I have to admit this: I still like the television show The Incredible Hulk. It is being rerun on the SciFi channel right now, and a while ago I thought I’d go back and check it out.

I’ve been disappointed with many of the shows I liked when I was younger. Battlestar Galactica is not nearly as good as I remember. Speed Racer is just awful. And let’s not even talk about the Brady Bunch.

So I was a tad concerned that my happy memories of The Incredible Hulk would be destroyed if I watched the show.

I shouldn’t have worried.

The show still affects me, in a visceral way. I mean, it is the typical story of the 90 pound weakling who somehow (magically, technologically) is able to fight back on his persecutors and throw things around. Heck, there are lots of Fairy Tales about with this story line.

The late Bill Bixby was, if you will excuse the pun, incredible. I don’t know of anyone else who I’d rather see in the role of Dr. David Banner. He took every episode seriously. He could have hammed it up, gone for the easy laugh or just made fun of the situation. Instead he played it for real, with sincerity. For me, it will always be him who says, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

And Lou Ferrigno was a fantastic Hulk. Unlike the movie, I find his representation of the Hulk the best. Huge, but not impossibly so, and great strength, but not infinite. And yes, I know that is different than the comic book, but I always thought that the television show was more “realistic.”

That is why if I am home at 6 PM, I turn on the SciFi channel and visit my old friends.

The weekend event put on by the Barony of Cynnabar (Coronation) went pretty well. I had a decent time. From the opening until 5 PM, Natalie and I were at gate handling a line that never ended. Thanks to her husband and others who helped out untying knots, we were able to keep the line relatively short throughout the day.

We only got yelled out once by a nice chivalric gentle who, after cursing us out for the cost of the event and merchanting, insisted that instead of a site booklet, for all he was paying he should be getting a blow job. No, I’m not kidding.

Serve where serve I might.

Court was fun, feast was long but nice. Afterwards was pretty good too.

The best part of the weekend, however, was on Sunday. On that day, my successor for the Kingdom Exchequer office came over, and we spent around three hours going over the job and transferring files.

On Saturday I was giddy with excitement, and Sunday was everything I hoped it would be!

After Sunday, I’m highly confident that she will do an excellent job. The kingdom is in very capable hands.

She now has all the files, and we went over almost every aspect of the job that I have, including cashing checks, balancing the account, writing checks, and how the accounts are organized.

Even the big filing cabinet in the basement was taken away by her!

All I have left is the main briefcase, which has the ledger and the checkbook.

I give that up on October 25 at Crown Tournament.

I’m getting all giddy with excitement again.

I signed up for Improv classes at The Second City in Detroit. I just got word that I’ve been accepted into the class and I’m very excited!

And nervous.

I do think I’m pretty good at improv. However, this is a whole ‘nuther kettle of fish, here. Now, I’m not taking the conservatory courses where you have to audition. I’m starting at the very bottom on their other track in the beginning program. There are five levels, each of which is eight weeks long.

Here they are:
Level A: Introduction of Basics, Focus on Environment
Level B: Continuation of Basics
Level C: Improvising Scenes
Level D: Emotion and Character
Level E: Advanced Scenes and Performance Games

So, starting October 6th, for eight weeks, I’ll be down in Detroit from 7 to 10 PM.

If I like it I’ll continue on with the other classes, which are all on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights (some Saturday or Sunday too).

I have to think carefully about the Conservatory classes. You have to audition to get into them, and, as they say, are “only for those students dedicated to the work.” I think those classes form an ensemble in the end. With my work related travel, I am not sure how much I can dedicate to this. On the other hand, if it turns out that I am actually good, I will try to figure out a way to make it work.

They also state you must have prior theater experience. I wonder if the stuff I’ve done in the past counts, such as Bedlam and street performing. I was also in a couple of plays in college.

Ah well, no need to think about that now – I’m just looking forward to having fun at these classes!

I got a call last night. It was a company claiming to represent Popular Science, a great magazine I subscribe to. So, I listen.

He asks me if I’m getting my issues in the mail on time, and in good shape. Wow, that is nice of him to ask. Yes, I reply, everything is going well, and I’m very satisfied.

