Steampunk, Colonialism and Imperialism; Chales Stross, Arthur Chu, Beth Cato, Warren Frey, Leigh Ann Hildebrand. An excellent deconstruction of the genre. It was also a deeper look at how people can gloss over or ignore the unpleasant things of history and fact to get to the story and the fun (ie; ignoring the huge gaps in wealth and privilege in a Victorian industrial age). Also learned new terms like Biopunk (Flintstones), Hedgepunk (Wall Street), and Silverpunk (Asian).
Anatomy of a Pandemic; Sam Scheiner, Dominick D'Aunno, Gregory Gadow, Perrian Lurie. Step by step guide on making your disease/virus/sickness believable. They all agreed that the film Contagion was the best example of doing it right and that many, many forms of entertainment get it wrong.
Vesta and the Chaotic Formation of Planets; Brother Guy Consolmagno. A detailed presentation of the asteroid Vesta, what it is made of and how it and the asteroid belt was formed. Another excellent presentation by this fellow. Noted that Vesta is important in that it is the only know asteroid made up of mostly basalts and that it is five million years older than other asteroids and meteorites.
Medieval Science and Engineering; Bradford Lyau, Brother Guy Consolmagno, Ada Palmer, Jo Walton, Eric Swedin. Described how throughout the middle ages there were societies that did not understand the technology that came before and how some thought they were created by people who were more advanced (better organized, learned and better off). Also discussed was the drive to more religious things during troubled times, and how when we see historical art in museums it is the best 1% of 1%. Also how people in the middle ages did not think of time as we do and some things that were created in the era of the middle ages were thought of as being created by the ancients only a few generations afterwards.
Art and Science of Spaceships; Brooks Peck, Alan Boyle, Joe Haldeman, Edward M Lerner, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro. Much of the discussion was on how difficult realistic starships (those that travel from one star system to another) take to get built and get to where they are going. It also went into the social problems of a generational starship and how the people might not want to get off once they get to their destination.
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