SETI Workshiop at Daejon KASI

As part of the 60th Annual International Astronautical Congress hosted by KASI in Daejon this year (which is, by the way, the International Year of Astronomy!), Dr. Rhee Myung-hyun (an astronomer I met while taking part in the SOAO workshop earlier this year) organized a workshop on SETI and sent me an invitation to it. I decided to set aside a couple of classes (with makeup classes to be held, of course) to make the trip down to Daejon and hear what the discussion would entail. My friend Mark, also known as the physicist down the hall, joined me and …

Continue Reading

A Random Linkdump and Concert Tonight…

No time to post anything too significant today, or for the next couple of days. Oh yeah: this is late notice, y’all, but… Hwang Shin Hae Band is playing tonight. No idea if there are tickets available but I’ll be there a few hours early, trying to get one! Show’s at 8, and here’s a map to the venue — the Sang Sang Madang live hall… So anyway — my content free post of… Shiny Links! Some stories by people you should know about: Tina Connolly’s “Hard Choices” at Brain Harvest (or play the game, made by Kaolin Fire, here) …

Continue Reading

Launch Pad Last Day

It’s the last day of Launch Pad, so I’m playing catch-up. This is not all the media that will be coming from it, just some of it. More will be coming, especially photographs. But for now, here are some videos shot by novelist and videographer Stacey Cochran. The first one is before the cut, and a bunch more are in the extended post: [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/eF3QE6YEeXc” width=”425″ height=”344″ allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”fs=1″ /]

Continue Reading

Launch Pad Vids

Having a great time here at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop in Laramie, Wyoming. Wish you were here? Well, some of the lectures are being posted online. Here are a couple of yesterday’s, courtesy of Stacey Cochran: [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/rfKmfWYwzLo” width=”425″ height=”344″ allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”fs=1″ /] [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/jD0g0vbX3VE” width=”425″ height=”344″ allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”fs=1″ /] And here are some useful links to useful resources, including the slides for a number of Mike Brotherton’s lectures.

Continue Reading

It’s Earth Day!

Say what you like about Earth Day — there’s someone I know out there is snarking about it right now, if he even knows about it — but if you ask me, it’s a holiday about celebrating and embracing something that is here, visible, tangible, and unarguably real. People survived and thrived for hundreds of thousands of years without holding major festivals for specific deities, without holding big annual parties for imaginary constructions like nation-states. Nation states are all well and good, but the Earth is here, tangible, and absolutely necessary for our survival. It’s as close to sacred as …

Continue Reading

Launch Pad, Here I Come!

I’m just trying to get tickets booked — it’s harder than I thought! — but since Mike Brotherton has announced the list of attendees for this year’s Launch Pad Workshop, and since I’m one of them, I figured it would be remiss if I did not include an expression of heartfelt glee here as well. We weren’t asked to keep it to ourselves that we’d be going, but I figured I’d wait until the announcement went out, just the same. Also, I’ve been pinching my arm to make sure it’s real. If you take a look at the list of …

Continue Reading

Ada Lovelace Day

Argh! I missed it–unsurprising, since I’ve been deluged with work and email, and since I also spent more than an hour after a long string of classes today, helping some students figure out how to find  an angle for their article for the magazine we’re working on. (So if I haven’t replied to an email, it’s coming soon, dear reader/correspondent.) Well, Nalo and Jetse both blogged for the occasion, among, I’m sure, many others. But I did not let Lady Lovelace go unnoticed on her special day: when one of my students claimed (today, in Media English) that the “first …

Continue Reading

Got a Call from Starbucks Korea… :)

Right, so after my message the other day to Starbucks Seattle, I got a very courteous, polite, apologetic, and professional call this afternoon from someone at Starbucks Korea, who works in marketing and who gave me the lowdown on this story, after getting a call from Seattle sometime today. She told me that the Alien Registration Numbers weren’t usable for Starbucks wifi access at first, but that this was fixed in early February. (I think she said the 6th, but I’m not 100% sure of it.) She said that it should be working now. I told her that it had …

Continue Reading

Workshops for You (If You’re Anything Like Me)

Here I am, fresh back from Sobaeksan (writeup coming soon on the SOAO workshop, I promise!), and already I’m looking for more astronomy immersion. (Though, this time, in English, so I can understand more of it!) Launch Pad is, as of yesterday (well, to me, as it’s the 16th of February here and now) looking for applicants. Twelve lucky people — writers, whether of science, SF, film scripts, or other things — will be selected to get a crash course on astronomy out in Laramie, Wyoming. It’s an excellent opportunity. Find out more, and apply, at the Launch Pad website. …

Continue Reading