Found the following "sight" on alta vista but am still not convinced after three clear nights of viewing.

http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/aw1orion.htm

Settling in on night shift. Activity is picking up, so I am keeping busy. Getting a lot of walking in making the rounds. I'm starting to feel it in my 42 year old left ankle.

Bond

That made me seven in '64. It could have been '65, but I am pretty sure it was before Goldfinger came out in late '64. How many grandpas would send out a 7 and 10 year old out alone in Brooklyn these days? Bond films are pretty much the only films I actually go to the theater to see. Although most films are enhanced by the big screen, the incremental enhancement factor to incremental cost ratio is very high for a Bond film, therefore justifying the additional expenditure (goddamn engineer).

I agree with you about the "Spy Who Loved Me" intro. Although not nearly as breathtaking, my boys and I enjoy the humor of the end of the Octopussy intro ("fillerup please").

BO

A basic questions about BO is whether, since it is a natural phenomenon, it has any survival advantage. If so, what is (was) it? Of course it could simply be a pheromonic vestige of our previous incarnations as wild beasts. It does have its onset at puberty, so one could imply a sexual attractiveness to the odor. We have retained hairy bits in the appropriate locations to enhance the effect. Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between the raw musky aroma you find attractive and the bacteria enhanced version that becomes apparent after 24 unbathed hours. How much of our current aversion to the latter is due to antiperspirant generated advertising memes and how much (if any) is due to a true negative biological reaction? More good questions for another of Sue's students to research.

I am not so sure of your assumption that excess bathing uses less water than to grow lawns in Florida and California. When you throw "industry" into the equation you should only include the "excess" water wasted by industry and of course carefully define what is considered excess. Sounds like more good thesis material. How about the water generated by the shower taken by the guy who worked up a stinky sweat mowing his Florida lawn?

Drones

Wudyaspose Captain Kirk would think of the drone society? (Did I arrive at the idea independently or was I infected by "Brave New World" twenty years ago? Probably just a slightly mutated version of BNW.)

Profanity

Where do you think I got "wab" from. Since it was not in your table of contents (see below) I had to hunt down your glossary page to find the link to "Rogers". I did and had some of my best laughs in a long time.

Assistant Editor

Jesus Christ! Why didn't you tell me a month ago? I would have taken notes whenever I saw misspelled words etc. You could link to Letters of Mark wherever I've changed your mind. (My body imagines that a selfplex somewhere between my ears had me type that.)

The text background wallpaper is fine and unobtrusive. So many make the text unreadable. The most annoying thing about the site is that your left navigating frame stays alive when I take a link away from your site. I know nothing of how you would fix this other than have a new browser open up. As far as content, it was clever and witty enough for me to want to read most of it. Perhaps I should give you the titles of the pages that I *haven't* read so that you can change those titles to more catchy versions.

There is a problem that sites like yours would make excellent reading material for the toilet. However that technology isn't yet affordable to me.

What about you writing a page (or several) for the Guest Zone? I will give you full Letters of Marque to attack any reasonable target that does not directly negate the main thrusts of my site. Naturally something on memetics would be very suitable but you choose. You even have my blessing to do quotes, graphics and hyperlinks. Any responses generated by the page I will send on to you, so you can reply to them directly or indirectly as you choose. Create the page yourself or send me the plain text.

Is your internet connection up to a full zip file of the whole site? Uncompressed it is too big to fit on a floppy disc but the last time I tried I managed to compress it down to a reasonable size and I took it on holiday with me on one floppy. If you want a copy of the latest version of all the site I could e-mail it to you.

Thanks for the comments. I have seen the previous version of the background tile on a big screen and I was surprised at how obviously square it was, this latest version is, I think, a neater tile. It is basically a mathematically created pseudo-chaotic patterned tile that I have tinted, I also reduced the contrast and removed noise. It isn't clouds, rocks or parchment, but it is similar. The idea is that it just makes a softer background than a plain colour or white. Incidentally I have used a similar plain shade as my "paper" colour in my windows settings, it makes all the hours I spend looking at the screen a touch softer on the retina.

