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

This is getting to be a habit. Once again KB has started a journal ( F1886503?thread=8311326 )that's got me thinking so hard about something that I've had to start a related journal of my own in order to avoid hijacking his one

The skeleton is a fantastic piece of evolutionary engineering for sure, but one that's even more astonishing is the brain. Here I am, an atheist who knows that everything we are has simply developed over billions of years, and yet I'm able to think. I have thoughts, a personality, an imagination, an awareness, a consciousness. I'm capable of creating abstract concepts, of thinking abstract thoughts, of understanding the universe, of being in tune with other people and liking (or disliking) some of the same things they do. Of being a part of humanity.

And it's not only humans who can do some of those things.

To put all that down to a gradual development of biological tissues over the billenia (not a typo) is quite something, but as someone who has no time for the supernatural, that's what it must be.

And if it happened here...

The brain is so mind-bending it is hard to even think about it.

Think about "thoughts". A thought is, to simplify it, a little electrical pulse in your noggin. And electricity is flowing electrons. So if I have the thought "windmill", the windmill I think of is actually a little wobbling electron.

And here is the weird bit: when I pass the thought on to you by saying the word "windmill" here on hootoo, I'm wiggling a little electron in your noggin all the way over in Texas!

It feels a bit strange to be jiggling someone's brain by remote control.

Yes, the brain is hard to fathom all right. What a complicated organ! And to think that the finest scientific minds are only scratching the surface of it...

You jiggled it more than you know, because that word made me think of Arkwright from Open All Hours - "Jer-jiggle it a bit."

Now I've jer-jiggled your brain

Now reality has jer-jiggled my brane too

I've just sat down to watch Doctor Who (series 6, episode, er... something or other - 'Closing Time', with James Corden), and who do I see in it?

Nurse Gladys Emmanuel

I'm starting to think we're hallucinating the whole thing.

Jiggle it a little it'll open.


I have the power not only to jiggle your brain electrons with an image, I can make you hear electronic keyboard music in your head with just two words...



Final Countdown.

Were you listening to Morning Edition too, this morning?
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/09/362737914/how-catchy-songs-lodge-their-hooks-in-your-ears

Hey, BG!

Nope, I wasn't up that early.

Aren't you impressed with my super power?


Actually, when I hear or think of Final Countdown (DAH dah... dit dit dit dada) I also see Gob Bluth doing his magic routine from Arrested Development.

Don't make me tap the sign.

No, not tap the sign, that other thing... bring out the big guns.

You know what song I mean, don't you

What a lovely journal - and how brilliantly it derailed

This is the stuff of h2g2 that makes me happy.

One does what one can, you know