Pixel Scroll 6/17/17 Fiery The Pixels Fell. Deep Thunder Scrolled Around Their Shoulders

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(1) DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE. Decided this weekend, the 2019 Eurocon will be hosted by TitanCon 2019 in Belfast, NI. The con is scheduled to complement the dates of the expected Dublin Worldcon.

Our proposed dates are Thursday 22 to Saturday 24 August 2019. That is the weekend after the proposed WorldCon (currently being bid for and running unopposed) to be held in Dublin, Ireland on Thursday 15 to Monday 19 August 2019.

We will also be running our traditional TitanCon Coach Tour on Sunday 25 August visiting beautiful locations around Northern Ireland that have been used as filming locations in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

(2) PHONE CALL FROM THE PAST. Today Galactic Journey had its inaugural video conference call from 1962. Sartorially splendid in his white dress shirt and narrow black tie, The Traveler, Gideon Marcus, shared the split screen with Janice Marcus (his editor), and Professor Elliott (whose blog promises to “Document the obscure”).

He started with a recap of significant genre news, including the new issue of F&SF with Truman Capote and Zenna Henderson on the cover, and developments in film, music, and gaming, like Avalon Hill’s recently released Waterloo.

The Traveler masterfully rolled clips like the technical director in those control booth scenes from My Favorite Year, showing us a performance by the band The Shadows (some of them smoking onscreen) and the trailer for Journey to the Seventh Planet (which surprisingly did not end John Agar’s movie career on the spot).

The trio also took questions from the audience — there were about 18 of us on the call — and gave us 1962’s perspective on dogs in space and something called the Radar Range.

If you’d like to take your own trip 55 years back in time, the session was recorded — here’s the link.

(3) FAUX DINO. The Nerdist admires Neil deGrasse Tyson despite his earnestness about certain topics. “GODZILLA Gets Debunked by Neil deGrasse Tyson”.

But, let’s face it, sometimes the good Dr. Tyson is kind of a killjoy. Especially when it comes to debunking the scientific possibility of your favorite science-fiction franchises. He loves to be that guy, the one to tell you how Superman couldn’t really exist, or how this or that sci-fi movie got it wrong, etc. He loves to be Captain Buzzkill sometimes.

The latest example of Neil deGrasse Tyson telling us how one of our favorite science fiction icons simply could never be real happened on his Star Talk radio podcast. According to Tyson, beloved kaiju Godzilla simply could not exist in the real world, because the laws of physics could not allow for it to happen. A giant creature the size of Godzilla would be way too heavy for his limbs, and would therefore collapse under his own weight. Tyson kills your dreams of Godzilla ever emerging from the oceans in this clip from his Star Talk Radio podcast, which you can watch down below….

(4) MIND IN A VACUUM. Or maybe we would find a little of Tyson’s earnestness useful here — “Is the Universe Conscious?”

For centuries, modern science has been shrinking the gap between humans and the rest of the universe, from Isaac Newton showing that one set of laws applies equally to falling apples and orbiting moons to Carl Sagan intoning that “we are made of star stuff” — that the atoms of our bodies were literally forged in the nuclear furnaces of other stars.

Even in that context, Gregory Matloff’s ideas are shocking. The veteran physicist at New York City College of Technology recently published a paper arguing that humans may be like the rest of the universe in substance and in spirit. A “proto-consciousness field” could extend through all of space, he argues. Stars may be thinking entities that deliberately control their paths. Put more bluntly, the entire cosmos may be self-aware.

The notion of a conscious universe sounds more like the stuff of late night TV than academic journals. Called by its formal academic name, though, “panpsychism” turns out to have prominent supporters in a variety of fields

(5) WTF? That was my first thought upon reading in Variety that YouTube personality Lilly Singh has been cast in HBO’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451.

Based on Ray Bradbury’s classic novel of the same name, the show depicts a future where media is an opiate, history is outlawed, and “firemen” burn books — Montag, a young fireman, forsakes his world, battles his mentor, and struggles to regain his humanity.