The problem with links and frames is as old as frames. I try to use the correct designation of self, parent, top, or blank, but inevitably some get missed in the heat of the creative moment and have to wait until I am in a less creative revisionist mood. I know what you mean about being stuck in inappropriate frames, it is very annoying.

I have two days off again this week so I will probably get around to fixing quite a few mistakes. The page, Letters of Mark, is excellent. It fizzes with life and ideas that we bounce off each other. I think we must be just similar enough and just different enough for this to work very well.

I know what you mean about reading on the toilet. I always have a "poo-ing book". The best kind are those that are suitable for short or long sessions and can be dipped into at random. When a good book has been thoroughly digested in the proper way I sometimes use it in this way too. As my creativity often peaks in the morning some of my best ideas are generated by a good book read on the toilet or in the bath. Then I muse over the ideas on my way to work, my mind goes back to the idea in the slack moments at work and by the time my lunchbreak comes around I have the majority of the ideas sorted for writing. This pattern just about justifies the effort of lugging the laptop around with me. Other ideas are too big to attempt over a lunchbreak and need the attention of a full day off.

I have not completely given up the idea of developing the site into something else, possibly a book, but I guess that is at least another 18 months away. At the moment I am revelling in the electronic media and the instant gratification of instant publishing. I can't help thinking that it would be good to make some money from it without prostituting myself too much. The idea of not publishing my best material because I want to charge people for it does go against the grain but it would be good to clear up my debts and get myself into a more sustainable lifestyle. Ahh, the crisis of conscience, the lure of the professional game...

Maybe there is somebody out there who could see clear to giving me a go at being a columnist or something.

Until last year there was a terrific radio station in this country, Talk Radio UK, which became Talk Radio, but has now degenerated into Talk Sport. It used to be really good, but it went too mass-market and low-brow. At its best it was fantastic, offering stimulating thinking on a huge range of subjects. I have considered becoming a kind of shock-jock but I don't have the speed of delivery that would be necessary and my spoken English is too full of errors, I have a slight speech impediment, my mouth does not always synchronize well with my thoughts. So my media must be principally text based.

Perhaps something will develop that gives me the outlet I have yearned for and will give me some financial reward for it as well.

Have you ever been a fan of talk radio stations? If so what kind of presenter do you enjoy, one who you agree with, one who is to the right of you or one to the left? I am basically quite a socialist and environmentalist type of person but I enjoy arguing from the right more than arguing from the left, as much as these simplistic labels are useful, so people often get a very strange idea of what I really believe in.

I enjoy listening to people spout unusual and radical ideas of almost any flavour. It is the tired, clichéd thinking that annoys me. Even if an idea is wrong if it is wrong in an interesting way it can make an entertaining debate. Some of my pages are motivated by the desire to stimulate debate and the ideas contained within them are not really my core ideas, just some that I don't mind having associated with me, others are very deeply held.

Drones

Captain Kirk? I don't know. Star Trek is not for me, I have never really watched it much, but it is on so often that you get to absorb it by osmosis. I guess he might not approve, he always struck me as a bit of a Victorian Methodist. I preferred Spock.

Brave New World! One of several books that have influenced me greatly. I read it several times in my teens and later. I read it again last year. I still don't get it, I don't see what is so very terrible about eugenics. Naturally I don't agree with the simplistic definition of happiness that the Fordians subscribed to. I can see a place in the human future for eugenics to remove disease and so reduce avoidable suffering. I have read other work by Huxley and I get the impression that he didn't intend Brave New World to be what it has been taken to be, an anti-science book. Huxley thought that eugenics of some kind was inevitable and potentially beneficial, that is my position too. Someday it will happen, it is better to be done by democrats than by an authoritarian state.

I would be willing to bet enough beer to get drunk on that before 2010 there will be an announcement that some stupid rich bastard has arranged for a clone of himself to be produced. With luck it will not become a widespread practice, it should not do as it offers no advantages to anybody; a clone is not you, only very like you.

Being a clone I am not alone

 every fibre of my flesh and bone

 is identical to the others 

everything I say is in the same tone 

as my test-tube brothers' voice 

there is no choice between us, 

if you had ever seen us,

 you'd rejoice in your uniqueness 

and consider every weakness 

something special of your own. 

