h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Newton: we don't know what a few things does, let alone the multitude.
Heisenburg: we don't know what one thing does, let alone a few.
Feynman: we don't know what nothing does, let alone one.



I think Physics is not about finding the truth, just a better approximation to it.

Quite true ...

But don't you think you should get out a little more ?

Just what I pick up from Physics lessons
You might be right though. Still, I did go all the way to Durham on Thursday/Friday - a lovely 6.5 hour coach ride there and another back. Fun!

Your love of Durham is more likely the application of Chemistry rather than Physics.

Your liking for 6.5hour coach journey defies the laws of ergonomics, and flirts with the need to do further research in Psychiatry !

Being unable to drive my car at the moment, I have been forced to try out public transport. I have to confess it was fun - but I wouldn't like to make a habit of it. A bit like my recollection of Durham. And, for that matter, Physics!

So go on, then, Lets talk. How did you get to know about H2G2 and what bits of Saint Douglas do you enjoy?

I was being sarcastic over the 6.5hr journey!
I went for an interview to do computer science there... I am seriously reconsidering and may do Physics or Natural Sciences.
It's a beautiful city, though. Very hilly, however.
What's your connection with Durham, then?

As regards h2g2 and Saint Douglas...
I've always enjoyed DNAs Hitchhiker's guide, and had read one of the Dirk Gently, and like the way he can completely ignore reality, and how large parts of the novels are completely irrelavent to anything. He doesn't do too many one-liners [The 'There was an accident with a time machine and a contraceptive' is a notable exception'], but rather large paragraphs or entire chapters (or, if you really want to take it to its inevitable conclusion, novels or 'trilogies' )
I learnt of h2g2 a while back from Daniel 'Gurps Boy' Fowler, aka Alundra at h2g2, who I think had seen it on tomorrows world.
I usually read it at school, during my Private Study periods, and since it isn't chat, I'm allowed.

My connection with Durham is pretty tenuous: I used to pass through there on the way to visit one of my Company's offices in Sunderland. I have stayed in the Three Tuns hotel there (quite posh, but over-priced with criminal Stilton on the cheeseboard), and used to enjoy a pre-brekky stroll down by the river watching the Student-types skimming along (in boats) at a rate of knots. A lovely place.

Nice to meet up with an Addams afficionado. I must confess that I was profoundly disappointed by the two Dirk Gently's that I have read. I suspect that my appreciation of them was marred by a lack of alcohol in the brain at the time... although I did find the idea of defining flying as missing the ground quite amusing. So far, I have only found one other person (worryingly a commercial airline pilot) who shares the view.

Sometime in the near future, people will realise that computers are simply tools. What you do with them is far more important than how you do it. And that will signal the decline of the potential worth of a career in computer technology. I mean, Douglas Addams made his name as an author, not as a typist. Hence his consistent mis-spelling of his surname!

Nice chattin'

See you around.

Have you seen the article on the front page today, on inventions? Very entertaining.

Computers aren't just tools - they are the swiss army knifes of the communication revolution

You mention the rowers in Durham - the theory in our school is that all rowers are malcoordinated... and most of them agree. They put themselves through ridculous amounts of pain to come eighth in a national competition, out of 168.

I've got the BIO in a few min... a lovely 3hr computer programming test which, if I do very well in, might earn me an invite down to Cambridge
I got a distinction in it last year (for 40%!)
I'll see you around, probably

The Cow

I like the cut of your jib, Cow. So now I am going to lecture you, for as a Wise Old Bird from a career in Management Development (where egos run wild and free), I believe I have worthwhile things to say to you:
You have mentioned your appearance on several occasions in a short while. I suspect this could be conditioned by your current educational environment, which offers many advantages, but fees are not the only costs one pays as a Public School inmate. No matter how reasonable the cloistered world you inhabit might seem, I would caution you that it is not the real world.
An unhealthy pre-occupation with categorising and classifying people based on woefully insufficient data is rife in the system and is as unhelpful as it is seductive to those whose first instinct is to try to put people in their right place before dealing with them.
What has motivated me to speak to you? You seemed interesting. Intelligent. Articulate. Capable of grasping difficult concepts. Witty. Someone worth listening to. (And no, I'm not at all interested in your body, thank you very much!) Your appearance is irrelevant.
Time for a poem:
As a beauty I am not a star
There are others more beautiful by far
But my face ... I don't mind it
Because I'm behind it
It's the people in front that go " aaaaarrrgh !!! "
Things could be worse, Dave McKee: at least you are a look-alike for Ford Prefect, rather than Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Hope your exam went well. A question, please: why do you really call yourself TheCow?

Remind me if I forget some of your points, I'm having to navigate internet explorer using a keyboard (not easy...)

I keep mentioning my appearence not because it's beautiful, but because it is odd. My sister has a bit of red hair too, but there isn't much red hair elsewhere in the family.
As regards rowers, I was merely quoting the general belief in the school. But rowers do put themselves through ridiculous levels of self-induced torture, so there must be something 'wrong' with them.