Singh will play Raven, a tabloid vlogger who works with the fire department to spread the ministry’s propaganda by broadcasting their book-burning raids to fans. She joins an A-list cast that includes Michael B. Jordan, Michael Shannon, and “The Mummy” star Sofia Boutella.

I’ve watched a lot of her comedy videos — my daughter is a fan — and she’s talented and funny. This sounds like she’s being given a dramatic role, so we’ll have to see how well that works. I don’t automatically assume Ray Bradbury would be unhappy with the choice — after all, he seemed to like Rachel Bloom’s YouTube act well enough.

Ray watching “F*** Me Ray Bradbury” for the first time. Photo by John King Tarpinian.

(6) MORE RAY TO SHARE. BBC’s Radio 3 program The Essay ends a five-part series with “Ray Bradbury’s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit”.

Five writers recall clothes and accessories that resonate vividly in works of art: The series started with a white dress and ends with a pristine white suit …

Author and journalist John Walsh describes the transformative powers of a ‘two-piece’, worn in turn by a motley bunch of blokes in Los Angeles and celebrated in Ray Bradbury’s story ‘The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit’.

(7) TOUPONCE OBIT. Ray Bradbury scholar William F. Touponce (1948-2017) died of a heart attack on June 15, His colleague at the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, Jonathan Eller, has posted a thorough and heartfelt appreciation.

Our good colleague, steadfast friend, and long-time Ray Bradbury scholar William F. Touponce passed away from a sudden heart attack on 15 June 2017. Bill joined the faculty of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts in Indianapolis (IUPUI) in 1985, and attained the academic rank of Professor of English and adjunct Professor of American Studies during his twenty-seven years with the school. In 2007 Bill co-founded the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and became the Center’s first director. During his four-year tenure as director, he established The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury and a scholarly annual, The New Ray Bradbury Review. He retired from the faculty in 2012, but continued to pursue his scholarly interests as Professor Emeritus right up until his passing.

…During the first decade of the new century Bill wrote introductions and volume essays for seven special limited press editions of Bradbury’s works; these included an edition of the pre-production text of Ray Bradbury’s screenplay for the 1956 Warner Brothers production of Moby Dick (2008). In 2007, we co-founded the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies within the Institute for American Thought, and Bill agreed to take on the direction of this new and exciting enterprise. During his four-year tenure as director, he established The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury multi-volume series, and a scholarly journal, The New Ray Bradbury Review.

(8) FURST OBIT. Stephen Furst, best known to fans as Vir Cotto on Babylon 5 has passed away. The LA Times obituary sums up his career.

Furst’s breakout role was as Dorfman in the 1978 film “Animal House,” which also marked the film debut of “Saturday Night Live” star John Belushi.

…He was later a regular on “Babylon 5” and “St. Elsewhere.”

In addition to his acting career, Furst directed several low-budget films, and was a producer on the 2009 drama “My Sister’s Keeper,” starring Cameron Diaz.

(9) TODAY’S FANNISH ANNIVERSARY

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born June 17, 1931 — Dean Ing
  • Born June 17, 1953 — Phyllis Weinberg

(11) CARRIE FISHER REPORT. An Associated Press story by Anthony McCartney, “Coroner Releases Results of Carrie Fisher Death Inquiry”, says the coroner determined that Fisher died from a variety of causes, one of which was sleep apnea, “but investigators haven’t been able to pinpoint an exact cause.”

Carrie Fisher died from sleep apnea and a combination of other factors, but investigators were not able to pinpoint an exact cause, coroner’s officials said Friday.

Among the factors that contributed to Fisher’s death was buildup of fatty tissue in the walls of her arteries, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said in a news release late Friday. The release states that the “Star Wars” actress showed signs of having taken multiple drugs, but investigators could not determine whether they contributed to her death in December.

Her manner of death would be listed as undetermined, the agency said.

(12) FOLLOW THE MONEY. Kara Dennison returns with “CONVENTIONS: Where Does Your Money Go?”

