Readercon

Last weekend I went to Readercon, another area SF convention, this one devoted to SF/F books and writing only, no other stuff. Well, apart from one panel on cooking and another one of Joan Sloncziewki's trip to Cuba. It was lots of fun, usually had at least one panel to go to, if not two or more. Felt friendlier, as in meeting more people without the link of filk, than other conventions. Was sort of surprised to see Sam Delaney present without there being a bigger fuss, though there was a panel devoted to him. Was surprised to see Richard Stallman, then remembered I'd seen him on a *panel* at Arisia or Boskone last year, so shouldn't have been. Was surprised to see him handing out pamphlets on why e-books are evil, like a street preacher. Learned Arisia has so much money it can donate to smaller conventions in the area.

===
elaine pagels argues book of revelation is anti paulite, angry about
gentiles being let in

woman says she was catholic but missed narnia allegory by comparison to
other children's lit like uncle arthur. (heidi or secret garden?)
Compare to Lewis's claim that he wasn't thinking of christianity while
writing

(Frankenstein)
Kant coined modern prometheus, for ben franklin and electricity

mary sees herself as the creature? never met her mother. had bad father.
had notes her mother wrote in childbirth (mary wollstonecraft). "i have
no doubt of seeing the animal today"

anthro panel. meh in general. one guy did 2 years field work in geneva,
talks about event where activists asked everyone to stand in a circle
holding hands, which terrified the diplomats, and china tried to block
it. armani suits and tshirts. UN meeting toom totally set up to
reinforce hierarchy.

virginia has its own dialect.

lila garrott claims lothlorien is a walled city... caras galadhon, yep, it is.

Other life bits

Finally visited Salem. It was kind of disappointing. Small town, but not small enough, seems to sprawl outside the downtown area. Lots of witch kitsch. LOTS, there's at least four witch-themed museums, plus various stories selling witchy paraphernalia. Lots of psychic readings shops, too. I got there too late to do any witch stuff even if I wanted to, apart from a haunted house-like shop in the mall, only $17.

I did do part of a walk along various historic houses.

IMHO a 'cafe' should not have $20+ entrees.

Arguably the nicest thing about the trip was on the train ride up, passing through some neat-looking wetlands at some point, I think before Lynn.


Other things... I've never been good at memory palace or other mnemonic type stuff. I memorized 111 digits of pi in high school but entirely through rhythm and brute force and some parallels within the numbers. I've memorized a fair number of poems, including 90 lines of heptameter, but those have their own structure. But, I've been playing memory games -- card matching type -- on my computer and phone. At first I'd put names to the cards and tried to just remember a sequence, but recently I started trying to string them together: "the spaceship releases Gort as Joe looks on and rightie runs away", and I've greatly improved my performance and score on the phone game, which gives doubling score if you can match pairs in a row, thus rewarding learning all the cards first and then trying to match them all. I regularly get what used to be my high scores. So, 'huh, it works'.

I finally got A/C. Was going to buy, then turned out fanw had a spare unit she didn't need, and I borrowed it. Was soooo good during the heat wave. Now, I feel guilty because it's cool enough again that fan cooling can work, but swapping the A/C and fan would be problematic. (The A/C fan seems to just re-circulate, not bring in air from outside.)

Friday was filk circle in Waltham, and I ate first at a Salvadoran/Ecuadoran restauran, Guanachapi. I note the countries are not adjacent; a friend suggests marriage. Had what turned out to be too much food: steak, rice and beans, salad, bacon, bready disks (not very good), chips and an odd salsa. The 'bacon' was more like thick lumps of pork belly; one of them seemed pure fat, and too disgusting for me, the others were more meaty. A decent meal, with leftovers; not ecstasy food. Oh, slices of avocado, too.


Books read recently:
_Agatha H and the Clockwork Princess_, Phil and Kaja Foglio
_I Claudius_, Robert Graves
_Old Man's War_, John Scalzi
_End This Depression Now!_, Paul Krugman
_The God Engines_, John Scalzi
_The Android's Dream_, John Scalzi
_Redshirts_, John Scalzi
_Burma Chronicles_, Guy Delisle
_Aya of Yop City_, Marguerite Abouet
_Captain Vorpatril's Alliance_, Lois Bujold
_Dreamweaver's Dilemma_, Lois Bujold (re)
_Look to Windward_, Iain Banks (re)
_India Becoming_, Akash Kapur
_Handbook to Life in the Inca World_, Suarez and George
_Shards of the Exalted Dream_

new blogs and links

transit blogs
http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/
http://www.humantransit.org/

econ blogs
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox.html -- Matt Yglesias. Someone suggested he was what I was looking for, in terms of economically-informed, market-friendly but not -fellating, liberals. Someone was right!

"Dr Laura Agustín on Migration, Trafficking and Sex"
http://www.lauraagustin.com/

Decline of US "assault deaths" and comparison to other countries, don't know how homicides are different. http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/20/america-is-a-violent-country/ The curve seems overly smoothed IMO, wiping out a 1990s peak, though this doesn't change the long trend.

Map of causes of death http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/top-15-causes-of-death
The "accidents" map is particularly interesting.

Tokyo as "libertarian" society, without much commons http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/do-property-rights-increase-freedom.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/big-campaign-spending-government-by-the-1/259599/
A tiny number of Americans -- .26 percent -- give more than $200 to a
congressional campaign. .05 percent give the maximum amount to any
congressional candidate. .01 percent give more than $10,000 in any
election cycle. And .000063 percent -- 196 Americans -- have given more
than 80 percent of the super-PAC money spent in the presidential
elections so far.

The "ultra-rich" of 1955
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/job-creators-of-1955/

LA takes lead in transit attitudes http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2012/07/6192057/what-new-york-city-can-learn-los-angeles-about-transit-biz?politics-bucket-headline

Oprah visits India
http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/you-still-eat-with-your-hands-oprahs-magical-mystery-tour-of-india-385494.html