. Nor by scorpions, beyond the obvious OMG A SCORPION which is natural if you are, say, in Arizona.
@Doctor Science:
Speaking of things with 8 legs — do those of you who are arachnophobes have a similar reaction to octopodes? Are there insects that set off the “SPIDER ICK” reaction, or is it taxon-specific?
Can only speak for myself, but… I think octopodes are great fun. As to arachnophobia, mine is very specific about spiders – not in the taxonomical sense, though. Something which is quite close to a spider in general outline – a harvestman, for instance – can evoke no reaction at all; scorpions and most other arachnids, I don’t like, but I can stand to be around them. It’s only spiders which provoke the AAAAGHH SPIDER GETITAWAYFROMMENOW AAAAGH AAAAGHH reaction in me. But it is all spiders, from the merely terrifying ones a quarter of an inch in size, to the utterly unthinkable ones that are making me break out in a cold sweat just typing about them.
I think the dictionary definition of a phobia is something like “an irrational aversion or dread”. Mine’s certainly irrational. You will look in vain for a taxonomical explanation, I’m afraid.
@Cacheperl (had to double-check that’s really your handle. I get the feeling you may be a nerd)
I can testify that (at least for me)Tarantulas, up close, are very pretty. I have no emotional dislike or hatred of spiders, but I have been freaked out by them all my life. Sometimes I work on that, mostly I ignore it. BUT, I’ve seen tarantulas in the wild, and their fur is pretty. Multi-colored, kind of like gasoline in a mud puddle (which, yes it is too pretty!). I had an almost uncontrollable urge to pet the ones I saw on the trail that day, but my girlfriend would never have spoken to or come within 10 feet of me again, I’m pretty sure (she’s squicked out beyond belief by even pictures of spiders).
I think part of that fascination-as-opposed-to-running-and-screaming thing was that the tarantula was moving verrrrry slowwwwlly. And it was slowly “running” the Hell away from us.
Speed is definitely a factor.
I think length of legs and wiggly-ness thereof has something to do with it, too. Hmm. Much to think about, here.
ETA: number-of-legs-wise… our cat used to enjoy catching bathtub spiders. We’d find a perfect circle of eight legs in the bathtub, with no spider body. Cats are evil.
@John Lorentz:
Nice. This I like. Second.
If you care to draft a motion for Kansas City, I’d be honoured if listed among names at the top. My reservation was same as yours, given 2015 events. Sitting at the Business Meeting, I belatedly tried to imagine how to do it in two years vs. three, but missed your key idea of polling all members between two Worldcons.
I think peacock spiders are adorable, partly because when I see video of one dancing I can’t help but narrate what I imagine its internal monologue to be: “Hey baby! Hey baby! Hey baby! AUGH NO DON’T EAT ME!!!”
@buwaya “Any suggestions ?”
Try apologizing. Saying you’re sorry to File770 ought to really incite things over there.
I hope it’s not a spoiler to note that neither the Gods Talk nor the Steerswoman series are finished; it was a bit disconcerting to discover that the latest volume in the latter series covers 4 days.
I don’t want to be picky, but, in the absence of someone discovering a practical route to immortality, fellow villainous scum hive members may wish to bear this in mind…
At the seaside, I have sometimes been startled by small, immature crabs that resemble large spiders, but the instant I figure out it’s a crab, the fear reaction disappears.
Octopodes only scare me in the “behold our scary-intelligent Cthuloid overlords” sense. No fear reaction at all.
On the other hand, paulcarp insists that tarantulas aren’t really spiders, and therefore I shouldn’t be afraid of them, but my phobia says, “hell no, honey, you cannot have a tarantula as a pet.”
“Have you tried giving snarky unhelpful advice?”
Yes indeed. My advice is almost always at least half-serious however.
There are some fairly out-front racists there, though maybe not quite as committed as I thought.
I have tried sharpening my point a bit, lets see what happens.
“Try apologizing. Saying you’re sorry to File770 ought to really incite things over there.”
?
This has flown over my head I’m afraid.
I’m not scared by many sea critters, though I’ll give barracuda and big sharks and whales the right of way. If you know their behavior you can be safe around most of them.