The Alley

Artists and vendors, this is for you. This is a whole other concept of paying for cons.

I’ve worked both as a seller in Artist Alley and an AA head, so I’ve seen a lot of sides of this. Tables at events can go for anywhere from $40 to (apparently now) $300, all for a six-foot table with a hotel tablecloth and two chairs. And seriously what the heck.

Here’s what the heck.

For starters, renting those tables actually costs the cons money. Yeah. To take them out of storage and use them for three days, the con has to pay the hotel. That’s a part of the contract. Each hotel chain will have their own version of pricing for that, but that fits into your fee.

Beyond that, the price is reflective of the fee to rent the space the Alley is in, as well as the sort of business the con believes you can expect to do. Not a guarantee, but an estimate. If you shell out $100 for a table, that’s in essence the con saying “A good vendor doing their part can expect to take home at least $100 this weekend.”

To be fair, some cons out there really overestimate themselves. The best way to make sure a price is fair is to talk to regular vendors at the event (in your medium, if possible) and see if it evens out. I’m describing to you how a scrupulous Artist Alley works — if something seems off, do your homework.

That said, there are some cons that know they are too small to bring the goods and will actually cut their prices or waive the table rental fee. If a table is extremely low-priced at an event, it’s not because all tables should be that cheap — it’s because the staff is aware of their attendance size and trying to be fair to artists. Artist Alley fees should be judged against their con, not against each other.

(13) THE X-PERSON FRANCHISE. The word from Vanity Fair — ” Sophie Turner Is Now Officially the Future of the X-Men Franchise”.

Fox today confirmed a number of suspicions that had been swirling around the next installment of the central X-Men franchise. For the foreseeable future, just like Cyclops, the mutants will be seeing red as Jessica Chastain joins Sophie Turner at the center of X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

Doubling down on the investment the studio made in Turner as head of the new class of mutants in X-Men: Apocalypse, the sequel is now, Deadline reports, officially subtitled Dark Phoenix–a reference to a famous comic storyline involving her powerful character, Jean Grey, breaking bad. It’s the same storyline X-Men explored with Famke Janssen as Jean Grey in the weakest installment of the franchise: The Last Stand. To lean in on a storyline from the least-loved X-Men film and draft Turner, whose debut in the franchise certainly didn’t make Apocalypse any better, is a risky choice. But Fox is full of gambles that pay off these days (see: Deadpool, Logan) and will shore up this foray into bold, new (yet familiar) territory with a trio of returning stars.

(14) SECURITY. China launches a quantum comsat.

The term “spy satellite” has taken on a new meaning with the successful test of a novel Chinese spacecraft.

The mission can provide unbreakable secret communications channels, in principle, using the laws of quantum science.

Called Micius, the satellite is the first of its kind and was launched from the Gobi desert last August.

It is all part of a push towards a new kind of internet that would be far more secure than the one we use now.

The experimental Micius, with its delicate optical equipment, continues to circle the Earth, transmitting to two mountain-top Earth bases separated by 1,200km.

(15) GLOWBOT. Swimming robot to investigate Fukushima: “‘Little sunfish’ robot to swim in to Fukushima reactor”.

It’ll be a tough journey – previous robots sent in to the ruined nuclear reactor didn’t make it back.

(16) A PIXAR FRANCHISE KEEPS ROLLING. NPR likes Cars 3: “‘Cars 3’ Comes Roaring Back With A Swapped-Out (Story) Engine”

The multi-billion-dollar success of Pixar’s Cars series can be chalked up to a great many things, but don’t discount the little vroom-vroom frowns the cars make with their dashboard eyes when they want to go fast. When Lightning McQueen, the Owen Wilson-voiced stock car with the bright flames decal, guns for pole position, he squints so much that any human who might be driving him wouldn’t be able to see the road. But of course there are no humans in this world, unless you count the invisible giant kids who must be steering the racers with their hands and making the motor sounds themselves.

