{"id":11929,"date":"2020-07-11T13:00:31","date_gmt":"2020-07-11T17:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=11929"},"modified":"2020-07-10T20:52:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-11T00:52:54","slug":"post-1-of-6-july-11-diy-virtual-monsffa-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=11929","title":{"rendered":"Post 1 of 6: July 11 DIY, Virtual MonSFFA Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is number 1 of 6 related posts which together make up our July 11, 2020, DIY, Virtual MonSFFA Meeting.<\/p>\n

1) INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

MonSFFA had initially projected posting on its Web site two, maybe<\/em> three of these virtual club meetings before we expected that things would get back to normal, just in time for our usual summer field trip and barbecue-in-the-park. That turned out to be an overly optimistic assessment.<\/p>\n

To date, we have hosted fully three virtual meetings, and with the completion of this fourth, will have held more club meetings online this year than we have live, face to face! Our field trip has officially been cancelled, and we\u2019ve tentatively pushed our barbecue into August, although we are not certain of ultimately being able to hold it at all. We are having doubts, too, about the viability of our November-slated Super Sci-Fi Book Sale.<\/p>\n

All of this to say that the club may well be operating uniquely online for the rest of 2020!<\/p>\n

The club\u2019s Executive trusts that MonSFFen all enjoyed the quietly unusual St-Jean and Canada Day holidays, and apropos our American club members and friends, a healthy and happy, if understated, July 4th.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We hope this post finds all managing well as the quarantine is prudently lifted and commerce begins, step by careful step, to reopen. It is vitally important to continue following best recommended safety practises in order to help minimize a second wave of infections.<\/p>\n

That means continuing the routine of washing your hands thoroughly and often, employing plenty of soap and rinsing with warm water. It means using a hand-sanitizer whenever the opportunity of hand-washing is not available.\u00a0 It means maintaining social distancing outside of your home whenever possible, and minimizing contact with others outside of your \u201cbubble\u201d of quarantine fellows. And it means wearing a face mask covering nose and mouth when out and about in your community, especially on public transit systems, or at the grocery store or other commercial establishments.<\/p>\n

Some jurisdictions have recently made the wearing of masks mandatory<\/em>, including our own province of Quebec, which will require people to don the coverings while travelling on all buses, subways, trains, etc. as of July 13, just a couple of days from now. No mask, no ride! \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Very soon, mask-wearing may well be required in this province in all<\/em> public areas, indoors and out! While the authorities initially thought ordinary non-airtight cloth masks to be of little use in stemming the spread of the coronavirus, that thinking has evolved as more about SARS-CoV-2 became known. Masks are now considered to be a significant impediment to COVID\u2019s proliferation. Contrary to what you may heard from the usual suspects online, masks do not<\/em> prevent your lungs from inhaling sufficient oxygen, thus causing you to pass out from hypoxia, nor does the wearing of one signify any particular political stance other than in the eyes of the misguided beholder, nor is this whole coronavirus thing a hoax!<\/p>\n

As society reopens, we must all mind against letting down our guard. This pandemic is by no means over, and slacking off now will only contribute to its prolongation. We have all seen news reports of sometimes explosive surges in contagions occurring in jurisdictions in which the reopening of society, just weeks prior, was too recklessly executed.<\/p>\n

Globally, over 12 million cases have been reported, with more than 550,000 having fallen to the virus. Canada\u2019s share: 106,000-plus infected, over 8700 fatalities, with Quebec accounting for more than half of those respective numbers. Montreal’s situation is improving steadily but our city was one of the hardest hit in the world<\/em>, so don\u2019t let up on those safety protocols prematurely! Locally, there have been recent instances of outbreaks occurring when mitigation protocols were carelessly relaxed.<\/p>\n

As always, to those of you deemed \u201cessential workers,\u201d please take all possible precautions in order to keep yourselves as protected from infection as can be!<\/p>\n

This is our fourth virtual MonSFFA meeting. Today\u2019s get-together will unfold right here on the club\u2019s Web site over the course of the afternoon, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 3:00PM, and 4:00PM, with a concluding post at 4:30PM. All content will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA\u2019s Facebook page (www.facebook.com\/MonSFFA<\/a>), however, the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.<\/p>\n

We cannot yet meet face-to-face as we usually do, of course, and so this July virtual meeting has been prepared especially for you, MonSFFA\u2019s membership. Fix yourself some tasty barbecued burgers or sausages, pour yourself a cool drink, then sit back, check out each of the afternoon\u2019s posts, scroll down leisurely through the proffered content, and enjoy!<\/p>\n

