h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I bought a wonderful book while in the States over Christmas. "Why Did it Have to be Snakes? From Science to the Supernatural, the Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones". It goes through all the films except for the very recent one, and examines things in them to see if they are possible, likely, ridiculous or otherwise. It's written in an amusing tone and treats everything equally, whether it is the type of spiders you'd find in a South American tomb, or the ability of Thuggee priests to rip a victim's heart from their body.

There's a section on Grave Robbers in it, and it goes into great detail about Belzoni, the greatest of the Egyptian Tomb Raider Archaeologists. A very good account of Belzoni, in fact. Remarkably similar to the one I wrote in 2007 for h2g2. A quick thumb through the bibliography at the end of the book, and ...

Yes, my Belzoni Entry was one of the three sources used for the section on Belzoni!

Fame at last.

how coooool is that

Can I have your autograph?

Which is better - that the author found your entry and included it in his book, or that you read the book and found your entry there?

Congratulations

Oooh, I subbed those!

That's great - did they reference "you" (Gnomon) or just general "h2g2"?

Well done!

I'm still waiting for someone to write the authoritative guide to Futtocks.

They referenced the entry with

Life the Universe and Everything as the names of the site
Belzoni: Tomb Raider and Archaeologist Part 3 as the name of the entry
The full URL to the entry
The date on which they looked at the page.

I hadn't ever thought of this last one, but I can see it is important as the web changes all the time.

I haven't finished the book yet, so if Indiana Jones is involved with futtocks later, I'll let you know.

Gnomon,

I've just found a reference to one of your entries in an academic journal (I found quite a few others too, so I'll compile a list).

Your "How to Play the Recorder" entry is referenced in the following journal:

General Music Today, Spring 2006, Vol. 19 Issue 3, p33-35

Would you like me to e-mail the article to you?

Icy

No, that's OK.

A list of academic references I've found: A46972182

(Still searching - maybe Futtocks will appear one day)

Icy

Oh, and with the giving the 'date of page access', that is as far as I'm concerned pretty-much standard practise for any* information accessed off the internet and sitated in a accademic contex; Obviously the internet ain't as established as the referenceing system to books and other hard print jorunal articles. Strictly speaking the most authoritive vies on sitating internet resources that I've seen suggests that this (giving the dat epage accessed), shoudl also be done aor any peer reviewed, journal articles access online as opposed to accesssing a print hard copy. Which makes a lot of sense; I certainly remember reading peer reviewed scienticic articles in big journals liek the lancet etc., and then when I came back to them a few weeks, or months later, corrections and ammendments would have been made to the onlien article, so depending when you'd accessed that article the exact* text of what your reading would be differnt

to Icy. I've just learnt what futtocks are. Patrick O'Brian often has Captain Aubrey clapping an arm around the futtock shrouds. I've got through 21 of his books largely by ignoring all the nautical terminology.

And congrats to Gnomon. In RL I know the thrill of coming across a reference to oneself. Even more thrilling, I bet, to find one in an unexpected place.

Wow, that must have been quite a thrill! Congratulations!

That's great, Gnomon.

That's great Gnomon, and it goes to show the value placed upon h2g2 entries. Nice one.

Websailor

Kudos and Congrats!

I hope the BBC aren't getting royalties for it when you did all the work.