That enduring childhood (typically but by no means exclusively boyhood) fascination with moving vehicles has propped up this franchise for the backseat set, seeing it through three feature-length films, a spin-off Planes series, and countless toy tie-ins.

(17) IAMBIC TWO-AND-A-HALF-METER. The Science Fiction Poetry Association is having a half-price sale on their t-shirts.

(18) FEWER NAUGHTY BITS. Row over cleaned-up movies: “Sony sanitising films row – the story so far”.

If you’ve been on a long-haul flight recently, you might have noticed the films being shown were a bit different from their cinematic release.

They’re usually a bit shorter as they’ve been made family-friendly for any young eyes who can see your screen.

Earlier this month Sony decided to make these sanitised versions available to download at home, choosing 24 titles including Ghostbusters and Easy A.

But now they’ve had to backtrack after filmmakers complained about the move.

(19) SUBCONTINENTAL SUBCREATOR. “India’s Tolkien”: “Amish Tripathi: ‘India’s Tolkien’ of Hindu mythology”. I wonder, has he been introduced to “America’s Tolkien”?

Meet best-selling Indian author Amish Tripathi who has just released his much anticipated fifth book, Sita: Warrior of Mithila, that re-imagines the life of the Hindu goddess from the epic Ramayan.

With four million copies in print, the former banker, who has successfully turned centuries-old mythological tales into bestselling works of fiction, is one of the highest selling Indian authors writing in English.

Chip Hitchcock says “India has snobs just like the west: ‘Although critics say his books lack any literary merit, they admire him for his ability to “create completely new stories from old ones”.’“

(20) PIONEERING. Oregon breaks new legal ground in personal identification — “Male, female or X? Oregon adds third option to driver’s licenses”.

Oregon on Thursday became the first U.S. state to allow residents to identify as neither male nor female on state driver’s licenses, a decision that transgender advocates called a victory for civil rights.

Under a policy unanimously adopted by the Oregon Transportation Commission, residents can choose to have an “X,” for non-specified, displayed on their driver’s license or identification cards rather than an “M” for male or “F” for female.

The policy change was cheered by supporters as a major step in expanding legal recognition and civil rights for people who do not identify as male or female. This includes individuals with both male and female anatomies, people without a gender identity and those who identify as a different gender than listed on their birth certificate.

(21) BRONZE AGE. Is this the style of armor Patroclus wore? “Dendra panoply, the oldest body Armour from the Mycenaean era”.

The earliest sample of a full body armor in Greece was found at the Dendra archeological site, located in the Argolis area. Discovered in May 1960 by Swedish archaeologists, the discovered breastplate, and backplate made of bronze, date to the 15th century BC. These pieces are part of the Dendra full-body armor, composed of fifteen pieces, including leg protectors, arm-guards, helmet and the parts mentioned above. The pieces were held together with leather lacing, covering the entire body of the soldier.

The breastplate and backplate are linked on the left side by a hinge, and together with the large shoulder protectors, these pieces consisted the upper body armor. Two triangular-shaped plates are attached to the shoulder protectors, providing protection for the armpits. The armor also includes a neck protection plate. Three pairs of curved shields hang from the waist, giving protection to the groin and the thighs. This artifact is unique for its armguard, and as for the leg protectors, it is assumed that they were made of linen and are a standard piece of armor seen in illustrations from the Mycenaean age.

(22) EMISSION IMPOSSIBLE. Speaking of Homeric — what about Our Wombat!

[Thanks to Joe H., Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Rich Lynch, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and rcade for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

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83 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/17/17 Fiery The Pixels Fell. Deep Thunder Scrolled Around Their Shoulders”

  2. (5) WTF?

    I’m not familiar with the YouTuber in question but I think it could be a cool idea. I didn’t feel the modern day additions to Handmaid’s Tale hurt it, anyway, so done reasonably well it should be fine for Fahrenheit 451.

    I liked Sofia Boutella a lot in Star Trek Beyond.

    (13) The X-Person Franchise

    I didn’t even particularly enjoy the Phoenix Saga during my first exposure in animated series form and I wasn’t exactly a discerning consumer at the time, what with being sixish. I’m not hugely excited that it’ll be adapted again.