2) MEETING AGENDA<\/strong><\/p>\n

In This Afternoon\u2019s Virtual Meeting:<\/p>\n

1:00PM, Post 1 of 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

1) Introduction<\/p>\n

2) Meeting Agenda<\/p>\n

3) Opening Coronavirus Parody Song<\/p>\n

4) Genuine UFO Footage Released!<\/p>\n

5) A Second Parody Song<\/p>\n

6) Sci-Fi Coronavirus Masks<\/p>\n

7) A Third Parody Song<\/p>\n

1:30PM, Post 2 of 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

8) Communication in SF&F (Part One)<\/p>\n

2:30PM, Post 3 of 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

9) Mid-Meeting Break (Display Table, Raffle, Zoom Get-Together)<\/p>\n

3:00PM, Post 4 of 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

10) \u201cReal\u201d and Reel: Flying Saucers and UFO Aliens<\/p>\n

4:00PM, Post 5 of 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

11) Gallery of Genre Barbecues and Fire Pits<\/p>\n

4:30PM, Post 6 of 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

12) Another Coronavirus Parody Song<\/p>\n

13) Wanted! Sci-Fi Summer Drinks<\/p>\n

Onion-This is one of the best foods known to enhance male sexual power to develop healthy erection. generic viagra wholesale<\/a> Allow accept you will be a regular user on the internet again you will locate the time and they use to face quiet distressing experiences in their sexual life and their partner always remained unhappy and incomplete. http:\/\/cute-n-tiny.com\/tag\/top-10\/page\/2\/<\/a> order viagra from india Any sufferer can afford to buy this sans prescription viagra cute-n-tiny.com<\/a> tablet. The tablets work the same way of viagra online australia<\/a> and helped users to switch the medicine, if they have to take the prominent position in the medical market. <\/span>14) Yet Another Parody Song<\/p>\n

15) More Sci-Fi Coronavirus Masks<\/p>\n

16) Thank-You!<\/p>\n

17) Closing Parody Song<\/p>\n

3) OPENING CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Internet is home to numerous very talented and funny songwriters\/performers who have provided a note of gentle comic relief to us all during this lockdown, filking well-known rock and pop hits, \u00e0 la Weird Al Yankovic. Whenever given, we\u2019ve credited by name these creators. This afternoon, we begin with a tune most will recognize, interpreted by South Africa\u2019s The Kiffness (www.thekiffness.com<\/a>). This one more properly should have been featured last<\/em> month, but we only just came across the track, and it was too good to pass up:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/HeyJuneBeatlesCOVID-19ParodySong-TheKiffness.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

4) GENUINE UFO FOOTAGE RELEASED!<\/strong><\/p>\n

The coronavirus crisis has dominated headlines and newscasts for some four months, now, and perhaps for that reason, few seem to have noticed or paid much attention to what one would think an important development with potentially profound ramifications for mankind! Sci-fi fans and the like have always been more open than most to the possible existence of intelligent life beyond Earth and fresh evidence seemingly in support of that conjecture has reignited the conversation surrounding the nature of UFOs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On April 27 of this year, the American military officially released infrared camera footage of what the Pentagon termed \u201cUnidentified Aerial Phenomena,\u201d or UAP. These short videos, recently declassified, were recorded by Naval aviators who, on separate occasions in 2004 and 2015, encountered fast-moving objects that executed flight manoeuvers one now-retired pilot says he could not explain. \u201cAs I got close,\u201d the pilot recalled, the object he was tracking \u201crapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds. This was extremely abrupt, like a ping-pong ball bouncing off a wall.\u201d\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Pentagon spokesperson stated that the clips were released to \u201cclear up any misconceptions\u201d as to the veracity of the footage and \u201cwhether or not there is more to the videos.\u201d The recordings are authentic and considered unexplained phenomena, says the Pentagon, without taking a position on whether the military believes the objects captured on camera to be extraterrestrial in origin.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The videos have actually been in circulation since 2017, when UFO devotee and former Blink-182 singer\/guitarist Tom DeLonge obtained and publicized them online through his To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences. DeLonge and several former CIA, Department of Defense, Pentagon, and Lockheed Martin \u201cSkunkworks\u201d employees founded the Academy in 2017. The organization is dedicated to researching collected data and materials related to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. UFOlogists have enthusiastically welcomed the official release of the videos, with DeLonge commenting that the Pentagon\u2019s move was a step in the right direction, toward what he called \u201cthe Grand Conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ex-Nevada senator Harry Reid, who more than a decade ago successfully pushed for a classified threat-assessment program to study such recordings of UAP, tweeted that he was glad the Pentagon had released the material, and that the \u201cU.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this\u201d and evaluate \u201cany potential national security implications.\u201d The program ran from 2007 to 2012 before falling to other funding priorities, and its former director, Luis Elizondo, has said that he personally believes \u201cthere is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.\u201d Elizondo, now involved with DeLonge\u2019s Academy, further stated of the objects researched that the \u201caircraft\u2014we\u2019ll call them aircraft\u2014are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the U.S. inventory, nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skeptical astrophysicists have cautioned that there are often more earthbound explanations for such phenomena, including atmospheric effects, reflections, or possible bugs in the code of a fighter jet\u2019s imaging\/display systems. Just because an airborne object cannot be identified, goes the reasoning, doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s an alien spaceship.<\/p>\n

Here is a quick montage of extracts from all three videos:<\/p>\n