SFLIS Minutes - March 14, 2001

- Things we can do in the IMU (in addition to SifCon).
  If we get 25 or more rooms in the Iowa House, they give us a free hospitality
  room (to use for a consuite, maybe?).
  The possibility of having Gamicon in the IMU sometime.  Might save money,
  but there would be a lot of paperwork.
  We should have a SF movie festival sometime.
- Caffeine:  a drug.  Can get addicted to it, get a headache if you go too
  long without it.  Go 2 weeks without and you get a headache when you drink
  it.
- Can't park in some of the university's lots for the next couple days because
  of wrestling.  They can charge wrestling fans $5 to park while employees
  only pay $12/year for parking.  They're making lots of money.
- There may be a shakeup in the SFLIS officer corps.  Jon has an interview
  and if he gets the job, he won't be able to make it to the meetings any
  more.
  One of our co-co-presidents wasn't at the meeting, so in keeping with SFLIS
  tradition, we elected him to take over if Jon leaves.  Congratulations!
- Nicotine lollipops with different strengths, available in Cedar Rapids by
  prescription.
- Dracula 2000 is at the cheap theater.  If you want to see it, you'd better
  do it soon.  The theater closes on Friday.
- Highly competitive golf with opposing teams wearing helmets and padding and
  each defending their holes.
  Glow-in-the-dark uranium balls.
  A discussion of possible rules and strategies for it.
- Not much SF stuff going on this week.
- Some comments about the overuse of plot ideas in Voyager.  Last night they
  did Beowulf.
- Discussion of Helm by Stephen J. Gould at Barnes & Noble after next
  week's meeting.  Science fiction with good science in it.
  Most of the people at the discussion will have actually read the book this
  time.  If you don't have time to read the whole book, you can read the front
  and back covers and the chapter titles, and you'll know enough to ask
  questions.
  You can tell who's into fantasy and who's into science fiction by their
  interpretation of the word "helm."
- April 6-8 is Weekend in Ravensbluff at the IMU.  It's free!
  SifCon is April 15.  Come and see the panel on how to be disowned by your
  family for not coming home for Easter.
- New Stephen King book will be out soon.  It's gonna be big (is that the
  number of readers or the number of pages?)
  A couple small books available from Scholastic Press by the author of the
  Harry Potter books.
- Did Iowa Public Television get enough pledges last week to keep Dr. Who
  for another year?
  The people who volunteered at Festival that night had a good time.
- ICON is mentioned in the Locus magazine in the list of upcoming conventions.
  As usual, it's the first non-football weekend in October.
- Synthetic cocaine would take a long time to make and would be very
  expensive.
- And we finish up with some talk about the state's can and bottle deposit
  law.