From jgoldie @ sccs.swarthmore.edu Tue Nov 8 22:40:07 2005 Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 22:36:42 -0500 (EST) From: Jillian G. Waldman Reply-To: presidents @ swil.org To: SWILnews Subject: SWILnews #7 is an Army of One SWILbusiness. The meeting was called to disorder at 12:12. There were only fifteen people there, so they reached a whole new level of pathetic-rabble-ness, but then, Eliza brought a bunch of proxies who failed to contribute to the noise level (see also: the attendance list). Jamison kissed Revan-the-Wookiee, and then we actually got down to business. The meeting two weeks from last Saturday - November 19th - will be movie nominations. Movies eligible are: - any previous SWILmovie last shown no more recently than Spring 2003; - any movie which falls under SWIL mandate, i.e. sci-fi/fantasy/just weird. The guidelines for mandate are quite flexible, so bring your best arguments for why a movie is mandate to the meeting and those present will lend their opinions. Please note that talking animal films are not mandate unless they have other fantasy elements in them, and anime also has to have mandate elements in it. If you can't come to that meeting, you can submit your nominations (with descriptions, please!) to presidents @ swil.org, or send them with a (human) proxy. Voting will happen by email sometime this winter. Greg Robinson arrived at this point in the meeting with lovely looking two-tone drinks. The trick, apparently, is to use ice. On the Elections (no, the SWIL ones): Jim Moskowitz applauded the presidents' making an actual major policy decision when it was decided that platforms will read/performed be at the presidential NOMINATIONS meeting, not the Elections. Please have your nominations and speeches ready by then - which, by the way, will be the weekend after Thanksgiving. Candidates, please make sure either you or a proxy are there to make sure you are nominated. Inauguration 2006 will be run by the current presidents, since all of us will be free, free, FREE as a bird by then! (Well, almost.) Jillian will be collecting money for food, but you should probably hold off a little while or she'll forget you gave her any. Speaking of Jillian, she's going to be going through the filkbooks over winter break and reorganizing them, in the hopes of having a filksing at Inauguration. If you can play guitar and would be willing to play at it, please let her know. Also, if you know any filks, email them, or links to them, to Jillian, so they can be included. Just before the sentience proof of the week, Jean Schneider arrived and showed us that it was raining men ... on the cover of her statistics textbook. Sentience Proof: David Jean-pierre Kornfilt: -------------------------------------------- David began by stating that he was a primate. Nobody disputed this. He further posited that, since monkeys are also primates, he is therefore a monkey. Nobody disputed this, either. He then reminded us of the well-known fact that, if a thousand monkeys sit in front of a thousand typewriters, they will eventually produce all the works of Shakespeare. Since he is only one monkey, then he will produce one-thousandth of the works of Shakespeare, in the time it would take a thousand monkeys to produce all of it. However, since time is infinite, as time approaches infinity, he will have written all of the works of Shakespeare. We can therefore assume him to be just as sentient as Shakespeare. Nobody disputed this, either. A number of big questions were raised: - is Shakespeare sentient? - how do we know David's sentient, and not the typewriter? - can monkeys really type, or do they just take apart typewriters into little bits and try to build them into things, some of which will, given infinite time, be the works of Shakespeare? - if David has only one typewriter, how can he possibly have enough bits for *all* the works of Shakespeare? (Oddly enough, this wasn't a CS joke, although it perhaps should have been -c) We finally agreed that Shakespeare is sentient because he could make Queen Elizabeth beautiful, whether or not she actually was. However, it was pointed out that alcohol could just as effectively make Queen Elizabeth appear beautiful. Lots of people insisted that alcohol wasn't sentient, or, if it was, it really shouldn't be, but alcohol