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

one of my friends at college who was a linguist found a question in a past exam paper which asked you to analysys the syntax and structure of klingon verses something like finnish

http://www.geocities.com/connorbd/varaq/

Coding in Klingon?

Apparently you can buy dictionaries and grammars and audio-visual courses and postal courses and all sorts. Or alternatively you could get a life!

I can understand wanting to learn a rude phrase, but as for actually learning the language - even Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons wouldn't go that far.

i don't think comic book guy would have the intelligence, but i do believe learning klingon must be the most useless thing on this planet. i have a feeling this will be a pretty short thread.

creachy

It's done okay up till now - it's only just been revived. I love it when old threads get revived - I often go on an old thread hunt and revive them myself.

Of course, veering offtopic is another way that threads get preserved.

and have you inadvertantly found the second most useless thing to learning klingon. (just joshing with ya).

creachy

I fear for the day when I start using the Comic Book Guy as a metric for how much of a I am.

I'll never be as as Comic Book guy... I'm too much of a techno-phobe...

Modern explorers seem pretty redundant.

They're making their endurance tasks more and more elaborate:

First person to reach Everest summit on the east face without using oxygen or your left arm etc.

Nobody really cares do they? Sir Ranulph Fienes is a brave and strong chap, but does anyone really bat an eyelid if someone runs seven marathons in seven days? A quick 's*d that for a lark!' then you forget about it.

That's not useless, that's pushing human endurance and expressing the driving human instinct to explore.

Learning to write Klingon, however, is possibly marginally more useless thatn just learning to speak it.

I don't have a problem with people exploring areas that are previously unexplored, uncharted etc. The first person to swim a body of water is valid too. But some modern endurance stunts are just plain daft.

Hah! You say that now, but when the Klingons land, you'll be laughing out of the other side of your face!

It reminds me of letters kids used to write to Norris McWhirter on 'Record Breakers'.

Dear Norris

I pushed a pea ten miles with a straw. Can I get in your book please?

Er, no.

The funniest letter was written by some poor kid who'd stayed up all night saying the word 'um'.

Is there a scientific form of Feng Shui? Considerations of influence of smells and colours in your environment etc?

Apparently learning to speak Esperanto is less useful because there are now more speakers of Klingon worldwide than there are speakers of Esperanto.

[Waits a few minutes until someone debunks this with a link to snopes]

F

There is a theory that really big massess screw up probabily (astrology), thats why the laws of physics don't work near black holes!

I think you're in the wrong thread.

The laws of Physics do work near black holes. These are not the laws of classical (Newtonian) physics because the enormous gravity introduces relativistic effects but they are still the laws of physics.

Kapla!

F

...execpt disguised in bowler hats and wearing umberllas!

What an odd way the thread has developed...

Learning Letzeburgish is more useless than learning Klingon