Zombie Crawl

Because sometimes in Atlanta is just a Saturday afternoon and there are dozens of zombies on a pub crawl in Virginia Highlands.

I was not a zombie on this particular occasion. And indeed we did get attacked by zombies several times. But hey you can't get angry: for them, humans are for eating. 

I did however get recruited to be a zombie on The Walking Dead. twice. Because I don't need make up and a funny walk to look like the living dead. Back up career plan! 

Terrified

You wake up on a Friday thinking everything is well with the world, and then you realise dinosaurs still exist

This is underwater and is freaking me out in ways I can't explain

Celebrating women in science

Rosalind Franklin on what would have been her 93rd birthday.

This

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Thank you for the food

I must thank everybody who fed me this weekend. Continuously. That is: continuously fed me, not that I must continuously thank them for ever and ever.

Cesar et al. at another great barbecue at the Paramount, wonderful tapas dinner in the Highlands chez friends, the drawer-full of herbs donated by said friends from their herb garden, and Giuseppe, for cooking for me all day Sunday.

You are all marvelous people and you can consider keeping me fed for 2 days straight your good deed for the week.

Suburbs

Life in the suburbs is routine, repetitive and monotonous. Adolescents feel the need to rebel and act out, in predictable ways.

Or something to that effect. From Bones. It's fiction but about scientists so I'll take it. The suburbs are scary. 

Eternal Spotless

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - both beautiful and sad. A rare comment from me: I tend not to associate beauty to sadness, or vice versa. I find sadness rather ugly most of the time.

Spoiler Alert

But this film was both these things, with portrayals bordering on perfection, in particular Jim Carrey. I can't find enough praise for his character portrayal, thoroughly believable.

There were moments of beauty in the script, the visuals and the character expressions.

There was sadness in the story and the aftermath. I came away with this feeling that they will simply relive the same love story over and over, doomed to repetition of failure, over and over, for life.

Airport mysteries

1. People who are afraid of double dipping crisps, yet will walk around an airport barefoot. 

2. Everyone standing 5 meters away from the doors when waiting for the terminal shuttle trains. 

Saturday morning

A class from my iTunes Uni Yale course in the Early Middle Ages, followed by an episode of Bones. Good awakening. Now to get ready for that barbecue. 

Working in Seattle

On my way to Seattle for a work conference, I spent the whole flight going through everything I probably forgot or that would go wrong. Then told myself it wouldn't matter, we would have our great backdrop and good humour and everything else was peripheral.

Arriving at our expo hall space on Saturday morning, what would be missing it our backdrop. It is in a warehouse, somewhere in Washington state. 

So we reverted to plan B.

First step in plan B: devise a plan B. 

But lucky for us we're pretty amazing and win fryer hours had a full stall with banner, two small posters, screen, computer screen and keyboard, tall counter top. A small table with flyers we had ordered off Amazon and was already here. 

It's always sunny in the US Economy

Economics lessons as imparted by the crew at Paddy's Pub

Bias for compassion

I'm rather amazed to see women on Twitter and Facebook praise this Dustin Hoffman video, in which he
"explains what every woman already knows", or
"breaks down explaining the poignant realisation of what women experience".

Judge for yourselves, but it seems to me he merely demonstrates a great narrow-mindedness (perhaps defeated by the Tootsie movie; one can but hope).

Also please note: I do not use the word sexism. Plenty of women are equally narrow minded and judge men in the same way as he says he has always judged women. Being the recipient of this attitude is not a male/female thing, it has occurred to everyone.

See the video here (no embed link, sorry).

Agree, disagree?

I feel so independent

A good fourth of July yesterday, despite the buckets and buckets of rain falling each second all over Atlanta.

A stroll up to see the Peachtree Road Race. I felt only partly embarrassed for feeling tired after standing there for almost two hours but good fun seeing friends run by. To note: people running by the police along the route, and giving them shout outs. Nice.

Following a few productive work hours, Giuseppe made me a wonderful spuma di patate and bought a bottle of Santa Cristina for lunch.

And the evening saw us at a house party (it was raining still) with not a single American. Well, not a whole one, I count as half and that was all the representation present. But good times it was. I dressed as a firework. Because that's how I roll.

Happy Anniversary

No, that is not me dressed up for an '80s themes party. This is a photo from the actual '80s showing my father and my mother on their way somewhere fabulous.

Today marks 42 years of their marriage. They are either get along quite well or are incredibly lazy.

Happy Anniversary, parentals!

Intentions

Sometimes ideas born of good intentions just turned bad. And sometimes ideas are just bad. 

(Read it all here http://www.city-journal.org/2013/eon0318sk.html)

The site generously provides a link to a “diversity document,” recommending that Caucasians “wear a white wristband as a reminder about your privilege, as well as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.”

This, of course, is not meant to be an echo of the Third Reich. It’s doubtful if the ahistorical functionaries who run Wisconsin’s DPI have ever read the racial laws of Nazi Germany. They may never have heardof Nazi Germany, where a series of cloth badges singled out “guilty” Germans for their race or their beliefs—yellow Stars of David for Jews, red triangles for political dissidents, green for criminals, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, blue for emigrants, brown for Gypsies, black for lesbians and other “anti-socials,” and pink for gay men.