And that is when he turned into a telemarketer. First he told me how rates would be rising but he could lock me in at a low rate if I extend my subscription for two years.

“I’m not interested in that.”

But, I’ll get a special deal if I…

“I’m not interested in buying anything from a telemarketer.

While he respects that, he has one final piece of information that…

“Listen to me. I have never bought anything from a telemarketer, and I never will. I don’t care if I would have to pay full price for the magazine at the newsstand. I will not buy anything from someone who calls me and wastes my time during dinner!”

He hangs up on me after thanking me.

Now, I have the telezapper and caller ID. Unfortunately, the occasional telemarketer gets through.

But then I read Newsweek, and I learn what the real problem is.

Right now, the Do-Not-Call registry has over 50 million people signed up, and this goes into effect on October 1st. The problem? There is a loophole: “telemarketers can continue calling any consumer that they’ve developed a ‘prior relationship’ with – you have one if a caller asked you questions about a product or you agreed to get further information by mail.”

Fabulous. I fell for it. Now this company, that probably doesn’t even work for Pop Sci, can now call me and I can’t fine them for wasting my time.

Because of the October 1st deadline, telemarketers are going on overdrive to call people and establish these relationships. Hopefully, that will backfire, encouraging more people to sign up.

In the mean time, here is my advice:

1. Use the telezapper, at least until the technology is obsolete.
2. If you have Caller ID, don’t answer the phone unless a number is given.
3. If they ask you questions about a product, don’t answer: tell them you want to be removed from their list, and that you do not want a relationship with their company. Be firm.
4. All else fails, screen your calls as much as you can. I can’t really do this, but I do consider this more. I might not go out of my way to answer the phone. If it is important, people will leave messages. I’ll leave them more, now.

I hope the Do-Not-Call list works. There are too many loopholes in it (charities can still call you, and politicians), but it is a start.

Well, this is a whole lot of not fun.

I’m on the plane now, but not flying. The flight was scheduled to leave at 6:30 PM, but because of the weather and then a whole slew of planes that haven’t stopped coming in one right after the other (just like in Die Hard II), we still haven’t taken off yet.

It is almost eight o’clock.

I’m glad I brought an extra book with me. I have one more in my satchel, but it is non-fiction – about anger and how to deal with people who make you mad.

Oooh, maybe we’ll take off in six to eight minutes now.

We’ll see.

As I stated earlier, today I did some reviews for the National Science Foundation (NSF). It is a bit of a thrill to do it. I mean, I write a lot of proposals, but because of this I now get to review them. I’ve even written some NSF proposals and have the nice honored of being turned down by them several times.

At least now have a better understanding why!

Here is how the process works. In this round NSF received over 1,500 proposals for their Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grants. By law, 2.5% of any funding that a government agency gives out has to be allocated to small businesses through the SBIR program. This is why I write proposals for the Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA, and any other agency that I might have the technical know-how to solve the problems they have.

Hey, University professors write grant proposals, why not me?

(As an aside, I’m pretty good at it. All told I’ve brought in more than a few million on my own gesture research, and a few more million on other work that Cybernet does.)

There are four different categories the proposals are funneled through: Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, Biotechnology, Electronics, and Information-based Technology . The last category was the I’m involved with, specifically, Human/Computer Interactions.

I was selected as a reviewer for a number of reasons. I have experience with NSF – though I haven’t won any NSF awards personally, Cybernet has, and I’ve administered those contracts. We have no current grants. My academic and corporate credentials are a good fit for being a reviewer. And, I like doing it.

(My flight took off, only 90 minutes late!!)

The reviews are rated in the following manner (and, if you are interested, a full description can be found here):
Excellent: Outstanding proposal in all respects; deserves highest priority for support.
Very Good: High quality proposal in nearly all respects; should be supported if at all possible.
Good: A quality proposal worthy of support.
Fair: Proposal lacking in one or more critical aspects; key issues need to be addressed.
Poor: Proposal has serious deficiencies.
I found it interesting that, in the actual review process, you needed to be at least Good (i.e. some Very Goods or above) in order to be recommended for some sort of funding.

