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Warren Ellis answers questions posed by Slashdot readers.
Daily archives: May 9, 2003
Space, pt. 2
Further to the news about Japanese plans to build reusable space transports- India intends to send a satellite to the moon.
via Boing Boing
Sign Your Life Away
The Israeli army now requires any foreigner going into the Gaza Strip to sign a waiver absolving their soldiers of responsibility in shooting incidents. Would you sign something that basically said ‘Yeah, go ahead and shoot me. I won’t complain.’?
Of course, the Palestinians are understood to have opted in to the getting shot clause at birth.
Technorati tag: Israel
Usual Time, Usual Place
I can’t believe I’ve got this far without discovering Meetup.com. I just signed up to go to the Bookcrossing meeting next Tuesday.
Fancy $95,000?
I don’t know if this has been on here before, but today I came across this Interesting Link about Patrick Combs, who managed to cash in a ‘fake’ cheque for $95,093.35.
Battle of the Big Lazy
Another piece of Heavensent art. This is a snippet from the Battle of the Big Lazy, alluded to in an earlier chapter. I’m going to keep coming back to it and adding details, because it’s nowhere near as hectic as a real battle would get and there aren’t any ships involved yet.
The lake is Crummock Water from the North end. Crashed plane a dirt cheap Spitfire model, mangled and then photographed on a sand bank in the stream at home. Running pilot a free Poser model from Renderosity. Attack plane another free model from Renderosity, this time a P-38 Lightning. Explosions and dogfight planes bootlegged from the battle in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Monkey Magic
An infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters might one day reproduce Shakespeare (though knowing our luck they’d probably go via the complete works of Jeffrey Archer) but six macaqes with one PC will mostly type the letter S.
The project – which was paid for with £2,000 of Arts Council money – was intended to emphasise differences between animals and machines, he went on. “The monkeys aren’t reducible to a random process. They get bored and they shit on the keyboard rather than type.”
CYA
The Israeli army now requires any foreigner going into the Gaza Strip to sign a waiver absolving their soldiers of responsibility in shooting incidents. Would you sign something that basically said ‘Yeah, go ahead and shoot me. I won’t complain.’?
Of course, the Palestinians are understood to have opted in to the getting shot clause at birth.
Angry now.
Fluff
Over on LiveJournal a poster has started a meme. When she scratches her belly button, she says, her clitoris is stimulated. All around the world, women are playing with their innies, trying to reproduce this effect. It’s actually quite common.
The revelation got me thinking about the good old BB. I knew it was where the umbilical cord connected in to the fetus and that was how nutrients etc. were transferred, but what exactly were the components of the umbilical. I had never given much thought to it, but it seems obvious that parts of the cord should remain in the body after birth, integrated into different organs. All of these useful facts were gleaned from a site set up to investigate the prevalence of belly button fluff (or lint, as it’s American).
Considering its connection to birth and strategic placement, it’s not surprising that the belly button has been eroticised, with a whole BB subculture and pages devoted to navels. (As we’re having a special Willow week here at Spinneyhead, here’s a link to Alyson Hannigan’s innie.) You can even find films ‘starring your favorite bellybutton – baring Superheros…The Bellybutton Hunter and The Tomb Huntress!‘
More scientifically, umbilical cord blood cells could be as good a source of stem cells as fetuses, though this is a controversial claim and most places only harvest the blood for reintroduction to the original owner.
And, finally, I couldn’t end this subject without mentioning piercings.
Outsider Trading?
Eric Kiel of cigarettes and coffee has split his weblog’s stock on Blogshares and is gifting chunks of 100 to all and sundry to generate interest and links. (Guess he succeeded here, then.) So far most of my value increases have been down to buying activity, rather than linkage, but in the wider world clicks count.
Now I must go and post a comment to one of his posts so I can harvest some of his increased traffic.