(no subject)

Originally posted at Livejournal.

More Worldcon Pictures!

Where were we? Saturday, I suppose.

After delicious Tapas, we invited the Knibleys back to the hotel for a drink. We were going to drink in the bar, and then it seemed like a good idea to show them around the parties.

Here is my disclaimer: At each party entrance, I explained that they weren't members, they were friends visiting from out of town, and we promised to tip generously if they were okay with us coming in. Everyone was fine as soon as the word "tip" was uttered, but I didn't want to do anything sneaky so we didn't.

kniblet got stickered!



Because there were so many people visiting from the U.K. to help promote London in 2014, dibsy started up a great game of "What neighborhood are you from?" I'm sure it wasn't called that, and it was probably spelled with a "u," but it was fun to watch.

It is truly awkward to explain to people who don't regularly attend SF conventions that there are people in this world who believe themselves to be an EXTREMELY IMPORTANT science fiction fan.

We talked about lots of stuff and things, but sadly I remember very little of the conversation. There was alcohol involved.

Sunday morning! Breakfast!



We were waiting in line for the hotel restaurant, when a passing someone said that there was a buffet breakfast at a restaurant less than a block away.

I love orange juice.



I saw two panels. Here's the first one.



Here is an awesome shirt that sat in front of me.



The first panel was:
NASA and the Future of Space Exploration
NASA and the future of space exploration
Catherine Asaro (M), Ben Bova, David Brin, Geoffrey A. Landis, Mary
Turzillo

It's gotta be good when the title is the same as the description. All in all, this was a pretty good panel. All of the panelists were resigned to the understanding that the fickleness of politics prevents NASA from being able to complete major projects. All of the panelists said that they were looking forward to private enterprise in the field of space exploration, with varying degrees of excuses why such things can't be publicly owned anymore.

No one even hinted that the political process needs fixing, because that's just how it is, and isn't giving tax money to private enterprise great?

I was happy to hear about upcoming projects, and the continuing efforts to engage young people in an interest in space exploration.

During the questions at the end, I said that I was very skeptical of private corporations. I wondered if any of the panelists could tell me what sorts of controls will prevent private enterprise from building great new technology with tax money and then hoarding the publicly paid for technology, and trying to monopolize on space exploration contracts to keep other corporations from competing.

Ben Bova is a swell guy who writes lots of nifty books. He is wrong when he says that corporate greed and the desire to make money from their technology is enough of a control.

The next panel was about pseudo-science, and had a traffic accident for a moderator. The report will be rather long probably not be very long, but will be emotionally taxing, and I hope to be asleep in two hours. I'm going to save the report for later.

Sunday at Chicon7

Originally posted at Livejournal.

A report on the second Sunday panel, and some of the rest of Sunday.

After the NASA panel was the panel that I had really wanted to see, a panel about Pseudo-Science. The moderator was one of the previous panelists, and had not seemed the least bit obnoxious, overbearing or bullying. It's amazing what a little bit of power can do for people.

Here's the program description:

The Resurgence of Pseudo-Science in 21st Century America
From creationism/intelligent design to astrology, non-scientific
concepts seem to be capturing the population’s imagination once
again. What is causing this rise of anti-science and what, if anything
can be done to stop it?
Mary Turzillo (M), Kendall F.Morris, Richard Garfinkle, Matthew S.
Rotundo, James L. Cambias

Maybe Mary Turzillo is someone that you're a close, personal friend of. Maybe she's one of many people on my flist that I don't know personally. No matter what, she is the worst moderator I've ever seen for any panel discussion.

The panel began benignly enough, with a discussion of the definition of pseudo-science. The moderator asked a question, and each panelist was given a chance to speak. As the panel progressed, Ms. Turzillo's questions got weirder, less based in reality, and Ms. Turzillo became more aggressive. "What if it turns out that Astrology is true?" "What if reality has shifted and these things all used to be true?"... By about the middle of the panel, Ms. Turzillo was every other speaker. She would ask a question, allow one panelist to express part of a thought and then she herself would speak over the panelist. Eventually, she forcibly took the microphone away from another panelist as he was explaining how the Scientific Method works.

No discussion of the second sentence in the description topic was allowed.

Like I said, she seemed a good enough contributor when she wasn't allowed to bully the other panelists, but she should NEVER EVER EVER be allowed to moderate any panel anywhere ever again. I don't mean this to be a terrible thing said behind her back. Please feel free to tell Mary Turzillo that I said she was the worst moderator I've ever seen, and that I think that she should never be allowed to moderate a panel again.

I don't know how Chicon selected their moderators, but I do know that a strong case was made against allowing moderators to self select, or allowing moderators to go without vetting.

Later on that evening, the Hugo awards!

I was reluctant to see the awards in the presentation room because the idea of waiting in line for a long time to be crammed into a room with 5,000 people does not appeal to me. Because there was to be a live, streaming web feed, there was no hotel room broadcast, so I decided to bite the bullet.

I'm glad that I saw the awards in person. For one reason, the room was big enough to accommodate the very large number of people present. For another, The streaming feed was killed by bots.

The Hugo Awards will be rebroadcast tonight at 7:00PM Central Time at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hugo-awards

Here is a video of the Hugo awards audience. I did not take this video immediately before the ceremony started. It was probably taken about thirty minutes before everyone had gotten in. This is all the seats in the Grand Ballroom occupied, with standing room only at the back of the theater. The standing room area was eventually quite full.

John Scalzi was a funny, engaging presenter. He has a great feel for pacing and for tossing in quick jokes to keep the event flowing smoothly. I might very well watch the event again.

Website recommendation . More about Chicago Worldcon

Originally posted at Livejournal.

( cut for people who don't care about world science fiction convention politics )