Comic-Con Single-Day Tickets On Sale

Single-day Comic-Con tickets went on sale today – and 76% of Saturday’s tickets were already gone by the time I posted this item.

The 41st installment of the Comic-Con International phenomenon takes place July 22-25, 2010 at the San Diego Convention Center. All the four-day tickets sold out in November. No on-site membership badges will be sold.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday single-day tickets are $35 for adults and $17 for juniors (ages 12-17), seniors (60 or older) and active-duty military. Sunday tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for juniors, seniors and active-duty military. Children younger than 12 get in free when accompanied by an adult.

Poles Apart

With Christmas just 10 days away it’s impossible that attention would be paid to any but the North Pole, isn’t it? Maybe there’s some polar sibling rivalry at work, because the South Pole has found a way to make its own headlines.

The geodesic dome that has protected over-winter scientists at the South Pole since 1975 is being replaced:

It was never supposed to hang around this long. Ten years, maybe 15 at most. Perhaps that’s why the South Pole Dome — a modestly sized structure spanning 164 feet and topping out at about 52 feet high — has loomed so large in the lore and legacy of polar history. The final chapter in that story will be completed 35 years after the U.S. Antarctic Program’s most iconic research station was officially dedicated in January 1975. The dome, the second research station built at the geographic South Pole, is coming down.

David Klaus observes, “The buildings which replaced it, while designed well, have no visual character. They just look like buildings on stilts. Geodesic domes are special.”

The unofficial historian of the South Pole… was matter-of-fact when asked about its imminent disassembly.

“When I showed up at Pole in 1976, the dome made the new station seem state-of-the-art,” he wrote in an e-mail. “No more collapsing snow tunnels, lots of storage space, and an instant icon for the U.S. Antarctic Research Program.

“But snow happens, things get old, drifts build up and structures get stressed,” he added. “As an engineer, my feeling at this point is that the dome has outlived its usefulness at Pole and needs to go away before it becomes a structural hazard.”

Frazetta Jr. Update

More details about Frank Frazetta Jr.’s arrest on arrest on December 9 by Pennsylvania state police have appeared in a local paper.

The Morning Call, which covers Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, ran this except from the arrest affidavit:

Alfonso Frazetta told police he began trying to get into the museum using hand tools, but then asked Frank Bush, 69, to use the backhoe, breaking the door off completely. Alfonso Frazetta moved 90 paintings from the museum into the back seats of his sport-utility vehicle and an attached trailer.

Another trooper called Frazetta Sr., who told the trooper his son did not have permission to be inside the museum or to remove the paintings. Geiger, Frazetta Sr.’s attorney, came to the scene and said there were 90 paintings insured for $20 million in the museum.

 Frazetta Jr.’s lawyer has made a statement, too:

Attorney T. Axel Jones, representing Alfonso Frazetta, said his client and siblings — a brother and two sisters — have had an ongoing squabble over their father’s estate, which began about five months ago when their mother died. They are doing an accounting of his estate, Jones said.

Alfonso Frazetta, also known as Frank Jr., had previously been the caretaker of the museum, a job that ended about five or six months ago, Jones said. He now runs an Internet business for his father, selling reproductions of his artwork, Jones said. The family also owns two businesses in East Stroudsburg, a costume shop and a golf store, he said.

 [Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story, via Mike Chomko.]

NPR Features Babbage, Lovelace

Charles Babbage, a father of modern computing, and Ada Lovelace, the mother of computer programming, came in for another round of praise from NPR’s Morning Edition on December 10. I have blogged about this before, but I’m sure Chris Garcia never tires of people pointing out that the place he works, the Computer History Museum, hosts a working Difference Engine:

The Difference Engine fills half a gallery and stands taller than most men. It’s 5 tons of cast iron, steel and bronze woven together from 8,000 distinct parts. Though it looks like it could be a sculpture, the machine is essentially a giant calculator.

Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, foresaw some of the less obvious things the engine might have done had it been completed:

Lovelace helped Babbage put his ideas in writing. She often understood the implications of his work better than he did….

“Ada recognized that you could actually use numbers to represent things other than just quantity,” [docent Tim Robinson] explains. “They could represent letters of the alphabet. They could represent musical notes. They could represent positions on a chess board.”

Update 12/14/2009: Corrected ‘owns’ to ‘hosts’ per Chris Garcia’s comment.

BVC’s New Cozy Mystery

Knowing several LASFSians are into lace making — Fuzzy Pink Niven even led a lace making workshop at Noreascon III – I suspect BookViewCafe is onto something with the forthcoming publication, Lacing Up For Murder by Irene Radford, a cozy mystery centered around the Whistling River Lodge on Mt. Hood in Oregon:

The cast of characters is as strange and interesting as the hotel itself with the story revolving around a gathering of lacemakers who become involved in a murder where silk thread is used as a garrote.

