Z and I had a lovely afternoon adventure yesterday, even if none of us are quite sure what we saw. School gets out early on Wednesdays, so I took him home for lunch, then took the bus downtown to visit le Fonds régional d'art contemporaine de Lorraine, which is to say, the Lorraine Regional Foundation for Contemporary Art. Ironically, the ( Read more... )

I've uploaded my DragonCon pictures in three batches: one for the parade, one for the Mechanical Masquerade on Sunday night, and one for, well, everything else. It was a great con. I saw a dozen fantastic things I wanted to see, at the expense, as usual, of at least three dozen fantastic things that were too far away or had absurdly long lines or ( Read more... )

Tellus Science Museum rocks my world. And their annual "Night at the Museum" event was the perfect geek family outing. With more than 40 costumed characters from science *and* science fiction, including Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and the the entire crew of the Serenity, it was like DragonCon Lite. We dressed Z in his lab coat and safety ( Read more... )

A bunch on glow-in-the-dark people spout bad, angsty dialog while engaging in an endless series of fights and vehicle chases. A 3-D movie with a 1-D plot about 2-D characters ( Read more... )

Need a recommendation: what's a classic science fiction short story that would be appropriate for a high-intermediate (there's that word again!!) ESL class? (Or maybe an excerpt that's complete in itself?)

(NB: Facebook comments here.)

So as you may have guessed from the OED story and all the dancing I've been doing: the paper is done! Woot ( Read more... )

There's a (possibly apocryphal) story about J.R.R. Tolkien and the OED (of which he was on the editorial staff) that goes thusly:

Someone once approached Tolkien and asked him why he used the plural "dwarfs" in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, "when the OED says that the correct plural is 'dwarves.'"

Tolkien allegedly replied, "My good sir, I wrote ( Read more... )

I have permission from my historical linguistics professor to do my final paper on science fiction vocabulary. I'd appreciate it if you'd take the time to complete my survey. It's both simpler and a bit harder than the last one--there are fewer questions, but they're probably harder to answer. There are no "right" and "wrong" answers; I'm ( Read more... )

I just finished reading the Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon. I liked the first few so much I actually went out and bought the last one in hardback, which is quite a compliment for me--there are about three authors whose books I automatically shell out that much cash for, and while I've enjoyed Moon's writing in the past, she hasn't typically ( Read more... )

I haven't been inundating my blog with costume construction tales and pictures this summer, but did you really think that meant I'd go to Dragoncon without at least four costumes ( Read more... )