I love the poem!

I guess you are right about the Ford Prefect vs. Zaphod Beeblebrox connection .

The exam went well... I got 83%. I might well be popping down to Cambridge for part two - I'll just have to wait and see. And tell you, of course, as soon as I know. The last question was evil. For 20%. It went a little like this:

Romulus and Remus have two sets of dice each. One has two normal dice {1,2,3,4,5,6}x2, the other has a different set of dice with exactly the same probabilities of getting the same sum. Eg: {0,1,2,3,4,5} and {2,3,4,5,6,7}. Except you aren't allowed zero. Write a program to give an example, or state impossible if it is.

I had -NO- idea about how to approach it. I got 4%/20%. If I'd writtent the following program

readln;
writeln('Impossible');

I would have got 2% more.

As regards the name, I needed something catchy, something unique. Something not completely copying from HHGTTG. I thought back to the day before I registered, when I was mowing the lawn and a set of prize cows was entranced by the movement of the mower. Why not 'The Cow'? Noone else is going to copy it, are they?

I was looking at a periodic table poster in school yesterday, with some really obscure pictures. For example, hydrogen looks like the earth orbiting the sun. Helium is a picture of the sun. Platinum (according to Mr. 'Teletubby' Elmore, the biology teacher who said 'There are four things in life to worry about: Beer, taxes, death and Teletubbies') was the Aramaic symbol for it (which, quite frankly, looked more like lumps of solder scattered on a patterned cloth).

I can't think of anything else interesting to say just now, so I'll have a think and get back to you at some point!

So you meet this bloke that enjoys travelling at breakneck speed backwards? Who thrills at the prospect of enduring physical extremis whilst bent two-double?

Don't panic.

Direct him to the nearest boat house, where he can share and enjoy his oddity with other like-minded individuals. And thank the prophet Zarquon that rowers are so odd they rarely appeal to the female of the species and seldom achieve the level of co-ordination necessary to mate.

The repellent effect of extreme ugliness is easily overcome by the liberal application of alcohol.
But rowers have problems that rank up there with some of the most perplexing issues to bother humankind: like if Remulant and Rhomboid have a computer, why do they still bother fiddling about with dice, particularly when they don't have proper dice? The answer -which is obviously 42- is that computer scientists should not waste their scarce time resources on people who simply don't deserve help.

writeIn('NothingisImpossiblebutsomethingsaresoimprobableastobeunworthyofmytime');
end

Congratulations on achieving 83 per cent in your examination. Both my daughters waste tremendous tracts of time despairing over disappointing exam performances that only scrape first/distinction standard. Thus proving that the only thing that they are really crap at is self-esteem. Which, at the end of the day is probably the only thing that truly matters to any traveller on the journey through Life.

Mr. Elmore clearly has distilled his personal philosophy to a point where a minor contaminant, namely the Teletubbies, has now reached critical mass. This is quite a common problem with Biology teachers. You should worry about him. Suggest he tries rowing as a hobby.

An American Mathematics professor named Tom Lehrer released a single of his rendition of the periodic table of elements rearranged in rhyming stanzas. I recall the closing lines: "these are the only things of which the news has come to Harvard ... and there may be any others but they haven't been discovered." I believe he is now doing classified research into rhymes that have potential military value. Can't reveal too much, other than to say that certain words that rhyme with "orange" can be used in hand-to-hand combat.

You're an inspiration, TheCow. Hence my writing a load of Bull.

Right. Try number two. A member of the fifth form with the brain of a snail thought it'd be fun to wipe what I wrote while I looked away. To say the least, I was pissed off.

Now I am calm. And to your posting.

Your appraisal of rowers is most humourous and accurate. However, there is one potential mate in the boat house. Kate Billings, the first girl admitted into the sixth form is quite a rower, although few would find her attractive, unless they owned a white stick.
Rowers depend on the river being liquid to participate, as well as several other crew members being available. If these are not available, they revert to a mechanical torture machine known as the 'Ergo'. This fiendish device is essentially a rower-powered fan, placed stratigically to give no cooling to the rower.
All of this does not, of course, affect the cox. Coxes are loud mouthed runts who enjoy looking at people in pain. I think they'd be as at home in a slave galley as the rowers themselves. Although in a better position.

Your clear-minded answer to the BIO problem amazed me. I thank you for your consideration into the problem. Of course, the answer is only obvious once you have seen it.
Computers are fantastic for dice throwing - you can so easily create a 8d7-4 for some RPG very quickly. And you can fiddle it in your favour, too.

Computer Scientists have a lot on their plate. They have spent the last 3 months dreaming up a solution to the real Y2K problem - what to do after the millennium bug. Then they realised that in January 2038 all Unix and derivative operating systems will think it's December 1900. Most mainframes run UNIX and Linux is becoming popular...