Oh the power of musical poetry. That has been bouncing around in my head for twenty odd years. Hawkwind (or was it Hawklords?) Spirit of the Age. If I got it wrong I apologize, I haven't heard the original for longer than I care to remember.

Washing water.

It probably is using a lot of water. Perhaps a better form of re-use would be beneficial. The water from the shower following mowing the lawn could be used to water the lawn? This sort of idea is widely suggested whenever there is a drought in England.

Drought, this year! Fat chance. Raining again. I envy you having three consecutive clear nights. Cloudy or rainy most of the summer, then a couple of bright days and then straight into high humidity and thunderstorms. Yesterday as I crossed over the river it was swollen, fast flowing, mid brown and opaque. No shortage of water this year, my front lawn is a water meadow, lush and dark green, too wet to walk on, far too wet to mow.

BO and puberty.

I am dreading my son reaching puberty. He sweats a lot now and his room gets very hot in summer. I think I will have to all I can to encourage him to enjoy bathing and to steer clear of grunge rock.

Orion

That was what I found. You're pretty hot on surfing aren't you? If there was an Olympic medal for it I would suggest you go to the try-outs. OK so you are not convinced.

Olympics

Have you been able to see the Olympics on TV? I like the idea of women in swimming costumes riding bikes but perhaps it would be better if they had a lower weight limit, this lot were too scrawny.

And have you seen those men swimmers? Like flatfish, tall wide and muscular, but turn round and they disappear.

I am flattered by your request that I write a page(s) for the Guest Zone. (Is this a new "Zone" or did I just miss it?) However, I am not sure I have either the discipline or the material to fill a 1000 or so word page with interesting material on a quasi-regular basis. My ideas come in spurts and seem to be better suited for the conversation/debate format we are currently using.

Example After reading about the author of "Bridges of Madison County" and seeing that such a small book made an unknown author rich when the movie came out (I have neither read the book nor seen the movie) I reasoned that a good way to get really rich relatively easily was to get a book made into a movie. (I know you are philosophically opposed to anybody getting really rich, but if the opportunity would present itself, would you give the money back?)

Now, one of the bits of advice I give newlyweds on how to keep their marriage healthy is to have a laugh-a-day. My wife and I (and now our kids) are fortunate to have similar senses of humor and we usually have a pretty good laugh every day. Most of these are of the "you had to be there" variety, but a good author will "put you there". I thought I'd keep a journal of these "laughs" and then flesh them out someday into a good comedy. I bought a notebook and started writing down snippets of several humorous episodes as they occurred. That was about five years ago and there are only ten pages in the "Book". Countless vignettes have passed me by and are lost forever because my memory recall is very poor. I just don't have the discipline to record the events as they occur and wouldn't make the time to flesh them out. The story of my life is that I'm often a day late and a dollar short.

Most of my political/religious/scientific ideas developed from conversations with fellows like you after a beer or two or three. This has been supplemented by reading the appropriate books and surfing the net. My views are crystallizing into a strict rationalist/reductionist point of view similar to Dawkins'. Everything is atoms and genes and memes, therefore everything can be explained in those terms. The gift is to hypothesize explanations and propose ways to test these hypotheses. Someone who is more left brained (or right brained--I can never remember which) than I can then follow through with the appropriate experiments. Alls I can say is good luck. If the muse hits me and I happen to have the time to put down 1000 or so words, I will forward it on. In the mean time, I think the current back and forth will have to do.

(Possible subject--vegetarianism. I can't remember if you have an article on the subject and I'm afraid to use the search engine. They would be good ones to harass on the news groups should you feel so inclined in the future.)

Talk Radio

Back in the states, if I was alone in my car, the radio was on and people were talking. Only at home was music playing. Mostly news, but shock jocks, and Rush Limbaugh types were also worthy. I tended to listen to more of the right. This may be because most of the shows were hosted by right leaners. I fit somewhere between libertarian and communist. It depends on who I am arguing with.

