If I had been moving back to the KW area at the end of September, rather than the end of November, I certainly would have been hitting some of the events at the Quantum To Cosmos conference. I hope some of my pals in the area are planning to check it out.
I’ll be able to stream the lectures, and several of them seem things I’m not going to want to miss. There are lots there that interest me, and which I’ll probably eventually get around to watching, but a couple that I’ll probably watch right away, and would likely have gone to include:
- The Origin of the Universe and the Arrow of Time
- Does Reality Have a “Genetic” Basis?
- Seeing Science Through Fiction–Stephenson!!
- Sense from Chaos: Controlling the Dynamic Networks of the Brain
I guess the lectures aren’t really a missed opportunity, since they will be available online, but the whole Science In The Pub track (which seems to be at the Huether!) seems tragic to miss.
And then there’s the film festival. I used to be a pretty consistent regular at the Princess back in the day (and I expect to pick that practice up again in the new year), but this selection in particular has some very topical appeal. I mean, I’ll usually take a chance to see Metropolis in a theatre, and I’ve been thinking Sarah might like E.T., and so on, but the real draw for me right now would be the chance to see Méliès‘ Le Voyage Dans La Lune.
Prior to this week I’d never heard of Méliès, or this movie–and apparently I’d been missing a lot of pop culture in jokes as a consequence. Until I happened to see a link to Lisa Goldstein‘s Nebula finalist story Dark Rooms. Having read it, I now have a healthy curiosity about the man’s work. (Please allow me to take a moment to plug Goldstein’s work–I think I have everything she’s written, and it’s all pretty great. In particular you should read The Red Magician, The Dream Years, Tourists, and The Alchemist’s Door, but all the novels are worth your time.)
Anyway, missing the chance to see the movie for the first time in a theatre–in a dark room, as ’twere–is a missed opportunity. I’m 100% sure I can go watch a bunch of Melies’ movies on YouTube, but it would have been great to see it first in the cinema.
Part of my process for coming to terms with leaving Halifax is convincing myself that having access to this kind of event will be a big plus. Of course the scheduling could have been better here for that argument, but I suspect that the Perimeter Institute probably won’t only have one such conference.
