16.16, Thursday 8 May 2003

Yoz responds to a bunch of my recent posts. He puts me straight on kosher cannibalism -- there's a whole lot more to it than not mixing milk and meat, so I wouldn't be okay eating dead people lactating or otherwise. Pretending for a moment that I were Jewish, which I'm not. (Actually his list of reasons is better than that: "Another is oh for god's sake". An admirable argument I'll use myself in the future.)

The geek badge of honour thing is interesting. I agree whole-heartedly: "an always-present useful tool which the travelling geek can both be identified with and called on to use. (I want a samurai sword with which to help ease the plight of bandit-plagued villagers.) Anyone can carry one, but you have to know how to use it".

In a way I'm thinking of the AC-contact from Isaac Asimov's The Last Question: "He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspace with the great Galactic AC that served all mankind".

Like a persistent Google connection. Oh, which leads me neatly to The Last Query, a cheap-shot global search-and-replace that I couldn't resist, which is only funny if you're an Asimov fan, and not really even then.