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

Hi, Beeblefish! Elektra found this gem published by the NSA. I wondered if you might find it helpful - or at least, worth a chuckle or two.

It's a declassified tome about the internet called 'Untangling the Web'. It's full of arcane talk and is weirdly poetic. I've searched, and alas, in its 650 pages, there is no mention of h2g2. I don't know whether to be relieved that we haven't attracted the attention of the spy agency, or dissed that they thought we weren't a threat. It's available on archive.org:

http://archive.org/details/NationalSecurityAgencyUntanglingWeb2007

The document's availability is thanks to one Michael Morisy, who requested it under FOIA. Here's his story on 'Atlas Obscura':

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/read-the-nsas-exceedingly-weird-guide-to-the-internet?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160606&[email protected]&bt_ts=1465210102519

Referenced and indexed.




On the Atlasobscura review,

1. Appeals to the 'infinite' are usually inappropriate, the term "indefinite" is usually more apt; people who want to pretend otherwise should be required to prove it.

If the term 'infinite' is used with reference to any objective phenomenology, it usually represents an undefined limit.




2. For people who tend to get confused about connotations, in most advanced standard dictionaries, under a given word, there's usually a numbered list of alternative definitions.

These are called "connotations".

The question is, which, if any, is most appropriate.




My remarks here may be reasonably classed as piddling, finicky nit-picking of questionable relevance.

Be that as it may.

Dmitri: Thanks! I will check it out! Oh the NSA, so wonderfully weird...

That they are. One of the perks of these days is that we can publish excerpts from Public Domain sources...including FOIA releases.

So that's a freedom that wasn't there int he BBC days?

I don't know that they would have said anything - nobody tried it - but I doubt they'd have been best pleased. I'm not aware that they ever said anything to the Post about content - I wasn't Editor then - but I know they occasionally censored Guide Entries. There was one someone wrote defending cannibalism, as I recall (it was part of a writing contest we had)...and some dodgy quibbling about my Brendan Behan entry...

They also limited how many new photos we could submit from the Post to just a few a week, mostly because it took up paid worker time. Now that we control the uploading, I've been known to add 3 dozen a week...we're ferociously illustrated these days.

That's exciting! Weird that uploading photos was such an issue. So it wasn't automated? Or was it that each photo needed vetting first?

Both. To load photos, you've got to be sure they're legal - it helps that I do that as a freelance writer anyway - and format them properly, or we'd have chaos. The Artists do a great job illustrating the Guide, btw.

That they do!

Oh, as I'm editing next week's issue of the Post, it occurs to me to make sure you know the three enduring institutions that are the bedrock of h2g2:

1. nighthoover
2. 2legs
3. The Isle of Wight (to which reference must be made as often as possible)

I will have to check out that entry when it posts!