My Schedule for Capricon 34

[beamjockey]

I'll be at Capricon 34 this weekend in Wheeling, Illinois, doing a few panels and a talk.

Time Travel without Technology
- Friday, 02-07-2014 - 7:00 pm to 8:15 pm - Willow

While most time travel seems to involve a technological breakthrough, sometimes, as with Matheson’s Bid Time Return or Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, characters manage to move through time either through force of will or natural phenomenon. How is this time travel different from the more traditional type?
Walt Boyes (M), Roland J. Green, Bill Higgins, Ken Hite, Matt Mitrovich

By the Light of the Chinese Moon
- Saturday, 02-08-2014 - 10:00 am to 11:15 am - Botanic Garden B

On December 14, China became the third country, and the first in 37 years, to soft land on the Moon. Is this the start of a new space race or has the US conceded the Moon to China? Will other countries join them?
Dermot Dobson (M), Bill Higgins, Jeffrey Liss, Jim Plaxco, Henry Spencer

Weird Patents
- Saturday, 02-08-2014 - 11:30 am to 12:45 pm - Botanic Garden A
A look at some of the weird ideas for which people have filed, and received patents.
Dermot Dobson, Bill Higgins, Ruth Pe Palileo (M)

Vandals of the Void: Damaging Meteorites from Chelyabinsk to Chicago
- Saturday, 02-08-2014 - 4:00 pm to 5:15 pm - Botanic Garden A

A window-shattering shock wave injured 1100 Russians and startled the world one year ago. Meteoric violence is rare, but it can be devastating-and meteorites have assaulted Chicagoland at least twice. Bill Higgins reviews the Chelyabinsk blast, reveals our local impacts.

Comments

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Boy, I'm sorry to be missing, especially, the Chinese Moon talk.

[billroper]

Is it non-technological time travel if you build your time machine out of three rubber bands and a rosary?

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

See you there, Bill. And I get to meet Henry Spencer, who I have only ever interacted with via the net.

BTW, you might want to get a picture of that new crater they just found on Mars, made in the last few years (the crater, not the picture). If I'm reading it correctly it was made by an impactor about the size of the Chelyabinsk one.

[jiawen]

It will be really cool if the Chinese space exploration panel doesn't turn into nationalistic Sinophobia. I was on a panel about recent Chinese space developments a couple years ago and it kept moving towards subtle and not-so-subtle China-hatred, despite my best efforts to the contrary.