The trouble with all these illusionists doing "high-risk" stunts is that we all *know* they'll survive it. It's like an adventure movie, you always have the nauseating knowledge the protagonist will come through in the end. Of course, there have been the rare occasions where it's all gone horribly wrong, but frankly I much prefer smaller, close-up magic than the hyped-up stuff.

So, you may ask, why did I apply for the Derren Brown thing? Well, having seen his other TV shows, I wanted to see what it would be like, simple as that.

[Dujon] Sorry am late replying, visiting friend near Wollongong, and with travel and all I didn't have net access for 48HOURS!!! I coped though :-). I don't know much about identifying snakes, so can't help you there much, but it did look like some sort of python, and was about 6ft long. I put a closeup of its head (and so some of its pattern) in that same directory, if I hadn't mentioned that before.

There is no problem in distinguishing between A, V and M (provided we can agree on a definition of life). Animals have life and a nervous system. Vegetables have life and no nervous system or brain. Minerals don't have life. The definitions include derivatives of Animal and Vegetable eg leather jacket, plank of wood, as has been mentioned. Inkspot puts his finger on it when saying there is a limit of how small you can go and to reduce it to atoms leads to meaninglessness. Even reducing it to molecules causes great difficulties.

I believe that, in the main, the idea is/was to have a target which is commonly known or which can be readily deduced rather than something esoteric. The whole idea is simply to give participants the chance to exercise logic and have a bit of fun in the process. In my opinion the use of 'string', as in the twine variety, is fine; the use of 'string' in the quantum sense is rather obtuse to most people and thus not in the spirit of the game. We all have our areas of special interest and should avoid the use of terms which are specific to experts (amateur or otherwise) in those fields. Well, that's my two bob's worth. ... :-)