From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2001-09-04T09:49:41+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:20830] Re: OReilly Ruby book has snail on cover

In article <20010903181307.97518.qmail@web13807.mail.yahoo.com>,
Kevin Smith  <kevinbsmith@yahoo.com> wrote:
>--- Sean Chittenden <sean-ruby-talk@chittenden.org> wrote:
>> none of these qualities are even close to being
>> exemplified by a snail.
>
>Interestingly, O'Reilly already used a (different) snail
>for their SSH book:
>  http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sshtdg/

THe snail on the SSH books seems to be a regular old garden snail, so our 
snail (looks like one of those colorful tropical snails) is at least 
better ;-)

>
>There might be an easier way to get a gallery but I enjoyed
>looking at a collection of their book covers:
>http://search.oreilly.com/cgi-bin/search?term=animals&category=All&pref=all

Well, if we must have a snail, the moon snail would be good, here's a 
quote from http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/biodiverse/moon_snail.html :

"Relative to other snail species in the Maritimes, moon snails are giants 
-about the size of a child's fist. They move surprisingly fast for a snail 
and are major carnivores of shellfish."

Ruby is surprisingly fast for an interpreted language.

I found another page that moon snails also attack oysters (which produce 
pearls) - Ruby is going after  Perl territory.

And lastly, a python is useless against a moon snail - it simply retreats 
into it's thick shell (of course moon snails are in the ocean, so a python 
wouldn't likely go after it anyway) ;-)

So, I conclude that if it must be a gastropod the moon snail would be 
the perfect cover animal for OReilly's Ruby book. ;-)

Phil