    (18) Fewer Naughty Bits

    I prefer these things to be opt-in. I would be pretty annoyed if I was shown the ‘clean’ version without being asked if that was something I wanted, in the same way that I continue to be miffed that theatrical editions of the original Star Wars trilogy are so difficult to get.

    It would have been courteous to speak to the creators involved before altering their work. Not just directors, but writers and editors, too, at minimum.

    (19) Subcontinental Subcreator

    Oooh, this sounds right up my street. I’ll have to add it my Mount 770. I love good retellings.

    (22) Emission Impossible

    A family in my home ed community had pet baby – I think they were terrapins? – and they urinated on everything. I am unsurprised that this was also a consequence of heroic rescue.

  3. (20) X is not a step forward, a step forward would be not have that listing at all since it has nothing to do with your ability to drive or your ability to match the licence to its owner.

  4. (19) Interesting — I’m familiar with (but haven’t actually read yet) Ashok Banker, who also did a multi-volume retelling of the Ramayana, but hadn’t heard of Tripathi until now.

  5. (9) For those who don’t do Facebook, here’s the link to David D. Levine’s Forty Years in Fandom post on his blog.

    I have a ways to go before I will have spent forty years in the desert in fandom, but I have had some memorable experiences. One of the best was asking David to MC the “Iron Faned” competition at the Seattle Corflatch. Each competing team had to write and lay out a fanzine in an hour. David had to keep the audience interested and entertained, by himself, for an hour. Not an easy job. He was fabulous.

  7. (2) I tried to get into the chat but alas.

    (4) Nope.

    (22) If ever there was a worthy cause to be covered in turtle urine, this is it.

  9. (19) Gah, I wouldn’t call him “India’s Tolkien”. I’ve read the first book and it was.. not great. Half-decent ideas but the writing and dialogue were really awkward.

    Speaking of Indian fantasy authors, I’ve heard good things about Samit Basu and his Gameworld trilogy (but haven’t read it yet).

  10. (20) It may not be the optimal step forward, but it is a step forward. Given the dominant use of driver’s licenses as ID by damn near everybody from the grocery store to the courthouse, I’m in favor of any modification that moves away from “boy or girl, ya gotta pick one” at the DMV.

    At least I do live in a state that doesn’t recycle one’s Social Security Number as their driver’s license number. As soon as I found out how to opt out of having my SSN printed on my license, I did so. Having those two things (default ID, SSN) on the same piece of plastic is just begging for trouble.

  11. 5) It’s my (entirely personal, unscientific and unsupported) opinion that comedy is actually a tougher thing to do than serious drama, so comedians and comic actors often do well in non-comic roles.

    18) Personally, I would rather not have movies “Edited for Schools by W.G. Bebbington M.A.”. Decisions about appropriate content should be left to parents, in my opinion, not any form of governmental or commercial censorship. The self-appointed guardians of public morality have always done more damage than the occasional rogue nipple or f-word. (My own, unsupported, opinion again, obviously.)

    19) Sounds like this guy is trying to do for the Ramayana what, for example, Evangeline Walton did for the Mabinogion… and, well, why not?

  12. After a little research on (18)…

    I already own digital copies of several of the named films – including, for instance, both original Ghostbusters movies and all five Spider-Man flicks (six if you count the “2.1” extended version) – on at least one of the named platforms (Vudu, aka Walmart’s connection to the de facto Ultraviolet standard, which I am completely unsurprised to see participating in this program). Given the article’s note that the clean and original versions would be packaged together, I took a look through my library.

    No clean versions have shown up.

    On the one hand, that’s kind of reassuring; I never asked for clean versions and don’t want them, so it’s good that they weren’t proactively added to my library. On the other, though, this likely means that people who wanted the clean versions and already had the originals – say, people in my situation, but with kids – would see no benefit from the new bundles and would have to rebuy the movies to get the clean versions. This strikes me as somewhere between suboptimal and a crass money grab.

