Closing tabs

Last weekend's conference was worthwhile but exhausting.  With regret but fortitude I announce that I have decided that I must attend the national ASECS conference every year as part of my core responsibilities: fortunately the coming three years will be easier to get to as well as probably rather less expensive (Cleveland, colonial Williamsburg and Minneapolis).  Had some great conversations with friends old and new, with older people I consider wise and with current and former students; meal venues included here and here.

The trip back was horrible and took fourteen hours door to door due to various delays; I got slightly lost in the Dallas airport (the SkyTrain shut down, and it's not well marked for pedestrians) and had significant anxiety that I was not going to make even the later flight I'd been rebooked on due to the initial delay, though all was fine in the end.  My bag turned out to have been on the earlier plane, but before I realized that, I spent a discouraged spell watching an increasingly empty carousel go round at LaGuardia: the sensation of relief when I realized my bag was actually in the luggage room is indescribable.

Closing tabs:

Norwegian larp!

How George Takei conquered Facebook.

The history of the O-U-I-J-A board.

The case for sleeping pills?

And last but not least, a highly archeological cake situation....

"Escape is entertainment"

New York City's comptroller is a Star Trek fan...

Extreme movie makeovers

At the Telegraph, pictures of an amazing (insane!) Star Trek bachelor pad...

The other future

Lev Grossman on the Star Trek franchise.

Simulation

Future holodecks.

(On an only associatively related note: an interesting obituary at the Times for Star Trek 'superfan' Joan Winston.)

Age-banded

Colleen Mondor was kind enough to send me some very thought-provoking questions last week, and has now posted the full interview at Chasing Ray. I will not excerpt it, but I was especially tickled by the final question, because she is the first person to have asked me about a possible allusion to something that was indeed very important to me while I was writing The Explosionist. I think she meant the question as an off-the-record afterthought, but I begged her to keep it in!