<pre><!--the pre tag is because IE hates everyone ~v -->
From presidents @ swil.org Sun Sep  5 16:46:03 2004
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 16:41:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Dubious Yet Illustrious Leaders <presidents @ swil.org>
To: SWIL Announcements List <announcements @ swil.org>
Subject: [SWIL-ANNOUNCE] The State of the SWIL

Greetings, SWILlies sundry and variable, and welcome to the SWIL
announcements list, to which you may or may not have noticed you were
subscribed.

The announcements is a very low-traffic list created to consist of all
the SWILlies we could locate.  The presidents manage the list, and will
use it to send out occasional announcements of those very few SWIL
events that SWILlies all over the place might be interested in.

Long, long ago, when the primordial Chaos and others of her ilk
conceived of the idea of this list, it was suggested that
one of the things that should go out to this list be "an annual Year in
Review/Year in Preview email, sent by the new presidents." This is that
email.  We hope you'll forgive us if we're a little late in getting it
sent out, since we had to configure the lists first, and then
procrastinate for half a year. If you hadn't noticed it's late, that's
okay too.

------------------
==== Contents ====
I. About SWIL
II. Officers of SWIL
III. The Year In Review
 - campus construction
 - Pterodactyl Hunt
 - George
 - Science Fiction Discussion Table (SFDT)
 - Cordwainer Bird Library
 - Neil Gaiman
 - swil.org mailing lists
 - swil.org webpage
 - wiki
 - Panic Book
 - swilshirts & reprints
------------------
I. SWIL

SWIL is the Swarthmore Warders of Imaginative Literature.  In 1981, it
was described thus:

SWIL: mutated reality.  A long time ago, on a campus far, far away,
there began SWIL, and when they said entropy always increases, they were
right. SWIL is a body of anthropomorphic globules dedicated to the
proposition that all fiction is not created equal; science fiction and
fantasy are better. We think. Therefore we are.

http://www.swil.org/SWILnews/Spring81/StudentHandbook3-16.txt

II. Officers of SWIL

We are TGV, the 300 km/h presidency.  On January 23, 2004, SWIL
inaugurated us as Tall (Mai Pucik '06), Grande (Mark Handler '05), and
Venti (Jillian Waldman '06).  Although many people had supported Raoul's
(Ben Bagley '04) proposal that we instead be called Rum, Sodomy, and the
Lash (after the Churchill quote indicating that these were the three
traditions of the British Navy), we somehow, err... didn't actually choose
them.  So instead we're sizes of caffeinated beverages sold by Starbucks.
And TGV, to make the train people happy.

The other official SWIL offices this year are also listed on
http://www.swil.org/swilfolk.html
and filled by:

Susan Zell '07, Treasurer
Jackie Werner '07, Chief Minister of Propaganda
Andrew Brown '07, Cordwainer Bird Librarian, SWIL Scribe
Susan Zell '07 & Miriam Newman '07, Mistresses of BEM
Jerome Fung '06, Custodian of George

Wizards for Pterodactyl Hunt 2004:
Andrew Brown '07, Sarah Hartman (BMC) '06, Jackie Werner '07

III. The Year in Review

If you've looked around campus, you'll have noticed that they persist in
constructing large buildings, thus mucking up campus and making
everything confusing.  As a consequence, they've finally finished what
they were doing to DuPont, Martin, and Cornell (specifically, merging
them into the still-unnamed Science Center, which shall be known as
NuPont until somebody tells us not to).  This means we can hold the
Pterodactyl Hunt on North Campus again.  It's especially convenient
since the area around Mertz Field is currently rather torn up by the
construction on the New Dorm (NuDorm?) just built south of Mertz.
North Campus is also much more interesting terrain.

In related Pterodactyl Hunt news, last year's massive effort to reduce
the foam sword shortage at Hunt Central was a success - we've now got
nearly enough swords for all the hunters.  Of course, we still need
more.

This year's Pterodactyl Hunt will be on Friday, October 1st, with the
next day as the rain date. Jackie (jwerner1 @ swarthmore.edu), Andrew
(abrown1 @ swarthmore.edu), & Sarah (shartman @ brynmawr.edu) are the
wizards. Questions about the Pterodactyl Hunt should be addressed to
them, or to the hunt email list (hunt AT swil DOT org).

In related campus construction news, they tore up the part of Parrish
5th floor that housed the George C. Hurliman Memorial Library Memorial
Library Memorial Library over the summer.  The madness of George III has
ended.  Fortunately, we moved out just in time, and George (IV) is now
(temporarily) housed in Parrish 473, which is every bit as high up and
out of the way as its previous location. Tedd has promised us that, next
year, we'll get a permanent space somewhere in Tarble, but Tedd's now
left Swarthmore (to be replaced by Myrt), so we'll see if that actually
works out.

Last year, we revived the (live) Science Fiction Discussion Table.  It
met on Tuesday nights at 5:30 in upper Sharples and had weekly
discussion topics. This year it will meet on Thursday nights.

We also tried to think of ways to improve the Cordwainer Bird science
fiction library, which is still housed on the top floor of Cornell.
It's impossible to actually integrate it with the library catalog,
sadly, so we haven't really accomplished much there.  Andrew Brown '07,
Birdwainer librarian extraordinaire, with the help of his loyal minions,
the Four Assistant Librarians of the Apocalypse, has completely
catalogued the library and the one in George.
http://www.swil.org/Cordwainer/

Please email book nominations for Cordwainer Bird to Andrew Brown '07 at
abrown1 @ swarthmore.edu.