I must admit I got REALLY FREAKED OUT as a child when I dropped into a shallow patch (6-18 inches deep) right next to the shore and beheld an octopus doing the ‘feel all around the rocks for food items’ behavior. More because it was completely unexpected. We departed in opposite directions post haste.
So naturally I married a lady with the ‘squid eye’ whose favorite sea creature is the octopus…
I’ll write it up, since our current plans are to be in Kansas City (Helsinki seems to be out, for now).
I think the key was to drink plenty of good beer (which works for many things). The idea came to me at dinner in a brewpub.
For me, it’s some combination of length of legs/number of legs/size/and possibly hairiness. A six-legged insect with Very Long Legs is worrisome, as is a centipede or millipede, but the phobia is definitely centered around spiders, primarily. Teensy-tiny less-than-a-millimeter spiders aren’t a problem, but anything as big or bigger than five or six millimeters is aaagh get it away, and anything bigger than a centimeter is AAARRGH, and anything with a BODY as big as a centimeter is “I’ll see you at the county line, still accelerating”.
I can sneak up on a spider I know is there, if I have to, but it’s no fun.
Spiders and a some insects (not 8 leg specific) and bees trigger panic attacks, killing sprees (of spiders/insects), yelling at whatever “fool” is in the room who doesn’t kill/remove said creature causing fear fast enough, and multiples of Xanax being taken. Oddly when home alone I’m calm until situation is handled before panic attack. Some of my fears come from a time living in a bed where I had to climb a ladder or a rope net to get into/out of bed and had unexpected visitors in the dark, some biting/stinging, and quick escape was impossible… Well I did have the option of going over the rail and breaking bones as my bed was over stairs… Some of it may also be from bad “team building” exercise in HS where we went to one of those outdoor retreats and I was convinced to be the 1st to eat an ant – instructor forgot to mention to kill it before putting in mouth until after I was bit a few times… Yes black ants taste different from red ants & bites by red ants hurts more… TMI?
On the other hand I’m quite fond of some insects and it leaves my husband quite baffled as I’m not all that consistent in his opinion. But his knowledge of bugs is sadly lacking.
Octopodes are fine from a distance.
Doctor Science asked for a trigger warning for ‘The Fifth Season’ in rot13, so here it is:
Bss gur gbc bs zl urnq, naq xrrc va zvaq gung fbzr bs gurfr ner vzcyvrq bayl naq abg tencuvpnyyl qrcvpgrq: Gur Svsgu Frnfba pbagnvaf puvyq nohfr, puvyq artyrpg, puvyq encr, puvyq gbegher, encr ol pbrepvba, sbeprq certanapl ol pbrepvba, naq rkgvapgvba-yriry riragf. Gur puvyq gbegher vf irel tencuvpnyyl qrcvpgrq, naq vaibyirf creznarag qnzntr gb gur obql. Gurer znl or bgure guvatf V’z sbetrggvat, naq vs fb V ncbybtvmr.
Ntnva, vs lbh’er ng nyy noyr gb trg guebhtu gurfr guvatf V qb erpbzzraq gur obbx va gur uvturfg cbffvoyr grezf; abar bs guvf vf rkcybvgngvir naq nyy bs vg vf jevggra va na rssbeg gb ryvpvg haqrefgnaqvat bs jung vg vf yvxr gb yvir va n phygher gung hfrf fynirel naq bgure zrgubqf bs rkcybvgngvba. Vg’f n pyrne nyyrtbel sbe gur cyvtug bs rkcybvgrq tebhcf, vg jbexf irel jryy naq vf rkgerzryl cbjreshy–vg’f whfg nyfb na vagrafr ernq.
If you want the idea to pass, I’d recommend waiting until the Puppy furor calms down some. From what I heard in the Meeting this year, the idea that amending the Constitution could become as gameable as the Hugo nominations have been was the principle reason for its defeat. Had the Puppies not reared up, it might have passed — or would at least have been much closer than it was.
The suggestion I heard that I thought made sense was — if voters are wary of the idea, it could be tested in stages. First, branch out from attendees of the meeting to attending members of Worldcon, making them able to vote without attending the meeting, either online or by paper ballot dropped off during the show. If that goes well, expand to supporting members in a second step.
It has the Brian Z advantage of going slow (or, wait, did he not want to do that with this one), and seeing how it works on a smaller scale before committing to a full-scale implementation.
