Join the 2008 GLOBE at Night Campaign from 25 February - 8 March. It's a research and data collection project on light pollutionthat you can participate in. Go to the website at http://www.globe.gov/globeatnight/, print out the magnitude charts for the constellation of Orion and go out after sunset and see how many stars you can see. Go online and report your results.

MUFON Director John Ventre will be giving a UFO lecture at Founders Hall of the Westmoreland Community College in Youngwood on Wed Feb 27 at 7:30 pm. This is right off exit 75 of thed Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Google Map to WCCC

Author Steven Brust has uploaded his Firefly fanfic novel "My Own Kind of Freedom." All you Browncoats, spread the word. You can't stop the wave.

http://dreamcafe.com/words/2008/02/05/firefly-novel/

The Pittsburgh Public Theater has a really interesting play coming up in March that has a kind of Science Fiction flair to it. The show is called "A Number" and is about human cloning. It is written by a wonderful playwright named Caryl Churchill.

I wanted to offer PARSEC members a 30% discount on tickets to this show. And, if you want, we can have a PARSEC night so you can all come to the same show.

Synopsis: If you thought you had a complicated relationship with your father, this powerful new work from the renowned Caryl Churchill ("Cloud Nine," "Mad Forest") may change your mind. Taking you into the future - when human cloning is no longer the stuff of science fiction - a father makes the decision to replicate his son and is forced to face the consequences when son number two (and an unexpected son number three) enters the picture. Last year's hot ticket in New York, "A Number provides" fresh perspective on what it is that makes us who we are.

Contact Group Sales Manager Becky Rickard at 412.316.8200 ext. 704

Submitted by Becky

Cory Doctorow has plugged our own Alpha Teen Sci-Fi Writing Workshop on BoingBoing. He also mentions Confluence.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/27/alpha-residential-sc.html

BoingBoing reports that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists Blog "is a new group blog by dozens of science fiction novelists, where they're talking about the work of being an sf writer -- the nitty gritty of writing, managing your career, and all the minutae of life in a very strange trade indeed."

http://www.sfnovelists.com/

"io9 is a newish blog-like thing with rapid-fire updates, gossip, and photos from the world of science fiction. It’s actually very cool, catering precisely to folks like me: science fiction fans who have grown up, take it semi-seriously, but like the occasional cup of snark. The writers clearly love (and are extremely intimate with) the genre and have lots of cool stuff on the blog (though they seemed to have liked the suckfest that was Pitch Black), and their insider info is impressive.

It’s actually hard to pin down their topics. They have a post on scifi t-shirts, and another on Clinton era scifi, as well as the odd science fact article or two.

All in all I really recommend it. But it's not for the faint of heart: they update a lot. It's can be hard to keep up; I missed a week (blogging the AAS) and came home to 140+ posts! Most are easy to scan through, but yikes. But read it if you have the time; it's worth it."

http://io9.com/

Copied from The Bad Astronomy Blog

The IRS has approved PARSEC as a 501(c)(3) entity as of Sept 28, 2007!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)

Don't have enough to do on the internet? Want to help some nice folks out with their science project? Well, I registered at the Galaxy Zoo. This is real science, in the spirit of SETI & Home, except that this takes some work on your part. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey needs you! They need people (because computers don't do the work so well) to categorize a million galaxies that they've photographed, and there is a tutorial on the site to help you learn how to sort these wild critters out. The bad part? Sometimes you find yourself looking at a dim, pixelated blob that you can't identify (they have a category for that though). The perks? Sometimes you find yourself looking at a crystal-clear, lovely merger of galaxies, swirling around each other, and you may be the first person ever to see them (and they have a category for mergers too). Mainly, you see either spiral or elliptical galaxies, and most are pretty easy to sort; there are also irregular galaxies, edge-on spirals, clusters, etc. It's fun, and you can spend as much or as little time as you want on it. But it isn't a video game, it's serious science, so think about it before doing the work.

What's funny is when you look at the forums on the site. I thought I was some sort of super-geek for saving my favorite galaxies on my computer, so that I can look at them later and send them to friends. It turns out that the forums are full of that sort of activity. We keep galaxy collections, swap them online, talk about the weird ones, conjecture about how they came to be that way, etc. Sort of like bug collecting, but with larger specimens. Give it a try, you'll learn some things and see lots of beautiful scenery out there in the universe....

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

Posted by Chris

Announcing the theme for next year's short story contest:

"Metallic Feathers"

Entries must be postmarked by April 15, 2008 and are expected in the standard contest format.

Contest details at http://www.parsec-sff.org/contest08.html.