pebkac thoughts

Got a response to my letter about my flowchart from KSR via email:

Dear Cristobal,

Thanks for your note.  I recently saw the reference to this on boingboing, although I did not fully track or understand it, after someone sent me there concerning a different matter entirely.  As you will see if you read my book Antarctica (and thanks for ordering it) my characters see this flow chart on the side of a machine in a lab room at the South Pole, which is just where I saw it, in December 1995.  I copied what I saw and thought it was amusing enough to include in the book, but feel no sense whatsoever of personal ownership.  Although I don’t say so explicitly in the book, I think it is pretty clear there that this is a found object that was really there at the South Pole. Where that version came from, and whether it relates to an earlier version, I have no idea.

So that’s the situation here, and you don’t need my approval but you have it for all further use of your flowchart, and best of luck with it, your new graduate work, and all else—-

thanks for asking, Stan Robinson

Yaaaay!