Eccentric Flower:200908/Friday

I slept reasonably well. In a hotel. On the party floor. Yay melatonin!

I can read a fair bit of French and sometimes I can understand when people speak it, but it depends on the context and how fast they talk. In Montreal they talk fast. If the gentleman at the coffee place had asked me "light or dark?" in French, I would have been expecting the question, and might even have been able to reply. But I would not have been expecting "strong or weak?" which is what he actually asked me. Fortunately, by then he had already switched to English, as they do. But really, who would deliberately say "I'd like weak coffee, please?"

Nonelvis and I then had some discussion about how they would say "weak" in that context - strong being "fort," naturellement. The lead horse was "douce," which means "soft," but that seemed unsatisfactory somehow. However, at lunch I had a beer which was described as "douce" - meaning not particularly strong in alcohol, there - and that made much more sense.

Panel on creationist science this morning. Marred by the absence of 1) an actual creationist and 2) Teresa Nielsen Hayden, but a good panel nonetheless, apart from a moderator who didn't moderate and thus did not adequately curb my least favorite part of these panels: the audience questions. I'm not so partial to questions from the audience in the first place, because I get embarrassed and want to crawl under my chair if the questions are inane, but the SF fan needs special curbing, because if not watched closely they will ramble for ten minutes without getting to the point and completely eat your panel's time. They mostly do not seem to have mastered the art of asking a question concisely.

Despite the absence of anyone foolish enough to take up the pure creationist point of view, it was not an utter slamfest. Although creationist science was duly and justifiably ridiculed (one panelist to an audience member: "The opposite of 'creationist science' is not 'evolution science.' The opposite of 'creationist science' is science"), the panel was not blindly anti-faith. This is important to me, because I feel that faith, despite its flaws, has a purpose and addresses a need. And a fair bit of honest discussion was had about the reasons people might turn to religion and why these reasons deserve more than empty mockery.

A lot of interesting points in the panel, including how Southern fundamentalism after the Civil War was at least partially a populist trend (I agree, but the proof is too large for the margin to contain it), and how words like "know" and "believe" are overloaded operators (as we programmers say), and so forth. But my favorite comment was from the gentleman on the panel who also happened to be a reverend. Someone noted that "intelligent design" is for people who don't want to have to know anything about actual science, and he said, no, intelligent design is for people who don't want to read the Bible. Even if you are far more of a literalist about the Bible than he believed was sane (he pointed out several times that the Bible contains multiple creation myths, for example), there's still some points where, even in the Biblical universe, intelligent design just don't make no sense.

Heather is cute and charming and did not bat an eye when she saw us spend money on a set of Asterix drinking glasses (Nonelvis) and three rare and quite expensive first-edition, long-out-of-print SF hardcovers (me). Perhaps that was partially because she herself bought a t-shirt, several pins, and a bag full of Star Trek tchotchkes. ("This one has three nacelles, so it goes faster.") Ah, what is so dangerous as the dealer's room - even the one at this con, which is apparently in reduced circumstances?

(I've noticed at both outside-the-US Worldcons I've attended the dealer's area is about half the size it is at the US cons. I suspect this is because a lot of the dealers are US-based and don't want to have to deal with another country's sales rules.)

The only other actual convention activity I attended today was watching Joe and Gay Haldeman interview each other for a half hour, which was lovable and hilarious. Joe and Gay are old friends of Nonelvis. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading beside the piscine, which is the hilarious French for what you and I would call a swimming pool. (It makes me feel like I am swimming in a fish pond.)

The Unibroue people apparently have restaurant(s)! They serve their beer, and food to go with their beer. It was excellent. That was lunch. Dinner was at a restaurant which I suppose I would describe as nouvelle retro bistro. You know those places which take diners, or red-Naugahyde lounges, or some other old concept, and keep the concept and certain bits but try to update others and improve them? Like that. But bistro. So you get the salad niçoise, but instead of canned tuna you get chunks of barely-seared sushi-grade tuna, and the eggs and potatoes aren't overcooked. Like that. It was excellent.

As prophecied, so far we have not had a bad meal. But when I get home I may have to go on a regime of celery and water for three days. I haven't even mentioned the chocolatier we stopped at on the way back from dinner last night. Just to have something in the room if we get peckish, you know. (I finally ate two of the chocolates this afternoon. I have been too full to be peckish.)

Off to watch a live rendition of a British game show concept. A topic is picked and a player is forced to extemporize for one minute on that topic without pausing, messing up, or making too big a fool of himself. Should be fun to watch.