I have just returned from an incredibly terrific campus visit to Denison University in Ohio, where I met with students to talk about technology and community, and gave a lecture on some of the difficulties and triumphs of being a woman in the sciences. I’ll post video of my lecture as soon as it’s available.

Last month I was also on the futurist show Fourcast, talking about crazy predictions for the future (I suggested historical reenactment planets). You can watch that here.

It’s been a crazy few months, and things are only about to get crazier. Since my last update, I published my short story “The Gravity Fetishist” in Flurb. It’s part of the Golden Age-style story cycle I’ve been writing about Bachelor City, the biggest town in the asteroid belt.

Over at io9, I’ve written about why the singularity won’t happen, and explained what makes portal fantasies so powerful, even though we’ve all seen the “walk through the door/wardrobe” trope a million times.

I dealt with the recent U.S. election in nerd style, by writing about a fascinating mathematical analysis of what happens to social networks in Congress when Republicans are in charge. A group of network theorists discovered that Republicans tend to form closer relationships between committees. In a Republican-led House, more individual Representatives tend to sit on multiple committees.

In other news, I’m pleased to say that I’ve had talks accepted at the 27th annual Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin this December, and at South-by-Southwest in March 2011. So I’ll see you in Berlin and/or Austin, if you’ll be at either of those events. I’m also going to be traveling to Japan at the end of this month (for fun and to research local nerd culture), and to Casablanca in January (research for my soon-to-be-in-second-draft-form novel).