Top UK spies revealed as wankers
The UK spy agency MI6 experimented with using semen as invisible ink; presumably because this fluid was readily available to several of their field agents on a few moments' notice. The agent in charge of the project? Mansfield Cumming. This and other revelations appear in MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, to be published this week.
A member of staff close to "C", Frank Stagg, said that he would never forget his bosses' delight when the Deputy Chief Censor said one day that one of his staff had found out that "semen would not react to iodine vapour".
Stagg noted that "we thought we had solved a great problem".
However, the discovery also led to some further problems, with the agent who had identified the novel use having to be moved from his department after becoming the butt of jokes.
the butt of jokes
Did they really want to go
there?
What about those of us that fall asleep in front of screens?
Yeah, I sometimes find myself falling asleep while sitting up in front of the computer, and often while watching TV. And I almost always go to bed with a TV on in the bedroom so the flickering light against my eyelids can lull me.
Total darkness and I aren't good friends, though we occasionally work together when Happy Fun Migraine stops by for a visit.
But TWO HOURS MONITOR FREE BEFORE SLEEP????
Seriously. I would never watch TV again.
I muchly prefer total darkness for sleeping. If I get up in the middle of the night, I don't turn the light on but just feel my way to the bathroom. Once I broke a toe because a roommate had left a chair in the middle of the kitchen and I stubbed my toe on it. You think that'd learn me, but no.
I went to the source for that MI6 semen thing.
[link]
Another downside:
In addition, at least one agent had to be reminded to use only fresh supplies of the 'ink' when correspondents began noticing an unusual smell.
I'm a delicate flower
now
and keep dark as much as possible (I have to remember that is not normal when I have guests over--oops) in case I feel sleepy so I don't have to get up and turn lights off. I hate my great big glowy front door. But I keep my bedroom pretty dark. It's lit by the computer LEDs only, mostly.
I have no prob not watching TV for two hours before going to bed, but cutting off the net is nigh impossible. I try to limit it, and I have never spontaneously fallen asleep in my life -- in front of TV, computer, etc. I've only once fallen asleep reading, and that was after taking my Ambien.
I have to be in bed, in the dark (usually with a pillow over my eyes), not too warm or cold, and quiet, or else some kind of ambient noise like an AC. Oh, and with as empty a bladder as possible.
Timelies!
Another GRONKTASTIC morning. I went to bed at 3am. At 8:15am the local junior high school band marched down our street. I guess everyone feels like it would be churlish to complain about those adorable little scamps using our block to practice on so no one has. Me? I'm looking up rifles with appropriate sights and silencers... Tried to go back to sleep but then repairmen arrived. Honestly, I never thought this neighborhood would be noisier than my last one but it kinda is. Every morning someone's yardeners are using power tools.
I want to turn my hours around. I really do. But it hasn't happened and I'm feeling like death on toast due to mornings like these.
I do think the laptop use right up to bedtime isn't helping much.
