Plan for Pandemonium

Where did you sleep meme, 2014 edition

roozle — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 02:52:48 GMT

Hmm, last time I posted to Dreamwidth was to do this meme last year. Wonder if I'll do any more blogging this year?

Well here goes. Not sure this is perfectly in order.

Melrose MA
Somerville MA
Boston MA
Paterson NJ
Wilmington MA
Portland ME
Madison WI
Chicago IL
Arlington VA
So. Burlington VT
Chestertown NY
Berlin Ger
London UK
Durham UK
Newark DE
Morristown NJ
Fort Lauderdale FL

Not exactly the year of sitting in one place, some very good memories in 2014.

This post was originally posted at http://roozle.dreamwidth.org/1772.html. I will see comments made either here or at http://roozle.dreamwidth.org/1772.html?mode=reply if you have a DreamWidth account.

Party Update and new information

roozle — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 03:56:52 GMT

We’re changing our parties to be an invited event, though with the intent to invite as widely as is practical. If you wish to be on this list, please let us know your preferred email address. If you have a partner or other significant person who should also be on this list, please send us their email address.

Here’s a link to our party rules & policies as of Aug 1:

Comments are screened, so you can post email addresses below.

Beginning of Summer party

roozle — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 01:59:25 GMT

A short update on last weekend's party. This is a link to the party recap post that sunspiral and I just wrote.

Lessons learned

roozle — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 00:50:22 GMT

1. Explore and learn new things, constantly, fearlessly.
2. Show your love.
3. Strive to make where you are a better place.

As a legacy goes, it's not bad.

This post was originally posted at http://roozle.dreamwidth.org/1494.html. I will see comments made either here or at http://roozle.dreamwidth.org/1494.html?mode=reply if you have a DreamWidth account.

the "where did you sleep" meme

roozle — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 22:57:54 GMT

I've enjoyed this meme the last few years, and got reminded of it earlier today. Places slept in 2013:

Melrose MA
Somerville MA
Boston MA
San Francisco CA
Walnut Creek CA
Paterson NJ
Arlington VA
Belfast UK
Dover NH
Chestertown NY
edited to add: New Lebanon NY
Wilmington MA
Christiana DE
Chicago IL

This post was originally posted at http://roozle.dreamwidth.org/1131.html. I will see comments made either here or at http://roozle.dreamwidth.org/1131.html?mode=reply if you have a DreamWidth account.

be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle

roozle — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 14:08:13 GMT

A certain sort of Arisia exhaustion among the volunteers is just about as seasonal as Frosty the Snowman and reminding everyone to get a flu shot before its too late. I've written about it before, here http://roozle.livejournal.com/196995.html at least and probably other places.

This is the low point before the high. When we get to January 14th or so the excitement of how we're actually doing this thing that we've worked on for so long will take over. But if you're working on Arisia right now and it feels like a long slog at the moment, my informal survey says that, if it helps to know that, you are not at all alone.

None of these "safety tips" are revolutionary:
1. take care of your health first.
2. ask for what you need -- but kindly
3. a thank you goes further than you can imagine
4. assume the best, make contingency plans anyway

Stay safe, enjoy New Year's Eve, see you at the last concomm meeting next Saturday, and then at Arisia 2014, which will be wonderful.

Cryptozoology T-shirts

roozle — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 03:50:15 GMT

The next fabulous Arisia party from Jacob and Talia will have the theme "Cryptozoology". Once again there will be a weekend full of open parties available for all ages, There's a round of T-shirts available, which raise funds for throwing these parties, designed by Jacob. See the link on his Etsy site and get 2014 party T-shirts.

family history

roozle — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 16:09:02 GMT

Many of you have met my parents at one family event or another.

After my parent's recent trip to England for the Kindertransport 75th Renuion, my father was interviewed by the local Jewish paper, and they wrote up this long and very expressive interview.

http://www.jstandard.com/content/item/sig_silbers_great_adventure/28175#

Level Minus One

roozle — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 18:48:14 GMT

I'm a little late to Paul Graham's essay on How To Disagree. Apparently lots of people have seen it before me, but if you haven't seen it, check it out. A useful thing to have in mind when you are thinking about what to say to the Person Being Wrong on The Internet.

Graham's level 0 for disagreement is name-calling. And I think we can all agree that "you're an asshole" doesn't really move an argument forward. Perhaps it is the lowest level at which we can still call this interchange a discussion. But there are two other patterns of responses, neither of them positive, that might qualify for negative numbers on the Graham hierarchy.

