Randomosity: Facebook privacy

Excellent -- I can now join Facebook!

In 2010. After they've implemented the privacy changes requested by the Canadian government.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8225338.stm

I can't believe it took this long for someone to protest loudly enough to get them to make these changes. Go Canada!

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Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Bingo. Now that is my kind of database.

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For Kaiju

Malki! must have had Kaiju in mind when he made this comic.

Also, Happy Tuesday.

There is another post in the works, but for now, that is all.

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Trifecta of Doom

That would be: insomnia, weather-induced sinus headache, and nonstop allergy attack.

Emails and such will return when my head stops asplodin'. I hear thunder rolling in ... hopefully once the storms pass I'll be rid of the headache, at least.

In other news, going to see Ponyo tomorrow night with a couple of friends. (Yay!) Assuming my compressed-jelly brain has not leaked out my ears by then. (Boo!)

At the moment, that seems like a rather lofty assumption.

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Randomosity: Zombies and gods

From the BBC News site:

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.

They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures.

And that is how you make disease vectors into an interesting article for the rest of us.

Locals in Nepal are considering a baby born with extra limbs a reincarnation of Ganesh. Although baby Risab is revered at the moment, it's scary to think how quickly that could turn:

"If my husband had not been there, they could have said I had given birth to a witch and come and killed me.

"Most of the neighbours came and said it was a God so they told me not to treat it badly and accept it."

But Ms Ghimire says most of the villagers are superstitious and - like her - believe in witches.

Indeed, her fears are not surprising, with one local Hindu priest openly saying that he believes the baby is a curse on the village and the reason for the late monsoons.

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Randomosity: Good things, past and future

GenCon provided a good excuse for a marathon gaming weekend, since several of us skipped the con this year. Beginning Thursday, we had two back-to-back sessions of Changeling (with pizza and delicious BLTs, respectively), a night off (for W. and I, anyway -- Edige had a third game to run), and then the Sunday 3rd continent game.

Saturday evening, W. and I stopped in at my aunt and uncle's to drop off some football tickets. We stayed and chatted for a bit, since they'd never met W. before; it was a pretty relaxed visit. My aunt restrained herself from asking too many questions (which she commented on proudly as we were leaving) and offered to take us to Red Lobster next week. So there's that to look forward to.

Afterward, we kept driving north and went to dinner in St. Joe. (There was lots of driving this weekend, as the weather was particularly good for it, for the first time in weeks.) Re: St. Joe, though -- there's a fine line, for me, between pleasant people-watching and claustrophobia, and the crowds up there this weekend were right on that border. Dinner was excellent, but even at 10 pm, the line at the ice cream shop was far too long.

Also, we decided during the course of the evening that our host at the Pumphouse Grill really needed to be an evil mage of some kind. He was perfectly polite, with perfectly manicured nails, and thick, shoulder-length stark white hair; a pure white Van Dyke, slightly hawkish nose, and dark-dark eyes. He needs to be a character, somewhere. In fact, I can't help but wonder if he didn't perhaps walk off the page of a book at some point.

I was supposed to make some zucchini bread this weekend with this amazingly huge zucchini Cher Mere gave me on Thursday, but it was so hot I have't gotten around to baking anything. Hopefully Tuesday will give me a chance if it cools off a little in the evening. I'm thinking I might be able to get three loaves out of this puppy. If it works out, I may have to drop off a loaf for them as a thank-you. Assuming they're edible, of course. ;)

Game-wise, I'm almost done with SMT: Devil Survivor. Unfortunately I hit a lull for a bit there; because I've been tearing through story points and haven't been taking on as much in the way of build-battles as I normally do in a MegaTen game, I ended up having to farm a fairly boring free battle over and over to get past the Belial fight because I didn't have enough ice in my arsenal. Once I went back and took a second stab at Belial with the revised strategy and updated fusions, it was a cake walk. I have now made it to the last "day" of the game, though, and I chose Gin's path -- but that's a subject for a whole post in itself. I've got my fingers crossed for a good ending, which is never a guarantee in these games. However ... I think I've played enough of them to figure out which ending leads to the "right" path for me.

