Yearly Archives: 2024

Recollections of Ergo

This entry was posted in History Writing and tagged education history MIT writing on by

Ergo: The Campus Voice of Reason. That was the name of our paper. Like all college students, we were more confident we were right than we should have been, but we stood apart from the crowd. As an organization, we were never “liberal” or “conservative” in the popular sense of the words. Our position was libertarian, strongly influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Ergo challenged university administrators, the campus left, politicians, and academics. My association with Ergo helped me to develop a framework of thought that I still go by. My views on what is important and how to achieve it have changed, and so have some of my conclusions, but my basic principles have changed very little.

Ergo came into being during a time called the “sixties,” which lasted from about 1965 to 1975. The founder was J. R. M. Seitz, who allegedly acquired all the parts necessary to build an Atlas missile (except the nuclear warhead) on the open market. It was the time of the Vietnam War and urban riots. It was a time of protests and violence. People marched and occupied buildings. Some thought that totalitarian Communist states were a great idea. Others just wanted the government to stop drafting people and sending them into an undeclared war on the other side of the globe. Once I was punched in the nose, and another time the sweater I was wearing was set on fire. I can’t count the number of times I was called a fascist. Interesting times.
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Analyzing the 2024 Worldcon code of conduct 4

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged censorship conventions fandom science fiction on by

A lot of science fiction conventions have codes of conduct that put severe restrictions on speech. They aren’t always enforced, and never fully and consistently, but they can be an excuse to embarrass or eject someone a concom member doesn’t like. For instance, Balticon pulled a program participant out of a panel and subjected her to humiliating treatment for vaguely defined violations of its speech code. The con apologized but dumped all the blame on one volunteer.

Conventions need to say what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable, but we have to look closely at each one’s rules to see how much it values open discussion. So let’s get a look at the Glasgow Worldcon’s rules.
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May 1 silent film show: Short comedies

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged Internet silent movies on by

Because of other stuff I have scheduled in May, my next silent film show will be on the first Wednesday of the month instead of the second. That’s May 1, 8 PM EDT. The show, with my live accompaniment as usual, will consist of three short comedy films starring famous actors:

Scene from silent film Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde. Pryde (Stan Laurel) is menacingly approaching a boy with an ice cream cone.

  • The Goat (1921) with Buster Keaton. A case of mistaken identity leads to Keaton’s character being chased by everyone.
  • Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (1925) with Stan Laurel. This spoof is based chiefly on John Barrymore’s 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Laurel was a noteworthy comedian by himself before teaming up with Oliver Hardy.
  • His Royal Slyness (1920) with Harold Lloyd. A prince asks an American who looks exactly like him to impersonate him, so the prince can stay with his girlfriend. Lloyd’s brother Gaylord, who looked a lot liked him, plays the prince.

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Kampala in 2028 is looking worse 1

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged conventions fandom Uganda on by

It’s no fault of the Kampala in 2028 bid committee, but the prospect of a Worldcon in Uganda in 2028 looks more frightening than ever. The Ugandan Constitutional Court has upheld critical portions of a 2023 law that criminalized homosexuality, allowing the death penalty in some cases. This would put some attendees in worse danger than they faced at the Chengdu Worldcon.

As the Freedom from Religion Foundation warns, the ruling “has disastrous consequences for LGBTQIA-plus Ugandans.” I don’t know why they repeatedly used that ever-growing letter salad, when the targets are specifically gays (or gays and lesbians, if you use the former just for men), but that’s just my obligatory jargon nitpick. The point is that con attendees might be in deadly danger just by being there.

I’m sure the bid committee didn’t want this to happen, but SF/F conventions in authoritarian states can put their members at serious risk. Better to hold the con somewhere else.

There are risks everywhere, of course. A man was recently arrested for making a bomb threat against a Michigan hotel while it was hosting a furry convention. The same hotel was threatened during last year’s con, which makes it likely the con was the target.

