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

Strangest thing - I tried sending someone a compliment via an email on a date website.

I said they were "a handsome devil"

Pretty innocuous, right?


This triggered a bar on the email - and a warning not to include "offensive" language in emails.

Anyone care to explain the rationale behind that one?

Samuel Pepys' Diary, 21 May, 1663:

"Being at supper, my wife did say something that caused me to oppose her in; she used the word ‘Devil’, which vexed me."

Who knew the Match.com filther was so well-read and literary?

write the e-mail backwards, sdrawkcab liam-e eht etriw see how the filter works on that one




RJR

Up to until last century, congregations in Welsh churches would turn and spit whenever the word 'devil' was mentioned.

Today, it's been largely replaced by the words 'Anne Robinson'.

Blimey... seems a bit... excessive for the interwebs...

Oh... but... please please please, can I steal the title of this thread, for either an album title or a song title?

Can I suggest the album artwork?

Chi-Chi playing the mouth organ.

Sure.

A World of Demons Not on Earth.

>congregations in Welsh churches would turn and spit<

I think I'd want to make sure I was in the front pew.

Pandemonium...

Another name for the city in Hell, described by Dante..

Literally means 'All Demons'



GT

'xactly. (I'm not sure if it originiates with Dante, though, I thought the City on the 5 th Circle was called Dis. Entymolgoy online gives the credit instead to John Milton 200 years or so later.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=pandemonium&searchmode=none

If you've ever read Carl Sagan's "demon haunted World" there is a fabulous exegesis on the origins of demons: Hesiod mentions them Plato recounts Socrates telling of his tutorDiotima as discussing demons.

Sagan introduces the chapter with a quote from the Isa Upanishad, from India dated to 6000BC "There are demon-haunted worlds, regions of utter darkness before going onto note that demon from The Greek implying "knowledge"

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=demon (see daimonion)


In 1516 Sir Thomas More wrote the first 'Utopia'. He coined the word 'utopia' from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'. But this was a pun - the almost identical Greek word eu-topos means a good place. So at the very heart of the word is a vital question: can a perfect world ever be realised?

http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/utopia.html

When things are described as a Utopia, I don't think many realise TM was being ironic by venturing to suggest it's very impossibility.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=utopia

The reason I chose it for this journal title was the idea of 'nowhere here' felt kind of like banishment - the word had been banished from beyond citation. Fallen, a little like an angel.

600BC not 6000BC

Clive!

Forgot to mention the name 'Dis' in my post!!




GT