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

silly question i know but where's SW? and do we really want glass udders? they sound very uncomfortable for the cows. if someone had invented a matter transporter that worked properly (ie in a useful way) we could insert little ones in the teats and just zap the milk straight to people's fridges. or something like that. sorry but it's getting late over this side of the world.

The person who discovered milk was either highly drunk or just bored one Sunday afternoon. Either that or they were _very_ twisted.
Whilst on the subject, what aboot chillies? when you eat a whole one they can be quite evil to the mouth, so you wouldn't eat them again. But NO...someone decides to chop them up small and put them in food. Bizzare. Must be a fun job in a newly sentient society: eat stuff to see if it tastes nice or is evil and poisonous.

And how is SW pronounced? Could be Welsh, in which case it might sound like 'SOO'.

ah this is a western thing - around a quarter of the world's population actually eat chillies everyday - i did what seemed like an entire paper on the reasons why chillie eating is evolutionarily good once, although in the time honoured tradition of all anthropology papers i have now forgotten more than i ever learnt.

it's the same deal as with coffee anyway - coffee is incredibly bitter and doesn't actually taste that great, but we all drink it because, like the chillies, it contains a chemical that takes advantage of our brain structure. i think it has to do with the dopamine system, which is how we get addicted to drugs.

that's not very coherent. i'll have to have a think and try to explain better another time.

... seems strange that the milk industry is so udderly huge, when human beings are the only creature to continue to drink milk after they've been weaned. (apart from spoilt cats, and they wouldn't have had a look in with out human intervention). And innit strange - if we carried on drinking human milk we'd be classed as weird! But drinking some furry bovine's output - national pass time, guv.

Not to mention cream, cheese, cream-cheese, sour cream, buttermilk... Seems like a lot of invention was done while clearing out the fridge.

Makes you kinda feel sorry for cows, doesn't it? I mean, not a day goes by without 60 million people in the UK alone wanting to take all your juice out of you and drink it...

Yes anachronisms are the thing aren't they! (oops!) SW stands for South West a sort of region of England usual taken to be anywhere south of Taunton and west into Devon and Cornwall, however The West Country is usually Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wilthsire and overlapping into the SW. Welsh is just Wales boy-o. Geography lesson over.

Chilli is a brutally mind-changing vegetable! It makes those people who 'eat' them (is that really what we do?) want to be even more abused. Just look at the amount of Tequila they consume! I fell sorry for the worms let alone the cows. Drunken worms? do they have to be 'breathalized'? (and if so which end do you stick it in?)

Certainly eating roasted coffee beans provides a new and useful employment for tooth picks which I might add are about to become the next great export product from Sweden so I am told (buy shares now).

Can anybody tell me why when you shop at a supermarket the fruit and vegatables are always the first section you enter? All you end up with is squashed tomatoes! I think that tomatoes are badly represented.

It's psychological warfare, mate. All the fresh, green, wholesome produce at the front of the store serving to indicate how fresh & wholesome (but not necessarily green) the rest of the store's produce is.

Conversely, dairy items and bready products are usually way at the other end of the store past all the other goods. Which is why when you go in to get a two litre (plastic) bottle of milk and a loaf of sliced bread, you leave the store with a frozen chicken, a gateau, a couple of bottles of cheap Australian chardonnay and a month's supply of toilet paper!

Also particularly nasty are the sweets at the counter, positioned to be at eye-level with toddlers either in tow at ground level or seated in the shopping trolley.

These are just the most well-known ploys of supermarkets. They spend heaps to try and get you to spend heaps!

