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

h2g2 conversations are renowned for their propensity to drift off topic. We as a community recognise that maybe our initial postings are often about the wrong subject altogether, and we appreciate the efforts of our correspondents to put us straight in these matters.

Usually.

But can we sustain a conversation in which *every single post* not only acknowledges the previous posting, but sets it off in a completely different direction? With your help, I aim to find out.


I'll start this thread by asking whether anyone watched the first episode of John Le Carre's 'The Night Manager' on BBC TV last Sunday. I thought it was a great attempt at dramatising one of his best books. The acting was first class.

...

My niece has me worried: she keeps painting pictures of ferns wearing galoshes.

I didn't watch it because I'm in the states and we have to settle for BBCAmerica, which, like most nights, was airing reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

BBCAmerica does run the occasional British series, like tonight, they're starting the series Prey, but mostly it's ST:TNG, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares or reruns of Top Gear. Oh, and the movie on sunday night will be The Fifth Element.

It now seems that as long as there's a British accent, that's good enough.

Last night, we started watching 'John Adams, the miniseries' on Amazon Prime. Tom Wilkinson makes the best Ben Franklin I ever saw. Yay, Brits!

I was partial to Howard Da Silva's Ben Franklin in the 1972 film "1776."

The best man at my wedding was called Ben Franklin.

<BB<

I am currently learning all the US Presidents, in order. Christian names, family names and initials and what they stand for. Franklin is mentioned in approx. 40 places in the USA so he must have been a big

GB

There are lots of towns in the USA called Berkeley. Most if not all of them are named after the Irish philosopher George Berkeley A3472986

Berkeley visited New England in 1728 and stayed three years. While there he had a fairly large impact, particularly on education.

The towns however seem to be named after him not for his philosophy or his philanthropy, but because he wrote a stirring poem including the line "Westward the course of Empire takes its way".

(Empire was seen as a Good Thing in those days)

http://americainclass.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/2_BERKELEY-VERSES-ON-THE-PROSPECT-OF-PLANTING-ARTS-AND-LEARNING-IN-AMERICA.pdf

Inevitably, when people are polled on the streets in the US, a disturbing majority of those will mention Ben Franklin when asked to name presidents.

Ben Franklin used to be carried around Philadelphia in a sedan chair.

http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-short-history-of-sedan-chair.html

I once tried to moot a proposal to revive the sedan chair as a tourist attraction in the old city, as a way for athletic students to earn extra money. I got no takers.

I think rickshaws are a bit more practical than sedan chairs.

It's widely believed that the rickshaw was invented in Japan by an American.

By a Mr Richard Shaw, I suppose.

I love those lists of things named after their inventor, like Diesel being named after Otto Diesel and so on.

Does anyone know any really surprising ones?

Oddly enough, there are three Americans cited who may have invented the rickshaw and none are named Richard; missionary Jonathan Scobie, blacksmith Albert Tolman, or carriage maker James Birch.

W. S.Gilbert is said to have written to the Roll-Royce company, "Your car certainly rolls, but I can't make it royce."

I've heard that in the great duet Gilbert and Sullivan, Sullivan used write the music and then Gilbert would write funny words which fitted the music perfectly. I can't understand how that would work - I'd expect it would be much easier to write the words first and fit the tune to them.

"Inevitably, when people are polled on the streets in the US, a disturbing majority of those will mention Ben Franklin when asked to name presidents." [Baron Grim]

If they're in Pennsylvania, then they are correct. When he was in his eighties, Franklin was the president of Pennsylvania...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_Pennsylvania

[Franklin was elected as Pennsylvania's sixth president in 1785. In 1790, the Pennsylvania constitution replaced the president with a governor]

>>I'd expect it would be much easier to write the words first and fit the tune to them<< [Gnomon]

I actually like doing tune first, words later - and I think quite a few people do. That's why there are dummy song lyrics.

I can think of two examples: the chorus to 'The Boxer' was supposed to be a dummy lyric, but Paul Simon never came up with any new words. (Simon said this, so it's true.)

And 'Tea for Two' is sung using the original dummy lyrics. (This may be a legend, but I've heard it from more than one source.)

And if Ben Franklin was the president of Pennsylvania, he should have fixed the turnpike, is all I can say. There were far too many turkeys on it, and they caused traffic jams.

I wasn't saying that Franklin was a president, I said he was a big which I thought would make a great topic drift oh never mind.

How can I factor in Elvis after Pennsylvania? Oh yes! My small daughters loved playing a game extending names to fit other things. I recall Pennsylvania being one of the dolls in their Sylvanian Families collection. One of those girls was conceived the night Elvis died.

Nobody remember when Groucho Marx died, as we were all still mourning Elvis's departure a couple of days before. I wonder who else's deaths we forget for this reason?

Mother Theresa. She died shortly after Princess Diana.