The one I've heard too much of recently is "argument by intimidation". Call it Level -1, but unfortunately we can't avoid thinking about how to respond to it when it happens. Name-calling is ugly and hurtful, but responses that threaten and explicitly bully are outside the realm of "let's try to talk about this". Rape threats and death threats, wishes for physical harm to the speaker, defacing of images, are all not-uncommon responses to internet conflict, and it seems particularly common as a response to women standing up against harassment . I don't actually recommend clicking on this link of the responses to Lindy West's assertion that the field of comedy is hostile to women; it's stomach-turning. Suffice to say they prove the point..

The other response that might be just sideways to the hierarchy of disagreement is "silencing". "Oh, shut up" is not an argument. [comment deleted] is not an argument either. It might be an appropriate refusal to engage with Level -1 and maybe even Level 0 comments. But deleting arguments because you disagree with them or they put you in a bad light means that there's no chance for examining our differences and maybe learning a thing or two about each other. If it's your blog you can discuss what you want to, how you want to, and remove all the comments you like, but there's a difference between a soapbox and a discussion. So I don't know what to call this one. Level square-root-of-negative-1 perhaps, because now the discussion has to move to the inside of our heads.

This post was originally posted at http://roozle.dreamwidth.org/911.html. I will see comments made either here or at http://roozle.dreamwidth.org/911.html?mode=reply if you have a DreamWidth account.

Experiment with giving away a book: Sweater Quest

roozle — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 23:24:26 GMT

On the way home from work today, I finished the book Sweater Quest: a year of knitting dangerously which is about Adrienne Martini's adventurous year of a ridiculously complicated knitting project, also interviewing a lot of knitting bloggers. I enjoyed this book, which made for delightful filler on two days of commuting. I especially liked the chapter in which she discusses the relationship in her life between knitting and yoga. Alas, I am about as much of a knitter as I am a yogini, which is to say not much of either though I admire both. And I'm not likely to read this book again.

So, who wants to read it next? I'll drop it in the mail to whoever gives me the best yarn about why they want it. Comments screened, including your address is a plus.

the right response at the right time.

roozle — Fri, 31 May 2013 23:26:34 GMT

In the early summer of a year in the late '90s, just before the All-Star game, a Red Sox player got arrested on domestic violence charges. I know when it was because I was listening to NPR in the car on the commute out to Westboro, so it must have been either '97 or '98. Bill Littlefield, the host of the sports commentary show "Only a Game" was on Morning Edition, commenting on a rare, for NPR, feature on a breaking sports story, in which we were supposed to be breathlessly waiting for analysis of what this might do to the All-Star lineup.

I vividly remember the question and answer that followed:
NPR Host: "The Red Sox management is meeting behind closed doors this morning. What do you think they are discussing?"
Bill Littlefield: "Well, I would think they are considering how to make sure Player X's wife is safe and how to get Player X and his family the help they need." As I recall, he refrained from using the word "OBVIOUSLY" in that sentence, but his voice said it quite clearly.

I announced out loud to the radio, and anyone else who would listen, "Bill Littlefield, you are a mensch". And ever since then, I smile when I hear his voice on the radio, in whatever context.

getting the word out about Arisia

roozle — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:29:34 GMT

Our September Arisia concomm meeting is coming up soon -- 2 pm Sunday Sept 9 at the Westin Boston Waterfront, the Arisia hotel.

We're looking for more volunteers in almost every area. Right now I'm looking for ideas for getting the word out. Keeping in mind that "back to school" is coming up, where should we be publicizing?

Beginning of Summer Party Sat Jun 30

roozle — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:56:59 GMT

Yes, we're doing that party thing again. I refer you to sunspiral's last post, here for the full details.

Making Overscheduling Work

roozle — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:40:52 GMT

sunspiral: I need three extra days between now and tomorrow.
roozle: If I had two extra days, I'd give you one!
sunspiral: *shmoop*

(And a hat tip to the original Kliban cartoon.)

10 best books 2011

roozle — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:22:22 GMT

Rather than listing all of the 55 or so books I read in 2011 -- some of them quite forgettable if not downright bad -- here's the "10 best" list. That's what I did for 2010, which had some truly wonderful things to list.

Herewith, what stands out for 2011:

1) The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. This book was one I listened to in audio, which turned out to be a good choice. There's a lot of Spanish dialog in the book, and I know no Spanish. I'd never have been able to hear it in my head as well as it was done on the tapes. Like last year's The Lace Reader, another mainstream fiction with seriously spec-fic elements.

2) Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. I haven't gotten into any of his other works, but this YA there-and-back-again tale captivated me. Then went from hand to hand around the house, seemingly well received by all. Very much reminds me of The Phantom Tollbooth, in many respects.

3) Shadow of the Apt trilogy or series or whatever it's turning out to be. By Adrian Tchaikovsky, which is an easy name to remember. This British SF series is epic fantasy, but in a very unusual world with an interesting set of cultures modeled on different insects. The technology/magic interface is nicely handled. If I had to count these separately, there wouldn't be much room on the list for other things, but really I think they best deserve one big entry for this sprawling, hefty, and rewarding series.

4) WAS by Geoff Ryman. The Wizard of Oz in film and book is the central organizing link between present day and historical characters and their searches.

5) City of Pearl by Karen Traviss. I haven't been able to get the characters of this alien encounter novel out of my head. Richly imagined and enjoyable to read. Although the first of several books in the same universe, it stands up well alone.

6) Mission Child Maureen McHugh. There's a review up at Tor that describes this complex book that looks carefully and seriously at human cultures just a little different from anything on Earth better than I'm able to. Check it out, it is well worth your time. ETA: I particularly wanted to call out the genderbending aspects of this book, which presents a quest for self-definition and self-determination absent the familiar categorical landmarks of our own society.

7) The Lighthouse by P. D. James. Another audio book, that made me willing to keep driving until I finished it.   This Adam Dalgliesh tale kicked off a spate of reading similar books in the police investigation genre, but this one was the best of the bunch so far.

8) Matter by Ian Banks was way too good a book to find in an airport bookstore, but lucky me because it saved a long plane ride. I thoroughly enjoyed Banks's sly sense of humor, it made me wonder why I'd had such a long gap since I read his work before, and I'm looking forward to catching up on more of his Culture series novels.

9) Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson. I picked this up in the FOGcon dealers room, and took a false start at it before I realized that "slim" did not correspond to "light", and that this alternate history book demanded my full attention to its premise -- what if John Brown's attack at Harpers Ferry had been successful -- and its characters. Once I got a quiet place and time to sink into the book, it was well worth it.

10) Galileo's Dream Kim Stanley Robinson is I think the only writer to make this list twice in a row. Playing with time and history and creating a fictionalized Galileo interestingly embedded in both a strange future world and a richly detail medieval one.

That's this year in books for me. I read a lot of other books, some of which were not worth the time spent on them, some of which were just quick reads for the enjoyment of the moment. These are most of the ones worth mentioning from 2011.

do you know where your towel is?

roozle — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:30:19 GMT

If you've got all your Arisia tasks signed sealed and delivered, read no further. Or if you happen to be reading my LJ and you don't know anyone who helps run a science fiction convention, you won't be interested in the rest of this. For everyone else: We're exactly one month out from the con and all of a sudden there's doom and gloom in the air.

Every year for Arisia, and on every other con I have worked on too, there comes that moment where many things seem to be falling apart, and all we can see are the holes. Before Noreascon 4, at just this stage in the process of WorldCon prep, Jill Eastlake sent out a message that said "if we do 80% of what we planned, the attendees will get 110% of what they expect". These were wise words and they often apply to what we are doing in Arisia as well. I'm not at all saying that we don't have a lot of work in front of us; of course we do. But it will get increasingly important to manage our expectations in the month ahead.

From what I'm seeing in my mailbox, and in private conversations, we're at that moment, right now, this week. We need to be really clear about what is done, what is in process, and what, reluctantly, we are going to have to abandon in order to get from here to the con. Saturday's concomm meeting is our last scheduled get together before the convention. So it's important that as many of us as possible are there, and that we get as many of those questions answered as we can.

In the meantime, simple rules will get us far:
* Put on your own oxygen mask first. Don't get to con minus your health, your sanity, or even your sense of humor.
* Assume that every one is doing the best they can. Treat your fellow volunteers a little better than they deserve.
* Share what you know. (And if you don't know, share that too. Someone else probably has the answer.)

We will get to the middle of January, we will meet at the Westin, and it will be awesome. Let's make sure we all get there in one piece. Huzzah!