More excitingly, Mai Pucik '06 (a.k.a. Tall) submitted a proposal last
spring for a Cooper Grant to bring Neil Gaiman to speak at Swarthmore.
Gaiman is an SF writer whom you've probably heard of, and has written,
among other things, the _Sandman_ comic books, _American_Gods_, and
_Neverwhere_. The current status of the project is that it will probably
go through, if nothing goes horribly wrong.  We still haven't an exact
date for him to come, but it will likely be sometime this school year.
More details will come later, though they will probably not be posted to
this list - if you're not on fun or chat and want to know, email
presidents and ask that we include you when we send out the final status
update.

And, less excitingly, we've done stuff to the swil.org email lists.
Besides creating this one, we've also created a mailing list for
SWILnews, swilnews @ swil.org.  The mailing lists are still hosted on Josh
Smith's server in California.

As always, to subscribe or unsubscribe from any swil.org list, email
majordomo @ swil.org with
(un)subscribe nameoflist
in the body of the message.

The complete list of swil.org mailing lists is available at
http://www.swil.org/lists/

Lists of note are:

fun: Postings of fun events in the Swarthmore/Philadelphia area.

boston-fun, nyc-fun, sfbay-fun, dc-fun, triangle-fun: Regional lists
similar in purpose to fun. Currently represented are Boston, New York
City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and the North Carolina "Research
Triangle" area (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill), but any area with a decent
concentration of SWILFolk can start one of these. Email Josh
(irilyth @ infersys.com) if you'd like to.

all-fun: A superset list of all regional fun lists (including
just-plain-fun), for non-location-specific fun events, like meteor
showers and t-shirt reprints. Anyone who is on one of the above fun
lists will be automatically subscribed to this one, or you can subscribe
directly.

chit-chat: Chatting with swilfolk. Ridiculously high traffic at times.

debate: Split off of the chat list in Spring of 2003, the debate list
was designed for more aggressive debates and point-by-point rebuttals.
More detail is available at
http://www.swil.org/lists/debate.

geek-chat: Like chit-chat, but much more technically minded.

hunt: Planning for the Pterodactyl Hunt.  Generally an even mixture of
nifty lore and annoying logistics.  Feel free to join if you'd like to
help and don't object to finding out all of the hunt's deepest,
darkest secrets.

reunion: This list is used to plan reunion-type activities, which
generally means the next Alumni Weekend, or the next SWIL reunion if
there's one of those coming up. Join if you're interested in attending.

vacation: Similar to the reunion list, this list is used to plan the
next SWIL group vacation, like the cruise, the ski trip, or the camping
trip. Join if you're interested in such activities.

sfdt: The Science Fiction Discussion Table. Usually, a new book is
discussed each month, and the list is also used for some general SF news
and discussion, like awards.  Some traffic, depending how alive the list
is at the time.  Not necessarily related to the group that meets in
Sharples.

theology: This list was created last spring, to provide a safe space for
SWILlies to discuss matters of religion.

The SWIL website has undergone minor improvements, but hasn't yet gone
through the major modernization and overhaul it needs.  Most of it is
now in XHTML.

A few pages that have been added include:
The Swarthmore Rounds - http://www.swil.org/roundlist.html
Cordwainer catalogues - http://www.swil.org/Cordwainer/
A not-quite-complete mirror of Joel McNary's swil page -
http://www.swil.org/JoelPage/

Jillian Waldman '06 (Venti) is trying to fill in the gaps in the
SWILnews archives (http://www.swil.org/SWILnews/). This includes, when
she has time, typing up the hard copies stored in George. If you can
help, email her at jgoldie @ sccs.swarthmore.edu.

Blake Setlow '06 did everyone a favor last spring and set up a SWIL wiki
on SCCS.  This is a website that anyone can edit and add pages to.
http://wiki.sccs.swarthmore.edu/swil
One of the projects on the wiki is the creation of a "Book of the
'Dactyl" to contain as much information as possible about the
Pterodactyl Hunt.  That's at
http://wiki.sccs.swarthmore.edu/PterodactylHunt
Feel free to add information, lore, etc., especially to pages about
individual monsters.

Chaos humored us enough to upload the SWIL Panic Book (formerly at
http://www.swil.org/howtos/howto/) to the wiki.  It's now at
http://wiki.sccs.swarthmore.edu/swil/The Panic Book
Please help us update the Panic Book with useful advice for
posterity!

Last year's SWILshirt was "All You Need is SWIL," idea by Susan Zell &
Miriam Newman, implemented by Jillian Waldman.  There's a picture at
http://www.swil.org/shirts/

We're thinking of doing reprints this fall of one or two past
SWILshirts, though we haven't yet selected which ones.
http://www.swil.org/shirts/old.html

I think that's everything.

If you have questions or concerns, email them to presidents @ swil.org.
The presidents are also generally on the chit-chat list, hunt list,
livejournal, etc.

With small fluffy objects,
TGV,

Jillian Waldman (jgoldie @ sccs.swarthmore.edu)
Mark Handler (mhandle1 @ swarthmore.edu)
Mai Pucik (mpucik1 @ swarthmore.edu)

--
This message brought to you by the SWIL announcements list.
For more info, see http://www.swil.org/lists/announcements.html