has a proof (bad pun, rabble. *smack* -c), so it must be sentient. To restate: David is sentient because, given infinite time, he is as sentient as Shakespeare, who is as sentient as alcohol, which is sentient on account of its proof. We were confused, and somewhat illogical, so we took his typing hands, thus making David a non-member of SWIL, and guaranteeing that there will never again be another work of Shakespeare. -------------------------------------------- Lottery. Jamison was offered the choice between two old, recordable audiotapes and the mystery bowl. He chose the bowl and got a mini lava lamp kit, containing a lava lamp that is nearly guaranteed to not work! Yay. NonSWILbusiness. Emmanuelle asked us all for advice about what to wear to the opera - we told her she should be dressed nicely but not too formally. Mike Karcher's brother came to ML with Steve Jackson games on Sunday night, but since Mike wasn't there right at 7 PM he asked for someone to make sure he was let in. Also Sunday night, at 8 PM, there was a live presidential debate between the two candidate characters from The West Wing. Doubtless all fans have already seen it and squeed. There was a debate about what constituted insulting the Midwest and who was allowed to do it. This was at SWILmeeting, not later. It was later that night that the folksing happened, though, and this sentence construction is horribly contrived. This folksing took place in our very near, dear Parrish Parlors, resulting in both Jillian and Mai having Senior Moments when they realized that there were current students who had *never been in there*. BDan wanted to play frisbee golf after meeting. None of the presidents went, so I don't know if there actually was a game. (There was. It was BDan and Jim, because I was doing phonology on the beach. -c) BDan and Mai wanted to recruit people to have sushi in Bryn Mawr tonight, since 25% of profits in any meal there that weekend would be going to hurricane relief. In the end, Sarah, Rebecca and Susan joined then. Philcon is happening the first week of finals. Register early! And if you want to share in the/a hotel room, contact BDan, who will be getting one. There was a Cantatrix concert Saturday evening at the Belltower, at 5:30. And finally, SWILbusiness briefly returned when Mai remembered to tell us that the facebook advertising had brought more people to SWILmovies, including some - gasp! - old people at Wallace and Gromit. The fact that old people are probably not on facebook completely failed to deter her. Attendance List of a Small, Nonexistent Nation off the Coast of Norway Sarah "Ignoring SWILangst so I can feed my fluffy pet Angsts" Hartman BDan "It was a dark and stormy day, because the sun had gone out and the ensuing atmospheric disturbances were severe" Fiarchild Miles [scribble] Skorpen (my family actually *does* come from an island off the coast of Norway.) [Miles, it should be between the two halves of your name, not afterwards! Tsk, tsk. - fist] [Mai, you oppressor. - also fist] J.P. "David" Kornfilt *crossed out E* "Foom" George Eliza "Keeper of the Proxies" Blair Jackie's "Hey, these aren't rabbits" Proxy Hat Finlay's "Cantatrix, 5:30, Belltower!" Proxy Devil Duck Lisa's "Oh, it was all just a proxy!" Proxy Dream Rebecca's "Here a proxy, there a proxy, everywhere a proxy proxy!" Proxy Octopus David's "I am not a proxy! I am a free man!" Proxy Knight Revan's "One more KOTOR joke and you get a lightsaber to the head" Proxy Wookiee Greg's "My proxy's balder than me" Proxy Ring Jillian's "Of *course* my proxy is purple and flowy" Proxy Scarf Not-Andrew's "Proxied against his will" Proxy Death Jackie's "I want to be an infinite loop when I grow up" Proxy's Proxy Jawa emmanuelle "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoo!" Wamba(rest of name eliminated by spiral binding) Mike "" Karcher Greg "Black Dog Serenade" Robinson Venger "The Best of the Three" Jamison Jim "When will this strike be o-ver? I am so tired of marching!" Moskowitz Mysterious "I only *look* like Susan Zell" Drinker of Polyjuice Potion Mai "When Captain America swings his mighty shield [musical note]" Pucik Andrew "Apathy" Brown-Conforti-Meredith-Something Apathy "Jillian" Waldman yours etc, the Ironic Presidency, esq. (Now a 3/2 of a special operation in Iraq! um... not so yay. -c)