Displacement Scale

I have a project to do that involves moderately accurate weighing. A good kitchen scale would set me back $50. But what if I just used a measuring cup with really accurate markings to measure the displacement of water? Impractical for large projects, but as far as I know perfectly accurate for getting weight. Since every ml of water at 4C equals one gram to be displaced. Provided I carefully look at the meniscus I should be able to measure as little as 25 grams using a standard measuring cup with another container floating freely in it. And with some judicious estimation I might get to within a reasonable error of my goal weights.

What project you might well ask. I am making ink. I am using as near as I can replicate the ink prepared by boiling galls recipe that takes several hours of gently simmering the crushed galls in distilled water. A long task, but one made lighter by listening to a book while I do it.

Poor Duran Duran

Apparently there is a real person in New Mexico named Duran Duran. He's listed in the phone book and he's registered to vote. But due to his name some Republican bloggers assumed he must be a fraudulent registration and were all up in arms. And he might not be the only one. Searching this online whitepages I found five other individuals bearing this name in the US. No word on if any of them are registered or not because people don't believe they're real people.

Oh, and the 28 people the GOP accused of not being real? Acorn produced evidence they were all real people and they've backed off. The Guardian

How Big a Particle?

I understand that the famous Double-slit experiment has been done with other particles besides photons that behave as both particles and waves. Today I wondered if anything larger had been tried. Apparently a paper was published in 2002 entitled "Quantum interference experiments with large molecules" where C60, fullerene molecules, were used in place of photons and it was found they behaved the same way. Where, exactly, does quantum behavior break over into macro behavior?

Rain Upon Laundry

I listened to a bit of The Thirteen Gun Salute while I did laundry at the laundromat. Unfortunately the book I checked out is a great deal less pleasant than the previous ones owing the the flat grating voice of Richard Brown. I have put in a request from interlibrary loan for the one read by the actor Patrick Tull. He does not go all the way to making it a radio play, but he does do the accents and some of the way the voices might sound. I like this dramatic reading style in part because it helps figure out who is thinking or saying something.

The rain that is coming down will probably make my laundry dry more slowly and it isn't pleasant to go out, but it is washing away the grim and making the air fresh. I like crisp autumnal days like this. As long as I don't have to be out in them very long.

Now I must figure out what I shall do for dinner. Richard will be home soon and I have people to call as well.

Cover Boy

So I'm on the cover of Tales of the Talisman, Volume 4, Issue 2. That's the most recent one. Apparently I had the right look to be a mad scientist and the creature as well.

Last night I ended up going to visit friends downtown, John and Robin, who live there and Dave who was visiting from out of town. It was interesting riding the bus downtown since the Great American Beer Festival was going on and so near the convention center it became full of a variety of cheerful people. It was actually quite nice on such a drizzly fall day to have crowds of happy people on the bus rather than a few quiet strangers.

Another Spin on the How I Came to Fandom Story

I somehow failed to find out that MileHiCon, the regional science fiction convention in the city I've lived near all my life, existed until I was nearly 21 years old. I knew about the local Star Trek/media convention, I knew about gaming conventions, but somehow I had completely failed to find out about the local SF book convention even though I was a dedicated reader with 1,500 books in my collection at that time. I remember once in high school hearing about the Critter Crunch, a sort of small scale robot wars, second hand from a friend and I had ideas about checking that out but I didn't actually do it. Why? I didn't know I needed it.

What got me going to conventions initially was the stars of things like Star Trek: TNG. Going to see a star is an easy sell, or at least an easier sell, to a young fan. If I had somehow heard that Arthur C. Clarke was going to be at a local convention when I was a teen you bet I would have been there. But I cannot think of many other authors that would have had that star power to draw me in. And I would have had to have heard about it. I honestly did not know a thing about it until I got drawn in by a group of fans at the art show of a gaming convention. And I went to the gaming convention specifically looking to volunteer to make friends because I was horrendously lonely living on my own. I don't think it would have occurred to me had that not been the case. A volunteer ethos for conventions was not instilled in me by things like Starfest.

