When Jason and I set out for the west coast in October of 2013, we drove cross-country with a Scalemate plushie named Senator Wyrmser riding shotgun for us. He quickly became something of a mascot for the trip, and every morning we'd set out with a cheerful "Squeaka!" from our traveling companion. The last thing I expected was the little guy setting out on his own while Jason and I were visiting the gift shop at the Petrified Forest. I found some of his vacation selfies on my camera last night, and it seems that he did a good job …
As you may or may not have guessed I'm a fan of science fiction (I'd have to be to take the name of a certain time traveling alien as my own) as well as an afficionado of H.P. Lovecraft's C'thul'hu Mythos. Maybe I'm in dire need of calling the crew together for another tabletop RPG night or maybe I've been under a little too much stess recently but lately I've been on a Laundry Files bender. If you've never heard of Charles Stross he's an excellent author who writes this particular series, in which a halpless hacker named Bob …
There is no such thing as dark matter. All of the mass of the universe that we can't see is comprised of hard drive mounting screws that fall on the floor and disappear, never to be seen again.
Inspired by the prose of Dr. Peter Watts, I bring you Conan the Bacterium (otherwise known as deinococcus radiodurans, "..the toughest microbial motherfucker on the planet, a microbe who laughs at hard vacuum and radiation hot enough to cook you to a cinder.")
Picture from the Wikipedia article on deinococcus radiodurans. Quote from Conan the Barbarian. Picture of Peter Watts from here, originally taken by Allan Weiss. Macro engineered with the GIMP and cheezburger.com.
