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

you mean father christmas isnt real? but but but

mini

yes he is

there there

what they mean is that as he lives at the north pole and the asctic is only a floating frozen see, santa does not have a fixed post code and all letters to him should be posted in the traditional method of....

up the chimney

yes he is

there there

what they mean is that as he lives at the north pole and the arctic is only a floating frozen see, santa does not have a fixed post code and all letters to him should be posted in the traditional method of....

up the chimney

but but but i dont have a chimmney where do i post my letter to father christmas?

mini

When we didn't have a chimney, we used to leave them by the fireplace anyway. He's magic, y'see and although he prefers them sent up to him, he will pop down to read the ones that cant be sent.

oh OK i will do that then, do you think he will mind if its next to the radiator as its the closest i have to a fireplace?

mini

He'll find it, dont you worry.

If you read it out of the open window loudly it'll help, too. He does like to have the hard copy if possible but his ansafone is always on and recording...

I wouldn't think of "intelligence" and "practicality" as two different skill, really. I would call intelligence the ability to think (ie. to work things out rather than memorising information) and to understand things.

I would call "practicality" the ability to apply what has been thought and understood to a concrete situation. Application is the important word here - if the knowledge wasn't there it couldn't be applied in a practical way.

Now, we live in a society where the work we do is all specialised - it's like Henry Ford's assembly line on a massive scale. In your mother's mother's lifetime, it's quite likely that her family could repair, use, and understand all the things they used in their lives, unless they were very high up the social ladder. That statement isn't likely to be true for anyone reading this.

Basically it is a symbiotic relationship. Without the knowledge of how electricity works, for example, there wouldn't be anything to be practical *with* when thinking about the best way to lay a cable.

But last point - what is "winning"?

In what sense do you ask?