A;as, Worldcon is over, Part B, Sunday.
Sep. 7th, 2004 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasWhen I finished my last post, I was just telling you about the thing which I had done which defined new levels of stupidity.
I'd decided to drink my way through the Worldcon parties.
On a Saturday night.
Forgetting that I was on medication that increased the effect of alcohol.
Two medications that do so, actually.
And that I was working in the morning.
Nine-thirty in the morning.
As a Hebrew school teacher.
Fortunately, it was a teacher training day -- the kids aren't showing up until next week. And it was actually very useful -- I'm starting to get a handle on what I'm doing, I think, and having ideas what to do. My co-teacher and I will be meeting tomorrow afternoon to do some more planning and so forth, and I'm going to be looking for blackboard paint to see if I can't make that cruddy chalkboard that actually doesn't accept chalk into a REAL chalkboard that DOES.
My boss mentioned to me that he'd seen my livejournal, and thought that the question I'd asked of Dr. Mike about mad science vs. evil overlordness was a good one.
So, if Rafi's reading this, everybody should now wave to him. *wave to Rafi*
I got back to the con around two or so, what with parking and all. Lis and I took a look at the Junkyard Wars setup, just long enough to see what the challenge was (build a machine to throw a beanie baby onto a target), but we didn't stick around to see what people built, or how well they did.
At 3, we went to "Creating Gods", where Lois McMaster Bujold, David B. Coe, Glen Cook, George R. R. Martin, Tamora Pierce, and Jo Walton all discussed how they design pantheons and use them in stories. And how you can have active gods that are involved in stories, and yet still have your human characters be able to do stuff without being overshadowed. That was a great panel -- if it had a weakness, it was that there were SO many people on the panel that one wanted to hear from that you didn't get quite enough from anyone. But nobody hogged the panel, and everybody had interesting insights and comments, so I was happy with it -- I just think six people is a bit much.
Four o'clock, we went to "Jewish Time-Based Mitzvot in a Lunar Colony". Nomi Berstein, Solomon Davidoff, and Janice Gelb were the panel -- Dan Kimmel unfortunately had laryngitis by that time and couldn't talk, so skipped out.
As expected, we had topic drift, and it became a generalized time-based mitzvot in various situations discussion (with a bit of a digression onto some other mitzvot, non-time based, but we pretty much stuck with the time-based ones.)
One insight: why not have all-women astronauts? Women are exempt from time based mitzvot, so you can sidestep the problem that way, at least for a while.
As it turns out, Michael Burstein said he is working on a novel about the first Jewish family on Mars, and asked a rabbi he knows about how to deal with time-based mitzvot on Mars. The rabbi, after checking to make sure that this was purely theoretical (he was willing to make a sort of reasonable guess for purposes of a story without too much worry, but if Michael and Nomi really WERE planning on moving to Mars, he'd have wanted to do a LOT more research), made it clear that this WASN'T a rulling, but, for purposes of the story, you could do the following: on the spaceship TO Mars, you keep track of the Earth days on the Jewish callendar. If you leave on 1 Tishrei, Earth date, and you spend 10 days in flight, then you arrive on 10 Tishrei, Earth date. And let's say that's a Monday.
Then you leave the spaceship, with the intention of settling permanently. You call the day that you step off the ship "10 Tishrei Mars." And you just count a day as a day.
Now, since the Martian day is 40 minutes longer than the Earth day, you will rapidly get out of sync with Earth, but that's okay. When other Jews arrive on Mars, they will follow the Mars callendar that you set up -- they'd follow the Earth callendar until they disembarked, but then the Mars callendar while they were on Mars, and then follow the Mars callendar on the spaceship back until they disembarked THERE, when they'd switch back to the Earth callendar.
Rosh Chodesh would be entirely calculated, and wouldn't be based on Phobos or Deimos at all, because that would be stupid. You WOULD have Adar II, even though you wouldn't be keeping this callendar in sync with anything in particular, but you'd follow all the calculations as set up. Just because.
After that, we went to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. Which frankly sucked, but we did find ourselves sitting next to FORREST J. ACKERMAN!!! I was, of course, star-struck, as is only appropriate in that situation.
