WindyCon Meeting Tonight

I'm heading off to tonight's WindyCon meeting with a few problems in my hip pocket. I'm running Special Events for the con and am trying to figure out things that I could do to make Opening and Closing Ceremonies more interesting, several of the ideas that I had having fallen through.

We'll have the Guest of Honor speeches, which will take about half an hour. There will be one award presentation for the ISFiC Writers Contest. Those are pretty much set in stone.

There've been complaints about the "interminable introduction of guests, many of whom aren't even at Opening Ceremonies". I sympathize with this, but I'm not sure I can eliminate it, since a number of the guests really enjoy it. I'm thinking about asking them to check in at the door so we can just introduce the folks who are actually there -- I'd just need to pass the list to Christian Ready, our Toastmaster, so he could edit his copy. Of course, if someone comes in late, they might get missed, but that's excusable, to my mind. At least it would make it shorter.

The convention theme is "Innerspace". Robert Sawyer is our Author Guest of Honor. And I have a month and a half to manufacture something entertaining.

Thoughts?

WindyCon Meeting Tonight

I'm heading off to tonight's WindyCon meeting with a few problems in my hip pocket. I'm running Special Events for the con and am trying to figure out things that I could do to make Opening and Closing Ceremonies more interesting, several of the ideas that I had having fallen through.

We'll have the Guest of Honor speeches, which will take about half an hour. There will be one award presentation for the ISFiC Writers Contest. Those are pretty much set in stone.

There've been complaints about the "interminable introduction of guests, many of whom aren't even at Opening Ceremonies". I sympathize with this, but I'm not sure I can eliminate it, since a number of the guests really enjoy it. I'm thinking about asking them to check in at the door so we can just introduce the folks who are actually there -- I'd just need to pass the list to Christian Ready, our Toastmaster, so he could edit his copy. Of course, if someone comes in late, they might get missed, but that's excusable, to my mind. At least it would make it shorter.

The convention theme is "Innerspace". Robert Sawyer is our Author Guest of Honor. And I have a month and a half to manufacture something entertaining.

Thoughts?

I Worry About This Sort of Thing

Living next door to Chicago gives one a different perspective on politics and possible cases of vote fraud. If true, this article suggests that somebody is working on generating a lot of potentially fraudulent votes in the upcoming election.

I think that's a bad thing, regardless of which side is doing the dirty work. (Maybe both. Who knows?) But since they're talking (in the article) about going to people's homes to investigate whether the registrations and absentee ballot requests are valid and legal, I suspect that the next thing we're going to hear is about how "they" are trying to intimidate people into not voting. I believe that was the spin from Florida when officials there were out checking on registrations recently.

One of my friends tells me that he, his wife, his daughter, and his deceased mother have perfect voting records in their old Hyde Park district, despite the fact that none of them have cast votes there in the multiple years since they moved away. Of course, he could be kidding me.

Maybe.

But this is why I worry about plans that expand absentee voting and allow you to vote without showing a photo ID. Because vote fraud does occur and -- if an election is as close as the 2000 race in Florida -- it makes a difference.

And that means that this isn't a good thing either.

I Worry About This Sort of Thing

Living next door to Chicago gives one a different perspective on politics and possible cases of vote fraud. If true, this article suggests that somebody is working on generating a lot of potentially fraudulent votes in the upcoming election.

I think that's a bad thing, regardless of which side is doing the dirty work. (Maybe both. Who knows?) But since they're talking (in the article) about going to people's homes to investigate whether the registrations and absentee ballot requests are valid and legal, I suspect that the next thing we're going to hear is about how "they" are trying to intimidate people into not voting. I believe that was the spin from Florida when officials there were out checking on registrations recently.

One of my friends tells me that he, his wife, his daughter, and his deceased mother have perfect voting records in their old Hyde Park district, despite the fact that none of them have cast votes there in the multiple years since they moved away. Of course, he could be kidding me.

Maybe.

But this is why I worry about plans that expand absentee voting and allow you to vote without showing a photo ID. Because vote fraud does occur and -- if an election is as close as the 2000 race in Florida -- it makes a difference.

And that means that this isn't a good thing either.