My big list is here, but we can filter that better.

( Wow, that was longer than expected. Let me cut it for y'all. )

The cast lists have been updated, and has information not yet revealed in story. Dr. Sun in particular, and mention of the Geisters' connection to Lucrezia. Also Faustus and the Castle, yet another spelling variation on "Mekkhan", and in the big list clarification of various student statuses -- actually, that bit might be 'old'.

At last!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Today's Girl Genius page? Made of win and awesome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21planck.html
Opinion piece on veganism, particularly as relates to child-raising. The recent infant death and parental conviction was the third such in the past four years.

In the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic, did you think Mina Harker had acquired any powers from her time with Dracula, like slow aging or physical toughness or a mental domination ability explaining her ability to stare down Hyde?  I always thought all she acquired were scars and experience, and that her "powers" were simply being smart, willful, and Victorian.  But some rasfw posters disagreed, at least speculatively.

Separately, I got Order of the Stick books -- not just a compilation, but a character prequel never online.  Whee!

Gingrich had an affair during the impeachment talks. This on top of divorcing his first wife while she was in the hospital.

brett_dunbar pointed me to Gillick competence, a recent English common law decision that minors can consent to medical care on their own. No parental notifications for abortion there!

( F-list mercy cut: )

A list of Miko's appearances, so you can judge her character development

A compilation of translations of Haley's cryptograms

And I'd like to say I've never seen a search function guarded by CAPTCHA before.  Nor such a hostile one; I had 50% of my searches rejected for not entering the right text.

Yes! Villain-slapping satisfaction! Or as one commenter put it, "Insult Nale, and whoever responds IS Nale. Elegantly simple."

Now if only Girl Genius would deliver, in a non-accidental form.

Webcomics: I started looking at The Midlands, some weird alt-dim urban-fantasy with elves comic I've been seeing people recommend. Interesting, though I'm still not sure what's going on. At the same time I read Casey and Andy, kind of like another Sluggy Freelance -- a couple of mad scientists and supporting cast; lots of gag strips, some story arcs, some cheesecake. Fun stuff. The same author has moved on to Cheshire Crossing, an Alice Wendy Dorothy Mary Poppins comic, updated as he finishes each issue. Interesting start.

I re-read The Scar. It held up.

My kanji study linked up with shogi, the Japanese version of chess. I've never gotten to play the game, but it looks, um, interesting. Using that word a lot. A 9x9 board, so more space then chess, and most of the pieces are puny -- knights can only go forward, generals move like kings but with fewer options, there's one rook and one bishop. OTOH captured pieces can be dropped in on your own side, so the game's actually a lot more complex. A silver general on the board has 5 moves; in the hand, it has 40. Even a unblocked queen in the middle of a chessboard has 27 options, I think. And it doesn't matter how many moves queens have if they self-destruct, but that doesn't happen in shogi.

But that's not the point. The point is that you "should" (though it took me years) be wondering why a Japanese piece is called a bishop. Japan doesn't have bishops, except for the <1% who have wandered into Catholic religions. So why call it a bishop? Well, it moves like one, unlimited diagonal movement -- that's a good reason. Still, I started wondering what they actually call the thing, and fortunately the Web quickly provided. Apparently they call it an angle goer, and it, along with the Western bishop, descend separately from the Indian "elephant" piece, which probably moved by jumping two squares diagonally. All the old pieces sucked -- except for the 'rook' (Persian rukh, chariot), aka chariot, which always had its unlimited horizontal movement. And in shogi is called the flying chariot.

That site also shows the two-character form of the various pieces, which I got to look up, or reverse lookup, on JDIC. Yay for some of the characters making sense. Though the lance looks like "incense chariot" and the "honorable horse" (aka knight) looks like "cinnamon tree horse". And the "king" is called the jade general -- but the characters for king and jade are the same, and the Chinese Heavenly King is the Jade Emperor. There's a connection there!