If I could gibber textually, I would do so now.

on the forum. hows it going

As I live with Wonko, I can attest to the jacket's 133t20r status. It is indeed nifty.

Ummm.... as one who actually witnessed your actual birth, I feel it is my responsibility to let you know that you were not born IN a placenta. You were, like all babies (geek and ungeek alike) born CONNECTED TO a placenta. By your umbilical cord.

Sorry.

Fine, fine...would "gestate" be a better word than "born"?

Babies are not born in placentas, not are they ever contained within them. They develop inside a gestational sac. The placenta is the connection (parallel port if you will) to the mother. (Off the subject, some people eat them, but that's another story.)

P.S. - does the Coke pocket have a solid-state cooling unit to keep the drink icy cold? Now THAT would be truly cool!

The real questions are: would the pockets be easily punctured by dental picks? Are there pockets of an appropriate size for an entire roll of toilet paper and a collection of ziploc bags? Are there pen loops for two colors of Sharpie pens? How easy is it to wash bits of Jurassic mudstone out of it?

These are my criteria for a vest.

You sound like you want to be prepared should you need to deficate and not have facilities. Is that what the baggies are for?

Ewwwwwwww...

So do you intend to put together a wearable computer for yourself?

And you can think of the placenta as a baby-adapter (not a container), sort of like a PCMCIA ethernet adapter. Mammals need some way of passing neutrients from mother to fetus, and waste from fetus to mother. Thus, mammals have a placenta attached to the wall of the uterus which aquires nutrients and oxygen from the mother and passes them to the fetus via a cable called the umbilical cord (kinda like a crossover cable). Waste and carbon dioxide is passed the other direction (you have to float in that fluid for nine months; you can be peeing in it, and you don't really want it carbonated).

Strangely enough, the entire fetus system switches from umbilical dependency to self-sufficiency pretty darn quickly and at just the right moment. It has to; if you breathe in the womb, you fill your lungs with fluid and (presumably) have trouble later on, but if you don't breathe after the placenta detaches, you suffocate.

Of course, this is nothing compared to the delicate chemical dance that occures in the early stages of development, as identical cells differentiate into various different organs. Developmental biology is fascinating stuff. Kinda scary too. It's amazing that such a haphazard system works as well as it does. I guess if it didn't, we wouldn't be here to wonder about it.

This is probably why you're a doctor and I'm not.

Unfortunately, no, the Coke pocket doesn't have a cooling unit, although it is well insulated and it's been doing a great job of keeping my Cokes icy cold during my long, grueling, two mile drive to work.

As soon as I saw all those pockets, the first thing I thought was, "Wearable computer! Wearable computer!". It's definitely something I've wanted to do for a long time, although it'll take some money. Sure would be fun to design though.

The pockets are fairly sturdy, though dental picks are mighty pointy. Although unless you were actually trying to puncture the pockets, I think they'd hold up. There are at least five pockets large enough to hold two entire rolls of toilet paper (though probably not all at once), and you could easily stash a whole box of ziploc bags in there. I haven't found actual pen loops yet (although I won't be surprised if I do), but there are plenty of smaller pockets suitable for pens, pencils and other things. The jacket is completely machine washable, so I imagine washing Jurassic mudstone out of it wouldn't be too much of a chore.

Felicity likes dinosaurs and has gone on digs with real live paleontologists whose names start with "B" and and with "akker". She's who you'd go to if you were building an island theme park with cloned dinosaurs and needed someone to tell you you were a crazy old man who can't pronounce "schedule".

I have this strange image of Wonko shrunk to three inches and lost in his jacket, roaming from pocket to pocket looking for pen loops.

I have never heard of this article of clothing before and am greatly intrigued. Conveniently, I live in one of the coldest city in North America (Ottawa), so this would actually be really useful. And so cool!

But when will it have a wireless network?

But when will it have a wireless network?

Presumably, as soon as you stash a battery and an access point in one of the pockets.

I read your post with much interest. It was excellent if I do say so myself.

Scott Jordan, CEO and Founder
www.SCOTTeVEST.com