I then went off to sit in line for Masquerade. I was there early enough that we got very good seats. I saw![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chanaleh while we were waiting, and she told me her story of woe and programs, which is her story to tell, so I won't.
Susan deGuardiola was the MC for the Masquerade, which had forty-seven entries. Forty-seven GOOD entries. There were twelve junior fan division entries, which ranged from the adorable to the brilliant. Two of them were Discworld-based entries, since Terry Pratchett was the GoH, and was there as one of the judges. One was a Death of Rats, and one was a "Death of Dust Bunnies -- the Grim Sweeper."
And then there were 35 adult division entires. I'm not going to say too much about them, because Masquerade is visual, so verbal descriptions are mildly pointless.
We don't stick around for the judging, because things get really late, so we started to head out to hit parties. And then the halftime show started. It was Charles Ross's One Man Star Wars. And we got sucked right in and couldn't leave. To call it brilliant is to not do it justice.
Afterwards, we started party-hopping, but, since the Masque started late, it ended late, and most of the parties were more-or-less dying down or over by that time. Ah, well. We did see the Hula-Dancing Spaceman at the Rhode Island party. That was pretty cool. And then we went home.
I'd decided to drink my way through the Worldcon parties.
On a Saturday night.
Forgetting that I was on medication that increased the effect of alcohol.
Two medications that do so, actually.
And that I was working in the morning.
Nine-thirty in the morning.
As a Hebrew school teacher.
Fortunately, it was a teacher training day -- the kids aren't showing up until next week. And it was actually very useful -- I'm starting to get a handle on what I'm doing, I think, and having ideas what to do. My co-teacher and I will be meeting tomorrow afternoon to do some more planning and so forth, and I'm going to be looking for blackboard paint to see if I can't make that cruddy chalkboard that actually doesn't accept chalk into a REAL chalkboard that DOES.
My boss mentioned to me that he'd seen my livejournal, and thought that the question I'd asked of Dr. Mike about mad science vs. evil overlordness was a good one.
So, if Rafi's reading this, everybody should now wave to him. *wave to Rafi*
I got back to the con around two or so, what with parking and all. Lis and I took a look at the Junkyard Wars setup, just long enough to see what the challenge was (build a machine to throw a beanie baby onto a target), but we didn't stick around to see what people built, or how well they did.
At 3, we went to "Creating Gods", where Lois McMaster Bujold, David B. Coe, Glen Cook, George R. R. Martin, Tamora Pierce, and Jo Walton all discussed how they design pantheons and use them in stories. And how you can have active gods that are involved in stories, and yet still have your human characters be able to do stuff without being overshadowed. That was a great panel -- if it had a weakness, it was that there were SO many people on the panel that one wanted to hear from that you didn't get quite enough from anyone. But nobody hogged the panel, and everybody had interesting insights and comments, so I was happy with it -- I just think six people is a bit much.
Four o'clock, we went to "Jewish Time-Based Mitzvot in a Lunar Colony". Nomi Berstein, Solomon Davidoff, and Janice Gelb were the panel -- Dan Kimmel unfortunately had laryngitis by that time and couldn't talk, so skipped out.
As expected, we had topic drift, and it became a generalized time-based mitzvot in various situations discussion (with a bit of a digression onto some other mitzvot, non-time based, but we pretty much stuck with the time-based ones.)
One insight: why not have all-women astronauts? Women are exempt from time based mitzvot, so you can sidestep the problem that way, at least for a while.
As it turns out, Michael Burstein said he is working on a novel about the first Jewish family on Mars, and asked a rabbi he knows about how to deal with time-based mitzvot on Mars. The rabbi, after checking to make sure that this was purely theoretical (he was willing to make a sort of reasonable guess for purposes of a story without too much worry, but if Michael and Nomi really WERE planning on moving to Mars, he'd have wanted to do a LOT more research), made it clear that this WASN'T a rulling, but, for purposes of the story, you could do the following: on the spaceship TO Mars, you keep track of the Earth days on the Jewish callendar. If you leave on 1 Tishrei, Earth date, and you spend 10 days in flight, then you arrive on 10 Tishrei, Earth date. And let's say that's a Monday.
