2015-03-17

GNU Terry Pratchett

"You know they'll never really die while the Trunk is alive[...]
It lives while the code is shifted, and they live with it, always Going Home."

- Lipwig von Moist, Going Postal, Chapter 13
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the clacks are a series of semaphore towers loosely based on the concept of the telegraph. Invented by an artificer named Robert Dearheart, the towers could send messages "at the speed of light" using standardized codes. Three of these codes are of particular import:

G: send the message on
N: do not log the message
U: turn the message around at the end of the line and send it back again
When Dearheart died, his name was inserted into the overhead of the clacks with a "GNU" in front of it to memorialize him forever (or for at least as long as the clacks are standing.)

"A man is not dead while his name is still spoken."
- Going Postal, Chapter 4 prologue
Keeping the legacy of Sir Terry Pratchett alive forever.
For as long as his name is still passed along the Clacks1,
Death can't have him.

You can find out how you can contribute to keeping Terry Pratchett's name spoken
by visiting the link here.

http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/

On a personal note, all of my blogs now carry a meta tag in the heading. Opening any page of my blogs, including my tumblr ones, invokes the meta tag and keeps the name bouncing around the internet.

I've also taken the liberty of including another meta tag invoking the same protocol, but this one dedicated to "GNU Leonard Nimoy."

"He's really not dead, as long as we remember him."
- Dr McCoy, Leonard H, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

     

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