Of course where I am now, the only English I hear on the radio is backed up with dump-to-the-dump-to-the-dump-to-the-dump. All the more reason to read web jocks like you. The best pro-talkers are very gifted people. They know what to say and say it when it is appropriate and are ready with the comeback. I am more typical. I come up with the perfect response an hour or day too late.

I was going to ask you a few days ago if the words I read are the first draft or the product of lots of tweaking. The word processor was made for people like me. I rarely think or speak in full sentences (drives my wife crazy) let alone paragraphs. Every thought must be reworked so that it comes out coherently. Are you left handed? (A more rational question than "Are you Libra?")

No taker here on your clone bet. The best justification I've heard is a source of spare parts. Eugenics is also a good article subject--especially for a shock jock wannabee. (Think of the flat, wide, muscular, swimmers we could produce.) A lot (all) of it has been said before. The best we can hope for is to impart a significantly more fertile mutation.

Mark

(That was 800 words. Wasn't too hard now was it?)

(That was two complete sentences without a rewrite.)

(Three)

The Guest Zone is rather empty at the moment. You haven't found it yet? The Intercontinental Net Surfing champion hasn't found it? A clue, 300 pixels down from the base of Big Ben and click. It has one of my best jokes on it.

There is no minimum size for a page, the upper limit is 200 KB per page, if you wanted to do more then feel free, I have used only about a tenth of my free webspace, so you could do several pages starting from the Zone page or daisy-chain them if you want. The effective minimum size? It depends what you have to say, I understand that the Gettysburg Address was only about 270 words, and that can hardly be dismissed as a waste of ink.

There is nothing stopping you doing a multiple subject single page if you only have snippets of points or questions to make. What was that bit about a quasi-regular basis? All pages on my site are posted once and left, I hardly ever take anything off. Naturally you would be free to suggest updates, additions etc. Because HTML is just a text file you could do all the modifications yourself with whatever software you want and send me the modified version back as an e-mail attachment.

The Guest Zone is in the peri-natal intensive care ward, not much has happened with it since I launched the idea, in fact, to be honest, nothing has happened.

Your analysis of my attitude to the generation of wealth is reasonable. I do not expect to be rich but if I ever did become so I am sure I could find it within myself to keep the money. At least I have an intellectually honest approach. So many of your countrymen, the phrase "Trailer Trash" seems to be appropriate, are dirt-poor (another Americanism that seems appropriate) and yet sincerely expect to be rich and defend every excess of the rich. However this reversal of class consciousness was achieved I am sure your wealthy elite are grateful for it, I get the impression that it was not the result of a conspiracy, just a lucky spin-off of history and American myth-building. Or is my dismissal of the conspiracy theory just because I doubt any rich Americans are really that bright? But then again, on the third hand, do not the great manipulators in the American media always portray clever people as Austrian or German, and evil people as English? Leaving Americans only the position of honest kick-ass cowboy hero or romantic lead. Perhaps I am on to something. Perhaps I am on something.

I have thought about writing a book several times. My first publication was a little number called "My book of mischief" when I was about 9. Next came half a chapter of "Michael Molloy, secret agent". Then a few science fiction books were in the planning stage based around the notion of time travel by cryogenics and finding a world that was actually both more advanced and better to live in, although that was obviously non-commercial. For some strange reason everybody in the civilized world thinks progress is a good thing but likes to be told that the future will be terrible to live in.

Search engine.

Don't be afraid. I promise I won't do that nasty trick again.

I have thought about vegetarianism as a subject to get the debate going but I am not sure if I could pull it off. I do have the advantage of having a mother who keeps pigs and cattle and I have shot for the pot so I know a bit about the subject and I am not living a lie, unlike so many other people who eat sausages and don't like to think of pigs. There is something a little strange sitting down to a steak of "Wee Dougie", but he melts in the mouth, and if we were not going to eat him he wouldn't have been born.

I have also thought of another trolling/spamming exercise too. The guaranteed diet that ensures 100% success, tried and tested in over 100 countries around the world, guaranteed to help you lose weight and keep it off, the AP plan. Come and learn about the sure fire diet regime that works with absolutely no risk of cheating. Slip the URL in, click, The absolute poverty plan. Clever, sick, easy; very me.