There were also two criteria:

1: What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? This criterion addresses the overall quality of the proposed activity to advance science and engineering through research and education.

2: What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? This criterion addresses the overall impact of the proposed activity.

Again, more details can be found in the above link.

Mainly, though, my view on this was that NSF is looking for very innovative proposals that will push the envelope of the body of knowledge in science and engineering, while also enhancing educational opportunities.

A result of my view is that many proposals that are accept are of the High Risk and High Reward category. Many of them will fail. In fact, if some don’t fail, then the proposals being accepted aren’t innovative enough. However, if they succeed, then results and reward for the company and the United States as a whole could be huge. This is how new industries get started. DARPA is the only other agency I know that takes such risks, although they are interested in defense, not education.

So before I actually went to D.C. for the review panel, I was sent a link and password to connect to the NSF reviewer’s site. Here there were eighteen proposals our panel would review.

That was when I began to freak, because I didn’t have time to review eighteen! I had been traveling so much in August that I didn’t even get the email until early September. Fortunately, I didn’t have to review them all.

There were nine people on each panel. Each reviewer reads and reviews, in detail, eight of the proposals. That way there are four reviewers for each proposal. We each respond to the proposals fully. I write over a page, usually two to three, with an overall score given. This batch was across the board (I’m not going to go into details about any of the proposals). It took me a few days to get them all done.

I always worry, though. What if I thought something was excellent and everyone thought it was a piece of crap, or vice versa? Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, we pretty much are on agreement. There were some differences, and that makes for the fun conversations.

So, I head out for the one day meeting the night before. I’m put up at a decent hotel right next to the NSF building (more of your tax dollars at work). We get started at 8:30 AM, though I’m late because the line to get my badge was longer than I’ve ever seen there before, and they have to check out your computer before you can bring it in.

(On my return I discovered that I had gotten an email about this problem on Saturday, way to late for me to read it.)

The discussions were fun. As I said, we mostly agreed, and many of the proposals were easy to classify. Each person is the leader for two proposals, and that person write up the panel summary that gives an overview of the discussion and result.

Typically, the four people who did the review would summarize the proposal and give their analysis. The other five would ask for clarifications and give their opinions to help move the discussion along. Our NSF moderator doesn’t say all that much. She just makes sure the conversation reaches a conclusion and that we stay on track. We only have one day to review eighteen proposals!

I had to leave the room for one of them due to a conflict of interest. That is going to happen though. If you get people who are experts in the field, then there is going to be those types of connections.

We ranked the reviewed into three categories: Highly Recommended, Recommended, and Do Not Fund. The HR and Rs we rank, and note when there are huge gaps. Sometimes, if there is funding, the Rs will get funded, depending on how the other groups go.

We got done at around 4:00 PM. I didn’t leave until 4:30 PM, just so I could make sure that I liked all the summaries. If we had finished by 3 PM I would have left right away since it would have been possible to catch an earlier flight.

Afterwards, our facilitator will take our rankings and combine them with all of the other panels, and determine who gets Phase I funding.

But, my work is done. I definitely have a better idea as to why some NSF grants gets funded and others don’t.

I think I’d like to be on a Phase II panel. I have very little idea what they are like, but I’m sure the on-the-side philosophy conversations are interesting!

Friday was tough for me. I had three cavities filled (I’m done for the year, but still have more work to do). This was after doing aerobics, giving blood, then dancing on Thursday, and doing free weights on Friday right before my appointment.

Probably not the best of my plans.

Anyhow, Thursday was the first time in years when I gave blood. I actually ran blood drives in my fraternity, but since then I’ve either traveled to much, or was sick, or just had too many stupid excuses to have the time to give blood.

And I hate needles. Then again, as the nurse said to me, “We’d be more scared if you said that you liked needles.” She was awesome.

Giving blood wasn’t that bad. What surprised me was, with such a shortage of blood in Michigan, how packed the place was. The process took an hour and a half.

One part did bother me: if you have been in England for over three months cumulative since 1980, then you are not allowed to give blood because of the risk of Mad Cow disease. So, if I travel back there for any length of time, I’m hosed.

