|synaptic disunion|

Friday, June 30, 2006

...that's what deadly means!

Some of you may know that I am a fan of the late Douglas Adams. Some of you may not know this. Some of you may not care and may not know who in the world I'm talking about.

Douglas Adams wrote the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books. Douglas also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, a second Dirk Gently book. Douglas worked with the BBC on television shows like Dr. Who and appeared twice on Monty Python. His wit was genuine, unforced, smart, and slightly cynical and hopeful at the same time. When Douglas died of a heart attack at age 49 in Santa Monica on May 11th, 2001, I wept.

In the late 1980s, after globtrotting with naturalist Mark Carwadine in search of some of the most endangered species on the planet, Douglas wrote (and completed) his only non-fiction book called Last Chance to See. It's probably my favorite book on the subject of endangered species, and the brave things that are being done to protect them. It is also a little known bit of trivia that this entire book was presented in CDROM format for the Apple/Macintosh in 1989 by BBC Enterprises. I have managed to get my hands on a copy of this rare collectors item, through no effort on my own. The only thing that can be salvaged from the cds in this set are the audio tracks of Douglas Adams reading bits of the book since the system requirements for the rest of the material are almost twenty years out of date, and there are none to be found anywhere.

The following audio track, then, is a treasure. A gift for any of you, who might be Douglas Adams fans in the very least. This is a bit of the past that you might not have known about, or have been able to experience, were it not for the red tape and the pack-rat-like tenacity of Higher Education. This clip is a clip of Douglas Adams reading part of Last Chance to See, the bit about the venom expert, if you've read the book. Enjoy.

: toadman : at Friday, June 30, 2006 |