I do love the SMT; it remains my all-time favorite game line. Once I'm done with this game, it might be worth taking a look at the whys and wherefores of that.

In other news, a group of us are going to see Miyazaki's Ponyo Thursday night. It's apparently an adaptation of the "Little Mermaid," with a Miyazaki twist, so I'm looking forward to that. A fellow gamers' daughters were watching Spirited Away while we played at Edige's last night, and it was hard not to sit down and watch the rest of the movie all the way through.

I'm tired today (far too much Devil Survivor last night after the game), and right now I'm hoping for a slow week. We only have a couple of things planned, so for the moment, I'm looking forward to enjoying the week's impending thunderstorms curled up on our comfy, comfy couch.

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The Kindness of Strangers

I loved Johanna Eurich's blog post on Alaska Dispatch today (courtesy of WitchVox). It's a rare piece that managed to inspire simultaneously a gleeful giggle, a touch of jealousy, and even some small bit of pity for the poor, protocol-laden Catholics of her area. I hope her article gives those church-folk a much-needed poke in the ribs.

I know it poked at mine. In some respects, I've not been very charitable lately, so it's good to be reminded of my duties now and then.

Last week, I had my own encounter with a stranded foreigner. When I boarded the shuttle bus to our parking lot at the end of the work day, there was an unfamiliar young lady sitting near the front with a huge backpack that was itself about half her height. With a lovely Irish accent, she asked if any of us had any water -- unfortunately no one did. By the time we reached the last stop, she and I were the only passengers left.

The young lady had a rather forlorn look on her face as we disembarked, clearly searching for something, so I asked if she was lost. Apparently our kindly shuttle driver had told her she'd be able to catch the city bus near that stop; however, to do so, she'd need to hike over to the library, which doesn't precisely look like a library -- and anyway the bus stop isn't visible from the far corner of the lot, where the shuttle drops us.

I offered her a ride to the bus station, and she crumpled into my car after stowing that huge pack in the back seat. As we chatted, I managed to glean that she was ultimately trying to catch a train to Chicago. After a quick stop at a gas station to get her something to drink, we skipped the bus stop and drove to the airport on the other side of town, where she could catch the South Shore train to Chicago -- or if that had stopped running, one of the Greyhound buses.

It was a pleasant ride. We chatted for a bit about the immigrant waves of the area, South Bend's adopted affinity for the Irish, and her looking forward to coming back to town to see a friend perform at Fiddler's Hearth. We didn't discuss religion, although we did find some amusement in her assurance that her grandmother would've been waxing poetic about the rewards I'd surely receive in Heaven for my kindness. Like Eurich, we agreed it was far better to enjoy the tiny contentments of this life rather than to hold out for mansions of gold.

Heck, I'm pretty sure Maeve -- a self-confessed "itchy foot" -- would be off in search of more interesting venues within days of finding herself holding the keys to such a celestial abode.

Maeve, it turned out, was an actress and director, mostly of small stage productions; she had been in Paris before coming to the US. She'd just come from New Orleans, and was planning to spend a little time in Chicago before heading back to NYC to work on a new project with some friends. I was honestly (and pleasantly) surprised, though, when she said that she loved America. Apparently she'd been impressed by the kindness of strangers during her travels, and declared she'd happily dispute any snarky comments about American hospitality once she headed back to Europe.

I'm okay with that plan. I imagine we Americans need all the good press we can get, these days ... though I'm wondering whether we're currently ranking higher or lower than the Brits in, say, Latvia and Greece.

In any case. As Maeve struggled to pull her enormous pack from my tiny backseat, I invited her to stop by my office if she found herself on campus again -- to refill her water bottle, if nothing else. She agreed that she would, and stowed her bottles of water and juice in the pack, and disappeared into the train terminal with a cheerful wave.

I hope the strangers she meets -- Christians, Pagans, or whomever they may be -- continue to treat her well. And here's hoping, too, that there will always be another Maeve (or perhaps a stranded Polish priest, or a sassy Alaskan journalist), the next time I need a reminder that a little kindness goes a long way.

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Suleiman-Too

I'd love to see the museum of culture and religion, built into the side of the mountain...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8161158.stm

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