    On the plus side, I discovered that Vudu has a library of free-to-stream (with ads) content. This could prove interesting, depending on how intrusive/frequent the ads are.

  13. @Rev Bob, I don’t even think they should put date of birth on there and sex, uhg…. I have a rather Heinleinian attitude toward ID and listing what’s between my legs strikes me as unnecessary info. If you need to turn me over and look like I’m a puppy to check if ID is actually mine, you’re doing it wrong.

  16. @Iphinome:

    Sometimes progress happens in baby steps rather than giant leaps. I would rather see a baby step forward than either no action or any kind of step backwards, so this news item makes me happy.

    I understand – and to some extent agree with – your dissatisfaction that gender is still listed on there at all, but I am determined not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Progress is a plus.

    As for DOB, it will be on there as long as we have laws that restrict activities by age. There’s no getting around that. If a store is to be held liable if they sell booze to a 20-year-old or smokes to a 16-year-old, they have to have some way to verify age. Right now, in the US, that means putting the DOB on the state-issued ID.

  18. @Iphinome: You are certainly free to hold that opinion. I know several people who would agree with you that this is not progress, but I would wager that it’s for different reasons.

    On the other hand, I know enbys and trans folk who will be very happy about this development and see it as a definite positive step. I’m with them.

  19. Two boxes to three boxes isn’t progress when you find all boxes objectionable. *shrug* you know my politics.

  20. As I said, you are free to hold your opinion. I am likewise free to hold mine, which happens to differ from yours.

    Given all the bigots I’ve seen denouncing this news out of transphobia and cissexism, I’m pretty happy where I’m at: opposing the jerks who want to keep oppressing my friends. But if you want to side with them on this issue, you do you. I will only say that I hope it’s not for the same reason they oppose it.

  21. They want two boxes, I want zero. It’s safe to say I’m not with them either.

  22. You’re not going to get zero before you get three. You may disagree with that, and that’s fine – but I think the path to the “no boxes” you want first passes through “three,” then more, and finally none. People have to accept more options before they’ll ever be ready to toss the boxes away altogether.

    So, yes – I see this as progress toward what we both want. It’s not the desired end result for either of us, but it’s closer than it was last week.

    If you can’t see that, I don’t know what else to say except “please stop telling my trans and enby friends who are happy about this that it’s bad and wrong, because they’re getting more than enough of that already.”

  23. I like the way a friend of mine put it: the three options are truer than the two have been. That’s a separate question from how desirable it is that the information be there at all. If it’s going to be, then it should at least be something like true.

  25. Years ago, my mother needed a name for her insecure, troublesome, but good-hearted Pomeranian. I suggested Vir, and having seen Babylon 5, she enthusiastically agreed. I looked the word up at the time and found it means both “man” and “hero” in Latin.

  26. @1: They’re running large conventions on two successive weekends? “You’re braver than I thought!” Any explanation why they don’t just declare that the two coincide, as has been done (IIRC) with past European Worldcons?

    @Steve Wright re @5: exactly my thought; cf Rex Harrison’s autobiography reminding us that comedy is A Damned Serious Business (as his acting teacher told him). There’s also the fact that this role is a Personality, which ISTM is a better fit for some comic actors than (e.g.) Hamlet

    @12: I wonder how many hotels actually charge for tables? Possibly Dennison is dealing with conventions so large that even the hotel is running a convention center (cf Chicons IV and V, where the exhibit hall was a separate domain), or possibly cons big enough to pay lots of guests (including large appearance fees) are treated differently. She also misses a subtlety that facility food usually comes from a contractor who is trying to make money off bulges instead of steady sales (i.e., not the facility itself) — but she’s right that the food prices don’t mean the organizer is rolling in it. (I’m a bit croggled by $12 hotdogs, but the last hotdog I bought in a center ($5, $6 for large) was in Spokane — which neither is the bright center of the universe nor charges as if it were. (IIRC they have an annual media con, but I have no reports of its economics.)

