I am in London, England, for Loncon 3, the 72nd Annual World Science Fiction Convention. While here, I will be participating in discussions of all manner of SCIENCE, namely:
Communicating Risk and Uncertainty – Thursday 20:00 – 21:00, Capital Suite 16 (ExCeL) – The risks of crossing the road are much higher than the risks that the LHC will make a black hole, or that your plane will crash. But we don’t worry about crossing the road. How can we improve our ways of thinking about and analysing risk?
Allergies on Alien Planets – Friday 19:00 – 20:00, London Suite 1 (ExCeL) – Planets that have aliens with big teeth, volcanos and poisonous atmospheres present obvious hazards, but what other trouble might be lying in wait for those visiting alien planets. Will the local microbes lunch on us and our food, pollute our water supply, ignore us or give us allergies? Diseases killed more colonists on Earth than animals or the colonised, but will this work elsewhere? Just why are our planets so safe?
Podcasting Science – Saturday 10:00 – 11:00, London Suite 2 (ExCeL) – What makes a good science podcast? Who is making them, how are they made, what’s out there that our panel can recommend? What are the advantdages and disadvantages of having them done by professional scientists and by people acting more as journalists?
The Bugs Are Coming Back – Monday 11:00 – 12:00, Capital Suite 13 (ExCeL) – Will we soon look back on the 20th century as a golden age of disease free living? How did we get to this state of affairs and what can be done about it?
Please feel free to say hello if you happen by, or track me by my pithy comments and observations.