They don’t like it either. They’ve lost over 10% of their donors because of that rule. Doctors are working to find a test for it, but until then…

I am finally getting a handle on things here at work.

I’m a reviewer for NSF, and I finished all the reviews I need to do before the meeting on Monday.

I finished all the proposals for this last round for the DoD and NASA. I’m very much proposaled out.

I’m through with my month of travel, and the proposals I did before then.

So, as I normally do at work when I get over major hurdles (which usually occur concurrently), I cleaned my office.

Big deal, right? Not really. When things get hectic, I make many piles. They end up on my desk, on the floor, on my secondary desk, on chairs, and on people who happen to wander by.

Now I’m one of those fortunate people that usually knows which pile is what. I also keep the most important stuff on my main desk and go through it to make sure nothing slips through my fingers.

Still, and clean office is really nice. I forgot that I have a sort of blue-greenish carpet. Oh, there’s that Shatner CD I was looking for. Hey! There are those juggling grenades I couldn’t find earlier!

I also was able to uncover a lot of my Ariel stuff that got hidden.

So, my office is clean. I only have one pile of stuff that is actual immediate work. My to do list is huge, but I’ve already started knocking stuff off of it.

It is a good feeling.

In other news, Elaine, Marcus, and I had dinner at Shawn and Reid’s last night. Traffic was surprisingly fine, and the food was most excellent. She’s a really good cook – I think for the first time in my life I liked sweet potatoes. Hmmm, actually, Marcus didn’t eat dinner. In the beginning he wasn’t a happy guy, but towards the end he did very well and everyone seemed to enjoy having him and his big smile around. There were eight of us there, and it was nice to hang out with adults.

And I am still stuffed, even after aerobics this morning!

I was well hidden inside the building, looking out the windows. I knew they were out there, but I couldn’t see anyone. My friends were behind me, also looking, though I couldn’t see them.

I darted back and forth, peering out each window and ducking.

Nothing.

Wait. There she is, across the road in another building, easily seen through her window and mine. She starts to turn towards me.

Without hesitation, before I even know what I’m doing, I raise my rifle to my shoulder, sight down the barrel, and gently squeeze the trigger.

I hit her right in the chest near her right shoulder, and she continues to spin around and goes down, dead.

I love bachelorette parties!

This one was a paintball game at Hell’s-something-or-other. I haven’t done paintball in over a decade (at another bachelor party, go figure), and I liked this one a bit better.

We had our own private game, so the nine of us didn’t have to battle another team and worry about cheaters. There were nine of us, so we divided up into the five women versus the four men. The maid of honor brought lots of good food.

The actual place itself was really great. I liked the layout of the ranges, and all the workers seemed to really like their jobs and care about the enjoyment of the people playing. The main fellow must have been 60 years old, and he was a hoot.

Our main refs were all young. In fact, they were literally half my age at 18. Grumble.

I also learned that in that group, I was the oldest. Grumble grumble.

We played six games. The gals trounced us four to two.

We all won though, as it was a great way to spend a sunny afternoon.

Elaine went to the Grand Pageant (formerly the Cloved Orange Ball) event in Sternfeld (Indianapolis, IL) on Saturday (I thought I’d add another parenthesis here). She went all by herself to go dancing. I decided I’d stay home with the Marcus Man and let her have some fun without having to worry about her husband and child.

She left very early in the morning, I think around 7 AM. She had just fed Marcus and put him back in the crib, where he fell right back to sleep.

She left.

That is where the fun begins.

He work up almost right away, of course. I showered then hung out with him all day. And, not surprisingly, I had a pretty good time!

At first I was thinking of giving a blow by blow account, with times, of what happened, but I’ve done that before in other areas. And while I’ll do that again because the technique is fun, I don’t think it is called for on this essay.

I fed him a bottle many times that day. This was the first time I was completely in charge of his feeding without anyone else around.

