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Darkover Convention Report
4 December 2013 07:17 pmI had never been to Darkover but since my wife was going and after my “Bobbins Initiative” commentary after TeslaCon, I thought I should put my money where my mouth was and support an established general literary science fiction convention’s steampunk track.
Darkover is a long running convention (since the 70s) in Baltimore with attendance not over 500 with its name originating with the Marion Zimmer Bradly series of novels. The name was licensed and apparently that license has run out so this will be the last Darkover con. Next year it will be the same people in the same hotel just with a different name; Chessiecon.
As I mentioned, there was a steampunk track. At least one person recognized me from one of my presentations at the Steampunk World’s Fair. I also ran into one of the reenactors (Buffalo Hunter) from Old Bedford Village’s Gunfight at the OK Corral.
One of the first steampunk programs on the schedule was on spiritualism. This pretty much followed the pattern of every spiritualism or occult panel I have ever seen at any con; Even though all of THESE people are frauds, fakes and charlatans, doesn’t mean that psychic powers aren’t real. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
However, in actuality, it is. The complete lack of evidence for the proposition IS, in fact, evidence against the proposition. Bayes’ theorem explains how. I’m not going to go into it, just watch the video.
On Saturday night, the “pith helmet is a symbol of British imperialism and therefore shouldn’t be worn” topic came up. I won’t go into that one either and will just reference my previous exposition on the subject. That was followed by a discussion that went through homeopathy and the ability of calcified lumps or unusually shaped moles discovered in the foot by a reflexologist to diagnose pregnancy and kidney disease or some other such. A cavalcade of observation bias. After being told numerous anecdotes about how many times the practitioner was able to successfully diagnose some sort of problem, I asked, “So, how many failures? How many times did you say there was a problem and there turned out not to be a problem or how many times did you fail to see a problem that was there?”
“I don’t know.”
And therin lies the flaw in all of these. Without knowing that, you have no idea what is actually going on. You see only the successes, ignore the failures and delude yourself into believing something that is unsupported by evidence. This is how the plural of anecdote is not data.
I suppose I should expect these sorts of woo-ish attitudes from the general populous but Darkover also contains an “esoteric” track hosted by Ecumenicon and the Order of St. Michael. The presence of faith (belief without evidence or in spite of evidence) is strong. I really need to sit down and build a presentation that recognizes Victorian pseudoscience for what it really was: fake science.
On the real science side (thank you for reality) there was a presentation on telegraphy based on “The Victorian Internet” by Tom Standage. I should relearn the Morse code. There was also the obligatory introduction to steampunk presentation.
Saturday evening was the promenade, a steampunk costume contest inflicted on random people sitting in the hotel lobby. Most of the weekend I was not in my full kit but for the contest I pulled out the gunleather and sword.
Yea. I won.
Does that sound to be lacking in enthusiasm? Well, it should. It’s not that I have any sort of disdain for costuming or that I have won often enough that another victory doesn’t measure. It’s really that I don’t consider my costume to be all the great or all steampunk. Nearly all of the clothing was purchased from Gentleman’s Emporium, so there is no creativity or sewing talent involved in that. Even though I built the belt, the gunleather isn’t inspired or anything. The only “steampunk” elements are the goggles and the fact that I am wearing a Japanese katana in a US cavalry saber sheath on a gunfighter costume. I do want to show off a bit and have pride in what I have done but there are other people who deserve costuming awards much more than I do.
One of the presentations on Sunday was about Charles Babbage and his machines. The presenter talked about the mathematical shortcut for calculating polynomials called the Method of Difference and the realization as how Babbage’s difference engine actually worked hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m not particularly good at math but knowing how these things actually work is fascinating and perhaps when I was in school if I had been taught this, I might have found it enlightening enough to do better instead of failing calculus multiple times.
I bought “The Steampunk Gazette.” I think it’s one of the most thorough, well organized and attractive of the “What is Steampunk” books out there. I also have met the author, Major Tinker. He came to Pittsburgh in 2010 and joined us in a photo shoot and I’ve run into him several times subsequently at conventions. I also picked up “The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes” by George Mann.