Exams are the bane of my life - If I didn't have them, I would probably learn more. I spend my time learning the exam, not the subject. For example, we spend one week writing a model answer for our fieldtrip. We have to recreate this in the exam in 90 minutes. Great fun.
As for self esteem, it is indeed vital. Even if misplaced. I *know* I am going to do something important on this planet - I just don't know what yet. So I follow my nose and stay away from the herd. And I do what I like. So I am doing Geography at A-Level, despite the fact that I got one of my lowest GCSE grades for it. But I *enjoy* it.

Mr. Elmore, while he does enjoy the Teletubbies, does think of other things beside them. His mind is occupied by Teletubbius Bounciupidownius, beer, wine, cider and all alcohols, reproduction (especially human) and has a dry fish tank with a plastic shark in it. He is also in charge of the Army cadets at school, and has a bullet hole in his whiteboard. Apparently, his predessessor had a skeleton wearing shirt, jacket, tie, sunglasses and gun, 007 style. At least Mr. Elmore isn't a rower.

Are you a fan of Monty Python? You may be aware of the tale of 'The funniest joke in the world'. If not, I'll give you further information if you want. I also have a song 'Physics Theoretical' to the chemistry tune.

I shall now tell you a little about two of my collegues.

Daniel 'Gurps Boy' Fowler, aka Alundra, on h2g2.
Marginally obsessed by RPGs, collector card games and Manga, he is preoccupied with things not of this world, such as elves.
Has the mind of an 18 year old in a 13 year old body.

Thomas 'Wade Aaron Guice' Redfern. Musician, likes good music (ie. not pop).
Told a story in assembly of 'Wade Aaron Guice', a Welsh bishop who disagreed so strongly with forced religious assemblies that he moved a sixth form centre into the middle of a main road, catapulted flaming sheep through windows and crucified head teachers. Starting dull and ending ridiculous, it pointed out the absurdness of not arguing with what someone says. A true masterpiece. He also sends intellectual emails to white supremistist groups (creator.org) and edits posters: eg

TOUCH RUGBY
Wednesday @ 12:45. 4th Year and above only. Rugby Pitches

to

TOUGH BUGRY
......

with a little physical cut-and-paste.
----------------------------------------------------------------
It's a bit long, I know, but I had a lot more to say, this time!

You know too much about rowers and too little about Kate Billings (nothing that a brown paper bag couldn't fix) for me to feel entirely comfortable. I am alarmed that you let a 5th former anywhere near your I/O device and deserve to have your posting wiped. Friends who are happy to accuse scrummers-down of b******y are not to be trusted (for such universal and obvious truth needs no publicity), and you are also associating with 13 year olds who show signs of excessive and premature brain ageing. You wantonly show a dangerous lack of disdain for an Elmore, enjoy Geography and openly admit to having aroused the curiosity of pedigree cattle.

You are clearly in trouble.

But not much that can't be sorted by a good strong dose of life, the universe and everything!

I have had a number of recent health scares that have caused me to reflect on my own story-so-far. Without wishing to bore you: a daughter recently gave me a key-ring which read "Danger - Retiree who has all the answers and the time to give them." I must say I prefer the sign in our local chip shop that says "Hire a teenager while they still know everything."

I digressed.

Oh, yes, without wishing to bore you, I have reached the interim conclusion that my first half century has consisted of having an absolute ball: making pots of dosh, creating a home life that's comfortable and fun, and enjoying learning from interacting with other fellow wasters-of-space on the planet.

Looking back, I can see a fresh perspective: I now realise that the things that have given me most pleasure have been the blatant and repeated breaches of the laws of English grammar (you know the sort of things: two-word sentences; Sun/Star words in Times/Telegraph submissions; starting sentences with So, And, and But; always inserting a comma before the final "and" in a list; various bits of semi-colon abuse), and the discovery of vast numbers of outwardly straight and serious individuals who share my love for somewhat strange humour.

I have fond memories of being on a selection panel for a Headteacher and performing a sotto voce duet with the Director of Education of Monty Python's Universe Song (Ex: MP's Meaning of Life) during a particularly pompous candidate's formal interview.

It was such fun having a seemingly earnest chat with an HRH in Goons character mode. And I am constantly discovering to my joy and amazement that all manner of folk (and I'm thinking of people like a Bishop, a world-famous Sir of an orchestral conductor, the Rector of a University, a couple of peers of the realm, General Secretaries of Trades Unions, numerous big-company Directors, and several millionaires I've met) can share a liking for silly humour like the Goons, Hancock, Kenneth Horne, Monty Python, Cleese, Merton, Hislop etc. And DNA's H2G2.

People sometimes worry about secret societies such as the Masons, the Mafia, the Mother's Union. The real power and influence network is the bond formed by a shared sense of humour.

And we've shared, kid. Thanks. I’ve really enjoyed interfacing, and I hope you have, too. Now it's time to Hitch On. If you need me, post a message to my home page.

Good Luck. Here’s to the next half-century!

Happy Hitching.