Readercon 18, preliminary report

This is not a full writeup by any means, and is not organized in any particularly useful manner. Think of it as an Impressionist painting, or something, I don't know. I'm tired. There are also no panel writeups in here.

Those will be coming; I have my notes from the various panels, and they're somewhat more complete than last year's. With luck, this means I won't confuse Glenn Grant and Greer Gilman again. (Look, I was taking notes on a PDA with a thumb keyboard. You try being verbose while trying to keep up with five fast-talking and very erudite panelists.)

( warning: alliteration inside )

kate_nepveu is collecting other Readercon reports over at readercon.

Upcoming lecture series on genetics and genomics

Interested in genomics? In the Boston area? Have some time on Wednesday nights?

You might be interested in this free lecture series.

Midsummer Nights’ Science will recount the scientific transformation that began more than a century ago with the seminal studies by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel — the “father of genetics” — who observed the ways in which physical traits were passed from one pea plant to another. In honor of the scientific field it helped to launch, the pea plant provides the inspiration for the seminar series, which takes its name from one of William Shakespeare’s well-known plays.

This year's lectures will be on Wednesday nights from 6 pm to 7 pm, starting on July 11th and running through August 1st; last year's lectures are available online.

This year's schedule:

• On July 11, David Reich will explain how decoding DNA from chimpanzees and gorillas is enabling scientists to dissect the evolutionary relationship between our ancestors and those of other primates.
  
• The following week, on July 18, Pardis Sabeti will explore what researchers are learning about the crucial changes to our DNA that have occurred during human evolution and the biological forces that drive these changes.
  
• On July 25, Todd Golub will describe how genomics is helping scientists to classify tumors according to what goes wrong inside them — information that has the potential to advance the understanding and perhaps treatment of cancer.
  
• Concluding the series on August 1 will be Vamsi Mootha. He will deconstruct the inner workings of mitochondria — the miniature engines that normally supply our cells with much-needed energy — and how their misfiring can lead to human disease.

(Shamelessly stolen from the press release.)

Did I mention that it's free? So it could be a cheap midweek date for that special geek in your life....

LibraryThing

I resisted. I stayed away. But finally, the Readercon panel (writeup to come) pushed me over the edge.

You people are evil. Evil evil evil evil evil. Damn you all.

That is all.

Okay, not all. But when you throw me in that metadata briar patch, danger awaits (looks at clock). I've ranted before about the craptastic nature of the CDDB metadata, and now I'm busily going through and fixing up LibraryThing data. (I'm very picky about my metadata quality.)

The username is my usual one, of course, since it was available.