Talk about the gentle art of murder… The serialized novel will launch December 17 and run for 36 weeks. Author Radford will be blogging on Thursdays for most of that time in support of the launch. A downloadable version will made be available from the BVC ebookstore for $4.99.

The serialized novel will be permanently available at the Radford’s bookshelf at BVC.

UFOs on the Ballot

Denver voters will have a chance next year to create a seven-member UFO commission that will study visitors from space. A proponent of the idea, Jeff Peckman, succeeded in getting enough signatures to place an initiative on the ballot.

Peckman made the news a year ago when he held a news conference to release images of what he said is an alien peeking through a window at a home in Nebraska.

Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown says a commission would be a waste of time and money. Its estimated cost is $100,000. Peckman claims it will be funded all by gifts and grants.

Meanwhile, he contends a commission will get “The federal government … to come clean on what they know,” to help open secret UFO files.

Two Recent LASFS Deaths Announced

The death of Ken Porter, a LASFS member since 1976, was announced at the December 10 meeting by John Hertz. According to Ken’s sister, he had missed a couple of appointments and a check of his apartment led to the discovery that he had died some time ago. The cause of death was not immediately known. Once authorities release his body it will be cremated.

People all remember Ken as friendly and easygoing, which he was, though I also remember he had a passion to help the club, and no patience whenever any injustice was done to his friends.

Like many LASFSians, Ken appeared in Niven, Pournelle and Flynn’s novel Fallen Angels – described on page 387 as a “heavy-set black man.” He participated on “Why Is Fandom So White?” panels run at several LA area conventions in years gone by.

Phil Castora, who joined LASFS in 1962, died during the summer. This was only learned in November when Charles Lee Jackson II went to his care facility intending to drop off some back copies of APA-L. Phil was a past secretary of the LASFS, and a truly funny writer. I loved his letters of comment to File 770 – they were gems.

Phil found a lot to laugh about and he was legendary for suddenly feeling something was so funny that he would laugh uncontrollably and collapse onto the floor. Bruce Pelz described this to several of us when I was a new club member, and answered that I hoped to see it. “No you don’t,” contradicted Bruce, who had already seen it quite often.

Back in the 1970s Phil made his living for awhile as a process server, which gave him an inexhaustible source of stories about the strange and ridiculous. His personal favorite was about the lawyer who had a lot of trouble properly filling out the necessary form to respond to lawsuit for malfeasance.

Interestingly, both Ken and Phil can be seen in their prime along with a lot of other LASFSians in Bill Mills video from the party hosted by Drew and Kathy Sanders on August 10, 1980. Ken is briefly visible at the 8:02, 9:24 and 10:46 marks. Phil appears at 5:52, 9:13 and 10:45. The video is hosted on Bill’s Voices On Video site.

Princess of Mars Premiere

Princess of Mars movie poster

"Princess of Mars" movie poster

I don’t know how often a direct-to-DVD movie gets a world premiere in a theater. Or if a showing at the “San Diego Eco Center for Alternative Fuel Education” really qualifies as the red carpet and limo treatment. But that’s how The Mars Society of San Diego is advertising the feature of its monthly movie night, Asylum’s Princess of Mars starring Antonio Sabato Jr. and Traci Lords. And really, does “the inspiration for James Cameron’s Avatar” (as the trailer unblushingly proclaims) deserve anything less?

The premiere — free and open to the public (though they request an RSVP to FILMIST at MAC.COM) – is Friday, December 18 at 7 p.m. The theater’s address is at 4001 El Cajon Blvd in San Diego. For more information, call 619/723-3456. A “Duck Dodgers” cartoon will also be shown, so the evening won’t be a complete loss. Or you can cough up $17.99 to Asylum and get the DVD at the end of the month – but no Daffy Duck.

Peter Watts Arrested,
Freed on Bond

Peter Watts, author of Blindsight and Starfish, told readers of his blog that he was struck, pepper-sprayed and arrested by U.S. border guards while stopped at the Port Huron, Michigan international border crossing. Although full details of the altercation have yet to be reported, Watts’ friend David Nickle says it happened when Watts “got out of the car and questioned the nature of the search.”

Watts was charged with assaulting a federal officer, a felony. He was allowed to post bond December 9 and return to Canada. According to Locus Online he must return to Michigan to face the assault charge, which could mean two years in prison and a ban on travel to the US.

At Whatever, John Scalzi has posted some information for people who are interested in helping Watts with his legal costs.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]