So, for lunch, I fed him some carrots (baby food carrots, which looks like brick-red goo) and a mixture of breast milk, oatmeal, and baby food bananas. The latter looked kinda good to me, which means I didn’t eat enough breakfast. Fortunately, he ate almost all of it, and was good about eating it!

He took a number of short naps (so it took me two sittings to get through the recording of Bill Maher’s Politically Inco…er….Real Time). I now understand why Elaine reads on the sofa a lot. She is too tired to go anywhere, and wants to be around when he’s just playing by himself on the floor.

We also watched a couple episodes of Buffy, and took a nice stroll outside to one of Ann Arbor’s many parks. He likes the swings. Out at the park were a bunch of guys with a bunch of toddlers. No women in sight. All we needed was some beer and a grill, and I think it would have been a beach party – with kids and without women.

I ran away quickly.

Marcus wasn’t too fussy at dinner either, and giving him his bath was a new experience for me. Nothing at all bad happened either. I put him to bed at around 9 PM and got some alone time until I went to bed at Midnight.

He woke up at 1 AM and was starving, so I made a bottle and fed him. He ate one ounce and then got really ticked off. I kept trying to feed him but no luck.

I did something I thought I’d never do: I tried the milk to see if it tasted okay. Yes, I’m publicly admitting that I tried my wife’s breast milk. What an odd taste. And I still don’t know if it was okay or not. He as fussy for a very long time, and I didn’t get to sleep until around 3 AM.

Elaine made it home at 6:30 AM, though I don’t recall waking up. Marcus woke up around 7 or 8, and Elaine fed him (yay!!). I did lunch for him on Sunday so Elaine could try to get some sleep. She had been up for around 25 hours.

All in all, it was a good father and son day, I think.

We sure did miss mommy, though.

Thank you all for your responses to my ethical question! I decided not to copy the book, told him so, and he said that he wasn’t going to argue because he found it used for $6. Great.

Anyway, this week I’ve started, once again, my workout sessions. Monday and Wednesday I did free weights (I’ll do so also tomorrow). Tuesday and Thursday I did aerobics. Every night I did Yoga.

We’ll see what new physical incapacitation hits me to stop me from working out.

My muscles ache nicely, and in a way I feel really good about that. I need to get more free weights, though, for some of my exercises.

Other news…

With Eli’s help I’m getting my new helm in shape. I’m hoping by next year it will be ready for use. It looks nice!!

I’ve written more proposals at work, and I’m really sick of writing proposals. I’m also an NSF reviewer, and I have eight reviews due by Monday. If I don’t get much done tomorrow, I’ll be working on that over the weekend.

Elaine and I are looking forward to Coronation. I’m very much looking forward to Crown, though, as I’m stepping down as Kingdom Exchequer! I’ve picked a replacement and she’s already starting to take over.

And the best news with regards to that is that the Domesday is finally balanced! I can’t believe how long it takes for Out of Kingdom transfers to balance. Whew!

I have an ethical question, and I’d love to hear the opinion from anyone who reads this blog.

I have a book, entitled “A Short Account of the History of Mathematics.” I think it is around a hundred years old.

Anyone, someone I know emailed me and asked that I copy the book and put it online because the copyright has expired.

It is an excellent book that I refer to often. However, I don’t feel good about doing this. We aren’t talking about a book that is hundreds of years old that is an original work that will never be reprinted.

In fact, I looked it up on Amazon, and indeed, it was reprinted last year.

While legally I’m within my rights to do as asked, I think ethically I would be in the wrong.

Personally, I feel that since I didn’t write the book, it is still too recently printed for me to, in essence, republish it for free.

However, I may be overreacting.

Comments and opinions? Should I make the book freely available on the web?

This is my last day at Torcon. YAY! I get to see my wife and guys soon. Well, soon being very late tonight.

I did set my alarm because I was up so late, 1 AM being late for me when I travel, but I still got up before the alarm.

At breakfast (which was the usual coffee and muffin), I ran into Justinos and Melika from the SCA! That was awesomely cool, and I hung out with them a bit today. Others from the SCA saw me, but they didn’t say hi. Hmm….

(Actually, I found out that they did see me in passing but I was rushing to something else. Go figure.)

