This week, Brannen, Scooter, and I were able to host a podcast from our beloved Madicon with fellow DC Geeks writer (and local professor and artist and expert in all things shiny, pretty, and immersive) -
Lauren
!
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| Surprisingly, even small cons have great cosplayers! (my photo, but if you know the cosplayer, please email me) |
I love podcasts that ramble, especially when we bring in other DC Geeks to add their specific flair to the conversation. With Lauren, we started discussing tales of tech support woe (“I bought a social media! We’re good!) and quickly moved on to the impact of the Internet on museums and galleries.
At times, the conversation seemed so familiar to me as a former Art History student, that I wondered if we were “being geeky enough” - as if it could somehow be non-geeky to discuss the interaction design principles of a gallery and the juxtaposition of its users rather than a mere visitors. Leaping further into the intersection of art and fantasy (with a bit of mysticism and ritual), we hit my favorite part of the podcast: masks. We delve into everything from how cosplay can be transformative as people take on a character to our own over-the-top plans for this Halloween.
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| Of course, the spectrum also includes people who just have fun rocking a great costume. (like John and Cassie here - image by me) |
Of course, it wouldn’t be a con podcast without actually running down some awesome con stories! Given that Brannen had run the LARP the night before, we had some excellent survival horror tales from within the Victorian asylum of St. Harold’s. As with all well-constructed LARPs, everyone believed they were the main plot line.
The gangsters faced off against a tentacled horror in the sewers attempting to break out their boss, Arkham-style. The madman clutching his tattered, blood-spattered manuscript succeeds in his ends (you’ll have to listen to find out the horrors that those involved). And generally, everyone wound up dead or stark raving mad. A resounding success!
So the final question of the podcast remains: What the hell was on the board in the study room we were recording in?!
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| Is... Is this Science? (image by me, science by a mysterious hero) |
We’re always discussing how there’s different areas of expertise in geek, and we were completely stumped by this. Proof that the high scores I got in AP Chem have been replaced with BBC Sherlock references (although we couldn’t even pin down what department these notes might have been for). So, brilliant readers, care to weigh in and educate us on these mysterious squiggles?
Thank you to Danita, the staff, and JMU’s Sci-Fi/Fantasy Guild for running a wonderful convention. And thanks to Lauren for educating us about how much cooler masks are than we ever even realized.
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This is N2, dinitrogen. It's labeled at the top left, and the N's with dots around them on the bottom right are a representation of the covalent bond.
ReplyDeleteThe complicated part, on the left, is a diagram looking at the sets of electrons - p orbitals on top, s orbitals on the bottom, the things sort of like up and down arrows are individual electrons with spin up and spin down. I think what we're looking at is a diagram about orbital hybridization, an approximation for what electrons do in simple molecules, although I've never seen this notation exactly before. B.O.'s is bonding orbitals, the number of electrons that take part in the bond (rather than staying with their own personal special atom.)
See, for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_hybridisation
Left behind by a chemistry or materials physics class, probably at like the sophomore level.
Ian
ijkaplan@law.gwu.edu
Wow. Thank you for the assist. It was bugging me(us) not knowing what that was. :)
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