My only phobia has to do with eyes. I can’t really even talk about them except to note that I’d much rather have a root-canal/mammogram/gynecological exam than have my eyes tested. And the prescription on my glasses needs updating. I won’t ask for trigger warnings but I have to close my eyes when closeups of eyes appear on screen or page. Shiver.
Have you considered the alternative hypothesis that your cat was trying to build a spider and you always interrupted before it was finished?
The only spiders that give me the creepies are those big garden spiders – argiopes? – with the yellow-and-black bodies and the zigzag in the web. They can be amazingly hard to see until you’re very close, which is how I found myself, as a child, suddenly surrounded by tall grass and giant spiders. My mind is blank on how I got out of there, but it was fast.
I recently found out about spider unboxing videos on youtube. The future is a strange place.
Octopodes, no. Arachnids: some. (My response to black widows is ‘ooh, pretty’ followed by flattening said critter.) Centipedes and scorpions – I’d rather have a good barrier between me and it, unless it’s outside and clearly not interested in me.
Jumping spiders are kind of cute, though: oh, look, headlights! Tarantulas are not somethin I see often, but my father brought them home from work once in a while – he was out in a rural area, kind of deserty in habitat, so it was tarantulas and horned lizards and once a rather large centipede that was trying to eat its way out of the bags it was in (double-bagged). And the bat that was released at the church we went to, so we could have a bat in our (non-existent) belfry.
When I was a child my parents had a small sailing boat, a Pierrot I think it was, and once when we stopped out at sea for a swim I looked around with my goggles and saw the keel. I knew it was there, obviously, and I had seen it and even painted it when the boat was up, but it triggered total irrational panic. I flailed a bit and in hindsight I’m glad that I am really comfortable in water.
The same visceral sense of panic I had when my mother and I went swimming from Premuda, a nice bit of the coast in Istria. The rocks are shaped like giant steps, so you jump in and there is a flat shelf about two meters deep, and then a drop to five meters, and I was happily looking at the starfish and fish and giant seashell and then I came upon the following drop into…
Blackness. Panic, flailing, and very hurried swimming towards land. Note that I have swam many times in waters deep enough you cannot see the sea floor, obviously. I wasn’t afraid of sharks or Chtulu. It was just that black drop.
@Stevie
Back in May, P.C. Hodgell posted a question on her livejournal asking to be reminded of plot-threads people thought should be tied up before the end. She commented that some of the things mentioned were threads she was already planning to wrap up, and some others she was glad to be reminded of.
I’m pretty sure the next book is not the last one planned, but I would be surprised if there turned out to be as many as 5 more books in the series.
@John Lorentz: If I might make a suggestion (admittedly on too little pondering and dearth of good beer): Conducting all-member vetting of any passed Constitutional amendments should become a trailing obligation of the just-concluded Worldcon. Reason: Sure, everyone’s exhausted, but the upcoming con already has enough challenges.
I also see no special reason to restrict vote timeframe as long as it’s between the two cons’ Business Meetings. Leave that up to the administrators. I could be missing something here, of course.
I love spiders.
They’re cute.
@buwya How long have you been commenting over there and you’ve never heard about never apologizing to SJWs? Give it a try…if you’re really looking to make waves.
@Kurt Busiek:
You may be right. I really don’t know for sure. You were there too, and your surmise is at least as good as mine.
The reason I will politely say I think your assessment might turn out not to be the case is the very large number of attendees who rose to speak in favour. (For the record, I didn’t rise to speak on either side, as I was very conflicted: I agree with Kevin that WSFS ought to run WSFS, but two years’ wait to take corrective actions such as EPH was bad enough, and three is Right Out.)
My sense of the meeting — and plainly I cannot pretend to actually know what ~300 sundry people’s thoughts were, only guess — is that the WSFS Business Meeting has absolutely no worries about genuine democracy among all WSFS fans. I think it was just a ‘2015 has shown that three years is too long’ outcome. In fact, what I keep hearing from regulars, and particularly from all the old-timer Business Meeting attendees, is agreement with Kevin that 300 people deciding everything is just no substitute for over 10,000 members having a say.
My sense is that WSFS is serious about involving the whole membership, and undeterred by the politics of the moment.
But you could be right; I could be wrong.