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

AHA!!! Now I get it. I was seeing the asterisks as integral parts of it, not as internet quotes.


nvm

did you know, the moon is made of cheese... hiccup...

Yes, yes I did.

http://www.google.com/moon/

Darn it! It used to show Swiss cheese when you zoomed all the way in.
Now they went and made it useful.

count zero. i can't account for your unfamiliarity with what is a ubiquitous practice. suffice to say it isn't something i invented or is peculiar to specific forums i might have been using. granted that some internet communities will have particular preferences not shared by others. i'm not surprised about second generation netsters being unfamiliar since web2 seems to have a different culture to it, but i am surprised a person who came up thru bulletin boards and irc etc never encountered it.

i am (genuinely) as surprised by this as you might be if i said i had been online over a decade and asked you what ; - ) meant.

as for the smile emoticon's birthday, isn't it 20 years? 10 years ago it was well and truly established. tho in the mid 90s there were more variations in common use such as 8 -)


it is witnessing that very overuse in my early net days that put me off emoticons. adults infantilising themselves online is a pet hate of mine.

note. in preview i noticed the emoticons turned into smileys so i added the spaces. so you guys have corrupted the thread by leading me to something (sort of) useful. interesting that the old smiley form 8 -) also converts.

don't even get me started on leet.

ah ok. the asterixes or whatever the plural of asterix is, indicate a condition distinct from the body of text. i'm pretty sure this in an inheritance from the text based rpg community who used it to 'break character'. in cgi chats using brackets would usually produce an error message.

Emoticons have a long and (in)distinguished heritage (I'd guess at least 20 years, and I'll try to give you a link for the first use of a smiley when I can remember where it is!)

The thing I can't get my head around these days is the difference from using asterisks for emphasis or for actions. Hmmm...

This goes back way more than 20 years:

Mary had a little lamb,
On ice she used to frisk.
Now wasn't she a silly girl
Her little *

The czech words for pangalactic gargleblaster is pangalaktický megacloumák.

A gem of uselessness in a rockfield of mediocrity.

Yes the little lamb was very silly. What are you going to do about it?

Here are some useless facts about Texas:

* Texas is the only state that can divide into five states legally. It was written in its constitution when it was a Republic. The information is useful only when people try to get the state divided up - none of which has ever really been seriously considered.

* The state is the only official republic that became a state. California was not a republic, though it did win its own freedom of independence.

* The Alamo was used for several things, including a warehouse before it was bought back by the DRT (Daughters of the Republic of Texas) and restored. If you look carefully, you can see places that were patched up from the original. The roof itself was replaced, and didn't exist during the battle of the Alamo.

* Jim Bowie didn't invent the Bowie knife. A relative of his did.

* The Battleship Texas is the only surviving US battleship that saw service in both WWI and WWII.

On a US note, the USS Constitution is the oldest Naval ship in the United States (not to mention it's a wooden ship), and is still sailable.

* The state has the most state whatevers in the country. Some include state large mammal (Longhorn), state small mammal (prairie dog), state gem (blue topaz), state stone (petrified palmwood), state food (chili), state beverage - non alcoholic (Dr Pepper), and state seashell - Lightning Whelk.

You left out that people insisted that the Republic of Texas be split into several smaller states before entering the Union.

Why did they write in that it could be divided into even more states?

The PIN for my old credit card was 7704.

<>

I forgot about people wanting it divided into smaller states, but you're right too: the size of Texas was greatly reduced to where it is today. At one point, Texas had territory up to about Wyoming and as wide as most of New Mexico. That state in particular I think was extremely grabby and took a bit of the territory as well. That's why such clean cuts at the top of the state. The Red River borders Oklahoma and Texas, and Rio Grande river Texas and Mexico.

Why they included it though in the constitution, I don't know except that possibly there'd be some day they want to divide thinking we'd be too large. There's been a few attempts since to try it though, one fairly recently.

A few more useless facts: Texas didn't want to secede initially, but we did anyway. Sam Houston was vehement in not doing this. He was opposed to having Texas secede from the union. In 1861, Texas voted to secede anyway. Houston refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new Confederacy and he was removed a governor. He retired shortly afterward and died not too long after, thinking he failed.

Also, the statue of Sam Houston in Huntsville is inaccurate. His ankle was broken by a gunshot at the battle of San Jacinto, but the cane is in the wrong hand. The statue itself can also be seen six and a half miles away.

They started construction on that statue just before I graduated from Sam Houston State University.

The official (dead) mascot of SHSU is a three legged dog unimaginatively named "Tripod" who's grave is just down the hill from the foundations of the Old Main building (destroyed by fire). Sam Houston lived on what is now part of the campus (further down the hill from Tripod's grave site).

The plural of Asterix.


Gauloises?

<>

That's cool, I didn't know that about Sam Houston State University (the mascot). I've only been there one time, and it was for a one act play critique.

So, did they move Old Main though and have the remains of the original one there too or did they rebuild the new one on the old grounds? West Texas A&M in Canyon had their Old Main burn down in 1914, four years after it started, and then it's been gutted twice I think since. But, the building still is on the original one's site (and it is still called Old Main).

All Hallows Eve -> All Hallow E'en = Halloween

Cicero used to stutter.