  27. @Rev Bob

    In the long ago time, Nevada used SSN as your driver’s license number. At least until the state lost a lawsuit over it. New licenses issued all around and… someone noticed, if you subtracted a two digit number from one segment and divided the resulting full number by two, it was still your SSN. Sort of a mini-scandal in the newspapers for awhile. Not sure if they ever moved past the feeble encrypted number scheme.

    @Kip W

    Furst?!? Great author 🙂

  28. @Stoic:

    Egads. That really IS feeble.

    I seem to recall that one of my neighboring states used/uses SSN as DLN, but that’s calling on memories that are about two decades old. Been a while since I worked in a convenience store and saw ’em all the time. (I could tell you stories about the bad fakes/alterations I encountered!)

    As it happens, I have three driver’s licenses in my wallet (current and the previous two), as well as – I shit thee not – my college ID from 1988*. Because I opted out of having my SSN on my licenses, the older two (identical save for the expiration date) show “ON FILE” in that field. The current one omits the field completely, replacing it with a new number that means nothing to me. I have no idea what it’s used for, or if it is used at all.

    * I also have a 1950s $5 bill in there, which comes in handy for proving that “In God We Trust” is a relatively recent addition to the design. Then there’s the pocket ninja…

  29. Tyson has said before that he mostly watches movies instead of reading books. I’m not saying that is exactly like admitting to eating babies and kicking kittens, but that is exactly like admitting to eating babies and kicking kittens.

  30. Ugh! I missed the context on Furst. Apologies for a misdirected comment and condolences to his friends, family, and fans.

  31. SSNs used to be reasonably public info. It’s only in the last couple decades or so that they’ve turned into your secret PIN.

    “the three options are truer than the two have been.” A good point. Asimov once wrote an essay pointing out that, while “5” is the wrong answer to “2+2=?”, it’s less wrong than, say, “blue” or “spatula”, and this ought to be taken into account.

    What I best remember Stephen Furst for is The Dream Team, a comedy in which he plays a mental patient who can only speak by repeating baseball game commentary.

  33. My student ID at college was my social security number (back in the eighties).

  34. Steve Wright: 5) It’s my (entirely personal, unscientific and unsupported) opinion that comedy is actually a tougher thing to do than serious drama, so comedians and comic actors often do well in non-comic roles.

    I agree with that as a generality. The question comes to mind about Lilly Singh because a lot of her YouTube comedy includes mugging various exaggerated facial expressions (in character) and if her 451 character is going to parody media coverage that would be an asset, but if she’s supposed to be a dramatic character, that kind of overacting would have to be discarded.

  35. They also often used to use SSNs as your ID with your insurance company. For obvious reasons, that got discontinued, but I have to admit that in a lot of ways, moving away from the SSN complicated things immensely in terms of actually verifying member identities &c.

  36. @Chip Hitchcock: “They’re running large conventions on two successive weekends?” The Eurocon has an important role in European fandom, but it isn’t large. If it were a US regional convention, it would be on the small side, but it would be one of the really good cons that you want to go to.

    The Eurocon was held in conjunction with the Worldcon in 1995 and 2005 in Glasgow. I was there and so much was going on, I did not make it to any Eurocon programming or get to know any of the regular Eurocon fans.

    In 2014 Shamrokon was held in Dublin a week after London 3. It was excellent. The Eurocon has its own distinctive character and it was a lot of fun. The timing made it easy for Worldcon members to attend. Shamrokon was well organized. It was bid by James Shields and it turned out that while James was fantastic for winning the bid, it is not actually possible for one person to organize a Eurocon all by himself. But then the local Irish fans pitched in and all was fine.

    I believe that James got the idea of bidding Eurocon on his GUFF trip, where he attended Au Contraire!, the New Zealand National SF Convention, the weekend before Aussiecon Four in Australia. I was also at Au Contraire!. It was awesome. It also inspired a Worldcon bid you may have noticed.

  37. Comedy timing can be a huge asset when doing drama and other non-laff-type genres (like horror). As Mike notes, mugging… not so much.

