Hold a Worldcon in a country and even their universities go crazy.
According to the BBC, researchers at two Ottowa universities have been pondering how best to defend ourselves against a zombie invasion.
In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity’s only hope is to “hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often”.
They added: “It’s imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else… we are all in a great deal of trouble.”
Undoubtedly. So why are we not hurriedly repealing gun control laws, eh?
A spokesman for the British government was unruffled:
“My understanding of zombie biology is that if you manage to decapitate a zombie then it’s dead forever. So perhaps they are being a little over-pessimistic when they conclude that zombies might take over a city in three or four days,” he said.
But over at The Spectator Alex Massie worries that the Canadians may have fatally under-estimated zombie abilities.
Anyone would think it was a slow news week.
I thought by far the best part of that story was the name of the professor behind the paper – “Robert Smith?”, who added the question mark to his name to differentiate himself from the lead singer of The Cure. David X. Cohen, your move.
Chris:
I live for the day when someone will start calling themselves “Cheryl Morgan?” in order to differentiate themselves from me.
Just so they’re not Marvel zombies.
Incidentally, going back to Anticipation (a phrase I’ve been just waiting to use, naturally), I added an addendum to this post of fannish links, which includes a link to the CBC news report, on the con, which probably was mentioned at Convention Reporter, but overlooked seeing there.
(I’m splitting what started as a single comment into several, with apologies, because your software seems to be doing odd things to any comment with more than two links in it. Sorry about, ah, stringing you along like this.)
Last part: You’ve also made me notice that I’ve made over 25 posts about zombies over the years, although a couple are references to Bob Tucker’s zine. But since there are far too many to otherwise point out, I leave you with that group selection, for your edification, if not boredom, as well as my outright link-whorage.
I’ve also just been drafting another post which will link to a couple of your posts, but you’ll see that tomorrow. Start your excitment, and anticipation, now! (Everyone in worldcon fandom got sick of those jokes years ago, right? I’m so behind the times….)
Gary:
Which part of the software are you having trouble with? I think I quarantine posts with more than 2 links, but I do approve them fairly quickly. If it is a problem with the preview, I know it is a bit buggy, but it is a plugin so I can’t do much about it.
And thanks for the links. I’ll be adding more stuff to ConReporter.com soon.
If it were just the preview, I couldn’t know without trying posts that seemed obviously screwed up.
Each time I tried previewing a post with more than two links, it would eliminate all the text and additional links between the second and last link. I didn’t try to further go on and post that, because I had no reason to think that not how it would have posted: in screwed up fashion. And I’ve seen other blog commenting software with the same problem.
If you’d like me to just ignore that possibility should I try a multiple-link post again, let me know.
I’m pretty sure it is just the preview. I have had trouble with it in the past. But it works for most people so I keep it there.
You neglected to link to the original Ottawa paper, by the way, as well as the BBC report.