(and remind me I said this, this time, next year!)

mic check: some thoughts about meetings and technology

roozle — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 06:39:29 GMT

Last night I decided to go the Occupy Boston GA, partly because of wanting to show support for the occupiers after the eviction from Dewey Square, partly to see if I could find out what would happen next and also partly because of a conversation I had on Friday. On Friday at noon, I went down to Dewey Square to sing protest songs with the Dewey Square Ad Hoc Chorus. I got into a conversation with Heather from Occupy Maine. I expressed being curious about how the GA worked, and she said, "oh you really should go to one. The GA is the cerebral cortex of the movement." Well that was pretty intriguing and Saturday, with everything that was going down then, was my first opportunity, so it seemed like an imperative.

It was a rather remarkable experience. Something on the order of 700 people showed up in the dark and the cold and stood, calmly and reasonably discussing and making progress, for well over two hours. In my experience, the usefulness and coherence of a meeting as a way of getting work done (as opposed to presenting information or being in some way a performance) goes down rather fast as you exceed the number of people who can sit around a table. And that wasn't what was happening here. It wasn't a fast or painless process by any means (also, did I mention, cold?) but it didn't fall apart as we passed the limits of people having conversation either.

I can't claim to be an expert about how the GA works after one meeting (though I sure plan to go back and learn more) but I walked away from the Boston Common full of thoughts about one aspect of the evening, which was the People's Mic. If you haven't seen this in action, it's a workaround for not having amplified sound. One person calls out "mic check" until the crowd is repeating back "mic check" . Then they start their message, repeated word by word and phrase by phrase by each person who can hear the message. The message moves back in waves until all can hear. It doesn't seem like it would be very effective but, in fact, it's remarkable in how it affects the dynamics of the meeting.   Herewith a list of some of my thoughts in the last 24 hours.

1. The absence of amplification is a (relatively petty, in the scheme of things) attempt to damage Occupy's ability to organize. It started in New York, and refusing to give a permit for amplified sound has become a standard tactic for city govenrments. The workaround of the People's Mic makes the point, loud and clear so to speak, that we can collectively overcome obstacles to success.
2. Repeating what you hear requires attentive listening and fosters engagement. It also encodes the information on another channel over just hearing it, improving the learning experience. I found the GA to be surprisingly free of background conversations and side chatter, due primarily to this need to attend and repeat.
3. "We are all leaders" is more that just a slogan.   Anyone, anywhere in the crowd can call out "mic check". With amplification, we'd still all be leaders but only some of us would have the microphone.   That would have a negative effect on the sense of equality and horizontal distribution of power in the GA.
4. In most groups, the louder-voiced people are at a substantial advantage of being heard. Softer voices tend to get ignored. With the People's Microphone, a lot of that difference is equalized. Softer voices are amplified just as much and there is less of difference in influence.
5. The People's Mic changes the language of the discourse. First of all, it rewards succinct communication and simple, jargon free language. Polysyllabic latinate jargon intensive compendiums of buzzwords trail off into muttering, while pithy words, expressed with feeling, echo loud.
6. That doesn't at all mean that the People's Mic suppresses complex ideas. Uma Spencer read her declaration of principles, a several paragraph speech. She had people's complete attention throughout.
7. The act of repeating what other people are saying changes what is expressed. In most meetings I have been in, facts and rationality have been privileged over expressions of feeling and personal experience. "I" statements are frowned upon and thus people wind up cherry-picking the facts that support the argument they want to make. In the GA, many people began with "I feel that" or "This is what happened to me".   These statements evoked empathy and solidarity rather than seeming off topic or "too personal".
8. A tenet of the practice of active listening is to repeat back what you have heard, in hopes of postponing your instant reactivity at least until you have confirmed the other speaker's intentions.   The People's Mic process mirrors active listening, which probably leads to more thoughtful responses.
9. The People's Mic is completely portable, completely free, independent of the grid, and uses no fossil fuels. It can't be confiscated in a police raid.
10. The People's Mic enables instant translation services. Behind me at the GA, someone was mic'ing into, I think, Portuguese, for the benefit of a small group around him. One could easily imagine using this feature widely and deliberately.
11. The People's Mic is not value free. One speaker said something that felt just wrong to me -- on the edge of incitement to violence rather than a non-violent rallying cry. And without even thinking about it, I did not repeat that sentence. Those weren't my words even in a tentative way. While in that case, I was one of only a few people who understood that phrase in such a negative way, I believe a speaker whose words seriously went against the values of the GA would find himself with a "broken mic" so to speak.
12. Back to language and the use of it.
The Peoples Mic
    encourages
         a particular cadence
that reminds me of
          nothing so much as
             William Carlos William's experiments with the broken line.
Williams
    who wanted to find in his poems
           an authentic
                 American
                      voice;
whose poems included common people
     and the sores and scars of urban existence
             not the usual subjects for poetry;
whose final masterful poems
   celebrated the victory of love
      and of the light
even against the certainty of death --
   he would hear poetry
       in these voices echoing in the GA.
</p>