Then you leave the spaceship, with the intention of settling permanently. You call the day that you step off the ship "10 Tishrei Mars." And you just count a day as a day.
Now, since the Martian day is 40 minutes longer than the Earth day, you will rapidly get out of sync with Earth, but that's okay. When other Jews arrive on Mars, they will follow the Mars callendar that you set up -- they'd follow the Earth callendar until they disembarked, but then the Mars callendar while they were on Mars, and then follow the Mars callendar on the spaceship back until they disembarked THERE, when they'd switch back to the Earth callendar.
Rosh Chodesh would be entirely calculated, and wouldn't be based on Phobos or Deimos at all, because that would be stupid. You WOULD have Adar II, even though you wouldn't be keeping this callendar in sync with anything in particular, but you'd follow all the calculations as set up. Just because.
After that, we went to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. Which frankly sucked, but we did find ourselves sitting next to FORREST J. ACKERMAN!!! I was, of course, star-struck, as is only appropriate in that situation.
I then went off to sit in line for Masquerade. I was there early enough that we got very good seats. I saw
chanaleh while we were waiting, and she told me her story of woe and programs, which is her story to tell, so I won't.Susan deGuardiola was the MC for the Masquerade, which had forty-seven entries. Forty-seven GOOD entries. There were twelve junior fan division entries, which ranged from the adorable to the brilliant. Two of them were Discworld-based entries, since Terry Pratchett was the GoH, and was there as one of the judges. One was a Death of Rats, and one was a "Death of Dust Bunnies -- the Grim Sweeper."
And then there were 35 adult division entires. I'm not going to say too much about them, because Masquerade is visual, so verbal descriptions are mildly pointless.
We don't stick around for the judging, because things get really late, so we started to head out to hit parties. And then the halftime show started. It was Charles Ross's One Man Star Wars. And we got sucked right in and couldn't leave. To call it brilliant is to not do it justice.
Afterwards, we started party-hopping, but, since the Masque started late, it ended late, and most of the parties were more-or-less dying down or over by that time. Ah, well. We did see the Hula-Dancing Spaceman at the Rhode Island party. That was pretty cool. And then we went home.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-07 03:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 08:36 am (UTC)*grin* I love that kind of geeking. It reminds me of being an altar server in some very High Church congregations.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 09:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 10:35 am (UTC)The problem with Mars is that the Mars days are almost 24 hours long. According to this table I have here[1], the Mars rotation (i.e. day) is 24 hours, 37 minutes and 23 seconds. So even if you happen to land at a lattitude which would sync up fairly well with Jerusalem time (as far as sun rise/set goes), you'd drift. Given the effects of sunlight on humans, I'd expect that Mars colonists would try to sync their schedules with the sun... and I believe that studies have shown that when people are removed from light and other time-cues, they tend to longer days, rather than shorter ones... so it's at least theoretically possible, from a biological standpoint, for people to adjust to 24.5 hour days.
If the colonists do standardize on the martian day for their day-to-day activities, I think that Jews would pretty much have to keep the time-based mitzvot keep in sync. Adding half an hour to a fast, or Shabbat, isn't a big deal... but starting a fast at 1am (and ending it at 2am the next day) would be. Especially if that didn't happen all the time...
In a way, places like Earth's moon would be easier, since the natural light/dark patterns are so far off from what people can handle -- in those cases, I would expect people to keep 24 hour days.
[1] Reprinted from "The Solar System," Carl Sagan, Scientific American, 9/1975)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 10:35 am (UTC)Story idea! :
...
Just then the Shabbat ten minute warning sounded. We quickly ducked into the airlock, cycled it, and took off our suits. We ran to the galley, where Deb was getting the candles ready for lighting. While the rest of the crew gathered, I punched some numbers into my PDA. The Shabbat alarm went off, and I quickly shut off the device as all work onboard stopped--except for Joel's, up on the bridge, since his work as pilot meant keeping us all alive.
After the ceremony, I grabbed a quick snack of cheese and crackers and chatted with Steve. Forty minutes later the Shabbat all-clear sounded, and it was back to work.
...
Anyway, using the subjective time would mean that you'd get out of sync with Earth pretty much immediately, but it would at least be consistent.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 02:09 pm (UTC)