Origin of The Big Beluga

Well, it was time to start a blog and The Big Beluga has been my Internet identity for some time. I have had one other Internet Identity and that was "The Inquiring Mind". Way back in the day, which is to say, the late '80s - when Internet access was only available in academic environments - I had created "The Inquiring Mind" as a Bulletin Board System (BBS) that was part of a network that allowed access to Internet email and newsfeeds. Eventually I let that go when Internet Service providers became available. For some reason I never maintained the Inquiring Mind or "inqmind" identity, preferring instead to use my normal email address.

Of course, having an anonymous and even whimsical identity has its advantages from a personal security point of view, but what I am seeking is not anonymity so much as what I call the "disembodied intelligence effect". That is, the feeling that our interactions on the Internet have less to do with the nature of our physical bodies and more to do with pure ideas, pure information, pure intelligence.

But why The Big Beluga? Well, I am a Canadian Beluga and for many years played hockey, specifically oldtimers hockey (I am a Babyboomer Beluga). One day after a spirited session of shiny I was lined up with several other guys waiting for a turn in the shower. While we stood there contemplating this mass of unsightly human male flesh, slowly turning from pallid white to pink under the clouds of steam and uncontrollably hot water, my friend Tony turned to me and said, "I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that we should make a calendar."

This is, of course, a reference to the many calendars that are made for charity featuring men from Police forces or Firefighters, etc. Rather than conjuring up an image of beefcake, all I could image at that point in time was a bunch of beached beluga whales, and I would be the biggest beluga of the bunch. Somehow the image stuck with me. Shortly after that I was trying to think up an Internet name and it came to me, I am The Big Beluga baby!

p.s. The beluga image in the title was obtained from Flickr under the Creative Commons Licence and is the work of Sally London. Share beluga images if you like!