Lorem Ipsum

The usual assortment of odds and ends:

• Variety reports (according to Ain't It Cool News) that there will indeed be a Firefly movie, titled Serenity, written and directed by Joss Whedon. To be released in 2005, from Universal. Set six months after the series stopped.
• According to a Pew study (says CNN), only "between 2 percent and 7 percent of adult Internet users in the United States [have] blogs." Also, "About 11 percent of Internet users report visiting blogs written by others."
• You should take it as read for the next couple of weeks that every day there'll be something new relating to my project at work that's making me tear out my hair and/or making me want to scream at someone in frustration. Since that's become the status quo for the time being, I won't bother reporting on it unless something even more egregious happens.
• On the plus side, I appear to be about six weeks ahead on editing SH stories, possibly for the first time ever.
• Fascinating piece about magnetic body art, which is to say, implanting magnets under someone's skin. (Note to the squeamish: there are a couple of big photos on the first screen showing a small magnetic rod being poked through someone's finger, and a couple of similar but bloodier photos near the bottom of the article. If that's going to squick you, then follow the link in a text-only browser or something.) "I am now able to perceive magnetic fields in ways not naturally possible. . . . With the implant I can detect subtle changes in polarity and strength that I cannot when equipped with a magnet in the conventional manner. . . . Being able to perceive magnetic fields has expanded my conscious perception of magnetic fields ‘in the wild’." I was reminded of a roleplaying campaign I played in about ten years ago, in which my character had a magnetic-field sense. It seems to me that sf doesn't do nearly enough with giving characters beyond-human physical senses.
• Some interesting stuff about New Zealand's electoral system—a few years back, sick of the kinds of election results they were getting, New Zealanders changed to a system whereby you cast one vote for an individual and one vote for a party, and the parties end up more or less proportionally represented in Parliament, a system called Mixed Member Proportional Representation (or MMP).
• I bought my plane tickets for WisCon. I'll be arriving Thursday evening (with luck, I'll even be in time for the GoH reading/reception), and leaving Monday evening. Tip to anyone traveling over Memorial Day weekend: planes fill up fast. Don't be like I usually am; make your plans and buy your plane tickets well in advance. Now is not too early.
• Disney is doing a series of live-action Narnia movies. This news has set off some spirited discussion in a mailing list I'm on of how best to handle the potentially racially charged elements of the series onscreen.

There's more, but I think that'll do for now.