9 AM. My panel:
Title: The Economics of Innovation
Day: Sun Time: 1000
Duration: 60
Room: CC: 203BD
Description: Sometimes what seems like a brilliant idea really isn't, when the true cost of implementation is considered vs. other options. This panel will try, once and for all, to drive a stake in the heart of the so-called "solar power satellite", but will also discuss what advances or breakthroughs are needed for other ideas to become economically feasible.
Panellists: Charles Cohen, Cory Doctorow, Tom Doherty, Richard Lynch

I said hi to Rom and Avi’s friend Cory. He is a very cool person. No surprise there.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that this panel would only be about power and power transmission. That really isn’t my field, so I just moderated and helped out. It was incredibly interesting, however, and I learned about the economics of many types of power generation and transmission.

I also learned that teenage girls use Amazon.com to get gifts anonymously for interacting with people through their webcams. Sigh. What a sad world we live in sometimes.

11 AM: Scientific Mistakes as a Plot Hook

“I’m Nancy Kress, and I’m obviously the token woman on the panel, and that is because women make fewer scientific mistakes.”

She then went on that probably all SF needs to have mistakes, because, well, that is what makes good story. When stuff goes wrong with a scientific process or product, or an unseen result, that makes something interesting.

Scientific errors can be used as a metaphor, though that should be clear if it is going to be used that way or if should be truly plausible.

“The most fantastic fantasy of all is the hardest of science fiction, because what can be more fantastic than believing we know all the basics.” – a quote attributed to Frederic Pohl.

I asked a question that clarified that the process of extrapolating science is really just like trying to discover a Ph.D. thesis topic. And the eureka moments in writing are very similar to those moments in the laboratory. I mentioned that if editors are the equivalent to a dissertation committee, then I don’t want to go through that again!

Wow, they’ve spent fifteen minutes on my question and comments. What fun!

The panelists are really good in this session. There is also the editor in chief of Analog, and he and the others are given out some excellent information, comments, and critiques.

“It is not only fantastic, but conceivably possible.” - Stanley Schmidt.

Analog has a department for stories of 1,000 words or less, called Probability zero, is a story that sounds plausible, but give it just a bit of analysis and it just doesn’t work.

“Know as much about your background as you can, but only write as much as you have to.” – Schmidt.

Noon: Behind the Scenes of Stargate SG1.

This past year I tuned into Stargate, now showing on the SciFi Channel, because I had heard good things about it. It had been on for seven seasons, but since I didn’t like the movie, I never gave it a second though.

I was hooked from the beginning. It stars Richard Dean Anderson of MacGuiver fame, and it takes itself just enough seriously that it retains a lot of fun and charm. I highly recommend it.

Therefore, I attended this session. It was being run by only one person, a German magazine writer whose name isn’t listed anywhere on the program. Arg!! I met him at the Firefly party on Friday. He has a very fun job – he gets to travel to all the sets of science fiction shows and watch the filming, interact with the cast and crew, and basically have fun. He’s been on about eight episodes of four shows as background characters because of his travels.

His talk was a hoot. Unfortunately, while they had AV equipment for his talk, they had nothing to play his CD of pictures.

Fortunately, I’m a geek who carries around his computer with me, even to the bathroom. I volunteered to run his slides for him, so I had a really good view. I’m surprised that I was the only one there with a computer.

1 PM: More food, and writing this blog.

I’m nervous, as at 2 PM is when I’m going to try to meet Spider Robinson and thank him for writing one of my favorite books: The Best of All Possible Worlds. For this anthology, he found a number of short stories that are very good, but don’t get much publication. Then he asks those authors to select an obscure short story they like, and those stories went in the book too.

Because of this, I was able to discover Robert Heinlein’s favorite story “My Lady’s Juggler.” Robinson did a great translation of it, which always brings me to tears. I’ve memorized it so that if I have a need or an opportunity to tell a story at an SCA event, I have one. I did tell it once at the Cynnabar camp during a rain storm to about six people, and it was received well.

I do adore this story. It is odd to me that I’m nervous about meeting him, but I can’t help it.

