Perhaps it's just because I finally got my copy of _World's End_ in hardcover, but I read this article on the BBC and thought of you (and the "Hob's Leviathan" story):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2910849.stm
So they went from "Giant Squid" to a "Colossal Squid." I wonder what they'll do when they find the next bigger squid down there.
-- Ed
Me too...
...
A few days of Disney World/Orlando for me and the girls start tomorrow night. My thanks to everyone who offered to show us around, feed us, dress like scary clowns and amuse us while we were waiting in lines etc.
The oddest Disney experience I ever had was for the launch of Big Entertainment, about a decade ago. They flew me and my wife in (that it was January and minus 40 back home, and had been for a couple of weeks, was a huge factor in our agreeing to go), along with Mickey Spillane and Leonard Nimoy, for the announcement of the line, and a photo-op. Disney had a Mickey Mouse on hand, and after the group photo Mickey Mouse and I posed together for some photos.
Afterwards I said to my wife, "I think Mickey Mouse was flirting with me."
"Oh... Did he say anything?"
"Nope. They aren't allowed to say anything. It was a girl in there, though. I think."
"Well, if it didn't say anything, did it do anything?"
"Nope. I mean, the person's inside a six-foot high mouse-costume, representing wholesomeness and the Disney Brand Identity."
"Well, how do you know you were being flirted with?"
"I don't. I just sort of suspect it."
And she probably gave me a look at that point.
I tried to explain the concept of Schrodinger's Cat to Holly today, over the phone, making rather a mess of it on the way, with regard to her going, until the form comes back from the university she applied-to-but-does-not-know-which-one-that-was, to Bryn Mawr and Smith. It might have been easier if, instead of comparing her choice of university to mythical cats in quantum boxes, I'd just pointed to how you can never be certain if you were actually being flirted with by Mickey Mouse. There are, as they used to say at the end of horror movies, some things man was not meant to know...