I'ts all in the wrist, you know. No but seriously, my two personal techniques have been honed over the last few years, and I can honestly say I haven't resorted to "the breadknife" for as long as I can remember.
Occasionally I've come across a slightly more stubborn carton than usual, but this is only due to more or stronger glue than usual being used in the carton's construction. These tougher ones need nothing more than a slightly different approach:
It's no good tugging as hard as possible until it rips apart, or sneaking up on it when you think it's not looking by snatching at it in a flurry of thumbs.
No no.
Were you not told at school how a starfish eats a mussell? He'll latch on to the shellfish and although the mussell will clamp shut even tighter, the starfish simply applies a constant and even pressure to the jaws of its prey until the shell throws its metaphorical hands in the air and surrenders to a greater patience. Sure, this technique will take a couple of days, but at least the starfish is guaranteed a tasty and nutritious meal.
The same principle applies to stubborn milk cartons.
Alternatively, if you can't wait a couple of days for some milk to put in your tea, you can use the "bend-like-a-reed-in-the-wind" method. In short it is the ancient chinese philosophy of turning a greater force on itself;
The carton is fighting against your tugging apart action with a will and a force that are greater than yours. What you do is pull at the tabs with all your might for a minute or so and then IMMEDIATELY release your grip. The carton should spring open on its own. If you can't switch from maximum pull to nothing in an 'n'th of a second this technique is of no use to you and I would recommend the breadknife.

I think we should revert back to the old form of packaging -- leather. Yes siree, we could replace all that plastic, paper and gum resin with a prefectly nice cow.

Cows haven't been getting too much good press lately, being blamed global warming (via methane emission), having some disease that makes them loony (well in the UK at least), and generally not behaving very cow like (see Larson's 'Far Side' cartoons). I can only recall one cow which actually made it big in television and that was Ermmentrude in 'The Magic Rounadabout'. I think more cows deserve a similar break.

Okey, so it'd require a bit of ingenuity to get the bar-code printed onto it's side and everything, but think of it, you could then *name* your milk carton!

Hmm... I think I'd call mine 'Daisy'...

There has to be a case for 'Milk Flavoured At Source'. Now I never really understod how green grass goes in and white-ish milk comes out, but suppose the cows were fed on grass sprinkled with custard powder? Or banana flavour powder? The possibilities are endless, and we haven't even gotten on to mind-altering chemicals yet

I don't think Tomatoes are at all unrepresented. I spent the whole summer working for Arreton Valley Nurseries and Wight Salads in a tomato greenhouse from 6:30am everyday - and in that greenhouse with the sun out, you cooked and got sun-burnt, not to mention the rashes that you get from constant contact with Tomato vines.

So I say - KILL ALL TOMATOES!!!!!

I know, but we don't want to go too over-the-top, would you want to drink the results of a cow's indigestion??

... it depends whether it looks like cold Pot-Noodle or not ...

MAGIC ROUNDABOUT!!!! yeah, kick ass program which should be on daily. Lets start a campaign.

I think maybe the source of the problem is the milk itself. It is, after all, the milk that gets split, not the milk carton. Maybe it is time to redesign milk.

Does anyone remeber the triangular shaped cartons that milk used to come in (years ago in the sixties that is)? These cartons may well be due a resurgence of fame in as much that they were stable and - more importantly - frozen! I like it.

Apart from that the Magic Roundabout was great, and to add to a thread from earlier why bother with the bar code - go straight to the micro-chip cow. After all apart from encoding the cows name if it also had enough onboard RAM could also have a recorded audio file snippet - makes you wonder why the EC didn't require this as proof that the cow in question was BSE free. After all if a faithful recording was of say Ermintrudes rendition of The Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen (as opposed to say Air of A G String) then I for one would have no difficulty in pointing out the stupid cow - as opposed to the brainy cow that is.

Has anyone tasted Sterilised Milk? as opposed to UHT milk - awful.

Why is it that on milk cartons they've got the "cut along here" dotted lines which, if you cut along, results in all the milk spilling out everywhere? Do they WANT you to spill all the milk? Is it a plot to encourage you to buy a second carton, which you'll spill again, and so have to buy a third and so on, and thereby making twice as much profit as normal?

If so, why don't they realise that everyone cuts open the cartons in the place where the "open here" message isn't.

Personally, my favourite (or "favorite" for those who can't read English) sort of milk carton is formed by nature, comes in a wide range of sizes, has it's own built in knozzle and the cat can't get at it.
Usually found in pairs attached to the chest of female humanoids.

By the way, there has been a "new" version of Magic Roundabout recently but it's lost all the old ironic humour.
Also Dylan seems to have given up the weed (suppose they couldn't have had him updated to the 90's - snorting coke)