You ask whether I re-write my stuff a lot or if it flows. Many of my pages have been extensively rewritten several times. In the original creation process I make use of all the tools at my disposal, backspace, cut and paste and insert. Naturally such techniques do not work well on the radio. I also use a superb dictionary program with built in dictionary of quotations, this is on the hard drive, no need for extra CD ROMs, but I also own several reference books on CD ROM, about 6 encyclopaedias, atlases, dictionaries and a Bible. Only the Bible was bought as stand-alone software without a magazine given away free with it. And I also have my Collins Little Gem Dictionary, which can be handy.

This is certainly the media for me. My typing is two fingered with the occasional use of the thumb (crude sexual innuendo avoided) and I always look at the keys, but with those restraints in mind I am fairly quick. I type like a journalist not a policeman. Sometimes my original writing is very fast and flowing, at other times it is slower. The most recent page I did, Features and Benefits, was done using my laptop in my lunchbreak. I used a word processor. Yesterday I pasted it into my WYSIWYG HTML editor and finished it off in five minutes. Then I uploaded it after 6 p.m. when I get more connection for my money. Today I edited it again, added a new paragraph and corrected a bit of poor grammar. The edited version will be in place this evening along with several other reworked pages.

The site improves slowly, it evolves. Good pages get worked on more to keep them sharp. Lesser pages are left. They should be culled or pruned to keep the site healthy but at the moment the site does better by being bigger, if nothing else it scares away other rivals from trying to usurp my position. While the Internet is virtually infinite in potential size the audience is not.

To answer your question I am right handed. Have you seen what I have written about the subject of left and right? Try searching for "Lopes".

I saw you put in mark2. I guess that mark1 was justified after all. I dabbled a little on that "Guest Zone" article, but haven't been able to put it together. To relieve writer's block, I started to tell about today's experience and it may have evolved into a potential article. Before you publish it (if it is even worthy), please give it an objective review for coherence and let me hear your comments. Otherwise stick it in mark2. Save any subjective review for later.

Note for the Editor: I didn't capitalize "god" in the article. I've noticed that you follow the convention of capitalizing the word when referring to "The Supreme Being". I have no objection to it being capitalized for consistency. (By the way. Will you put "(C) 2000 by Martin Willett" at the bottom? Is your stuff really copywritten or is that a scam to discourage would-be plagiarists? Will I now get a share of the huge profits from your web-site? I have a team of lawyers eagerly awaiting your answer ;-)

(SNIP) Article put in the Guest Zone.

Copyright.

My understanding is that you don't have to register with anybody, just assert your right. By claiming the copyright you have done all you need to apart from possibly proving it. If you think your work needs extra protection print out a copy, seal it in an envelope and post it to yourself. I would have to rely on my fans to corroborate the fact that I published a particular work when I said I did. It is slightly more protection than a St Christopher medallion hanging from your rear view mirror. Naturally a registered trade mark or a patent is something else, that does need more paperwork and you have to pay the lawyers upfront.

What should I put on the bottom? You didn't want me to use your surname. I suppose really it should be your name, I suppose I could put "Copyright 2000 by Martin Willett on behalf of the original author." You needn't worry too much about anonymity. I have had my address on my website for a couple of months now and I have had no letter bombs, biblical tracts, cash or drugs sent to me. But I keep looking.

Profits from the website? Nothing on the horizon yet. I just ran into another bill again today, Windows crashed and wouldn't re-load, I needed to pay for some help. It has taught me a lesson though, expect Windows to crash one day and keep a list of your crucial access codes on paper. I made a backup once. I gave up the idea as a bad job, any form of insurance is only worth having if the prospect of needing to claim is bad enough to justify the expense of the premiums. The effort of keeping backups seems too much trouble when compared to the prospect of simply starting again with a blank hard drive. Most of my software I can get back from my CDs. The next time my system goes wobbly I will welcome the experience of starting off fresh, unburdened by hundreds of megabytes of redundant code and dodgy settings.

Capitals.

I use a capital for God the particular god. If you know what I mean. Just as I would for Allah the god and Odin the god. Or Fat Freddy's Cat come to that.

