Weekend Update
Aug. 28th, 2006 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mabfanFriday evening, shortly before shabbat began, I heard from the Associated Press Reporter that I was quoted in her article on Pluto. For those of you not following ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
savepluto, here's a link to one copy of the article, whose slant can be inferred from the title: Online merchants see green in Pluto news. Because it's an AP article, it's showing up on websites (and presumably newspapers) around the world, and I'm quoted at the very end:
And here's an amusing tidbit: we hadn't really planned to sell merchandise ourselves until the AP reporter suggested it. So is that a case of the journalists influencing the news?
Moving on, shabbat was relaxing as usual. I spent much of the afternoon reading, and I finished the book Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. Reading it, I get the feeling that Kean wrote most of it, but that he ran the manuscript by Hamilton to make sure Hamilton approved. I have to say, I admire the way Kean promoted Hamilton from vice-chair to co-chair and strongly pushed for the commission to present a united, bipartisan front. He discusses that in the book a lot, and how often Americans would approach commission members and thank them for their bipartisan approach.
Saturday night, Nomi and I watched television.
Sunday morning, I woke up to the expectation that I had lost the two Hugos I was up for. (I figured that had I won, we would have been woken by a phone call from one of my acceptors.) Sure enough, checking the Internet yielded the news that both stories had lost in their categories. Congratulations to all the winners.
The vast majority of Sunday was filled with attending a family get-together in Manchester, Connecticut. The gathering was for the Weiss extended family, and for those of you who are confused, I shall explain. Nomi's step-grandmother was Matilda Weiss, and she had six siblings. Her brother Bob is married to Gloria, of Aunt Gloria's Lasagna (recipe available from Nomi on request). What this means is that we have a lot of relatives whom we are not related to by blood, but by the marriage of Nomi's paternal grandfather to his second wife. We drove to Connecticut, as did Nomi's parents and uncle, and we spent the day with the extended family, catching up and seeing people we haven't seen in a while.
Eventually, we drove home, picked up dinner at Rubin's, and plopped down in front of the television to watch Stargate SG-1. We have now finished season five and have only three more DVD sets to go before we're all caught up. Which will probably be just in time for the series to have come to an end.
savepluto, here's a link to one copy of the article, whose slant can be inferred from the title: Online merchants see green in Pluto news. Because it's an AP article, it's showing up on websites (and presumably newspapers) around the world, and I'm quoted at the very end:
Michael Burstein, who heads the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet, a grass-roots group formed earlier this year, said he was encouraged by the ruckus.
"If someone is creating 'Save Pluto' T-shirts, more power to them. No one has a monopoly on Pluto," he said.
And here's an amusing tidbit: we hadn't really planned to sell merchandise ourselves until the AP reporter suggested it. So is that a case of the journalists influencing the news?
Moving on, shabbat was relaxing as usual. I spent much of the afternoon reading, and I finished the book Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. Reading it, I get the feeling that Kean wrote most of it, but that he ran the manuscript by Hamilton to make sure Hamilton approved. I have to say, I admire the way Kean promoted Hamilton from vice-chair to co-chair and strongly pushed for the commission to present a united, bipartisan front. He discusses that in the book a lot, and how often Americans would approach commission members and thank them for their bipartisan approach.
Saturday night, Nomi and I watched television.
Sunday morning, I woke up to the expectation that I had lost the two Hugos I was up for. (I figured that had I won, we would have been woken by a phone call from one of my acceptors.) Sure enough, checking the Internet yielded the news that both stories had lost in their categories. Congratulations to all the winners.
The vast majority of Sunday was filled with attending a family get-together in Manchester, Connecticut. The gathering was for the Weiss extended family, and for those of you who are confused, I shall explain. Nomi's step-grandmother was Matilda Weiss, and she had six siblings. Her brother Bob is married to Gloria, of Aunt Gloria's Lasagna (recipe available from Nomi on request). What this means is that we have a lot of relatives whom we are not related to by blood, but by the marriage of Nomi's paternal grandfather to his second wife. We drove to Connecticut, as did Nomi's parents and uncle, and we spent the day with the extended family, catching up and seeing people we haven't seen in a while.
Eventually, we drove home, picked up dinner at Rubin's, and plopped down in front of the television to watch Stargate SG-1. We have now finished season five and have only three more DVD sets to go before we're all caught up. Which will probably be just in time for the series to have come to an end.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 02:22 pm (UTC)Not that I'm bitter. ;-) I am, however, watching it primarily for certain Farscape castmembers who've joined the show, and after an absence of several weeks, returned from the U.K. to find a Firefly castmember on board.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 03:26 pm (UTC)Um, I'm not sure if this is part of your joke, or if you haven't actually heard that the show has been cancelled as of the end of the current season.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 03:51 pm (UTC)what irks me is that they told the cast/crew of the cancellation at the 200th episode wrap party. talk about taking the wind out of your sails.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 03:56 pm (UTC)The show was definitely past its expiry date; the early seasons were a lot of fun, but this season was kind of like, well there are Ben and Claudia, so I'll watch them.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 02:33 pm (UTC)BBC News article on the backlash from the planet vote. As far as I can tell, it's not an AP or Reuters rehash. Enjoy!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 12:53 pm (UTC)By the final day, and after dealing with the Hugo Best Editor split, a revision to the wording of the Best Artist Hugo definition, and weird site selection data, the fans in attendance were, to put it mildly, a bit punchy. Many motions were piled on to the stack -- my favorite being to "amnd by substitution". That motion would have replaced the word "deplores" with the word "applauds", and was thus a textbook example of how to flip a motion 180 degrees in one easy step.
We eventually voted (and we had to actually count!) to deplore, and thus the fans were released back into the wild. we might actually make it back home today (i.e., Tuesday).
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 12:56 pm (UTC)I'm glad fandom voted to deplore.
By the way, we should be emailing you soon about Capclave...hope it's not too late...
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 01:19 pm (UTC)When I go back to packing (real soon now), I'll see if it's hiding here -- if it is, I'll figure out some place to stash it.
Too bad we already sent a 60 lb. box out via FedEx Ground yesterday afternoon (books! there were bright shiny new books in the dealers' room! and then I won a box of stuff at the book raffle!) -- it could have joined the larger paper shipment if I'd only known.
It's definitely not too late to decide to come to Capclave. I'll be sending the list of panel topics etc out in the next few days, once I've actually had some sleep!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 01:34 pm (UTC)I don't need the whole paper, just that one page, if that helps you with packing.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 11:40 am (UTC)speaking of seeing green, you and some of your readership may find this t-shirt topical.
i’m confident in saying that Kris Straub is not merely cashing in on the current heightened interest in Pluto, as he is a well-established geek. :)
-steve