WSC 2026 1. Introductory Questions

“My Way”

popularized by Frank Sinatra, a son associated with nostalgia to one’s life and reputation as a “self-made” man, provided by Paul Anka

• a life lived fully and on personal terms

5 Lord of the Rings Endings

In Defense - Sara Welch-Larson

• Mount Doom - ring is destroyed + apocalyptic ending

• Rescue and Coronation - Frodo and Sam are rescued by Gandalf

• The Shire - hobbits return to the shire, life is unchanged

• The Grey Havens - Frodo leaves Middle-Earth with the Elves

• Dams return - Sam returns home to Rosie and his children

‘It’s not the destination, it’s the jounrey”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• American philosopher and abolitionist who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century

• 1836 Essay Nature

nuclear powered cars

Ford Nucleon, Seattle-ite XXI, Studebaker-Packard Astral

• astral - full sized mockup of car designed to balance on a single wheel stabilized by a gyroscope

food pills

staple of science fiction - Matt Novak

• 1930 sci fi music Just Imagine

• suffragette Mary Elizabeth Lease predicted liberation from the kitchen