Foxholes.

Was I right in assuming you were referring to my habit of checking out my searchees, like this

2 martin

2 lopes (1 was me)

1 wog

1 Carl Sagan

1 bollocks (I think that was me too)

I have got to go now, a whole day wasted on a wobbly operating system. I see no reason not to publish your piece on the guest zone. I will have a go at responding to it another time.

An interesting little sidelight on the idea of the rich being paid what they would do anyway. A bloke came to my door with a parcel for me to sign for (a Gameboy and games for my son). For some reason he asked me whether I was in the IT business (do I look like a geek?) I told him I was waiting for a computer repair man to call and he invited himself in and tried to fix my problem for me, for the love of the challenge!

As it turned out there was no quick fix available and he had to go, his engine was running and his deliveries were all timed. Of course he could have been working for MI5 or the CIA wanting to infiltrate my system, but I doubt it, he left his 'phone number.

God of the Roadside I thought you would think of a good title. That's the job of the Editor anyway. I think the Editor also deals with copyrighting details too. Can you not put anything? The risk being that somebody will steal the idea that I stole from someone else (don't get excited, no plagiarism here, just meme transfer)? How about just (c) 2000. No name will give protection somewhere between St. Christopher and fuzzy dice

Sorry to hear no one's sent you drugs yet. Too bad also about the tracts. I hear some of them are quite humorous.

Go with big "G" where appropriate (since it's appropriate). I had the other Lopes (At your request), and the foxhole. I thought I read it somewhere and didn't want to regurgitate. Not working nights anymore (he says at 9:21 pm), so actual work is picking up. Good luck with your computer problem.

Frost tonight. Now I get to drive on ice too.

(C) 2000 Mark

I travelled to Minneapolis in 1984, alone. I knew one person in the city. I had never been anywhere on the continent of North America before the day before, he did not know I was coming. Can you guess who the person I saw was, as I got off the plane? You'll never guess...

Somebody I never met before.

It was an incidence. Life is full of incidences. The vast majority never form a two of kind to become a coincidence. Just think how many incidences you have in a day, several hundred. You see somebody, think of somebody, talk to somebody on the telephone, hear their name mentioned, or some connection at one or two stages removed such as wearing the tie they gave you as a present. Is not at all surprising that sometimes they form a startling pair, your brain recognises a pattern and an amazing coincidence story is generated. Add to the naturally occurring coincides all those that are faked to improve the story and the mystery vanishes. They are a statistical certainty, just like lottery wins. The chances that your ticket will win might be 14 million to one against but it is fairly likely that somebody will win most draws. With a global population of six billion, multiplied by several hundred incidences a day each and the whole thing seems as incredible as two brothers having the same surname.

Amazing coincidence, a lad at work says his sister is expecting a baby on her own birthday and he has a cousin who is expecting too, also on her own birthday. Amazing. But if you think about it logically it soon becomes radically less amazing. First ask how many other people he knows who are pregnant, every one makes the coincidence less startling. Next consider that the doctor doesn't really know the expected day very precisely, but would know the mother's birthday, so there is probably a built in bias. Next ask yourself how many cousins, sisters, sisters-in-law, nieces, aunts, friends, wives of cousins etc. who could just have easily been substituted in the equation and it still seemed remarkable. That takes the edge off the story.

Give the story to a journalist and the first thing that happens is that the two birthdays become one and both women become only children, their mothers are then encouraged to say that the same was true of them too, the doctors get called up and a photo-call is done. Scan pictures are compared and declared to be identical. The next week the National Enquirer has them expecting children of each other's boyfriends or the same alien. Never let truth stand in the way of a good story.

God is a tough concept to throw away totally. God knows I have tried. He sneaks into your thinking and speaking. The meme is very persistent. I don't think this is too much of a problem as long as we know we are not being literal. Just in the same way we can talk about muses, demons and so on.

I just remembered a joke from the Soviet era, you might have heard a better version but here goes:-

The potato harvest this year is so good that if we heaped up all the crop it would surely reach to the throne of God himself.

But comrade, God is a fictional entity.

Yes I know comrade, alas so are the potatoes.