And given the way that many fans are so damn off putting when talking about fandom I'm not sure I would have stayed going to MileHiCon except that I had fallen into the orbit of the Denver Area SF Association and made one of my great friendships. Rose Beetem is the reason I am in fandom. Period. Without her I likely would have wandered away long ago.

To draw in new people star power is needed. Plus advertising. And I can think of only a few name in SF and fantasy with enough star power to draw in fans at any price. Much less the typical $200 at the door price of a Worldcon. Why would a fan shell out even $40 for some big important author that they're not a fan of? When I was a teen I would have gone to a convention (if I heard about it) if the author had been Piers Anthony, Michael Crichton, or maybe Stephen King. But MileHiCon actually had Sheri S. Tepper, Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, George R.R. Martin Connie Willis, SP Somtow, and Ellen Datlow in my HS years. Not that they aren't great authors (or editors), but I'm only someone who knows who they are now after I've been in fandom for many years. The only one I might have heard of was George R.R. Martin in connection with Wild Cards. And I did not come across that metaphorical handbill when I was in high school.

I probably prefer the mix of authors that our convention actually has rather than going after the sort of thing that appealed to me as a teen and still appeals to teens today. But if you want young people you need someone they've heard of and to actually tell them. Having a webpage isn't enough because no one is searching for your convention if they don't already know that such a thing exists. And I'm not the right person to answer where young people go online when they're readers... Maybe conventions need to advertise on author's blogs? I don't know.

The Hugos No One Attends*

*For values of the people actually receiving the award.

Since I've never attended before and did not closely look at which authors were or were not attending the convention I thought I would see a number of authors picking up Hugo awards at the ceremony on Saturday night here in Denver. Not so and I've been given to understand this is not unusual.

In the case of both the fan awards and the dramatic presentation ones it is quite understandable. After all if you were in the movie or television biz it would mostly be a bit of a distraction from work. Meanwhile the fans are often too poor to jet off to wherever Worldcon is in a particular year so unless they're regular attendees of Worldcon or near by they're probably not going to show either. But the lack of authors at it is rather disheartening. This, much more than people talking about the graying of fandom or griping "What I liked didn't win, so the Hugos suck", shows there really is something wrong with the Hugo Awards. Authors can't even be bothered to show up when they're nominated and the odds on favorite to win the award. (I'm referring here to Michael Chabon not being there to pick up the Hugo given to for his novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union.)

By something wrong with the Hugos I mean that they're not really that important outside of the community of people who already go to Worldcon. They probably have as much value on the cover of a book as any other award (or even a made up one) rather than being something important to sales like the Oscars are to movie rentals and sales. And I don't know how this could be changed.

The usual suspect is the lack of new fresh faces at Worldcon, and I'm sure it could not hurt. Another problem is the size and profile of the World Science Fiction Society and the Hugo Awards themselves. Search for the Booker Prize or Hugo Award and you'll generally find about half as much mention of the Hugos on the net as the Booker. Assuming that the average SF reader is probably more internet savvy and likely to have a blog or webpage than the average reader of the type of literature that get the Booker that is not a good sign. So how could the Hugo be increased in profile?

I do not know.

I think that there would be more attention paid if there was more perceived value in voting or if the voters were higher profile about doing so. For example I think a few well respected and widely read bloggers writing about how and why they voted would do much to 'shine up' the award. Or if was more transparent about how and when to vote so that people who do not have the initial interest or ability to go to a World Science Fiction Convention would be blogging about it the same way they write about politics.

But this is obviously all speculation on my part. I have no hard numbers to point to that say that having more members of an online WSFS would make the Hugos more respected or not. But I would love to hear competing ideas or support.

I'll be cleaning and writing periodically for the rest of the day.