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

what about music?

I like it. Whether or not plants do, I couldn't say.

Music is vibration sculpture. Plants don't have ears; but it's possible they derive other benefits from it, I suppose.

I would have no trouble at all with the notion that plants have unknown means of perceiving their environments.

What do you think?

Indeed they do, an old research project attached an eeg machine (used to measure brain wave activity) to an ordinary house plant, then, with eeg recording a live lobster was dropped into a boiling pot (science can be so cruel at times), the plant reacted at that very instant. This reveals that plants do react, on some plane anyway, with actions about them.. perhaps vibrations in the air.. or perhaps they are using a form of perception were as yet unaware of.

The part that I find disturbing about that sort of thing is not that plants are more sophisticated than we give them credit for, but that we may be blundering about disturbing things that we are unable to perceive; rather like a person bumping into things in the dark.

So ripping my broad beans from their blankety bed may be assault, that kind of thing?

It used to be said that animals did not have souls, and were incapable of feeling pain. Thus, all kinds of cruelty was meted out to them.

In my view, it's best to tread carefully and err on the side of caution. Besides, where's the harm in showing any lifeform a little respect, especially when the form of the life is due to a gardener's hard work.

...This is exactly the kind of outlook it would have been impossible to develop in the audience of a Saturday Matinee.

Shhhh, you're disturbing the petunias.

They were in pitifully short supply in our old neighbourhood.

no wonder, with the noise of all those kids (!)

When I was a kid the Saturday pictures were shown at the local fire brigade station. Same movies, Lone Ranger, Woody Woopecker, the serials and all the rest. The difference was the best behaved bigger kids were allowered to slide down the fire pole at the end of the movies. Decorum reigned. Well sort of. Congrats on your article. I am still one of the great ignored.

Incidentally some plants do have ears, wheat, barley, in fact most of the cereal plants. Some plants are host to earwigs, maybe the insects listen to the music.

Hello loonytunes. Thanks for your comments. The saturday firehall thing sounds like a lot of fun.

Stand by not to be ignored.

Standing at attention. Sir

I'm sorry, the impending seriousness of this line of though brings to mind the line from HitchHiker's Guide about plunging to the surface of Magrathea and the appearance of a bowl of petunias and the surprised Sperm whale.
the petunias thinks "Oh no, not again!"

If we understood why this was so we might understand a great deal more about those days of yore spent in the reflected, flickering light of a cinema.

I always had to campaign to go to the cinema, since Mum and Dad were keener on me reading a book than going to the pictures. Still, I had as much fun doing either, and the books were open to me much later than the film was.

Any particular genre grab you in a special way, Fruitbat (Eric the)?

(A voice from the past insists on asking, "Are all your pets called Eric?")

Sends a posy of snapdragons by pigeon post. It's the grey one

Science fiction always grabs me, although what I usually end up with is stuff that should be shot on sight and buried fairly quickly afterward. Apparently, the majority of cinema-goers don't want to think when they go to the pictures any more (and the few that I've encountered act very indignant that I should ask them to when I talk about this).
This is borne out by 1)the number of pictures produced that require the suspension of mental activity to be enjoyed; 2)the amount of money these pictures make.
Mind you, these are probably the people that aren't interested in sf anyway, they just expect lots of explosions, fancy make-up and computer graphics for their $8.50 CDN.
I recently sat through a rep. presentation of "The Matrix" and "The Mummy". The Matrix bored me by spending the first half-hour telling me something I understood within two minutes (although everyone else appears to have needed the full half-hour): this reality is a computer-generated mental construction that most of us are quite happy to live in because we don't know any better. Sound familiar? ("The Truman Show", "Men In Black").
The Mummy was terrific camp, well played and a lot of fun. The Matrix was a waste of time, energy and money.
I remember when The Terminator came out and many critics were saying that playing a robot is Schwartzenneggar's (sic) best performance; I'm still working out what Keanu Reeve's best part is since he doesn't every appear to have any dimension...Anyway


Much as I would like to respond with "There's nothing so odd about that..." I must confess that NONE of my pets are called Eric; for some reason I have the word fruitbat circling in my head constantly and had to put it to use before it drove me pidgeony.

Fruitbat (Eric the)

Well said.

Did you happen to see... "Gataca", with some intense young guy and the lovely Uma Thurman? That was a good film, I thought. The basic sci-fi element was substantial and well treated. There was a strong narrative, and the acting was good (although I always find empathy with Uma an easy task).

"The Fifth Element" was good, too. A bit campy; but there's nothing wrong with that. There were a few recently, now that I think of it. "Dark City" (I think that's the title) was a good one.

There's not been much that can compare to "2001, A space Odyssey", though.

JTG