Oop, image inclusion time! :)

Also add Joan Slonczewski's classic _A Door into Ocean_
Though on second thought, the Sharers in that story are human - they have altered themselves to fit the aquatic planet that they've colonized, however, and unaltered humans are barging in with resource exploitation in mind. Close enough I think!

Oz and Henson - wouldn't have thought of them, but agree with fervor!

Oh gosh, and that's probably why he played the mysterious Agent who had a slo-mo fight with Daisy in the local pub. :) I'm not the only one to mark the resemblence it seems.

No wonder - I was mixing him up with Kevin Eldon! Apologies. There's totally a resemblance, especially if you don't actually look at a picture of Hugo Weaving. :)

But I will always think of him as the creepily sensual cleaner in Black Books.

Thursday Next series! Mystery, fantasy, scifi, fan-fiction:

Yes! And - mystery, occult investigation, alt. history
- and changes format, too, with little playlets scattered through it
Masks of the Illuminati

I thought George Washington had smoked some pot, cursed inventively, and summoned mystic forces with the help of his high-level mason pals in order to spook the British!

sure. But when something mysterious like this happens, we need to look for what factors have changed, and GMO is something that has changed. and I don't think that we can pretend to know everything about genetics and metabolism to be able to say so categorically that we know what the effect of these modifications…

I will read the essay, but for now I am baselessly speculating. :) I wonder if, like most everyone's diet, the lab animal's food is derived from genetically engineered products. It may seem that they are getting the exact same food as in the past - but maybe the very nature of that food has changed at a genetic…

I think that what complicates the social status situation is that, unlike these other categories, being fat is something that could theoretically happen to almost anyone. And often does. The fear of becoming the scorned Other adds venom to the vitriol against that Other, I think.

oop, credit for art is Shaennon Garrity!
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity…

Helen Beta Narbonic! She planned it all, all along!

Well but he did get stranded on a backwater planet (Earth) for 15 years, and chose Ford Prefect as a nicely inconspicuous name...

My memory is so foggy, I wouldn't be sure how close or far I was cleaving to my prior timeline - I do know that it would be torture indeed to be the person I am now yet have to act out everything I did then! As long as I'm not a helpless observer along for the ride, forced to relive all the misery. Yeek.

Too true. This is the series that made me realize that it's OK to not keep every book in a series in my possession!

So if the explanation for Christopher Eccleston's Doctor's accent is "lots of planets have a North," will the explanation for Peter Capaldi's accent be "lots of planets have a Scotland" ?

This really isn't new: circa 1964, a `slightly irreverent' Chad Mitchell trio lets us in on "A Dying Business":

With the whole brass band they had on that recent tour? Ooooo :D