I expect the line to be long because he is one of the Guests of Honor. At about a quarter of I’ll get in line.

I have a dread feeling he won’t even show up.

2 PM: Signing.

The line was long. Incredibly long. It was good that I went early because I was only about fifty people from the beginning. I didn’t get up to Spider until 2:50, actually. I spent a delightful time talking to people in line with me. It passed pretty quickly.

Spider Robinson was a very gracious and pleasant person. His eyes widened when he saw the book. I apologized for the poor quality of its condition, and he shook his head no, saying that when he went up to Heinlein with one of his favorite stories (“The Man Who Traveled In Elephants,” which is in the anthology I showed him), his copy was in just as bad condition. I told him how I loved his translation of the Juggler story, and thanked him because I would have never have had the opportunity to even know about it otherwise, and he beamed and told me the story of how he heard it from Heinlein in the first place. He signed the book and shook my hand.

I could not have gone better.

I spent some time after that talking to his wife and one of his friends about Michigan and Worldcons and the like, and that was an enjoyable time also.

3 PM: Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard.

Wow, this place is backed. It is a double sized room and the only empty seat is…wait, next to me! When, okay, it just got filled. I was wondering.

Ah, I see. The reason why it is so crowded is because of the panel, of course: Ester Friesner, Karen Haber (no show), Mike Resnick, Terry Pratchett, and Connie Willis.

Willis: This is why I like science fiction conventions…you people will laugh at anything!

Hmmm, this is going to just be a very silly panel.

Pratchett is as funny as his books. He tells very good stories with a “marvelous deadpan delivery.”

Willis: Comedy is heavily rooted in pain.

Why is death so funny? Pratchett: “Because it hasn’t happened to us yet.”

Willis: When you are near death your emotions are really close to the surface, and any emotions will bubble up, crying, laughter, etc.

Lots of stories about death and food were told.

(There was music piped in, and I could hear it in the background during the entire panel discussion. The tune was the one we use in the SCA for the dance “Hole In The Dance.” The same music lasted the whole time.)

Pratchett: In the Crimean, an officer yelled “Oh my god, I lost me leg!” Another one responded, “No you didn’t, it is over here!” And all of them, including the officer who lost his leg, laughed.

Pratchett: To be funny, make use of your own incomprehensions.

Resnick: We don’t write jokes, we write stories. The humor is the expected happening expectedly, or not comprehending a situation, or fully comprehending an abnormal one.

Freisner: Pay attention to what is going on around you, and how you can describe it. Find people who write funny and dissect how they do it.

Willis: Parodies stay very very close to the truth. Be very close, just a little outrageous.

Pratchett: Look at things a different way. “Maybe Sweeny Todd was just a very bad barber.” “The Astrologer is working backwards: everything she predicts is influencing the stars.”

It actually was quite funny, but not much useful information out of it.

(Oh! I figured out the music! Outside, in the hallway, they were teaching Regency Dance. It was the same fellow who taught my wife and me at last year’s World Con.)

4 PM: my panel:

Title: Stump the Scientists - Interactive Panel
Day: Sun Time: 1600
Duration: 60
Room: CC: 103A
Description: Kids ask questions the experts may not be able to answer
Panellists: Charles Cohen, Julie Czerneda

Well that was exhausting! They took it literally and asked puzzles. Many of them were odd. For example, we were asked how could one tell if Santa enters through the front door. The answer was by looking. Okay.

We got some riddles right and others wrong.

There were some science questions. My favorite was asking how black holes were formed, which lead to a question as to why pressure increases temperature. I demonstrating it by having them press their hands together really hard and then feeling that their palms warmed up a little bit.

Very tiring, but I do love interacting with kids, and we encouraged them all to study so they could help answer those really hard questions.

And so I was done! I got on the road by 5:15, made excellent time, got to the border at 8:45 PM, and then waited an hour at customs. The lines on both sides were huge. They were searching every car, and in my line many cars took quite a long time.

I was asked to open my trunk, but that was it. I was out of there in about three minutes.

I’m very glad to be home! My wife had all the kitties in bed with her. It was very sweet.