Short Stuff

ojouchan and I are racing to get caught up on gift acquisition, and it's kicking our asses. We ended up home so late that I had to call in late for work to get enough sleep. Ojou had, for some reason, been up all night, and crashed along side me. She was still sleeping when I went to work. And there's probably more to come today, though we haven't figured out what. Still, we want it to be fast, so nothing too extensive here.

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Shortly after I heard about the Avatar casting, I also saw a legal article about discrimination in casting: "Casting and Caste-Ing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms," by UCLA law professor Russell K. Robinson. There's a lot of information about how employment law intersects (and often mysteriously doesn't intersect) with casting decisions. No time to pull out a good quote now, but anyone tempted to use this article is advised to read closer and/or figure out why things are different on their own.

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I don't do MMOs because my sporadic gaming assures me that I'll be paying a monthly charge for something I often don't even touch. Still, I've always been interested in A Tale in the Desert, a game without combat focused on economy and building a society in Egypt. Instead of being a static world, ATitD has a beginning, middle, and end.

Tale 3 wrapped up last month, and after a few weeks of beta, Tale 4 started on Friday. I imagine this would be a good time to join the game, if you have any interest.

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I'm spending spare internet time trying to learn about Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, which was spurred by this week's episode of (I know it's weird) Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Sarah's opening monologue this time was:

In 1490, the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca landed on the shores of the New World, seeking power and fortune. He was immediately attacked and captured, almost all of his traveling companions murdered. Enslaved, de Vaca chose to embrace his captors beliefs and learn their ways. He became a healer. Over time, he was freed, and de Vaca attracted his own following, who believed he had the power over life and death. The desert had transformed him. He was not the first, and he would not be the last.

The part about being "immediately attacked and captured" raised red flags when I heard it. I've been trying to learn more, but since Cabeza de Vaca (all three words constitute his last name) spent about eight years in and around the Gulf of Mexico, the stories kind of lond. Of course, after I looked at the monologue written out, I realized that I probably should have been suspicious when they said he landed in Florida two years before Columbus's first voyage. Clearly, Cabeza de Vaca was a time traveler, maybe even a cyborg.