ETA: link to Uma Spenser's speech, and less draconian LJ-cut

PSA: phone down

roozle — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:00:13 GMT

This morning my phone had an unauthorized adventure with a glass of water. Next up, either the phone and rice trick will work or I will add "phone insurance" to my list of Things That Don't Suck (per Thanksgiving post in http://edgetocenter.com/ :').

So in the meantime, at least until tomorrow night which is my first opportunity to get to the phone store, use email to reach me.

party invitations the formal kind

roozle — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:27:33 GMT

Recently my LJ has had some musings about the etiquette of invitations, social inclusivity vs the desire for small events and the like. Most of the time those are pretty informal things, and invitations by email is what we mostly discussed. But I was thinking about the details of formal invitations and who's included in those.

I'm curious about the following:

View Poll: Wedding invitations and bringing a date

Anyway, wondering what the hive mind thinks. Edited to add: No actual real world invitations were ~~harmed~~ consulted in the making of this poll. All in the hypothetical realm.

modern superstitions #11

roozle — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:36:44 GMT

It's a bad sign when you invoke Mad-Eye Moody to describe your email management scheme.

the time to be reasonable has clearly passed

roozle — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:27:58 GMT

So about that Senate Supercommittee, there was never a GOOD outcome, but it did seem like there was some kind of floor on the worst outcome -- the automatic, across the board, cuts would come into play, including defense but not including Social Security and Medicare.

Well, if the Democrats had ONLY thrown a significant section of the middle class under the bus by proposing a trade of additional revenues for cuts in Social Security and an increase in the eligible age for Medicare, I would be not surprised, because that's been the rhetoric of this whole deficit panic from the get-go. Disappointed, but not surprised.

And if the Democrats had ONLY played Charlie-Brown-here's-your-football yet again by agreeing to cuts in spending first and real reform on revenues later, I would have rolled my eyes and gnashed my teeth but again, what's to wonder.

But this goes too far: before the negotiations about tax increases has really properly begun, the Democratic position includes this:
In their recipe for follow-up legislation, Democrats stipulate that the individual tax rate should be no higher than 35 percent, and that the new tax code should be “as progressive as current law.” That's from the New York Times.

Or, in other words, the Democrats on the SuperCommittee have put out as an acceptable beginning bargaining position permanently writing the Bush tax cut into law. The top rate is NOW 35 percent and it's scheduled to go back to 39.5 percent in 2013. That looming increase is one of the Democrat's biggest pieces of leverage for getting anything done or protecting any social programs whatsoever. And they're proposing to just toss that piece of leverage away before getting any meaningful compromise in return.

Senator John Kerry's phone number is 202-224-2742. Maybe enough phone calls tomorrow can help persuade him that he's heading down the wrong course. That would be the pleasant sort of surprise.

do you want a soapbox?

roozle — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:56:02 GMT

I'm signal boosting a new idea for Arisia 2012, Arisia Lightning Talks. There are so many people at Arisia that have an interest or project that they could speak about for 5 minutes and tell me something new and exciting -- is one of them you?

Sign up with the form on this page, through the end of October.

If you have suggestions of people who should know about this, especially if they might not be reading this LJ, drop me an email or leave a comment.

the right of the people to peaceably assemble

roozle — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 04:49:20 GMT

Right now the Boston Police are assembling around the Occupy Boston camp in riot gear.

Ostensibly its because they don't have permission to be on the Rose Kennedy Greenway but OccupyBoston says they have permission from the Trust to be there.

its not you, its me

roozle — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 14:05:07 GMT

I really am reading LiveJournal so erratically that you can't depend on me getting important news that way. If it's important to you that I know something going on, please drop me an email.

I'm not reading Google+ or Facebook either on any consistent basis at the moment.

I feel like I ought to change this, somehow, but I haven't figured out something that will work.

first!

roozle — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 05:39:50 GMT

I have just completed my first art commission. Also, this will be the first piece of mine to get published in anything. The Readercon souvenir book cover is DONE.

Also, how does it happen that it is approaching 2 am again?