One would think that with all the Dr. Who fans walking around, a fez would not be such a novelty. I need a button that says, “No, I’m not a shriner.”
Darkover is a long running convention (since the 70s) in Baltimore with attendance not over 500 with its name originating with the Marion Zimmer Bradly series of novels. The name was licensed and apparently that license has run out so this will be the last Darkover con. Next year it will be the same people in the same hotel just with a different name; Chessiecon.
As I mentioned, there was a steampunk track. At least one person recognized me from one of my presentations at the Steampunk World’s Fair. I also ran into one of the reenactors (Buffalo Hunter) from Old Bedford Village’s Gunfight at the OK Corral.
One of the first steampunk programs on the schedule was on spiritualism. This pretty much followed the pattern of every spiritualism or occult panel I have ever seen at any con; Even though all of THESE people are frauds, fakes and charlatans, doesn’t mean that psychic powers aren’t real. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
However, in actuality, it is. The complete lack of evidence for the proposition IS, in fact, evidence against the proposition. Bayes’ theorem explains how. I’m not going to go into it, just watch the video.
On Saturday night, the “pith helmet is a symbol of British imperialism and therefore shouldn’t be worn” topic came up. I won’t go into that one either and will just reference my previous exposition on the subject. That was followed by a discussion that went through homeopathy and the ability of calcified lumps or unusually shaped moles discovered in the foot by a reflexologist to diagnose pregnancy and kidney disease or some other such. A cavalcade of observation bias. After being told numerous anecdotes about how many times the practitioner was able to successfully diagnose some sort of problem, I asked, “So, how many failures? How many times did you say there was a problem and there turned out not to be a problem or how many times did you fail to see a problem that was there?”
“I don’t know.”
And therin lies the flaw in all of these. Without knowing that, you have no idea what is actually going on. You see only the successes, ignore the failures and delude yourself into believing something that is unsupported by evidence. This is how the plural of anecdote is not data.
I suppose I should expect these sorts of woo-ish attitudes from the general populous but Darkover also contains an “esoteric” track hosted by Ecumenicon and the Order of St. Michael. The presence of faith (belief without evidence or in spite of evidence) is strong. I really need to sit down and build a presentation that recognizes Victorian pseudoscience for what it really was: fake science.
On the real science side (thank you for reality) there was a presentation on telegraphy based on “The Victorian Internet” by Tom Standage. I should relearn the Morse code. There was also the obligatory introduction to steampunk presentation.
Saturday evening was the promenade, a steampunk costume contest inflicted on random people sitting in the hotel lobby. Most of the weekend I was not in my full kit but for the contest I pulled out the gunleather and sword.
Yea. I won.
Does that sound to be lacking in enthusiasm? Well, it should. It’s not that I have any sort of disdain for costuming or that I have won often enough that another victory doesn’t measure. It’s really that I don’t consider my costume to be all the great or all steampunk. Nearly all of the clothing was purchased from Gentleman’s Emporium, so there is no creativity or sewing talent involved in that. Even though I built the belt, the gunleather isn’t inspired or anything. The only “steampunk” elements are the goggles and the fact that I am wearing a Japanese katana in a US cavalry saber sheath on a gunfighter costume. I do want to show off a bit and have pride in what I have done but there are other people who deserve costuming awards much more than I do.
One of the presentations on Sunday was about Charles Babbage and his machines. The presenter talked about the mathematical shortcut for calculating polynomials called the Method of Difference and the realization as how Babbage’s difference engine actually worked hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m not particularly good at math but knowing how these things actually work is fascinating and perhaps when I was in school if I had been taught this, I might have found it enlightening enough to do better instead of failing calculus multiple times.
I bought “The Steampunk Gazette.” I think it’s one of the most thorough, well organized and attractive of the “What is Steampunk” books out there. I also have met the author, Major Tinker. He came to Pittsburgh in 2010 and joined us in a photo shoot and I’ve run into him several times subsequently at conventions. I also picked up “The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes” by George Mann.
One would think that with all the Dr. Who fans walking around, a fez would not be such a novelty. I need a button that says, “No, I’m not a shriner.”
