We’ve touched on tattoos and body mods before, and I’ve shared why I may never get a tattoo myself. That may all change though, which I’ll explain at the end of this piece. My new-found willingness to think about getting a tattoo myself was inspired by reading about an interesting “social experiment” that was recently promoted in the UK by Ultimate Holding Company, which -although its web site gives the impression is some sort of non-profit – is in fact an ethically-minded commercial design studio in based in Manchester. In their words, they are “committed to sustainable practices, ethical and responsible business, and design driven grass roots collaboration“. UHC recently put together an exhibit and event called ExtInked,  in which 100 “ambassadors” applied to have one of England’s 100 most endangered species tattooed on their bodies. A cool idea, although it might have been interesting to see them do something more than basically garner attention for their own studio; as of this writing, neither their web site, their Facebook page, nor any of the press they’ve generated mentions any tangible results of the idea, beyond a few hundred people getting interested in the concept, and a hundred of them getting tattoos of endangered species. The last I knew, getting “Mom” tattooed on your arm isn’t going to bring her back from the dead. All the same, it’s a pretty cool and hip idea, and it will be interesting to see if generates some real results. I wish the UHC, their partners, and the participants the best, or I wouldn’t be sharing their project here. As I was reading about their project though, I ran across another tattoo idea that hit closer to home. Earlier this year, Phil Plait of Discover Magazine’s “Bad Astronomy” Blog announced he’d get a tattoo if site traffic increased to 2 million page views for a month. It worked, and he and Discover CEO Henry Donahue ended up getting tattoos. So here’s the deal. I’ll get a tattoo if Dissociated Press traffic increases to 250,000 monthly page views in January. Right now it’s hovering around a paltry 20,000 page views monthly, a level that  – trust me – does not generate enough revenue to make it worth maintaining. So, much like the UHC’s project, if you don’t want to see Dissociated Press become extinct, send us some visitors. Maybe I’ll let you pick the tattoo.