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged science fiction silent movies on by | Open »

Tomorrow as I post this (April 10, 2024) at 8 PM Eastern Time I’ll accompany Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film, Metropolis, on Twitch. It’s one of my favorites, with a futuristic city, an evil robot, and probably the first full-blown mad scientist’s lab in a movie. Twitch left my last two shows up for on-demand playing for about a week, and I assume they’ll do the same with this one, so you can catch it even if the show time is inconvenient. This is the restored 2 ½ hour version, and there will be a 10-minute intermission to give my arms a rest.

If you’re near Plaistow, NH, you can catch me accompanying it in person at the Plaistow Library at 1 PM on Friday, April 12.

A preview scene with my accompaniment is up on YouTube.

The numbering of musical works

This entry was posted in Music Writing and tagged music writing on by

The other day while driving, I heard a familiar-sounding piano sonata on WCRB. It was one I’d heard before, in fact one I was familiar with. I could accurately anticipate the music, which was obviously Mozart’s, in some spots. But I couldn’t place the damn thing! When I reached my destination, I stayed in the parking lot and kept the radio on to the end. The announcer said only that it was Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 2.” This wasn’t very helpful, since there are different numberings in different editions.

The numbering of musical works is tricky in general. For many composers, there are generally accepted numbers, but Mozart’s sonatas aren’t the only case where there’s confusion. Schubert’s symphonies are usually numbered 1 to 9, even though No. 7 is just a sketch. The “Unfinished” is No.8 and the “Great C major” the 9th in this scheme. Some lists, though, have just eight symphonies. They make the “Unfinished” the seventh and the C major symphony the eighth, or vice versa.
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The trouble with fannish gatherings

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged COVID-19 fandom filk science fiction on by

The latest SMOF News (Volume 3, issue 30) discusses the post-pandemic decline of in-person fan-run science fiction conventions, with Outlantacon being the latest casualty. It’s a situation I’m familiar with, since I’ve negotiated hotel contracts for several filk conventions and more recently couldn’t find a suitable hotel at a reasonable cost for NEFilk. Two factors make up the problem: rising hotel costs and decreased attendance.

Fan-run cons have always worked on the periphery of more lucrative events, such as weddings and gatherings of large organizations. To get space, we have to find a weekend that the other customers don’t want or fill up the space that they aren’t using. COVID killed a lot of hotels, and the ones that are still around want to make up for a couple of years of lost revenue. This means fewer discount deals. If we paid rates comparable to the big customers, we’d have to charge a membership rate of a couple of hundred dollars for a weekend con.
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Time to flee Glassdoor

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing as business and tagged Glassdoor Internet privacy on by

Glassdoor is a site which lets employees and ex-employees report anonymously on what it’s like to work at companies. It used to place a high value on user privacy, since people reporting bad stuff about their employers can get them into trouble. Recently, though, it’s not only reversed itself but, in a single bound, become one of the worst websites for privacy.

I’m unusually close to Report Zero on this matter, and I think the person making this report would rather not be too widely identified, so I’ll link only to secondary sources here, such as this Ars Technica article, checking them against the original reports for accuracy.
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Two views on open discussion

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged censorship education on by

Is open discussion with minimal limitations a value or a danger? Here I try to understand the people who are afraid of it and answer their concerns.

The starting point for this post was a Code of Conduct posted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It doesn’t specify severe penalties for violation, though groups within W3C could in principle reference it as a basis for draconian rules. It recommends resolving issues by discussion in preference to censure or expulsion. So that much is OK. This code is much less of a problem than some which certain science fiction conventions have proclaimed.

Still, its list of “unacceptable behaviors” is broad, and that raises concerns. Many refer to remarks that have no place in a professional organization, such as “deliberate misinformation,” “personal attacks,” “unwelcome sexual attention,” and so on. Others, though, could be used to discourage or punish unpopular ideas.
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