I merely ask this philosophical question, because I am humbled to find that I have 2013 friends. I have applied for membership of the Friends of Charles Darwin, and if accepted I may become CD, FCD. Membership is free, which is an improvement on the Royal Society. I have just received a most impudent letter from them insisting that if I continue to sign myself Charles Darwin FRS, I must pay my subscriptions backdated to 1881.
Better yet, the Friends of Charles Darwin has some sound advice for my continuing education.
I must pay my subscriptions backdated to 1881.
Perhaps you should open a Paypal account and we could all contribute?
I would suggest you be careful advertising that you’re “a friend of yourself”. Some religious folk might interpret it the wrong way.
I’m proud to be one of your friends already (I was about no. 700). Amongst your many other friends, you may wish to pay a visit to Carl Beull, an excellent illustrator of extinct (and extant) animals.
I believe you also owe all 2013 friends Christmas and Birthday cards – though perhaps as they have failed to send you yours for the last few years, perhaps you could all agree to call it off?
When you have finished paying your debts to the Royal Society there is the small matter of your outstanding subscription to the
august organjournal Nature, since 4 November 1869, plus interest. A tidy sum that will keep many an impoverished editor from a pauper’s grave afterburnout and being thrown on the scrap-heapretirement.Mr. Darwin – I suggest you find yourself a good lawyer, and chase up those image rights. You could start by seeing how many times Nature Publishing Group has used your photograph.
Etching, surely, Dr Bob?
What? Is Nature so primitive it hasn’t discovered photography yet? :-)
Classic, Bob, that’s us.
Like a fine wine.
Or cheese…
Well, we ain’t smelly, at least. Apart from a certain editor’s feet, which are frequently to be spotted, Hobbit-style, on his desk. Winter is not too bad, but summer….
Feet on the desk? Such things would never do in Capt Fitzroy’s cabin. Bedlam is come again.
Oh come on. We’ve heard all about those Navy types.
Dear Mr Darwin
I should like to clarify the remarks of a colleague, Dr Clarke, who notes inter alia that ”... apart from a certain editor’s feet, which are frequently to be spotted, Hobbit-style, on his desk.”
After certain indelicate remarks made about my footwear in another place by a person rightly transported to New South Wales for the crime of punctuational terrorism, I have vowed, by way of defiance, to wear crocs sans socks from now until the clocks go back. Crocs are rather like clogs, but made of plastic, which is, I suppose, a distant cousin of bitumen or petroleum, only injection-moulded … oh never mind. back to the transformation notebooks with you. I remain,
Your servant,
Dr Henry Gee.
PS Are you quite sure you’re not Jewish?
I am moderately certain that crocs are made when a daddy crocodylidae gives a mummy crocodylidae a special hug.
Only if they are plastic crocodiles. Your taxonomic usage, Mr Darwin, is shocking. I think you might be a modern imposter.
It was you, sir, who said that crocs are like dogs!
Sorry. Your wrote clogs. My cataracts are playing up.
I’d recommend extreme hydrotherapy administered by sadistic Yorkshiremen. Either that or extended periods of rest in darkened rooms. What’s that? You do these things already?