On Fri, 2 Feb 2001, John D. Giorgis wrote:
> As I have now hinted in two other messages, David Brin was in the DC
> area.
> For those of you who are wondering if any fireworks ensued, I should point
> out that the contrapositive is not necessarily true. Although I met Dr.
> Brin, I'm not sure that he realizes just yet that he met me.
>
> The problem you see, is that Brin was scheduled to speak for about an
> hour, maybe an hour and a half - but got on a roll and ended up
> speaking for two and a half hours until 10:00pm. Things were kind of
> chaotic afterwards, as he apparently had to get somewhere, and I'm not
> sure that after introducing myself, and mentioning Brin-L briefly,
> that he ever connected me with "Oh.... that radical right-wing-crazed
> Republican ." Oh well.... maybe next time I'll try to arrange to meet
> him *before* he gtes on a roll with a speech.
I've noticed that when he's into "book-signing mode", he can be oblivious
as to who he's talking to. He didn't remember my having come through his
line at Worldcon when Dan talked to him later. (He also gets *extremely*
focused on his children when they're around, not seeming to notice most
other people; that's fine. The kids are getting the attention they
deserve from their daddy, and the youngest looks to be something of a
handful.)
> The most surprising part of the event, for me anyways, was that: 1)
> Brin is "short", or at least shorter than I am. 2) Brin has a fairly
> high-pitched voice (I'd bet that he sings tenor.)
The voice struck me when I first saw him in 1998. I don't know how much I
noticed the height; but I noticed that you were closer to my idea of
"tall" when I met you, but hadn't thought to compare your height to
Brin's. (Certainly not to *say* anything about it....) After the initial
meeting with Brin, his height was "Brin-height" to me. You are
"John-height" to me (for a particular value of "John").
I find his voice to be soothing when he's doing a reading, sometimes to
the point of the words not all getting through, but his voice just kind of
washing over me. (It can be very relaxing to just let someone's voice
wash over you that way....) When he's speaking ON a topic, he's got a
certain charisma. I find him to be fairly entertaining.
> Brin was certainly a captivating speaker, and definitely left little
> room for boredom the whole time. Most of his talk was centered around
> "The Transparent Society," but he manged to hit upon pretty much all
> of the themes that we have seen from him on this list: why Star Wars
> is evil, why Star Trek is great, why impeachment was wrong, why elites
> cannot be trusted, why Harry Potter is evil, and, of course, why the
> Republican Party is the root of all Evil. :)
Just why *is* Harry Potter evil, anyway? :)
Julia
