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

You still have to play the hand you were dealt, Pierce. If you didn't inherit an Einsteinian intellect or the body of a top model, your options are not going to be stellar.

Anyway, it's fine to want to be a better version of yourself, but getting down on yourself would do more harm than good. Relax. Get enough sleep. Give yourself a pato n the back now and then because, faults aside, you're basically a good guy even on your worst day.

speak for yourself; I had the body of a god and danced like an angel and proved the continuum hypothesis when I was three. Well I new the price of a bottle of sauce and it continued to go up.

Just how good can you be at school when you was thrashed for doing homework and had three paper rounds, a job on a farm and had to work in a rubber works in the holiday making protectors for long fat fingers.

Yes, yeh and I had to tip up. cor Einstein had it easy and was not even American.

I thought Einstein spent the last part of his life in New Jersey. No?

Cor, I thought he was born in Germany like most of the clever dickies, but then I wouldn't know. I suppose I could look it up but can't be bothered.

It is Xmus now, which means nothing on telly, no shops open, no nothing, no buses and nothing.

There was a little thing called the Holocaust which Einstein escaped by going west across the Atlantic. By the late forties/early fifties, he was so famous that people would crowd his lectures. Most had no idea what he was talking about, but they were thrilled to hear such an obvious genius speak.

I knew a few of what are commonly known as genius's. What is so good about them is that you can be completely confused about something but once in their company everything makes sense, and when you leave you are completely confused again, until you do it all by yourself.

Even then I forgot it, but I did have to be smashed in the head by a five to truck. I think it probably has something to do with it.

Imagine; if there wasn't any wars, there might be a cure for heart disease. We might travel faster than light.

Genius tends to fade with time. The human mind is at its best around the age of 30. After that, it gradually loses its acumen. But don't worry about it, as there is usually plenty of intelligence left. Plus, with time comes improved judgment, even wisdom.

Most people have ideas before going to university, have them bashed out of them only to be reconstituted later. Then they live off them.

Ha ha

Some people spend their college years partying and chasing students of the opposite (or sometimes the same) gender. Others have their sights set on medical or dental or law school. They burn the midnight oil studying.

Ambition is lauded these days. People are supposed to want to be entrepreneurs. They're encouraged to think "out of the box." From what I've seen, all of this motivational stuff ends up making them crazy or miserable, or both.

Entrepreneurship works best for the tiny number of people who get to the very top. They seem to expect the rest of the world to worship their every utterance. There's a billionaire who thinks it's unfair that he can't live forever. He's trying to fund a crash program of research into extending longevity. Chances are, he's the only one who will be able to afford to outlive the rest of us. What if he runs out of money when he's, say, 160? What then?

For some poor souls in their fifties or sixties, living much longer would be a cruelty. Why extend pain or disability?

...if there wasn't any wars...

Modern blood transfusion technology was an outgrowth of WW II, before that, they'd just match blood types and run a line directly from the donor to the recipient, which didn't work very well if the recipient had higher BP than the donor.

One couldn't get Cipro in the USA until the anthrax letters scare of 2002.

War has always been a tremendous stimulant to economic growth and technological innovation.

Space colonization could work better that way, without the violence of conflict, but there are people who think it immoral to deliberately stimulate economic growth to the purpose merely of improving living standards.

Without war they would have been discovered anyway, and some are motivated by things other than oil or money.

You cannot expect the discovery of a new theorem by putting a gun to the scientists head.

I suppose weapons advanced a lot though.Rockets, jets and global warming.

Civil wars in the east take their attention off us stealing the food out of their mouths.

...what I mean is that some people are terribly inhibited about doing a good thing, just because its a good thing, and instead need the excuse of a crisis of some kind. Disappointing, but its so...

"Without war they would have been discovered anyway, and some are motivated by things other than oil or money" [PAL]

That's possible, but waging war requires that a society mobilize its citizens. This in turn focusses people's energies. The American Civil War required that each side (the North and the South) train large numbers of soldiers and get them accustomed to working together and following orders. Strangely enough, the laying of rails for the Intercontinental railroad a few years later required exactly the same degree of organization. Without the Civil War, it would likely have taken longer to organize the large numbers of people who were needed for building the railroad. There were plenty of war veterans available who could work together and follow the plans that the top brass came up with.

And then there are some people like the Tea party group in the US that will manufacture a crisis for publicity and never do a good thing.

I'm no fan of the Tea Party movement, Shagbark, but I see the phenomenon as a massive letting off of steam as reality sinks in. The reality is that conservative Republican control of the U.S. government has probably run its course for a while. It was getting tired. People who have a hard row to hoe in terms of earning their livelihood have lost faith in many conservative myths like the trickle down theory. How much wealth has really trickled down from the few wealthy people who control so much of the nation's wealth?

You think it is hard now. Wait a minute, all the dodgy deals were done in London now 600-1000% debt to GDP.

Just wait for a Minsky moment, and bye bye

I don't know what a Minsky moment is, sounds impressive though.

I never ever believed in trickle down anything; but I do believe in greed and those that have it sure ain't going to heaven.

Even if they believed in it.

I think the guillotine will get them in the end.

There are many fine charities. Well-meaning people of means contribute to them, I'm sure. All too often, though, there are strings attached. There's one prominent charity (you can guess which one it is,I'm sure) helps the needy in the hope that they will embrace Christ. This is fine if they are so inclined. It's not fine if they have had bad experiences with Christian churches in the past.