    That Shakespeare fellow is in the news again. Reminds me of the third-rate actor who wanted to play Hamlet, but nobody would cast him in the part until he came into an inheritance and used it all to mount a production with himself in the lead. As he launched into the famous soliloquy, the grumbling (and other noises) of the audience got to him at last, and he turned to them and yelled, “Hey, c’mon! Don’t blame me! I didn’t write this crap!”

  38. My college ID was my SSN, too. When I worked at a work-study job in college, we had a listing of the students by their dorm rooms and each was listed with their SSNs. I suppose if I had access to a time machine, I could start a life of cybercrime and wreak havoc on those who had annoyed me in college.

    I also remember when in high school, we were lectured to about how life in college would change us. One point was that we would memorize our SSNs. To prove this, the two teachers recited their SSNs aloud to the class.

  40. When I went through Army basic in 1980, one’s SSN doubled as one’s “service number.” To ensure we all memorized them. our drill sergeant conducted mail call by number instead of name.

  41. @Tom Becker: there’s a difference between successive cons a few hundred miles apart and such cons in the same city; I’d venture that a lot of the Irish con-runners who weren’t heavily involved in Loncon will find keeping away from a more local con more difficult. Not my monkeys — I’m not likely to go to either, for reasons — but I may look on and wonder from a distance.

  43. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the discussion, but I figured I’d point it out just in case. Not only is Belfast not Dublin, but Belfast is in another country from Dublin. Yeah, they’re on the same island, but I don’t think it’s all that different from London-Dublin.

    (I hope I can manage it, because it would be fun.)

  44. Steve Leavell- I don’t know how different it may be but VA medical services still use that as the main identifier.

  45. I would like to see someone drive from London to Dublin, with no boats involved. That’s a big difference between Dublin->Belfast.

  46. See the TitanCon Belfast History page. TitanCon is run by a local Belfast SF/F society, a local gaming centre, and Brotherhood Without Banners. It has been held annually since 2011. I don’t think there is anything to worry about, except that if you don’t go you’ll miss out on it.

    Dublin to Belfast is 2.5 hours by express train with 8 departures daily. You will be able to attend both a WorldCon and a Eurocon in less than two weeks off.

    Belfast is well worth visiting. Besides the Game of Thrones and The Enchanted Duplicator connections, the food is outstanding (especially the seafood), the Victorian architecture is amazing, and the fans are friendly.

  47. @lurkertype: If you’re willing to front me the money, I’d be happy to accept the challenge. It looks like a C-17 costs $24,000 an hour to operate. Probably need two hours.

  48. Dang. I should have been more specific and also ruled out aircraft. I maintain you can’t take the train from London to Dublin.

  49. 4) I am an occasional believer in the Sentient Universe — the one that sometimes taps you really hard on the shoulder and says, “AHEM.” But I also know that my personal interpretation of unusual coincidences is no more likely to be true than those of any other religion. It’s a useful metaphor at times, but not more than that.

    12) I’m impressed; that’s a very good analysis of the reasons cons cost as much as they do. While the author’s primary focus is on media-cons, a lot of it is applicable to traditional fan-run cons as well. It’s also worth noting that one of the main ways a con gets into financial difficulties is low attendance, and there have been some notable examples of cons which were depending on the gate to pay the bills and… it didn’t. (*cough*FedConUSA*cough)

    Relatedly, my partner has a Care and Feeding of Dealers 101 guide on his website. This is geared more toward the traditional fan-run con. (Full disclosure: It’s over 10 years old, and really needs some updating to reflect how certain things have changed. But every one of those sub-headings is there because of something we, or other dealers we know, have personally encountered.)

    13) The Dark Phoenix arc may or may not have been “the weakest X-Men film”, but it’s a well-loved story within the comic franchise. IMO, if the movie had problems, it was because they tried to compress a complex storyline that took a long run to finish in comic format into a 90-minute movie, and of necessity cut out a lot of critical foundation material. If this one gets it right, more power to them.

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