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Monday Starlinks

September 1st, 2008

I’ll have some new blogging-related announcements in the next day or two, schedule permitting. Good stuff. In the meantime, here are some links of interest for science and science fiction.

Science Fiction

Dragoncon makes the headlines now in major news venues like CNN via their ireport category. More conventional reporting in the Altanta newspapers. I’d love to go sometime, and to Comic-Con, but haven’t managed it just yet. Worldcon was always my standard can’t-miss con except for some international venues, but when these other cons are drawing many tens of thousands or more and Worldcon is having trouble cracking 5000 (Denvention this year drew about 3750 according to their website), well…we’ll see.

Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was apparently a wartime seducing spy. Of course writers are dead sexy.

Kick-ass wearable dino suits! Awesome!

Star Trek: The Experience is closing in Las Vegas today. This kind of pisses me off because I always meant to go and never got around to it. Carpe Astras!

And in a related story, which I will put under science fiction, because it is really in some sense just actualized science fiction: Fossil Fuels 30 Million Year Old Beer. Extraction of ancient DNA, just as in Jurassic Park, gives us beer from the past. Cool.

Science

This one could go into either category, but it’s more science in the end, I think. Cracked.com lists eight animals with superpowers. It’s a fun article.

On to global warming. In the Telegraph, we have two articles. The first reports how the arctic has become an island for the first time in human history, with both the north-west and north-east passages simultaneously open. These kind of events are happening in all sorts of fields, ranging from biology to agriculture, medicine, and more, where there are unprecedented changes occurring all consistent with warming. Now, the other article comes from the esteemed but badly biased and misinformed Christopher Booker, who argues that the global warming consensus isn’t one, and uses a bunch of misinformation and myths to make his stupid case. Yes, a very stupid case, buying into crap work. Don’t think so? Read his op-ed and then read this. Booker is repeating lies for whatever reason, and the Telegraph is printing them.

Now, there may be some strange things going on. The global climate models I think are pretty good and robust in many ways, but they have to assume things like solar behavior. There is a relationship involving sun spots that’s important, and for the first time in a century we’ve had a month with NO sunspots. More extended periods without sunspot activity in the past have led to cooling here on Earth. In the short term — decades — we could see CO2 and the sun offsetting each other, with a massive temperature spike coming out on the other end. It could be a worst-case scenario as a natural trend masks the underlying heating trend from CO2, and lying liars like Booker convince enough people to take no action.

OK, more than just links today, I suppose.

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4 Responses to “Monday Starlinks”

  1. Richard Says:
    September 2nd, 2008 at 3:17 am

    You’re spot on about Booker - he really is an embarrassment to the Telegraph, and UK journalism. And this isn’t the only scientific issue on which he has, over a period of years, systematically misrepresented the facts and made wholly bogus claims. His book ‘Scared to Death’ really is something special, and not in a good way!

  2. Kevin Standlee Says:
    September 2nd, 2008 at 9:37 am

    This year’s Worldcon in Denver had approximately the same number of people attending it as the previous Worldcon in Denver. The largest Worldcon ever was only a bit more than 8000 people, which is still dwarfed by monster pop culture events like DC and ComicCon.

    Worldcon, by its very structure, can’t possibly grow as large as those two huge events. It’s held in a different city every year; it’s put on by a completely independent group every year. If next year’s Dragon*Con were going to be in Glasgow, and were to be organized by a different group with no financial relationship or backing from the one this year, you can expect that there would be a lot fewer people attending it. Especially if the one the year after that was going to be in Melbourne, and the one after that in Seattle, and so on.

    The World Science Fiction Convention is never going to be able to challenge the large, static conventions on size. Its major attraction is likely to be the quality of the gathering, and the concentration of international SF/F authors, artists, and fans, and its focus on actual science fiction and fantasy art and literature, rather than things that don’t seem to have a whole lot to do with SF/F, like pro wrestling and adult film stars.

  3. Kevin Standlee Says:
    September 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 am

    Whoops, I hit submit too fast: Thank you again for being a panelist on Match Game SF!

  4. Mike Brotherton Says:
    September 2nd, 2008 at 10:08 am

    You’re welcome, Kevin. It was a lot of fun! And good points regarding Worldcon. I think I grew up viewing it as the biggest, best, most important science fiction convention and have been disillusioned a bit when other events dwarf it by factors of 10-30. I already have in my mind World Fantasy as being the small high-quality con, and I love it, but have difficulty attending when I teach a MWF class schedule as has been the case in recent years.

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