It was on April 3 and it was a great day, well worth taking the time off. There were several fascinating talks, but the two pieces which gripped me by the throat and held me were The DC Youth Poetry Slam Team and singer-songwriter Be Steadwell. Steadwell's song had me in tears, and I do not cry easily at theater.

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I wish these had been up ( Read more... )

One of the more interesting panels at yesterday's conference dealt with internet (and other) surveillance in daily life. While all of the panelists were interesting, Madeline Ashby, who was introduced to me via her story in the Hieroglyph anthology, was the one whose ideas intrigued me the most ( Read more... )

I took today off when I found out there was going to be an event at the National Academy of Sciences about the role of Science Fiction in inspiring science fact (Can We Imagine Our Way to a Better Future?).

The Twitter feed is here. And an article from the BBC about the book project is here.Neal Stephenson was asked in 2011 why fiction writers ( Read more... )

Last night I attended a lecture with performances by Robert Wyatt on George Gershwin's life and work. The information about his life was fairly pedestrian, but I learned a couple of new things. The first was that his jawline was irregular because he'd been kicked by a horse. The second was that the Lullaby for Strings pre-dates "Vi's Song" in ( Read more... )

Once again I volunteered for this discussion at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. This doesn't mean I was on any of the panels, just for the record; only that I did things like make certain people had water, directed them places, and generally dogsbodied for anyone who needed me ( Read more... )

For anyone who's interested, this was the blurb about the lecture. This segment of notes is predominantly from Dr. Vecchi.

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Seriously, I'm writing up my notes about a joint lecture given by a retired BAU member and the current head of the BSU. If you are interested in the FBI or Psychopaths, please check behind the cut.

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