My Capricon 33 Schedule

[beamjockey]

I'll be at Capricon 33 in Wheeling, Illinois this weekend, having attended thirty-two Capricons previously.

Science Reporting Sucks Rocks
Friday, 02-08-2013
11:30 am to 1:00 pm
Botanic Garden A

Correlation is not causation! Every day, the news butchers articles about health, climate change, and technological advancements. Science literacy continues to suffer in the US. Why does this happen? How can we prevent it?

Dr. Lisa Freitag
Bill Higgins (Moderator)
W. A. (Bill) Thomasson
Dr. Michael Unger

Nerdvana: Big Bang Theory's Impact on the Perception of Fandom
Friday, 02-08-2013
1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Birch A

Love it or leave it, everyone seems to be watching the Big Bang Theory. The shows fan community reaches beyond whom we would expect to be interested. Are they laughing at us or with us?

Jerry Gilio (Moderator)
Liz Gilio
Bill Higgins
Mary Anne Mohanraj

Curiosity on Mars Slideshow
Friday, 02-08-2013
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
River AB
Curiosity is on Mars and there's more out there than Marvin the Martian. Come feed your curiosity with the latest from Curiosity.

Bill Higgins

Higgins and Silver Talk
[This really could have used a better title...]
Friday, 02-08-2013
7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Bill Higgins and Steven Silver discovered a joint affection for Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a collection explaining the background of common sayings. In this wide-ranging discussion, the two use randomly selected entries to guide their conversation.

Bill Higgins
Steven H Silver

AI Vision: Early AI vs. Current Technology
Saturday, 02-09-2013
1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Botanic Garden A
Humankind has been dreaming of thinking machines for centuries. History, philosophy, mechanics, computing, and human imagination feed this dream. What has been and what will be?

Peter de Jong
James Dobbs (Moderator)
Bill Higgins

Riverworlds: The Latest on Mars and Titan
Saturday, 02-09-2013
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Botanic Garden A

Dried river beds on Mars? A mini Nile on Titan? Interesting. We want to learn more.

Bill Higgins
Jeffrey Liss
Jim Plaxco (Moderator)

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I wish I was going!

[selidor]

I'd never have thought of calling them riverworlds, but it makes perfect sense. (I honestly think of them both as iceworlds; mental categorisation can be funny)...

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

In my slightly over half a century of life, I can't ever recall seeing a high degree of scientific literacy among either the press or the general public.

I recall Ronald Florence - in _The Perfect Machine_, his book on the Hale telescope - talking about how the press of the late Thirties kept referring to the mirror as a "lens." Also how, after the telescope finally became operational in the late Forties, tourists and dignitaries would come in, look at the top of the telescope, see nothing but air and ask where "The Big Eye" was.

Then there were the newspaper reviews of "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes."

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I can't make it, alas. Do you have plans for such panels at this year's worldcon?

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

AI Vision
If surrealism aims at the transformation of mind and all that resembles it, and the point of AI is to resemble mind, then . . .
(I want to keep passing this around until someone does something interesting with it.)